Benji (8:58)
Well, look, so by their own admission, which I'll explain in a little bit, the DOJ has never even reviewed or looked at at any level these million plus documents. So how would you go to Congress and testify that you've reviewed the documents when you haven't? And this was not like some like super secret source that they found underneath, you know, whatever. Like this was clearly in the Southern District of New York's possession and custody and control. It was the main documents that were part of the Epstein files. Okay? And it says so here in this email that I uncovered. And then I put this out, Midas touch wrote stories about it. And then 12 hours later the DOJ said they found. We found it. We found it. So here's what the email said. Again, it's from the prosecutors to other prosecutors involved in document review dated October 30, 2020. Following up on our earlier phone conversation, a hard drive with the following production is being sent to SDNY via FedEx with the following production in the US v Epstein workspace. And then they have the prefix, we call it Bates numbers in the legal practice, but SDNY Pro D. So Southern District of New York, that's the prosecutor's office in New York, the Southern District of New York. They're the ones who prosecuted Epstein and Ghislaine. Then Epstein died by suicide, allegedly before his prosecution actually took place. 0080-009001-00011 note. This is a six part production. 001-200-130014. The email goes on to say there are approximately 1.2 million records currently being imaged. The images will be available on Monday, November 2, 2020 at the earliest. The production of the records will begin as soon as the images are available in the workspace. Please feel free to contact me if you have any questions. Thanks. This is something I'm very familiar with when they talk about US V. Epstein workspace. The workspace is the E discovery, the electronic discovery platform where these documents are being uploaded on. That's why they're saying these records are being uploaded. They say 1.2 million records right here. But notice that it says Pro D008 to 0014. So one question I immediately have is, okay, what about 001 to 007 that clearly exists? They don't. You don't just start at 008. So that's why I go, there's probably a lot more than 1.2 million records and then there could be production. 0014 to 0050 for all we know. This is just one hard drive, right? I don't have the other emails, so I don't know the other hard drives, but I found this email and what I was able to review. So There may be 10 hard drives with more stuff like this. And this is just the workspace. The E discovery involving electronic discovery of US V Epstein, this is not US V. Ghislaine, and this is only in the Southern District of New York, so this isn't in the Southern District of Florida, where there was that sweetheart deal that Epstein entered in 0708 with Acosta, Trump's guy who became the Labor Secretary. So there's probably a whole lot of other documents there. And then even if you use that universe, that's just the criminal cases. What about all of the civil cases? What about the international stuff? The Virgin island stuff? This, the island, the St. James stuff? What about all of those cases? What about the cases against the banks? What about. So between all of that stuff, to me, it's obvious that we're talking about at least 5 million records, not even documents. One record could potentially be a thousand pages. So we could be talking about tens of millions of actual stuff here. And that's the analysis. That's how I get that. I want you to know I don't just, like, come up with these things. Like, that's how I estimate that. And any litigator who's been involved in big document production cases would know that I'm saying is, like, so obviously true in our profession, it would be like, one plus one equals two. Like, it's not even a. Like a. It's not Even like a, whoa, I'm going out on a leap here. And then so the Department of Justice yesterday wrote the following. The U.S. attorney for the Southern. Just think about this, what they wrote on Christmas Eve, this is their message. The U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York and the FBI have informed the Department of Justice they have uncovered over 1 million more documents potentially related to Jeffrey Epstein's case. The DOJ has received these documents from SDNY and the FBI to review them for release in compliance with the Epstein files Transparency act, existing statutes and judicial orders. We have lawyers working around the clock to review and make the legally required redactions to protect victims, and we will release the documents as soon as possible. Due to the mass volume of materials, this process may take a few more weeks. The Department will continue to fully comply with federal law and President Trump's direction to release the file. So when we know that between March and July there were a thousand lawyers and FBI officials purportedly working on the Epstein files, we know that they were billing the taxpayers, because we've seen through Jason Leopold at Bloomberg's great reporting that there were tens of thousands of overtime hours alone in yet alone the other hours. Millions of dollars. So what were they doing with those millions of dollars when in document review? When I was a litigator handling document productions far bigger than this, I had a team. And for those litigators out there listening, they'll be like, yeah, I absolutely get what you're saying, Ben. My team was five associates, and we'd be able to get through this. Not like overnight. We'd be able to get through all of this easy. 90 days, no problem. We loaded on our workspace, we'd have keywords, search terms. The privilege would have notes about why it's privileged versus why it's not privileged. This was an easy production to do. What were those thousands of lawyers spending hundreds of thousands of hours doing? The first thing you would do in a situation like this, if you were, let's say, the main partner or the Attorney general tasked with this, you know that the unit. You know where the universe is. I, heck, I know where the universe. You know, it's Southern District of New York, you know, it's Southern District of Florida, you know the civil cases. So you create a list first. What are all of the cases, right? Then you put out a request to each of the people who run these offices, because there's, you know, and then you say, let me get them. So that's the process. But I will remind you that Maureen Comey was The lead prosecutor in the Southern District of New York against Epstein and Ghislaine James Comey's daughter. She was a renowned prosecutor out there in Southern District of New York. She was fired by Donald Trump as part of Trump's retaliation and retribution many, many months ago. She. But. But there are still people. They clearly have a file where this stuff is kept, regardless of Maureen Comey being fired. So I just wanted to give you that inside perspective of how you'd go about this and why this is all just completely bs and then, look, I'll pass it to you, Brett, and sorry for hogging it, you know, Democratic ranking member of the House Oversight Committee. Garcia credited the Midas Touch reporting for breaking the story. He said new media organizations like Midas Touch are critical to holding the administration accountable. Their reporting is making an impact after we uncovered this, and so it's an honor to uncover it. But, you know, I wish I didn't have to use those skills to figure out that the executive branch is covering up a child sex trafficking.