After Donald Trump's administration asked a judge to keep secret the names of individuals who had monetary transactions with disgraced financier and convicted child abuser Jeffrey Epstein, a legal expert highlighted the administration's about-face on the documents.
Former federal prosecutor Kristy Greenberg, who previously commented on Trump's criminal legal matters, appeared on MSNBC over the weekend to discuss the administration's actions involving Epstein records.
With the host saying the report "may have opened a can of worms," Greenberg notes that the filing at first glance appears to be like any other DOJ filing.
"Well, I think when you look at this filing, this is something that you would generally expect from DOJ to say, 'Hey, these are uncharged third parties. They have privacy interests. They object to their names being made public, so we are going to object this being disclosed. We want this to remain secret.' That's kind of standard," Greenberg said. "However, and there's a big however. The problem with that motion is, not too long ago, we got a very different motion from this Department of Justice where they asked for grand jury materials to be unsealed, and there is a precedent there. They're talking about the fact that they are committed to transparency."
She added, "You can't have it both ways."
"You cannot continue to speak about being transparent and stating that the public interest is great in these materials, and therefore materials need to be unsealed and then say, well, actually, not so much with respect to x, y, and z. It doesn't make sense," she said. "It's inconsistent. Their positions are very difficult to understand, and I expect that the judge will have some problems in terms of really understanding where is the coherent position."
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