DOJ Temporarily Deletes Trump Photo From Epstein Files, Ensuring Everyone Knew About The Deletion
from the lol-DOJ-lol dept
Imagine having all the power but none of the brains. That’s the current administration, the one that behaves like a blind, enraged bull set loose in its own china shop. “We can always get more china,” says the administration, shortly before realizing it really can’t, thanks to tariff efforts that ensure China won’t be buying from the US any time soon, much less selling replacement china at the expected price point.
This is worse than the inmates running the asylum. This is more akin to a bunch of Nurse Ratchets running the asylum. The asylum becomes more cruel and less competent with each passing day. Cruelty isn’t generally associated with intelligence. And that truism remains unbothered during Trump’s second ascendance to the Oval Office.
Trump and his fans spent years stoking conspiracy theories about Democratic party members and the wholesale sexual abuse of children. These conspiracy theories led to actual violence that those participating in these conspiracy theories refuse to take responsibility for.
New York financier/pimp Jeffrey Epstein was apparently a friend to everyone rich or powerful. And he gave them what they couldn’t get elsewhere: sexual access to minors. Some of this remains alleged. But some of it was the supporting evidence for Epstein’s conviction. Epstein is dead and I can imagine lots of his friends and acquaintances breathed a sigh of relief when it was reported he had (allegedly) died by suicide in jail.
A resurgence of interest in Epstein’s files posed a unique problem for Donald Trump. On one hand, Trump had spent years stoking interest in these files, claiming they would expose a vast Democratic party cabal solely interested in sexually exploiting minors. But he also knew these files would reveal things about his own relationship with Epstein and, very likely, contain implications about Trump’s interest in much younger women.
After a period of proclaiming the Epstein files to be something no one was interested in (blatantly false, no matter which side of the MAGA you fall on), Trump and his DOJ decided to move forward with a staggered release of these documents. Congress actually managed to get in on the governance game (something lately completely subsumed by Trump’s desire to rule solely from the confines of the Oval Office via executive orders) and passed a bill that required a full release by December 19.
This didn’t happen. GOP leaders made sure it wouldn’t happen by declaring a Congressional holiday recess well in advance of the holidays to ensure GOP reps would be safely back in their home states before the release of additional Epstein files.
We got whatever the DOJ chose to release. And that release was a combination of stuff we’ve mostly already seen, some (heavily-redacted) stuff we hadn’t seen yet, and more than 200 pages of fully-redacted documents. We already knew we were in for a whole lot of opacity. What we possibly didn’t expect was the DOJ attempting to hide stuff after the fact.
At least 16 files disappeared from the Justice Department’s public webpage for documents related to Jeffrey Epstein — including a photograph showing President Donald Trump — less than a day after they were posted, with no explanation from the government and no notice to the public.
The missing files, which were available Friday and no longer accessible by Saturday, included images of paintings depicting nude women, and one showing a series of photographs along a credenza and in drawers. In that image, inside a drawer among other photos, was a photograph of Trump, alongside Epstein, Melania Trump and Epstein’s longtime associate Ghislaine Maxwell.
Trump’s DOJ is either too dumb to know or too stupid to care about the Streisand Effect. The quickest way to draw attention to something you don’t want people paying attention to is to perform a hasty deletion.
Anyone who was paying attention to this release had already saved the documents to a bunch of cloud services and static storage devices. Those who were paying attention past the initial release would know if the government decided to bury something after the fact.
Of course, the government did try to do that. The people with the most power and money seem to think they’re the smartest people walking the earth because they’ve fully bought into the meritocracy illusion. And they’re always wrong. Being rich or powerful doesn’t make you smarter. It just makes it easier to shrug off your losses.
The DOJ tried to do that after people outside of the imaginary “meritocracy” pointed out this post facto deletion.
Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche early Sunday said the image was removed from the website after learning there were concerns about women in the photo, “so we pulled that photo down.”
“It has nothing to do with President Trump,” said Blanche on NBC’s “Meet the Press.
That’s impossible to believe because everything this particular federal government does has everything to do with Donald Trump. It’s a system of supposed checks and balances manned entirely by people who demand that the moment Poochie isn’t on screen, everyone should be asking “Where’s Poochie?”
Here’s the most high profile image the DOJ deleted (albeit temporarily) just in case it tries to do it again. Take a look in the drawer to find a photo of the current president next to someone the DOJ now implies was “a victim.”
