'Release all the files': DOJ withheld more Epstein files than law requires

Epstein files released. Now, I had a little hesitancy on that word because it's only part, but DOJ releasing a mass dump of heavily redacted documents tonight. I want to just emphasize that point by heavily redacted.

I mean, a lot of pages that look like this and this and this and this and this. And that's all I was going to do to the printer to make the point. Okay, there's a lot more of them. We have teams across CNN going through what was released right now in terms of pages that

are not quite as black as these. But the DOJ is admitting in a letter to Congress that the files are not complete, separate from the redactions themselves. And that lack of completion is a big problem because the deadline by law, thanks to Congress forcing Trump's hand on the Epstein files, is today. Now, the key Republican who is behind getting that law passed is Congressman Thomas Massey, and he's posting on social media tonight, quote, unfortunately, today's document released by

AG Pam Bondi and Deputy AG Todd Blanche grossly fails to comply with both the spirit and the letter of the law that Donald Trump signed just 30 days ago. And Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene said, quote, release all the files, it's literally the law. Well, they did not, and they have not yet. The White House saying tonight

that it did not receive the Epstein documents that were released by the Department of Justice before the release. So they're saying that they weren't involved with what the DOJ chose to put out today. But the Justice Department did brief the White House

on what the documents contained. So what do we actually have tonight on the pages that aren't black as the country starts to shut down and check out for the end of year holiday time? We do have some apparently never before released documents,

along with thousands of files that were already public, the redactions, of course, and a whole bunch of pictures of Bill Clinton. Now, among the never-before-released documents is this photo of Bill Clinton. He's with Epstein. I've got a printout of that one as well. And then a photo of a shirtless Clinton in a jacuzzi next to another person whose face is redacted, and a photo of Clinton swimming in a pool with Ghislaine Maxwell and another woman whose face is redacted.

Now, it's important to know Clinton has not been accused by law enforcement of any wrongdoing related to Epstein and a Clinton spokesperson's posting on social media tonight. The White House hasn't been hiding these files for months, only to dump them late on a Friday to protect Bill Clinton. This is about shielding themselves from what comes next or from what they'll try and hide forever. Now, as for Trump himself, he didn't want to talk about the files today.

He refused to take questions about anything today when he appeared in public to announce

a drug pricing order. I won't even take questions today because there's no way I can take questions

that are anywhere comparable to what you just witnessed.

To be clear, what he's talking about, what we just witnessed was an announcement from Trump about drug prices. MJ Lee has been going through the files such that we have them. And MJ, look, you know, we got these photos, we got lots of redactions, lots of things missing,

but there are still, you know, many, many pages of documents that you are able to look through. What are you learning from them? missing, but there are still, you know, many, many pages of documents that you are able to look through. What are you learning from them?

Yeah, Erin, as we are going through these thousands and thousands of pages of documents and photos to try to figure out what's new, what's significant, are there people of interest that we should be taking note of? You're right that this is just a partial release of the so-called Epstein files from the DOJ and what's interesting is that Todd Blanche has essentially informed Congress as of this afternoon that this is happening in this way

because of the sheer volume of the documents that we are talking about and what he essentially communicated is that we needed more time to figure out what information needed to be redacted, including on some information that the agency got recently. Now, one thing that is interesting is that he made clear in this communication to Congress that they made a decision to withhold and redact information that goes beyond what is stated in the law. And just as a

reminder, what is stated in the law is that there are five categories of information that can be redacted. That includes identifying information about the victims and just scrolling through these documents. You can tell, you know, there are photos where there is a black box over a woman's face that clearly falls under that category. But there are other examples as well, like child sex abuse, anything that shows physical abuse,

anything that could hurt an ongoing investigation, something that could hurt national security. But the fact that there are going to be more documents coming out on a rolling basis, and that so many redactions, again, beyond what the law originally stated,

is going to have huge political ramifications. And I also think we should talk about the ramifications that stated is going to have huge political ramifications. And I also think we should talk about the ramifications that that is going to have on the survivors, because one of the things that the survivors are very much looking for in a big picture way as they go through these files is a sense of a better understanding of why some of these internal decisions over the course of many years were made, including, you know, what charges did the department decide to not bring on certain people? What were the decision making

processes that took took place over the course of many years that they've never gotten the answer to. So this is going to be sort of a long running process and I can tell you with certainty that survivors are not going to be sort of a long-running process, and I can tell you with certainty that survivors are not going to be happy about what they are going to see as still the continued lack of transparency here.

