It’s that time again. The 59th Anniver­sary of the JFK assas­si­na­tion. Or rather, the 59th Anniver­sary of the JFK assas­si­na­tion and sub­se­quent offi­cial coverup. 59 year of ‘the more things change, the more they stay the same’. No mat­ter how much new damn­ing evi­dence gets released, there’s always been this giant trove of still-clas­si­fied files that gov­ern­ment agen­cies have repeat­ed­ly refused to release. That was all sup­posed to change in 2017 when a sup­pos­ed­ly con­crete dead­line for the release of all clas­si­fied infor­ma­tion relat­ed to the JFK assas­si­na­tion was sup­posed to be released. Instead, then-Pres­i­dent Trump decid­ed to side with the CIA and FBI and agreed to waive the dead­line, which brings us back to where we are.

A new dead­line for the release of mate­ri­als was set for Decem­ber 15 next month by Pres­i­dent Biden. But as we’re going to see, the word­ing of that dead­line appears to still allow for the same kinds of bureau­crat­ic refusal to turn over the doc­u­ments that’s been used in the past. So we’re going to see what ulti­mate­ly gets released in a few weeks of the more than 14,000 JFK-relat­ed doc­u­ments still clas­si­fied. But in the mean­time, it turns out we got a new batch of released files. Files show­ing the cor­re­spon­dences between the Nation­al Archives and the var­i­ous gov­ern­ment agen­cies that are still refus­ing to release these files. It turns out the cor­re­spon­dences were obtained via a FOIA request by Lar­ry Schnapf, a lawyer who is rep­re­sent­ing the Mary Fer­rell Foun­da­tion in a law­suit filed against the Pres­i­dent Biden and the Nation­al Archives, demand­ing release of all the still-clas­si­fied assas­si­na­tion doc­u­ments. Inter­est­ing­ly, while Schnapf filed the law­suit against the Nation­al Archives, he actu­al­ly prais­es them for their efforts. It’s the oth­er agen­cies that are refus­ing to release the doc­u­ments. That’s the sto­ry that unfolds in these released cor­re­spon­dences. The Nation­al Archives kept inform­ing agen­cies like the FBI and CIA that they are not abid­ing by the law. For years.

It’s also notable that the Nation­al Archives has been telling the pub­lic not to expect any major bomb­shells when the doc­u­ments are being released. So if the still-clas­si­fied files aren’t filled with assas­si­na­tion bomb­shells, why are so many gov­ern­ment agen­cies unwill­ing to allow their release? It’s part of the ongo­ing mys­tery. Maybe the Archives is just unaware of the full damn­ing nature of some of these doc­u­ments. Or maybe they’re damn­ing, but in rela­tion to oth­er things like the CIA’s rela­tion­ship with orga­nized crime and not nec­es­sar­i­ly damn­ing in rela­tion to the assas­si­na­tion. Or per­haps each indi­vid­ual file isn’t real­ly damn­ing on its own, but the col­lec­tion of them togeth­er paints a damn­ing pic­ture. We don’t real­ly know what’s still hid­ing in those 14,000 still-clas­si­fied doc­u­ments. But it’s pret­ty damn clear the agen­cies that ran that coverup want that to be the case for as long as pos­si­ble. And 59 years isn’t long enough:

Politi­co

Why We Still Don’t Have the JFK Assas­si­na­tion Files

The FBI and the CIA are still pro­tect­ing their sources from six decades ago.
John F. Kennedy wav­ing from a car, with Jacque­line Kennedy sit­ting next to him.

By Philip Shenon
11/15/2022 11:00 AM EST

Philip Shenon, a for­mer Wash­ing­ton and for­eign cor­re­spon­dent for the New York Times, is author of A Cru­el and Shock­ing Act: The Secret His­to­ry of the Kennedy Assas­si­na­tion.

Almost exact­ly 59 years after those rifle shots rang out in Dealey Plaza, left a pres­i­dent mor­tal­ly wound­ed and changed the course of his­to­ry, there are still secrets that the gov­ern­ment admits it is deter­mined to keep about the Novem­ber 1963 assas­si­na­tion of Pres­i­dent John F. Kennedy. More than 14,000 clas­si­fied doc­u­ments some­how relat­ed to the president’s mur­der remain locked away, in part or in full, at the Nation­al Archives in clear vio­la­tion of the spir­it of a land­mark 1992 trans­paren­cy law that was sup­posed to force the release of vir­tu­al­ly all of them years ago.

The fact that any­thing about the assas­si­na­tion is still clas­si­fied — and that the CIA, FBI and oth­er agen­cies have refused to pro­vide the pub­lic with a detailed expla­na­tion of why — has con­vinced an army of con­spir­a­cy the­o­rists that their cyn­i­cism has always been jus­ti­fied.

New­ly released inter­nal cor­re­spon­dence from the Nation­al Archives and Records Admin­is­tra­tion reveals that, behind the scenes, there has been a fierce bureau­crat­ic war over the doc­u­ments in recent years, pit­ting the Archives against the CIA, FBI and oth­er agen­cies that want to keep them secret.

The cor­re­spon­dence, obtained under the Free­dom of Infor­ma­tion Act, shows that the Archives has tried, and often failed, to insist that oth­er agen­cies com­ply with the 1992 law by declas­si­fy­ing more doc­u­ments. The strug­gle was espe­cial­ly fierce in 2017, when then-Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump sided with the CIA and FBI and agreed to waive a sup­pos­ed­ly con­crete legal dead­line that year to release all clas­si­fied doc­u­ments relat­ed to the JFK assas­si­na­tion.

Last year, Pres­i­dent Joe Biden ordered anoth­er review of the doc­u­ments to allow more to be made pub­lic this Decem­ber. Offi­cials involved in the declas­si­fi­ca­tion process say they are opti­mistic that a large batch of doc­u­ments will be made pub­lic next month.

The inter­nal cor­re­spon­dence from the Archives helps resolve one lin­ger­ing mys­tery about the doc­u­ments: In their nego­ti­a­tions with the White House and the Archives in recent years, how have the CIA, FBI, the Pen­ta­gon and oth­er agen­cies jus­ti­fied keep­ing any secrets about a turn­ing point in Amer­i­can his­to­ry that occurred decades ago — an event that has always inspired cor­ro­sive con­spir­a­cy the­o­ries about gov­ern­ment com­plic­i­ty?

...

The Archives cor­re­spon­dence reveals, for the first time, their detailed jus­ti­fi­ca­tions, pro­vid­ing a rare win­dow into rea­son­ing inside the CIA and FBI. In many cas­es, it shows, the CIA and FBI pressed to keep doc­u­ments secret because they con­tained the names and per­son­al details of still-liv­ing intel­li­gence and law-enforce­ment infor­mants from the 1960’s and 1970’s who could be at risk of intim­i­da­tion or even vio­lence if they were pub­licly iden­ti­fied.

Many of those sources — now elder­ly, if not close to death — are for­eign­ers liv­ing out­side the Unit­ed States, which means it would be more dif­fi­cult for the Amer­i­can gov­ern­ment to pro­tect them from threats. The CIA has also with­held infor­ma­tion in the doc­u­ments that iden­ti­fies the loca­tion of CIA sta­tions and safe­hous­es abroad, includ­ing sev­er­al that have been in use con­tin­u­ous­ly since Kennedy’s death in 1963.

The Archives cor­re­spon­dence shows that, while much of the still-clas­si­fied infor­ma­tion is only indi­rect­ly relat­ed to the assas­si­na­tion, some of it comes direct­ly from the FBI’s “main inves­tiga­tive case files” about the president’s mur­der. That includes the all-impor­tant case files on Lee Har­vey Oswald, Kennedy’s assas­sin, and Jack Ruby, the Dal­las strip-club own­er who mur­dered Oswald two days after Kennedy’s death.

The Archives paper­work shows that the FBI and Drug Enforce­ment Admin­is­tra­tion have fought par­tic­u­lar­ly hard to pro­tect the iden­ti­ty of infor­mants in orga­nized-crime inves­ti­ga­tions — an argu­ment that will intrigue con­spir­a­cy the­o­rists who believe the Mafia was behind Kennedy’s death. Many assas­si­na­tion researchers argue that the assas­si­na­tion was blow­back for the so-called war on orga­nized crime waged by the president’s broth­er, then-Attor­ney Gen­er­al Robert Kennedy.

In fact, the cor­re­spon­dence shows the over­whelm­ing major­i­ty of the doc­u­ments that the FBI has with­held from the pub­lic in recent years some­how involved orga­nized-crime inves­ti­ga­tions. Of the near­ly 7,500 doc­u­ments that the FBI kept clas­si­fied at the time of the 2017 dead­line, 6,000 were from “var­i­ous files of mem­bers of orga­nized crime or La Cosa Nos­tra.”

The DEA made a spe­cial plea to black out the names of six con­fi­den­tial infor­mants iden­ti­fied in assas­si­na­tion-relat­ed files involv­ing orga­nized-crime inves­ti­ga­tions: “Giv­en the well-doc­u­ment­ed propen­si­ty for vio­lence by the Mafia, it is rea­son­able to expect the indi­vid­u­als, if alive, remain in sig­nif­i­cant dan­ger of retal­i­a­tion for their assis­tance,” the agency said in a 2018 let­ter to the Archives.

The inter­nal cor­re­spon­dence and emails from the Archives were pro­vid­ed to POLITICO Mag­a­zine by Lar­ry Schnapf, a New York lawyer who filed a fed­er­al law­suit last month against Pres­i­dent Biden and the Nation­al Archives, demand­ing release of all the still-clas­si­fied assas­si­na­tion doc­u­ments. Schnapf, whose clients in the law­suit include the Mary Fer­rell Foun­da­tion, an assas­si­na­tion-research group, obtained the inter­nal cor­re­spon­dence from the Archives under a Free­dom of Infor­ma­tion Act request.

Even though he is now suing the Nation­al Archives, he said in an inter­view he was impressed by the aggres­sive­ness of Archives offi­cials in try­ing to force the CIA, FBI and oth­er agen­cies to abide by the 1992 law, which called for the declas­si­fi­ca­tion of all assas­si­na­tion-relat­ed doc­u­ments with­in 25 years — a dead­line reached in Octo­ber 2017. The fact that so much infor­ma­tion remains clas­si­fied today “only feeds a lot of the more bizarre con­spir­a­cy the­o­ries” about Kennedy’s death, he said.

The 1992 law, the John F. Kennedy Assas­si­na­tion Records Col­lec­tion Act, was adopt­ed by Con­gress in hopes of con­trol­ling a firestorm of con­spir­a­cy the­o­ries whipped up the year before by the release of Oliv­er Stone’s pop­u­lar, con­spir­a­cy-soaked film JFK, which sug­gest­ed Kennedy was killed in a coup d’etat involv­ing his suc­ces­sor, Pres­i­dent Lyn­don John­son. Opin­ion polls have shown con­sis­tent­ly since the late 1960’s that most Amer­i­cans believe there was a con­spir­a­cy in Kennedy’s death — that Oswald, assum­ing he was the assas­sin in Dealey Plaza in Dal­las, did not act alone.

As a result of the law, mil­lions of pages of doc­u­ments were made pub­lic in the 1990’s that rewrote ele­ments of the his­to­ry of the assas­si­na­tion. The declas­si­fied files did not offer con­clu­sive proof of any sort of con­spir­a­cy in the president’s death. But they did reveal how much evi­dence — espe­cial­ly about Oswald — had been with­held by the CIA and FBI from the War­ren Com­mis­sion, the White House pan­el led by Chief Jus­tice Earl War­ren that con­clud­ed in 1964 that Oswald had almost cer­tain­ly act­ed alone.

Some files declas­si­fied as a result of the 1992 law strong­ly sug­gest­ed, for exam­ple, that the CIA’s Mex­i­co City sta­tion cov­ered up evi­dence of its aggres­sive sur­veil­lance of Oswald dur­ing his mys­te­ri­ous trip to the Mex­i­can cap­i­tal just sev­er­al weeks before the assas­si­na­tion, includ­ing the fact that Oswald boast­ed there of his inten­tion to kill Kennedy. The doc­u­ments show that, if the CIA sta­tion in Mex­i­co had act­ed quick­ly on what it learned in Sep­tem­ber and Octo­ber 1963, Kennedy might have sur­vived his trip to Dal­las on Nov. 22. Accord­ing to a bare-bones index at the Archives, sev­er­al of the still-clas­si­fied assas­si­na­tion doc­u­ments are drawn from the files of the U.S. embassy in Mex­i­co — the CIA sta­tion, in par­tic­u­lar.

In 2013, the CIA’s in-house his­to­ri­an con­clud­ed that the spy agency had con­duct­ed a “benign cov­er-up” dur­ing the War­ren Commission’s inves­ti­ga­tion in 1963 and 1964 in hopes of keep­ing the com­mis­sion focused on “what the Agency believed was the ‘best truth’ — that Lee Har­vey Oswald, for as yet unde­ter­mined motives, had act­ed alone in killing John Kennedy.”

Oth­er gov­ern­ment agen­cies have offered dif­fer­ent jus­ti­fi­ca­tions for with­hold­ing infor­ma­tion in the still-clas­si­fied assas­si­na­tion files, the new­ly dis­closed Archives cor­re­spon­dence shows.

The Defense Depart­ment told the Archives in 2018 that it would con­tin­ue to black out por­tions of 256 clas­si­fied Pen­ta­gon doc­u­ments since they iden­ti­fy “active U.S. war plans, for­eign gov­ern­ment infor­ma­tion, sen­si­tive nuclear weapons infor­ma­tion and U.S. pris­on­er of war per­son­al and debrief­ing infor­ma­tion.” Even so, the Pen­ta­gon assured the Archives, “the records iden­ti­fied are not direct­ly relat­ed to the assas­si­na­tion.”

In its 2018 cor­re­spon­dence with the Archives, the State Depart­ment request­ed that por­tions of 31 doc­u­ments be kept secret because of “nation­al secu­ri­ty and for­eign affairs con­cerns,” although it not­ed that “none of the department’s redac­tions relate direct­ly to the JFK assas­si­na­tion.”

The cor­re­spon­dence shows that the Archives, which has housed the assas­si­na­tion records for decades, has long warned the CIA, FBI and oth­er agen­cies that they are fail­ing to abide by require­ments of the 1992 law, which allowed JFK-assas­si­na­tion infor­ma­tion to remain clas­si­fied only if there was “clear and con­vinc­ing evi­dence” of a “sub­stan­tial risk of harm” to nation­al secu­ri­ty or for­eign pol­i­cy.

In a memo in August 2017, William J. Bosanko, chief oper­at­ing offi­cer of the Nation­al Archives, protest­ed the FBI’s deci­sion to con­tin­ue to with­hold the names of con­fi­den­tial sources from the 1960’s, espe­cial­ly those that came direct­ly out of the case files on Oswald and Ruby. “These files clear­ly relate direct­ly to the assas­si­na­tion,” he said. Besides, he not­ed, “it is dif­fi­cult to imag­ine cir­cum­stances under which an indi­vid­ual could be harmed by the release of their name in a file in the JFK col­lec­tion.”

But the protests by the Archives were over­ruled at the last minute by Trump. His deci­sion in Octo­ber 2017 to waive the dead­line sur­prised many in the gov­ern­ment since the for­mer pres­i­dent has been an enthu­si­as­tic con­spir­a­cy the­o­rist for decades, includ­ing about the Kennedy assas­si­na­tion, and had once promised “great trans­paren­cy” in releas­ing the doc­u­ments.

Dur­ing the 2016 pres­i­den­tial cam­paign, Trump repeat­ed­ly pro­mot­ed a con­spir­a­cy the­o­ry that the father of one of his Repub­li­can oppo­nents, Sen­a­tor Ted Cruz of Texas, was some­how tied to the assas­si­na­tion — a claim, denied by the Cruz fam­i­ly, based on a grainy 1963 pho­to­graph that showed Oswald stand­ing next to a man who resem­bled Cruz’s father as both hand­ed out fliers sup­port­ing Cuban leader Fidel Cas­tro.

In decid­ing to with­hold thou­sands of doc­u­ments, Trump said he was con­vinced they con­tained infor­ma­tion about nation­al secu­ri­ty and for­eign pol­i­cy “of such grav­i­ty that it out­weighs the pub­lic inter­est in imme­di­ate dis­clo­sure.” But he offered no specifics about his rea­son­ing; nor did the CIA, the FBI and oth­er agen­cies that urged him to block the release.

Under the 1992 law, only the sit­ting pres­i­dent of the Unit­ed States has the pow­er to with­hold doc­u­ments beyond the 2017 dead­line, which means the pow­er now rests entire­ly with Pres­i­dent Biden. Last Octo­ber, Biden ordered the archives to begin a com­pre­hen­sive review of the still-clas­si­fied records, with a goal of releas­ing as many as pos­si­ble by a new dead­line of this Dec. 15.

But his writ­ten order dis­ap­point­ed many his­to­ri­ans and assas­si­na­tion researchers since Biden, like Trump, left open the pos­si­bil­i­ty that some doc­u­ments will remain clas­si­fied for­ev­er. Biden’s order, draw­ing on the word­ing of the 1992 law, said he would allow doc­u­ments to be with­held if their release might do “iden­ti­fi­able harm” to “mil­i­tary defense, intel­li­gence oper­a­tions, law enforce­ment, or the con­di­tion of for­eign rela­tions that is of such grav­i­ty that it out­weighs the pub­lic inter­est in dis­clo­sure.”

The Nation­al Archives said in a state­ment to POLITICO Mag­a­zine that it had recent­ly com­plet­ed its review of the still-clas­si­fied mate­r­i­al and pro­vid­ed its rec­om­men­da­tions to Pres­i­dent Biden about which doc­u­ments should be released on Dec. 15.

Bosanko, the Archives offi­cial over­see­ing the project, said in an inter­view that the recent inter­a­gency review of the JFK doc­u­ments had been the most inten­sive in decades, involv­ing a page-to-page inspec­tion, with the CIA, FBI and oth­er agen­cies pressed to jus­ti­fy why any infor­ma­tion — includ­ing indi­vid­ual names and address­es — should con­tin­ue to be with­held from the pub­lic: “We looked at every sin­gle redac­tion in these doc­u­ments.” He said his team is con­tin­u­ing to nego­ti­ate with the CIA and oth­er agen­cies this month in hopes of con­vinc­ing them — before the Dec. 15 dead­line set by the White House — to lift their oppo­si­tion to releas­ing some of the still-clas­si­fied mate­r­i­al.

A spokes­woman for the CIA said the agency was work­ing close­ly with the Archives with the goal of “releas­ing as much infor­ma­tion in the pub­lic inter­est as pos­si­ble, con­sis­tent with the need to pre­vent harm to intel­li­gence oper­a­tions.” At the time of the 2017 dead­line, the CIA had with­held 250 records in full and redact­ed infor­ma­tion from about 15,000 oth­er doc­u­ments – in some cas­es, just a few names or oth­er words on a sin­gle page, in oth­er cas­es, whole blocks of text. The CIA spokes­woman said that, as a result of declas­si­fi­ca­tion efforts since 2017, the agency is no longer with­hold­ing any doc­u­ments in full.

...

Archives offi­cials and oth­ers in the gov­ern­ment have cau­tioned for years that the pub­lic should not expect to find bomb­shells in the still-secret doc­u­ments – at least no bomb­shells that can be eas­i­ly detect­ed. Many of the pre­vi­ous­ly declas­si­fied CIA and FBI files were full of bureau­crat­ic jar­gon, code­names and obscure for­eign names and address­es that made them incom­pre­hen­si­ble at first, even for expe­ri­enced researchers.

And no mat­ter what Biden decides, about 500 doc­u­ments and oth­er items in the col­lec­tion will remain secret, since the 1992 law exempts them from pub­lic release. Among them are doc­u­ments pro­duced by fed­er­al grand juries and by the Inter­nal Rev­enue Ser­vice, includ­ing the tax and employ­ment records of Oswald, Ruby and many of their asso­ciates.

It also includes tape record­ings of six inter­views con­duct­ed in 1964 with Jacque­line Kennedy and for­mer Attor­ney Gen­er­al Robert Kennedy by the jour­nal­ist William Man­ches­ter, who was autho­rized by the Kennedy fam­i­ly to write a his­to­ry of the assas­si­na­tion. Those tapes were turned over to the Archives by the Kennedy fam­i­ly in exchange for an agree­ment they would not be made pub­lic until 2067 — the 100th anniver­sary of the pub­li­ca­tion of Manchester’s best­selling book The Death of a Pres­i­dent. The law also exempt­ed the pub­lic release of what the Archives index describes as five “very per­son­al let­ters” that Mrs. Kennedy wrote to Pres­i­dent John­son, includ­ing at least three she sent to him in the week after the assas­si­na­tion.

What might be on Manchester’s tapes has long tan­ta­lized his­to­ri­ans and assas­si­na­tion researchers. He lat­er wrote in his mem­oirs that he record­ed 10 hours of wrench­ing con­ver­sa­tions with Mrs. Kennedy, in which she offered a detailed account of events in the days sur­round­ing the assas­si­na­tion, includ­ing a descrip­tion of the hor­ri­fy­ing scene inside the president’s lim­ou­sine as the shots rang out in Dealey Plaza. “She with­held noth­ing,” he wrote. The inter­views in Mrs. Kennedy’s home in George­town were bear­able only because of the cock­tails they drank through­out, he sug­gest­ed. “Future his­to­ri­ans may be puz­zled by the odd clunk­ing nois­es on the tapes,” Man­ches­ter wrote. “They were ice cubes. The only way we could get through those long evenings was with the aid of great con­tain­ers of daiquiris.”

———–

“Why We Still Don’t Have the JFK Assas­si­na­tion Files” By Philip Shenon; Politi­co; 11/15/2022

“New­ly released inter­nal cor­re­spon­dence from the Nation­al Archives and Records Admin­is­tra­tion reveals that, behind the scenes, there has been a fierce bureau­crat­ic war over the doc­u­ments in recent years, pit­ting the Archives against the CIA, FBI and oth­er agen­cies that want to keep them secret.”

A fierce bureau­crat­ic war, with the Nation­al Archives on one side and agen­cies like the CIA, FBI, and State Depart­ment on the oth­er side. That’s the pic­ture depict­ed in the new­ly released inter­nal cor­re­spon­dences obtained by Lar­ry Schnafp, a lawyer whose clients include the Mary Fer­rell Foun­da­tion. As Schnafp notes, while he end­ed up suing the Archives, he’s actu­al­ly been impressed with the agen­cy’s aggres­sive­ness in try­ing to get doc­u­ments released. That aggres­sive­ness is part of what was revealed with these inter­nal cor­re­spon­dences. Aggres­sive­ness in the form of remind­ing agen­cies like the FBI and CIA that they are not abid­ing by the 1992 law that man­dates these dis­clo­sures.

At the same time, as the arti­cle notes, the Archives have for years warned the pub­lic not to expect any bomb­shells. At least not eas­i­ly detect­ed bomb­shells. It’s part of the mys­tery here: the Archives are declar­ing that still-with­held clas­si­fied doc­u­ments aren’t going to be rev­e­la­to­ry and yet its still run­ning into steep resis­tance from the FBI and CIA despite those agen­cies rec­og­niz­ing that they are fuel­ing the per­cep­tion of a cov­er up. It’s the kind of sit­u­a­tion that sug­gests the Archives isn’t ful­ly aware of all of the dif­fer­ent inves­tiga­tive threads that could be pulled should those still-clas­si­fied doc­u­ments get released:

...
The cor­re­spon­dence, obtained under the Free­dom of Infor­ma­tion Act, shows that the Archives has tried, and often failed, to insist that oth­er agen­cies com­ply with the 1992 law by declas­si­fy­ing more doc­u­ments. The strug­gle was espe­cial­ly fierce in 2017, when then-Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump sided with the CIA and FBI and agreed to waive a sup­pos­ed­ly con­crete legal dead­line that year to release all clas­si­fied doc­u­ments relat­ed to the JFK assas­si­na­tion.

...

The inter­nal cor­re­spon­dence and emails from the Archives were pro­vid­ed to POLITICO Mag­a­zine by Lar­ry Schnapf, a New York lawyer who filed a fed­er­al law­suit last month against Pres­i­dent Biden and the Nation­al Archives, demand­ing release of all the still-clas­si­fied assas­si­na­tion doc­u­ments. Schnapf, whose clients in the law­suit include the Mary Fer­rell Foun­da­tion, an assas­si­na­tion-research group, obtained the inter­nal cor­re­spon­dence from the Archives under a Free­dom of Infor­ma­tion Act request.

Even though he is now suing the Nation­al Archives, he said in an inter­view he was impressed by the aggres­sive­ness of Archives offi­cials in try­ing to force the CIA, FBI and oth­er agen­cies to abide by the 1992 law, which called for the declas­si­fi­ca­tion of all assas­si­na­tion-relat­ed doc­u­ments with­in 25 years — a dead­line reached in Octo­ber 2017. The fact that so much infor­ma­tion remains clas­si­fied today “only feeds a lot of the more bizarre con­spir­a­cy the­o­ries” about Kennedy’s death, he said.

...

In 2013, the CIA’s in-house his­to­ri­an con­clud­ed that the spy agency had con­duct­ed a “benign cov­er-up” dur­ing the War­ren Commission’s inves­ti­ga­tion in 1963 and 1964 in hopes of keep­ing the com­mis­sion focused on “what the Agency believed was the ‘best truth’ — that Lee Har­vey Oswald, for as yet unde­ter­mined motives, had act­ed alone in killing John Kennedy.”

Oth­er gov­ern­ment agen­cies have offered dif­fer­ent jus­ti­fi­ca­tions for with­hold­ing infor­ma­tion in the still-clas­si­fied assas­si­na­tion files, the new­ly dis­closed Archives cor­re­spon­dence shows.

The Defense Depart­ment told the Archives in 2018 that it would con­tin­ue to black out por­tions of 256 clas­si­fied Pen­ta­gon doc­u­ments since they iden­ti­fy “active U.S. war plans, for­eign gov­ern­ment infor­ma­tion, sen­si­tive nuclear weapons infor­ma­tion and U.S. pris­on­er of war per­son­al and debrief­ing infor­ma­tion.” Even so, the Pen­ta­gon assured the Archives, “the records iden­ti­fied are not direct­ly relat­ed to the assas­si­na­tion.”

In its 2018 cor­re­spon­dence with the Archives, the State Depart­ment request­ed that por­tions of 31 doc­u­ments be kept secret because of “nation­al secu­ri­ty and for­eign affairs con­cerns,” although it not­ed that “none of the department’s redac­tions relate direct­ly to the JFK assas­si­na­tion.”

The cor­re­spon­dence shows that the Archives, which has housed the assas­si­na­tion records for decades, has long warned the CIA, FBI and oth­er agen­cies that they are fail­ing to abide by require­ments of the 1992 law, which allowed JFK-assas­si­na­tion infor­ma­tion to remain clas­si­fied only if there was “clear and con­vinc­ing evi­dence” of a “sub­stan­tial risk of harm” to nation­al secu­ri­ty or for­eign pol­i­cy.

In a memo in August 2017, William J. Bosanko, chief oper­at­ing offi­cer of the Nation­al Archives, protest­ed the FBI’s deci­sion to con­tin­ue to with­hold the names of con­fi­den­tial sources from the 1960’s, espe­cial­ly those that came direct­ly out of the case files on Oswald and Ruby. “These files clear­ly relate direct­ly to the assas­si­na­tion,” he said. Besides, he not­ed, “it is dif­fi­cult to imag­ine cir­cum­stances under which an indi­vid­ual could be harmed by the release of their name in a file in the JFK col­lec­tion.”

But the protests by the Archives were over­ruled at the last minute by Trump. His deci­sion in Octo­ber 2017 to waive the dead­line sur­prised many in the gov­ern­ment since the for­mer pres­i­dent has been an enthu­si­as­tic con­spir­a­cy the­o­rist for decades, includ­ing about the Kennedy assas­si­na­tion, and had once promised “great trans­paren­cy” in releas­ing the doc­u­ments.

...

Archives offi­cials and oth­ers in the gov­ern­ment have cau­tioned for years that the pub­lic should not expect to find bomb­shells in the still-secret doc­u­ments – at least no bomb­shells that can be eas­i­ly detect­ed. Many of the pre­vi­ous­ly declas­si­fied CIA and FBI files were full of bureau­crat­ic jar­gon, code­names and obscure for­eign names and address­es that made them incom­pre­hen­si­ble at first, even for expe­ri­enced researchers.
...

As the arti­cle also points out, while the 1992 law requir­ing the release of the doc­u­ments has yet to demon­strate con­clu­sive proof of a con­spir­a­cy to kill Kennedy, the doc­u­ments that have been released did reveal just how much evi­dence had been with­held from the War­ren Com­mis­sion. Like evi­dence relat­ed to Oswald’s alleged ‘trip to Mex­i­co City’. A trip that the CIA ini­tial­ly claimed had no evi­dence about. And now we’re learn­ing that some of the still-with­held doc­u­ments are drawn from the CIA sta­tion at the US embassy in Mex­i­co:

...
The 1992 law, the John F. Kennedy Assas­si­na­tion Records Col­lec­tion Act, was adopt­ed by Con­gress in hopes of con­trol­ling a firestorm of con­spir­a­cy the­o­ries whipped up the year before by the release of Oliv­er Stone’s pop­u­lar, con­spir­a­cy-soaked film JFK, which sug­gest­ed Kennedy was killed in a coup d’etat involv­ing his suc­ces­sor, Pres­i­dent Lyn­don John­son. Opin­ion polls have shown con­sis­tent­ly since the late 1960’s that most Amer­i­cans believe there was a con­spir­a­cy in Kennedy’s death — that Oswald, assum­ing he was the assas­sin in Dealey Plaza in Dal­las, did not act alone.

As a result of the law, mil­lions of pages of doc­u­ments were made pub­lic in the 1990’s that rewrote ele­ments of the his­to­ry of the assas­si­na­tion. The declas­si­fied files did not offer con­clu­sive proof of any sort of con­spir­a­cy in the president’s death. But they did reveal how much evi­dence — espe­cial­ly about Oswald — had been with­held by the CIA and FBI from the War­ren Com­mis­sion, the White House pan­el led by Chief Jus­tice Earl War­ren that con­clud­ed in 1964 that Oswald had almost cer­tain­ly act­ed alone.

Some files declas­si­fied as a result of the 1992 law strong­ly sug­gest­ed, for exam­ple, that the CIA’s Mex­i­co City sta­tion cov­ered up evi­dence of its aggres­sive sur­veil­lance of Oswald dur­ing his mys­te­ri­ous trip to the Mex­i­can cap­i­tal just sev­er­al weeks before the assas­si­na­tion, includ­ing the fact that Oswald boast­ed there of his inten­tion to kill Kennedy. The doc­u­ments show that, if the CIA sta­tion in Mex­i­co had act­ed quick­ly on what it learned in Sep­tem­ber and Octo­ber 1963, Kennedy might have sur­vived his trip to Dal­las on Nov. 22. Accord­ing to a bare-bones index at the Archives, sev­er­al of the still-clas­si­fied assas­si­na­tion doc­u­ments are drawn from the files of the U.S. embassy in Mex­i­co — the CIA sta­tion, in par­tic­u­lar.
...

Then there’s the exten­sive clas­si­fi­ca­tion of fig­ures with orga­nized crime ties, with the FBI and DEA and fight­ing par­tic­u­lar­ly hard to keep the iden­ti­ties of any infor­mants clas­si­fied for as long as pos­si­ble. This is a good time to recall the pho­to tak­en just before the assas­si­na­tion that appears to show a smil­ing 24-year old Bar­ry Seal “seat­ed at a night­club table in Mex­i­co City with [Water­gate bur­glar] Frank Stur­gis, [Iran-Con­tra oper­a­tive] Felix Rodriguez, and William Sey­mour, all mem­bers of the CIA’s assas­si­na­tion squad, Oper­a­tion 40.” Any sort of Bar­ry Seal ties to the CIA assas­si­na­tion would obvi­ous­ly be some of the most damn­ing and high­ly sen­si­tive clas­si­fied info the DEA could pos­si­bly pos­sess. It’s a reminder that the rea­sons for the extreme sen­si­tiv­i­ty around these doc­u­ments isn’t just going to be relat­ed to direct fears of hav­ing the assas­si­na­tion plot exposed. There’s all the oth­er tan­gen­tial­ly plots — like decades of CIA-spon­sored major drug-traf­fick­ing — that could be revealed too:

...
The inter­nal cor­re­spon­dence from the Archives helps resolve one lin­ger­ing mys­tery about the doc­u­ments: In their nego­ti­a­tions with the White House and the Archives in recent years, how have the CIA, FBI, the Pen­ta­gon and oth­er agen­cies jus­ti­fied keep­ing any secrets about a turn­ing point in Amer­i­can his­to­ry that occurred decades ago — an event that has always inspired cor­ro­sive con­spir­a­cy the­o­ries about gov­ern­ment com­plic­i­ty?

...

The Archives cor­re­spon­dence reveals, for the first time, their detailed jus­ti­fi­ca­tions, pro­vid­ing a rare win­dow into rea­son­ing inside the CIA and FBI. In many cas­es, it shows, the CIA and FBI pressed to keep doc­u­ments secret because they con­tained the names and per­son­al details of still-liv­ing intel­li­gence and law-enforce­ment infor­mants from the 1960’s and 1970’s who could be at risk of intim­i­da­tion or even vio­lence if they were pub­licly iden­ti­fied.

Many of those sources — now elder­ly, if not close to death — are for­eign­ers liv­ing out­side the Unit­ed States, which means it would be more dif­fi­cult for the Amer­i­can gov­ern­ment to pro­tect them from threats. The CIA has also with­held infor­ma­tion in the doc­u­ments that iden­ti­fies the loca­tion of CIA sta­tions and safe­hous­es abroad, includ­ing sev­er­al that have been in use con­tin­u­ous­ly since Kennedy’s death in 1963.

The Archives cor­re­spon­dence shows that, while much of the still-clas­si­fied infor­ma­tion is only indi­rect­ly relat­ed to the assas­si­na­tion, some of it comes direct­ly from the FBI’s “main inves­tiga­tive case files” about the president’s mur­der. That includes the all-impor­tant case files on Lee Har­vey Oswald, Kennedy’s assas­sin, and Jack Ruby, the Dal­las strip-club own­er who mur­dered Oswald two days after Kennedy’s death.

The Archives paper­work shows that the FBI and Drug Enforce­ment Admin­is­tra­tion have fought par­tic­u­lar­ly hard to pro­tect the iden­ti­ty of infor­mants in orga­nized-crime inves­ti­ga­tions — an argu­ment that will intrigue con­spir­a­cy the­o­rists who believe the Mafia was behind Kennedy’s death. Many assas­si­na­tion researchers argue that the assas­si­na­tion was blow­back for the so-called war on orga­nized crime waged by the president’s broth­er, then-Attor­ney Gen­er­al Robert Kennedy.

In fact, the cor­re­spon­dence shows the over­whelm­ing major­i­ty of the doc­u­ments that the FBI has with­held from the pub­lic in recent years some­how involved orga­nized-crime inves­ti­ga­tions. Of the near­ly 7,500 doc­u­ments that the FBI kept clas­si­fied at the time of the 2017 dead­line, 6,000 were from “var­i­ous files of mem­bers of orga­nized crime or La Cosa Nos­tra.”

The DEA made a spe­cial plea to black out the names of six con­fi­den­tial infor­mants iden­ti­fied in assas­si­na­tion-relat­ed files involv­ing orga­nized-crime inves­ti­ga­tions: “Giv­en the well-doc­u­ment­ed propen­si­ty for vio­lence by the Mafia, it is rea­son­able to expect the indi­vid­u­als, if alive, remain in sig­nif­i­cant dan­ger of retal­i­a­tion for their assis­tance,” the agency said in a 2018 let­ter to the Archives.
...

Final­ly, there’s the lat­est promise to final­ly get all these remain­ing doc­u­ments declas­si­fied. Decem­ber 15 is the next due date. But it sounds like the exact same excus­es that pre­vent­ed the release of these doc­u­ments could still apply:

...
Last year, Pres­i­dent Joe Biden ordered anoth­er review of the doc­u­ments to allow more to be made pub­lic this Decem­ber. Offi­cials involved in the declas­si­fi­ca­tion process say they are opti­mistic that a large batch of doc­u­ments will be made pub­lic next month.

...

Under the 1992 law, only the sit­ting pres­i­dent of the Unit­ed States has the pow­er to with­hold doc­u­ments beyond the 2017 dead­line, which means the pow­er now rests entire­ly with Pres­i­dent Biden. Last Octo­ber, Biden ordered the archives to begin a com­pre­hen­sive review of the still-clas­si­fied records, with a goal of releas­ing as many as pos­si­ble by a new dead­line of this Dec. 15.

But his writ­ten order dis­ap­point­ed many his­to­ri­ans and assas­si­na­tion researchers since Biden, like Trump, left open the pos­si­bil­i­ty that some doc­u­ments will remain clas­si­fied for­ev­er. Biden’s order, draw­ing on the word­ing of the 1992 law, said he would allow doc­u­ments to be with­held if their release might do “iden­ti­fi­able harm” to “mil­i­tary defense, intel­li­gence oper­a­tions, law enforce­ment, or the con­di­tion of for­eign rela­tions that is of such grav­i­ty that it out­weighs the pub­lic inter­est in dis­clo­sure.”

The Nation­al Archives said in a state­ment to POLITICO Mag­a­zine that it had recent­ly com­plet­ed its review of the still-clas­si­fied mate­r­i­al and pro­vid­ed its rec­om­men­da­tions to Pres­i­dent Biden about which doc­u­ments should be released on Dec. 15.

Bosanko, the Archives offi­cial over­see­ing the project, said in an inter­view that the recent inter­a­gency review of the JFK doc­u­ments had been the most inten­sive in decades, involv­ing a page-to-page inspec­tion, with the CIA, FBI and oth­er agen­cies pressed to jus­ti­fy why any infor­ma­tion — includ­ing indi­vid­ual names and address­es — should con­tin­ue to be with­held from the pub­lic: “We looked at every sin­gle redac­tion in these doc­u­ments.” He said his team is con­tin­u­ing to nego­ti­ate with the CIA and oth­er agen­cies this month in hopes of con­vinc­ing them — before the Dec. 15 dead­line set by the White House — to lift their oppo­si­tion to releas­ing some of the still-clas­si­fied mate­r­i­al.

...

And no mat­ter what Biden decides, about 500 doc­u­ments and oth­er items in the col­lec­tion will remain secret, since the 1992 law exempts them from pub­lic release. Among them are doc­u­ments pro­duced by fed­er­al grand juries and by the Inter­nal Rev­enue Ser­vice, includ­ing the tax and employ­ment records of Oswald, Ruby and many of their asso­ciates.
...

So are they wait­ing for every­one involved to have passed? Or wait­ing for democ­ra­cy and any form of pub­lic account­abil­i­ty to have passed? Either way, we’ll see how many doc­u­ments are indeed released next month. And how many new excus­es get deployed but why it is once again a major dis­ap­point­ment. A very guilty-look­ing major dis­ap­point­ment.

Time flies when you’re hav­ing fun. Less so when cov­er­ing up. And yet there’s no deny­ing the grim real­i­ty: it’s been a wild­ly suc­cess­ful cov­er up. 60 years and count­ing. Who knows how much longer it will go, but it does indeed appear that there will be no hon­est pub­lic account­ing of the John F. Kennedy assas­si­na­tion while any of the fig­ures involved are still alive. EVERYONE is going to be LONG dead before the truth is allowed to come out. Assum­ing that ever hap­pens.

Recall how Con­gress passed a law in 1992 man­dat­ing a release of gov­ern­ment doc­u­ments on the assas­si­na­tion by 2017, a dead­line that has been pushed back on by both the Trump and Biden admin­is­tra­tions, result­ing in thou­sands of doc­u­ments still held back by the gov­ern­ment.

