Labeling Images Contraband Could Justify Withholding Them
If and when the Trump administration releases the Justice Department’s Epstein files no one should be surprised if there are no photos or videos of grown men raping underage girls even though we have sworn testimony from many of the now adult victims that such images were recorded.
That’s not to say that the images, still or moving, don’t exist, but rather that the Trump Administration may well label them contraband child pornography as a way to withhold evidence.
Federal law makes it a crime to view ‘a visual depiction of an actual minor engaging in sexually explicit conduct;’
This weekend Donald Trump urged House Republicans to vote to release the files, which his adminisration has withheld using excuse after lie after ridiculous claim after baseless posts about a hoax… .
Trump’s big flip-flop came after Rep. Thomas Massie, a Kentucky Republican who is all in for MAGA but not protecting pedophiles said he anticipated as many as 100 House Republicans would vote to require release of the government files.
So far all we have seen are emails held by the Epstein estate. By law the estate is entitled to return of all evidence seized during FBI executions of search warrants at five Epstein properties in New York, Florida, and his private Caribbean island.
Contraband
However, contraband, be it illicit drugs or anything that could be deemed child pornography, can be held back from the Epstein estate.
I note this because so much news coverage, and especially from Washington, fails to include journalists reading relevant law before reporting. One need not be a lawyer to understand the law, you just have to read it and learn terms of art. Or reporters could ask legal experts, both practicing lawyers and professors of law. (I’ve taught law now for almost 17 years and have lectured about the law on six continents, yet never took a law school course.)
Please pay close attention to my BOLD FACE ADDITIONS and the final words quoted below from Section 2252A of Title 18, the federal criminal code:
(a)Any person who—
(1)
knowingly …mails, or transports or ships using any means or facility of interstate or foreign commerce or in or affecting interstate or foreign commerce by any means, including by computer, any child pornography;
(2)knowingly receives or distributes—
(A)
any child pornography using any means or facility of interstate or foreign commerce or that has been mailed, or has been shipped or transported in or affecting interstate or foreign commerce by any means, including by computer; or
(B)
any material that containschild pornography using any means or facility of interstate or foreign commerce or that has been mailed, or has been shipped or transported in or affecting interstate or foreign commerce by any means, including by computer;
(3)knowingly—
(A)
reproduces any child pornography for distribution through the mails, or using any means or facility of interstate or foreign commerce or in or affecting interstate or foreign commerce by any means, including by computer; or
(B)advertises, promotes, presents, distributes, or solicits through the mails, or using any means or facility of interstate or foreign commerce or in or affecting interstate or foreign commerce by any means, including by computer, any material or purported material in a manner that reflects the belief, or that is intended to cause another to believe, that the material or purported material is, or contains—
(i)
an obscene visual depiction of a minor engaging in sexually explicit conduct; or
(ii)
a visual depiction of an actual minor engaging in sexually explicit conduct;
More Bamboozling?
While it might not happen, I can easily imagine Karoline Leavitt, Pam Bondi, Kash Patel, and other Trump appointees saying that they really wanted to be forthcoming, but this law prevented them from showing everything even to lawmakers and their staffs.
Should that happen the smart response, in my view, is to demand that the uncensored images be shown to any members ion the House or Senate who want to see them and to investigative staff appointed by Congress.
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