Attorney General Pam Bondi said the FBI handed over a "truckload" of Jeffrey Epstein files to the DOJ. (New York State Sex Offender Registry via AP | Getty Images)
The bill required the DOJ to withhold information about potential victims and material that could jeopardize open investigations or litigation. Officials could also leave out information "in the interest of national defense or foreign policy," the bill said, while keeping visible any details that could embarrass politically connected people.
Last week, the DOJ revealed that two of its components, the FBI and the U.S. attorney’s office in the Southern District of New York, had just gathered and submitted more than 1 million additional pages of potentially responsive documents related to Epstein’s and Ghislaine Maxwell’s sex trafficking cases for review.
The "mass volume of material" could "take a few more weeks" to sift through, the DOJ said in a statement on social media, adding that the department would "continue to fully comply with federal law and President Trump’s direction to release the files."
The DOJ’s concerns about page volume and redaction requirements echo those frequently raised in similar litigation surrounding compliance with Freedom of Information Act requests, where courts have stepped in to balance competing interests of parties in the cases rather than attempting to force compliance on an unrealistic timetable.
Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., threatened legal action against the DOJ. (Kayla Bartkowski/Getty Images)
Reps. Ro Khanna, D-Calif., and Thomas Massie, R-Ky., who spearheaded the transparency bill, warned that they plan to pursue contempt proceedings against Attorney General Pam Bondi in light of the DOJ missing the deadline and making perceived over-redactions.
CLICK HERE TO GET THE FOX NEWS APP
A group of mostly Democratic senators also called on the DOJ inspector general to investigate the department’s compliance with the law.
The DOJ has maintained that releasing unreviewed documents would violate the law, saying last week that it had "lawyers working around the clock to review and make the legally required redactions."
Ashley Oliver is a reporter for Fox News Digital and FOX Business, covering the Justice Department and legal affairs. Email story tips to ashley.oliver@fox.com.
https://www.foxnews.com/politics/lapsed-epstein-deadline-underscores-challenge-reviewing-files-30-days