The Department of Justice has released less than 1% of the so-called Epstein files, a court filing has revealed, as Democrats step up criticism of the Trump administration’s “lawlessness” for keeping records under seal.

The department conceded that only 12,285 documents, totalling 125,575 pages, relating to the disgraced financier and sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein have been published to date, despite a federal law requiring the vast majority to be released by 19 December.

Pam Bondi, the US attorney general, wrote a five-page update to Paul Engelmayer, the federal New York judge overseeing the case, on Monday, asserting that efforts to protect the identities of Epstein’s victims were a priority, and had slowed the process.

“There are more than two million documents potentially responsive to the Act that are in various phases of review,” she wrote in the letter co-signed by Todd Blanche, her deputy, and Jay Clayton, US attorney for the southern district of New York.

"What are they trying to hide?” Chuck Schumer, the Senate minority leader, said in a post to X on Monday accusing the justice department of failing to submit a required unredacted list to Congress “of all government officials and politically exposed persons” named or referenced in the files.

“It’s been 17 DAYS since the Trump DOJ first broke the law and failed to release all the Epstein files. It’s been 14 DAYS since Trump’s DOJ released anything at all – with the DOJ doing everything in its power to delay and obfuscate.”

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[–] 122 points 10 months ago (5 children)

<despite a federal law requiring the vast majority to be released by 19 December.>

The very FACT that they have NOT released the files now is a CLEAR indication that they NEVER intended to release them at all.

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  • [–] 42 points 10 months ago (2 children)

    Congress needs to get off its withering impotent ass and arrest Bondi (and impeach Trump of course)

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  • [–] 42 points 10 months ago (2 children)
  • [–] 31 points 10 months ago* (2 children)

    Hear that MAGA? Next time you're getting ready to parrot that nonsense about "Promises Made, Promises Kept," remember that two of his CENTRAL promises of his campaign were releasing the Epstein Files, and America First - staying out of other countries business, specifically no regime change, and no nation building. And now we have both, AND they are still hiding the Epstein Files.

    We should remind all MAGAs as often as possible.

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  • [–] 25 points 10 months ago (7 children)

    Pam Bondi, the US attorney general, wrote a five-page update to Paul Engelmayer, the federal New York judge overseeing the case, on Monday, asserting that efforts to protect the identities of Epstein’s victims co-conspirators were a priority, and had slowed the process.

    ftfy

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  • [–] 17 points 10 months ago (6 children)

    It would take fucking minutes to auto find each victim name, and censor it, and maybe, MAYBE, a few days for a team of people to review it and manually change what wasn't caught.

    If charges don't come out of how this was handled, let alone for sure charging all of the child rapists and anyone that helped them, we need to burn this mother fucker down.

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  • [–] 13 points 10 months ago (1 child)

    redacting information is a lot harder than that. you often have to redact things that allow people to draw correlations that lead to identity… details like that should be redacted

    but this is ridiculous on its own, even without the enormous blunders that prove it’s about protecting co-conspirators rather than victims

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  • [–] 11 points 10 months ago

    I mean I do imagine it would take a bit of time, but they've got entire teams of people who's entire jobs are handling that.

    It wouldn't take this long, even if they actually needed to both protect victims and help coconspirators. It's been literal years, and even the mandate from a few months back was an extreme amount of time.

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  • [–] 11 points 10 months ago (1 child)

    Don't take this personally, your heart is in the right place.

    I think you can't see the forest for the trees. There will be no charges. It will not be released. Trump will ratchet up the insanity to the level that's needed to make child sex trafficking irrelevant.

    The only option at this point is extreme, active, hot and visible resistance. It's the only thing that will break through. There will be no meaningful midterms. You're in a fight for your life, and if you fail your country will become history's next fascist experiment. Every American has to consider the world after America has subjugated it, causing untold suffering and destruction - will you be okay to live in that country? Will you be able to push the death out of your mind and live a happy life?

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  • [–] 4 points 10 months ago

    I couldn't, it's constructive advice and it's appreciated, but I do see it that way. Maybe not as deeply and as eloquently as you put it, but yeah that is exactly how I view it, but with a dash of hope I likely shouldn't still have.

    Thanks for chiming in

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  • [–] 11 points 10 months ago (1 child)

    I completely agree with you, but I distinctly remember saying "There's no way Trump comes back from this" five years ago today, and yet here we are. I have very little hope for the system as it is now.

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  • [–] 4 points 10 months ago

    Yeah, agreed. I wasn't as hopeful then, just because all of the blatant crime starting 10 years ago and frankly decades ago, but every time I think there's a line, like a party to or directly throwing a baby that was just murdered into a lake with witnesses around, I do think, this has got to be it.

