Attorneys for alleged victims of late intercourse offender Jeffrey Epstein — citing an “unfolding emergency” — are urging two federal judges in New York to order the fast takedown of the Justice Division’s Epstein recordsdata web site.
The legal professionals are contending widespread failures by the DOJ to redact names and figuring out info of Epstein’s victims, in line with a replica of a letter obtained Sunday by ABC Information.
“For the victims of Jeffrey Epstein, each hour issues. The hurt is ongoing and irreversible,” attorneys Brittany Henderson and Brad Edwards wrote within the letter addressed to U.S. District Judges Richard Berman and Paul Engelmayer.
The attorneys write that because the DOJ began posting materials to the web site final month, they’ve been in near-constant communication with the division to appropriate redaction errors and that they’d an expectation “such failures wouldn’t recur.”
“That expectation was shattered on January 30, 2026, when DOJ dedicated what often is the single most egregious violation of sufferer privateness in someday in United States historical past,” the letter states.
Paperwork that have been included within the U.S. Division of Justice launch of the Jeffrey Epstein recordsdata are photographed Friday, Jan. 2, 2026.
Jon Elswick/AP
The legal professionals — who symbolize greater than 200 alleged Epstein victims — say that during the last 48 hours they’ve reported “1000’s of redaction failures on behalf of almost 100 particular person survivors whose lives have been turned the other way up by the DOJ’s newest launch,” in line with the letter.
They cite examples of FBI paperwork with full names left unredacted, together with these of victims who have been minors on the time of their exploitation. Different victims, the letter says, have had their names, financial institution info, and addresses posted with out redaction. One e mail itemizing 32 minor victims had simply one of many names redacted, the letter says.
The letter contains quotes from a few of the girls who say their names have been revealed within the doc disclosure.
“I’ve by no means come ahead! I’m now being harassed by the media and others,” wrote a sufferer recognized as Jane Doe. “That is devastating to my life. … Please pull my identify down instantly as each minute that these doc with my identify are up, it causes extra hurt to me. … Please, I’m begging you to delete my identify!!!”
One other sufferer quoted within the letter mentioned the discharge of her info is “profoundly distressing” and “locations me and my baby at potential bodily threat.”
The DOJ has acknowledged that some errors are inevitable in a doc disclosure of this magnitude, however has vowed to appropriate any redaction errors dropped at its consideration. The division has inspired victims or their legal professionals to report errors and has promised to take away paperwork briefly till the correct redactions could be put in place.
Deputy Lawyer Basic Todd Blanche earlier on Sunday defended the Justice Division’s procedures at the same time as survivors and lawmakers criticized the Epstein recordsdata disclosure as inadequate and crammed with redaction errors.
“We took nice pains, as I defined on Friday, to be sure that we protected victims,” Blanche informed ABC Information’ “This Week” anchor George Stephanopoulos. “Each time we hear from a sufferer or their lawyer that they consider that their identify was not correctly redacted, we instantly rectify that.”
Blanche mentioned that redaction errors solely affect “about .001% of all of the supplies.”
“We knew this — I mentioned this on Friday — that that, after all, the character of any such evaluation was so — the quantity of supplies that have been reviewed, that there could be occasions when this occurred. And so we’re, we’re working exhausting to be sure that we repair that, and I count on that that may proceed,” he mentioned.
Of their letter, the attorneys argue that the DOJ’s course of is ill-suited to take care of the scope of the issue.
“It’s not moral, ethical, or accountable to aim to treatment these violations by way of DOJ’s torturously tedious sport. This was by no means a posh endeavor. DOJ has possessed the names of victims that it promised to redact for months,” the attorneys wrote. “There is no such thing as a conceivable diploma of institutional incompetence adequate to elucidate the dimensions, consistency, and persistence of the failures that occurred.”
The attorneys urge the judges to step in urgently.
“This Court docket is the final line of protection for victims who have been promised safety and as an alternative have been uncovered. Judicial intervention isn’t merely acceptable—it’s important.”
