Dems sending Trump a 'veiled message' with slow drip of damning Epstein photos: attorney

President Donald Trump's administration has just one more week under a statutory deadline to release all remaining evidence about convicted sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein. And Democrats may be using Friday's release of new photos of Trump and Epstein as a way of sending a message to the administration.

That's according to criminal defense attorney Stacy Schneider, who told CNN on Friday that the photos suggest that Democrats on the House Oversight Committee may have some damning photos they're keeping under wraps as a safety measure. Democrats released several dozen photos on Friday, though they represent just a small sample of the approximately 95,000 photos the committee received via a subpoena to Epstein's estate.

Schneider noted that the mere existence of photos of people posing with Epstein doesn't suggest criminal activity, and that none of the people seen in the photos have been charged with crimes. She added, however, that Democrats could be sitting on a trove of photographic evidence that they would release if the Trump administration is not forthcoming enough in next week's expected release of the full Epstein files.

"I believe that the House Oversight Committee was sending a message to the administration, to [Attorney General] Pam Bondi and to the Justice Department, that we've got a stash of evidence and information that we know exists," she said. "And if you play funny business in releasing these files and taking advantage or over-advantage of all those loopholes that they were given in the law to release the files — and not telling the public what's really in there — we have it on this side, on the other side of the other subpoena."

"I think it was a subliminal message, or a veiled message, that we're watching you, and we want to make sure you do the right thing by the public," she added.

Under the Epstein Files Transparency Act, which Trump signed into law in November, the DOJ is compelled to release all remaining evidence from Epstein's two federal criminal investigations from 2008 and 2019 within 30 days, which would be on December 19. However, the law allows Bondi to not only redact victims' names to protect their identities, but gives her final discretion over what to keep under wraps in the name of not jeopardizing ongoing investigations.

The DOJ spent more than $1 million on overtime pay earlier this year for federal agents to comb through the Epstein files, and to flag any mentions of Trump. Epstein's brother, Mark (who has not been implicated in his deceased brother's crimes), said he heard from a "pretty good source" that the FBI was "sanitizing" the Epstein files at a facility in Virginia in anticipation of the files eventually being made public.

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