WHERE ARE THE EPSTEIN TAPES?

 

Where is the footage Jeffrey Epstein secretly recorded of people in his houses?!

This footage could finally lead to justice for the survivors

Dean Obeidallah Dec 21

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The headlines surrounding the (corrupt) DOJ’s release of a small chunk of the Epstein files on Friday has focused on aspects ranging from the outrageous redactions to the DOJ suddenly removing 16 items originally released from its website. But there is something vitally important missing in this discussion.

Where are the countless hours of footage that Jeffrey Epstein secretly recorded of people in his various homes?! This video footage could finally provide answers for the victims regarding who was involved in this massive sex ring/child rape ring and lead to accountability.

Let’s begin with this fact: We know Trump’s DOJ possesses numerous hard drives which contain footage taken from Epstein’s homes. How do we know this? Simple, the DOJ told us this during their 2021 prosecution of Ghislaine Maxwell for her role in raping children and trafficking women and Pam Bondi’s July 2025 memo confirmed that.

As federal prosecutors laid out during Maxwell’s trial, after Epstein was arrested in 2019, the FBI swarmed his house in New York and seized massive amounts of evidence. And as reported during Maxwell’s trial, FBI special agent Kelly Maguire walked the jury through what the FBI confiscated from Epstein’s house including CDs and hard drives stashed in plastic bins and draws throughout the home. Maguire specifically told the jurors that the items seized from Epstein’s included “external hard-drives.”

In fact during the trial, the government marked photos as exhibits of these every items which were reported on back in 2021. The relevant ones for our purposes are the boxes of hard drives in large plastic bins in a room in Epstein’s home marked as “Government exhibit 935-R” – which is below.

The prosecution also marked the below photo as an exhibit which depicted even more massive hard drives and even CDs—with some clearly marked as photos:

Is the footage on those hard drives from Epstein’s surveillance cameras installed in his homes? It’s unclear but we know from numerous credible sources that Epstein secretly recorded people in his homes.

For starters, I spoke a few months ago to brave Epstein survivor Lisa Phillips—a former model who was one of the speakers on Capitol Hill in September demanding the release of the Epstein files. She told me point blank Epstein had video cameras everywhere and the reason was for blackmail purposes.

Phillips explained, “Jeffrey wasn’t doing this just for his own sexual gratification. He was building something out.” Phillips added that Epstein “told me to have things on people, so the young girls were there to serve a purpose, a grander, bigger purpose, darker purpose.”

That is why as Phillips explained, Epstein “videoed everything on his island, everything in his house,” all “so he has the proof.” That “proof” of course was for blackmail purposes.

In addition, Epstein survivor Maria Farmer back in 2019 told CBS news that Epstein had extensive surveillance inside his home--including tiny pinhole cameras. Farmer explained that Epstein had what he called “the media room” that you gained access through what appeared to be an “invisible door.” Farmer shared that this room housed television monitors “all stacked up” where she could see the bedroom, bathroom and other parts of Epstein’s house all being secretly recorded by these cameras.

In fact, in August 2025, the NY Times ran an in-depth story about Epstein’s New York City townhouse where he had abused countless women and girls, noting that “several of Mr. Epstein’s victims have said the mansion was outfitted with a network of hidden video cameras.” The Times review of photos that had been released to the public noted that the images taken inside Epstein’s Manhattan home “showed video cameras on the third floor in Epstein’s suite, which included his bedroom, bathrooms and the massage room where Epstein was accused of having teenage girls give him massages while he was naked.”

The photos the NY Times published included the one below which pointed out where one of the cameras was secretly hidden in Epstein’s New York residence:

Add to that, Pam Bondi’s own July 2025 memo told us that the DOJ is in possession of large swaths of videos connected to Epstein. As the memo notes, “the FBI conducted digital searches of its databases, hard drives, and network drives.” Bondi continued, “these searches uncovered a significant amount of material, including more than 300 gigabytes of data and physical evidence.”

