Seriosly, why?

    • ReiRose@lemmy.world
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      22 minutes ago

      Because they’re assholes.

      Oh, you mean dems are assholes too…?

      Are you one of those ‘both parties are the same’ folks?

      • possumparty@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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        4 minutes ago

        It’s not just because they’re assholes, it’s because a significant portion of them are also pedophiles. Pedos protecting pedos.

      • Swordgeek@lemmy.ca
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        16 minutes ago

        I think you missed the point.

        Trump won’t release them because his name (and others in the GOP) is all over it and he could be facing actual prison time.

        The Democrats didn’t because…well, we know that Clinton at least was involved with Epstein. I’m sure many others were as well.

        Besides which, other powerful people outside of politics are likely to have put strong pressure on the US to keep them locked up (e.g. Prince Andrew).

        The problem isn’t one party or the other, and it’s not that “all parties are the same,” but in this particular case it IS almost guaranteed that too many people are named and shamed for any group in power to release them.

  • rumba@lemmy.zip
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    4 hours ago

    Because the files vaguely implicate a lot of influential oligarchs who donate to both sides.

    We know Trump hung out with Epstein, there are pictures and testimony. It simply doesn’t move the needle away from the right. He’s just buying trouble.

    gdamn thing should have been in the public from day one.

  • Fedizen@lemmy.world
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    2 hours ago
    1. Donors - some donors are implicated - eg Bill Gates
    2. Bill Clinton - Bill Clinton is a known associate, former president
    3. Celebrities/Press - Steven Pinker and a lot of the other idiots that dems like to pretend are smart and exceptional are implicated.
    4. if Dems released it it would probably be easier for trump etc to dismiss allegations as a smear
    5. Dems did prosecute Maxwell but its not clear anyone else can be charged.

    Its clearly stupid to not have released a list of epstein’s friends and been like “these people are wanted for questioning”

  • Jimmycakes@lemmy.world
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    3 hours ago

    Because they are the other side of the same coin as Republicans. Neither side wanna help us much. One side actively trying to make it worse for us while the other one is happy we are living shit but don’t want it worse.

  • specialseaweed@sh.itjust.works
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    14 hours ago

    I think it’s important to remember that Biden was, perhaps more than any president in my lifetime (and I’m an old man), an institutionalist. He was a senator for just about forever, then the VP for 8 years. He was 78 years old when he became president. He is an old school liberal Catholic, a very nearly extinct person in the Catholic and Christian spheres.

    I think he saw his presidency as a repudiation of right wing reactionary politics. His election, in his mind, was in large part a call to what he saw as the original intent and purpose of the executive branch. To put it plainly, he saw himself as elected because America rejected the politicization of government under Trump. Included under that umbrella of beliefs about the purpose of the executive was the unalienable requirement that the executive not direct the FBI to investigate the opposing political party. Remember, Joe Biden was a senator when Nixon resigned. He was there when Nixon was using the executive branch to attack Democrats.

    Biden appointed Garland to the DOJ. Garland’s record was perfectly fine and appeared well suited to the role, but his biggest strengths (in Biden’s mind) was his nonpartisanship and his conservative view of government. By conservative I mean staying within the lines of what the DOJ should be doing, a cautious view of the use of DOJ power. Again, this was done in reaction to Trump and his… let’s call it “expansive” view of government power. In Biden’s mind, he was righting the ship.

    And Garland was exactly as advertised, to a maddening degree. He was cautious to the point of being timid. He refused to throw the weight of the DOJ into investigations with political implications without reaching an imaginary bar of fairness that just isn’t realistic. You saw it in the Jan 6th investigations. You saw it in the Kushner deals (and all of the Trump family deals which are obviously dirty). You saw it in Garland’s unwillingness to take on wildly politicized federal prosecutor offices because doing so would be political interference (in his mind). You saw it when Robert Hur took unprofessionalism and partisanship to the absolute extreme when attacking Biden under the guise of a special counsel appointment and Garland did nothing because instiutionalism in his mind meant not interfering with the process.

