The Department of Justice started releasing files related to the life, death and criminal investigations of convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein Friday. Files continued to be posted on its "Epstein Library" website on Saturday.
But NPR identified more than a dozen files released by the DOJ on Friday that are no longer available Saturday afternoon, including one that shows President Trump's photo on a desk among several other photographs. The removed files also show various works of art, including those containing nudity.
On its website, the Justice Department directs people to report any files that should not have been posted by notifying the agency using a dedicated email address. A statement at the top of each page of the website said: "In view of the Congressional deadline, all reasonable efforts have been made to review and redact personal information pertaining to victims, other private individuals, and protect sensitive materials from disclosure."
The DOJ acknowledged, though, "because of the volume of information involved, this website may nevertheless contain information that inadvertently includes non-public personally identifiable information or other sensitive content, to include matters of a sexual nature."
The DOJ did not immediately respond to a request for comment on why the files were no longer available.
After the initial release of files, some members of Congress raised concerns about what was missing from the data sets.
"There are powerful men, bankers, politicians who we know from survivors - they've told us this — who were at these parties where there were many young women, and a few were under age, and these powerful men knew about it, and they didn't say anything," Rep. Ro Khanna, D-Calif., told NPR. They need to be at least publicly held accountable."
Rep. Thomas Massie, R-Ky., who cosponsored the Epstein Transparency Act in the House along with Khanna, criticized the redactions.
Posting on X, he said the release "grossly fails to comply with both the spirit and the letter of the law." He also warned "a future DOJ could convict the current [Attorney General] and others" for not properly releasing all files the law mandated be made public.
Apart from the photo that is no longer available to download, Trump's name and image appears rarely in the new documents available. There are a few pictures of him with women and a framed photo of Epstein and a redacted woman with a $22,500 oversized check signed by Trump.
While Trump wasn't mentioned much this time around, he was a frequent subject of emails and text messages in another Epstein file tranche released by the House Democratic Oversight Committee — with well over a thousand different mentions — though mainly as the subject of Epstein's near-obsession with his presidency, as the latter positioned himself as a Trump whisperer of sorts to his powerful associates.
NPR's Rahul Mukherjee and Stephen Fowler contributed reporting.
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