Then we get to the real issue. Bondi’s memo tells us DOJ is in possession of videos of the victims: “The files relating to Epstein include a large volume of images of Epstein, images and videos of victims who are either minors or appear to be minors.”

These files must be released—subject to appropriate redactions to protect the victims.

It is undisputed that “the Epstein Files Transparency Act” signed into law by Trump in November mandates the release of these hard drives and videos taken. As the law provides, the DOJ must produce “all unclassified records, documents, communications, and investigative materials in the possession of the Department of Justice, including the Federal Bureau of Investigation and United States Attorneys’ Offices” that relate to both Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell.

It’s true there are provisions in the law to allow DOJ to redact portions such as if it contains “personally identifiable information of victims.” But there are no protections in the law for the men or others who engaged in the crimes.

These videos are the key to identifying all the powerful men involved in the crimes against the women and children—regardless of their political affiliation. Will we see Trump walking around Epstein’s house when children are present who Epstein was raping? Perhaps. But that is not the reason this footage needs to be made public.

It’s to help the survivors heal and pursue justice. As Epstein survivor Marina Lacerda—who was only 14 years of age when she was sexually abused by Epstein--passionately explained on Capitol Hill in September, “The worst part is that the government is still in possession right now of documents and information that could help me remember and get over all of this maybe and help me heal.”

That is why we are seeing Epstein survivors vocally slam Trump’s DOJ after the woefully incomplete release of the files on Friday. Jess Michaels—one of the earliest known victims of Epstein—told the NY Times on Saturday: “What are they protecting? The coverup continues.”

And Lacerda put it this way to the NY Times on Saturday: “We have been let down.” She added, “We waited for this day to bring these other men who have been protected to justice.”

We are seeing a cover up of a cover up. The brave women who have waited for justice for decades deserve far better. They deserve the release of the footage in DOJ’s possession that Epstein secretly recorded. That is the first step in holding the powerful men accountable for their crimes.

THE WHITE HOUSE IS A LOST CAUSE

 

Opinion

Jamelle Bouie

The White House Is a Lost Cause

Dec. 17, 2025

 

By Jamelle Bouie

Opinion Columnist

There is a presidency at work in Washington, but it is not clear that there is a president at work in the Oval Office.

Ask Donald Trump about the goings on of his administration, and there is a good chance he’ll defer to a deputy rather than answer the question. “I don’t know her,” he said when asked about his nominee for surgeon general, Casey Means, this year. “I listened to the recommendation of Bobby,” he said, pointing to Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the secretary of health and human services.

Ask Trump for insight into why his administration made a choice or to explain a particular decision, and he’ll be at a loss for words. Ask him to comment on a scandal? He’ll plead ignorance. “I know nothing about it,” Trump said last week, when asked about the latest tranche of photographs released from the estate of Jeffrey Epstein.

None of this on its own means the president isn’t working or paying attention to the duties of his office. But consider the rest of the evidence. He is, by most accounts, isolated from the outside world. He does not travel the country and rarely meets with ordinary Americans outside the White House. He is shuttled from one Trump resort to another to play golf and hold court with donors, supporters and hangers-on.

Ronald Reagan took regular meetings with congressional leaders to discuss his legislative agenda; George H.W. Bush spearheaded negotiations with the nation’s allies and led the United States to war in Iraq; and George W. Bush was, for better or worse, “the decider” who performed leadership for the cameras as much as he tried to exercise it from the Oval Office. Trump is a ubiquitous cultural presence, but there is no outward sign that he is an active participant in running the national government. He was mostly absent during discussions of his signature legislation — the One Big, Beautiful Bill Act — and practically AWOL during the monthlong government shutdown.

It is difficult for any president to get a clear read on the state of the nation; it takes work and discipline to clear the distance between the office and the people. But Trump, in his second term, does not seem to care about the disconnect. Abraham Lincoln once remarked that it would “never do for a president to have guards with drawn sabers at his door, as if he fancied he were, or were trying to be, or were assuming to be, an emperor.” A president has to be engaged — attentive to both the government and the public he was elected to serve.

