By law, we had to make certain redactions.… But we said to Congress, any congressman can come in and spend as much time as they want looking at everything unredacted.
If we didn’t release it, it’s because it was not responsive to the law, and therefore not part of the Epstein files.… By law, we had to make certain redactions.…
What is he actually talking about? Congress passed the Epstein Files Transparency Act that Trump signed into law. Some of the details:
- Mandated Release: Requires the DOJ to release, in a searchable format, all documents, flight logs, and investigative materials related to Jeffrey Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell, if needed, declassifying them to the extent possible.
- Prohibited Redactions: No redactions, except a very narrow list of allowable reasons, and they have to justify each one with a separate report to Congress within 15 days.
- Prohibited Withholdings: No withholdings, except a very narrow list of allowable reasons, and they have to justify each one with a separate report to Congress within 15 days.
- Congressional Oversight: The DOJ must report to Congress with a list of all government officials and politically exposed persons named in the documents, without redaction of their names.
- No Personal Secrecy: The law explicitly prohibits withholding records due to embarrassment, reputational harm, or political sensitivity.
NAL, but my understanding is they just… didn’t follow it. Right!? I expected it to be long, but it’s about 2 pages, and is refreshingly direct and no-nonsense. Here’s the full law:
https://www.govinfo.gov/link/plaw/119/public/38
I know The Files are a salacious issue many of us are morbidly curious about… But there are very real victims being denied justice here as they simply choose not to comply.
The major point you’re missing is that the regime does not fucking care and nobody is going to hold them accountable, ever.
Arrest him
Kill him.
Shoot him and the rest of this dumbass administration.
I’m inches away from saying just execute all conservative politicians period.
Arrest or just, like, whatever.
He’d grind up into a nice paste.
Which is obviously the reason he got the job
And that seems like a clear cut cause for impeachment. If the Democrats gain control of the House a solid strategy would be to start impeachment proceedings against lower level appointees before going after Trump
We need a Truth and Reconciliation Committee
He is “acting AG”. Not even confirmed yet. The purpose of impeachment is to take an appointee from “confirmed” to “non-confirmed” status. I am not even sure impeachment would make sense? Couldn’t Trump just make him acting AG immediately again?
He’s the AG. This was a trick they pulled in the first term. You make a guy the “acting” head of the agency, and he does the job until the new guy gets appointed, and approved by the Senate.
So what happens if you name an “acting” head, and then never choose a final appointee? Nothing. Nothing happens. Your chosen guy remains the head of the agency, without ever being vetted or approved by the Senate.
Todd Flintstone is the new AG, for all ill tents and porpoises.
No, that’s not correct. “Impeachment is a process by which a legislative body or other legally constituted tribunal initiates charges against a public official for misconduct.”
https://www.britannica.com/topic/impeachment
Landau, Sidney; Brantley, Sheila; Davis, Samuel; Koenigsberg, Ruth, eds. (1997). Funk & Wagnall’s Standard Desk Dictionary. Vol. 1 (1996 ed.). United States: Harper & Row, Publishers, Inc. p. 322. ISBN 978-0-308-10353-5. “1. To charge (a high public official) before a legally constituted tribunal with crime or misdemeanor in office. 2. To bring discredit upon the honesty or validity of.”
From your own article:
In Great Britain conviction on an impeachment has resulted in fine and imprisonment and even in execution, whereas in the United States the penalties extend no further than removal and disqualification from office.
So removal only. Which might even nor make sense, because he was never confirmed by the Senate. Trump can just immediately appoint him again.
What? “Has resulted”. That’s a possible historical result. Impeachment is a process.
Yeah, that a good plan.
I’m not so keen on replacing Trump with Vance/Theil. Trump can be better for us going into 2028, as long as we can keep him under control, and that will require getting rid of the sycophant loyalists, and making him pick a new crew, who won’t get appointed unless he chooses people who will reign him in.
If we get rid of him, we give Vance 2 years to normalize MAGA, and make them viable for 2028. I’d rather have 2 more years of suppressed Trump chaos, to amp up the outrage going into Election Day 2028 - as long as we can keep him under control. Running his mouth can’t hurt much, and it gives us lots of ammo to humiliate him with.
“This is the first I’m hearing of it.”
“Never even met the guy, barely knew him.”
