‘No excuse’: Most Epstein files sent to Congress already public, Democrats say
By Catie Edmondson
Washington: The “overwhelming majority” of documents the US Justice Department gave Congress in response to a subpoena for all information from its investigation into disgraced financier Jeffrey Epstein had already been publicly released, the top Democrat on the House’s principal investigative committee said.
The Justice Department began sending material on Friday (Saturday AEST) to the House oversight committee, which had demanded all records by August 19, providing a total of 33,295 pages.
Ghislaine Maxwell with Jeffrey Epstein.Credit: AP
But congressman Robert Garcia, the top Democrat on the panel, said that of the files the committee had received, only 3 per cent contained new information. The remaining 97 per cent, he said, contained information previously released by the Justice Department, the Florida Department of Law Enforcement or the Palm Beach County State Attorney’s office.
Among those files were video from the Metropolitan Correctional Centre in New York from the night of Epstein’s death; Supreme Court filings from Ghislaine Maxwell, his long-time associate who is serving a 20-year federal prison sentence; a Justice Department inspector general report on Epstein’s death; and a memo from US Attorney-General Pam Bondi to Kash Patel, the FBI director.
The only new information, Garcia said, was fewer than 1000 pages from the Customs and Border Protection’s log of flight locations of Epstein’s plane from 2000 to 2014 and “forms consistent with re-entry back to the US”.
“There is no excuse for incomplete disclosures,” Garcia said in a statement. “Survivors and the American public deserve the truth.”
A Republican spokesperson for the committee declined to confirm or deny the contents of the documents, saying that the panel was continuing to review them. In a statement, she said the material was only the first batch of documents from the Justice Department and that more would be forthcoming.
A Justice Department spokesperson said in a statement that the material already handed over amounted to more than what the Democrats requested when they led the committee. He said the department would continue to work to provide material to Congress while shielding information on crime victims.
The committee has not publicly released the files that the Justice Department provided the panel, although the spokesperson said it intended to do so after a thorough review to ensure any victims’ identification and child sexual abuse material were redacted.
The Justice Department on Friday (Saturday AEST) also released transcripts and audio of two days of interviews in late July between Maxwell and Todd Blanche, the department’s No.2 official.
The committee’s chair, Republican congressman James Comer, praised the Justice Department at that time for its speed in delivering “thousands of pages of Epstein-related documents to the oversight committee”.
Democrats and a few Republicans on the House oversight committee banded together last month to approve a subpoena for the files, forcing Comer to issue it.
House Republican leaders still appear likely to face a bipartisan effort early next month to force a floor vote on a public release of the files. Republican congressman Thomas Massie and Democrat Ro Khanna plan to use a procedural manoeuvre to bring up their measure, which has bipartisan support, requiring the Justice Department to release its records to the public.
Khanna, a member of the oversight committee, said on Saturday (Sunday AEST) that he planned to press ahead with the measure to force “the full release” of the files.
“Less than 1 per cent of files have been released,” Khanna said. “DOJ is stonewalling. The survivors deserve justice, and the public deserves transparency.”
This article originally appeared in The New York Times.
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