The Justice Department has snubbed Senate Democrats demanding the release of the Epstein files in its latest move to slow-walk the release of any information about the biggest scandal to hit Donald Trump’s second term.
Democrats on the Senate Homeland Security Committee sent a scathing letter to Attorney General Pam Bondi after her department failed to produce documents on the convicted sex offender by their deadline.
Last month, Democrats on the committee invoked the obscure “rule of five” to compel the Justice Department to release the full files as the White House was in crisis mode over the botched release of documents and questions over Trump’s relationship with Epstein. They had called for a response by August 15.
But their deadline came and went without a response from the Justice Department. Instead, the department sent a letter stating they were “continuing to evaluate whether it may appropriately provide documents,” and referenced efforts to unseal grand jury transcripts, according to Senate Democrats.
“You have failed to comply, and to date, the Committee has received no documents or information from your office,” they wrote in a new letter on Tuesday.
Committee Democrats are now demanding the files and other material in the DOJ and FBI’s possession, as well as a briefing to committee staff no later than September 2, which is the date Congress returns from recess, and pressure over the Epstein files is expected to kick back into high gear.
The letter this week was one of several indications that the Justice Department is dragging its feet on the issue after the Trump administration promised to release documents.
On Monday, the Republican House Oversight Committee Chairman James Comer revealed the Justice Department indicated it would begin to provide Epstein-related records to the committee on Friday after it issued a subpoena last month.
However, he said it would take the Justice Department time to produce all the records and ensure victims and material related to child sexual abuse are redacted, raising questions over what the department has been doing with the documents for the months since Bondi initially promised she was preparing to release them about six months ago.
A House committee spokesperson told the Daily Beast that it intends to make the records public after its own thorough review to redact victims’ identification and child sex abuse material.
However, House Democrats on the committee, who pushed for the subpoena, blasted releasing the documents in batches as a continuation of the White House “cover-up.” They argued “handpicked, partial productions are wholly insufficient and potentially misleading,” considering Bondi said she had the documents months ago.
Then there was the Justice Department’s own attempt to release information without delivering the documents as promised.
After their botched release sparked MAGA fury, the Trump administration sought to get grand jury testimony unsealed instead, but that has now been brutally shot down three times with scathing court opinions.
On Wednesday, a third district judge rejected the Justice Department’s attempt to release grand jury testimony. It was the third and final time a federal judge denied the Trump administration’s grand jury testimony requests.
Judge Richard Berman wrote that the government’s trove of information would better inform the public than the grand jury testimony and noted that the only witness in it was an FBI agent.
“The government is the logical party to make a comprehensive disclosure to the public of the Epstein files,” he wrote. “By comparison, the instant grand jury motion appears to be ‘diversion’ from the breadth and scope of the Epstein files in the Government’s possession.”
He indicated that it was 70 pages of transcripts, whereas the government is in possession of 100,000 pages of Epstein documents.
Just last week, a separate judge also denied unsealing the grand jury testimony from the sex-trafficking case against Epstein’s accomplice Ghislaine Maxwell. He called the Justice Department’s attempt a “distraction.”
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