Friday, December 19 was described in media reports as "Epstein Day," as that was the day the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) and the Trump Administration were required, under the Epstein Files Transparency Act of 2025, to release "unclassified" DOJ files on the late billionaire financier and convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein. And countless files were released that day, followed by more on Monday, December 22 — albeit with very heavy redactions.
But during an appearance on The Bulwark's vodcast posted on December 28, Ryan Goodman — a New York University law professor and co-founder of Just Security — lamented that way too many questions remained unanswered about Epstein's crimes.
Goodman told neocon host Bill Kristol, one of President Donald Trump's most vocal critics on the right, "I guess what surprised me is low little we've learned over nine days. We were supposed to have had all of the documents at once — that's what the law required. And my surprise is also the way in which DOJ is handling this in some respects, and Congress in response to it."
The NYU law professor argued that "major revelations" are "few and far between" where the release of the Epstein files is concerned.
Goodman told Kristol, "To me, the major revelations are that the DOJ thought that they had ten co-conspirators at least — that's from some of the documents around the time of the case against Epstein in New York…. About 2019. And we don't know what they exactly meant by co-conspirator. Some of them are certainly like Ghislaine Maxwell, wealthy businessmen in Ohio. They fit the profile of what people would immediately think. Others, I'm not sure what's behind those redactions."
The legal scholar stressed, however, that the "revelations" are "pretty scant given what I think is still coming."