Le Journal

Monday marks one month since the deadline for the Justice Department to release all of its files related to Jeffrey Epstein, but only a fraction of the records have been made public. The delays have frustrated Epstein’s victims and brought warnings of repercussions from the co-authors of the Epstein Files Transparency Act, Reps. Thomas Massie, R-Ky., and Ro Khanna, D-Calif. Massie claimed in a statement to NBC News on Friday that “Attorney General Bondi is making illegal redactions and withholding key documents that would implicate associates of Epstein.” In a separate statement Friday, Khanna said “DOJ’s refusal to follow the law” is “an obstruction of justice.” “They also need to release the FBI witness interviews which name other men, so the public can know who was involved. That is why Massie and I are bringing inherent contempt against Bondi and requested a special master to oversee this process,” he said. “The survivors and the public demand transparency and justice,” Khanna said. The Justice Department did not respond to requests for comment on the releases and the lawmakers’ claims. It said in a court filing last week that it had “made substantial progress and remains focused on releasing materials under the Act promptly while protecting victim privacy.” “Compliance with the Act is a substantial undertaking, principally because, for a substantial number of documents, careful, manual review is necessary to ensure that victim-identifying information is redacted before materials are released,” the filing said. Jeffrey Epstein Jan 13 House GOP seeks to hold Bill Clinton in contempt for skipping Epstein deposition Jeffrey Epstein Jan 7 House committee votes to issue more subpoenas related to Jeffrey Epstein Jeffrey Epstein Jan 6 More than 2 million Epstein files still to be released, DOJ says in court filing Victims have complained that the Justice Department is protecting the wrong people. In a letter to the Justice Department’s inspector general last week, a group of Epstein survivors and relatives of victims complained that the redactions to date had been “selective.” “These failures have caused renewed harm to survivors and undermined trust in the institutions responsible for safeguarding sensitive information,” the group said in its letter. “In multiple instances, names of individuals alleged to have participated in or facilitated abuse appear to have been redacted, while identifying details of survivors were left visible. In some cases, survivors’ names, contextual identifiers, or other information sufficient to identify them publicly were not adequately protected,” they added. They also complained, as have Khanna and Massie, that the Justice Department has not complied with another part of the law, which requires it to explain its redactions. “Without it, there is no authoritative accounting of what records exist, what has been withheld, or why, making effective oversight and judicial review far more difficult,” an attorney for the congressmen argued in a filing. The Justice Department has not commented on the request for the inspector general to step in. On Friday, lawyers for the Justice Department challenged Massie and Khanna’s request for a special master to oversee the release of the materials in a court filing, arguing the pair do not have legal standing to make the request. President Donald Trump signed the Epstein Files Transparency Act into law on Nov. 19. The law gave the attorney general 30 days to “make publicly available in a searchable and downloadable format all unclassified records, documents, communications, and investigative materials in the possession of the Department of Justice” involving Epstein, “including all investigations, prosecutions, or custodial matters.” On Dec. 19, the day the files were due to be made public, Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche…

A car appeared to crash into a home in Winthrop, Massachusetts on Monday morning. An NBC10 Boston crew captured photos showing a Honda CRV that hit at least the porch of the house on Upland Road. The town’s police and fire departments were on scene. It’s unclear what led up to the crash, although the home is situated on a hill and the weather conditions were snowy. Additional information, including if there were any injuries, has not yet been made available.

The MBTA has temporarily suspended Orange Line service along a busy stretch of the subway line over a medical emergency. Orange Line trains will be suspended between Back Bay and North Station due to the medical situation at Downtown Crossing, the T said shortly after 11 a.m. It wasn’t made clear how long the service impact will last. The T referred riders to the Green Line for substitute service.

President Donald Trump warned Europe that he no longer feels “the obligation to think purely of peace,” linking his hostile campaign to seize Greenland to his failure to win the Nobel Peace Prize, Norway’s leader has said. The message was the latest move in the spiraling transatlantic tensions between the United States and Europe, which vowed Monday not to be blackmailed by Trump’s intensifying pressure to take over the Danish territory. As European powers scrambled to respond to Trump’s promise to implement tariffs on countries that stand in his way, Norwegian Prime Minister Jonas Gahr Støre went public with the president’s warning. “Considering your Country decided not to give me the Nobel Peace Prize for having stopped 8 Wars PLUS, I no longer feel an obligation to think purely of Peace, although it will always be predominant, but can now think about what is good and proper for the United States of America,” Trump said in the message, the text of which was first reported by PBS and confirmed as accurate in a statement by the Norwegian leader. The White House did not immediately respond to an overnight request for comment from NBC News. European governments weighed a strong response to their postwar friend in Washington ahead of an emergency summit in Brussels on Thursday. “Germany and France agree: We will not allow ourselves to be blackmailed,” German Finance Minister Lars Klingbeil said. “Blackmail between allies of 250 years, blackmail between friends, is obviously unacceptable,” French Finance Minister Roland Lescure said at the same event. “We Europeans must make it clear: The limit has been reached,” Klingbeil said. In the short term, European governments are considering a range of options including their own tariffs. Another is the European Union’s “bazooka” — officially known as the Anti-Coercion Instrument, which has never been used before. This allows E.U. countries to take retaliatory action against any rivals seen as threatening the bloc, and could involve restricting American access to tenders or investment proposals. Some geopolitical and historical experts believe Trump’s pursuit of Greenland has now become the lowest ebb of transatlantic relations since the Suez Crisis of 1956, when the U.S. pressured Britain, France and Israel to withdraw from their invasion of Egypt. It was against this backdrop that Trump’s message to the Norwegian leader was made public. “I can confirm that this is a text message that I received yesterday afternoon from President Trump,” the Norwegian leader said. He said it came in response to an initial communication from himself and Finnish President Alexander Stubb, in which they conveyed their “opposition to his announced tariff increases.” Støre also pointed out that — regardless of its merits — this backlash was misdirected, as the Nobel Peace Prize is awarded by the Norwegian Nobel Committee, and not the Norwegian government. Trump has made no secret of his desire to become a Nobel laureate, or of his displeasure when it was instead awarded to the Venezuelan opposition activist María Corina Machado last month. Machado presented Trump with the award last week, after he left her out of his plans for Venezuela following the capture of President Nicolás Maduro. The Norwegian Nobel Committee said that the coveted prize cannot “even symbolically, be passed on or further distributed.” Trump says that he wants Greenland to counter what he calls a growing threat from Russia and China. The U.S. already has huge leeway to establish military bases on the Arctic island or strike deals to mine its vast mineral resources. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent defended Trump’s moves, telling NBC’s “Meet the Press” on Sunday that the president was using “the economic might of the U.S. to avoid a hot war.” He said the goal was to avoid a future “national emergency.” Trump said late Sunday that “Denmark has been unable to do anything about”…