Sarah Fitzpatrick writes:

Jeffrey Epstein’s victims began the day believing they might finally get something they’d been requesting for years: a direct conversation with the nation’s top law-enforcement official before the Justice Department made public a full trove of long-buried documents and photos. The release of the Epstein files, as the department’s hundreds of thousands of investigative materials have come to be known, might finally provide clarity on what the government knew about Epstein’s sex-trafficking scheme and when it knew it. The victims sat by their phones waiting anxiously—but also, they told me, with a bit of hope.

Just over 24 hours earlier, on the eve of the deadline for the files’ release, Attorney General Pam Bondi and Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche had placed a call to a group that supports survivors of Epstein’s abuse, according to multiple people briefed on the outreach. On the call, the officials previewed what would and wouldn’t be in the disclosure: photographs, yes; videos, no. Victims’ names would be redacted. At one point, according to a person familiar with the conversation, the officials suggested that if video exists, it may still be in the possession of the Epstein estate—an assertion that raised alarms among survivors who have long believed that recordings were used as leverage and blackmail.

This morning, the Justice Department indicated via email to the group that Bondi would try to speak with survivors and expressed support for them, according to people familiar with the correspondence. But soon after, they were told that the attorney general would not be available after all, due to a medical appointment. One DOJ official familiar with Bondi’s schedule told me the attorney general “was at Walter Reed today for a prescheduled routine appointment,” and emphasized that “no call was missed,” because “that meeting was never scheduled.”

Meanwhile, Blanche appeared on Fox News and announced that the administration wouldn’t be hitting its deadline from Congress. Some files would be released, but many would not—at least not yet. Survivors were left with familiar feelings of disappointment and disillusionment, as well as unresolved questions: Why did the Trump administration change course last month on its promise to release all of the Epstein files if it wasn’t going to actually follow through? What was the government holding back—and why?

Sharlene Rochard first met Epstein in New York in the mid-1990s, when she was still a teenager. She told me that she has taken additional security precautions in and around her home in recent days, not knowing what would be released or whether she would be mentioned. She and other victims had asked the DOJ for advance notice and preparation for what was coming, she said, so that they didn’t find out what was in the files on television or social media. But she didn’t get that.

“I feel really disappointed,” Rochard said. “America is getting a look tonight into how we have all felt for years.”

The failure to schedule a call with victims was only one piece of a broader, frantic rush inside Donald Trump’s Justice Department as it approached the final hours of its congressionally mandated deadline. The Epstein Files Transparency Act, signed by Trump on November 19, requires the attorney general to make public, within 30 days, “all unclassified records, documents, communications, and investigative materials” in the DOJ’s possession that relate to Epstein and his associate Ghislaine Maxwell. The cache was believed to include flight logs, internal DOJ communications, and even records concerning the “destruction, deletion, alteration, misplacement, or concealment” of Epstein-related evidence.

The law tries to preempt a possible work-around by the DOJ. It explicitly bars the department from withholding, delaying, or redacting records because of “embarrassment, reputational harm, or political sensitivity,” even for “any government official [or] public figure.”

Members of Congress and staff for the House Oversight Committee told me that they were alarmed by the DOJ’s silence in the days and hours before the release. Staff for Senator Jeff Merkley and Representatives Ro Khanna and Thomas Massie had repeatedly sought guidance from DOJ officials on what would be released and how the department was preparing. The lawmakers never got a response. [Continue reading…]