ReportWire

Tag: department of justice

  • DOJ sues 5 more states in push for sensitive voter roll data

    [ad_1]

    The Justice Department is suing five more states for access to their full voter registration lists, the latest effort by the Trump administration to force states to share personal data about voters ahead of the midterm elections.

    Kentucky, New Jersey, Oklahoma, Utah and West Virginia were all named in lawsuits the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division filed today. With the new suits, the Justice Department has now sued 29 states and the District of Columbia for voter data.

    Three federal judges have already ruled to toss out the lawsuits, most recently in Michigan, where U.S. District Judge Hala Jarbou said the voting laws the Justice Department cited do not require the state to turn over voter information.

    The Justice Department has argued that Attorney General Pam Bondi has the authority to demand the production, inspection and analysis of statewide voter registration lists.

    “Accurate, well-maintained voter rolls are a requisite for the election integrity that the American people deserve,” said Attorney General Pamela Bondi. “This latest series of litigation underscores that This Department of Justice is fulfilling its duty to ensure transparency, voter roll maintenance, and secure elections across the country.”

    Most of the states the Justice Department has targeted in lawsuits have been Democratic-led. But three of the states named today — Oklahoma, Utah and West Virginia — are led by Republican governors. Other GOP-led states, like Nebraska, have turned over sensitive voter data to the Justice Department.

    “The Justice Department will continue to fulfill its oversight role dutifully, neutrally, and transparently wherever Americans vote in federal elections,” said Assistant Attorney General Harmeet K. Dhillon of the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division.

    “Many state election officials, however, are choosing to fight us in court rather than show their work. We will not be deterred, regardless of party affiliation, from carrying out critical election integrity legal duties.”

    The Voting Rights Act, known as the “crown jewel” of the Civil Rights Movement, was first enacted in 1965 to protect voters against discrimination.

    [ad_2]

    NBC Staff and Kyla Guilfoil and Michael Kosnar | NBC News

    Source link

  • Guthrie’s husband’s company is not Epstein ‘co-conspirator’

    [ad_1]

    After Nancy Guthrie’s Feb.1 abduction from her Tucson, Arizona, home, her daughter “Today” host Savannah Guthrie put out a call on social media for tips on her mother’s whereabouts, pleading for her safe return. 

    So far, social media users have been less than helpful. With the Justice Department’s Jan. 30 release of more than 3 million pages of files related to Jeffrey Epstein, X users proposed bogus links between the abduction and the file release.

    Multiple X posts include a photo of Savannah Guthrie’s family and an accusation about her husband, Michael Feldman. 

    “Her husband’s company is listed as a co conspirator in the Epstein files… FGS Global,” reads a Feb. 12 X post with over 1 million views. “In case you’re wondering why now of all times for Savannah Guthrie’s mother to be ‘kidnapped.’”

    The co-anchor’s husband isn’t named in the Epstein files, and neither is his current company.

    Searching the digital Epstein files, we found one 2013 email to Epstein from a person named Michael Feldman, but it seems to be someone else, introducing himself as a “theoretical physicist.”

    Guthrie’s husband is a communications consultant who previously worked in the Clinton administration as chief liaison to Congress and senior adviser for former Vice President Al Gore. Feldman currently works as North American co-chairman of FGS Global, an international public relations firm.

    We did not find FGS Global listed in Justice Department files, but another public affairs company that was merged to found FGS Global was listed. As a community note on one of the X posts said, Feldman helped found Glover Park Group in 2001, and its name appears twice in the Epstein files. The firm merged with other companies to form FGS Global in 2021. 

    PolitiFact reached out to FGS Global, but didn’t receive an immediate response.

    The first mention was in 2014. The office of Terje Rød-Larsen, a former diplomat and former president of the International Peace Institute, shared a list of articles with Epstein, and one story mentioned the Glover Park Group’s work lobbying for Egyptian interests. 

    The second was in a 2015 email forwarded by Larry Summers, former U.S. Treasury secretary and former Harvard University president. Summers suggested that Epstein contact Joe Lockhart, who worked at the Glover Park Group and served as press secretary during the Clinton administration, as well as other Democratic politicians. The initial email says Lockhart “helped Clinton and Genera= (sic) Petraeus.” (Former CIA director and retired U.S. Army Gen. David Petraeus had an extramarital affair uncovered in 2012.)

    (Screenshot of a Jan. 8, 2015, email exchange in the Epstein files)

    These mentions are not evidence that Feldman, FGS Global or Glover Park Group were “co-conspirators” with Epstein. 

    Being mentioned in the files does not mean criminal wrongdoing. We reported in 2025 that figures such as President Donald Trump and Clinton appear in the files, but that doesn’t mean they are guilty or charged with crimes. As of February 2026, Epstein and his coconspirator Ghislaine Maxwell are the only people who have been convicted in the scheme to sexually exploit and abuse multiple minor girls.

    Pima County Sheriff Chris Nanos said Feb. 16 on X that the Guthrie family, including “all siblings and spouses,” had been cleared as possible suspects in the Nancy Guthrie case.

    We rate the X posts’ claims about Guthrie’s husband’s company False. 

    [ad_2]

    Source link

  • Justice Department sues Harvard for data as it investigates how race factors into admissions

    [ad_1]

    WASHINGTON — The Trump administration is suing Harvard University, saying it has refused to provide admissions records that the Justice Department demanded to ensure the Ivy League school stopped using affirmative action in admissions.

    In a lawsuit filed Friday in federal court in Massachusetts, the Justice Department said Harvard has “thwarted” efforts to investigate potential discrimination. It accused Harvard of refusing to comply with a federal investigation and asked a judge to order the university to turn over the records.

    Harmeet Dhillon, who leads the department’s Civil Rights Division, said Harvard’s refusal is a red flag. “If Harvard has stopped discriminating, it should happily share the data necessary to prove it,” Dhillon said in a statement.

    A statement from Harvard said the university has been responding to the government’s requests. It said Harvard is in compliance with the Supreme Court decision barring affirmative action in admissions.

    “The University will continue to defend itself against these retaliatory actions which have been initiated simply because Harvard refused to surrender its independence or relinquish its constitutional rights in response to unlawful government overreach,” the university said.

    The suit is the latest salvo in President Donald Trump’s standoff with Harvard, which has faced billions of dollars in funding cuts and other sanctions after it rejected a list of demands from the administration last year.

    Trump officials have said they’re taking action against Harvard over allegations of anti-Jewish bias on campus. Harvard officials say they’re facing unconstitutional retaliation for refusing to adopt the administration’s ideological views. The administration is appealing a judge’s orders that sided with Harvard in two lawsuits.

    The Justice Department opened a compliance review into Harvard’s admissions practices last April on the same day the White House issued a series of sweeping demands aligned with Trump’s priorities. The agency told Harvard to hand over five years of admissions data for undergraduate applicants along with Harvard’s medical and law schools.

    It asked for a trove of data including applicants’ grades, test scores, essays, extracurricular activities and admissions outcomes, along with their race and ethnicity. It asked for the data by April 25, 2025. The lawsuit said Harvard has not provided that data.

    Justice Department officials said they need the data to determine whether Harvard has continued considering applicants’ race in admissions decisions. The Supreme Court barred affirmative action in admissions in 2023 after lawsuits challenged it at Harvard and the University of North Carolina.

    Trump officials have accused colleges of continuing the practice, which the administration says discriminates against white and Asian American students.

    The White House is separately pressing universities across the U.S. to providing similar data to determine whether they have continued to factor race into admissions decisions. The Education Department plans to collect more detailed admissions data from colleges after Trump signed an action suggesting schools were ignoring the Supreme Court decision.

    Trump’s dispute with Harvard had appeared to be winding down last summer after the president repeatedly said they were finalizing a deal to restore Harvard’s federal funding. The deal never materialized, and Trump rekindled the conflict this month when he said Harvard must pay $1 billion as part of any deal, double what he previously demanded.

    ___

    The Associated Press’ education coverage receives financial support from multiple private foundations. AP is solely responsible for all content. Find AP’s standards for working with philanthropies, a list of supporters and funded coverage areas at AP.org.

    Copyright © 2026 by The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved.

    [ad_2]

    AP

    Source link

  • Don Lemon’s arrest looks like an assault on freedom of the press

    [ad_1]

    Don Lemon and Georgia Fort, two journalists who covered a protest that disrupted services at a St. Paul church on January 18, were arrested last week on federal charges punishable by up to a decade in prison. While the protest itself entailed trespassing coupled with disorderly conduct, the attempt to treat reporting on the event as a federal felony looks like a thinly veiled assault on freedom of the press.

    Opponents of the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) crackdown in Minnesota targeted Cities Church because one of its pastors, David Easterwood, directs enforcement and removal operations at ICE’s field office in St. Paul. Was that a good reason to interrupt a service at his church and self-righteously harangue the congregants to the point that many of them fled?

    No, it was not. Even if Easterwood had been there, the demonstration would have been misguided, misdirected, obnoxious, morally objectionable, and plainly illegal, especially after the protesters were asked to leave and refused to do so. But that does not mean Lemon and Fort should be held criminally liable for the conduct of the people they were covering.

    Lemon, a former CNN anchor and longtime critic of President Donald Trump who hosts a YouTube show, and Fort, a local reporter who runs a livestreaming news outlet, covered an organizational meeting that preceded the protest, agreed not to divulge the protest’s location ahead of time, and recorded the event itself. According to a federal indictment filed last Thursday, those actions made them “co-conspirators.”

    Lemon and Fort allegedly conspired with the protest’s organizers to “injure, oppress, threaten, or intimidate” the Cities Church worshipers “in the free exercise or enjoyment” of their religious freedom—a crime that carries a maximum penalty of 10 years in prison. The evidence supporting that charge seems skimpy.

    At one point, the indictment says, Lemon and Fort “approached the pastor” running the service, Jonathan Parnell, and “largely surrounded him.” They “stood in close proximity to the pastor,” allegedly “in an attempt to oppress and intimidate him,” and “physically obstructed his freedom of movement” while Lemon “peppered him with questions to promote the operation’s message.”

    That is one way to describe Lemon’s interaction with Parnell. Here is another way: Lemon interviewed the pastor about his response to the protest.

    Lemon’s questions were clearly sympathetic to the protesters. But the interview looks a lot more like journalism, however biased, than a conspiracy to violate someone’s constitutional rights.

    The indictment says Fort “stood in front” of “a minivan full of children” outside the church while interviewing a protest organizer. Although Fort’s behavior may have been inconsiderate, that interview likewise does not easily fit within the statute that the Justice Department is invoking.

    The indictment also charges Lemon and Fort with violating a federal law that applies to someone who, “by force or threat of force or by physical obstruction, intentionally injures, intimidates, or interferes with” a person exercising his religious freedom at a place of worship. Again, that description does not seem consistent with their conduct or their avowed intent.

    Those difficulties help explain why a federal magistrate judge who approved arrest warrants for three protesters declined to approve warrants for Lemon and Fort. When federal prosecutors asked Patrick Schiltz, a George W. Bush appointee who serves as chief judge of the U.S. District Court in Minnesota, to override that decision, he saw “no evidence” that the journalists at the scene “engaged in any criminal behavior or conspired to do so.”

    You can fault Lemon for implicitly condoning this protest, which he acknowledged was intended to be “traumatic and uncomfortable,” and for erroneously suggesting that it was protected by the First Amendment. But those misjudgments are not the same as actively participating in what the indictment calls “a coordinated takeover-style attack” on the church.

    If the evidence is not driving the case against Lemon, what is? The White House’s gloating take on his arrest suggests his real offense was political.

    © Copyright 2026 by Creators Syndicate Inc.

