WASHINGTON — The Justice Department is scrambling to review about 5.2 million pages related to the late convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein to comply with a law passed by Congress, a source familiar with the operation told NBC News on Tuesday night.
That number is much higher than previously known.
DOJ was seeking to enlist roughly 400 employees in the effort to sift through the records, which is expected to run from Jan. 5 to Jan. 20, two sources familiar with the plan told NBC News.
A Justice Department spokesperson did not respond to NBC News’ request for comment.
Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche said Wednesday that lawyers from department’s headquarters, the FBI, the Southern District of Florida and the Southern District of New York “are working around the clock through the holidays, including Christmas and New Years, to review documents in compliance with federal law.”
“It truly is an all-hands-on-deck approach and we’re asking as many lawyers as possible to commit their time to review the documents that remain,” he wrote on X. “Required redactions to protect victims take time but they will not stop these materials from being released. The Attorney General’s and this Administration’s goal is simple: transparency and protecting victims.”
A bipartisan law required the Justice Department to release the federal government’s trove of Epstein files by Dec. 19. The New York Times reported on the extra documents Tuesday evening.
The Justice Department said in an X post on Dec. 24 that lawyers were “working around the clock to review and make the legally required redactions to protect victims,” but because of the massive volume of material, the process “may take a few more weeks.”
The Trump administration has come under fire since it failed to release all of the government’s records related to Epstein by the Dec. 19 deadline, which was required by the law signed by President Donald Trump. Reps. Ro Khanna, D-Calif., and Thomas Massie, R-Ky., who spearheaded the legislation in Congress, said earlier this month that they are speaking with members of Congress about holding Attorney General Pam Bondi in contempt.
Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., also said last week that he would introduce a resolution directing the Senate to “initiate legal action against the DOJ” for releasing only some of its records related to Epstein.
A day later, the Justice Department released 30,000 more documents — the third batch that was made public — including an email that claimed that flight logs show Trump flew on Epstein’s plane at least eight times in the 1990s. The email was from an unnamed assistant U.S. attorney from the Southern District of New York, but the sender and recipient were redacted.
In a post on X, the DOJ said that some of the documents contained “untrue and sensationalist claims made against President Trump that were submitted to the FBI right before the 2020 election.
After that release, Khanna wrote on X, “.@RepThomasMassie & I will continue to keep the pressure on.After we said we are bringing contempt, the DOJ is now finding millions more documents to release.They need to release the 302 FBI statements & the emails on Epstein’s computer.The Epstein class must go.”
Last Friday, Trump acknowledged that more than a million documents potentially related to the Epstein case were were turned over to the DOJ by the U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York and the FBI. The president complained that the DOJ “is being forced to spend all of its time on this Democrat inspired Hoax.” He added, “The Radical Left doesn’t want people talking about TRUMP & REPUBLICAN SUCCESS, only a long ago dead Jeffrey Epstein — Just another Witch Hunt!!!”
Trump has not been accused of and has denied any wrongdoing in connection with Epstein. The White House has said Trump ended his relationship with Epstein in the early 2000s because Epstein was a “creep.”
Epstein died in jail in 2019 while awaiting trial on federal sex trafficking charges. His accomplice, Ghislaine Maxwell, was found guilty in New York in 2021 of multiple sex trafficking charges for her role in the sexual abuse of underage girls and is serving a 20-year prison sentence.
Dareh Gregorian contributed.