DOJ Epstein Files Rollout Draws Privacy, Oversight Scrutiny (Full Transcript)

[00:00:00] Speaker 1: The Department of Justice releasing its remaining documents from the Jeffrey Epstein investigation. Deputy Attorney General Todd Bland saying the records will be posted throughout the day, including more than 2,000 videos, more than 180,000 images, some of the material so explicit you have to verify being an adult before you can actually access it.

[00:00:19] Speaker 2: Many of Epstein's survivors have been publicly pushing for years to have these documents come out, but it took a law passed with near unanimous support in Congress to finally bring these documents to light.

[00:00:32] Speaker 3: Victims of Mr. Epstein have gone through unspeakable pain and there's nobody that should say anything differently and to the extent that there's frustration, I understand where that comes from just from what we know about Mr. Epstein. I hope that the work that the men and women within this department have done over the past two months hopefully is able to bring closure.

[00:01:03] Speaker 2: CNN's Evan Perez is here with us now and Evan, there's been a lot of speculation about President Trump being named in these files and we're learning now the FBI actually compiled a list of allegations related to the president back in August. What are you learning?

[00:01:15] Speaker 4: Right. So this was in 2025 that the FBI compiled a list of all of these sexual assault allegations that involved the president of the United States, some of them stretch back years, decades, that were related, associated with this case and we don't know what of anything is actually credible here. As a matter of fact, we believe that a lot of these could not be verified. Some of them were second and third hand accounts that people were relating things and that's the way the FBI works, right? Some of this is in 302s, what they call 302s, which are essentially witness statements and anyone can make any allegations, the FBI takes it down and then it takes time and effort to try to verify whether any of that stands and so that appears to what has happened here and what's notable here is that there's some of them that have very salacious accusations about the president and again, a lot of them are unverified at all by the FBI. It appears that at least a couple of the documents that we're talking about here have been removed since they were posted earlier by the Justice Department. We don't know why that is. They've done this in previous tranches that they've released but look, I mean, we know that Jeffrey Epstein and the president of the United States were friends, that they were close friends for a period and then they had a falling out. The president has described that over the number of years and he's also said repeatedly that he had nothing to do and did not know anything about the activities, the illegal activities of Jeffrey Epstein with underage girls and so that's what's notable. One of the notable things, a lot of these documents, you know, 3.5 million documents in all that have been released in all of the Justice Department's work here, they've had hundreds of lawyers over the last few weeks who've been focused only on this, leaving behind all their other work to try to meet this deadline which of course they've blown past by a number of weeks and so we are still going through a lot of these documents. Some of them are things we've seen before including things related to the Glenn Maxwell case where of course she was convicted in 2022 for being associated with some of these crimes and so we're still going through a lot of these documents to see what else we learn in here. There was also some allegations about Bill Clinton, a lot of Bill Clinton mentions here including someone who was his former White House counsel who makes reference to Jeffrey Epstein. She worked as a lawyer apparently for Jeffrey Epstein and his estate and, you know, refers to him as wonderful Jeffrey and things like that so there's a lot of political figures associated with Epstein which is not surprising given the company that he kept.

[00:03:51] Speaker 2: Evan, thank you so much for that, really appreciate it.

[00:03:54] Speaker 1: The Justice Department is in the process of releasing its remaining files related to the Jeffrey Epstein sex trafficking case. We're now hearing from some Epstein survivors though who say their names appear unredacted throughout the documents despite assurances directly from DOJ that no personally identifiable information about victims would be released. Joining us now, an attorney who represents 11 of Epstein's accusers, Eric Fudali. Eric, thank you so much for being with us. The documents that were released today include some 3 million pages, 2,000 videos, 180,000 images as well. Is that, to your knowledge, everything DOJ has in its possession?

[00:04:37] Speaker 5: Absolutely not. No, it's not everything. And even what has been produced still has redactions. You know, there are some very alarming statements from the Department of Justice today discussing what they've withheld and what they've redacted. And most alarming was they cited attorney-client privilege and ongoing investigations. The problem with that is there's no oversight. We just have to trust that everything they're withholding is, in fact, attorney-client privilege. And attorney-client privilege is very nuanced and very difficult, especially when you're dealing with prosecutors who technically don't really have clients other than the government. So again, it's very convoluted, also ongoing investigations. You could say anything's an ongoing investigation and then withhold. That's what's so frustrating and so alarming about this. And that's why the congressmen have requested some of the federal judges in New York have overseen the Epstein cases to appoint a special overseer to oversee this production and make sure that it's being done in compliance with the law. We're actually filing some amicus briefs and letters to those judges on behalf of my clients as we speak, because that's what needs to happen. There needs to be oversight.

[00:05:45] Speaker 1: When you hear that there are survivors out there saying that they have read their names, even Jane Doe's, that they have read their names in these documents, I mean, what does that tell you about the process, the review process to put these documents out there?

[00:06:01] Speaker 5: It's, it's, it's really, it's really concerning. And really, what's so baffling about this is on one hand, it's a coverup, but on the other hand, it's, it's incompetence. So you have this combination, this sort of like perfect storm of trying to cover up what they don't want people to see, but then accidentally covering up what they shouldn't allow people to see, or accidentally showing people what they shouldn't see. I mean, this is just, I don't know if I've ever seen in the history of me, this Epstein case or really anything, such sheer incompetence in such an obvious and robust effort to cover things up and not withhold things from the public. But the fact that after all these redactions, all this time, we're more, we're almost a month and a half past the deadline for which all the documents were supposed to be produced, that they're still producing documents that are not fully redacted. I saw that there was, I heard there was a driver's license that showed a survivor's name. So it's just, it's, it's, it's incomprehensible how poor a job, how this has been handled.

[00:07:01] Speaker 1: I can predict what your response is going to be based on, on your description of this as a coverup and your description of the entire process. But I do have to ask whether you believe Deputy Attorney General Blanche, when he says that the White House had no purview, no control, no influence whatsoever on this review.

[00:07:21] Speaker 5: I have difficulty believing that for a couple of reasons. You know, first, it would seem like this administration has been the only people in the entire country who don't want the Epstein files revealed. I mean, this was a bipartisan issue in Congress, the House, in the Senate, Republicans, Democrats countrywide all want the Epstein files released. So something has to be stopping it because remember, the Department of Justice didn't need a law to release them. They could have just released them. So something was stopping them. And certainly it wasn't the will of the public because the public wants these released. Certainly it wasn't Congress or the Senate because they want this released. So there has to be another entity that wanted these files not released. And the other, the logical conclusion is that this administration is the one who has been blocking the release and appears perhaps to continue to be blocking this release.

[00:08:12] Speaker 1: Eric Fudaly, thanks so much for the time. Thank you.