Thread by @SenWhitehouse

Another low moment in yesterday’s hearing was Patel saying he and MAGA Bondi tried to get Epstein files out but judges wouldn’t let them.

Here’s what really happened:

🧵

Federal judges (who are not idiots) know that ONLY grand jury documents are protected by secrecy rule.  

So why, two separate judges wondered, would FBI/DOJ release nothing FBI/DOJ had, and only try to release protected documents? Weird, huh?

Then the judges looked at the grand jury documents and noticed how few they were (a “snippet”) and how it was most ALREADY public. Oops.

Quote: “unsealing the grand jury materials would not reveal new information of any consequence”; any knowledgeable person would “learn next to nothing new.”

Both judges said (a) no public interest in releasing because no there there, and (b) obviously not pursuit of transparency but the opposite.

One even said the best reason to release would be to show the public what a fake effort at transparency Patel/Bondi engaged in.

Quote: unsealing would “expose as disingenuous the Government’s public explanations for moving to unseal,” that the stunt “was aimed not at ‘transparency’ but at diversion — aimed not at full disclosure but at the illusion of such.” Ouch.

(BTW a federal judge calling an argument from the highest levels of DOJ “disingenuous” would set off alarms in any non-MAGA DOJ. But Audience Of One.)

So now the poor fool uses that blown cover at hearing, as if those judges hadn’t exposed the FBI/DOJ scam. Oy.

What happens next time the FBI or DOJ go before either judge, and the judges remember this dumb and dishonest FBI conduct?

Credibility matters in law enforcement, and credibility with judges matters a LOT. This is amateur hour self-injurious foolishness.

All done while sitting on tens of thousands of pages of their own files, and not investigating tens of millions in Epstein “suspicious activity reports.”

(Clue to Patel/Bondi: if you’re actually looking for Epstein suspicious activity, maybe look at Epstein “suspicious activity reports.”)