So with the bla­tant cov­er up of this sem­i­nal event on track to con­tin­ue indef­i­nite­ly, here’s a piece in The Inde­pen­dent that con­tains a fun fact that the US pub­lic real­ly should be more and more aware of as the years tick by and the cov­er up con­tin­ues: a recent Gallup poll found hat 65 per cent of US adults think Oswald worked with oth­ers to elim­i­nate Kennedy, while 29 per cent believe he was sole­ly respon­si­ble. And that’s just this year’s poll. Gallup has been con­duct­ing that poll since 1963, and if you look at that his­to­ry of polling there has NEVER been a point where a major­i­ty of US adults did­n’t sus­pect a broad­er con­spir­a­cy. It’s anoth­er part of this over­all sto­ry that could only emerge slow­ly over time, but here it is: the JFK assas­si­na­tion cov­er up has effec­tive­ly been car­ried out in the face of a skep­ti­cal pub­lic the entire time.

But then there’s the oth­er side of this sto­ry: it’s not like the US pub­lic has real­ly pri­or­i­tized this issue. Sim­ply answer­ing a poll­ster’s ques­tion the same as actu­al­ly car­ing or doing some­thing about it. It’s been 60 years of pub­lic sus­pi­cions, but extra­or­di­nar­i­ly pas­sive pub­lic sus­pi­cions. The kind of extreme­ly vague sus­pi­cions a large­ly dis­en­gaged pub­lic can’t real­ly artic­u­late or act upon.

With the 60th Anniver­sary of that dark day upon us with the in-your-face gov­ern­ment cov­er up still very bla­tant­ly intact, it’s hard to think about what more there is to say about this sto­ry. It hap­pened, it was bla­tant­ly cov­ered up, that cov­er up is still in place, and while sus­pi­cions remain to this day no one actu­al­ly cares. That’s the JFK assas­si­na­tion sto­ry in 2023: the extra­or­di­nary pas­siv­i­ty of the US pub­lic in the face of 6 decades of bla­tant cov­er up. Two gen­er­a­tions now of Amer­i­cans sus­pect­ing some sort of big con­spir­a­cy sur­round­ing the assas­si­na­tion of JFK, but not actu­al­ly car­ing enough to do real­ly any­thing about it:

The Inde­pen­dent

JFK: 60 years on from assas­si­na­tion, what do we know and what remains a mys­tery?

Fas­ci­na­tion with unan­swered ques­tions over the fourth pres­i­den­tial assas­si­na­tion per­sists, writes Graeme Massie

11/22/2023

When John F Kennedy became the fourth sit­ting US pres­i­dent to be assas­si­nat­ed, at the hands of a gun­man, in Texas 60 years ago, the coun­try was left stunned and heart­bro­ken.

The hand­some and charis­mat­ic New Eng­lan­der was shot dead in Dal­las, Texas, on 22 Novem­ber 1963, join­ing an infa­mous list that includes Abra­ham Lin­coln, James Garfield and William McKin­ley.

Lin­coln was shot in April 1865 by actor John Wilkes Booth at Ford’s The­ater in Wash­ing­ton DC, five days after the sur­ren­der of Con­fed­er­ate Gen­er­al Robert E Lee, in an attempt to dis­rupt the Union and save the Con­fed­er­a­cy. Garfield was shot in July 1881 by Charles Gui­teau at a Wash­ing­ton DC train sta­tion, after the pres­i­dent refused to appoint him to a diplo­mat­ic post. Garfield died from his injuries sev­er­al months lat­er in Sep­tem­ber 1881.

McKin­ley was shot twice in the chest by anar­chist Leon Czol­go­sz in Buf­fa­lo in 1901 with his attack­er claim­ing the pres­i­dent was the head of a cor­rupt gov­ern­ment. He died of a gan­grene infec­tion weeks lat­er.

But the moti­va­tion for the killing of JFK, which the FBI and the War­ren Com­mis­sion con­clud­ed was car­ried out by lone assas­sin Lee Har­vey Oswald, has always remained unclear spark­ing a debate that has raged for decades.

Here is what we know about the slay­ing of Pres­i­dent John F Kennedy.

Why was JFK in Texas?

Pres­i­dent Kennedy and first lady Jacque­line Kennedy had trav­elled to Texas as part of a cam­paign to uni­fy the Demo­c­ra­t­ic Par­ty and kick off his 1964 re-elec­tion bid.

The cou­ple spent 21 Novem­ber in San Anto­nio, Hous­ton and Fort Worth, fly­ing to Dal­las Love Field on Air Force One the next day.

The pres­i­dent and first lady were col­lect­ed by a con­vert­ible Lin­coln Con­ti­nen­tal that would take them, along with Texas Gov­er­nor John Con­nal­ly, through the streets of down­town Dal­las on his way to give a speech at the Trade Mart at 12.30pm.

Gun­shots ring out

As the lim­ou­sine pulled into Dealey Plaza, Texas’s first lady Nel­lie Con­nal­ly turned to Kennedy and remarked on the size of the crowds, say­ing “Mr Pres­i­dent, you can’t say Dal­las doesn’t love you.”

...

The offi­cial ver­sion of what hap­pened is that Kennedy was hit by two bul­lets from above and behind, one in the back of the neck, exit­ing through his throat before hit­ting Gov Con­nal­ly, who was seri­ous­ly wound­ed but sur­vived the attack. The oth­er bul­let struck the pres­i­dent in the head.

Secret Ser­vice agent Clint Hill jumped on top of the limo and cov­ered the first lady and the pres­i­dent. The motor­cade then rushed to Park­land Hos­pi­tal. Thir­ty min­utes lat­er the pres­i­dent was dead.

...

The arrest of Lee Har­vey Oswald

For­mer Marine Lee Har­vey Oswald, who had spent time in the Sovi­et Union, was arrest­ed for the mur­der in a movie the­atre less than an hour after the shoot­ing after also killing Dal­las police offi­cer JD Tip­pit.

Two days lat­er, as Oswald was moved through the base­ment of the Dal­las Police Depart­ment head­quar­ters live on tele­vi­sion, he was shot and killed by local night­club own­er Jack Ruby.

Ruby was con­vict­ed of killing Oswald and sen­tenced to death but he appealed and died of can­cer in 1967, before the retri­al could take place.

FBI and War­ren Com­mis­sion

Fol­low­ing the Kennedy assas­si­na­tion the FBI car­ried out some 25,000 inter­views and chased down thou­sands of leads, before con­clud­ing that Oswald act­ed alone.

The War­ren Com­mis­sion, set up by Pres­i­dent John­son to inves­ti­gate the killing, spent a year prob­ing the assas­si­na­tion and in its 889-page final report also con­clud­ed that Oswald had act­ed alone.

The report con­firmed that there was “no evi­dence” that Oswald or Ruby were part of a domes­tic con­spir­a­cy to kill Kennedy, or that a for­eign gov­ern­ment had planned and car­ried out the attack.

It did note that Oswald had trav­elled to the Sovi­et Union in 1959, unsuc­cess­ful­ly applied for Sovi­et cit­i­zen­ship, and lived there until 1962. The report also stat­ed that Oswald, a Marx­ist, had vis­it­ed the Russ­ian and Cuban embassies in Mex­i­co City in Sep­tem­ber 1963, months before the shoot­ing.

Con­spir­a­cy the­o­rists have ques­tioned the rea­son for Oswald’s vis­it to the embassies and whether or not he had con­tact with intel­li­gence offi­cials there.

How­ev­er, the report ulti­mate­ly did not give a con­clu­sive motive for why Oswald had shot and killed Kennedy.

“The expla­na­tion of Oswald’s motive for killing Pres­i­dent Kennedy was buried with him,” TIME wrote in 1964.

Con­spir­a­cies and Zaprud­er film

Debate and con­spir­a­cy the­o­ries have raged about the assas­si­na­tion over the last six decades, with thou­sands of books, movies, TV shows and pod­casts ded­i­cat­ed to what hap­pened and the mys­ter­ies that may remain.

Accord­ing to a Gallup poll ear­li­er this month a major­i­ty of Amer­i­cans believe that Oswald did not act alone on 22 Novem­ber 2023 and that oth­ers were involved in a plot to kill Kennedy.

The poll found that 65 per cent of US adults think Oswald worked with oth­ers to elim­i­nate Kennedy, while 29 per cent believe he was sole­ly respon­si­ble.

Gallup first asked Amer­i­cans the same ques­tion imme­di­ate­ly after the killing and found that 52 per cent of peo­ple believed there was “some group or ele­ment” oth­er than Oswald involved. It found that 29 per cent believed he act­ed alone, while 19 per cent were unsure.

One rea­son why con­spir­a­cy the­o­ries in the case have remained con­sis­tent could be that the gov­ern­ment has nev­er released all its files. It was sup­posed to have been com­plet­ed by 2017 but that date has been pushed back dur­ing both the Trump and Biden admin­is­tra­tions.

The War­ren Com­mis­sion did not rely on X‑rays of Kennedy or pho­tos of the autop­sy, say­ing that pub­li­ca­tion of that mate­r­i­al would be an inva­sion of the Kennedy family’s pri­va­cy.

The Nation­al Archives report on the assas­si­na­tion states that “the secre­cy that sur­round­ed the autop­sy pro­ceed­ings, there­fore, has led to con­sid­er­able skep­ti­cism towards the Commission’s find­ings.”

Adding to that sense of doubt is a film of the assas­si­na­tion tak­en by ama­teur pho­tog­ra­ph­er Abra­ham Zaprud­er. In his video, Kennedy’s head appears to be thrown back­wards, sug­gest­ing that a bul­let hit the front of his head. Con­spir­a­cy the­o­rists have claimed that the bul­let could have been fired by a sec­ond gun­man posi­tioned on a grassy knoll near­by.

Two oth­er gov­ern­ment pan­els, a team of foren­sic pathol­o­gists in 1968 and the Com­mis­sion on CIA Activ­i­ties With­in the Unit­ed States in 1975, both agreed that Kennedy was struck by two bul­lets from behind.

Mean­while, 2024 pres­i­den­tial hope­ful Robert Kennedy Jr – a nephew of JFK and son of Robert F Kennedy, who was him­self assas­si­nat­ed in Los Ange­les in 1968 while run­ning for pres­i­dent – backs a con­spir­a­cy the­o­ry that the CIA was respon­si­ble for the killing of his uncle, call­ing the evi­dence “over­whelm­ing.”

“There is over­whelm­ing evi­dence that the CIA was involved in his mur­der,” Mr Kennedy said in a May inter­view with John Cat­si­ma­tidis on New York City radio sta­tion WABC 770. “I think it’s beyond a rea­son­able doubt at this point.”

Mr Kennedy went on to sug­gest that the killing was car­ried out because the pres­i­dent had refused to com­mit US troops to Viet­nam.

“When my uncle was pres­i­dent, he was sur­round­ed by a mil­i­tary-indus­tri­al com­plex and intel­li­gence appa­ra­tus that was con­stant­ly try­ing to get him to go to war in Laos, Viet­nam, etc,” Mr Kennedy said. “He refused. He said that the job of the Amer­i­can pres­i­den­cy is to keep the nation out of war.”

The House Select Com­mit­tee on Assas­si­na­tions said in a 1979 report that it was prob­a­ble that two gun­men fired at Kennedy and that he was like­ly assas­si­nat­ed because of a con­spir­a­cy. How­ev­er, it could not iden­ti­fy the sec­ond gun­man or give any real details on what the con­spir­a­cy was.

John McCone, who was CIA direc­tor when Kennedy was assas­si­nat­ed, tes­ti­fied to the com­mit­tee that despite con­spir­a­cy the­o­ries Oswald was not a CIA agent and that the agency had nev­er com­mu­ni­cat­ed with him.

But of course, with Oswald’s assas­si­na­tion by Ruby, he could nev­er be put on tri­al or tell a jury exact­ly why he had car­ried out the killing.

Secret Ser­vice agent reveals new detail in book

On 22 Novem­ber 1963, Paul Lan­dis was a 28-year-old Secret Ser­vice agent rid­ing in the car direct­ly behind the president’s lim­ou­sine. He was assigned to pro­tect the first lady.

In a new book Mr Lan­dis, now 88, says that he found an intact bul­let next to the first lady, which he col­lect­ed and left on the president’s stretch­er but nev­er told the War­ren Com­mis­sion about because of the trau­ma he suf­fered. He does not believe there was a sec­ond shoot­er.

“I reached over and took her by the shoul­ders and tried to help her up, but she was lean­ing over the president’s head, cov­er­ing his head,” he told Pittsburgh’s Action News in an inter­view to mark the 60th anniver­sary.

He accom­pa­nied Kennedy to the hos­pi­tal, where he remem­bered “every­body was push­ing and shov­ing and scream­ing.”

And he recalled: “I got wedged up against the exam table where they had removed the president’s body.”

While the new descrip­tion of the bul­let is a small detail, Mr Landis’s account dif­fers from the offi­cial account of the shoot­ing, which says that the bul­let was found on Gov Connally’s stretch­er. The new claim chal­lenges the idea of a “mag­ic bul­let” hit­ting Kennedy, then hit­ting Con­nal­ly and adding anoth­er lay­er of mys­tery to the events.

Mr Lan­dis thinks that the bul­let may have been under­charged and hit Kennedy in the back before pop­ping out and com­ing to rest in the lim­ou­sine, where he found it.

His new book, The Final Wit­ness, was pub­lished by Chica­go Review Press last month.

“There’s no goal at this point,” he said in an inter­view before its pub­li­ca­tion. “I just think it had been long enough that I need­ed to tell my sto­ry.”

Mr Landis’s new account has drawn scep­ti­cism from oth­ers who were there that day, includ­ing his col­league Clint Hill.

“If he checked all the evi­dence, state­ments, things that hap­pened, they don’t line up,” Mr Hill told NBC News. “It doesn’t make any sense to me that he’s try­ing to put it on the president’s gur­ney.”

————

“JFK: 60 years on from assas­si­na­tion, what do we know and what remains a mys­tery?” by Graeme Massie; The Inde­pen­dent; 11/22/2023

“One rea­son why con­spir­a­cy the­o­ries in the case have remained con­sis­tent could be that the gov­ern­ment has nev­er released all its files. It was sup­posed to have been com­plet­ed by 2017 but that date has been pushed back dur­ing both the Trump and Biden admin­is­tra­tions.”

A con­sis­tent refusal to release the doc­u­ments the law man­dates be released. Gee, might that have some­thing to do with per­sis­tence of all the ‘con­spir­a­cy the­o­ries’ around this event? Both Trump and Biden refused to release them all. Of course, this refusal to release all the doc­u­ments is a rel­a­tive­ly new rea­son for sus­pi­cions since that release dead­line was only 6 years ago in 2017, 54 years after the assas­si­na­tion. But it’s been six years now of delays and push­backs. It’s the kind of sit­u­a­tion that would beg the ques­tion “What is the gov­ern­ment hid­ing?”, if we already weren’t inun­dat­ed with decades of evi­dence point­ing towards a mas­sive cov­er up. Evi­dence that now includes Secret Ser­vice agent Paul Lan­dis­’s recount­ing of events that fur­ther under­cuts the absurd ‘mag­ic bul­let’ nar­ra­tive that remains the offi­cial nar­ra­tive to this day. Recall how Lan­dis­’s account is backed up by the rec­ol­lec­tions nurse Phyl­lis Hall pub­licly shared in 2013. The more time pass­es, the more evi­dence and insights gained, the more a pic­ture has emerged of a gross cov­er up that remains in place to this day:

...
The War­ren Com­mis­sion did not rely on X‑rays of Kennedy or pho­tos of the autop­sy, say­ing that pub­li­ca­tion of that mate­r­i­al would be an inva­sion of the Kennedy family’s pri­va­cy.

The Nation­al Archives report on the assas­si­na­tion states that “the secre­cy that sur­round­ed the autop­sy pro­ceed­ings, there­fore, has led to con­sid­er­able skep­ti­cism towards the Commission’s find­ings.”

Adding to that sense of doubt is a film of the assas­si­na­tion tak­en by ama­teur pho­tog­ra­ph­er Abra­ham Zaprud­er. In his video, Kennedy’s head appears to be thrown back­wards, sug­gest­ing that a bul­let hit the front of his head. Con­spir­a­cy the­o­rists have claimed that the bul­let could have been fired by a sec­ond gun­man posi­tioned on a grassy knoll near­by.

...

The House Select Com­mit­tee on Assas­si­na­tions said in a 1979 report that it was prob­a­ble that two gun­men fired at Kennedy and that he was like­ly assas­si­nat­ed because of a con­spir­a­cy. How­ev­er, it could not iden­ti­fy the sec­ond gun­man or give any real details on what the con­spir­a­cy was.

...

On 22 Novem­ber 1963, Paul Lan­dis was a 28-year-old Secret Ser­vice agent rid­ing in the car direct­ly behind the president’s lim­ou­sine. He was assigned to pro­tect the first lady.

In a new book Mr Lan­dis, now 88, says that he found an intact bul­let next to the first lady, which he col­lect­ed and left on the president’s stretch­er but nev­er told the War­ren Com­mis­sion about because of the trau­ma he suf­fered. He does not believe there was a sec­ond shoot­er.

“I reached over and took her by the shoul­ders and tried to help her up, but she was lean­ing over the president’s head, cov­er­ing his head,” he told Pittsburgh’s Action News in an inter­view to mark the 60th anniver­sary.

He accom­pa­nied Kennedy to the hos­pi­tal, where he remem­bered “every­body was push­ing and shov­ing and scream­ing.”

And he recalled: “I got wedged up against the exam table where they had removed the president’s body.”

While the new descrip­tion of the bul­let is a small detail, Mr Landis’s account dif­fers from the offi­cial account of the shoot­ing, which says that the bul­let was found on Gov Connally’s stretch­er. The new claim chal­lenges the idea of a “mag­ic bul­let” hit­ting Kennedy, then hit­ting Con­nal­ly and adding anoth­er lay­er of mys­tery to the events.
...

So with the 60 years now hav­ing past, and the offi­cial cov­er up still very much intact, it’s worth keep­ing in mind that it isn’t sim­ply the case that 65 per­cent of US adults sus­pect there was a broad­er con­spir­a­cy. Take a look at Gallup polling going back to 1963 and you’ll find that a major­i­ty of US adults has NEVER believed the offi­cial sto­ry. it’s a part of this that only grows more and more promi­nent as the decades tick by: the cov­er up was exe­cut­ed in the face of over­whelm­ing pub­lic sus­pi­cion. For 60 years now. And with no appar­ent end in sight. The end was sup­posed to be the 2017 dead­line for the release of all those doc­u­ments but that obvi­ous­ly isn’t hap­pen­ing

...
Accord­ing to a Gallup poll ear­li­er this month a major­i­ty of Amer­i­cans believe that Oswald did not act alone on 22 Novem­ber 2023 and that oth­ers were involved in a plot to kill Kennedy.

The poll found that 65 per cent of US adults think Oswald worked with oth­ers to elim­i­nate Kennedy, while 29 per cent believe he was sole­ly respon­si­ble.

Gallup first asked Amer­i­cans the same ques­tion imme­di­ate­ly after the killing and found that 52 per cent of peo­ple believed there was “some group or ele­ment” oth­er than Oswald involved. It found that 29 per cent believed he act­ed alone, while 19 per cent were unsure.
...

Of course, while the US pub­lic may have har­bored sus­pi­cions about the nature of the assas­si­na­tion plot this whole time, you can’t real­ly argue the pub­lic did much about it. Out­side of a few fig­ures on the fringes, there’s almost no real inter­est of con­cern about the long-term impli­ca­tions of a suc­cess­ful con­spir­a­cy to kill a pres­i­dent and then cov­er up it.

So while the world in 2023 may seem like it’s com­ing apart at the seems, it’s worth keep­ing in mind that the world in 2023 has very much been shaped by the pow­er­ful forces who exe­cut­ed that assas­si­na­tion and man­aged to main­tain such a deep grip on pow­er that we still can’t talk about them 60 years lat­er. It’s their world and we’re just pas­sive­ly liv­ing in it.

He did it. The exec­u­tive order promised by Pres­i­dent Trump just a day before his inau­gu­ra­tion to order the release of the remain­ing clas­si­fied gov­ern­ment files in assas­si­na­tion archives of JFK, RFK, and MLK was indeed ful­filled.

Sort of. The exec­u­tive order was issued. And based on the lan­guage of the order it would appear to be a direc­tive to release all the remain­ing doc­u­ments and redac­tions, with­out excep­tion. “I pre­vi­ous­ly accept­ed pro­posed redac­tions from exec­u­tive depart­ments and agen­cies (agen­cies) in 2017 and 2018, but ordered the con­tin­ued re-eval­u­a­tion of those remain­ing redactions...I have now deter­mined that the con­tin­ued redac­tion and with­hold­ing of infor­ma­tion from records per­tain­ing to the assas­si­na­tion of Pres­i­dent John F. Kennedy is not con­sis­tent with the pub­lic inter­est and the release of these records is long over­due,” the exec­u­tive order states. It sure sounds like he’s call­ing for a declas­si­fi­ca­tion of every­thing, with­out redac­tion. Huge, if true.

But the dev­il is the details when it comes to this kind of sto­ry, and there do appear to be details that could serve as a pre­text for with­hold­ing some of the archives mate­ri­als. Specif­i­cal­ly, the exec­u­tive order requires the direc­tor of nation­al intel­li­gence and attor­ney gen­er­al to work with White House offi­cials on a plan to release the records on JFK’s assas­si­na­tion and present it to Trump with­in 15 days. The reports on plans for the RFK and MLK assas­si­na­tions sim­i­lar­ly need to be deliv­ered to Trump with­in 45 days. Which means the real test of this order will be whether or not those plans end up being filled with all sorts of excep­tions and, in turn, whether or not Trump approves it.

The count­down begins. It’s hard to know what exact­ly to expect from this. But it’s a remark­able turn of events if Don­ald Trump, the pres­i­dent who arguably pos­es the great threat to US democ­ra­cy in his­to­ry, is the one who appar­ent­ly has final­ly issued these orders. Remark­able, in part, because he was tasked, by law, with doing this back dur­ing his first term. And then went on to staged an insur­rec­tion. That’s the guy who ulti­mate­ly made this his­toric call. Which is a reminder that every oth­er pres­i­dent in the last six decades, includ­ing Joe Biden, utter­ly failed in their pub­lic duties on these mat­ters. Trump was just hand­ed back access to an orchard filled with all this his­toric low-hang­ing fruit and he final­ly picked the fruit. After skip­ping the oppor­tu­ni­ty the first time around. It’s a his­toric turn of events. Bad, but his­toric.

But as we’re also going to see, we did get a hint back in 2023 regard­ing what’s still sit­ting in those archives. Unfor­tu­nate­ly, it’s a hint com­ing from one of the least trust­wor­thy sources avail­able: Roger Stone. Accord­ing to a July 3, 2023, inter­view with Alt Right fig­ure Jack Poso­biec, Stone claimed that he asked then-Trump about the JFK records ear­ly on dur­ing Trump’s first year in office. “He said, ‘I can’t tell you, it’s so hor­ri­ble you would­n’t believe it. Some­day you’ll find out.’ That was the sum total of it and he did­n’t want to talk fur­ther about it. He kicked the can down the road to Pres­i­dent Joe Biden.” That was Stone’s pub­lic claim rough­ly a year and a half ago. And while Stone might be a dis­rep­utable char­ac­ter prone to deceit, there’s no deny­ing Roger is one of Trump’s old­est pals (who isn’t named Jef­frey).

It’s also worth not­ing a very inter­est­ing find­ing in the JFK case made by researcher Jef­fer­son Mor­ley back in Decem­ber of 2022 in response to files obtained by the Mary Far­rell Foun­da­tion fol­low­ing an Octo­ber 2022 law­suit. Accord­ing to Mor­ley, the doc­u­ments obtained by the foun­da­tion relat­ed to a still-clas­si­fied covert oper­a­tion approved by CIA offi­cials three months before Kennedy’s death. A covert oper­a­tion that the doc­u­ments sug­gest­ed involved the use of Lee Har­vey Oswald for intel­li­gence pur­pos­es sev­er­al weeks pri­or to the assas­si­na­tion. Which is the kind of doc­u­ment that, if their inter­pre­ta­tion is cor­rect, not only con­tra­dicts a core tenet of the CIA’s sto­ry but also sug­gests there real­ly might be some explo­sive rev­e­la­tions still sit­ting in that archive. Because one of the big ques­tions long loom­ing over the assas­si­na­tion archives is the ques­tion of whether or not tru­ly incrim­i­nat­ing doc­u­ments were going to be left in there at all. They could be destroyed, after all. But if there real­ly are doc­u­ments in there that could show Oswald was being used as an intel­li­gence asset for the CIA just sev­er­al weeks before the assas­si­na­tion, who knows what else is sit­ting in there? We’ll find out. Specif­i­cal­ly, we’ll find out whether or not we’ll ever be allowed to find out. Soon. Maybe:

USA TODAY

Trump orders release of secret JFK, RFK and MLK assas­si­na­tion doc­u­ments

Zac Ander­son
Josh Mey­er
Pub­lished 4:10 p.m. ET Jan 23, 2025 | Updat­ed 5:59 p.m. ET Jan. 23, 2025

Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump signed an exec­u­tive order Thurs­day requir­ing the full release of gov­ern­ment doc­u­ments relat­ed to the assas­si­na­tions of for­mer Pres­i­dent John F. Kennedy, his broth­er and pres­i­den­tial can­di­date Robert F. Kennedy and civ­il rights icon Mar­tin Luther King Jr.

The mur­der of Pres­i­dent Kennedy on Nov. 22, 1963 has been the sub­ject of intense spec­u­la­tion for decades, with ram­pant con­spir­a­cy the­o­ries and ques­tions about what the gov­ern­ment knows.

While mil­lions of gov­ern­ment records relat­ed to the Kennedy assas­si­na­tion have been released, some infor­ma­tion remains clas­si­fied and redact­ed. Trump’s order notes that the fed­er­al gov­ern­ment also has­n’t released all infor­ma­tion relat­ed to the oth­er two assas­si­na­tions.

“Their fam­i­lies and the Amer­i­can peo­ple deserve trans­paren­cy and truth,” the order states. “It is in the nation­al inter­est to final­ly release all records relat­ed to these assas­si­na­tions with­out delay.”

...

“A lot of peo­ple are wait­ing for this... for years, for decades,” Trump said, adding: “And every­thing will be revealed.”

The order requires the direc­tor of nation­al intel­li­gence and attor­ney gen­er­al to work with White House offi­cials on a plan to release the John F. Kennedy records and present it to Trump with­in 15 days. A plan for releas­ing the oth­er records must be pre­sent­ed to Trump with­in 45 days.

Trump’s order lays out the saga over releas­ing John F. Kennedy’s record. A law passed in 1992 required the records to be ful­ly released by Oct. 26, 2017 unless the pres­i­dent at the time deter­mines their release would cause “iden­ti­fi­able harm to the mil­i­tary defense, intel­li­gence oper­a­tions, law enforce­ment, or con­duct of for­eign rela­tions... of such grav­i­ty that it out­weighs the pub­lic inter­est in dis­clo­sure.”

Trump was pres­i­dent when the 2017 dead­line arrived. He ordered the release of near­ly 2,900 records, but kept oth­ers secret because of con­cerns by the CIA and FBI that their release could hurt nation­al secu­ri­ty.

“I pre­vi­ous­ly accept­ed pro­posed redac­tions from exec­u­tive depart­ments and agen­cies (agen­cies) in 2017 and 2018, but ordered the con­tin­ued re-eval­u­a­tion of those remain­ing redac­tions,” Trump’s exec­u­tive order states, not­ing for­mer Pres­i­dent Joe Biden act­ed in 2021, 2022 and 2023 to give agen­cies more time to review the records.

“I have now deter­mined that the con­tin­ued redac­tion and with­hold­ing of infor­ma­tion from records per­tain­ing to the assas­si­na­tion of Pres­i­dent John F. Kennedy is not con­sis­tent with the pub­lic inter­est and the release of these records is long over­due,” the exec­u­tive order states.

The doc­u­ments released in 2017 includ­ed details on the FBI and CIA inves­ti­ga­tions into Lee Har­vey Oswald, the Marine vet­er­an iden­ti­fied as Kennedy’s assas­sin, and infor­ma­tion on covert Cold War oper­a­tions.

In hold­ing back some records, Trump said at the time: “I have no choice – today – but to accept those redac­tions rather than allow poten­tial­ly irre­versible harm to our nation’s secu­ri­ty.”

The CIA had no imme­di­ate com­ment on Trump’s exec­u­tive order.

But in the past, the spy agency has opposed whole­sale release of the remain­ing doc­u­ments on the grounds that it could com­pro­mise nation­al secu­ri­ty – specif­i­cal­ly the top-secret sources and meth­ods it uses to col­lect intel­li­gence.

That includes human intel­li­gence or “humint,” or how covert CIA offi­cers per­son­al­ly get infor­ma­tion and “sig­int,” or sig­nals intel­li­gences, which means what kinds of tech­nolo­gies are used to eaves­drop on tar­gets over­seas.

Then-CIA direc­tor William Burns described the agency’s posi­tion in a Dec. 15, 2021 let­ter to Pres­i­dent Joe Biden about why some of infor­ma­tion con­tained in the files about the 1963 assas­si­na­tion should nev­er be redact­ed.

In it, Burns said “all infor­ma­tion” in the CIA’s col­lec­tion “about the assas­si­na­tion itself” had been released to the pub­lic.

“What remains redact­ed in the doc­u­ments in this col­lec­tion are not relat­ed to the assas­si­na­tion itself, but rather are pri­mar­i­ly post-assas­si­na­tion doc­u­ments and the details which remain clas­si­fied con­cern intel­li­gence sources and meth­ods of cur­rent rel­e­vance,” Burns wrote.

Some of the files also con­tain infor­ma­tion iden­ti­fy­ing CIA employ­ees and their intel­li­gence sources and assets. Release of that infor­ma­tion, Burns said, could not only get them killed but under­mine nation­al secu­ri­ty by giv­ing away U.S. spy­ing tech­niques and tech­nolo­gies for for­eign adver­saries.

“I am aware,” Burns told Biden, “of no pub­lic inter­est in dis­clo­sure that out­weighs the seri­ous and tan­gi­ble harm to intel­li­gence oper­a­tions that will ensue from dis­clo­sure of such infor­ma­tion.”

...

Trump in a Fox News inter­view that aired Wednes­day said Mike Pom­peo, his for­mer CIA direc­tor and sec­re­tary of state, and oth­ers dis­cour­aged him from releas­ing some of the Kennedy doc­u­ments. Trump said Pom­peo told him “it was just not a good time to release them.”

“They did­n’t want the Kennedy stuff released and they’re pro­fes­sion­als, and I respect them, and they’re work­ing for me and the coun­try, they’re work­ing for the coun­try,” Trump said. “And so I did­n’t release but I’m going to release them imme­di­ate­ly.”

———–

“Trump orders release of secret JFK, RFK and MLK assas­si­na­tion doc­u­ments” by Zac Ander­son and Josh Mey­er; USA TODAY; 01/23/2025

“The order requires the direc­tor of nation­al intel­li­gence and attor­ney gen­er­al to work with White House offi­cials on a plan to release the John F. Kennedy records and present it to Trump with­in 15 days. A plan for releas­ing the oth­er records must be pre­sent­ed to Trump with­in 45 days.”

Ok, the promised exec­u­tive order was indeed issued. Sort of. The order was­n’t for an imme­di­ate declas­si­fi­ca­tion of the remain­ing files. It’s an order for a set of plans to be pre­sent­ed to Pres­i­dent Trump. For­tu­nate­ly, those plans have to be pre­sent­ed rel­a­tive­ly soon, in just 15 days for the JFK records. But that might just mean we’re going to find out in 15 days how the plan will some­how dis­ap­point in the end. And yet, look­ing at the lan­guage of the exec­u­tive order, it appears to be pret­ty explic­it. Trump is call­ing for a release of all remain­ing files, includ­ing the pre­vi­ous­ly redact­ed infor­ma­tion. It’s an order that, if tak­en lit­er­al­ly, would seem to leave the gov­ern­ment lit­tle wig­gle room in terms of keep­ing doc­u­ments secret:

...
“A lot of peo­ple are wait­ing for this... for years, for decades,” Trump said, adding: “And every­thing will be revealed.”

...

Trump’s order lays out the saga over releas­ing John F. Kennedy’s record. A law passed in 1992 required the records to be ful­ly released by Oct. 26, 2017 unless the pres­i­dent at the time deter­mines their release would cause “iden­ti­fi­able harm to the mil­i­tary defense, intel­li­gence oper­a­tions, law enforce­ment, or con­duct of for­eign rela­tions... of such grav­i­ty that it out­weighs the pub­lic inter­est in dis­clo­sure.”

Trump was pres­i­dent when the 2017 dead­line arrived. He ordered the release of near­ly 2,900 records, but kept oth­ers secret because of con­cerns by the CIA and FBI that their release could hurt nation­al secu­ri­ty.

“I pre­vi­ous­ly accept­ed pro­posed redac­tions from exec­u­tive depart­ments and agen­cies (agen­cies) in 2017 and 2018, but ordered the con­tin­ued re-eval­u­a­tion of those remain­ing redac­tions,” Trump’s exec­u­tive order states, not­ing for­mer Pres­i­dent Joe Biden act­ed in 2021, 2022 and 2023 to give agen­cies more time to review the records.

“I have now deter­mined that the con­tin­ued redac­tion and with­hold­ing of infor­ma­tion from records per­tain­ing to the assas­si­na­tion of Pres­i­dent John F. Kennedy is not con­sis­tent with the pub­lic inter­est and the release of these records is long over­due,” the exec­u­tive order states.

...

Trump in a Fox News inter­view that aired Wednes­day said Mike Pom­peo, his for­mer CIA direc­tor and sec­re­tary of state, and oth­ers dis­cour­aged him from releas­ing some of the Kennedy doc­u­ments. Trump said Pom­peo told him “it was just not a good time to release them.”

“They did­n’t want the Kennedy stuff released and they’re pro­fes­sion­als, and I respect them, and they’re work­ing for me and the coun­try, they’re work­ing for the coun­try,” Trump said. “And so I did­n’t release but I’m going to release them imme­di­ate­ly.”
...

Now, assum­ing we real­ly do see a mas­sive release of the remain­ing files and redac­tions, what should we actu­al­ly expect? Will there be dev­as­tat­ing rev­e­la­tions? Or just a bunch of details but no mean­ing­ful rev­e­la­tions? Keep in mind that, even if there are dev­as­tat­ing rev­e­la­tions sit­ting in those unre­leased files, there’s noth­ing pre­vent­ing the destruc­tion of doc­u­ments as long as the world does­n’t yet know about their exis­tence. At the same time, pre­vi­ous­ly released but redact­ed files will be a lot hard­er to keep hid­den if the redact­ed sec­tions are ordered released.

And that brings us to the fol­low­ing sto­ry for July of 2023 from a most untrust­wor­thy source, but a source that has the sta­tus of being one of Don­ald Trump’s long-term close asso­ciates: Roger Stone. Accord­ing to Stone, Trump con­fid­ed dur­ing his first term in office that the then-still clas­si­fied JFK files are ‘so hor­ri­ble you would­n’t believe it.’ As Stone put it, “He said, ‘I can’t tell you, it’s so hor­ri­ble you would­n’t believe it. Some­day you’ll find out.’ That was the sum total of it and he did­n’t want to talk fur­ther about it. He kicked the can down the road to Pres­i­dent Joe Biden.” So Trump kicks the can down the road to Biden, Biden kicks it back to Trump, and here we are:

Newsweek

Trump Told Roger Stone He ‘Won’t Believe’ What’s in Clas­si­fied JFK Files

Pub­lished Jul 05, 2023 at 4:50 PM EDT
Updat­ed Jul 06, 2023 at 8:42 AM EDT
By Nick Mor­dowanec
Staff Writer

Roger Stone, a GOP polit­i­cal oper­a­tive and close con­fi­dant of Don­ald Trump, said that the for­mer pres­i­dent told him clas­si­fied doc­u­ments per­tain­ing to the 1963 assas­si­na­tion of Pres­i­dent John F. Kennedy are “so hor­ri­ble you would­n’t believe it.”

The Nation­al Archives and Records Admin­is­tra­tion (NARA) fin­ished its records review on Fri­day, in accor­dance with a memo by Pres­i­dent Joe Biden that instruct­ed the post­ing of doc­u­ments con­tain­ing new infor­ma­tion asso­ci­at­ed with the Pres­i­dent John F. Kennedy (JFK) Assas­si­na­tion Records Col­lec­tion Act of 1992.

...

“Even he, Trump, held back 20 per­cent of the doc­u­ments,” Stone told Jack Poso­biec of Human Events, part of the GOP non­prof­it Turn­ing Point USA. “When I had the occa­sion to ask him about that, I said, ‘Why did­n’t you let it all out?’

.@RogerJStoneJr tells @JackPosobiec that Trump told him the clas­si­fied doc­u­ments per­tain­ing to the assas­si­na­tion of JFK con­tained details “so hor­ri­ble you would­n’t believe it.“Why does Biden keep delay­ing their declas­si­fi­ca­tion? ?? pic.twitter.com/6ZjofvMlyI— Human Events (@HumanEvents) July 3, 2023

“He said, ‘I can’t tell you, it’s so hor­ri­ble you would­n’t believe it. Some­day you’ll find out.’ That was the sum total of it and he did­n’t want to talk fur­ther about it. He kicked the can down the road to Pres­i­dent Joe Biden.”

A spokesper­son for the pres­i­den­tial cam­paign of Demo­c­rat Robert F. Kennedy Jr., JFK’s nephew, told Newsweek on Tues­day: “We will nev­er know for sure until these doc­u­ments are made pub­lic in full. After 60 years, there are no nation­al secu­ri­ty con­cerns. The Amer­i­can peo­ple deserve to know their own his­to­ry.”

As a result of con­gres­sion­al pas­sage of the JFK Records Act of 1992, the release of relat­ed records had to occur by Octo­ber 2017.

Trump did not start declas­si­fy­ing JFK-relat­ed records until after Octo­ber 2017, cit­ing intel­li­gence agen­cies and sources poten­tial­ly being com­pro­mised. He report­ed­ly declas­si­fied tens of thou­sands of doc­u­ments dur­ing his term.

Doc­u­ments released in Decem­ber offered some new insight into alleged JFK assas­sin Lee Har­vey Oswald and how he was being sur­veilled by the CIA, as well as his involve­ment with the agency on an oper­a­tion months before the killing.

But his­to­ri­ans have expressed a luke­warm reac­tion to the doc­u­ments as pro­vid­ing a wider glimpse into JFK’s death.

Stone said he asked Trump in the ear­ly stages of his pres­i­den­cy what he would do with JFK-relat­ed records.

Weeks before the sched­uled release date in 2017, Trump alleged­ly asked Stone, “Why has­n’t any­one brought this to my atten­tion?”

When Trump told Stone that said sources and meth­ods would be exposed, Stone respond­ed that most sources are dead and that the pub­lic deserved to know the details.

...

“As I have reit­er­at­ed through­out my Pres­i­den­cy, I ful­ly sup­port the Act’s aim to max­i­mize trans­paren­cy by dis­clos­ing all infor­ma­tion in records con­cern­ing the assas­si­na­tion, except when the strongest pos­si­ble rea­sons coun­sel oth­er­wise,” Biden said in a memo released Fri­day by the White House in accor­dance with NARA’s records release.

Biden added that act­ing archivist Colleen Shogan told him the process was com­plete and rec­om­mend­ed that he post­pone the pub­lic release of cer­tain redact­ed infor­ma­tion in the records cer­ti­fied as part of the Decem­ber 2022 memo.

