Hey, good morning. It is Saturday, December the 20th, and I'm Ali Valshi.

It was a highly anticipated moment in the years-long Jeffrey Epstein saga, the release of the so-called Epstein files.

The Department of Justice was compelled by law to release all the documents it had related

to the investigations into Jeffrey Epstein yesterday. It was meant to be a huge moment for the public,

specifically for Trump's base, which had been begging to see these files and what was in them,

but an even bigger moment for the survivors, some of whom were hoping it would bring some sort of

closure.

But what was actually released was less than satisfactory. The DOJ only released some of the

hundreds of thousands of files related to Epstein, and many of the documents were heavily

redacted. Hundreds upon hundreds of pages actually looked like this, a black box, fully redacted.

Lawmakers on both sides of the aisle say the release does not comply with the legislation that was passed last month, which forced

the release of all the documents. I spoke to Congressman Jamie Raskin, top Democrat on the House

Judiciary Committee last night. This is a huge tug of war over whether there will be truth and justice and accountability

for the predators here.

The question is now, what will the government do about it?

And we saw how Donald Trump just switched sides at the last minute to say, oh, yeah, everybody

vote for this, figuring that they would proceed to sandbag and

undermine the disclosure, which they have done.

All right. There's much more to unpack here, including what we did learn from the documents

and what's still a mystery. In a little while, I will be joined by Congressman Roger

Krishnamorty, a member of the House Oversight Committee. All right, let's start, though, with a report card. Maybe the student in your life is spending this week studying for final exam, sweating their grade point average, working hard to make up that extra point or two. It's crunch time for them. So too for the president. Nearing the end of his first year in office, Donald Trump is facing a lower approval rating than he's ever had as president in either term on the very issue that he was elected to improve, the cost of living.

But unlike the young person in your life, he's not having any performance anxiety.

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