‘Release all the files’: DOJ withheld more Epstein files than law requires

‘Release all the files’: DOJ withheld more Epstein files than law requires

Epstein files released now. I had a little hesitancy on that word because it’s only part the DOJ releasing amassed some other heavily redacted documents tonight, and I want to just emphasize that point by heavily redacted. I mean, a lot of pages that look like this and this and this and this and this, and that’s all I was going to do to the printer to make the point, okay. There’s a lot more of them. We have teams across CNN going through what was released right now in terms of pages that are not quite as black as these, but the DOJ is admitting in a letter to Congress that the files are not complete, separate from the redactions themselves. And that lack of completion is a big problem because a deadline by law, thanks to Congress forcing Trump’s hand on the Epstein files, is today. Now, the key Republican who was behind getting that law passed is Congressman Thomas Massie. And he’s posting on social media tonight, quote, unfortunately, today’s document released by AG, Pam Bondi and Deputy AG Todd Blanch, grossly fails to comply with both the spirit and the letter of the law the Donald Trump signed just 30 days ago and Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene said, quote, release all the files. It’s literally the law. Well, they did not. And they have. Not yet. The white House saying tonight that it did not receive the documents that were released by the Department of Justice before the release. So they’re saying that they weren’t involved with what the DOJ chose to put out today. But the Justice Department did briefed the white House on what the documents contain. So what do we actually have tonight on the pages that aren’t black? As the country starts to shut down and check out for the end of your holiday time. We do have some apparently never before released documents, along with thousands of files that were already public. The redactions, of course, and a whole bunch of pictures of Bill Clinton. Now, among the never before released documents is this photo of Bill Clinton. He is with Epstein. Got a print out of that one as well. And then a photo of a shirtless Clinton in a Jacuzzi next to another person whose face is redacted, and a photo of Clinton swimming in a pool with Glenn Maxwell and another woman whose face is redacted. Now, it’s important to note Clinton has not been accused by law enforcement of any wrongdoing related to Epstein and a Clinton spokesperson. Posting on social media tonight, the white House hasn’t been hiding these files for months, only to dump them late on a Friday to protect Bill Clinton. This is about shielding themselves and what comes next, or from what they’ll try and hide forever. Now, as for Trump himself, he didn’t want to talk about the files today. He refused to take questions about anything today when he appeared in public to announce a drug pricing order. I won’t even take questions today, because there’s no way I can take questions that are anywhere comparable to what you just witnessed. To be clear what he’s talking about, what we just witnessed was an announcement from Trump about drug prices. M.J. Lee has been going through the files such that we have them. And MJ, look, you know, we got these photos. We got lots of redactions, lots of things missing. But there are still, you know, many, many pages of documents that you are able to look through. What are you learning from them? Yeah. Erin, as we are going through these thousands and thousands of pages of documents and photos to try to figure out what’s new, what’s significant, are there people of interest that we should be taking note of? You’re right that this is just a partial release of the so-called Epstein files from the DOJ. And what’s interesting is that Todd Blanch has essentially informed Congress as of this afternoon that this is happening in this way because of the sheer volume of the documents that we are talking about. And what he essentially communicated is that we needed more time to figure out what information needed to be redacted, including on some information that the agency got recently. Now, one thing that is interesting is that he made clear in this communication to Congress that they made a decision to withhold, and redact information that goes beyond what is stated in the law. And just as a reminder, what is stated in the law is that there are five categories of information that can be redacted. That includes identifying information about the victims. And just scrolling through these documents, you can tell, you know, there are photos where there is a black box over a woman’s face that clearly falls under that category. But there are other examples as well, like child sex abuse, anything that shows physical abuse, anything that could hurt an ongoing investigation, something that could hurt national security. But the fact that there are going to be more documents coming out on a rolling basis and that so many redactions again, beyond what the law originally stated is going to have huge, political ramifications. And I also think we should talk about the ramifications that that is going to have on the survivors, because one of the things that the survivors are very much looking for, in a big picture way as they go through these files, is a sense of a better understanding of why some of these internal decisions over the course of many years were made, including, you know, what charges did the department decide to not bring on certain people? What were the decision making processes that took, took place over the course of many years that they’ve never gotten the answer to. So