Epstein survivors call out Trump’s justice department for ‘extreme redactions’ in latest file release – live | Jeffrey Epstein
Epstein survivors call out Trump’s justice department for ‘extreme redactions’ in latest file release
Survivors of Jeffrey Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell’s abuse released a new statement on Monday criticizing the Trump administration’s justice department for failing to release all of the documents related to the case by the 19 December deadline.
The statement, posted in full on X by CBS reporter Scott MacFarlane, says the release was “a fraction of the files, and what we received was riddled with abnormal and extreme redactions with no explanation.”
The survivors also accuse the justice department of leaving identities of some of the victims unredacted, “causing real and immediate harm.”
It is alarming that the United States Department of Justice, the very agency tasked with upholding the law, has violated the law, both by withholding massive quantities of documents, and by failing to redact survivor identities.
The statement also calls out the lack of ability to search within the released files, making it impossible for survivors to find pertinent information to their cases.
There has been no communication with survivors or our representatives as to what was withheld from release, or why hundreds of thousand of documents have not been disclosed by the legal deadline, or how DOJ will ensure that no more victim names are wrongly disclosed. While clearer communication would not change the fact that a law was broken, its absence suggests an ongoing intent to keep survivors and the public in the dark as much as possible and as long as possible.
Key events
The justice department has released another batch of files related to the late convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein. We’re going through them now.
The New York Times has more on that, reporting that the government’s lawyers told US judge Paula Xinis that it had not decided whether to arrest Kilmar Ábrego García again, to which Xinis sounded skeptical. “Why should I lift it — so he can get arrested in the middle of the night?” she reportedly asked, referring to the court order.
According to the Times, Xinis set a deadline of Friday for the government to decide if it would arrest him and, if so, provide a lawful reason. And she extended the order protecting him from being detained again until then.
Federal judge to decide whether Kilmar Ábrego García should return to immigration custody
A federal judge will decide today whether Kilmar Ábrego García should be returned to immigration custody after being free for just over a week, the Associated Press reports.
“This is an extremely irregular and extraordinary situation,” US district judge Paula Xinis told attorneys at the hearing in Greenbelt, Maryland. “I am trying to get to the bottom of whether there are going to be any removal proceedings,” she said as she tried to get information from the government’s lawyer on the status of Ábrego García’s case. “You haven’t told me what you’re going to do next.”
Ábrego García, his wife and legal team were met at the federal court building by a boisterous reception that included a choir, bullhorn and drum as scores of supporters cheered, according to the AP. His wrongful deportation to El Salvador earlier this year has made him a symbol of Trump’s aggressive anti-immigration policies.
He had been in immigration detention since August before his 11 December release. In that time, the government has said it planned to deport him to various African countries. However, officials have made no effort to deport him to the one country he has agreed to go to — Costa Rica. Xinis has even accused the government of misleading her by falsely claiming that Costa Rica was unwilling to take him.
In court today, Ábrego García’s lawyers reiterated that he is prepared to go to Costa Rica “today”.
Xinis’ 11 December order that Ábrego García be released from immigration custody also concluded that the immigration judge who heard his case in 2019 had failed to issue an order of removal from the US, and he cannot be deported anywhere without a removal order.
In filings last week, government attorneys argued that, with or without a final order of removal, they are still working to deport Ábrego García, so they can legally detain him during the process.
“If there is no final order of removal, immigration proceedings are ongoing, and Petitioner is subject to pre-final order detention,” they wrote.
For their part, Ábrego García’s attorneys cited a US supreme court ruling that “because immigration proceedings ‘are civil, not criminal’ detention must be ‘nonpunitive’”. They argued that in this case, detention is punitive because the government wants to be allowed to hold him indefinitely without a viable plan to deport him.
“If immigration detention does not serve the legitimate purpose of effectuating reasonably foreseeable removal, it is punitive, potentially indefinite, and unconstitutional,” they wrote.
Also in that New York Times report is the case of Isabela Herrera, who donated $2.5m to MAGA Inc. late last year. At the time, her father, Julio Herrera Velutini, a Venezuelan-Italian banker, was being prosecuted by the justice department for trying to bribe the governor of Puerto Rico, the Times reports.
He hired a former personal lawyer for Trump, who alleged that the case was an example of the political weaponization of the criminal justice system. Top justice department officials then “authorized a misdemeanor plea deal to settle the case and overruling career prosecutors who had pushed for a harsher sentence”.
Herrera could still face a year in prison at sentencing, which is scheduled for next month. Herrera and a lawyer for him declined to comment on the Times’s report.
A DOJ spokeswoman told the Times “the decision to settle this case was made through the proper channels and was not influenced by any donation to MAGA Inc.”
