Experts sounded the alarm on Sunday after Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche revealed a dubious new scheme to protect some of the people mentioned in the Epstein files.
In a court filing last week, Blanche submitted explanations to Judge Emmet Sullivan about the Department of Justice's process for redacting the Epstein files. That court filing included a new definition of what it means to be a victim in the case, according to Allison Gill, host of "The Breakdown," who discussed the filing with Katie Phang, the journalist who sued the DOJ over its redactions, on a new episode.
The new definition of "victim" in the Epstein case now includes people who "self-identified" as victims, which led Gill to worry that abusers who hung out with Epstein may self-identify and therefore be protected from disclosure.
Phang pointed out that the new definition also carries some stark implications.
"It does two things. One, it creates a very slippery slope in terms of how we are viewing who we are now defining as victims," Phang said. "It's never easy to identify a victim, especially in a trafficking situation. My concern is the expansive nature that Blanche is taking is that he's going to use that as an excuse to not investigate, as an excuse not to prosecute."
"We know that there are people who were brought into the Epstein orbit and were, according to them, groomed and abused by Epstein and Maxwell ... and were tasked to recruit ... almost as if it's a grotesque Ponzi scheme," she added.
Phang noted that her lawsuit is not seeking to "out" anyone who was abused by Epstein, which is explicitly prohibited by the Epstein Files Transparency Act that was signed into law last year.
Even so, Phang argued that Blanche could use the definition to put the case into a "weird position."
"If Todd Blanche allows people who were co-conspirators with Epstein, Maxwell, and others ... to be able to self-identify as victims, and in doing so, protects their names from possible ... pursuit of the truth, we have a problem. We have a serious problem," Phang added.