Over a month has now passed since the Trump administration was supposed to release the Epstein files under the Epstein Files Transparency Act (EFTA). Not only is the administration flouting the law and withholding millions of pages, but the little it has released is deeply problematic. Indeed, on Friday we identified that the Department of Justice has been surreptitiously adding redactions and hiding information on some of the files after they were initially released to the public.
We are not taking all this lying down. Thanks to your paid subscriptions, my colleagues and I at Democracy Defenders Fund are fighting against this corruption in both the courts of law and of public opinion. We will not stop until we pop the files free — all of them.
How Did We Get Here
The Epstein Files Transparency Act (EFTA) had to be brought before the House by discharge petition — an extraordinary measure that bypasses normal procedure — given Speaker Mike Johnson’s obstinate refusal to bring legislation to the floor. That discharge petition itself was stymied by Johnson’s weeks-long delay of swearing in Rep. Adelita Grijalva (D-AZ) during the government shutdown. Nonetheless, the EFTA passed nearly unanimously, with only one member of the house, Rep. Clay Higgins (R-LA), voting against it. Donald Trump signed the bill on Nov. 19.
Once signed into law, the EFTA required the full release of the Epstein files by Dec. 19, 2025. On the evening of Dec. 19, Democracy Defenders Fund was prepared to review the “several hundred thousand” documents Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche affirmed would be released. Instead, only 12,285 documents totaling 125,575 pages have been disclosed. The DOJ has since stated that it has uncovered many more documents and is reviewing 5.2 million pages. Some were apparently in the offices of the U.S. attorneys, notwithstanding the fact that the department had previously advised Democracy Defenders Fund in response to our FOIA requests that no such records existed.
The existence of these new records brings into sharp relief the mischaracterizations by the DOJ, including the FBI director’s assertion that the FBI had done a systematic review of all Epstein records. And it gets worse. Our initial review of the files that were released identified serious issues.
First, it became abundantly clear that Justice overly redacted information in defiance of the EFTA. Names, email addresses, faces, whole pages were blacked out.
Second, these redactions lacked the required justification. Congress made it clear that every redaction must be “accompanied by” an explanation in the official journal of the government, the Federal Register. The DOJ has yet to file a single justification for specific redactions.
Third, regardless of Justice’s over-redaction of almost all identifying information of any person, the department released photos of former President Bill Clinton unredacted. The disparate treatment of the former president raises concerns about gamemanship.
Based on that initial review, DDF filed an extensive request to the Department of Justice’s Office of the Inspector General on Jan. 7, seeking a comprehensive review of the department’s non-compliance. Importantly, we provided significant legal arguments against DOJ’s use of expansive non-statutory redactions.
More DOJ Malpractice
We have not stopped there.
Following our initial review, our expert team has compared documents DOJ previously released against documents currently in DOJ’s online Epstein Library. This week, our review identified over 70 records that had been updated with new or different redactions. The DOJ’s retroactive removals stretch from redactions of nude images to the removal of the name of a U.K. law enforcement liaison officer on official correspondence to hiding the names of several Department of Justice officials.
Do these redactions matter? Who knows — so much other material is missing that it is hard to say for certain. Sure, these changes may turn out to be benign, but the process is not. No notice that we can find was provided to the public, no justification was given for the redactions, and no markings were applied to show these post-release changes. If it were not for our careful review, the American public would have no way of knowing that Justice was altering the original release of the Epstein files before our very eyes.
This surreptitious amendment of already-released files raises profound questions about the integrity and transparency of the department’s review. So, on Friday, we submitted a follow-up request to the OIG and to Congress.
We are, of course, not alone in making noise. Others have called the Department of Justice to account as well. Senate Majority Leader Charles Schumer (D-NY) — who threatened in December to sue the department for failing to release the Epstein files — has called the DOJ’s actions a “blatant disregard of the law.” He is seeking legislation to authorize court action.
