WASHINGTON, D.C. — The Department of Justice released more than 3 million pages of documents under the Epstein Files Transparency Act. Following the release, the Government Accountability Office launched an investigation into redactions present in the documents.

Several members of Congress had requested the government investigation into the document redactions. Representative Robert Garcia stated, "OK, that's fine, let's see them." Garcia also said, "I think what people need to understand is we're not sure what's in the 3 million."

The Department collected over 6 million pages of material during its investigation into Jeffrey Epstein. The Department maintains that approximately 3 million unreleased documents were either duplicative, unrelated to Epstein, or protected by legal privilege. The Department issued a general statement characterizing its redactions as consistent with the Epstein Files Transparency Act.

The Act permits redaction primarily to protect victims and explicitly excludes reputational harm or political sensitivity as valid reasons for redaction. The Act also requires the Department to publish a written justification for every redaction in the Federal Register and submit it to Congress.

The Department un-redacted a photo of Steve Bannon and two emails after external inquiries. An un-redacted email in the archive identified former U.K. diplomat Peter Mandelson as the sender. Mandelson stated he regrets his friendship with Epstein and never witnessed criminal activity.

The Department also released screengrab images from Epstein's littlestjeff@yahoo.com inbox with sender and recipient fields redacted. Only a small number of emails from this account were included in the released archive. Most of Epstein's released emails originate from the jeevacation@gmail.com account, created around 2008. The release does not contain approximately 20,000 messages from Epstein's earlier jeeproject@yahoo.com account.

In April, Melania Trump acknowledged exchanging emails with Ghislaine Maxwell. A 2002 email in the released files signed "Love, Melania" had the sender's and recipient's full names and email addresses redacted. Melania Trump stated, "My polite reply to her email doesn't amount to anything more than a trivial note."

The released archive contains emails that reference attachments not included in the release. For example, in August 2018, an employee sent Epstein an email with an attachment titled "ZMC_-_Gun_Inventory.pdf" regarding firearms at his Zorro Ranch property in New Mexico. The archive also contains internal Department and FBI correspondence with official names redacted.