Biden was also instruct­ed by NARA to pro­vide its Nation­al Declas­si­fi­ca­tion Cen­ter (NDC) with trans­paren­cy plans that will be used “to ensure appro­pri­ate con­tin­ued release of infor­ma­tion as spe­cif­ic iden­ti­fied harm dis­si­pates, then trig­ger­ing pub­lic dis­clo­sure.”

“I have every con­fi­dence that the NDC’s imple­men­ta­tion of these plans offers a clear path for­ward for pub­lic trans­paren­cy and the time­ly release of addi­tion­al infor­ma­tion as cir­cum­stances war­rant,” Shogan said in a state­ment.

————

“Trump Told Roger Stone He ‘Won’t Believe’ What’s in Clas­si­fied JFK Files” By Nick Mor­dowanec; Newsweek; 07/05/2023

“He said, ‘I can’t tell you, it’s so hor­ri­ble you would­n’t believe it. Some­day you’ll find out.’ That was the sum total of it and he did­n’t want to talk fur­ther about it. He kicked the can down the road to Pres­i­dent Joe Biden.”

Trump was spooked by what he knew. That’s more or less Roger Stone’s recount­ing of the con­ver­sa­tion he had with Trump back dur­ing the ear­ly stages of his first term. And note this anec­dote: Trump appar­ent­ly asked “Why has­n’t any­one brought this to my atten­tion?” just weeks before the Octo­ber 2017 release date that was man­dat­ed by law. A date that Trump obvi­ous­ly did­n’t meet in his first time. That’s also part of the con­text of this sto­ry: by law, all of these files were tech­ni­cal­ly already sup­posed to be released back in 2017. But ‘rea­sons’ kept com­ing up to jus­ti­fy their con­tin­ued with­hold­ing:

...
Stone said he asked Trump in the ear­ly stages of his pres­i­den­cy what he would do with JFK-relat­ed records.

Weeks before the sched­uled release date in 2017, Trump alleged­ly asked Stone, “Why has­n’t any­one brought this to my atten­tion?”

When Trump told Stone that said sources and meth­ods would be exposed, Stone respond­ed that most sources are dead and that the pub­lic deserved to know the details.
...

And as an exam­ple of the kinds of rev­e­la­tions that are prob­a­bly sit­ting in these doc­u­ments, it was Doc­u­ments released in Decem­ber of 2022 that appar­ent­ly show Oswald being involved with a CIA oper­a­tion just months before the assas­si­na­tion. A rev­e­la­tion that would utter­ly destroy the CIA’s decades old stance on Oswald:

...
Doc­u­ments released in Decem­ber offered some new insight into alleged JFK assas­sin Lee Har­vey Oswald and how he was being sur­veilled by the CIA, as well as his involve­ment with the agency on an oper­a­tion months before the killing.

But his­to­ri­ans have expressed a luke­warm reac­tion to the doc­u­ments as pro­vid­ing a wider glimpse into JFK’s death.
...

And as we’re going to see in the fol­low­ing piece about those pos­si­ble rev­e­la­tions, the doc­u­ments show­ing this evi­dence of a CIA oper­a­tion involv­ing Oswald were obtained by the Mary Fer­rell Foun­da­tion thanks to a law­suit. Which makes these doc­u­ments, obtained in Decem­ber of 2022, exam­ples of the kinds of doc­u­ments Trump was con­vinced to keep clas­si­fied back in 2017. And also sug­gests that if there aren’t even­tu­al­ly doc­u­ments released describ­ing a still-clas­si­fied CIA oper­a­tion that involved Oswald in the months before the assas­si­na­tion, there’s still some doc­u­ments being withheld...or destroyed:

Newsweek

New Doc­u­ments Shed Light on CIA’s Con­nec­tion to Lee Har­vey Oswald

Pub­lished Dec 06, 2022 at 2:08 PM EST
Updat­ed Dec 07, 2022 at 10:01 AM EST
By Nick Reynolds
Senior Reporter, Pol­i­tics

A corps of researchers look­ing into the 1963 assas­si­na­tion of Pres­i­dent John F. Kennedy say they have unearthed proof his alleged assas­sin, Lee Har­vey Oswald, was involved in an oper­a­tion by the CIA mere months before the killing, reignit­ing ques­tions about whether the Oswald tru­ly was alone in his deci­sion to kill the youngest man ever elect­ed pres­i­dent.

In a Tues­day press con­fer­ence at the Nation­al Press Club, Jef­fer­son Morley—a vet­er­an of the D.C. press corps and a pre­em­i­nent expert on JFK’s assas­si­na­tion with the Mary Fer­rell Foun­da­tion—told reporters that he and attor­neys with the foun­da­tion obtained doc­u­men­ta­tion relat­ing to a still-clas­si­fied covert oper­a­tion approved by senior CIA offi­cials three months before Kennedy’s death that sug­gest­ed the agency used Oswald for intel­li­gence pur­pos­es sev­er­al weeks pri­or to shoot­ing.

“This is an extra­or­di­nar­i­ly seri­ous claim, and it has pro­found impli­ca­tions for the offi­cial sto­ry,” Mor­ley said Tues­day morn­ing in Wash­ing­ton. “The CIA knew far more about the lone gun­man than then they are admit­ting even today. So this sto­ry deserves the clos­est pos­si­ble scruti­ny.”

The doc­u­ment, one of sev­er­al researchers obtained this month as the result of an Octo­ber law­suit, is a pre­cur­sor to a fuller release of doc­u­ments antic­i­pat­ed by the Nation­al Archives this month.

The man­dat­ed release of records dates to a 2021 memo by Pres­i­dent Joe Biden’s admin­is­tra­tion order­ing the release of all doc­u­ments relat­ed to the JFK assas­si­na­tion after sev­er­al delays by agen­cies like the CIA and FBI. Attor­neys for the Mary Fer­rell Foun­da­tion argued that the agen­cies have ille­gal­ly stalled the release of more than 16,000 addi­tion­al doc­u­ments relat­ed to the case over con­cerns they could poten­tial­ly com­pro­mise the names of indi­vid­u­als and the meth­ods used in intel­li­gence-gath­er­ing activ­i­ties more than a half-cen­tu­ry ago.

...

“Why would they want to hide that? Because it’s embar­rass­ing,” Lar­ry Schnapf, a pro­fes­sor of law at New York Uni­ver­si­ty who has served as the foun­da­tion’s attor­ney, told Newsweek. “But embar­rass­ment is specif­i­cal­ly a term the JFK Records Act pro­vides for. It says that embar­rass­ment is not grounds for post­pone­ment.”

That the CIA knew of Oswald is not a smok­ing gun. It has already been revealed the fed­er­al gov­ern­ment knew more about the cir­cum­stances sur­round­ing the Kennedy assas­si­na­tion than it acknowl­edged pub­licly, begin­ning with the Nation­al Archives’ release of a trove of pre­vi­ous­ly clas­si­fied doc­u­ments relat­ing to the assas­si­na­tion in 2017 as well as the release of a num­ber of doc­u­ments detail­ing Oswald’s his­to­ry in 2021.

And its exis­tence does not prove of a CIA plot to kill the pres­i­dent, as some the­o­ries have spec­u­lat­ed.

But the doc­u­ment, one of 10 that researchers believe was improp­er­ly with­held from the ini­tial release, helps under­score what the gov­ern­ment has so far refused to acknowl­edge, and why pub­lic mis­trust over the truth of the Kennedy assas­si­na­tion con­tin­ues to per­sist near­ly 60 years lat­er.

If true, the new­ly released doc­u­ments appear to con­tra­dict the gov­ern­men­t’s claims that it had no knowl­edge of Oswald pri­or to the killing, out­lined at the time of Kennedy’s mur­der by an appar­ent com­mu­nist sym­pa­thiz­er and in the years fol­low­ing his death.

In a pre­vi­ous­ly clas­si­fied 1975 depo­si­tion on Oswald’s poten­tial involve­ment in the case, for­mer CIA Direc­tor Richard Helms claimed that Oswald was “cer­tain­ly not an agent of the CIA,” was “nev­er used by the CIA,” and that the agency could find “no evi­dence that Oswald had any con­nec­tion with the CIA.”

In oth­er instances, they said, inde­pen­dent research has con­firmed oth­er dis­crep­an­cies in the offi­cial nar­ra­tive around the involve­ment of fig­ures like George Joan­nides, a now-deceased CIA agent who had inti­mate involve­ment with the group of com­mu­nist rev­o­lu­tion­ar­ies Oswald had been in con­tact with pri­or to the killing. Joan­nides notably with­held infor­ma­tion about his role from con­gres­sion­al inves­ti­ga­tors seek­ing answers about Kennedy’s death.

...

“This is an oppor­tu­ni­ty for the CIA to come clean,” for­mer CIA offi­cer and senior fel­low at Har­vard’s Belfer Cen­ter for Sci­ence and Inter­na­tion­al Affairs Rolf Mowatt-Larssen said Tues­day. “Not because the CIA was involved in Kennedy’s assas­si­na­tion, but because the CIA under­stands that there is still doubt as to what hap­pened and whether there were peo­ple inside the CIA or any oth­er parts of the U.S. gov­ern­ment who might have been involved in this hor­rif­ic con­spir­a­cy to kill the pres­i­dent.”

To this day, the fed­er­al gov­ern­ment has main­tained that Oswald act­ed alone and had no con­nec­tion with the CIA. The fed­er­al gov­ern­ment has also denied that Oswald had any con­nec­tions to com­mu­nist orga­ni­za­tions in Cuba or to orga­nized crime cells in the U.S. that could have had moti­va­tion for Kennedy’s death.

But giv­en the geopo­lit­i­cal con­text of the era—concerns over a com­mu­nist gov­ern­men­tal pres­ence in Latin Amer­i­ca, a poten­tial shift in U.S. pol­i­cy toward Vietnam—some still believe the nar­ra­tive is not to be dis­missed.

To this day, Mor­ley sug­gests that the CIA is still hid­ing 44 doc­u­ments known to exist in Joan­nides’ per­son­nel file that he said “will shed light on his secret activ­i­ties” between 1963 in 1978, includ­ing infor­ma­tion about a CIA oper­a­tion involv­ing Oswald he said “has nev­er been dis­closed.”

Whether those doc­u­ments are released this month, Mor­ley said, is the true test of whether the fed­er­al gov­ern­ment is pre­pared to acknowl­edge the truth about its involve­ment in Kennedy’s death.

“I’m not crazy about the term the smok­ing gun,” Mor­ley said. “I think that’s a bit of a cliche. It’s not a term that inves­tiga­tive reporters use. But I think in this case, it’s appro­pri­ate that what we’re talk­ing about here is not smok­ing-gun proof of a con­spir­a­cy to kill the pres­i­dent. We’re talk­ing about smok­ing-gun proof of a CIA oper­a­tion involv­ing Lee Har­vey Oswald, that the CIA is still con­ceal­ing in 2022.

“This body of records has pro­found impli­ca­tions for the offi­cial sto­ry of the assas­si­na­tion. Is the undis­closed Oswald oper­a­tion evi­dence of CIA com­plic­i­ty in JFK assas­si­na­tion? Is it evi­dence of incom­pe­tence and under­stand­ing the threat Oswald posed to the pres­i­dent? Only full dis­clo­sure on Decem­ber 15 can resolve this ques­tion.”

———–

“New Doc­u­ments Shed Light on CIA’s Con­nec­tion to Lee Har­vey Oswald” By Nick Reynolds; Newsweek; 12/06/2022

“In a Tues­day press con­fer­ence at the Nation­al Press Club, Jef­fer­son Morley—a vet­er­an of the D.C. press corps and a pre­em­i­nent expert on JFK’s assas­si­na­tion with the Mary Fer­rell Foun­da­tion—told reporters that he and attor­neys with the foun­da­tion obtained doc­u­men­ta­tion relat­ing to a still-clas­si­fied covert oper­a­tion approved by senior CIA offi­cials three months before Kennedy’s death that sug­gest­ed the agency used Oswald for intel­li­gence pur­pos­es sev­er­al weeks pri­or to shoot­ing.”

Evi­dence of Oswald’s involve­ment just weeks before the assas­si­na­tion in a still-clas­si­fied covert oper­a­tion approved three months pri­or. Approved by senior CIA offi­cials. That’s quite a find­ing. The kind of find­ing that utter­ly under­mines nar­ra­tives the CIA has been hid­ing behind for decades now. But also a rev­e­la­tion that was made pub­lic back in Decem­ber of 2022, over two years ago, which rais­es the ques­tion: What kind of prepa­ra­tion have been since then in antic­i­pa­tion of the even­tu­al release of files describ­ing that still-clas­si­fied CIA oper­a­tion?

...
“This is an extra­or­di­nar­i­ly seri­ous claim, and it has pro­found impli­ca­tions for the offi­cial sto­ry,” Mor­ley said Tues­day morn­ing in Wash­ing­ton. “The CIA knew far more about the lone gun­man than then they are admit­ting even today. So this sto­ry deserves the clos­est pos­si­ble scruti­ny.”

The doc­u­ment, one of sev­er­al researchers obtained this month as the result of an Octo­ber law­suit, is a pre­cur­sor to a fuller release of doc­u­ments antic­i­pat­ed by the Nation­al Archives this month.

...

“Why would they want to hide that? Because it’s embar­rass­ing,” Lar­ry Schnapf, a pro­fes­sor of law at New York Uni­ver­si­ty who has served as the foun­da­tion’s attor­ney, told Newsweek. “But embar­rass­ment is specif­i­cal­ly a term the JFK Records Act pro­vides for. It says that embar­rass­ment is not grounds for post­pone­ment.”

That the CIA knew of Oswald is not a smok­ing gun. It has already been revealed the fed­er­al gov­ern­ment knew more about the cir­cum­stances sur­round­ing the Kennedy assas­si­na­tion than it acknowl­edged pub­licly, begin­ning with the Nation­al Archives’ release of a trove of pre­vi­ous­ly clas­si­fied doc­u­ments relat­ing to the assas­si­na­tion in 2017 as well as the release of a num­ber of doc­u­ments detail­ing Oswald’s his­to­ry in 2021.

And its exis­tence does not prove of a CIA plot to kill the pres­i­dent, as some the­o­ries have spec­u­lat­ed.

But the doc­u­ment, one of 10 that researchers believe was improp­er­ly with­held from the ini­tial release, helps under­score what the gov­ern­ment has so far refused to acknowl­edge, and why pub­lic mis­trust over the truth of the Kennedy assas­si­na­tion con­tin­ues to per­sist near­ly 60 years lat­er.

If true, the new­ly released doc­u­ments appear to con­tra­dict the gov­ern­men­t’s claims that it had no knowl­edge of Oswald pri­or to the killing, out­lined at the time of Kennedy’s mur­der by an appar­ent com­mu­nist sym­pa­thiz­er and in the years fol­low­ing his death.

In a pre­vi­ous­ly clas­si­fied 1975 depo­si­tion on Oswald’s poten­tial involve­ment in the case, for­mer CIA Direc­tor Richard Helms claimed that Oswald was “cer­tain­ly not an agent of the CIA,” was “nev­er used by the CIA,” and that the agency could find “no evi­dence that Oswald had any con­nec­tion with the CIA.”

...

“I’m not crazy about the term the smok­ing gun,” Mor­ley said. “I think that’s a bit of a cliche. It’s not a term that inves­tiga­tive reporters use. But I think in this case, it’s appro­pri­ate that what we’re talk­ing about here is not smok­ing-gun proof of a con­spir­a­cy to kill the pres­i­dent. We’re talk­ing about smok­ing-gun proof of a CIA oper­a­tion involv­ing Lee Har­vey Oswald, that the CIA is still con­ceal­ing in 2022.
...

Is the pub­lic real­ly about to see all the ‘smok­ing-guns’ left sit­ting in the JFK assas­si­na­tion archives? The lan­guage of this exec­u­tive order would seem to promise just that. But, again, the dev­il is in the details. There’s still time for obfus­ca­tion.

Still, based on all the avail­able cir­cum­stan­tial evi­dence, we have rea­son to sus­pect some damn­ing evi­dence of the suc­cess­ful coup waged against the US democ­ra­cy over six decades ago could end up get­ting exposed. Which will make the even­tu­al release, or lack of release, of the RFK and MLK files all the more inter­est­ing.

Look what the cat> FBI just dragged in: 2400 pre­vi­ous­ly undis­closed files on the JFK assas­si­na­tion. They were ‘just dis­cov­ered’ as a result of Pres­i­dent Trump’s exec­u­tive order. An exec­u­tive order that, as we’ve seen, promis­es the com­plete release of all doc­u­ments, entire­ly unredact­ed. An order that is dif­fi­cult to take at face val­ue. And yet, it seems to be play­ing out and already yield­ing results.

So what’s in the 2400 new­ly dis­cov­ered doc­u­ments? The three anony­mous White House offi­cials who are serv­ing as sources for this report­ing haven’t seen the doc­u­ments. But they are assur­ing us that Pres­i­dent Trump remains very seri­ous about com­plete­ly dis­clos­ing every­thing. In fact, the fol­low­ing Axios report that broke this sto­ry is filled with quotes from these anony­mous White House staffers like, “When POTUS hears about this stonewalling, he’s gonna hit the roof,” or “This is total Deep State bulls**t,” and “Don’t be sur­prised if all these records just sud­den­ly wind up online...He wants to move on and call this a promise kept.”

And it’s that “promis­es kept” desire that brings us to anoth­er dimen­sion to this sto­ry: as Jef­fer­son More­ly of the Mary Fer­rell Foun­da­tion warns, there is no dead­line on the release of these doc­u­ments. Which is why we should prob­a­bly be high­ly con­cerned that all the polit­i­cal the­atrics we’re see­ing at this point is all we’re going to ulti­mate­ly get from this. A loud, high pro­file ‘promis­es kept’ roll­out of a dis­clo­sure plan that ulti­mate­ly is nev­er real­ly com­plet­ed.

As More­ly also warns, Trump’s exec­u­tive order only includ­ed files in the Nation­al Archives. But we should­n’t assume all the rel­e­vant files are stored in the Nation­al Archives. For exam­ple, the CIA still has hun­dreds of records, accord­ing to More­ly. And then there’s the pri­vate col­lec­tions. More­ley goes on to argue that these pri­vate col­lec­tions and oth­er gov­ern­ment archives should have been includ­ed in the exec­u­tive order.

It’s also worth not­ing that the FBI’s dis­clo­sure of these 2400 ‘new­ly dis­cov­ered’ FBI files could play a role in an ongo­ing law­suit open by More­ly and the Mary Fer­rell Foun­da­tion in 2022 over the the Biden admin­is­tra­tion’s ongo­ing refusal to ful­ly dis­close all of the archives as required by law. Which is also a reminder that the legal bat­tles over these archives is like­ly far from over. Espe­cial­ly if what is ulti­mate­ly revealed ends up answer few if any of the major ques­tions that have long loomed over this inves­ti­ga­tion. Just because Trump loud­ly and proud­ly issues the ‘dis­close every­thing’ order does­n’t mean it’s actu­al­ly going to be dis­closed. And that’s why we have to ask: are we learn­ing about this explo­sive new devel­op­ment from the FBI because we real­ly are on the cusp of hav­ing this major chap­ter of US his­to­ry revealed? Or are we learn­ing about this because it’s been deter­mined that there needs to be a lot of ear­ly excite­ment so Trump can declare ‘promis­es kept’ and just move on?:

Axios

Scoop: FBI finds secret JFK assas­si­na­tion records after Trump order

Marc Caputo
02/11/2025

The FBI just dis­cov­ered about 2,400 records tied to Pres­i­dent Kennedy’s assas­si­na­tion that were nev­er pro­vid­ed to a board tasked with review­ing and dis­clos­ing the doc­u­ments, Axios has learned.

* The still-secret records are con­tained in 14,000 pages of doc­u­ments the FBI found in a review trig­gered by Pres­i­dent Trump’s Jan. 23 exec­u­tive order demand­ing the release of all JFK assas­si­na­tion records.

Why it mat­ters: The dis­cov­ery — 61 years after Kennedy was killed in Dal­las — fol­lows decades of gov­ern­ment reluc­tance to release all doc­u­ments relat­ed to the assas­si­na­tion, which fueled a moun­tain of con­spir­a­cy the­o­ries.

* The exis­tence of the new doc­u­ments was dis­closed Fri­day to the White House, when the Office of the Direc­tor of Nation­al Intel­li­gence sub­mit­ted its plan to dis­close the assas­si­na­tion records under Trump’s order.

Zoom in: The con­tents of the new­ly found records are close­ly held secrets. The three sources who relayed their exis­tence to Axios said they had­n’t seen the doc­u­ments.

* But the dis­cov­ery of thou­sands of records on one of the most scru­ti­nized events in U.S. his­to­ry is like­ly to raise ques­tions about the pro­ce­dures for vet­ting and releas­ing infor­ma­tion across the entire gov­ern­ment.

* “This is huge. It shows the FBI is tak­ing this seri­ous­ly,” said Jef­fer­son Mor­ley, an expert on the assas­si­na­tion and vice pres­i­dent of the non­par­ti­san Mary Fer­rell Foun­da­tion, the nation’s largest source of online records of Kennedy’s killing. He sued the U.S. gov­ern­ment for more records.

...

Real­i­ty check: The remain­ing records to be dis­closed — as well as the new­ly dis­cov­ered tranche of 2,400 reports — are unlike­ly to defin­i­tive­ly prove whether Lee Har­vey Oswald was the lone-wolf assas­sin or was part of a broad­er con­spir­a­cy, experts say.

Catch up quick: Under the 1992 JFK Records Act, assas­si­na­tion records were sup­posed to be hand­ed over to the JFK Assas­si­na­tion Records Review Board and then to the Nation­al Archives. The archive main­tains a col­lec­tion of doc­u­ments that were sup­posed to be ful­ly dis­closed in 2017.

* Admin­is­tra­tion offi­cials deter­mined these new­ly dis­cov­ered records had­n’t been sub­mit­ted to or vet­ted by the assas­si­na­tion review board or the Nation­al Archives.

* When Trump was pres­i­dent in 2017, he delayed dis­clo­sure of the records the gov­ern­ment had iden­ti­fied, on the advice of the CIA. Pres­i­dent Biden then ordered lim­it­ed releas­es of records that still did­n’t ful­ly com­ply with the spir­it of the JFK Records Act.

* Gov­ern­ment secre­cy advo­cates argued to Trump and Biden that full dis­clo­sure of the assas­si­na­tion doc­u­ments could com­pro­mise “sources and meth­ods” of intel­li­gence gath­er­ing, and unfair­ly impli­cate offi­cials involved in the con­tro­ver­sy.

The big pic­ture: Trump has regret­ted for years not releas­ing all the JFK records in his first term, accord­ing to those who have dis­cussed the mat­ter with him.

...

* RFK Jr., named by Trump to be Health and Human Ser­vices sec­re­tary, has called for full dis­clo­sure for years, and believes both assas­si­na­tions were part of a broad­er con­spir­a­cy.

Trump’s order calls for a plan to release assas­si­na­tion records of RFK and the Rev. Mar­tin Luther King Jr. by March 9.

* “PRESIDENT TRUMP IS ENDING THE ENDLESS DELAYS,” a White House fact sheet issued Jan. 23 says: “Pres­i­dent Trump promised dur­ing his cam­paign to release assas­si­na­tion records to give Amer­i­cans the truth.”

What’s next: Despite Trump’s order, sources say, the var­i­ous intel­li­gence agen­cies with records of the assas­si­na­tion are still rec­om­mend­ing redac­tions.

* “When POTUS hears about this stonewalling, he’s gonna hit the roof,” a White House offi­cial told Axios.

* “This is total Deep State bulls**t,” said anoth­er.

* “Don’t be sur­prised if all these records just sud­den­ly wind up online,” a Trump advis­er said. “He wants to move on and call this a promise kept.”

The intrigue: The new­ly dis­cov­ered FBI files could have rel­e­vance in the ongo­ing fed­er­al law­suit filed by the Mary Fer­rell Foun­da­tion against the Biden admin­is­tra­tion in 2022. It alleges fed­er­al agen­cies had more doc­u­ments relat­ed to the assas­si­na­tion that they weren’t turn­ing over to the Nation­al Archives. They include:

* Jail­house record­ings of mob­ster Car­los Mar­cel­lo, who claimed he was involved in the assas­si­na­tion.

* CIA files of George Joan­nides. He was the chief of covert action at the CIA sta­tion in Mia­mi and was a case offi­cer for a New Orleans-based CIA-fund­ed exile group that had a series of encoun­ters with Oswald before the shoot­ing. Joan­nides also was accused of mis­lead­ing a House com­mit­tee inves­ti­gat­ing the assas­si­na­tion by fail­ing to dis­close his ties to Oswald. “The Joan­nides file sounds exact­ly like the new­ly dis­cov­ered FBI files,” Mor­ley said. “It’s some­thing assas­si­na­tion-relat­ed that was nev­er turned over to the Archives.”

———–

“Scoop: FBI finds secret JFK assas­si­na­tion records after Trump order” by Marc Caputo; Axios; 02/11/2025

“The FBI just dis­cov­ered about 2,400 records tied to Pres­i­dent Kennedy’s assas­si­na­tion that were nev­er pro­vid­ed to a board tasked with review­ing and dis­clos­ing the doc­u­ments, Axios has learned.”

2400 doc­u­ments that were nev­er turned over to the assas­si­na­tion review board for mys­te­ri­ous rea­sons. Rea­sons that are pre­sum­ably going to remain a mys­tery. What’s in these doc­u­ments? We don’t know. The sto­ry is based on three anony­mous sources who haven’t actu­al­ly seen the doc­u­ments. So peo­ple inside the Trump admin­is­tra­tion are being warned by the FBI about all these new doc­u­ments, but no one has been told what they con­tain. Which is a reminder that the most incrim­i­nat­ing doc­u­ments could be ‘dis­ap­peared’ and it’s unlike­ly any­one would know. At least not any­one who was­n’t involved with the dis­ap­pear­ances. At the same time, as we can see, these anony­mous sources are send­ing out sig­nals sug­gest­ing that Trump is very seri­ous about full dis­clo­sure, despite intel­li­gence agen­cies still rec­om­mend­ing redac­tions. We have pub­lic expec­ta­tions get­ting set through anony­mous sources assur­ing the pub­lic that all will be revealed, despite these sources not actu­al­ly know­ing what’s in the doc­u­ments. It’s the kind of polit­i­cal the­atrics seem­ing­ly designed to pro­mote a ‘promis­es kept’ nar­ra­tive despite us not actu­al­ly hav­ing a com­pelling rea­son to assume all of these files will ulti­mate­ly be revealed or haven’t already been altered or destroyed:

...
* The exis­tence of the new doc­u­ments was dis­closed Fri­day to the White House, when the Office of the Direc­tor of Nation­al Intel­li­gence sub­mit­ted its plan to dis­close the assas­si­na­tion records under Trump’s order.

Zoom in: The con­tents of the new­ly found records are close­ly held secrets. The three sources who relayed their exis­tence to Axios said they had­n’t seen the doc­u­ments.

* But the dis­cov­ery of thou­sands of records on one of the most scru­ti­nized events in U.S. his­to­ry is like­ly to raise ques­tions about the pro­ce­dures for vet­ting and releas­ing infor­ma­tion across the entire gov­ern­ment.

...

The big pic­ture: Trump has regret­ted for years not releas­ing all the JFK records in his first term, accord­ing to those who have dis­cussed the mat­ter with him.

...

What’s next: Despite Trump’s order, sources say, the var­i­ous intel­li­gence agen­cies with records of the assas­si­na­tion are still rec­om­mend­ing redac­tions.

* “When POTUS hears about this stonewalling, he’s gonna hit the roof,” a White House offi­cial told Axios.

* “This is total Deep State bulls**t,” said anoth­er.

* “Don’t be sur­prised if all these records just sud­den­ly wind up online,” a Trump advis­er said. “He wants to move on and call this a promise kept.”
...

Also note one of the appar­ent rea­sons for ongo­ing calls from inside the intel­li­gence com­mu­ni­ty for the with­hold­ing of doc­u­ments: offi­cials might be unfair­ly impli­cat­ed in the con­tro­ver­sies that unfold from the dis­clo­sures. It sure would be inter­est­ing to know who exact­ly is appar­ent­ly ‘unfair­ly impli­cat­ed’ in these yet-to-be-dis­closed doc­u­ments because that sounds like an admis­sion that there is some very incrim­i­nat­ing evi­dence yet to be reveal. But we can’t know because that would unfair­ly impli­cate them, accord­ing to this log­ic:

...
Real­i­ty check: The remain­ing records to be dis­closed — as well as the new­ly dis­cov­ered tranche of 2,400 reports — are unlike­ly to defin­i­tive­ly prove whether Lee Har­vey Oswald was the lone-wolf assas­sin or was part of a broad­er con­spir­a­cy, experts say.

...

* When Trump was pres­i­dent in 2017, he delayed dis­clo­sure of the records the gov­ern­ment had iden­ti­fied, on the advice of the CIA. Pres­i­dent Biden then ordered lim­it­ed releas­es of records that still did­n’t ful­ly com­ply with the spir­it of the JFK Records Act.

* Gov­ern­ment secre­cy advo­cates argued to Trump and Biden that full dis­clo­sure of the assas­si­na­tion doc­u­ments could com­pro­mise “sources and meth­ods” of intel­li­gence gath­er­ing, and unfair­ly impli­cate offi­cials involved in the con­tro­ver­sy.
...

And as we can see, the new­ly dis­cov­ered files aren’t just rel­e­vant in rela­tion to Pres­i­dent Trump’s dis­clo­sure order. The Mary Fer­rell foun­da­tion has an ongo­ing law­suit from 2022 over the Biden admin­is­tra­tion’s refusal to ful­ly com­ply with the 2017 full dis­clo­sure man­date. How might this admis­sion by the FBI affect that ongo­ing law­suit? It’s some­thing to watch, espe­cial­ly since that law­suit might be our best chance of get­ting an expla­na­tion for how these doc­u­ments were ‘lost’ in the first place. And as the law­suit alleged, that includes doc­u­ments like the jail­house record­ings of Car­los Mar­cel­lo or the CIA files of George Joan­nides. If those files real­ly have been with­held from the pub­lic all these decades, they must either con­tain some very sen­si­tive ‘sources and meth­ods’ con­tent or are con­tra­dic­to­ry of the offi­cial ‘lone gun­man’ nar­ra­tive:

...
* “This is huge. It shows the FBI is tak­ing this seri­ous­ly,” said Jef­fer­son Mor­ley, an expert on the assas­si­na­tion and vice pres­i­dent of the non­par­ti­san Mary Fer­rell Foun­da­tion, the nation’s largest source of online records of Kennedy’s killing. He sued the U.S. gov­ern­ment for more records.

...

The intrigue: The new­ly dis­cov­ered FBI files could have rel­e­vance in the ongo­ing fed­er­al law­suit filed by the Mary Fer­rell Foun­da­tion against the Biden admin­is­tra­tion in 2022. It alleges fed­er­al agen­cies had more doc­u­ments relat­ed to the assas­si­na­tion that they weren’t turn­ing over to the Nation­al Archives. They include:

* Jail­house record­ings of mob­ster Car­los Mar­cel­lo, who claimed he was involved in the assas­si­na­tion.

* CIA files of George Joan­nides. He was the chief of covert action at the CIA sta­tion in Mia­mi and was a case offi­cer for a New Orleans-based CIA-fund­ed exile group that had a series of encoun­ters with Oswald before the shoot­ing. Joan­nides also was accused of mis­lead­ing a House com­mit­tee inves­ti­gat­ing the assas­si­na­tion by fail­ing to dis­close his ties to Oswald. “The Joan­nides file sounds exact­ly like the new­ly dis­cov­ered FBI files,” Mor­ley said. “It’s some­thing assas­si­na­tion-relat­ed that was nev­er turned over to the Archives.”
...

This is also a good time to recall how an ear­li­er FOIA suit by More­ly to learn more about Joan­nides was blocked by Brett Kavanaugh short­ly before his Supreme Court nom­i­na­tion hear­ings. And then there’s the evi­dence that Joan­nides was at the Ambas­sador Hotel on the night of the RFK assas­si­na­tion. Is evi­dence of Joan­nides’s ties to Oswald going to final­ly be revealed as a result of Trump’s exec­u­tive order? We’ll see, but as the fol­low­ing arti­cle warns, we should­n’t assume the archive of doc­u­ments Trump ordered be ful­ly released is the only archive of rel­e­vant doc­u­ments. The order only includes doc­u­ments in the Nation­al Archives, and as Jef­fer­son Mor­ley warns, the CIA still has hun­dreds of oth­er records in its pos­ses­sion like CIA sit­u­a­tion reports on Cuban exiles in Flori­da. Beyond that, some doc­u­ments are held by the Kennedy fam­i­ly and oth­er pri­vate col­lec­tions. And as More­ly also warns, there’s no dead­line for the even­tu­al release, mean­ing this could all be the­atrics designed to give a ‘promis­es kept’ nar­ra­tive while the can is once again kicked down the road:

Dai­ly Mail

Secret JFK doc­u­ments ‘to unveil role of mys­te­ri­ous CIA oper­a­tive’ knew pres­i­den­t’s assas­sin

By NICK ALLEN FOR DAILYMAIL.COM

Pub­lished: 11:26 EST, 11 Feb­ru­ary 2025 | Updat­ed: 12:04 EST, 11 Feb­ru­ary 2025

New­ly unearthed secret JFK assas­si­na­tion doc­u­ments may include files on a CIA spy chief with a murky role in the affair, it has emerged.

The CIA man based in Mia­mi fund­ed a group of Cuban exiles, which assas­sin Lee Har­vey Oswald tried to infil­trate weeks before he shot the pres­i­dent in Dal­las on Novem­ber 22, 1963.

On Mon­day, it was revealed by Axios that the FBI had unearthed 2,400 new doc­u­ments that could shed light on the endur­ing mys­tery of JFK’s death.

...

Accord­ing to Jef­fer­son Mor­ley, a lead­ing expert on the assas­si­na­tion, the new doc­u­ments could include files on George Joan­nides, who was chief of covert action at the CIA’s sta­tion in Mia­mi in 1963.

Joan­nides, who died in 1990, was also case offi­cer for a group of anti-Cas­tro stu­dents called the the Cuban Stu­dent Direc­torate, which had sev­er­al inter­ac­tions with Oswald, and received fund­ing from the CIA.

The spy’s per­son­nel file, which has pre­vi­ous­ly been released, showed he was ‘chief of the psy­cho­log­i­cal war­fare branch’ of the CIA’s sta­tion in Mia­mi in 1963, with a staff of 24 and a bud­get of $1.5 mil­lion, accord­ing to Mor­ley.

JFK inves­ti­ga­tors have long been intrigued by Joan­nides — whose code­name was ‘Howard’ — and want­ed to know more about him.

They also want to know more about whether ele­ments of the CIA, in the wake of the JFK assas­si­na­tion, used the Cuban Stu­dent Direc­torate to pro­mote pro­pa­gan­da and a poten­tial U.S. inva­sion of Cuba.

It has pre­vi­ous­ly been spec­u­lat­ed that hun­dreds of pages of doc­u­ments relat­ing to the episode may still exist.

Some Trump insid­ers are report­ed­ly con­cerned that the dis­cov­ery of the new doc­u­ments could be a stalling tac­tic to delay Trump’s ordered release.

But Trump is deter­mined to release them all.

...

A col­lec­tion of over 5 mil­lion gov­ern­ment records at the Nation­al Archives was required to be opened by 2017, unless there were any exemp­tions des­ig­nat­ed by the pres­i­dent.

But about 3,600 of those records still have redac­tions and haven’t yet been ful­ly released.

As he ordered their declas­si­fi­ca­tion with the stroke of a pen in the Oval Office, Trump said: ‘All will be revealed.’

...

The most recent releas­es includ­ed CIA cables and mem­os record­ing vis­its by Oswald to the Cuban and Sovi­et embassies in Mex­i­co City weeks before the assas­si­na­tion.

Oth­er rev­e­la­tions that could be includ­ed in doc­u­ments still to be release include:

The Cuban assas­sin

One of the biggest redact­ed gaps in the Nation­al Archives records is in an FBI file assem­bled on Her­minio Diaz, a Cuban assas­sin who is believed to have killed up 20 peo­ple and tar­get­ed polit­i­cal fig­ures.

The file on Diaz starts in 1957 when he was involved in a plot to assas­si­nate the pres­i­dent of Cos­ta Rica.

It runs to 30 pages but more than a dozen pages remain redact­ed.

Diaz was killed in 1966 while attempt­ing to assas­si­nate Fidel Cas­tro.

He had entered the Unit­ed States in the sum­mer of 1963, short­ly before the JFK assas­si­na­tion, and it is known the CIA had con­tact with him.

He was giv­en polit­i­cal asy­lum and lived in Flori­da.

Also already known is that Tony Cues­ta, anoth­er man involved in the 1966 Cas­tro plot with Diaz, sur­vived after attempt­ing to com­mit sui­cide with a hand grenade.

Cues­ta was then befriend­ed by a fel­low inmate in prison, Reinal­do Mar­tinez Gomez.

Decades lat­er, Gomez went pub­lic, say­ing that Cues­ta told him Diaz con­fessed to being involved in the JFK assas­si­na­tion.

Gomez said he want­ed to ‘get (it) off his chest’ before he him­self died.

Diaz’s known polit­i­cal hits also involved mur­der­ing a senior secu­ri­ty offi­cial inside the Cuban con­sulate in Mex­i­co in 1948.

The ques­tion remains — what is in over a dozen pages of redac­tions in his FBI file?

The secret memo on the CIA

Five months before the JFK assas­si­na­tion Arthur Schlesinger Jr., Kennedy’s speech­writer and advis­er, wrote a secret five-page memo addressed: MEMORANDUM FOR THE PRESIDIENT.

The memo was titled: ‘CIA Reor­ga­ni­za­tion’.

It was writ­ten short­ly after the dis­as­trous Bay of Pigs inva­sion of Cuba and around the time Kennedy declared is inten­tion to ‘splin­ter the CIA into a thou­sand pieces and scat­ter it into the winds.’

While some of the five-page memo has been released, one-and-a-half pages remain redact­ed.

‘The page is about why JFK was alien­at­ed from the CIA, that’s very impor­tant,’ Jef­fer­son Mor­ley, a renowned JFK assas­si­na­tion expert who has writ­ten three books on the CIA, told DailyMail.com.

The blanked-out sec­tion comes just before a dis­cus­sion of the CIA and ‘para­mil­i­tary war­fare.’

In the unredact­ed parts of the memo Schlesinger sug­gests to Pres­i­dent Kennedy that he break up the CIA.

...

Schlesinger wrote: ‘An agency ded­i­cat­ed to clan­des­tine activ­i­ty can afford damn few vis­i­ble errors.’

The CIA had ‘about used up its quo­ta’ and ‘its mar­gin for future error is prac­ti­cal­ly non-exis­tent.’

Schlesinger wrote: ‘One more CIA deba­cle will shake faith con­sid­er­ably in U.S. pol­i­cy, at home as well as abroad.’

The CIA had too much auton­o­my and was ‘cor­rupt­ing the prin­ci­ples and prac­tices of our soci­ety,’ the memo went on.

He said its oper­a­tions should have to receive a green light from the State Depart­ment. effec­tive­ly remov­ing the CIA’s inde­pen­dence.

The memo makes clear that the CIA was on the chop­ping block under Pres­i­dent Kennedy and pro­vides fuel for those who claim the agency was involved in the assas­si­na­tion.

In addi­tion to pre­serv­ing its own exis­tence and pow­er, ele­ments of the CIA were said to object to what they saw as Kennedy’s weak­ness against com­mu­nism.