Reps. Thomas Massie (R-KY) and Ro Khanna (D-CA), the authors of the EFTA, have also sharply criticized the Justice Department. Massie explained that the release “grossly fails to comply with both the spirit and the letter of the law.” Subsequently, Massie and Khanna requested that a judge appoint an independent monitor to enforce the department’s obligations, but the request was denied because the judge didn’t have oversight over the EFTA.
Is that the end of the story? Not hardly.
Enter Our (and Your) FOIA Litigation
We suspected shenanigans and filed FOIA requests even before the EFTA became law. We demanded documents related to the investigation of Epstein and Ghislane Maxwell. But we also insisted on documents related to the Department of Justice’s refusal to release those investigative documents, its purported search for Trump’s name in the record, and any sweetheart deal Maxwell received to move her to a minimum-security prison camp against Bureau of Prisons policy. Since July, we have filed three tranches of FOIAs, totaling nearly a dozen individual requests.
When the administration gave us the cold shoulder, we initiated a lawsuit in August challenging DOJ’s refusal to release the records. We expanded that lawsuit and filed a motion for summary judgment on the department’s failure to expedite its review of our request. It is pending before the court.
We will not accept the administration’s obfuscation, slow-walking, and out-and-out non-compliance with the law. We expect a favorable outcome in our most recent motion for summary judgment. And we will continue to push the Department of Justice for compliance with the EFTA and call attention to its missteps.
As I highlighted last week, the democracy coalition is overwhelmingly winning in the court of law and in the court of public opinion. The victims of the heinous crimes perpetrated by Epstein and his co-conspirators deserve more than the Justice Department’s abject failure to abide by the law. We won’t stop until we’ve ensured that the Justice Department provides justice to the victims of Epstein and his friends and to the American people.
Your paid subscriptions make that — together with our 248 other cases and matters — possible. Not to mention our unsurpassed Contrarian coverage. Just take a look at this week’s highlights, authored by my wonderful colleagues Meghan Houser, Jamie Riley, Lily Conway, and our Contrarian team.
Civil Rights on Trial
Supreme Court Considers Axing Voting Rights
Janai Nelson spoke to Jen Rubin about what’s at stake in Louisiana v. Callais: Will the Supreme Court cement its MAGA allegiance and gut the Voting Rights Act? Or will it clear the lowest bar in preserving a cornerstone of American democracy and MLK Jr.’s greatest achievement?
Trump’s Assertion of Power Threatens Black Workers
Craig Becker and Joseph A. McCartin analyzed Donald Trump’s claims of absolute authority to fire any federal employee for any reason — including blatant racial, gender, religious or other discrimination — as a threat to “the central principle of the civil service system and a unique threat to Black workers.” See also: Katie Phang’s live reporting on the oral arguments in the Lisa Cook v. Trump case.
Jack Smith Reminds us What Real Prosecutors Sound Like
Andrew Weissmann joined Jen to reveal the hope hidden in the spectacle that was special counsel Jack Smith’s hearing before the House Judiciary Committee this week to defend his investigations into Trump’s 2020 election meddling and the stolen documents. “The government writ large is filled with people like him who are there for the right reasons, who follow the facts and the law.”
The End of the Lawsuit But Not the End of the Fight
Former Federal Labor Relations Authority chair Susan Tsui Grundmann wrote on her lawsuit against the president for wrongful termination — a suit with the natural end of her rightful term — and its place in a larger fight against Trump’s authoritarian power grab. “These firings are intended to concentrate all executive power in one person: him.”
NATO No More?
Jeff Nesbit wrote on Trump’s grasping demands for Greenland this week, calling his threats to take over an ally “a 19th-century solution to a 21st-century problem.” “Seizing Greenland wouldn’t make America great; it would make America alone.”
An Open Letter to European Leaders
Brian O’Neill addressed European leaders directly, apropos of Trump’s militaristic antics at Davos, with the reality check that appeasement has only taught Trump to expect compliance. “The wager was that careful engagement would blunt the edge — keep him inside the guardrails, keep the alliance intact, keep the temperature down. That wager has failed.”
Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse joined Jen to discuss a question getting less hypothetical every day, thanks to Trump’s provocations on the world stage: Who is America without its allies? “Once you put into the minds of our allies that the United States … is willing to publicly contemplate invading a fellow member of NATO, they’re going to have to take steps in that vein.”
Cracks in the ICE?
“ICE Is A Modern Day Slave Patrol”
Latosha Brown of the Black Voters Matter Fund joined Jen to expose how the dehumanization of Americans is nothing new, and that there are constructive lessons in facing history head-on. “This notion that America was exceptional and that somehow our systems could not be eroded or somehow democracy was ever infallible…. One lesson I think we should take in is that all systems are created by people.”
Kristi Noem is Cold as Ice. She’s No Barbie.
Shalise Manza Young took issue with the trend of disparaging Kristi Noem as “ICE Barbie”—not because the MAGA secretary doesn’t deserve the implied insult, but because Barbie doesn’t. “Barbie … has never been a sociopathic shrew.”
Will ICE Target World Cup Fans Too?
On the latest episode of Offsides, Pablo Torre wonders whether America can guarantee other countries that immigration agents will not harass or detain their citizens visiting for the World Cup. (He suspects not.) “You’re going on a vacation. You want to go to a sporting event. Who wants to have that in the back of your mind?”
Misogyny & Persisting Nevertheless
Move Over Childless Cat Ladies. There’s a New Broad in Town.
Jennifer Weiss-Wolf introduced us to right’s favorite new bogey(wo)man: AWFUL, aka “Affluent White Female Urban Liberals,” aka, per Fox News, “organized gangs of wine moms us[ing] Antifa tactics to harass and impede” ICE. The horror.
Split Screen: A Year Since Trump 2.0
Azza Cohen looked back at a year in images of both destruction and resistance. ‘We have lost so much this year, and we will continue to lose more for the next three years of this awful administration. But we cannot lose our hope that the arc of history is long, and it’s up to us to keep bending it toward justice.”
For this week’s Undaunted column, Jen highlighted a democratic — and Democratic — bright spot: the inauguration of two women as state governors, Mikie Sherrill and Abigail Spanberger, who are poised to serve as shining examples of the leadership our nation deserves.
Fighting back
So, You Want to Run for President?
Jen offered a guide to what 2028 aspirants should consider before running in what will be (yet again) the most important election of our lifetimes. “Democratic hopefuls have to rebuild public trust on the tough everyday issues.”
A Guide to Resisting Violent Extremism
Dr. Mike Jensen discussed his work at PERIL (the Polarization and Extremism Research and Innovation Lab) researching effective ways to “pre-bunk” individuals against potentially radicalizing content online. “It’s not unlike research [into] vaccines.”
The Contrarian Covers the Democracy Movement
This week we saw ICE protests in Minnesota, Washington, D.C., Illinois, Arizona, and much more, culminating on Friday with a National Day of Solidarity with Minnesota organized by ICE Out for Good. As always, get help organizing from Indivisible, find protests in your area at mobilize.us, and send us your protest photos at submit@contrariannews.org.
Culture, Cartoons & Fun Stuff
This week, our cartoonists took on Trump’s Greenlandic ambitions (‘I Will Have My Vengeance’ and Promises, Promises, Michael de Adder), the view from our allies (Taco, Trump?, Nick Anderson), the view with historic eyes (Tom the Dancing Bug, Ruben Bolling), and more.
Lucinda Williams Wants to Push Our Buttons
Alan Light gave us an interview with country legend Lucinda Williams on the advent of her new album, World’s Gone Wrong, in which “the three-time Grammy winner returns to her folk singer and activist roots.”
Marissa Rothkopf gave us a little baking diplomacy and self care for trying times.
I’m sure your summary of the Trump administration’s misdeeds covers only a fraction of their illegal, immoral, and murderous actions.
To bribery, extortion, torture, the destruction of civil rights, women’s rights, and international law, we can now add the commission and coverup of pedophilia.
Thank you for keeping us up to date on some of your many trials to hold this rogue presidency accountable. It's a pleasure to hear more about your work.