    [ad_2]

    Jacob Sullum

    Source link

  • New Epstein documents include emails financier exchanged with wealthy and powerful

    [ad_1]

    A huge new tranche of files on millionaire financier and sex offender Jeffrey Epstein released Friday revealed details of his communications with the wealthy and powerful, some not long before he died by suicide in 2019.

    The Justice Department said it was disclosing more than 3 million pages of documents, as well as thousands of videos and photos, as required by a law passed by Congress. By Friday evening, more than 600,000 documents had been published online. Millions of files that prosecutors had identified as potentially subject to release under the law remain under wraps, however, drawing criticism from Democrats.

    Here’s what we know so far about the files now being reviewed by a team of Associated Press reporters:

    Epstein talked politics with Steve Bannon, ex-Obama official

    The documents show Epstein exchanged hundreds of friendly texts with Steve Bannon, a top advisor to President Donald Trump, some months before Epstein’s death.

    They discussed politics, travel and a documentary Bannon was said to be planning that would help salvage Epstein’s reputation.

    In March 2019, Bannon asked Epstein if he could supply his plane to pick him up in Rome.

    A couple of months later, Epstein messaged to Bannon: “Now you can understand why trump wakes up in the middle of the night sweating when he hears you and I are friends.”

    The context is unclear from the documents, which were released with many redactions and little clear organization.

    Another 2018 exchange focused on Trump’s threats at the time to oust Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell, whom he had named to the post just the year prior.

    Around the same time, Epstein also communicated with Kathy Ruemmler, a lawyer and former Obama White House official. In a typo-filled email, he warned that Democrats should stop demonizing Trump as a Mafia-type figure even as he derided the president as a “maniac.”

    Bannon did not immediately respond to a message from the AP seeking comment. Ruemmler said through a spokesperson she was associated with Epstein professionally during her time as a lawyer in private practice and now “regrets ever knowing him.”

    He also chatted with Elon Musk and Howard Lutnick about island visits

    Billionaire Tesla founder Elon Musk emailed Epstein in 2012 and 2013 about visiting his infamous island compound, the scene of many allegations of sexual abuse.

    Epstein inquired in an email about how many people Musk would like flown by helicopter, and Musk responded it would likely be just him as his partner at the time. “What day/night will be the wildest party on =our island?” he wrote, according to the Justice Department records.

    It’s not immediately clear if the island visits took place. Spokespersons for Musk’s companies, Tesla and X, didn’t immediately respond to emails seeking comment Friday.

    Musk has maintained that he repeatedly turned down the disgraced financier’s overtures. “Epstein tried to get me to go to his island and I REFUSED,” he posted on X in 2025.

    Epstein also invited Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick to the island in Dec. 2012. Lutnick’s wife enthusiastically accepted the invitation and said they would arrive on a yacht with their children. The two also had drinks on another occasion in 2011, according to a schedule. Six years later, they emailed about the construction of a building across the street from both of their homes.

    Lutnick has distanced himself from Epstein, calling him “gross” and saying in 2025 that he cut ties decades ago. He didn’t respond to an emailed request for comment on Friday afternoon.

    The records also have new details on Epstein’s incarceration and suicide

    Epstein was arrested on federal sex trafficking charges in July 2019, and found dead in his cell just over a month later.

    The latest batch of documents includes emails between investigators about Epstein’s death, including an investigator’s observation that his final communication doesn’t look like a suicide note. Multiple investigations have determined that Epstein’s death was a suicide.

    The records also detail a trick that jail staffers used to fool the media gathered outside while Epstein’s body was removed: they used boxes and sheets to create what appeared to be a body and loaded it into a white van labeled as belonging to the Office of the Chief Medical Examiner.

    The reporters followed the van when it left the jail, not knowing that Epstein’s actual body was loaded into a black vehicle, which departed “unnoticed,” according to the interview notes.

    __

    Associated Press reporters across the country contributed to this story, including Michael R. Sisak and Philip Marcelo in New York, Cal Woodward in Washington, Safiyah Riddle in Montgomery, Alabama, and Meg Kinnard in South Carolina.

    [ad_2]

    Lindsay Whitehurst | The Associated Press

    Source link

  • How Bill and Hillary Clinton Could Soon Become Criminal Defendants

    [ad_1]

    Photo: Kenny Holston/Getty Images

    Republicans have thirsted for a criminal prosecution of a Clinton — Bill, Hillary, any Clinton will do — since the 1990s. Thirty years and several near-misses later, they may finally get their wish.

    The Clintons almost certainly aren’t going to prison, or even getting convicted. But with characteristic hubris, Bill and Hillary have walked themselves to the brink of federal charges by defying bipartisan congressional subpoenas on the Jeffrey Epstein investigation. And it’s a good bet that our current Justice Department — which apparently makes critical decisions by a sophisticated litmus test that asks, “Do we like you, or not?” — will pursue criminal contempt charges.

    The Clintons have, of course, had previous brushes with the law. We all remember the impeachment (and acquittal) of Bill Clinton over his false testimony about his relationship with Monica Lewinsky. But nearly lost to history is that Clinton barely avoided a federal indictment. On his final day in office in January 2001, Clinton agreed to a deal with prosecutors that spared him criminal charges for perjury and obstruction in exchange for a five-year suspension of his Arkansas law license, a $25,000 fine, and a public statement acknowledging that he had testified falsely. For my latest book, I asked Robert Ray, who replaced Ken Starr as Independent Prosecutor in late 1999, whether he would have indicted Clinton had he not agreed to the deal. Ray responded, “We were more than prepared to pull the trigger, if necessary.”

    A decade and a half later, Hillary Clinton narrowly dodged an indictment for her use of a private email server while secretary of state. Shortly before the 2016 election, FBI Director James Comey unilaterally announced that Clinton had been “extremely careless” but that the Justice Department would not pursue criminal charges; he then announced the case’s re-opening, eleven days before the election. Clinton was spared an indictment, but Comey’s public comments probably cost her the presidency.

    Yet for all the political drama and close prosecutorial calls, the Clintons could soon find themselves sitting at the defense table over a pair of comparatively mundane subpoenas.

    In August 2025, the House Oversight Committee — led by Republican James Comer, a serial over-promiser who habitually teases shocking revelations about prominent Democrats but never delivers — subpoenaed both Clintons for in-person testimony over their connections to Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell. Both subpoenas were approved unanimously by all Republicans and Democrats on the Committee.

    Through their lawyers, the Clintons engaged in a monthslong pushback campaign. They argued to the Committee that the subpoenas were unrelated to any legitimate legislative purpose; were intended to harass and embarrass; and were overbroad and unduly burdensome. Indeed, it’s not clear Hillary would know anything of substance about the details of Epstein’s criminal enterprise. And while Bill Clinton would have a hellacious time explaining newly-revealed photographs of his nighttime frolic in a pool with Maxwell and an unidentified female, it’s difficult to articulate how testimony about his dealings with Epstein thirty years ago might somehow inform the drafting of anti-human-trafficking legislation now, as the Committee disingenuously claims.

    But the Committee holds broad subpoena power, and Comer was unswayed by these legal arguments. Comer declined the Clintons’ offer to provide written statements in lieu of live testimony and, ultimately, the parties reached no resolution.

    Listen to The Counsel podcast

    Join a team of experts — from former prosecutors to legal scholars — as they break down the complex legal issues shaping our country today. Twice a week, Elie Honig and other CAFE Contributors examine the intersecting worlds of law, politics, and current events.

    Last week, the Clintons launched a self-important, last-ditch public relations campaign. In a letter signed personally by both Bill and Hillary (not their lawyers), the Clintons wrapped themselves in all manner of high-minded irrelevancy. They cited “[p]eople [who] have been seized from their homes by masked federal agents,” the mass pardons of January 6 rioters, Donald Trump’s targeting of universities and law firms, and the recent fatal shooting of Renee Good in Minneapolis. “Every person has to decide when they have seen or heard enough, and are ready to fight for this country, its principles, and its people, no matter the consequences,” the Clintons wrote with a self-important flourish. “For us, now is that time.” Yet the Clintons conspicuously failed to explain how their cited examples had anything to do with whether Bill Clinton should tell Congress what he knows about Jeffrey Epstein’s child sex trafficking network.

    Now the Clintons have worked themselves into a jam. They made a curious tactical decision not to file a lawsuit in advance to “quash” (invalidate, essentially) the subpoenas; while they still might formally challenge the subpoenas in court, it’s likely too late. When the designated days arrived last week for the Clintons to testify, they both failed to appear. At that point, the Committee had all it needed to pursue contempt: presumptively valid subpoenas (and no court order invalidating them); two dates for testimony; and no-shows by both Bill and Hillary.

    On Wednesday, the Oversight Committee voted to hold both Clintons in contempt of Congress. Notably, nine Democrats joined their Republican colleagues to vote for contempt for Bill Clinton, while three Democrats voted for contempt against Hillary. The matter will next move to the full House for a vote. If it passes — Republicans hold a slim majority, and several Democrats on the Committee voted for the subpoenas and contempt — then the matter will be formally referred to the Justice Department for potential prosecution.

    That’ll leave the final call to DOJ leadership. Both attorney general Pam Bondi and deputy attorney general Todd Blanche have made clear that political retribution is their highest aspiration. Witness, for example, the spectacularly failed payback prosecutions of James Comey and Letitia James, and the recent full-bore investigations of seemingly every prominent Democrat in Minnesota — but not the ICE officer who fatally shot Good.

    And consider that, during the Biden administration, lightning-rod Trump confidantes Peter Navarro and Steve Bannon were prosecuted, convicted, and imprisoned for four months each for contempt after they, too, defied Congressional subpoenas. Navarro and Bannon made less of an effort than the Clintons have to engage with the Committee, and were more defiant in general, but those are thin distinctions. At bottom, the Clintons did the same thing as the two Trump loyalists.

    If the Justice Department does indict the Clintons for contempt, don’t count on the cases getting anywhere. The cases would have to be charged in Washington D.C., which is overwhelmingly pro-Democratic and anti-Trump. Trump received less than 7 percent of the vote in D.C. in all three of his presidential runs; Bill Clinton topped 84 percent in both of his campaigns, and Hillary topped 90 percent in hers. A grand jury might well refuse to indict, even under the low “probable cause” standard, and it’s almost impossible to conceive of a D.C. trial jury unanimously voting to convict Bill or Hillary.

    But it’s not clear the Justice Department, or Comer, or Trump would care about the ultimate outcome. After more than three decades of futile yearning for a Clinton indictment, Republicans have never seen an opportunity quite like the one the Clintons have handed them now. The prospect of a Clinton criminal charge — even if unlikely to succeed — might just be too much to resist.


    See All



    [ad_2]

    Elie Honig

    Source link

  • A month after Epstein files deadline, only a fraction of DOJ records have been released

    [ad_1]

    Monday marks one month since the deadline for the Justice Department to release all of its files related to Jeffrey Epstein, but only a fraction of the records have been made public.

    The delays have frustrated Epstein’s victims and brought warnings of repercussions from the co-authors of the Epstein Files Transparency Act, Reps. Thomas Massie, R-Ky., and Ro Khanna, D-Calif.

    Massie claimed in a statement to NBC News on Friday that “Attorney General Bondi is making illegal redactions and withholding key documents that would implicate associates of Epstein.”

    In a separate statement Friday, Khanna said “DOJ’s refusal to follow the law” is “an obstruction of justice.”

    “They also need to release the FBI witness interviews which name other men, so the public can know who was involved. That is why Massie and I are bringing inherent contempt against Bondi and requested a special master to oversee this process,” he said.

