Hey, everybody, I'm Alison Gill.

Welcome to The Breakdown.

There was a time when tons of people after the failed release of the Epstein files, they were asking me how to get somebody to, like, a third party, an independent third party, to review the redactions in the Epstein files and the withholdings,

too, right? Because we haven't gotten everything. So everyone's like, how do we do that? Why isn't a

judge asking for this? And my answer was always, well, you have to get it in front of a judge,

which means somebody has to file a lawsuit, which means somebody has to have standing, somebody needs to show harm.

And, you know, this, it took me back to the old Mueller report days.

And back then, BuzzFeed and I think a media organization called Epic, sued pursuant to a Freedom of Information Act request to have a judge review Bill Barr's

redactions of the Mueller report. And that judge, Reggie Walton, went in and reviewed everything

in camera and determined that Bill Barr inappropriately redacted the Mueller report and ordered

many of the redactions lifted.

He said, here's what Judge Walton said.

The court cannot reconcile certain public representations made by Attorney General Barr with the findings in the Mueller report.

The inconsistencies between Attorney General Barr's statements made at a time when the public did not have access to the redacted version of the Mueller report to assess the veracity of its statements,

and portions of the redacted version of the Mueller report that conflict with those statements,

caused this court to seriously question whether Attorney General Barr made a calculated attempt to influence public discourse about the Mueller report in favor of President

Trump, despite certain findings in the redacted version of the Mueller report to the contrary.

Now, you can pull out all the Mueller report stuff and plug in the Epstein files, and it's, you know,

just it's so similar what the attorney general is withholding, what the attorney general is redacting.

It goes against the public statements that they've been making and that the government's been making.

And so somebody needs to review that.

But in order to get a judge to review it, you've got to get it in front of a judge, which means you have to file a lawsuit.

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