'An outrage': Ex-prosecutor says DOJ's move on Epstein files is aimed at shielding Trump

The Justice Department is now all but openly manipulating the release of the Jeffrey Epstein sex trafficking case files to insulate President Donald Trump from any potentially damaging information, former federal prosecutor Joyce Vance wrote on her Substack on Wednesday.

This comes after White House officials started directly controlling the social media account for the DOJ, which shortly proclaimed a letter in which Epstein appeared to incriminate Trump was "fake" and called an influencer expressing skepticism a "dope."

"No other person whose name surfaces in a criminal case gets this sort of boost on the official Justice Department account, and it’s an outrage (and another marker of authoritarianism) that this president does," wrote Vance. "The Justice Department doesn’t represent the president, or at least it isn’t supposed to. But this DOJ is led by an Attorney General who represented Trump when he was impeached and a Deputy Attorney General who was his personal criminal defense lawyer. Many of the U.S. Attorneys bear strong personal loyalty to Trump. It’s unprecedented, but that doesn’t mean we can’t label an outrage as an outrage."

Indeed, Vance continued, this only proves that Justice Department officials are convinced Trump does in fact have something to hide — particularly in light of what little the current releases have revealed about Trump.

"Trump has been calling the Epstein Files a 'Democratic hoax' in recent weeks, but what’s come so far demonstrates that is not the case," she wrote. "Many of us support believing women who come forward to report sexual abuse and violence. It’s difficult and dangerous, especially when powerful men are involved, as the Epstein saga demonstrates far too well. But for those who are unwilling to believe women, the documents and new information, like the fact that Trump flew on Epstein’s plane far more times than he has previously acknowledged, suggest this is far from a hoax."

"Not everything Jeffrey Epstein got away with can or should be laid at Trump’s door," Vance wrote. However, she continued, his DOJ is "flagrantly" violating the Epstein Files Transparency Act as written by Congress. "The cover-up, as we’ve learned, is frequently as important as and can be even worse than the crime. Here, it’s unforgivable, especially since Trump campaigned on releasing the Files. It’s time to release all of them and give survivors the comfort they are able to take from knowledge about what happened to them and who was responsible. It would also give Congress information on what went wrong, and the opportunity to enact new and better laws to prevent anything like this from happening again."

"A country that had begun to make progress in believing women is regressing," Vance warned. "In this environment, it becomes more and more difficult for victims to come forward, which means that the people committing crimes against them are going to get away with it. Again."