“I expect that we’re going to release more documents over the next couple of weeks, so today several hundred thousand and then over the next couple weeks, I expect several hundred thousand more,” Blanche said. “There’s a lot of eyes looking at these and we want to make sure that when we do produce the materials we are producing, that we are protecting every single victim.”

The delay means the White House is in apparent conflict with a law President Donald Trump signed in November that mandated the wholesale release of all of its non-exempt Epstein information within a 30-day period.

A spokesperson for the Department of Justice declined a request to expand on Blanche’s comments, saying they speak for themselves.

“President Trump signed that law 30 days ago,” Blanche told Fox News. “And we have been working tirelessly since that day to make sure that we get every single document that we have within the Department of Justice, review it and get it to the American public.”

Blanche later told ABC that Trump would not be shown any favoritism in the Justice Department’s handling of the file release, and that the DOJ had not been instructed to redact the president’s name.

“There’s no effort to hold anything back because there’s the name Donald J. Trump or anybody else’s name,” he said.

When asked for comment, a spokesperson for Rep. Thomas Massie (R-Ky.) — who led the successful discharge petition effort to trigger eventual passage of the law — pointed to a video on X on Thursday where he indicated he’d know whether the administration had met his disclosure standards. Following conversations with lawyers for Epstein’s victims, he believes the FBI has at least 20 names of men who are accused of committing sex crimes.

“If we get a large production on Dec. 19, and it does not contain a single name of any male who is accused of a sex crime or sex trafficking or rape or any of these things, then we know they haven’t produced all the documents,” he said. “It’s that simple.”

Rep. Ro Khanna (D-Calif.), who partnered with Massie to push the discharge petition, said in a statement that “if DOJ is producing real documents of interest that are not overly redacted, and if they are clear about a timeline for full production then that is a positive step.”

“They ultimately must release all of it,” he said. “The north star remains justice for survivors and holding the rich and powerful men who raped young girls or covered up the abuse accountable.”

Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer panned Trump and Attorney General Pam Bondi for the delayed release in a statement Friday, saying that “this just shows the Department of Justice, Donald Trump, and Pam Bondi are hellbent on hiding the truth.”

“Senate Democrats are working closely with attorneys for the victims of Jeffrey Epstein and with outside legal experts to assess what documents are being withheld and what is being covered up by Pam Bondi,” he said. “We will not stop until the whole truth comes out.”

Josh Gerstein contributed to this report.