WSJ: The US Justice Department accidentally releases names of 43 Jeffrey Epstein victims, including minors

In a new batch of files released in the case of sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, the US Department of Justice has not redacted the personal information of at least 43 victims. Among them are those who have not previously disclosed their identities publicly or were minors at the time of the abuse.

This was reported by The Wall Street Journal, after studying the archive of new documents from the case of the late financier.

Although the US Department of Justice was required to withhold all the names of the victims before publishing materials in the Epstein case, the full names of several women appeared in the documents more than a hundred times.

In addition, the files contain the names of over 20 underage victims. When searching by keywords on the Ministry of Justice website, you can also find the womenʼs personal details and home addresses.

The victims reported that after posting files revealing their names, they began to experience online bullying.

The media notes that some of the editing gaps look unusual. For example, in one 2008 email where US prosecutors discuss a list of victims to be contacted, ten names are crossed out, while one in the middle of the list is left open.

Another document from 2016 contains a long list of women identified as Epsteinʼs victims. It only has one name blacked out, while the rest of the names and surnames were public.

In one 2014 email exchange between a victim and a male scout at a modeling agency who recruited her into Epsteinʼs network, the scoutʼs email address is blacked out, while the victimʼs is not.

The Justice Department said it spent weeks redacting the materials and began temporarily removing the documents after discovering errors. Deputy US Attorney General Todd Blanch said the department was quickly correcting the violations, but they allegedly only amounted to “0.001% of the materials”.

Victimsʼ lawyers say they alerted the agency to the list of 350 victims, but the Justice Department has not verified whether the redaction worked. They say the Justice Department expects victims to find their own information in the millions of pages and file requests to have it removed.

"We notified them of the problem within an hour of the release. This is a serious mistake, there is no excuse for it not being fixed immediately unless it was done intentionally", one of the victimsʼ advocates stressed.

Lawyers have appealed to federal judges to temporarily close the documents site, conduct a full audit, and appoint an independent monitor of the editing process.

The Jeffrey Epstein case

American financier Jeffrey Epstein was first arrested in 2008. He was convicted of sex with minors and organizing prostitution. After 13 months in prison, the financier made a deal with prosecutors and was released. In 2019, he was charged with new charges of human trafficking.

At the time, it was reported that the FBI had discovered thousands of names of famous people in Epsteinʼs notebook, including former British Prime Minister Tony Blair, Rolling Stones frontman Mick Jagger, and billionaire Richard Branson. This sparked a series of accusations and suspicions against famous people that they may have used Epsteinʼs services.

Epstein was arrested a second time on July 7, and on August 10, 2019, he committed suicide in prison. In December 2023, a US court ordered the release of the names of more than 170 people from Epsteinʼs inner circle.

Donald Trump has also been accused of having ties to Epstein. Trump and Epstein were allegedly friends and attended the same parties in the 1990s. However, Donald Trump has filed a lawsuit against journalists who covered this information.

In November, it became known that dozens of references to Ukraine were found among Jeffrey Epsteinʼs documents. Among other things, the names of politician Oleksandr Vilkul and former President Leonid Kuchma appear there.

On December 19, the US Department of Justice released the first selection of the “Epstein files”. Among the tens of thousands of documents that were censored are many photos of famous people. Less than a day after the publication, at least 16 files related to Epstein disappeared from the US Department of Justice website. Among them was a photo with Trump.

The US Department of Justice published a new set of documents on January 30. In particular, Donald Trumpʼs name is mentioned more than 38 000 times, but there is no evidence of wrongdoing on his part.

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