Speaker 1: Imagine a mountain of paper five million pages high, I
mean just trying to digitalize that, a stack of documents
so huge it blocks out the sun. And now imagine
you've been told that at the top of that mountain
is some kind of truth, some kind of justice you've
been waiting for, Yeah, only to find out that we've
only seen the first few feet of it, just one
percent of that entire five million page mountain. What secrets,
what critical insights are still buried in there? Exactly Today
on Thrilling Threads, we're diving into two massive stacks of
documents that are really shaping public life. And both stories
are all about information, what's being released and maybe more importantly,
what's being held back.
Speaker 2: Welcome to Thrilling Threads. Our mission today is to really
unpack the details from a recent CBS News report. It
gives us two kind of perfect case studies in this
modern information battle. First, we're going to get into the
huge logistical, political, and the human challenges run the release
of the Jeffrey Epstein case file, five million page mountain.
That's the one, and then we're going to pivot completely.
We're going to dissect the key takeaways from this recently
released two hundred and fifty page deposition transcript from former
Special Counsel Jack Smith. Our goal, as always is to
give you the most important pieces of this so you
can really understand the scale and the implications of what's
happening behind the headlines.
Speaker 1: Okay, let's unpack this first one, because the numbers here
are just they're almost hard to believe. We're talking about
the Department of Justice, the DJ and their struggle to
release the files from the Jeffrey Epstein's sex trafficking case.
And this isn't them doing it out of the kindness
of their.
Speaker 2: Heart, No, not at all. This is legally mandated exactly.
Speaker 1: And the core detail coming from the lawyers for the
survivors is that the number of files we still haven't
seen is far larger than previously known, which is already
an alarming statement.
Speaker 2: It is because we already thought it was huge, but
the actual estimate they give it just reframes the entire situation.
It comes from the attorneys for a group of survivors,
and they estimate that as little as one percent of
Epstein's case files have been released so far, one percent,
after all this time, all the public pressure, the media focus,
the court actions, we are, according to the people closest
to the victims, just seeing the very very tip of
this colossal iceberg.
Speaker 1: I think we need to stay on that one percent
figure for a second, because it's a meaningless number without
the total volume. And the source material backs this up, right.
It cites a New York Times report, it.
Speaker 2: Does, and that report estimates that there are five million
pages of files currently under review by the DOJ.
Speaker 1: Five million pages. So let's do the math on that.
If that one percent estimate is right, that means we've
seen what about fifty thousand pages roughly.
Speaker 2: Yes, And in any normal legal case, fifty thousand pages
would be considered a massive document dump. People would be
combing through that for months.
Speaker 1: Right. But here, if that's only one percent, it means
there are four million, nine hundred and fifty thousand pages
still locked away somewhere inside the DOJ, waiting for review
for redaction.
Speaker 2: For something that combination one percent and five million pages,
that's the single most important data point here. It explains everything.
It explains the logistical nightmare, It explains the waiting period,
It explains the frustration.
Speaker 1: So what is that logistical nightmare? Exactly? I mean, why
can't they just hit a button and release it all.
What are the actual steps that are causing this agonizing delay.
Speaker 2: Well, it really boils down to this tension between two
different legal requirements. On the one hand, you have this
new law that says release everything, that's the transparency mandate, okay.
But on the other hand, you have all these other
legal protections. So even if they have, as they say,
all hands on deck, they have to manually review every
single one of those millions of pages to make sure
they're not releasing sensitive information.
Speaker 1: And what kind of information are we talking about?
Speaker 2: First and foremost the privacy and the safety of the
victims and the witnesses. That is a huge legal protection.
You have to redact names, locations, any personal details that
could identify them. That alone is an enormous task.
Speaker 1: And I'm guessing it's not just about the survivors, given
who Epstein was connected to. There have to be other
legal layers here.
Speaker 2: Oh. Absolutely, you're potentially dealing with national security information. I mean,
if any government officials or intelligence figures are in those files,
that's a whole other level of review. Then you have
things like attorney client privilege, right, and you even have
you know, third party business communications that could be covered
by trade secrets or NDAs. If the DOJ releases that improperly,
they could get sued. So every single page is a
potential legal landmine.
