On Thursday, a gang of social media influencers loyal to President Donald Trump walked out of the White Home and shortly took to social media to brag about their haul: Every had been given a big white binder studying, “The Epstein Files: Phase 1.”
Lawyer Normal Pam Bondi pledged earlier within the week to launch what data the federal authorities had gathered on Jeffrey Epstein, the disgraced financier who died in jail awaiting trial on intercourse trafficking costs in 2019.
“What you’re going to see … is a lot of flight logs, a lot of names, a lot of information,” Bondi instructed Fox Information, including, “It’s pretty sick, what that man did.”
However the binders didn’t seem to include any new data. A watermark throughout the entrance learn “DECLASSIFIED,” but it surely was not clear whether or not any of the data inside had ever been technically labeled.
A lot of the data surrounding Epstein — flight logs, pages of his so-called little black e-book — has already been made public over the past a number of years because of lawsuits and numerous media shops. A model of the recordsdata is even obtainable for simply $5 on Amazon.
JIM WATSON by way of Getty Pictures
Bondi has claimed that the FBI is withholding sure details about the Epstein case, and that she remains to be working to uncover it. In an announcement issued Thursday, Bondi stated that she “has requested the FBI deliver the remaining [Epstein] documents to the Department by 8:00 AM on February 28 and has tasked FBI Director Kash Patel with investigating why the request for all documents was not followed.”
She recommended the purpose of the binder stunt was to “shed light on Epstein’s extensive network and begin to provide the public with long overdue accountability” as a result of the paperwork — regardless of being straightforward to google — had beforehand not been “released in a formal capacity by the U.S. government.”
One of many influencers, Rogan O’Handley, generally known as DC Draino on-line, livestreamed himself flipping by means of his binder’s contents, exhibiting many pages of what seemed to be flight logs.
Over 100 pages of Epstein’s flight logs, with just a few redactions, had been made public in December 2021 as a part of the federal government’s case towards Ghislaine Maxwell, who was discovered responsible of serving to Epstein and sentenced to twenty years in jail in 2022. Different paperwork had been launched over the past a number of years as a part of a go well with towards Maxwell by a sufferer, Virginia Giuffre, who says she was recruited as a teen to supply sexual favors to Epstein and buddies like Britain’s Prince Andrew.
Epstein’s black e-book of telephone numbers and speak to data was revealed by the now-defunct weblog Gawker in 2015, revealing an entry for Trump. Flight logs revealed up to now have already revealed that Trump and former President Invoice Clinton had flown on Epstein’s non-public jet up to now, together with supermodel Naomi Campbell, disgraced actor Kevin Spacey, and plenty of extra.
The MAGA influencers invited to the White Home Thursday included Chaya Raichik, who runs the rabidly anti-LGBTQ LibsOfTikTok social media accounts; Liz Wheeler, a political commentator on the right-wing One America Information Community; Jessica Reed Kraus, who runs the pro-Robert F. Kennedy Jr. HouseInhabit accounts; and Jack Posobiec, a Pizzagate conspiracy theorist who has used his appreciable platform to unfold false rumors up to now.
One other, Savanah Hernandez, downplayed the binders’ contents on X, saying that “this morning’s meeting is a part of the Trump admin’s push to bring independent journalists and media to speak directly to the highest members of the administration in an effort to be the most transparent admin in history.”
Kraus claimed on Instagram that Trump instructed the influencers gathered within the Oval Workplace that they had been “the most trusted media now.”
She recommended the stunt was a part of the White Home’s ongoing efforts to wrest management of the press pool from the mainstream shops which have coated the president and people round him for a lot of a long time and provides it to handpicked social media influencers as an alternative.
“Our inclusion has officially broken their monopoly over White House access,” Kraus wrote.
Over a span of a long time, Epstein sexually abused women as younger as 14 from his numerous high-end properties in New York, Florida, New Mexico and his non-public Caribbean island.
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He carried out a slap-on-the-wrist sentence in 2008 that concerned being housed in a non-public wing of a neighborhood jail, which allowed him to depart day by day on “work release.” In 2019, he was arrested by the FBI, however lower than two months later Epstein was discovered useless in his jail cell.
