The Trump administration’s release of long-awaited Epstein files didn’t provide what survivors were looking for, Sarah Fitzpatrick reports. theatln.tc/U3X4ejM0 Jeffrey Epstein’s victims began the day believing they might finally get something they’d been requesting for years: a direct conversation with the nation’s top law-enforcement official before the Justice Department made public a full trove of long-buried documents and photos. The victims sat by their phones waiting anxiously—but also, they told Fitzpatrick, with a bit of hope. Just over 24 hours earlier, Attorney General Pam Bondi and Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche had placed a call to a group that supports survivors of Epstein’s abuse, according to multiple people briefed on the outreach. This morning, the Justice Department indicated via email to the group that Bondi would try to speak with survivors and expressed support for them, according to people familiar with the correspondence. But soon after, they were told that the attorney general would not be available. Meanwhile, survivors learned that “some files would be released, but many would not—at least not yet. Survivors were left with familiar feelings of disappointment and disillusionment, as well as unresolved questions,” Fitzpatrick reports. Sharlene Rochard—who first met Epstein in the mid-1990s, when she was a teenager—told Fitzpatrick that she has taken additional security precautions in and around her home in recent days. She and other victims had asked the DOJ for advance notice and preparation for what was coming, she said. But she didn’t get that.“I feel really disappointed,” Rochard said. “America is getting a look tonight into how we have all felt for years.“ “The failure to schedule the call with victims was only one piece of a broader, frantic rush inside Donald Trump’s Justice Department as it approached the final hours of its congressionally mandated deadline,” Fitzpatrick reports.
Read more: theatln.tc/U3X4ejM0 🎨: The Atlantic. Sources: Davidoff Studios / Getty, Natasha Breen / REDA / Getty.
The Atlantic
The Trump administration’s release of long-awaited Epstein files didn’t provide what survivors were looking for, Sarah Fitzpatrick reports. theatln.tc/U3X4ejM0
Jeffrey Epstein’s victims began the day believing they might finally get something they’d been requesting for years: a direct conversation with the nation’s top law-enforcement official before the Justice Department made public a full trove of long-buried documents and photos. The victims sat by their phones waiting anxiously—but also, they told Fitzpatrick, with a bit of hope.
Just over 24 hours earlier, Attorney General Pam Bondi and Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche had placed a call to a group that supports survivors of Epstein’s abuse, according to multiple people briefed on the outreach. This morning, the Justice Department indicated via email to the group that Bondi would try to speak with survivors and expressed support for them, according to people familiar with the correspondence. But soon after, they were told that the attorney general would not be available.
Meanwhile, survivors learned that “some files would be released, but many would not—at least not yet. Survivors were left with familiar feelings of disappointment and disillusionment, as well as unresolved questions,” Fitzpatrick reports. Sharlene Rochard—who first met Epstein in the mid-1990s, when she was a teenager—told Fitzpatrick that she has taken additional security precautions in and around her home in recent days. She and other victims had asked the DOJ for advance notice and preparation for what was coming, she said. But she didn’t get that.“I feel really disappointed,” Rochard said. “America is getting a look tonight into how we have all felt for years.“
“The failure to schedule the call with victims was only one piece of a broader, frantic rush inside Donald Trump’s Justice Department as it approached the final hours of its congressionally mandated deadline,” Fitzpatrick reports.
Read more: theatln.tc/U3X4ejM0
🎨: The Atlantic. Sources: Davidoff Studios / Getty, Natasha Breen / REDA / Getty.
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