DOJ to release more than 3 million Epstein documents Friday

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(The Center Square) - The U.S. Department of Justice will release three million documents related to convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein throughout the day on Friday, according to a DOJ official. 

In a news conference Friday morning, Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche said the DOJ would release more than three million pages including more than 2,000 videos and 180,000 images associated with the criminal investigation into convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.

Blanche said the photos and videos released would include commercial pornography and images seized from Epstein's devices. 

"Some of the videos, though, and some of the images do appear to be taken by Mr. Epstein or by others around him," Blanche said. 

"We erred on the side of over collecting of materials from various sources to best ensure maximum transparency and compliance, which necessarily means that the number of responsive pages is significantly smaller than the total number of pages initially collected," Blanche said. 

The Justice Department's release comes weeks after the Dec. 19 deadline set by Congress for full release documents related to Epstein. 

Blanche said the Department of Justice would submit reports to the U.S. House and Senate Judiciary Committees with explanations for the legal basis of redactions made and a list of all government officials named or referenced. 

He said officials redacted documents containing child sexual abuse materials, personally identifiable victim information, and every woman except for Ghislaine Maxwell. 

"To this end, though, and to ensure transparency, if any member of Congress wishes to review any portions of the responsive production in any unredacted form, they're welcome to make arrangements with the department to do so and we're happy to do that," Blanche said.