On November 19, 2025, President Trump signed into law HR 4405, the “Epstein Files Transparency Act.” That act states:
Not later than 30 days after the date of enactment of this Act, the Attorney General shall, subject to subsection (b), make publicly available in a searchable and downloadable format all unclassified records, documents, communications, and investigative materials in the possession of the Department of Justice, including the Federal Bureau of Investigation and United States Attorneys’ Offices, that relate to: (1) Jeffrey Epstein including all investigations, prosecutions, or custodial matters.(2) Ghislaine Maxwell.
The U.S. Department of Justice did not meet the 30-day deadline on December 12. In fact, almost one month after that deadline, they have announced that they’re not even close:
In a legal filing Monday, the Justice Department told a judge it has released about 12,285 documents so far, totaling some 125,575 pages. More than 2 million documents that may need to be released under the law are still “in various phases of review.”
That means the department has reviewed less than 1% of its total possible records on Epstein, though it noted that it believes a “meaningful portion” of the still-unreviewed documents are duplicates. It also said the documents’ page counts vary widely.
It’s not clear how long it will take the department to release all of the files, or when the next tranche will be made public. The Justice Department revealed on Christmas Eve that it had discovered over a million new documents, and reviewing them could take “a few more weeks.”
Perhaps the sponsors and supporters of the “Epstein Files Transparency Act” always had an unrealistic expectation of how long it would take for the DOJ to review all of the documents covered by their legislation. But it’s a bad look for the U.S. government to pass a law requiring the disclosure of certain documents, and for the nation’s federal law enforcement institution to admit they can’t obey the law, won’t come anywhere near obeying the requirements of that law, and have no idea when or if they will ever be able to obey that law.