When the redact­ed part is released it could add to the the­o­ry that the CIA was either involved, or turned a blind eye to, a plot to kill the pres­i­dent.

What was Oswald doing in Mex­i­co before the assas­si­na­tion?

It is known JFK assas­sin Lee Har­vey Oswald trav­eled to Mex­i­co just weeks before the shoot­ing to get visas for t he Sovi­et Union and Cuba.

How­ev­er. of all the JFK files at the Nation­al Archives, the doc­u­ment with the most remain­ing redac­tions con­cerns that trip.

The CIA had Oswald under sur­veil­lance dur­ing the six-day vis­it.

It was bug­ging the Sovi­et and Cuban embassies and record­ed his inter­ac­tions with offi­cials there.

Win Scott, the CIA’s Mex­i­co City sta­tion chief lat­er wrote that ‘every piece of infor­ma­tion con­cern­ing Lee Har­vey Oswald was report­ed imme­di­ate­ly after it was received’ to the CIA head­quar­ters.

It includ­ed ‘the entire con­ver­sa­tion Oswald had from the Cuban Con­sulate with the Sovi­et Embassy.’

A doc­u­ment of more than 70 pages detail­ing CIA oper­a­tions in Mex­i­co is includ­ed in the JFK files released so far.

But swathes of it are redact­ed with numer­ous ‘Secret’ mark­ings.

Those seek­ing the full truth of what Oswald did in Mex­i­co, and who he may have met there, are eager­ly await­ing release of the full doc­u­ment.

Will this be the end of the JFK assas­si­na­tion saga?

Trump’s exec­u­tive order may not cov­er all the records asso­ci­at­ed with the JFK assas­si­na­tion.

There are numer­ous oth­er records not held by the Nation­al Archives.

Accord­ing to Mor­ley the CIA still has ‘hun­dreds’ of oth­er records, and oth­ers are with the Kennedy fam­i­ly.

And there are records of an inter­view with Jack­ie Kennedy in a pri­vate col­lec­tion, in which she details her view on the lone gun­man the­o­ry.

‘These doc­u­ments need to be part of the exec­u­tive order,’ Mor­ley told DailyMail.com

‘They should be pub­lic now, there’s no legit­i­mate nation­al secu­ri­ty infor­ma­tion in here.’

Oth­er secret doc­u­ments include CIA ‘sit­u­a­tion reports’ on Cuban exiles in Flori­da.

Trump’s order gave the Direc­tor of Nation­al Intel­li­gence and Attor­ney Gen­er­al 15 days to come up with a plan for releas­ing the remain­ing doc­u­ments at the Nation­al Archives.

How­ev­er, there is no dead­line for actu­al­ly releas­ing them, which Mor­ley said meant the ‘can could be kicked down the road.’

Experts said it was ‘pos­si­ble’ the doc­u­ments would reveal valu­able new infor­ma­tion.

...

———–

“Secret JFK doc­u­ments ‘to unveil role of mys­te­ri­ous CIA oper­a­tive’ knew pres­i­den­t’s assas­sin” By NICK ALLEN; Dai­ly Mail; 02/11/2025

“Some Trump insid­ers are report­ed­ly con­cerned that the dis­cov­ery of the new doc­u­ments could be a stalling tac­tic to delay Trump’s ordered release.”

Is this all stalling the­atrics? Make a big splash with the exec­u­tive orders and report­ing on the plans for dis­clo­sure, while just kick­ing the can down the road? That’s what experts like Mary Far­rel’s Jef­fer­son Mor­ley fears, giv­en that there’s no dead­line in the order:

...
Will this be the end of the JFK assas­si­na­tion saga?

Trump’s exec­u­tive order may not cov­er all the records asso­ci­at­ed with the JFK assas­si­na­tion.

There are numer­ous oth­er records not held by the Nation­al Archives.

Accord­ing to Mor­ley the CIA still has ‘hun­dreds’ of oth­er records, and oth­ers are with the Kennedy fam­i­ly.

And there are records of an inter­view with Jack­ie Kennedy in a pri­vate col­lec­tion, in which she details her view on the lone gun­man the­o­ry.

‘These doc­u­ments need to be part of the exec­u­tive order,’ Mor­ley told DailyMail.com

‘They should be pub­lic now, there’s no legit­i­mate nation­al secu­ri­ty infor­ma­tion in here.’

Oth­er secret doc­u­ments include CIA ‘sit­u­a­tion reports’ on Cuban exiles in Flori­da.

Trump’s order gave the Direc­tor of Nation­al Intel­li­gence and Attor­ney Gen­er­al 15 days to come up with a plan for releas­ing the remain­ing doc­u­ments at the Nation­al Archives.

How­ev­er, there is no dead­line for actu­al­ly releas­ing them, which Mor­ley said meant the ‘can could be kicked down the road.’

Experts said it was ‘pos­si­ble’ the doc­u­ments would reveal valu­able new infor­ma­tion.
...

But also note how we already know so much about this his­to­ry that experts have a pret­ty good idea of what should be in these still-unre­leased files. Like infor­ma­tion on whether or not the CIA was aware George Joan­nides’s psy­cho­log­i­cal oper­a­tions out­fit was in con­tact with Oswald. We know what should be in these files. And the intel­li­gence com­mu­ni­ty knows we know. That’s part of the the­atrics at play here: there are expec­ta­tions that must be met for this to be a plau­si­ble ‘final sto­ry’ on the issue:

...
Accord­ing to Jef­fer­son Mor­ley, a lead­ing expert on the assas­si­na­tion, the new doc­u­ments could include files on George Joan­nides, who was chief of covert action at the CIA’s sta­tion in Mia­mi in 1963.

Joan­nides, who died in 1990, was also case offi­cer for a group of anti-Cas­tro stu­dents called the the Cuban Stu­dent Direc­torate, which had sev­er­al inter­ac­tions with Oswald, and received fund­ing from the CIA.

The spy’s per­son­nel file, which has pre­vi­ous­ly been released, showed he was ‘chief of the psy­cho­log­i­cal war­fare branch’ of the CIA’s sta­tion in Mia­mi in 1963, with a staff of 24 and a bud­get of $1.5 mil­lion, accord­ing to Mor­ley.

JFK inves­ti­ga­tors have long been intrigued by Joan­nides — whose code­name was ‘Howard’ — and want­ed to know more about him.

They also want to know more about whether ele­ments of the CIA, in the wake of the JFK assas­si­na­tion, used the Cuban Stu­dent Direc­torate to pro­mote pro­pa­gan­da and a poten­tial U.S. inva­sion of Cuba.

It has pre­vi­ous­ly been spec­u­lat­ed that hun­dreds of pages of doc­u­ments relat­ing to the episode may still exist.
...

And then there’s the giant gap found in the FBI file on Harminio Diaz, some­one who a wit­ness claimed admit­ted to tak­ing part in the assas­si­na­tion. It’s worth not­ing that Diaz is on the list of the like­ly shoot­ers in that mas­sive list of sus­pect­ed post­ed by Mon­ty. It’s a reminder that the lack of dis­clo­sure thus far isn’t lim­it­ed to yet-to-be-revealed doc­u­ments. Plen­ty of already-released doc­u­ments are full of redac­tions that need to be unredact­ed too:

...
The Cuban assas­sin

One of the biggest redact­ed gaps in the Nation­al Archives records is in an FBI file assem­bled on Her­minio Diaz, a Cuban assas­sin who is believed to have killed up 20 peo­ple and tar­get­ed polit­i­cal fig­ures.

The file on Diaz starts in 1957 when he was involved in a plot to assas­si­nate the pres­i­dent of Cos­ta Rica.

It runs to 30 pages but more than a dozen pages remain redact­ed.

Diaz was killed in 1966 while attempt­ing to assas­si­nate Fidel Cas­tro.

He had entered the Unit­ed States in the sum­mer of 1963, short­ly before the JFK assas­si­na­tion, and it is known the CIA had con­tact with him.

He was giv­en polit­i­cal asy­lum and lived in Flori­da.

Also already known is that Tony Cues­ta, anoth­er man involved in the 1966 Cas­tro plot with Diaz, sur­vived after attempt­ing to com­mit sui­cide with a hand grenade.

Cues­ta was then befriend­ed by a fel­low inmate in prison, Reinal­do Mar­tinez Gomez.

Decades lat­er, Gomez went pub­lic, say­ing that Cues­ta told him Diaz con­fessed to being involved in the JFK assas­si­na­tion.

Gomez said he want­ed to ‘get (it) off his chest’ before he him­self died.

Diaz’s known polit­i­cal hits also involved mur­der­ing a senior secu­ri­ty offi­cial inside the Cuban con­sulate in Mex­i­co in 1948.

The ques­tion remains — what is in over a dozen pages of redac­tions in his FBI file?
...

Final­ly, note how the doc­u­ments of inter­est­ing aren’t just FBI and CIA doc­u­ments. There’s Kennedy White House doc­u­ments that also have yet to be ful­ly revealed, like the ‘CIA Reor­ga­ni­za­tion’ memo writ­ten by Arthur Schlesinger Jr. where he sug­gests Kennedy break up the CIA. The pub­lic has yet to see those redact­ed parts, but we can be con­fi­dent the CIA knows what’s in that full memo. Are we going to final­ly get to see that com­plete memo?

...
The secret memo on the CIA

Five months before the JFK assas­si­na­tion Arthur Schlesinger Jr., Kennedy’s speech­writer and advis­er, wrote a secret five-page memo addressed: MEMORANDUM FOR THE PRESIDIENT.

The memo was titled: ‘CIA Reor­ga­ni­za­tion’.

It was writ­ten short­ly after the dis­as­trous Bay of Pigs inva­sion of Cuba and around the time Kennedy declared is inten­tion to ‘splin­ter the CIA into a thou­sand pieces and scat­ter it into the winds.’

While some of the five-page memo has been released, one-and-a-half pages remain redact­ed.

‘The page is about why JFK was alien­at­ed from the CIA, that’s very impor­tant,’ Jef­fer­son Mor­ley, a renowned JFK assas­si­na­tion expert who has writ­ten three books on the CIA, told DailyMail.com.

The blanked-out sec­tion comes just before a dis­cus­sion of the CIA and ‘para­mil­i­tary war­fare.’

In the unredact­ed parts of the memo Schlesinger sug­gests to Pres­i­dent Kennedy that he break up the CIA.

...

Schlesinger wrote: ‘An agency ded­i­cat­ed to clan­des­tine activ­i­ty can afford damn few vis­i­ble errors.’

The CIA had ‘about used up its quo­ta’ and ‘its mar­gin for future error is prac­ti­cal­ly non-exis­tent.’

Schlesinger wrote: ‘One more CIA deba­cle will shake faith con­sid­er­ably in U.S. pol­i­cy, at home as well as abroad.’

The CIA had too much auton­o­my and was ‘cor­rupt­ing the prin­ci­ples and prac­tices of our soci­ety,’ the memo went on.

He said its oper­a­tions should have to receive a green light from the State Depart­ment. effec­tive­ly remov­ing the CIA’s inde­pen­dence.

The memo makes clear that the CIA was on the chop­ping block under Pres­i­dent Kennedy and pro­vides fuel for those who claim the agency was involved in the assas­si­na­tion.

In addi­tion to pre­serv­ing its own exis­tence and pow­er, ele­ments of the CIA were said to object to what they saw as Kennedy’s weak­ness against com­mu­nism.

When the redact­ed part is released it could add to the the­o­ry that the CIA was either involved, or turned a blind eye to, a plot to kill the pres­i­dent.
...

Giv­en every­thing we know today about the CIA’s his­to­ry of treat­ment towards world lead­ers it deter­mined had a ‘weak­ness against com­mu­nism’, it almost would have been odd had the CIA not decid­ed to remove Kennedy from office. And that’s before we fac­tor in the ‘splin­ter the CIA into a thou­sand pieces and scat­ter it into the winds’ memo. Are we going to learn about about the CIA’s con­cerns about Kennedy’s soft­ness towards com­mu­nism when all these files are released? It would be odd if we did­n’t. And yet, it would be beyond plau­si­ble to imag­ine the vol­un­tary release of any doc­u­ments that strong­ly sug­gest CIA cul­pa­bil­i­ty in Kennedy’s assas­si­na­tion.

Decades of cir­cum­stan­tial evi­dence points strong­ly towards CIA respon­si­bil­i­ty. And while we can’t real­is­ti­cal­ly expect any sort of ‘smok­ing gun’ reveal­ing that cul­pa­bil­i­ty, we can cer­tain­ly expect more cir­cum­stan­tial evi­dence. But that’s assum­ing all these doc­u­ments are even­tu­al­ly released. Promis­es made. Promis­es not yet kept. Let the pre­emp­tive cel­e­bra­tions and oth­er the­atrics com­mence.

It keeps get­ting more inter­est­ing. And per­plex­ing: the Trump admin­is­tra­tion’s pledge to dis­close long-stand­ing state secrets of pub­lic inter­est appears to have a new con­gres­sion­al coun­ter­part. Yes, a new con­gres­sion­al task force has just been declared. And this task force isn’t just promis­ing to dis­close doc­u­ments found in archives. The lead­ers of the com­mis­sion appear to promis­ing new inves­ti­ga­tions into these chap­ters of his­to­ry. Chap­ters rang­ing from the assas­si­na­tions of JFK and MLK, to 9/11, the ori­gins of COVID, and even the Jef­frey Epstein sto­ry. In fact, the new of the task force, Flori­da Rep­re­sen­ta­tive Anna Pauli­na Luna, has even said she wants to inter­view the still-liv­ing attend­ing physi­cians who over­saw the ini­tial med­ical treat­ment of JFK after he was shot, which is pre­sum­ably a ref­er­ence to rev­e­la­tions dis­closed in a 2023 doc­u­men­tary JFK: What the Doc­tors Saw where sur­viv­ing mem­bers of that med­ical team recount­ed the com­pelling foren­sic evi­dence for mul­ti­ple shoot­ers and the coverup they were forced to impose. This is a good time to recall that Sep­tem­ber 2023 sto­ry about the inter­view ER nurse Phyl­lis J. Hall gave back in 2013 about wit­ness a “pris­tine bul­let” sit­ting on JFK’s stretch­er next to his head, an account that backed up the 2023 account from Secret Ser­vice agent Paul Lan­dis — who was pro­tect­ing JFK’s lim­ou­sine — that not only refut­ed the “mag­ic bul­let” nar­ra­tive but also strong­ly point­ed towards shots com­ing from the front. As we’re going to see, Rep. Luna has come out say­ing she believes mul­ti­ple shoot­ers were involved. And she just might be able to pro­vide eye wit­ness tes­ti­mo­ny of that in com­ing months. This new con­gres­sion­al task force is poten­tial­ly a very big deal. A big deal that, of course, is com­ing at the same time the remain­ing archives on these assas­si­na­tions are pur­port­ed­ly going to be final­ly revealed under Trump’s exec­u­tive order. Epstein’s client list might also be revealed too, accord­ing to Rep Luna.

Big bold promis­es are being made by Rep. Luna. Which makes this a good time to recall that bizarre sto­ry from back in 2021 about an appar­ent assas­si­na­tion plot against Luna her­self. That would be the sto­ry of how Luna’s rival in the 2022 GOP con­gres­sion­al pri­ma­ry, William Brad­dock, was record­ed telling anoth­er local Repub­li­can to stay away from Luna because Brad­dock was going to have his ‘Russ­ian Ukrain­ian’ mafia friends assas­si­nate Luna. Why did Luna need to be assas­si­nat­ed? Well, accord­ing to Braddock’s expla­na­tion dur­ing the phone call, Luna didn’t stand a chance of win­ning in the high­ly com­pet­i­tive dis­trict. Luna had lost her 2020 con­gres­sion­al race but went on to win the 2022 race. It’s a chill­ing reminder about the mafia-like nature of con­tem­po­rary GOP pol­i­tics.

Now, giv­en that all these big bold promis­es are being made by far right Repub­li­cans, we’re faced with the same under­ly­ing ques­tion sur­round­ing Trump’s own promis­es to make all these his­toric dis­clo­sures: how can these far right mafia-like politi­cians pos­si­ble be expect­ed to hon­est­ly treat top­ics that are vir­tu­al­ly all con­spir­a­cies per­pe­trat­ed by pow­er­ful far right net­works? The answer, of course, is we can’t trust them to hon­est­ly han­dle this enor­mous task. But that’s not going to stop them from going ahead with it. It’s a his­toric oppor­tu­ni­ty to inject far right dis­tor­tions and white­wash­ing offi­cial­ly into our under­stand­ing of our own his­to­ry, after all. They’re not going to pass up this oppor­tu­ni­ty.

Part of what makes this new task force such as bizarre devel­op­ment is the bizarre biog­ra­phy of the per­son lead­ing it. A biog­ra­phy that appears to have under­gone a white­wash­ing of its own. Because Rep. Luna appears to have expe­ri­enced what can be can­did­ly referred to as some sort of iden­ti­ty cri­sis. A cri­sis that start­ed after he start­ed her career in pol­i­tics as the direc­tor of His­pan­ic out­reach for the far right Turn­ing Points USA out­fit. It sounds like Turn­ing Point’s founder, CNP mem­ber Char­lie Kirk, per­son­al­ly recruit­ed her for the job. Kirk’s appar­ent spon­sor­ship of her polit­i­cal rise is notable in that is puts her more direct­ly in the orbit of the Coun­cil for Nation­al Pol­i­cy (CNP) fac­tion of the GOP. The Chris­t­ian Nation­al­ist theo­crat­ic fac­tion that played a key role in plan­ning the Jan­u­ary 6 Capi­tol insur­rec­tion, planned Project 2025, and is effec­tive­ly the dom­i­nant fac­tion of both MAGA and the Repub­li­can Par­ty at this point. So it’s also worth not­ing that one of Rep. Luna’s first acts as a new mem­ber of Con­gress in Jan­u­ary of 2023 was to align her­self with the fac­tion of Repub­li­cans who forced that polit­i­cal­ly awk­ward 14 rounds of vot­ing in order to elect Kevin McCarthy as the Speak­er of the House. An ‘make hell for McCarthy’ fac­tion that was effec­tive­ly orga­nized by the CNP. That’s part of the con­text of Rep. Luna’s Kirk-back polit­i­cal career.

And as we’re going to see, up until the point when she start­ed that career as Turn­ing Point’s His­pan­ic out­reach direc­tor she was­n’t Anna Pauli­na Luna. She was Anna Pauli­na May­er­hofer. In fact, her 2015 vot­er reg­is­tra­tion form lists her eth­nic­i­ty as “White, not of His­pan­ic ori­gin”. It was only after tak­ing that posi­tion at Turn­ing Point that she changed her last name to Luna and in 2019 her vot­er reg­is­tra­tion eth­nic­i­ty was updat­ed to His­pan­ic. Lat­er, her moth­er also changed her name to include Luna too. It appears the embrace of their His­pan­ic her­itage has very much been a mother/daughter project, along with the era­sure of the May­er­hofer side of the fam­i­ly in Luna’s upbring­ing.

Now, in fair­ness, it’s not like Rep Luna has no His­pan­ic her­itage and was just mak­ing that all up. Her mom, Mon­i­ca, is His­pan­ic and Luna was Mon­i­ca’s moth­er’s last name. But the puz­zles around Luna’s biog­ra­phy aren’t lim­it­ed to this polit­i­cal­ly con­ve­nient sur­name-switch. Luna’s work for Turn­ing Points in 2018 quick­ly turned into a 2020 con­gres­sion­al run, which she lost before ulti­mate­ly win­ning in 2022. And as part of that polit­i­cal per­sona, Luna insist­ed that she had grown up in pover­ty, raised by a sin­gle-moth­er and with vir­tu­al­ly no oth­er sup­port. Her father, George May­er­hofer, was a drug addict in and out of prison dur­ing her child­hood. That’s the nar­ra­tive she ran on but it’s a nar­ra­tive her extend­ed fam­i­ly oth­er her father’s side dis­putes. Instead, they claim she was giv­en exten­sive extend­ed fam­i­ly sup­port and were very much a part of her life grow­ing up. It’s a dis­pute her uncle, Edward May­er­hofer, even made pub­lic on social media dur­ing her con­gres­sion­al runs, result­ing in Luna fil­ing an stalk­ing injunc­tion against her uncle. Edward’s daugh­ter, Nicole, is now sim­i­lar­ly estrange from the cousin she grew up with over these dis­putes.

Oth­er bio­graph­ic dis­putes include Luna’s claims that she was actu­al­ly raised as Mes­sian­ic Jew by her father, and even has a small amount of Ashke­nazi Jew­ish ances­try. It’s a claim made in an inter­view with Jew­ish Insid­er, made all the more inter­est­ing by her pri­or claims that her father was­n’t actu­al­ly part of her child­hood. Notably, her moth­er does con­cur that her father did even­tu­al­ly get involved with Mes­sian­ic Judaism after clean­ing him­self up from his drug addic­tion. And yet three mem­ber of the extend­ed fam­i­ly tell reporters they have no rec­ol­lec­tion of this Mes­sian­ic Jew­ish phase and that her father was instead a Catholic. Is this some sort of bio­graph­ic embell­ish­ment done pure­ly for crass polit­i­cal appeal? Or some­thing else?

And then we get to the dis­pute over her grand­fa­ther, Nicholas May­er­hofer. As we’re going to see, Luna claims her grand­fa­ther had no role at all in her upbring­ing. And yet, accord­ing to rel­a­tives, Nicholas would pick his grand­fa­ther up from day­care when her moth­er was busy with class­es, which would appear be to anoth­er exam­ple of how this extend­ed fam­i­ly from her father’s side was very much a part of her child­hood.

Why the deci­sion to excise this grand­fa­ther from her biog­ra­phy? Again, is this just crass pol­i­tics? Maybe, but there’s anoth­er pos­si­ble motive at work here: Nicholas has an inter­est­ing biog­ra­phy of his own in that he served in the Wehrma­cht in Nazi Ger­many in the 1940s while he was a teenag­er. Luna’s moth­er insists she nev­er knew any­thing about her father-in-laws’s his­to­ry in the Nazi mil­i­tary. But as we should prob­a­bly expect, her extend­ed fam­i­ly claim Luna’s grand­fa­ther was always very open about this chap­ter in his his­to­ry.

Now, it’s impor­tant to point out that we have zero indi­ca­tions that her grand­fa­ther was an ide­o­log­i­cal Nazi or par­tic­i­pat­ed in war crimes. Instead, he appar­ent­ly was just draft­ed and felt like he had no choice and did­n’t hold big­ot­ed or anti­se­mit­ic beliefs, accord­ing to the extend­ed fam­i­ly. So it does­n’t sound like Luna is some­how cov­er­ing up a Nazi influ­ence from her child­hood. Or at least we have no direct evi­dence of that. But there’s also no deny­ing the sad real­i­ty that Rep Luna, as a MAGA-mem­ber of today’s GOP, is now oper­at­ing in a Nazi-adja­cent role and has sur­round­ed her­self with many far right fel­low trav­el­ers.

There’s anoth­er bio­graph­ic dis­crep­an­cy that does­n’t involved Luna’s fam­i­ly but does involve her capac­i­ty for pub­licly dis­tort­ing the truth: Accord­ing to the nar­ra­tive that has emerged as she’s become a pub­lic fig­ure, Rep. Luna had an expe­ri­ence that inflict­ing “endur­ing trau­ma” on her dur­ing her time serv­ing in the Air Force at White­man Air Force Base. An endur­ing trau­ma that shaped her world­view to this day: One night, at 4 a.m. she woke up to a home inva­sion of her apart­ment by her land­lord. As Luna recount­ed in 2019 on her Youtube chan­nel, “Had my friend Jere­my not been there to pro­tect me, I’m pret­ty sure I wouldn’t be stand­ing right here in front of you guys right now...[My land­lord] was not break­ing into my house at 4 a.m. to see how I was doing.” She pret­ty clear­ly pub­licly accused her then-land­lord of mur­der­ous intent. And yet, accord­ing to her then-room­mate, the pair had indeed been expe­ri­enc­ing a prob­lem with the lock on their back door and had asked the land­lord to fix it. But the only break in that the room­mate recalls is one that hap­pened dur­ing the day while the two were stay­ing else­where while the door was get­ting fixed. And the police report from that break in sup­ports the room­mate’s account. Again, Rep. Luna pub­licly accused her old land­lord of try­ing to mur­der her one night as part of her polit­i­cal ambi­tions and it appears to be a com­plete fab­ri­ca­tion.

That’s all part of what makes this sto­ry about the new Rep. Luna-led con­gres­sion­al ‘state secrets’ task force such a bizarre new devel­op­ment. Some sort of con­gres­sion­al task force of this nature is long over­due. But it’s hard to imag­ine some­one less qual­i­fied to lead it. Well, ok, it’s not actu­al­ly that hard to imag­ine some­one less qual­i­fied to lead it. Near­ly about any mem­ber of today’s Repub­li­can cau­cus will like­ly be just as duti­ful in white­wash­ing the far right con­nec­tions to all of these still-undis­closed chap­ters of his­to­ry. Rep. Luna bio­graph­ic mys­ter­ies just makes her a lit­tle less qual­i­fied than the rest of her fel­low trav­el­ers. So of course that’s who get tapped to run this:

The Inde­pen­dent

New con­gres­sion­al task force weighs declas­si­fy­ing Jef­frey Epstein’s ‘client list’ and oth­er gov­ern­ment secrets

The task force, led by con­gress­woman Anna Pauli­na Luna, will also inves­ti­gate the JFK assas­si­na­tion and 9/11 ter­ror­ist attacks in a bid to ‘end an era of gov­ern­ment secre­cy’

James Lid­dell
Wednes­day 12 Feb­ru­ary 2025 12:43 EST

A new con­gres­sion­al task force is weigh­ing whether to release a slew of nation­al secrets — and Jef­frey Epstein’s “client list” could be among the doc­u­ments declas­si­fied.

House Over­sight Com­mit­tee Chair­man James Com­er announced the estab­lish­ment of the inves­tiga­tive unit Tues­day. Repub­li­can Flori­da Rep. Anna Pauli­na Luna will lead the task force that will decide whether to pub­lish mate­ri­als relat­ed to fed­er­al gov­ern­ment inter­ests and “end an era of secre­cy,” the law­mak­er said.

Luna, a fierce Don­ald Trump sup­port­er who is lob­by­ing to have his face carved into Mount Rush­more, said that along with releas­ing the dis­graced financier’s con­tact list, her team will inves­ti­gate the Sep­tem­ber 11 ter­ror­ist attacks, the ori­gins of Covid-19, the assas­si­na­tions offor­mer Pres­i­dent John F Kennedy and Dr. Mar­tin Luther King Jr, and UFOs.

...

Eleven let­ters were issued to top U.S. secu­ri­ty and intel­li­gence offi­cials, with one addressed to Attor­ney Gen­er­al Pam Bon­di request­ing a brief­ing by no lat­er than next Tues­day regard­ing “what doc­u­ments (if any) are in your pos­ses­sion regard­ing the inves­ti­ga­tion into and pros­e­cu­tion of Jef­frey Epstein.”

It is not clear whether the client list dif­fer­en­ti­ates from Epstein’s pre­vi­ous­ly released black book which includes high-pro­file fig­ures includ­ing for­mer U.S. pres­i­dent Bill Clin­ton, tech stal­wart Bill Gates, and the pres­i­dent him­self. None of those pre­vi­ous­ly list­ed have ever been accused of any wrong­do­ing.

Luna said she would be open­ing the task force to both Repub­li­cans and Democ­rats, and the con­gress­woman said a first hear­ing would be held in March.

The announce­ment fol­lows Trump’s sign­ing an exec­u­tive order last month pledg­ing to declas­si­fy records sur­round­ing the assas­si­na­tions of JFK, Sen­a­tor Robert F Kennedy and Dr Mar­tin Luther King – a move which prompt­ed calls for the pres­i­dent to release the pedophile’s elu­sive list.

...

“We know he [Clin­ton] was on the plane, called the Loli­ta Express, mul­ti­ple times. He has been a con­tin­ued friend of his for many years,” Pam Bon­di, Trump’s new­ly appoint­ed attor­ney-gen­er­al, told Fox News last week – though Clin­ton has denied the claim.

“Con­trast that with Don­ald Trump, who had not spo­ken to him for over a decade after he kicked him out of Mar-a-Lago for bad behav­ior.”

...

———–

“New con­gres­sion­al task force weighs declas­si­fy­ing Jef­frey Epstein’s ‘client list’ and oth­er gov­ern­ment secrets” by James Lid­dell; The Inde­pen­dent; 02/12/2025

“The announce­ment fol­lows Trump’s sign­ing an exec­u­tive order last month pledg­ing to declas­si­fy records sur­round­ing the assas­si­na­tions of JFK, Sen­a­tor Robert F Kennedy and Dr Mar­tin Luther King – a move which prompt­ed calls for the pres­i­dent to release the pedophile’s elu­sive list.”

Well that’s a bit awk­ward: The exec­u­tive orders on the Kennedy and MLK assas­si­na­tions end­ed up gen­er­at­ing calls for the release of Jef­frey Epstein’s client list. Does that list include Don­ald Trump, the per­son Epstein described in a 2017 inter­view — released days before the 2024 elec­tion day — as his “best friend”? We will appar­ent­ly find out since the release of that client list is one of many major dis­clo­sures already promised by the leader of this new­ly announced con­gres­sion­al task force. As Repub­li­can Flori­da Rep. Anna Pauli­na Luna promis­es, the pub­lic is not just going to see the release of that client list but whole new inves­ti­ga­tion into the 9/11 attacks, the ori­gins of COVID, JFK’s and MLK’s assas­si­na­tions (no RFK?) and UFO. It’s a remark­ably bold agen­da, made all the more remark­able by the fact that it’s going to be lunatic Repub­li­cans lead­ing these inves­ti­ga­tions. What kind of warped dis­tor­tions of his­to­ry are we about to see unfold?

...
Luna, a fierce Don­ald Trump sup­port­er who is lob­by­ing to have his face carved into Mount Rush­more, said that along with releas­ing the dis­graced financier’s con­tact list, her team will inves­ti­gate the Sep­tem­ber 11 ter­ror­ist attacks, the ori­gins of Covid-19, the assas­si­na­tions offor­mer Pres­i­dent John F Kennedy and Dr. Mar­tin Luther King Jr, and UFOs.
...

And as we can see in the fol­low­ing arti­cle about the leader of this new con­gres­sion­al task force, Rep Anna Pauli­na Luna, this task force is going to be led by some­one who very much fits the ‘far right wing-nut’ mold. And as we can also see from her state­ments on the new task force, she sounds very intent on lead­ing new inves­ti­ga­tions into all of these long-stand­ing state secrets. That includes express­ing a hope to inter­view the attend­ing physi­cians who direct­ly wit­nessed JFK’s med­ical treat­ment, which is pre­sum­ably a ref­er­ence to the rev­e­la­tions dis­closed in a 2023 doc­u­men­tary JFK: What the Doc­tors Saw where sur­viv­ing mem­bers of that med­ical team recount­ed the com­pelling foren­sic evi­dence for mul­ti­ple shoot­ers and the cov­er up they were forced to impose. Is that real­ly going to be allowed hap­pen? How inter­est­ed is a far right mem­ber of con­gress real­ly going to be in final­ly uncov­er­ing what was ulti­mate a high­ly suc­cess­ful far right plot to assas­si­nate the pres­i­dent? It’s not like the CIA was the only enti­ty involved. This is explo­sive his­to­ry she’s threat­en­ing to uncov­er. And that’s just the JFK assas­si­na­tion. What about all these oth­er explo­sive top­ics? Plans for major the­atrics are clear­ly in the works. That’s becom­ing increas­ing­ly clear. What remains unclear is how exact­ly all these the­atrics are going to play out with­out impli­cat­ing the pow­er­ful far right net­work that are ulti­mate­ly very ide­o­log­i­cal­ly aligned with Rep Luna and the rest of today’s Repub­li­can Par­ty:

The Inde­pen­dent

Meet Anna Pauli­na Luna, the GOP law­mak­er tasked with revis­it­ing JFK files and Epstein’s list

Repub­li­can fire­brand believes there were ‘two shoot­ers’ and promis­es ‘trans­paren­cy’ to reveal ‘fed­er­al secrets’

Alex Wood­ward
in New York
Wednes­day 12 Feb­ru­ary 2025 13:50 EST

The Repub­li­can con­gress­woman tasked with revis­it­ing “fed­er­al secrets” sur­round­ing the assas­si­na­tions of John F. Kennedy and Mar­tin Luther King Jr. — and Jef­frey Epstein’s so-called “client list” — is among a new class of GOP insur­gents and Don­ald Trump loy­al­ists who recent­ly float­ed a bill to put Trump’s face on Mount Rush­more.

...

The gov­ern­ment has spent years inves­ti­gat­ing polit­i­cal assas­si­na­tions and “oth­er gov­ern­ment secrets with­out suc­cess,” she claimed, and “it is time to give Amer­i­cans the answers they deserve.”

...

After grad­u­at­ing from the Uni­ver­si­ty of West Flori­da with a degree in biol­o­gy, Luna served as the direc­tor of His­pan­ic engage­ment for Turn­ing Point USA, land­ing a spot on Fox News in 2018 in which she com­pared Hillary Clin­ton to her­pes, prompt­ing the net­work to apol­o­gize to view­ers.

She spent most of her life up to that point as Anna Pauli­na May­er­hofer, using her father’s last name. Her grand­fa­ther immi­grat­ed from Ger­many after serv­ing in the Wehrma­cht army in Nazi Ger­many. She for­mal­ly changed her last name to Luna, rec­og­niz­ing her Mex­i­can-Amer­i­can mother’s ances­try.

...

With­in her rel­a­tive­ly short time in office, she joined Repub­li­cans who ini­tial­ly refused to sup­port for­mer House Speak­er Kevin McCarthy, spon­sored res­o­lu­tions to impeach for­mer Attor­ney Gen­er­al Mer­rick Gar­land, FBI Direc­tor Christo­pher Wray, Sec­re­tary of Home­land Secu­ri­ty Ale­jan­dro May­orkas, and Wash­ing­ton, D.C., U.S. Attor­ney Matthew Graves.

...

“Amer­i­cans deserve to know the truth, whether it makes the gov­ern­ment look good or not,” she said at the time, promis­ing to use her role as a mem­ber of the House Over­sight Com­mit­tee to deliv­er the “truth” regard­ing JFK’s killing.

On Tues­day, Over­sight Com­mit­tee chair James Com­er announced the for­ma­tion of the “Task Force on the Declas­si­fi­ca­tion of Fed­er­al Secrets” to com­ply with Trump’s order.

At a press con­fer­ence, Luna said she hopes to inter­view “attend­ing physi­cians at the ini­tial assas­si­na­tion and then also peo­ple who have been on the var­i­ous com­mis­sions look­ing into — like the War­ren Com­mis­sion — look­ing into the ini­tial assas­si­na­tion.” All mem­bers of the War­ren Com­mis­sion are dead.

She also said she wants to revis­it inves­ti­ga­tions that she claims have been “rinsed and repeat­ed by the media to push a cer­tain nar­ra­tive that we don’t agree with.”

“I believe there were two shoot­ers,” she told reporters.

...

———-

“Meet Anna Pauli­na Luna, the GOP law­mak­er tasked with revis­it­ing JFK files and Epstein’s list” by Alex Wood­ward; The Inde­pen­dent; 02/12/2025

“The gov­ern­ment has spent years inves­ti­gat­ing polit­i­cal assas­si­na­tions and “oth­er gov­ern­ment secrets with­out suc­cess,” she claimed, and “it is time to give Amer­i­cans the answers they deserve.””

The gov­ern­ment failed in its past inves­ti­ga­tions and it’s time to give the pub­lic the answers they deserve. It’s not just a call for dis­clo­sures of state secrets. Rep Luna is promis­es a broad range of new inves­ti­ga­tions, like the “truth” about the JFK assas­si­na­tion. Which might include an inter­view of the attend­ing physi­cians on the day of JFK’s assas­si­na­tion, which is like­ly a ref­er­ence to the explo­sive rev­e­la­tions dis­closed in a 2023 doc­u­men­tary JFK: What the Doc­tors Saw where sur­viv­ing mem­bers of that med­ical team recount­ed the com­pelling evi­dence for mul­ti­ple shoot­ers and the cov­er up they were forced to impose. It’s great to hear Rep Luna com­mit­ting her­self to inves­ti­gat­ing this chap­ter of his­to­ry. And yet, again, this is one of the last per­son we can expect to hon­est­ly han­dle these top­ics. How can we pos­si­bly expect far right Repub­li­cans to hon­est­ly inves­ti­gate a crime of this nature? A crime com­mit­ted for the advance­ment of far right goals?

...
“Amer­i­cans deserve to know the truth, whether it makes the gov­ern­ment look good or not,” she said at the time, promis­ing to use her role as a mem­ber of the House Over­sight Com­mit­tee to deliv­er the “truth” regard­ing JFK’s killing.

...

At a press con­fer­ence, Luna said she hopes to inter­view “attend­ing physi­cians at the ini­tial assas­si­na­tion and then also peo­ple who have been on the var­i­ous com­mis­sions look­ing into — like the War­ren Com­mis­sion — look­ing into the ini­tial assas­si­na­tion.” All mem­bers of the War­ren Com­mis­sion are dead.

...

“I believe there were two shoot­ers,” she told reporters.
...

And then we get to these impor­tant details on Luna’s rise as a young MAGA Repub­li­can: after grad­u­at­ing col­lege, Luna went on to serve as the direc­tor of His­pan­ic engage­ment for Turn­ing Point USA, the far right polit­i­cal out­fit found­ed by CNP mem­ber Char­lie Kirk. So when we see how, soon after join­ing con­gress, Luna was part of the group of Repub­li­cans who ini­tial­ly refused to sup­port Kevin McCarthy as speak­er of the House in Jan­u­ary of 2023, lead­ing to an awk­ward round of one failed vote after anoth­er, its worth keep­ing in mind how the CNP’s fin­ger­prints were all over that effort to tem­porar­i­ly block McCarthy’s Speak­er­ship (pre­sum­ably so more con­ces­sions could be extract­ed from him). That’s the con­gres­sion­al coali­tion Luna is loy­al to: the CNP coali­tion. Which is the last coali­tion we can expect to hon­est­ly address all of these decades-old scan­dals:

...
After grad­u­at­ing from the Uni­ver­si­ty of West Flori­da with a degree in biol­o­gy, Luna served as the direc­tor of His­pan­ic engage­ment for Turn­ing Point USA, land­ing a spot on Fox News in 2018 in which she com­pared Hillary Clin­ton to her­pes, prompt­ing the net­work to apol­o­gize to view­ers.

...

With­in her rel­a­tive­ly short time in office, she joined Repub­li­cans who ini­tial­ly refused to sup­port for­mer House Speak­er Kevin McCarthy, spon­sored res­o­lu­tions to impeach for­mer Attor­ney Gen­er­al Mer­rick Gar­land, FBI Direc­tor Christo­pher Wray, Sec­re­tary of Home­land Secu­ri­ty Ale­jan­dro May­orkas, and Wash­ing­ton, D.C., U.S. Attor­ney Matthew Graves.
...

