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    Epstein estate records release could shine light on sex trafficker’s connections – or show nothing at all

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    The release of records from Jeffrey Epstein’s estate to US lawmakers this week, as well as potentially suspicious transaction reports, could offer a roadmap to where the scandal swirling around the late convicted sex trafficker goes next.Donald Trump has repeatedly vowed full transparency around Epstein and his links to a wide circle of powerful, rich and famous associates. But instead, the administration has been accused of foot-dragging and a cover-up, and has faced intense scrutiny over the extent of Trump’s own social contact with Epstein.Due to be handed over this week to the House oversight committee chair are estate records that include Epstein’s 50th “birthday book” compiled with notes from friends – including an entry allegedly signed by Trump that is now the subject of a defamation lawsuit against the Wall Street Journal.They also include Epstein’s last will and testament, agreements he signed with federal prosecutors in Florida in 2008, his contacts from his “black book”, non-disclosure agreements, and financial transactions and holdings. In addition, the committee has asked the treasury secretary, Scott Bessent, for relevant suspicious activity reports (SARs) in connection with the investigation and prosecution of Epstein and his one-time girlfriend Ghislaine Maxwell on sex-trafficking charges.The committee this week also plans to hold a transcribed interview with Alex Acosta, Trump’s first-term labor secretary who was US attorney for the southern district of Florida when the justice department struck a plea deal with Epstein that victims have repeatedly said allowed him to get away with many crimes.Then there is a stalled campaign by the Kentucky Republican representative Thomas Massie and the California Democrat Ro Khanna to pass legislation to force the government to release all documents relating to the Epstein-Maxwell investigation.The White House has reportedly advised Republicans in Congress that supporting the effort would “be viewed as a very hostile act to the administration”.Adding to pressure on the Trump administration, Epstein survivors said last week they would compile their own client list of alleged abusers if the information was not released. Massie and Georgia representative Marjorie Taylor Greene said they would read out the names on the House floor under a protective “speech or debate” clause.But none of the potential avenues for more information on the Epstein-Maxwell sex-trafficking conspiracy may be more fruitful than the financial disclosures, and especially the SARs, if they are made public.But the SARs request is already mired in partisan politics, with Democratic senator Ron Wyden accusing Bessent of withholding key information. In a letter, Wyden listed 58 people or institutions he wanted records on. “Treasury records shine a light on how high-profile individuals paid Epstein staggering sums of money, which was then used to move women around the world or engage in dubious transactions indicative of money laundering,” he said.Banks are required to file SARs with the treasury’s Financial Crimes Enforcement Network when they suspect a criminal violation, when specified transaction thresholds are reached, or when they suspect money laundering.According to Patrice Schiano, a former FBI forensic accountant now with the John Jay College of Criminal Justice in New York, an SAR itself does not necessarily reveal much – but it can be used by law enforcement to subpoena information, including the originator and beneficiaries of the transaction.“They’re documents that speak for themselves. You might find things you don’t necessarily know you’re looking for. Maybe a source is telling you something but you don’t really know the support behind the SARs, and there are ways with SARs you can begin to figure things out,” Schiano said.In a 2023 lawsuit, the Epstein victims and the US Virgin Islands claimed that JP Morgan notified the government of $1bn in suspicious transactions by Epstein dating back to 2003 – but made the report only after Epstein was arrested in 2019.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionLawyers for the bank said it had flagged the treasury department six times, including as early as 2002, about Epstein’s financial activity and that the federal government gave no response and took no action. The bank settled the action for $290m. JP Morgan said that any association with Epstein “was a mistake, and we regret it”.According to Schiano, Epstein’s banking information, if lawmakers can get it, could be “a rich source”.Schiano added: “But you have to have access to SARs, then you have to get a subpoena, and then you have to crunch the data. It’s not easy to do, and it takes a long time, but they could have all the information they need to do a comprehensive investigation.”But will they? A release last week of more than 30,000 pages of Epstein-related documents yielded little new. Wyden noted in his letter that Bessent has twice declined to produce treasury documents to the committee. The senator and his staff viewed some of the SARs last year, but they were not allowed to copy the documents.A treasury department spokesperson called Wyden’s request “political theater”.Representative James Comer, the chair of the House oversight committee, has also issued deposition subpoenas to several former senior US government officials and figures such as Bill and Hillary Clinton, James Comey, Loretta Lynch, Eric Holder, Merrick Garland, Robert Mueller, William Barr, Jeff Sessions and Alberto Gonzales to testify.Marie Springer, author of The Politics of Ponzi Schemes: History, Theory, and Policy, warned the truth about Epstein may remain a mystery and even the release of estate records may show little.“I’m very suspicious about the whole Epstein case. I don’t think we will ever have full disclosure,” Springer said. “He had a lot of money for someone who didn’t graduate from college. The curiosity is around why and how, and the people alive now aren’t willing to tell the story.” More

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      The Jeffrey Epstein cover-up is an affront to US democracy | Rebecca Solnit

