The Justice Department's rollout of the legally mandated files around the investigation of the Jeffrey Epstein case was bungled from the start, explained former Watergate lawyer Nick Ackerman.
It was reported on Thursday that more than 1 million new documents had been discovered in the ongoing search of the Epstein files. The law signed by Trump in November mandated that the DOJ release all the files by Dec. 19.
Speaking on CNN, Friday morning, Ackerman called the excuse for the delay "total nonsense."
"They had to know that these. The files existed right from the get-go. First of all, we know that prior to May of this year, Pam Bondi had lots of FBI agents going through all of these files to determine whether President Trump's name was in these documents. So, she knew where the documents were. But on top of that, even more glaring is the fact that all of these documents — they had to know were in the Southern District of New York that prosecuted the Maxwell and Epstein criminal cases."
He explained that prosecutors are legally mandated to turn over all evidence to the defense team. So these documents would have been in the SDNY's possession.
To turn over all of the evidence, the prosecutors would have to know where it was.
"And certainly Todd Blanche, who is in charge of this whole matter, was a former assistant U.S. attorney in the Southern District of New York — he should have known that," Ackerman said. "So, they had to know that these were there. There's no excuse for it."
Ackerman also called out a false claim that the DOJ had a limited time to ensure redactions of the information by the deadline. Many full pages are redacted.
"Well, they should have been able to [do it], because they knew who the victims were," said the legal expert. "It's a matter of just putting a black mark over people who are victims. That was it. There's certainly nothing in there for national security. There's no other really valid reason not to turn over all this information. This should have taken no time at all. They should have been able to do it in that month. They knew where the documents were. This is just a lame excuse."