CNN legal analyst criticizes Trump’s Justice Department
CNN senior legal analyst Elie Honig says U.K. authorities and Congress are miles ahead of the Justice Department in their investigation of possible co-conspirators of late child predator Jeffrey Epstein, calling the “embarrassing” lack of charges “perhaps intentional.”
“The U.S. Department of Justice is being outmaneuvered by both Congress and British authorities in follow-up investigations into the Epstein files,” Honig wrote Friday in an editorial published in New York magazine’s Intelligencer. “There’s no excuse for either.”
He continued: “As British police arrest astonishingly powerful men for their dealings with Jeffrey Epstein and the US House of Representatives attempts to force the titans of finance and politics to answer tough questions, our Justice Department is left far behind.”
Honig went on to note that “it’s not even clear that the Department of Justice is doing anything at all.”
U.K. law enforcement arrested former Prince Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor last week on “suspected misconduct in public office” after the most recent tranche of Epstein’s files appeared to suggest the former royal gave Epstein confidential information in 2010 and 2011, according to the BBC.
British authorities also arrested Peter Mandelson, the former UK ambassador to the United States, on suspicion of misconduct. Honig argued that England has embarrassed the Justice Department by launching these investigations in a “matter of weeks.”
“British police investigated and arrested a former prince (Andrew) and a lord (Mandelson); subjected both men, and others around them, to extensive interrogations; and conducted searches of properties associated with the subjects,” Honig wrote.
He argued that “the most memorable step taken by our Justice Department since the release of the files was Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche’s public service announcement that ‘the American people must understand that it is not a crime to party with Mr. Epstein.’
Blanche made the argument during an interview with News earlier this month.
Honig went on to criticize President Donald Trump for dismissing the case as a “hoax” and the Justice Department for its “proactive making of excuses,” citing Blanche’s claim earlier this month that the litany of disturbing emails “doesn’t necessarily allow us to prosecute anyone.”
Honig wrote: “Not exactly the tenacious prosecutorial stance that Blanche and I learned during our first simultaneous days in the Southern District of New York. But hey, if our Justice Department isn’t going to make significant use of its own Epstein files, at least others will.”
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He then praised last year’s successful bipartisan effort to pass the Epstein Files Transparency Act and praised the House Oversight Committee for subpoenaing “powerful people” and “making them face significant questioning under oath.”
Among them was retail billionaire Les Wexner, who maintained during five hours of questioning last week that he did not know about Epstein’s criminality, which Honig said the Justice Department could rigorously investigate by speaking to witnesses, examining email records and more.
“However, we have seen no indication that the Department of Justice is doing such a thing,” he wrote.
Honig then noted that they have not even subpoenaed “the most powerful of all Epstein’s former friends, Trump himself,” and that it is “irritating” that Congress has made more progress “with a skeleton investigative staff” than Justice Department prosecutors have with “the vast resources” at their disposal.
“Meanwhile, British authorities and Congress press ahead,” Honig wrote on Friday. “It is an embarrassing moment for our Justice Department’s leadership and a revealing indictment of its own stubborn, and perhaps determined, indifference.”