'Mind-boggling': Expert says Epstein files release a 'perfect storm' of 'incompetency'

The Justice Department on Friday released an additional 3 million pages of documents related to the late convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein. The Trump administration says it was the final release of Epstein files, even though some 2 million more documents remain unreleased. The latest batch reveals new details about Epstein’s connections to the rich and powerful, including Hollywood figures, tech billionaires, public officials and more. Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche said it is unlikely anyone else would be prosecuted.

Attorney Arick Fudali, who represents 11 Epstein survivors, says the release of the files has been a “perfect storm” of “incompetency and an active cover-up” by the Trump administration. “It’s so mind-boggling, because they’re withholding documents that they shouldn’t be withholding … but, on the other hand, they’re showing documents that they shouldn’t be showing because they contain unredacted names of survivors,” says Fudali.

Investigative journalist Vicky Ward, who has covered the Epstein case for many years, says despite the flawed release of the files, they continue to shine light on a world of elite impunity and excess. “We just see over and over again in these documents, this was just one big billionaires boys club that treated women like objects,” says Ward.

This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.

AMY GOODMAN: This is Democracy Now!, democracynow.org, The War and Peace Report. I’m Amy Goodman.

The Justice Department has released an additional 3 million pages of documents related to the late convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, in what the DOJ, the Department of Justice, is calling the final release of Epstein files. But there are over two-and-a-half million more pages that remain unreleased.

On Sunday, Meet the Press host Kristen Welker interviewed Democratic Congressmember Ro Khanna of California, co-sponsor of the Epstein Files Transparency Act.

KRISTEN WELKER: Has the Justice Department fully complied with the law, Congressman?

REP. RO KHANNA: No, they haven’t. They’ve released, at best, half the documents. But even those shock the conscience of this country. I mean, you have some of the most wealthy individuals, tech leaders, finance leaders, politicians, all implicated in some way, having emails about wanting to go to Epstein’s island, knowing that Epstein was a p------. It’s, frankly, one of the largest scandals, in my view, in our country’s history, and there is a demand for elite accountability. But the survivors’ lawyers that I’ve talked to have said that the survivors are still upset. They’re upset that many of their names accidentally came out without redactions, and they want to make sure the rest of the files come out.

AMY GOODMAN: The New York Times reports the new files include 5,300 files containing more than 38,000 references to Donald Trump, first lady Melania Trump, Mar-a-Lago and other related words. Many of the references are news articles about Trump, but the new files also include an FBI document that summarizes allegations made against Trump by people who had called the FBI’s Threat Operations Center tip line.

The documents also reveal new details about Epstein’s connections to the rich and powerful across the world. In one email, Elon Musk asked Epstein, quote, “What day/night will be the wildest party on [your] island?” unquote. Virgin [Group] founder Richard Branson sent Epstein an email in 2013 saying he wanted to see him again, quote, “as long as you bring your harem,” unquote. Emails show Trump’s Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick arranged to visit Epstein’s island in 2012, years after Lutnick had claimed he’d cut off ties with Epstein.

Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche said it’s unlikely anyone else will be prosecuted.

A group of Epstein survivors criticized how the DOJ had handled the release. In a statement, the survivors said, quote, “This latest release of Jeffrey Epstein files is being sold as transparency, but what it actually does is expose survivors. As survivors, we should never be the ones named, scrutinized, and retraumatized while Epstein’s enablers continue to benefit from secrecy. This is a betrayal of the very people this process is supposed to serve,” unquote.

We’re joined now by two guests. Vicky Ward, longtime investigative journalist, host and co-producer of the podcast series Chasing Ghislaine: The Untold Story of the Woman in Epstein’s Shadow, which also became a TV series by the same name. Ghislaine Maxwell is expected to testify before Congress on February 9th. Arick Fudali is also with us. He’s a partner and managing attorney of The Bloom Firm, which is a victim’s rights law firm. He represents 11 of Jeffrey Epstein accusers.