Trump is neither. He is uninterested in anyone except his most devoted fans, and would rather collect gifts from foreign businessmen than take the reins of his administration. “The president doesn’t know and never will,” Susie Wiles, the White House chief of staff, said in an interview with Vanity Fair, commenting on the work of Elon Musk in the first months of the year. “He doesn’t know the details of these smallish agencies.”

Instead, the work of the White House has been delegated to a handful of high-level advisers. Russell Vought, the director of the Office of Management and Budget, is the de facto shadow president for domestic affairs. As one senior government official told ProPublica, “It feels like we work for Russ Vought. He has centralized decision-making power to an extent that he is the commander in chief.” It was Vought who orchestrated the administration’s assault on the federal bureaucracy, including the wholesale destruction of U.S.A.I.D. It was Vought who either froze or canceled hundreds of billions of dollars in funding for anti-poverty programs, H.I.V. reduction initiatives and research into science, medicine and technology. And it is Vought who has been pushing the boundaries of executive power as he attempts to turn the federal government into little more than an extension of the personal will of the president — as channeled through himself, of course.

If Vought is the nation’s shadow president for domestic policy, then Stephen Miller is its shadow president for internal security. Miller, Trump’s top domestic policy adviser, is using the president’s authority to try to transform the ethnic mix of the country — to make America white again, or at least whiter than it is now. He is the primary force behind the expansion of Immigration and Customs Enforcement and Customs and Border Protection into a roving deportation force. He has pushed both agencies to step up their enforcement operations, targeting schools, restaurants, farms and other work sites and detaining anyone agents can get their hands on, regardless of citizenship or legal status. It is Miller who is behind the militarization of ICE, the use of the National Guard to occupy Democrat-led cities and assist deportation efforts, and the plan to blanket the United States with a network of detention camps for unauthorized immigrants and anyone else caught in his dragnet.

Traditionally, presidents have had a mostly free hand in the conduct of American foreign policy. But here as well Trump has handed the power of the presidency over to a set of figures — inside and outside of government — who are not so much acting on his behalf as they are acting in his stead. Marco Rubio, the secretary of state, and Pete Hegseth, the secretary of defense, are orchestrating a war — and possibly regime change — in Venezuela, while Steve Witkoff, a real estate developer, and Jared Kushner, the president’s son-in-law, are busy pushing a so-called peace deal that would give large parts of Ukraine to Russia, rewarding Vladimir Putin for his decision to wage a war of conquest.

In his foreword to Theodore Sorensen’s 1963 book, “Decision-Making in the White House,” President John F. Kennedy wrote that the “heart of the presidency is therefore informed, prudent and resolute choice” and that the “secret of the presidential enterprise is to be found in an examination of the way presidential choices are made.”

What do we make of a president who chooses not to make these choices?

For Chief Justice John Roberts and the conservative majority on the Supreme Court, the answer is to deliver that president an expansive grant of executive power. In a series of decisions on the court’s so-called shadow docket, Roberts and his allies have backed Trump’s repeated claims to virtually uncontested authority over the entire executive branch. The court has allowed the president to fire officials otherwise shielded by for-cause protections created by Congress, and has signaled quite clearly that it intends to overturn a New Deal-era decision that affirmed the power of Congress to create agencies that are independent of the president’s direct control.

The theoretical basis for the court’s expansion of executive power is the unitary executive theory. Devised by lawyers in the Reagan administration, themselves frustrated by the many legislative obstacles to presidential ambition, the theory holds that the Constitution’s executive vesting clause — “the executive power shall be vested in a president of the United States of America” — is a broad grant of inherent authority. This inherent authority — drawn as well from Article II’s command that the president “take care that the laws are faithfully executed” — includes the power to dismiss executive branch officials at will.

