Attorneys for alleged victims of late sex offender Jeffrey Epstein — citing an “unfolding emergency” — are urging two federal judges in New York to order the immediate takedown of the Justice Department’s Epstein files website.
The lawyers are contending widespread failures by the DOJ to redact names and identifying information of Epstein’s victims, according to a copy of a letter obtained Sunday by ABC News.
“For the victims of Jeffrey Epstein, every hour matters. The harm is ongoing and irreversible,” attorneys Brittany Henderson and Brad Edwards wrote in the letter addressed to U.S. District Judges Richard Berman and Paul Engelmayer.
The attorneys write that since the DOJ started posting material to the website last month, they have been in near-constant communication with the department to correct redaction errors and that they had an expectation “such failures would not recur.”
“That expectation was shattered on January 30, 2026, when DOJ committed what may be the single most egregious violation of victim privacy in one day in United States history,” the letter states.
Documents that were included in the U.S. Department of Justice release of the Jeffrey Epstein files are photographed Friday, Jan. 2, 2026.
Jon Elswick/AP
The lawyers — who represent more than 200 alleged Epstein victims — say that over the last 48 hours they have reported “thousands of redaction failures on behalf of nearly 100 individual survivors whose lives have been turned upside down by the DOJ’s latest release,” according to the letter.
They cite examples of FBI documents with full names left unredacted, including those of victims who were minors at the time of their exploitation. Other victims, the letter says, have had their names, bank information, and addresses posted without redaction. One email listing 32 minor victims had just one of the names redacted, the letter says.
The letter includes quotes from some of the women who say their names have been revealed in the document disclosure.
“I have never come forward! I am now being harassed by the media and others,” wrote a victim identified as Jane Doe. “This is devastating to my life. … Please pull my name down immediately as every minute that these document with my name are up, it causes more harm to me. … Please, I’m begging you to delete my name!!!”
Another victim quoted in the letter said the release of her information is “profoundly distressing” and “places me and my child at potential physical risk.”
The DOJ has acknowledged that some mistakes are inevitable in a document disclosure of this magnitude, but has vowed to correct any redaction errors brought to its attention. The department has encouraged victims or their lawyers to report mistakes and has promised to remove documents temporarily until the proper redactions can be put in place.
Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche earlier on Sunday defended the Justice Department’s procedures even as survivors and lawmakers criticized the Epstein files disclosure as insufficient and filled with redaction errors.
“We took great pains, as I explained on Friday, to make sure that we protected victims,” Blanche told ABC News’ “This Week” anchor George Stephanopoulos. “Every time we hear from a victim or their lawyer that they believe that their name was not properly redacted, we immediately rectify that.”
Blanche said that redaction errors only impact “about .001% of all the materials.”
“We knew this — I said this on Friday — that that, of course, the nature of this type of review was so — the volume of materials that were reviewed, that there would be times when this happened. And so we’re, we’re working hard to make sure that we fix that, and I expect that that will continue,” he said.
In their letter, the attorneys argue that the DOJ’s process is ill-suited to deal with the scope of the problem.
“It is no longer ethical, moral, or responsible to attempt to remedy these violations through DOJ’s torturously tedious game. This was never a complex undertaking. DOJ has possessed the names of victims that it promised to redact for months,” the attorneys wrote. “There is no conceivable degree of institutional incompetence sufficient to explain the scale, consistency, and persistence of the failures that occurred.”
The attorneys urge the judges to step in urgently.
“This Court is the last line of defense for victims who were promised protection and instead were exposed. Judicial intervention is not merely appropriate—it is essential.”
