Ayesha Bakshi

And on that day, basically, it said, we're not going to meet that deadline.

We're going to release some documents today.

And we're going to release further files down the line.

Finally, at the end of January, the deputy attorney general under Pam Bondi, Todd Blanch, said it was basically completing that process and releasing in total about 3.5 million pages of documents.

but withholding another about $2.5 million.

And now the American public is looking at those documents and seeing a lot of redactions, a lot of things covered up that many members of Congress don't believe comply with the transparency law trying to force this release.

And so there's this ongoing controversy about whether the Trump administration

is being fully transparent with the American people.

There's a context for this.

Donald Trump had a long former friendship with Jeffrey Epstein.

He's not alone in that.

Among prominent people, President Bill Clinton, it's very clear, had some sort of relationship with Jeffrey Epstein as well.

Neither of them has been implicated in crimes by evidence that's come out in relation to Jeffrey Epstein.

But there's just this concern that the Justice Department isn't being transparent

And that played out in a major way at the hearing.

Pam Bondi defended the department's actions.

She said a lot about how the department is trying to protect victims in particular.

She said that that they're open to investigating anyone.

But it's also true that in this release of documents, the department released a lot of victim names and had to redact those later.

That's something that was not supposed to happen later.