    “The survivors and the public demand transparency and justice,” Khanna said.

    The Justice Department did not respond to requests for comment on the releases and the lawmakers’ claims. It said in a court filing last week that it had “made substantial progress and remains focused on releasing materials under the Act promptly while protecting victim privacy.”

    “Compliance with the Act is a substantial undertaking, principally because, for a substantial number of documents, careful, manual review is necessary to ensure that victim-identifying information is redacted before materials are released,” the filing said.

    Victims have complained that the Justice Department is protecting the wrong people. In a letter to the Justice Department’s inspector general last week, a group of Epstein survivors and relatives of victims complained that the redactions to date had been “selective.”

    “These failures have caused renewed harm to survivors and undermined trust in the institutions responsible for safeguarding sensitive information,” the group said in its letter.

    “In multiple instances, names of individuals alleged to have participated in or facilitated abuse appear to have been redacted, while identifying details of survivors were left visible. In some cases, survivors’ names, contextual identifiers, or other information sufficient to identify them publicly were not adequately protected,” they added.

    They also complained, as have Khanna and Massie, that the Justice Department has not complied with another part of the law, which requires it to explain its redactions.

    “Without it, there is no authoritative accounting of what records exist, what has been withheld, or why, making effective oversight and judicial review far more difficult,” an attorney for the congressmen argued in a filing.

    The Justice Department has not commented on the request for the inspector general to step in. On Friday, lawyers for the Justice Department challenged Massie and Khanna’s request for a special master to oversee the release of the materials in a court filing, arguing the pair do not have legal standing to make the request.

    President Donald Trump signed the Epstein Files Transparency Act into law on Nov. 19. The law gave the attorney general 30 days to “make publicly available in a searchable and downloadable format all unclassified records, documents, communications, and investigative materials in the possession of the Department of Justice” involving Epstein, “including all investigations, prosecutions, or custodial matters.”

    On Dec. 19, the day the files were due to be made public, Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche said in an interview with Fox News that the Justice Department was releasing hundreds of thousands of documents that day and that it could take a “couple of weeks” for the rest to come to light.

    He said the delay was needed to comply with the law’s directive that information about all of Epstein’s victims — of which the Justice Department has said there are over 1,000 — is redacted from the releases.

    The Justice Department said in a court filing this month that it had posted “approximately 12,285 documents (comprising approximately 125,575 pages) in response to the Act.”

    In a court filing Thursday, the Justice Department acknowledged that “millions” of pages of materials were outstanding.

    “To date, the Department has employed over five hundred reviewers to review and redact millions of pages of materials from the investigations into Epstein and his convicted co-conspirator,” Ghislaine Maxwell, the filing said.

    The filing did not give a total number of files that are outstanding or say when they would be made public.

    The Justice Department released a transcript of an interview between a senior administration official and Ghislaine Maxwell, the imprisoned former associate of Jeffrey Epstein.

    Among the documents that have yet to be released are any internal discussions about a controversial joint memo the FBI and the Justice Department released in July, in which they said they had conducted an “exhaustive” review of the files and determined that there was not evidence to charge anyone else in the case and that no further information would be released.

    The memo was met with tremendous political backlash, some of it from supporters of Trump.

    Epstein at various points had ties to Trump, former President Bill Clinton and the former Prince Andrew of Britain, among others. All have denied wrongdoing.

    Epstein died by suicide in his jail cell while he was awaiting trial on federal sex trafficking charges in 2019.

    Epstein had been investigated on similar charges a decade earlier but wound up pleading guilty to state charges involving a single underage victim after he reached a secret nonprosecution agreement with federal prosecutors in Florida. The deal resulted in Epstein’s serving just 13 months in a Palm Beach County jail, which he was allowed to leave almost daily via a work-release program and have his own private security detail.

    Maxwell is serving a 20-year prison term for conspiring to sex traffic minors.

    Ryan J. Reilly, Hallie Jackson and Joe Murphy contributed.

    Prince Andrew will no longer be called the Duke of York after giving up his title in the wake of continued scrutiny surrounding his connection to Jeffrey Epstein.

    [ad_2]

    Dareh Gregorian | NBC News

    Source link

  • DOJ investigating Gov. Tim Walz and Mayor Jacob Frey, sources say

    [ad_1]

    The Justice Department is investigating Minnesota officials, including Gov. Tim Walz and Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey, under the theory that they conspired to impede federal immigration agents, a senior law enforcement official and person familiar with the matter told NBC News.

    The law at issue is a rarely used federal statute with roots in the Civil War era. It was one of the statutes listed in a memo from Attorney General Pam Bondi last month, obtained by NBC News, that spelled out the laws that she wanted federal prosecutors to use to target individuals she dubbed domestic terrorists.

    CBS News first reported on the investigation.

    In a statement Friday regarding reports of the investigation, Walz said, “Two days ago it was Elissa Slotkin. Last week it was Jerome Powell. Before that, Mark Kelly. Weaponizing the justice system and threatening political opponents is a dangerous, authoritarian tactic.”

    “The only person not being investigated for the shooting of Renee Good is the federal agent who shot her,” he said.

    Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz says the Trump administration has denied the state’s Bureau of Criminal Apprehension a role in an investigation into the fatal shooting of a Minneapolis woman by an ICE officer, calling it a threat to accountability.

    Frey said in a statement in response to reports of the DOJ investigation that he “will not be intimidated.”

    “This is an obvious attempt to intimidate me for standing up for Minneapolis, our local law enforcement, and our residents against the chaos and danger this Administration has brought to our streets,” he said.

    He added, “Neither our city nor our country will succumb to this fear. We stand rock solid.”

    Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey blasted federal immigration authorities, telling ICE to “get the f—” out of the city after an ICE officer fatally shot a woman during an immigration-related operation

    Kristen Welker and Raquel Coronell Uribe contributed.

    [ad_2]

    Ryan J. Reilly and Peter Alexander | NBC News

    Source link

  • Justice Department says filming immigration raids is ‘domestic terrorism’

    [ad_1]

    After leaving the Chicago area in November, U.S. Border Patrol Commander Gregory Bovino made an unexpected return on December 16, along with several hundred federal agents and a film crew. Returning to the same aggressive tactics that sparked protests earlier this year, local officials criticized Bovino for using immigration operations as a form of political theater. 

    In a statement to the Chicago Sun-Times, a spokesperson for Democratic Mayor Brandon Johnson called out agents for allegedly arresting people indiscriminately and without arrest warrants. The mayor’s office also criticized them for filming the raids and “[turning] these operations into a spectacle.”

    “This activity is occurring alongside a film crew, which appears to be using these raids to create content at the expense of traumatizing families,” said the spokesperson. “These tactics are destabilizing, wrong, and must be condemned.” 

    But this is not the first time a federal agency has filmed immigration operations for political theater. In addition to being tasked with carrying out record levels of deportations, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) under President Donald Trump has seemingly been transformed into a propaganda arm to sell the public on the president’s increasingly unpopular immigration policies. Examples include a video posted on X by DHS Secretary Kristi Noem of agents raiding a South Shore apartment building on September 30 and a video posted on the DHS’ official Instagram account depicting various immigration arrests.

    As Bovino and the DHS have embraced the power of cinema to document immigration arrests and promote current policies, the Trump administration is also cracking down on individuals who choose to record immigration operations. In a December 4 memo, originally leaked by journalist Ken Klippenstein, the Justice Department encourages federal prosecutors to press “domestic terrorism” charges against people for “doxing” law enforcement officers. While undefined in the memo, “doxing” in this context is understood to mean the publishing of information that identifies law enforcement officers, which the Justice Department insinuates is a threatening activity used to “silence opposing speech, limit political activity, change or direct policy outcomes, and prevent the functioning of a democratic society.” 

    This definition mirrors previous statements by DHS officials earlier this year, including a statement made by Noem in July: “Violence is anything that threatens [agents] and their safety, so it’s doxing them, it’s videotaping them where they’re at when they’re out on operations.”

    However, much of what the Trump administration tries to paint as the unacceptable “doxing” of law enforcement agents is often observers merely recording on-duty officers—an activity firmly protected by the First Amendment when no physical interference or danger is present, and an important tool for holding public officials accountable. By broadly defining domestic terrorism to include something as vague as “doxing,” the Trump administration has rolled out a “nationwide policy of intimidating and threatening people who attempt to observe and record DHS operations,” according to David Bier, the director of immigration studies at the Cato Institute.

    Under such a broad definition, even the DHS’ own camera crews and media hired specifically to record and publish details of immigration operations could potentially be prosecuted for domestic terrorism. The only limiting factor in the memo seems to be whether the publisher is considered Trump’s political ally or opponent, i.e., an “Antifa-aligned extremist,” which the December 4 memo defines, in part, as someone with “extreme viewpoints on immigration,” such as “mass migration and open borders.” 

    But the right to free speech isn’t taken away when someone says or does something that the government disagrees with. Attempting to define who is and isn’t protected by the First Amendment is not only unconstitutional, but also a strategy that could put even Trump’s allies at the mercy of federal prosecutors.  

    [ad_2]

    Autumn Billings

    Source link

  • The DOJ assails D.C.’s ‘assault weapon’ ban as an arbitrary, historically ungrounded gun law

    [ad_1]

    In Washington, D.C., a gun cannot be legally owned unless it is registered, and it cannot be registered if it qualifies as an “assault weapon” under D.C. law. That policy, the U.S. Justice Department argues in a lawsuit it filed this week in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, violates the Second Amendment by arbitrarily banning guns that are commonly used for lawful purposes.

    The lawsuit, which seems to be the first case pursued by a new Second Amendment Section within the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division, “underscores our ironclad commitment to protecting the Second Amendment rights of law-abiding Americans,” Attorney General Pam Bondi said on Monday. Assistant Attorney General Harmeet Dhillon, who runs the Civil Rights Division, said she is determined to “defend American citizens from unconstitutional restrictions [on] commonly used firearms.”

    The statutory basis for the lawsuit, which names the District of Columbia, the Metropolitan Police Department, and D.C. Police Chief Pamela Smith as defendants, is 34 USC 12601, which prohibits any law enforcement “pattern or practice” that “deprives persons of rights, privileges, or immunities secured or protected by the Constitution or laws of the United States.” That statute authorizes the attorney general to address such abuses by filing civil actions seeking “appropriate equitable and declaratory relief.”

    In this case, Dhillon alleges a pattern or practice that deprives D.C. residents of the constitutional right to keep and bear arms. That right, the Supreme Court said in the landmark Second Amendment case District of Columbia v. Heller, encompasses ownership of firearms “in common use” for “lawful purposes like self-defense.” Since handguns are “the quintessential self-defense weapon,” the Court said, they clearly fall into that category, which made D.C.’s ban on them unconstitutional.

    The Court’s 2022 decision in New York State Rifle & Pistol Association v. Bruen, which overturned New York’s restrictions on carrying handguns in public for self-defense, reiterated that point. “Whatever the likelihood that handguns were considered ‘dangerous and unusual’ during the colonial period, they are indisputably in ‘common use’ for self-defense today,” the majority said. Colonial laws that “prohibited the carrying of handguns,” the Court concluded, “provide no justification for laws restricting the public carry of weapons that are unquestionably in common use today.”

    The guns banned by D.C.’s “assault weapon” law likewise are “unquestionably in common use today.” The law covers a long list of firearm models, including AR-15 rifles, along with guns that meet specified criteria. Any semi-automatic rifle that accepts detachable magazines, for example, is considered an “assault weapon” if it has a pistol grip, a thumbhole stock, a folding or adjustable stock, or a flash suppressor.

