Only 2% of Epstein documents made public after | Political News

Only a minuscule fraction of the investigative recordsdata related to late intercourse offender Jeffrey Epstein have been launched by the U.S. Justice Department, a recent report discovered.

An investigation from UK broadcaster Channel 4 News discovered that some 3.5 million recordsdata launched by the U.S. Department of Justice would possibly only represent 2 p.c of the data that authorities had been reviewing just last 12 months. The data analysis was launched just days before U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi told Congress that the DOJ launched all of its recordsdata related to Epstein.

The disgraced New York financier was charged with intercourse trafficking in 2019 but died by suicide in prison while awaiting trial.

Internal emails between federal investigators and prosecutors reviewed by Channel 4 News reporters discovered that authorities anticipated processing between 20 and 40 terabytes of data from Epstein’s estates, including his Florida mansion, New York penthouse and Caribbean personal island.

After reviewing subsequent documents, Channel 4 News discovered there’s up to 50 terabytes from the “earliest stage” of their investigation in June 2020.

In 2021, authorities said via an inside e-mail that they had been “looking at approximately 14.6 terabytes of archived data.”

Using the accessible data, Channel 4 News calculated that the three.5 million documents totalled “more than 300GB,” which “accounts for just 2 percent” of data that authorities were reviewing “just last year.”

“They claimed that 6 million pages were identified, including duplicates — they released over 3 million,” Channel 4 News editor Asnushka Asthana said. “Both those numbers are tiny compared to the amount collected according to today’s emails.”

Investigators famous via e-mail that organizing and accessing the recordsdata proved to be a large problem. 

“Imagine if we had seized the papers from approximately 100,000 filing cabinets. Then that all just got dumped in one big pile. Documents that had multiple parts stapled together got separated. And then any of those documents that was larger than 100 pages couldn’t be opened. That’s what we’ve got,” one investigator explained.

Another added, “Many files are too large to open… There are many files that are completely invisible to us.”

After a tense hearing before members of the House Judiciary Committee last week, Bondi sent a letter to lawmakers on Feb. 14 doubling down on her claims that the DOJ “released all ‘records, documents, communications and investigative materials.'”

She also clarified in response to criticism that the released files were overly redacted that they were “all government officials and politically exposed persons’ names or referenced in the released materials.”