Phoenix: If the Epstein files were supposed to be a bombshell, it was a bomb that failed to detonate – at least, not in the expected way.
The US Department of Justice began on Saturday (AEDT) to release thousands of documents relating to its investigations into convicted sex offender and his girlfriend/accomplice Ghislaine Maxwell.
Jeffrey Epstein contemplates a cake in the shape of women’s breasts in a newly released photograph.Credit: US Department of Justice
But rather than a smoking gun that would embarrass or incriminate Epstein’s old friend Donald Trump, the day ended with Democrats threatening to impeach or prosecute Attorney-General Pam Bondi and her underlings for failing to deliver the expected goods.
The trove of documents was light on new material. There were many photographs – especially of former Democratic president Bill Clinton hanging out with Epstein back in the day – but not a lot of the material that Epstein’s victims and their allies were hoping for.
What people really wanted to see were grand jury transcripts, internal FBI memos and documents that might identify co-conspirators who aided or took part in the abuse of girls.
Such documents were rare, and when they appeared, they were mostly or wholly redacted. One file consisted of 100 pages that were all fully blacked out. So were the faces of many women in the photographs, other than Maxwell.
Pages from a totally redacted New York grand jury file into Jeffrey Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell, released on Friday.Credit: AP
Yes, the Justice Department was protecting the identities of victims. And yes, it only had 30 days to make redactions on hundreds of thousands of pages. But the result feels wholly unsatisfactory.
It also means the Epstein saga will continue to dog Trump. The DoJ might be trying to comply with the law in good faith. But rightly or wrongly, the notion that something is being covered up here will persist.
It was only in the hours before the deadline that the Trump administration admitted it was not going to release all the Epstein files on Saturday, the legal deadline.
Deputy attorney-general Todd Blanche went on Fox News to say that while “several hundred thousand” files would be made public, there would be several hundred thousand more released over the next two weeks – the Christmas and New Year’s break.
Donald Trump leaves the White House on Friday for a rally in North Carolina, before heading to his Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida.Credit: AP
Pretty convenient timing. Trump headed to his Mar-a-Lago resort on Friday night, where he is expected to stay for two weeks, far away from the Washington press pack and any annoying Epstein questions.
There was surprisingly (or perhaps unsurprisingly) very little of Trump in the files released on Saturday. That is despite the two men sharing a close friendship throughout the 1990s and into the early 2000s, though they fell out at some point around the middle of that decade.
Instead, we got a stack of pictures of Clinton – including one image of a shirtless Bill in a hot tub with a woman whose face was blacked out – and some images showing Michael Jackson, Mick Jagger and other celebs hanging out with Epstein.
Bill Clinton in a hot tub with an unknown person.Credit: AP
Prince Andrew – now Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor – lies across several women in a newly released photograph.Credit: US Department of Justice
In one photo, the then Prince Andrew – now stripped of his royal titles thanks to his association with Epstein – was lying across the laps of no less than five women, with Maxwell standing behind them. Titillating, but all things told, more of the same.
Perhaps the most significant new document was a humble, one-page FBI note from September 1996. It was the log of a complaint by a woman who alleged Epstein had stolen nude photographs she had taken of her younger sisters, then aged 16 and 12, and threatened to burn her house down if she told anyone about it.
The name of the complainant was redacted, but we know it to be Maria Farmer, an artist who had worked for Epstein in the ’90s. For a long time, she has said publicly that she told the FBI about Epstein way back in 1996, but her claims were never taken seriously. It would be another 10 years before the FBI properly investigated Epstein, leading to his conviction in a plea deal in 2008.
Annie Farmer (left) and her sister Maria Farmer. Maria went to the police about Jeffrey Epstein in 1996.Credit: Netflix
The 1996 memo finally proves Farmer was telling the truth. It also hammers home the uncomfortable truth of how long Epstein had been on the authorities’ radar. They were warned, but the warnings were not heeded. As Trump has said, Palm Beach in the 1990s was a different time.
That’s also the impression you get from sifting through these hedonistic photographs. It was an era when men behaved badly with little compunction; they knew they could get away with it.
Given this administration’s apparent allergy to transparency when it comes to the Epstein files, one wonders whether times have really changed.
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