Federal prosecutors are done reviewing the Jeffrey Epstein-Ghislaine Maxwell sex-trafficking case, Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche told ABC News on Sunday, but key Democrats insist the public still isn't seeing the full picture, the Guardian reports. Blanche said the Justice Department's review of the case "is over," even as survivors and lawmakers continue to push for further disclosures and potential prosecutions of Epstein's associates.
Also Sunday on CNN, Blanche, the Trump administration official overseeing the release of Epstein-related records, said victims "want to be made whole" and that while the department wants the same, "that doesn't mean we can just create evidence or that we can just kind of come up with a case that isn't there." He said that even though "there's a lot of horrible photographs that appear to be taken by Mr Epstein or by people around him … that doesn't allow us necessarily to prosecute somebody." Blanche also defended the massive document dump on Friday, saying only a tiny fraction of files—about ".001%"—had redaction errors and that those were quickly corrected. (The New York Times reports dozens of nude photos, apparently of victims, were accidentally posted online.)
He called it "amazing" that the department was being accused of a cover-up less than a day after releasing millions of pages, adding, "We have nothing to hide. We never did." He confirmed the department has no plans for further prosecutions, CNN reports. He also said the DOJ could not investigate tips regarding President Trump's connections with Epstein, because many of the tips were anonymous, the Hill reports. None of the allegations against Trump related to Epstein have been verified, Politico reports. Democrats in Congress strongly disagreed with Blanche's remarks. Rep. Ro Khanna, who co-authored the transparency law requiring the release, told CNN the Justice Department has "released at best half the documents," yet argued what has emerged already "shocks the conscience."
He pointed to references and correspondence involving high-profile figures such as Elon Musk and commerce secretary Howard Lutnick—people who have been linked socially or professionally to Epstein but not charged with crimes. Khanna called the broader scandal "one of the largest" in US history and said survivors remain angry—both that some of their names appeared without proper redaction and that they believe "the rest of the files" are still being withheld. Other top House Democrats echoed that criticism. Rep. Jamie Raskin said "case closed has been [the Trump administration's] mantra," and dismissed the 3 million released documents as "close to nothing" given prosecutors' control over what gets made public.
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