CNN
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FBI agents are working around the clock – some in 12-hour overnight shifts – on a frenzied mission this week.
The urgent work isn’t an impending national security threat, but instead reviewing documents and other evidence in the investigation of accused sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein to make redactions before the Justice Department releases them publicly, according to people familiar with the situation.
The frantic effort is trying to solve a problem largely of the White House’s own making: Trump allies spent months fanning conspiracies over Epstein’s suicide death and whether the government was holding on to information that could expose prominent people who may have been in involved in his alleged crimes.
Last month, Attorney General Pam Bondi touted the release of Epstein files, which was met with derision from Trump’s MAGA supporters who expected to learn new information and were underwhelmed by what they saw.
Agents have been ordered to set aside investigations, including some related to threats from China and Iran, to help complete the redactions, people briefed on the matter say.
Every division in the bureau has been ordered to provide agents to the cause, including those who work on criminal and national security matters. This weekend, agents in the Washington field office are spending hours on redaction duty, people briefed on the matter say.
“Under Attorney General Bondi’s leadership, the Department of Justice is working relentlessly to deliver unprecedented transparency for the American people,” a Justice Department spokesperson said in response to CNN’s inquiry.
For much of the week, agents could be seen filing into a room at FBI headquarters, with some also doing the work at field offices in New York and at an FBI office in Chantilly, Virginia, the sources said. For hours, agents sit at banks of computers, using editing software to identify redactions required under federal laws, including the Privacy Act. The material also includes video.
Bondi ordered the current round of redactions after promising to release all evidence related to the Epstein investigation. The first tranche, released in February, consisted largely of documents already in the public domain.
The Justice Department called the release “symbolic,” and Bondi said in a letter to FBI Director Kash Patel that she belatedly learned that investigators in New York, which led the Epstein case, had held on to thousands of pages of documents. She demanded the documents and video be produced to her office promptly.
“There will be no withholdings or limitations to my or your access. The Department of Justice will ensure any public disclosure of these files will be done in a manner to protect the privacy of victims and in accordance with law, as I have done my entire career as prosecutor,” Bondi wrote to Patel.
The problem remains, however, that Justice and FBI officials don’t believe the new documents set to be released in the coming days will contain any bombshells. Officials expect that even after the release of the latest documents, people who believe there are secrets being covered up will likely continue to believe there is a cover-up, much like how cottage industry of conspiracies have continued to flourish over President John F. Kennedy’s assassination.
Even weeks after the release of the first tranche of documents, social media posts about other Justice Department enforcement matters are bombarded with replies from apparent pro-Trump accounts demanding more substantive releases of the so-called Epstein files.
A Justice official says that even if the latest tranche of documents don’t satisfy questions from critics, the department is satisfied that the public will end up having access to more documents and evidence than they would have if Bondi hadn’t ordered the review.
“The goal is transparency,” the official said.
The Epstein documents review is part of a wider release of records promised by President Donald Trump, including documents related to the assassinations of Martin Luther King and President Kennedy.
Thousands of pages of JFK assassination documents released earlier this week were the subject of another controversy because some people’s Social Security numbers and other private information were left unredacted.
Experts said that the JFK records didn’t contain new information to support conspiracies about who killed the president. Tom Samoluk, who was a deputy director of the Assassination Records Review Board, told CNN that from what he reviewed, there isn’t anything to change the current conclusion of Kennedy’s assassination: that a lone gunman, Lee Harvey Oswald, was responsible for his death.
