Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche said Tuesday it was “horrible” and “inexcusable” that identifying details of some of the the victims of Jeffrey Epstein were made public during the release of millions of files related to the criminal investigation into the sex offender.
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A group of victims filed a lawsuit against the Trump administration and Google last week over the disclosure of their personal information found in the files over the past several months.
“Sometimes it was genuine mistakes and that’s human, and that doesn’t make it right. I’m not excusing that, but you’re talking about less than 1% by the way, as far as we know it’s fixed,” Blanche said in an interview Tuesday with NBC News.
“It’s horrible that happened,” he said. “It’s horrible and it’s inexcusable.”
The Justice Department had been heavily criticized over its handling of the review of the Epstein case. The politically connected sex offender died by suicide in federal lockup while awaiting trial on sex trafficking charges in 2019.
Blanche, then the second in command at the Justice Department, had announced in December that the DOJ would release hundreds of thousands of files, and then it released only a small fraction of that amount.
The department made public millions more files at the end of January. Millions were withheld, most of which Blanche said were duplicates, but about 200,000 were held back or redacted for various legal reasons.
Blanche on Tuesday defended the Justice Department’s efforts in releasing the files.
“We were criticized for not doing that work quickly enough. You’re talking about working through 6 million pieces of paper,” he said.
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Blanche said he understood the lack of closure for victims is difficult; only one other person was ever charged – Epstein’s co-conspirator, Ghislaine Maxwell, who was convicted. He said he had no reason to think President Donald Trump would consider a pardon for Maxwell.
Blanche said the case remained open and encouraged victims to come forward if they had information that could help bring additional charges.
“So the big misconception is that the Department of Justice or me has ever said ‘case closed.’ What we have said is that from the information that we have within the Epstein files, we do not have a case against anybody.”
In mid-November, Trump singled out former President Bill Clinton, his treasury secretary and former Harvard University President Larry Summers, and LinkedIn co-founder and Democratic donor Reid Hoffman, as well as top banks such as JPMorgan Chase, posting on his Truth Social platform that he had asked then-Attorney General Pam Bondi to investigate their involvement with Epstein.
But there are dozens of big names that appear in the files, including Trump himself, and at least a half-dozen top administration officials.
Clinton, Summers and Hoffman have all denied wrongdoing and have said they regret ever associating with Epstein.
Summers apologized for his ongoing communications with Epstein and quit Harvard after his relationship with Epstein surfaced, Clinton testified in a closed-door congressional session that “I saw nothing” and “did nothing wrong.”
Bondi responded that she asked U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York Jay Clayton to take the lead. The status of that investigation is unclear.