FBI Director Kash Patel claimed Wednesday that he is barred by recent court orders from releasing thousands of documents connected to disgraced sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein.
“I’m not going to break the law to satisfy your curiosity,” Patel said during the second day of Congressional oversight hearings after Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-Md.) challenged him on why he hasn’t released more of the files.
But Patel appears to be mischaracterizing those recent court orders, which came amid a hurried effort by the Trump administration to ask federal judges for permission to release grand jury materials stemming from the case of Epstein and co-conspirator Ghislaine Maxwell.
Judges considering the ask said it appeared to be an effort to confuse the public, noting that the materials consisted of only a few dozen pages of hearsay — much of which became public during court proceedings — and were dwarfed by the FBI’s massive trove of records.
In fact, one of the judges who ruled on the grand jury matter — and who presided over Epstein’s criminal case before he died by suicide in a jail cell in 2019 — said the Trump administration had the power to release the records.
“The government is the logical party to make comprehensive disclosure to the public of the Epstein files,” U.S. District Judge Richard Berman wrote last month, emphasizing that the materials in the FBI’s possession are not subject to typical secrecy of grand jury material.
Berman, a Clinton appointee, called the Trump administration’s effort to seek release of the limited grand jury material an apparent “diversion from the breadth and scope of the Epstein files in the government’s possession.”
Rep. Dan Goldman (D-N.Y.) pressed Patel on this point, suggesting that the grand jury orders had no bearing on his ability to release more materials. Patel then cited other sealed orders and protective orders from Epstein and Maxwell’s criminal cases that he said barred the release of additional information.
“Why are you not going to a court, like you did for the grand jury testimony?” Goldman wondered. “You are hiding the Epstein files, Mr. Patel. You are part of the cover-up.”
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