Latest release of Epstein files includes some survivors’ names, despite DOJ assurances, lawyers say
Jeffrey Epstein is seen in this image released by the Department of Justice in Washington, December 19, 2025. (U.S. Justice Department)
(WASHINGTON) — Attorneys for hundreds of Jeffrey Epstein’s survivors told ABC News that names and identifying information of numerous victims appear unredacted in the latest disclosure of files on the late sex offender by the Department of Justice, including several women whose names have never before been publicly associated with the case.
Three million pages from the DOJ’s files on Epstein were being released to the public Friday, Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche said at a press briefing this morning.
Several categories of pages were withheld from the release due to their sensitive nature, Blanche said. These items include personally identifying information of the victims, victims’ medical files, images depicting child pornography, information related to ongoing cases and any images depicting death or abuse.
“We are getting constant calls for victims because their names, despite them never coming forward, being completely unknown to the public, have all just been released for public consumption,” said Brad Edwards, an attorney for some of the victims, in a telephone interview with ABC News. “It’s literally 1000s of mistakes.”
ABC News has independently confirmed numerous instances of victims’ names appearing in documents included in the latest release.
Shortly after the new material appeared on Friday morning, Edwards said he and his law partner, Brittany Henderson, began receiving calls from clients.
“We contacted DOJ immediately, who has asked us to flag each of the documents where victim names appear unredacted and they will pull them down,” Edwards said. “it’s an impossible job. The easy job would be for the DOJ to type in all the victims’ names, hit redact like they promised to do, then release them. “
“They’re trying to fix it, but I said ‘the solution is take the thing down for now. There’s no other remedy to this. It just runs the risk of causing so much more harm unless they take it down first, then fix the problem and put it back up.'”
ABC News had reached out to the DOJ for comment.
The department has reviewed and redacted “several millions of pages” of materials related to the investigations of Epstein and his associate, Ghislaine Maxwell, and expects to publish “substantially all” of the records “in the near term,” according to a letter filed Tuesday by Jay Clayton, the U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York.
Maxwell is currently serving a 20-year sentence prison.
Blanche said Friday’s release, which follows the passage of the Epstein Files Transparency Act, will include 2,000 videos and 180,000 images related to the Epstein case.
Blanche said in total there were 6 million documents, but due to the presence of child sexual abuse material and victim rights obligations, not all documents are being made public in the current release.
Epstein died by suicide in a New York jail in 2019 while awaiting trial on charges that he “sexually exploited and abused dozens of minor girls at his homes in Manhattan, New York, and Palm Beach, Florida, among other locations,” using cash payments to recruit a “vast network of underage victims,” some of whom were as young as 14 years old.
Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass delivers her State of the City address Monday, February 2, in Los Angeles at the Expo Center.(Photo by Hans Gutknecht/MediaNews Group/Los Angeles Daily News via Getty Images)
(LOS ANGELES) — Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass has called for 2028 Los Angeles Olympics chair Casey Wasserman to step down following the release of the Hollywood mogul’s emails with convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein’s co-conspirator, Ghislaine Maxwell, who is serving a 20-year sentence for child sex trafficking and other offenses.
Some flirtatious emails sent between Wasserman and Maxwell in 2003 surfaced through the Department of Justice’s release last month of millions of Epstein-related documents. They followed a previously known trip to Africa that Wasserman took on Epstein’s plane in 2002 alongside former President Bill Clinton for a humanitarian mission with the Clinton Foundation.
The LA28 Executive Committee of the Board said last week it stands by Wasserman after its review found that his relationship with Epstein and Maxwell “did not go beyond what has already been publicly documented.”
In an interview with CNN on Monday, Bass said she disagrees with the board.
“The board made a decision. I think that decision was unfortunate. I don’t support the decision,” Bass said.
The mayor, who noted that she is not able to fire Wasserman, said she thinks that “we need to look at the leadership” of LA28 and that her job is to ensure the city is “completely prepared” to host the Summer Olympics.
Wasserman heads LA28, the organizing committee responsible for delivering the 2028 Games, including securing corporate sponsors and other funding. He was previously the LA Olympic Bid Committee president.
“My opinion is, is that he should step down,” Bass said. “That’s not the opinion of the board.”
ABC News has reached out to Wasserman’s spokesperson and LA28 for comment regarding Bass’ remarks and has not yet received a response.
Maxwell was convicted of child sex trafficking and other offenses in connection with Epstein in 2021.
In the newly publicized emails, sent nearly 20 years before Maxwell’s arrest, Wasserman told her in one exchange, “I think of you all the time… So what do I have to do to see you in a tight leather outfit?”
