DOJ Drops Epstein Files ‘Library’ On Last Possible Day | EUROtoday

WASHINGTON — On Friday afternoon, the Department of Justice made public its investigatory recordsdata on the late intercourse predator Jeffrey Epstein… kind of.

Congress handed a legislation final month giving the Trump administration 30 days to place the fabric in a public, searchable and downloadable database. Despite combating it for months, the president finally signed the laws.

The new web site, calling itself The Epstein Library, contains browsable catalogues of hundreds of PDF paperwork from the federal government’s investigations of Epstein, who died in jail in 2019 after being charged with intercourse trafficking minors.

The web site additionally features a search perform, although queries for names of individuals recognized to have related to Epstein ― together with Bill Clinton and Donald Trump ― turned up no outcomes when HuffPost accessed the positioning on Friday afternoon. A disclaimer notes that many information are handwritten and should not seem within the search perform.

Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche prompt earlier Friday that whereas the DOJ has “been working tirelessly” to make the recordsdata public, the division might not totally adjust to the deadline set by The Epstein Files Transparency Act.

“I expect that we’re going to release more documents over the next couple of weeks. So today, several hundred thousand, and then over the next couple weeks, I expect several hundred thousand more,” Blanche mentioned in an interview with “Fox & Friends.”

The new web site says it “will be updated if additional documents are identified for release.”

The legislation doesn’t spell out penalties for noncompliance. It provides the Justice Department leeway to withhold personally figuring out materials associated to victims and issues associated to ongoing investigations.

In response to Blanche’s feedback, Democrats mentioned the Trump administration has defied the legislation.

“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,” Reps. Robert Garcia (Calif.) and Jamie Raskin (Md.) mentioned in a joint assertion. “We are now examining all legal options in the face of this violation of federal law.”

Blanche defended the president’s stance on the difficulty, baselessly claiming that Trump has lengthy favored making the complete paperwork public.

“Just so everybody appreciates, President Trump has said for years that he wants full transparency, and he wants the Department of Justice to release everything that we can with respect to this investigation and cases,” Blanche mentioned.

Despite Blanche’s claims, the Trump administration has not delivered such transparency, and the president himself dismissed calls for for the recordsdata’ launch as a Democratic “hoax.” He solely known as on congressional Republicans to assist the Epstein Transparency Act, co-sponsored by Reps. Thomas Massie (R-Ky.) and Ro Khanna (D-Calif.), after it turned clear its passage was inevitable.

Massie mentioned there can be methods to know if the administration has not launched all it ought to. He additionally famous that the legislation can be binding on future attorneys normal.

“The victims know 20 accused that should be in those files. If we don’t see them in the files, they’re not releasing them,” Massie instructed HuffPost this week.

Trump, a onetime buddy of Epstein’s, has not been accused of any wrongdoing in relation to the disgraced financier. However, Epstein claimed Trump knew about his prison exercise, in response to emails made public by House Oversight Democrats earlier this 12 months. The Republican-led committee has obtained tens of hundreds of paperwork from Epstein’s property — a trove of fabric that’s solely separate from what’s on the Justice Department, which declined to prosecute Epstein in 2008, regardless of important proof of intercourse trafficking crimes, however then introduced fees in 2019. The committee has additionally obtained a number of the Justice Department’s Epstein recordsdata after it despatched a subpoena.

White House chief of workers Susie Wiles instructed Vanity Fair in an interview revealed this week that Trump is talked about repeatedly within the DOJ paperwork, however that he’s not implicated in “anything awful.”

Friday is a momentous day for survivors of Epstein’s abuse, together with Maria Farmer, who alleged that Epstein and confederate Ghislaine Maxwell, who’s serving out a 20-year sentence, sexually assaulted her within the Nineteen Nineties.

“This is a moment for which I have waited three entire decades, over half of my life,” Farmer mentioned in a press release shared with CNN.

The DOJ’s National Security Division has been working to redact the paperwork, CNN and Reuters reported. While the legislation allowed for some redactions, together with for any data that would jeopardize an ongoing federal investigation or prosecution, the invoice specifies that “no record shall be withheld, delayed, or redacted on the basis of embarrassment, reputational harm, or political sensitivity, including to any government official, public figure, or foreign dignitary.”

Despite this legislation, greater than 100 pages within the new trove have been blacked out with out clarification. Khanna, one of many principal lawmakers behind the push to launch the recordsdata, launched a video message Friday night saying the Justice Department’s launch does “not comply” together with his and Massie’s invoice.

“They released one document from a New York grand jury of 119 pages totally blacked out,” Khanna mentioned. “This, despite a federal judge ordering them to release that document, and our law requires them to explain redactions. There’s not a single explanation for why that entire document was redacted.”

“It is an incomplete release with too many redactions,” Khanna added.