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Representative Jamie Raskin of Maryland, the leading Democrat on the House Judiciary Committee, has raised serious concerns after reviewing the unredacted files related to Jeffrey Epstein. Raskin alleges that the Department of Justice (DOJ) may have violated legal protocols by obscuring certain names in these documents.
For the first time, lawmakers were granted access on Monday to the complete, unredacted DOJ files concerning Jeffrey Epstein, the late disgraced financier. This access came amid questions from several congressional members about whether the DOJ had adhered to legal requirements for public disclosure, which only allow for specific, limited redactions.
Raskin expressed alarm that the files, which were made public, mistakenly revealed the identities of victims who were meant to be protected. He also noted that the documents appeared to conceal the identities of individuals associated with Epstein, seemingly to shield them from potential embarrassment or political fallout.
“I found numerous unjustified redactions in these files, alongside a failure to protect the names of victims, which is deeply concerning,” Raskin stated.
“It’s implausible to think that a billion-dollar global sex trafficking operation involved only Jeffrey Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell,” Raskin continued. “There must be other individuals involved, and it’s imperative that we uncover who these co-conspirators are. Listening to the survivors could be the key to unraveling this complex and troubling situation.”
Among the documents Raskin said were redacted was a discussion from Epstein’s lawyers that contradicts an assertion from President Trump that he kicked the deceased financier out of his Mar-a-Lago club.
It’s unclear where Epstein’s lawyers got the information or whether it was accurate, but Raskin argued there was no legal basis for shielding the email in the files.
“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,” Raskin said.
“There is certainly nothing in our federal law that would require redaction in that case.”
The files can only be viewed by lawmakers, not their staff, and can only be seen within the DOJ office.
Raskin said there are just four computers available for lawmakers to review the roughly 3 million pages of documents that have been released. During the multiple hours he reviewed documents, Raskin estimated he reviewed 30 or 40 documents.
“This is going to be an extremely time-consuming and painstaking process,” he said.
“There are puzzling, inexplicable redactions, and so we need some explanation for 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.”
DOJ officials have yet to file a report justifying their redactions.
A staffer for Raskin said he plans to go back and continue reviewing the files.
However, Raskin said he will not be able to review a significant portion of the files before Attorney General Pam Bondi appears before the panel on Wednesday.
“There is no way before Attorney General Bondi arrives on Wednesday that we’re going to have the opportunity to go through every reduction in order to ask thorough questions,” he said.