Deputy US Attorney General Says Review of Jeffrey Epstein Sex-Trafficking Case ‘is over’
Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche said Sunday that federal prosecutors have completed their review of the Jeffrey Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell sex-trafficking case files, declaring the process “over” amid mounting criticism that the Justice Department has not released all the records required under transparency laws.
Speaking to ABC News, Blanche said the department had fulfilled its obligations after Friday’s massive document release. In separate remarks to CNN, he acknowledged the suffering of survivors but stressed that prosecutors cannot bring charges without sufficient evidence.
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“Victims want to be made whole, and we want that,” Blanche said. “But that doesn’t mean we can create evidence or bring a case that isn’t there.”
Blanche’s comments came after survivors’ advocates and Democratic lawmakers argued that the document dump — which included millions of pages — was still incomplete and, in some instances, improperly redacted. He said any mistakes involving victim identities were quickly corrected and represented “.001%” of the total material.
He also pushed back against accusations of a cover-up, calling it “amazing” that such claims surfaced less than a day after the release. “We have nothing to hide,” Blanche said.
Democrats on Capitol Hill strongly disagreed. Rep. Ro Khanna, who co-authored the transparency law tied to the files, told CNN the department had released “at best half” of the archive. “Even what they released shocks the conscience,” Khanna said, pointing to references involving prominent figures who had contact with Epstein but have not been accused of wrongdoing.
Rep. Jamie Raskin said the administration’s stance amounted to declaring “case closed” while still controlling which records are made public. House Democratic leader Hakeem Jeffries echoed that view on ABC’s This Week, saying full transparency has not yet been achieved and asking, “What are they hiding and who are they protecting?”
The Justice Department has previously noted that many documents in the archive are duplicates from separate investigations conducted in Florida and New York, which inflates the total page count.
Epstein, a former associate of President Donald Trump, pleaded guilty in 2008 to state charges involving a minor and later died in federal custody in 2019 while awaiting trial on additional sex-trafficking charges. Maxwell is currently serving a 20-year prison sentence following her 2022 conviction for aiding Epstein’s abuse network.
As debate continues over what has — and has not — been released, survivors’ attorneys say their clients remain frustrated, both by accidental disclosures of some names and by the belief that more records remain undisclosed.
