A top Democratic lawmaker accused the Trump Justice Department of openly defying the law Friday after the long-awaited release of records related to Jeffrey Epstein turned out to be only a fraction of what Congress ordered.
Rep. Robert Garcia (D-CA), the ranking Democratic member of the House Oversight Committee, told CNN’s Jake Tapper that the Department of Justice is “absolutely breaking the law” by what was not made public Friday, emphasizing that the release falls short of what federal law requires.
“They have not produced what they were required to do, which was all the files, by today, in a way that was searchable for the public – and that is not what’s happened.”
The Democratic lawmaker then offered a stark estimate of how little the Justice Department actually turned over on Friday.
“In our initial estimation, and again, this is just this is our estimation right now, it could be that we’re only getting about 10% of what the DOJ frankly has,” Garcia said. “And of that 10%, 5% of that has already been released. And the other 5% is highly redacted.”
“So we’re getting very little so far,” he added. “We hope to get more in the days ahead.”
Garcia went on to explain that much of what was released appears to already be in the public domain, including court filings, previously released video, civil case records, prison footage, and material related to Ghislaine Maxwell’s testimony. The little that appears to be new, Garcia told viewers, is heavily redacted without explanation.
“We don’t know what else is being redacted,” he said. “What we’re seeing is not transparency.”
He said Democrats might be forced to take legal action “if the Trump administration continues to stonewall, continues to not provide his full transcripts, and clearly they don’t have a real interest in transparency.”
He called on President Donald Trump and Attorney General Pam Bondi to “release all the files today and immediately.”
“This is not a real release,” Garcia concluded.
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