- Trump probably
Okay, so he’s in contempt of the law.
And? That’s meaningless unless it’s enforced.
Time to make “citizens arrests” a thing again.
Correct.
I first saw these comments here
Just before Trump started bombing Iran, there were reports of an Epstein Victim who had been interviewed by the FBI four times, during Trump’s first term. After each interview, they would confirm more and more of her story, so they’d come back and get more info. Her testimony was accompanied by 10 photos.
She is one of the best documented victims, and her testimony could put people away for life. I had been hearing about her for weeks, but it seemed like I was seeing more and more reports about it, and it was about to break into the mainstream media…when Trump started bombing Iran, and Epstein slipped off the front page.
I saw a description of ONE of those photos, and it described her as a young teen, naked, semi-conscious, surrounded by several men, one doing something between her legs with an object. Blood was said to be in the scene. The victim testified that she thought she was going to die that night. That was only ONE of the photos.
Of course, those photos will never see the light of day because they are not just child sex images, they are violent, as well. They are easily the best evidence against those monsters, but it’s also evidence that literally nobody can ever see, so their power is badly blunted.
It is important that verified descriptions of the these photos and videos be released, so we can truly understand what these psycho-pervoids were doing to these girls, and make MAGA losers understand that Epstein’s parties weren’t just naked teens carrying trays of drinks through parties of Sociopathic Oligarchs.
In this case, too, all those responsible will get off scot-free. This case demonstrates beyond a shadow of a doubt that the U.S. legal system is so corrupt that it not only fails to serve its purpose but, on the contrary, is systematically exploited to enable the most serious crimes in the first place.
The Epstein case is just one particularly repugnant example of this, as the regime’s blatant enrichment through corruption and its countless crimes also make abundantly clear.
Nothing will change in this regard until U.S. citizens rise up and demand justice.
I mean he fired his personal lawyer in florida, for another one of his personal lawyers to act as AG. The epstien victims will never get justice from republican’s, they HATE being held accountable for their actions. When they do get caught, they get angry and violent.
I wish I could say I was surprised. What a corrupt clown show
He’s also in the Epstein files
“Convicting me and throwing me in jail is now the sworn duty of every American!”
Wild how you can straight up not do your job and collect a paycheck if you work in the gov these days.
He’s doing the job he was assigned to do. When it’s not working, it’s working.
So the pedophiles can start a new special island, if they haven’t already. I bet they’ll call it the “No Elon’s Club” because they don’t want Muskrat there, but they’re allowed one.
What makes you think there was ever only one island?
There is nothing suggesting there aren’t many others like Epstein. He’s just one that got caught.
Epstein was the Western guy. They probably have an Asian guy, and a Middle Eastern guy, too. Sort of a super-elite concierge service.
Ah, the clumsy scapegoat.
Pedophile is to child molester as heterosexual is to rapist. They’re not the same thing, one’s not even a superset of the other. People don’t commit sexual assault just because they are attracted to someone. People often sexually assault victims they are not even attracted to.
In common parlance, pedophile and child molester are interchangeable.
In the current context, where we’re explicitly talking about Epstein and his network of suppliers and customers, we can reasonably infer this and realize that it’s a weird fucking time to lionize the celibate pedophile.
It’s a sick world, and dark humour is the only way I’m getting through this bucket ride.
I don’t understand the downvotes to this comment. I know it does not feed the frenzy but it’s a valid analytical point.
Attraction and attack are not the same thing and the language applied should be noted as it can be used by the press and those who write it to deceive. I’ll give another example ‘sexual assault of underage woman’ to describe a rape of girl/child but the language is sometimes used to lessen perception.
They poster is not condoning or excusing just pointing out a nuance.
The difference is insignificant to most people. We keep hearing about Pedophile Protectors, but you know another word for Pedophile Protector? Pedophile.
Whether you are just attracted to children, or defend/cover for Pedophiles, or actually actively molest children, you are a Pedophile. Most people don’t care much about the nuances.
They poster is not condoning or excusing just pointing out a nuance.
Right, but WHY?
Or to infer from a very similar argument, it’s not uncommon for someone to very carefully and pointedly draw an incredibly fine line between, say, pedophilia and hebephilia, as though that specific nuance – also entirely precise – is all that matters.
