Ahead of Attorney General Pamela Bondi and Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche’s appearance at today’s closed-door hearing with the House Committee on Oversight, Amb. Norm Eisen (ret.), executive chair of Democracy Defenders Fund, made the following statement:

“The law required the Department of Justice to release all of the Epstein files on Dec. 19, but three months later, the Justice Department is still stonewalling the American people. The failure of the Department to comply fully with the Epstein Files Transparency Act will go down as one of the gravest marks on the already crumbling reputation of the Department. The survivors of Epstein’s trafficking network and the American people are owed full transparency, and Congress must sustain its oversight and demand answers until the DOJ fulfills its legal obligation. In the meantime we will continue to surge forward on our litigation to obtain many of the most critical missing documents."

In a series of letters to the DOJ Office of the Inspector General, DDF has outlined the Department's systemic failures regarding the document production, including:

• Failed to Justify Redactions: The DOJ has failed to provide an index or line-by-line descriptions of its redactions and withholdings, including the specific legal basis for each action, as required by the Federal Register and in direct communication with Congress.

• Over-Redacted Government Officials and Suspects: The Department has excessively redacted information, including the names of government officials and potential suspects, despite Congress' explicit requirement to release all information except for direct victim-identifying details.

• Unjustified withholdings: The DOJ has withheld approximately 3 million pages of reviewed documents. The rationale for these withholdings is highly questionable. The DOJ has failed to provide an index or line-by-line descriptions of its redactions and withholdings, including the legal basis for specific redactions and withholdings. The Department of Justice was required to do this both in the Federal Register and in a letter to Congress. The Department has never published any description of its redactions and withholdings in the Federal Register.

• Suspicious Document Tampering: The DOJ has surreptitiously removed and replaced documents after they were initially reviewed, applying additional unexplained redactions to the files.

Read DDF’s report, What We’ve Learned from the Epstein Files So Far.

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Democracy Defenders Fund brings together a nonpartisan team to work with national, state and local allies across the country to defend in real-time the foundations of our democracy.