THE GOVERNMENT EXPLAINS WHY THEY HAVEN’T MET THE DECEMBER 19 DEADLINE FOR DISCLOSURE OF ALL EPSTEIN FILES
I have in my hot little hands (ok, actually they’re kind of chilly) a letter from the government to the judges in the Epstein cases, explaining why the government has blown past the 12/19/25 deadline for disclosing of all documents.
The letter itself is dated… oh wait for it… December 19, 2025. (I have also included a follow-up letter submitted yesterday, and a request for an extension of time to 1/13, but the meaty stuff is in the 12/19 letter.)
It’s a 5-page letter (included for Notes from the Front members), here are some of the highlights:
“The Department is undertaking a victim-oriented approach in connection with the production and public disclosure of materials required by the Act (the “Transparency Act Materials”).
Following the passage of the Act, the Department, including Department attorneys in both Washington, D.C. and the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York (“SDNY”), immediately undertook a process aimed at identifying victims who desired to have personal identifying information redacted from the Transparency Act Materials. That victim-identification process included:
• Immediate consultation with known counsel for numerous victims;
• Affirmative reach out to other counsel identified to the Department as potential counsel for victims;
• A public invitation to victims to contact the Department directly.
They go on to add that so far they have:
• Held more than 30 meetings and calls (in person or virtually) with victims’ counsel and, where appropriate, with certain victims directly; and
• Compiled and continuously updated a file (the “Victim Privacy File”) of victim names and certain other victim-identifying information provided by victims”
Then they also explain that they are “Overseeing more than 150 lawyers and other Department personnel in Washington, D.C., reviewing the potentially responsive information to (1) identify Transparency Act Materials and (2) make appropriate redactions, including for Victim Privacy Information”.
And “This review is ongoing, involves substantial commitment of SDNY AUSA resources, and is being done as expeditiously as possible in response to the Court’s Order and in consideration of the Act. As documents complete the first phase of review by the Department, they are being promptly reviewed by SDNY AUSAs in an effort to expeditiously certify materials for release under the Act.”
And this tasty morsel: “In addition, the review and redaction process, and particularly the focus on victim privacy interests, can result in the redaction of materials that may already be publicly available or where the disclosure of such redacted information, with hindsight, would not put victim privacy interests at risk. For example, victim privacy interests counsel in favor of redacting the faces of women in photographs with Epstein even where not all the women are known to be victims”.
There’s more, much of it eye-roll inducing, but the above is the gist of it.
Notes from the Front members: the full 5-page letter is in your inbox now.
To preserve original source documents before they can be tampered with (remember the 16 documents that mysteriously disappeared from the Epstein files?), and protect myself from claims of improper republication, and trolls, I don’t publicly share documents I find, I make them available privately to Notes from the Front members. Often these are non-public documents for which I have had to pay out of my own pocket in order to share them with you. Others of them may be public but I find the source originals for you and include explanations and insights based on my decades of law practice and as a law professor, with a side of snark. ;~)
You can join at the link below for immediate access to these documents, the archives, our private chat, etc.. – it’s $5 a month which both keeps the trolls out, and helps to cover my expenses for our private dropbox, for purchasing transcripts and documents to share with you, etc..
https://annepmitchell.substack.com/p/the-government-explains-why-they
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