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      Rape is a crime against democracy in the most immediate sense of equality between individuals and the premise that we’re all endowed with certain inalienable rights. Most rapists operate on the premise that they can not only overpower the victim physically, but can do so socially and legally. They count on a system that discounts the voices of victims and only too often cooperates in silencing them, through shame, intimidation, threats, discrediting, the obscene legal instrument known as a nondisclosure agreement and a system too often run by men for men at the expense of women and children. That is to say, rapists count on getting away with it because of a system that hands them power and steals it from their victims. They count on a silencing system. On profound inequality.Which is what makes rape such a peculiar crime: it is the ritual enactment of the perpetrator’s power and the victim’s powerlessness, buttressed by the circumstances that puts and keeps each of them in those roles. It’s driven by the desire to use sexuality to cause physical and psychic injury, to dominate, to celebrate the rapist’s power and the victim’s powerlessness, to treat another human being as a person without rights, including the right to set boundaries, to say no and to speak up afterward. A society that perpetuates and protects this desire and arrangement is rape culture, and it’s been our culture throughout most of its existence.Democracy, in this context, means a society and system in which everyone’s rights matter, everyone’s voice is heard and everyone is equal under the law. Rapists count on this not being true, but is has become more true over the past half century, thanks to feminism, and changed a lot more over the past dozen years, thanks to more feminism. There has been a shift toward equality of of voice, rights and support from the legal system, from arresting officers to investigations, judges and juries (who, thanks to feminism, are no longer exclusively male). It hasn’t changed enough, but it’s changed a lot, which is how a hundred survivors of Jeffrey Epstein’s rape club were able to gather with the support of Thomas Massie, a Republican congressperson from Kentucky, and Ro Khanna, a Democratic representative from California, on Wednesday morning to speak to the world about their experiences and demand justice.They became victims, and some were abused for years, because of the power differential between Epstein and the girls and young women. His power consisted not only of his immense and still-unexplained wealth, but of aid from a host of others. Some actively cooperated in manipulating and abusing them, as groomer and pimp-in-chief Ghislaine Maxwell did, along with the fellow rapists to whom Epstein offered these children and young women. Others knew and chose to protect him and his fellow abusers, and some still do, all the way to the very top.Mike Johnson, the House speaker, adjourned Congress earlier this summer to prevent votes on measures relating to Epstein and thereby protect Donald Trump. As the New Republic reported on Tuesday, “House Speaker Mike Johnson is offering Republicans a cowardly out to avoid voting on a bipartisan discharge petition to release the Epstein files in full.” Johnson’s main concern in this (and pretty much everything else he does) is to protect Trump. He is not alone. Jamie Raskin said in July: “They’d conscripted a thousand FBI agents to be working around the clock 24 hours going through a hundred thousand Epstein documents and told them to flag any mentions of Donald Trump … This might be one of the most massive cover-ups in the history of the United States unfolding before our eyes.”The US attorney general, Pam Bondi, ordered this frantic censorship scheme to protect Trump, which should have begotten a thousand front-page news stories demanding to know what exactly it took a thousand agents to hide from us and who exactly Trump is that he requires this kind of anti-democratic protection. Like Johnson, and like Todd Blanche, the deputy attorney general, who conducted a long, deeply wrong exculpatory softball interview with Maxwell, she’s serving one man rather than the 342 million people of this country. Trump himself, who over the summer seemed terrified and eager to distract from whatever there is to be found out about his role in all this, once again attempted to silence victims by calling the whole thing “a Democrat hoax” immediately after the news conference. Survivor Haley Robson called out Trump and declared: “I cordially invite you to the Capitol to meet me in person so you can understand this is not a hoax.”The women who spoke at Wednesday morning’s press conference made it clear they still fear they face threats, that the machinery of silencing is still at work. Katie Tarrant of the Washington Post writes, “Lisa Phillips, a victim of Jeffrey Epstein, and her lawyer Brad Edwards, said victims were scared to speak publicly about other abusers for fear of legal action. Her response came in response to a question about a client list some victims said they are compiling.” Another Post journalist reports, “Anouska De Georgiou, who said she was a victim of Jeffrey Epstein, said she and her daughter were threatened when she volunteered to be a witness in a lawsuit against Ghislaine Maxwell.”And this attempt to suppress the truth about crimes and silence victims is only too consistent with the Republican party and the Trump administration. The attacks on immigrants, refugees, Black and brown people, women, trans people, the positioning of the administration as above the law with the cooperation of the rogue conservatives of the supreme court: all this is an attempt to roll back not only the democratic gains of the past several decades, but the democratic principles of universal rights and equality under the law embedded in the constitution and the Bill of Rights.Rendering women second-class or maybe 11th-class citizens again is at the heart of the current rightwing agenda, with its pursuit of criminalization of pregnancy, denial of reproductive rights including access to birth control, the right to choose whether to bear children, and life-saving care for women who have miscarriages or otherwise need a pregnancy terminated. But this is only part of the attack on women. The administration has disproportionately fired Black women from government jobs. 300,000 Black women have left – or been pushed out of – the workforce in the last three months.Pete Hegseth, who himself settled rape allegations out of court, has fired women in high positions in the military, claims women are less qualified than men and has been reposting videos from Christian fanatics asserting women should not have the right to vote. Trump’s is quite literally a pro-crime administration, as major branches of federal government are pulled away from pursuing criminals to persecuting immigrants, often violating the law to do so. The administration has sought to cut funding for and dismantle programs addressing domestic violence. And of course the Trump administration is headed by Donald J Trump – a judge found in a civil claim that it was “substantially true” that Trump raped journalist E Jean Carroll. It’s rapists all the way down, and enablers all the way up.