And then we get to this very intrigu­ing piece of Luna’s biog­ra­phy: For most of her life, she went by Anna Pauli­na May­er­hofer, using her father’s sur­name. And it turns out her grand­fa­ther on her father’s side served in the Wehrma­cht in Nazi Ger­many. Now, as we saw, Luna’s polit­i­cal career start­ed as the head of His­pan­ic out­reach for Char­lie Kirk’s Turn­ing Point USA, so it’s not par­tic­u­lar­ly sur­pris­ing that she would embrace her His­pan­ic her­itage by switch­ing to her moth­er’s maid­en name Luna at that point. Still, giv­en that the US is in the mid­dle of a far right con­sti­tu­tion­al coup and is being run by an unelect­ed co-pres­i­dent who did mul­ti­ple Sieg Heil’s at the inau­gu­ra­tion, you have to won­der what’s under this ‘Nazi grand­fa­ther’ rock. Espe­cial­ly with Luna lead­ing this new task force:

...
She spent most of her life up to that point as Anna Pauli­na May­er­hofer, using her father’s last name. Her grand­fa­ther immi­grat­ed from Ger­many after serv­ing in the Wehrma­cht army in Nazi Ger­many. She for­mal­ly changed her last name to Luna, rec­og­niz­ing her Mex­i­can-Amer­i­can mother’s ances­try.
...

And those many ques­tions over Luna’s biog­ra­phy brings us to the fol­low­ing Wash­ing­ton Post arti­cle from Feb­ru­ary of 2022, rough­ly a month into Luna’s first term in office. And as the arti­cle describes, the ques­tions over Luna’s bio­graph­ic aren’t just exten­sive and trou­bling in and of them­selves. They’ve effec­tive­ly torn her extend­ed fam­i­ly apart, with Luna hav­ing filed a stalk­ing injunc­tion against her own uncle, Edward May­er­hofer, over his repeat­ed­ly bring­ing up her bio­graph­ic con­tra­dic­tions on social media dur­ing her runs for office. She’s also report­ed­ly now estranged from her cousin, Nicole May­er­hofer, Edward’s daugh­ter, over what is now a kind of extend­ed fam­i­ly dis­pute over her pub­lic biog­ra­phy. A dis­pute large­ly over Luna’s attempt to pub­licly dis­so­ci­ate her­self with the May­er­hofer side of her fam­i­ly in favor of a ‘raised alone by a His­pan­ic sin­gle-mom’ polit­i­cal­ly con­ve­nient nar­ra­tive. A dis­pute that includes excis­ing the role her grand­fa­ther played in her upbring­ing too. Except it does­n’t sound like he was an ide­o­log­i­cal Nazi, despite serv­ing in the Nazi Army. Instead, she just does­n’t want to acknowl­edge him and any­one on that side of the fam­i­ly as play­ing a role in her upbring­ing. She white­washed the May­er­hofer out of her, leav­ing her His­pan­ic her­itage to embrace. So when it comes to ques­tions about whether or not Rep. Luna is going to turn this task force into a his­toric act of white­wash­ing, it’s worth keep­ing in mind that at her polit­i­cal career is pred­i­cat­ed on a per­son­al white­wash­ing that includ­ed estrang­ing her­self from her extend­ed fam­i­ly in order to keep up a polit­i­cal­ly con­ve­nient nar­ra­tive:

The Wash­ing­ton Post

The mak­ing of Anna Pauli­na Luna

Luna’s sharp turn to the right, her account of an iso­lat­ed and impov­er­ished child­hood, and her embrace of her His­pan­ic her­itage have sur­prised some friends and fam­i­ly who knew her before her ascent to the U.S. House this year.

Updat­ed Feb­ru­ary 10, 2023
By Jacque­line Ale­many and Alice Crites

Twelve years before she was elect­ed as the first Mex­i­can Amer­i­can woman to rep­re­sent Flori­da in Con­gress, Anna Pauli­na Luna was serv­ing at White­man Air Force Base in War­rens­burg, Mo., where friends said she described her­self as alter­nate­ly Mid­dle East­ern, Jew­ish or East­ern Euro­pean. Known then by her giv­en last name of May­er­hofer, Luna sport­ed design­er cloth­ing and expressed sup­port for then-Pres­i­dent Barack Oba­ma.

By the time she ran for Con­gress as a Repub­li­can, she had changed her last name to Luna in what she said was an homage to her mother’s fam­i­ly. A staunch advo­cate for gun rights, she cit­ed on the cam­paign trail a har­row­ing child­hood that left her “bat­tle hard­ened.” She said she and her moth­er had lit­tle extend­ed fam­i­ly as she grew up in “low-income” neigh­bor­hoods in South­ern Cal­i­for­nia with a father in and out of incar­cer­a­tion. She said she expe­ri­enced a trau­ma­tiz­ing “home inva­sion” when she was serv­ing in the Air Force in Mis­souri.

Luna’s sharp turn to the right, her account of an iso­lat­ed and impov­er­ished child­hood, and her embrace of her His­pan­ic her­itage have come as a sur­prise to some friends and fam­i­ly who knew her before her ascent to the U.S. House this year. A cousin who grew up with Luna said she was reg­u­lar­ly includ­ed in fam­i­ly gath­er­ings. Her room­mate in Mis­souri had no rec­ol­lec­tion of the “home inva­sion” Luna detailed, describ­ing instead a break-in at their shared apart­ment when they were not home, an inci­dent con­firmed by police records.

“She would real­ly change who she was based on what fit the sit­u­a­tion best at the time,” said the room­mate, Brit­tany Brooks, who lived with Luna for six months and was a close friend dur­ing her mil­i­tary ser­vice.

Luna’s con­gres­sion­al office did not pro­vide answers to a detailed list of ques­tions about her biog­ra­phy from The Wash­ing­ton Post. When approached in per­son on Capi­tol Hill last week, Luna claimed she had not received any inquiry from The Post and declined to com­ment fur­ther. On Fri­day, Luna’s com­mu­ni­ca­tions direc­tor, Edie Heipel, emailed The Post call­ing the ques­tions “bizarre” and stat­ing “our office will not be respond­ing to you any fur­ther.”

...

Luna’s per­sona as a hard-line con­ser­v­a­tive who over­came steep per­son­al odds helped her flip Florida’s new­ly redis­trict­ed 13th Con­gres­sion­al seat red last year, rid­ing the sup­port of for­mer pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump to vic­to­ry over Demo­c­ra­t­ic can­di­date Eric Lynn. She is part of a new class of House Repub­li­cans that includes many elect­ed to pub­lic office for the first time, includ­ing Rep. George San­tos (N.Y.), whose fab­ri­ca­tions about his biog­ra­phy emerged after his elec­tion.

...

Cen­tral to Luna’s polit­i­cal iden­ti­ty is a dra­mat­ic life sto­ry laid out on her cam­paign web­site fea­tur­ing dis­turb­ing expe­ri­ences that left her with “an armor” that pre­pared her to fight for the Amer­i­can Dream, as she has described it. She says she sur­vived an armed rob­bery by age 9 and that her grand­moth­er “died of HIV/AIDS con­tract­ed from hero­in use.” She has assert­ed at times that her grandmother’s hus­band and broth­ers died that way, too.

In text mes­sages and emails to The Post, Luna’s moth­er, Mon­i­ca Luna, affirmed her daughter’s accounts of those inci­dents.

“Anna’s sto­ry is lay­ered and com­plex because my sto­ry is lay­ered and com­plex because it took me a very long time to get sta­bi­lized after a dif­fi­cult child­hood of my own, and then naive­ly get­ting involved in rela­tion­ships that were not good for me,” Mon­i­ca Luna wrote.

‘Bro­ken home men­tal­i­ty’

Luna was born Anna Pauli­na May­er­hofer in 1989 in San­ta Ana, Calif. Her father, George May­er­hofer, was a drug addict, accord­ing to Luna and oth­er fam­i­ly mem­bers, and he and Luna’s moth­er nev­er mar­ried. In cam­paign lit­er­a­ture and in speak­ing engage­ments, Luna has rou­tine­ly said her moth­er sin­gle-hand­ed­ly raised her with “no fam­i­ly to rely on.”

“That bro­ken home men­tal­i­ty real­ly did pro­vide me with a lot of insight as to what things work and what oth­er things don’t work, espe­cial­ly when it comes to pol­i­cy,” Luna said on her pod­cast in 2021. She has also said she and her moth­er lacked “a strong extend­ed net­work of peo­ple” that could help care for them.

...

Luna lived as a child in var­i­ous apart­ments and homes in the Orange Coun­ty cities of Irvine, Aliso Viejo and San­ta Ana as well as the city of Los Ange­les, accord­ing to pub­lic records. Luna also spent time in Tustin and Vic­torville while vis­it­ing her father, Mon­i­ca Luna said.

Mon­i­ca Luna said she was the only source of mean­ing­ful finan­cial sup­port for the fam­i­ly and had to rely on wel­fare assis­tance for peri­ods of time, espe­cial­ly as she was putting her­self through col­lege at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Cal­i­for­nia at Irvine, and UCLA School of Law.

“Anna had a life that looked like one thing but in real­i­ty, there was a side that peo­ple didn’t know about,” Mon­i­ca Luna wrote.

Oth­er rel­a­tives have dif­fer­ent rec­ol­lec­tions, say­ing Luna and her moth­er were sup­port­ed by an extend­ed fam­i­ly.

“The whole fam­i­ly kind of raised her — my dad was a part of her life when she was younger and we all kind of cod­dled her,” said Nicole May­er­hofer, a first cousin who is three years younger than Luna. She shared with The Post pho­tos of the two girls grow­ing up togeth­er and into ear­ly adult­hood, includ­ing a snap­shot from a fam­i­ly birth­day par­ty when they were young. “She was always a part of every­thing, all these fam­i­ly gath­er­ings and activ­i­ties.”

Luna’s pater­nal grand­fa­ther, Hein­rich May­er­hofer, would pick her up from day care when Mon­i­ca Luna was study­ing, accord­ing to Nicole Mayerhofer’s moth­er, Jolan­ta.

“She had every­thing. What she need­ed and more,” said Jolan­ta May­er­hofer. “And not only did Mon­i­ca pro­vide for her, but my father-in-law did, too.” Anoth­er fam­i­ly mem­ber, who spoke on the con­di­tion of anonymi­ty to pro­tect their pri­va­cy, also said rel­a­tives were involved in Luna’s life.

For her part, Mon­i­ca Luna dis­put­ed the accounts of Luna’s cousin and aunt, say­ing Luna “bare­ly spent any time with them in her entire life,” and called it a “com­plete fab­ri­ca­tion” that Luna’s grand­fa­ther pro­vid­ed for her daugh­ter.

Luna’s biog­ra­phy on her cam­paign web­site says that through­out her child­hood and teenage years, her father “spent time in and out of incar­cer­a­tion,” and that her com­mu­ni­ca­tion with him dur­ing this time was “through let­ters to jail and col­lect calls.”

The Post was not able to locate any pub­lic records of felony charges or prison sen­tences for George May­er­hofer in Cal­i­for­nia, where Luna lived at the time. A spokesper­son for the Cal­i­for­nia Depart­ment of Cor­rec­tions said they had no records that he served time in state facil­i­ties.

...

Accord­ing to Mon­i­ca Luna and Jolan­ta May­er­hofer, George May­er­hofer had sev­er­al short stints in jail for not pay­ing child sup­port. Mon­i­ca Luna said he also spent at least one year in jail for a drug-relat­ed charge. And she said he served time in Orange Coun­ty. A spokesper­son for the Orange Coun­ty Cor­rec­tions Depart­ment and the San­ta Ana jail told The Post they had no records of incar­cer­a­tion for George May­er­hofer.

...

A break-in

Luna ulti­mate­ly decid­ed to leave Los Ange­les in 2009 when she was 19 and enlist in the Air Force, accord­ing to an account she gave on a 2021 pod­cast.

...

At Missouri’s White­man Air Force Base, where Luna served as an air­field oper­a­tions man­ag­er, some of her peers thought she came from a well-off fam­i­ly — she wore design­er cloth­ing and men­tioned at times hav­ing nan­nies as a child, accord­ing to two for­mer friends. They recalled her talk­ing about her aspi­ra­tion of being a Max­im mag­a­zine mod­el.

Accord­ing to a biog­ra­phy of Luna on the web­site of Turn­ing Point USA, the con­ser­v­a­tive non­prof­it where she worked, she “mod­eled pro­fes­sion­al­ly as a means of pay­ing for expens­es that the GI bill did not cov­er.”

Luna — whose mother’s fam­i­ly is Mex­i­can Amer­i­can and pater­nal grand­moth­er was born in Hidal­go, Mex­i­co — now describes her­self as His­pan­ic and uses the Span­ish pro­nun­ci­a­tion of her first name. But fel­low ser­vice mem­bers say Luna did not pub­licly describe her­self as His­pan­ic at the time and referred to her­self using the Eng­lish pro­nun­ci­a­tion.

“At White­man, we had dif­fer­ent orga­ni­za­tions for dif­fer­ent groups and we did have an active His­pan­ic pop­u­la­tion on base — she wasn’t part of that,” said Katie West, who served at the same time as Luna at White­man Air Force Base. “I know that for sure because I had a lot of friends who were part of that. She’s kind of lean­ing into that now but that was news to me.”

...

In a 2019 clip from a speak­ing engage­mentpost­ed to Luna’s YouTube chan­nel, Luna said that when she was sta­tioned at White­man she expe­ri­enced a “home inva­sion” at 4 a.m., say­ing that her land­lord broke in to the apart­ment.

“Had my friend Jere­my not been there to pro­tect me, I’m pret­ty sure I wouldn’t be stand­ing right here in front of you guys right now,” Luna added. “[My land­lord] was not break­ing into my house at 4 a.m. to see how I was doing.”

But Brooks said in an inter­view that she was not aware of such an ear­ly-morn­ing inci­dent tak­ing place. Rather, she said, there was a day­time break-in that occurred when Luna wasn’t home.

A report from the War­rens­burg Police Depart­ment obtained by The Post describes the July 2010 episode as a “bur­glary not in progress.”

The inci­dent occurred after Brooks and Luna report­ed to their land­lord that they kept “find­ing the rear door to the res­i­dence stand­ing open,” accord­ing to the police report. In response, the land­lord changed the locks on the apart­ment and had dead­bolts and latch­es installed, the report said.

But the women con­tin­ued to find the door stand­ing open and unlocked, prompt­ing them to tem­porar­i­ly stay else­where for sev­er­al days, the report said. One day, Luna came by the apart­ment and sprin­kled baby pow­der on the floor in front of the doors before leav­ing.

Brooks, who is the only per­son named as being inter­viewed by the police after the break-in, returned lat­er to check on the apart­ment and then called the police to report that “some­one had gained entry into her res­i­dence,” accord­ing to the report.

When the police arrived, Brooks showed them “what appeared to be a heavy tread left boot print in the pow­der exit­ing the premis­es,” accord­ing to the police report.

Brooks, who is now a lawyer work­ing with vet­er­ans at a legal aid clin­ic in Flori­da, told police that while noth­ing was miss­ing from the res­i­dence, “her desk draw­ers had been opened and gone through” and “there was also a used con­dom lying on the floor that Brooks advised was not from her.”

The landlord’s name was redact­ed from the police report, and no sus­pect was ever arrest­ed or charged in the case, accord­ing to police records.

Luna has described how the “endur­ing trau­ma” of the break-in fol­lowed her when she moved to Flori­da.

“When I was sta­tioned in Mis­souri, I had some­one that broke into my house,” Luna told reporters at her vic­to­ry par­ty on elec­tion night. “I didn’t have a firearm. It wasn’t until I got sta­tioned in Flori­da that I got my con­cealed car­ry. So I have lived in cir­cum­stances and in states where gun con­trol was pushed.”

Brooks said that at the time of the break-in, both she and Luna had guns in the apart­ment that were giv­en to them by Brooks’s father.

Becom­ing Luna

Luna spent six years in the mil­i­tary, where she met her hus­band, Andrew Gam­berzky, an Air Force Spe­cial Oper­a­tions vet­er­an who was wound­ed dur­ing his sec­ond com­bat deploy­ment. Dur­ing her time in the mil­i­tary, she trained at Lack­land and Keesler Air Force bases before she was assigned to White­man Air Force Base and then Hurl­burt Field, accord­ing to a spokesper­son for the Air Force.

...

Luna’s rise to polit­i­cal promi­nence began in 2018 after online state­ments she made on human traf­fick­ing and the Sec­ond Amend­ment caught the atten­tion of Char­lie Kirk, founder of Turn­ing Point USA.

Kirk brought Luna on as the group’s direc­tor of His­pan­ic engage­ment in August of that year, a posi­tion that served as a launch­pad for her unsuc­cess­ful bid for Con­gress against Rep. Char­lie Crist (D‑Fla.) in 2020.

It was around that time Luna began to embrace her His­pan­ic her­itage pub­licly.

When Luna first reg­is­tered to vote in Okaloosa Coun­ty, Fla., in 2015, she iden­ti­fied her­self as “White, not of His­pan­ic ori­gin.” But she marked her eth­nic­i­ty as His­pan­ic when she updat­ed her reg­is­tra­tion in 2019.

That same year, at age 29, she filed a peti­tion in Wash­ing­ton state request­ing to change her name to Luna. In the peti­tion, which was reviewed by the Tam­pa Bay Times, Luna wrote that she want­ed “to rep­re­sent my His­pan­ic her­itage and have the same last name as my moth­er.”

Mon­i­ca Luna told The Post that Luna was her mother’s fam­i­ly name, and that she her­self recent­ly took steps to make Luna legal­ly part of her name, as well. She dis­put­ed the idea that her daugh­ter only recent­ly start­ed iden­ti­fy­ing with her Mex­i­can ances­try.

...

Luna also stat­ed on the cam­paign trail and in an inter­view with Jew­ish Insid­er in Novem­ber that while she iden­ti­fies as Chris­t­ian, she was “raised as a Mes­sian­ic Jew by her father.” Mes­sian­ic Jews iden­ti­fy as Jew­ish and say they believe that Jesus is the Mes­si­ah. “I am also a small frac­tion Ashke­nazi,” she added, refer­ring to Jews whose ances­tors lived in Cen­tral or East­ern Europe.

Luna’s moth­er said her father was a “Chris­t­ian that embraced the Mes­sian­ic faith.”

“He even­tu­al­ly got clean and start­ed attend­ing a mes­sian­ic Jew­ish church in Orange Coun­ty. He brought Anna to ser­vices and she buried him to Jew­ish cus­toms,” Mon­i­ca Luna wrote in a text.

How­ev­er, three mem­bers of Luna’s extend­ed fam­i­ly said that her father was Catholic, and that they were not aware of him prac­tic­ing any form of Judaism while Luna was grow­ing up.

George Mayerhofer’s father, Hein­rich May­er­hofer, immi­grat­ed to Cana­da from Ger­many in 1954 and iden­ti­fied as Roman Catholic, accord­ing to an immi­gra­tion record reviewed by The Post.

Accord­ing to sev­er­al fam­i­ly mem­bers, Hein­rich May­er­hofer, who died in 2003, served in the armed forces of Nazi Ger­many when he was a teenag­er in the 1940s.

One of his sons, Edward May­er­hofer — Luna’s uncle — pro­vid­ed The Post what he said was a por­trait of Hein­rich May­er­hofer dressed in a uni­form as a young sol­dier in Ger­many. Experts from the Simon Wiesen­thal Cen­ter who reviewed the pho­to con­firmed the uni­form was con­sis­tent with that of a mem­ber of the Wehrma­cht, which was the armed forces of Nazi Ger­many.

Jolan­ta May­er­hofer, Edward’s wife, said Hein­rich May­er­hofer — who went by Hen­ry — told her he had no choice but to serve the Nazi regime dur­ing the war.

“It hurt for him to talk about it,” she said. “He said, ‘You get­ting the let­ter, you need to show up, oth­er­wise your life is over. … He did not like it, but that’s what life was.”

Mon­i­ca Luna said she had nev­er heard that Luna’s grand­fa­ther had Nazi ties. She not­ed that Luna is estranged from Edward May­er­hofer, who is the broth­er of Luna’s father and pub­licly raised incon­sis­ten­cies in Luna’s biog­ra­phy on social media dur­ing her first bid for Con­gress. In response, Luna filed a request for a stalk­ing injunc­tion against him in 2020.

Luna has not pub­licly dis­cussed Hein­rich May­er­hofer, although she has not­ed her mater­nal great-grand­fa­ther Anto­nio Luna’s ser­vice in World War II on social media, tweet­ing in 2020 that he “was at D‑Day.” Anoth­er great-grand­fa­ther, William Todd — the son of an Amer­i­can adven­tur­er and a native of Col­i­ma, Mex­i­co — also served dur­ing World War II with Arizona’s 158th Infantry Reg­i­ment team, accord­ing to a 1952 arti­cle in the Ari­zona Dai­ly Star.

Nicole May­er­hofer, Luna’s cousin, and oth­er fam­i­ly mem­bers said it was well known in the fam­i­ly that Hein­rich May­er­hofer served in the Ger­man army in World War II. She said her grand­fa­ther at times spoke of his expe­ri­ences in the war.

“Yes, [my grand­fa­ther] did grow up that way but when he decid­ed to come to Amer­i­ca and live here, even though he tried to remem­ber where he came from, he was accept­ing of peo­ple of dif­fer­ent races and reli­gions — he was not anti­se­mit­ic,” Nicole May­er­hofer said.

The rela­tion­ship between the cousins dete­ri­o­rat­ed in 2020 after Luna filed the stalk­ing injunc­tion against Nicole Mayerhofer’s father, accord­ing to Nicole.

...

———–

“The mak­ing of Anna Pauli­na Luna” By Jacque­line Ale­many and Alice Crites; The Wash­ing­ton Post; 02/10/2023

“Luna’s sharp turn to the right, her account of an iso­lat­ed and impov­er­ished child­hood, and her embrace of her His­pan­ic her­itage have come as a sur­prise to some friends and fam­i­ly who knew her before her ascent to the U.S. House this year. A cousin who grew up with Luna said she was reg­u­lar­ly includ­ed in fam­i­ly gath­er­ings. Her room­mate in Mis­souri had no rec­ol­lec­tion of the “home inva­sion” Luna detailed, describ­ing instead a break-in at their shared apart­ment when they were not home, an inci­dent con­firmed by police records.”

The per­son who was once Anna Pauli­na May­er­hofer, some­one who had only a pass­ing asso­ci­a­tion with the His­pan­ic side of her fam­i­ly back­ground, sud­den­ly become the very His­pan­ic Anna Pauli­na Luna with a whole new per­son­al biog­ra­phy about child­hood improver­ish­ment and chill­ing events like a “home inva­sion” that pur­port­ed­ly deeply impact­ed and shaped Luna’s world­view. As well as a father, George May­er­hofer, who spent much her child­hood deal­ing with drug addic­tion and stints in jail. It was her moth­er, Mon­i­ca Luna, who raised her sin­gle-hand­ed­ly with “no fam­i­ly to rely on.” It’s the kind of biog­ra­phy that has obvi­ous polit­i­cal appeal, which explains why her cam­paign keeps pro­mot­ing it:

...
Luna was born Anna Pauli­na May­er­hofer in 1989 in San­ta Ana, Calif. Her father, George May­er­hofer, was a drug addict, accord­ing to Luna and oth­er fam­i­ly mem­bers, and he and Luna’s moth­er nev­er mar­ried. In cam­paign lit­er­a­ture and in speak­ing engage­ments, Luna has rou­tine­ly said her moth­er sin­gle-hand­ed­ly raised her with “no fam­i­ly to rely on.”
...

But also the kind of biog­ra­phy that appears to con­tra­dict the rec­ol­lec­tions of extend­ed friends and fam­i­ly. Includ­ing fam­i­ly from her father’s side who claims to have been very involved with her life. And yet, as we can also see, her moth­er, Mon­i­ca, is very much sup­port­ive of the sin­gle-moth­er “no fam­i­ly to rely on” nar­ra­tive Luna’s cam­paign has been run­ning. Some­one is lying here:

...
Mon­i­ca Luna said she was the only source of mean­ing­ful finan­cial sup­port for the fam­i­ly and had to rely on wel­fare assis­tance for peri­ods of time, espe­cial­ly as she was putting her­self through col­lege at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Cal­i­for­nia at Irvine, and UCLA School of Law.

...

Oth­er rel­a­tives have dif­fer­ent rec­ol­lec­tions, say­ing Luna and her moth­er were sup­port­ed by an extend­ed fam­i­ly.

“The whole fam­i­ly kind of raised her — my dad was a part of her life when she was younger and we all kind of cod­dled her,” said Nicole May­er­hofer, a first cousin who is three years younger than Luna. She shared with The Post pho­tos of the two girls grow­ing up togeth­er and into ear­ly adult­hood, includ­ing a snap­shot from a fam­i­ly birth­day par­ty when they were young. “She was always a part of every­thing, all these fam­i­ly gath­er­ings and activ­i­ties.”

...

Mon­i­ca Luna told The Post that Luna was her mother’s fam­i­ly name, and that she her­self recent­ly took steps to make Luna legal­ly part of her name, as well. She dis­put­ed the idea that her daugh­ter only recent­ly start­ed iden­ti­fy­ing with her Mex­i­can ances­try.
...

And as we can see, that embrace of her His­pan­ic her­itage hap­pened to coin­cide with her 2018 recruit­ment by Char­lie Kirk to serve as Turn­ing Point USA’s His­pan­ic engage­ment direc­tor. In fact, she self-iden­ti­fied as “White, not of His­pan­ic ori­gin,” when she reg­is­tered to vote in Okaloosa Coun­ty, Fla., in 2015. That Turn­ing Points USA job sure kin­dled her His­pan­ic pride. And launched a polit­i­cal career that start­ed with an unsuc­cess­ful 2020 con­gres­sion­al run fol­lowed by a suc­cess­ful 2022 rematch. That’s quite a polit­i­cal tra­jec­to­ry:

...
When Luna first reg­is­tered to vote in Okaloosa Coun­ty, Fla., in 2015, she iden­ti­fied her­self as “White, not of His­pan­ic ori­gin.” But she marked her eth­nic­i­ty as His­pan­ic when she updat­ed her reg­is­tra­tion in 2019.

That same year, at age 29, she filed a peti­tion in Wash­ing­ton state request­ing to change her name to Luna. In the peti­tion, which was reviewed by the Tam­pa Bay Times, Luna wrote that she want­ed “to rep­re­sent my His­pan­ic her­itage and have the same last name as my moth­er.”
...

And as we can see from the con­tra­dic­to­ry rec­ol­lec­tions of her “home inva­sion” expe­ri­ence while sta­tioned at White­man Air Force Base that she claims inflict­ed “endur­ing trau­ma” on her, it appears the sto­ry was first pub­licly shared in 2019, after she embarked on this new polit­i­cal career at Turn­ing Points USA. An expe­ri­ence that is in wild con­flict with her then-room­mate’s rec­ol­lec­tions. Accord­ing to Luna, her land­lord broke into her apart­ment at 4 a.m., seem­ing­ly with mur­der­ous intent, with Luna assert­ing “Had my friend Jere­my not been there to pro­tect me, I’m pret­ty sure I wouldn’t be stand­ing right here in front of you guys right now...[My land­lord] was not break­ing into my house at 4 a.m. to see how I was doing.” She’s lit­er­al­ly accus­ing her land­lord of break­ing in with the intent of mur­der­ing her. And yet her room­mate recounts a break-in that hap­pened dur­ing the day when Luna was­n’t home. Now, as we can see from the police reports, the room­mates report­ed to police a faulty lock on the rear door and kept find­ing it hang­ing open. And as the report also states, the girls were stay­ing at a dif­fer­ent place dur­ing the time of the break-in, which does­n’t sound con­sis­tent with a 4 a.m. home inva­sion. So it sounds like there real­ly was some sort of lock issue. But the fact that both the room­mate and police report con­tra­dicts the trau­mat­ic 4 a.m. inva­sion by a mur­der­ous land­lord either means the room­mate was­n’t there and Luna nev­er shared it with the room­mate and police, which seems very unlike­ly. Or the room­mate has mem­o­ry issues. Or Luna made it up. It sounds like “Jere­my” could help clear some of this up:

...
In a 2019 clip from a speak­ing engage­mentpost­ed to Luna’s YouTube chan­nel, Luna said that when she was sta­tioned at White­man she expe­ri­enced a “home inva­sion” at 4 a.m., say­ing that her land­lord broke in to the apart­ment.

“Had my friend Jere­my not been there to pro­tect me, I’m pret­ty sure I wouldn’t be stand­ing right here in front of you guys right now,” Luna added. “[My land­lord] was not break­ing into my house at 4 a.m. to see how I was doing.”

But Brooks said in an inter­view that she was not aware of such an ear­ly-morn­ing inci­dent tak­ing place. Rather, she said, there was a day­time break-in that occurred when Luna wasn’t home.

...

The landlord’s name was redact­ed from the police report, and no sus­pect was ever arrest­ed or charged in the case, accord­ing to police records.

Luna has described how the “endur­ing trau­ma” of the break-in fol­lowed her when she moved to Flori­da.
...

And then we get to the many inter­est­ing ques­tions regard­ing Luna’s rela­tion­ship with her father, George May­er­hofer, who Luna and her moth­er insist was bare­ly present dur­ing Luna’s child­hood. Accord­ing to a 2022 inter­view with Jew­ish Insid­er, Luna claims she was raised as a Mes­sian­ic Jew by her father. That’s a some­what dif­fi­cult claim to square with the ‘I was raised by my sin­gle-moth­er’ nar­ra­tive we’re also get­ting. Luna even claims to be “a small frac­tion Ashke­nazi.” And yet, as we can also see, her rel­a­tives have no rec­ol­lec­tion of her father going through this Mes­sian­ic Jew phase while Luna was grow­ing up and only remem­ber him as a Catholic:

...
Luna also stat­ed on the cam­paign trail and in an inter­view with Jew­ish Insid­er in Novem­ber that while she iden­ti­fies as Chris­t­ian, she was “raised as a Mes­sian­ic Jew by her father.” Mes­sian­ic Jews iden­ti­fy as Jew­ish and say they believe that Jesus is the Mes­si­ah. “I am also a small frac­tion Ashke­nazi,” she added, refer­ring to Jews whose ances­tors lived in Cen­tral or East­ern Europe.

...

How­ev­er, three mem­bers of Luna’s extend­ed fam­i­ly said that her father was Catholic, and that they were not aware of him prac­tic­ing any form of Judaism while Luna was grow­ing up.
...

But it’s the bio­graph­ic dis­crep­an­cies regard­ing Luna’s pater­nal grand­fa­ther, Hein­rich May­er­hofer, that are espe­cial­ly intrigu­ing when it comes to ques­tions about who Luna might be try­ing to hide about her past: Jolan­ta May­er­hofer, Luna’s aunt who is mar­ried to George’s broth­er Edward, recalls how Hein­rich would pick up Luna from day care when her mom was study­ing, adding, “She had every­thing. What she need­ed and more...And not only did Mon­i­ca pro­vide for her, but my father-in-law did, too.” Anoth­er anony­mous fam­i­ly mem­ber con­curs with this take. And yet Luna’s moth­er insists Luna “bare­ly spent any time with them in her entire life,” and called it a “com­plete fab­ri­ca­tion” that Luna’s grand­fa­ther pro­vid­ed for her daugh­ter. These are major dis­putes about basic facts of her child­hood. Why? Is this pure­ly about craft­ing the ‘sin­gle-moth­er impov­er­ished His­pan­ic child­hood’ nar­ra­tive? Or is Hein­rich’s his­to­ry as a mem­ber of the Wehrma­cht play­ing a role here? Now, on the one hand, being a mem­ber of the Wehrma­cht isn’t a big a red flag as, say, being a mem­ber of the SS. And it sounds like this grand­fa­ther nev­er pro­fessed Nazi ide­olo­gies to his fam­i­ly. So it does­n’t appear that Luna was some­how secret­ly being influ­enced by a Nazi grand­fa­ther in her youth. And yet, we have to ask, why­But that does­n’t mean there isn’t some sort of dark his­to­ry here. And It does­n’t sound like he is asso­ci­at­ed with spe­cif­ic Nazi war crimes. Although, as we’ve also seen, Cana­da was shock­ing­ly accept­ing of Nazi war crim­i­nals and the sub­se­quent decades cov­er­ing this up. Still, we can’t assume every last Nazi emi­gre to Cana­da was nec­es­sar­i­ly a war crim­i­nal. And yet, we’re still left with this strange con­flict in Luna’s biog­ra­phy. Was Hein­rich May­er­hofer a major part of her child­hood or not? And if we was, why all the efforts to hide this past? Again, is this pure­ly about pro­ject­ing an ‘impov­er­ished sin­gle-moth­er-and-daugh­ter-against-the-world’ nar­ra­tive for polit­i­cal pur­pos­es? Or is some­thing else being hid­den here?

...
Luna’s pater­nal grand­fa­ther, Hein­rich May­er­hofer, would pick her up from day care when Mon­i­ca Luna was study­ing, accord­ing to Nicole Mayerhofer’s moth­er, Jolan­ta.

“She had every­thing. What she need­ed and more,” said Jolan­ta May­er­hofer. “And not only did Mon­i­ca pro­vide for her, but my father-in-law did, too.” Anoth­er fam­i­ly mem­ber, who spoke on the con­di­tion of anonymi­ty to pro­tect their pri­va­cy, also said rel­a­tives were involved in Luna’s life.

For her part, Mon­i­ca Luna dis­put­ed the accounts of Luna’s cousin and aunt, say­ing Luna “bare­ly spent any time with them in her entire life,” and called it a “com­plete fab­ri­ca­tion” that Luna’s grand­fa­ther pro­vid­ed for her daugh­ter.

...

George Mayerhofer’s father, Hein­rich May­er­hofer, immi­grat­ed to Cana­da from Ger­many in 1954 and iden­ti­fied as Roman Catholic, accord­ing to an immi­gra­tion record reviewed by The Post.

Accord­ing to sev­er­al fam­i­ly mem­bers, Hein­rich May­er­hofer, who died in 2003, served in the armed forces of Nazi Ger­many when he was a teenag­er in the 1940s.

...

Nicole May­er­hofer, Luna’s cousin, and oth­er fam­i­ly mem­bers said it was well known in the fam­i­ly that Hein­rich May­er­hofer served in the Ger­man army in World War II. She said her grand­fa­ther at times spoke of his expe­ri­ences in the war.
...

And with all these very con­flict­ed accounts between Luna and her moth­er’s account, on the one hand, and her extend­ed fam­i­ly’s accounts on the oth­er hand, it’s rather notable that Luna is now appar­ent­ly estranged from her father’s side of the fam­i­ly. She even filed a stalk­ing injunc­tion against her uncle Edward May­er­hofer, George’s broth­er, in response to him rais­ing incon­sis­ten­cies with Luna’s biog­ra­phy on social media after she start­ed run­ning for pub­lic office. At the same time, her moth­er insists that she nev­er knew any­thing about her father-in-law’s Nazi past, despite Luna’s cous­in’s recount­ing how this was not at all a fam­i­ly secret. Luna seems quite des­per­ate to dis­tance her­self as much as pos­si­ble from her grand­fa­ther’s Nazi ties. So much so that she’s effec­tive­ly cut her­self off from the May­er­hofer side of the extend­ed fam­i­ly:

...
Mon­i­ca Luna said she had nev­er heard that Luna’s grand­fa­ther had Nazi ties. She not­ed that Luna is estranged from Edward May­er­hofer, who is the broth­er of Luna’s father and pub­licly raised incon­sis­ten­cies in Luna’s biog­ra­phy on social media dur­ing her first bid for Con­gress. In response, Luna filed a request for a stalk­ing injunc­tion against him in 2020.

...

The rela­tion­ship between the cousins dete­ri­o­rat­ed in 2020 after Luna filed the stalk­ing injunc­tion against Nicole Mayerhofer’s father, accord­ing to Nicole.
...

It’s pret­ty clear the May­er­hofer side of the fam­i­ly does­n’t agree with or appre­ci­ate Rep. Luna’s pub­lic white­wash­ing of her fam­i­ly back­ground. It’s a sad sto­ry over­all for the fam­i­ly. And like­ly to only get sad­der as Luna’s pub­lic pro­file con­tin­ues to grow, along with the size of her dis­tor­tions.

But, at the same time, there’s no deny­ing that things like invit­ing the attend­ing physi­cians who wit­nessed JFK’s body to tes­ti­fy before Con­gress is some­thing that was pre­vi­ous­ly absolute­ly unimag­in­able in today’s polit­i­cal envi­ron­ment. Major rocks real­ly could end up being over­turned by a con­gres­sion­al task force like this and it’s not at all clear that Repub­li­can fig­ures like Rep. Luna act­ing all excit­ed about final­ly reveal­ing all these secrets real­ly under­stand that what they threat­en­ing to reveal. Who knows how sin­cere­ly ‘QAnon’-ed she real­ly is? She might gen­uine­ly think there’s a vast left-wing Deep State that she is about expose. But we can be con­fi­dent she will be qui­et­ly made well aware of the far right nature of these chap­ters in his­to­ry once the ‘re-opened inves­ti­ga­tions’ begin. How will Rep. Luna ulti­mate­ly spin her inves­tiga­tive find­ings? Will it be left at “we could­n’t find an answer?” vague con­clu­sions? Or some­thing a more QAnon-ish ‘Com­mu­nist Jew­ish Illu­mi­nati were behind it all!’ nar­ra­tive? We don’t know yet but we can be con­fi­dent it will involve some sort of dis­tor­tion to cov­er up the far right roles in all of these chap­ters. Which, in a cyn­i­cal sense, makes Rep. Luna actu­al­ly very high­ly qual­i­fied to lead the effort.

The rev­e­la­tions await. But the the­atrics are just get­ting start­ed. That’s the weird state of affairs emerg­ing between Repub­li­can mem­bers of con­gress and the Trump admin­is­tra­tion regard­ing the state secrets dis­clo­sure agen­da that Trump has made one of his ear­li­est pri­or­i­ties. The kind of the­atrics that appear to be set­ting the stage for a series of dis­ap­point­ing non-rev­e­la­to­ry dis­clo­sures that can poten­tial­ly be blamed on some sort of last-minute ‘deep state’ actions.

It start­ed with an inter­view on Fox News with Trump’s Attor­ney Gen­er­al Pam Bon­di, where Bon­di was asked about the Jef­frey Epstein client list and replied that she already had the list and was review­ing it. She also indi­cat­ed she’s already start­ed review­ing files on the JFK and MLK assas­si­na­tions. When asked if she’s “seen any­thing”, Bon­di replied “not yet.” This is a good time to recall how a 2017 inter­view of Epstein was revealed just days before the 2024 elec­tion where Epstein referred to Trump as his “best friend” for a decade.

Bon­di also made a recent appear­ance at the Con­ser­v­a­tive Polit­i­cal Action Con­fer­ence (CPAC), where she was again asked by con­ser­v­a­tive com­men­ta­tor Ben­ny John­son about when the Epstein client list will be released. Bon­di replied that she’s been briefed on it but was­n’t able to talk about it pub­licly. Then, days lat­er, John­son hosts a guest on his show who made a remark­able claim regard­ing the FBI’s role in this dis­clo­sure process: Accord­ing to for­mer FBI agent Gar­ret O’Boyle, the FBI is active­ly destroy­ing all sorts of evi­dence that is slat­ed to be revealed accord­ing to Trump’s dis­clo­sure exec­u­tive order.

Fol­low­ing that ‘report’ on Ben­ny John­son’s show, a num­ber of Repub­li­can mem­bers of con­gress of made tweets on X.com call­ing on Bon­di to release all the files. Includ­ing Rep­re­sen­ta­tive Anna Pauli­na Luna. As we’ve seen, Luna is the far right mem­ber of the ‘Free­dom Cau­cus’ who is now head­ing the new con­gres­sion­al task force on nation­al secrets. As Luna tweet­ed, “Reach­ing out on X because we can’t seem to get a response from the AG...What is the sta­tus of the doc­u­ments?”

