On Friday, Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche addressed the press to announce the release of almost 3 million pages of materials related to Jeffrey Epstein, assuring reporters that Justice Department staff had been dogged about protecting the identity of Epstein’s victims and survivors.
“To protect victims, we redacted every woman depicted in any image or video,” he stated, adding that his office employed “multiple layers of review and quality control.”
But despite Blanche’s public declaration that the redaction process was “rigorous” and that victim-identifying information — not just names but other identifying details, such as home addresses, medical files, professional histories and photos — would be protected, MS NOW’s initial review found more than 40 known or suspected survivors’ identities were revealed in some manner in the files produced on Friday.
That number is likely larger, according to a lawyer for one survivor, writing on Sunday to the two judges overseeing the criminal cases still open on Epstein and his convicted co-conspirator, Ghislaine Maxwell. Attorney Brittany Henderson told the judges that since Friday’s release, she and her partner have “reported thousands of redaction failures on behalf of nearly 100 individual survivors.”
Those failures, she continued, constitute “what may be the single most egregious violation of victim privacy in one day in United States history.” She added that the Justice Department should be forced to take down the public website that currently houses the Epstein materials until the unredacted personal information is protected.
The letter was first reported by ABC News.
Epstein survivor Anouska De Giorgiou found out by text from her lawyer on Friday that her driver’s license, complete with unredacted photo and name, as well as handwritten notes detailing her July 2021 meeting with prosecutors were contained in the department’s document dump.
MS NOW had previously reached out to De Giorgiou’s lawyers to inquire about the unredacted information. They had not been aware of the unreacted document until that contact.
Speaking to MS NOW by phone, De Giorgiou said she was devastated to see how much material was now transparent and expressed anger at “all the men who want the credit for ‘doing the right thing’ but don’t have the courage to stand up for what is right.”
“This is what happens when very junior men somehow end up in positions of power,” she said.
De Giorgiou was one of four survivors to testify at Maxwell’s 2021 trial and also traveled to Washington to press for the passage of the Epstein Files Transparency Act, which specifically allows the attorney general to withhold or redact identifying information, noting that the disclosure of such “would constitute a clearly unwarranted invasion of personal privacy.”
The public revelation of what De Giorgiou — now a parent and mental health professional living in California — shared at that 2021 meeting was particularly shocking to her. The purpose of that meeting, she remembers, was to familiarize prosecutors with her life and background in order to assess her credibility on the stand at Maxwell’s trial, because prosecutors were anticipating a tough cross-examination.
FBI agents and DOJ lawyers pressed De Giorgiou for intimate, sometimes embarrassing details, and got them. She shared details about her past substance abuse and subsequent recovery and sobriety, as well as her romantic history.
De Giorgiou also told prosecutors about her interactions with President Donald Trump, with whom she has maintained she had no sexual or other kind of relationship. But she says she told prosecutors that Maxwell had introduced her to Trump, claiming Maxwell intended to offer her as a “sexual object.”
On Saturday, De Giorgiou sent an email — obtained by MS NOW — to senior leaders in the U.S. attorney’s office for the Southern District of New York to relay her anger and concern. De Giorgiou told prosecutors the Justice Department’s release of her personal and private information was “not only profoundly distressing and retraumatizing,” it also “exposes me to possible legal, professional and personal repercussions.”
De Giorgiou also said she was struggling to understand how this could have happened and asked DOJ officials to explain immediately what would be done to rectify the situation. She said that she has not received any response but that, after her inquiries, the identifying information appeared to have been removed from the department’s Epstein library.
On Sunday morning, Blanche appeared on “This Week” and responded to criticism of the redactions, saying that his teams took “great pains” to ensure information was protected and that they are fixing documents as they come to the department’s attention. Blanche added that the total number of those documents in the tranche of 3 million released is “0.001%.”
On Monday, U.S. Attorney Jay Clayton responded to the letter sent to judges by survivors, saying that all documents in question are being removed from the site for correction. The filing notes that since the release on Friday, the department continues to “enhance” its process to address concerns of victims.
In a quick response to both the victims’ attorneys and Clayton, the judge who oversaw the Epstein case has scheduled a conference for this week given “the urgency of the issues,” while encouraging both sides to “continue to resolve open issues in good faith.”
It is little consolation to at least one of the women; De Giorgiou says with her personal information already released, the damage has been done.
“When people have wronged you, you can’t keep going to their house to ask for forgiveness. They have to come to your house and ask to apologize.”
MS NOW is reviewing the documents released by the Justice Department in collaboration with journalists from NBC, The Associated Press, CNBC and CBS. Journalists from each newsroom are working together to examine the documents and share information about what is in them. Each outlet is responsible for its own independent news coverage of the documents.