After everyone noticed this premature burial, the DOJ restored the files, pretending this was all about protecting victims of crimes committed by Epstein and his associates (Donald Trump among them), rather than a misguided attempt to rewrite history while this particular history was still being published.
The Department of Justice on Sunday restored online a photo from the Jeffrey Epstein files that contained images showing President Donald Trump after backlash over its removal.
[…]
“The Southern District of New York flagged an image of President Trump for potential further action to protect victims,” the DOJ said in a post on the social media site X.
“Out of an abundance of caution, the Department of Justice temporarily removed the image for further review. After the review, it was determined there is no evidence that any Epstein victims are depicted in the photograph, and it has been reposted without any alteration or redaction.”
I’d love to be able to take the DOJ at its word. But it has steadily destroyed that option ever since [gestures at the long history of the DOJ, but emphasizing its recent actions with much more demonstrative hand gestures] it has been the (alleged) Department of Justice. But it gets even less of a benefit of a doubt here because we are absolutely right to assume this DOJ considers Donald Trump to be the victim of any criminal acts he may have actually perpetrated while getting cozy with Mr. Epstein.
At some point, the Trump DOJ is going to insist that if Trump ever participated in the rape of underage women, he was forced to do by Antifa protesters backed by billions in George Soros funding. He will have been the victim of a “woke” cabal that recognized him for the sexual predator he is and then used his predilections against him.
This move by the DOJ to temporarily bury a photo of Trump makes it clear it will always do whatever it thinks might please Trump even when it’s immediately obvious it cares more about fluffing Trump than serving the nation.
Filed Under: doj, donald trump, epstein files, jeffrey epstein, opacity, streisand effect, stupidity, todd blanche, trump administration
Comments on “DOJ Temporarily Deletes Trump Photo From Epstein Files, Ensuring Everyone Knew About The Deletion”
Just wait until someone sues the DOJ over their refusal to comply with the law. Which will keep the Epstein files in the news until the lawsuit is resolved.
Probably after a long slog that goes all the way up to SCOTUS.
Re: 'He wouldn't do that!' 'He outright admitted to doing it.' 'Fake news!'
The real kicker is that Trump could have headed this whole thing off at the very start had he simply just come out and admitted that he was heavily involved with Epstein and everything that meant and before he even finished the sentence his supporters would have been coming up with excuses for his monstrous actions and why they were still supporting him, by instead trying to bury the whole disgusting mess Trump himself is responsible for keeping it in the news all this time.
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Maybe. But I’m not so sure this is really about the Epstein files.
I think that, by and large, people are really fucking unhappy with the way things are going right now, including a whole lot of people who voted for Trump.
But Trump voters won’t admit, even to themselves, that this is exactly what they voted for; they have to make excuses, come up with some reason they were tricked, that Trump isn’t who they thought he was or his policies aren’t what they thought they were (even though they absolutely fucking are).
Trump’s association with Epstein has been a major outlet for those excuses, but if it weren’t that I think they’d find something else.
I agree with you that these people legitimately do not care that Donald Trump is a pedophile and that, with the exact same information but different circumstances, they’d be defending him. But I think that if the economy were better, most of them would be defending him even now.
Re: Re:
I think you’re missing the point of the denial. The denial is not to make people think it didn’t happen. It’s to put his most loyal supporters on notice that they now have to convince everyone else that it’s OK that it happened. That takes time, so they need the heads-up.
'We're trying to hide all that information to protect the people we claimed were lying!'
Congress actually managed to get in on the governance game (something lately completely subsumed by Trump’s desire to rule solely from the confines of the Oval Office via executive orders) and passed a bill that required a full release by December 19.
This didn’t happen. GOP leaders made sure it wouldn’t happen by declaring a Congressional holiday recess well in advance of the holidays to ensure GOP reps would be safely back in their home states before the release of additional Epstein files.
I honestly struggle to think of a way to tell the world more clearly that the files contain a bunch of republican politicians, donors and other public figures than how desperate they have been and continue to be to hide everything in them. At this point they could hold a live press conference to admit that Trump and others were heavily involved with Epstein and it would be less of an admission of guilt than what they’re already doing and more tellingly not doing.
Re:
Telling us that powerful people are in the files doesn’t hurt them that much. People paying attention already guessed that, and people not paying attention probably still haven’t worked it out.
