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▲ nickpinkston 12 hours ago

I wonder if any of this is a conscious act of resistance vs. just incompetence.

And yes, I've heard of Hanlon's Razor haha

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hanlon%27s_razor

▲wolpoli 11 hours ago | parent | next [-]

Black square vs redaction tool difference is well known if someone's job involves redacting PDF or just working with PDF. It's most likely that additional staffs were pulled in and weren't given enough training.

▲Dusseldorf 11 hours ago | parent | next [-]

Colleagues whose full time job is doing this sort of thing for various bits of the government have told me this is exactly the case here. People from all over the government have been deputized to redact these documents with little or no prior training.

▲culi 6 hours ago | parent | next [-]

If there's that many people who have access to these files, I'm shocked there hasn't been leaks until this point.

▲Jcampuzano2 28 minutes ago | parent | next [-]

When other people close to the case end up dead you have a pretty decent reason to not leak.

▲maeln 4 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Why risk leaking it and potentially getting caught, when you can do a bad job redacting instead :)

▲themafia 2 hours ago | parent [-]

I'd want them to leak their instructions given to them for this assignment.

▲lukan 4 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

If loyalty is the metric and not competence they were selected for ..

▲dboreham 10 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

CUaaS. Cover Up as a Service.

▲femto 10 hours ago | parent [-]

With a sister website BAEaas (Backup and Extort as a service).

▲mindslight 11 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

I wonder if this activity is being used as a kind of loyalty test. Keep track of who is assigned to redact what, and then if certain files leak or are insufficiently redacted, they indicate who isn't all in on Dear Leader.

It's not like a few more stories of Trump raping $whomever are going to move the needle at all, especially with how the media is on board with burying negative coverage of the regime.

Also if you're wondering how this activity isn't some kind of abuse of government resources, keep in mind that thanks to the Supreme Council's embrace of the Unitary Executive Theory (ie Sparkling Autocracy), covering up evidence about Donald Trump raping under-aged sex trafficking victims is now an official priority of the United States Government.

▲andrewflnr 11 hours ago | parent | next [-]

I guess they might try, but given all the other nonsense I certainly don't think the admin is organized enough to execute that plan.

▲ 10 hours ago | parent | prev [-]
[deleted]
▲asmor 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

It seems insane that nobody at the other end runs something as simple as MAT or imagick (twice) over it to take the text layers out before uploading though. I hope this is at least partially intentional.

▲baby 4 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

My understanding is that many people were fired and replaced by loyalists at the FBI. I think there are a lot of incompetent people working there right now.

▲exasperaited 10 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Yeah — don't attribute to resistance what can adequately be explained by idiocy.

▲cynicalsecurity 11 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Let people believe it's deliberate sabotage. Unfortunately, in real life, minions of a dictator serve the dictator; they don't risk their live or safety for a noble cause. Any screw-ups are a result of gross incompetence that is typical for every dictatorship.

▲brunoqc 11 hours ago | parent | next [-]

Maybe because facism favor loyalty over competence.

▲zerocrates 6 hours ago | parent [-]

Arendt:

Totalitarianism in power invariably replaces all first-rate talents, regardless of their sympathies, with those crackpots and fools whose lack of intelligence and creativity is still the best guarantee of their loyalty.

▲potato3732842 an hour ago | parent [-]

>Totalitarianism in power invariably replaces all first-rate talents, regardless of their sympathies, with those crackpots and fools whose lack of intelligence and creativity is still the best guarantee of their loyalty.

Same reason unions always work hardest when fighting on behalf of the worst workers. If you go to bat for a man who can't do better elsewhere he'll go to bat for you in return.

But wait, the situation is more complicated than that you say? Why yes, that's exactly the point. Two of us can play at the stupid smug oversimplification game.

While the effect being described is real to an extent, distilling it to the point you did is useless because there is so much more nuance. Why assume the place was staffed with first rate talent to begin with? And even if there is a lot of first rate talent many will stick around because they don't care who they serve (people not like this don't tend to make careers in government TBH).

