Congress releases batch of Epstein files, many of which were already public
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.”
“There are things that the White House doesn’t want out there that my legislation would cause to be released,” Massie said.
A spokesperson for Johnson did not immediately respond to a request for comment Tuesday night. Speaking to reporters earlier in the day about Massie’s discharge petition, Johnson said: “I would describe virtually everything Thomas Massie says related to this issue as meaningless.”
In an interview with MSNBC on Tuesday night, Massie said he did not think Trump had done anything illegal, but said perhaps friends of his might be implicated.
“I think the best way to clear President Trump’s name is to release all the files. I actually don’t think he’s done anything criminal. I think he may be covering for some rich and powerful people that are friends of his,” Massie said. “We’ve got to get it out in the open, regardless of whose friends might be incriminated.”
In response to Massie’s comments, a White House official told NBC News in an email: “Helping Thomas Massie and Liberal Democrats with their attention-seeking, while the DOJ is fully supporting a more comprehensive file release effort from the Oversight Committee, would be viewed as a very hostile act to the administration.”
Massie and Trump have clashed before, with the Kentucky Republican seeking to win over MAGA allies by pushing for more transparency with the Epstein files after he isolated himself by opposing Trump’s “Big, Beautiful Bill” earlier this year. Trump’s allies later launched a super PAC to unseat Massie, who has served in the House since 2012.
Other examples of the contents of Tuesday’s release include transcripts of certain parts of hearings in the Epstein criminal case. Hundreds of files are individual pages of other reports, including a Justice Department Office of Professional Responsibility investigation into the nonprosecution agreement Epstein reached in 2008 with the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of Florida, which was then headed by Alex Acosta, who later was Trump’s labor secretary in his first term.
Acosta is scheduled to appear voluntarily before the Oversight Committee this month after victims raised concerns about why he was not included in an earlier batch of subpoenas to people like former President Bill Clinton, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and former Attorney General Merrick Garland.
GOP leaders are trying to stave off an internal party revolt as Khanna and Massie attempt to force a floor vote on their bipartisan bill to release all the Epstein files immediately.
A House Republican co-sponsor of that bill told NBC News that they communicated to both the White House and Comer that they wanted the panel to publicly release the batch of files the Justice Department handed over as soon as possible, or else they may feel compelled to back Massie and Khanna’s bill.
The member said Tuesday that the message to the White House and Comer was essentially: “Don’t put me in a corner.”
A GOP leadership source told NBC News that leaders have been going all out to quash the discharge petition. That includes adding a resolution to the floor schedule this week to express support for the Oversight Committee’s Epstein probe.