Deputy AG Blanche says pulling Trump photo from Epstein file was justified

María Paula Mijares Torres, Bloomberg News on Dec 21, 2025

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Justice Department officials were protecting victims of Jeffrey Epstein when they removed several images from agency’s release of files tied to the notorious sex offender, Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche said.

“There were a number of photographs that were pulled down after being released on Friday,” Blanche said on NBC’s "Meet the Press." “That’s because a judge in New York has ordered us to listen to any victim or victim rights group if they have any concerns about the material that we’re putting up.”

Attention has focused on an image of a desk drawer with a number of photos, including one showing future President Donald Trump, that was among those removed from the department’s website after a massive release of material.

“You can see in that photo there’s photographs of women,” Blanche said. “And so we learned after releasing that photograph that there were concerns about those women and the fact that we had put that photo up. So we pulled that photo down. It has nothing to do with President Trump.”

Blanche, a former personal attorney for Trump, has emerged as the Justice Department’s main public face in the release of the agency’s Epstein files, which was mandated by Congress after a bipartisan groundswell overcame Trump’s objections to publicizing the material.

In a letter to Congress on Friday, Blanche said the department couldn’t meet the Dec. 19 deadline for a full release because of the volume of material and restrictions imposed by a federal judge in Manhattan aimed at preventing the identification of victims.

He said more than 1,200 victims or relatives were identified during the review process and that references to them were redacted, along with information covered by legal privileges such as attorney-client and deliberative-process protections.

Blanche said Sunday that he and Attorney General Pam Bondi spoke to victims’ groups as recently as Thursday, though he didn’t provide specifics about the decision to pull the image showing Trump.

“If we need to redact faces or other information, we will,” Blanche told NBC. “And then we’ll put it back up.”

The partial release and extensive redactions prompted immediate criticism by some lawmakers. Democrats on the Senate Judiciary Committee accused the administration of violating the Epstein Files Transparency Act and shielding President Donald Trump.

Blanche dismissed the notion that political considerations are influencing the release of material from the files and argued that the law allows for leeway in the timeline to protect victims.

“Bring it on,” he said. “We are doing everything we’re supposed to be doing to comply with this statute.”

Before working in the Justice Department, Blanche represented Trump during his 2024 criminal trial in New York City where he was convicted on 34 felony counts of falsifying business records on May 30, 2024.

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