1 hour ago
2
The Department of Justice said Monday that it took down “several thousand documents and media” from recently released Epstein files that mistakenly exposed the personal information of the disgraced financier’s victims, according to court records.
The decision to take down the files comes after attorneys for Jeffrey Epstein’s victims told two New York judges that the lives of roughly 100 survivors had been “turned upside down” by sloppy redactions in the tranche of over 3 million Epstein files released on Friday — exposing their photos, email addresses, names, and private banking details.
In a Monday letter to Judges Richard Berman and Paul Engelmayer — who are overseeing Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell’s sex trafficking cases — Jay Clayton, the US Attorney for the Southern District of New York, wrote that the DOJ has taken down all the exposing materials identified by victims or their lawyers.
The government has also independently identified a “substantial number” of documents to take down, the document obtained by The Post said.
The department blamed the several redaction snafus on “technical or human error,” and said it has “revised its protocols for addressing flagging documents.”
“The Department has worked all hours through the weekend from the point when the first
victim-related concerns were raised,” Clayton wrote.
Documents are to be pulled down when flagged by victims, then are evaluated before a redacted version of the document can be reposted, “ideally within 24 to 36 hours,” Clayton said of the revised protocol.
Brittany Henderson and Brad Edwards, two attorneys for Epstein victims, wrote to the court on Sunday seeking “immediate judicial intervention” for the failed redactions that caused “panic amongst the survivors of Jeffrey Epstein all over the world.”
“On Friday, January 30, 2026, the Department of Justice publicly released more than 3.5 million Epstein-related documents while failing to redact victims’ names and other personally identifying factors in thousands of instances,” the attorneys wrote.
This was “despite repeated representations that redaction was the sole reason for delayed release and DOJ’s acknowledgement that failure to redact would cause extraordinary harm to victims,” the letter continued.
“There is no conceivable degree of institutional incompetence sufficient to explain the scale, consistency, and persistence of the failures that occurred — particularly where the sole task ordered by the Court and repeatedly emphasized by DOJ was simple: redact known victim names before publication,” the lawyers, Henderson and Edwards, wrote.
Messages between the attorneys and eight women, who identify as victims of the dead pedophile and whose personal information was leaked in the “Epstein Files Transparency Act” mandated release, were also included in the letter to the judges.
One victim wrote she is now in a “life-threatening situation” after her full address and a photo of herself were released in the file dump.
Another victim claimed she had received death threats after her private banking information was leaked in 51 entries, forcing her to shut down her credit cards and accounts.
The Department of Justice did not immediately respond to The Post’s request for comment.
English (US)