“Ludicrous” Situation: Jeffrey Epstein Case Redaction Takes Over FBI’s New York Office

It’s the FBI’s flagship field office, with more than a thousand agents and another thousand or so civilian employees. And right now, multiple sources with knowledge of the matter say that one priority at the Bureau’s New York Field Office is taking precedence over all others: the review and redaction of sensitive information in the Jeffrey Epstein case files, to prepare for possible publication.

“It’s literally all hands on deck,” one source familiar with the matter tells me, adding that dozens and dozens of agents are working around the clock on the case, instead of on their regular duties. “I even saw an agent walking in with a pillow,” the source added.

The New York field office is an epicenter for FBI counterintelligence, counterterrorism, public corruption, international drug trafficking, and financial crime investigations. The redeployment of agents to comb over the file of the notorious sex trafficker Epstein, who died nearly six years ago, is an indication of the Justice Department priorities in this second Trump administration. One FBI veteran calls it a “ludicrous” situation.

During the campaign, Donald Trump said he’d consider releasing Epstein’s alleged client list, which had long been thought of as a kind of unholy grail, naming the powerful and privileged who had preyed on Epstein’s victims. Less than three weeks after being sworn in as Attorney General, Pam Bondi told Fox News that list is “sitting on my desk right now to review… That’s been a directive by President Trump.” But the release of “phase one” of the Epstein documents, in binders handed out to perplexed MAGA influencers, became an instant fiasco. Almost all the material had been previously published: a “little black book” that had circulated for a decade as well as flight logs that surfaced during the prosecution of Epstein co-conspirator Ghislaine Maxwell. “EVERY SINGLE ONE OF THOSE RIGHT WING PAID INFLUENCERS LIED TO ALL OF YOU TODAY!” tweeted Trump ally Laura Loomer. “THEY ENGAGED IN DECEPTION TO RUN COVER FOR PEDOPHILES!!!”

An irate Bondi later that day wrote to FBI director Kash Patel that she had been deceived. “I repeatedly questioned whether this was the full set of documents responsive to my request and was repeatedly assured by the FBI that we had received the full set of documents. Late yesterday, I learned from a source that the FBI Field Office in New York was in possession of thousands of pages of documents related to the investigation and indictment of Epstein,” Bondi said in her letter. “Despite my repeated requests, the FBI never disclosed the existence of these files.” (The Justice Department did not immediately respond to a request to comment for this story.)

The attorney general, as the New York Times noted, supplied no evidence to back up the claim.

Speaking to Vanity Fair, an FBI veteran called the franctic scramble “fucked up,” and added that it seemed to fly in the face of how federal cases are handled in the modern era. “It’s not 20 years ago. There’s not one hard file.”

Days later, James Dennehy, the agent in charge of the New York Field Office, was ordered to retire. The 23-year veteran had already angered the Trump administration with his refusal to turn over the names of agents who had worked on January 6 investigations. “I’ve been told many times in my life, ‘When you find yourself in a hole, sometimes it’s best to quit digging.’ Screw that. I will never stop defending this joint,” Dennehy wrote in a March 3 email to staff.

That night, Bondi went on Fox News claiming she had received a “truckload” of evidence on the Epstein case, and was now rushing to get it out. The FBI veteran noted that this was an odd way for Bondi to describe the matter. “There’s no master file in the New York office. That doesn’t exist,” the veteran added. ”There’s not some crusty agent with his feet on bankers’ boxes.”

ABC News, citing unnamed sources, reported that up to a thousand FBI agents—“many of whom are usually focusing on national security matters”—had been pulled into the effort to review the files. The network also quoted FBI spokesperson Ben Williamson as saying, “Director Patel is committed to full transparency and justice.” (Williamson did not respond to multiple requests to comment for this story.)

The FBI has already released online thousands of heavily redacted pages of files from its various Epstein probes going back to 2007. “A lot of the redactions, if you really look at those documents, they’re completely unnecessary,” Julie K. Brown, the investigative reporter who broke open the Epstein case, told Rolling Stone. “They redacted Jeffrey Epstein’s own name out of some of those documents.”

Recently released files related to the assassination of John F. Kennedy had the opposite problem, with Social Security numbers and other personal data left exposed.

Bondi told Fox News that any further Epstein files would be blacked out only to “protect grand jury information and confidential witnesses,” as well as national security information. That might present a problem to her boss. The flight logs, re-released last month, included references to Trump, who once noted that Epstein “likes beautiful women as much as I do, and many of them are on the younger side.” It’s unclear whether or not the FBI will redact any further mentions to the president of the United States.