    And you saw it in the Epstein case.

    Garland did everything by the book to an absurd degree that ended up paralyzing justice. Biden didn’t touch Garland or any of it because he believes doing so was itself an injustice, even if Garland was wrong to handle it the way he did. In Biden’s mind, the president should not have the power to demand the DOJ take action in a specific case like the Epstein case, especially if there’s political implications.

  • BarneyPiccolo@lemmy.today
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    14 hours ago

    Because spineless Establishment Dems have some obsession with “playing nice,” even with vicious MAGA Nazi enemies. I have a million questions, starting with:

    Why didn’t Biden have HitlerPig and his henchmen arrested within the first 60 seconds after his Inauguration?

    • TankovayaDiviziya@lemmy.world
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      6 hours ago

      Because spineless Establishment Dems have some obsession with "playing nice insider trading

      Ftfy.

      The Dem party is known as the party of insider trading after all!

    • subversive_dev@lemmy.ml
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      7 hours ago

      No you see Joe Biden just loves institutions so much!

      Almost as much as he loves weirdly sniffing women’s heads

      • iridebikes@lemmy.world
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        5 hours ago

        Obsessed with the hair sniffing bullshit but is fine with Trump being the wingman of one of the planets most prolific pedophiles.

        • subversive_dev@lemmy.ml
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          4 hours ago

          Certainly, there is more evidence in the public record of trump being the worst sort of sex pest, and with Epstein specifically.

          Nevertheless “both sides” across at least three administrations chose to protect the elite pedophiles at the expense of the truth and the victims.

  • OutlierBlue@lemmy.ca
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    1 day ago

    Because it could hurt rich people and both parties are on the side of rich people.

    • Binturong@lemmy.ca
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      6 hours ago

      This is the actual answer, cutting right through the smoke and mirrors and bullshit. Anyone who had the displeasure of reading through the flight logs that were available in their entirety online almost a year ago and probably still are: saw just what names pop up, often multiple times. This is the most bipartisan issue there ever was, so NOBODY in power wants to touch it.

  • Basic Glitch@sh.itjust.works
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    1 day ago

    Well specifically, it is still an ongoing investigation, so nobody has a “complete set of files to release.”

    In February Pam Bondi said she had the first phase of files in her office, made a big public announcement about having requested all remaining files, and said she was waiting on them to be delivered. She even wrote a letter to Kash Patel about it and publicly released the letter.

    Then when she read whatever was in that second half of files that got delivered to her, she suddenly wasn’t so eager to release it.

    Even more than knowing what is in there about Trump, I would be most interested to know what banks knowingly financed what Epstein was doing. I would guess any bipartisan fears about information in there that could “destroy the country,” is more likely related to banks and corporations that are considered “too big to fail,” rather than any super scandalous information about individuals.

    • wildcardology@lemmy.world
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      9 hours ago

      She released that first phase to MAGA influencers and made a big show out of it. She was asked about releasing the Epstein list and she said it’s on her desk along with mlk and jfk files and would release it

  • pjwestin@lemmy.world
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    1 day ago

    First, Bill Clinton is almost certainly all over them, and older Democrats still think of the Clintons as the epitome of Democratic success. Some of the old guard is still trying to push focus away from the Epstien files. Just two days ago, Nancy Pelosi was calling the Epstien files a distraction, which is a bat-shit crazy thing to say about evidence that could prove that your opponent was involved in a pedophile ring.

    Second, Epstien probably has some sort of ties to the intelligence community. I don’t know that I believe all these stories about him being a secret Mossad asset, but I think its very possible that the someone in the CIA was using him. Alex Acosta, who prosecuted Epstien in 2008, claimed that he was told to back off because he, “belonged to intelligence,” and they’re clearly withholding a lot of information, there’s definitely something they don’t want people to know. Anyway, since 9/11, the Democrats and Republicans have had basically the same position on the intelligence community (essentially, abject deference), so if the CIA says that it would be a national security risk to release the files, the Democrats aren’t going to release the files.

