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Notes -
Epstein files are currently being released. DOJ link HERE. Epstein Files Transparency Act PDF HERE.
Some notes from picking a random place to start and going through them one-by-one:
Lots of questionable redactions.
Funniest one so far.Cumstained porno mag. Looks like they decided to redact only her tits. Can they do that under the law? NSFW Link.
There is at least one male whose face is being consistantly redacted. Were there any male "victims"? Not sure what the legal basis for a redaction could be. Doesn't look like Trump to me.
Jeffery is definitely a boob guy.
Some of the ass pics that are in there are unredacted. Interesting choice.
A second redacted male figure. Looks like Epstein himself tbh. Maybe an accident?
Quote from a victim's interview notes: "What doing? Why bringing me dark girl?" "Bringing young girl." "Yeah but not dark."
They are definitely redacting the portions of interviews where they describe what Jeffery did sexually. Understandable, but not sure if legal under the Act.
"Tell girls don't wear heels, just wear casual everyday clothes." Really makes you think.
I'm glad I didn't do a direct download.
Now I'm getting big binders full of thumbnail pics. I hope the corresponding full-size photos are somewhere else in the files.
Lots of pictures of clouds. I think the guy just liked photos.
Did we really need to redact the photos of the other guys in the police photo lineups? Are they victims? Not super relevant but gives you an idea what the culture was in the office when they were putting these together.
Very ominous scrapbook page titled "Looking For a Way Out", with redacted pictures of a girl.
The mainstream conspiracy narrative is so ridiculous. If the government is under control of foreign blackmail, none of what it releases can be trusted anyway (it's at best selectively-released, if not outright fabricated). If the government is a trustworthy source of information, then it's not under the control of a blackmail cabal in the first place. You can't have your cake and eat it, too.
Also, this whole redaction thing is such a troll. If you want to release 50 pages and hide 50 pages, you don't release 50 unedited pages and 50 pages of black boxes; you just release the 50 clean pages and don't mention the other pages you left out (and yes, I do deem the government capable of re-numbering a list, especially with the help of ChatGPT).
I find the whole "release the files" thing so funny.
If you really believe that there exists a DoJ employee who is so moral and ethical that he would neither leak an incriminating document during the Biden admin, nor destroy it during the Trump admin, and so powerful that he could not be fired or forced to do so during either; then you probably believe in the Easter Bunny.
If there is anything incriminating in there, it's going to come together weeks from now. It's going to be a reference that correlates to a hint that leads to a receipt that pulls on a thread that leads to an angle. It's going to be some clue so small that they forgot to redact it, and it's only going to make sense as a piece of circumstantial evidence, a piece that completes a puzzle we haven't taken out of the box yet. But probably it won't be that either.
It's not going to be something that MSNBC can broadcast in real time.
It was clear that nothing much would come of it.
If there was solid material evidence that Trump had fucked 13yo's, then the Biden administration would have gone after him. They certainly tried to get him for everything else in the book (some of which was fair, other stuff less so).
Still, Trump campaigned on releasing the Epstein files, which played well with his base but was an unforced error on his part given how much he hung out with this guy. Likely all the photos of him hanging out with Epstein were already leaked, as was his creepy-as-fuck birthday card.
The Democrats forcing the DOJ to release the files was just them cashing in on that. It was clear that either he would have to release the files with him being in them, or redact everything which mentioned him. Both would harm him, somewhat. Unsurprisingly, he did not want the photos of him and Epstein going through the press again, so he redacted everything. But less than 5% of the electorate is going to take that as "this proves that he did not know Epstein".
I always found it a bit weird that they didnt bring any corruption case from his real estate business. Its hard to imagine he hasnt done it, in places with lots of Dem politicos, who may feel differently about him now and can be promised immunity and something like hero status - but no, they went with obscure campaign finance law. I dont get it.
If they tried getting him on real estate corruption, then they'd have to prosecute everyone in New York from the mayor's office on down. Yes, it's sleazy, but c'mon: you've been telling us for years that he's sleazy and corrupt.
The Letitia James effort rebounded on her (if the bank involved didn't prosecute, how bad a crime was it really?) and it's amusing that she got dinged for fibbing on a mortgage application after making such hay out of Trump doing likewise. But again, everyone expects that doing business in New York involves a lot of, um, differently ethical practices.
As to Mar-a-Lago and the golf courses, those are probably okay from a legal standpoint (that's not to say there isn't or wasn't any corruption involved, but the golf courses do seem to be straightforward 'buy 'em and develop 'em' deals). As to failed projects like the Atlantic City casino, yeah possibly dodgy there, but again - par for the course for such deals. It seems to have been involved in a lot of financial troubles, but if it was possible to get him on such properties, that would have happened already from disgruntled creditors.
Why? Whats forcing them to be fair about this?
They can't be forced to be fair, but it's the same problems that I think Mamdani is going to run into with his campaigns of reform; yeah, very nice, guys, but that's not how we do things here. Inertia, layers of bureaucracy, people protecting their own little fiefdoms, nobody wanting to get off the gravy train of bribes and backhanders, and about seventeen firms of sharks dressed as lawyers just hoping for a nice, drawn-out, billable hours in the hundreds if not thousands, lawsuit to drag through the courts for years.
Corruption is hard to measure, says this post, but here's a ranking of cases taken:
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His corruption was probably entangled with democratic machine power networks, so to go after him you would need to at least go after the local democrats he bribed.
Yes, this would run off of some democrat he bribed. I think thats an advantage: it means they can just entice one such guy to come clean, instead of having to really investigate. I think there likely are cases that implicate only one official, maybe one who wants to retire anyway, and then you just need to make him a good enough offer to flip. Including extensive immunity so nothing more in that vicinity will need to be investigated.
cc /u/HereAndGone2 sure, this is not the way things are done normally, but you only need one.
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And, to the point- Democrats really need local machines to win elections. Call it fraud, call it 'turn out the vote', doesn't really matter- democrats simply will not win competitive elections if the (often corrupt)local machines don't feel like it, and making them feel threatened is bad for that effort.
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