“Meet the Press” host Kristen Welker grills Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche about why the Justice Department did not release all of the thousands of records related to Jeffrey Epstein as per a near-unanimous vote in Congress. Blanche says the DOJ did not meet the 30-day deadline because victim names and details must be reviewed and redacted, and claims hundreds of lawyers are reviewing documents line by line. He said they were required to take down some photos after publication: “There were a number of photographs that were pulled down after being released on Friday. That’s because a judge in New York has ordered us to listen to any victim or victims’ rights group if they have any concerns about the material that we’re putting up. And so when we hear concerns, whether it’s photographs of women that we do not believe are victims or we didn’t have information to show that they were victims, but we learned that there are concerns, of course we’re taking that photograph down.” “The absurdity of us pulling down a photo, a single photo because President Trump was in it is laughable,” he said. “And the fact that everybody’s trying to act like that’s the case is a reflection of their true motivation.” “But the reality is anybody, any victim, any victim’s lawyers, any victim rights group can reach out to us and say: ‘Hey, Department of Justice, there’s a document, there’s a photo, there’s something within the Epstein files that identifies me.’ And we will then of course pull that off and investigate it,” he said.

KRISTEN WELKER: And joining me now is Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche… The Epstein Files Transparency Act called for all files, with limited exceptions, to be released within 30 days. On Friday, the Justice Department released just a fraction of the overall Epstein files. Why didn’t the Justice Department meet that Friday deadline? DEPUTY ATTORNEY GENERAL TODD BLANCHE: So it’s very simple and very clear. The statute also requires us to protect victims. And so the reason why we are still reviewing documents and still continuing our process is simply that, to protect victims. So the same individuals that are out there complaining about the lack of documents that we’re produced on Friday are the same individuals who apparently don’t want us to protect victims. So 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, which is exactly what the transparency act expects. That’s exactly what Attorney General Bondi expects. It’s exactly what President Trump expects. So that’s what we’re doing. KRISTEN WELKER: Well, you’re talking about protecting the victims. The law directed the Justice Department to, quote, “release internal DOJ communications including emails, memos, meeting notes concerning decisions to charge, not charge, investigate or decline to investigate Epstein or his associates.” That’s the crux of what many of the victims or the survivors say they want to see. Why wasn’t that information prioritized in the first release, Mr. Blanche? DEPUTY ATTORNEY GENERAL TODD BLANCHE: Well, first of all it was. And there are numerous documents released on Friday that address what you just quoted from, from the statute that address internal communications within the Department of Justice and internal communications between law enforcement and the Department of Justice. But it’s for the same reason. Because many of those internal communications talk about victims. Many of those internal back and forth between prosecutors and law enforcement talk about victims and their stories. And that has to be redacted. And by the way, everybody expects us to redact that. So the same complaints that we’re hearing yesterday and even this morning from Democrats and from others screaming loudly from a hill about lack of production on Friday, imagine if we had released tons of information around victims. That would be the true crime. That would be the true wrong. And if anybody out there, I heard Congressman Raskin, the Democrat on the House Oversight Committee, releasing statements accusing Attorney General Bondi, Director Patel and myself of not doing our jobs. If they have an issue with me protecting victims, they know how to get ahold of me. But we’re not going to stop doing it. KRISTEN WELKER: Well, let’s talk about the redactions which you raise. The Epstein Files Transparency Act prohibits redactions, quote, “on the basis of embarrassment, reputational harm, or political sensitivity.” Has anything been redacted on that basis? DEPUTY ATTORNEY GENERAL TODD BLANCHE: Absolutely positively not. And that’s another trend that is just simply false. There were a number of photographs that were pulled down after being released on Friday. That’s because a judge in New York has ordered us to listen to any victim or victims’ rights group if they have any concerns about the material that we’re putting up. And so when we hear concerns, whether it’s photographs of women that we do not believe are victims or we didn’t have information to show that they were victims, but we learned that there are concerns, of course we’re taking that photograph down. And we’re going to address it. If we need to redact faces or other information, we will. And then we’ll put it back up. So we are in every way, shape, and form, complying with the statute, which by the way, is what President Trump has been asking us to do since before he was elected. There is nothing that he has to hide in the Epstein files. There never was. 