The Jeffrey Epstein Files Transparency Act passed through Congress on Tuesday much faster than the battle between the two parties over whether to release the millionaire pedophile’s documents had suggested in previous months. He received almost unanimous support. Only one member, Congressman Clay Higgins (Trumpist from Louisiana), voted against the text. The rest, 427 deputies and 100 senators, supported him. Not only that: the Upper House did so by resorting to the so-called “unanimous consensus” mechanism, which allowed the text to be sent directly and without debate to the desk of the President of the United States, Donald Trump.
He was scheduled to arrive at the White House on Wednesday morning, where he awaited Trump’s signature. There was no bill signing ceremony on the day’s program, nor did the plans change throughout the morning. However, the president of the United States has promised that he will sign it, despite having been hindering the disclosure of those documents for months, and on Monday he declared to the press that he was willing to “give everything” to those who have been asking for transparency for months. “Let the Senate examine them. Let anyone examine them,” he added.
But “everything” may not be enough for the victims. The law approved by Congress includes some exceptions that allow the Department of Justice to reserve information that could turn this new declassification into another chapter in the history of disappointments accumulated in this case by those who want it to be clarified once and for all how far Epstein’s sex trafficking network reached and which rich and powerful men participated in it or, at least, were aware of the crimes of the pedophile and his accomplice Ghislaine Maxwell. He is serving 20 years in a minimum-security prison after cooperating with the Trump administration last July.
The Epstein Files Transparency Act orders Attorney General Pam Bondi to release unclassified documents related to millionaire pedophile. Bondi, who changed his mind in July about releasing those materials after months of promising to release Epstein documents, has 30 days from signing to comply with the order.
Such disclosure must, according to the rule, be “systematic” and include all documents in the possession of the Department of Justice. This is a diverse and endless collection of files. There are millions of pages, including flight logs, personal communications, internal reports, metadata, immunity agreements, employee contracts of the financier or emails with his circle of influence.
Possible censorship
The law also requires that published material be easily searchable and downloadable. And it authorizes the Justice Department to censor information that could be compromising to victims, materials depicting child sexual abuse, shocking images, or data that could jeopardize an active investigation. Bondi is obliged to justify these censorships and asks Congress for an additional report detailing their contents. crossed out within 15 days of publication.
“We will observe the law,” Bondi said three times this Wednesday when asked by reporters. “In the meantime, we will continue to protect victims and act with transparency.”
Asked what had changed since his Department said in a statement in July that they would no longer release materials, the attorney general offered a casual response: “There’s information, new information, additional information, but, again, we’re just going to obey (whatever) the law says.” Before that change of heart, and as we later learned, Bondi had warned Trump in a meeting at the White House that his name appeared “everywhere” in the newspapers of the billionaire pedophile, with whom he had been in a friendly relationship for 15 years.
The victims, gathered on Tuesday at the Capitol to accompany the passage of the new law, fear that the Trump administration will deliver excessively censored material or that they will cling to the existence of these ongoing investigations. Specifically, those ordered by the President of the United States in Bondi last Friday. Then, he asked him to investigate Epstein’s ties to some of the names that repeatedly appeared on the papers that became known over the years. He named three, all Democrats: Bill Clinton, former Harvard Chancellor Larry Summers and megadonor Reid Hoffman.
Thomas Massie, a Republican from Kentucky and supporter of the new law, threatened to read in the House of Representatives all the names of Epstein’s accomplices collected from the victims. He will do so, he promised, if the declassification expected from Washington does not satisfy the desire for justice of the survivors of the billionaire pedophile’s abuse.
