Days after releasing millions of pages of documents related to its investigation into Jeffrey Epstein, the Justice Department has been forced to take down several thousand that “may have inadvertently included victim-identifying information.”
That move came after attorneys for several survivors of Epstein’s abuse asked a judge to order the department to take down the website due to redaction failures.
On Monday’s “Deadline: White House,” Nicolle Wallace described the department’s actions as a “slap in the face,” adding, “to call the release sloppy and haphazard is about the nicest thing we can say about it.”
An initial review from MS NOW found that more than 40 known or suspected survivors’ identities were revealed in the files produced on Friday.
Danielle Bensky, an Epstein survivor, sat down with Wallace to discuss the Justice Department’s botched rollout, which she called “just absolutely egregious and appalling.”
“On Saturday, I just felt so broken,” Bensky told Wallace. “I felt like I couldn’t get out of bed. I really had a moment where it’s like, ‘What is this fight for if we’re just exposing people?’”
Bensky said that while she and other survivors urged lawmakers to make the documents public, they also wanted to ensure their identities and privacy would be respected.
“So many of us worked so hard to speak to congressional leaders, to talk to senators, to talk to anybody we possibly knew had any power, to say, ‘We want this done the right way,’” she said.
Bensky recalled a meeting the survivors held with House Speaker Mike Johnson in which she said the Republican “looked us dead in the eye” and promised to protect the disgraced financier’s victims.
“Then [we] have this come out, and I’m looking through the files and I’m seeing my name all over the place,” Bensky said, adding that “the reductions don’t even make any sense.”
“It just feels like at every turn, it’s just a game — and it’s not a game for us,” she added. “It’s our lives.”
Bensky, who met Epstein when she was an aspiring ballerina, told Wallace she was worried the lack of care to protect survivors could cause a “chilling effect” that makes victims “feel like they can’t come forward and those in power will always be able to pull the strings, and that it’s hard right now to feel any other way.”
MS NOW is reviewing the documents released by the Justice Department in collaboration with journalists from NBC, The Associated Press, CNBC and CBS. Journalists from each newsroom worked together to examine the documents and share information about what is in them. Each outlet is responsible for its own independent news coverage of the documents.
You can watch Bensky’s full interview in the clip at the top of the page.
Allison Detzel is an editor/producer for MS NOW. She was previously a segment producer for “AYMAN” and “The Mehdi Hasan Show.”