Lawmakers on Sunday accused the Trump administration of “flouting” the law following the release of thousands of increasingly redacted documents related to convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.
Though the Justice Department on Friday began its release of additional documents regarding Epstein, Saturday’s second batch of highly redacted material drew frustrations from Republicans and Democrats alike. Now, some have begun to accuse the department of hiding critical information in order to protect President Donald Trump and his associates.
“How can you block out an entire document? It makes no sense,” Rep. Jamie Raskin, ranking Democrat on the House Judiciary Committee, said in a Sunday interview with CNN’s “State of the Union.”
“This is all about covering up things that for whatever reason Donald Trump doesn't want to go public,” the Maryland Democrat added, “either about himself or other members of his family, friends, Jeffrey Epstein or just the social business cultural network that he was involved in for at least a decade if not longer.”
The Justice Department has released more than 13,000 documents related to Epstein over the last two days, but Rep. Thomas Massie (R-Ky.) on Sunday indicated he was unsatisfied with the release.
“They are flouting the spirit and letter of the law,” Massie, co-sponsor of the Epstein Files Transparency Act, told CBS’s “Face the Nation” in a joint interview alongside the other co-sponsor, Rep. Ro Khanna (D-Calif.).
“It's very troubling, the posture they have taken. And I won't be satisfied until the survivors are satisfied. I said in the hours leading up to this release that we will know if they are complying if they implicate any of the other … suspects that are involved, the witnesses, the victims themselves have given to the FBI and they have never been mentioned.”
Massie on Sunday revealed that he and Khanna are discussing drafting orders to bring “inherent contempt” against Attorney General Pam Bondi, a move that would be a step short of impeachment but would nonetheless rebuke Bondi for her inadequacies in releasing the files, in the lawmakers’ view. This, he said, would be the “most expeditious way” to get justice for these victims, adding that they are building a bipartisan coalition to back the orders if and when they come to the House floor.
Trump had faced pressure over the release of the files for months, in part due to promises he made on the 2024 campaign trail. Last June, he told Fox News that he would declassify the files. But during the first few months of his second term, Trump repeatedly dismissed concerns about the deceased financier, calling the files a Democrat-created “hoax.”
After Trump’s about-face in which he then urged Republican members of Congress to vote in favor of the files’ release, the DOJ was forced to release the documents in order to comply with a new law that Trump signed into law last month. Though Friday was the deadline to release the documents, Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche said more documents would be made public in the coming weeks and that DOJ was taking steps to ensure that throughout the production of materials, the department is “protecting every single victim” — and suggested moving more expeditiously could lead to identifying information for the victims being made public.
“The same individuals that are out there complaining about the lack of documents that were produced on Friday are the same individuals who apparently don't want us to protect victims,” Blanche told host Kristen Welker on NBC’s “Meet the Press” on Sunday.
“So the same complaints that we're hearing yesterday and even this morning from Democrats and from others screaming loudly from a hill about lack of production on Friday, imagine if we had released tons of information around victims? That would be the true crime,” he added. “If they have an issue with me protecting victims, they know how to get a hold of me, but we're not going to stop doing it."
Khanna on Sunday said the redactions were “excessive.”
“This shouldn't be a big document dump,” said Khanna, co-sponsor of the Jeffrey Epstein Transparency Act. “There is a pretty simple point: who raped these young girls, who covered it up and why are they getting away with it?”
While photos of former President Bill Clinton were included in the latest release, as well as at least one photo of Trump that has disappeared from the DOJ’s website, much of the material was either already publicly available or heavily redacted.
Blanche on Sunday defended the Justice Department's decision to remove more than a dozen files from its website, telling Welker that there were concerns about the safety of those featured.
"You can see in that photo, there are photographs of women, and so we learned after releasing that photograph that there were concerns about those — about those women and the fact that we had put that photo up,” he said.
Blanche pointed out that “dozens” of photos of Trump with Epstein are already publicly available.
“So the absurdity of us pulling down a single photo because President Trump was in it is laughable, and the fact that everyone is trying to act like that's the case is a reflection of the true motivation,” he said.
House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries on Sunday said the initial release is “inadequate.”
"It falls short of what the law requires,” Jeffries told ABC’s “This Week.”
But he demurred when asked about the prospect of backing impeachingment against Bondi, saying instead there needs to be a “full and complete investigation” of what the law requires the Justice Department to release.
Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) told Jonathan Karl in an interview with ABC’s “This Week” on Sunday that “it all should be released.”
“I mean, look, the administration has struggled for months and months with something they initially ginned up and then sort of tried to tamp down,” he said. “So any evidence or any kind of indication that there's not a full reveal on this, this will just plague them for months and months more.
Sen. Tim Kaine (D-Va.) echoed Paul in remarks to NBC's “Meet the Press," but he went a step further in indicating that he doesn't trust the DOJ to comply with the law.
"So when they actually do release files and it's a fraction of what's available, and it's heavily redacted, and then a day later they pull material back, the facts that I've just lain out for you how why so many people are really suspicious," the Virginia Democrat said. "All these files need to come out."
And it’s not just the volume of outstanding documents, Khanna said, but also the contents of what’s in them that’s leading him and others to accuse the Justice Department of deliberately concealing critical information.
“The key documents that our law said needed to be released, the 60-count indictment that actually implicates a lot of these people and the prosecution memo, were not released,” Khanna said. “It's not about the timeline. It's about the selective concealment.”
Neither the White House nor the Department of Justice immediately responded to requests for comment.
Jacob Wendler contributed to this report.
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