Washington – The U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) assured this Sunday that President Donald Trump “has nothing to do” with the removal of files from the case of the pedophile Jeffrey Epstein, including photos of the Republican, from the declassified documents published by the U.S. Government.
The president is not involved in the decision to remove more than a dozen images within the thousands of pages published this Friday about the deceased magnate, specified the assistant attorney general, Todd Blanche, who said they responded to requests from victims’ organizations.You may be interested in: http://Maduro tacha de “piratería de corsarios” la confiscación de petroleros por parte de EE.UU.
“After publishing the photographs, we learned that there were concerns about (the identity of) those women and the fact that we had published the photos, so we removed them. It has nothing to do with President Trump. Dozens of photos of President Trump with Mr. Epstein have already been published”, he specified to the NBC network.
Blanche added that the “idea that a single photo was removed because President Trump appeared is absurd.” Among the documents removed this Saturday was the image of a desk with framed photographs of personalities with Epstein – a well-known financier with privileged access to key figures – where several photos of Trump with women in swimsuits could also be seen in an open drawer, NBC reported. Hours after Blanche’s statements, the Department of Justice indicated on its X profile that it had temporarily removed this image “out of caution” and to review it “more thoroughly”. Subsequently, he determined that there is no evidence “of Epstein’s victims appearing” and republished the image “without any alteration” or censorship. The rest of the photographs that had been deleted included sexually explicit artwork, photographs of mailboxes full of envelopes, and a page from a notebook with names and numbers. In another post on X, the DOJ noted that it is “required by law” to conceal information about victims and minors, as well as “confidential material”. “Things have not been censored to protect famous individuals or prominent politicians,” he added. The friendship between Trump and Epstein has been a subject of scrutiny, especially by opponents of the Republican president, who has assured that he cut ties with his former friend and ally in 2004, before he was first accused of sexual abuse and exploitation of minors. Blanche added that once they comply with the victims’ requests, they will republish the files, and defended the DOJ’s work against criticism for the publication of dozens of heavily censored pages among the documents, disclosed in compliance with a transparency law approved by Congress and ratified by Trump. “If we need to censor faces or other information, we will, and then we will republish it. This way, we are complying with the law, which, by the way, is what President Trump has been asking us to do since before he was elected. There is nothing he has to hide in Epstein’s files,” he indicated. Blanche also warned that the reason the DOJ is still reviewing the documents and has spaced out their release instead of releasing them all at once this Friday, as stipulated, is “simply to protect the victims”. Several senators and congressmen, including Dick Durbin, the highest-ranking Democrat on the Senate Judiciary Committee, stated that their party “will investigate this violation of the law and ensure that the American people know about it.”
