“I went over there, and I was able to determine, at least I believe, that there were tons of completely unnecessary redactions, in addition to the failure to redact the names of victims, and so that was troubling to us,” Raskin told reporters.
He accused the justice department of being “in a cover-up mode” and breaking the law.
“They violated that precept by releasing the names of a lot of victims, which is either spectacular incompetence and sloppiness on their part, or, as a lot of the survivors believe, a deliberate threat to other survivors who are thinking about coming forward, that they need to be careful because they can be exposed and have their personal information dragged through the mud as well,” Raskin said.
The justice department has released a total of about 3.5m files related to Epstein, and Raskin said there were around 3m more awaiting release.
Another redacted document Raskin said he saw in full was an email Epstein had sent to his associate Ghislaine Maxwell, which contained an account from his lawyers of a conversation with attorneys representing Trump that occurred around 2009.
Trump was quoted in it as saying that while Epstein was never a member of his Mar-a-Lago club, he had been a guest and was never asked to leave, which would contradict statements from the president that he had at one point barred him from his Florida property.
Oh no you're exactly right. Best I can tell it's straight up "We'll give you transparency," but in a way that's basically entirely unactionable by the members of Congress. Even if a dozen members go in and say they saw something in the files that contradicts the narrative, the regime will just say they're lying and fight any subpoena for the files.
Until Congress starts actually impeaching and removing people for this, it's basically nothing as far as I can tell. Unless I'm missing something huge here.