Attorney General Pam Bondi admitted mistakes were made in the handling of the Jeffrey Epstein files, particularly on the redactions of victims’ names.
Approximately 7,000 documents of the 3.5 million released have been flagged for further review based on concerns from victims, Bondi revealed in a letter to federal judges.
Because of the errors the Justice Department “has temporarily removed thousands of documents from the DOJ Epstein Library for further review— including approximately 9,500 documents subject to the Protective Orders in the Maxwell case,” she wrote.
The Justice Department has been under scrutiny for its handling of the release. Observers noted some files disappeared after they posted publicly online last week.
The tranche of documents revealed the names of women who had not previously been named publicly, leading to criticism from victims’ rights groups.
Bondi blamed several factors for the errors, including human errors, technical errors, and DOJ staff being hampered by their ability to search the text of certain documents that were part of the cache.
