SCOTT DETROW, HOST:
The Justice Department is facing pushback from lawmakers and the public for its failure to release all of its files on the late convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein. A law signed by President Trump directed the DOJ to publish the files with minimal redactions by December 19. That did not happen. Now, the government says there could be millions more documents to review over the coming weeks. NPR's Stephen Fowler is here now to discuss the fallout around the limited release of the Epstein files. Hey, Stephen.
STEPHEN FOWLER, BYLINE: Hey, there.
DETROW: We've seen a lot of files, but as we just pointed out, it's not all of them. So why don't we have all of the files at this point?
FOWLER: Well, the Justice Department says they are working on it around the clock and that they found at least 1 million new documents to review. There's not really a good answer, though, especially when some of the emails they have released show that the FBI and prosecutors in New York have had all of these documents from Epstein's estate and devices that they seized for more than five years. In many ways, though, this is a quest that was doomed from the start, Scott, long before Congress ever got involved.
DETROW: Tell me more about that.
FOWLER: Well, on the campaign trail in 2024, Donald Trump and his allies said that they would release the files while amplifying some conspiracy theories about Epstein's life and death. The message they had was basically, look, the government is run by a powerful people hiding the truth from you, and if you elect us, we will fix it. No amount of document dumps are going to satisfy that line of thinking for those folks. Then, during 2025, Trump spent most of it claiming that Democrats invented the files to hurt him and that Democrats were involved with Epstein's crimes mentioned in the files and also insulted his own supporters who wanted answers about the victims who said that Epstein and other powerful people trafficked and sexually assaulted them. So that's led to this general feeling from the public of, well, now you're the government, you have power and we think that you are the one hiding the truth about Epstein. The White House strongly disagrees with that. They say they're being transparent and following both the spirit and letter of the law.
DETROW: Let's talk more about the spirit and the letter of the law. The measure passed by Congress and signed by President Trump is pretty straightforward - the Epstein Files Transparency Act.
FOWLER: Yeah, on paper, but this is incredibly unprecedented of an ask. Law enforcement just doesn't turn over every single thing they get during an investigation. There's plenty of things that are unusable and unverifiable, and we've already seen examples of that being included in the files released. They've created new conspiracy theories about Epstein and Trump. There are other laws that Congress has passed, like the John F. Kennedy Assassination Records Act of 1992 and the Nazi War Crimes Disclosure Act that are much more explicit about what records should be released, the process, the longer timeline. They're basically more specific and achievable than what we have here.
DETROW: So if President Trump made promises about the Epstein files that couldn't be kept and Congress passed a law asking the Department of Justice to do things that can't be fully done, and amid all of this, there's just this insatiable demand from so many corners for more information, where does that leave us?
FOWLER: Deeply unsatisfied, Scott. There's only about 40,000 pages that have been released. The Department of Justice says you can't trust things that might be released in the future, at least the things that aren't going to be redacted. So this will continue to be a political problem heading into the 2026 midterms for President Trump and Republicans.
DETROW: That is NPR's Stephen Fowler in Atlanta. Thank you so much.
FOWLER: Thank you. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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