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 about his case.
The documents stem from a subpoena House Oversight Committee chair James Comer, R-Ky., issued last month to the Justice Department. The committee released 33,295 pages of records Tuesday, which it has referred to as a first batch of documents from the Justice Department.
The content of all the records was not immediately clear, but many files had already been made public through court filings and other releases.
The committee is investigating the Epstein case weeks after President Donald Trump and his administration faced outrage from both supporters and opponents for saying they would not release more files related to Epstein, even though Trump ran 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 released 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 Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche's interview with Maxwell, video from inside Epstein’s home in West Palm Beach, Florida, after Palm Beach police executed a search warrant, video from inside the jailhouse where Epstein died by suicide in 2019 and audio taken by Palm Beach police pertaining to their initial investigation into Epstein.
Rep. Robert Garcia of California, the top Democrat on the committee, said the “overwhelming” number 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."
Garcia said that only 3% of the files released were new and that 97% were already public. A spokesperson for the Republican-led committee defended the release in response.
“The Trump DOJ is in compliance with the Committee’s subpoena and is providing documents on a rolling basis,” the spokesperson said in a statement.
In a separate statement, Garcia said the only new disclosure in the trove was less than 1,000 pages from Customs and Border Protection detailing flight logs of Epstein’s plane and forms for re-entry into the United States.
The documents show that male and female passengers were on the flights. But pursuant to Justice Department policy, the only person named in the customs records is Epstein himself; passengers’ names were redacted.
Other Democrats on the committee slammed Tuesday's release as not transparent enough. Rep. Ro Khanna, D-Calif., said it as only a drop in the bucket of all the files.
Khanna has been working with Rep. Thomas Massie, R-Ky., on what is 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.
Massie said Tuesday's release of records "doesn't change a thing" for the discharge petition, adding that "eventually people are going to pore through those documents and find out there's nothing new in there."
He also asserted that the White House is trying to stop the bill because they don’t want everything released, and accused House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., of helping to “cover up a sex trafficking ring.”
