House Democrats demand release of Epstein files mentioning Trump

WASHINGTON (CN) — Days after the Justice Department backed away from the Trump administration’s promise to publish new evidence related to disgraced financier and convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, House Democrats are now suggesting that the agency is withholding certain documents because they implicate the president.

And the lawmakers, members of the House Judiciary Committee, called on Attorney General Pam Bondi in a letter Tuesday to publicly release Epstein files that “mention or reference” Trump, as well as the contents of a separate special counsel investigation which probed the president’s handling of classified documents.

“This administration has repeatedly claimed that President Trump is ‘the most transparent and accessible president in American history,’” the Democrats led by Maryland Representative Jamie Raskin told Bondi. “So far, your DOJ has not only failed to live up to this promise, but you have also consistently hidden from the American public materials and information that may be damaging to President Trump."

High-ranking administration officials, such as FBI Director Kash Patel, have long vowed that the Trump White House would release documents related to Epstein’s crimes and his 2019 death in a New York prison cell, which investigators have long said was a suicide. The probe into Epstein has attracted particular attention from conspiracy theorists and some on the political right, who have suggested that the late financier did not die by suicide but was instead killed to conceal a so-called “client list” which incriminated prominent figures.

The Justice Department released a trove of files related to the Epstein case this year, but they contained little new information.

And in a memo made public Monday, the Justice Department concluded that Epstein’s fabled client list did not exist, and that there was “no credible evidence” of blackmail or anything else that would warrant renewed investigation.

The agency also said that the FBI probe of Epstein documents meant that additional public disclosures were not “appropriate or warranted.”

In their letter to Bondi, the House Democrats pointed to a statement from billionaire and former Trump adviser Elon Musk that the president had been implicated in the Epstein files.

During their public falling-out in early June, Musk wrote in a post on his social media platform X that Trump’s name appeared in documents related to Epstein and that was the “real reason” they had not been made public. Musk has since deleted that post and later apologized to the president, saying that he “went too far.”

Still, the Democrats told Bondi on Tuesday, Musk’s post “was clearly referring to records related to the investigation of Jeffrey Epstein.”

And the lawmakers pointed to what they said was an “immense effort” at the Justice Department to review the collection of Epstein records. They cited reports that the FBI had pulled in additional staff, who worked through nights and over weekends, to pore over the Epstein files. Despite that heavy lift, though, the Justice Department has refused to publish new information.

“This raises the question of whether the White House has moved to prevent the declassification and public release of the full Epstein files because they implicate President Trump, and whether these massive redaction efforts and the withholding of the files were intended to shield your boss from embarrassing revelations within those files,” the Democrats told Bondi.

Meanwhile, the lawmakers also urged the attorney general to release special counsel Jack Smith’s report on Trump’s handling of classified documents following his first term in office. A federal court in February formally dismissed the case against the president, but the Justice Department has moved to indefinitely block Smith’s findings from being made public.

The Democrats argued that the Justice Department’s position on the classified documents report was “plainly impossible to reconcile” with longstanding agency practice, pointing out that former Attorney General Merrick Garland released unredacted special counsel reports on three occasions — including findings from a probe into then-President Joe Biden’s own handling of classified information.

And the lawmakers said that the move ran afoul of the Justice Department’s willingness to cooperate with House Republicans’ ongoing investigation into Smith and Trump’s prosecution and their requests for depositions from prosecutors involved in the special counsel probe.

“Your DOJ has acquiesced to these requests without objections or restrictions, taking a highly unusual position at odds with decades of longstanding DOJ policy to protect line prosecutors and prosecutorial deliberations,” they wrote.

Democrats have long slammed the Trump administration for its efforts to appoint Justice Department officials who they argue place loyalty to the president above all else. Bondi herself was a member of Trump’s legal team during his 2020 impeachment trial — and other top agency officials such as Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche and Associate Attorney General Emil Bove have also been the president’s lawyers at one time or another.

In their Tuesday letter, the Democratic lawmakers argued that the Justice Department has become Trump’s “personal law firm,” accusing its officials of working to conceal damaging information about him from the public.

“We call on you to stop protecting your boss and former client, release the Smith report in full without redactions immediately, and publicly release all documents in the Epstein files that mention or reference Donald Trump,” they told Bondi.

Following the Justice Department’s release of the first batch of Epstein documents in February, Bondi said she had the disgraced financier’s client list on her desk.

But in a White House media briefing on Monday, Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt partially walked back those comments, saying that Bondi was referring to the “entirety of the paperwork in relation to Jeffrey Epstein.” She referred further questions to the Justice Department.

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