    Since 1990, more than 30 million “modern sporting rifles” have been sold in the United States, and as many as 24 million Americans have owned AR-15s or similar rifles for lawful purposes such as self-defense, hunting, and recreational target shooting. “The AR–15 is the most popular rifle in the country,” the Supreme Court noted in a recent decision.

    Under Bruen, a restriction on conduct covered by the “plain text” of the Second Amendment is constitutional only if the government can show it is “consistent with this Nation’s historical tradition of firearm regulation.” Yet as Dhillon notes, there is no “historically analogous” precedent for a “broad ban” on firearms “commonly used” by “law-abiding citizens” for “lawful purposes” such as “self-defense inside the home”—the right recognized in Heller.

    Dhillon notes that D.C.’s “assault weapon” ban, like other laws of this sort, “is based on little more than cosmetics, appearance, or the ability to attach accessories.” More to the point, it “fails to take into account whether the prohibited weapon is ‘in common use today’” or whether “law-abiding citizens may use these weapons for lawful purposes protected by the Second Amendment.”

    Although the Justice Department’s nine-page complaint is skimpy, federal judges have elaborated on these points. Like the law at issue in Heller, U.S. District Judge Peter Sheridan noted last year, New Jersey’s AR-15 ban amounts to “the total prohibition [of] a commonly used firearm for self-defense…within the home.” And under Heller, “a categorical ban on a class of weapons commonly used for self-defense is unlawful.”

    Sheridan highlighted testimony showing that “AR-15s are well-adapted for self-defense.” When it upheld Maryland’s AR-15 ban a week later, by contrast, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 4th Circuit declared that such rifles are “ill-suited and disproportionate to the need for self-defense.”

    That conclusion, Judge Julius Richardson noted in a dissent joined by four of his colleagues, ignored the self-defense advantages of AR-15s, including better accuracy, greater recoil absorption, and more stopping power than handguns. While handguns also have certain advantages, Richardson said, the appeals court had no business second-guessing gun owners’ weighing of these rifles’ pros and cons, thereby “replac[ing] Americans’ opinions of their utility with its own.”

    Where Richardson saw self-defense advantages, the majority saw features that make AR-15s especially deadly in mass shootings. These clashing perspectives illustrate the folly of trying to draw a legal distinction between guns that are suitable for legitimate purposes and guns that supposedly are good for nothing but killing innocent people.

    Also last year, a federal judge in Illinois issued a permanent injunction against that state’s “assault weapon” ban, deeming it “an unconstitutional affront to the Second Amendment.” In his 168-page opinion, U.S. District Judge Stephen P. McGlynn explained why that law did not pass the Bruen test, which requires the government to cite historical analogs that are “relevantly similar” in motivation and scope.

    Considering the purported historical analogs on which Illinois relied, McGlynn noted that “only 4% (9 out of 225) of the cited statutes entirely restricted the sale and/or possession of entire classes of weapons.” The government “relies predominantly and overwhelmingly on concealed carry statutes, statutes restricting the discharge of firearms, and statutes proscribing brandishing or causing terror,” he wrote.

    Those laws, like the Illinois ban, were aimed at “preventing death or injury from firearms,” McGlynn conceded. But they were not similar in scope. He concluded that the state “clearly cannot demonstrate” that its law “follows any historical tradition of sweeping prohibitions on the sale, transfer, and possession of vast swaths of firearms.”

    The District of Columbia will face similar challenges in defending its “assault weapon” ban under Bruen. And assuming the Supreme Court eventually agrees to hear this case or a similar one, at least four justices seem inclined to be skeptical of the constitutional justification for such laws. In addition to Brett Kavanaugh, who as a judge on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit dissented from a 2011 decision upholding the D.C. ban, Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito, and Neil Gorsuch have indicated their receptiveness to the arguments sketched by Dillon.

    Last June, when the Supreme Court declined to hear an appeal of the 4th Circuit decision upholding Maryland’s “assault weapon” ban, Kavanaugh emphasized the importance of addressing those arguments. “Given that millions of Americans own AR–15s and that a significant majority of the States allow possession of those rifles, petitioners have a strong argument that AR–15s are in ‘common use’ by law-abiding citizens and therefore are protected by the Second Amendment under Heller,” he wrote, highlighting the difficulty of “distinguish[ing] the AR–15s at issue here from the handguns at issue in Heller.”

    While “AR–15s are semi-automatic,” Kavanaugh noted, “so too are most handguns.” Both kinds of weapons are used “for a variety of lawful purposes, including self-defense in the home,” he added. “For their part, criminals use both AR–15s and handguns, as well as a variety of other lawful weapons and products, in unlawful ways that threaten public safety. But handguns can be more easily carried and concealed than rifles, and handguns—not rifles—are used in the vast majority of murders and other violent crimes that individuals commit with guns in America.”

    The denial of review in the Maryland case “does not mean that the Court agrees” with the 4th Circuit’s decision “or that the issue is not worthy of review,” Kavanaugh emphasized. “The AR–15 issue was recently decided by the First Circuit and is currently being considered by several other Courts of Appeals. Opinions from other Courts of Appeals should assist this Court’s ultimate decisionmaking on the AR–15 issue. Additional petitions for certiorari will likely be before this Court shortly and, in my view, this Court should and presumably will address the AR–15 issue soon, in the next Term or two.”

    [ad_2]

    Jacob Sullum

    Source link

  • DOJ says reviewing Epstein files may take weeks after getting over 1 million new docs

    [ad_1]

    The Justice Department said Wednesday that it’s received a new tranche of records — more than 1 million documents — “potentially” related to Jeffrey Epstein’s case, requiring additional time to process them before release.

    The DOJ said it “may take a few more weeks” to review the files produced by the FBI and the U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York.

    “The US Attorney for the Southern District of New York and the FBI have informed the Department of Justice that they have uncovered over a million more documents potentially related to the Jeffrey Epstein case,” the Justice Department said on its X accountWednesday afternoon.

    “The DOJ has received these documents from SDNY and the FBI to review them for release, in compliance with the Epstein Files Transparency Act, existing statutes, and judicial orders. We have lawyers working around the clock to review and make the legally required redactions to protect victims, and we will release the documents as soon as possible. Due to the mass volume of material, this process may take a few more weeks.”

    Spokespeople for the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York and the Department of Justice did not immediately respond to NBC News requests for comment about the contents of the documents and why they weren’t uncovered earlier. A spokesperson for the FBI declined to comment.

    Epstein died in his jail cell in 2019 while awaiting trial on federal sex trafficking charges in the Southern District of New York. Ghislaine Maxwell, Epstein’s accomplice, was indicted in July 2020 on federal sex trafficking charges. She was found guilty in December 2021 in New York and is serving a 20-year prison sentence.

    The Justice Department publicly released thousands of pages of Epstein files on Friday, the statutory deadline for releasing all of the files as outlined in the Epstein Files Transparency Act that was passed by Congress and signed into law by President Donald Trump last month. Another tranche was released Tuesday.

    After the initial batch, Justice Department officials said they needed more time to review the files they have on hand and redact text and images related to Epstein’s victims. Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche said in an interview with Fox News on Friday that he expected the entirety of the Epstein files to be online by Jan. 2.

    “The reason why we are still reviewing documents and still continuing our process is simply to protect victims,” Blanche told NBC News’ “Meet the Press” on Sunday.

    “We’re going through a very methodical process with hundreds of lawyers looking at every single document and making sure that victims’ names and any of the information from victims is protected and redacted, which is exactly what the [Epstein Files] Transparency Act expects,” he added.

    As of Wednesday, the Justice Department had released about 40,000 documents related to Epstein, according to an NBC News analysis.

    The files released so far have included several documents that mentioned President Donald Trump, including one that indicated he had flown on Epstein’s private jet more times than previously known.

    Trump has not been accused of any wrongdoing, and he has denied doing anything improper. The president has said he cut ties with Epstein at some point in the early 2000s because he was a “creep.”

    The Justice Department said Tuesday in a post on X that the documents release included “untrue and sensationalist claims” about Trump.

    Some members of Congress have criticized the delay in releasing all of the Epstein files.

    Reps. Ro Khanna, D-Calif., and Thomas Massie, R-Ky., who both spearheaded the bipartisan effort in Congress this year to pass the Epstein Files Transparency Act, have promised to hold officials accountable for the holdup, floating impeachment or charges of contempt.

    On Wednesday, after the Justice Department said more Epstein files were found, Khanna said his threat with Massie to pursue contempt charges helped lead to the DOJ’s announcement.

    “@RepThomasMassie & I will continue to keep the pressure on. After we said we are bringing contempt, the DOJ is now finding millions more documents to release,” the California congressman wrote.

    Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., responded to the Justice Department’s announcement of a longer timeline for releasing the files by accusing them of a “coverup.”

    “A Christmas Eve news dump of ‘a million more files’ only proves what we already know: Trump is engaged in a massive coverup. The question Americans deserve answered is simple: WHAT are they hiding—and WHY? Justice delayed is justice denied. Release the files. Follow the law,” Schumer wrote in a post on X.

    Schumer this week introduced a resolution that would direct the Senate to “initiate legal action against the DOJ” for not releasing the full Epstein files by last Friday.

    Congress is scheduled to be back in session the first full week of January.

    Democrats in the House of Representative released 19 images, including photos of Jeffrey Epstein with presidents Trump and Clinton, Ghislaine Maxwell, billionaire Bill Gates, film director Woody Allen and conservative firebrand Steve Bannon. NBC New York’s Jonathan Dienst reports.

    [ad_2]

    Alexandra Marquez | NBC News

    Source link

  • FBI Addresses Epstein Letter Claiming Trump Likes Young Girls Hours After It Goes Viral – How People Are Reacting To Their Response! – Perez Hilton

    [ad_1]

    The Department of Justice is speaking out about that alarming letter about Donald Trump…

    As we previously reported, the DOJ released thousands more documents from the Jeffrey Epstein files on Tuesday morning — including ones that mention Trump. We reported how an email in the files alleges Trump flew on Epstein’s private jet multiple times — including four times with Epstein’s partner and co-conspirator Ghislaine Maxwell. But one of the other most troubling documents to drop? It’s a letter the convicted sex offender allegedly sent to Larry Nassar, the former US gymnastics team doctor convicted of sexually assaulting young gymnasts, while they were both in federal prison in August 2019, which features a disturbing line about the president. The message said:

    “As you will know by now, I have taken the ‘short route’ home. Good luck! We shared one thing … our love & caring for young ladies and the hope they reach their full potential. Our president also shares our love of young, nubile girls. When a young beauty walked by he loved to ‘grab snatch’, whereas we ended up snatching grub in the mess halls of the system. Life is unfair. Yours, J. Epstein.”

    Related: Nicki Minaj Goes Full MAGA! She Praises Trump, Reaffirms Anti-Trans Views, & More!

    “Our president” was Donald Trump at the time. Take a look at it (below):

    (c) Department of Justice

    The letter was postmarked on August 13, 2019, just three days after Epstein died by suicide. According to the file, the feds obtained the note when it came back to the Metropolitan Correctional Center in New York since Nassar was moved from Tucson, Arizona, to a Florida prison. An FBI agent reportedly requested that a laboratory perform a handwriting analysis to prove Epstein wrote the letter, but the results are unknown.

    The letter has since gone viral online, with people calling out the alleged comment about Trump. In fact, the new round of files, including the letter, led to an Epstein survivor and now former Trump supporter to call for his impeachment. Hours after the new batch of documents dropped on Tuesday, the Department of Justice announced on X (Twitter) that they are “currently looking into the validity of this alleged letter from Jeffrey Epstein to Larry Nassar and we will follow up as soon as possible.” However, they made a point to note three things right off the bat:

    “- The postmark on the envelope is Virginia, not New York, where Jeffrey Epstein was jailed at the time.

