The House committee investigating Jeffrey Epstein released a batch of files Tuesday related to the late convicted sex offender amid pressure for the Trump administration to release more information on his case.
House Oversight Committee chair James Comer, R-Ky., issued a subpoena last month to the Justice Department. The committee on Tuesday released 33,295 pages of records, which it has referred to as a first batch of documents from the Justice Department. It is not immediately clear what those records contain.
The committee’s investigation into Epstein comes weeks after President Donald Trump and his administration faced outrage from the public for saying they would not release more files related to Epstein, despite Trump running on a promise of more transparency.
Many of the documents being released Tuesday night are public filings in the criminal cases involving Epstein co-conspirator Ghislaine Maxwell. The documents include the types of records that have been made public through the federal courts that oversaw related cases, and were reported on at the time.
Examples of the previously released files include video and audio of Justice Department official Todd Blanche with Maxwell, video from inside Epstein’s West Palm Beach home following a search warrant by the Palm Beach police, video from inside the jail house where Epstein died by suicide in 2019, and audio taken by Palm Beach Police pertaining to their initial investigation with Epstein.
Rep. Robert Garcia of California, the top Democrat on the committee, said that the “overwhelming” amount of pages the committee released Tuesday were already public.
“To distract from their continued White House cover-up, the DOJ released the interview between Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche and sex trafficker Ghislaine Maxwell. Maxwell is desperately seeking a pardon from the Trump Administration and cannot be trusted,” Garcia said.
“DOJ’s limited disclosure raises more questions than answers and makes clear that the White House is not interested in justice for the victims or the truth,” Garcia added. “Democrats forced a bipartisan vote to subpoena the Epstein files in their entirety, and the Administration must comply. There is no excuse for incomplete disclosures. Survivors and the American public deserve the truth.”
Other Democrats on the committee also slammed the release as not sufficiently transparent. Rep. Ro Khanna, D-Calif., said the items made public were only a drop in the bucket of all the files.
“These documents are less than 1 percent of the file, and 97 percent of that 1 percent are in the public domain,” Khanna said.
Khanna has been working with Republican Rep. Thomas Massie, R-Ky., on what’s known as a discharge petition to force a vote on legislation that would require the Justice Department to release all of the Epstein files, despite opposition from House GOP leadership.
Khanna called Tuesday’s release a “distraction of a document dump” that he said “will only draw more attention” to the news conference he and Massie will host Wednesday morning with some of Epstein’s victims.
This is a developing story. Please check back for updates.
Syedah Asghar contributed.