    • LikeableLime@lemmy.world
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      1 day ago

      They apparently had video (obviously doctored and they couldn’t even hide that) after saying for years that all of the cameras malfunctioned. That video was released very recently so that leads me to believe there’s more stuff that never got released.

  • Nollij@sopuli.xyz
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    2 days ago

    Legal Eagle just released a video about “the real Epstein files”. The main point they covered in the video is victim impact. The victims could be threatened and harassed because of the info.

    Another point not covered is that criminal case info is typically not disclosed. Releasing a list of accused perpetrators (i.e. pedophiles/child rapists) encourages vigilante justice. It also interferes with any ongoing investigations, which should (at least in theory) still be ongoing.

    I don’t want Trump to release the case info. I want his DOJ to announce charges against people like Les Wexner, based on that info. And I want it to not just be his political enemies and bullshit lies.

      • AmidFuror@fedia.io
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        2 days ago

        Dig into the bus crash more. It was minor, but Giuffre then checked herself into the hospital and made pretty bizarre claims about her health. Then she went home and killed herself shortly after.

        There was nothing nefarious about the crash, and it revealed she was having mental health issues.

    • danc4498@lemmy.world
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      2 days ago

      I very much get the first point. Victims need to be protected at all costs. Even if it means the public doesn’t get to know things.

      To the second point, the way Trump handled it felt very much like “case closed, nothing to see here”. This does not feel like justice is going to be served.

    • grue@lemmy.world
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      2 days ago

      Did they cover the part about how Biden’s DOJ had absolutely no fucking excuse to take that long to prosecute?

      • snooggums@lemmy.world
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        2 days ago

        We can’t seem like we are making it political because he’s running for office or some bullshit was always the excuse.

        • CmdrShepard49@sh.itjust.works
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          1 day ago

          Yet they waited 3.5 years until right after he won the Republican nomination to bother charging him and that was just for the Jan 6th bullshit let alone the Epstein stuff.

          • snooggums@lemmy.world
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            1 day ago

            He should have been tossed in jail by February for insurrection. The whole hand wringing about ‘appearances’ excuse is why we can’t hold anyone in power accountable.

            • CmdrShepard49@sh.itjust.works
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              1 day ago

              Yeah the sycophants are always quick to make up a million excuses why Democrats can’t ever accomplish anything they talk about, while simultaneously pretending they’re “fighting fascism” by supporting this farce.

      • socsa@piefed.social
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        2 days ago

        There probably just isn’t the kind of direct evidence people imagine. You can’t prosecute people just for associating with a creep.

        • Nollij@sopuli.xyz
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          1 day ago

          I specifically mentioned Les Wexner for a reason. While the public information includes an absolute ton of red flags, and it’s very likely that he bought child prostitutes, it doesn’t reach the level proof beyond a reasonable doubt. IOW, it’s unlikely to reach a conviction in court.

          These people are also rich enough to drag out a court case for decades, even longer than the government. As such, they aren’t likely to take a plea agreement that’s more than a slap on the wrist and without admitting anything serious.

        • grue@lemmy.world
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          1 day ago

          Okay, fine. Then if there was never going to be a prosecution, then there was no impediment to the Biden admin releasing the files.

          So, which is it: did the Biden administration fuck up by slow-walking the prosecution, or did the Biden administration fuck up by failing to release the files even when it had no intention of prosecuting? Those are the only options!

  • citizensongbird@lemmy.world
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    16 hours ago

    My guess is, because Republican leaders and propaganda outlets were constantly accusing Democrats of witch hunts and politically motivated criminal investigations, Dems releasing Epstein’s client list would have been seen as more of the same. Trump’s base would have absolutely called it fake news. So Dems waited until Republicans were in control and then said, “Okay, now you can release it.” With predictable results.