A substantial amount of the files are redacted, and there’s apparently a lot that hasn’t been released at all yet either. It’s hard to get a good idea of something if you can only see a small percentage of it, especially when that small percentage has been curated. Right now it feels kinda like going to North Korea, seeing a show village and declaring the country a rich and free democracy. The play looks great, and you’ll never know otherwise if you don’t get a look behind the curtains. And when the curtains do open, surprise there’s even more curtains!
And one of the big issues here is with trust. Maybe a redaction is personal information of a victim, or maybe it’s something else that needed to be covered up because it looked bad. The unknown is unknown after all. I’m not sure how much I can trust the Trump admin here at all when there’s already been multiple controversies with unwarranted redacting and the multiple u-turns that have already occured around the files, so “nothing to see behind the curtains” is not particularly convincing. At the very least the behavior has been very very suspicious.
There’s also some really interesting things to consider about the arguments around the files. One common claim was “if there was anything potentially damaging for Trump in them, why did the Biden admin not release it”. Now we know there is tons of stuff about Trump. Nothing that is definitive proof of criminal behavior, but things like the birthday book letter and accusations certainly seem like they could have been harmful for his campaign.
So now we’re stuck with “There is potentially damaging material about Trump in there, so why did the Biden admin not release it?”. Perhaps they’re more ethical than the argument makers thought and didn’t think it fair to leak those files. Or maybe there’s something that both admins don’t want revealed, whether it be a third party or a MAD scenario. I don’t know, but it again sure is weird!
I might be deferring too much to other people on this, but my understanding is that releasing the files would make it easier for Maxwell to argue that she didn’t get a fair trial, since it would be impossible to find an unbiased jury, it would be obvious that the government was politicizing her case and potentially tilting the scales unfairly, and it would create risks with witnesses.
That’s not what the person you are linked to is saying. They are just claiming that the DOJ has a habit of not releasing their case files.
There’s no reason to assert that this habit just exist because of arguments about biasing the Jury, a stronger reason for that general habit is likely that releasing case files can sometimes bring evidence to light that was ignored at the trial and that makes the convicted person look innocent which isn’t what the DOJ wants. Prosecutors don’t want the defense to have access to all the evidence that can used to argue innocence.
Apart from that you wouldn’t need to open the full case file to selectively leak embarrassing information from it about Trump and/or start a case against Trump and put the victims accusing Trump on the stand.
A substantial amount of the files are redacted, and there’s apparently a lot that hasn’t been released at all yet either. It’s hard to get a good idea of something if you can only see a small percentage of it, especially when that small percentage has been curated. Right now it feels kinda like going to North Korea, seeing a show village and declaring the country a rich and free democracy. The play looks great, and you’ll never know otherwise if you don’t get a look behind the curtains. And when the curtains do open, surprise there’s even more curtains!
And one of the big issues here is with trust. Maybe a redaction is personal information of a victim, or maybe it’s something else that needed to be covered up because it looked bad. The unknown is unknown after all. I’m not sure how much I can trust the Trump admin here at all when there’s already been multiple controversies with unwarranted redacting and the multiple u-turns that have already occured around the files, so “nothing to see behind the curtains” is not particularly convincing. At the very least the behavior has been very very suspicious.
There’s also some really interesting things to consider about the arguments around the files. One common claim was “if there was anything potentially damaging for Trump in them, why did the Biden admin not release it”. Now we know there is tons of stuff about Trump. Nothing that is definitive proof of criminal behavior, but things like the birthday book letter and accusations certainly seem like they could have been harmful for his campaign.
So now we’re stuck with “There is potentially damaging material about Trump in there, so why did the Biden admin not release it?”. Perhaps they’re more ethical than the argument makers thought and didn’t think it fair to leak those files. Or maybe there’s something that both admins don’t want revealed, whether it be a third party or a MAD scenario. I don’t know, but it again sure is weird!
Releasing the files would have damaged their legal case against Ghislaine Maxwell, and the final appeal didn’t get denied until Oct 2025.
Why do you think it would have damaged the case and made her getting her appeal through more likely? What argument do you think she could have made?
I might be deferring too much to other people on this, but my understanding is that releasing the files would make it easier for Maxwell to argue that she didn’t get a fair trial, since it would be impossible to find an unbiased jury, it would be obvious that the government was politicizing her case and potentially tilting the scales unfairly, and it would create risks with witnesses.
That’s not what the person you are linked to is saying. They are just claiming that the DOJ has a habit of not releasing their case files.
There’s no reason to assert that this habit just exist because of arguments about biasing the Jury, a stronger reason for that general habit is likely that releasing case files can sometimes bring evidence to light that was ignored at the trial and that makes the convicted person look innocent which isn’t what the DOJ wants. Prosecutors don’t want the defense to have access to all the evidence that can used to argue innocence.
Apart from that you wouldn’t need to open the full case file to selectively leak embarrassing information from it about Trump and/or start a case against Trump and put the victims accusing Trump on the stand.