      Rebecca Solnit is a Guardian US columnist. She is the author of Orwell’s Roses and co-editor with Thelma Young Lutunatabua of the climate anthology Not Too Late: Changing the Climate Story from Despair to Possibility More

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      Ghislaine Maxwell never saw Trump in ‘any inappropriate setting’, transcript shows

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      The US Department of Justice has released the transcript and audio recording of an interview conducted by Todd Blanche, the deputy attorney general, with the convicted sex trafficker Ghislaine Maxwell.In a post on X, Blanche said the materials were being released “in the interest of transparency”, providing links to the transcript and to audio files.The release includes documentation from a two-day interview conducted on 24 and 25 July. The materials comprise redacted transcripts for both days, along with multiple audio recordings – seven separate parts plus test recordings for day one, and four parts plus test recordings for day two.The department of justice gave Maxwell limited immunity to allow her to talk about her criminal case, but did not promise anything in exchange for her testimony, according to the transcript that was released.“The most important part of this agreement is that this isn’t a cooperation agreement, meaning that by you meeting with us today, we’re really just meeting,” Blanche told Maxwell. He added: “I’m not promising to do anything.”Maxwell, 63, was Jeffrey Epstein’s longtime associate and was convicted on five counts, including sex trafficking of minors, and sentenced to 20 years in prison in 2022 for helping Epstein sexually abuse teenage girls.Epstein died by suicide in federal custody in 2019 while awaiting trial on sex trafficking charges.Maxwell, in the released transcript, said she never saw Trump do anything inappropriate and she repeatedly showered Trump with praise. That sort of comment would have been welcomed by Trump and his circle who have been keen to dismiss concerns about this relationship with Epstein which have roiled his support base.“I actually never saw the president in any type of massage setting. I never witnessed the president in any inappropriate setting in any way. The president was never inappropriate with anybody,” Maxwell said.But she did detail the social relationship between Trump and Epstein, who cultivated a wide and powerful social circle for many years.“I don’t know how they met, and I don’t know how they became friends. I certainly saw them together and I remember the few times I observed them together, but they were friendly. I mean, they seemed friendly,” she said.She added: “I think they were friendly like people are in social settings. I don’t … I don’t think they were close friends or I certainly never witnessed the president in any of … I don’t recall ever seeing him in his house, for instance,” she said.The justice department lawyers also quizzed Maxwell extensively about Epstein’s relationship with former president Bill Clinton, who travelled multiple times on Epstein’s plane and – like Trump – has denied any wrongdoing or knowledge of wrongdoing.“President Clinton liked me, and we got along terribly well. But I never saw that warmth or that … that warmth, or however you want to characterize it, with Mr Epstein,” she said of Clinton’s contacts with Epstein.Maxwell also said she did not remember Trump having been in Epstein’s 50th birthday book, which she assembled.The Wall Street Journal reported in July that the book’s collection of letters included one with Trump’s name on it. The president has repeatedly denied writing the note and filed a lawsuit accusing the Journal of libel.Maxwell said she saw some parts of the birthday book before her trial, during its discovery phase.“There was nothing from President Trump,” Maxwell said.She also denied remembering any picture of a naked woman, a detail the Journal previously reported.Maxwell said Epstein did not know what to do to celebrate his 50th, and she suggested a birthday book like “my mom did … for my dad”.She added: “He said, I love that idea.”After her interview with justice department lawyers, Maxwell was moved from the low-security federal prison in Florida, where she had been serving a 20-year sentence, to a minimum-security prison camp in Texas.Neither her lawyer nor the federal Bureau of Prisons have explained the reason for the move which caused a storm of criticism and raised eyebrows as to whether Maxwell get some sort of deal for her cooperation.One legal expert said that the release of the transcript was Trump “getting what he wants” from the interview in the latest effort to calm the political storms around his links to Epstein that have dogged him for weeks.“From what we see from this transcript, Trump is getting what he wants. She is saying that Trump didn’t do anything untoward, nothing criminal. That’s what Trump wants. Ideally, he’d also like names of Democrats who did do something wrong, because that’s what the Maga base has been promised,” Dave Aronberg, former Democratic state attorney for Palm Beach county, told CNN.The House oversight committee has received the first round of Epstein documents from the justice department, which includes 33,000 pages of documents, according to panel staff.“The committee intends to make these records public after thorough review to ensure any victims’ identification and child sexual abuse material are redacted,” a spokesperson for committee chair James Comer said. “The committee will also consult with the [justice department] to ensure any documents released do not negatively impact ongoing criminal cases and investigations.”The committee subpoenaed files related to Epstein following a public outcry over the administration’s handling of its promises to release more information related to Epstein’s conduct and death.House Democrats seized on the issue and helped push Comer to subpoena the justice department for documents.“The Trump DoJ is providing records at a far quicker pace than anything” than it did during Joe Biden’s presidency, the committee spokesperson continued. 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      Ghislaine Maxwell’s grand jury transcripts are likely a dud, but other documents could reveal much

