Congress is still staggering around like they’ve been hit with a two‑by‑four made of pure institutional rot, and every hour brings another lawmaker stepping up to say, in their own polite congressional dialect, “What in the actual hell did the DOJ do here.” Jamie Raskin has been one of the loudest voices, and he’s not mincing words. He’s talking about redactions that make no sense, redactions that hide nothing sensitive, redactions that obscure mundane details like dates, locations, and already‑public information. He’s pointing out that the DOJ blacked out things that were literally available on Google, while leaving the names and photos of trafficking victims exposed to the world. Raskin’s whole vibe is: If this is what they’re willing to show us, imagine what they’re still hiding.
And he’s not alone. Members from both sides of the aisle are lining up to say the same thing: the DOJ’s redactions weren’t just sloppy… they were suspicious. They were nonsensical. They were insulting. They were the bureaucratic equivalent of a toddler covering their eyes and insisting they’re invisible. Lawmakers are talking about pages where the DOJ redacted the same word in one paragraph and left it unredacted in the next. They’re talking about black bars over flight numbers, over hotel names, over dates that are already public record. They’re talking about redactions that look like someone panicked and just started Sharpie‑ing anything that made them uncomfortable.
And then there’s the six men — the six powerful men whose names were redacted for no legal reason whatsoever. Not minors. Not victims. Not protected witnesses. Just men with enough influence that someone at DOJ decided they deserved a blackout bar. Rep. Ro Khanna is furious about it. Rep. Thomas Massie is furious about it. Sen. Cynthia Lummis, who walked into the reading room thinking this was all overblown, came out saying, “Now I see what the big deal is.” And then there’s the unnamed lawmaker who didn’t bother with euphemisms and simply said, “There’s a bunch of sick fucks.” When Congress, the same Congress that has seen classified war briefings, calls something sick, you know the files aren’t just bad. They’re radioactive.
But the real fury - the bipartisan, visceral, stomach‑turning fury - is about what wasn’t redacted. Because while the DOJ was busy shielding the identities of powerful men, they somehow left victims’ names, victims’ photos, victims’ identifying details unredacted in the public release. Women who were minors at the time. Women who were trafficked. Women who were coerced. Women who have already endured years of retraumatization. Their names were left exposed to the world while the men who harmed them were tucked behind black bars like delicate little orchids. Lawmakers are saying this wasn’t just a mistake, it was dangerous. It was reckless. It was illegal. It was a betrayal of the very people the DOJ claimed they were protecting.
And the survivors themselves have said publicly that they’ve received death threats, vile, graphic threats against them and their families, if they talk. They’ve said they’ve been warned to stay silent. They’ve said they’ve been told they’ll end up like Virginia Giuffre, who many people do not believe took her own life any more than Jeffrey Epstein did or any more than Ivana Trump “fell down some stairs.” Survivors have said the threats are real. The danger is real. The fear is real. And the DOJ’s decision to leave their names unredacted didn’t just fail to protect them, it painted a target on their backs.
And here’s the Unfugginbelievable truth… the DOJ’s excuse that they missed deadlines because they were “carefully reviewing the files to protect victims” is laughable. It’s insulting. It’s a giant middle finger to the survivors and to the public. Because if they were carefully reviewing anything, how did they manage to redact flight numbers but not the names of trafficked girls. How did they manage to black out hotel names but not the photos of minors. How did they manage to hide the identities of six powerful men but leave the identities of the women they abused hanging out in the open like bait.
And this is where the Epstein Transparency Act comes in… the bipartisan law, signed by the predator-in-chief, that was supposed to force the DOJ to release the files fully and honestly. The law that was supposed to prevent exactly this kind of selective secrecy. The law that was supposed to ensure the public got the truth, not a curated, sanitized, self‑protective farce. And the DOJ responded to that law - to Congress’s explicit demand for transparency - by redacting the wrong people, exposing the wrong people, and then shrugging like this was all just a clerical error.
It wasn’t a clerical error. It was a choice. It was a pattern. It was a message. And the message was clear: the powerful will be protected, and the vulnerable will be sacrificed.
And now Pam Bondi is sitting in front of Congress, trying to explain why the DOJ handled the release like a drunk intern with a Sharpie and a grudge. She’s trying to spin it, trying to deflect, trying to trumpshit her way through the hearing. But the lawmakers aren’t buying it. They’ve seen the unredacted files. They’ve seen the redactions. They’ve seen the danger the survivors are in. They’ve seen the six protected men. They’ve seen the nonsense black bars over meaningless information. They’ve seen the DOJ’s giant, institutional “go fuck yourself” to the Epstein Transparency Act.
And once Bondi is done, once she’s finished dodging and spinning and trying to defend the indefensible, the next article writes itself. Because the real story isn’t just what’s in the files. It’s who the DOJ chose to protect — and who they chose to expose.
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