Speaker 1: So even with all the modern tech we have, you
know AI that can scan for keywords, it still comes
down to a person, a human being, having to make
a final call on what to black out.
Speaker 2: That's the crux of it. An AI can flag a
name for you, sure, but a person has to look
at the context and decide is this a protected witness,
is this a powerful person who should be exposed, or
is this just some random person who got swept up
in all this? This shear volume becomes its own kind
of shield for the information. The complexity is the delay.
Speaker 1: And that slowness, that complexity, it leads us right to
the next critical point here. This wasn't just a vague
promise of transparency. The DOJ missed a specific, legally binding deadline.
Speaker 2: That's such a critical piece of context. Earlier this year,
President Trump signed a bill into law. It wasn't a suggestion.
It was a requirement for the DOJ to release all
of its files related to the case. This came from
intense congressional pressure because of all the allegations that this
case was mishandled from the start.
Speaker 1: And the source material gives us the exact date, right,
The statutory deadline for that full release was December nineteenth.
Speaker 2: December nineteenth, that was the date that was the promise
the system made, and as the source points out, that
deadline has come and gone. We're not talking about an
internal DOJ goal that they missed. This is a failure
to follow a direct mandate from Congress signed into law
by the president. Is that elevates this from just a
logistical problem to really a political accountability crisis, which.
Speaker 1: Of course immediately led to political fallout as you'd expect.
The source tells us Democrats on the Senate Judiciary Committee
are now asking for an internal investigation. They want to
know why these millions of pages weren't released on time,
and that call.
Speaker 2: For an internal investigation is very telling. It suggests that
at least some people in Congress don't fully buy the
it's just a resource issue explanation.
Speaker 1: Right.
Speaker 2: They're asking a pretty tough question. Was this deadline just
totally unrealistic from the start because of the five million pages,
or was there a failure somewhere inside the DOJ, a
failure of prioritization of resource allocation, or worst case scenario,
a lack of political will to actually meet the mandate
they were given.
Speaker 1: Let me just pose a question here at to play
devil's advocate. This one percent estimate, it comes from the
survivor's attorneys. Is it possible that number, while maybe technically true,
is also being used strategically to maximize pressure on the DOJ.
Speaker 2: That's an essential angle to consider, and the answer is
almost certainly yes. I mean, in any kind of high
stakes litigation like this, information that gets released to the
media is part of a legal strategy. Sure by hammering
that only one percent is out figure, the attorneys create
this powerful perception of obstruction or you know, bureaucratic failure,
and that perception generates political pressure. It forces Congress, in
this case, the Senate Democrats to step in and demand answers.
The scale itself becomes a political weapon.
Speaker 1: That makes sense. If they had said, you know, twenty
five percent is out, the story wouldn't have nearly the
same impact.
Speaker 2: Exactly, the one percent figure, whether it's perfectly precise or not,
is incredibly effective at getting political traction.
Speaker 1: But no matter how that number is being used, the
most important and really the most tragic consequence of this
delay falls on the survivors themselves. The source highlights this
saying the delay is seen not just as a flouting
of the law, but as a profound retraumatization of the survivors.
Speaker 2: And this is where we have to shift from the
legal logistics to the human psychology of it all. It's
probably the most critical part of this story. What does
retraumatization actually mean here? For survivors of crimes like this,
the legal process is always incredibly difficult, but it's supposed
to come with the promise of eventually some kind of closure.
Speaker 1: They're given a light at the end of the tunnel.
They're told, just wait for December nineteenth. That's the day.
That's when the full truth comes out. That's when you'll
see the scope of all this.
Speaker 2: Precisely, that specific date becomes this huge psychological marker. It's
an endpoint, it's the final hurdle. It's the moment this
system is supposed to finally acknowledge everything. So when that
day just passes and you're told, oh, we're only at
one percent, you're instantly thrown back into this state of
indefinite diagonizing waiting.
Speaker 1: It's like a form of secondary victimization, isn't it. The
original crime was by the perpetrators, but this ongoing trauma
is being inflicted by the very system that's supposed to
be delivering justice.
Speaker 2: It is absolutely a form of secondary victimization. The process
that's meant to help them move forward is now the
thing holding them back. It feels like the system is
actively stalling their recovery. They're just left hanging with no
answers and no timeline. The expectation was closure and the
reality they got was just an indefinite stall.