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      When Donald Trump’s Department of Justice requested the release of grand jury transcripts in criminal proceedings against sex-traffickers Jeffrey Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell, the move did little to quiet an ever-growing chorus of critics frustrated by the US president’s backtracking over disclosing investigative files.Indeed, the justice department’s filings in this request revealed that only two law enforcement officers testified during grand jury proceedings in New York, undermining notions that unsealing them would reveal numerous truths.Manhattan federal court judge Paul Engelmayer recently rejected the justice department’s unsealing gambit and, in his decision, dealt yet another blow to the suggestion that grand jury documents would foster transparency about Epstein and Maxwell’s crimes and their social links to powerful figures such as Bill Clinton, Donald Trump himself and many others.“Insofar as the motion to unseal implies that the grand jury materials are an untapped mine lode of undisclosed information about Epstein or Maxwell or confederates, they definitively are not that,” Engelmayer said, adding that anyone who expected new information to emerge from the documents “would come away feeling disappointed and misled”.“There is no ‘there’ there,” Engelmayer said in his written decision.In disabusing the possibility of bombshells in Maxwell’s grand jury transcripts, questions once again abound as to whether other investigative documents on Epstein will ever see the light of day – and whether there will be any political consequences for Trump if his justice department does not deliver them to a public increasingly convinced of a cover-up.Neama Rahmani, founder of West Coast Trial Lawyers and a former federal prosecutor, said the US attorney general, Pam Bondi, and the FBI director, Kash Patel, have the legal power to release these other documents – but it might be politics that is keeping them from doing so.“They hold the key,” he said. “With a stroke of their pen, they can release the Epstein files.”Most of the Epstein files are not grand jury transcripts protected by sealing, Rahmani said. “There has to be a treasure trove of information that the Department of Justice has.“Members of the public [and] the media, they can’t compel the DoJ to release the information under a [Freedom of Information Act] request or anything similar, because there’s the law enforcement privilege, the deliberative process privilege,” Rahmani added. “The DoJ doesn’t have to make public its confidential files just because the public wants to, but they can certainly choose to do so.“Trump was inaugurated in January. Bondi has been AG for seven months now. How long does it take to go through these documents?“I think we’re waiting for something that’s never going to come to fruition.”Victims’ advocates have also noted that the Trump administration is capable of releasing these documents so that those whom Epstein and Maxwell preyed on can get justice.“For the last 20 years the victims have always wanted the full disclosure of information regarding Epstein and Maxwell’s sexual-trafficking scheme. They have always wanted all individuals to be held accountable for their part in the sexual exploitation,” said Spencer Kuvin, chief legal officer of Goldlaw, who has represented multiple Epstein victims.“The current administration has the power to release everything by merely signing an executive order. Instead of trying to help victims and expose sexual predators, they are more worried about protecting their friends who socialized with these criminals.”Analysts have voiced differing views on whether there is longterm political liability for Trump if the documents are not released.Susan MacManus, professor emerita of political science at the University of South Florida, said there are several possibilities. Republicans might hope that people grow bored with the issue and start focusing on other subjects.A smaller cohort of ultra-conservative Republicans, however, is dissatisfied that the documents have not been released.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotion“They’re disappointed in Trump because they think that there’s something hidden there, and they believe in transparency,” MacManus explained. Some Republicans might think that “ultimately, at least some of this stuff will come out”, implicating Democrat and Republican politicians alike.MacManus does not think that this issue will sway an election, however.“I see this as something that goes out of the picture and comes back in and goes out and comes back in,” MacManus said. “But I don’t think it’s enough to move somebody’s vote if they’re a Republican or if they’re a Democrat, they’re going to stick with their party.”Rick Wilson, the Lincoln Project co-founder and former Republican strategist, felt the document issue presented a dramatic problem for Trump.“I just feel like they’re in a really bad rut right now. I don’t think they’ve got an easy way out of this,” Wilson said.Wilson said that recent polling he’s conducted indicates that the controversy is not going away.“Americans, and Republicans in particular, are paying attention to this story because there is a ‘there’ there for them,” he said.Matt Terrill, a Republican strategist and managing partner of public affairs firm Firehouse Strategies, said that at the moment, interest in the issue has died down for the time being. Americans are focused on issues such as the economy, and many are on vacation.When Congress returns, however, Terrill expects the controversy will also return to the forefront, but that doesn’t mean the attention will be entirely on Trump. The House oversight committee subpoenaed Bill and Hillary Clinton, as well as several former attorneys general and law enforcement officials, to testify about Epstein.“That could take the spotlight off President Trump,” he said. Even if this diverts attention from the president, Terrill said it would behoove the administration to be more open about whatever is going on.“There are many people in the Maga base who joined the Maga base because they want government transparency and they want accountability. They want justice and, for right or wrong, many people in the Maga base, and even those outside of the Maga base, feel as though they’re not getting that right now with this situation.”“So I do think it’s important, if you’re the administration, the Trump administration, to continue to put out everything you have in terms of this case,” he said. “If you can’t put things out, explain to the American people why you can’t put those things out.” More

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      Judge rejects Trump administration request to unseal Ghislaine Maxwell grand jury transcripts

