Democrats on the House Oversight Committee are decrying what they say is a scarcity of recent information within the Jeffrey Epstein files that the Justice Department provided to the panel Friday.
“Only 3% of the documents given to the Oversight Committee are new. The rest are already in the public domain. Less than 1% of files have been released. DOJ is stonewalling,” Rep. Ro Khanna of California stated in a press release Saturday as he known as for the complete launch of the files.
Rep. Summer Lee of Pennsylvania in a statement additionally claimed that the DOJ’s files are “largely thousands of pages of recycled content already made available to the public.”
The oversight committee earlier this month subpoenaed the Justice Department for any Epstein-related files, together with communications between former Biden administration officers and the DOJ associated to Epstein, as a lot of President Donald Trump’s supporters search extra info and transparency concerning the case. The committee has additionally subpoenaed high-profile witnesses to testify, together with the Clintons.
According to Lee, the “only new disclosure” is fewer than 1,000 pages from Customs and Border Protection’s “log of flight locations of the Epstein plane” courting from 2000 to 2014 and “forms consistent with reentry back” to the United States.
Lee stated the opposite information DOJ handed over that were already launched embrace: video from the correctional middle the night time of Epstein’s dying, a DOJ inspector basic report on Epstein’s dying, communications between the Bureau of Prisons and DOJ about Epstein’s dying, Attorney General Pam Bondi’s memo on releasing the Epstein files, and courtroom paperwork from Epstein confederate Ghislaine Maxwell’s trial and Epstein’s felony case in Florida.
Asked to answer the claims from Khanna and Lee, a House oversight spokesperson instructed NCS that the committee “continues to review the 34,000 pages of documents and has no further update at this time.”
“It’s important to note that this is the first batch of documents from the DOJ, with more to come,” the spokesperson stated in a press release.
The committee had said it plans to make the Epstein files public after a “thorough review” to make sure victims’ identities and different delicate issues are redacted.
It’s unclear how quickly the information will probably be publicly launched.
The DOJ turned over the information to the committee the identical day it launched a transcript of the interview that Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche performed with Maxwell.
Democratic Rep. Robert Garcia, the highest Democrat on the oversight panel, in a press release accused the DOJ of releasing the Maxwell transcript “to distract from their continued White House cover-up.”
NCS has reached out to the Department of Justice for remark.