    -The return address listed the wrong jail where Epstein was held and did not include his inmate number, which is required for outgoing mail.

    -The envelope was processed three days AFTER Epstein’s death.”

    Well, nearly two hours later, the DOJ is already coming forward with the supposed answers as to whether the letter is legit or not. The verdict? The department claimed on X (Twitter) that the letter is “FAKE.” Yes, in all caps. The tweet said:

    “The FBI has confirmed this alleged letter from Jeffrey Epstein to Larry Nassar is FAKE. The fake letter was received by the jail, and flagged for the FBI at the time.”

    According to the DOJ, the FBI came to that conclusion for three reasons:

    “-The writing does not appear to match Jeffrey Epstein’s.

    -The letter was postmarked three days after Epstein’s death out of Northern Virginia, when he was jailed in New York.

    -The return address did not list the jail where Epstein was held and did not include his inmate number, which is required for outgoing mail.”

    Hmm. The DOJ concluded the post, saying:

    “This fake letter serves as a reminder that just because a document is released by the Department of Justice does not make the allegations or claims within the document factual. Nevertheless, the DOJ will continue to release all material required by law.”

    They determined all that in… only two hours? Really? People, as you can imagine, are not buying a single word the DOJ says following the extremely short investigation. Many even have a lot of questions — including if the letter was fake, why was it included in the files in the first place, why are the results of the handwriting analysis not in the files, and more.

    And let’s not forget, the Associated Press reported about the Epstein letter to Nassar back in 2023. The publication obtained over 4,000 pages of documents related to Epstein’s death from the federal Bureau of Prisons under the Freedom of Information Act at the time, including his attempt to connect with Nassar by mail. The actual details of the letter were unknown back then, though. Regardless, why didn’t the DOJ say something if it’s fake? We also need to point out that the department has only called out supposed “untrue and sensationalist claims” against Trump — and no one else mentioned in the files, which is eyebrow-raising in itself. Not to mention, a photo of him reportedly disappeared from the files. So, all that has people skeptical about what the DOJ claims. See some of the reactions (below):

    “The hand writing assessment was done when? Release the results from the investigation.”

    “This information seems incredibly important. Was it included in the release of that letter? If not, why not?”

    “You completed your investigation in 2 hours?”

    “Then who wrote the letter? Who sent it? Too many unknowns if it’s fake.”

    “Y’all are the same people who released it so are you that incompetent you didn’t check to make sure something that damn scathing involving Trump was real or not before you released it?  More likely one of you f**ked up and it released it with the rest.”

    “If it wasn’t authentic, why was it released as part of the files in the first place?”

    “Ok so where is the FBI document from 2019 (when it was discovered) concluding that it was fake? You put out a tweet and expect us to believe it???”

    “What steps did you take to confirm this? Seems to me you are just regurgitating your statement from earlier. Was there an official analysis done on this originally that you were able to reference so quickly? Seems odd. Not much time has elapsed since you announced you were looking into it?”

    “That’s it? Those are your only reasons? The handwriting is the only valid point. Where’s the report on this? Where and when was the analysis done?”

    “The @FBI requested handwriting analyis on the Epstein-Nassar letter in 2020, according to last night’s file dump (below). Question: Where are the results? Follow up: Did the DOJ examine those results today, 16 hours after the letter’s release, or was a new analysis conducted?”

    It’s clear a lot of people feel like this admin’s response to literally any claim of wrongdoing is to just throw the word “fake” on it and call it a day. But what are YOUR thoughts on the DOJ’s response, Perezcious readers? Are you just as skeptical? Why or why not? Let us know in the comments.

    [Image via MEGA/WENN, New York Sex Offender Registry]

    [ad_2]

    Perez Hilton

    Source link

  • DOJ Claims Epstein Files Letter From Jeffrey Epstein to Larry Nassar Is Fake

    [ad_1]

    No prior connection between Jeffrey Epstein and Nassar was publicly known. The note makes a reference to “our president”—at that point, Donald Trump, in his first term—and a seeming predilection for “young, nubile girls.” Epstein’s opening greeting also may refer to an intention to end his own life.

    The additional files related to Jeffery Epstein released by the Justice Department on Tuesday, December 23 include a note addressed to “L.N.” signed by “J. Epstein.”

    “Dear L.N.,” the letter reads, “As you know by now, I have taken the ‘short route’ home. Good luck! We shared one thing … our love and caring for young ladies and the hope they’d reach their full potential. Our President also shares our love of young, nubile girls. When a young beauty walked by, he loved to ‘grab snatch,’ whereas we ended up snatching grub in the mess halls of the system. Life is unfair.”

    [ad_2]

    Kase Wickman

    Source link

  • Jeffrey Epstein’s alleged jailhouse letter to Larry Nassar surfaces in federal records – Detroit Metro Times

    [ad_1]

    A newly released tranche of Justice Department records tied to Jeffrey Epstein includes a handwritten letter addressed to Larry Nassar, the former Michigan State University and USA Gymnastics doctor who sexually abused hundreds of young athletes over nearly two decades.

    The letter, which appears to have been written by Jeffrey Epstein, was addressed to “L.N.” and postmarked Aug. 13, 2019, just three days after Epstein was found dead in his jail cell in New York. Epstein’s death was ruled a suicide.

    Nassar, a Michigan-based physician who served as a longtime doctor for USA Gymnastics and Michigan State University, is serving a 60-year federal prison sentence on child pornography charges. More than 150 women and girls told a Michigan judge in 2018 that Nassar sexually abused them under the guise of medical treatment.

    The letter, included in files released Tuesday by the Justice Department, contains crude and disturbing language that appears to reference sexual abuse and incarceration. It also includes an indirect reference to President Donald Trump.

    A letter from Jeffrey Epstein to Larry Nassar was among the records released by the Justice Department this week. Credit: U.S. Department of Justice

    “Dear L.N.,” the letter reads, “As you know by now, I have taken the ‘short route’ home. Good luck! We shared one thing … our love and caring for young ladies and the hope they’d reach their full potential. Our President also shares our love of young, nubile girls.”

    The letter ends with, “Life is unfair,” and is signed, “J. Epstein.”

    The envelope, addressed to Nassar at a federal prison in Tucson, Arizona, was marked “return to sender” because the addressee was “no longer at this address,” according to an FBI document also released by the Justice Department.

    A separate FBI laboratory examination request shows that on Sept. 25, 2019, an agent received a call from the Bureau of Prisons regarding the letter after it was intercepted at the Metropolitan Correctional Center in Manhattan. In July 2020, the FBI requested a handwriting analysis to determine whether Epstein authored the letter or if it was written by someone else. The documents do not disclose the results of that analysis.

    It remains unclear whether Epstein and Nassar had any personal relationship.

    Larry Nassar. Credit: Michigan Department of Corrections

    Epstein, a wealthy financier with ties to powerful political and business figures, was awaiting trial on federal sex trafficking charges when he died in custody. Nassar remains incarcerated in federal prison.

    Another batch of recently released Justice Department documents also included a Michigan-related lawsuit alleging that Epstein met his first known victim in the 1990s at Interlochen Center for the Arts, a renowned fine arts summer camp near Traverse City.

    The complaint, filed in 2020 and later settled, said the girl was 13 when Epstein and co-conspirator Ghislaine Maxwell approached her at Interlochen, groomed her over several years, and sexually abused her. The lawsuit also alleges Epstein later brought her to Mar-a-Lago, where he introduced her to Trump.

    Trump has denied any wrongdoing and has not been charged in connection with Epstein.


    [ad_2]

    Steve Neavling

    Source link

  • At least 16 files have disappeared from the DOJ webpage for documents related to Jeffrey Epstein

    [ad_1]

    At least 16 files disappeared from the Justice Department’s public webpage for documents related to Jeffrey Epstein — including a photograph showing President Donald Trump — less than a day after they were posted, with no explanation from the government and no notice to the public.Related video above: Justice Department’s partial release of Epstein files frustrates lawmakersThe missing files, which were available Friday and no longer accessible by Saturday, included images of paintings depicting nude women, and one showing a series of photographs along a credenza and in drawers. In that image, inside a drawer among other photos, was a photograph of Trump, alongside Epstein, Melania Trump and Epstein’s longtime associate Ghislaine Maxwell.The Justice Department didn’t answer questions Saturday about why the files disappeared but said in a post on X that “photos and other materials will continue being reviewed and redacted consistent with the law in an abundance of caution as we receive additional information.”Online, the unexplained missing files fueled speculation about what was taken down and why the public was not notified, compounding long-standing intrigue about Epstein and the powerful figures who surrounded him. Democrats on the House Oversight Committee pointed to the missing image featuring a Trump photo in a post on X, writing: “What else is being covered up? We need transparency for the American public.”The episode deepened concerns that had already emerged from the Justice Department’s much-anticipated document release. The tens of thousands of pages made public offered little new insight into Epstein’s crimes or the prosecutorial decisions that allowed him to avoid serious federal charges for years, while omitting some of the most closely watched materials, including FBI interviews with victims and internal Justice Department memos on charging decisions.Scant new insight in the initial disclosuresSome of the most consequential records expected about Epstein are nowhere to be found in the Justice Department’s initial disclosures, which span tens of thousands of pages.Missing are FBI interviews with survivors and internal Justice Department memos examining charging decisions — records that could have helped explain how investigators viewed the case and why Epstein was allowed in 2008 to plead guilty to a relatively minor state-level prostitution charge.The gaps go further.The records, required to be released under a recent law passed by Congress, hardly reference several powerful figures long associated with Epstein, including Britain’s former Prince Andrew, renewing questions about who was scrutinized, who was not, and how much the disclosures truly advance public accountabilityAmong the fresh nuggets: insight into the Justice Department’s decision to abandon an investigation into Epstein in the 2000s, which enabled him to plead guilty to that state-level charge, and a previously unseen 1996 complaint accusing Epstein of stealing photographs of children.The releases so far have been heavy on images of Epstein’s homes in New York City and the U.S. Virgin Islands, with some photos of celebrities and politicians.There was a series of never-before-seen photos of former President Bill Clinton, but fleetingly few of Trump. Both have been associated with Epstein, but both have since disowned those friendships. Neither has been accused of any wrongdoing in connection with Epstein, and there was no indication the photos played a role in the criminal cases brought against him.Despite a Friday deadline set by Congress to make everything public, the Justice Department said it plans to release records on a rolling basis. It blamed the delay on the time-consuming process of obscuring survivors’ names and other identifying information. The department has not given any notice when more records might arrive.That approach angered some Epstein accusers and members of Congress, who fought to pass the law forcing the department to act. Instead of marking the end of a yearslong battle for transparency, the document release Friday was merely the beginning of an indefinite wait for a complete picture of Epstein’s crimes and the steps taken to investigate them.”I feel like again the DOJ, the justice system is failing us,” said Marina Lacerda, who alleges Epstein started sexually abusing her at his New York City mansion when she was 14.Many of the long-anticipated records were redacted or lacked contextFederal prosecutors in New York brought sex trafficking charges against Epstein in 2019, but he killed himself in jail after his arrest.The documents just made public were a sliver of potentially millions of pages of records in the department’s possession. In one example, Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche said Manhattan federal prosecutors had more than 3.6 million records from sex trafficking investigations into Epstein and Maxwell, though many duplicated material already turned over by the FBI.Many of the records released so far had been made public in court filings, congressional releases, or Freedom of Information Act requests, though, for the first time, they were all in one place and available for the public to search for free.Ones that were new were often lacking necessary context or heavily blacked out. A 119-page document marked “Grand Jury-NY,” likely from one of the federal sex trafficking investigations that led to the charges against Epstein in 2019 or Maxwell in 2021, was entirely blacked out.Trump’s Republican allies seized on the Clinton images, including photos of the Democrat with singers Michael Jackson and Diana Ross. There were also photos of Epstein with actors Chris Tucker and Kevin Spacey, and even Epstein with TV newscaster Walter Cronkite. But none of the photos had captions, and no explanation was given for why any of them were together.The meatiest records released so far showed that federal prosecutors had what appeared to be a strong case against Epstein in 2007, yet never charged him.Transcripts of grand jury proceedings, released publicly for the first time, included testimony from FBI agents who described interviews they had with several girls and young women who described being paid to perform sex acts for Epstein. The youngest was 14 and in ninth grade.One had told investigators about being sexually assaulted by Epstein when she initially resisted his advances during a massage.Another, then 21, testified before the grand jury about how Epstein had hired her when she was 16 to perform a sexual massage and how she had gone on to recruit other girls to do the same.”For every girl that I brought to the table, he would give me $200,” she said. They were mostly people she knew from high school, she said. “I also told them that if they are underage, just lie about it and tell him that you are 18.”The documents also contain a transcript of an interview Justice Department lawyers did more than a decade later with the U.S. attorney who oversaw the case, Alexander Acosta, about his ultimate decision not to bring federal charges.Acosta, who was labor secretary during Trump’s first term, cited concerns about whether a jury would believe Epstein’s accusers.He also said the Justice Department might have been more reluctant to make a federal prosecution out of a case that straddled the legal border between sex trafficking and soliciting prostitution, something more commonly handled by state prosecutors.”I’m not saying it was the right view,” Acosta added. He also said that the public today would likely view the survivors differently.”There’s been a lot of changes in victim shaming,” Acosta said.Associated Press journalists Ali Swenson, Christopher L. Keller, Aaron Kessler and Mike Catalini contributed to this report.