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      Dismissing it as little more than a “diversion,” a federal judge in New York has formally rejected the Trump-led US justice department’s request to release transcripts of pre-indictment, grand jury interviews with witnesses in the case of Ghislaine Maxwell, the convicted sex trafficker and associate of Jeffrey Epstein.Judge Paul Engelmayer wrote that the transcripts could not be released publicly – “casually or promiscuously” – as Donald Trump’s government had pushed for because it would risk “unraveling the foundations of secrecy upon which the grand jury is premised”.Nonetheless, while Engelmayer said that releasing the transcripts would jeopardize the confidence of people called to testify before grand juries, he also made it a point to write that the transcripts were “redundant of the evidence at Maxwell’s trial”.Engelmayer also said that the government did not identify information of consequence in the record that was not already public in its request to release the Maxwell case’s grand jury testimony.That observation raises questions about whether the Trump administration meant to substantially address the bipartisan calls for transparency in Epstein’s case through its move for the transcripts’ release.And Engelmayer sought to answer those questions in his ruling.“A member of the public, appreciating that the Maxwell grand jury materials do not contribute anything to public knowledge, might conclude that the government’s motion for their unsealing was aimed not at ‘transparency’ but at diversion – aimed not at full disclosure but at the illusion of such,” he wrote.“Contrary to the government’s depiction, the Maxwell grand jury testimony is not a matter of significant historical or public interest,” he added. “Far from it. It consists of garden-variety summary testimony by two law enforcement agents.”Brad Edwards, a Florida lawyer who has represented nearly two dozen Epstein accusers, told the Associated Press that he did not disagree with the the Engelmayer’s ruling Monday.“Our only concern was that if materials were released, then maximum protection for the victims was essential,” he said. “The grand jury materials contain very little in the way of evidentiary value anyway.”Trump’s administration had requested the release of grand jury transcripts in July amid intense political heat around the investigation of Epstein – the late financier and convicted pedophile – and his co-conspirator Maxwell, who is serving a 20-year prison sentence.Members of the president’s Republican party joined the calls for his administration to resolve questions about the scandal, some of which center on him.Maxwell recently was interviewed by the deputy attorney general, Todd Blanche, and soon after was moved from a prison in Florida to a lower security prison in Texas, prompting accusations that a cover-up of evidence linking Epstein to Trump was in progress.An attorney for Maxwell says she spoke truthfully to Blanche. The lead prosecutor in the 2022 case against Maxwell, Maurene Comey, was dismissed from the southern district of New York federal prosecutor’s office before the interview took place.The request to unseal the testimony has been seen as an incremental measure: the government has acknowledged they contain no testimony from witnesses who weren’t members of law enforcement.But thousands of other documents and electronic files are in the government’s possession. In early July, the US justice department and FBI released a memo stating they found no evidence of an Epstein “client list” or blackmail – and that no further materials would be released to protect victims.Yet the fight over Epstein-Maxwell grand jury testimony is not complete. A federal judge in Florida is looking at releasing transcripts from the grand jury testimony that led to an earlier federal indictment against Epstein – from 2006 – that was later shelved.To resolve that case, Epstein pleaded guilty to Florida state charges of soliciting minors and entered into a non-prosecution agreement to protect himself and four named others from future prosecution. Maxwell has appealed her conviction to the US supreme court, claiming she should have been shielded under that earlier agreement.But a number of avenues remain open. The Republican-led House oversight committee has subpoenaed the justice department and issued subpoenas to Bill Clinton, ex-secretary of state and Hillary Clinton – whom Trump defeated in 2016 to secure his first presidency – and eight former top law enforcement officials to appear before the committee in the fall. More

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      JD Vance’s attempt to blame Democrats

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      Four days after JD Vance reportedly asked top Trump administration officials to come up with a new communications strategy for dealing with the scandal around the late convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, he appears to have put his foot in it, sparking a new round of online outrage even as he tried to defuse the furor.In an interview with Fox News broadcast on Sunday, the vice-president tried to deflect criticism of the administration’s refusal to release the Epstein files by blaming Democrats. He accused Joe Biden of doing “absolutely nothing” about the scandal when he was in the White House.“And now President Trump has demanded full transparency from this. And yet somehow the Democrats are attacking him and not the Biden administration, which did nothing for four years,” he said. Epstein’s former girlfriend, Ghislaine Maxwell, was convicted of conspiring with Epstein to sexually abuse multiple minor girls and sentenced to 20 years in federal prison during the Biden administration.If Vance’s attempt to switch public blame onto Democrats was the big idea to emerge from his strategy meeting with attorney general Pam Bondi and FBI director Kash Patel, which according to CNN he convened at the White House last week, then their labours appear to have backfired. (Vance denied to Fox that they had discussed Epstein at all, though he did acknowledge the meeting took place.)Within minutes of the Fox News interview being broadcast, social media began to hum with renewed cries of “release the files!”Clips of Vanc smearing Democrats quickly began to circulate on X. “We know that Jeffrey Epstein had a lot of connections with leftwing politicians and leftwing billionaires … Democrat billionaires and Democrat political leaders went to Epstein island all the time. Who knows what they did,” he said. Vance also repeated Trump’s previously debunked claim that Bill Clinton had visited Epstein’s private island dozens of times. Clinton has acknowledged using Epstein’s jet, but denied ever visiting his island.“Fine. Release all the files,” was the riposte from Bill Kristol, the prominent conservative Never Trumper who urged the documents to be made public with “no redactions of clients, enablers, and see-no-evil associates”.Jon Favreau, Barack Obama’s former head speechwriter, replied: “Release the names! Democrats, Republicans, billionaires, or not. What are you afraid of, JD Vance?”Favreau added that Trump’s name “is in the Epstein files”. That was an apparent reference to a report in the Wall Street Journal last month that a justice department review of the documents conducted under Bondi had found that the president’s name did appear “multiple times”.Other social media users used the Fox News interview as an excuse to re-run video of Trump in the hosting Epstein and Maxwell at Mar-a-Lago.Epstein died in August 2019, during Trump’s first presidency, while the financier and socialite was awaiting trial in a Manhattan jail; the death was ruled a suicide.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionThe White House has been caught in a bind over the Epstein affair which spawned conspiracy theories among many of Trump’s supporters, which now senior figures in the administration had actively encouraged during the 2024 campaign.In July the justice department announced that there was no Epstein client list and that no more files would be made public, a decision that clashed with earlier statements from top Trump officials, including Bondi’s statement in February that a client list was “sitting on my desk right now to review”. The decision triggered an immediate and ongoing uproar that crossed the partisan political divide.Among the most viral clips in the aftermath of that reversal was video of Vance himself telling the podcaster Theo Von, two weeks before the election: “Seriously, we need to release the Epstein list, that is an important thing.”In his Fox News interview Vance also warned that “you’re going to see a lot of people get indicted” after Trump accused Obama of “treason” and called for his predecessor to be prosecuted.The director of national intelligence, Tulsi Gabbard, has passed documents to the justice department that she claims show that the Obama administration maliciously tried to hurt Trump by linking Russian interference in the 2016 election to him.Obama has dismissed Trump’s call for his prosecution as weak and ridiculous. More

