Over 11,571 Epstein Documents Currently On Appeal in One FOIA Case with Maureen Comey Involved

The public was told that no more Epstein files would be forthcoming.

Officials implied the only Epstein-related documents left were “child porn” that could, of course, not be released. The Justice Department, in a memo released on Sunday, said, “no further disclosure would be appropriate or warranted” about the Epstein case involving the sexual trafficking of children.

But one pending FOIA appeal by two litigants in New York, that the DOJ’s Maureen Comey is due to respond to later this month, has identified at least 11,571 more FBI documents alone related to the Epstein affair, almost all of them as-of-yet unreleased.

This is in addition to the estimated 3 million documents the government gave to Ghislaine Maxwell to prepare for her defense, and they are still active in that case.

The ongoing litigation relates to Freedom of Information Act (“FOIA”) requests filed by media entities to release Epstein-related documents. The litigation filed by Radar Online and James Robertson over a FOIA originally filed eight years ago involves over 11,571 documents that the FBI already admits are responsive to a search for Epstein documents.

The FBI admitted it also withheld an ‘unspecified additional number’ of documents without clarifying further.

You can read the Radar Online appeal before the Second Circuit Court of Appeals, case number 24-1964, here.

The government’s response brief is due by July 27, 2025. A decision in the case could come as soon as three to nine months after the back-and-forth briefing periods end.

The appeal notes that “declarations submitted by Michael G. Seidel of the FBI’s Information Management Division and Assistant United States Attorney Maureen Comey categorized the documents at issue inconsistently,” making it extremely difficult to take their claims that releasing the withheld documents would negatively affect ongoing law enforcement matters seriously. Comey is the daughter of disgraced former FBI Director James Comey, who appeared to call for President Trump to be killed in a cryptic Instagram post.

The Southern District of New York U.S. Attorney’s office has not, attorneys involved in the case say, explained why it is still withholding these documents.

One of the high-powered media attorneys for Radar Online and James Robertson, Dan Novack, exclusively told the Gateway Pundit, “In the eight years that my clients have fought for the Epstein files, the DOJ has never offered the rationale cited in this memo to justify withholding tens of thousands of pages.”

Trump himself has been dismissive of Epstein-related inquiries this week, responding to a reporter when asked about the missing minute in the Epstein cell footage reported by The Gateway Pundit, “Are people still talking about this guy, this creep? That is unbelievable,” Trump said before asking Bondi if she even wanted to “waste time” answering.

The Justice Department estimates that there are over 1,000 victims of Jeffrey Epstein, and Epstein’s pimp Ghislaine Maxwell is in prison for 20 years for three counts of trafficking and one count of conspiracy. So, despite no ‘clients’ of Epstein having been indicted, people are still talking about him.

On April 20, 2017, Radar Online LLC and James Robertson originally filed an FOIA with the FBI for Epstein-related documents. It has taken eight years of fighting and litigation to get to this point.

The government initially identified 11,571 pages of responsive documents, of which only 181 pages were produced in full, and 1,051 pages were redacted in part.

The government completely withheld 10,107 pages under a variety of exemptions to FOIA.

FOIA exemptions, of which there are nine, and official bureaucratic resistance and denials, are common in controversial information requests. The government typically relies on three key ones: the first, which covers national security matters, the third, which covers privacy rights, and the seventh, which covers law enforcement records.

The government’s initial basis for withholding the documents was Jeffrey Epstein’s “personal privacy.” But as a matter of law, individual privacy rights rarely survive the death of the individual.

After Epstein’s extremely suspicious death and possible murder on August 10, 2019, the FBI, in litigation, began retroactively changing the basis for their arguments to withhold the documents.

No longer able to argue for Epstein’s ‘privacy’, they instead said their withholding was due to Ghislaine Maxwell’s ongoing prosecution.

The government then changed its argument again after Maxwell was convicted, saying that because Maxwell could potentially appeal her case, the FBI should be entitled to deny Radar Online’s request for documents under Exemption 7(A), which prevents the disclosure of records that would ‘interfere with law enforcement proceedings.’

Instead of asserting Epstein’s ‘privacy’ rights to withhold the documents, the FBI began arguing that there was an ongoing law enforcement case against Ghislaine Maxwell. The only problem is that Maxwell was convicted and sentenced three years ago, on June 28, 2022, to 20 years in prison.

Maxwell did file an appeal, which was denied unanimously in September 2024 by a three-judge panel of the U.S. Second Circuit Court of Appeals. Maxwell has filed for review by the Supreme Court this past April, arguing primarily that the prior federal non-prosecution agreement with Epstein in Florida should prevent her prosecution and conviction in New York.

If Maxwell loses her appeal to the Supreme Court, her appeals will be exhausted. Meaning that, practically, there is no vague concern about what might be considered ‘law enforcement investigation’ records. But then, perhaps the government will then change the rationale again for why they withhold these documents from media outlets, the appellants note.

The ‘law enforcement records’ exemption is meant to prevent defendants from having greater access to investigatory files than they otherwise would have during criminal discovery, prevent impacting the jury pool, and also prevent impacting witness statements, testimony, and willingness to testify. Radar Online alleges that the FBI has failed to demonstrate any of those potential problems in their case.

The government is simply using bad faith arguments to prevent disclosure of records it does not want to disclose, say the appellants.

Attorney Novack ridiculed the government’s contentions in the case, telling The Gateway Pundit, “In court, they insist that releasing even one additional page from the Epstein file would hurt their ability to reprosecute Ghislaine Maxwell in the event the Supreme Court orders a new trial. It’s a flimsy rationale, and we are challenging it head-on in the Court of Appeals.”

Thirteen days ago, Radar Online filed its appeal to the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit in New York City to overrule the District Court’s decision to allow the FBI to retroactively change the reason it was withholding responsive documents to Radar Online’s FOIA about Epstein files.

The district court ruling was issued by Judge Paul G. Gardephe, who was appointed to the court in 2008 by Republican President George W. Bush.

Their key arguments in the Radar Online appeal are, 1) that the FBI should not be able to retroactively change the exemptions that they rely upon to deny documents, and 2) that the public interest outweighs any potential privacy rights, and 3) that the government failed to prove that there would be any effect on a theorized appeal by Maxwell. Additionally, Radar Online says it is unreasonable that the government can withhold 10,000 documents when producing so few in this case.

Several media outlets have courageously spent a great deal of time and money in court to try and release these files, including: The Gateway Pundit, The Miami Herald, Mike Cernovich, and Radar Online.

The government is arguing that Epstein’s social network needs to have its privacy rights protected. Bill O’Reilly has said that the administration has privately said the same thing to him. One FBI Privacy Officer is quoted in the Radar Online case as arguing for the rights of Epstein’s social circle, “Even where individuals have been previously named in press reports, official confirmation by the FBI carries a new level of stigma and constitutes an invasion of personal privacy.”

Attorney Novack had a different opinion, telling The Gateway Pundit, “Our only hope of understanding how the FBI failed to hold Epstein accountable for over a decade — and preventing future miscarriages of justice — is if the government releases the files.”

The post Over 11,571 Epstein Documents Currently On Appeal in One FOIA Case with Maureen Comey Involved appeared first on The Gateway Pundit.

Over 11,571 Epstein Documents Currently On Appeal in One FOIA Case with Maureen Comey Involved

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