Todd Blanche, the deputy attorney general, on Sunday defended the Justice Department’s public release of files related to the sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, saying the administration would not remove any mentions of President Trump in the files as they continue to be released over the next two weeks.
“We are not redacting information around President Trump,” Mr. Blanche said on NBC’s “Meet the Press.” The second-in-command at the Justice Department, Mr. Blanche said that hundreds of agency lawyers had been scouring “about a million or so pages of documents” and redacting information about victims.
Some victims and advocates have criticized the initial batch issued on Friday as heavily redacted and containing few revelations, while some lawmakers have charged that the failure to meet the 30-day deadline, as imposed by Congress last month, means that the administration has failed to adhere to the law.
Representative Thomas Massie, Republican of Kentucky, one of the authors of the law compelling the Justice Department to release of all of its material on Jeffrey Epstein, said on CBS’s “Face the Nation” that administration officials were “flouting the spirit and the letter of the law,” by releasing the material with many redactions and without certain files, which he called “missing.”
The deputy attorney general said the department was complying with the statute in completing a gargantuan task that has to be done carefully to protect victims.
“You’re talking about a million or so pages of documents — virtually all of them contain victim information,” Mr. Blanche said.
He acknowledged that a small number of documents — photographs inside Mr. Epstein’s home — were removed from the online collection because of concerns raised by victims.
One of the removed photos, taken in one of Mr. Epstein’s homes, showed a credenza with a number of photographs, including one of Mr. Trump.
Blanche said that photo of the credenza and others were removed because of concerns from victims.
“It has nothing to do with President Trump,” Mr. Blanche said. “The absurdity of pulling down a single photo because of President Trump is laughable.”
After that photo was released, he said, concerns were raised about some of the women depicted in other photos shown on the credenza. “So we pulled that photo down,” Mr. Blanche said.
The Trump administration’s handling of the Epstein files has been the subject of intense criticism for months. First, Attorney General Pam Bondi publicly pledged to release them, and suggested there was a damning client list that would shock the nation. In February, the attorney general arranged the distribution of binders titled “The Epstein Files: Phase 1,” which were given to right-wing social media influencers visiting the White House, but the contents were largely a rehash of previously public information.
Months later she reneged on the entire effort and said nothing more would be released. The ensuing public criticism resulted in a new law from Congress forcing the Trump administration to release the files. Last week, Vanity Fair published an interview with Susie Wiles, Mr. Trump’s chief of staff, in which she said Ms. Bondi had “completely whiffed” on the issue.
As the political headaches multiplied, Mr. Trump ordered the Justice Department to investigate former President Bill Clinton and others for their “involvement and relationship” with Mr. Epstein.
Asked on Sunday whether Mr. Clinton was now under investigation, Mr. Blanche declined to say.
“I will never talk about ongoing criminal investigations, so I am not going to address that question,” he said, adding that the Justice Department had spent years investigating people associated with Mr. Epstein, a disgraced financier who died by suicide in 2019 while in jail awaiting trial on sex trafficking charges, and that it was impossible to predict where such investigations may lead.
“Based on the information I have now, we are not prepared to bring charges,” he said.
Mr. Blanche was also pressed to explain why, just days after he went to a minimum-security Florida prison to interview Ghislaine Maxwell, Mr. Epstein’s convicted co-conspirator, she was transferred to a less secure prison in Texas.
“She was suffering numerous and numerous threats against her life,” Mr. Blanche said. He also noted that he oversees the federal Bureau of Prisons and every decision it makes.
According to federal prison regulations, inmates who are designated sex offenders are generally supposed to be held in low-security prisons like the one in Florida.
Overall, Mr. Blanche sought to defend the department from accusations that it had become subservient to the president’s wishes.
Kristen Welker, the moderator on “Meet the Press,” raised the criminal cases filed against the former F.B.I. director James Comey and New York’s attorney general, Letitia James — charges that were dismissed last month when a judge found that the prosecutor who brought them had been unlawfully put in that job by the Trump administration.
That appointment was made, and those criminal charges were filed, after Mr. Trump forced out his own prosecutor in Virginia, Erik S. Siebert, who had concluded that the evidence did not support charges against either Mr. Comey or Ms. James.
Asked whether the Justice Department was taking directions about whom to prosecute from the president, Mr. Blanche replied, “No, of course we’re not.”
But in seeking to defend the department, Mr. Blanche publicly contradicted the president.
“Mr. Siebert wasn’t fired because he refused to bring cases,” Mr. Blanche said. “He resigned.”
In September, Mr. Trump had angrily declared on social media: “He didn’t quit, I fired him!”
Catie Edmondson contributed reporting.
Devlin Barrett covers the Justice Department and the F.B.I. for The Times.
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