Members of Congress who pushed to release the files related to Jeffrey Epstein told The Independent that the Department of Justice is skirting the letter of the law it passed to force the release of the files.
In November, Reps. Ro Khanna (D-Calif.) and Thomas Massie (R-Ky.) filed a discharge petition to force the House to vote on their legislation requiring the Department of Justice to release all files related to Epstein. That vote passed almost unanimously and it passed by unanimous consent in the Senate.
But Massie criticized the release of the files almost as soon as the process began. In fact, Trump officials have admitted they are still going through the files to make proper redactions and not everything was released by the December 19 deadline set by federal law.
Massie said that he wanted to see the 302 forms, which the FBI uses to describe interviews. Massie also said he wanted to see the full initial documents from the late convicted sex offender’s 2008 case, which allowed him to be convicted on lesser state charges in Florida after a deal between attorneys.
“They need to produce the initial draft indictment documents in the older case in Florida, they need to produce the same thing,” he told The Independent. “In the 2019 case, there's some very specific documents that are not releasing.”
Massie and Khanna have also sent a letter to Judge Paul Engelmayer of the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York that asked him to force a release of the files. Their letter called for the appointment of a special master to ensure a release of the full files.
“Put simply, the DOJ cannot be trusted with making mandatory disclosures under the Act,” the letter read. “While we believe that criminal violations have taken place and must be addressed, the most urgent need now is for the DOJ to produce all the documents and electronically stored information required by the Act.”
The Kentucky Republican who has emerged as a massive critic of the Trump administration, criticized the DOJ attempting to override parts of their law that said that the files could not be redacted based on personal embarrassment.
“So that's what I'm focused on, not the fact that they've clearly missed the deadline,” he said. “Which, of course, they shouldn’t have. They’ve had a long time for that.”
Rep. Theresa Leger Fernandez (D-N.M.), the chairwoman of the Democratic Women’s Caucus who held a vigil with the victims during the passage in the Senate, also criticized the nature of the release. Specifically, she criticized the fact many men’s faces were redacted, but women’s were not.
“Everything they're doing is exactly the opposite of what they're supposed to do,” she told The Independent. “We're supposed to try to protect those who are already victimized. What they're doing is re-victimizing.”
At the same time, Democrats are continuing their probe of the Epstein case in the House of Representatives. Despite being in the minority, Democrats on the House Oversight Committee secured subpoenas of Les Wexner, a billionaire whose money Epstein managed, and two executors of Epstein’s estate, Darren Indyke and Richard Kahn.
Ranking Member Robert Garcia (D-Calif.) told The Independent that he supported Khanna and Massie’s request for a special master. He also demanded that Attorney General Pam Bondi release the files.
“And so we're very supportive of that, and we continue to interview folks and interview survivors and are demanding that Bondi get the files out,” he told The Independent.
But Democrats have fewer allies in the push to release the files. This week, Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia officially resigned from Congress after a public clash with President Donald Trump about her support to release the files.
Reps. Lauren Boebert of Colorado and Nancy Mace of South Carolina are the only original Republican co-signatures to the discharge petition pushed by Massie and Khanna that led to the law that required the files release.
Late last month, Trump vetoed legislation Boebert sponsored to bring clean drinking water to parts of her district. Boebert heavily implied that her vote on the Epstein discharge petition played a role in the veto.
On Thursday, the House took it the veto, but it failed to override the veto. Only 24 Republicans voted to override the veto from the president.
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