>Justice Department officials were protecting victims of Jeffrey Epstein when they removed several images from agency’s release of files tied to the notorious sex offender, Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche said.
>“There were a number of photographs that were pulled down after being released on Friday,” Blanche said on NBC’s Meet the Press. “That’s because a judge in New York has ordered us to listen to any victim or victim rights group if they have any concerns about the material that we’re putting up.”
>Attention has focused on an image of a desk drawer with a number of photos, including one showing future President Donald Trump, that was among those removed from the department’s website after a massive release of material.
>“You can see in that photo there’s photographs of women,” Blanche said. “And so we learned after releasing that photograph that there were concerns about those women and the fact that we had put that photo up. So we pulled that photo down. It has nothing to do with President Trump.”
>Blanche, a former personal attorney for Trump, has emerged as the Justice Department’s main public face in the release of the agency’s Epstein files, which was mandated by Congress after a bipartisan groundswell overcame Trump’s objections to publicizing the material.
NickConrad on
Came to see why Lindsey Graham was weighing in
East-Will1345 on
“Man with cock in his mouth explains that cock needed a mouth on it.”
Everywhereslugs on
So blur the faces of the victims and release the photos. Trump selfish self-preservation mode is in high gear.
Individual_Respect90 on
Even if this was the real reason you can’t put the toothpaste back into the tube. It’s already done and downloaded by thousands of people.
Krisparz on
So instead of redacting the faces of these victims the photos were pulled which *happens* to include Trump.
Cool… Cool cool cool.
crashorbit on
Trump Derangement Syndrome is when those around him tell deranged gaslight fairytales around the proven facts.
Travelerdude on
Pulling Trump and inserting Clinton is pure strategy.
Crazy_Junket3180 on
It is not his place to determine what is obstruction of justice and what is not.
Deacon523 on
“What kind of coverup would we be running if we didn’t cover everything up?”
the_bucket_murderer on
Hes allowed to lie to the press btw its completely legal don’t accept any of this as fact look for evidence, don’t believe what he says.
They redacted stuff with trump first but have failed to redact stuff with survivors despite being informed about the files that expose victims day 1. EFTA00000160, EFTA00000214, and EFTA00001217 all show victims unredacted and people have called the DOJ office of attorney general and informed them of this mistake. People who picked up the phone confirmed the file numbers and said they would get the info to somebody who can make the redactions immediately.
You should make a call to the office of the attorney general today too. Record it. You can’t post the number in text without AI moderation causing problems though so you’ll have to look it up yourself.
**TODD BLANCHE IS LYING**.
Redtex on
Ummm, no.
OdiousAltRightBalrog on
The sad thing is that this tactic will likely work, at least on those on the right.
Mitt Romney tried the same thing back in 2012: He refused to release his tax returns during the Presidential election for months. Finally after getting criticized relentlessly by the press and others (including TRUMP, of all people), he released ONE year of his taxes, and it was just a summary.
Every other candidate going back to Nixon released ten years of full tax returns, so Romney was CLEARLY hiding something. But it worked. Everyone on the Right was convinced that he did the right thing and wasn’t hiding anything. Every conservative I talked to was convinced that he released ten years of full tax returns.
Dr_PocketSand on
Cool… So, we agree… You admit to violating federal law.
jzsang on
I actually can’t believe how bad the DOJ has botched this. Not only has not everything come out yet (which the DOJ has admitted), but some of the things that have come out have either not been redacted properly OR – my suspicion – also needed to be pulled because they feature Trump or other current governmental figures (which is ridiculous).
I was skeptical about all of this before the files (or at least part of the files) were released. This is all just making it worse though. Even if Trump is hypothetically innocent, it’s making both him and the DOJ look really bad. The DOJ had so much time to do this. Remember how much time they spent on redactions shortly after Trump took office? Now,
after thousands of hours and millions of dollars, we’ve ultimately been given a half-baked and likely tampered-with project.
ThouHastLostAn8th on
From the article:
>**Blanche dismissed the notion that political considerations are influencing the release of material** from the files and argued that the law allows for leeway in the timeline to protect victims.
>The Justice Department said it redacted the names and identifying information of victims, and **sources told Fox News Digital that the same redaction standards were applied to politically exposed individuals and government officials**.
chrispy_exe on
So the president’s personal lawyer is admitting to contempt of Congress. This is why Johnson sent the House home, y’all.
