Epstein files: 2 million records in various stages of review, DOJ says

[snot]

14. A brief timeline re- the records & some math, for what it's worth:

Epstein was arrested in July, 2019. Speculate that the feds might have collected most of the files by the end of 2019, during Trump's first term; so his admin had them for about 1 year before Biden was inaugurated at the beginning of 2021.

The Biden admin had them for 4 more years.

Now the Trump admin has had them for 1 more year. So that's a total of 6 years.

Suppose you only spent 3 of those years actually redacting and preparing everything for publication, because you spent the other 3 years just preparing for and conducting the trials of Maxwell & Epstein. If my math is right, you'd basically have to process about 2,000 documents per day. I'd think you might be able to do that if you put 10 lawyers on it full time – each lawyer would have to process about 20 documents per hour (I expect some would go more quickly and others more slowly).

But I honestly don't believe that either admin wanted to release most of the files – I think that for various reasons, they hoped we'd forget about them and move on.

The problem seems to be that sex-related conspiracies sell even better than assassination or 9/11-related conspiracies. And I'm glad, because the Epstein case implicates not only crimes in the past but, so long as any dirt remains secret, potential crimes (blackmail) in the future.