Oth­er Repub­li­can mem­bers of con­gress who have also tak­en to Twit­ter to make sim­i­lar demands of Bon­di include Rep­re­sen­ta­tives Tim Burchett and Mike Collins, along with Sen­a­tor Mike Lee, with all three call­ing for the release of the Epstein client list. Inter­est­ing­ly, both Collins and Lee make a ref­er­ence to the release of the FBI’s files on the Las Vegas shoot­er. Now, as we’ve seen, while the FBI utter­ly refused to even acknowl­edge a poten­tial far right motive for Steven Paddock’s Las Vegas mas­sacre, wit­ness­es report­ed hear­ing him talk­ing like a Sov­er­eign Cit­i­zen and about the need for some­one to ‘wake up’ the Amer­i­can peo­ple in the weeks lead­ing up to the attack. Are these con­gress­men seri­ous­ly demand­ing that files show­ing Pad­dock­s’s Sov­er­eign Cit­i­zen sym­pa­thies be released to the pub­lic? That’s hard to imag­ine. So what exact­ly are they expect­ing to get released? That’s all part of what makes these claims about the FBI’s destruc­tion of evi­dence so inter­est­ing: we’re see­ing the begin­nings of a nar­ra­tive that fol­lows along the lines of ‘we would have released all the evi­dence show­ing decades of abuse by the lib­er­al Deep State, but the doc­u­ments were destroyed by that Deep State before Don­ald Trump had a chance to destroy the Deep State.’ The pieces are being put into place.

And that all brings us to the inter­est­ing ‘whistle­blow­er’ pedi­gree of Gar­ret O’Boyle, the for­mer FBI agent who start­ed these ‘FBI doc­u­ment destruc­tion’ claims: it turns out O’Boyle was one of the FBI agents who was invit­ed to tes­ti­fy about the FBI’s alleged anti-con­ser­v­a­tive bias back in 2023 before the Repub­li­can-led House Judi­cia­ry Com­mit­tee’s Select Sub­com­mit­tee on the Weaponiza­tion of the Fed­er­al Gov­ern­ment. As we’re to see, O’Boyle’s tes­ti­mo­ny actu­al­ly result­ed in Democ­rats call­ing for his pros­e­cu­tion for per­jury when he denied that his sus­pen­sion from the FBI had to do with leak­ing sen­si­tive doc­u­ments to Project Ver­i­tas. As we’ve seen, Project Ver­i­tas basi­cal­ly oper­ates like a far right dis­in­for­ma­tion out­let tasked with con­coct­ing fre­quent­ly-doc­tored ‘evi­dence’ to push far right nar­ra­tives.

So an FBI agent who was sus­pend­ed for leak­ing infor­ma­tion Project Ver­i­tas — and then lying about it to con­gress — and who served as a ‘whistle­blow­er’ for the Repub­li­can-led Sub­com­mit­tee on the Weaponiza­tion of the Fed­er­al Gov­ern­ment is the guy who made the claims about all the FBI doc­u­ment destruc­tion served as the trig­ger for this group of Repub­li­can mem­bers of con­gress sud­den­ly ask­ing Bon­di about all these doc­u­ments. We are already see­ing the ‘Deep State destroyed all the doc­u­ments before Don­ald Trump could destroy the Deep State!’ nar­ra­tive being estab­lished:

The Dai­ly Beast

‘Fed­er­al Secrets’ Task Force Chair Trolls Pam Bon­di to Get JFK and Epstein Files

“Reach­ing out on X because we can’t seem to get a response from the AG,” Anna Pauli­na Luna wrote. “What is the sta­tus of the doc­u­ments?”

Mary Ann Akers
Wash­ing­ton Bureau Chief
Updat­ed Feb. 25 2025 2:49PM EST
Pub­lished Feb. 25 2025 1:37PM EST

The chair­woman of the House “fed­er­al secrets” pan­el called out Attor­ney Gen­er­al Pam Bon­di for not mov­ing faster to declas­si­fy doc­u­ments about JFK’s assas­si­na­tion and the late pedophil­i­ac sex traf­fick­er Jef­frey Epstein’s client list.

Rep. Anna Pauli­na Luna, who chairs the House Task Force on the Declas­si­fi­ca­tion of Fed­er­al Secrets, began trolling Attor­ney Gen­er­al Pam Bon­di on social media Tues­day.

“Reach­ing out on X because we can’t seem to get a response from the AG,” said Luna, whose Flori­da Gulf Coast dis­trict was redrawn in 2022 to favor a more MAGA-friend­ly elec­torate. “What is the sta­tus of the doc­u­ments?”

...

She said she was “fol­low­ing up… imme­di­ate­ly” on claims she heard on right-wing dar­ling Ben­ny Johnson’s pod­cast that the FBI is “work­ing day and night to destroy files” relat­ed to Epstein and oth­er cases—perhaps even the hid­den secrets of the “two shoot­ers” Luna says she believes were involved in the JFK assas­si­na­tion.

“Kash Patel will dis­cov­er exact­ly who destroyed these doc­u­ments and they will be held account­able imme­di­ate­ly,” Luna declared.

Bon­di, Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump’s new­ly sworn-in head of the Depart­ment of Jus­tice, told Fox News on Fri­day that she’s in pos­ses­sion of a trove of doc­u­ments that includes Epstein’s client list.

“It’s sit­ting on my desk right now to review,” Bon­di said of evi­dence she claims to have against the late bil­lion­aire sex offend­er. “That’s been a direc­tive by Pres­i­dent Trump.”

Luna has request­ed a brief­ing on Wednes­day from top intel­li­gence and legal offi­cials in the Trump admin­is­tra­tion to update her task force on plans to declas­si­fy doc­u­ments under Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump’s exec­u­tive order titled “Declas­si­fi­ca­tion of Records Con­cern­ing the Assas­si­na­tions of Pres­i­dent John F. Kennedy, Sen­a­tor Robert F. Kennedy, and the Rev­erend Dr. Mar­tin Luther King, Jr.”

...

Luna’s lash­ing out at Bon­di comes after the con­gress­woman was round­ly crit­i­cized for her announce­ment on X that her first hear­ing to exam­ine the 1963 assas­si­na­tion of JFK is sched­uled for March 26. She said her fed­er­al secrets task force will trav­el to the site of the mur­der in Dealey Plaza in Dal­las to “speak with first-hand wit­ness­es. Stay tuned!”

“In the lin­go of the inter­net, the Repub­li­can from St. Peters­burg, Flori­da, got “ratioed,” JFK assas­si­na­tion buff Jeff Mor­ley wrote on his Sub­stack newslet­ter Tues­day. “She reaped an embar­rass­ing­ly high ratio of neg­a­tive to pos­i­tive replies in her social media account.

It’s unclear what first­hand wit­ness­es Luna has in mind since vir­tu­al­ly every­one present at Dealey Plaza on Nov. 22, 1963, is now dead—including Secret Ser­vice agent Clint Hill, who dove into the back of Pres­i­dent Kennedy’s limo to try to shield him from the fatal gun­shots fired by Lee Har­vey Oswald. Hill’s death was report­ed on Tues­day. He was 93.

...

———-

“‘Fed­er­al Secrets’ Task Force Chair Trolls Pam Bon­di to Get JFK and Epstein Files” by Mary Ann Akers; The Dai­ly Beast; 02/25/2025

““Reach­ing out on X because we can’t seem to get a response from the AG,” said Luna, whose Flori­da Gulf Coast dis­trict was redrawn in 2022 to favor a more MAGA-friend­ly elec­torate. “What is the sta­tus of the doc­u­ments?””

What is the sta­tus of the doc­u­ments? That’s the ques­tion pub­licly posed to AG Pam Bon­di by Rep. Anna Pauli­na Luna, head of the new con­gres­sion­al task force on nation­al secrets. A ques­tion posed in the wake of ‘report­ing’ from right-wing pod­cast­er Ben­ny John­son, who was claim­ing that the FBI is “work­ing day and night to destroy files” relat­ed to Epstein and maybe even the hid­den secrets of the “two shoot­ers” Luna believes were involved in the JFK assas­si­na­tion. What was Ben­ny John­son bas­ing these claims on? That’s very unclear. But we seem to be see­ing a right-wing nar­ra­tive already emerg­ing that would pur­port­ed­ly explain why the files even­tu­al­ly released on these mat­ters will ulti­mate­ly dis­ap­point. A nar­ra­tive pred­i­cat­ed on the FBI — now run by Kash Patel — engag­ing in the destruc­tion of evi­dence. In oth­er words, we’re see­ing a nar­ra­tive about ‘Deep State’s final revenge’. Or at least that will pre­sum­ably be the spin. And this all comes after a Fri­day inter­view with Fox News were Bon­di told the pub­lic she was in pos­ses­sion of the Epstein client list and review­ing it. Strange far right the­atrics around this ‘dis­clo­sure’ man­date are under­way:

...
She said she was “fol­low­ing up… imme­di­ate­ly” on claims she heard on right-wing dar­ling Ben­ny Johnson’s pod­cast that the FBI is “work­ing day and night to destroy files” relat­ed to Epstein and oth­er cases—perhaps even the hid­den secrets of the “two shoot­ers” Luna says she believes were involved in the JFK assas­si­na­tion.

“Kash Patel will dis­cov­er exact­ly who destroyed these doc­u­ments and they will be held account­able imme­di­ate­ly,” Luna declared.

Bon­di, Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump’s new­ly sworn-in head of the Depart­ment of Jus­tice, told Fox News on Fri­day that she’s in pos­ses­sion of a trove of doc­u­ments that includes Epstein’s client list.

“It’s sit­ting on my desk right now to review,” Bon­di said of evi­dence she claims to have against the late bil­lion­aire sex offend­er. “That’s been a direc­tive by Pres­i­dent Trump.”
...

Inter­est­ing­ly, it appears that the seg­ment of the pub­lic that has been eager­ly await­ing the release of these troves of secrets doc­u­ments ridiculed Rep. Luna on X fol­low­ing her announce­ment of a March 26 open­ing hear­ing for her new state secrets dis­clo­sure task force. Which gives us a clue as to part of the motive behind the the­atrics we’re see­ing deployed. Because the real­i­ty is that the secrets that have long ani­mat­ed the con­ser­v­a­tive base are con­sis­tent­ly secrets about far right malev­o­lence. And yet, thanks to the real­i­ty-warp­ing pow­er of far right pro­pa­gan­da out­lets like InfoWars that sys­tem­at­i­cal­ly excise the far right ele­ment out of their ‘con­spir­a­cy the­o­ry’ analy­sis, much of that con­ser­v­a­tive base is expect­ing some sort of QAnon-style series of rev­e­la­tions about decades of vast left-wing con­spir­a­cies. The GOP, quite sim­ply, made a num­ber of promis­es it can’t real­is­ti­cal­ly keep with­out expos­ing decades of far right treach­ery. The­atrics are going to be required to han­dle this sit­u­a­tion:

...
Luna has request­ed a brief­ing on Wednes­day from top intel­li­gence and legal offi­cials in the Trump admin­is­tra­tion to update her task force on plans to declas­si­fy doc­u­ments under Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump’s exec­u­tive order titled “Declas­si­fi­ca­tion of Records Con­cern­ing the Assas­si­na­tions of Pres­i­dent John F. Kennedy, Sen­a­tor Robert F. Kennedy, and the Rev­erend Dr. Mar­tin Luther King, Jr.”

...

Luna’s lash­ing out at Bon­di comes after the con­gress­woman was round­ly crit­i­cized for her announce­ment on X that her first hear­ing to exam­ine the 1963 assas­si­na­tion of JFK is sched­uled for March 26. She said her fed­er­al secrets task force will trav­el to the site of the mur­der in Dealey Plaza in Dal­las to “speak with first-hand wit­ness­es. Stay tuned!”

“In the lin­go of the inter­net, the Repub­li­can from St. Peters­burg, Flori­da, got “ratioed,” JFK assas­si­na­tion buff Jeff Mor­ley wrote on his Sub­stack newslet­ter Tues­day. “She reaped an embar­rass­ing­ly high ratio of neg­a­tive to pos­i­tive replies in her social media account.
...

Also note, when we see the arti­cle assert that it’s unclear who Rep. Luna was refer­ring to when she talked about bring­ing first­hand wit­ness­es to the JFK assas­si­na­tion to tes­ti­fy, recall how Rep Luna had called for the “attend­ing physi­cians at the ini­tial assas­si­na­tion and then also peo­ple who have been on the var­i­ous com­mis­sions look­ing into — like the War­ren Com­mis­sion — look­ing into the ini­tial assas­si­na­tion.” She was­n’t specif­i­cal­ly refer­ring to peo­ple at Dealey Plaza. That said, it’s rather notable that Clint Hill, the Secret Ser­vice agent who dove into the back of Kennedy’s lim­ou­sine, just died. He was 93, so in that sense the tim­ing was­n’t exact­ly sur­pris­ing. Still, quite a time to die. Lit­er­al­ly weeks before the start of this new con­gres­sion­al task force:

...
It’s unclear what first­hand wit­ness­es Luna has in mind since vir­tu­al­ly every­one present at Dealey Plaza on Nov. 22, 1963, is now dead—including Secret Ser­vice agent Clint Hill, who dove into the back of Pres­i­dent Kennedy’s limo to try to shield him from the fatal gun­shots fired by Lee Har­vey Oswald. Hill’s death was report­ed on Tues­day. He was 93.
...

And, again, all this pub­lic ques­tion­ing about “where are the files” start­ed after Bon­di gives an inter­view to Fox News where she acknowl­edged that she had the Epstein files and was already review­ing them. So it’s worth not­ing that in that same inter­view Bon­di indi­cat­ed that she also had already start­ed review­ing the JFK and MLK files too. Although, when asked if she had “seen any­thing”, Bon­di replied “not yet”:

Fox News

Bon­di says Epstein client list ‘sit­ting on my desk right now,’ and is review­ing JFK, MLK files

Bon­di her­self advo­cat­ed for the release of the Epstein list in 2024

By Haley Chi-Sing Fox News
Pub­lished Feb­ru­ary 21, 2025 3:07pm EST

U.S. Attor­ney Gen­er­al Pam Bon­di said Fri­day the Jef­frey Epstein client list is ‘sit­ting on my desk right now’ and is review­ing the JFK and MLK files after Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump’s ear­li­er direc­tives.

U.S. Attor­ney Gen­er­al Pam Bon­di on Fri­day said the Jef­frey Epstein client list is “sit­ting on my desk right now” and she is review­ing the JFK and MLK files as well after Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump’s ear­li­er direc­tives.

“It’s sit­ting on my desk right now to review,” Bon­di told ‘Amer­i­ca Reports’ host John Roberts on Fri­day. “That’s been a direc­tive by Pres­i­dent Trump.”

Bon­di also stat­ed she is “review­ing” the JFK and MLK files, which the pres­i­dent signed an exec­u­tive order to declas­si­fy at the start of his sec­ond term.

“That’s all in the process of being reviewed, because that was done at the direc­tive of the pres­i­dent from all of these agen­cies,” Bon­di said.

When asked if she had “seen any­thing,” Bon­di respond­ed, “Not yet.”

Trump’s return to the Oval Office came with the prospect of the pub­lic final­ly being able to see Epstein’s long-await­ed “black book” amid inquiries into the deceased financier and sex traf­fick­er.

...

Bon­di her­self advo­cat­ed for the release of the Epstein list in 2024, telling Sean Han­ni­ty at the time, “It should have come out a long time ago.”
...

———-

“Bon­di says Epstein client list ‘sit­ting on my desk right now,’ and is review­ing JFK, MLK files” by Haley Chi-Sing; Fox News; 02/21/2025

“Bon­di also stat­ed she is “review­ing” the JFK and MLK files, which the pres­i­dent signed an exec­u­tive order to declas­si­fy at the start of his sec­ond term. ”

It’s not just the Epstein Files. AG Pam Bon­di is already review­ing JFK and MLK files. So had she “seen any­thing” in those files? “Not yet”, accord­ing to Bon­di in that Fox New inter­view. Now, if the FBI real­ly was destroy­ing all the incrim­i­nat­ing files as Ben­ny John­son claims then, sure, see­ing “noth­ing” is exact­ly what we should expect. Are we get­ting set up for a ‘no rev­e­la­tions (because the Deep State destroyed it all to save the Democ­rats)’ nar­ra­tive?

...
“That’s all in the process of being reviewed, because that was done at the direc­tive of the pres­i­dent from all of these agen­cies,” Bon­di said.

When asked if she had “seen any­thing,” Bon­di respond­ed, “Not yet.”
...

And as we can see in the fol­low­ing arti­cle, the mem­bers of con­gress open­ly ques­tion­ing AG Bon­di over the release of these doc­u­ments includes Rep­re­sen­ta­tives Tim Burchett and Mike Collins, along with Sen­a­tor Mike Lee. All three have recent tweets on X.com call­ing on Bon­di to release the Epstein files. With Collins and Lee both call­ing for the release of the files on anoth­er major event in US his­to­ry: the Las Vegas mas­sacre. Again, as we’ve seen, while the FBI utter­ly refused to even acknowl­edge a poten­tial far right motive for Steven Paddock’s Las Vegas mas­sacre, wit­ness­es report­ed hear­ing him talk­ing like a Sov­er­eign Cit­i­zen and about the need for some­one to ‘wake up’ the Amer­i­can peo­ple in the weeks lead­ing up to the attack. Is the FBI sit­ting on files of evi­dence of Pad­dock­’s far right ide­ol­o­gy? That would be quite a rev­e­la­tion. The kind of rev­e­la­tion that Collins and Lee prob­a­bly aren’t super keen on pub­licly reveal­ing. So what exact­ly is it that they’re expect­ing to see revealed in the Las Vegas shoot­er files? That’s all part of the grow­ing mys­tery of the grow­ing far right demands for the release of state secrets. Demands that, if hon­est­ly car­ried out, are high­ly like­ly to include all sorts of rev­e­la­tions of not just far right plots but, thus far, suc­cess­ful­ly cov­ered-up far right plots:

Newsweek

Delay to Jef­frey Epstein Files Being Released Rais­es Ques­tions

By Marni Rose McFall
Live News Reporter
Pub­lished Feb 25, 2025 at 5:20 AM EST

On Thurs­day, Feb­ru­ary 20, Attor­ney Gen­er­al Pam Bon­di indi­cat­ed that files per­tain­ing to the late sex offend­er Jef­fery Epstein are set to be released; the fact that they are yet to be released is rais­ing ques­tions from Repub­li­can politi­cians.

...

Why It Mat­ters

Epstein, a financier and con­vict­ed sex offend­er, was found dead in a cell in New York’s Met­ro­pol­i­tan Cor­rec­tion­al Cen­ter in August 2019 while await­ing tri­al on sex traf­fick­ing charges. His death was ruled a sui­cide, but it prompt­ed a wave of con­spir­a­cy the­o­ries due to his well-doc­u­ment­ed con­nec­tions to pub­lic and pow­er­ful fig­ures.

Esti­ma­tions of the num­ber of girls abused by Epstein vary, with accounts rang­ing from a few dozen to more than 100. How­ev­er, the total num­ber of vic­tims may well be much high­er than this.

...

What To Know

At the Con­ser­v­a­tive Polit­i­cal Action Con­fer­ence, Bon­di was asked by con­ser­v­a­tive com­men­ta­tor Ben­ny John­son about when the list will be released.

Bon­di said that she had been briefed on it and is not able to talk about it pub­licly but added that Trump’s direc­tive will be fol­lowed.

...

Now, less than a week after Bon­di indi­cat­ed the files would be released, Repub­li­cans are ques­tion­ing why the files are not yet pub­lic. Rep­re­sen­ta­tive Anna Pauli­na Luna, who recent­ly announced that she will lead a task force focused on declas­si­fy­ing fed­er­al secrets, includ­ing doc­u­ments relat­ed to Epstein, took to X, for­mer­ly Twit­ter, to ques­tion why the files are yet to be released.

So too did Rep­re­sen­ta­tive Tim Burchett, Sen­a­tor Mike Lee and Rep­re­sen­ta­tive Mike Collins.

For years, online rumors have claimed with­out proof that an extend­ed list of Epstein’s “clients” exists. In Jan­u­ary 2024, dozens of Epstein’s asso­ciates were named in 900 pages of court doc­u­ments which were unsealed by a New York judge, includ­ing Trump, for­mer Pres­i­dent Bill Clin­ton and Prince Andrew, a mem­ber of the British roy­al fam­i­ly.

The doc­u­ments were not the rumored “client list,” and many of the peo­ple named were not accused of wrong­do­ing.

What Peo­ple Are Say­ing

Rep­re­sen­ta­tive Tim Burchett on X: “Where are the Epstein Files @PamBondi?”

Rep­re­sen­ta­tive Anna Pauli­na Luna on X: “On Feb 11 & Feb 19, @GOPoversight sent a let­ter to the @TheJusticeDept ask­ing for sta­tus on releas­ing the Epstein files as well as JFK etc. The DOJ has not respond­ed. Reach­ing out on X because we can’t seem to get a response from @AGPamBondi. @PamBondi, what is the sta­tus of the doc­u­ments? Many of these doc­u­ments were ordered to be declas­si­fied by @POTUS.”

Sen­a­tor Mike Lee on X: “This information—about Epstein, the Las Vegas shoot­er, the JFK assas­si­na­tion, etc.—belongs to the Amer­i­can peo­ple. It’s about damn time they be giv­en access to it!”

Rep­re­sen­ta­tive Mike Collins on X: “Release the Epstein files. Release the Las Vegas shoot­er files. Release the JFK files.”

...

—————

“Delay to Jef­frey Epstein Files Being Released Rais­es Ques­tions” By Marni Rose McFall; Newsweek; 02/25/2025

“Now, less than a week after Bon­di indi­cat­ed the files would be released, Repub­li­cans are ques­tion­ing why the files are not yet pub­lic. Rep­re­sen­ta­tive Anna Pauli­na Luna, who recent­ly announced that she will lead a task force focused on declas­si­fy­ing fed­er­al secrets, includ­ing doc­u­ments relat­ed to Epstein, took to X, for­mer­ly Twit­ter, to ques­tion why the files are yet to be released.”

The pub­lic ques­tions are already grow­ing just days after Bondi’s Fox New appear­ance. Pub­lic ques­tions raised exclu­sive­ly by very con­ser­v­a­tive law­mak­ers and per­son­al­i­ties. Bon­di was even asked about the doc­u­ment releas­es by Ben­ny John­son at the recent CPAC gath­er­ing, which is pre­sum­ably part of the pre­text for John­son’s ‘report­ing’ about the FBI furi­ous­ly destroy­ing all the evi­dence:

...
At the Con­ser­v­a­tive Polit­i­cal Action Con­fer­ence, Bon­di was asked by con­ser­v­a­tive com­men­ta­tor Ben­ny John­son about when the list will be released.

Bon­di said that she had been briefed on it and is not able to talk about it pub­licly but added that Trump’s direc­tive will be fol­lowed.
...

And then we get to the ques­tions raised by oth­er mem­bers of con­gress like Rep­re­sen­ta­tives Tim Burchett, Mike Collins, and Sen­a­tor Mike Lee. As we can see, both Lee and Collins specif­i­cal­ly brought up “the Las Vegas Shoot­er”. Again, recall how the FBI utter­ly refused to even acknowl­edge a poten­tial far right motive for Steven Paddock’s Las Vegas mas­sacre, despite wit­ness­es hear­ing him talk­ing like a Sov­er­eign Cit­i­zen and about the need for some­one to ‘wake up’ the Amer­i­can peo­ple in the weeks lead­ing up to the attack. How much real inter­est is there among these con­ser­v­a­tive con­gress­men in reveal­ing what the FBI knows about Pad­dock­’s Sov­er­eign Cit­i­zen sym­pa­thies?

...
So too did Rep­re­sen­ta­tive Tim Burchett, Sen­a­tor Mike Lee and Rep­re­sen­ta­tive Mike Collins.

For years, online rumors have claimed with­out proof that an extend­ed list of Epstein’s “clients” exists. In Jan­u­ary 2024, dozens of Epstein’s asso­ciates were named in 900 pages of court doc­u­ments which were unsealed by a New York judge, includ­ing Trump, for­mer Pres­i­dent Bill Clin­ton and Prince Andrew, a mem­ber of the British roy­al fam­i­ly.

The doc­u­ments were not the rumored “client list,” and many of the peo­ple named were not accused of wrong­do­ing.

What Peo­ple Are Say­ing

Rep­re­sen­ta­tive Tim Burchett on X: “Where are the Epstein Files @PamBondi?”

Rep­re­sen­ta­tive Anna Pauli­na Luna on X: “On Feb 11 & Feb 19, @GOPoversight sent a let­ter to the @TheJusticeDept ask­ing for sta­tus on releas­ing the Epstein files as well as JFK etc. The DOJ has not respond­ed. Reach­ing out on X because we can’t seem to get a response from @AGPamBondi. @PamBondi, what is the sta­tus of the doc­u­ments? Many of these doc­u­ments were ordered to be declas­si­fied by @POTUS.”

Sen­a­tor Mike Lee on X: “This information—about Epstein, the Las Vegas shoot­er, the JFK assas­si­na­tion, etc.—belongs to the Amer­i­can peo­ple. It’s about damn time they be giv­en access to it!”

Rep­re­sen­ta­tive Mike Collins on X: “Release the Epstein files. Release the Las Vegas shoot­er files. Release the JFK files.”
...

Get ready for an ‘all the files show­ing Steven Pad­dock was a pro-trans flam­ing lib­er­al were destroyed by the lib­er­al FBI’ nar­ra­tive. A nar­ra­tive that, again, appears to be root­ed in the claims made on Ben­ny John­son’s show by for­mer FBI agent Gar­ret O’Boyle. A for­mer agent who pre­vi­ous­ly tes­ti­fied about the alleged anti-con­ser­v­a­tive bias inside the FBI back in 2023 as part of the Repub­li­can-led House Judi­cia­ry Com­mit­tee’s Select Sub­com­mit­tee on the Weaponiza­tion of the Fed­er­al Gov­ern­ment. Yes, the source for claims of the FBI’s hur­ried destruc­tion of evi­dence relat­ed to all these state secrets is the same for­mer agent who pub­licly insists that the FBI is actu­al­ly super-anti-con­ser­v­a­tive:

NBC News

FBI agent who tes­ti­fied for Repub­li­cans was sus­pend­ed over leaked sen­si­tive infor­ma­tion

House Democ­rats are ask­ing Attor­ney Gen­er­al Mer­rick Gar­land to inves­ti­gate whether Gar­ret O’Boyle, whom Repub­li­cans pre­sent­ed as an FBI whistle­blow­er, lied to Con­gress.

June 8, 2023, 3:09 PM CDT
By Ryan Nobles

WASHINGTON — Gar­ret O’Boyle, an FBI agent who was pre­sent­ed in a pub­lic hear­ing by House Repub­li­cans as a whistle­blow­er, was sus­pend­ed by the bureau because inter­nal inves­ti­ga­tors had con­clud­ed that he leaked sen­si­tive inves­tiga­tive infor­ma­tion to the right-wing group Project Ver­i­tas, accord­ing to a bureau offi­cial.

House Democ­rats now accuse O’Boyle of lying to the com­mit­tee and are refer­ring the mat­ter to Attor­ney Gen­er­al Mer­rick Gar­land, accord­ing to a let­ter obtained by NBC News.

Law­mak­ers learned about the rea­son for O’Boyle’s sus­pen­sion, which was pre­vi­ous­ly unre­port­ed, in tes­ti­mo­ny that Jen­nifer Moore, the FBI’s exec­u­tive assis­tant direc­tor for human resources, pro­vid­ed to the House Judi­cia­ry Com­mit­tee’s Select Sub­com­mit­tee on the Weaponiza­tion of the Fed­er­al Gov­ern­ment. Parts of her tes­ti­mo­ny are includ­ed in a let­ter top Democ­rats on the Judi­cia­ry and Weaponiza­tion pan­els wrote to Gar­land, alleg­ing that O’Boyle lied to the com­mit­tee about leak­ing infor­ma­tion before he was sus­pend­ed.

In the let­ter, Rep. Jer­ry Nadler, D‑N.Y., and Del. Stacey Plas­kett, D‑Virgin Islands, detail sev­er­al instances when O’Boyle, in inter­views with com­mit­tee staff and in the panel’s pub­lic hear­ing, denied that he had leaked FBI infor­ma­tion to the media.

O’Boyle tes­ti­fied that he made Rep. Jim Jor­dan, R‑Ohio, who chairs the Weaponiza­tion sub­com­mit­tee, aware of his sus­pen­sion and had pro­vid­ed him with the let­ter inform­ing him of the FBI’s deci­sion. O’Boyle described the charge as noth­ing more than an alle­ga­tion and claimed that he nev­er pro­vid­ed any­one out­side the agency with non­pub­lic infor­ma­tion before he was sus­pend­ed.

Q: Okay. But you did speak to the media?

A: Not pri­or to being sus­pend­ed, no.

Q: Okay. So your tes­ti­mo­ny is that you nev­er spoke to the media, that it was entire­ly false, what was in the sus­pen­sion notice that you were hand­ed?

A: Cor­rect.
Tran­script of WEAPONIZATION COMMITTEE staff inter­view with gar­ret o’boyle

Democ­rats argue in their let­ter to Gar­land that Moore’s tes­ti­mo­ny direct­ly con­tra­dicts O’Boyle’s claim. She pro­vid­ed the com­mit­tee with sev­er­al exam­ples of when non­pub­lic infor­ma­tion end­ed up in the pub­lic domain and explained how the inter­nal inves­ti­ga­tion deter­mined O’Boyle was respon­si­ble, accord­ing to their let­ter to Gar­land.

Moore point­ed to an inter­view Project Ver­i­tas con­duct­ed with an anony­mous sub­ject referred to as an “FBI whistle­blow­er.” She said the agency was able to deter­mine O’Boyle was that sub­ject.

Accord­ing to his sus­pen­sion let­ter, which is includ­ed in the Democ­rats’ let­ter to Gar­land, O’Boyle was sus­pend­ed by the FBI last Sept. 23. The inter­view in ques­tion was post­ed by Project Ver­i­tas on May 12 last year.

In addi­tion to the inter­view, Moore said, the bureau’s inves­ti­ga­tion revealed that O’Boyle had also removed sen­si­tive infor­ma­tion from FBI com­put­ers and pro­vid­ed it to Project Ver­i­tas with­out autho­riza­tion. Some of the infor­ma­tion shared with the right-wing site was part of an active crim­i­nal inves­ti­ga­tion, she told the com­mit­tee. There was an urgency to locate who was leak­ing the infor­ma­tion because of the risk it pre­sent­ed, she said, accord­ing to the let­ter.

...

Nadler and Plas­kett believe that the incon­sis­ten­cies in O’Boyle’s state­ments con­sti­tute a crime. In their let­ter, they ask Gar­land to exam­ine if O’Boyle is guilty of lying to Con­gress and per­jury.

In response to the let­ter, a spokesper­son for O’Boyle told NBC News that O’Boyle denies any claim that he lied about his sus­pen­sion to the com­mit­tee or that he leaked sen­si­tive infor­ma­tion to any media out­let.

Repub­li­cans point­ed to a por­tion of the tran­script that was not includ­ed in the Democ­rats’ let­ter. In that sec­tion, Moore declined to say if the bureau still believes O’Doyle was the sub­ject of the Project Ver­i­tas inter­view, say­ing she could not dis­cuss the inves­ti­ga­tion.

“Democ­rats are so des­per­ate to dis­tract from Jus­tice Depart­ment wrong­do­ing that they’re will­ing to embar­rass them­selves with friv­o­lous attacks on brave FBI whistle­blow­ers,” Rus­sell Dye, a spokesper­son for the Weaponiza­tion sub­com­mit­tee, said in a state­ment. “Gar­ret O’Boyle is a proud vet­er­an and expe­ri­enced law-enforce­ment offi­cer who has served our nation with hon­or and dis­tinc­tion. His only crime was speak­ing out about FBI abus­es, and because he exer­cised his con­science, shame­less Democ­rats now seek to smear his name.”

O’Boyle tes­ti­fied before the Weaponiza­tion sub­com­mit­tee last month at a hear­ing focused on alleged anti­con­ser­v­a­tive bias at the FBI. He tes­ti­fied along­side two oth­er self-pro­claimed FBI whistle­blow­ers whose secu­ri­ty clear­ances were sus­pend­ed because their con­duct in Jan. 6 cas­es brought into ques­tion their alle­giance to the U.S., a bureau offi­cial wrote to Con­gress.

...

———–

“FBI agent who tes­ti­fied for Repub­li­cans was sus­pend­ed over leaked sen­si­tive infor­ma­tion” By Ryan Nobles; NBC News; 06/08/2023

“O’Boyle tes­ti­fied before the Weaponiza­tion sub­com­mit­tee last month at a hear­ing focused on alleged anti­con­ser­v­a­tive bias at the FBI. He tes­ti­fied along­side two oth­er self-pro­claimed FBI whistle­blow­ers whose secu­ri­ty clear­ances were sus­pend­ed because their con­duct in Jan. 6 cas­es brought into ques­tion their alle­giance to the U.S., a bureau offi­cial wrote to Con­gress.”

What kind of ‘whistle­blow­ing’ did Gar­ret O’Boyle engage in? Whistle­blow­ing about the alleged anti-con­ser­v­a­tive bias at the FBI. That laugh­able asser­tion end­ed up with O’Boyle tes­ti­fy­ing before the Repub­li­can-led House Judi­cia­ry Com­mit­tee’s Select Sub­com­mit­tee on the Weaponiza­tion of the Fed­er­al Gov­ern­ment in 2023, dur­ing which O’Boyle denied alle­ga­tions that he leaked sen­si­tive infor­ma­tion to Project Ver­i­tas. A denial that was in stark con­trast with the FBI’s expla­na­tion for who O’Boyle was sus­pend­ed. And yet, as we can see in the response O’Boyle gave to NBC News back in June of 2023 as this sto­ry was play­ing out, he con­tin­ues to deny being the source of the leak:

...
Law­mak­ers learned about the rea­son for O’Boyle’s sus­pen­sion, which was pre­vi­ous­ly unre­port­ed, in tes­ti­mo­ny that Jen­nifer Moore, the FBI’s exec­u­tive assis­tant direc­tor for human resources, pro­vid­ed to the House Judi­cia­ry Com­mit­tee’s Select Sub­com­mit­tee on the Weaponiza­tion of the Fed­er­al Gov­ern­ment. Parts of her tes­ti­mo­ny are includ­ed in a let­ter top Democ­rats on the Judi­cia­ry and Weaponiza­tion pan­els wrote to Gar­land, alleg­ing that O’Boyle lied to the com­mit­tee about leak­ing infor­ma­tion before he was sus­pend­ed.

...

Democ­rats argue in their let­ter to Gar­land that Moore’s tes­ti­mo­ny direct­ly con­tra­dicts O’Boyle’s claim. She pro­vid­ed the com­mit­tee with sev­er­al exam­ples of when non­pub­lic infor­ma­tion end­ed up in the pub­lic domain and explained how the inter­nal inves­ti­ga­tion deter­mined O’Boyle was respon­si­ble, accord­ing to their let­ter to Gar­land.

Moore point­ed to an inter­view Project Ver­i­tas con­duct­ed with an anony­mous sub­ject referred to as an “FBI whistle­blow­er.” She said the agency was able to deter­mine O’Boyle was that sub­ject.

...

In addi­tion to the inter­view, Moore said, the bureau’s inves­ti­ga­tion revealed that O’Boyle had also removed sen­si­tive infor­ma­tion from FBI com­put­ers and pro­vid­ed it to Project Ver­i­tas with­out autho­riza­tion. Some of the infor­ma­tion shared with the right-wing site was part of an active crim­i­nal inves­ti­ga­tion, she told the com­mit­tee. There was an urgency to locate who was leak­ing the infor­ma­tion because of the risk it pre­sent­ed, she said, accord­ing to the let­ter.

...

In response to the let­ter, a spokesper­son for O’Boyle told NBC News that O’Boyle denies any claim that he lied about his sus­pen­sion to the com­mit­tee or that he leaked sen­si­tive infor­ma­tion to any media out­let.
...

It’s worth not­ing that the law­suits over O’Boyle’s sus­pen­sion at the FBI are still ongo­ing. But regard­less of whether or not he was prop­er­ly sus­pend­ed or not, the fact that the guy was the ‘anti-con­ser­v­a­tive bias at the FBI’ whistle­blow­er tells us what we need to know about the verac­i­ty of his claims. After all, claim­ing the FBI is anti-con­ser­v­a­tive is about as ahis­tor­i­cal as claim­ing ‘Deep State’ is run by a bunch of lib­er­als. But that’s the ahis­tor­i­cal nar­ra­tive get­ting pushed right now...just in term for the impend­ing ‘state secret dis­clo­sure’ let downs.

Promis­es made, promis­es kept bro­ken, but it’s total­ly not the Trump admin­is­tra­tion’s fault. Blame that FBI. That’s the fas­ci­nat­ing nar­ra­tive that has already erupt­ed around the ‘Phase 1’ release of the Jef­frey Epstein files. Yes, it turns out the long await­ed Epstein file dump was a dud. Sur­prise! Every­thing that was released had either already been pub­lished or was redact­ed. This is a good time to recall that 2017 inter­view of Epstein was revealed just days before the 2024 elec­tion where Epstein referred to Trump as his “best friend” for a decade.

As one of the jour­nal­ists in the White House press pool put it, “what we were look­ing for was hid­den from us.” Or, rather, one of the ‘jour­nal­ists’ in the White House press pool. Because it turns out the group of ‘jour­nal­ists’ invit­ed to the White House and giv­en binders of this ‘Phase 1’ release con­sist­ed of 15 far right inter­net influ­encers. A group that includ­ed Jack Poso­biec, Scott Presler and the peo­ple behind the accounts DC_Draino and Lib­sofTik­Tok. The pub­lic han­dling of this antic­i­pat­ed bomb­shell, that turned out to be a dud, was effec­tive­ly done by right-wing inter­net trolls.

Which is not to say that these influ­encers did­n’t express dis­ap­point­ment. They were open­ly dis­ap­point­ed. But as we’re going to see, it was dis­ap­point­ed that was­n’t specif­i­cal­ly focused on the Trump White House. Because this dis­ap­point­ing ‘Phase 1′ Epstein file release was giv­en to them with an acknowl­edg­ment by Trump’s AG Pam Bon­di that it was going to dis­ap­point­ing and just the start. Future releas­es should be more inter­est­ing. Maybe. If rogue ele­ments in the FBI don’t some­how block it first. That’s the meta-mes­sage Bon­di first com­mu­ni­cat­ed to these influ­encers dur­ing their pri­vate pre-release han­dover of the ‘Phase 1’ binders and lat­er com­mu­ni­cat­ed in a let­ter to FBI Direc­tor Kash Patel that was pub­licly released. As Bon­di tells it in the let­ter, “the FBI Field Office in New York was in pos­ses­sion of thou­sands of pages of doc­u­ments relat­ed to the inves­ti­ga­tion and indict­ment of Epstein.” Those thou­sands of pages of doc­u­ments have yet to be turned over by the field office, accord­ing to Bon­di. So the FBI Field Office in New York is the rea­son for the dud. That’s the unspo­ken mes­sage from Bon­di to the pub­lic, using far right influ­encers as co-mes­sen­gers.

And, of course, this all played out soon after we saw a ‘FBI is destroy­ing all the evi­dence!’ nar­ra­tive emerge out of right-wing media. Which rais­es the ques­tion as to whether or not we’re see­ing the ini­tial stage of the excuse for why the most incrim­i­nat­ing parts of the Epstein Files will ulti­mate­ly not be released. An excuse that dou­bles as fuel for the Project 2025. If the New York FBI field office is destroy­ing Epstein evi­dence, that’s all the more of a jus­ti­fi­ca­tion for Kash Patel’s QAnon-themed purge at the FBI. And the kind of excuse that can serve as a tem­plate for the destruc­tion of a whole lot more evi­dence on the rest of these ‘state secrets’. It’s a recipe for the sys­tem­at­ic destruc­tion of what­ev­er real evi­dence left in gov­ern­ment archives that can be blamed on ‘the Deep State’. A Deep State defined by the MAGA move­ment as a cabal of com­mu­nist bureau­crats secret­ly run­ning every­thing who are only now being exposed and over­thrown.

