When the Home Oversight Committee launched a trove of recordsdata and emails from the Epstein property earlier this month, alleged victims of the convicted intercourse offender responded with “widespread panic” after studying the paperwork included dozens of unredacted sufferer names, distinguished attorneys for Epstein victims informed a federal choose this week.
“I assumed the federal government had promised to redact our names and figuring out materials. I do not perceive how that is taking place once more,” one alleged sufferer informed attorneys Bradley Edwards and Brittany Henderson, with the Edwards Henderson legislation agency, in line with a court filing Wednesday.
“Such a negligence by the federal government to a survivor is simply unable to understand. It’s simply unimaginable,” one other alleged sufferer mentioned, in line with the submitting. “I do not perceive how that is attainable.”
“I’ve been unable to mentally and emotionally perform or sleep,” one more alleged sufferer wrote, per the court docket submitting.
With the Justice Division now dealing with a Dec. 19 deadline to launch a whole bunch of hundreds of Epstein recordsdata, as required by the Epstein Files Transparency Act, the Edwards Henderson attorneys are calling on a federal choose to order the DOJ to enhance their overview coverage to forestall one other launch of doubtless delicate details about alleged victims.
Jeffrey Epstein in Cambridge, Ma., Sept. 8, 2004.
Rick Friedman/Corbis by way of Getty Pictures
“These girls are usually not political pawns. They’re moms, wives, and daughters. These are girls who have been abused by Jeffrey Epstein, and in some cases by others, and who’ve already had their rights violated previously by the Authorities,” the attorneys wrote within the submitting to U.S. District Choose Richard Berman. “They’re human beings who’ve the precise to be handled with dignity and respect, and to really feel secure and guarded by our nation, which has failed them time and time once more.”
In response to the attorneys’ submitting, the Home Oversight launch included the unredacted names and private data of dozens of victims, together with girls who have been minors on the time of their abuse. One doc alone contained 28 unredacted names of alleged sufferer, the attorneys wrote. Based mostly on the scope of the problem, the attorneys mentioned that they consider the DOJ both “doesn’t know the identities of all of the victims of Jeffrey Epstein and thus can not apply correct redactions to the recordsdata,” or “is deliberately failing to guard victims from public publicity.”
“Whereas we’ll element the varied excuses that the Courtroom will little doubt be supplied, that is completely unacceptable and a program that should be rectified previous to the general public launch of any extra paperwork,” the Edwards Henderson attorneys wrote.
The submitting additional famous that the DOJ publicly acknowledged in July that “Epstein harmed over one thousand victims.” Based mostly on that assertion, the attorneys requested within the submitting that the court docket affirm with the DOJ that, previous to submitting the recordsdata to the Home Oversight Committee, “it undertook the onerous and needed job of redacting all one thousand plus sufferer names that it had in its possession.”
“On that pointed inquiry, the court docket will study the DOJ’s redaction course of and its course of efforts are so irreconcilable with the variety of victims it has publicly acknowledged that, when confronted with the discrepancy, its response will land someplace between incoherent mumbling, non sequitur, and outright misrepresentation,” the attorneys wrote.
After months of anticipation, the Home of Representatives voted 427-1 to go a invoice ordering the discharge of the Justice Division’s recordsdata on late intercourse offender Jeffrey Epstein in Washington, Nov. 18, 2025.
Home of Representatives
The attorneys additionally alleged within the submitting that victims have been unable to contact the Division of Justice to forestall the identical factor from taking place once more.
“Regardless of quite a few pleas for help, there may be one singular entity that the victims can not appear to discover a method to interact and which has been the first violator of the victims’ id safety to date — the Division of Justice,” they wrote.
With the DOJ already possessing a whole bunch of hundreds of Epstein paperwork, the attorneys additionally solid doubt in regards to the Trump administration’s intention in searching for out separate grand jury material.
The DOJ has requested judges in New York and Florida to authorize the discharge of grand jury transcripts and displays from the prosecutions of Epstein and Maxwell — data that’s usually not made public. Earlier than the passage of the Epstein Recordsdata Transparency Act, the DOJ made comparable requests that have been denied by judges.
“[T]his extremely small, and largely irrelevant, subset of grand jury supplies [seems] to function nothing greater than DOJ’s perpetual distraction from offering the American individuals with full transparency because it pertains to Jeffrey Epstein, whereas defending the victims,” the submitting states.
Rep. Thomas Massie speaks alongside Rep. Ro Khanna and Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene throughout a information convention on the Epstein Recordsdata Transparency Act exterior the U.S. Capitol, November 18, 2025 in Washington.
Heather Diehl/Getty Pictures
The Edwards Henderson attorneys requested Choose Berman to order the Division of Justice to make clear what paperwork they plan to launch and the method for redacting them. He additionally requested the flexibility to consult with the DOJ to make sure that an entire checklist of victims’ names is used within the redaction course of.
Choose Berman responded to the letter Wednesday by ordering the Division of Justice, by midday Monday, Dec. 1, to offer a “detailed description” of the supplies they search to launch and a “detailed description of the privateness course of, together with any redactions, the Authorities seeks to make use of to guard the rights of Epstein victims.”
In a separate filing Wednesday, U.S. Lawyer Jay Clayton mentioned his workplace would “consult with counsel for recognized victims regarding names and phrases for withholding and redactions.”
Clayton additionally clarified the breadth of the paperwork the Division of Justice seeks to launch, together with notes from witness interviews, search warrant purposes, monetary and journey information, grand jury subpoena returns, faculty information, supplies from the Epstein property, and legislation enforcement information.
