Well, we got our Friday Epstein Files news dump. Sort of.
The Department of Justice did indeed post some files. The website is messy, incomplete, and impossible to search. As in literally impossible—the search feature is utterly broken.
But the operative word here, really, is “some.” As in “not all.” Which we knew was coming, because Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche took time out from declaring war on judges who rule against the Trump administration to explain that the administration has no intention of obeying the law and releasing all the Epstein files by Friday’s deadline.
Todd, did it ever occur to you that judges might not consistently rule against you and your former private criminal defendant client, who now happens to be the current president of the United States, if you just followed the laws to begin with?
Blanche went on Fox News to announce the Department of Justice’s plan to comply with the Epstein Files Transparency Act. Complying would mean releasing all of the files about Jeffrey Epstein, President Donald Trump’s longtime pal, by Friday. But Blanche dares ask: what if we just don’t?
“I expect that we’re going to release several hundred thousand documents today. 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 of weeks,” Blanche said. “I expect several hundred thousand more.”
The law set a deadline for releasing all the files. Friday. Not the deadline to start to release and then roll it out over several weeks. Not the deadline to “expect” to release. Friday. All of them. Friday.
Instead, we got some half-assed DOJ website with an impossible-to-navigate structure and no information as to how much has already been released and how much the DOJ still has left to try to read through and figure out a way to limit any damage to Trump.
But per Blanche, the delay is because they are just so gosh-darned worried about protecting Epstein’s victims. “There’s a lot of eyes looking at these, and we want to make sure that when we do produce the materials that we’re producing, that we’re protecting every single victim.”
This excuse might land better if Blanche’s boss, Attorney General Pam Bondi, hadn’t bragged back in February about how she very sternly requested all the Epstein documents for her review. Or talked about how she was ready to review the Epstein client list sitting on her desk right away, only to later backtrack and say there was no such thing. Or if the DOJ hadn’t announced back on July 7 that it had finished its “exhaustive review of investigative holdings relating to Jeffrey Epstein.”
If any of these things were actually true, these documents would have been reviewed multiple times, making a last-minute scramble to determine where victims’ names appeared and get them redacted unnecessary.
And it’s not like the administration didn’t know this was coming. Sure, they worked night and day to stop the release, and sure, House Speaker Mike Johnson basically shut down the House of Representatives to lend a hand, but given that the public pressure on this has been unrelenting for months, the DOJ could have been reviewing and redacting all along.
Unfortunately, when the administration thumbs its nose at yet another law, what on earth would be the recourse? Congress was barely able to get it together to pass a law requiring the release. The United States Supreme Court seems very willing to agree that if Trump doesn’t want to follow laws, he doesn’t have to.
Related | Epstein kept photos of Trump, young women, and sex toys
However, the Democrats on the House Oversight Committee are smartly playing the long game here, releasing material in bits and pieces with no fixed schedule. Keep that threat hanging over the heads of Trump and the DOJ, House Democrats.
Blanche and Bondi aren’t in their roles to execute the laws; they are there to protect Trump. And if that means breaking the law, they don’t care.
No comments:
Post a Comment