The publication of all declassified files from the investigations into pedophile Jeffrey Epstein that the Trump Administration is required to carry out by Friday may not include all the documentation at once due to its large volume, the need to protect the privacy of victims and also ongoing investigations and other procedures.
On November 18, Congress approved with broad support from both parties the so-called Epstein Files Transparency Act, which granted the Department of Justice 30 days to publish the files, from FBI documents, to deliberations of the Attorney General’s Office led by Pam Bondi, to materials on the grand jury investigation that indicted the pedophile in 2019.
It is known that President Donald Trump, who initially did not want to support the publication of the case files and who later had to rectify and sign the law after verifying the strong support of the legislature, appears numerous times in the documentation of the case regarding the one who was his friend and with whom he said he cut off relations in 2004, before Epstein was accused for the first time of child abuse and prostitution.
The fact is that the law requires that this enormous amount of material, more than 300 gigabytes of images, text documents or videos, be presented in a “searchable and downloadable” way on the Internet, which requires the creation of a huge public database.
Added to this computer architecture challenge are the complex criteria when censoring documents to hide sensitive information.
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These new Epstein file photos show Trump, Bill Clinton, Steve Bannon and others
CNN reported today, citing an anonymous source close to the matter, that each lawyer assigned by the Department of Justice to the campaign to publish the Epstein files has had to process more than a thousand documents since the end of November.
Legal experts anticipate that numerous deletions will be made in the documents regarding statements of the witnesses who collaborated with the investigation, the investigation methods used and, above all, the identity of the victims, especially those who were minors when the financial magnate abused them or prostituted them.
All of this means that the entire volume of declassified files may not be available for consultation tomorrow, and also that a substantial part of the documentation will be partially censored when published.
Finally, it must be taken into account that the recent order that Trump himself gave to the Department of Justice to investigate former President Bill Clinton’s relationship with Epstein may also reduce or delay the publication of material.
In this sense, the fact that the defense of Epstein’s ex-girlfriend and main collaborator, Ghislaine Maxwell, requested this week a rectification of her sentence, arguing a series of irregularities in the judicial process that ended with her serving a sentence of 20 years in prison.
With information from EFE.
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