CmdDeadHand on
So there are not any non redacted photos of trump because he is with victims in every photo and they want to protect the victims?
This makes it worse, like they know their reasoning makes it worse, right?
md4024 on
Blanche must be shitting his pants after reading the interview Suzie Wiles did with Vanity Fair. She could not have been more obvious that they are setting him up to be the fall guy for everything related to Epstein. Blanche is Trump’s personal attorney and his deputy Attorney General, but Wiles claimed that he went to meet with Ghislaine Maxwell and made a deal with her entirely on his own accord. She even claimed Trump was “ticked” when he found out about it.
Maybe Blanche was aware that this was going to be the strategy, but I doubt it, so he better work to get his affairs in order.
Ohuigin on
This regime believes the American people are truly fucking stupid.
Why you gotta keep proving them right, MAGA?
Greeve78 on
Hahahah ok fuck stick. Would you have accepted that answer if Biden admin was doing this? Didn’t think so.
Ihor_90 on
As a Ukrainian I kept hearing everyone calling my country a corrupt shithole, but even in Ukraine this would not fly. So what should I call the US?
Significant_Land_738 on
Pulling Blanche’s law license… also justified.
ProudPainting6850 on
They just keep making shit worse. Can’t wait to see these people banished from the government.
USA_Ultra on
Captain Hook… Tick tick tick
throwaway1601900 on
Justified how, because Trump is implicated? I’m sorry, but with all the delays, redactions, and now removal of photos, there’s simply no way Trump didn’t rape underage girls.
Jca666 on
This will continually get worse for Trump.
KnightDuty on
They’re supposed to disclose the reasons ahead of time specifically as not to get themselves into this specific situation.
Please, show me the paper trail. Which victims rights group SPECIFICALLY asked for this?
Why hasn’t it been put back up with the four women’s faces (and only them) removed? I have all the files on my computer. Would you like me to do this in 1 min and Photoshop and forward it to you?
TemporalColdWarrior on
It’s time to impeach Bondi and Blanche.
wetlookcrazy on
All this shit will come out eventually. Long after the orange blob is dead. He’ll never be held accountable for anything if he’s in office
findingmike on
Impeachment is justified.
dmp2you on
No it wasn’t , especially when you leave the ones that are taking from fund raisers just to scapegoat . ie Clinton in a PUBLIC pool, Dianna Ross and her own damn kids w/Michael Jackson and Clinton.
ShirtPitiful8872 on
Good lord they can’t even cover things up competently.
When they chose to remove his photo or documents that were already released they showed everyone that they were already redacting anything with Trump in them.
If they were competent, they would have kept them in as a way to show that they didn’t redact everything with Trump to give the illusion of credibility.
kingnyrican on
Let’s talk about a blatant double standard.
When you or I get a subpoena, we comply. If we violate federal law, we face real consequences. But when it comes to Donald Trump and his circle, a large portion of the media doesn’t just normalize this lawlessness—they’ve started to celebrate it.
This hypocrisy was on full display this week with the Epstein files.
On Friday, the Department of Justice failed to comply with a federal law requiring the release of the Epstein documents. Let that sink in.
Congress passed a specific law (The Jeffrey Epstein Victims’ Rights Act) with clear instructions:
* Release Deadline: All files must be released within 30 days.
* What to Release: “all unclassified records, documents, communications, and investigative materials.”
* Redactions: Must be extremely limited (e.g., to protect victims) and every single redaction must have a written justification.
* Most importantly: The law explicitly states that no record can be withheld or redacted due to “embarrassment, reputational harm, or political sensitivity” to any powerful person.
So, what did the DOJ do? They violated almost every part of this law.
* They released only a small fraction of the records by the deadline.
* Entire categories of documents seem to be missing.
* The redactions are a complete joke—sometimes blacking out entire pages—with zero justification provided for any of them.
This is a clear and undeniable violation of a federal statute, seemingly to protect the powerful. Where is the wall-to-wall coverage holding the DOJ accountable with the same fervor applied to anyone else who ignores legal demands?
The same media outlets that would (rightfully) eviscerate any regular citizen for ignoring a subpoena are largely treating this as just another news story, not the institutional lawlessness that it is.