Since the emails came to light, Wasserman’s eponymous sports marketing and talent management company has lost several clients, including the singers Chappell Roan and Orville Peck and the former soccer player Abby Wambach.
Wasserman apologized for what he called his “past personal mistakes” in a message to his staff last week obtained by ABC News through his spokesperson.
“Hopefully by now you know the facts about my limited interactions with those two individuals,” he said. “It was years before their criminal conduct came to light, and, in its entirety, consisted of one humanitarian trip to Africa and a handful of emails that I deeply regret sending. And I’m heartbroken that my brief contact with them 23 years ago has caused you, this company, and its clients so much hardship over the past days and weeks.”
Wasserman said in his message to his staff that he believes he has become a “distraction” and has started the process to sell his company while he devotes his “full attention to delivering Los Angeles an Olympic Games in 2028 that is worthy of this outstanding city.”
The LA28 Executive Committee of the Board said last week that it “takes allegations of misconduct seriously” and conducted a review of Wasserman’s past interactions with Epstein and Maxwell with the help of outside counsel.
“We found Mr. Wasserman’s relationship with Epstein and Maxwell did not go beyond what has already been publicly documented,” the board said in a statement, citing the 2002 flight to Africa on Epstein’s plane and the 2003 emails with Maxwell.
“The Executive Committee of the Board has determined that based on these facts, as well as the strong leadership he has exhibited over the past ten years, Mr. Wasserman should continue to lead LA28 and deliver a safe and successful Games,” the board said.
School bus (David L. Ryan/The Boston Globe via Getty Images FILE)
(MONTGOMERY COUNTY, Tenn.) — The National Transportation Safety Board is investigating a crash involving a school bus in Tennessee that killed two middle school students.
The NTSB said it has “initiated a safety investigation in coordination with the Tennessee Highway Patrol” into Friday’s deadly crash in Carroll County.
“The NTSB investigation will examine school bus driver performance, student passenger occupant protection, and the oversight of school transportation operations,” the agency said in a statement on Monday.
The investigation can take one to two years to complete, with a preliminary report possible in about 30 days, the NTSB said.
The crash involved a school bus from Montgomery County, a Tennessee Department of Transportation dump truck and a Chevrolet Trailblazer, authorities said. Dash cam video showed the bus initially colliding with the dump truck.
“The details of the crash are still ongoing,” Tennessee Highway Patrol Maj. Travis Plotzer said at a press briefing on Friday, adding that it doesn’t appear the dump truck “had any contributing factors to the crash.”
Two students on the school bus were pronounced dead at the scene, the Tennessee Highway Patrol said. Authorities have not released any additional details on them.
Several others were injured in the crash, with multiple victims airlifted to trauma centers in Memphis and Nashville, authorities said.
The cause of the crash remains under investigation.
The Clarksville-Montgomery County School System said a group of eighth grade students and educators from Kenwood Middle School were on the bus headed to Jackson, Tennessee, for a weekend competition when the crash occurred.
“In a moment, their lives and their families’ lives were upended,” Clarksville-Montgomery County School System Director Jean Luna-Vedder said in a message to the school community over the weekend. “As a mother and a lifelong educator, I cannot begin to imagine the fear and pain they continue to endure. I ask that everyone pray and wrap their arms around these students, employees, their families, and the entire Kenwood community.”
Spinner shark on the bottom of the ocean close to Male / Maldives (Cavan Images / Henn Photography/Getty Images)
(NEW YORK) — Warming waters are attracting more swimmers and sharks alike to the Eastern seaboard — creating the perfect recipe for an increase of shark sightings along the coasts in the coming months, some shark experts told ABC News.
Scientists at the New England Aquarium in Boston urged the public to be vigilant and report shark sightings after the first white shark of the season was confirmed off Massachusetts on Sunday.
A dead grey seal with a visible wound found on Lucy Vincent Beach in Chilmark, Martha’s Vineyard, was consistent with the bite of a white shark, John Chisholm, an adjunct scientist in the Aquarium’s Anderson Cabot Center for Ocean Life, said in a statement.
“This is just the beginning of white shark season in New England, and it serves as a good reminder to be mindful of the presence of these sharks in inshore waters,” Chisholm said. “Their numbers will continue to increase throughout the summer with peak activity occurring in the fall.”
A juvenile white shark was also seen off the coasts of New York and New Jersey last week. The female shark, named Nori, pinged a shark-tracking system. Scientists with the Global Shark Tracker program have been monitoring her movements as she makes her way up the East Coast.