Yet when the reader pulls back a bit and insist on seeing it in full context, along with the tone and the direction of whatever the overall point was supposed to be, it turns out to be just a very lightly veiled defense of the entire idea.
The reason this nuance has never caught on in general conversation is because it moves the line from between people who do not sexually accost children and those that do, to something far more subjective and impossible to measure. I don’t give a shit who is attracted to children; I give a very large shit about the deeds of those who act on it.
Similarly, I don’t care about a chronological age that was assigned to subsets of offenders in the course of researching this unnatural and abhorrent behavior, and for the furtherance of understanding it; I care very much that the underage person upon whom this sexual behavior is being acted out upon is not of an age to be able to handle the early sexualization, confusion, and adult burdens that invariably come with it.
Because I flatly guarantee you, to that kid it does not matter one bit whether they got preyed upon the day before or the day after their eleventh birthday, or whether that chomo with his hand in their junk is feeling actual attraction to them, or not.
When hit with the reality of the damage the sexual predators of children actually do to ruin lives, that oh-so-important nuance falls away just as easily as the apologies of all the offenders who are then moved on to other schools, other churches, other daycares, other lives.
To that kid – and by extension to me, and to anyone/everyone else who cares very deeply about what that sexually predatory shit does to a child, not just at the moment it is done to them but easily for the rest of their life – that nuance that is so special to these people that they lift it up and explain it so carefully, that nuance you’re defending now, is nothing in the light of how what was done to that child is anything but the lowest form of evil shit one human being can do to another.
So you two keep defending that nuance like it makes a difference to anyone but an offender, and I will keep asking why.
I’d say the “why” is that if you take a word whose non-colloquial definition is just “attracted to children/minors” and use it to mean “assaulter of children/minors”, you inhibit the ability for someone to admit to the former to seek help to prevent becoming the latter. And I don’t just mean from mental health professionals who may be trained to find that distinction and provide the necessary help anyway, a person’s first line of support is often family, friends, a partner, etc. It’s not just pedantry, language has a pretty significant effect on perception and perception is the closest any of us can get to reality. Also, it’s very common mental health practice to separate thoughts from actions, and if there is someone sitting on the edge between the two, I’d really rather that they have the mental health to not cause such an abhorrent victimization to occur, instead of trying to remove that boundary between thinking something and acting on it.
This is a colloquial discussion of sexual crimes against children, and your hypothesized edge case is so far off the beaten path it might as well be in Narnia.
It’s not just pedantry, it’s Lemmy. You really cannot get more colloquial than here.
No one is stopping anyone from getting help for anything, and it is ridiculous for you to suggest otherwise.
Getting help for anything is about hitting bottom, some limit against which you can no longer bear the cost of challenging. So if your real and genuine concern is truly that some offender be not offended by the colloquial use of the word pedophile, they should not be in this thread chock full of those very obviously mocking them, and neither should you.
Edit: New last paragraph is probably more helpful than the rest of the original post.
The point was about the conflation of terminology in colloquial use, not limited to one specific instance. My “edge case” was that someone with bad thoughts or someone they might go to for support (not just a professional) would hear/read the conflation; in what way is that broad a scenario “in Narnia”?
I have no idea what your intent was in saying that this is Lemmy and language is used colloquially here. Yes, that’s what we’re discussing?
Attaching the meaning of “has committed sexual crimes against children” to a person who must admit to having sexual thoughts about children in order to get help for said thoughts is going to add to the difficulty of admitting that. Being thought of as someone who has committed reprehensible and criminal acts that haven’t actually done would certainly not be a motivation to speak up. It would be an extremely limited view of human behavior to assume every single factor can only have an all-or-nothing effect on what they end up doing. What is ridiculous about what I actually said, not just a strawman of it?
I’m sure the colloquial use of mental health terminology never impacted anyone who didn’t actually do anything violent or destructive, right? Surely we never had trouble with people not getting help for that, since obviously we “don’t care” about the people who only have bad thoughts, and the context is very clear that the words we used actually only meant the criminals. There’s never been a some sort of stationary bike of terminology or something caused by the use of words with specific meanings as something totally different, everyone knows that the language we use in one space would never affect how those things get treated elsewhere. And the queen handing out Turkish delight would never turn out to be evil.