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      JD Vance to meet with top Trump officials to plot Epstein strategy – report

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      JD Vance will reportedly host a meeting on Wednesday evening at his residence with a handful of senior Trump administration officials to discuss their strategy for dealing with the ongoing scandal surrounding the convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.The vice-president’s gathering, first detailed by CNN, is reportedly set to include the attorney general, Pam Bondi; the deputy attorney general, Todd Blanche; the FBI director, Kash Patel; and the White House chief of staff, Susie Wiles.Sources familiar with the gathering told CNN and ABC News that the officials will be discussing whether to release the transcript of the justice department’s recent interview with Ghislaine Maxwell, Epstein’s associate and a convicted sex trafficker.Two weeks ago the justice department sent Blanche, who is also one of Donald Trump’s former personal lawyers, to interview Maxwell, who is serving a 20-year prison for sex trafficking and other crimes.That meeting lasted two days and details from it have not been made public.According to ABC News, the administration is considering publicly releasing the transcripts from the interview as soon as this week.On Wednesday, Alicia Arden, who filed a police report against Epstein in 1997 accusing him of sexually assaulting her, appeared at a news conference and implored the government to release all of the files related to the Epstein case.“I’m tired of the government saying that they want to release them. Please just do it,” she said, adding that she would like to know what Blanche asked Maxwell during their meeting, and what Maxwell’s responses were.Maxwell, Arden said, “should not be pardoned”.“She was convicted of sex-trafficking children,” she added. “This is a terrible crime.”Arden was joined by her lawyer, Gloria Allred, who also said that the Trump administration should release the “entire transcript” of Blanche’s interview with Maxwell “including all of his questions and all of her answers”.Last week, Maxwell was quietly transferred from a Florida prison to a lower-security facility in Texas. Trump claimed to reporters that he “didn’t know” about the transfer.The Trump administration has faced mounting pressure and a bipartisan backlash after the justice department announced it would not be releasing additional documents related to Epstein, despite earlier promises by Trump and Bondi that they would do so.Epstein, who died in prison in New York in 2019 while awaiting federal trial, is the subject of countless conspiracy theories, in part due to his ties to high-profile and powerful individuals.On Tuesday, the House oversight committee subpoenaed the justice department for files related to the Epstein sex-trafficking investigation and issued subpoenas for depositions from several prominent figures.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionThey included the former president Bill Clinton; the former secretary of state Hillary Clinton; multiple former attorneys general, including Jeff Sessions, Alberto Gonzales, William Barr and Merrick Garland; and the former FBI directors James Comey and Robert Mueller.Axios pointed out that Trump’s former labor secretary Alex Acosta was absent from the list despite his involvement in the 2008 plea deal with Epstein when Acosta was a top federal prosecutor in Florida. Axios noted that Acosta’s boss during his time in Florida, Gonzales, is on the subpoena list.At the news conference on Wednesday, Allred, who has represented multiple Epstein victims, said she believes that Acosta should also be subpoenaed, as well as Blanche and Bondi.Allred said that she believes that “victims and survivors of Jeffrey Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell should be invited to appear before the House and Senate committees” to share their stories, how “they were victimized by Epstein and Maxwell, the impact on them of these crimes, and how the criminal justice system has helped them or failed them”.Maxwell, who was found guilty of sex trafficking and other charges in December 2021, is appealing her conviction to the supreme court, citing Epstein’s plea agreement. This week, her attorneys also opposed the government’s request to unseal grand jury transcripts related to the Epstein case.“Jeffrey Epstein is dead,” her lawyers wrote. “Ghislaine Maxwell is not. Whatever interest the public may have in Epstein, that interest cannot justify a broad intrusion into grand jury secrecy in a case where the defendant is alive, her legal options are viable and her due process rights remain.”Maxwell also said last week that she was willing to testify before Congress if she was granted immunity.The Democratic representative Raja Krishnamoorthi, who has introduced a resolution in Congress that opposes Maxwell receiving a presidential pardon or any other form of clemency, told CNN on Wednesday that he believes the “vast majority of Americans oppose any form of clemency for Maxwell, and we need to say that with one voice in Congress as well”.The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment relating to the Vance meeting. More

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      Legal cases could prise open Epstein cache despite Trump’s blocking effort