What does it say when the laws only apply to us, but not to them?
Why should we obey the law?
bedbathandbebored on
So let’s all remember that this is twice now that they have admitted he’s in there.
AnonAmbientLight on
It’s justified because it was disastrous for the administration!
37 Comments
>Justice Department officials were protecting victims of Jeffrey Epstein when they removed several images from agency’s release of files tied to the notorious sex offender, Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche said.
>“There were a number of photographs that were pulled down after being released on Friday,” Blanche said on NBC’s Meet the Press. “That’s because a judge in New York has ordered us to listen to any victim or victim rights group if they have any concerns about the material that we’re putting up.”
>Attention has focused on an image of a desk drawer with a number of photos, including one showing future President Donald Trump, that was among those removed from the department’s website after a massive release of material.
>“You can see in that photo there’s photographs of women,” Blanche said. “And so we learned after releasing that photograph that there were concerns about those women and the fact that we had put that photo up. So we pulled that photo down. It has nothing to do with President Trump.”
>Blanche, a former personal attorney for Trump, has emerged as the Justice Department’s main public face in the release of the agency’s Epstein files, which was mandated by Congress after a bipartisan groundswell overcame Trump’s objections to publicizing the material.
Came to see why Lindsey Graham was weighing in
“Man with cock in his mouth explains that cock needed a mouth on it.”
So blur the faces of the victims and release the photos. Trump selfish self-preservation mode is in high gear.
Even if this was the real reason you can’t put the toothpaste back into the tube. It’s already done and downloaded by thousands of people.
So instead of redacting the faces of these victims the photos were pulled which *happens* to include Trump.
Cool… Cool cool cool.
Trump Derangement Syndrome is when those around him tell deranged gaslight fairytales around the proven facts.
Pulling Trump and inserting Clinton is pure strategy.
It is not his place to determine what is obstruction of justice and what is not.
“What kind of coverup would we be running if we didn’t cover everything up?”
Hes allowed to lie to the press btw its completely legal don’t accept any of this as fact look for evidence, don’t believe what he says.
They redacted stuff with trump first but have failed to redact stuff with survivors despite being informed about the files that expose victims day 1. EFTA00000160, EFTA00000214, and EFTA00001217 all show victims unredacted and people have called the DOJ office of attorney general and informed them of this mistake. People who picked up the phone confirmed the file numbers and said they would get the info to somebody who can make the redactions immediately.
You should make a call to the office of the attorney general today too. Record it. You can’t post the number in text without AI moderation causing problems though so you’ll have to look it up yourself.
**TODD BLANCHE IS LYING**.
Ummm, no.
The sad thing is that this tactic will likely work, at least on those on the right.
Mitt Romney tried the same thing back in 2012: He refused to release his tax returns during the Presidential election for months. Finally after getting criticized relentlessly by the press and others (including TRUMP, of all people), he released ONE year of his taxes, and it was just a summary.
Every other candidate going back to Nixon released ten years of full tax returns, so Romney was CLEARLY hiding something. But it worked. Everyone on the Right was convinced that he did the right thing and wasn’t hiding anything. Every conservative I talked to was convinced that he released ten years of full tax returns.
Cool… So, we agree… You admit to violating federal law.
I actually can’t believe how bad the DOJ has botched this. Not only has not everything come out yet (which the DOJ has admitted), but some of the things that have come out have either not been redacted properly OR – my suspicion – also needed to be pulled because they feature Trump or other current governmental figures (which is ridiculous).
I was skeptical about all of this before the files (or at least part of the files) were released. This is all just making it worse though. Even if Trump is hypothetically innocent, it’s making both him and the DOJ look really bad. The DOJ had so much time to do this. Remember how much time they spent on redactions shortly after Trump took office? Now,
after thousands of hours and millions of dollars, we’ve ultimately been given a half-baked and likely tampered-with project.
From the article:
>**Blanche dismissed the notion that political considerations are influencing the release of material** from the files and argued that the law allows for leeway in the timeline to protect victims.
From Fox News yesterday:
https://www.foxnews.com/live-news/epstein-files-release-department-of-justice#post-29f53e5
>The Justice Department said it redacted the names and identifying information of victims, and **sources told Fox News Digital that the same redaction standards were applied to politically exposed individuals and government officials**.
