The Department of Justice is asking for help reviewing 5.2 million pages of unreviewed documents related to convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, seeking to enlist 400 lawyers total from its criminal and national security divisions along with the U.S. attorneys’ offices in Florida and New York, according to people familiar with the matter. 

As Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche told ABC News Chief Justice Correspondent Pierre Thomas in an interview earlier this month, the DOJ already had nearly 200 lawyers working to review the files.

But in recent days, department leadership has made clear to the workforce that more help is needed.

The New York Times was first to report the development.

The review of the documents is expected to take much of January, the sources said.

The reorienting of resources from both the criminal and national security divisions has already raised concerns among current and former DOJ officials given the department has already diverted many of those resources towards immigration enforcement, according to sources familiar with the matter. 

At this point, the next release of documents is not expected until the end of next month, according to the sources. 

Congress passed the Epstein Files Transparency Act in November mandating the release of the DOJ’s files on Epstein. The measure required the DOJ to release all of the documents, with certain exceptions like protecting victim privacy and ongoing investigations, by Friday, Dec. 19. Missing the deadline, the DOJ said it has been delayed by the vetting process to protect victims. 

It’s not immediately clear why the Department of Justice is only now claiming that it has just discovered upward of 5 million pages of documents from its investigations into Epstein, who died by suicide in 2019 in his jail cell awaiting trial on sex trafficking charges.

In February, Attorney General Pam Bondi admonished the U.S. Attorney’s office for the Southern District of New York after she said they had only just alerted her to the existence of hundreds of thousands of documents that they had not previously provided to her office. It’s not clear why they are only now claiming to be alerted to this vast volume of alleged unreviewed material.