Name: Partial release of Epstein files faces criticism
Uploaded: 2025-12-21T00:27:37.276Z
Duration: 3 min 54 s
Description: The U.S. Department of Justice released thousands of documents, photos and files related to late sex offender Jeffrey Epstein on Friday. But some Democrats are criticizing the partial release because the department had a deadline to release all of the files by end of Friday.

The U.S. Department of Justice released thousands of documents, photos and files related to late sex offender Jeffrey Epstein on Friday. But some Democrats are criticizing the partial release because the department had a deadline to release all of the files by end of Friday.

Washington

The U.S. Department of Justice has released a large set of documents related to convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, with officials stating that more material will be made public in the future. Many of the documents and photographs had been previously released, and significant portions of the new material were heavily redacted, including hundreds of pages blacked out due to grand jury testimony.

Survivors and lawmakers have criticized the partial release, expressing disappointment at the limited disclosure and the extent of redactions. Some lawmakers have indicated that legal action may be taken to compel the Justice Department to comply fully with court orders, as the department has promised additional releases by the end of the year.

'Partial' release of Epstein files faces criticism

A flood of material related to convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein has been released by the U.S. Department of Justice. And even more may be coming. For more on the release and the reactions to it, let's bring in journalist Steve Futterman, joining us this morning from Los Angeles. Nice to see you, Steve. Let's talk about what we learned from yesterday's release. Well, Marianne, depends who you talk to. We didn't really learn that much. Lots of documents were released, but many of them had been released before. Lots of pictures in this initial release. Let's take a look at some of them. There were a number of pictures of Bill Clinton. There's one in a pool, one in a jacuzzi, a number of pictures of Clinton, but also a number of other well-known people, personalities, Prince Andrew, Mick Jagger, Michael Jackson, Diana Ross. So lots of pictures. And, of course, lots of pictures of Jeffrey Epstein. There were some pictures of young women. Most of those were blocked out. However, apparently there were some videos that do show some young women in without being blocked out. So that might be something that comes up a bit later. Now, one of the survivors, Annie Farmer, she was 16 years old when she says she was abused by Jeffrey Epstein. By the way, her sister was also one of the victims. She talked about her disappointment that not all of the documents were released, only a small number of documents. Take a listen. I don't feel tremendously confident that everything will come out. There's been a lot of effort and money and time put into redactions, not to protect victims, but to protect people in power. And that's really the general reaction amongst the victims. They're happy that the documents have at least started to come out. Now, the deputy attorney general, Todd Blanche, defended the release. He said this is only a first step. There'll be a lot more documents released. He said the Department of Justice wasn't able to go through all the documents. That of course has not been received very well by a number of lawmakers. But that's the situation right now. There will be more documents released, he says, in the weeks ahead by the end of the year. So, Steve, what has the reaction been from U.S. lawmakers? Well, many of them are very, very upset. And they basically say, listen, you were told you had to have these documents released by midnight last night. You were clearly told that. There were no exceptions, no bits of wiggle room there, and you didn't release them. The Justice Department has basically said that they have the right to do lots of redacting. Another issue is the redacting. We can take a look at some pictures here. You can see lots of blackouts in pages. In fact, there are hundreds of pages which are completely blacked out, much of that from grand jury testimony. Let's take a listen to some of the lawmakers who are very upset with the amount of documents, the lack of the amount of documents being released. It is disappointing that they haven't been able to release these documents on time in compliance with the law. While it's clear they're trying at the very least to meet the deadline, they should have been able to do more. Now there are documents that haven't come out, as we mentioned, lots and lots of documents. By the way, Donald Trump not mentioned very much in the documents that were released yesterday. His name comes up several times, but not very often. There is likely to be some lawsuits now filed by lawmakers, maybe even from some third party groups who accused the Justice Department of not following through in what they were ordered to do. There will be probably hearings next week in federal courts where you will have people asking the judge to order the Justice Department to release these things and release them now. Not that many people satisfied. We were sort of expecting this would be the result of the first release, and it turned out to be the case. Not much there. Not many new revelations, but they say, the Justice Department says, still a long ways to go. Many more documents will be released. Journalist Steve Futterman. Thanks, Steve. Thanks, Marianne.

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