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. And so you should not be surprised that the material that we released on Friday or the material that we’re going to release over the next couple of weeks is exactly what the statute requires us to release, which is everything that we have from this case, with the exception of redacting personal information from victims and other statutes, you know, privileges and things like that. Otherwise, everything is getting produced. KRISTEN WELKER: Mr. Blanche, I want to follow up with you on what you just said. You were referencing the 15 files released Friday. They disappeared from DOJ’s website yesterday including this photo of what looks like a desk with a drawer open continuing photos of Donald Trump. Just to be very clear, to put a fine point on it, why were these files taken down? You’re saying it was at the direction of a judge. DEPUTY ATTORNEY GENERAL TODD BLANCHE: You can see in that photo, there’s photographs of women. And so 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. It has nothing to do with President Trump. 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. So the absurdity of us pulling down a photo, a single photo because President Trump was in it is laughable. And the fact that everybody’s trying to act like that’s the case is a reflection of their true motivation. But the reality is anybody, any victim, any victim’s lawyers, any victim rights group can reach out to us and say, “Hey, Department of Justice, there’s a document, there’s a photo, there’s something within the Epstein files that identifies me.” And we will then of course pull that off and investigate it. KRISTEN WELKER: Are you saying that one or more of the women in one of the photos or several of the photos is a victim or a survivor of Jeffrey Epstein, and that’s why you took those files down? And will they be put back up? DEPUTY ATTORNEY GENERAL TODD BLANCHE: No, that’s not what I’m saying. Of course, if we knew that, if we believed that that photograph contained a survivor, we wouldn’t have put it up in the first place without redacting the faces. But notwithstanding what we believe, we don’t have perfect information. And so when we hear from victims’ rights groups about this type of photograph, we pull it down and investigate. We’re still investigating that photo. 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 Director Patel have directed the department to do. KRISTEN WELKER: Okay. Let’s delve more deeply into the redactions. Is any information about President Trump redacted in any of the files that have or will be released? DEPUTY ATTORNEY GENERAL TODD BLANCHE: No. Not unless it’s supposed to be redacted under the law, which means victim information or any sort of privilege like attorney-client privilege. But I have no reason to believe that the lawyers that are working on this case were talking about President Trump. Because he had nothing to do with the Epstein files. He had nothing to do with the horrific crimes that Mr. Epstein committed. And so I don’t expect there will be anything redacted. But the short answer is we are not redacting information around President Trump, around any other individual involved with Mr. Epstein. And that narrative which is not based on fact at all is completely false. KRISTEN WELKER: The White House has said that President Trump is included in the files. Can you guarantee that every mention and every photo of President Trump in the Epstein files will be released? DEPUTY ATTORNEY GENERAL TODD BLANCHE: Yes. Yes. I mean, I’ve said it three, four times now. And we’ve said it before. And President Trump has said it repeatedly since before he was elected and since he was elected. All summer long he’s said the same thing, “I have nothing to hide.” And so of course that’s the case. But let me just make sure everybody understands something. To the extent that he is, quote, “in the Epstein files,” it’s not because he had anything to do with the horrific crimes, full stop. But yes, if President Trump is mentioned, if there’s photographs that we have of President Trump or anybody else, they of course will be released with the exception of any victims or survivors that we’ve identified, which we will either not release that photograph if it’s just a photograph of a survivor. Or if we do release the photograph, because there’s other individuals in the picture, the survivor’s face or her entire body in some cases will be redacted. KRISTEN WELKER: And we’re talking about President Trump in relation to this. For months he urged Republicans to stop pushing for the files to be released. He dismissed the Epstein files as a hoax. I want to play a little bit of what he has said about the Epstein files before he signed the law. Take a look. DONALD TRUMP: It’s all been a big hoax. It’s perpetrated by the Democrats and some stupid Republicans. I don’t understand why they would be so interested. He’s dead for a long time. It’s sordid, but it’s boring. This is a Democrat hoax that never ends. KRISTEN WELKER: Are the Epstein files a hoax, Mr. Blanche? DEPUTY ATTORNEY GENERAL TODD BLANCHE: Look, President Trump is saying it’s not that the Epstein files are a hoax. It’s this game that Democrats have been playing for the past nine months around the Epstein files that is a complete and total hoax. KRISTEN WELKER: Well, some Republicans– DEPUTY ATTORNEY GENERAL TODD BLANCHE: It’s Epstein files have existed– KRISTEN WELKER: –are pushing for the release too– DEPUTY ATTORNEY GENERAL TODD BLANCHE: –for many years. KRISTEN WELKER: Some of the Republicans are pushing for the release too, just to be clear. DEPUTY ATTORNEY GENERAL TODD BLANCHE: Well, that’s different. To be clear, releasing the files is not what President Trump has ever had an issue with. When he calls this a hoax, he’s talking about the fact that there’s this narrative out there that the Department of Justice is somehow hiding or protecting information about him, which is completely false, as evidenced by the fact that Epstein files existed for