Shocker: Department Of Justice Couldn’t Even Properly Redact The Epstein Files
The Trump administration continues to find new and inventive ways to reveal its absolute incompetence. It’s only been five days, and the long-awaited release of the Epstein files has been a saga. There was widespread outrage when the Department of Justice initially released the documents, with most pages completely blacked out. Of course, this is the Trump administration, and intrepid sleuths quickly discovered that the DOJ had not properly redacted many of the documents.
It’s so comforting knowing these are the people in charge of guarding the nation’s secrets and keeping us all safe.
According to the Guardian, folks more computer-savvy than I am discovered that some of the documents could be unredacted simply by copying and pasting them into a word processor or using Photoshop. This seems to reveal that the DOJ hastily tried to redact the files ahead of their Congressionally mandated release. The improperly redacted files didn’t contain any revelations about any impropriety related to President Donald Trump, though they did reveal details of the financial transactions that facilitated Jeffrey Epstein’s sex trafficking and child abuse.
“Defendants also attempted to conceal their criminal sex trafficking and abuse, conduct by paying large sums of money to participant-witnesses, including by paying for their attorneys’ fees and case costs in litigation related to this conduct,” one of the unredacted passages reads.
“Epstein also threatened harm to victims and helped release damaging stories about them to damage their credibility when they tried to go public with their stories of being trafficked and sexually abused. Epstein also instructed one or more Epstein Enterprise participant-witnesses to destroy evidence relevant to ongoing court proceedings involving Defendants’ criminal sex trafficking and abuse conduct.”
According to NBC News, the Epstein files included an email sent from the former Prince Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor to Epstein’s confidant Ghislane Maxwell, where he inquires if she’s found him “some new inappropriate friends.”
“Let me know when you are coming over as I am free from 25th August until 2nd Sept and want to go somewhere hot and sunny with some fun people before having to put my nose firmly to the grindstone for the Fall,” the email reads, concluding with, “See ya A xxx.” Mountbatten-Windsor was stripped of his British titles of Prince and Duke of York because of his relationship with Epstein.
Another revelation concerns a civil case in the Virgin Islands against Darren K. Indyke and Richard D. Kahn, two executors of Epstein’s estate.
From the Guardian:
The exhibit was the second amended complaint in the state case against Indyke and Kahn.
In section 85, the redacted portion states: “Between September 2015 and June 2019, Indyke signed (FAC) for over $400,000 made payable to young female models and actresses, including a former Russian model who received over $380,000 through monthly payments of $8,333 made over a period of more than three and a half years until the middle of 2019.”
Prosecutors in the Virgin Islands settled its civil sex-trafficking case against Epstein’s estate, Indyke and Kahn in 2022 for $105m, plus one half of the proceeds from the sale of Little St James, the island on which Epstein resided and on which many of his crimes occurred. The justice department press release announcing the settlement did not include an admission of liability.
Indyke, an attorney who represented Epstein for decades, has not been criminally indicted by federal authorities.
Indyke was hired by the Parlatore Law Group in 2022. Why is that worth noting? Well, the Parlatore Law Group represents Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, and they also represented President Donald Trump during his case regarding classified government documents he stored at Mar-a-Lago.
To paraphrase Pulitzer Prize winner Kendrick Lamar: Indyke got a weird case. Why is he around?
The DOJ has been quick to run defense for President Donald Trump, whose name does appear several times throughout the documents, with one of Epstein’s leaked emails alleging that Trump was using his mouth to blow more than hot air.
“The Department of Justice has officially released nearly 30,000 more pages of documents related to Jeffrey Epstein. Some of these documents contain untrue and sensationalist claims made against President Donald Trump that were submitted to the FBI right before the 2020 election. To be clear: the claims are unfounded and false, and if they had a shred of credibility, they certainly would have been weaponized against President Donald Trump already,” it said on X.
If you can’t tell, the DOJ’s handling of the Epstein files release has been a shitshow. In addition to many pages being completely blacked out, the DOJ also removed several documents from its site that it released last Friday. One of the documents that was removed from the Epstein library was a photo of President Donald Trump. While the photo didn’t seem to showcase any impropriety, it’s still incredibly suspicious that it was removed from the site.
For a group of people prone to believing and promoting conspiracy theories, they sure are moving in a way that can only be perceived as conspiratorial. If Trump truly has nothing to hide, then why hide a picture of him? I guess you can only rail against the deep state for so long until you become the deep state.
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