One definitely does not have to “hit bottom” to get help, and in fact it’s often much more effective to deal with a problem before reaching the point of no longer being able to bear the cost of challenging it. My concern is not about “being offended”, it’s about doing what is actually effective to prevent people from acting on sexual thoughts towards children based on everything we know about preventing people from acting on other unhelpful thoughts. Maybe to you that’s less important than being able to mock sexual offenders online? Your use of the word “offender” (as in sexual offender, ie the distinction trying to be made, what my post never really said anything about) here would seem to indicate that you have either not paid attention to the answers when you “keep asking why”, or you actually consider the thought or attraction alone an “offense”. You seem to do more fighting any responses you get than trying to understand (even if still disagreeing with) them.
Maybe it doesn’t fit your image of those who disagree with you, but I do think those who have committed sexual offenses against children do deserve to be shamed for that, should face consequences, and I’m not particularly bothered by mocking or deriding them (especially in the case of “elites” or others who are definitely not wanting to get help for or “resist” urges). But I’m also pretty categorically opposed to “thought-crime”, so I personally hold a distinction between a term that means “has bad thoughts” and a term that means “does bad things”. And unless society decides to invariably execute or imprison forever any offenders, I think that there also needs to be some sort of treatment or plan to prevent someone from wanting to seek out another offense; and that just a risk of punishment or rules about staying away from children is a pretty crappy way of doing that.
Edit: I don’t think we disagree on the big things: 1) anyone “participating” in Epstein’s ring is a bad person; 2) the most important thing is a) preventing offenses against children and b) not compounding the harm after the fact. I think the disagreement is about if there is value to distinguishing between the term ‘pedophile’ as "a person with sexual thoughts or attraction towards children (ignoring the whole age/hebe- thing for now) and a term like ‘child molester’ (or similar) as “a person who commits a sexual offense against a child (again ignoring details like exact age of consent or whatever, below whatever one picks)”; ie is there a difference in how we would treat those people, what impact might distinguishing the terms have, in what situations would that impact apply, etc? My understanding is that we both recognize a difference in the definitions and would respond differently. I and others have said that it does make a difference whether we (collectively, in demonstrating language meaning by use) use the term ‘pedophile’ to mean the second definition, one who acts/assaults, instead of only relating to “is this person sexually attracted to children?” without connection to “has this person sexually assaulted children?”; also that neither definition falls completely within the other. (At least) I have claimed that maintaining a distinction does, in an indirect and as-a-general-rule way, contribute to the 2a goal of preventing offenses against children. You and others have said that, at least within the context of this thread since it was pointed out, it is not helpful to care about the distinction, and that taking the time and effort to do so detracts from 1a and (as I understand) 2b. Additionally, that the argument of distinction supporting 2a was not sound. I think the 1a-detraction only occurs if you pre-suppose mixed usage and conflated meanings, and consider engaging in other discussions like “is word choice important?” to be inherently taking away from the main idea of “bad people doing bad things”. I can’t claim any close knowledge about 2b, but I also don’t see any argument that everyone using only action-oriented (“child molester”, “sex offender”, etc) or intent/behavior (“grooming”, “predator”, etc) language (or even just generic derogatives), without using language that (is claimed to) also maps to non-included groups (ie ‘pedophile’), would further victimize someone; is that something you’d argue for? Overall, is that a fair statement of positions?
It is a fine line, and I clearly said I am not defending abuse. A sexual offender is a sexual offender. But language is a issue. I do not see that commenter defending offenders, and it can often be on this forum that offense is taken to language that does not lean into the frenzy.
Why were they pointing this out? i don’t know maybe they have a thing about language, maybe they were in a rush and didn’t realise the tone it may imply. The downvoted response reeks of the old attitude of oh look a pediatrician lets beat him! Step back and look objectively. Rational conversations are allowed…unless you want an echo chamber.
You are implying that I do not care for victims, you know nothing about me…and I would argue you have jumped to the cliche ‘wont someone think of the kids’. Is taking the time to look at how language is used against victims (child or adults) defending offenders? Life is not black and white, and taking the time to understand motivation of attacks does not mean you sympathize with offenders. There are plenty of psychologists that look at this.
I hope you keep asking why…and i hope it comes from educated studies…most likely from physiologists who have made a career from understanding motivation and the neurosciences. It is a subject that people feel hurt but accusing random people on the internet is not a fix.