years and years and years. And you did not hear a peep out of a single Democrat for the past four years. And yet we’re supposed to believe that lo and behold all of a sudden out of the blue, Senator Schumer suddenly cares about the Epstein files. That’s the hoax. And that’s the hoax that has existed for months and months and months. This isn’t about whether we would release or not release the Epstein files. As a general matter, we do not release the files of criminal investigations and prosecutions. There’s laws around that. There’s laws that protect victims, that protect the innocent. So we’re doing something here that is more transparent than we’ve done in any criminal investigation in the history of this country. Don’t forget that. KRISTEN WELKER: In November President Trump directed the attorney general to investigate, speaking of investigations, high-profile Democrats with ties to Jeffrey Epstein. Is the Justice Department investigating only Democrats or everyone with a connection to Jeffrey Epstein? DEPUTY ATTORNEY GENERAL TODD BLANCHE: So Jay Clayton, the U.S. Attorney in the Southern District of New York, which is the office that had the most recent Epstein case, is investigating pursuant to the communication from President Trump. And by the way, this department will always investigate anybody and anything that we learn about sex trafficking or any victim of horrible sex crimes that take place. As proof of that, the attorney general, the director of the FBI, we have charged and we are prosecuting more child predators just in the first ten months of this administration than the entire four years of the Biden administration. So this idea that we’re protecting or doing something wrong when it comes to protecting victims is not true. KRISTEN WELKER: Well, in the directive, President Trump singled out former President Bill Clinton. Of course a number of photos of President Clinton were released Friday. A Clinton spokesperson saying, “The White House hasn’t been hiding these files for months only to dump them late on a Friday to protect Bill Clinton. This is about shielding themselves from what comes next or from what they’ll try and hide forever.” Let me ask you bluntly. Is President Clinton under investigation? DEPUTY ATTORNEY GENERAL TODD BLANCHE: I will never talk about ongoing criminal investigations. So I’m not going to answer that question. But let me address the second part of the quote that you just gave us. Think about how patently absurd that position is. The idea that we have hundreds and hundreds of DOJ lawyers, these are not political. It’s not me. It’s not Attorney General Bondi looking at all of these files and determining whether they are responsive to the act. And we over collected, by the way. We went out to all of our components and we said, “Give us any document that you think in any way, shape, or form is connected to the Epstein case.” And that’s what we’re going through. So the idea that we are hiding something or there’s something that we have hidden under a rock around President Trump or other Republicans is not only false, but it’s obviously false for anybody that’s intelligent enough to think about what we’re doing. KRISTEN WELKER: Let me just put a fine point on this. Will the Justice Department bring any new charges against anyone based on the content of these files? DEPUTY ATTORNEY GENERAL TODD BLANCHE: We have continued to investigate anybody associated with Jeffrey Epstein for years and years. We discussed this in our July memo. And so the answer is I don’t know whether there’ll be additional prosecutions. Based on the information that we had in July, based upon the information that I’m aware of now, we are not prepared to bring charges against anybody. But we are learning new information all the time. We learned the names of additional victims as recently as Wednesday of this week. Okay, so there’s new names that we didn’t have before that we ran across our database to understand whether they had ever met with law enforcement or ever talked to the FBI. And so we’re always investigating. And so it would be premature and not fair for me to unilaterally say yes or no to what future prosecutions there may be. KRISTEN WELKER: Okay, Mr. Blanche, you talk about the reaction from Capitol Hill. Let me allow you to respond to some of it. Congressman Thomas Massie and Ro Khanna, the authors of the Epstein bill, say the partial release of files fails to comply with the law. They say they are considering looking into the possibility of impeachment proceedings, contend even criminal referrals for obstruction of justice for DOJ officials. Do you take these threats seriously? DEPUTY ATTORNEY GENERAL TODD BLANCHE: Not even a little bit. Bring it on. We are doing everything we’re supposed to be doing to comply with the statute. And Congressman Massie and these other Congressmen that are coming out speaking negatively about Director Patel and the attorney general have no idea what they’re talking about. They know the work that we’re going through. They know what we’re doing to protect victims. I mean, just think about what we’re doing. You’re talking about a million or so pages of documents. Virtually all of them contain victim information. So listen, the idea that Attorney General Bondi would ever let a single piece of paper go out of this department that contains victim information is something they know we won’t do. And the fact that they’re threatening to impeach her for protecting victims is a reflection of where their head’s at. It’s not a reflection of this department. We are complying with the statute. We will continue to comply with the statute. And if by complying with the statute we don’t produce everything on Friday, we produce things next week and the week