I spoke this week with attorney Arick Fudali, who represents eleven survivors of Jeffrey Epstein’s abuse, about what the Trump administration has labeled its “release” of the Epstein files. It was a devastating account of how power continues to protect itself by hiding behind the very people it harmed.
As many predicted, the Trump administration did not meet the requirements of the Epstein Files Transparency Act. The law is not ambiguous. It requires the release of all unclassified Epstein-related records in a searchable format, with any redactions narrowly tailored and legally justified. What the Department of Justice produced instead was a nonfunctional website, thousands of unlabeled files, and a vague promise that this was merely an “initial” step.
The DOJ has attempted to justify this failure by claiming it is acting to protect victims. That assertion is not only legally incorrect. It is morally offensive.
As Fudali told me, survivors’ names are being invoked as a shield for secrecy rather than as a mandate for transparency. The result is that survivors are once again used, not supported. “This is nothing new for them,” Fudali said. “They’ve been wronged by administration after administration, Justice Department after Justice Department, for decades.”
The administration’s conduct is particularly glaring given what we know about the scope of the material being withheld. Public reporting confirms that the FBI and DOJ possess terabytes of Epstein-related data and that tens of thousands of hours were spent reviewing those materials earlier this year. Additional teams of national security lawyers were reportedly pulled into the process. After all of that, the public was handed a digital maze that, at least initially, did not even allow basic name searches.
For survivors, this is a continuation of trauma. Fudali described the current moment as psychologically torturous, reopening wounds for people who have already endured the worst forms of abuse and intimidation. The release was supposed to offer closure. Instead, it has become the beginning of another long battle.
That pattern extends beyond documents. Survivors were not consulted when the DOJ transferred Ghislaine Maxwell from a maximum-security prison to a minimum-security facility. She remains the only person convicted in connection with Epstein’s trafficking operation, despite decades of credible allegations and investigations. The message to survivors is unmistakable: accountability is negotiable.
Fudali’s work underscores how deep that failure runs. One of the survivors he represents, known publicly as Rosa, was trafficked from Uzbekistan by Jean-Luc Brunel under the guise of modeling opportunities, Fudali says. When she arrived in the United States, she was introduced to Epstein while he was wearing an ankle monitor, the product of a plea deal that should never have existed. Had Epstein been fully prosecuted years earlier, Rosa would never have encountered him.
Instead, Epstein used her immigration status, isolation, and fear as tools of control. According to Fudali, that kind of coercion was not incidental. Epstein identified each victim’s vulnerabilities and exploited them relentlessly, threatening family members, livelihoods, and legal status. Many survivors, he said, continue to live in fear long after Epstein’s death, still convinced that his power extends beyond the grave.
What is often lost in the public discourse is the scale and nature of Epstein’s abuse. While there were instances involving other powerful men, Fudali said that Epstein primarily trafficked victims for himself, sometimes abusing multiple girls a day for years. The fixation on political scorekeeping obscures the reality that this was a system built on serial violence, intimidation, and impunity.
The administration’s document dump mirrors that abuse in form, if not in kind. Thousands of files with no context, no organization, and massive redactions that extend far beyond what is legally permissible are not transparency. They are obfuscation. In civil litigation, such tactics are recognized for what they are: attempts to hide the truth in plain sight.
The question now is enforcement. What happens when the very institutions charged with upholding the law are the ones violating it? Fudali made clear that litigation is not off the table. He has already sued the FBI over its historic failures and is exploring further legal action to compel compliance, including possible intervention before federal judges who already have jurisdiction over related matters.
The survivors are not backing down. “They’re the only reason we’ve gotten this far,” Fudali said. “And we’re not going to stop fighting.”
That, ultimately, is the point the administration seems to misunderstand. Survivors are not a convenient excuse for secrecy. They are the reason the law exists. Transparency is not a threat to justice here. It is the only path to it.
Watch my interview with Fudali above, and let’s keep working together to deliver the truth.
