AILSA CHANG, HOST:
All right, we turn now to news out of Washington, where the Justice Department says that it's releasing more than 3 million pages of materials tied to convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein. This is happening under the Epstein Files Transparency Act. Congress passed that law late last year, requiring the Justice Department to make all of the Epstein files public. NPR justice correspondent Ryan Lucas is covering this and joins us now. Hi, Ryan.
RYAN LUCAS, BYLINE: Hi there.
CHANG: OK, so it was the deputy attorney general, Todd Blanche, who made this announcement today, right? What did he have to say?
LUCAS: Well, Blanche said that the department is producing 3 million pages of materials today. He says that brings the total amount the department has released under the Epstein law to around 3.5 million pages. Here's a bit of what Blanche said.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
TODD BLANCHE: Today's release marks the end of a very comprehensive document identification and review process to ensure transparency to the American people and compliance with the act.
LUCAS: Now, he said more than 500 lawyers and other DOJ employees worked nights, weekends, also holidays to go through and review all of these materials. And there were a lot of files to review. Blanche said it was the equivalent of two Eiffel Towers' worth of pages if stacked up.
CHANG: Wow.
LUCAS: And NPR has a team of folks going through the latest files, looking for anything new or noteworthy.
CHANG: That is a lot of files for the NPR team. OK, well, the Justice Department has gotten a lot of criticism for its handling of the Epstein files, like over its redactions that it has made throughout all of these files, failing to meet the deadline that was outlined under the law. Did Blanche respond to any of those criticisms?
LUCAS: Yes. He spelled out, as the department has in the past, that redactions were made as the law allows for things like personally identifiable information of Epstein's victims or of pornographic material. Blanche said today that the department also redacted every woman who appears in any photo or any video, with the exception of Ghislaine Maxwell. She's Epstein's longtime confidant. She was convicted in 2021 of sex trafficking for helping Epstein abuse underage girls.
Now, Blanche said that when the number of files is this big, mistakes are, as he put it, inevitable. The Justice Department has not yet provided a summary of the redactions that it made and the legal basis for them as the law requires. Blanche said that that will happen in due time.
CHANG: OK. Well, the friendship between President Trump and Jeffrey Epstein has been a constant topic of conversation. They were friends for years before there was a falling out. Did Blanche address concerns that the Justice Department might be withholding embarrassing information about Trump in these files?
LUCAS: Well, he was asked point-blank whether Trump was treated the same as everyone else who appears in the files and whether everything in there related to him is being released. It was a pertinent question, in part because Blanche himself previously served as Trump's personal defense attorney. Now, Blanche replied that the department complied with the law. He also denied that the DOJ protected Trump in any way. He also at one point said this.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
BLANCHE: There's this mantra out there that, oh, you know, the Department of Justice is supposed to protect Donald J. Trump and that's what we were telling - that's not true. That was never the case. And we are always concerned about the victims.
LUCAS: He said there's a hunger for information out there that won't be satisfied by the release of these files. Now, some of that hunger, it has to be said, has been fueled by Trump and other top administration officials, including at the Justice Department, because of the conspiracy theories that they've pushed over the years about what could be in these files.
CHANG: And before we go, Ryan, I want to turn quickly to something that Blanche said about Minnesota. He now says the Justice Department has opened a civil rights investigation into the killing of Alex Pretti, right? Isn't that a reversal?
LUCAS: Right. Since Pretti was shot dead by federal immigration agents last weekend, administration officials had publicly said DHS was leading the Pretti investigation. There was no FBI civil rights probe. Now we have, as you said, a reversal. Blanche says the FBI is investigating. It's in coordination with the Justice Department Civil Rights Division. I will say that the attorney general - the deputy attorney general also brushed off questions about whether the FBI would conduct a similar investigation into the killing of Renee Macklin Good, the other U.S. citizen fatally shot in Minneapolis by federal agents this month. Blanche said cases are handled differently depending on the circumstances.
CHANG: That is NPR's Ryan Lucas. Thank you so much, Ryan.
LUCAS: Thank you.
(SOUNDBITE OF EMOTIONAL ORANGES SONG, "TALK ABOUT US") Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
NPR transcripts are created on a rush deadline by an NPR contractor. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Accuracy and availability may vary. The authoritative record of NPR’s programming is the audio record.