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  • [–] 24 points 10 months ago* (1 child)

    They also moved the FBI headquarters, and I suspect they will claim they lost a lot of the files in transit. The more time they let it stew the harder it will be to disprove, so they will keep gaslighting as long as possible until they bring out the excuse.

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  • [–] 18 points 10 months ago (3 children)

    Hey hey! Look over there, Venezuela! Pay attention to that!

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  • [–] 8 points 10 months ago (1 child)

    Why even make a distraction? They could brazenly come out and say "we're not releasing anymore. What are you going to do about it?"

    And Congress will just sit there going 👉👈 and nothing would happen. I truly believe that Congress has lost all power at this point. They are a collection of figureheads that couldn't enforce a parking lot, let alone the laws of a country. They can pass whatever law, or make whatever sanction they want, but there's no one around to actually enforce it anymore. All that power has gone to the Executive branch.

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  • [–] 16 points 10 months ago* (1 child)

    Unreal. Aren't there any patriots willing to release the files and then be murdered?

    We need someone suicidal to take one for the team.

    Chuck Schumer says "what are they trying to hide?"; meanwhile, he's one of the redacted names. Oh, Chuck, you stinker

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  • [–] 12 points 10 months ago (1 child)

    ... as Democrats step up criticism of the Trump administration’s “lawlessness” for keeping records under seal.

    Oh good! And here I was wondering if they were going to DO anything at all, but they're on the case! Silly me for doubting the dems.

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  • [–] 11 points 10 months ago

    s/disgraced financier/child molester/g

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  • [–] 10 points 10 months ago

    You know what's "funny"?

    MAGA stands together against pedophilia, blaming the left. Their source? Some roll playing teenagers on 4chan. One even did an armed raid on a pizzaria.

    Now, loads and loads of evidence stacks up of their dear leader being a pedophile and close friend to the world's biggest pedophilia ring leader (already widely known before first term elections), yet they stand with their pedo criminal dictator.

    I believe MAGA made a remarkable achievement, namely a discovery of a new level of hypocrisy, far higher than anyone ever theorized being possible.

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  • [–] 19 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago)

    Hilarious that the elites are shoving AI up everyone's ass and everyone in this admin seems to being doing literally EVERYTHING with AI.

    But redacting the Epstein files is ONE task that has to be done manually.

    Seriously any day now there's going to be a letter written by Epstein filled with em-dashes that exonerates Trump.

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  • [–] 9 points 10 months ago (2 children)

    "History's most transparent administration"

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  • [–] 9 points 10 months ago (1 child)

    97.3% are all about Donny Diddler.

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  • [–] 20 points 10 months ago (7 children)

    That 1% contains Trump's name hundreds of times and has credible evidence of him being party to his own child's infanticide

    What could even be worse at that point

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  • [–] 18 points 10 months ago (6 children)

    Actually, the tip doesn't allege that it was Trump's child, it alleges that Trump was present when her uncle killed the baby. It makes no allegation about who the father is, and sadly the list of candidates would be very large in that scenario. He was there near the birth, no claim about who was there for the conception.

    I also hate to admit it, but that specific "credible evidence" was a tip submitted via an online form in October 2020. Certainly worth searching for/demanding more to see where, if anywhere, the tip went, but by itself it isn't credible evidence. There's so much more credible bad stuff about Trump that makes this quite believable, but until linked to more substantive stuff, probably best to stick to the more concrete stuff. I suspect there were quite a few crafted attempts at 'October Surprises' during the 2020 race and Epstein was a solid topic well known by the populace to try those sorts of things.

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  • [–] 6 points 10 months ago (5 children)

    The more interesting thing about that particular piece of evidence is that it's concrete proof of what we already know: that they're censoring Trump's name in the documents.

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  • [–] 3 points 10 months ago (4 children)

    Actually, that tip didn't even pretend to redact Trump's name. This was not one of the documents where someone had to highlight/copy/paste to 'defeat' the redaction.

    There may be other places where they did redact his name, I don't know. I haven't bothered and the specific examples that people bothered to highlight weren't Trump.

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  • [–] 4 points 10 months ago (3 children)

    They retracted it and then republished it with his name redacted.

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  • [–] 3 points 10 months ago (2 children)

    I missed that, currently it's published without that redaction.... https://www.justice.gov/epstein/files/DataSet%208/EFTA00025010.pdf

    When did they redact it?

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  • [–] 3 points 10 months ago* (1 child)
  • [–] 4 points 10 months ago

    Ok, now that makes sense, and I can see the strategy.

    Some unsubstantiated tip submitted during the 2020 election? Leave Trump's name in and emphasize how tenuous Trump's presence is in the Epstein files.

