Attorney General Pam Bondi and top Justice Department officials have asked a federal court for more time to finish releasing the vast trove of files related to convicted child sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, more than a month after a law required full disclosure by a December 19, 2025 deadline.

In a court filing this week, Bondi — joined by Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche and U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York Jay Clayton — told judges the department still cannot provide a specific completion date for its review of the materials. Instead, they said they expect release “in the near term,” a phrase that has done little to calm public frustration.

The backlog is enormous. The files include documents, audio recordings, videos and photographs that the FBI previously estimated amounted to more than 300 gigabytes of data and evidence. Despite the sheer volume, less than 1 percent of the materials have been made public so far — only about 12,285 documents — with more than 2 million documents still under review.

Bondi’s filing highlights the logistical challenge: hundreds of Justice Department attorneys, agents and staff are working on the project, manually reviewing and redacting materials to remove victim-identifying information before release. The filing also notes ongoing quality-control checks and system preparations that could require additional work.

But critics argue that the slow pace and vague timeline raise serious questions about the department’s commitment to transparency — and compliance with the law. The Epstein Files Transparency Act, passed almost unanimously by Congress and signed by President Donald Trump in November 2025, required the Justice Department to make the records publicly available within 30 days — a deadline the department has now blown by weeks without consequences.

Public dissatisfaction is high. A recent CNN poll found that most Americans are not satisfied with the amount of material released and believe the government may be intentionally withholding information; only 16 percent said the DOJ is working to release all possible information.

Bipartisan critics in Congress, including Reps. Ro Khanna (D-Calif.) and Thomas Massie (R-Ky.), who led the legislative effort to force the files’ release, have called the delay a “flagrant violation” of the law and pressed for stronger oversight.

For now, despite mounting frustration from lawmakers and the public alike, the Justice Department’s message remains the same: the work is enormous, and while progress is being made, a finish line still can’t be pinned down.