▲andsoitis 11 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

Do you truly believe the US is currently a dictatorship?

▲culi 5 hours ago | parent | next [-]

A man who tried to overturn an election is in power and is disappearing people on the streets without due process.

The other day there was news about some ICE members who blew up the door to a family's home in order to detain a man. The man was a citizen. They knew that. They came to intimidate him because a few days earlier he tried filming their cars on a public street. That's just one example but these cases are only becoming more common.

One thing that's clear is that if he tries to overturn an election again, he is way better positioned to succeed this time. ICE is now the 5th most heavily funded military in the world and the whole point of DOGE[0] was to centralize the government and fill only with loyalists.

[0] NYT investigation recently proved there were little savings https://archive.ph/y5guv

▲vunderba 10 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

I wouldn’t go so far as to call it a dictatorship, but it’s definitely trending toward authoritarianism.

Wasn't too hard to put together a quick graph of the past decade for the U.S. using the World Press Freedom Index (relative ranking and score) - an annual ranking of 180 countries published by Reporters Without Borders that measures the level of press freedom.

https://imgur.com/a/4liEqqi

▲bdangubic 11 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

what is the US exactly currently if not dictatorship? is there a single thing “President” cannot do right now and if so who would be stopping him? so perhaps on paper US is not dictatorship much like Russia and China are not… We spend decades trying to fight these regimes and lost so much that now we are worse than them :)

▲chocoboaus3 10 hours ago | parent | next [-]

The supreme court did just stop him for the moment putting the national guard into chicago

▲bdangubic 9 hours ago | parent | next [-]

bookmark this for a few days and then come back to it… the story is “… for now” :-)

▲jibal 8 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

"rare setback"

▲bdangubic 8 hours ago | parent [-]

it is not a setback, they have to play a little game now and again to entertain the masses. scotus as it was before doesn’t exist anymore and won’t for decades, it now just rubberstamps

▲jibal 7 hours ago | parent [-]

I quoted the media. The main point in this context is the "rare" part. I'm well aware of the nature of the GOP operatives on the SCOTUS. Thomas, Alito, and Gorsuch all voted in Trump's favor. That Beerhead, Ms. IDreamOfGilead, and "Citizens United/I hate the VRA/worst chief justice since Taney" voted to temporarily uphold the stay actually surprised me (Bart O' said he would have given Trump more leeway) but yes, it's theater.

▲nothrabannosir 8 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

> is there a single thing “President” cannot do right now

Stand in the middle of fifth Avenue and shoot someone :)

Have political enemies executed

Get his face on Mount Rushmore

Disband congress

Disband the Supreme Court

Keep Jimmy Kimmel off air

Get Jon Stuart to shut up

Get James comey indicted

Get a national holiday named after him

Etc.

Even when we focus on things he tried to do, there is a lot he couldn’t. Let alone when you look at things he didn’t try to do.

▲bdangubic 8 hours ago | parent | next [-]

we are 11 months in, please be patient while the process is taking place, be right with you with your list :)

lots of these are of course also just a distraction to discuss at Thanksgiving and Christmas dinner vs you know, other things

▲nothrabannosir 8 hours ago | parent [-]

You said "right now". If you want to change to "will be able to do in the near future, before the end of his second term", that's a (slightly?) different list. But it's also a different comment.

You said "anything", in the context of dictatorship. I only used items in this list which IMO you can reasonably say Putin, an actual dictator, can do. Right now. Except the first one! Because that was a joke, a reference to something he himself said he could do.

If you want to change to "anything which has backroom deal importance, not just bread and games for the masses, but the real things, if you know you know", that's a (slightly) different list.

But, it's also a different comment.

