Ahmed Kamel – Egypt Daily News
The U.S. Department of Justice has removed several thousand documents and media files from its website after acknowledging that materials related to the late sex offender Jeffrey Epstein were published with redaction failures that may have exposed identifying information about victims.
In a letter filed Monday on the dockets of two federal judges, Justice Department officials said the documents were taken down after it was discovered that they “may have inadvertently included victim-identifying information due to various factors, including technical or human error.” The filing was submitted by Jay Clayton, the U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York.
The move followed an emergency request late Sunday from attorneys representing Epstein’s victims, who urged the court to order the DOJ to take the website offline entirely. The lawyers said the latest document release exposed the names or personal details of nearly 100 survivors, arguing that the disclosures had caused severe emotional distress and reversed years of efforts to protect victims’ privacy.
While the Justice Department did not indicate that it plans to shut down the Epstein files website altogether, Clayton said officials are continuing to work with victims and their legal representatives to identify problematic materials and remove them for further review. He added that the department is also making procedural and technical improvements to prevent similar errors, while still complying with the Epstein Files Transparency Act, which mandates public disclosure of the records.
“As of the writing of this letter, all documents requested by victims or counsel to be removed by yesterday evening have been removed for further redaction,” Clayton wrote, adding that the department continues to process new requests and conduct internal searches to identify additional documents requiring corrections.
Clayton noted that the DOJ has independently removed a “substantial number” of files without waiting for victim complaints and has revised its internal protocols multiple times since the release. Dedicated teams have been assigned to monitor and respond to requests from victims and their attorneys, and the department is not relying solely on survivors to flag errors.
According to the letter, DOJ staff worked through the weekend running supplemental searches to identify missed redactions. Clayton said the first 24 hours after the documents were released on Friday prompted “significant enhancements” to the department’s procedures for handling victim-related concerns.
The controversy comes amid the DOJ’s broader release of Epstein-related records. Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche said Friday that approximately three million pages of documents were being made public. He added that the department holds roughly six million pages in total, with nearly half withheld due to legal restrictions, including the presence of child sexual abuse material and obligations under federal law to protect victims’ identities.
Epstein died in a New York jail cell in 2019 while awaiting trial on federal sex trafficking charges, but the handling of his case and the protection of his victims continues to raise legal, ethical, and institutional questions. The latest incident has renewed criticism of how the government balances transparency with survivor privacy in high-profile criminal cases.
