The Jeffrey Epstein files could be taken offline as early as Wednesday after President Donald Trump’s Justice Department accidentally revealed the names of nearly 100 women abused by the disgraced financier in its “careless and dangerous” rollout.

Attorneys representing the women have requested that the DOJ commit to removing their identities from millions of publicly available files by noon on Wednesday, or else temporarily take the website down.

“Our sole objective is the immediate protection of victims through the correction of the Department of Justice’s redaction failures,” Brittany Henderson said in correspondence to Manhattan Federal Judge Richard Berman, which was made public Tuesday.

Late Monday, Berman, who presides over Epstein’s case, ordered a hearing to take place Wednesday morning after victims’ attorneys alerted him to “an unfolding emergency” requiring immediate judicial intervention. In a brief ruling, the judge said he realized the “concern and the urgency of the issues.”

The DOJ’s Friday release of files, encompassing more than 3 million documents, came more than a month after it was legally required to share the totality of its materials with the public under the Epstein Files Transparency Act, barring information that could identify victims or hinder active investigations. Trump officials had excused blowing the deadline by claiming they were prioritizing redacting victims’ identities.

Nearly 100 women were identified in “thousands” of instances, Henderson told the court in a filing Sunday, “despite repeated representations that redaction was the sole reason for delayed release and DOJ’s acknowledgment that failure to redact would cause extraordinary harm to victims.”

“There is no conceivable degree of institutional incompetence sufficient to explain the scale, consistency, and persistence of the failures that occurred—particularly where the sole task ordered by the Court and repeatedly emphasized by DOJ was simple: redact known victim names before publication,” Henderson wrote.

​Manhattan U.S. Attorney Jay Clayton’s office has been handling the redactions. A spokesman declined comment. The Daily News also reached out to the DOJ’s Washington, D.C., office for comment.

In a filing Monday, Clayton told the court thousands of documents inadvertently naming victims had been removed, blaming the revelations on “technical or human error.” He said the documents would be posted back online after a more thorough redaction process, “ideally within 24 to 36 hours.”

But some women who have complained were met by incompetence, according to the Sunday letter to the court from Henderson and attorney Brad Edwards. One victim, who was a minor when Epstein abused her, was named 20 times in a single document, the letter detailed. She flagged the violation to the DOJ, which claimed it would remove the references, but only took down three instances. The 17 other references remain online.

“I have never come forward! I am now being harassed by the media and others. This is devastating to my life,” one woman was quoted in Henderson’s letter to the court.

“Wasn’t the only job to redact victim names? Hasn’t every person with authority promised repeatedly that victims have nothing to worry about because our names will be redacted? Hasn’t the entire delay of producing documents been allegedly because you have been redacting names?”

The records disclosures come after Congress passed the Epstein Files legislation in November in response to sustained public pressure to unmask influential people who may have known about or participated in the late financier’s abuse, though it appears far more identities of victims have been exposed.

One client of Henderson and Edwards said the government’s reckless rollout had renewed her trauma.

“The release of this information is not only profoundly distressing and retraumatizing, but it also places me and my child at potential physical risk,” the woman was quoted in the lawyers’ letter.

“This situation has reopened trauma I have worked diligently to overcome, and it has done so in a manner that feels both careless and dangerous.”

_____

©2026 New York Daily News. Visit at nydailynews.com. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.