They will be angrier if files are withheld. I think the Felon should release everything (except perhaps victims' names), and let the chips fall. Then he can honestly say "that's everything". Instead, his followers are thinking he's part of the cover-up. I think releasing the files will result in less damage to him than the perception that he is furthering a cover-up.

I mean - can they do that? There are rules governing materials seized in a criminal investigation. They can't just publish everything.

People talk of "the Epstein files" as if that collection of documents represents the corpus of material relevant to his crimes. But it's not like a criminal file that contains the evidence, witness testimony, flight logs, etc. that pertains just to his criminal or potentially criminal activities. It's going to be everything. The feds would have seized every single piece of paper in his home and business, every computer, every phone, every photo, every document.

So they've got mountains of things like phone bills, tax records, personal correspondence, credit card statements, utility records, medical records, probably a million emails (ranging from significant ones to "$1 off at CVS"), appliance manuals, and a thousand other types of records. Imagine your life, and take every single piece of paper in your home or office and every single file in your computer printed out - the pages and pages and pages of that. If you were accused of a serious federal crime, every single sheet would be in the government's hands. And there are laws that govern what they're allowed to do with that information. They're allowed to use that information in a ton of ways, but they can't just publish your bank records if they arrest you for getting into a bar fight.

"The Epstein Files" will have literally million pages of unrelated crap that has nothing to do with anything. Maxwell's discovery request to the government asked for everything they had on Epstein - they gave her 2.7 million pages in response. There's almost certainly no logistical way for the government to publish everything that's in there without carefully reviewing it, and even then there will still be lots of records that can't be disclosed for various reasons.

And people will then note that not everything was disclosed, and they'll say "Aha! Those are the records I need to see." Especially when the stuff that is disclosed is just stuff like copies of billing statements from his landscaping company and unsolicited credit card offers.