    NEW YORK (AP) —

    At least 16 files disappeared from the Justice Department’s public webpage for documents related to Jeffrey Epstein — including a photograph showing President Donald Trump — less than a day after they were posted, with no explanation from the government and no notice to the public.

    Related video above: Justice Department’s partial release of Epstein files frustrates lawmakers

    The missing files, which were available Friday and no longer accessible by Saturday, included images of paintings depicting nude women, and one showing a series of photographs along a credenza and in drawers. In that image, inside a drawer among other photos, was a photograph of Trump, alongside Epstein, Melania Trump and Epstein’s longtime associate Ghislaine Maxwell.

    The Justice Department didn’t answer questions Saturday about why the files disappeared but said in a post on X that “photos and other materials will continue being reviewed and redacted consistent with the law in an abundance of caution as we receive additional information.”

    Online, the unexplained missing files fueled speculation about what was taken down and why the public was not notified, compounding long-standing intrigue about Epstein and the powerful figures who surrounded him. Democrats on the House Oversight Committee pointed to the missing image featuring a Trump photo in a post on X, writing: “What else is being covered up? We need transparency for the American public.”

    The episode deepened concerns that had already emerged from the Justice Department’s much-anticipated document release. The tens of thousands of pages made public offered little new insight into Epstein’s crimes or the prosecutorial decisions that allowed him to avoid serious federal charges for years, while omitting some of the most closely watched materials, including FBI interviews with victims and internal Justice Department memos on charging decisions.

    Scant new insight in the initial disclosures

    Some of the most consequential records expected about Epstein are nowhere to be found in the Justice Department’s initial disclosures, which span tens of thousands of pages.

    Missing are FBI interviews with survivors and internal Justice Department memos examining charging decisions — records that could have helped explain how investigators viewed the case and why Epstein was allowed in 2008 to plead guilty to a relatively minor state-level prostitution charge.

    The gaps go further.

    The records, required to be released under a recent law passed by Congress, hardly reference several powerful figures long associated with Epstein, including Britain’s former Prince Andrew, renewing questions about who was scrutinized, who was not, and how much the disclosures truly advance public accountability

    Among the fresh nuggets: insight into the Justice Department’s decision to abandon an investigation into Epstein in the 2000s, which enabled him to plead guilty to that state-level charge, and a previously unseen 1996 complaint accusing Epstein of stealing photographs of children.

    The releases so far have been heavy on images of Epstein’s homes in New York City and the U.S. Virgin Islands, with some photos of celebrities and politicians.

    There was a series of never-before-seen photos of former President Bill Clinton, but fleetingly few of Trump. Both have been associated with Epstein, but both have since disowned those friendships. Neither has been accused of any wrongdoing in connection with Epstein, and there was no indication the photos played a role in the criminal cases brought against him.

    Despite a Friday deadline set by Congress to make everything public, the Justice Department said it plans to release records on a rolling basis. It blamed the delay on the time-consuming process of obscuring survivors’ names and other identifying information. The department has not given any notice when more records might arrive.

    That approach angered some Epstein accusers and members of Congress, who fought to pass the law forcing the department to act. Instead of marking the end of a yearslong battle for transparency, the document release Friday was merely the beginning of an indefinite wait for a complete picture of Epstein’s crimes and the steps taken to investigate them.

    “I feel like again the DOJ, the justice system is failing us,” said Marina Lacerda, who alleges Epstein started sexually abusing her at his New York City mansion when she was 14.

    Many of the long-anticipated records were redacted or lacked context

    Federal prosecutors in New York brought sex trafficking charges against Epstein in 2019, but he killed himself in jail after his arrest.

    The documents just made public were a sliver of potentially millions of pages of records in the department’s possession. In one example, Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche said Manhattan federal prosecutors had more than 3.6 million records from sex trafficking investigations into Epstein and Maxwell, though many duplicated material already turned over by the FBI.

    Many of the records released so far had been made public in court filings, congressional releases, or Freedom of Information Act requests, though, for the first time, they were all in one place and available for the public to search for free.

    Ones that were new were often lacking necessary context or heavily blacked out. A 119-page document marked “Grand Jury-NY,” likely from one of the federal sex trafficking investigations that led to the charges against Epstein in 2019 or Maxwell in 2021, was entirely blacked out.

    Trump’s Republican allies seized on the Clinton images, including photos of the Democrat with singers Michael Jackson and Diana Ross. There were also photos of Epstein with actors Chris Tucker and Kevin Spacey, and even Epstein with TV newscaster Walter Cronkite. But none of the photos had captions, and no explanation was given for why any of them were together.

    The meatiest records released so far showed that federal prosecutors had what appeared to be a strong case against Epstein in 2007, yet never charged him.

    Transcripts of grand jury proceedings, released publicly for the first time, included testimony from FBI agents who described interviews they had with several girls and young women who described being paid to perform sex acts for Epstein. The youngest was 14 and in ninth grade.

    One had told investigators about being sexually assaulted by Epstein when she initially resisted his advances during a massage.

    Another, then 21, testified before the grand jury about how Epstein had hired her when she was 16 to perform a sexual massage and how she had gone on to recruit other girls to do the same.

    “For every girl that I brought to the table, he would give me $200,” she said. They were mostly people she knew from high school, she said. “I also told them that if they are underage, just lie about it and tell him that you are 18.”

    The documents also contain a transcript of an interview Justice Department lawyers did more than a decade later with the U.S. attorney who oversaw the case, Alexander Acosta, about his ultimate decision not to bring federal charges.

    Acosta, who was labor secretary during Trump’s first term, cited concerns about whether a jury would believe Epstein’s accusers.

    He also said the Justice Department might have been more reluctant to make a federal prosecution out of a case that straddled the legal border between sex trafficking and soliciting prostitution, something more commonly handled by state prosecutors.

    “I’m not saying it was the right view,” Acosta added. He also said that the public today would likely view the survivors differently.

    “There’s been a lot of changes in victim shaming,” Acosta said.

    Associated Press journalists Ali Swenson, Christopher L. Keller, Aaron Kessler and Mike Catalini contributed to this report.

    [ad_2]

    Source link

  • At least 16 files have disappeared from the DOJ webpage for documents related to Jeffrey Epstein

    [ad_1]

    At least 16 files disappeared from the Justice Department’s public webpage for documents related to Jeffrey Epstein — including a photograph showing President Donald Trump — less than a day after they were posted, with no explanation from the government and no notice to the public.Related video above: Justice Department’s partial release of Epstein files frustrates lawmakersThe missing files, which were available Friday and no longer accessible by Saturday, included images of paintings depicting nude women, and one showing a series of photographs along a credenza and in drawers. In that image, inside a drawer among other photos, was a photograph of Trump, alongside Epstein, Melania Trump and Epstein’s longtime associate Ghislaine Maxwell.The Justice Department didn’t answer questions Saturday about why the files disappeared but said in a post on X that “photos and other materials will continue being reviewed and redacted consistent with the law in an abundance of caution as we receive additional information.”Online, the unexplained missing files fueled speculation about what was taken down and why the public was not notified, compounding long-standing intrigue about Epstein and the powerful figures who surrounded him. Democrats on the House Oversight Committee pointed to the missing image featuring a Trump photo in a post on X, writing: “What else is being covered up? We need transparency for the American public.”The episode deepened concerns that had already emerged from the Justice Department’s much-anticipated document release. The tens of thousands of pages made public offered little new insight into Epstein’s crimes or the prosecutorial decisions that allowed him to avoid serious federal charges for years, while omitting some of the most closely watched materials, including FBI interviews with victims and internal Justice Department memos on charging decisions.Scant new insight in the initial disclosuresSome of the most consequential records expected about Epstein are nowhere to be found in the Justice Department’s initial disclosures, which span tens of thousands of pages.Missing are FBI interviews with survivors and internal Justice Department memos examining charging decisions — records that could have helped explain how investigators viewed the case and why Epstein was allowed in 2008 to plead guilty to a relatively minor state-level prostitution charge.The gaps go further.The records, required to be released under a recent law passed by Congress, hardly reference several powerful figures long associated with Epstein, including Britain’s former Prince Andrew, renewing questions about who was scrutinized, who was not, and how much the disclosures truly advance public accountabilityAmong the fresh nuggets: insight into the Justice Department’s decision to abandon an investigation into Epstein in the 2000s, which enabled him to plead guilty to that state-level charge, and a previously unseen 1996 complaint accusing Epstein of stealing photographs of children.The releases so far have been heavy on images of Epstein’s homes in New York City and the U.S. Virgin Islands, with some photos of celebrities and politicians.There was a series of never-before-seen photos of former President Bill Clinton, but fleetingly few of Trump. Both have been associated with Epstein, but both have since disowned those friendships. Neither has been accused of any wrongdoing in connection with Epstein, and there was no indication the photos played a role in the criminal cases brought against him.Despite a Friday deadline set by Congress to make everything public, the Justice Department said it plans to release records on a rolling basis. It blamed the delay on the time-consuming process of obscuring survivors’ names and other identifying information. The department has not given any notice when more records might arrive.That approach angered some Epstein accusers and members of Congress, who fought to pass the law forcing the department to act. Instead of marking the end of a yearslong battle for transparency, the document release Friday was merely the beginning of an indefinite wait for a complete picture of Epstein’s crimes and the steps taken to investigate them.”I feel like again the DOJ, the justice system is failing us,” said Marina Lacerda, who alleges Epstein started sexually abusing her at his New York City mansion when she was 14.Many of the long-anticipated records were redacted or lacked contextFederal prosecutors in New York brought sex trafficking charges against Epstein in 2019, but he killed himself in jail after his arrest.The documents just made public were a sliver of potentially millions of pages of records in the department’s possession. In one example, Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche said Manhattan federal prosecutors had more than 3.6 million records from sex trafficking investigations into Epstein and Maxwell, though many duplicated material already turned over by the FBI.Many of the records released so far had been made public in court filings, congressional releases, or Freedom of Information Act requests, though, for the first time, they were all in one place and available for the public to search for free.Ones that were new were often lacking necessary context or heavily blacked out. A 119-page document marked “Grand Jury-NY,” likely from one of the federal sex trafficking investigations that led to the charges against Epstein in 2019 or Maxwell in 2021, was entirely blacked out.Trump’s Republican allies seized on the Clinton images, including photos of the Democrat with singers Michael Jackson and Diana Ross. There were also photos of Epstein with actors Chris Tucker and Kevin Spacey, and even Epstein with TV newscaster Walter Cronkite. But none of the photos had captions, and no explanation was given for why any of them were together.The meatiest records released so far showed that federal prosecutors had what appeared to be a strong case against Epstein in 2007, yet never charged him.Transcripts of grand jury proceedings, released publicly for the first time, included testimony from FBI agents who described interviews they had with several girls and young women who described being paid to perform sex acts for Epstein. The youngest was 14 and in ninth grade.One had told investigators about being sexually assaulted by Epstein when she initially resisted his advances during a massage.Another, then 21, testified before the grand jury about how Epstein had hired her when she was 16 to perform a sexual massage and how she had gone on to recruit other girls to do the same.”For every girl that I brought to the table, he would give me $200,” she said. They were mostly people she knew from high school, she said. “I also told them that if they are underage, just lie about it and tell him that you are 18.”The documents also contain a transcript of an interview Justice Department lawyers did more than a decade later with the U.S. attorney who oversaw the case, Alexander Acosta, about his ultimate decision not to bring federal charges.Acosta, who was labor secretary during Trump’s first term, cited concerns about whether a jury would believe Epstein’s accusers.He also said the Justice Department might have been more reluctant to make a federal prosecution out of a case that straddled the legal border between sex trafficking and soliciting prostitution, something more commonly handled by state prosecutors.”I’m not saying it was the right view,” Acosta added. He also said that the public today would likely view the survivors differently.”There’s been a lot of changes in victim shaming,” Acosta said.Associated Press journalists Ali Swenson, Christopher L. Keller, Aaron Kessler and Mike Catalini contributed to this report.

