After the release of a partial trove of documents from the late convicted sex offender’s case, which contained heavily redacted pages and blacked-out photos, victims of Jeffrey , Epstein have criticized the US government.
At least 16 files from the tranche, which were published online, have vanished from the public website, according to US media reports on Saturday.
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A photo of President Donald Trump was included in the deleted files.
In response to a law that was overwhelmingly passed by Congress in November that mandated the release of all Epstein files, despite Trump’s months-long effort to keep them sealed, the Department of Justice (DOJ) began making the trove public on Friday.
It blamed the delay on what it claimed was a time-consuming process of concealing survivors’ names and other identifying information and said it plans to release more records on a rolling basis.
However, the tens of thousands of pages that were made public did not provide any fresh information about Epstein’s crimes or the prosecution decisions that had allowed him to avoid serious federal charges for years. Additionally, they omitted some of the most closely watched sources, including internal DOJ memos on charging decisions and FBI interviews with victims.
A 119-page document with the title “Grand Jury-NY,” which is thought to have been the result of one of the federal sex trafficking investigations that led to the Epsteinsteinstein accusations in 2019, was completely blacked out.
Marina Lacerda, one of Epstein’s victims, reacted furiously to the numerous redactions and unreleased documents.
She told MS NOW on Saturday, “All of us are enraged by this.” It’s yet another insult to the face. We had high hopes for more.
In the 2019 investigation that led to the filing of sex trafficking charges against the late financier, Lacerda claimed that Epstein abused her when she was 14 years old.
Epstein committed suicide shortly after being arrested that year.
In a separate interview, Lacerda claimed she felt let down by The New York Times.
She claimed that “many of the photos are irrelevant.”
Jess Michaels, a second survivor, claimed to have spent hours looking through the victim’s statements and records of her call to an FBI tipline, but neither one of them came up for public view.
She continued, “I can’t find any of those.” Is this the government’s best course of action? Even a law passed by Congress doesn’t serve our needs.
Marijke Chartouni, who claimed Epstein abused her when she was 20 years old, lashed out for being uninformed.
Where is the transparency if everything has been redacted? She stated in an interview with The New York Times on Friday.
Some lawmakers expressed their dismay as well.
In a social media post on Friday, Republican Representative Thomas Massie, who helped to spearhead the legislative push, claimed that the White House “failed to comply with both the spirit and the letter of the law that Donald Trump signed just 30 days ago.”
The government’s case file had only been allowed by legal and victim privacy concerns to be made public by Friday under that law.
Meanwhile, the 16 mysterious missing files, which have heightened public rumors about what was done, and why no one was informed, have added to Epstein’s and the powerful people who lived nearby.
Democrats from the House Oversight Committee wrote in response to the missing image, which appears in a post on X, saying, “What else is being covered up? The American public needs transparency, too.
Chuck Schumer, a senior Democrat, said, “Just imagine how much more they’re trying to hide this.” One of the biggest cover-ups in American history might be this.
However, the Trump administration denied that the materials had been made available. There was no “to hold anything back” being made, according to deputy attorney general Todd Blanche, who spoke with ABC on television.
Late on Saturday, the DOJ released a statement about X. As more details become available, “Photos and other materials will continue to be reviewed and redacted in accordance with the law in an abundance of caution,” it said.
Former president Bill Clinton, late news anchor Walter Cronkite, singer Mick Jagger, Michael Jackson, and Diana Ross, British entrepreneur Richard Branson, and Sarah Ferguson, the former Duchess of York, are just a few of the celebrities who have appeared in photos that were made public as part of Friday’s release.
Chris Tucker and Kevin Spacey were also photographed with Epstein.
None of those individuals have been charged with any wrongdoing in connection with Epstein, and many of the photos were provided without context and without date.
In a photo, Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor is seen stumbling over several women’s laps. The former duke of York has denied any wrongdoing and was stripped of his royal crown as a result of his ties to Epstein.
Despite being frequently mentioned in earlier Epstein-related documents, Trump himself was not made any mention. In the 1990s and the early 2000s, Trump and Epstein had a disagreement before Epstein was found guilty of first-degree murder in 2008.
Trump has denied knowing about Epstein’s crimes and has not been charged with any wrongdoing.
Two agency spokespeople posted on social media images that they claimed showed him with Epstein victims in response to the outcry from the DOJ.
Angel Urena, Clinton’s deputy chief of staff, claimed in a statement that the White House was trying to “shield themselves” from scrutiny by focusing on the former president.