Speaker 1: And the source mentions a very specific complaint on this
front that the survivors are not getting an open line
of communication about what's happening or when they can expect.
Speaker 2: Anything, and that lack of communication just makes the trauma
so much worse. Transparency isn't just about handing over documents.
It's about clear communication. It's about managing expectations, especially when
you're dealing with victims. Right, If the DOJ really is
working all hands on deck, then part of that job
has to be communicating with the survivors' legal teams giving
them realistic updates. The silence, combined with the mis deadline,
just leaves the people most affected by this feeling powerless
and frankly disrespected by the process.
Speaker 1: So, after all this, the miss deadline, the political anger,
the human cost, how does the Department of Justice respond
when CBS News asks them for an update.
Speaker 2: Well, they gave a pretty standard crisis communications statement. They
emphasize how hard they're working. They said they have all
hands on deck, that they were working through the holiday weekend,
and that they're trying to get more files out as
quickly as possible.
Speaker 1: It's the classic we're working on it response, trying to
show the failure is about the size of the task.
Speaker 2: Not a lack of effort precisely. But the crucial piece
that was missing, and the source makes a point of this,
is that the statement gave no date certain, no definitive
timeline for when this will actually be done. The promising effort,
but they're refusing to promise a result by a.
Speaker 1: Specific time, and that lack of a date really confirms it,
doesn't it. As the source says, there's no sense it
happens anytime soon. If there are still millions of pages
left for the survivors. An open ended promise is almost
worse than being told it will be another year.
Speaker 2: It is because it removes that psychological marker again, the
scale is the enemy of certainty. Here, with ninety nine
percent of five million pages left, the dog is basically
saying it a very cautious and politically damaging way, that
they simply cannot predict when this will be over. It
confirms the magnitude of the problem, but it has absolutely
nothing to address the human cost of that delay.
Speaker 1: You know, that very concept, that lack of certainty, the
inability to commit, the total lack of declarative confidence in
meeting a goal. It provides a really sharp transition to
our second story. We're going from a situation defined by
a failure to release information to a situation defined by
the absolute confidence in the information that's been gathered.
Speaker 2: It's a remarkable contrast, isn't it. On one hand, you
have a government agency completely swamped by the logistics of
millions of pages, unable to offer any certainty at all, right,
And on the other you have the release of former
Special Council Jacksmith's deposition, a document that is defined from
top to bottom by unequivocal certainty in his findings, and
that confidence is really the core of this next part
of our deep dive.
Speaker 1: Okay, let's jump into that Jacksmith transcript. So this is
a two hundred and fifty page document and it was
released by the Republican controlled House Judiciary Committee. We should
probably start with the politics of that, because who releases
a document like this really matters.
Speaker 2: That is rule number one in Washington information warfare. The
Republican controlled committee made this public after a closed door
deposition last month, and the act of releasing it themselves
is a way to control the narrative from the very beginning.
Speaker 1: They get to frame it first.
Speaker 2: They get to frame it. They can present themselves as
the champions of transparency, even if the document itself contains
things that are damaging to their political side. They're looking
for things to discredit the investigation, but they're also setting
the terms of the debate.
Speaker 1: And what was the setup for this interview. It was
an eight hour closed door session. That's a marathon.
Speaker 2: It was an eight hour marathon. And the structure is
really important for understanding the transcript. The questioning very formal.
It went back and forth between Republicans and Democrats, one
hour for each.
Speaker 1: Side at a time, So he was essentially being cross
examined by two opposing legal teams for eight hours straight.
Speaker 2: That's a great way to put it. One side is
trying to defend the investigations process and get him to
state his conclusions clearly. The other side is trying to
challenge the very basis of the investigation, looking for inconsistencies
or signs of bias. That adversarial setup just underlines the
political intensity here.
Speaker 1: And when you actually read the transcript or the summary
of it, what comes through isn't careful legal language. Its forcefulness.
The main takeaway from the source is that Jack Smith
was declaratively confident in his investigation of President Trump.