Let’s start with you, Arick. Talk about what came out in these documents and what didn’t. In fact, one of your survivors, the people that you represent, was named over 500 times?

ARICK FUDALI: That’s absolutely correct, 538 times. And what’s so baffling is this seems to be sort of the perfect storm between incompetency and an active cover-up. It’s both. And it’s so mind-boggling, because they’re withholding documents that they shouldn’t be withholding, that the public deserves to see, based on attorney-client privilege and some other very vague privileges, but, on the other hand, they’re showing documents that they shouldn’t be showing because they contain unredacted names of survivors. Five hundred thirty-eight times is an outrageous amount of mistakes to expose a woman who was sexually trafficked by Jeffrey Epstein to — from Uzbekistan in 2009. And that is so significant because that is a year after Jeffrey Epstein got the sweetheart deal from Alex Acosta, which, again, not a lot of documents there explaining Alex Acosta’s decision to ignore survivors and give Epstein this sweetheart deal.

AMY GOODMAN: I remember seeing her, very — I was very shocked — in Washington, when all the other survivors were there, incredibly brave. She had decided just late the night before to present herself — right? — to stand in solidarity. She’s from Uzbekistan.

ARICK FUDALI: Yeah.

AMY GOODMAN: But you spoke for her.

ARICK FUDALI: Yes, absolutely. I spoke for her because she’s still been hesitant to become public. Some of the collective empowerment of the other survivors really empowered her to at least show up and show her face. That was a really big moment for her. Remember, she was abused while Jeffrey Epstein was wearing an ankle bracelet from the Alex Acosta plea deal. So, I mean, it’s really compelling. And now she wants to still remain private. She doesn’t want her name out there in the grand national news. And 538 times the DOJ missed her name. And that is a name that was provided by my firm to the DOJ. There’s just no excuse for that type of incompetency and that type of mistake.

AMY GOODMAN: And what about the people who are being protected? Not the survivors, clearly.

ARICK FUDALI: That’s what’s so — that’s what’s so mind-boggling about the whole thing, is they’re naming survivors, they’re protecting potential predators. And the real issue here is there’s just no oversight. And there’s been motions for the court, and we’re actually filing an amicus brief and some letters to the court on behalf of our clients, to demand that a special master be appointed to review all of the materials and decide what should be privileged, what should be produced, what should be redacted, and what shouldn’t, because right now the public, the survivors, all of us are forced to trust a Department of Justice, Trump’s Department of Justice, that has done absolutely nothing to earn our trust.

AMY GOODMAN: Vicky Ward, what were you most struck by with the release of the millions of pages of files, and the pages that weren’t released?

VICKY WARD: Right. Well, just to Arick’s point about your poor client being trafficked to Epstein in 2009, I did read some interesting exchanges among redacted officials within the Justice Department, you know, dated — they were dated 2011, and it was when Bradley Edwards, another of the attorneys who’s, you know, represented so many survivors, was pushing, arguing that it had been a breach of the Crime Victims Act that this nonprosecution agreement had been done behind their backs without their knowledge.

ARICK FUDALI: Yeah.

VICKY WARD: And you see these unnamed Justice Department officials saying, “Well, whether or not, you know, that deal was good or bad, we’ve got to dig in and protect ourselves.” But there’s almost — I mean, I was struck by the — I mean, I’m paraphrasing, but it was whether or not that was a good — that whatever the content of that deal was, they knew it was —

ARICK FUDALI: Oh, yeah.

VICKY WARD: They knew —

ARICK FUDALI: Absolutely.

VICKY WARD: — it was a — it was a really bad thing to have done.

ARICK FUDALI: There’s reporting that Alex Acosta instructed his fellow prosecutors not to inform the victims of the special plea deal. That’s a big deal. I was a prosecutor for like six months. I didn’t care for it. But the one thing I learned in that six months is that when you do a plea deal, you inform the victims. So, the fact that that’s reported that he did — that he instructed them not to inform the victims, that’s pretty, pretty suspicious.