    NEW YORK (AP) —

    At least 16 files disappeared from the Justice Department’s public webpage for documents related to Jeffrey Epstein — including a photograph showing President Donald Trump — less than a day after they were posted, with no explanation from the government and no notice to the public.

    Related video above: Justice Department’s partial release of Epstein files frustrates lawmakers

    The missing files, which were available Friday and no longer accessible by Saturday, included images of paintings depicting nude women, and one showing a series of photographs along a credenza and in drawers. In that image, inside a drawer among other photos, was a photograph of Trump, alongside Epstein, Melania Trump and Epstein’s longtime associate Ghislaine Maxwell.

    The Justice Department didn’t answer questions Saturday about why the files disappeared but said in a post on X that “photos and other materials will continue being reviewed and redacted consistent with the law in an abundance of caution as we receive additional information.”

    Online, the unexplained missing files fueled speculation about what was taken down and why the public was not notified, compounding long-standing intrigue about Epstein and the powerful figures who surrounded him. Democrats on the House Oversight Committee pointed to the missing image featuring a Trump photo in a post on X, writing: “What else is being covered up? We need transparency for the American public.”

    The episode deepened concerns that had already emerged from the Justice Department’s much-anticipated document release. The tens of thousands of pages made public offered little new insight into Epstein’s crimes or the prosecutorial decisions that allowed him to avoid serious federal charges for years, while omitting some of the most closely watched materials, including FBI interviews with victims and internal Justice Department memos on charging decisions.

    Scant new insight in the initial disclosures

    Some of the most consequential records expected about Epstein are nowhere to be found in the Justice Department’s initial disclosures, which span tens of thousands of pages.

    Missing are FBI interviews with survivors and internal Justice Department memos examining charging decisions — records that could have helped explain how investigators viewed the case and why Epstein was allowed in 2008 to plead guilty to a relatively minor state-level prostitution charge.

    The gaps go further.

    The records, required to be released under a recent law passed by Congress, hardly reference several powerful figures long associated with Epstein, including Britain’s former Prince Andrew, renewing questions about who was scrutinized, who was not, and how much the disclosures truly advance public accountability

    Among the fresh nuggets: insight into the Justice Department’s decision to abandon an investigation into Epstein in the 2000s, which enabled him to plead guilty to that state-level charge, and a previously unseen 1996 complaint accusing Epstein of stealing photographs of children.

    The releases so far have been heavy on images of Epstein’s homes in New York City and the U.S. Virgin Islands, with some photos of celebrities and politicians.

    There was a series of never-before-seen photos of former President Bill Clinton, but fleetingly few of Trump. Both have been associated with Epstein, but both have since disowned those friendships. Neither has been accused of any wrongdoing in connection with Epstein, and there was no indication the photos played a role in the criminal cases brought against him.

    Despite a Friday deadline set by Congress to make everything public, the Justice Department said it plans to release records on a rolling basis. It blamed the delay on the time-consuming process of obscuring survivors’ names and other identifying information. The department has not given any notice when more records might arrive.

    That approach angered some Epstein accusers and members of Congress, who fought to pass the law forcing the department to act. Instead of marking the end of a yearslong battle for transparency, the document release Friday was merely the beginning of an indefinite wait for a complete picture of Epstein’s crimes and the steps taken to investigate them.

    “I feel like again the DOJ, the justice system is failing us,” said Marina Lacerda, who alleges Epstein started sexually abusing her at his New York City mansion when she was 14.

    Many of the long-anticipated records were redacted or lacked context

    Federal prosecutors in New York brought sex trafficking charges against Epstein in 2019, but he killed himself in jail after his arrest.

    The documents just made public were a sliver of potentially millions of pages of records in the department’s possession. In one example, Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche said Manhattan federal prosecutors had more than 3.6 million records from sex trafficking investigations into Epstein and Maxwell, though many duplicated material already turned over by the FBI.

    Many of the records released so far had been made public in court filings, congressional releases, or Freedom of Information Act requests, though, for the first time, they were all in one place and available for the public to search for free.

    Ones that were new were often lacking necessary context or heavily blacked out. A 119-page document marked “Grand Jury-NY,” likely from one of the federal sex trafficking investigations that led to the charges against Epstein in 2019 or Maxwell in 2021, was entirely blacked out.

    Trump’s Republican allies seized on the Clinton images, including photos of the Democrat with singers Michael Jackson and Diana Ross. There were also photos of Epstein with actors Chris Tucker and Kevin Spacey, and even Epstein with TV newscaster Walter Cronkite. But none of the photos had captions, and no explanation was given for why any of them were together.

    The meatiest records released so far showed that federal prosecutors had what appeared to be a strong case against Epstein in 2007, yet never charged him.

    Transcripts of grand jury proceedings, released publicly for the first time, included testimony from FBI agents who described interviews they had with several girls and young women who described being paid to perform sex acts for Epstein. The youngest was 14 and in ninth grade.

    One had told investigators about being sexually assaulted by Epstein when she initially resisted his advances during a massage.

    Another, then 21, testified before the grand jury about how Epstein had hired her when she was 16 to perform a sexual massage and how she had gone on to recruit other girls to do the same.

    “For every girl that I brought to the table, he would give me $200,” she said. They were mostly people she knew from high school, she said. “I also told them that if they are underage, just lie about it and tell him that you are 18.”

    The documents also contain a transcript of an interview Justice Department lawyers did more than a decade later with the U.S. attorney who oversaw the case, Alexander Acosta, about his ultimate decision not to bring federal charges.

    Acosta, who was labor secretary during Trump’s first term, cited concerns about whether a jury would believe Epstein’s accusers.

    He also said the Justice Department might have been more reluctant to make a federal prosecution out of a case that straddled the legal border between sex trafficking and soliciting prostitution, something more commonly handled by state prosecutors.

    “I’m not saying it was the right view,” Acosta added. He also said that the public today would likely view the survivors differently.

    “There’s been a lot of changes in victim shaming,” Acosta said.

    Associated Press journalists Ali Swenson, Christopher L. Keller, Aaron Kessler and Mike Catalini contributed to this report.

    [ad_2]

    Source link

  • A photo with Trump in it appears to have been removed from the partial Epstein files the Justice Department released | Fortune

    [ad_1]

    A photo featuring President Donald Trump that was included in one of the Justice Department files on the late sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein appears to have been removed online.

    Late Friday, the department published a trove of documents to meet a deadline mandated by an overwhelmingly bipartisan vote in Congress, though not all the Epstein files were released, and many that were made public have been heavily redacted.

    There was little mention of Trump in the text that was available, and White House officials highlighted photos of former President Bill Clinton.

    But an image of a desk with several pictures on it included one showing Trump’s face. It was originally listed as EFTA00000468, but it no longer appears on the list of “data set 1” files and is not accessible online anymore.

    “This photo, file 468, from the Epstein files that includes Donald Trump has apparently now been removed from the DOJ release,” Democrats on the House Oversight Committee pointed out in a post on X on Saturday. “@AGPamBondi is this true? What else is being covered up? We need transparency for the American public.”

    The Justice Department didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment. It said on X that it hasn’t redacted any names of politicians, pointing to comments from Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche.

    “The only redactions being applied to the documents are those required by law — full stop,” he said. “Consistent with the statute and applicable laws, we are not redacting the names of individuals or politicians unless they are a victim.”

    The administration’s failure to release all the files and the massive blackouts of many documents have already stirred outrage among congressional leaders of the effort to make them public.

    Rep. Ro Khanna, D-Calif., said Friday that the document dump doesn’t comply with the spirit or the letter of the law, and singled out one file from a New York grand jury where all 119 pages were blacked out.

    Later, he said he and Rep. Thomas Massie, R-Ky., have already started working on drafting articles of impeachment and inherent contempt against Attorney General Pam Bondi, though they haven’t decided yet whether to move forward.

    “Impeachment is a political decision and is there the support in the House of Representatives? I mean Massie and I aren’t going to just do something for the show of it,” Khanna told CNN.

    [ad_2]

    Jason Ma

    Source link

  • At least 16 files have disappeared from the DOJ webpage for documents related to Jeffrey Epstein

    [ad_1]

    At least 16 files disappeared from the Justice Department’s public webpage for documents related to Jeffrey Epstein — including a photograph showing President Donald Trump — less than a day after they were posted, with no explanation from the government and no notice to the public.

    The missing files, which were available Friday and no longer accessible by Saturday, included images of paintings depicting nude women, and one showing a series of photographs along a credenza and in drawers. In that image, inside a drawer among other photos, was a photograph of Trump, alongside Epstein, Melania Trump and Epstein’s longtime associate Ghislaine Maxwell.

    The Justice Department did not say why the files were removed or whether their disappearance was intentional. A spokesperson for the department did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

    Online, the unexplained missing files fueled speculation about what was taken down and why the public was not notified, compounding long-standing intrigue about Epstein and the powerful figures who surrounded him. Democrats on the House Oversight Committee pointed to the missing image featuring a Trump photo in a post on X, writing: “What else is being covered up? We need transparency for the American public.”

    The episode deepened concerns that had already emerged from the Justice Department’s much-anticipated document release. The tens of thousands of pages made public offered little new insight into Epstein’s crimes or the prosecutorial decisions that allowed him to avoid serious federal charges for years, while omitting some of the most closely watched materials, including FBI interviews with victims and internal Justice Department memos on charging decisions.

