Dec.24

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DoJ Drops another Tranche of Epstein Files

The Department of Justice drip, drip, dripped another set of Epstein files late on Monday—a group of more than 11,000 files, totaling about 30,000 pages. The website the DoJ put together to share the files is here, but it is poorly organized and is not indexed, which are presumably both features, not bugs. CBS News has put together a much more accessible database here.

Here's a list of the most important storylines/takeaways resulting from the second dump:

• Incompetence, Thy Name Is Bondi: The DoJ, which has ostensibly been burning the midnight oil to get this done, is guilty of at least two utterly embarrassing screw-ups. The first is that some of the victims' names are not properly redacted, such that their identities are now publicly known. This actually violates the law passed by Congress, which requires the victims' names to be kept hidden. The second screw-up is that at least some of the redactions were done in a hacky way, such that it's possible to recover the text and read it. That includes some mentions of Donald Trump that were apparently not meant to see the light of day.
  
  
• De Plane, De Plane: Speaking of Trump, his name appears a lot more in Drop 2.0 than it did in Drop 1.0. Most obviously, there is an e-mail making clear that Trump traveled on Epstein's plane a lot more than was previously known, and that Ghislaine Maxwell was along for the ride, much of the time.
  
  
• O! What a Tangled Web We Weave!: Speaking of lies, "Attorney General" Pam Bondi and FBI Director Kash Patel both decreed that there were only two conspirators here, and those two were Epstein and Maxwell, end of story. That was obviously a lie, and now we have proof, as numerous law-enforcement communications refer to a somewhat lengthy list of co-conspirators (at least 10 of them). You can see examples of those numerous communications here and here. Who are those co-conspirators, and why did Bondi and Patel try to hide their existence? Was one of them, perhaps, a friend of Epstein with initials DJT? Inquiring minds want to know.
  
  
• Oh, A!: Speaking of initials, numerous documents refer to a "member of the British royal family" whose name begins with "A." Undoubtedly, this is Queen Anne, who reigned from 1702-07, and whose activities during the War of the Spanish Succession have always left us with lots of questions and few answers.
  
  Well, OK, it might also be the former Prince Andrew, now known as Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor, who is already deeply implicated in Epstein's crimes, and who lives in a country where they actually punish sexual predators, no matter how high-ranking they might be. We presume that the attention paid to "A." yesterday was because his presence all over the documents affirms their legitimacy, and also suggests that other people who appear as regularly as he does might well be guilty of similar crimes. You know, like "presidents whose name begins with T."? That's right, we're on to you, Harry S. Truman.
  
  
• Fake News: One of the documents that appeared in the second release, before quickly disappearing, was a "letter" from Jeffrey Epstein to convicted child molester Dr. Larry Nassar, in which Epstein ostensibly wrote "Our president shares our love of young, nubile girls..." There's actually more to the quote, but it's not great for a family-friendly site. Just hours after the letter was released, the FBI declared it to be a fake, which is why it was removed.
  
  We believe it was a fake, because it's way too ham-fisted and obvious, and because the postmark on the letter was from Virginia, and was 3 days after Epstein died in New York. We also believe that "Oops! This shouldn't have been in there!" was a stunt perpetrated by the FBI, or someone else in the administration, so as to put the idea out there, "You know, ANY of these records could be phony." And, just in case anyone missed that message, the DoJ posted a note to eX-Twitter shortly thereafter that says: "Some of these documents contain untrue and sensationalist claims made against President 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 Trump already."
  
  
• Donald Trump, Rapist: While we do not believe that Larry Nassar and Jeffrey Epstein had conversations about Trump's interest in young and nubile girls, we do think that an FBI report made on October 27, 2020, is credible. It's from a limousine driver who says that, in 1999, he overheard his female passenger on the phone, talking about how both Trump and Epstein had raped her. We already know Trump is a rapist, of course, thanks to E. Jean Carroll, and this is not a crime that people tend to commit only once. Incidentally, the woman whose conversation formed the basis of that report was found dead under mysterious circumstances; her death was deemed a suicide.
  
  
• Dead Canary: Another FBI Report, this one from 2023, is courtesy of Jeffrey Epstein's brother Mark. Mark says that his brother was about to name names, and was killed in order to keep him silent. We do not know what evidence Mark has for this, or if he has any at all, but this is certainly going to be fuel for the conspiracy theorists.
  
  
• ClintonWater: The first document release had a lot of Bill Clinton material, and the second one added to that. The general goal was to convince people that the real bad guy is the 42nd president, not the 45th/47th president. The problem here is that Clinton is a smart guy and a shrewd political operator. So, a Clinton spokesperson held a press conference, and said: "What the Department of Justice has released so far, and the manner in which it did so, makes one thing clear: someone or something is being protected. We do not know whom, what or why. But we do know this: We need no such protection." That's about as good a response as is possible under these circumstances.

We must say, we are not entirely sure what the administration's strategy is. Our best guess is that they are going to release enough documents so that Bondi can say "See! We did what Congress told us to do!", and they are primarily going to do so over the holidays, in an attempt to bury the story. It would appear that casting doubt on the documents, by claiming some/many of them are fake, is also part of the plan.

Maybe that will serve to bring an end to this story, but we doubt it. The DoJ is still on pace to release just a small fraction of the overall total and that, plus the overall clumsiness of the DoJ, and its obvious partisan interest here, have countless people across the political spectrum asking "Who are they protecting?" That is not a question that the White House wants people asking, we would imagine. (Z)