Washington – Lawmakers unhappy with the Justice Department’s decisions to redact or significantly withhold documents from the legal release of files related to Jeffrey Epstein threatened Saturday to begin impeachment proceedings against officials, including Pam Bondi, the U.S. attorney general.
Democrats and Republicans alike criticized the omission, while Democrats also accused the Justice Department of deliberately withholding the release of at least one photo of President Trump, with Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D.N.Y.) suggesting it could foreshadow “one of the photos.” The largest cover-up in American history“.
Trump administration officials said the release was fully consistent with the law, and that its revisions were drafted solely to protect victims of Epstein, a disgraced financier and convicted sex offender who was accused of abusing hundreds of women and girls before his death in 2019.
Rep. Ro Khanna (D-Fremont), author of Epstein introduces the Transparency Actwhich requested the release of the investigation, criticized Bondi in a social media video, accusing her of denying the existence of many of the recordings for months, only to push an “incomplete version with a lot of redactions” in response to — and in violation of — the new law.
Khanna said he and the bill’s co-sponsor, Rep. Thomas Massie (R-Ky.), are “exploring all options” to respond and force more disclosures, including by pursuing “removal of justice,” requiring courts to hold officials who block their release in contempt of court, and “referring to prosecution those who obstruct justice.”
“We will work with survivors to demand the full release of these files,” Khanna said.
He later added in an interview with CNN that he and Massey were drafting articles of impeachment against Bondi, although they had not decided whether to introduce them.
Massi, in his own blog post on social media He said Khanna was right in dismissing Friday’s release as insufficient, saying it “fails grossly to comply with the spirit and letter of the law.”
Lawmakers’ view that the Justice Department’s document dump failed to comply with the law echoed similar complaints across the political spectrum on Saturday, as the full scope of redactions and other withholdings came into focus.
Frustration escalated sharply late Friday afterward Fox News Digital reported That the names and identifiers of not only victims but also “politically exposed individuals and government officials” had been deleted from the records — which would violate the law, was denied by Justice Department officials.
Critics included Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.), who cited the Fox report in an angry post late Friday to X.
“The point was not to protect ‘politically exposed individuals and government officials.’ That is exactly what MAGA has always wanted, and that is what draining the swamp actually means. “It means exposing them all, the rich, powerful, corrupt elites who commit crimes, not clearing their names and protecting them,” Greene wrote.
Senior Justice Department officials later contacted Fox News to object to the report. But the removal of the file released in a statement on Friday evening, which contained an office in Epstein’s home with a drawer filled with photos of Trump, reinforced bipartisan concerns that references to the president were being illegally withheld.
In the release of documents from the Epstein family estate by the House Oversight Committee this fall, Trump’s name appeared More than 1000 times -More than any other public figure.
“If they take it down, just imagine how much they’re trying to hide,” Schumer wrote on X. “This may be one of the largest cover-ups in American history.”
Many victims also said that the release was not enough. “It’s really another slap in the face,” Alicia Arden, who went to police to report that Epstein assaulted her in 1997, told CNN. “I wanted all the files to show up, like they said they would.”
Trump, who signed the bill into law after working to prevent him from voting, has been conspicuously quiet on the issue. In a long speech in North Carolina on Friday evening, he did not mention this.
However, White House officials and Justice Department leaders rejected the idea that the release was incomplete or inconsistent with the law, or that politicians’ names had been redacted.
“The only redactions that are applied to documents are those required by law, period,” said Deputy Atty. General Todd Blanche. “In line with applicable law and laws, we do not edit the names of individuals or politicians unless they are victims.”
Other Republicans defended the administration. Rep. James Comer (R-Ky.), chairman of the House Oversight Committee, said the administration “is providing unprecedented transparency in the Epstein case and will continue to release documents.”
Epstein died in a Manhattan jail awaiting trial on sex trafficking charges. He had been convicted in 2008 of procuring a child for prostitution in Florida, but served only 13 months in custody in what many condemned as a plea deal for a wealthy and well-connected defendant.
Epstein’s acts of abuse have attracted significant attention, including among many within Trump’s political base, in part because of unanswered questions surrounding which of his many powerful friends may also have been involved in crimes against children. Some of those questions revolved around Trump, who was friends with Epstein for years before they had what the president described as a falling out.
Evidence has emerged in recent months suggesting Trump may have known about Epstein’s crimes during their friendship.
Trump “knew about the girls,” Epstein wrote in a 2019 email, released by the House Oversight Committee. In a 2011 email to Ghislaine Maxwell, who was convicted of conspiring with Epstein to help him sexually abuse girls, Epstein wrote that “the dog that did not bark is Trump. [Victim] “I spent hours with him at my house…and he never mentioned his name.”
Trump denied any wrongdoing.
The records released Friday contained few, if any, major new revelations, but they included a complaint against Epstein that was filed with the FBI in 1996 — which the FBI did little with, underscoring long-standing fears among Epstein’s victims that his crimes could have been stopped years earlier.
Sen. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.), one of the president’s most consistent critics, wrote on X that Bondi should appear before the Senate Judiciary Committee to explain under oath the widespread redactions and omissions, which he called “a willful violation of the law.”
“The Trump Justice Department has months to fulfill its promise to release all of the Epstein files,” Schiff wrote. “Epstein survivors and the American people need answers now.”