WSJ Editors: Say, The Epstein Files Release Was a Bad Idea, Huh?https://hotair.com/ed-morrissey/2026/02/04/wsj-editors-say-the-epstein-files-release-was-a-bad-idea-huh-n3811531Actually, the mandate from Congress to publish the entire catalog of data and materials from the investigations of Jeffrey Epstein amounts to several bad decisions. Democrats who seized on the idea in hope that it would implicate Donald Trump now have to watch Bill and Hillary Clinton decide whether to hide behind the Fifth Amendment, having lost a battle over congressional subpoenas. The material exposed the victims (literally, in some cases) despite Congress' attempts to mandate redactions, because Congress also mandated an impossible release schedule that practically guaranteed massive numbers of errors in the process.
And finally, as the Wall Street Journal's editors concede today, most of this material consists of worthless speculation and baseless accusations, which is why this kind of material remains under seal unless and until prosecutors charge someone in a case. Congress set the American justice system on fire for political expediency, and now everyone is getting burned:
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The second failure: Congress knew damned well that this material should never have been made public. Prosecutors have long held to the principle that investigative evidence should not be made public except where charges are brought, mainly because investigations kick over a lot of rocks and collect a lot of nonsense in the process. Investigators chase down rumors, lies, and delusions along with actual and usable evidence. The US system of justice has rules for the use of evidence that culls out the dross, but it still exists in the records, and the outcome of this effort by Congress was not just predictable but repeatedly predicted:
Meantime, heinous accusations are circulating against prominent people, without any evidence they’re true. Since Epstein died in 2019, prosecutors have had time to chase real leads. The Epstein emails that show elites privately cozying up to a wealthy sex offender are embarrassing, but the government isn’t supposed to be in the business of posting scandalous raw evidence without a verifiable criminal case.
“There are allegations in there that, with 10 or 15 minutes of work, you can realize have no basis in fact,” Jay Clayton, the U.S. Attorney for Manhattan, told CNBC. Protecting accusers, he said, matters for prosecuting future offenders, since it’s “very, very difficult to get victims to come forward in these types of situations.”
Trump-Hating Dems and Trump-Hating RINOs had made
"Trump is a Pedo" a core belief, and did not give a @#$% how many innocents would be hurt by this act in their
white-whale quest for an illusory Gotcha-Trump. BTW, TWSJ's editors have hands as crap-coated as a
Schifftyroo-grade Dem Trump-Hater. TWSJ's editors called for the release of all the files.