AMY GOODMAN: And just for people’s memory, because this is a complicated story, back in 2007, what that plea deal was? And the bravery of the Farmer sisters, of Maria Farmer coming forward, what, over a decade before —

ARICK FUDALI: In the ’90s, yeah.

AMY GOODMAN: — and the number of young women, girls, children, who had been abused, and yet the deal that was reached?

ARICK FUDALI: It’s really — I mean, it’s revictimizing. It’s beyond a travesty of injustice. The one thing, you know, he was literally — many victims were ignored, and he was literally given like a slap on the wrist. One thing that is important to understand, though, that the one thing Alex Acosta did do is he did make him a registered sex offender in 2007, 2008, so that was public knowledge. And that brings some real questions. Anyone that’s been released in these new files, anyone who is continuing to associate closely with Jeffrey Epstein after he became a publicly known registered sex offender, I think, has some questions to answer.

VICKY WARD: Well, and to that, Amy, I will say, you know, as you know, I have a personal history on reporting this story, and I went through hell in 2002 with Epstein threatening me, because I had got to the Farmer sisters and found it nauseating to suddenly see this fax from Jeffrey Epstein to Graydon Carter bashing me and the questions I’d been asking of him and Ghislaine Maxwell about the Farmer sisters back in 2002.

AMY GOODMAN: Let’s be clear, because we’ve talked about this in detail.

VICKY WARD: Yes.

AMY GOODMAN: But back in 2002, you were writing for Vanity Fair. You were asked to do a piece on this up-and-coming millionaire, billionaire Jeffrey Epstein.

VICKY WARD: Yes.

AMY GOODMAN: And then you found this story of the Farmer sisters.

VICKY WARD: Yes.

AMY GOODMAN: Epstein actually came into the offices of Vanity Fair?

VICKY WARD: Behind my back.

AMY GOODMAN: And you were about to have twins.

VICKY WARD: I was about to have twins. I was on bedrest. We were wrapping up the final sort of stages of fact-checking. The Farmer sisters were definitely in the piece, and their allegations. But what I did not know was that Jeffrey Epstein had sent my boss this fax casting all these absurd aspersions on me. And obviously, it was after that that the Farmer sisters and their allegations were cut.

What I then found interesting, again, going back to what Arick was saying, that there were all these emails from all these guys after it was known that Jeffrey Epstein was a convicted sex offender. Even then, I found emails with another Vanity Fair reporter, who’s sadly dead, John Connolly, but ended up co-authoring a book with James Patterson, now my co-author, Filthy Rich. There are all sorts of correspondence —

AMY GOODMAN: It was called Filthy Rich.

VICKY WARD: It was — yes. There were all sorts of correspondence about John Connolly. And at one point, Epstein reaches out to Michael Wolff and says, “Shall we ask Graydon?” In other words, Graydon Carter was part of the boys club, at least in Epstein’s mind, that part of the boys club, along with Elon Musk and Steve Tisch and Howard Lutnick and Richard Branson and, you know —

AMY GOODMAN: Richard Branson, who is the founder of Virgin Airways.

VICKY WARD: Yes, and, you know, Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor. You know, it was — I mean, we just see over and over again in these documents, this was just one big billionaires boys club that, you know, treated women like objects. I mean, this, you know, discussion of — I don’t want to even talk about it on here, the discussion of their body parts. I mean, you know, and you see Epstein writing, “Let’s not put the” — you know, “Let’s not put this down on paper too much.” I mean, at least he was aware of that.

