Legal expert debunks Trump admin excuses for still concealing Epstein files

The Justice Department claims to have produced all of the documents around the investigation of Jeffrey Epstein, but at least three reports have said that the DOJ's own documents prove this is untrue.

Former federal prosecutor Elie Honig spoke to CNN on Thursday morning, commenting on former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, who is set to testify to the House Oversight and Reform Committee in a closed-door session. The Clintons had demanded that the hearing be public, but the committee refused, claiming that it "was" public since they'd be releasing the video immediately. There are two other Epstein associates whose interviews are being withheld.

During the era when the former president was traveling with Epstein, she was in the U.S. Senate.

"It is entirely unclear what information of substance and relevance the committee thinks they're going to get from Hillary Clinton, as distinct from Bill Clinton, when it comes to Hillary Clinton. She claims, as you discussed before, that she's never met Jeffrey Epstein. There's no evidence to the contrary."

He went on to say that Clinton had "very limited contact with Ghislaine Maxwell," and that committee Chairman James Comer (R-Ky.) has alleged that Maxwell's nephew worked on her campaign in 2008 and then was hired to work at the State Department.

"If that's all they've got, John, I don't know what they think they're going to get of any actual use out of Hillary Clinton. Now, Bill Clinton, who is testifying tomorrow, absolutely, a different story," Honig said.

The larger conversation, however, is about the missing documents. One Channel 4 report from the U.K. walked through the number of terabytes of data that FBI agents said they had. If that is accurate, it means that only 2 percent of what they have in their possession has been released. A second report cites the DOJ's press release, which states that over 6 million documents were recovered. What has been released is lower than four million.

A new NPR report this week states that the DOJ intentionally didn't release documents that alleges President Donald Trump assaulting a woman years and years ago. Her complaint was not included in any of the files.

"Just because a witness says this obviously doesn't mean it's so, but these were documents as part of the larger Epstein files that were not released [by] the Department of Justice," said CNN host John Berman.

When they were asked about it, the DOJ said they released all documents. They said that there could be some documents that were improperly tagged and should be released, but haven't been.

"I've not seen any legitimate justification for withholding these documents" said Honig. "So, DOJ has said recently that if any documents are missing from this production, it's either because they're duplicates, they relate to an ongoing criminal investigation, or there's a privilege."

He took them one by one, noting that none of them met the criteria.

"If they're duplicates, we would see the original. So that's not the case. I highly doubt there's an ongoing criminal investigation by the Justice Department of Donald Trump, and so that just leaves privileges. But there are no privileges, legal privileges, that would apply here. There's no attorney-client privilege. There's no Fifth Amendment privilege about things that a witness would have said about someone else," he explained.

The DOJ could be relying on the idea that it could be politically embarrassing or damaging to people who haven't been charged with a crime, he added. The problem with that, however, is that the law passed by Congress and signed by Trump specifically says that it cannot be an excuse.

It "specifically says that DOJ cannot withhold documents on the basis of potential embarrassment or political damage to any person. So, I think DOJ has not complied with the law here. And the question is: is someone in Congress, or anyone else, going to force them to measure up to the law?" Honig asked.

Regardless, he said, "The DOJ has not complied with the law."

Berman then asked why the DOJ wouldn't have complied.

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