this is going to be sort of a long running process. And I can tell you with certainty that survivors are not going to be happy about what they are going to see as still the continued lack of transparency here. Yeah. All right. Thank you very much, M.J. Lee. And everyone is here with me now severely. And obviously, you know, you’ve been covering this for years and you’ve pushed everything every night here for the files to be released. So the day comes, the deadline comes, and we get some stuff, we get some new stuff. We get a lot of stuff we already knew. We got a lot of black pages. And when it comes to, men, we get a lot of pictures of Bill Clinton. Yeah. Aaron, apparently there’s about 10% of the actual FBI files that were released today, and 5% of that, 5% of the ten we already had. Okay. So we’re receiving, for the most part, very little. And, you know, it’s already been, playing politics in the sense of putting out pictures of Bill Clinton. You have to wonder if the DOJ has assigned Jay Clayton at the SD and why to investigate. Clinton and other, Democratic enemies of President Trump. Why are they showing all these photos of Bill Clinton? You would think that would be part of the investigation. So that doesn’t make any sense. We did learn that there’s 1200 victims more than we initially thought, from the DOJ. The DOJ also said, and this is most important to me, and I think the, survivors DOJ communications on investigations into Epstein and his associates and details of any immunity deals. And so I’m looking for the SD 302 forms, which are the FBI witness reports that representative Tom Massey says pertains to 20 men that Jeffrey Epstein trafficked these, children to. And from the initial look that I made earlier, I don’t see any of the 302 forms. However, we may see them in a later document. I mean, Stacey, just to state the obvious here, it’s just definitionally impossible that it’s random what we got today. Right? If you’re putting out 10%, someone’s making a decision on what that 10% is. Yeah, exactly. And it seems like Todd blanches the propped up an ounce of it. But to Barry’s point, it’s so significant that President Trump directed Pam Bondi to investigate. Bill Clinton directly named him in a social media post, along with other Democrats, and then she answered the call and appointed a U.S. attorney in the Southern District of New York to investigators. Yeah, and the policy of the Justice Department is you don’t release anything related to an ongoing investigation, especially photographs about the subject of an ongoing investigation. And obviously, it seems to be a disingenuous subject, being Bill Clinton being ordered to be investigated at this late stage of the game. It’s certainly did seem targeted at the time and still does. But why would they go against their own policies and then released Bill Clinton’s photos? It’s kind of makes a farce of this entire situation, right? If your whole point, if you were going to hide behind an ongoing investigation, the one that you’ve got going is into Bill Clinton. And yet we got a whole bunch of pictures of him in a pool and Jacuzzi and whatnot. Yeah, I’ll just add one more building block, which is that the legislation, the Epstein Files Transparency Act, actually has an exception that says you do not have to release information if it’s a if it could jeopardize an ongoing investigation. So it’s not just that that’s Justice Department policy. The law allows for them to actually have the law right. That massive. Yes. Yes, exactly. So it’s the the oddity that that would be the piece that’s released, and especially when the victims have named at least 20 men, and then we’ve only got one one out of 20. Right. And it happens to be that one. Okay, Mac. So I mean, we all we all get that. And obviously everybody, if there’s anything more to know about Bill Clinton, then people should know it, right? But they should know about everyone else as well. The two two men behind the bill, the law that Ryan’s talking about. Yeah. Ro Khanna and Thomas Massie have both said this is a load of baloney. And, Massie saying, you know, basically get out of town. Right. His words are that fails to grossly fails to comply with the spirit and the letter of the law. Then you had Marjorie Taylor Greene, who, you know, has been a regular voice on this issue. But now other issues that Trump does, this become like, everybody jumps on board to this or no, there are now three things that are universally approved of in politics motherhood, apple pie, and releasing all of the Epstein files, which is what makes this so incredibly jarring, alarming, and politically stupid that the Trump administration is acting this way. They are either grossly incompetent and that, you know, tells or look at how they’re dealing with issues of affordability, or they are on the wrong side of the Epstein conspiracy, the Epstein case, call it whatever you want. They’re on the wrong side of it. I cannot for the life of me understand why they are operating this way, unless they’re trying to hide something on behalf of Donald Trump.

The DOJ’s redactions of the files are vast – and the reasons for them go beyond what the law requires. In some cases, entire pages are redacted. To comply with the law, several redactions had to be made, according to the DOJ. Information redacted, Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche said, included any material that contained personally identifiable information of victims, child sexual abuse materials, classified national defense or foreign policy information, or would jeopardize an active investigation.

0:00 Erin Burnett OutFront
2:52 MJ Lee reports
5:34 The panel discusses

#Epsteinfiles #DepartmentofJustice #News