But John D. Keller, who oversaw the justice department division that handled the case, told the paper that “the difference between the deal and the more than 20 years Herrera could have faced if convicted of the original charges was ‘striking’. Keller, who resigned in protest when he was directed by Trump’s appointees to drop another politically fraught prosecution, said the Herrera case ‘appears to be another example of political considerations dictating the outcome in an individual criminal case’.”
In an analysis of more than half a billion dollars in contributions from hundreds of donors, the New York Times reports that those deep-pocketed individuals and corporations have received pardons, favorable regulatory moves, jobs, access to the president, dropping of legal cases and other valuable gains since Donald Trump returned to office.
An extract from the NYT’s investigation reads:
Since President Trump was elected a second time, he and his allies have raised nearly $2bn for his favored political causes and passion projects … [We] traced a large portion of the funds raised – more than half a billion dollars’ worth – back to 346 donors who each gave at least $250,000. It also found that more than half of them have benefited, or are involved in an industry that has benefited, from the actions or statements of Mr. Trump, the White House or federal agencies.
Take, for example, previously unreported donations and pledges to Trump’s White House ballroom project. According to the NYT, one $2.5m pledged donation came from engineering firm Parsons Corporation, which is “jockeying for some of the more than $1tn in contracts that could be awarded to build a missile defense system proposed by the president called the “Golden Dome”. Lockheed Martin, the primary maker of F-35 fighter jets and another firm expected to compete for work related to the “Golden Dome”, also donated $10m to the Trust for the National Mall for Trump’s ballroom.
The chief executive of Roblox, who has “applauded a Trump executive order and other initiatives involving children’s use of AI”, is also giving $2.5m to the ballroom project. Tech firm Palantir, which donated $10m to the project, has “secured federal contracts worth hundreds of millions of dollars, including to develop software to help ICE deport people”.
Crypto trading platform Ripple also donated to ballroom; the Securities and Exchange Commission ended its lawsuits against Ripple and other platforms earlier this year after the companies each donated $m or more to Trump’s inaugural committee.
And, per the New York Times’s report:
While a foundation funded by Miriam Adelson, a casino magnate, mostly supports Jewish and Israeli causes, it pledged to donate $25m to the ballroom project, according to two people familiar with the donation. In a speech at a White House Hanukkah party last week, Mr. Trump praised Dr. Adelson, a physician by training, for donating tens of millions of dollars to help his campaigns and using her access to lobby for greater U.S. backing for Israel. Calling her to the lectern, Mr. Trump said, “When somebody can give you $250m, I think that we should give her the opportunity to say hello.” The two embraced and bantered about how Dr. Adelson would be willing to donate $250m more to help Mr. Trump seek an unconstitutional third term.
Schumer to ask Senate to back legal action over DOJ’s ‘blatant disregard of the law’ with partial Epstein files release
Joseph Gedeon
The Senate Democratic leader, Chuck Schumer, has announced he will introduce a resolution directing the Senate to take legal action against the justice department over its incomplete release of files related to the convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.
“I am introducing a resolution directing the Senate to initiate legal action against DoJ for its blatant disregard of the law in its refusal to release the complete Epstein files,” Schumer said in a statement on social media.
The American people deserve full transparency, and Senate Democrats will use every tool at our disposal to ensure they get it. This administration cannot be allowed to hide the truth.
If passed, the resolution would authorize the Senate to file a lawsuit seeking a court order forcing the justice department to release the complete set of documents.
There have been plenty of questions surrounding the action that could be taken against Trump’s justice department for failure to produce all of the Epstein documents by the legal 19 December deadline.
But, as my colleague Victoria Bekiempis writes, while there are avenues of action, each of them seem like … an uphill battle for those looking for accountability.
She writes:
Several attorneys told the Guardian that those making the legal threats do have tools with which to try to follow through. But there’s a major obstacle: those with legal authority in this case are the ones accused of failing to follow the law.
You can read her full analysis at the link below:
More Epstein files expected this afternoon, transparency bill co-sponsor says
Democratic congressman Ro Khanna, Thomas Massie’s co-sponsor on the Epstein Files Transparency Act, says they expect more documents to be released this afternoon, but there is uncertainty in what exactly will be released.
In a post on X, Khanna wrote:
We hear there will be another DOJ Epstein release this afternoon. Here is what @RepThomasMassie, survivors and I want.
1) The FBI witness interviews which names other men
2) The Epstein emails seized from his computer
3) The 60 count draft indictment
4) The 82 page prosecution memo
The DOJ must stop protecting rich & powerful men who were not charged or those who sabotaged the prosecution.