This sounds reasonable until you realize that legislative limits on removal are one of the key ways that Congress holds the president accountable. A nonpartisan official tasked with carrying out the public good or investigating executive branch malfeasance cannot do her job if the president can dismiss her at will for any reason under the sun — or for no reason at all. Imagine a member of a regulatory body, fired because she might threaten the interests of a favored donor, or an inspector general pushed out because he uncovered wrongdoing.

Proponents of the unitary executive theory call it necessary for presidential accountability. This is backward. The theory works instead to shield the president from legislative scrutiny — to render him unaccountable except for a single, quadrennial election. This runs against the structure of the Constitution, which imagines not separation of powers but separated institutions sharing powers. The idea that Congress cannot insulate officials from direct presidential control would shock those members of Congress, among them delegates to the Constitutional Convention, who voted to do exactly that in the 1790s, when the ink had barely dried on the Constitution. Or perhaps they were mistaken and it is Roberts — and the conservative legal community — who understands the true scope of presidential power.

Whether or not the unitary executive theory is historically or intellectually grounded, it is undoubtedly true that in the hands of a president such as Trump, greater executive power is less a means to make the government more accountable than it is a license for presidential dictatorship. It puts something like sovereign power in the hands of one man to use as he sees fit, with few opportunities for real accountability until the next election. Think Bonapartism with an American twist.

But there is something ironic at work in this effort to concentrate executive power in the name of constitutional fidelity. It is being done on behalf of a president who is mostly missing from the business of government. The unitary executive lacks an executive. And the president we have isn’t unitary. He has given his newfound power away to a small set of virtually unaccountable advisers, insulated from public outcry and indifferent to public opinion.

There is a strong argument that far from a grant of presidential power, the executive vesting clause was a simple statement of structure: There shall be one magistrate and not a council of magistrates. This was the subject of real debate during the Philadelphia Convention, and the vesting clause exists to make this clear. Alexander Hamilton’s disquisition on “energy” in the executive branch — found in Federalist No. 70 — is a response to critics who thought republican government needed a plural executive, not a brief for unlimited presidential authority.

The modern presidency is very different from the one the framers envisioned. But one important aspect of the overlapping systems of accountability and control that emerged over the course of two centuries — in response to real and difficult problems of governance — is that they affirmed and reaffirmed the principle of presidential responsibility that drove the decision to create a single executive. A government with independent and nonpartisan officials is a government that can make clear to the people’s representatives in Congress if the president is honoring the public’s trust.

The purpose of the presidency is to carry out the aims of Congress and help govern the nation on behalf of its people — not, as this Supreme Court would have it, to carry out the political will of the president. It makes sense that, from time to time, Congress would put some institutional distance between its goals and the president’s agenda. This doesn’t diminish accountability — it enhances it. Put another way, independence can provide voters a clear view while direct political control can be used to obscure, occlude and obstruct.

In fact, we can see quite clearly that the concentration of presidential power in this administration has done more to make the government unaccountable than it has opened it up to public input or made it more responsive to public discontent.

The embrace of the unitary executive theory by both the president and the court has given us the worst of all worlds: an ultrapowerful presidency without an actual president at the helm. A figurehead whose viziers exercise unitary authority on his behalf, running roughshod over both the law and common decency in pursuit of their own narrow agendas.

The White House is a lost cause, but one might hope that the Supreme Court would be attentive enough to the conditions of the real world to think twice about continued pursuit of its ideological project. But these are principled conservatives. They believe in their theories. And they intend to see them through, no matter the cost to the Constitution or the damage done to American democracy.

 

JOJO - WHAT WAS STOLEN?

 

What Was Stolen

Survivors, Silence, and the Injustice of It All

JoJoFromJerz Dec 21

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I’m sitting in my living room, cup of coffee in hand, surrounded by Christmas, and I can’t stop crying.

The tree is lit, steady and familiar, and everything in the room looks the way it always does this time of year. Nothing’s been disrupted. Nothing’s been taken away. The quiet holds. The warmth stays where it belongs. And yet, something inside me feels unmoored, as if I’ve drifted a few inches outside myself and don’t quite know how to come back yet.

