‘We pulled that photo down.’ DOJ defends removal of Epstein photos.

The second in command at the Department of Justice is defending the decision to take down more than a dozen photos from the Jeffrey Epstein files published online last week.

Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche in an interview on Dec. 21 acknowledged the department pulled at least 15 photographs from the government website hosting the massive trove of documents related to the late convicted sex offender.

In an interview on NBC News’ “Meet the Press,” Blanche said the removal of the photos came at the request of victim advocacy groups and that they will “go back up” after the department investigates whether they need to make further redactions.

Several media outlets over the weekend reported that 15 or 16 photographs initially included in the publicly released files were taken down. One of the images was that of a desk, with an open drawer containing several printed photographs, including at least one showing President Donald Trump. The removed files reportedly also show various works of art, including those containing nudity.

“You can see in that photo there are photographs of women,” Blanche told NBC. “And so we learned after releasing that photograph that there were concerns about those women and the fact that we had put that photo up. So we pulled that photo down. It has nothing to do with President Trump.”

Reports of the images’ disappearance from the website ⁠that hosts the files fueled speculation over the Trump administration’s handling of the already controversial materials, as officials did not immediately explain why the images were taken down. Democrats on the House Oversight Committee posted one of the photos in question on X, asking Attorney General Pam Bondi: “What else is being covered up? We need transparency for the American public.”

The Department of Justice did not immediately respond to a USA TODAY request for comment on Dec. 21.

Blanche said the decision to take down the photos was in compliance with the redaction requirements in the Epstein Transparency Act. Congress passed the legislation nearly unanimously last month to force the Department of Justice to release its Epstein files, sidestepping Trump and Republican congressional leaders’ initial objections. The act’s deadline was Dec. 19, the day thousands of files were published on the department’s website.

Yet not all the Epstein documents were released. Blanche previously said lawyers are still sifting through the materials to ensure that victims aren’t named or identified, and it could take several weeks to produce the remaining hundreds of thousands of pages.

The files include photographs, contact lists, flight logs, business records and memos, court documents and more. But key investigative documents known to be in the government’s possession, including information leading to the federal indictment of Epstein in 2019 and his longtime associate Ghislaine Maxwell in 2020, were missing entirely.

The Epstein Files Transparency Act allows the Justice Department to withhold documents that name victims, portray child sex abuse or that could hurt criminal prosecutions. But it also states that records cannot be withheld, delayed or redacted “on the basis of embarrassment, reputational harm, or political sensitivity, including to any government official, public figure, or foreign dignitary.”

Blanche denied that the Justice Department was covering up anything through the file redactions. Trump and Epstein were close friends for more ⁠than a decade in the 1990s and early 2000s before falling out.

“We are not redacting information around President Donald Trump, around any other individual involved with Mr. Epstein, and that narrative… is not based on fact,” ⁠Blanche said in the NBC News interview.