The Department of Justice recently acknowledged mistakes in handling the infamous Epstein files, noting they are being re-reviewed for additional redactions.
For context, on Thursday, a letter signed by US Attorney General Pam Bondi, Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche, and US Attorney for the Southern District of New York, Jay Clayton, was filed with judges in the Southern District of New York.
According to Business Insider, the letter stated that Department of Justice officials have pulled approximately 9,500 documents temporarily, for additional redactions, partly due to the inclusion of victim-identifying information.
The Justice Department says it has taken down several thousand documents and “media” that may have inadvertently included victim-identifying information since it began releasing the latest batch of documents related https://t.co/f6NxcJoEOq
— GazetteXtra (@gazettextra) February 3, 2026
Further citing the letter, the outlet noted that after the DOJ released the Epstein documents, some victims and their attorneys found new names and personal details for redaction “that were not identified prior to publication.”
“Additionally, many of the documents flagged by victims and victim counsel for further review were not necessarily identifying of a particular victim based on the face of the document, itself, and were not obviously sensitive in nature,” the letter continued, urging the judges to “not take any further protective measures” as they review the documents.
The filing also stated that the problems in the Epstein files could be due to huge amounts of documents, “from multiple offices and investigations spanning over twenty years.” Per the outlet, the letter also stated that the problem could be due to “technical capabilities of the document management systems” and “human error.”
It further mentioned that, “Based on a sampling of documents for purposes of preparing this letter, there are instances where redactions appear to have been inadvertently missed despite what is clearly a robust effort by the reviewer.”
Giving an example, the DOJ noted that victim identifying information “in a document that consists of more than 80 pages of scanned material from a hard-copy file,” was “comprehensively redacted throughout, but the document has been flagged for further review because on one page, the first name of a victim appears.”
BREAKING: DOJ announces the release of 3 million pages of Epstein files:
“Today, we are producing more than 3 million pages, including more than 2,000 videos and 180,000 images,” US Deputy AG Blanche says. pic.twitter.com/ukKb7xyerz
— Fox News (@FoxNews) January 30, 2026
Meanwhile, speaking about the newly filed letter by the DOJ, a spokesperson for the department told Business Insider that they take “victim protection very seriously.”
“The Department had 500 reviewers looking at millions of pages for this very reason, to meet the requirements of the act while protecting victims. When a victim’s name is alleged to be unredacted, our team is working around the clock to fix the issue and republish appropriately redacted pages as soon as possible,” said the spokesperson.
Most recently, the Department of Justice released around 3 million documents related to late s– offender Jeffrey Epstein to the public, which included the names of prominent individuals, including Bill Clinton, Woody Allen, and Elon Musk, among others.
