DOJ’s Epstein Files Staffing Surge Beset by ‘Very Rocky Start’

The Justice Department’s newly expanded team reviewing files related to Jeffrey Epstein has struggled in its mission of expediting the Trump administration’s legally-mandated disclosures, according to people familiar with the process.

At DOJ’s Criminal Division, which took on the mammoth redaction exercise last week, more than two-thirds of the 232 employees assigned to review Jeffrey Epstein investigation documents failed to meet their required 1,000 pages-per-day threshold, said one of the individuals.

A supervisor in an office within the Criminal Division that’s been deluged with Epstein review relayed to staff that DOJ leadership is “well aware that the project got off to a very rocky start and numerous issues continue to be flagged for more concrete guidance,” according to a Jan. 8 email obtained by Bloomberg Law.

Tysen Duva, who was sworn in last month as head of the Criminal Division, acknowledged the challenging task at hand, telling employees Jan. 9 that he knows this isn’t how they wanted to start their year, said the individual, who like others spoke anonymously about internal communications.

Duva commended the division for increasing its daily output through the week, saying they collectively surpassed 200,000 pages on Jan. 8. But Duva also said reviewers needed to improve their individual metrics the following week.

The Criminal Division, home to about 600 lawyers in Washington focused on white collar and violent crime cases, was enlisted to support previously assigned reviewers at the FBI, National Security Division and US attorney’s offices in Manhattan and Miami after more than two million documents were identified late last year related to the late financier and convicted sex offender.

Attorney General Pam Bondi and Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche informed a federal judge Jan. 5 of plans to divert 400 attorneys across the department to dedicate all or most of their workdays to complying with the Epstein Files Transparency Act. But even with additional reviewers, the complexities remain in protecting victim identities, as required by the law.

DOJ representatives didn’t respond to questions about the nature of the “numerous issues” and the “very rocky start,” or about whether the department expects the remaining documents to be released later than previously anticipated.

Several individuals briefed on the department’s implementation of the Epstein disclosure law said DOJ lawyers are frustrated to be focused on the document review rather than investigating and prosecuting crimes and protecting national security.

For instance, attorneys throughout NSD are required to complete two batches of pages each day before they can resume their regular case work, and must seek a supervisor’s approval that a particular matter is “urgent” before being exempted from Epstein duties, two of the people said.

Blanche, in a Dec. 31 statement on X, said DOJ attorneys were working “around the clock” in an “all hands on deck approach.”

This followed sharp bipartisan criticism on the department’s chaotic rollout of initial redacted files released last month, which was riddled with technical snafus and reversals on whether to keep certain pages public.