Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche on Sunday disputed the narrative that the Department of Justice is redacting or withholding portions of sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein’s case files that relate to President Trump.
“There is nothing that he has to hide in the Epstein files. There never was,” Mr. Blanche said on NBC’s “Meet The Press.” “And even though there’s repeated attempts by Democrats to paint him as being part of the Epstein saga, it’s failing over and over again.”
Mr. Blanche confirmed that the Justice Department removed a photograph posted in its initial Epstein file release that pictured Mr. Trump with women.
“We learned after releasing that photograph that there were concerns about those women and the fact that we had put that photo up. So we pulled that photo down,” he said. “It has nothing to do with President Trump.”
Mr. Blanche said “it is laughable” that people think the Justice Department removed the photo because the president is in it.
“There are dozens of photos of President Trump already released to the public seeing him with Mr. Epstein. He has said that in the ’90s and early 2000s he socialized with him,” he said.
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The Justice Department pulled the photo that pictured Mr. Trump and some others after a victims’ rights group raised concerns, Mr. Blanche said.
“We’re still investigating that photo,” he said. “The photo will go back up. And the only question is whether there will be redactions on the photo. And of course if there are survivors in any of the photos, we will redact them as Congress expects us to do, as President Trump expects us to do, and as the attorney general and [FBI] Director [Kash] Patel have directed the department to do.”
Mr. Blanche said the Justice Department’s redactions in the files posted online and delays in releasing others are because the law requires them to protect the personal identifiable information of victims.
“We’re going through a very methodical process with hundreds of lawyers looking at every single document and making sure that victims’ names and any of the information from victims is protected and redacted,” he said.
Mr. Blanche also cited “other statutes” that protect attorney-client communications and other privileged information from being released.
“Otherwise, everything is getting produced,” he said.
Any mention of Mr. Trump in the Epstein files or photos of him will be released “unless it’s supposed to be redacted under the law,” Mr. Blanche said.
Mr. Trump “had nothing to do with the horrific crimes that Mr. Epstein committed. And so I don’t expect there will be anything redacted,” he said. “But the short answer is we are not redacting information around President Trump, around any other individual involved with Mr. Epstein.”
The initial trove of documents the Justice Department released includes several photos of former President Bill Clinton.
Mr. Blanche declined to say if Mr. Clinton is under investigation, saying “I will never talk about ongoing criminal investigations.”
He said the Justice Department for years has continued to investigate people associated with Epstein but couldn’t say whether there will be additional prosecutions.
“Based upon the information that I’m aware of now, we are not prepared to bring charges against anybody,” he said. “But we are learning new information all the time. We learned the names of additional victims as recently as Wednesday of this week.”
