The US Justice Department said Wednesday that it may need a “few more weeks” to release all of its records on the late sex offender Jeffrey Epstein after suddenly discovering more than a million potentially relevant documents, further delaying compliance with last Friday’s congressionally mandated deadline.
The Christmas Eve announcement came hours after a dozen US senators called on the Justice Department’s watchdog to examine its failure to meet the deadline.
The group, 11 Democrats and a Republican, told Acting Inspector General Don Berthiaume in a letter that victims “deserve full disclosure” and the “peace of mind” of an independent audit.
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The Justice Department said in a social media post that federal prosecutors in Manhattan and the FBI “have uncovered over a million more documents” that could be related to the Epstein case – a stunning eleventh-hour development after department officials suggested months ago that they had undertaken a comprehensive review that accounted for the vast universe of Epstein-related materials.
In March, Attorney General Pam Bondi told Fox News that a “truckload of evidence” had been delivered to her after she ordered the Justice Department to “deliver the full and complete Epstein files to my office” – a directive she said she made after learning from an unidentified source that the FBI in New York was “in possession of thousands of pages of documents”.
In July, the FBI and Justice Department indicated in an unsigned memo that they had undertaken an “exhaustive review” and had determined that no additional evidence should be released – an extraordinary about-face from the Trump administration, which for months had pledged maximum transparency.