The Guardian reports President Donald Trump’s politicized Justice Department is trying to obfuscate the president’s ties to notorious sex-trafficker Jeffrey Epstein.
On Friday morning, Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche told Fox News that the department wouldn’t be releasing all of the files on Friday as required by a Congressionally passed law.
“There’s a lot of eyes looking at these and we want to make sure that when we do produce the materials we are producing, that we are protecting every single victim,” Blanche said.
By the time the department finally released roughly ten percent of materials on Friday, many of the documents had been heavily or completely redacted. Beyond a few pictures, the materials made no mention of Trump, despite Attorney General Pam Bondi reportedly telling Trump earlier this year his name was definitely in the files.
While Trump barely made an appearance in Friday’s release, former president Bill Clinton appears in several images, giving Trump entertainment subsidiaries like The Daily Wire opportunities to deflect from Trump’s proximity to Epstein. Justice department and White House spokespeople, similarly, were quick to highlight Clinton’s images on Twitter.
“The release underscores how the Trump administration is trying to balance both the demand to release the files – something encouraged in large part by the MAGA base – while also obfuscating with a slow trickle of document dumps to prevent any embarrassment to Trump, who was friends with Epstein for years before they had a falling out,” the Guardian reports. “Blanche has said the department will continue to produce documents on a rolling basis in the coming weeks – a holiday period – a bet that Americans will simply tune out the story as it drags on.
Rep. Thomas Massie (R-Ky), a Republican who sponsored the law forcing the Trump administration to release the files, was one of many members of Congress to announce his outrage at the tactic, saying on Twitter that the release “grossly fails to comply” with the statute.
The Epstein Files Transparency Act, which Massie championed and passed against White House opposition, mandates the release of the entirety of the materials, as well as requiring Bondi to submit within 15 days of the document release a report detailing all categories of the records and provide a summary and legal basis for redactions made. Bondi did not release the report on Friday.
“The White House hasn’t been hiding these files for months only to dump them late on a Friday to protect Bill Clinton,” said Clinton spokesperson Angel Ureña. “This is about what comes next, or from what they’ll try and hide forever. So they can release as many 20-plus-year-old photos as they want, but this isn’t about Bill Clinton. Never has, never will be.”
Read the Guardian report at this link.