<\/p>\n
The disappointment was palpable. In February, a group of 15 rightwing influencers visited the White House and paraded binders<\/a> labelled \u201cThe Epstein Files: Phase 1\u201d, only to discover that they contained precious little that was new.<\/p>\n Ten months later, it was the world\u2019s turn. Amid huge global anticipation on Friday, the US justice department released hundreds of thousands of pages of documents related to the late financier and convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein<\/a>.<\/p>\n \u201cThe Trump administration<\/a> is the most transparent in history,\u201d proclaimed Abigail Jackson, a White House spokesperson, insisting that it has \u201cdone more for the victims [of Epstein] than Democrats ever have\u201d.<\/p>\n But it soon became apparent that, once again, Donald Trump had over-promised and under-delivered. Many of the documents in the data dump were heavily redacted, with text blacked out so it was impossible to read. Norm Eisen, executive chair of Democracy Defenders Fund, said: \u201cWhat they have released is clearly incomplete and appears to be over-redacted to boot.\u201d<\/p>\n The documents extensively featured photos of former president Bill Clinton, a Democrat, and appeared to include few if any photos of Trump or documents mentioning him, despite Trump and Epstein\u2019s well-publicised friendship in the 1990s and early 2000s.<\/p>\n Moreover, Friday\u2019s release was far from complete. US deputy attorney general Todd Blanche said<\/a> \u201cseveral hundred thousand\u201d documents would be made public on Friday, but the need to protect the victims meant thousands more would be released over the next couple of weeks. The initial release also appeared to include far less than Blanche promised.<\/p>\n It smelled of a cover-up. And the rare reticence of Trump did little to dispel that notion. At a White House event on Friday with pharmaceutical companies who have agreed to lower some of their prices, the president \u2013 typically so garrulous on every issue under the sun \u2013 declined to answer reporters\u2019 questions off topic.<\/p>\n Trump said: \u201cI prefer not talking and asking questions only for the reason that this is such a big announcement. I really don\u2019t want to soil it up by asking questions, even questions that are very fair questions that I\u2019d love to answer. So I think we have to just stop right here.\u201d<\/p>\n The president had spent much of this year resisting disclosure and denouncing the files as a \u201cDemocratic hoax\u201d. But a rare bipartisan uprising in Congress forced him to cave and sign legislation last month mandating release of all unclassified Epstein records to be released by the end of 19 December in a searchable and downloadable format. His administration blew past that deadline and Democrats cried foul.<\/p>\n Chuck Schumer, the minority leader in the Senate, said: \u201cThis set of heavily redacted documents released by the Department of Justice today is just a fraction of the whole body of evidence.<\/p>\n \u201cSimply releasing a mountain of blacked-out pages violates the spirit of transparency and the letter of the law. For example, all 119 pages of one document were completely blacked out. We need answers as to why.\u201d<\/p>\n Jeff Merkley, the lead Senate sponsor of the Epstein Files Transparency Act<\/a>, added that administration officials \u201chave chosen to illegally disregard the law I led the fight in the Senate to pass. By failing to comply, the administration is openly denying \u2018equal justice under the law\u2019 to all of Jeffrey Epstein\u2019s victims.\u201d<\/p>\n None of this will surprise critics who have seen Trump eviscerate Congress over the past year with authoritarian zeal. He has signed 221 executive orders \u2013 more than in his entire first term \u2013 and bypassed the legislative branch on everything from a TikTok ban to dismantling USAID to adding his own name<\/a> to the John F Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts.<\/p>\n Soon after the partial release of the Epstein files, it was announced that the US military had launched airstrikes<\/a> against dozens of Islamic State targets in Syria in retaliation for an attack on US personnel. There were echoes of another December day in 1998 when Clinton ordered air strikes against Iraq<\/a> and was accused by members of Congress of trying to distract from impeachment proceedings against him.<\/p>\n But Trump will struggle to distract from the Epstein issue, with just 44% of Republicans saying they approve of how he has handled it so far. There was some expectation that Friday might bring the matter to a head, for better or worse, with the politically advantageous timing of the Christmas holiday just around the corner.<\/p>\n Instead the \u201cmost transparent\u201d administration again decided to slow-walk and stonewall. That will only feed the very conspiracy theories that Trump once feasted upon but which now threaten to consume him.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n #Trump #overpromises #underdelivers #heavily #redacted #Epstein #cache #Jeffrey #Epstein<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The disappointment was palpabl… <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":5304,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/microvibenews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5303"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/microvibenews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/microvibenews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/microvibenews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/microvibenews.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=5303"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/microvibenews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5303\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/microvibenews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/5304"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/microvibenews.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=5303"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/microvibenews.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=5303"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/microvibenews.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=5303"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}