Speaker 2: That phrase, declaratively confident is so telling. That's not how
prosecutors usually talk. It's not you know, we believe the
evidence suggests. It implies a firm, assertive, almost aggressive declaration
of his final conclusions. It's like he's daring them to
challenge the evidence he.
Speaker 1: And that confidence went all the way to the potential
outcome of a trial.
Speaker 2: It did. The source says that Smith stated in so
many words he was confident, he was going to get
a conviction. That a huge statement for a prosecutor to make.
It shows an incredible belief in the strength and the
depth of the evidence his team put together. He clearly
believes it crosses that very high bar of beyond a
reasonable doubt.
Speaker 1: And he was just as clear about why the focus
of the prosecution was squarely on the former president.
Speaker 2: R oh Absolutely, he left no room for ambiguity there.
Smith asserted that Trump was the one to prosecute because,
in Smith's view, he was the one who drove efforts
to overturn the twenty twenty election. That word drove is
so important. It assigns the role of initiator, of the
driving force behind the entire scheme.
Speaker 1: And he didn't stop there. He connected those efforts directly
to the violence on January sixth.
Speaker 2: Unequivocally. The testimony, as reported, says that the January sixth
attack on the Capitol would not have happened if not
for President Trump. That is a powerful assertion of direct causation.
He's legally linking the alleged scheme to overturn the election
directly to the violence that followed.
Speaker 1: Can we just talk for a second about the significance
of him using language like this in a formal deposition,
phrases like drove efforts or being confident of conviction.
Speaker 2: It's a critical point. Usually prosecutors, especially in such high
profile politically charged cases, they hedge, they use cautious language.
They'll say things like the evidence appears to support this charge.
Smith's decision to use such absolute, definitive terms suggests a
couple of things. Okay, First, that his office truly believes
the evidence is overwhelming and doesn't require any hedging. And second,
he was likely using this formal under oath setting to
solidify his own narrative to counter all the political attacks
by just being incredibly blunt and aggressive about his findings.
Speaker 1: It's a high stakes declaration of facts, not a cautious
legal argument. And the fact that the opposition party is
the one who released the transcript contained these statements, it
kind of underscores how unshakable he must have been during
those eight hours.
Speaker 2: It speaks volumes, doesn't it. They released it presumably hoping
to find flaws, but in doing so they also broadcast
Smith's own incredibly confident rationale for the prosecutions, and that
of course just set the stage perfectly for the Democratic response.
Speaker 1: Which brings us right to Representative Jamie Raskin of Maryland.
He's the top Democrat on that committee, and his statement
provides the perfect counter narrative. He interprets this transcript not
just as an explanation, but as an indictment of the
politics surrounding it.
Speaker 2: Exactly, and Raskin has a long history with this right.
He was on the January sixth Select Committee, so for him,
protecting the integrity of these findings is paramount. He claimed
that releasing the full deposition makes crystal clear what he
says the administration and his allies in Congress have tried
so desperately to hide.
Speaker 1: That language desperately to hide is very pointed. He's basically
saying that the Republicans inadvertently amplified the strength of Smith's
case by releasing the transcript.
Speaker 2: That is exactly the political spin he's putting on it.
And from there he makes this really explosive central claim
that changes the whole debate. Raskin asserts that these criminal
prosecutions were not failed, they were blocked.
Speaker 1: And that's a powerful distinction, because if a case fails,
it suggests the evidence wasn't there, but if it was blocked,
that implies that political interference stopped a legitimate case from
moving forward.
Speaker 2: The word blocked is a political weapon. It immediately recasts
all the Republican scrutiny of the Special Council's office not
as legitimate oversight, but as another form of obstruction, the
same kind of obstruction. He would argue that was at
the heart of the January sixth investigation itself, and Raskin
then uses Smith's own confident words to back this up.
Speaker 1: He says Smith testified compellingly and unequivocally that his office
had found proof beyond any reasonable doubt for two different
criminal schemes, right, and.
Speaker 2: Those two schemes cover both the Smith's major investigations. The first,
as we've been discussing, was that Trump engaged in a
criminal scheme to overturn the election. Raskin is saying Smith
testified under oath that they met the highest possible burden
of proof on.
Speaker 1: That, and the second scheme was about the document's case.
