The US Department of Justice on Friday released another tranche of records connected to convicted paedophile Jeffrey Epstein. The records include three million pages, 2,000 videos and 1.8 lakh images.
The Justice Department is required by a law passed in November to publish all Epstein-related records. The Epstein Files Transparency Act was enacted after months of public and political pressure.
“Today we are producing more than 3 million pages, including 2000 videos and 180,000 images related to Epstein. These include large quantities of commercial pornography and images seized from Epstein’s devices,” said US Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche said.
However, he pointed out that the Justice Department did not protect President Donald Trump from his name appearing in the documents. “We comply with the act, and there is no ‘protect President Trump.’ We didn’t protect or not protect anybody,” he told reporters.
The DoJ had missed the earlier deadline of December 19 set by Congress. The Justice Department said hundreds of lawyers were tasked with reviewing the records to determine what needs to be redacted in order to protect the identities of victims of sexual abuse.
Blanche said there were a total of six million documents but they were redacted due to presence of child sexual abuse material.
Before Christmas, the DoJ had released several thousands of pages, which included flight logs showing that Trump flew on Epstein’s private jet in the 1990s. The records also had several photographs of former President Bill Clinton. However, neither Trump nor Clinton has been publicly accused of any wrongdoing in connection with Epstein. Both of them have said they had no knowledge about his involvement in child abuse.
Epstein killed himself in a New York jail cell in August 2019, a month after he was indicted on federal sex trafficking charges.