I look at the ornaments and think about my children when they were small. I remember how they could lose themselves completely in the act of creating. Tongues caught between their teeth. Brows knit in concentration. Fingers sticky with glue as they tried, again and again, to get it just right. I can still hear the snip of scissors through construction paper—the pause, the careful turn before the next cut. Time moved differently for them then. The world shrank to color and shape and the seriousness of being four or five and trusted with something sharp. Their hands moved slowly, deliberately, within a reality that had never let them down. Safety wasn’t something they questioned or named; it was simply the way the world was. It was the room itself.

For Jeffrey Epstein’s victims, childhood was never allowed to remain intact.

That knowledge sits heavily with me today.

Over the last several days, as the Epstein files keep surfacing, the images are everywhere, and they keep finding me whether I’m ready or not. They’re on the news. They’re on social media. They’re in every public space where this story is still breaking and unfolding. I know they’re there. I know they’re coming. And still—nothing prepares you.

Nothing prepares you for the angle of a leg that looks like it belongs to a toddler.

Nothing prepares you for a sticky note explaining that a girl couldn’t make it one night because of soccer. Soccer. A word that should live safely in minivans and muddy cleats and Saturday mornings, not here.

Nothing prepares you for the sheer number of photographs, for how methodical they seem, for the chilling realization that someone took the time to document all of this.

Knowing doesn’t soften it. Anticipation doesn’t dull it. Every one of them still knocks the air out of me, especially the photographs that leave no room for denial. A girl on her knees. Her face blurred. Her small body bearing the weight of what was done.

Their faces are blurred, smudged, as if anonymity could still shield them. But nothing in these images is softened. The blur becomes a spotlight, drawing attention to what cannot be hidden: limbs too slight, postures unformed, bodies that have not yet learned to brace against the world. You see, unmistakably, how young they are—not by their faces, but by the way they inhabit space with the unguarded trust of childhood. The realization lands with a sickening clarity: innocence is visible even when identity is erased.

What’s making it unbearable isn’t only what’s being revealed. It’s what’s being done right now.

The Trump administration, aided by a complicit Department of Justice, is engaged in a calculated and cruel campaign of obstruction in plain sight. They’re flouting the law meant to demand accountability, stretching deadlines and dodging disclosure with open contempt. The truth is rationed and obscured while the women who survived these horrors are dragged back through them yet again. Predators remain protected. Evidence is hoarded, withheld, erased. None of this is subtle or accidental. The truth is being smothered in real time, and witnessing it is fucking horrific.

This is why anger came first, as it always does—swift, sharp, fiercely protective. It surged in and named the truth without flinching: the depravity, the machinery that swallows harm and spits it out below, the predators shielded while survivors are told to wait, to be patient, to bear it. For a moment, that anger anchored me. It gave shape to the horror, carved edges I could grasp in the dark.

But anger is fleeting. It never stays.

What followed was grief. Wide and quiet. Filling the room alongside the glow of the tree and the evidence of a childhood that was allowed to remain intact.

My early childhood was not a safe place. I have no memory of comfort from my mother—no recollection of being held, soothed, or shielded. What lingers is presence as threat: a looming figure that felt wrong long before I had words for wrongness. She was a shadow that swallowed the light, a force that filled the room and pressed the air from my lungs. I remember screaming. I remember pleading with her to stop. I remember fear so absolute it became physical—a cold that seeped through me, marrow-deep. At four years old, I couldn’t name it as abuse, or violence, or evil. But my body understood. Some part of me mapped the danger, etched it into my bones—a warning that never fully faded.

And I remember my father holding me afterward. His arms. His steadiness. The quiet attempt to make me feel safe again. That care mattered. It’s part of me too. But it didn’t erase what came before it, or what followed. I never felt safety from my mother. Not then. Not ever. That absence became its own kind of presence, one that shaped how I learned to exist in the world.

Maybe that’s why this moment feels so crushing.