▲h33t-l4x0r 3 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Well he did get Ellen Degeneris to self-deport

▲exasperaited an hour ago | parent | prev [-]

He has functionally neutered Congress. It is almost completely meaningless and it is operating without an independent Speaker.

I think he could succeed in principle re: Mount Rushmore, to be honest. I think eventually people will cave in and agree to do it, and then they will just pray to cholesterol that they can wait it out.

▲billy99k 8 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

[flagged]

▲bdangubic 8 hours ago | parent | next [-]

I hope you are just trying to be funny cause if you are it is good

▲consz 7 hours ago | parent [-]

Not even believable conspiracy slop for 2023, let alone in almost 2026.

▲bigyabai 4 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

> Ukraine jailed all opposing politicians during the war with Russia and stopped having elections.

No, they did not jail "all" of the opposition. Fair elections cannot be held during an invasion, especially at the rate Russia frauds votes and candidates: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Accusations_of_Russian_interfe...

▲hattmall 9 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

It's pretty clear he can barely do anything policy wise. Limited tariffs and immigration / border stuff is pretty much all that he is getting done.

▲JKCalhoun 7 hours ago | parent | next [-]

And killing so many sailors in South American waters.

▲bdangubic 8 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

you don’t need policy, policy is what his predecessors were doing and are now going “wait, we could have done whatever the F we wanted??! damn!!” :)

▲idle_zealot 11 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

It's not so simple a binary. We're definitely much less democratic than a year ago, and the bar was low then.

▲Loughla 10 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

I truly believe we're headed that direction. I've lived long enough to have seen a wide variety of presidents, both good and bad. This one is easily the worst one, in terms of bare naked power grabs.

I believe Trump will manufacture a crisis before he's out of office in a bid to maintain control. I believe he will have learned from Bush Jr. that a simple war isn't good enough, and it needs to be a genuine emergency.

I believe he'll do whatever he can to make that happen. Native born terrorist, or war with a close country, or absolutely over the top financial crash. Something awful that lets him invoke some obscure rule that lets him stay in power with congressional approval - he'll just skip the congressional approval part like he already does.

▲irishcoffee 10 hours ago | parent [-]

This is one of those instances where I with hn had some kind of remindMe feature.

▲Loughla 29 minutes ago | parent | next [-]

I hope I'm wrong, but I legit believe that will happen.

See you in about 2 years.

▲JKCalhoun 7 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

Hopefully it is not an instance where you won't need it.

▲vkou 10 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

How would the roadmap for turning a democracy into a one party dictatorship differ from the trajectory we are on?

▲rurban 4 hours ago | parent [-]

Which democracy? The USA isn't one for decades already

▲vkou 36 minutes ago | parent [-]

I've no doubt that if we plopped you down in the middle of, say, modern-day Russia, you'd be able to observe a few important differences in the political organization of the two countries.

Fewer than you would a year or nine ago, certainly, and a lot of people are working very hard on closing the gap.

Democracy is a spectrum. There have always been significant flaws with American democracy, but you'd be mad to not observe significant, active regression and effort by the government to replace it with something else.

▲ourmandave 10 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

The pendulum swings. It always does. And all the powers SCOTUS gave the executive branch will eventually be in the hands of the Loyal Opposition.

If it swings as far back you might even see universal health care, sane gun laws, fair wages, campaign finance reform, reproductive freedom, science based policy making, reigning in billionaires, etc.

▲sdenton4 7 hours ago | parent | next [-]

I have very little faith that scotus will have any consistency in their decisions going forward - they seem to be nakedly political, and backing trump. If the elections swing the other direction (despite their aid in gerrymandering), expect them to cry about the power of the presidency and start rolling it back as fast as they can push decisions through the shadow docket.

▲kergonath 4 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

> The pendulum swings. It always does. And all the powers SCOTUS gave the executive branch will eventually be in the hands of the Loyal Opposition.

