Justice Department under scrutiny for revealing victim info and concealing possible enablers in Epstein files

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By Jeremy Herb, MJ Lee, Nicky Robertson, CNN

(CNN) — The Justice Department failed to black out identifying information about many of Jeffrey Epstein’s victims and redacted the details of individuals who may have aided the convicted sex offender, prompting an outcry from survivors who accuse DOJ of botching the release of more than 3 million documents last week.

A CNN review of the Epstein documents identified several examples of people whose identities were blacked out possibly helping to connect him with women, including redacted co-conspirators in a much-anticipated draft indictment of Epstein from the 2000s.

A redacted individual wrote in one 2015 email to Epstein: “And this one is (i think) totally your girl.”

In another 2014 email in the files, a person wrote to Epstein: “Thank you for a fun night… Your littlest girl was a little naughty.” But the name of the individual who wrote that message is redacted.

The Department of Justice on Friday released what it said was the last of the Epstein files that it was required to disclose by law, but the documents have prompted widespread outcry about a continued lack of transparency and justice for Epstein’s many survivors.

Epstein survivors are up in arms about the mishandled redactions, including blacked out statements that victims made to the FBI.

A DOJ official said in a statement that any fully redacted names are of victims. “In many instances, as it has been well documented publicly, those who were originally victims became participants and co-conspirators,” the official said. “We did not redact any names of men, only female victims.”

FBI and law enforcement names were also redacted, the DOJ official said.

Meanwhile, the Justice Department has been scrambling to fix the improper disclosure of victim information.

The Justice Department narrowly avoided a hearing in federal court on Wednesday by reaching an agreement late Tuesday with lawyers for some of the Epstein survivors, who had accused DOJ of releasing information about nearly 100 Epstein victims in the files.

Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche acknowledged Monday that “mistakes were made” but argued that DOJ has moved expeditiously to correct any information unintentionally released.

For Epstein survivors, the DOJ’s response is unacceptable.

“To have pieces of my life be out there on display in that way, was really troublesome,” said Dani Bensky, who told CNN in a roundtable with Epstein survivors that her name, address and phone number were all initially in the files.

“And I know that I’m public now, yes, it hurts me — but it really hurts our survivor sisters who are still ‘Jane Does’ even more,” she added.

The furor over what is and isn’t included in the Epstein documents highlights how the department’s release of more than 3 million documents on Friday is hardly the end of the fight over the Epstein files — even as both Blanche and President Donald Trump have said they think it’s time to move on.

Congress forced the disclosure of the Epstein documents after passing the Epstein Files Transparency Act last November over Trump’s initial objections. But the bipartisan group of lawmakers who pushed for the law’s passage say there are still millions of files that have not been released, which the DOJ argued fell within exceptions to the law not requiring their disclosure.

Democratic Rep. Ro Khanna of California and GOP Rep. Thomas Massie of Kentucky, who led the effort to release the files, have asked to view the unredacted files — and are still threatening Attorney General Pam Bondi with impeachment or contempt for failing to comply with the law if more are not disclosed.

“The DOJ has protected the Epstein class with blanket redactions in some areas while failing to protect the identities of survivors in other areas,” Khanna said in a statement to CNN. “Congress cannot properly assess DOJ’s handling of the Epstein and Maxwell cases without access to the complete record.”

‘There’s no reason to redact it’

The documents released on Friday include the names of numerous high-profile men who interacted with Epstein — who died by suicide in 2019 awaiting trial on federal sex-trafficking charges — a list that included Trump, former President Bill Clinton, Bill Gates, Elon Musk and the former Prince Andrew, among many others. All have denied any wrongdoing related to Epstein and have never been charged by law enforcement with any crimes.

But Epstein survivors say the files appear to shield those who specifically enabled the convicted sex offender’s abuse, as well as other men who may have been named in the survivors’ statements that were completely redacted.

One Epstein survivor pointed to another FBI form contained in the files where full pages were blacked out.

“It basically outlines everything that this person experienced and shared with the FBI. It was seven pages long and four of them looked like this,” Jess Michaels told CNN in an interview. “What happened to her and who did it is also reacted. So you cannot say in the same sentence: ‘There were no men, there was no list’ and redact this much of a statement. Because if there’s no men, then there’s no reason to redact it. There’s no other reason.”

One of the most anticipated documents in the files was the controversial draft indictment from the Southern District of Florida from the 2000s, which would have charged Epstein, along with three others, who were described as having been “employed” by Epstein.

The individuals are all described as having conspired to “persuade, induce, and entice individuals who had not attained the age of 18 years to engage in prostitution.” But their names are redacted.

The files also include numerous email exchanges with Epstein that appear to describe the procurement of women.

A redacted individual from a Paris modeling agency wrote in a 2013 email to Epstein: “New Brazilian just arrived, sexy and cute, 19yo .”

The email appears in the files twice: In one version, the modeling agency’s name is redacted, but in another, the agency is not redacted from the sender’s email signature.

In a 2018 email to Epstein, another redacted individual wrote: “I found at least 3 very good young poor.”

“Meet this one,” the person continued. “Not the beauty queen but we both likes her a lot.”

In a letter to Congress on Friday, the Justice Department detailed how it made redactions, saying it complied with the law by redacting victim information, child sex abuse materials and anything that would jeopardize an active investigation.

DOJ also withheld 200,000 pages “covered by various privileges, including deliberative process privilege, the work-product doctrine, and attorney-client privilege,” according to the letter.

At his press conference last Friday announcing the release of the files, Blanche said they did not contain information about evidence that would lead to the prosecution of any men who abused women.

“I said this earlier, there’s this built-in assumption that somehow there’s this hidden tranche of information of men that we know about that we’re covering up or that we’re choosing not to prosecute. That is not the case,” Blanche said. “I don’t know whether there are men out there that abuse these women.”

Scrambling to scrub files

In the hours after Friday’s DOJ release, CNN reported that multiple survivors, including anonymous “Jane Doe” victims, were seeing their names and information throughout the documents that were published.

Attorneys for some of the survivors sent a letter saying the DOJ’s failure to properly redact victims’ information had trigged an “unfolding emergency,” asking two federal judges in New York for an “immediate judicial intervention.”

Sunday’s letter included testimony from various anonymous “Jane Doe” victims who described receiving death threats and harassment from the media since the publication of the files.

“When DOJ believed it was ready to publish, it needed only to type each victim’s name into its own search function. Any resulting hit should have been redacted before publication. Had DOJ done that, the harm would have been avoided,” the lawyers wrote.

DOJ said in a response filed to the judges that it had removed all documents that victims or their lawyers identified, and a Justice Department spokesperson had said it had 500 reviewers looking at the files “for this very reason.”

“Mistakes were made by – you have really hard-working lawyers that worked for the past 60 days. Think about this though: you’re talking about pieces of paper that stack from the ground to two Eiffel Towers,” Blanche said Monday on Fox News. “The minute that a victim or their lawyer reached out to us since Friday, we immediately dealt with it and pulled it down.”

Epstein’s survivors say the release of names, even if corrected, is yet another example of how the Justice Department failed them.

“Publishing images of victims while shielding predators is just a failure of complete justice,” Epstein survivor Sharlene Rochard told CNN. “There’s this deep sense of betrayal when the systems meant to protect you becomes the one causing all of this harm.”

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