A number of Jeffrey Epstein survivors skilled “widespread panic” after the Home Oversight Committee launched 20,000 information earlier this month with out redacting their names, prompting some to imagine that the Justice Division is “intentionally” failing to guard their privateness, in keeping with a Wednesday courtroom submitting.
In a letter to Decide Richard Berman this week, Bradley Edwards and Brittany Henderson, legal professionals who’ve represented a whole lot of Epstein victims, mentioned they had been contacted by survivors whose identities had been uncovered within the Nov. 12 disclosure of information.
“This type of negligence by the government to a survivor is just unable to comprehend. It just is impossible. It can’t be,” one individual recognized as Sufferer 1 allegedly mentioned in a message to the legal professionals, per the courtroom submitting.
“I thought the government had promised to redact our names and identifying material. I don’t understand how this is happening again,” mentioned one other survivor recognized as Sufferer 3.
Edwards and Henderson mentioned in addition they acquired calls from not less than six different survivors who had been contacted by the media after their names appeared within the information made public by lawmakers on Nov. 12.
“Several have been approached personally by reporters on the street, and one was confronted in front of her nine-year old son by a reporter asking for her to comment about being an Epstein victim,” the legal professionals write. “The situation is already dire, we have diligently and repeatedly brought this issue to Congress, and the source of the problem, we are told, lies with the Department of Justice.”
The legal professionals cited the instance of a doc launched by the DOJ to the Home Oversight Committee wherein the names of not less than 28 survivors had been left unredacted, together with some who had been minors on the time of the abuse.
“This is absolutely unacceptable and a problem that must be rectified prior to the public release of any additional documents,” they mentioned.
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The legal professionals added that it’s their understanding that the Home Oversight Committee obtains a redacted model of all Epstein information from Epstein’s property and the DOJ, after which depends on these redactions when it makes the paperwork public.
Whereas Epstein’s property has made what seem like “genuine mistakes” in redactions, Edwards and Herderson mentioned they’re most involved about “the redaction process, or complete lack thereof, being applied” by the DOJ.
“With no direct understanding of the process, and only comparing unredacted documents in our possession with the redacted versions provided by the DOJ to Congress, it appears that the DOJ has a very short list of victims whose identities were redacted in certain documents in the United States v. Maxwell case, whose names were likewise redacted in its production, leaving all others completely unredacted,” they write.
“Given the number of times we have drawn Congress’s attention to this issue, and the fact that victims’ names continue to be produced by DOJ in unredacted form, many of the victims believe this is being done intentionally,” they added.
The DOJ didn’t instantly reply to a HuffPost request for touch upon the letter.
The decide on Wednesday ordered the DOJ to supply an in depth description of the supplies it holds and in addition clarify the privateness course of it plans to make use of to guard the privateness rights of Epstein’s survivors by Dec. 1.
Berman’s order comes after Trump signed a invoice forcing the discharge of your complete trove of Epstein information that the DOJ holds after his efforts to dam the laws failed. The Epstein Recordsdata Transparency Act requires the federal government to make “all unclassified records, documents, communications, and investigative materials in the possession” of the DOJ accessible in a searchable and downloadable format by Dec. 19.
