Former Department of Justice (DOJ) prosecutor Elie Honig says the “first sign of trouble” that Trump’s DOJ was not serious about releasing the Epstein files was the way it blew off the due date mandated by Congress.
“The Epstein Files Transparency Act … required that the DoJ ‘shall’ (not ‘may’) produce ‘all’ (not ‘some’) documents within 30 days of the law’s November 19 enactment. Yet when the December 19 deadline hit, Justice Department leadership channeled the Fast Times at Ridgemont High stoner Jeff Spicoli to explain its unlawful delinquency: Just couldn’t make it on time.”
Things “spiraled from there,” said Honig, with Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche (who is also President Donald Trump's former personal attorney) assuring the DOJ would complete the release “over the next two weeks.” Yet Blanche announced that prosecutors had “uncovered” over a million additional documents despite the documents sitting in the DOJ’s own internal files.
“We currently have no idea where the overall production stands. Has the DOJ released, say, 95 percent of the Epstein files? Fifty percent? Twenty-two percent? The Justice Department itself seems not quite sure,” said Honig, adding that the rollout of the files was itself riddled with “bush-league errors.”
The word-search function required by the act initially floundered with searches for "Trump" and "Clinton" originally producing no results. Documents relating to Trump vanished and returned without explanation. And the Justice Department “apparently used a paint roller to black out entire hundred-plus-page documents” while failing to redact victim-identifying information as required by the act, according to Honig.
“But the Justice Department’s bungled rollout shouldn’t distract from an even more serious problem: its open disregard of the law’s substantive commands,” Honig said. “… If they’re truly concerned with shedding meaningful light, they would focus on two overarching questions. First, why did federal prosecutors in the Southern District of Florida give Epstein an outrageous state-level sweetheart plea deal in Florida in 2007, when they had ample basis to prosecute him federally and lock him up for decades? And, second, who else beyond Jeffrey Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell participated in this massive child-sex-trafficking conspiracy?
Honig said the Transparency Act is intentionally framed to answer these two questions, but DOJ leaders “have simply reinterpreted the law to their own preference and convenience and have left victims and the public largely in the dark.” He accused Blanche of defying the Act by declaring that the Justice Department will not release documents pertaining to internal prosecutorial communications that could explain why Epstein got such a light deal in Florida during Trump’s first term.
“As long as Justice Department leadership refuses to follow the law as written, we’ll never learn what really happened inside the Southern District of Florida in 2007,” said Honig. “How much evidence did prosecutors have? Why did then-U.S. Attorney Alex Acosta let Epstein plead out to piddly state-level charges? Why did prosecutors ignore and at times mislead Epstein’s victims? Did anyone inside the Justice Department object?”
Worse, Honig said Trump’s DOJ is redacting the names of ten individuals labeled “co-conspirators” by FBI agents working the Epstein case as well as the names of others who, according to documents, allegedly had or sought sexual contact with minors. Yet the act demands “no record shall be withheld, delayed, or redacted on the basis of embarrassment, reputational harm or political sensitivity.”
“No sentient human being actually believes that only two people — Epstein and Maxwell — were entirely responsible for the trafficking ring that victimized hundreds of underage girls. Yet nobody else has been charged and we’ll never learn the identities of other culpable facilitators and participants so long as the Justice Department refuses to follow the law’s plain language,” Honig said.
Read Honig's Intelligencer column at this link.
