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After a right-wing conspiracy theorist claimed on Thursday to have evidence that the Trump administration was engaged in a cover-up to protect Republicans named in the Epstein files, the Justice Department offered the public an unusual response.
James O’Keefe, the oft-debunked disinformation-peddler (who was ousted in 2023 from the conservative activist group Project Veritas), posted one of his sting-style videos in which the department’s acting deputy chief at the Office of Enforcement Operations, Joseph Schnitt, discusses internal DOJ feuds over the release of files related to deceased sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein and the department’s decision to move convicted Epstein accomplice Ghislaine Maxwell to a minimum security prison. In the video, Schnitt also makes the startling claim that any documents eventually released by the DOJ will redact the names of Republicans and not liberals.
The Justice Department responded with a written statement — attributed to Schnitt, posted to X, that appeared to have been captured from a phone with depleted battery — in which Schnitt said he was set up by “a woman named Skyler on Hinge” and that the comments he made were “my own personal comments on what I’ve learned in the media and not from anything I’ve learned or done via work.”
Replies to the DOJ’s tweet suggest the effort to quell concerns about the department’s transparency have only raised more questions.
The Wall Street Journal reported in July that Trump was told by the attorney general that his name appears in the files; the inclusion of an individual’s name in the files does not imply any wrongdoing.
Given O’Keefe’s track record of dubiously editing hidden-camera clips to advance his political agenda (which I've covered here for MSNBC in the past), the substance of this particular video should be taken with a boulder-sized grain of salt. But that O’Keefe’s agenda now appears to include targeting the Trump administration over an alleged cover-up of the Epstein files is indicative of the growing right-wing backlash to the administration’s efforts to block the files’ release.
Just this week, the White House called a bipartisan effort to pry the documents out of the DOJ a “hostile act to the administration” in yet another about-face from Trump’s previous vow to release the files if elected. And on Friday, Trump’s Truth Social account posted a tirade that called for an end to investigations into the Epstein files, making the demonstrably false claim that the DOJ has “done its job” and “given everything requested of them.”
Nonetheless, lawmakers are due to get their hands on some potentially revelatory materials from another source in short order. MSNBC’s Lisa Rubin reported Friday that next week House Oversight Committee staff are set to receive unredacted documents from Epstein’s estate that will include flight logs, records of financial transactions and phone calls, and a bound book of birthday messages high-profile figures sent to Epstein. (Trump last month denied having contributed to the book a risqué drawing and a suggestive message that alluded to the “things in common” he had with Epstein.)