One month after the congressionally mandated deadline to release all its files on convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, the Justice Department has made only a fraction of the files public — and it remains silent on its plans to fully comply with the law.
Also keeping quiet about the DOJ delays are congressional Republicans, almost all of whom voted in November to release the records after spending months heeding President Donald Trump’s opposition to the move.
Some of them are openly admitting it’s no longer a priority.
“I don’t give a rip about Epstein,” Rep. Lauren Boebert (R-Colo.) said last week when she was asked to take stock of the month since the Dec. 19 deadline.
“Like, there’s so many other things we need to be working on,” she added. “I’ve done what I had to do for Epstein. Talk to somebody else about that. It’s no longer in my hands.”
Boebert was one of four House Republicans, alongside Thomas Massie of Kentucky, Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia and Nancy Mace of South Carolina, who joined with Democrats to force a House floor vote on the Epstein legislation when leadership resisted moving it.
The White House lobbied these lawmakers heavily to take their names off the discharge petition to compel the bill’s consideration, with administration officials at one point summoning Boebert to the Situation Room for a final plea.
Now Washington’s attention has since shifted to other political firestorms, from Trump’s military action in Venezuela to the shooting of a U.S. citizen by an ICE agent in Minnesota, and congressional Republicans are eager to move on — underscoring the extent to which the GOP remains wary of crossing swords with the president.
The public falling out between Greene and Trump was largely over Greene’s support for releasing the Epstein files — Trump called her a “traitor” — and ultimately culminated in Greene’s resignation from the House earlier this month. Trump vetoed a bill that would have supported a water infrastructure project in Boebert’s district, and administration officials privately warned Mace that her defiance would likely to cost her the president’s endorsement in the South Carolina governor’s race.
Mace has vowed on social media to “keep fighting” for justice for Epstein’s victims but has not otherwise continued the drumbeat against the Justice Department.
Rep. Anna Paulina Luna (R-Fla.), who has worked with Democrats on a House Oversight and Government Reform Committee investigation into the Epstein case, said in a recent interview she’s now more more focused on holding Bill and Hillary Clinton in contempt of Congressfor not honoring the panel’s subpoena to testify about Epstein.
Many of the photos released by the DOJ so far feature the former president consorting with Epstein, and the administration has sought to portray Bill Clinton as the real pariah, not Trump. Both men have denied wrongdoing, and neither has been implicated in Epstein’s crimes.
Pressed on the delays in releasing more records, Luna said the initial deadline was not “realistic” and that “I’m not going to rush the process on that — we’re going to get them.”
House Oversight Chair James Comer (R-Ky.) is also defending the administration.
“From my standpoint, the Department of Justice is cooperating,” he told reporters after Bill Clinton defied his subpoena to testify last week. “They are turning over documents. We would all like for them to turn documents over quicker, but at the end of the day, they are complying.”
Not only has the administration failed to fully release Epstein records in its possession — as mandated in the bill passed overwhelmingly in the House and unanimously in the Senate in November — it has also failed to give its rationales for redactions in the files, as mandated by the statute.
On Christmas Eve, the Justice Department said the U.S. attorney’s office in the Southern District of New York and the FBI have identified potentially more than a million documents related to Epstein that have yet to be made public, offering no updated timing beyond “a few more weeks” to complete an internal audit. In a recent court filing, the department said more than 500 people were involved in its review.
That leaves Massie, who has already burned his bridges with the president for championing the Epstein release effort among other perceived slights, as the lone House Republican now publicly agitating for DOJ compliance.
“They’re in clear violation of the law, and I don’t think they’ve allocated the necessary resources to release these files,” Massie said in an interview. “But I’m most concerned about the over-redaction of the files. … There’s a list of things they can redact and a list of things they can’t redact in our bill, and they’re violating that.”
In an effort to establish some oversight of the Justice Department’s actions, Massie and Rep. Ro Khanna (D-Calif.), who together championed the bill to release the Epstein files, have asked a judge in New York to appoint an independent third party to oversee the documents’ release. The judge has since asked the Trump administration to respond to their motion.
Asked about the waning GOP appetite for accountability around the Epstein files release, Khanna signaled he wasn’t concerning himself with that, saying in an interview it was now irrelevant what his Republican colleagues are or are not doing.
“The law has passed,” he said. “Now it’s for the courts. Now it’s a legal matter.”
A Justice Department spokesperson did not respond to a request for comment.
The conversation is due to pick back up on Capitol Hill in early February: Attorney General Pam Bondi is scheduled to testify before the House Judiciary Committee on Feb. 11, after a previous appearance was cancelled due to the prolonged government shutdown. She’ll surely face questions about the delays from Democrats, as well as from Massie, who sits on the panel.
“I’ll probably focus my five minutes on the Epstein files and her noncompliance with the law,” Massie said.
Read the full article here