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The US justice department will begin releasing long-awaited files related to Jeffrey Epstein as mandated by a new law, though not all documents would be made public on Friday, a top official says.<\/p>\n Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche said the department expects to publish “several hundred thousand pages” initially, followed by more over the coming weeks.<\/p>\n The Friday deadline was mandated by a bill that got near-unanimous support in Congress, and was later signed into law by US President Donald Trump after he reversed his earlier opposition to the release.<\/p>\n The files relate to investigations into the disgraced late sex offender, but it is likely that much of the content will be heavily redacted.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n “We are looking at every single piece of paper that we are going to produce making sure every victim – their name, their identity, their story, to the extent that it needs to be protected – is completely protected,” Blanche told Fox & Friends.<\/p>\n He said that the justice department will release more material in the coming weeks.<\/p>\n “So, today, several hundred thousand, and then over the next couple of weeks, I expect several hundred thousand more,” Blanche said. <\/p>\n “There’s a lot of eyes looking at these, so we want to make sure that when we do produce the materials that we’re producing, we’re protecting every single victim.”<\/p>\n Under the Epstein Files Transparency Act, the DOJ was given until 19 December to release the files. <\/p>\n The bill specifically mentions that the government must release all unclassified records, documents, communications and investigative materials in the DOJ’s possession that relate to the investigation and prosecution of Epstein. <\/p>\n<\/div>\n Leading up to their release, Democrats in the House of Representatives have been publishing batches of documents and photos from Epstein’s estate without context. <\/p>\n Lawmakers say they have been sorting through a trove of 20,000 documents and 95,000 photos from the estate. <\/p>\n Democratic Congressman Robert Garcia said in a press release that most of the documents arrived without context, and they have been working to redact potential victims. <\/p>\n The documents and images have featured several high-profile figures, including Trump, former US President Bill Clinton, Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates, and Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor.<\/p>\n Appearing in the photos or documents is not evidence of any wrongdoing, and many of the pictured men have said they were never involved in Epstein’s illegal activity.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n #justice #department #release #thousands #Epstein #files #top #official<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Watch: “It’s final… <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":5208,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[242],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/microvibenews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5207"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/microvibenews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/microvibenews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/microvibenews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/microvibenews.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=5207"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/microvibenews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5207\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/microvibenews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/5208"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/microvibenews.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=5207"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/microvibenews.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=5207"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/microvibenews.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=5207"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}