That sounds reinsuring, but it is completely false. The idea that the pendulum swings is just regression to the mean: sure, after a terrible president, the next one is likely to be less terrible. But there is nothing that implies that after a far-right regime will come a far-left one. In fact, if you look at History in various countries around the world, this seems very unlikely.

> If it swings as far back you might even see universal health care, sane gun laws, fair wages, campaign finance reform, reproductive freedom, science based policy making, reigning in billionaires, etc.

Don’t count on it. In all likelihood it will regress to the centre. The American culture hasn’t changed that much and American leftists did not suddenly become competent at getting popular support.

▲Eisenstein 3 hours ago | parent [-]

> But there is nothing that implies that after a far-right regime will come a far-left one. In fact, if you look at History in various countries around the world, this seems very unlikely.

Looking at the history of left wing movements in countries post-WWII, can you think of a reason why they wouldn't be successful and far-right ones would? The Cold War may have been a factor.

> Don’t count on it. In all likelihood it will regress to the centre.

The center doesn't exist anymore. The right-wing has labeled the US Democratic Party as extreme left. There should be a term for 'forcing your opposition to materialize because you are unable to distinguish between propaganda and reality'.

▲watwut 3 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

> And all the powers SCOTUS gave the executive branch will eventually be in the hands of the Loyal Opposition.

They will find excuses to reverse. There will be some technicality, made up historical precense or some actually untrue fact about the world that wil totally make the situation different.

Conservative heretage foundation group has outcome in mind ... and "opposition" is not their preffered outcome.

▲jliptzin 9 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Oh the horror!

▲DANmode 9 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Tell us more about the sane (“common sense”?) gun laws!

I love these.

▲ourmandave an hour ago | parent | next [-]

I could cut-n-paste a bunch of them and you could copy back all the arguments against them, if you want to do that.

Or post a link to a tiresome comment sections where it's been done countless times.

But until 2A is amended there's nothing we can do.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%27No_Way_to_Prevent_This,%27_...

▲cyberax 8 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

I'd love to limit the semi-auto rifles like the infamous AR-15. Useless for hunting, useless for self-defense. In exchange for country-wide reciprocity for concealed carry and firearm transportation.

▲pppppiiiiiuuuuu 8 hours ago | parent [-]

> Useless for hunting, useless for self-defense.

I'm not a 1A guy, I think that for instance people with a history of domestic violence shouldn't be armed (that is what I would cite as "common sense"), but this statement really damages your credibility. Of course semiautomatic rifles are useful for both hunting and for self defense. They are effective weapons. That's the problem.

▲cyberax 8 hours ago | parent [-]

> I'm not a 1A guy, I think that for inference people with a history of domestic violence shouldn't be armed

Whut? How the fuck did you make that jump?

AR-15 rifles are useless for hunting. They are too small to reliably kill large game (deer) and too large for small game (rabbits). Sure, they're fine for coyotes, but if you're buying an AR-15 to hunt coyotes, then you should just stop.

AR-15s are also useless for self-defense. They are too bulky for indoor use, and the bullets can penetrate multiple walls. A regular semi-auto handgun is far superior if you're looking to protect yourself against domestic violence.

▲pppppiiiiiuuuuu 8 hours ago | parent [-]

The domestic violence thing was about a potential gun regulation, not a scenario. People with domestic violence convictions are overrepresented among murderers and mass shooters. So it would make sense to prevent them from obtaining guns.

It's useless for hunting, but you identify circumstances it's useful in. You say it's useless for self defense because it's bulky, I've heard a hundred people say it's ideal because it's easier to be proficient with a rifle than with a pistol.

Say whatever you want, but when you make absolute statements like that, it damages your credibility. That's my feedback for you.

▲consz 7 hours ago | parent | next [-]

I think you may have very differing views of what "self-defense" situations you and the other poster are talking about.

Could you describe a specific scenario one of those hundred people might be imagining?

