The Justice Department has filed a motion to have key pieces of information struck from a lawsuit arising from a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request.
National security expert Marcy Wheeler noticed the filing on Tuesday in a lawsuit between the DOJ and the government watchdog organization American Oversight.
The FOIA request asks for documents around the investigation of sex offender Jeffrey Epstein. On page three of the complaint, American Oversight references an incident reported by Sen. Dick Durbin (D-Ill.).
According to Durbin, a whistleblower revealed that the DOJ and FBI were tasked with searching through the Epstein files, searching for President Donald Trump.
The FBI's review included "digital searches of its databases, hard drives and network drives as well as physical searches of squad areas, locked cabinets, desks, closets and other areas where responsible materials may have been stored," the filing said.
The effort found "more than 300 gigabytes of data and physical evidence." It took "approximately 1,000 FBI personnel, who spent tens of thousands of hours on this effort." Those employees "were instructed to 'flag' any records mentioning Donald Trump," the filing said.
The DOJ is demanding that the information provided on that page, and two others, be struck.
The filing request came just before a federal judge in New York announced the release of court documents of Epstein's accomplice, Ghislaine Maxwell, CNN reported.
