Victims of Jeffrey Epstein as well as commentators across the political spectrum are weighing in on the Malignant Fascist's continuing Epstein files coverup. A sampling (our emphasis throughout):
Disappointed. Frustrated. Suspicious.
Several of Jeffrey Epstein’s victims said Friday that Justice Department failed them with its partial release of files related to the federal investigations into Mr. Epstein’s decades-long sexual abuse of teen girls and young women. They said the release of thousands of pages of photographs and heavily redacted documents did little to shed new light on the investigations and the scope of Mr. Epstein’s crimes or conspirators.
“They are proving everything we have been saying about corruption and delayed justice,” said Jess Michaels, one of the earliest known victims of Mr. Epstein. “What are they protecting? The coverup continues.”
Ms. Michaels has said she was sexually assaulted by Mr. Epstein in 1991 when she was 22 years old and training to be a dancer. She was among the victims who lobbied for the bipartisan law that directed the Justice Department to release virtually everything it had gathered during its sex trafficking investigations of Mr. Epstein and one of his main enablers, Ghislaine Maxwell.
But the more than 13,000 files released on Friday were heavily redacted and not easily searchable.
“If everything is redacted, where is the transparency?” said Marijke Chartouni, who has said she was sexually abused by Mr. Epstein when she was 20 years old.
Among the tens of thousands of pages was one document that did provide a long-sought window into the F.B.I.’s handling of Mr. Epstein’s case: The file showed that Maria Farmer, another of Mr. Epstein’s earliest victims, filed a federal “child pornography” complaint against him in 1996. But investigators did not begin to thoroughly scrutinize Mr. Epstein until about a decade later.
Ms. Farmer, who fought for years to get the F.B.I. to make public her complaint, said she felt “vindicated” to finally see the document but also was heartbroken at the knowledge that the F.B.I. did not act on her complaint.
“It’s a tremendous relief that she doesn’t have to continue to fight to prove her truth,” said Ms. Farmer’s sister, Annie Farmer. She noted, though, that she was disappointed by the general lack of transparency with Friday’s release.
“So many of the photos are irrelevant,” said Marina Larcerda, who has said Mr. Epstein sexually abused her when she was 14. She was an important witness in the 2019 federal investigation that led to the filing of sex trafficking charges against Mr. Epstein. But she only recently went public with her story.
“We have been let down,” Ms. Larcerda said. “We waited for this day to bring these other men who have been protected to justice.”
Epstein survivor Liz Stein told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme that she thinks the Department for Justice is “really brazenly going against the Epstein Files Transparency Act” – the law which required all documents to be released by Friday.
She says survivors are worried about the possibility of a “slow rollout of incomplete information without any context”. The fight for justice has spanned decades, continents and political administrations, Stein says, adding: “We just want all of the evidence of these crimes out there”.
While the release of documents comes at a “great cost” to victims, Stein is hoping it will be a “path to justice”.
Lisa Phillips was in her 20s when she met the disgraced financier and says she suffered years of abuse from him and people linked to him.
She told CNN that she believes the Department of Justice was “protecting themselves, not the victims,” after Trump officials released only partial files that were heavily redacted.
“I feel like they have so much information to start connecting the dots and for survivors to get justice. But as you’re seeing, we just keep stalling,” she added.
Reps. Thomas Massie (R-KY) and Ro Khanna (D-CA)
Donald Trump’s justice department was hit with legal threats and scathing outrage after authorities released a limited, heavily redacted trove of Jeffrey Epstein files in an apparent violation of the law mandating the near-complete disclosure of these documents by Friday.
“The justice department’s document dump this afternoon does not comply with Thomas Massie and my Epstein Transparency Act,” Ro Khanna, the California Democratic congressman who co-authored the law requiring full disclosure of all Epstein files by 19 December, said in a video statement.
“It is an incomplete release, with too many redactions. Thomas Massie and I are exploring all options,” he also said, among them possible impeachment of justice department officials, finding them in contempt of Congress.
Khanna also floated the possibility of “referring for prosecution those who are obstructing justice”.
“Unfortunately, today’s document release by @AGPamBondi and @DAGToddBlanche grossly fails to comply with both the spirit and the letter of the law that @realDonaldTrump signed just 30 days ago. @RepRoKhannais correct,” Massie, a Kentucky member of Congress and co-author of this legislation, said on X.
“A future [justice department] could convict the current AG and others because the Epstein Files Transparency Act is not like a Congressional Subpoena which expires at the end of each Congress,” Massie said at another point...
Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA)
Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, R-Ga., ripped the Department of Justice in an X post tonight for its execution in releasing the Epstein files today, calling it “NOT MAGA.”
Greene blasted the files for their heavy redaction and said the DOJ had failed to release them all by the lawful deadline.
"People are raging and walking away," she said in the post.
Reps. Robert Garcia (D-CA and Jamie Raskin (D-MD)
Reps. Robert Garcia and Jamie Raskin, the ranking Democrats on the House Oversight and Judiciary Committees, said they're examining "all legal options" after "the Department of Justice is now making clear it intends to defy Congress itself."
"Donald Trump and the Department of Justice are now violating federal law as they continue covering up the facts and the evidence about Jeffrey Epstein's decades-long, billion-dollar, international sex trafficking ring," Garcia and Raskin said in a statement.
"Courts around the country have repeatedly intervened when this Administration has broken the law. We are now examining all legal options in the face of this violation of federal law. The survivors of this nightmare deserve justice, the co-conspirators must be held accountable, and the American people deserve complete transparency from DOJ," they added...
Sam Levine, The Guardian
The justice department’s partial release of the Epstein files on Friday signaled how the agency is using a variety of tactics to try to bury and obfuscate Donald Trump’s connection to Jeffrey Epstein.
As the department raced towards a legally mandated Friday deadline to release its files, little emerged about what it planned to release. There never really seemed to be a doubt that the department would release the files late on Friday afternoon, deploying the well-worn Washington trick of burying unflattering news before a weekend. [snip]
By the time the department eventually did release thousands of pages of materials on Friday evening – not the hundreds of thousands [Deputy AG and MF lawyer Todd] Blanche promised - many of the documents had been heavily or completely redacted. Other than a few pictures, the materials made no mention of Trump, even though attorney general Pam Bondi reportedly told Trump earlier this year his name was in the files.
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. 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...
The coverup tactic that they've already signaled they're pursuing (deny, attack, reverse victim and offender) has begun. Flooding the zone with material on the likes of Bill Clinton, Prince Andrew, and others already known to have Epstein connections from one end of the sleazy scale to the other is intended to obfuscate the obvious, deep relationship between Epstein and his best friend for decades, the Malignant Fascist. But even then, someone let one or two MF-related tidbits slip through the redactions process. The truth will out.
No comments:
Post a Comment