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Democrats on the House Oversight Committee have demanded answers from the Department of Justice after details of a flight taken by an investigative journalist well known for covering Jeffrey Epstein turned up in the pedophile’s files.
Miami Herald reporter Julie K Brown, author of the book Perversion of Justice, which was published in 2020, posted on X Sunday: “Does somebody at the DOJ want to tell me why my American Airlines booking information and flights in July 2019 are part of the Epstein files (attached to a grand jury subpoena)?
“As the flight itinerary includes my maiden name (and I did book this flight) why was the DOJ monitoring me?”
Brown also addressed the matter in a post on Substack in which she said she had “expected” to see her name in the Epstein files because of her reporting, but added: “What I didn’t expect to see was an American Airlines flight record from 2019 with my full name on them, including my maiden name, which I don’t use professionally. It’s an unusual name, so it’s clear it’s me.”
Her X message was reposted by the official Oversight Dems account with the comment: “The Department of Justice needs to explain why travel information and booking itineraries for a journalist are in the Epstein files.”
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Jeffrey Epstein pictured in one of the files released this month by the Department of Justice in accordance with the terms of the Epstein Files Transparency Act (DOJ)
The Independent has contacted the DOJ for comment.
The near-unanimous passage of the Epstein Files Transparency Act through Congress in November set in motion a 30-day deadline for the DOJ to publish all of its past investigative material on Epstein, the billionaire pedophile and sex trafficker who died by suicide in a New York City jail cell in August 2019 while awaiting trial.
President Donald Trump signed off on the bill after months of pressure to release the information – as he had previously promised his supporters he would – and amid persistent questions about his past friendship with Epstein, which he has said ended “long before it became fashionable” in 2004.
Trump has not been accused of any wrongdoing in relation to the financier, and anyone’s appearance in the files should not be interpreted as evidence of guilt.
The DOJ duly published a significant tranche of Epstein documents and photographs on December 19 in compliance with the act. Still, they were found to be incomplete, lacking in context, and not presented in a searchable format, as the original bill had expressly stipulated.
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Miami Herald journalist Julie K Brown, whose reporting helped reopen the case against Epstein (Miami Herald/YouTube)
A second, even larger batch of files was posted on the department’s website on December 23, two days before Christmas, leaving interested parties scrambling to comb through the almost 30,000 pages released.
The DOJ has since said it has uncovered “over a million more” documents possibly tied to the Epstein case and that it will take weeks to release them all.
Brown is credited with helping to reopen the case against Epstein after the mysterious financier was allowed to plead guilty to two state-level prostitution offenses in 2008 as part of a plea deal with Florida prosecutors that saw him escape more serious federal charges.
The Miami Herald began publishing a series of Brown’s reports in November 2018 that saw her identify 80 potential victims of Epstein’s sexual abuse, some of whom were as young as 13 when the abuse took place, and speak to eight individuals about their experiences.
Epstein was eventually re-arrested and charged again in July 2019, a chain of events that also saw then-secretary of labor Alex Acosta resign, given that he had been the U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of Florida at the time the pedophile’s plea deal was agreed.
The deal not only shielded Epstein himself from further prosecution but also protected his co-conspirators.