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      On the campaign trail, Donald Trump vowed that his administration would release a tranche of documents in the criminal investigation into disgraced late financier Jeffrey Epstein.But since Trump returned to the White House, his promises have fallen flat, with few documents released – and backtracking about releasing more records. The lack of disclosure has prompted not only dissatisfaction among those seeking information about Epstein’s crimes, but political flak Trump can’t seem to deflect, especially about his own relations with the convicted sex trafficker.But where political pressures have so far failed, legal pressures that have largely sailed under the radar of the fierce debate about Epstein’s crimes could yet succeed and bring crucial information in the public eye.Several court cases provide some hope that even if Trump’s justice department fails to make good on calls for transparency, potentially revelatory records about Epstein, his crimes and his links to some of the most powerful people in the US might still see the light of day.Moreover, it is possible that the justice department’s unusual request to unseal grand jury transcripts, in Epstein and accomplice Ghislaine Maxwell’s criminal cases, could also undermine opposition to it releasing records.One lawsuit brought by the news website Radar Online and investigative journalist James Robertson stems from their April 2017 public records request for documents related to the FBI’s investigation of Epstein. This request came years after Epstein pleaded guilty to state-level crimes in Florida for soliciting a minor for prostitution – and before his 2019 arrest on child sex-trafficking charges in New York federal court.Radar and Robertson filed suit in May 2017 after the FBI did not respond to their request; the agency ultimately agreed that it would process documents at a rate of 500 pages per month, per court documents.“Despite the FBI identifying at least 11,571 pages of responsive documents, 10,107 of those pages remain withheld nearly 20 years after the events at issue,” according to court papers filed by Radar and Robertson.Although Epstein killed himself in custody awaiting trial, and Maxwell is serving a 20-year prison sentence, the FBI is fighting release of more documents. The agency has invoked an exception to public records disclosure that allow for documents to be withheld if their release would interfere with law enforcement proceedings.The Manhattan federal court judge overseeing this public records suit sided with the FBI’s citation of these exemptions, but Radar is pursuing an appeal that could be heard in the second circuit court of appeals this fall.“In court, they insist that releasing even one additional page from the Epstein file would hurt their ability to re-prosecute Ghislaine Maxwell in the event the supreme court orders a new trial,” a spokesperson for Radar said.“It’s a flimsy rationale and we are challenging it head on in the court of appeals. Our only hope of understanding how the FBI failed to hold Epstein accountable for over a decade – and preventing future miscarriages of justice – is if the government releases the files.”It’s also possible that the justice department’s request to release grand jury transcripts in Epstein and Maxwell’s cases could bolster arguments for the release of records.“The DoJ’s core argument against disclosure for the past six years has been that it would jeopardize their ability to put – and keep – Ghislaine Maxwell in prison. They say that releasing even a single page could threaten their case,” the Radar spokesperson said. “Naturally, any support they offer to release material undermines their claims.”Separately, developments in civil litigation involving Epstein and Maxwell could also potentially lead to the disclosure of more documents surrounding their crimes.A federal judge in 2024 unsealed a cache of documents in the late Epstein accuser Virginia Giuffre Roberts’s defamation case against Maxwell. Some documents were kept under seal, however, and journalists pursuing release of documents appealed against that decision.On 23 July, the second circuit decided that it found “no error in the district court’s decisions not to unseal or make public many of the documents at issue”, but it also ordered the lower court to review possibly unsealing them.Robert’s attorney Sigrid McCawley reportedly said she was “thrilled with the decision” and also said she was “hopeful that this order leads to the release of more information about Epstein’s monstrous sex trafficking operation and those who facilitated it and participated in it”, according to Courthouse News Service.Others who have represented Epstein victims have called for disclosure of public records – and voiced frustration about being stonewalled in their pursuit of documents.Jennifer Freeman, special counsel at Marsh Law Firm, who represents Epstein accuser Maria Farmer, previously told the Guardian she had made a public records request for information related to her client, with no success.Spencer T Kuvin, chief legal officer of GoldLaw and an attorney for several Epstein victims, hopes that public records battles could help pull back the veil on Epstein information.“I think that the Foia requests will absolutely assist in the disclosure of information. The DoJ has made blanket objections citing ongoing investigations, but through Foia litigation the courts can test those objections by potentially reviewing the information ‘in camera’,” Kuvin said. “This means that an independent judge may be appointed to review the information to determine whether the DoJ’s objections are accurate or just a cover.”Roy Gutterman, director of the Newhouse School’s Tully Center for Free Speech at Syracuse University, cautioned that calls for disclosures – and even government requests to release some files – might not be a panacea for access to extensive documents.“This case is already complicated, and there were already too many cooks in the very crowded kitchen, and it’s getting more crowded as more public interest grows in the grand jury materials as well as the now-settled defamation case,” Gutterman said.But stonewalling could also continue. With the public records requests, it’s possible that US federal authorities could still successfully cite the investigation exemption and keep documents out of pubic view.“Using Foia for FBI and law enforcement materials related to this case, might be a creative newsgathering tactic, but the law enforcement exemption the government is citing might be legitimate because some of the materials are grand jury materials and some other materials might include private or unsubstantiated allegations,” Gutterman said.“The reporter in me thinks there is an important public interest in revealing these documents, but the law might end up keeping most material secret. Even with the widespread and growing public interest, it might be too big an ask to unseal a lot of this material.“Practically speaking, the DoJ might also be very selective in which materials it would want to release as well because of the political element involved here, too.” More

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      Ghislaine Maxwell: could talking about Epstein be her get out of jail free card?

