Key Takeaway: Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche said prosecutors’ review of the Epstein–Maxwell sex‑trafficking investigation "is over," while reaffirming that evidence must support any prosecution. He promised to fix redaction errors and defended the department’s transparency, calling cover‑up claims unfounded. Lawmakers and survivors, including Rep. Ro Khanna and House leaders, disputed that account — saying significant records remain withheld and expressing alarm that some victims’ names were improperly disclosed.
Deputy AG Todd Blanche Says Epstein‑Maxwell Review "Is Over" — Lawmakers and Survivors Push Back
The US deputy attorney general Todd Blanche during a news conference after the DoJ released 3m pages of Epstein files, on Friday.Photograph: J Scott Applewhite/AP(Photograph: J Scott Applewhite/AP)
Todd Blanche, the deputy U.S. attorney general who oversaw the Trump administration’s release of Department of Justice records related to Jeffrey Epstein, told ABC News that prosecutors’ review of the Epstein–Ghislaine Maxwell sex‑trafficking investigation "is over." Blanche made additional remarks in a separate CNN interview addressing survivors’ demands for restitution and criticism of the document release process.
Blanche: Review Complete, But Evidence Limits Prosecutions
Blanche said survivors "want to be made whole" and that the Justice Department shares that goal. But he cautioned that prosecutors cannot manufacture evidence: "That doesn’t mean we can just create evidence or that we can just kind of come up with a case that isn’t there."
"We have nothing to hide. We never did," Blanche said, calling accusations of a cover‑up "amazing" so soon after the department published millions of pages of records.
He also acknowledged that investigators have reviewed "a lot of horrible photographs that appear to be taken by Mr. Epstein or by people around him," but said such images alone do not necessarily permit prosecution.
Redactions, Releases and Political Pushback
After a large release of records on Friday — roughly 3 million pages, according to officials — survivors’ attorneys and Democratic lawmakers raised concerns about incomplete disclosures and redaction mistakes. Blanche said any redaction errors would be corrected immediately and described the affected files as a vanishingly small proportion of the material: "the numbers we’re talking about were .001% of all the materials."
Representative Ro Khanna (D‑Calif.), a co‑author of the transparency law that spurred the release, disputed Blanche’s assessment. "They’ve released at best half the documents," Khanna told CNN, and he said even the files already disclosed "shock the conscience of this country." Khanna pointed to records that reference prominent individuals — including Elon Musk and financier Howard Lutnick — who appear in correspondence or event guest lists but have not been accused of crimes.
Representative Jamie Raskin (D‑Md.) called the administration’s stance a "case closed" posture and described the recent release as "close to nothing when they’re deciding which documents are coming out." House Democratic Leader Hakeem Jeffries echoed those concerns on ABC’s This Week, saying transparency is not complete and accusing what he called "the department of injustice" of withholding additional records.
Context
Jeffrey Epstein pleaded guilty in Florida in 2008 to state prostitution charges, including solicitation involving a minor. He died by suicide in federal custody in New York in 2019 while awaiting trial on federal sex‑trafficking charges. Ghislaine Maxwell, a close associate of Epstein, was convicted and began serving a 20‑year sentence in 2022 for her role in the sex‑trafficking operation.
The Justice Department has noted that many pages in its Epstein archive are duplicates arising from separate investigations in Florida and New York, a factor it says affects counts of total pages released.
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