Washington — A gaggle of survivors of convicted intercourse offender Jeffrey Epstein’s sexual abuse is suing the Trump administration and Google over the discharge of their private info in troves of recordsdata made public by the Justice Division.
The survivors filed a class-action lawsuit in federal court docket in California on Thursday arguing that the Justice Division’s disclosure of their personally identifiable info was a violation of federal privateness legislation. They’re looking for at the very least $1,000 per class member from the federal government and an unspecific quantity of damages from Google.
Of their lawsuit, the survivors stated that whereas the Justice Division took down their info after it was printed in late 2025 and earlier this 12 months, on-line entities like Google continued to republish it and have refused requests to take away it.
“Survivors now face renewed trauma,” they stated of their go well with. “Strangers name them, e mail them, threaten their bodily security, and accuse them of conspiring with Epstein when they’re, in actuality, Epstein’s victims.”
The Justice Division printed greater than 3 million pages of information associated to its investigation into Epstein after Congress handed and President Trump signed into legislation the Epstein Information Transparency Act, which required the division to reveal all of its unclassified materials.
Paperwork had been made public in a number of tranches in late December and by means of the top of January, and included movies, court docket information, FBI and Justice Division paperwork, emails, textual content messages and information clippings. A number of the materials included mentions of outstanding figures like President Trump, former President Invoice Clinton, Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor, previously often called Prince Andrew, and billionaires Elon Musk and Invoice Gates.
However the recordsdata additionally initially contained almost 100 survivors’ private info, together with their names, telephone numbers and pictures. After studying of the disclosures, the Justice Division took down the paperwork containing that info, together with one with unredacted pictures of 21 survivors and most of their birthdates.
Deputy Lawyer Common Todd Blanche stated the Justice Division reviewed 6 million pages in all and launched roughly half of these pages. A portion of the information had been withheld for numerous causes, he stated, together with as a result of they include survivors’ private info.
The survivors stated of their lawsuit that whereas the Justice Division eliminated the recordsdata from its web site, the division has recognized that the unredacted paperwork are nonetheless publicly out there on different web sites, together with these maintained by Google. The federal government has “achieved nothing to demand their removing,” they stated.
Public statements from Blanche, “considered along with DOJ’s subsequent document-dump, display that america deliberately prioritized quantity and velocity of public disclosure over the security and privateness of Epstein survivors, adopting a launch now, retract later method that made illegal disclosures of sufferer (personally figuring out info) not merely foreseeable, however inevitable,” the survivors stated.
Epstein was investigated by state authorities in Florida in 2005. He agreed to plead responsible to 2 state prostitution prices and serve an 18-month jail sentence as a part of a cope with federal prosecutors that noticed him keep away from federal prosecution.
Epstein was then indicted on federal intercourse trafficking prices in 2019. He died by suicide at a Manhattan correctional facility whereas awaiting trial.