▲pppppiiiiiuuuuu 7 hours ago | parent [-]

I don't really care to have an in depth discussion of self defense scenarios because I don't think that helps us understand common sense gun regulation any better. I'm sure you can find people making that argument if you are curious. My point is not that the AR-15 is an appropriate self defense weapon but that there are better arguments you could have made, and that the one you did make lost someone who is already sympathetic to your position.

▲consz 2 hours ago | parent | next [-]

I did find someone making that argument, you. I don't think asking for one example out of a hundred is asking for an in depth discussion, but if you claim this is too much for you then I won't push the issue.

▲cyberax 5 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

You're a bot, likely.

▲pppppiiiiiuuuuu 5 hours ago | parent [-]

I guess what I'm saying doesn't compute.

▲JKCalhoun 7 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

"it's ideal because it's easier to be proficient with a rifle than with a pistol"

So a shotgun then?

▲DANmode 9 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

> science based policy making

One of my favorite trivia questions is: how long has it been since Congress has had staff scientists?

▲refurb 8 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

You act like Trump’s policies don’t have broad support with a majority of voters.

▲ourmandave an hour ago | parent [-]

Polls can be capricious, but Trump's recent numbers with some groups have seen big drops.

▲rootusrootus 9 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

The country as a whole, no. But within the regime? Yeah.

▲ 10 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]
[deleted]
▲sneak 11 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

I’m still always surprised that there are adults who think it is not.

The CIA, for example, is entirely above the law.

▲neutronicus 10 hours ago | parent [-]

That's different from a dictatorship, though, especially if the CIA is not answerable to a supposed dictator.

▲dragonwriter 10 hours ago | parent [-]

> That's different from a dictatorship,

Its exactly equivalent to a dictatorship by the head of the CIA, unless the CIA is effectively answerable to some other authority despite not being answerable to the law, and then it is equivalent to a dictatorship by that higher authority.

▲neutronicus 2 hours ago | parent | next [-]

The CIA can’t rule by edict.

Being above the law is necessary but not sufficient to be a dictator.

We also don’t know enough about the internal politics of the CIA to assert much about the head of the CIA.

▲JumpCrisscross 9 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

> Its exactly equivalent to a dictatorship by the head of the CIA

No it's not. I can commit all manner of illegal acts in my home unnoticed, that doesn't make me a dictator.

▲dragonwriter 7 hours ago | parent | next [-]

Yes, and if the hypothetical were that the CIA was effectively outside of control of the law for actions committed in private by CIA personnel in their homes, then the conclusion would be different (even though an agency the scale of the CIA would still have different implications than an individual even then), but that wasn't the hypothetical under discussion, which had much fewer—as in zero—qualifications on the CIA’s lack of accountability.

Analogies don't work when they aren't analogous.

▲JumpCrisscross 6 hours ago | parent [-]

> if the hypothetical were that the CIA was effectively outside of control of the law for actions committed in private by CIA personnel in their homes

My point is their actions are committed outside the law. They've just been able to avoid punishment by covering it up. What they are not is above the law, at least not in the long run. (There are absolutely short bouts where the CIA acts above the law overseas, and rare cases where it has done so domestically. But the fact that they're covering it up betrays that they're crafty bastards, not invincible ones.)

▲sneak 7 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

The CIA ran torture prisons, got caught, then there was a congressional inquiry, and they hacked into the computers of the congresspeople to delete the evidence of torture.

Then they got caught hacking congressional computers to delete evidence.

Nothing happened to them.

They are above the law. You are not.

▲JumpCrisscross 7 hours ago | parent [-]

> CIA ran torture prisons, got caught, then there was a congressional inquiry, and they hacked into the computers of the congresspeople to delete the evidence of torture

One, source?

Two, this above reproach. Not above the law. They deleted the evidence, they didn't just blow the scandal off. (Historically, our IC was popular. Right now, it's the deep state. You're seeing political appointees at the FBI and CIA exert control.)

