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Victims of Jeffrey\u00a0Epstein have criticised the United States government after it released a partial trove of documents from cases against the late convicted sex offender with heavily redacted pages and blacked-out photos.<\/p>\n
The growing outcry on Saturday came as US media reported that at least 16 files from the tranche, which were published online, had disappeared from the public webpage.<\/p>\n list of 3 items<\/span>end of list<\/span><\/section>\n The deleted files included a photograph showing President Donald Trump.<\/p>\n The Department of Justice (DOJ) began releasing the trove on Friday to comply with a law overwhelmingly passed by Congress in November that \u2060mandated the disclosure of all Epstein files, despite Trump\u2019s months-long effort to keep them sealed.<\/p>\n It said it plans to release more records on a rolling basis, blaming the delay on what it said was a time-consuming process of obscuring survivors\u2019 names and other identifying information.<\/p>\n But the tens of thousands of pages made public offered little new insight into Epstein\u2019s crimes or the prosecutorial decisions that allowed him to avoid serious federal charges for years. They also omitted some of the most closely watched materials, including FBI interviews with victims and internal DOJ memos on charging decisions.<\/p>\n Meanwhile, a 119-page document titled \u201cGrand Jury-NY\u201d, likely from one of the federal sex trafficking investigations that led to the charges against Epstein in 2019, was entirely blacked out.<\/p>\n One of Epstein\u2019s victims, Marina Lacerda, reacted angrily to the large number of redactions and unreleased documents.<\/p>\n \u201cAll of us are infuriated by this,\u201d she told the news outlet MS NOW on Saturday. \u201cIt\u2019s another slap in the face. We expected way more.\u201d<\/p>\n Lacerda, who said Epstein abused her when she was 14 years of age, was a crucial witness in the 2019 investigation that led to the filing of sex trafficking charges against the late financier.<\/p>\n Epstein killed himself in jail that year shortly after his arrest.<\/p>\n Lacerda told The New York Times in a separate interview that she felt let down.<\/p>\n \u201cSo many of the photos are irrelevant,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n Another survivor, Jess Michaels, told the news outlet CNN that she spent hours searching through the released files for her victim\u2019s statement and records of her call to an FBI tipline, but found neither.<\/p>\n \u201cI can\u2019t find any of those,\u201d she said. \u201cIs this the best that the government can do? Even an act of Congress isn\u2019t getting us justice.\u201d<\/p>\n Marijke Chartouni, who said she was abused by Epstein when she was 20 years old, decried a lack of openness.<\/p>\n \u201cIf everything is redacted, where is the transparency?\u201d she said on Friday in an interview with The New York Times.<\/p>\n Some lawmakers also expressed frustration.<\/p>\n Republican Representative Thomas Massie, who helped spearhead the legislative push, accused the White House of failing to comply \u201cwith both the spirit and the letter of the law that Donald Trump signed just 30 days ago\u201d in a social media post on Friday.<\/p>\n That law required the government\u2019s case file to be posted publicly by Friday, constrained only by legal and victim privacy concerns.<\/p>\n Meanwhile, the unexplained 16 missing files led to speculation online about what was taken down and why the public was not notified, compounding longstanding intrigue about Epstein and the powerful figures who surrounded him.<\/p>\n Democrats on the House Oversight Committee pointed to the missing image featuring a Trump photo in a post on X, writing: \u201cWhat else is being covered up? We need transparency for the American public.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cIf they\u2019re taking this down, just imagine how much more they\u2019re trying to hide,\u201d said senior Democrat Chuck Schumer. \u201cThis could be one of the biggest cover-ups in American history.\u201d<\/p>\n The Trump administration, however, denied that it was not being forthcoming with the released materials. Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche said during a TV interview with ABC that there was no attempt \u201cto hold anything back\u201d to protect Trump.<\/p>\n The DOJ also issued a statement on X late on Saturday. \u201cPhotos and other materials will continue being reviewed and redacted consistent with the law in an abundance of caution as we receive additional information,\u201d it said.<\/p>\n Separately, celebrities who appeared in photos made available as part of Friday\u2019s release include former President Bill Clinton, late news anchor Walter Cronkite, singers Mick Jagger, Michael Jackson and Diana Ross, British entrepreneur Richard Branson and the \u2060former Duchess of York, Sarah Ferguson.<\/p>\n There were also photos of Epstein with actors Chris Tucker and Kevin Spacey.<\/p>\n Many of the photos were undated and provided without context, and none of those figures has been accused of any wrongdoing in connection with Epstein.<\/p>\n Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor also appears in one photo lying across the laps of several women. The former duke of York, who was stripped of his royal title over his ties to Epstein, has denied any wrongdoing.<\/p>\n Notably missing were references to Trump himself, despite his frequent inclusion in previous releases of Epstein-related documents. Trump and Epstein were friends in the 1990s and early 2000s and had a falling out before Epstein\u2019s first conviction in 2008.<\/p>\n Trump has not been accused of wrongdoing and has denied knowing about Epstein\u2019s crimes.<\/p>\n Amid the outcry, the DOJ sought to draw attention to Clinton, with two agency spokespeople posting on social media images that they said showed him with Epstein victims.<\/p>\n Clinton\u2019s deputy chief of staff, Angel Urena, said in a statement that the White House was attempting to \u201cshield themselves\u201d from scrutiny by focusing on the former president.<\/p>\n \u201cThey can release as many grainy 20-plus-year-old photos as they \u200cwant, but this isn\u2019t about Bill Clinton,\u201d he wrote.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Victims of Jeffrey\u00a0Epstein have criticised the United States government after it released a partial trove of documents from cases against the late convicted sex offender with heavily redacted pages and blacked-out photos. The growing outcry on Saturday came as US media reported that at least 16 files from the tranche, which were published online, had […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":2522,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6119","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-us-canada-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6119","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=6119"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6119\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/2522"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=6119"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=6119"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=6119"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}Recommended Stories <\/h2>\n
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