The thing that the GOP are afraid of is if the public knows exactly who was involved. Especially if they aren’t sure which of their donors are in there.
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That is a very kind way of expressing that the GOP wants to retain the usefulness of its extortion material stash as long as possible.
The GOP is not beholden to its donors. It is beholden to their cash.
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I wasn’t thinking of the extortion angle.
I was thinking more about members of the GOP who suspect that some of their major donors are in the files. But don’t know which ones. Right now they can deny specific knowledge* and keep getting their money.
But as soon as those names come out, they need to choose between losing that donor money or losing the votes from people who don’t like them supporting a pedos agenda.
*Even if they know for sure that a specific donor is on there, they can still deny it.
“We just took down the pictures of trump because we were concerned about the victims. You know us, super concerned about victims!”
“So Trump, who didn’t even know Epstein at all because he was a bad bad man, was posing in photos with his victims?!”
“Oh, no, wait, we just were being super careful, nothing to see here, the pictures are back. Look over there, it’s a Democrat trying to make your child trans!”
More condemning was a side by side of one doc that was already public on the doj from earlier in the year. The old one had trumps name, the new one had it redacted.
The doj openly lied that trump being redacted was how they got it from the court.
Re: It's a consistent part of making America great again
The administration is currently browbeating the Smithsonian to stop exhibits that make Americans feel bad about themselves.
Obviously anything that would show Americans that they elected an immoral incompetent paedophile crook would make them feel bad, so this part of history needs to be redacted.
Re: Re:
Meanwhile, America, at any time, should make Americans feel bad. Even the good things and neutral things should be tempered by how terrible America regularly is.
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Trump’s name is definitely in there.
The FBI had agents working in shifts 24/7 flagging every instance of his name.
There was even training materials given to the agents on how to do this.
MSW Media put in an FOIA request for the training documents but the DOJ is trying to block it on the grounds that the Epstein files aren’t of high public interest.
So Trump is definitely not a victim of Epstein. That makes him what exactly, an associate?
Revealing coverup
What the administration is trying to coverup is far more revealing than what is already known with regards to the contents of the Epstein Files. If what is being covered up gets out to the public (officially or unofficially) in some manner, there will be many heads that will be rolling.
Re:
And it’s not just about Trump, or Republicans or Democrats. It’s about powerful men (and it is almost entirely men, with a few exceptions like Ghislaine Maxwell) acting with impunity. Politicians, royals, Ivy League professors, Fortune 500 executives. Powerful men flaunting their power, their ability to do as they please without consequence.
If we’re going to reckon with this, really reckon with it — and I have my doubts — it’s going to mean some very big changes.
Re: Re:
Sadly, those very big changes are going to be rather ugly. The warning signs are flashing and sirens are blaring, but nobody in the opposing party is home and willing to stump up. It unfortunately falls upon citizens that need to relearn how to truly hold people in power to task as they’ve become too complacent over the decades.
The Trump Administration...
can’t govern worth a damn but has perfected the execution of the Streisand Effect!
The Streisand Effect strikes again!
Strange that none of the females were blacked out in Trumps photos but they are all blacked out in Clinton photos.
Is that because only Clinton photos were with underage girls but Trump photos they were not minors?
Re:
Nice attempt at shifting and reframing, sorry but Donald Trump Rapes kids, own it and admit that you support a Rapist and a PDFile. scumfuck.
Re: Re:
I’ve disliked trump since the eighties, probably before you were born.
I didn’t like what he did in my country back then, but thanks for playing miss scumfuck
Baaaaaahahaha these motherfuckers are so dumb they did it again. The Bezos Post:
(emphasis mine)
Re: 'We're trying to remove his name/photo because he's so INNOCENT!'
The more they attempt to cover-up Trump’s involvement with Epstein the more they prime people to assume that any redactions have good odds of involving Trump since they’ve been caught multiple times now of trying to scrub any mention of him from the files.
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They’re not sending their best.
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The sad/reassuring thing is I’m pretty sure they are, anyone who’s actually qualified has either been fired or quit in disgust by this point.
Re: Re: Re:2
Nah, there are still tens of thousands of people in the FBI. That’s way too many people to purge everybody but the Trump loyalists, though it’s not for lack of trying.
The incompetence isn’t because there’s nobody at the FBI who knows how to do their job. It’s because the people who do are being micromanaged by the incompetents at the top.