Because I know what it costs when safety fails. I know how long it takes to rebuild even a fragile sense of trust. I know how violence doesn’t end when the act itself is over, how it keeps working its way forward, lodging itself in decisions, reactions, instincts, long after the damage is done.

That force was already in my body a few nights ago when I picked up Virginia Giuffre’s book and told myself I was ready.

I wasn’t.

I didn’t get far before I had to put it down. What she endured surged up all at once, brutal and undeniable. A child being used again and again, systematically. And a woman left to carry what was done to her for the rest of her life.

Virginia Giuffre is no longer here to speak for herself. While she lived, she told the truth—unflinchingly, at great personal cost. Still, the world failed to protect her. Her absence is a devastating reminder: truth-telling does not promise safety. It does not halt the harm.

Trauma doesn’t ask permission. It doesn’t wait for a quiet moment or a time when you’re strong enough to face it. It arrives when it wants—sudden, unbidden—slipping through the cracks of ordinary days. It weaves itself into the fabric of your life, haunting you whether you’re ready or not. I know this because something that happened decades ago can still feel as close as breath, as sharp as yesterday, whenever the present brushes up against its ghost.

That’s what this moment’s doing.

The story doesn’t move forward; it circles, pulling the same women back into its orbit, again and again. Each new headline tears open wounds that never had time to close. Pages appear, then disappear. Deadlines come and go, untouched by consequence. The truth is grazed, diluted, deferred—while the women who endured it are left to shoulder its weight once more, as if survival alone weren’t already too much to ask.

The questions that matter are sitting in plain sight, unanswered.

Why was a convicted child sex trafficker, sentenced to twenty years for facilitating the rape of children, moved at all?

Why was Ghislaine Maxwell granted limited immunity?

Why’s she now held in conditions that resemble comfort rather than consequence?

And why, when the Epstein files were released, were the images showing Donald Trump deleted?

Fifteen files removed. No explanation. No accountability. Evidence present one moment, erased the next, as if disappearance could stand in for truth.

I know what being raped in high school did to me—how it unsettled everything I thought I knew about myself, about trust, about safety. The aftershocks still surface in ways I don’t always expect. But even as I live with that, I know there are limits to my understanding. What happened to these women began when they were children. It wasn’t a single wound—it was inflicted over and over, with intention, with persistence. I wasn’t trafficked. I wasn’t returned to harm, again and again, reduced to something to be bartered and used. I can’t begin to comprehend what it means to carry that kind of pain, to have your childhood stolen piece by piece, and then to watch as the world looks away, unwilling to face the horror of what was done while rewarding the ones who did it to you.

This isn’t political. It isn’t partisan. These were children.

I stand with the survivors. With the women still waiting to be heard. With the girls whose childhoods were taken from them. With those whose names we know—Virginia Giuffre, Maria Farmer—and with every survivor whose name we may never learn. So many have been forced to speak a language they never wanted to know. Others are still searching for words, caught in silence. All of them deserve more than waiting, more than empty promises, more than being asked to bear this alone. All of them deserve to be seen, to be honored, to be treated with dignity.

We cannot give them back what was stolen.

But we can sure as shit end the silence that keeps rewarding the thieves.

We must hold every enabler, every protector, every silent bystander to account—because justice delayed is justice denied.

And if you’re a survivor reading this, please know that you are not alone.

You may feel like your story is too heavy. Like your pain is too much. Like no one will believe you or understand you or love you if they know the truth.

But I promise you, your story matters.

Your truth is not a flaw. It is not a stain. It is not something to hide. It is sacred.

And even if no courtroom ever speaks your name, even if no headline ever tells your story, even if no apology ever comes, you are not invisible. You are not small. You are not forgotten.

You are worthy.

And your voice still has power. Even when the system fails you. Even when justice never arrives. Even when the world hands your abuser the spotlight and dares you to smile.

Your voice still belongs to you. And that matters more than anything.

Don’t let them take that from you.