Yeah.

All right. Thank you very much, MJ Lee, and everyone's here with me now. So Bari Levine, obviously, you know, you've been covering this for years, and you've pushed every night here for the files to be released. So the day comes, the deadline comes, and we get some stuff.

We get some new stuff. We get a lot of stuff we already knew. We get a lot of black pages. And when it comes to men, we get a lot of pictures of Bill Clinton.

Yeah, Erin, apparently there's about 10% of the actual FBI files that were released today. And 5% of that, 5% of the 10, we already had, okay? So we're receiving, for the most part, very little. And, you know, it's already been playing politics in the sense of putting out pictures of Bill Clinton.

You have to wonder if the DOJ has assigned Jay Clayton at the SDNY to investigate Clinton and other Democratic enemies of President Trump, why are they showing all of these photos of Bill Clinton? You would think that would be part of the investigation. So that doesn't make any sense. We did learn that there's 1,200 victims, more than we initially thought, from the DOJ.

The DOJ also said, and this is most important to me, and I think the survivors, DOJ communications on investigations into Epstein and his associates and details of any immunity deals. And so I'm looking for the FD302 forms, which are the FBI witness reports

that Representative Tom Massey says pertains to 20 men that Jeffrey Epstein trafficked these children to. And from the initial look that I made earlier, I don't see any of the 302 forms. However, we may see them in a later document dump.

I mean, Stacey, just to state the obvious here, it's just definitionally impossible that it's just definitionally impossible that it's random what we got today, right? If you're putting out 10%, someone's making a decision on what that 10% is.

Yeah, exactly. And it seems like Todd Blanch is the propped-up announcer of it. But to Barry's point, it's so significant that President Trump directed Pam Bondi to investigate Bill Clinton, directly named him in a social media post along with other Democrats. And then she answered the call and appointed a US attorney in the Southern District of

New York to investigate. To investigate him and others, yeah. And the policy of the Justice Department is you don't release anything related to an ongoing investigation, especially photographs about the subject of an ongoing investigation. And obviously it seems to be a disingenuous subject, being Bill Clinton being ordered to be investigated at this late stage of the game.

It certainly did seem targeted at the time and still does. But why would they go against their own policies and then release Bill Clinton's photos? It kind of makes a farce of this entire situation.

I mean, it really does. Right. If your whole point, if you were going to hide behind an ongoing investigation, the one that you've got going is into Bill Clinton. And yet we got a whole bunch of pictures of him in a pool and a jacuzzi and whatnot.

Yeah, and I'll just add one more building block, which is that the legislation, the Epstein Files Transparency Act, actually has an exception. It says you do not have to release information if it could jeopardize an ongoing investigation. So it's not just that that's Justice Department policy.

The law allows for them to actually have that.

The specific law, right, that Massey's law.

Yes, exactly.

So it's the oddity that that would be the piece that's released, and especially when the victims have named at least 20 men. And then we've only got one, one out of 20.

Right. And it happens to be that one. OK, Max. So, I mean, we all get that. And obviously, everybody, if there's anything more to know about Bill Clinton, then people should know it, right? But they should know about everyone else as well. The two men behind the bill, the law that Ryan's talking about, Ro Khanna and Thomas Massey, have both said this is a load of baloney.

And Massey saying, you know, basically, get out of town, right? His words are that it fails to, grossly fails to comply with the spirit and the letter of the law. Then you had Marjorie Taylor Greene, who, you know, has been a regular voice on this issue but now other issues, going against Trump. Does this become like everybody jumps on board to this or no?

There are now three things that are universally approved of in politics, motherhood, apple pie, and releasing all of the Epstein files, which is what makes this so incredibly jarring, alarming, and politically stupid, that the Trump administration is acting this way. They are either grossly incompetent, and that tells, look at how they're dealing

with issues of affordability, or they're on the wrong side of the Epstein conspiracy, the Epstein case. Call it whatever you want. They're on the wrong side of it. I cannot for the life of me understand why they are operating this way unless they're I cannot for the life of me understand why they are operating this way unless they're

trying to hide something on behalf of Donald Trump.