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      Since Ghislaine Maxwell met with federal prosecutors last week, the imprisoned British socialite’s legal team has portrayed her as a beacon of truth willing to discuss all matters related to her child sex-trafficking co-conspirator Jeffrey Epstein’s many crimes. “Ghislaine answered every single question asked of her over the last day and a half. She answered those questions honestly, truthfully, to the best of her ability,” attorney David Oscar Markus told reporters. “She never invoked a privilege. She never refused to answer a question.”Maxwell’s highly unusual two-day sit-down with the deputy attorney general, Todd Blanche – who served as Donald Trump’s criminal defense attorney before working for his justice department – came as the US president tiptoes through a political minefield related to Epstein and his own social links to the disgraced former financier.But Blanche’s meeting – held amid rumors and denials of a pardon for Maxwell shortly before her sudden move on Friday to a Texas prison – did not just show Trump’s flagging efforts at damage control over the Epstein scandal. Maxwell is simultaneously pursuing several other strategies to be freed from her 20-year federal prison sentence.And, some experts believe, Maxwell’s ultimate aim is probably not really revealing the whole truth and everything she knows about Epstein, Trump and other powerful figures. Instead, it is all about earning her freedom.Maxwell’s team is pushing the US supreme court to consider her appeal, which contends that she was shielded from prosecution in Epstein’s controversial 2007 plea agreement – an argument that has been opposed by the same justice department that has now met with her.Maxwell is also trying to make the most of a congressional subpoena, threatening to invoke her fifth amendment right against self-incrimination unless she is given immunity. Her legal team has also suggested clemency – which Trump could grant immediately.This broad-spectrum approach, which several longtime defense attorneys said represented sound legal strategy, has prompted skepticism about whether any discussions reflect an actual desire to reveal truth. More, Maxwell’s track record of alleged lying undermines whatever truths Trump officials claim they want to reveal in highly publicized meetings.“If I were representing her, I would be doing exactly the same thing. The supreme court petition has virtually no chance of success. The issues raised are not novel or of general relevance to other cases,” said Ron Kuby, a longtime defense attorney whose practice focuses on civil rights.Kuby told the Guardian that the supreme court agrees to take on “only the smallest fraction” of petitions. “Filing a supreme court petition is akin to playing the lotto, you can’t win unless you play, but your likelihood of winning is slim, so it’s a last-ditch effort that defendants use when they have enough money for full due process.”The parallel strategy of actively pursuing clemency with the Trump administration is sound because Trump could commute her sentence or issue a pardon, Kuby said. “Because these are all federal convictions, he can let her out of jail tomorrow,” he added.As for why Maxwell would seem willing to shed light on Epstein despite a low likelihood of a positive outcome, “she has nothing to lose.“The question isn’t ‘why would she meet with them’? She’ll do anything for people who can help with this,” Kuby said.Eric Faddis, a trial attorney and founding partner of the Colorado firm Varner Faddis, voiced similar sentiments about Maxwell’s strategy.“For anyone who’s been sentenced to 20 years in prison, it would behoove them to explore all potential avenues to try and better their legal position, and it looks like that’s what Maxwell is doing here,” Faddis said.Other legal experts agree.“Maxwell’s attorneys are doing everything they can to keep her out of prison,” said John Day, a former prosecutor in New Mexico who founded the John Day Law Office.The Epstein controversy swirling around Trump may prove an excellent opportunity that few could have foreseen.“This is a moment in time that wasn’t there before, where she suddenly has an opening to try to get a change in her situation,” Day said. “Up until the Epstein case resurfaced and the Epstein-Trump issues came to the forefront of people’s attention, Maxwell was just doing her time.“Suddenly, she is trying to make the case that she has information, and she has information that’s worth trading for, and she’s hoping, her lawyers are hoping, that somehow someone is going to decide that it’s worth giving her a break.”Should Maxwell receive any favorable outcome, it might do little to promote truth and much to foment uncertainty.“If there is some kind of a deal that came out of the nine hours that Todd Blanche met with her, then any information that comes out of that is always going to be seen in the context of ‘what was the deal?’” Day said.Indeed, Trump’s handling of the Epstein files has done little but sow doubt. The Trump justice department released a memo insisting there was no Epstein client list, and decided not to release extensive case files, despite his campaign promise to do so.This backtracking on releasing documents helped fan the flames of controversy that came after the publication of a Wall Street Journal article claiming that Trump contributed a “bawdy” letter to a birthday present for Epstein – compiled by Maxwell.Shortly after the story ran, Trump announced that he had directed his justice department to request the unsealing of grand jury transcripts in Epstein and Maxwell’s criminal cases.This purported push for transparency, vis-a-vis Bondi’s request for unsealing, does not appear to have quelled backlash against Trump. The Wall Street Journal on 23 July reported that Bondi told Trump his name appeared in the Epstein files on multiple occasions.Epstein, whom prosecutors stated abused girls as young as 14, had long enjoyed the company of numerous high-profile men in his circle – among them Trump and Britain’s Prince Andrew. Epstein killed himself in jail awaiting trial six years ago.Trump’s camp has insisted that a pardon is not in the works, with a senior administration official saying: “No leniency is being given or discussed. That’s just false. The president himself has said that clemency for Maxwell is not something he is even thinking about at this time.”But at other times, Trump’s comments on the issue have raised eyebrows, with him saying: “I’m allowed to do it, but it’s something I have not thought about.” He has also remarked: “Well, I’m allowed to give her a pardon, but nobody’s approached me with it. Nobody’s asked me about it” and that “Right now, it would be inappropriate to talk about it.”Top congressional Republicans are toeing the line when it comes to the idea of potential presidential relief, including the House speaker, Mike Johnson. “Well, I mean, obviously that’s a decision of the president,” Johnson said on Sunday on NBC’s Meet the Press. “I won’t get in front of him. That’s not my lane.”The political benefit for Trump from a pardon – however unlikely – remains nearly nil, as it would do little to support his prior claims about wanting the truth revealed.“The giant problem here – although what we have seen is that people are capable of believing all kinds of things if Trump says they are true – I don’t think there’s anything that Ghislaine Maxwell can say that will put any of this to rest,” Kuby said. “Certainly, the optics of giving an actual convicted child [abuser] clemency does not easily align with the right wing’s purported concern about child abuse.” More