New FBI FOIA records show top Trump-administration officials were personally tracking the review and redaction of Epstein files — while dozens of those internal communications were later nowhere to be found in DOJ’s public Epstein Library, according to a new complaint sent to the DOJ watchdog.
One March 2025 email sent directly to FBI Director Kash Patel and Deputy Director Dan Bongino says FBI and DOJ lawyers spent the weekend drawing up a new review-and-redaction plan:
💬 “We have not been asked to approve a release to the public yet.”
Another FBI email is even more telling: the team said it had already completed 97% of the review before the project was relaunched with “revised additional redaction categories” — and that the completed disks “would have been [delivered] today.”
The Democracy Defenders Fund says the missing material includes emails involving Patel, Bongino and senior DOJ official Emil Bove, communications tied to the decision that “no further disclosure” was warranted, and correspondence concerning redactions of Ghislaine Maxwell’s interview.
It also found government officials’ names blacked out in the official Epstein release even though the same identities were visible in the FBI’s FOIA production.
DOJ says it reviewed roughly 6 million pages. Only 3.5 million have been released.
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