Justice Department officials were protecting victims of Jeffrey Epstein when they removed several images from agency’s release of files tied to the notorious sex offender, Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche said.
“There were a number of photographs that were pulled down after being released on Friday,” Blanche said on NBC’s Meet the Press. “That’s because a judge in New York has ordered us to listen to any victim or victim rights group if they have any concerns about the material that we’re putting up.”
Attention has focused on an image of a desk drawer with a number of photos, including one showing future President Donald Trump, that was among those removed from the department’s website after a massive release of material.
The Justice Department said later Sunday it restored the photo after determining “there is no evidence that any Epstein victims are depicted in the photograph.” The review was undertaken out of an abundance of caution after the Southern District of New York federal prosecutors’ office initially flagged the image “for potential further action to protect victims,” the department said on its X account.
“You can see in that photo there’s photographs of women,” Blanche said earlier on Sunday. “And so we learned after releasing that photograph that there were concerns about those women and the fact that we had put that photo up. So we pulled that photo down. It has nothing to do with President Trump.”
Blanche, a former personal attorney for Trump, has emerged as the Justice Department’s main public face in the release of the agency’s Epstein files, which was mandated by Congress after a bipartisan groundswell overcame Trump’s objections to publicizing the material.
In a letter to Congress on Friday, Blanche said the department couldn’t meet the Dec. 19 deadline for a full release because of the volume of material and restrictions imposed by a federal judge in Manhattan aimed at preventing the identification of victims.
He said more than 1,200 victims or relatives were identified during the review process and that references to them were redacted, along with information covered by legal privileges such as attorney-client and deliberative-process protections.
Blanche said Sunday that he and Attorney General Pam Bondi spoke to victims’ groups as recently as Thursday, though he didn’t provide specifics about the decision to pull the image showing Trump.
“If we need to redact faces or other information, we will,” Blanche told NBC. “And then we’ll put it back up.”
The partial release and extensive redactions prompted immediate criticism by some lawmakers. Democrats on the Senate Judiciary Committee accused the administration of violating the Epstein Files Transparency Act and shielding President Donald Trump.
Representative Jamie Raskin, the top Democrat on the House Judiciary Committee, said on CNN’s State of the Union that the administration is “covering up things that, for whatever reason, Donald Trump doesn’t want to go public.”
Blanche rejected that allegation, pledging that nothing related to Trump in the files would be withheld.
“If President Trump is mentioned, if there’s photographs that we have of President Trump or anybody else, they of course will be released, with the exception of any victims or survivors that we’ve identified,” he told NBC.
He also argued that the law allows for leeway in the timeline to protect victims.
“Bring it on,” he said. “We are doing everything we’re supposed to be doing to comply with this statute.”
Before working in the Justice Department, Blanche represented Trump during his 2024 criminal trial in New York City where he was convicted on 34 felony counts of falsifying business records on May 30, 2024.
Reporting by María Paula Mijares Torres
Disclaimer: This report is auto generated from the Bloomberg news service. ThePrint holds no responsibility for its content.