As we should expect, Rep­re­sen­ta­tive Anna Pauli­na Luna, who was recent­ly tasked with head­ing up the con­gres­sion­al task force on dis­clos­ing state secrets has already tak­en to social media, declar­ing “THIS IS NOT WHAT WE OR THE AMERICAN PEOPLE ASKED FOR and a com­plete dis­ap­point­ment. GET US THE INFORMATION WE ASKED FOR!” And who knows, maybe ‘Phase 2’ of the Epstein release will ful­fill Rep Luna’s demands. But if not, who is she going to blame? The Trump admin­is­tra­tion? Or the New York FBI field office? The same ques­tion applies to all these influ­encers. It’s a ques­tion about a hypo­thet­i­cal. But it’s a hypo­thet­i­cal that’s already start­ed play­ing out with this open­ing dud.

And then there’s the oth­er jour­nal­is­tic dud in the room: the fact that these 15 far right influ­encers were part of the White House press pool in the first place. Because it turns out there’s a new front in Trump’s Uni­tary Exec­u­tive-inspired Project 2025 pow­er grab: the com­po­si­tion of the White House press pool is no longer self-reg­u­lat­ed by the White House Cor­re­spon­dents’ Asso­ci­a­tion. The White House has tak­en con­trol. With imme­di­ate con­se­quences like the oust­ing of the Asso­ci­at­ed Press — due to its refusal to refer to the Gulf of Mex­i­co as the “Gulf of Amer­i­ca” — and the invi­ta­tion of out­lets like Gate­way Pun­dit, Steve Ban­non’s War Room pod­cast, and Mike Lin­del­l’s Lin­dell TV.

This is a good time to recall the many friv­o­lous law­suits against media out­lets like CBS’s par­ent cor­po­ra­tion, Para­mount, over a sup­pos­ed­ly doc­tored inter­view of Kamala Har­ris. The takeover of the White House press pool is just one more piece of a much larg­er cam­paign designed to cre­ate a tamed media land­scape. This is a good time to recall how Mike Lin­dell showed up at the White House on Decem­ber 11, 2020, and lob­bied for a plot to replace CIA Deputy Direc­tor Vaughn Bish­op with Kash Patel. It’ll be inter­est­ing to see how Lin­dell TV han­dles ques­tions about Kash Patel and the FBI’s require­ment to hand over secret files.

It also turns out the Pen­ta­gon has imple­ment a sim­i­lar purge of its own press corp. In fact, the “DOD rapid response” social media account recent­ly post­ed “Since real jour­nal­ism is dead, we’ll do it for you.”

Beyond the White House and Pen­ta­gon press pool takeovers, we’re learn­ing about the White House­’s plans for Voice of Amer­i­ca (VOA). As we saw, the first Trump admin­is­tra­tion tried to car­ry out an ide­o­log­i­cal purge of the VOA in 2020 under Michael Pack­’s lead­er­ship at the US Agency for Glob­al Media (USAGM, for­mer­ly the BBG). Also recall how Pack is not only a close ally of Steve Ban­non but was also the Pres­i­dent of the Clare­mont Insti­tute. A fur­ther purge of the VOA was to be expect­ed. And it’s hap­pen­ing.

Chron­ic elec­tion denier Kari Lake has been select­ed as the new VOA head. Anoth­er fig­ure who is join­ing return­ing as an advis­er to the USAGM after work­ing their dur­ing the first Trump admin­is­tra­tion is Mora Nam­dar. She wrote the sec­tion on the agency for Project 2025.

That’s the dis­turb­ing series of devel­op­ments encom­pass­ing the ongo­ing cov­er up of the var­i­ous state secrets Trump pledged to dis­close. Promis­es were made to release every­thing. But, so far, it’s promis­es not kept, with the FBI field office pub­licly tak­ing the blame at the same time Kash Patel’s FBI QAnon-inspired purge is get­ting under­way. The nar­ra­tive to turn evi­dence destruc­tion into fur­ther fuel for these ‘Deep State’ purges is being estab­lished. One dud and pow­er grab at at time:

Nation­al Pub­lic Radio

Trump White House seeks tighter grip on mes­sage with new lim­its on press

Feb­ru­ary 26, 2025 5:00 AM ET
David Folken­flik

In the White House brief­ing room Tues­day, the Trump admin­is­tra­tion announced its lat­est steps to tight­en its grip on the mes­sage it sends out and the news cov­er­age it receives.

No longer would the White House Cor­re­spon­dents’ Asso­ci­a­tion, made up of news out­lets that cov­er the White House, deter­mine how they will share cov­er­age of Pres­i­dent Trump at major events where space is lim­it­ed.

Press sec­re­tary Karo­line Leav­itt told the assem­bled reporters the White House would make that deter­mi­na­tion instead. Leav­itt said the media asso­ci­a­tion pre­vi­ous­ly had “dic­tat­ed” who was able to report direct­ly on Trump and with this move, she was return­ing “pow­er to the peo­ple.”

“Lega­cy out­lets who have par­tic­i­pat­ed in the press pool for decades will still be allowed to join – fear not,” Leav­itt said from the White House lectern. “We will also be offer­ing the priv­i­lege to well-deserv­ing out­lets who have nev­er been allowed to share in this awe­some respon­si­bil­i­ty.” The tele­vi­sion pool will not be affect­ed, despite the pres­i­den­t’s dif­fer­ences with many major net­works; before enter­ing elec­toral pol­i­tics, Trump was a fre­quent sub­ject of tabloid and tele­vi­sion atten­tion and then a real­i­ty TV star.

Press out­lets “pool” their resources when cov­er­age by all would be imprac­ti­cal; a selec­tion of print, video, radio, online and pho­to news orga­ni­za­tions alter­nate in doing the report­ing. The Trump admin­is­tra­tion already has barred The Asso­ci­at­ed Press, a main­stay of those pools, from cov­er­ing major events because it has not changed its guid­ance for call­ing the body of water between Mex­i­co and Flori­da the Gulf of Amer­i­ca, rather than the Gulf of Mex­i­co.

...

Leav­itt already has invit­ed once-fringe fig­ures from far-right out­lets into the press room to ask ques­tions. They include reporters for the con­spir­a­cy-mind­ed Gate­way Pun­dit, Steve Ban­non’s pod­cast and Lin­dell TV, start­ed by the MyP­il­low mag­nate Mike Lin­dell. While ide­o­log­i­cal jour­nal­ists have attend­ed White House brief­in­gs for decades, she has ampli­fied their role.

...

Declar­ing “VICTORY”

The AP filed a law­suit over the ban, say­ing the White House vio­lat­ed its First Amend­ment free speech rights and its Fifth Amend­ment pro­ce­dur­al rights, as it had no oppor­tu­ni­ty to appeal the deci­sion inter­nal­ly. At a hear­ing on Mon­day, U.S. Dis­trict Court Judge Trevor McFad­den, a Trump appointee, pushed Jus­tice Depart­ment lawyers to recon­sid­er the admin­is­tra­tion’s stance toward the AP. Yet the judge also ques­tioned why the cor­re­spon­dents’ asso­ci­a­tion had such dis­cre­tion over who par­tic­i­pat­ed.

The White House appears to have either tak­en inspi­ra­tion or refuge from the judge’s words — with Leav­it­t’s buoy­ant announce­ment the very next day. She was flanked by tele­vi­sion screens show­ing a map of the South­east­ern U.S., each stamped with the word “VICTORY” in all cap­i­tal let­ters. It showed the Gulf of Mex­i­co marked as the Gulf of Amer­i­ca, Trump’s pre­ferred term.

The AP’s refusal to change its Style­book to reflect the pres­i­den­t’s pref­er­ence, expressed in an exec­u­tive order on his first day in office, led to the ban, Trump and Leav­itt have said. Judge McFad­den sug­gest­ed that sound­ed like view­point dis­crim­i­na­tion, some­thing the courts have found vio­lates the First Amend­ment. Yet he declined the news agen­cy’s request for an emer­gency decree to force the admin­is­tra­tion to back off the ban. Instead, he set a hear­ing for March 20.

Mean­while, the pres­i­den­t’s chief reg­u­la­tor of broad­cast media has insti­gat­ed inves­ti­ga­tions of each of the major broad­cast out­lets – ABC, CBS, NBC, NPR and PBS – save Rupert Mur­doch’s Fox, which is a cor­po­rate sis­ter of the pro-Trump Fox News Chan­nel. In 2016, Mur­doch struck an alliance of con­ve­nience with Trump. It briefly flagged, until last year when Trump once more dom­i­nat­ed the Repub­li­can pri­maries.

The pres­i­dent, in his pri­vate capac­i­ty, has filed many law­suits against media and social media com­pa­nies. The own­ers of ABC, Face­book, and X have each paid mil­lions of dol­lars to set­tle law­suits he filed against them. Para­mount, CBS’s cor­po­rate par­ent, which is seek­ing gov­ern­ment approval of a sale, is weigh­ing whether to fol­low their exam­ple in Trump’s $20 bil­lion suit over its inter­view with Kamala Har­ris last year. Legal observers almost uni­form­ly say the pres­i­dent has no mer­it to his case.

A pin­cer move­ment

The admin­is­tra­tion is oper­at­ing some­thing of a pin­cer move­ment, apply­ing pres­sure to all pos­si­ble vul­ner­a­bil­i­ties.

...

“This move does not give the pow­er back to the peo­ple — it gives pow­er to the White House,” Jacqui Hein­rich, who cov­ers Trump for Fox News, tweet­ed after Leav­itt announced the White House would pick which reporters could serve in press pools. “Our job is to advo­cate for the MOST access pos­si­ble.”

The pres­sure on the press dove­tails with Trump’s efforts to clamp down on inde­pen­dent checks on his pow­er with­in the exec­u­tive branch. Among the myr­i­ad gov­ern­ment offi­cials he has dis­missed are agency inspec­tors gen­er­al and Spe­cial Coun­sel Hamp­ton Dellinger, who inves­ti­gates fed­er­al employ­ees’ com­plaints against the gov­ern­ment. He’s fired senior mil­i­tary lawyers, whom Defense Sec­re­tary Pete Hegseth – a for­mer Fox star – said could be “road­blocks” to the White House­’s agen­da.

Under Hegseth, the Defense Depart­ment has dis­lodged eight news orga­ni­za­tions from per­ma­nent work sta­tions at the Pen­ta­gon, includ­ing NPR, and invit­ed in sev­en con­ser­v­a­tive and right-wing news out­lets to replace them (along with one lib­er­al out­fit, Huff­Post).

A Reuters defense cor­re­spon­dent tweet­ed that Hegseth was trav­el­ing to vis­it Guan­tanamo Bay to vis­it the new U.S.-run deten­tion cen­ter for immi­grants with­out a sin­gle reporter who rou­tine­ly cov­ers the mil­i­tary. Pen­ta­gon social media accounts painstak­ing­ly doc­u­ment­ed his com­ings and goings. The “DOD rapid response” social media account taunt­ed CNN after it depart­ed its small work space and mocked the news media last night:: “Since real jour­nal­ism is dead, we’ll do it for you.”

Trump’s picks vis­it Voice of Amer­i­ca

Some jour­nal­ists who cov­er the admin­is­tra­tion say they believe that veers into pro­pa­gan­da. And that’s what is feared by many jour­nal­ists over at the gov­ern­ment-owned Voice of Amer­i­ca, who were pres­sured intense­ly dur­ing Trump’s first term. His choice to lead it, Kari Lake, appeared for the first time at the inter­na­tion­al net­work yes­ter­day, accord­ing to five peo­ple there. That said, it was hard­ly a secret: She tweet­ed out a pic­ture of the net­work’s name­plate at the entry of its Wash­ing­ton, D.C. head­quar­ters. “Let’s Get To Work,” she wrote.

Lake is a for­mer local news anchor in Phoenix who ran, unsuc­cess­ful­ly, for gov­er­nor and then U.S. Sen­ate from Ari­zona. She has denied elec­tion loss­es (both hers and Trump’s) and become a fre­quent crit­ic of the main­stream media.

...

Trump announced Lake’s selec­tion as though the posi­tion involves a pres­i­den­tial appoint­ment. It does not; the appoint­ment is done by the head of VOA’s par­ent agency, the U.S. Agency for Glob­al Media, and approved by a bipar­ti­san board. Con­fir­ma­tion hear­ings have not yet been sched­uled for Trump’s pick to lead the USAGM, the right-wing media crit­ic Brent Bozell.

At the time of her selec­tion, Lake wrote, “Under my lead­er­ship, the VOA will excel in its mis­sion: chron­i­cling Amer­i­ca’s achieve­ments world­wide.” That’s not pre­cise­ly the net­work’s stat­ed mis­sion. On its web­site, Voice of Amer­i­ca says it’s com­mit­ted to “pro­vid­ing com­pre­hen­sive cov­er­age of the news and telling audi­ences the truth.”

As she awaits her appoint­ment at Voice of Amer­i­ca, Lake has tak­en a role as an advis­er to the U.S. Agency for Glob­al Media. In recent days, she has defend­ed the Voice of Amer­i­ca’s exis­tence from calls for its elim­i­na­tion by pres­i­den­tial advis­er Elon Musk. She took to Musk’s social media plat­form X to do so.

“I think it’s worth get­ting in, dig­ging around, fix­ing what’s wrong, bol­ster­ing what’s good, & putting out an incred­i­ble prod­uct that ful­fills its mis­sion, broad­cast­ing the Amer­i­can sto­ry across the globe, & spread­ing the ideals of free­dom & lib­er­ty,” she wrote, link­ing an inter­view she sat for with the pro-Trump out­let Epoch Times.

Anoth­er new advis­er to VOA’s par­ent agency is Mora Nam­dar, who worked for USAGM in the first Trump admin­is­tra­tion. She also wrote the sec­tion on the agency for Project 2025, the blue­print for gov­ern­ing devel­oped by the Her­itage Foun­da­tion. Trump dis­avowed Project 2025 on the cam­paign trail, but now in office, he has enact­ed sev­er­al of its pro­pos­als.

...

She was part of an effort by Trump appointee Michael Pack, USAG­M’s chief exec­u­tive for sev­en months in 2020, to root out per­ceived ide­o­log­i­cal bias through­out the net­work. A senior White House reporter was inves­ti­gat­ed for bias; anoth­er was demot­ed after ask­ing tough ques­tions of then U.S. Sec­re­tary of State Mike Pom­peo in the wake of the Jan­u­ary 2021 siege of the U.S. Capi­tol.

A fed­er­al judge found that Pack vio­lat­ed con­sti­tu­tion­al pro­tec­tions. A for­mal inves­ti­ga­tion deter­mined that Pack had repeat­ed­ly abused the pow­ers of his office, broke laws and reg­u­la­tions, and engaged in gross mis­man­age­ment.

Ulti­mate­ly, inter­views with more than two dozen peo­ple showed that Trump’s aides at the White House and USAGM want­ed the net­work to reflect Trump’s suc­cess­es and to tamp down on crit­i­cisms of him — a con­sis­tent thread of recent devel­op­ments.

—————

“Trump White House seeks tighter grip on mes­sage with new lim­its on press” by David Folken­flik; Nation­al Pub­lic Radio; 02/26/2025

“Press sec­re­tary Karo­line Leav­itt told the assem­bled reporters the White House would make that deter­mi­na­tion instead. Leav­itt said the media asso­ci­a­tion pre­vi­ous­ly had “dic­tat­ed” who was able to report direct­ly on Trump and with this move, she was return­ing “pow­er to the peo­ple.””

The White House was return­ing “pow­er to peo­ple” with its takeover of the White House press pool. A takeover that does­n’t just include the inser­tion of an array of far right media out­lets like Steve Ban­non’s War Room pod­cast and Lin­dell TV. Again, recall how Mike Lin­dell showed up at the White House on Decem­ber 11, 2020, and lob­bied for a plot to replace CIA Deputy Direc­tor Vaughn Bish­op with Kash Patel. It also includes the implic­it threat that the remain­ing out­lets that have yet to be purged had bet­ter not anger the White House with too many incon­ve­nient ques­tions:

...
No longer would the White House Cor­re­spon­dents’ Asso­ci­a­tion, made up of news out­lets that cov­er the White House, deter­mine how they will share cov­er­age of Pres­i­dent Trump at major events where space is lim­it­ed.

...

“Lega­cy out­lets who have par­tic­i­pat­ed in the press pool for decades will still be allowed to join – fear not,” Leav­itt said from the White House lectern. “We will also be offer­ing the priv­i­lege to well-deserv­ing out­lets who have nev­er been allowed to share in this awe­some respon­si­bil­i­ty.” The tele­vi­sion pool will not be affect­ed, despite the pres­i­den­t’s dif­fer­ences with many major net­works; before enter­ing elec­toral pol­i­tics, Trump was a fre­quent sub­ject of tabloid and tele­vi­sion atten­tion and then a real­i­ty TV star.

...

Leav­itt already has invit­ed once-fringe fig­ures from far-right out­lets into the press room to ask ques­tions. They include reporters for the con­spir­a­cy-mind­ed Gate­way Pun­dit, Steve Ban­non’s pod­cast and Lin­dell TV, start­ed by the MyP­il­low mag­nate Mike Lin­dell. While ide­o­log­i­cal jour­nal­ists have attend­ed White House brief­in­gs for decades, she has ampli­fied their role.

...

But the “pow­er to the peo­ple” press pool purges aren’t lim­it­ed to White House press pool. The Pen­ta­gon press pools is get­ting purged too. And note that when we read how the new media out­lets invit­ed into the press pool con­sist of sev­en con­ser­v­a­tive and right-wing news out­lets plus the Huff­in­g­ton Post, keep in mind that the Huff­in­g­ton Post was one of the out­lets kicked out of the White House press pool in recent days. Which is going to make it grim­ly inter­est­ing to see how ‘well behaved’ the Huff­in­g­ton Post reporters are with their Pen­ta­gon duties:

...
Under Hegseth, the Defense Depart­ment has dis­lodged eight news orga­ni­za­tions from per­ma­nent work sta­tions at the Pen­ta­gon, includ­ing NPR, and invit­ed in sev­en con­ser­v­a­tive and right-wing news out­lets to replace them (along with one lib­er­al out­fit, Huff­Post).

A Reuters defense cor­re­spon­dent tweet­ed that Hegseth was trav­el­ing to vis­it Guan­tanamo Bay to vis­it the new U.S.-run deten­tion cen­ter for immi­grants with­out a sin­gle reporter who rou­tine­ly cov­ers the mil­i­tary. Pen­ta­gon social media accounts painstak­ing­ly doc­u­ment­ed his com­ings and goings. The “DOD rapid response” social media account taunt­ed CNN after it depart­ed its small work space and mocked the news media last night:: “Since real jour­nal­ism is dead, we’ll do it for you.”
...

And, of course, this press pool purge is just one aspect of a mul­ti­fac­eted cam­paign of ‘tam­ing’ the US media and ensur­ing com­pli­ant report­ing. Tam­ing that includes a slew of friv­o­lous law­suits that media out­lets have been eager­ly set­tling or at least seri­ous­ly pon­der­ing set­tling, like the ongo­ing friv­o­lous law­suit against CBS’s par­ent cor­po­ra­tion, Para­mount, over a sup­pos­ed­ly doc­tored inter­view of Kamala Har­ris. Or the attempts to pun­ish the AP over its refusal to go along with the ‘Gulf of Amer­i­ca’ troll­ish renam­ing of the Gulf of Mex­i­co. The media will be tamed one way or anoth­er. Pow­er to the peo­ple, appar­ent­ly:

...
Press out­lets “pool” their resources when cov­er­age by all would be imprac­ti­cal; a selec­tion of print, video, radio, online and pho­to news orga­ni­za­tions alter­nate in doing the report­ing. The Trump admin­is­tra­tion already has barred The Asso­ci­at­ed Press, a main­stay of those pools, from cov­er­ing major events because it has not changed its guid­ance for call­ing the body of water between Mex­i­co and Flori­da the Gulf of Amer­i­ca, rather than the Gulf of Mex­i­co.

...

Declar­ing “VICTORY”

The AP filed a law­suit over the ban, say­ing the White House vio­lat­ed its First Amend­ment free speech rights and its Fifth Amend­ment pro­ce­dur­al rights, as it had no oppor­tu­ni­ty to appeal the deci­sion inter­nal­ly. At a hear­ing on Mon­day, U.S. Dis­trict Court Judge Trevor McFad­den, a Trump appointee, pushed Jus­tice Depart­ment lawyers to recon­sid­er the admin­is­tra­tion’s stance toward the AP. Yet the judge also ques­tioned why the cor­re­spon­dents’ asso­ci­a­tion had such dis­cre­tion over who par­tic­i­pat­ed.

The White House appears to have either tak­en inspi­ra­tion or refuge from the judge’s words — with Leav­it­t’s buoy­ant announce­ment the very next day. She was flanked by tele­vi­sion screens show­ing a map of the South­east­ern U.S., each stamped with the word “VICTORY” in all cap­i­tal let­ters. It showed the Gulf of Mex­i­co marked as the Gulf of Amer­i­ca, Trump’s pre­ferred term.

The AP’s refusal to change its Style­book to reflect the pres­i­den­t’s pref­er­ence, expressed in an exec­u­tive order on his first day in office, led to the ban, Trump and Leav­itt have said. Judge McFad­den sug­gest­ed that sound­ed like view­point dis­crim­i­na­tion, some­thing the courts have found vio­lates the First Amend­ment. Yet he declined the news agen­cy’s request for an emer­gency decree to force the admin­is­tra­tion to back off the ban. Instead, he set a hear­ing for March 20.

Mean­while, the pres­i­den­t’s chief reg­u­la­tor of broad­cast media has insti­gat­ed inves­ti­ga­tions of each of the major broad­cast out­lets – ABC, CBS, NBC, NPR and PBS – save Rupert Mur­doch’s Fox, which is a cor­po­rate sis­ter of the pro-Trump Fox News Chan­nel. In 2016, Mur­doch struck an alliance of con­ve­nience with Trump. It briefly flagged, until last year when Trump once more dom­i­nat­ed the Repub­li­can pri­maries.

The pres­i­dent, in his pri­vate capac­i­ty, has filed many law­suits against media and social media com­pa­nies. The own­ers of ABC, Face­book, and X have each paid mil­lions of dol­lars to set­tle law­suits he filed against them. Para­mount, CBS’s cor­po­rate par­ent, which is seek­ing gov­ern­ment approval of a sale, is weigh­ing whether to fol­low their exam­ple in Trump’s $20 bil­lion suit over its inter­view with Kamala Har­ris last year. Legal observers almost uni­form­ly say the pres­i­dent has no mer­it to his case.
...

And then we get to Trump’s choice to lead Voice of Amer­i­ca: chron­ic elec­tion-denier Kari Lake. A choice Trump appears to have made despite the fact that the appoint­ment is actu­al­ly made by the by the head of VOA’s par­ent agency, the U.S. Agency for Glob­al Media (USAGM, for­mer­ly the BBG), and approved by a bipar­ti­san board. Which rais­es the ques­tion as to whether or not that bipar­ti­san board approval process is even going to hap­pen at this point giv­en the Uni­tary Exec­u­tive the­o­ry that is guid­ing this admin­is­tra­tion:

...
Some jour­nal­ists who cov­er the admin­is­tra­tion say they believe that veers into pro­pa­gan­da. And that’s what is feared by many jour­nal­ists over at the gov­ern­ment-owned Voice of Amer­i­ca, who were pres­sured intense­ly dur­ing Trump’s first term. His choice to lead it, Kari Lake, appeared for the first time at the inter­na­tion­al net­work yes­ter­day, accord­ing to five peo­ple there. That said, it was hard­ly a secret: She tweet­ed out a pic­ture of the net­work’s name­plate at the entry of its Wash­ing­ton, D.C. head­quar­ters. “Let’s Get To Work,” she wrote.

Lake is a for­mer local news anchor in Phoenix who ran, unsuc­cess­ful­ly, for gov­er­nor and then U.S. Sen­ate from Ari­zona. She has denied elec­tion loss­es (both hers and Trump’s) and become a fre­quent crit­ic of the main­stream media.

...

Trump announced Lake’s selec­tion as though the posi­tion involves a pres­i­den­tial appoint­ment. It does not; the appoint­ment is done by the head of VOA’s par­ent agency, the U.S. Agency for Glob­al Media, and approved by a bipar­ti­san board. Con­fir­ma­tion hear­ings have not yet been sched­uled for Trump’s pick to lead the USAGM, the right-wing media crit­ic Brent Bozell.
...

And that Uni­tary Exec­u­tive the­o­ry guid­ing Trump admin­is­tra­tion of course being put into place heav­i­ly through the actions of Project 2025. So it’s rather notable that one of the new advis­ers to VOA, Mora Nam­dan, wrote the Project 2025 sec­tion on their plans for the VOA. Which is a reminder that any upcom­ing purge of the VOA is going to be a Project 2025 guid­ed purge. And when we see how Nam­dan was part of the efforts of the first Trump admin­is­tra­tion to car­ry out an ide­o­log­i­cal purge of the VOA under Michael Pack­’s lead­er­ship at the USAGM, recall how Pack is not only a close ally of Steve Ban­non but was also the Pres­i­dent of the Clare­mont Insti­tute. So when we read about how a fed­er­al judge found that Pack vio­lat­ed con­sti­tu­tion­al pro­tec­tions in the car­ry­ing out of that purge, keep in mind that what­ev­er he was doing in 2020 is going to seem like child’s play com­pared the purges planned today:

...
Anoth­er new advis­er to VOA’s par­ent agency is Mora Nam­dar, who worked for USAGM in the first Trump admin­is­tra­tion. She also wrote the sec­tion on the agency for Project 2025, the blue­print for gov­ern­ing devel­oped by the Her­itage Foun­da­tion. Trump dis­avowed Project 2025 on the cam­paign trail, but now in office, he has enact­ed sev­er­al of its pro­pos­als.

...

She was part of an effort by Trump appointee Michael Pack, USAG­M’s chief exec­u­tive for sev­en months in 2020, to root out per­ceived ide­o­log­i­cal bias through­out the net­work. A senior White House reporter was inves­ti­gat­ed for bias; anoth­er was demot­ed after ask­ing tough ques­tions of then U.S. Sec­re­tary of State Mike Pom­peo in the wake of the Jan­u­ary 2021 siege of the U.S. Capi­tol.

A fed­er­al judge found that Pack vio­lat­ed con­sti­tu­tion­al pro­tec­tions. A for­mal inves­ti­ga­tion deter­mined that Pack had repeat­ed­ly abused the pow­ers of his office, broke laws and reg­u­la­tions, and engaged in gross mis­man­age­ment.

Ulti­mate­ly, inter­views with more than two dozen peo­ple showed that Trump’s aides at the White House and USAGM want­ed the net­work to reflect Trump’s suc­cess­es and to tamp down on crit­i­cisms of him — a con­sis­tent thread of recent devel­op­ments.
...

What are the con­se­quences going to be of this press pool pow­er grab? Well, as the fol­low­ing arti­cles make clear, we won’t have to wait long to find out. Because it turns out a group of 15 far right ‘influ­encers’ were just invit­ed to the White House to get what appears to be exclu­sive ear­ly access to the ‘Phase 1’ roll out of the long-promised Epstein files. Influ­encers like the peo­ple behind the DC_Draino and Lib­sofTik­Tok social media accounts. Right-wing influ­ence antics dom­i­nat­ing the ini­tial cov­er­age of the Epstein files release was the obvi­ous plan. Except their antics were most­ly dis­ap­point­ment thanks to the fact that the released doc­u­ments had either already been pre­vi­ous­ly leaked to the pub­lic or were heav­i­ly redact­ed. It was the kind of let down that result­ed in these influ­encers most­ly express­ing dis­ap­point­ment. But AG Pam Bon­di had an excuse for the dis­ap­point­ment all ready to go. An excuse very much in line with the ‘FBI is destroy­ing all the evi­dence!’ nar­ra­tive that has already emerged in right-wing media: accord­ing to Bon­di, the FBI and pros­e­cu­tors in the South­ern Dis­trict of New York had failed to turn over oth­er doc­u­ments that Bon­di had ordered them to pro­duce:

CBS News

Right-wing influ­encers get binders labeled “The Epstein Files,” but down­play rev­e­la­tions

By Ker­ry Breen
Updat­ed on: Feb­ru­ary 27, 2025 / 6:46 PM EST / CBS News

A group of 15 right-wing influ­encers vis­it­ed the White House on Thurs­day and emerged with binders labeled “The Epstein Files: Phase 1” that they obtained from Attor­ney Gen­er­al Pam Bon­di, who has vowed to release infor­ma­tion held by the Jus­tice Depart­ment about the late sex offend­er Jef­frey Epstein.

But some of those who received the binder said there was lit­tle new infor­ma­tion in the files. Bon­di lat­er released a state­ment with links to the doc­u­ments, and said, “The first phase of declas­si­fied files large­ly con­tains doc­u­ments that have been pre­vi­ous­ly leaked but nev­er released in a for­mal capac­i­ty by the U.S. Gov­ern­ment.”

Liz Wheel­er, who was seen leav­ing the White House, went live on X lat­er in the day to describe the binder and flip through its con­tents. She said that while peo­ple are look­ing for new infor­ma­tion relat­ed to the Epstein case, “that’s not what’s in” the fold­er. Most of the pages that Wheel­er showed were from Epstein’s address book, which has long been pub­lic, with address­es redact­ed.

Jes­si­ca Reed Kraus, anoth­er influ­encer, wrote in an Insta­gram post that Bon­di per­son­al­ly deliv­ered the doc­u­ments to the group in a meet­ing that Pres­i­dent Trump joined. Wheel­er wrote that FBI Direc­tor Kash Patel and Vice Pres­i­dent JD Vance were also in atten­dance.

A total of 15 influ­encers were on hand for the meet­ing, accord­ing to Kraus. Oth­ers includ­ed con­spir­a­cy pro­mot­er Jack Poso­biec, elec­tion denier Scott Presler and Rogan O’Han­d­ley and Chaya Raichik, the peo­ple behind the accounts DC_Draino and Lib­sofTik­Tok, respec­tive­ly.

Poso­biec described the con­tents of the binders as “con­tacts” and “flight logs.” He said “more and more pieces of this” would be com­ing.

...

Wheel­er said Bon­di told the group that the FBI and pros­e­cu­tors in the South­ern Dis­trict of New York had failed to turn over oth­er doc­u­ments that Bon­di had ordered them to pro­duce.

...

———–

“Right-wing influ­encers get binders labeled “The Epstein Files,” but down­play rev­e­la­tions” By Ker­ry Breen; CBS News; 02/27/2025

“A total of 15 influ­encers were on hand for the meet­ing, accord­ing to Kraus. Oth­ers includ­ed con­spir­a­cy pro­mot­er Jack Poso­biec, elec­tion denier Scott Presler and Rogan O’Han­d­ley and Chaya Raichik, the peo­ple behind the accounts DC_Draino and Lib­sofTik­Tok, respec­tive­ly.”

Yes, far right influ­encers like DC_Draino and Lib­sofTik­Tok are now invit­ed into the White House press pool. Invit­ed by the Trump White House, of course, which has now assert­ed the author­i­ty to make such deci­sions. But they weren’t just invit­ed into the pool. It was these influ­encer who were giv­en binders of the ‘Phase 1’ release of the Epstein files. A wild­ly dis­ap­point­ing release by all accounts. Why so dis­ap­point­ing? Well, this is where it gets grim­ly inter­est­ing: AG Pam Bon­di is already blam­ing the FBI and pros­e­cu­tors in the South­ern Dis­trict of New York for fail­ing to turn over the rel­e­vant doc­u­ments. A claim that is very much aligned with the sto­ries get­ting loud­ly pushed on right-wing media out­lets about the FBI fran­ti­cal­ly destroy­ing evi­dence. The ‘FBI destroyed all the evi­dence at the last minute’ nar­ra­tive is get­ting but­tressed:

...
Liz Wheel­er, who was seen leav­ing the White House, went live on X lat­er in the day to describe the binder and flip through its con­tents. She said that while peo­ple are look­ing for new infor­ma­tion relat­ed to the Epstein case, “that’s not what’s in” the fold­er. Most of the pages that Wheel­er showed were from Epstein’s address book, which has long been pub­lic, with address­es redact­ed.

Jes­si­ca Reed Kraus, anoth­er influ­encer, wrote in an Insta­gram post that Bon­di per­son­al­ly deliv­ered the doc­u­ments to the group in a meet­ing that Pres­i­dent Trump joined. Wheel­er wrote that FBI Direc­tor Kash Patel and Vice Pres­i­dent JD Vance were also in atten­dance.

...

Wheel­er said Bon­di told the group that the FBI and pros­e­cu­tors in the South­ern Dis­trict of New York had failed to turn over oth­er doc­u­ments that Bon­di had ordered them to pro­duce.
...

And as we can see from the let­ter to FBI Direc­tor Kash Patel made pub­lic Thurs­day after­noon, Bon­di is mak­ing sure the pub­lic mes­sage for the lack of any explo­sive rev­e­la­tions is blamed on the FBI Field Office in New York. The kind of pub­lic charge that is only going to fuel Patel’s ide­o­log­i­cal purge of the FBI:

New York Post

Trump DOJ feeds Jef­frey Epstein doc­u­ments to under­whelmed con­ser­v­a­tive influ­encers: ‘You should feel frus­trat­ed’

By Steven Nel­son and Ryan King
Pub­lished Feb. 27, 2025
Updat­ed Feb. 27, 2025, 7:15 p.m. ET

WASHINGTON — The Jus­tice Depart­ment released a hand­ful of files on noto­ri­ous sex traf­fick­er Jef­frey Epstein on Thurs­day — though there appear to be no new names or details.

...

A source who reviewed the files told The Post ahead of the influ­encers’ embar­goed release that they spanned more than 100 pages of the noto­ri­ous pedophile’s phone book, includ­ing a list of con­tacts with­out fur­ther con­text and address­es redact­ed.

This per­son added the unveil­ing was like­ly to be a “dis­ap­point­ment” to sleuths eager for bomb­shell new evi­dence about Epstein’s con­nec­tions to promi­nent polit­i­cal and busi­ness lead­ers.

Indeed, when the con­ser­v­a­tive social media per­son­al­i­ties began live-stream­ing footage of the con­tent after The Post’s ini­tial report, they revealed files that were long avail­able in the pub­lic record — such as flight logs — and that all of the bold­faced names in the con­tact list already were known from pri­or dis­clo­sures.

Hours lat­er, Attor­ney Gen­er­al Pam Bon­di released the doc­u­ments pub­licly. The names in the con­tact book includ­ed: Michael Jack­son, Britain’s Prince Andrew, Mick Jag­ger, Ethel Kennedy — the moth­er of Robert F. Kennedy Jr., Alec Bald­win and for­mer New York Gov. Andrew Cuo­mo.

How­ev­er, the doc­u­ment appeared to be a copy of Epstein’s “black book” that was first pub­lished in 2021 and lat­er put up for auc­tion.

A list of 254 names on anoth­er doc­u­ment titled “MASSEUSES” was entire­ly redact­ed.

The flight logs includ­ed in the release were made pub­lic as part of Epstein accom­plice Ghis­laine Maxwell’s 2021 tri­al.

No “client list” was includ­ed in the release, which was com­piled into binders describ­ing the dis­clo­sure as “phase one” of the Epstein files, accord­ing to The Post’s source.

Bon­di lat­er sug­gest­ed more details will be com­ing. In a let­ter to FBI Direc­tor Kash Patel made pub­lic Thurs­day after­noon, she claimed that she had been told “the FBI Field Office in New York was in pos­ses­sion of thou­sands of pages of doc­u­ments relat­ed to the inves­ti­ga­tion and indict­ment of Epstein.”

Bon­di went on to demand the “full and com­plete Epstein files to my office, includ­ing records, doc­u­ments, audio and video record­ings, and mate­ri­als relat­ed to Jef­frey Epstein and his clients” by 8 a.m. Fri­day.

Bon­di pre­vi­ous­ly hint­ed at more dra­mat­ic rev­e­la­tions in a Wednes­day night inter­view with Jesse Waters of Fox News say­ing she would release “a lot of names, a lot of infor­ma­tion — it’s pret­ty sick what that man did.”

...

For­mer Pres­i­dent Bill Clin­ton, Bill Gates, Prince Andrew and Pres­i­dent Trump are among the high-pro­file peo­ple who asso­ci­at­ed with Epstein — though Trump report­ed­ly banned Epstein from Mar-a-Lago in 2007 over an inci­dent with a club member’s teen daugh­ter. (Trump was not named in the con­tact list, though some of his fam­i­ly mem­bers were.)

Copies of the binder cir­cu­lat­ed with­in the West Wing Thurs­day morn­ing and were dis­trib­uted to 15 con­ser­v­a­tive influ­encers who vis­it­ed the White House.

One of the influ­encers who obtained ear­ly access to the files, pod­cast­er Liz Wheel­er, acknowl­edged that the trove lacked a “bomb­shell.”

“Now what’s inter­est­ing is we’re all wait­ing for bomb­shells,” Wheel­er told fol­low­ers in a live stream on X. “We’re all wait­ing for juicy stuff. And that’s not what’s in this binder. That’s not what’s in this binder at all. And that’s exact­ly how the attor­ney gen­er­al pre­sent­ed it to us.”

“It’s fine to feel frus­trat­ed,” she added. “You should feel frus­trat­ed.”

Wheel­er briefly showed off por­tions of the binder, reveal­ing heav­i­ly redact­ed pages, includ­ing a con­tact list, while insist­ing, “what we were look­ing for was hid­den from us.”

Rep. Anna Pauli­na Luna (R‑Fla.), who leads a House GOP task force on gov­ern­ment trans­paren­cy, demand­ed more infor­ma­tion.

“I nor the task force were giv­en or reviewed the Epstein doc­u­ments being released today … A NY Post sto­ry just revealed that the doc­u­ments will sim­ply be Epstein’s phone­book,”  Luna tweet­ed.

“THIS IS NOT WHAT WE OR THE AMERICAN PEOPLE ASKED FOR and a com­plete dis­ap­point­ment. GET US THE INFORMATION WE ASKED FOR!”

Some of Epstein’s address books have already been made pub­lic, and it’s unclear if the doc­u­ment dump will include fresh infor­ma­tion.

A 97-page address book pub­lished by Gawk­er in 2015 includ­ed names, address­es and phone num­bers of 221 peo­ple.

A dif­fer­ent address book from 1997 was put up for auc­tion  last year but failed to sell.

That 64-page book list­ed 349 peo­ple includ­ing Robert F. Kennedy Jr, News­Na­tion anchor Chris Cuomo’s wife Cristi­na Greeven, actress Mor­gan Fairchild and bil­lion­aire Carl Icahn.

...

———–

“Trump DOJ feeds Jef­frey Epstein doc­u­ments to under­whelmed con­ser­v­a­tive influ­encers: ‘You should feel frus­trat­ed’” By Steven Nel­son and Ryan King; New York Post; 02/27/2025

“Bon­di lat­er sug­gest­ed more details will be com­ing. In a let­ter to FBI Direc­tor Kash Patel made pub­lic Thurs­day after­noon, she claimed that she had been told “the FBI Field Office in New York was in pos­ses­sion of thou­sands of pages of doc­u­ments relat­ed to the inves­ti­ga­tion and indict­ment of Epstein.””

