Thousands of Epstein-related files taken down
The U.S. Department of Justice said it has removed several thousand documents and “media” that may have inadvertently contained victim-identifying information since it began releasing the latest batch of documents related to disgraced financier Jeffrey Epstein.
It was stated that the reason for the disclosure of sensitive information, which caused a reaction from the victims and their lawyers, was “technical or human error”.
In a letter to New York judges overseeing sex trafficking cases against Epstein and his confidant Ghislaine Maxwell, U.S. Attorney Jay Clayton wrote that the department had removed nearly all material identified by victims or their attorneys, as well as a “significant number” of documents independently identified by the government.
Clayton, based in Manhattan, said the department “repeatedly revised its protocols for marking documents” after victims and their attorneys requested changes to the process for reviewing and redacting released records.
He wrote that when victims raised concerns that something needed to be corrected, the documents were immediately removed from the public website.
He said the concern was being assessed before a redacted version of the document was republished “ideally within 24 to 36 hours.”
There are occasional errors, but the Justice Department tries to work quickly to resolve them, Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche said in an interview on ABC’s This Week on Sunday.
“Every time we heard from a victim or their attorney who believed their name was not properly changed, we immediately corrected that. The numbers we’re talking about for the American people to understand, we’re talking about 0.001 percent of all materials,” Blanche said.
The impact of errors in document redactions was highlighted in a sex trafficking case in New York federal court on Monday, when attorneys and brothers of two top real estate brokers asked Judge Valerie E Caproni for a mistrial because documents were made public without necessary redactions.
Deanna Paul, the defense attorney at the trial of Tal, Oren and Alon Alexander, said that “the government’s own conduct has eliminated the possibility of a fair trial in this case” after the brothers’ names were included in various documents released Friday. The brothers pleaded not guilty to drugging and raping numerous girls and women from 2008 to 2021.
Paul said the Alexander brothers were now “branded” as the “most toxic fraternity”.
The judge temporarily denied the motion to overturn the trial, but still confronted the prosecutor and asked: “Really the government?”
“Yes, I understand where the court is coming from,” Assistant U.S. Attorney Elizabeth Espinosa said.
He said he wasn’t sure how the documents “caught up in the universe of documents” related to Epstein, but confirmed that at least one of the documents mentioning the Alexander brothers “should have been properly redacted” and the documents were withdrawn from public circulation.