Nori is the first tagged white shark to begin this season’s northward migration, according to the nonprofit OCEARCH.
“It’s very normal for us to see more sharks off the East Coast, especially as you move north in the summer compared to the winter, partially because they’re more likely to be there and partially because someone’s more likely to be watching,” Catherine Macdonald, director of the University of Miami’s Shark Research and Conservation Program, told ABC News.
Why there are more shark sightings in the summer months
The moment a swimmer sets foot in the ocean, they are in close proximity to a shark — even if they’re not necessarily in sight, according to marine biologists who spoke with ABC News.
At least 30 species of sharks are starting to make their northward seasonal migration up the Eastern seaboard after overwintering in southern waters, Joel Fodrie, director of the Institute of Marine Sciences at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, told ABC News.
As the waters begin to warm, they’re on the move to new areas to set up their strategies for hunting, Fodrie said.
Those recreating on the coastlines can expect to see different species of sharks, depending on where they are.
Of the sharks considered aggressive or a potential threat to humans, white sharks are commonly seen in the Northeast during the summer months — especially around Cape Cod — because their preferred prey, the grey seal, tends to congregate there, Bradley Wetherbee, a professor of marine biology and ecology at the University of Rhode Island, told ABC News.
Tiger sharks bask in the warm Florida waters year-round, Mahmood Shivji, a shark biologist at the Save the Seas Foundation Shark Research Center at Nova Southeastern University, told ABC News.
Bull sharks are common in the Gulf and feed on large fish — often confusing humans for prey in those interactions, Wetherbee said.
A large presence of fish, mackerel or seals — all prey for sharks — could indicate that one is nearby, looking to feed. The presence of dolphins could also mean a shark is around, because the larger marine animals tend to feed on the same prey, Frodrie said.
There are also simply more opportunities to see sharks, the experts said.
Protections in the Atlantic have allowed shark populations to rebound in the waters off the U.S., while globally they are still being killed at high rates due to overfishing, Shivji said.
The existence of drones and advanced cameras — as well as social media — are making the presence of sharks more known than ever before, Frodrie added.
Swimmers should be vigilant, but don’t necessarily need to worry, experts say
An increase in shark presence in the north and mid-Atlantic is normal and isn’t anything to worry about, Macdonald said.
With the exceptions of the bolder species, sharks are scared of people and fairly easy to spook, Frodrie said.
“There’s more than 540 species of shark on the planet, and the vast majority of them rarely come into contact with people but wouldn’t be a threat to them even if they did,” Macdonald said.
Over the last 400 million years, sharks have evolved to detect things and sense their environment using their jaws, Wetherbee said. When they bite people, they are likely testing whether they are prey.
“No one wants to have a negative encounter, but it’s kind of a primordial fear,” Wetherbee said.
Sharks are a keystone species, and their presence can be a marker of a healing ecosystem, Macdonald said. They play a “huge role” in shaping the structure and function of ecosystems by moving nutrients around landscapes and helping control prey populations, she added.
“Marine ecosystems look really different in the absence of sharks, often in ways that we don’t want, so we don’t always appreciate them when we see them,” Macdonald said.
The public can report shark sightings through the Atlantic White Shark Conservancy’s Sharktivity app, which provides information and push notifications on shark movements in the aim to help people and sharks coexist.
Sharks are not the biggest danger humans face at the beach
Shark bites on humans — especially fatal attacks — are rare, the data shows.
In 2025, there were 65 confirmed unprovoked shark bites on humans and 29 provoked bites — meaning the human initiated the interaction in some way, according to the Florida Museum of Natural History’s International Shark Attack File.
On average, fewer than 10 people worldwide are killed by unprovoked shark attacks each year, according to the Florida Museum of Natural History. In 2025, there were 12 confirmed shark-related fatalities, nine of which were labeled as unprovoked.
Getting bitten by a shark is rare in itself, but victims of shark attacks have a 1 in 3.7 million chance of being killed by a shark.
All four shark experts ABC News spoke with pointed to rip currents as being the real danger swimmers face at the beach.
In the U.S. alone, there are more than 100 deaths annually that are attributed to rip currents, according to a scientific review of data provided to the United States Lifesaving Association.
“Supervision of kids in the ocean, awareness of rip currents and risks of drowning — all of that is a much greater risk to swim or safety than sharks will ever be,” Macdonald said.
Compared to the number of drownings at beaches, the odds of getting bitten by a shark are extremely low, the experts said.
“The numbers are so small, but it doesn’t do any good to tell people that, because if you’re out there, if you’re one of the ones that gets bitten … I’m sure it’s quite an ordeal,” Wetherbee said.
