The US Department of Justice has begun releasing the files on the investigation into the case of sex offender Jeffrey Epstein - initially more than 300,000 pages. Among the first files uploaded are partially redacted documents from the Federal Bureau of Investigation.
Interest in the website has been high, which is why the Department of Justice is regulating access to it. Visitors had to queue online to get to the home page with different categories of documents, including court records.
More documents - in the coming weeks
Hundreds of thousands of more documents are to be released in the coming weeks, Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanch said on Fox News. Each page will be formatted to protect the identities of the victims.
However, Democrats argue that the Justice Department is violating the law. Representative Raja Krishnamurthy considers this unacceptable. "Everything should be released at once. They had years to prepare for publication, or at least 30 days (from the law's entry into force)", ARD quoted him as saying. Any delay or excessive deletion of images would be contrary to the law.
Too many cross-outs, missing financial documents
As expected, such deletions are found in many places in the documents. In one of them, consisting of 100 pages, literally every page is completely blacked out.
Krishnamurthy also criticized the fact that much content is missing: "What I'm looking for are financial documents. There are billions of dollars in transactions related to this disgusting child sex trafficking network. I want to know who was paid and for what?".
Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer said that this was all a "cover-up to protect Donald Trump from his ugly past" . Democrats also received support from Republican Thomas Massie, who co-sponsored the legislation. Democrats are now exploring "all legal options", as lawmakers from the Judiciary and Oversight committees reported.
Trump is not indicted, Clinton is the victim
The US Congress had given the Justice Department until Friday to release many documents. Trump resisted for a long time and only after the pressure became enormous did he sign the law for publication, passed by Congress, in November.
Trump knew Epstein well, as old photos of the two show. However, there is no incriminating information about the current president in the published documents. On the other hand, many photos of former President Bill Clinton appear in the declassified files - for example, while swimming in the pool with Epstein's longtime confidant Gillian Maxwell, who was convicted in 2022 of recruiting underage girls for Epstein.
A Clinton spokesman criticized the publication of the photos as a distraction by the White House. There are two groups of people, wrote Angel Urena on the X platform. The first group knew nothing and cut off their ties with Epstein before his criminal acts came to light. However, the second group continued to maintain relations with him after. "We belong to the first group." No amount of delaying tactics from the second group will change that, he continued.
Victims Uncover Old Documents
While it is not yet clear what the fallout from the release of the materials will be, there are already reactions from some of Epstein's victims. Annie Farmer is one of the survivors, and her sister Maria was also abused. "My sister reported Epstein and his crimes to the authorities in 1996. An FBI form was released today with some of that information, labeled "child pornography" because Epstein had stolen photos of me and my sister. "I was 16 at the time and she was 12," Farmer said.
It is completely unacceptable to her that the authorities knew about this for years but failed to prevent the suffering of others later, the ARD also said.