Raskin Shreds DOJ’s ‘Baffling’ Redactions, Like Email Contradicting Trump’s Claim He Kicked Epstein Out of Mar-A-Lago

Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-MD) denounced the “tons of completely unnecessary redactions” the Department of Justice made in the Epstein files, including records of a conversation that Jeffrey Epstein was not kicked out of Mar-a-Lago like President Donald Trump has claimed.

After mounting pressure — including from his fellow Republicans — Trump signed a law last November to release the files related to the deceased child sex predator and his girlfriend and accomplice Ghislaine Maxwell with a deadline of Dec. 19. The law required a wide release of millions of documents, photos, videos, and other files, with redactions limited to victims’ names and other identifying information.

The DOJ missed that deadline, and since then, there have been additional releases of files that have revealed additional powerful people who were in communication with Epstein, thousands of mentions of Trump, and controversial failures to redact victims’ names. In the most recent release, the files also included nude images of victims that the DOJ had failed to redact. All the while, critics argue that the DOJ has failed to disclose documents that are required to be released by law and redacted information that should not be concealed, including names and other details about the men who allegedly participated in Epstein’s child sex trafficking and abuse.

Raskin, the ranking Democrat on the House Judiciary Committee and a former constitutional law professor, was able to review unredacted files Monday morning and spoke to reporters later in the day about what he had seen.

The documents “are filled with redactions of names and information about people who clearly are not victims and may fall into that other category,” said Raskin, calling it “troubling” how he had determined “that there were tons of completely unnecessary redactions in addition to the failure to redact the names of victims.”

“Did you see the names of any potential co-conspirators that were redacted?” a reporter asked Raskin.

The congressman replied that he “saw the names of lots of people who were redacted for mysterious or baffling or inscrutable reasons.”

When asked if any of the redacted names were “well-known individuals,” Raskin replied that Ohio billionaire Les Wexner’s name was redacted and he “couldn’t understand the logic of that,” because he “was not a victim, and his name has appeared other places.”

Raskin noted that the DOJ had not released a “privilege log,” the document customarily created when legal documents are withheld or redacted in response to a discovery request or other legal obligation to release them, and he was expecting there might be some explanations in that log about why certain redactions were made.

He also noted an email that contradicted Trump’s claims that he had broken off his friendship with Epstein and expelled him from Mar-a-Lago:

I saw one document which was an email that was sent by Jeffrey Epstein to Ghislaine Maxwell, which was the foreword of an email that he had received from some of his lawyers, giving an account of a conversation between Epstein lawyers and Trump lawyers and others about what had taken place during that 2009 period.

It was during the period of the 2009 investigation, and Epstein’s lawyers synopsized and quoted Trump as saying that that Jeffrey Epstein was not a member of his club at Mar-a-Lago, but he was a guest at Mar-a-Lago and he had never been asked to leave.

And that was redacted for some indeterminate, inscrutable reason. I know it seems to be at odds with some things that President Trump has been saying recently about how he had kicked Jeffrey Epstein out of his club or asked him to leave. And this was at least one report that appears to contradict it.

Later, Raskin commented that these redactions were “puzzling” to him, and he “couldn’t figure out why that would be redacted,” because there was “certainly nothing” in the law that was passed that would direct that to be redacted.

“It was part of the file, and it should be released,” he added. “It just raises questions. But but there are many more examples like that where that came from. There are tons of mysterious redactions and we don’t know why.”

When asked if he had seen redactions related to former President Bill Clinton, Raskin said that he had not seen any.

Raskin noted that the law required the DOJ to “release the entire Epstein file,” and so far “they released 3.5 million documents, and they’ve withheld 3 million documents — so about half of all the documents have not been released yet.”

He had been able to review “maybe 30 or 40” of those documents that day, Raskin said, adding it was an “extremely time-consuming and painstaking process,” and criticizing the DOJ and specifically Attorney General Pam Bondi for dragging their feet on releasing the documents.

‘There is no way, before Attorney General Bondi arrives on Wednesday, that we’re going to have the opportunity to go through every redaction in order to ask thorough questions,” said Raskin, pointing out that it would be impossible even if every single one of the 217 members of Congress who voted for the discharge petition “spent every waking hour” at the DOJ going through the documents.

Raskin emphasized how important he thought it was for the survivors to testify, and for the money trail to be investigated further, as well as the “organizational hierarchy,” because “there’s no way you run $1 billion international child sex trafficking ring with just two people committing crimes, Jeffrey Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell.”

“No way,” he continued. “It doesn’t work like that. So we need to figure out what other conspiracies were involved, what other coconspirators were involved. And I really do believe that listening to the survivors is going to be our pathway through this nightmare.”

Raskin drilled down further into the “overwhelming” number of “puzzling, inexplicable redactions” he had seen, saying that Congress needed “some explanation from the Department of Justice about what their process was and why it seems to have created so many erroneous non-redactions, causing tremendous pain to survivors, and then so many seemingly false redactions that made it as well.”

Watch the clip above via MS NOW.

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