So the president’s personal lawyer is admitting to contempt of Congress. This is why Johnson sent the House home, y’all.
So there are not any non redacted photos of trump because he is with victims in every photo and they want to protect the victims?
This makes it worse, like they know their reasoning makes it worse, right?
Blanche must be shitting his pants after reading the interview Suzie Wiles did with Vanity Fair. She could not have been more obvious that they are setting him up to be the fall guy for everything related to Epstein. Blanche is Trump’s personal attorney and his deputy Attorney General, but Wiles claimed that he went to meet with Ghislaine Maxwell and made a deal with her entirely on his own accord. She even claimed Trump was “ticked” when he found out about it.
Maybe Blanche was aware that this was going to be the strategy, but I doubt it, so he better work to get his affairs in order.
This regime believes the American people are truly fucking stupid.
Why you gotta keep proving them right, MAGA?
Hahahah ok fuck stick. Would you have accepted that answer if Biden admin was doing this? Didn’t think so.
As a Ukrainian I kept hearing everyone calling my country a corrupt shithole, but even in Ukraine this would not fly. So what should I call the US?
Pulling Blanche’s law license… also justified.
They just keep making shit worse. Can’t wait to see these people banished from the government.
Captain Hook… Tick tick tick
Justified how, because Trump is implicated? I’m sorry, but with all the delays, redactions, and now removal of photos, there’s simply no way Trump didn’t rape underage girls.
This will continually get worse for Trump.
They’re supposed to disclose the reasons ahead of time specifically as not to get themselves into this specific situation.
Please, show me the paper trail. Which victims rights group SPECIFICALLY asked for this?
Why hasn’t it been put back up with the four women’s faces (and only them) removed? I have all the files on my computer. Would you like me to do this in 1 min and Photoshop and forward it to you?
It’s time to impeach Bondi and Blanche.
All this shit will come out eventually. Long after the orange blob is dead. He’ll never be held accountable for anything if he’s in office
Impeachment is justified.
No it wasn’t , especially when you leave the ones that are taking from fund raisers just to scapegoat . ie Clinton in a PUBLIC pool, Dianna Ross and her own damn kids w/Michael Jackson and Clinton.
Good lord they can’t even cover things up competently.
When they chose to remove his photo or documents that were already released they showed everyone that they were already redacting anything with Trump in them.
If they were competent, they would have kept them in as a way to show that they didn’t redact everything with Trump to give the illusion of credibility.
Let’s talk about a blatant double standard.
When you or I get a subpoena, we comply. If we violate federal law, we face real consequences. But when it comes to Donald Trump and his circle, a large portion of the media doesn’t just normalize this lawlessness—they’ve started to celebrate it.
This hypocrisy was on full display this week with the Epstein files.
On Friday, the Department of Justice failed to comply with a federal law requiring the release of the Epstein documents. Let that sink in.
Congress passed a specific law (The Jeffrey Epstein Victims’ Rights Act) with clear instructions:
* Release Deadline: All files must be released within 30 days.
* What to Release: “all unclassified records, documents, communications, and investigative materials.”
* Redactions: Must be extremely limited (e.g., to protect victims) and every single redaction must have a written justification.
* Most importantly: The law explicitly states that no record can be withheld or redacted due to “embarrassment, reputational harm, or political sensitivity” to any powerful person.
So, what did the DOJ do? They violated almost every part of this law.
* They released only a small fraction of the records by the deadline.
* Entire categories of documents seem to be missing.
* The redactions are a complete joke—sometimes blacking out entire pages—with zero justification provided for any of them.
This is a clear and undeniable violation of a federal statute, seemingly to protect the powerful. Where is the wall-to-wall coverage holding the DOJ accountable with the same fervor applied to anyone else who ignores legal demands?
The same media outlets that would (rightfully) eviscerate any regular citizen for ignoring a subpoena are largely treating this as just another news story, not the institutional lawlessness that it is.
What does it say when the laws only apply to us, but not to them?
Why should we obey the law?
So let’s all remember that this is twice now that they have admitted he’s in there.
It’s justified because it was disastrous for the administration!
Also Trump rapes women and children.
They really think saying something makes it true.