Speaker 2: Yes, Raskin said, Smith's office also developed proof beyond a
reasonable doubt that Trump willfully retain highly classified documents after
leaving office. So, according to Raskin's reading, Smith's confidence wasn't
just about one case, it was across the board.
Speaker 1: You know what's so striking is the contrast in the language.
You have Smith the investigator, using this definitive but formal
legal language confident, unequivocal, proof beyond a reasonable doubt, and
then you have Raskin, the politician, translating that into political
language blocked hidden.
Speaker 2: It's a perfect example of how facts are instantly turned
into ammunition in Washington. Smith's testimony was intended from his perspective,
to defend his legal process, but it's immediately repurposed by
Democrats as evidence of obstruction, and at the same time
it's used by Republicans who released it to try and
frame the conversation around their own points about bias or procedure.
The legal details are just fuel for this deep ongoing
political division.
Speaker 1: And the timing of this release isn't random either. The
source notes that this is all happening around a very
significant anniversary.
Speaker 2: Yes, we're reaching the five year mark of the January
sixth attack, and that just raises the political temperature on
all of this. The timing forces this conversation right back
to the events of that day. But now we're seeing
it through the fresh lens of this very declarative, very
confident legal testimony for the man who investigated it.
Speaker 1: So the source concludes by saying, this is still a visceral,
divisive issue here in Washington, and that's really the key context.
These legal arguments are not being debated like facts in
a courtroom by the public or by politicians. They're being
treated as declarations of war in this ongoing fight over
the legitimacy of the twenty twenty election.
Speaker 2: And that's why this matters to you, the listener. These
specifically this level of certainty from Smith. It's not some
academic legal exercise. These are the core arguments that are
fueling the political division that is shaping everything right now.
Understanding Smith's confidence and how Raskin is strategically using it
gives you the tools to decipher the rhetoric you're hearing
from all signs.
Speaker 1: Okay, So to bring this all together, we've looked at
these two huge ongoing legal battles, both centered on the
control of information. On one side, we have the statutory
deadline that was just blown past by the DOJ for
the Epstein files, five million pages with only one percent released,
it's a logistical failure causing political anger and most importantly,
retraumatizing survivors.
Speaker 2: And then on the complete opposite end of the spectrum,
you have the confident, declarative assertions of Jack Smith laid
out in a two hundred and fifty page transcript. He's
claiming unequivocally that he had proof beyond a reasonable doubt.
The contrast is really the story here, a logistical failure
causing indefinite delay versus a clear confident legalists being used
as a political flashpoint.
Speaker 1: Right, the DOJ is so overwhelmed by the sheer scale
of those five million pages that the volume itself becomes
a kind of shield, a bureaucratic burial to the truth. Meanwhile,
the Special Council's testimony, even though it's only two hundred
to fifty pages, carries so much declarative weight that it
becomes this very precise focal point for intense political debate.
Speaker 2: That's the essential takeaway. The journey from an investigation to
what the public gets to know is never ever a
straight line. It's always filtered, whether it's one percent of
five million files or two hundred and fifty pages of testimony.
The information you receive has been filtered by legal deadlines,
by political strategy, and by just immense bureaucratic effort or
the lack of it. You have to consider not just
what's released, but how the scale of what still unreleased
continues to impact justice.
Speaker 1: The sheer volume of the Epstein files, it's a stark
reminder that you don't need to burn documents to hide
the truth. Sometimes you just need to drown everyone in
the paperwork and in.
Speaker 2: The political arena. The release of key details is always
managed strategically. It can be used as a weapon to
assert authority like Smith did, or as a shield to
claim you're being obstructed like Raskin did. The information gets
filtered twice, once by the investigation and then again through
the partisan lens of politics.
Speaker 1: So with all that in mind, here's our final thought
for you. Given how the release of information is so
strategically managed, and how sheer volume can act as its
own barrier to truth, what responsibility do we, as informed
listeners have to track the information that's still unseen, those
millions of pages, versus the very precise, politically charged details
we are allowed to focus on, like a two hundred
and fifty page deposition. How do we keep the scale
of the unseen in mind while we're processing the confidence
of what's been seen.
Speaker 2: Let's know what stands out to you. Thank you for
joining us in this thrilling threads