    Your linked document appears to be a part of more substantial testimony, so redact Trump since it's not really suitable for debunking.

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  • [+] 31 points 10 months ago (21 children)
  • [–] 41 points 10 months ago (18 children)
  • [–] 9 points 10 months ago (6 children)
  • [–] 11 points 10 months ago (5 children)

    Unless unjust people write the laws.

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  • [+] -7 points 10 months ago (4 children)

    Something being a law don’t mean it’s legal

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  • [–] 24 points 10 months ago (2 children)

    No, it quite literally does. Something being a law don't mean it's moral.

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  • [+] -16 points 10 months ago (10 children)

    Why write that? Congratulations, you're now on a list.

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  • [–] 15 points 10 months ago (4 children)

    Why are you trying to convince people to die quietly with the US?

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  • [–] 0 points 10 months ago (3 children)

    Do everything legally possible. But also if you're going to do illegal stuff it's stupid to write it online.

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  • [–] 1 point 10 months ago (2 children)

    I don’t disagree. But that’s not what you said. You sound like a fed. Or a magat trying to shut down Trump opposition. Maybe check yourself.

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  • [–] 3 points 10 months ago (1 child)

    Very false

    • Lemmy is unlikely to be monitored because they probably haven't heard about it or have heard and don't care
    • It has no tracking, so the platforms don't know who the user is; the government would have to figure it out for themselves
    • Decentralization across multiple jurisdictions impedes collaboration with governments
    • These "lists" are mostly a myth; it's only a suspicious sequence like "how to make a bomb" then "dc police response speed" and "when will trump be in white house" that gets you on watch lists, at least in the US
    • This user (@silvadinlabop@lemmy.cafe) might be in a country that does not have any such lists or does not monitor the internet or only monitors web searches or has no laws against such statements
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  • [–] 5 points 10 months ago

    lol my sweet summer child, sorry but those first 4 points aren't as strong as you think. The last point may still be valid. By all means Americans need to get this whole regime out, but it's just stupid to advocate online for illegal means. Why would you post something about it?

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  • [–] 15 points 10 months ago (1 child)

    Keep pushing your representatives to stay on this. Phone calls, letters, emails, etc., all can be used to make sure our reps know that this is important to all of us ongoingly. And that is why you are incorrect, We The People in fact can continue to do something about this matter. Don't give up hope now, that's exactly what the fascists would prefer you do. Don't give them what they want. Be brave, u/the_q , remember persistence furthers.

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  • [–] 5 points 10 months ago

    The only MO most members of congress have right now is to AVOID any kind of confrontation that will show that they don't actually have the ability to enforce anything. They will bend over backwards to make it look like the White House ignoring their actions is "normal" so they can maintain the illusion that they still function as a check, and they certainly won't push further than they think the white house is willing to go on its own. The white house knows this as well - it's to their benefit that the Congress still nominally APPEARS to be a functional branch of government so they don't have to risk open rebellion if they straight up dissolve it, although at this point, I don't think there is ANYTHING that can pierce the insane, deluded, mentally ill complacency of the majority of the American people.

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  • [–] 14 points 10 months ago (1 child)

    So stop whining about it and fucking imprison all of them for contempt and have someone else release it.

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  • [–] 7 points 10 months ago

    I feel like it's more important than ever to partition/set-up feeds to only see politics when one wants to.

    Absolute madness. The really bad kind.

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  • [–] 6 points 10 months ago (1 child)

    What is it called when you are 1% in compliance with the law.

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  • [–] 6 points 10 months ago

    Failure to comply with legal requirements whether in time or to this even being a substantive release.

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  • [–] 5 points 10 months ago (1 child)

    So Trump is the other 99%?

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  • [–] 9 points 10 months ago (1 child)

    This thing is over now, isn't it?

    A war has starte the and news media lost interest in the president being a pedophile

    Fuck, America is predictable if anything

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  • [–] 4 points 10 months ago

    I've started counting rocket artillery to go to sleep instead of sheep. Wherein those rockets land? You can prolly make a guess.

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  • [–] 4 points 10 months ago

    At this point, we should use force to convince the DoJ to release 99.9% of those files

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  • [–] 2 points 10 months ago

    When it's not working, it's working.

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  • [–] -3 points 10 months ago (6 children)

    The Q was right. The storm is coming

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  • [–] 5 points 10 months ago (5 children)

    Ugh I've been reading variations of that comment for like 30 years, get a new thing.

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  • [–] -1 points 10 months ago (4 children)

    Why do you think Q wasn't mentioned in the Epstein files

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  • [–] 0 points 10 months ago (2 children)
  • 1 comment in c/theguardian_us@ibbit.at view that post
    [–] 3 points 10 months ago

    Guess what’s in the other 99%?

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