It appears that when Attorney General Pam Bondi initially labeled the release of the Epstein documents as the "first phase," she meant that subsequent phases would involve redacting the names of Trump and other high-profile individuals. There should only be victims' names redacted. Still, here we are, where they are covering up for a notorious sex trafficker while diminishing the horror of what the children and young women went through by the FBI redacting the individuals' names.
Bloomberg's Jason Leopold reports that Investigators blacked out Trump’s name and the names of other high-profile figures, claiming that the information constituted an “unwarranted invasion of privacy,” because the FOIA officers determined that the now-president was a private citizen when federal law enforcement launched an investigation into Epstein nearly 20 years ago.
Bloomberg reports:
In preparation for potential public release, the documents then went to a unit of FOIA officers who applied redactions in accordance with the nine exemptions. The people familiar with the matter said that Trump’s name, along with other high-profile individuals, was blacked out because he was a private citizen when the federal investigation of Epstein was launched in 2006.
In particular, the reviewers applied two FOIA exemptions to justify their redactions. The first, Exemption 6, protects individuals against “a clearly unwarranted invasion of personal privacy.” The Supreme Court has said the exemption protects "individuals from the injury and embarrassment" that would result from the disclosure of personal information in possession of the government.
The second, Exemption 7(C), protects personal information contained in law enforcement records, the disclosure of which “could reasonably be expected to constitute an unwarranted invasion of personal privacy.”
A White House spokesperson would not respond to questions about the redactions of Trump’s name, instead referring questions to the FBI. The FBI declined to comment. The Justice Department did not respond to multiple requests for comment.
In March, FBI Director Kash Patel had directed FBI special agents to join the bureau's FOIA team to review every document in the Epstein files.
"That included a mountain of material accumulated by the FBI over nearly two decades, including grand jury testimony, prosecutors’ case files, as well as tens of thousands of pages of the bureau’s own investigative files on Epstein," the outlet reports. "It was a herculean task that involved as many as 1,000 FBI agents and other personnel pulling all-nighters while poring through more than 100,000 documents, according to a July letter from Senator Dick Durbin to Bondi."
"Here’s the bottom line: The FBI's behind-the-scenes decision-making suggests that the chances of aliens resurrecting JFK are greater than Trump’s name ever being unredacted from the Epstein files," Leopold adds.
As Bloomberg pointed out, Trump could simply sign a privacy waiver, which would repeal the redactions and allow the files with his name to be released in full, but we know that will never happen. Meanwhile, Ghislaine Maxwell, Jeffrey Epstein’s long-time accomplice and fuckbuddy, was quietly transferred from a minimum security federal prison in Florida to a cushy prison camp in Bryan, Texas.
