A federal judge smacked down President Donald Trump's administration in court on Wednesday, calling officials out on their desperate effort to dodge accountability around the documents from the investigation of Jeffrey Epstein and convicted accomplice Ghislaine Maxwell.
In a ruling, Judge Richard Berman blasted, "The Government's 100,000 pages of Epstein files and materials dwarf the 70-odd pages of Epstein grand jury materials" and its refusal to disclose them.
Legal analyst and former Justice Department prosecutor Elie Honig called the judge's smackdown far outside the norm as Berman refuses to be the DOJ's patsy.
"This is not just a vanilla rejection of emotion by the judge here; this is a rebuke aimed at DOJ, because what Judge Berman says here, at its heart is, essentially, this is much more about the appearance of transparency than actual transparency. He says in the snippet, you just showed that this is a diversion because what the judge says here is we're talking about a tiny percentage of the file."
While there is some interesting info that was likely included in the small snippet of grand jury information, Honig said he has tried to tell anyone who will listen that it will be a small fraction of what the Justice Department has.
"What the judge says here is all the rest of it, the remaining 99.3%, you DOJ, have the ability to turn that over without my permission of a judge. And so the judge basically says this is all for show, and you haven't made the showing," Honig closed.
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