after, that’s still compliance with the statute. There is well settled law as they should know that in a case like this where we’re required to produce within a certain amount of time, but also comply with other laws like redacting information, that very much trumps. Redacting information very much some deadline in the statute. KRISTEN WELKER: All right, a couple more and we’re almost out of time. I do want to ask you about Ghislaine Maxwell who was of course convicted in 2021 for her role in helping Jeffrey Epstein traffic his victims. In July you interviewed her in Florida where she was serving a 20-year sentence in federal prison. Just a week later, Maxwell was moved to a more permissive prison camp in Texas. Why was she moved just days after you interviewed her, Mr. Blanche? DEPUTY ATTORNEY GENERAL TODD BLANCHE: So that’s a Bureau of Prison security issue that I will not talk about. KRISTEN WELKER: Did you have anything to do with it? Did you have anything to do with it? DEPUTY ATTORNEY GENERAL TODD BLANCHE: Let me finish. First of all, I am responsible for the Bureau of Prisons. So every decision that they make lands on my desk to the extent it needs to. But just let me talk about the security issue. At the time that I met Miss Maxwell, there was a tremendous amount of scrutiny and publicity towards her. And the institution she was in, she was suffering numerous and numerous threats against her life. So the BOP is not only responsible for putting people in jail and making sure they stay in jail, but also for their safety. And so she was moved. She was in federal prison. She was in federal prison before. And she’s in federal prison now. She’s doing 20 years because she was convicted. And the fact that she was moved, she might be moved to another institution tomorrow if security requires it. And that’s true of any federal inmate across this country. KRISTEN WELKER: But as you know, survivors were outraged by all of this, especially the fact that she was moved. Why talk to Ghislaine Maxwell and not the survivors, Mr. Blanche? DEPUTY ATTORNEY GENERAL TODD BLANCHE: What you just said is completely false. We will talk to any survivor at any time which is something that we have said– KRISTEN WELKER: Have you talked to them– DEPUTY ATTORNEY GENERAL TODD BLANCHE: –from day one. KRISTEN WELKER: But have you talked to them? DEPUTY ATTORNEY GENERAL TODD BLANCHE: Of course. Yes. First of all, they have to want to speak with us. The attorney general and I spoke with a victims’ rights group as recently as Thursday, okay? And if folks want to talk to us next week or the week after or in the coming months, they know how to get ahold of us. And we will always talk to survivors and victims’ families. But just backing up to your question about Miss Maxwell. Nobody ever talked to her. Nobody ever asked her questions about what she knew. So when she said that she had something she wanted to say, notwithstanding the fact she had been convicted, of course we went and talked to her. Imagine if we didn’t talk to her. Imagine if she had said, “I have a story to tell. And I would like to talk to the government,” and I said no. The same outrage would be directed at this department for not speaking with her. So we’re trying to do our job here. And we are doing our job here. But any victim that wants to talk to the FBI, that wants to talk the Department of Justice, they can call us anytime. KRISTEN WELKER: Let me ask you. President Trump in September urged Attorney General Pam Bondi to prosecute former FBI director James Comey, New York Attorney General Leticia James, and Senator Adam Schiff saying in a social media post that was supposed to be private, quote, “They’re all guilty as hell.” Comey was indicted five days later. Does President Trump speak to you or to the attorney general directly about individual criminal cases and investigations, Mr. Blanche? DEPUTY ATTORNEY GENERAL TODD BLANCHE: I will never talk about the communications I have with President Trump. And I don’t expect Attorney General Bondi will either. However, when it comes to the prosecutions that this department is undertaking, we are following the facts and the law, period. And so with the case of James Comey, and he was indicted, the case was then dismissed by a judge because of an appointment’s issue, we were already investigating, which was very much available to the public at the time that President Trump sent that note. And so the fact that we continued to investigate and ultimately he was indicted is not a reflection of what President Trump put in that truth. It’s a reflection of the work that we’re doing and have been doing long before September. KRISTEN WELKER: Just very quickly, career prosecutor Erik Siebert was fired after refusing to prosecute these cases against James Comey. He was replaced by Lindsey Halligan, of course the president’s former personal lawyer who doesn’t have prosecutorial experience, who was found to be unconstitutionally appointed. And the cases were thrown out, as you say. To be clear is the Justice Department taking directions about who to prosecute from President Trump? DEPUTY ATTORNEY GENERAL TODD BLANCHE: No, of course we’re not. And also Mr. Siebert wasn’t fired because he refused to bring cases. He resigned, okay? And so this narrative out there that somehow it was because of James Comey, it was because of Letitia James. No, that’s not true at all. And Ms. Halligan went in there and did a great job. She’s still doing a great job as our U.S. attorney in the EDPA. And you had a local judge rule that she was not validly appointed. We filed an appeal in that case. I expect that eventually when an appellate court looks at this issue, we’ll win that issue.

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