    Scant new insight in the initial disclosures

    Some of the most consequential records expected about Epstein are nowhere to be found in the Justice Department’s initial disclosures, which span tens of thousands of pages.

    Missing are FBI interviews with survivors and internal Justice Department memos examining charging decisions — records that could have helped explain how investigators viewed the case and why Epstein was allowed in 2008 to plead guilty to a relatively minor state-level prostitution charge.

    The gaps go further.

    The records, required to be released under a recent law passed by Congress, hardly reference several powerful figures long associated with Epstein, including Britain’s former Prince Andrew, renewing questions about who was scrutinized, who was not, and how much the disclosures truly advance public accountability.

    Among the fresh nuggets: insight into the Justice Department’s decision to abandon an investigation into Epstein in the 2000s, which enabled him to plead guilty to that state-level charge, and a previously unseen 1996 complaint accusing Epstein of stealing photographs of children.

    The releases so far have been heavy on images of Epstein’s homes in New York City and the U.S. Virgin Islands, with some photos of celebrities and politicians.

    There was a series of never-before-seen photos of former President Bill Clinton but fleetingly few of Trump. Both have been associated with Epstein, but both have since disowned those friendships. Neither has been accused of any wrongdoing in connection with Epstein and there was no indication the photos played a role in the criminal cases brought against him.

    Despite a Friday deadline set by Congress to make everything public, the Justice Department said it plans to release records on a rolling basis. It blamed the delay on the time-consuming process of obscuring survivors’ names and other identifying information. The department has not given any notice when more records might arrive.

    That approach angered some Epstein accusers and members of Congress who fought to pass the law forced the department to act. Instead of marking the end of a yearslong battle for transparency, the document release Friday was merely the beginning of an indefinite wait for a complete picture of Epstein’s crimes and the steps taken to investigate them.

    “I feel like again the DOJ, the justice system is failing us,” said Marina Lacerda, who alleges Epstein started sexually abusing her at his New York City mansion when she was 14.

    Many of the long-anticipated records were redacted or lacked context

    Federal prosecutors in New York brought sex trafficking charges against Epstein in 2019, but he killed himself in jail after his arrest.

    The documents just made public were a sliver of potentially millions of pages records in the department’s possession. In one example, Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche said Manhattan federal prosecutors had more than 3.6 million records from sex trafficking investigations into Epstein and Maxwell, though many duplicated material already turned over by the FBI.

    Many of the records released so far had been made public in court filings, congressional releases or freedom of information requests, though, for the first time, they were all in one place and available for the public to search for free.

    Ones that were new were often lacking necessary context or heavily blacked out. A 119-page document marked “Grand Jury-NY,” likely from one of the federal sex trafficking investigations that led to the charges against Epstein in 2019 or Maxwell in 2021, was entirely blacked out.

    Trump’s Republican allies seized on the Clinton images, including photos of the Democrat with singers Michael Jackson and Diana Ross. There were also photos of Epstein with actors Chris Tucker and Kevin Spacey, and even Epstein with TV newscaster Walter Cronkite. But none of the photos had captions and was no explanation given for why any of them were together.

    The meatiest records released so far showed that federal prosecutors had what appeared to be a strong case against Epstein in 2007 yet never charged him.

    Transcripts of grand jury proceedings, released publicly for the first time, included testimony from FBI agents who described interviews they had with several girls and young women who described being paid to perform sex acts for Epstein. The youngest was 14 and in ninth grade.

    One had told investigators about being sexually assaulted by Epstein when she initially resisted his advances during a massage.

    Another, then 21, testified before the grand jury about how Epstein had hired her when she was 16 to perform a sexual massage and how she had gone on to recruit other girls to do the same.

    “For every girl that I brought to the table he would give me $200,” she said. They were mostly people she knew from high school, she said. “I also told them that if they are under age, just lie about it and tell him that you are 18.”

    The documents also contain a transcript of an interview Justice Department lawyers did more than a decade later with the U.S. attorney who oversaw the case, Alexander Acosta, about his ultimate decision not to bring federal charges.

    Acosta, who was labor secretary during Trump’s first term, cited concerns about whether a jury would believe Epstein’s accusers.

    He also said the Justice Department might have been more reluctant to make a federal prosecution out of a case that straddled the legal border between sex trafficking and soliciting prostitution, something more commonly handled by state prosecutors.

    “I’m not saying it was the right view,” Acosta added. He also said that the public today would likely view the survivors differently.

    “There’s been a lot of changes in victim shaming,” Acosta said.

    ___

    Associated Press journalists Ali Swenson, Christopher L. Keller, Aaron Kessler and Mike Catalini contributed to this report.

    [ad_2]

    Michael R. Sisak and David B. Caruso | The Associated Press

    Source link

  • Here’s Who’s In the Epstein Files

    [ad_1]

    Many familiar faces and names are mentioned or pictured in the redacted documents, among them former President Bill Clinton, Rolling Stones frontman Mick Jagger, Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor (formerly known as Prince Andrew, until he was recently stripped of his royal titles in connection with the Epstein scandal), and even Winnie the Pooh and Piglet (one victim claimed that Epstein took her to Disneyland, and photos are included in the data dump).

    Michael Jackson, Bill Clinton and Diana Ross.Department of Justice.

    Image may contain Jeffrey Epstein Face Head Person Photography Portrait Toy Adult Accessories Glasses and Clothing

    Jeffery EpsteinDepartment of Justice.

    [ad_2]

    Kase Wickman

    Source link

  • Epstein files top takeaways: No bombshells or client lists, but some celebrity cameos

    [ad_1]

    The Justice Department on Friday released thousands of documents from its files on the late sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, but the massive document release was heavily redacted, incomplete and shed little new light on his crimes.

    It did, however, contain some celebrity cameos.

    Here’s a look at what is — and what is not — in the “Epstein files” so far.

    Many of the files had already been released

    Many of the materials that were released had been made public through various lawsuits and court filings, including the reports from the Palm Beach police that led to the initial state criminal probe in 2005. Some records were also previously released as part of the House Oversight Committee investigation into the Epstein case.

    Among the documents released were already public filings from the criminal cases against Epstein and his co-conspirator Ghislaine Maxwell, including filings from Maxwell’s appeal for her conviction and 20-year prison sentence on sex trafficking charges. It also includes various civil complaints filed against Epstein over the years.

    But not all of it was old news. One of the files released was Maria Farmer’s 1996 complaint to the FBI alleging Epstein stole photos she had taken of her 12 and 16-year-old sisters and sold them. She sued the federal government earlier this year in federal court over alleged failures to protect her and other Epstein victims.

    Farmer said in a statement Friday, “I feel redeemed.”

    Her legal team said in a news release that the document “proves that if the FBI had simply done its job in 1996, Epstein’s decades-long sex trafficking operation could have been stopped at the outset.”

    Farmer’s suit is still pending and the government has yet to file a response to her allegations.

    Lots of records are still missing

    The Epstein Files Transparency Act gave the attorney general 30 days to “make publicly available in a searchable and downloadable format all unclassified records, documents, communications, and investigative materials in the possession of the Department of Justice” involving Epstein, “including all investigations, prosecutions, or custodial matters.”

    That clock ran out Friday, and Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche acknowledged that the release was several hundred thousand pages short of “all” and that it could take a “couple of weeks” for the rest to come to light.

    He attributed the delay to the need to redact information about the victims. “What we’re doing is we are looking at every single piece of paper that we are going to produce, making sure that every victim — their name, their identity, their story — to the extent it needs to be protected, is completely protected,” he told Fox News.

    The law’s co-author, Rep. Ro Khanna, D-Calif., said the department needs to give a detailed timeline on when those documents will be released, and also noted that some documents appeared to be overly redacted.

    “Some of the documents I’ve just been scanning them have very heavy redactions,” Khanna said, and under the law, “they owe the Congress and the American public an explanation for every redaction.”

    Khanna’s co-author, Rep. Thomas Massie, R-Ky., said in a video on X Thursday that he’d been told by victims’ lawyers that “there are at least 20 names of men who are accused of sex crimes in the possession of the FBI,” but no such names were evident in the release.

    Few mentions of Trump in the DOJ release

    President Donald Trump’s past friendship with Epstein is well known — and his chief of staff Susie Wiles told Vanity Fair that he appears in the files— but there were only a few passing mentions of him in the documents released Friday.

    Trump has said he had a falling out with Epstein before he ever faced criminal charges, and has not been accused of any wrongdoing.

    Wiles told Vanity Fair that Trump was in the files but he’s “not doing anything awful.” She said he and Epstein had been “young, single playboys together.”

    In a statement following the DOJ release, the White House said, “The Trump Administration is the most transparent in history. By releasing thousands of pages of documents, cooperating with the House Oversight Committee’s subpoena request, and President Trump recently calling for further investigations into Epstein’s Democrat friends, the Trump Administration has done more for the victims than Democrats ever have.”

    Bill Clinton makes numerous appearances

    Former President Bill Clinton, however, made numerous appearances in photographs that were released with the files. In one, he’s standing with Epstein as they smile while looking at something that’s not shown in the photo. In another, he’s in a hot tub. In a third, he’s photographed swimming in a pool with Maxwell.

    In two others, Clinton is shown with his arm around a woman whose face is blacked out, and in a third, he’s shown sitting at a table with a woman sitting on his leg.

    The pictures are undated and it’s unclear where they were taken. Clinton traveled on Epstein’s plane four times in 2002 and 2003 on trips for his Clinton Foundation, according to his spokesperson, Angel Ureña.

    Trump has called on Attorney General Pam Bondi to investigate Clinton’s ties to Epstein, although the former president has not been accused of any wrongdoing. Nothing in the photos suggests any wrongdoing.

    Ureña said in a post on X that the “White House hasn’t been hiding these files for months only to dump them late on a Friday to protect Bill Clinton. This is about shielding themselves from what comes next, or from what they’ll try and hide forever. So they can release as many grainy 20-plus-year-old photos as they want, but this isn’t about Bill Clinton. Never has, never will be.”

    Wiles told Vanity Fair that “the president was wrong” to suggest that there was anything incriminating about Clinton in the Epstein records.

    More celebrity sightings

    Clinton wasn’t the only well-known person whose picture appeared in the files. Appearing with the former president in another picture was Rolling Stones frontman Mick Jagger, with a woman whose face is blacked out standing between them.

    A representative for Jagger did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

    In another shot, Epstein was photographed standing next to the late pop star Michael Jackson, in front of a painting of a naked woman reading on the beach.

    Others showed actor Kevin Spacey standing with Epstein. None of the photos are dated, so it’s unclear when or where any of them are from. Spacey told journalist Piers Morgan last year that he traveled on Epstein’s plane as part of a humanitarian mission with the Clinton Foundation but that “he never spent time with him.”

    A representative for Spacey did not immediately respond to a request for comment. In a post on X earlier this year, Spacey wrote, “Release the Epstein files. All of them. For those of us with nothing to fear, the truth can’t come soon enough.”

    Nothing in the photos suggests any wrongdoing by any other figure. In a letter to Congress on Friday, Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche said that the records “did not reveal credible evidence that Epstein blackmailed prominent individuals, nor did it uncover evidence that could predicate an investigation against uncharged third parties.”

    Hayley Walker, Chloe Atkins, Gary Grumbach , Brennan Leach, Justin Goldman, Daisy Conant, Maya Rosenberg, Tom Winter and Michael Kosnar contributed.

    President Donald Trump was asked about a possible pardon for Ghislaine Maxwell after the Supreme Court rejected the appeal of her criminal conviction.

    [ad_2]

    Dareh Gregorian | NBC News

    Source link