Nearly two-thirds of the lawyers in the U.S. attorney’s office in Manhattan are spending all or most of their work day reviewing many of the two million documents in the Jeffrey Epstein investigation that the Justice Department must still release.
The disclosure that 125 of the office’s roughly 200 assistant U.S. attorneys are participating came in a letter from Attorney General Pam Bondi and other officials filed in Manhattan federal court on Monday night.
The letter, which was also submitted by Ms. Bondi’s deputy, Todd Blanche, and the U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York, Jay Clayton, said that the 125 lawyers were among more than 400 Justice Department lawyers who had been directed to review the Epstein materials to determine what must be redacted before they are released. The disclosure was ordered by a new law, the Epstein Files Transparency Act.
The letter said that for at least the next few weeks the lawyers would be working to review and redact a large trove of documents, photographs, video recordings, handwritten notes and other materials that are to be made public. That means that at least half of the lawyers in the Manhattan U.S. attorney’s office who normally handle criminal cases will be devoted to the review.
The law requires the government to redact names and other personal information that could identify victims of Mr. Epstein’s sex-trafficking scheme, in which large numbers of girls and women were sexually abused by him and his longtime companion, Ghislaine Maxwell.
The filing on Monday, addressed to Judge Paul A. Engelmayer, who has overseen the Maxwell case, emphasized what the Justice Department called its commitment to protecting victim privacy under the new law, which had set a deadline of Dec. 19, 2025, for the materials to be released.
David Paul Horowitz, a lawyer who teaches a workshop at Columbia Law School on electronic evidence and discovery, said that because of the heightened sensitivity of the Epstein case and Congress’s mandate that the department release the materials, “maybe throwing 400 lawyers at it as a show of good faith is not a bad idea.”
But, he added, having the Southern District divert more than half of its lawyers to work on the review, even for just a few weeks, “could pose a significant disruption to the office’s day-to-day work.”
“I’d like to know who is watching drug kingpins while they are looking at these documents,” Mr. Horowitz said.
Mr. Clayton said in a statement that the dedication of the Southern District’s assistant U.S. attorneys was “legendary” and he added that, as detailed in the Monday court filing, “compliance with the act and the protection of victims requires extraordinary effort.”
“We will meet that burden,” Mr. Clayton said, “and the people of New York, and in particular victims of crimes, can rest assured that we have their interests front of mind at all times.”
The Justice Department’s filing did not elaborate on how the review had been allocated among the office’s lawyers. Of the office’s roughly 200 assistant U.S. attorneys, 154 are assigned to criminal cases, 45 to civil matters and six are serving in executive roles, the Southern District has said.
The office has long handled some of America’s most complex prosecutions, including those involving terrorists, international drug traffickers, corrupt politicians and financial fraudsters. Its current docket includes defendants like Nicolás Maduro, the Venezuelan leader captured over the weekend in a U.S. military operation and charged with narco-terrorism conspiracy; and Luigi Mangione, who faces trial in the 2024 killing of UnitedHealthcare’s chief executive in Midtown Manhattan. Both men have pleaded not guilty.
It is clear that as the department examines records for potential redaction, it is still dealing with other Epstein-related cases that must be processed as part of the review ordered by the new law.
On Tuesday, Ms. Bondi, Mr. Blanche and Mr. Clayton wrote to another Southern District judge asking her to order the release of grand jury materials in the case of two correctional officers who officials said had left Mr. Epstein unmonitored in his Manhattan jail cell in August 2019. The next day, he was found hanged in a death that was ruled a suicide.
The officers, accused of spending their shift surfing the internet and appearing to be asleep, were charged with falsifying records to cover up their failure to perform their duties. They ultimately entered into agreements that resulted in their charges being dismissed.
The Justice Department’s Monday letter to Judge Engelmayer said that in addition to attorneys from the Southern District of New York, other lawyers from the department’s Criminal and National Security Divisions in Washington were involved in the review. Also assisting were lawyers from the federal prosecutor’s office in Miami, which investigated Mr. Epstein two decades ago as part of a separate criminal matter.
“Many of the attorneys dedicated to this review from the department have experience in victim-privacy-related matters,” the letter said, “which is necessary given the nature of the materials and the types of documents that require careful redaction.” The letter, for example, cited notes of F.B.I. interviews and internal department memos.
More than 100 specially trained F.B.I. document analysts with experience in handling sensitive victim materials are also helping in the review.
The deadline imposed by the law to release the files passed nearly three weeks ago, but the review process still appears to be moving in fits and starts. The letter did not specify when the review would be completed.
Stephen Gillers, a law professor at New York University, said that recent graduates who were lucky enough to get a job working for the Justice Department might feel that “to sit day after day and rifle through many files that are certainly boring and may be even offensive — this is not what you signed up for.”
But Carrie H. Cohen, a former Southern District prosecutor who is now in private practice, said it did not alarm her that a large number of the office’s attorneys were involved in the review — “particularly here, where there’s a concern about victims’ identities and sensitive personal information”
The job of an assistant U.S. attorney “is a privilege to have,” she said, “and document review is part of the job.”
Benjamin Weiser is a Times reporter covering the federal courts and U.S. attorney’s office in Manhattan, and the justice system more broadly.
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