The Division of Justice started releasing its recordsdata on Friday on the late pedophile Jeffrey Epstein. Many paperwork, which embrace interview transcripts and name logs, have been closely redacted.
SCOTT SIMON, HOST:
The Justice Division has launched recordsdata regarding the life, dying and prison investigation into Jeffrey Epstein – nicely, at the very least a few of them. The legislation signed by President Trump final month had directed the DOJ to show over the paperwork by Friday. NPR’s Stephen Fowler has been reviewing the recordsdata and joins us. Stephen, thanks for being with us.
STEPHEN FOWLER, BYLINE: Good morning.
SIMON: What precisely was launched?
FOWLER: Effectively, on the floor, it certain seemed like rather a lot. Justice.gov/epstein went stay round 4 p.m. And there was a queue you needed to wait in earlier than accessing the web page. The Epstein library contained nicely over 100,000 pages of court docket data, Freedom of Info Act recordsdata, memoranda from the Justice Division and movies from exterior Epstein’s federal jail cell, the place he died by suicide in 2019, and paperwork that the Epstein Information Transparency Act, signed into legislation final month, compelled the Justice Division handy over.
SIMON: Seems like there’s extra to the story.
FOWLER: Effectively, yeah. It is not all of the recordsdata. And within the grand scheme of what was launched, there aren’t that many issues which are really new, Scott. Notably, there aren’t many mentions of the president on this newest launch. He was a longtime good friend of Epstein earlier than that they had a falling out and has appeared in beforehand launched recordsdata. Eighty p.c of it comes from public court docket data from greater than 50 circumstances in opposition to Epstein, his confederate Ghislaine Maxwell and others. There’s about 4,000 recordsdata, 8,500 pages, that fall underneath this new Transparency Act. Most of these are images of Epstein’s property and his travels with individuals like former President Invoice Clinton, amongst others. And there is this beforehand undisclosed FBI report from 1996 – 30 years in the past – that accused Epstein of kid pornography crimes and allegedly threatened to burn the accuser’s home down if she advised anybody about it. Even then, there are lots of of pages, simply straight-up redacted black containers throughout issues like grand jury info that do depart quite a lot of questions.
SIMON: The legislation directed the Justice Division to launch all of their recordsdata by yesterday. That apparently did not occur. What did division officers say?
FOWLER: The DOJ says its overview of the recordsdata discovered greater than 1,200 victims and households and wrote in a separate court docket submitting Friday that redactions embrace individuals who might not really be victims, as they err on the aspect of what they are saying is perhaps seen as an over-redaction, taking out greater than could also be required by legislation out of an abundance of warning. This might additionally clarify why there will probably be multiple launch of paperwork. On Friday evening, there have been extra recordsdata that had been uploaded.
SIMON: What’s been the response from members of Congress?
FOWLER: Not all of them are pleased. Keep in mind, this was a close to unanimous legislation that was handed by means of Congress. Democratic Consultant Ro Khanna of California, who cosponsored the Epstein Information Transparency Act, advised All Issues Thought of yesterday that the launched recordsdata weren’t what he anticipated or wished. He says there’s too many redactions and lacking info altogether. This is an instance.
RO KHANNA: There is a draft indictment of the primary Jeffrey Epstein case that basically implicates different wealthy and highly effective males who knew concerning the abuse or participated in it. That indictment ought to be launched.
FOWLER: His Republican cosponsor, Thomas Massie of Kentucky, mentioned that impeachment may very well be on the desk for officers concerned, although Congress is out of session for some time over the vacations.
SIMON: Stephen, what can we anticipate to occur now?
FOWLER: Like Khanna mentioned, it is notable the entire issues that are not within the recordsdata which have been launched and that some individuals assume won’t ever be. There’s an FBI memo from over the summer season that mentioned about 300 gigabytes of proof is of their possession. And the best way President Trump has dealt with this by fanning flames of conspiracy on the marketing campaign path, then attacking his supporters for desirous to know extra as soon as he took workplace has mainly made it the place no one is about to be happy with the data that’s and may very well be put on the market.
SIMON: NPR’s Stephen Fowler. Thanks a lot.
FOWLER: Thanks.
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