Miami Herald reporter Julie K. Browntells Bulwark podcaster Tim Miller that the DOJ is intentionally releasing Epstein documents in random dumps to distract the public from the powerful perpetrators that the government seeks to protect — many of them potentially Republican donors.
“That's all you can say, that it is a cover-up because they're not providing the information in a way that the public can really understand,” said Brown, who has covered the investigation of convicted sex-trafficker Jeffrey Epstein and who got the Epstein matter reopened after her damning investigation of Epstein’s 2008 sweetheart deal that let him continue his railroad of sexual assault.
“President Donald Trump’s officials are intentionally covering the faces of men in images,” said Brown, while also pulling documents that reveal Trump's name. This leaves Epstein's many victims to assume that Trump — who was friends with Epstein for many decades — is still working behind the scenes to protect himself and Epstein’s millionaire co-conspirators.
“Look, those men know who they are. So, it wouldn't surprise me if they were reaching out to Trump and saying: ‘you better stop this.’ And who knows what else they know besides their own activity. They might know of other men's activity,” Brown told Miller. “So, this is one big possible snowball here.”
“I was told that … some of his MAGA or Republican donors might be named in these files,” added Brown, “which is kind of ironic because at one point [Trump] said, ‘we're going to investigate all the Democrats’ that are in these files. Well, there aren't all Democrats in these files.”
Brown referenced Epstein’s alleged letter to another pedophile, Larry Nasser, describing it as a “shiny object” to divert attention from what they’re hiding.
“One of the ways you can be transparent is when you release … something like an FBI tip, you have the paperwork that says, ‘we verified that this is not Epstein's handwriting and this is where it was mailed and here's what we did about this tip.’ But they're not doing that. They're throwing stuff out there and they're doing it in such a disorganized manner that it distracts from what the real story should be,” said Brown. “And when you're focusing on the shiny objects, such as a Larry Nassar letter or a million other examples, you're spending your time looking at that rather than what the prosecutors were doing behind the scenes to make sure that Epstein got a better deal than any other pedophile who ever committed this kind of crime has ever been given.”
Brown said Epstein’s victims — with whom she retains regular contact — are similarly convinced the Trump administration is protecting powerful friends, and they are afraid to name names because of the administration’s apparent alliance with powerful perpetrators.
“Why would you put your neck on the line and name all these men when you feel like there is a government cover up protecting the men? So, I think that there is an understandable reluctance for them to trust the government in revealing these names because they feel like Epstein has been getting away with this and all these men now have been getting away with this for quite a long time,” Brown said.
Hear the full Bulwark podcast at this link.