Trump over-promises and under-delivers with heavily redacted Epstein cache

 

 Analysis

Trump over-promises and under-delivers with heavily redacted Epstein cache

David Smith

in Washington

‘Most transparent’ administration has slow-walked and stonewalled – the incomplete release smells of a cover-up

 

Sat 20 Dec 2025 00.05 GMT

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/dec/19/doj-epstein-files-release-redacted-trump

 

The disappointment was palpable. In February, a group of 15 rightwing influencers visited the White House and paraded binders labelled “The Epstein Files: Phase 1”, only to discover that they contained precious little that was new.

 

Ten months later, it was the world’s turn. Amid huge global anticipation on Friday, the US justice department released hundreds of thousands of pages of documents related to the late financier and convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.

 

“The Trump administration is the most transparent in history,” proclaimed Abigail Jackson, a White House spokesperson, insisting that it has “done more for the victims [of Epstein] than Democrats ever have”.

 

But it soon became apparent that, once again, Donald Trump had over-promised and under-delivered. Many of the documents in the data dump were heavily redacted, with text blacked out so it was impossible to read. Norm Eisen, executive chair of Democracy Defenders Fund, said: “What they have released is clearly incomplete and appears to be over-redacted to boot.”

 

The documents extensively featured photos of former president Bill Clinton, a Democrat, and appeared to include few if any photos of Trump or documents mentioning him, despite Trump and Epstein’s well-publicised friendship in the 1990s and early 2000s.

 

Moreover, Friday’s release was far from complete. US deputy attorney general Todd Blanche said “several hundred thousand” documents would be made public on Friday, but the need to protect the victims meant thousands more would be released over the next couple of weeks. The initial release also appeared to include far less than Blanche promised.

 

It smelled of a cover-up. And the rare reticence of Trump did little to dispel that notion. At a White House event on Friday with pharmaceutical companies who have agreed to lower some of their prices, the president – typically so garrulous on every issue under the sun – declined to answer reporters’ questions off topic.

 

Trump said: “I prefer not talking and asking questions only for the reason that this is such a big announcement. I really don’t want to soil it up by asking questions, even questions that are very fair questions that I’d love to answer. So I think we have to just stop right here.”

 

The president had spent much of this year resisting disclosure and denouncing the files as a “Democratic hoax”. But a rare bipartisan uprising in Congress forced him to cave and sign legislation last month mandating release of all unclassified Epstein records to be released by the end of 19 December in a searchable and downloadable format. His administration blew past that deadline and Democrats cried foul.

 

Chuck Schumer, the minority leader in the Senate, said: “This set of heavily redacted documents released by the Department of Justice today is just a fraction of the whole body of evidence.

 

“Simply releasing a mountain of blacked-out pages violates the spirit of transparency and the letter of the law. For example, all 119 pages of one document were completely blacked out. We need answers as to why.”

 

Jeff Merkley, the lead Senate sponsor of the Epstein Files Transparency Act, added that administration officials “have chosen to illegally disregard the law I led the fight in the Senate to pass. By failing to comply, the administration is openly denying ‘equal justice under the law’ to all of Jeffrey Epstein’s victims.”

 

None of this will surprise critics who have seen Trump eviscerate Congress over the past year with authoritarian zeal. He has signed 221 executive orders – more than in his entire first term – and bypassed the legislative branch on everything from a TikTok ban to dismantling USAID to adding his own name to the John F Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts.

 

Soon after the partial release of the Epstein files, it was announced that the US military had launched airstrikes against dozens of Islamic State targets in Syria in retaliation for an attack on US personnel. There were echoes of another December day in 1998 when Clinton ordered air strikes against Iraq and was accused by members of Congress of trying to distract from impeachment proceedings against him.

 

But Trump will struggle to distract from the Epstein issue, with just 44% of Republicans saying they approve of how he has handled it so far. There was some expectation that Friday might bring the matter to a head, for better or worse, with the politically advantageous timing of the Christmas holiday just around the corner.

 

Instead the “most transparent” administration again decided to slow-walk and stonewall. That will only feed the very conspiracy theories that Trump once feasted upon but which now threaten to consume him.