Donald Trump had ‘nothing to do’ with photo removal, Todd Blanche says
María Paula Mijares Torres
Washington: U.S. Justice Department officials protected Jeffrey Epstein’s victims over the weekend when they removed several images from files the agency released on the notorious sex offender, Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche said.
“There were a number of photos that were removed after they were posted on Friday,” Blanche told NBC. Meet the Press. “This is because a judge in New York ordered us to listen to any victims or victims’ rights groups if they had any concerns about the material we presented.”
Attention has focused on an image of a desk drawer containing a number of photographs, including one showing future President Donald Trump, among those removed from the department’s website following the release of a large amount of material on Friday (Saturday AEDT).
“You see in this photo there are photographs of women,” said Blanche. “And after we posted that photo, we learned that there were concerns about those women and we put up that photo. So we took that photo down. This has nothing to do with President Trump.”
New York Times Monday morning reported that the photo was later re-uploaded to online files, and that the Justice Department said it reposted the photo after determining that it contained no image of any victim.
Blanche, Trump’s former personal attorney, emerged as the Justice Department’s main public face in the agency’s release of the Epstein files, which was authorized by Congress after Trump’s objections to public release of the material unfolded on a bipartisan basis.
In a letter to Congress on Friday, Blanche said the department was unable to meet the Dec. 19 deadline for the full release because of the density of the material and restrictions imposed by a federal judge in Manhattan to prevent the identification of the victims.
More than 1,200 victims or relatives were identified during the review process and references to them were redacted, along with information covered by legal privileges such as attorney-client and negotiation process protections, he said.
Blanche said on Monday (AEDT) that she and Attorney General Pam Bondi had met with victims’ groups on Thursday but did not elaborate on the decision to remove the image showing Trump.
“If we need to redact faces or other information, we’ll do that,” Blanche told NBC. “Then we’ll put it back in.”
The partial publication and extensive redactions sparked immediate criticism from some MPs. Democrats on the Senate Judiciary Committee accused the administration of violating the Epstein Files Transparency Act and protecting Trump.
Jamie Raskin, the top Democrat on the House Judiciary Committee, said on CNN: State of the Union He said the administration was “covering up things that Donald Trump, for whatever reason, did not want to be made public.”
Blanche denied this claim and promised that nothing related to Trump in the files would be kept secret.
“If there is any mention of President Trump, if there are photographs of President Trump or anyone else, those will be published, of course, other than the victims or survivors that we have identified,” he told NBC.
He also argued that the law gives leeway in the timeline to protect victims.
“Bring it,” he said. “We are doing everything we need to do to comply with this statute.”
Before working at the Department of Justice, Blanche represented Trump at his 2024 criminal trial in New York City, where he was convicted on May 30, 2024, of 34 felonies for falsifying business records.
Bloomberg
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