But I do want to mention one thing, which is, as you mentioned, Ghislaine Maxwell is supposed to testify before the House Oversight Committee virtually next Monday. And, you know, I think we probably won’t learn anything. I think she’s going to plead the Fifth. But in her habeas corpus filing that she’s filed as part of her appeal, she does talk about 25 men with whom settlements were done. And she claims that they were done — they were pressured into doing these settlements because of the criminal proceedings hanging over her. I have always said that my sources have told me this, that there were a lot of civil settlements done behind the scenes with men who — and if those settlements had not been done, maybe they would be being criminally prosecuted now.

AMY GOODMAN: When you say private settlements, you mean money settlements?

VICKY WARD: Yes.

AMY GOODMAN: With survivors?

VICKY WARD: Yes, with nondisclosure agreements.

AMY GOODMAN: And you’re — I mean, you have 11 — you represent 11 survivors. But the Uzbekistan survivor, the woman who came from Uzbekistan, being promised a — what?

ARICK FUDALI: Modeling.

AMY GOODMAN: A modeling deal.

ARICK FUDALI: Yeah.

AMY GOODMAN: Was what? Nineteen?

ARICK FUDALI: Right.

AMY GOODMAN: It wouldn’t have happened to her if Jeffrey Epstein, back in 2007 —

ARICK FUDALI: Right, absolutely. And that’s what’s so appalling about that deal, is it did absolutely nothing to protect women from Jeffrey Epstein. That’s the whole point of what a district attorney is supposed to do when they catch criminals. It’s to stop them in their tracks and to protect the other potential victims. And that’s the exact opposite of what Alex Acosta and his team did. That’s what’s such a travesty, because had he not given him that sweetheart deal, had he not given the slap on the wrist, my client and many, many other women would have never met Jeffrey Epstein, would have never been trafficked, and their lives would be much, much different today.

And that’s — and that’s the other such a frustrating thing about the documents releases. I’m not seeing anything. I haven’t seen anything really explaining the prosecution agreements, the prosecutor’s notes, what really the discussions, the emails, what went in to that deal, that is such a suspicious and just really travesty of an injustice type of deal.

VICKY WARD: Well, you do see — what you do see, though, again, is the brotherhood at work. You do see how Alex Acosta was great buddies with Jay Lefkowitz and other of the lawyers on Jeffrey Epstein’s team, that Epstein was very clever, bringing in all the lawyers that he thought would be able to work lawyers in the Justice Department, for whatever reason. Alex Acosta, once he left his position in government, went into private practice in the same firm as Jay Lefkowitz. I mean, this is how the world works, really tragically.

AMY GOODMAN: Finally, there are extreme allegations in these millions of pages, of murder, of sexual assault. In one case, President Trump, it’s talked about, having raped a 13-year-old. But these are allegations, although there was —

VICKY WARD: Yeah.

AMY GOODMAN: — a lawsuit brought by a young woman, who — that lawsuit was then taken away immediately.

VICKY WARD: Yeah, vanished, right. You’re talking about Katie — yes.

AMY GOODMAN: And these come through a tip line, of course.

VICKY WARD: Yes.

AMY GOODMAN: These all have to be investigated. But it looks like Blanche says the investigations are done.

VICKY WARD: Yeah.

ARICK FUDALI: That’s what he says. But he’s also withholding documents, apparently, due to ongoing investigations. There’s something very vague about that. And again, that’s why we need a special master, someone to oversee this, other than the Department of Justice policing itself, because I don’t believe the Department of Justice can be trusted to police itself when it comes to Jeffrey Epstein, because Jeffrey Epstein continues to be the only criminal I’ve ever looked into who continues to get special treatment beyond the grave.

VICKY WARD: Well put.

AMY GOODMAN: We’re going to continue to follow this and, of course, the Ghislaine Maxwell testifying next Monday. I want to thank you both for being with us. Arick Fudali represents 11 Epstein survivors. And I want to thank Vicky Ward, a longtime investigative journalist, co-produced the podcast and TV series Chasing Ghislaine: The Untold Story of the Woman in Epstein’s Shadow.