The Justice Department is denying accusations of a cover-up and of flouting a new law following its partial and extensively redacted releases of files on Jeffrey Epstein in an ever-deepening political storm around President Donald Trump.
The department started to make public files from a huge trove of information on the accused sex trafficker to meet Friday’s deadline. The files contained the stunning revelation that there are 1,200 people identified as victims or their relatives. They include materials from dozens of hard drives, old CDs and computers.
But the information has fallen far short of the congressionally mandated full disclosure, and hundreds of thousands of pieces for evidence are still being reviewed by officials. Experts say that many documents critical to understanding the case and why Epstein was not prosecuted earlier have yet to appear.
The department’s limited compliance is the latest twist in the saga over Epstein, a highly connected former financier who died in jail in 2019, which has drawn in a group of famous political and business elites who were once in his orbit.
Senior officials insist their caution is motivated by the need to avoid identifying Epstein’s victims, but Trump’s opponents allege obstruction by his politicized DOJ. And the limited release of documents threatens to condemn women who were allegedly trafficked or abused by Epstein as young girls to another false dawn in their long-frustrated quest for justice.
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