Rep. Chip Roy (R-TX) said the Trump administration needs better “transparency” regarding the Jeffrey Epstein case, shortly after President Donald Trump doubled down on calling the files a “made-up” hoax orchestrated by Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, and other Democrat leaders.
Speaking with reporters on the steps outside the U.S. Capitol on Tuesday, Roy appeared to stumble over his answer when asked if he thinks the Department of Justice (DOJ) has “been transparent enough when it comes to the Epstein matter,” but ultimately called for the administration to “address” the situation:
“Uh, look, I’ll let the, you know, Department of Justice continue to carry out what they need to do, I do think there needs to be more transparency,” he said. “I do think that all needs to move forward, and I think that the administration needs to address that. But we’ll keep, you know, talking to them about what they’re going to do.”
When further asked if the DOJ’s controversial memo claiming there was no evidence of an Epstein sex trafficking “client list” and that the billionaire criminal had committed suicide in his New York City prison cell was “good enough” for him, Roy replied, “We’ll see. We want to see more information out of that.”
The congressman’s call for “more information” regarding the case came shortly after Trump told reporters outside the White House that the “files” associated with Epstein were “made up by [former FBI Director James] Comey, they were made up by Obama, they were made up by the Biden [administration].”
“And we went through years of that, with the ‘Russia, Russia, Russia’ hoax, with all of the different things that we had to go through — we’ve gone through years of it,” he continued.
Referring to U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi, Trump said, “She’s handled it very well, and it’s going to be up to her. Whatever she thinks is credible, she should release.”
Trump’s latest statement on the subject followed a few days after a long Truth Social post claiming that the Epstein files were “written by Obama, Crooked Hillary, Comey, [former CIA Director John] Brennan, and the Losers and Criminals of the Biden Administration.”
After listing other priorities he believes the DOJ should focus on, including “investigating Voter Fraud, Political Corruption, ActBlue, The Rigged and Stolen Election of 2020, and arresting Thugs and Criminals,” the president said Americans should “not waste Time and Energy on Jeffrey Epstein, somebody that nobody cares about.”
The administration’s assertion that there is no “client list” of people who procured underage girls from Epstein has contradicted what even some of Trump’s most senior officials have said in the past, including Vice President JD Vance.
“What possible interest would the US government have in keeping Epstein’s clients secret? Oh…” Vance wrote when he was running for Senate in 2021:
“If you’re a journalist and you’re not asking questions about this case you should be ashamed of yourself. What purpose do you even serve?” he wrote in a follow-up:
Trump himself chided a reporter for asking about the case last week after the DOJ’s memo dropped, saying, “I can’t believe you’re asking a question on Epstein at a time like this”:
Olivia Rondeau is a politics reporter for Breitbart News based in Washington, DC. Find her on X/Twitter and Instagram.
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