Victims of disgraced US financier Jeffrey Epstein joined a chorus of criticism on Monday over the Trump administration’s slow release and heavy redaction of records from the investigation into his alleged sex crimes.President Donald Trump said meanwhile, in his first comments since the release of the files, that people who “innocently met” Epstein in the past risked having their reputations ruined.The Epstein Files Transparency Act (EFTA) passed by Congress and signed into law by Trump mandated the complete release of the Epstein files by Friday of last week.But the Trump Justice Department has released only one batch of documents so far, with Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche blaming the delay on the need to redact the identities of Epstein’s more than 1,000 victims.In a statement, a group of Epstein victims complained that only a “fraction” of the files have been released and were “riddled with abnormal and extreme redactions with no explanation.””At the same time, numerous victim identities were left unredacted, causing real and immediate harm,” they added.EFTA co-sponsors Ro Khanna, a Democrat, and Thomas Massie, a Republican, threatened over the weekend to bring contempt of Congress charges against Attorney General Pam Bondi for failing to comply with the law.And Democratic Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer introduced a resolution on Monday calling for legal action against the administration for failing to release the complete Epstein files.”Instead of transparency, the Trump administration released a tiny fraction of the files and blacked out massive portions of what little they provided,” Schumer said in a statement.”This is a blatant cover-up. Pam Bondi and Todd Blanche are shielding Donald Trump from accountability, and the Senate has a duty to act.”- ‘We need no such protection’ -Blanche denied on Sunday that the Justice Department was redacting the files to protect the president, a formerly close friend of Epstein, a convicted sex offender with connections to the rich and powerful.Trump initially tried to block the disclosure of the files linked to Epstein, who died in a New York jail cell in 2019 while awaiting trial on sex-trafficking charges in what was ruled a suicide.The president, who cut ties with Epstein years before his arrest and faces no accusations of wrongdoing, finally bowed to mounting pressure from Congress and signed the law compelling publication of the files.Trump on Monday dismissed the furor over Epstein as a distraction from his party’s achievements.”This whole thing with Epstein is a way of trying to deflect from the tremendous success that the Republican Party has,” he told reporters at his Mar-a-Lago home.Former Democratic president Bill Clinton featured prominently in the first batch of photos from the Epstein files released by the Justice Department and Trump was asked for his reaction.”I like Bill Clinton,” he said. “I hate to see photos come out of him.”There’s photos of me too,” Trump noted. “Everybody was friendly with this guy (Epstein).””You probably have pictures being exposed of other people that innocently met Jeffrey Epstein years ago, many years ago, and they’re highly respected bankers and lawyers and others,” he said.”But they’re in a picture with him because he was at a party and you ruin a reputation of somebody.”Clinton urged the Justice Department in a statement on Monday to release any materials in the files related to him, saying he had nothing to hide.”Someone or something is being protected. We do not know whom, what or why. But we do know this: We need no such protection,” Clinton said.Ghislaine Maxwell, Epstein’s former girlfriend, remains the only person convicted in connection with his crimes and is serving a 20-year sentence for recruiting underage girls for the disgraced financier.

The US Interior Department on Monday said it had paused leases for all five of the country’s offshore wind projects under construction, citing unspecified national security risks and casting new doubt over the future of an industry detested by President Donald Trump.The Republican president has long expressed opposition to windmills, particularly over their appearance, and his administration has made multiple attempts to limit their implementation during his second term.The Interior Department pointed in its announcement to national security risks from the projects, all off the Atlantic coast, that the Pentagon outlined in “recently completed” classified reports.The move comes weeks after a judge ruled that a blanket ban on new offshore permits — signed by Trump on his first day in office in January — was illegal.The Interior Department did not specify what the risks were, but it noted that the Department of Energy had also previously identified potential issues related to radar interference.The pause, effective immediately, would provide time to mitigate the government’s concerns, the Interior Department said.Democratic Senator Sheldon Whitehouse of Rhode Island said the move “looks more like the kind of vindictive harassment we have come to expect from the Trump administration than anything legitimate.”The Revolution Wind project off Rhode Island’s coast, developed by Danish energy giant Orsted, is 80 percent complete, according to its website.Whitehouse said on X that the project had long ago been “thoroughly vetted and fully permitted by the federal government, and that review included any potential national security questions.”- ‘One’ gas pipeline -Dominion Energy, which is behind a massive wind farm off the Virginia coast, said similary that its project “has been more than ten years in the works, involved close coordination with the military, and is located…so far offshore it does not raise visual impact concerns.”The company said it had been ordered to halt work for 90 days, while warning that stopping the project will “lead to energy inflation and threaten thousands of jobs.”Interior Secretary Doug Burgum, seen as close to the fossil fuel industry, expressed concerns for more than just security issues in a post on X, bashing the wind projects as “expensive, unreliable, heavily subsidized offshore wind farms.””ONE natural gas pipeline supplies as much energy as these 5 projects COMBINED,” the former Republican governor wrote.Wind energy represents about 10 percent of US power production, almost entirely from land-based turbines.Other projects targeted by Monday’s order include the Vineyard Wind project off Massachusetts, and the New York-area Sunrise and Empire projects.- ‘Ugly monsters’ -Trump has long complained that windmills ruin views and are expensive. During a trip this summer to one of his UK golf courses, the US president urged Britain to stop subsidizing the “ugly monsters.”In addition to his order attempting to ban new wind farm permits, Trump’s administration has also moved to block all federal loans for wind energy.”We should not be kneecapping America’s largest source of renewable power, especially when we need more cheap, homegrown electricity,” the Environmental Defense Fund’s lead counsel Ted Kelly said in a statement.New York’s Governor Kathy Hochul said on X that she was working with other impacted states “to review every available option to get these projects back on track.”Dominion Energy’s stock price closed down around 3.7 percent, while Danish energy giant Orsted — behind the Revolution Wind project — was down 11 percent.