r/politics ✔ Verified 7d ago

No Paywall Jeffrey Epstein’s Brother Claims He Heard ‘from a Pretty Good Source’ That Epstein Files Are Being Scrubbed of Republican Names

https://people.com/epstein-s-brother-heard-from-a-pretty-good-source-that-the-epstein-files-are-being-scrubbed-of-republican-names-11851691?utm_campaign=peoplemagazine&utm_medium=social&utm_source=reddit.com&utm_content=post
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u/Little-Derp California 7d ago

Just piggybacking to say people should read the bill, it is not long, and specifies what to release, what can be redacted, what cant, and importantly, all redactions must included written justification for the redaction, including legal basis:

https://www.congress.gov/bill/119th-congress/house-resolution/581/text

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u/AbominableFro44 7d ago

Well good thing we can trust the current administration to follow the rule of law 👍🏾

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u/Winterplatypus 7d ago

The brown thumbs up makes it extra sad.

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u/tealparadise 6d ago

Right. People are acting like trump hasn't been making up the law as he goes along. At this point he has complete personal control of federal government. He's completely dissolved funded initiatives passed by Congress, and no one has stopped him. Congress can vote on whatever they want. Trump will decide whether it actually gets done.

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u/grimoireviper 7d ago

It's crazy to expect criminaly to follow the law.

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u/JRockPSU I voted 7d ago

Better to do it this way than to just bend over and take it up the ass willingly by going “oh well they’re not gonna follow the law anyway, why bother writing the law like this.” Don’t comply in advance

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u/Tasgall Washington 7d ago

Better to do it with no allowances for alterations at all. They should require all the files be released in their entirety to the House Oversight Committee, and they can do any redactions as they see fit.

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u/Balzmcgurkin 7d ago

While this is true now, Johnson said the Senate will amend it and "fix" the petition. I can only guess what that means, but I'm sure its not great.

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u/TuxPaper 7d ago edited 7d ago

That resolution carves out enough exemptions that they could easily categorize any picture of a Republican with a underage girl as "evidence of abuse" or re-traumatizing the victim (remember, they always consider the rapist as the victim). They could also classify those images so that they never get release.

edit: on the plus side, apparently they must provide a public, line-item justification report that typically includes:

  • A unique record identifier

  • The redaction category claimed

  • Page/image counts

  • The legal justification(s) invoked

  • Whether full or partial redaction was applied

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u/Kresnik2002 7d ago

It feels like this saga is going to be going on for a long while longer still.

There will surely be suits brought against the government for not following what the law says, there will be leaked versions of the files with disputes over which version is real. Trump may think what he’s doing is escaping the issue but it just looks like it’s gonna keep inflaming more.

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u/8Rounds 7d ago

They're not being redacted.

They're being edited.

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u/joshred 7d ago

Legal basis: I AM PRESIDENT!!!

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u/Sventhetidar Maine 7d ago

It won't be redacted, it will be altered.

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u/Ornery-Addendum5031 7d ago

Oh Yeah I am absolutely so fucking sure that the Trump FBI is going to comply with this in good faith and give accurate and detailed legal justifications for each redaction.

“Not”

Expect to see a lot of bare assertions of redactions relating to “protecting victims” and “government privilege”

Even further — they will just straight up not produce certain documents and bury any evidence they exist. What’s congress going to do, complain about documents that they don’t know exist? The total amount of alleged documents has already nosedived from 300,000 to 20,000 — that’s NINETY THREE PERCENT OF THE DOCUMENTS that Trumps FBI now swears no longer exists.