The Government Accountability Office plans to examine the Justice Department’s handling of files related to Jeffrey Epstein after a bipartisan group of senators raised concerns that the department violated the law.
The Justice Department has released millions of pages of documents related to the late convicted sex offender since President Donald Trump signed a law in November requiring the department to make the records public with narrow restrictions.
But Democrats and some Republicans in Congress questioned whether the Justice Department released all the required files and have criticized officials for not redacting some victims’ names and for redacting the names of some Epstein associates.
Sens. Jeff Merkley (D-Oregon), Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska), Ben Ray Luján (D-New Mexico) and Dick Durbin (D-Illinois) last month asked the GAO — an independent agency that is part of the legislative branch — to look into how the department reviewed the files “and the resulting failure of the Department to follow the law, respond to Congress and protect victims.”
Merkley said Tuesday that the GAO has agreed to do so.
“This independent investigation is an important step in holding this Administration accountable for siding with the rich and powerful to help cover up the abuse of our most vulnerable,” Merkley said in a statement. “I’ll keep fighting to use all the tools at my disposal to deliver justice for Epstein’s victims and transparency for the American people.”
The GAO is the second agency to agree to examine the Justice Department’s handling of the Epstein files and compliance with the law. The Justice Department inspector general’s office said last week that it would audit how the department identified, redacted and released the Epstein records after Merkley, Murkowski, Durbin and other senators asked the inspector general to do so. The GAO told Merkley in a letter that it will coordinate with the inspector general’s office to ensure that the two agencies do not duplicate each other’s efforts.
Epstein, a well-connected financier who pleaded guilty in 2008 to charges of soliciting prostitution and died in federal custody while awaiting trial on federal sex trafficking charges in 2019, faced multiple investigations during his lifetime over his relationships with young women. His longtime companion, Ghislaine Maxwell, was convicted on sex trafficking charges and is serving a 20-year prison sentence in Texas.
Since Epstein’s death, which was later ruled a suicide, conspiracy theorists have speculated without evidence that federal officials have worked to protect powerful friends who may have participated in his crimes.
The Epstein files consumed months of Trump’s presidency, with Attorney General Pam Bondi testifying twice on Capitol Hill about the release of the files before Trump ousted her this month.
At a news conference in January, Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche said the department identified about 6 million documents related to Epstein but withheld roughly half of them because they were deemed to fall under exceptions in the law or to be duplicates of files it had already released.
“I can assure that we complied with the statute, we complied with the [law], and we did not protect President Trump,” Blanche said.
“We didn’t protect or not protect anybody,” he added, dismissing the ongoing debate as “a thirst for information that I do not think will be satisfied by the review of these documents.”
Trump had a long-standing friendship with Epstein, and the two had a falling out in the mid-2000s. Trump has not been accused of participating in Epstein’s criminal conduct.
Blanche, now the acting attorney general, has signaled a desire to move on from the Epstein case.
“To the extent that the Epstein files was a part of the past year of this Justice Department, it should not be a part of anything going forward,” Blanche said on Fox News after Bondi’s ouster.
Jeremy Roebuck and Maegan Vazquez contributed to this report.
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