Massie attacks justice department for ‘protecting the rich, powerful and politically connected’
Republican congressman Thomas Massie, who co-sponsored the Epstein Files Transparency Act with Democratic congressman Ro Khanna, responded to the survivors’ statement on X by echoing their calls for full accountability from the justice department.
The survivors deserve justice. The DOJ release does not comply with the Epstein Files Transparency Act and does not provide what the survivors are guaranteed under the new law.
Massie also posted the results of a poll he conducted on the social media platform that revealed 97% of the 181,000 users who responded think the “DOJ is not transparent.”
“The results are in: nobody is buying this bogus Epstein release,” he wrote. “The DOJ needs to quit protecting the rich, powerful, and politically connected.”
Epstein survivors call out Trump’s justice department for ‘extreme redactions’ in latest file release
Survivors of Jeffrey Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell’s abuse released a new statement on Monday criticizing the Trump administration’s justice department for failing to release all of the documents related to the case by the 19 December deadline.
The statement, posted in full on X by CBS reporter Scott MacFarlane, says the release was “a fraction of the files, and what we received was riddled with abnormal and extreme redactions with no explanation.”
The survivors also accuse the justice department of leaving identities of some of the victims unredacted, “causing real and immediate harm.”
It is alarming that the United States Department of Justice, the very agency tasked with upholding the law, has violated the law, both by withholding massive quantities of documents, and by failing to redact survivor identities.
The statement also calls out the lack of ability to search within the released files, making it impossible for survivors to find pertinent information to their cases.
There has been no communication with survivors or our representatives as to what was withheld from release, or why hundreds of thousand of documents have not been disclosed by the legal deadline, or how DOJ will ensure that no more victim names are wrongly disclosed. While clearer communication would not change the fact that a law was broken, its absence suggests an ongoing intent to keep survivors and the public in the dark as much as possible and as long as possible.
House Democrat Eric Swalwell was quick to criticize Kash Patel’s armored BMW use, as reported by MS Now.
The California congressman, who announced his bid governor last month, said in a post on X:
It’s time to KASH OUT. Director Patel has lost the confidence of the team he must lead. Their leaks are desperate pleas to give them a director who can keep us safe. PATEL MUST RESIGN.
Kash Patel reportedly using armored BMW as transport, raising questions
Trump’s FBI director Kash Patel is using a fleet of armoured luxury BMW X5s that he requested the agency purchase for his travel, MS Now reports, in Patel’s latest questionable use of taxpayers dollars.
Patel, who is already facing a House investigation for his alleged misuse of taxpayer funds, pressed for the vehicles so he could be less “conspicuous” on his outings, four sources familiar with his transportation told the outlet.
FBI directors, who are protected by a security detail, typically travel in Chevrolet Suburbans, though the US government does use the same class of BMWs to protect state department officials and diplomats in high-risk international areas around the world.
Former justice department official Stacey Young, told MS Now that the BMW request was another example of Patel putting his public image ahead of concern for taxpayer resources, calling it “an embarrassment”. She added:
He needs a field jacket that fits just right, a ‘Punisher’-inspired challenge coin and a new fleet of foreign cars to drive around in.
Defending the choice to MS Now, FBI spokesperson Ben Williamson said the BMWs were chosen because they were more cost-effective than other upgraded vehicles the agency could’ve purchased. Without disclosing how much they cost, he said the move was “evaluated partly as a way to save taxpayers millions by picking cheaper selections or making cost structures more efficient”.
Patel has come under fire for his taxpayer expenses, including taking personal trips on the FBI’s Gulfstream private jet for a date night his girlfriend Alexis Wilkins and reportedly hiring a FBI security detail for her.
Trump and Hegseth to make announcement, reportedly about ‘shipbuilding’
Donald Trump, defense secretary Pete Hegseth and Navy secretary John Phelan are scheduled to make an announcement at 4:30pm ET from Palm Beach, Florida.
The White House hasn’t provided details, and Reuters is reporting that it’ll be a “shipbuilding announcement”. When we get further clarity, we’ll let you know here.
It follows Trump’s signing of a $900bn defense policy bill last week and against a backdrop of escalating tensions between the United States and Venezuela. The US is currently in active pursuit of a third oil tanker accused of carrying Venezuelan oil, NBC News reported last night. “It is flying a false flag and under a judicial seizure order,” an official told the outlet.
In an interview with NBC News last week, Trump left the possibility of war with Venezuela on the table. The US military has killed more than 100 people in strikes on alleged drug boats in the region and seized two oil tankers off Venezuela’s coast, as part of Trump’s campaign to isolate and pressurize Nicolás Maduro’s regime.