▲ 11 hours ago | parent | prev [-]
[deleted]
▲neilv 11 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

A third possibility is diversion, while the most damaging evidence would be suppressed a different way.

▲userbinator 8 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Another option: also change some of the text underneath.

▲JohnTHaller 9 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Given the sheer number of people they had to pull in and work overtime to redact Trump's name as well as those of prominent Republicans and donors as per numerous sources within the FBI and the administration itself, incompetence is likely for a chunk of it.

▲sigwinch 7 hours ago | parent [-]

It’s funny that this effort, the largest exertion of FBI agents second only to 9/11, seems to be unprepared to redact. Cynically, I’m prepared for it to be part of a generative set of PDFs derived from the prompt “create court documents consistent with these 16 PDFs which obscure the role of Donald Trump between 1993 and 1998.”

▲_annum 5 hours ago | parent [-]

Generative subterfuge aside, the information being "uncovered" through copy-and-paste could have been modified and we would never know.

I'm leaning towards negligence though.

▲apical_dendrite 11 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Reporting is that they had a basically impossible deadline and they took lawyers off of counterintelligence work to do this. So a conscious act of resistance is possible, but it's a situation where mistakes are likely - people working very quickly trying to meet a deadline and doing work they aren't that familiar with and don't really want to be doing.

▲jmward01 8 hours ago | parent | next [-]

It seems like a common tactic by this administration is to just not do what they are required to do until they have been told 50 times and criminal charges are being filed. I suspect the actual truth here is 'don't do this' turned into 'you have 1 day to do this and keep my name out of the release' which led to lots of issues. They probably spent more time deciding the order of pages to release, and how to avoid releasing the things damaging to the administration, than actually doing the work needed to release it. Now they will say 'look, see! You didn't give us enough time and our incompetence is the proof'

▲cosmicgadget 5 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

Considering the Comey, James, and Adams debacles, seems quite likely they're purged most people with a shred of competence.

▲russellbeattie 8 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

There's a third option: Ambivalence.

Any major documents/files have been removed all together. Then the rest was farmed out to anyone they could find with basic instructions to redact anything embarrassing.

Since there's absolutely zero chance anyone in the administration will ever be held accountable for what's left, they're not overly concerned.

The thing that I've been waiting to see for years is the actual video recordings. There were supposedly cameras everywhere, for years. I'm not even talking about the disgusting stuff, I'm talking security for entrances, hallways, etc.

The FBI definitely has them, where are they?

What about Maxwell's media files? There was nothing found there? Did they subpoena security companies and cloud providers?

The documents are all deniable. Yes video evidence can now be easily faked, but real video will have details that are hard to invent. Regardless, videos are worth millions of words.

▲billy99k 8 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

The 'resistance' was not releasing them during the last administration.

▲jmyeet 10 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

It's a good question.

For context, lawyers deal with this all the time. In discovery, there is an extensive document ("doc") review process to determine if documents are responsive or non-responsive. For example, let's say I subpoenaed all communication between Bob and Alice between 1 Jan 2019 and 1 Jan 2020 in relation to the purchase of ABC Inc as part of litigation. Every email would be reviewed and if it's relevant to the subpoena, it's marked as responsive, given an identifier and handed over to the other side. Non-responsive communication might not be eg attorney-client communications.

It can go further and parts of documents can be viewed as non-responsive and otherwise be blacked out eg the minutes of a meeting that discussed 4 topics and only 1 of them was about the company purchase. That may be commercially sensitive and beyond the scope of the subpoena.

Every such redaction and exclusion has to be logged and a reason given for it being non-responsive where a judge can review that and decide if the reason is good or not, should it ever be an issue. Can lawyers find something damaging and not want to hand it over and just mark it non-responsive? Technically, yes. Kind of. It's a good way to get disbarred or even jailed.

My point with this is that lawyers, which the Department of Justice is full of, are no strangers to this process so should be able to do it adequately. If they reveal something damaging to their client this way, they themselves can get sued for whatever the damages are. So it's something they're careful about, for good reason.