More doc­u­ments are forth­com­ing. Thou­sands of doc­u­ments cur­rent­ly in the pos­ses­sion of the the FBI Field Office in New York. That’s the mes­sage Pam Bon­di is deliv­er­ing to the pub­lic, along with a demand for “full and com­plete Epstein files to my office, includ­ing records, doc­u­ments, audio and video record­ings, and mate­ri­als relat­ed to Jef­frey Epstein and his clients” by 8 a.m. the next day. A dead­line that has already passed. Did Bon­di get the files?

...
Bon­di went on to demand the “full and com­plete Epstein files to my office, includ­ing records, doc­u­ments, audio and video record­ings, and mate­ri­als relat­ed to Jef­frey Epstein and his clients” by 8 a.m. Fri­day.

Bon­di pre­vi­ous­ly hint­ed at more dra­mat­ic rev­e­la­tions in a Wednes­day night inter­view with Jesse Waters of Fox News say­ing she would release “a lot of names, a lot of infor­ma­tion — it’s pret­ty sick what that man did.”
...

And when we see how the names of some Trump fam­i­ly mem­bers were list­ed on the Epstein client list but not Don­ald Trump him­self, this is a good time to recall that 2017 inter­view of Epstein was revealed just days before the 2024 elec­tion where Epstein referred to Trump as his “best friend” for a decade. Which is a reminder that Trump was­n’t just Epstein’s client. They were much much more:

...
For­mer Pres­i­dent Bill Clin­ton, Bill Gates, Prince Andrew and Pres­i­dent Trump are among the high-pro­file peo­ple who asso­ci­at­ed with Epstein — though Trump report­ed­ly banned Epstein from Mar-a-Lago in 2007 over an inci­dent with a club member’s teen daugh­ter. (Trump was not named in the con­tact list, though some of his fam­i­ly mem­bers were.)
...

Final­ly, we get to the loud the­atrics of Rep Anna Pauli­na Luna, the head of the new ‘state secrets’ con­gres­sion­al task force. “GET US THE INFORMATION WE ASKED FOR!” Rep Luna demand­ed on social media. Demands that, if not met, will pre­sum­ably result in the FBI Field Office in New York tak­ing the blame:

...
Wheel­er briefly showed off por­tions of the binder, reveal­ing heav­i­ly redact­ed pages, includ­ing a con­tact list, while insist­ing, “what we were look­ing for was hid­den from us.”

Rep. Anna Pauli­na Luna (R‑Fla.), who leads a House GOP task force on gov­ern­ment trans­paren­cy, demand­ed more infor­ma­tion.

“I nor the task force were giv­en or reviewed the Epstein doc­u­ments being released today … A NY Post sto­ry just revealed that the doc­u­ments will sim­ply be Epstein’s phone­book,”  Luna tweet­ed.

“THIS IS NOT WHAT WE OR THE AMERICAN PEOPLE ASKED FOR and a com­plete dis­ap­point­ment. GET US THE INFORMATION WE ASKED FOR!”
...

Rep Luna is clear­ly unhap­py. Or at least that’s the thrust of her pub­lic the­atrics. But who will she ulti­mate­ly blame if ‘Phase 2′ and ‘Phase 3’ are duds too? And what will she demand? Will she demand an inves­ti­ga­tion of a Trump admin­is­tra­tion cov­er up? Or will she demand more purges by Kash Patel? It’s not hard to guess the answer. Which is why it’s not hard to guess whether or not Rep Luna’s task force is ulti­mate­ly going to be a dud too. Along with an excuse for more purges.

Get ready. It’s hap­pen­ing for real this time! With a few minor strings attached.

That was the mes­sage Attor­ney Gen­er­al Pam Bon­di deliv­ered to the increas­ing­ly skep­ti­cal MAGA base over the ongo­ing Jef­frey Epstein dis­clo­sure dud. A dud that, as we’ve seen, start­ed with alle­ga­tions in right-wing media that the FBI offices in New York were destroy­ing evi­dence soon fol­lowed by a woe­ful­ly under­whelm­ing ‘Phase I’ release of already-released files. A dud of a release that Bon­di pub­licly blamed on the New York FBI for refus­ing to turn over doc­u­ments. And now, Bon­di has revealed that an entire “truck­load” of Epstein-relat­ed files was just deliv­ered to Bondi’s office from the New York office of the FBI and Bon­di is ready­ing their release.

But not their entire release. Expect some redac­tions. What kind of redac­tions can we expect? Well, dur­ing an inter­view with Sean Han­ni­ty, Bon­di indi­cat­ed that the names of vic­tims will be redact­ed. Which makes sense. But then she gets to this sec­ond cat­e­go­ry of redac­tions: nation­al secu­ri­ty con­cerns. It also appears Bon­di includ­ed nation­al secu­ri­ty con­cerns as grounds for redac­tions in oth­er cas­es like the JFK and MLK assas­si­na­tions.

So what are the poten­tial nation­al secu­ri­ty con­cerns sur­round­ing the Epstein files? Bon­di does­n’t say. But it should be pret­ty obvi­ous that some­one like Epstein — who was like­ly run­ning some sort of gov­ern­ment-pro­tect­ed sex­u­al honeypot/blackmail oper­a­tion tar­get pow­er­ful peo­ple and long sus­pect­ed of serv­ing as an intel­li­gence asset — just might have pos­sessed troves of high­ly scan­dalous doc­u­ments that could cre­ate all sorts of inter­na­tion­al scan­dals. Don’t for­get that Alex Acos­ta — the fed­er­al pros­e­cu­tor who hand­ed Epstein his ini­tial sweet­heart plea deal — claimed he was told Epstein “belonged to intel­li­gence” and that he should just leave it alone. All indi­ca­tions are that a full dis­clo­sure of the Epstein files could be wild­ly embar­rass­ing not just to pow­er­ful indi­vid­u­als but also gov­ern­ments. Beyond that, there’s the real­i­ty that Epstein claimed in a 2017 inter­view revealed just days before the 2024 elec­tion that Don­ald Trump was his “best friend” for a decade. What kind of ‘nation­al secu­ri­ty’ con­cerns could rev­e­la­tions like that cre­ate now that Trump is back in the White House? In oth­er words, Bon­di just gave her­self the free­dom to effec­tive­ly redact the most impor­tant and explo­sive Epstein rev­e­la­tions. At the same time she just pledged to release the ‘truck­load’ of doc­u­ments that the New York FBI office was alleged­ly with­hold­ing.

And that brings us to anoth­er update on Bondi’s high­ly pub­lic spat with the New York branch of the FBI: the assis­tant direc­tor in charge of the FBI’s New York field office, James Den­nehy, was just ordered to resign with­out any expla­na­tion. Now, it’s impor­tant to keep in mind that Den­nehy’s fir­ing was almost a giv­en at this point after he wrote a memo to FBI staff mem­bers last month call­ing on them to “dig in” and resist the Trump admin­is­tra­tion’s ongo­ing insti­tu­tion­al purge and that let­ter was report­ed on by the New York Times. There was no way he was­n’t going to fired at some point after that. But that’s part of what makes the tim­ing of this fir­ing all the more inter­est­ing. Instead of fir­ing him right away, he was appar­ent­ly allowed to stay on the job long enough to allow this ‘FBI in NY is withholding/destroying all the Epstein files’ nar­ra­tive take hold. Inter­est­ing tim­ing.

But despite all the the­atrics com­ing out of the Trump admin­is­tra­tion over the release of these files, it’s not like there’s no rea­son to sus­pect the FBI — along with all sorts of oth­er gov­ern­ment agen­cies — real­ly are resis­tant to the full dis­clo­sure of the Epstein files. After all, if he real­ly was a US intel­li­gence asset there’s no way that’s going to be allowed to be revealed. Hence all the nec­es­sary the­atrics. Which brings us to a remark­able update on the Epstein inves­ti­ga­tion that we got back in Jan­u­ary of 2024. An update that emerged dur­ing the tri­al of Ghis­laine Maxwell when FBI agent Kel­ly Maguire tes­ti­fied about the FBI’s han­dling of the evi­dence recov­ered from the safe that was found in Epstein’s New York res­i­dence dur­ing an 2019 raid of the prop­er­ty. Recall how, as we learn at the time, that safe con­tained a num­ber of very inter­est­ing items includ­ing a Sau­di Ara­bi­an pass­port issued in the 1980s. The pass­port had Epstein’s pho­to but a fake name. And list­ed Sau­di Ara­bia as Epstein’s place of res­i­dence. Well, guess what hap­pened to the con­tents of that safe fol­low­ing the FBI raid: noth­ing. They lit­er­al­ly did not remove the con­tents of the safe because they lacked a war­rant to allow it, accord­ing to agent Maguire. Instead, the items in the safe were pho­tographed. And when FBI agents returned to the New York res­i­dence lat­er that year to retrieve the con­tents of the safe, they dis­cov­ered the con­tents had all been tak­en. They were lat­er returned by Richard Kahn, Epstein’s for­mer lawyer and execu­tor of his estate. Maguire could not con­firm if the con­tent on the returned CDs was the same as the ones pho­tographed but assert­ed that all items had been account­ed for.

So in 2019, dur­ing Trump’s first term, Epstein’s New York res­i­dence was raid­ed and the con­tents of his safe were allowed to be tak­en and then returned by his lawyer. And the FBI appar­ent­ly hap­less­ly allowed this all to hap­pen. It’s cer­tain­ly not a great look for the New York branch of the FBI. But, again, it’s hard not to notice how this was all under Trump’s first watch. A watch that includ­ed the still-unex­plained and high­ly sus­pi­cious ‘sui­cide’ of Epstein in fed­er­al jail cell. It’s all a reminder that the Trump admin­is­tra­tion’s high pro­file the­atrics around the release of the Epstein files is prob­a­bly being done with the knowl­edge that much of that evi­dence that’s sup­posed to be dis­closed today was like­ly qui­et­ly destroyed already dur­ing the first Trump admin­is­tra­tion and some sort of cov­er sto­ry is now need­ed:

Giz­mo­do

Trump’s AG Claims She Will Release More Epstein Docs, but They May Be Redact­ed for Nation­al Secu­ri­ty

The search for rad­i­cal “trans­paren­cy” isn’t going so well inside the new Trump White House.

By Lucas Ropek
Pub­lished March 4, 2025

MAGA-world was per­turbed last week when Pres­i­dent Trump’s new attor­ney gen­er­al, Pam Bon­di, claimed to have final­ly shed light on the mys­te­ri­ous case of Jef­frey Epstein but, instead, released a bunch of doc­u­ments that had already been pub­licly avail­able for years. Now, Bon­di is claim­ing that the rea­son she wasn’t able to release more doc­u­ments is because oth­er gov­ern­ment offi­cials blocked them from being sent to her.

...

Bon­di now claims that a “source” told her that there were thou­sands of pages per­tain­ing to Epstein that remained in the South­ern Dis­trict of New York, the dis­trict where Epstein was being tried for sex traf­fick­ing when he died in 2019. Bon­di has inti­mat­ed that the FBI and the SDNY with­held those doc­u­ments from her when she request­ed the full Epstein dossier. She now says that, with the help of new MAGA FBI direc­tor Kash Patel, a “truck­load” of doc­u­ments have been acquired from SDNY and that those doc­u­ments will soon be made pub­lic.

How­ev­er, Bon­di has explained that the doc­u­ments that will be released may still be par­tial­ly redact­ed. Bon­di went on Fox News recent­ly and said that aspects of the thou­sands of new­ly dis­cov­ered doc­u­ments may still be shield­ed from pub­lic scruti­ny.

“We’re gonna go through it as fast as we can, but go through it very cau­tious­ly to pro­tect all the vic­tims of Epstein,” Bon­di said, imply­ing that the iden­ti­ties of vic­tims would remain secret.

“Is that the only thing that will be redact­ed?” asked Han­ni­ty. “Nation­al secu­ri­ty?” the host tried a lit­tle lat­er.

“Nation­al secu­ri­ty, some grand jury information—which is always going to be con­fi­den­tial. But we’ll see. Let’s look through them as fast as we can, get it out to the Amer­i­can people—because the Amer­i­can peo­ple have a right to know. Not only on that, but on Kennedy, on Mar­tin Luther King.”

Giv­en Bondi’s dis­cus­sion of JFK and MLK in the same con­ver­sa­tion, it’s unclear if her “nation­al secu­ri­ty” con­cerns applied to those cas­es rather than to Epstein’s, although—given the fact that those fig­ures died half a cen­tu­ry ago, it’s unclear why any of America’s nation­al secu­ri­ty inter­ests would be impact­ed by infor­ma­tion per­tain­ing to those cas­es. Giz­mo­do reached out to the Jus­tice Depart­ment for clar­i­fi­ca­tion.

The inter­net cer­tain­ly took Bondi’s rhetoric to mean that the Epstein case might have “nation­al secu­ri­ty” impli­ca­tions. As one com­menter put it, “here’s an idea, how about you tell us WTF a known human traf­fick­er and pedophile has to do with our nation­al secu­ri­ty??”

Bondi’s bizarre claims about the FBI and the SDNY sug­gest two equal­ly dis­turb­ing pos­si­bil­i­ties: 1) there is some sort of con­spir­a­cy involv­ing a rogue wing of the FBI and the legal sys­tem in New York or 2), Bon­di, the Attor­ney Gen­er­al of the Unit­ed States, is basi­cal­ly invent­ing a nar­ra­tive to jus­ti­fy the government’s resis­tance to the long-sought trans­paren­cy that Trump’s base has been ask­ing for.

Julie K. Brown, per­haps the most author­i­ta­tive jour­nal­ist when it comes to the Epstein case, has point­ed out that some 10,000 pages of heav­i­ly redact­ed Epstein case files are already pub­licly avail­able on the FBI’s web­site. Many of those files were pub­licly released dur­ing Biden’s admin­is­tra­tion. If the sub­se­quent files that the DOJ releas­es dupli­cate those doc­u­ments, it will have meant that Trump’s gov­ern­ment is essen­tial­ly re-releas­ing already avail­able doc­u­ments and attempt­ing to present them as new.

Brown has also not­ed that Bon­di was the Attor­ney Gen­er­al of Flori­da between 2011 and 2019, “a peri­od of time when Jef­frey Epstein’s plane records became pub­lic, vic­tims’ law­suits were filed, and a lot of new evi­dence against Epstein sur­faced. So ques­tions should be asked about why she didn’t take up the case — or launch a probe — when she was attor­ney gen­er­al in Flori­da.”

The news that Bondi’s sup­posed doc­u­ment dump will be redact­ed has only fur­ther spurred long-cir­cu­lat­ing con­spir­a­cy the­o­ries that Epstein was an intel­li­gence asset that either worked for the CIA, Israel’s Mossad, or both.

The­o­ries that Epstein may have been a spook have been around for years and seem to have first ger­mi­nat­ed due to the mys­te­ri­ous cir­cum­stances in which Epstein was giv­en a plea deal in Flori­da when he was first arrest­ed for sex crimes in 2006. The non-pros­e­cu­tion agree­ment that many deemed high­ly lenient was over­seen by then U.S. Attor­ney for the South­ern Dis­trict of Flori­da, Alexan­der Acos­ta. Acos­ta is report­ed to have lat­er said: “I was told Epstein ‘belonged to intel­li­gence’ and to leave it alone.” Acos­ta was lat­er made Trump’s labor sec­re­tary and was also report­ed­ly in the run­ning to replace Trump’s Attor­ney Gen­er­al, Jeff Ses­sions, but was dropped from the list of con­tenders a day after Brown pub­lished a sto­ry on his Epstein “sweet­heart deal.”

But Epstein’s pos­si­ble links to the spook world go fur­ther than that. Ghis­laine Maxwell, Epstein’s long­stand­ing part­ner in crime, is the daugh­ter of Robert Maxwell, a pub­lish­ing mag­nate who enjoyed ties to the Israeli gov­ern­ment and who died under sus­pi­cious cir­cum­stances in 1991. It has long been rumored that Maxwell worked for Mossad, Israel’s top intel­li­gence agency.

...

Epstein was found dead in his prison cell in 2019, and a coroner’s report pro­duced by the New York City med­ical examiner’s office stat­ed that Epstein died by sui­cide. How­ev­er, Epstein’s death has long been the sub­ject of con­jec­ture and con­spir­a­cy the­o­ry, lead­ing to the oft-heard refrain “Epstein Didn’t Kill Him­self,” which has cir­cu­lat­ed the inter­net for the past half-decade. Odd aspects of the case—such as the mal­func­tion­ing of the prison secu­ri­ty cam­eras in front of Epstein’s cell on the day of his death—have con­tributed to pub­lic sus­pi­cions about the case. A foren­sic pathol­o­gist hired by Epstein’s broth­er in 2019 pro­duced a report that stat­ed homi­cide appeared like­ly in the case.

———–

“Trump’s AG Claims She Will Release More Epstein Docs, but They May Be Redact­ed for Nation­al Secu­ri­ty” By Lucas Ropek; Giz­mo­do; 03/04/2025

“Bon­di now claims that a “source” told her that there were thou­sands of pages per­tain­ing to Epstein that remained in the South­ern Dis­trict of New York, the dis­trict where Epstein was being tried for sex traf­fick­ing when he died in 2019. Bon­di has inti­mat­ed that the FBI and the SDNY with­held those doc­u­ments from her when she request­ed the full Epstein dossier. She now says that, with the help of new MAGA FBI direc­tor Kash Patel, a “truck­load” of doc­u­ments have been acquired from SDNY and that those doc­u­ments will soon be made pub­lic.”

A “truck­load” of Epstein-relat­ed files have been acquired from the SDNY and will soon be made pub­lic. That’s the remark­able pledge AG Pam Bon­di just made, days after pub­licly accus­ing the SDNY and New York branch of the FBI of refus­ing to hand over thou­sands of doc­u­ments. What’s the excuse for the next round of under­whelm­ing releas­es going to be? Well, we already have our hint: nation­al secu­ri­ty con­cerns. Yes, get ready for par­tial­ly redact­ed releas­es. Redact­ed, in part, to pro­tect vic­tims. But also redact­ed for vague “nation­al secu­ri­ty” rea­sons. Also note how it’s unclear if Bondi’s ‘nation­al secu­ri­ty’ con­sid­er­a­tions were spe­cif­ic to the Epstein case or if it applied to the oth­er state secret top­ics like the JFK and MLK assas­si­na­tion. Now, on the one hand, we should expect nation­al secu­ri­ty con­cerns to apply to all of these cas­es. And yet, as the arti­cle notes, the JFK and MLK cas­es are decades old. If there’s are nation­al secu­ri­ty con­cerns remain­ing in those cas­es after all these decades, it’s pre­sum­ably mas­sive­ly scan­dalous nation­al secu­ri­ty con­cern. Also keep in mind that when we are pre­sent­ed with the twin pos­si­bil­i­ties — 1) there is some sort of con­spir­a­cy involv­ing a rogue wing of the FBI and the legal sys­tem in New York or 2), Bon­di is basi­cal­ly invent­ing a nar­ra­tive to jus­ti­fy the government’s resis­tance to dis­clos­ing the files — those aren’t actu­al­ly mutu­al­ly exclu­sive sce­nar­ios. It’s very pos­si­ble the FBI and SDNY is with­hold­ing some high­ly sen­si­tive doc­u­ments and it’s very pos­si­ble the Trump admin­is­tra­tion is fine with that and also fine with pin­ning the blame on the FBI and SDNY:

...
How­ev­er, Bon­di has explained that the doc­u­ments that will be released may still be par­tial­ly redact­ed. Bon­di went on Fox News recent­ly and said that aspects of the thou­sands of new­ly dis­cov­ered doc­u­ments may still be shield­ed from pub­lic scruti­ny.

“We’re gonna go through it as fast as we can, but go through it very cau­tious­ly to pro­tect all the vic­tims of Epstein,” Bon­di said, imply­ing that the iden­ti­ties of vic­tims would remain secret.

“Is that the only thing that will be redact­ed?” asked Han­ni­ty. “Nation­al secu­ri­ty?” the host tried a lit­tle lat­er.

“Nation­al secu­ri­ty, some grand jury information—which is always going to be con­fi­den­tial. But we’ll see. Let’s look through them as fast as we can, get it out to the Amer­i­can people—because the Amer­i­can peo­ple have a right to know. Not only on that, but on Kennedy, on Mar­tin Luther King.”

Giv­en Bondi’s dis­cus­sion of JFK and MLK in the same con­ver­sa­tion, it’s unclear if her “nation­al secu­ri­ty” con­cerns applied to those cas­es rather than to Epstein’s, although—given the fact that those fig­ures died half a cen­tu­ry ago, it’s unclear why any of America’s nation­al secu­ri­ty inter­ests would be impact­ed by infor­ma­tion per­tain­ing to those cas­es. Giz­mo­do reached out to the Jus­tice Depart­ment for clar­i­fi­ca­tion.

The inter­net cer­tain­ly took Bondi’s rhetoric to mean that the Epstein case might have “nation­al secu­ri­ty” impli­ca­tions. As one com­menter put it, “here’s an idea, how about you tell us WTF a known human traf­fick­er and pedophile has to do with our nation­al secu­ri­ty??”

Bondi’s bizarre claims about the FBI and the SDNY sug­gest two equal­ly dis­turb­ing pos­si­bil­i­ties: 1) there is some sort of con­spir­a­cy involv­ing a rogue wing of the FBI and the legal sys­tem in New York or 2), Bon­di, the Attor­ney Gen­er­al of the Unit­ed States, is basi­cal­ly invent­ing a nar­ra­tive to jus­ti­fy the government’s resis­tance to the long-sought trans­paren­cy that Trump’s base has been ask­ing for.
...

And then we get to that very inter­est­ing his­to­ry around Bondi’s own work as a Flori­da AG from 2011 to 2019, a peri­od of time when Bon­di had every oppor­tu­ni­ty to reopen the case or launch a probe. Why did that nev­er hap­pen? Could it have some­thing to do with the remark­able claim made by Alex Acos­ta, the fed­er­al attor­ney accuse of arrang­ing the sweet­heart non-pros­e­cu­tion fed­er­al plea deal for Epstein? Acos­ta, who was work­ing for the South­ern Dis­trict of Flori­da at the time, claims he was told Epstein belonged to intel­li­gence and should be left alone. What are the odds Bon­di, as Flori­da’s AG, nev­er caught wind of that? Keep in mind that get­ting tipped off that Epstein was a pro­tect­ed intel­li­gence asset might be incred­i­bly scan­dalous for the US gov­ern­ment but it’s prob­a­bly one of the best excus­es indi­vid­ual offi­cials can give for their inac­tion:

...
Julie K. Brown, per­haps the most author­i­ta­tive jour­nal­ist when it comes to the Epstein case, has point­ed out that some 10,000 pages of heav­i­ly redact­ed Epstein case files are already pub­licly avail­able on the FBI’s web­site. Many of those files were pub­licly released dur­ing Biden’s admin­is­tra­tion. If the sub­se­quent files that the DOJ releas­es dupli­cate those doc­u­ments, it will have meant that Trump’s gov­ern­ment is essen­tial­ly re-releas­ing already avail­able doc­u­ments and attempt­ing to present them as new.

Brown has also not­ed that Bon­di was the Attor­ney Gen­er­al of Flori­da between 2011 and 2019, “a peri­od of time when Jef­frey Epstein’s plane records became pub­lic, vic­tims’ law­suits were filed, and a lot of new evi­dence against Epstein sur­faced. So ques­tions should be asked about why she didn’t take up the case — or launch a probe — when she was attor­ney gen­er­al in Flori­da.”

...

The­o­ries that Epstein may have been a spook have been around for years and seem to have first ger­mi­nat­ed due to the mys­te­ri­ous cir­cum­stances in which Epstein was giv­en a plea deal in Flori­da when he was first arrest­ed for sex crimes in 2006. The non-pros­e­cu­tion agree­ment that many deemed high­ly lenient was over­seen by then U.S. Attor­ney for the South­ern Dis­trict of Flori­da, Alexan­der Acos­ta. Acos­ta is report­ed to have lat­er said: “I was told Epstein ‘belonged to intel­li­gence’ and to leave it alone.” Acos­ta was lat­er made Trump’s labor sec­re­tary and was also report­ed­ly in the run­ning to replace Trump’s Attor­ney Gen­er­al, Jeff Ses­sions, but was dropped from the list of con­tenders a day after Brown pub­lished a sto­ry on his Epstein “sweet­heart deal.”

But Epstein’s pos­si­ble links to the spook world go fur­ther than that. Ghis­laine Maxwell, Epstein’s long­stand­ing part­ner in crime, is the daugh­ter of Robert Maxwell, a pub­lish­ing mag­nate who enjoyed ties to the Israeli gov­ern­ment and who died under sus­pi­cious cir­cum­stances in 1991. It has long been rumored that Maxwell worked for Mossad, Israel’s top intel­li­gence agency.
...

And as the arti­cle also reminds us, it’s not like we don’t already have a pre­pon­der­ance of cir­cum­stan­tial evi­dence indi­cat­ing a gov­ern­ment desire to silence Epstein for good. A foren­sic pathol­o­gist hired by Epstein’s broth­er did con­clude that he was like­ly killed in jail, after all:

...
Epstein was found dead in his prison cell in 2019, and a coroner’s report pro­duced by the New York City med­ical examiner’s office stat­ed that Epstein died by sui­cide. How­ev­er, Epstein’s death has long been the sub­ject of con­jec­ture and con­spir­a­cy the­o­ry, lead­ing to the oft-heard refrain “Epstein Didn’t Kill Him­self,” which has cir­cu­lat­ed the inter­net for the past half-decade. Odd aspects of the case—such as the mal­func­tion­ing of the prison secu­ri­ty cam­eras in front of Epstein’s cell on the day of his death—have con­tributed to pub­lic sus­pi­cions about the case. A foren­sic pathol­o­gist hired by Epstein’s broth­er in 2019 pro­duced a report that stat­ed homi­cide appeared like­ly in the case.
...

And as were going to see in the fol­low­ing piece, this lat­est ‘update’ of sorts by Bon­di about the “truck­load” of Epstein doc­u­ments just turned over by the FBI — with all of the implied hope for big rev­e­la­tions to come that are implied in such a state­ment — comes at the same time we’re learn­ing James Den­nehy, the assis­tant direc­tor in charge of the FBI’s New York field office, was just ordered to resign with­out any expla­na­tion. Although, to some extent, no expla­na­tion was real­ly need­ed giv­en that this same assis­tant direc­tor who sent a memo last month to the FBI staff serv­ing under him call­ing on them to “dig in” in the face of the Trump admin­is­tra­tion’s FBI purge. Grant­ed, call­ing on agents to “dig in” in the face of what appears to be an uncon­sti­tu­tion­al exec­u­tive branch pow­er grab that amounts to the re-imple­men­ta­tion of the spoils sys­tem, isn’t real­ly the kind of action that should jus­ti­fy get­ting fired. And, of course, Den­nehy’s fir­ing comes days after Bon­di pub­licly accused the New York branch of the FBI of with­hold­ing thou­sands of Epstein-relat­ed doc­u­ments:

The Hill

FBI New York field office chief says he was forced to resign

by Rebec­ca Beitsch — 03/04/25 9:52 AM ET

The head of the FBI’s New York field office, who had been crit­i­cal of Trump admin­is­tra­tion fir­ings at the bureau, says he was forced out of his role.

James Den­nehy, the assis­tant direc­tor in charge of the FBI’s New York field office, said in a note to staff that he was told to put in his retire­ment papers with­out any expla­na­tion. 

...

Den­nehy had pre­vi­ous­ly told staff to “dig in” in the wake of a purge of FBI lead­ers both in head­quar­ters and field offices. Short­ly there­after, the Jus­tice Depart­ment demand­ed the FBI hand over a list of the names of agents who worked on the 1,500 inves­ti­ga­tions that led to charges for peo­ple who stormed the Capi­tol.

“Today, we find our­selves in the mid­dle of a bat­tle of our own, as good peo­ple are being walked out of the FBI and oth­ers are being tar­get­ed because they did their jobs in accor­dance with the law and FBI pol­i­cy,” he wrote last month in an email report­ed by The New York Times.

“Time for me to dig in.”

In his Mon­day mis­sive to staff, Den­nehy echoed for­mer FBI Direc­tor Christo­pher Wray in call­ing on staff to fol­low FBI guide­lines. Wray appoint­ed Den­nehy to his post in New York in Sep­tem­ber.

...

The Asso­ci­at­ed Press con­tributed.

———–

“FBI New York field office chief says he was forced to resign” by Rebec­ca Beitsch; The Hill; 03/04/2025

“James Den­nehy, the assis­tant direc­tor in charge of the FBI’s New York field office, said in a note to staff that he was told to put in his retire­ment papers with­out any expla­na­tion.”

It’s not exact­ly a sur­prise fir­ing. But the tim­ing sure is inter­est­ing. Inter­est­ing, and yet pre­sum­ably inevitable after Den­nehy, the assis­tant direc­tor in charge of the FBI’s New York field office, declared in a let­ter to the FBI staff that was ulti­mate­ly report­ed in the New York Times that it was “time for me to dig in”. As we can see now, dig­ging in did­n’t work:

...
Den­nehy had pre­vi­ous­ly told staff to “dig in” in the wake of a purge of FBI lead­ers both in head­quar­ters and field offices. Short­ly there­after, the Jus­tice Depart­ment demand­ed the FBI hand over a list of the names of agents who worked on the 1,500 inves­ti­ga­tions that led to charges for peo­ple who stormed the Capi­tol.

“Today, we find our­selves in the mid­dle of a bat­tle of our own, as good peo­ple are being walked out of the FBI and oth­ers are being tar­get­ed because they did their jobs in accor­dance with the law and FBI pol­i­cy,” he wrote last month in an email report­ed by The New York Times.

“Time for me to dig in.”
...

And while the forced res­ig­na­tion of the assis­tant direc­tor in charge of the FBI’s New York field office should raise all sorts of ques­tions about whether or not the FBI real­ly was with­hold­ing damn­ing Epstein-relat­ed files, here’s a sto­ry from Jan­u­ary 2024 about a pret­ty incred­i­ble ques­tion relat­ed to the FBI’s han­dling of the most sen­si­tive evi­dence dis­cov­ered at Epstein’ s New York city res­i­dence: dur­ing the FBI’s 2019 raid of Epstein’s NYC res­i­dence, the con­tents of a safe con­tain­ing all sorts of mate­ri­als includ­ing tapes, CDs, pass­ports, and pic­tures were NOT imme­di­ate­ly seized by the FBI. Why? Well, the FBI claims their war­rant did­n’t allow for the removal of the con­tents. Instead, they just pho­tographed the con­tents. Lat­er, when agents returned to seize the evi­dence, it turns out the con­tents of the safe had been removed. They were only lat­er returned by Richard Kahn, Epstein’s for­mer lawyer and execu­tor of his estate. We only learned of all of this thanks to the tes­ti­mo­ny of FBI agent Kel­ly Maguire dur­ing Ghis­laine Maxwell’s tri­al. Maguire could not con­firm if the con­tent on the returned CDs was the same as the ones pho­tographed but assert­ed that all items had been account­ed for. So when it comes to the FBI’s role in the dis­ap­pear­ance of the most incrim­i­nat­ing Epstein-relat­ed doc­u­ments, it’s impor­tant to keep in mind that the FBI appar­ent­ly allowed Epstein’s lawyer to remove the con­tents of Epstein’s hon­ey­pot safe and return them lat­er:

The Dai­ly Mail

FBI is demand­ed to release HUNDREDS of ‘miss­ing’ Jef­frey Epstein doc­u­ments includ­ing tapes, CDs, pass­ports and pic­tures raid­ed from his $51 mil­lion NYC town­house amid sus­pi­cions pedo was linked to Mossad

* FBI agent tes­ti­fied a cache of evi­dence was uncov­ered at a safe at Epstein’s Man­hat­tan town­house in July 2019
* The doc­u­ments were pho­tographed but not removed as the FBI had no war­rant
* When they returned days lat­er the evi­dence had van­ished, accord­ing to FBI agent Kel­ly Maguire
* Fol­low along LIVE as DailyMail.com cov­ers the Jef­frey Epstein list release

By BETHAN SEXTON FOR DAILYMAIL.COM
Pub­lished: 12:58 EST, 5 Jan­u­ary 2024 | Updat­ed: 15:41 EST, 5 Jan­u­ary 2024

The FBI is fac­ing fresh calls to release hun­dreds of ‘miss­ing’ pieces of evi­dence raid­ed from Jef­frey Epstein’s $51 mil­lion New York town­house fol­low­ing the release of a new list of his asso­ciates.

Among the items said to be miss­ing are tapes, CDs, pass­ports and pic­tures all locat­ed inside a safe with­in the prop­erty dur­ing a siege on the home in July 2019, short­ly after Epstein was arrest­ed.

...

FBI agent Kel­ly Maguire pre­vi­ous­ly tes­ti­fied the agency broke open a safe at his home in July 2019 to reveal the cache of evi­dence, along with ‘loose dia­monds’ and ‘large amounts of US cur­ren­cy’.

Speak­ing at the sex-traf­fick­ing tri­al of Epstein’s madam Ghis­laine Maxwell, she told the court the agents only pho­tographed the con­tents as they did not have a war­rant for its removal, the Tele­graph reports.

When the agency returned to seize the evi­dence on July 11, it had van­ished accord­ing to Maguire who claimed it was sub­se­quent­ly returned in two suit­cas­es by Richard Kahn, Epstein’s for­mer lawyer and execu­tor of his estate. 

She could not con­firm if the con­tent on the CDs was the same as the ones pho­tographed but said all items had been account­ed for.

The agency allud­ed to the con­tents of the safe in an appli­ca­tion to a judge to deny Epstein’s bail.

Box­es of CDs and hard dri­ves were also dis­cov­ered in sev­er­al rooms in Epstein’s  Upper East Side, includ­ing in a mas­sage room.

On the fifth floor FBI agents found metic­u­lous­ly labelled CDs in black binders which they said con­tained pho­tos. 

The dis­clo­sure fueled spec­u­la­tion that Epstein may have been run­ning a hon­ey­pot entrap­ment oper­a­tion, gain­ing valu­able ‘kom­pro­mat’ mate­r­i­al to black­mail polit­i­cal and busi­ness elites.

For­mer Israeli spies have gone on record stat­ing as much and claim­ing that Epstein was brought into the spy game by Ghis­laine Maxwell’s father Robert Maxwell, who was also iden­ti­fied as a Mossad agent by Ari Ben-Menashe, who worked worked for Israel ‘s Mil­i­tary Intel­li­gence Direc­torate from 1977 to 1987.

Reports at the time of the raid on Epstein’s home also stat­ed that stacks of lewd pho­tographs of chil­dren were uncov­ered in the safe.

...

The town­house was giv­en to Epstein by lin­gerie tycoon Leslie Wexn­er who report­ed­ly gift­ed it to him for just $1.

Wexn­er was among sev­er­al high pro­file names who appear on the new asso­ciate list, which also includes Bill Clin­ton and Don­ald Trump.

...

———–

“FBI is demand­ed to release HUNDREDS of ‘miss­ing’ Jef­frey Epstein doc­u­ments includ­ing tapes, CDs, pass­ports and pic­tures raid­ed from his $51 mil­lion NYC town­house amid sus­pi­cions pedo was linked to Mossad” By BETHAN SEXTON;
The Dai­ly Mail; 01/05/2024

“Among the items said to be miss­ing are tapes, CDs, pass­ports and pic­tures all locat­ed inside a safe with­in the prop­erty dur­ing a siege on the home in July 2019, short­ly after Epstein was arrest­ed.”

Well that’s all sorts of inter­est­ing: tapes, CDs, pass­ports and pic­tures found inside a safe inside Epstein’s New York home had gone miss­ing. Hun­dreds of items. Which sure sounds like Epstein’s black­mail trea­sure trove. And yet, dur­ing Ghis­laine Maxwell’s tri­al, FBI agent Kel­ly Maguire tes­ti­fied that the FBI agents that con­duct­ed the ini­tial 2019 raid of the home did not have a war­rant for the removal of the items found in that safe. Instead, they only pho­tographed the con­tents. And when agents returned, the con­tents had van­ished but were sub­se­quent­ly returned in two suit­cas­es by Richard Kahn, Epstein’s for­mer lawyer and execu­tor of his estate. Was it con­firmed that Kahn returned every­thing in the pho­tographs? Nope:

...
The FBI is fac­ing fresh calls to release hun­dreds of ‘miss­ing’ pieces of evi­dence raid­ed from Jef­frey Epstein’s $51 mil­lion New York town­house fol­low­ing the release of a new list of his asso­ciates.

...

FBI agent Kel­ly Maguire pre­vi­ous­ly tes­ti­fied the agency broke open a safe at his home in July 2019 to reveal the cache of evi­dence, along with ‘loose dia­monds’ and ‘large amounts of US cur­ren­cy’.

Speak­ing at the sex-traf­fick­ing tri­al of Epstein’s madam Ghis­laine Maxwell, she told the court the agents only pho­tographed the con­tents as they did not have a war­rant for its removal, the Tele­graph reports.

When the agency returned to seize the evi­dence on July 11, it had van­ished accord­ing to Maguire who claimed it was sub­se­quent­ly returned in two suit­cas­es by Richard Kahn, Epstein’s for­mer lawyer and execu­tor of his estate. 

She could not con­firm if the con­tent on the CDs was the same as the ones pho­tographed but said all items had been account­ed for.

The agency allud­ed to the con­tents of the safe in an appli­ca­tion to a judge to deny Epstein’s bail.

Box­es of CDs and hard dri­ves were also dis­cov­ered in sev­er­al rooms in Epstein’s  Upper East Side, includ­ing in a mas­sage room.

On the fifth floor FBI agents found metic­u­lous­ly labelled CDs in black binders which they said con­tained pho­tos. 
...

It’s just one more remark­able twist in a legal saga of remark­able twists. A legal saga that, by all appear­ances, cen­ters around some sort of gov­ern­ment pro­tect­ed hon­ey­pot oper­a­tion. The kind of oper­a­tion that could be used to black­mail pow­er­ful fig­ures around the world. Which is part of what makes the ambi­gu­i­ty about which gov­ern­men­t’s intel­li­gence agen­cies Epstein may have been work­ing for so intrigu­ing. Was he feed­ing black­mail infor­ma­tion to the CIA? Mossad? Both? Any­one else?

...
The dis­clo­sure fueled spec­u­la­tion that Epstein may have been run­ning a hon­ey­pot entrap­ment oper­a­tion, gain­ing valu­able ‘kom­pro­mat’ mate­r­i­al to black­mail polit­i­cal and busi­ness elites.

For­mer Israeli spies have gone on record stat­ing as much and claim­ing that Epstein was brought into the spy game by Ghis­laine Maxwell’s father Robert Maxwell, who was also iden­ti­fied as a Mossad agent by Ari Ben-Menashe, who worked worked for Israel ‘s Mil­i­tary Intel­li­gence Direc­torate from 1977 to 1987.
...

And as Pam Bon­di warned us, nation­al secu­ri­ty risks are going to be rea­son enough for redac­tions. Which makes this a good time to remind our­selves that this whole sor­did state of affairs keeps pos­ing the same sad meta-ques­tion about our civic respon­si­bil­i­ties: if a series of rev­e­la­tions are so scan­dalous that they would destroy pub­lic and inter­na­tion­al faith in the basic decen­cy of the rul­ing estab­lish­ment, would the dis­clo­sure of those scan­dals pose enough of a threat to social order to jus­ti­fy their fur­ther non-dis­clo­sure? Because that appears to be the extreme­ly sad ques­tion the US gov­ern­ment is deal­ing with when it comes to these Epstein files. An extreme­ly sad ques­tion that pre­sum­ably applies to all the oth­er mega-scan­dals the Trump admin­is­tra­tion has promised to final­ly reveal. Final­ly. Even­tu­al­ly. Any day now. With a few redac­tions. But don’t wor­ry, it will only be the most explo­sive stuff, redact­ed for the sake of the nation and its secu­ri­ty, of course.