It is a fine line, and I clearly said I am not defending abuse.
Funny, that’s never been an argument I ever had to make for myself, somehow.
I would argue you have jumped to the cliche ‘wont someone think of the kids’.
It’s no cliché for me. I live with a survivor. When it comes to sexual offenses against children, the kids are the ONLY ones I think about. Adults can take care of themselves, and so can you, which is why it’s amazing to me how offended you are by someone taking the children’s side.
So much so that you actually reduce the position of caring about survivors and their loved ones to merely, in your own word, a cliché. You can’t even discuss what I actually said; you’re forced to erect strawmen: “The downvoted response reeks of the old attitude of oh look a pediatrician lets beat him!” and calling any level of pushback against your insistence on honoring the nuance of pro-pedophilic understanding “the frenzy.”
I don’t need that level of distracting drama, and didn’t employ it: that’s ALL your own.
Life is not black and white, and taking the time to understand motivation of attacks does not mean you sympathize with offenders.
And it does not mean you don’t, either. But this wasn’t about taking time to understand, it was about holding up and defending your all-important nuance that moves eyes away from the crime and toward “understanding the offender.” I don’t stand for it where it’s just a feint to derail discussion away from the victims and onto an arbitrary line in the sand. That helps no one at all, and that’s where you are right now.
Funny thing, I can actually sympathize with offenders, and have specifically had to do exactly that in my own life to be able to support those offended against, which is a tightrope your rhetorical nuance doesn’t hold a candle to, and one you obviously cannot begin to understand.
And I would not ask you to: caring about the actual children whose lives are destroyed is just “cliché” to you, you’ve made that clear. By the same token, your claim to precious linguistic nuance means nothing to me at all, nor does your estimation of me personally: turns out you know nothing about me either.
You know nothing about me.
I am not continuing a discussion with someone who clearly wants to just yell and call me a pedophile. Continue protesting on behalf of others.
I might add you words can be taken out of context, if you try hard enough.
It’s no cliché for me. I live with a survivor. When it comes to sexual offenses against children, the kids are the ONLY ones I think about.
I am not continuing a discussion with someone who clearly wants to just yell and call me a pedophile. Continue protesting on behalf of others.
If you could point out, for me and others, exactly where in my writing I specifically did this: “yell and call [you] a pedophile.”
Very obviously, I didn’t. If I had, you wouldn’t have had to lie about it, which begs the question of why you are so threatened by what I said about pedophiles and pedophilia that you took it as a personal attack, against you specifically, which you then countered with an obvious, demonstrable lie?
Which brings me back to my original point, that I think you have gone out of your way to prove for the rest of us:
There is NEVER any time in which defending the linguistic pedantry of pedophilic nuance is a valid stance: it is ALWAYS about something else.
If I had “yelled” (lol) or called you a pedophile – which is not a term I throw around as a pejorative if only because the thought of what they do is vomitous – if I had literally done this in reality, you would not have had to lie, distort, or employ such over-the-top amounts of hyperbole.
Instead, you’ve gone out of your way to make my point. Like this:
I might add you words can be taken out of context, if you try hard enough.
It’s no cliché for me. I live with a survivor. When it comes to sexual offenses against children, the kids are the ONLY ones I think about.
Nice try. It’s not the first time a pedo defender has tried to tar me with their own brush. You can’t even do it in a straightforward way.
But let me clear it up for you: I genuinely believe, from a very viscerally deep place in my soul, there is nothing as inhuman, as indefensible, as revolting, as UNNATURAL, as sickeningly self-indulgent, as the sexual use of children for ANY purpose, understandable or not. And I have a post history that proves it.
Speaking of which, my profile bio hasn’t changed in three years. You should check it out.
And thank you again for going out of your way to prove what I have known all along: the overwhelming defense of tiny differences in language used to describe pedos is never innocent, and never just about nuance.
Yes how dare we assume the Epstein class acted on their pedophilia!
can any American citizen become a Congressman or is it some vote by the inside only?
no, you need to secure between 10s of thousands and millions in campaign finances, the good will of corporate media, and support of the establishment political parties. exceptions are extremely rare
In theory? Yes. In practice? Only if you’re already in a government social circle.