So in my opinion, it's unlikely that this is an act of resistance. Lawyers won't generally commit overt illegal acts, particularly when the only incentive is keeping their job and the downside is losing their career. It could happen.

What I suspect is happening is all the good lawyers simply aren't engaging in this redaction process because they know better so the DoJ had the wheel out some bad and/or unethical ones who would.

What they're doing is in blatant violation to the law passed last month and good lawyers know it.

There's a lot of this going on at the DoJ currently. Take the recent political prosecutions of James Comey, Letitia James, etc. No good prosecutor is putting their name to those indictments so the administration was forced to bring in incompetent stooges who would. This included former Trump personal attorneys who got improerly appointed as US Attorneys. This got the Comey indictment thrown out.

The law that Ro Khanna and Thomas Massey co-sponsored was sweeping and clear about what needs to be released. The DoJ is trying to protect both members of the administration and powerful people, some of whom are likely big donors and/or foreign government officials or even heads of state.

That's also why this process is so slow I imagine. There are only so many ethically compromised lackeys they can find.

▲sigwinch 7 hours ago | parent | next [-]

Fine, but the teeth of this act belong to some future justice department. I predict Trump will issue blanket pardons for everyone involved, up to Bondi; and that none of them will respect a congressional subpoena.

▲dragonwriter 5 hours ago | parent | next [-]

There's already bipartisan talk of inherent contempt being applied in the House, so the teeth might not wait for a future justice department.

▲jmyeet 5 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

There's no putting this genie back in the bottle.

MAGA is a cult and every cult has a mission. MAGA's mission is to uncover the elite pedophile ring. A cult can only be sustained so long as the mission is incomplete. Epstein is core foundational mythology. It's going to be really difficult if not impossible to redirect this.

You'll notice that Mike Johnson once again has put Congress in recess to avoid it taking action, this time a day before the 30 day deadline. The last time was for 7 weeks to try and get Republicans to remove their names from the discharge petition to avoid all this. Republicans know what a core problem this is.

So it's politically damaging with his base for Trump to pardon attorneys involved in obstructing this. But even if he weathers that, it doesn't solve his problem.

For one, any attorneys despite any pardon are subject to disciplinary proceedings (including disbarment) as well as possible state charges.

For another, this stuff is simply going to get out. Where previously a DoJ attorney would be committing career suicide if they got caught leaking things like grand jury testimony and confidential non-prosecution agreements, now they're obligated to. So they're not leakers anymore, they're whistleblowers who are following the law.

Congress will eventually have to come back into session and Pam Bondi may actually face a real risk of impeachment. If that happens, who is going to want this job when the key requirement is being such a loyalist that you have to break the law?

Congress will also seek compliaance from DoJ and hold investigations as well as drip feed their own documents from,say, the House Oversight Committee.

And in the wings we still have Ghislaine Maxwell who is clearly operating under an implicit understanding that she will get a pardon or, more likely, a commutation. Her move to a lower security prison that isn't eligible for her type of offenses was (IMHO) clearly a move to buy her continued silence until it became politically possible to free her. I don't think that's ever going to be possible other than maybe a lame duck pardon when leaving office.

This story is only getting bigger.

▲dragonwriter 5 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

> My point with this is that lawyers, which the Department of Justice is full of, are no strangers to this process so should be able to do it adequately. If they reveal something damaging to their client this way, they themselves can get sued for whatever the damages are. So it's something they're careful about, for good reason.

> So in my opinion, it's unlikely that this is an act of resistance. Lawyers won't generally commit overt illegal acts,

Political redaction in this release under the Epstein Transparency Act is an overt, illegal act.

Does that reconfigure your estimation of whether DoJ attorneys that aren't the Trump inner-circle loyalists installed in leadership roles might engage in resistance against (or at least fail to point out methodological flaws in the inplmentation of) it?