Inside the DOJ’s Quiet Admission: The Epstein Files Are Nowhere Near Ready

Why the December 19 deadline was always impossible with a government is still scrambling to identify victims, fix redactions, and clean up an investigation that failed survivors the first time.

Welcome back to The Red Letter.

There is no world in which the Department of Justice releases the full Epstein files by December 19. None.

Former federal prosecutor Kristy Greenberg told me bluntly: “There’s no way that all the Epstein files that should be released will be released by December 19th.”

And now, the DOJ’s own court filing — a December 8 letter to Judges Berman and Engelmayer — confirms exactly that. You can read it here.

In that letter, the Department admitted that it’s still scrambling to figure out what its redaction policies are, who the victims are, and what materials actually fall under the law.

The DOJ openly admits it is still:

• compiling a master list of victims,

• contacting lawyers to identify additional victims,

• hearing from unrepresented victims,

• reviewing civil litigation materials,

• and building a centralized redaction system from scratch.

This is not a department ready to release anything. This is a department trying to construct an airplane in midair.

As Greenberg put it: “There’s no way that they would be able to pull all of this together in 10 days.”

🔒 Paywalled: Paid subscribers can access my full analysis of the government’s internal scramble — including their springtime rush to scrub Trump’s name from the files — and what this impossible December 19 deadline means for the victims and for real government accountability. Your support makes this reporting possible.