Republicans are turning the heat back up on the Trump administration for its handling of the Epstein files.
Kentucky Representative Thomas Massie torched FBI Director Kash Patel over the weekend after he caught the bureau chief off guard on information that Patel should have already been privy to.
“I told Director Kash Patel that the FBI has names of 20 men to whom Jeffrey Epstein trafficked women and girls,” Massie wrote on X. “This basic fact seemed to surprise him. Why?
“Is the FBI withholding those names to protect the President’s rich and powerful friends?” Massie continued, before demanding that the administration “release the Epstein files.”
Massie has been fighting for the release of more documents related to the investigation into Jeffrey Epstein, the deceased pedophilic sex trafficker with connections to the rich and powerful, including President Donald Trump.
“I believe that Trump is trying to protect rich and powerful people who are his friends, and that is why this material is not getting released,” Massie told CNN last week.
Even Patel ferociously argued for the total release of the Epstein files—before he formally entered the Trump administration. Months before Patel’s name was floated to run the bureau, Patel had told podcaster Benny Johnson that he believed the documents were being shielded from public view because of “who’s on that list.” During his confirmation hearing, the 45-year-old swore there would be “no stone left unturned” in the quest to make the Epstein files completely transparent.
But it all came to a head during a heated House Oversight Hearing Wednesday, when members of the lower chamber forced the bureau chief to confront the incongruencies between his prior stances and his recent lagging actions.
“This spring, you ordered hundreds of agents to pore over all of the Epstein files, but not to look for more clues about the money network, or the network of human traffickers,” said Representative Jamie Raskin. “You pulled these agents from their regular counterterrorism or drug trafficking duties to work around the clock—some of them sleeping at their desks—to conduct a frantic search to make sure Donald Trump’s name and image were flagged and redacted wherever they appeared.”
Raskin then highlighted a July memo from the bureau, in which Patel and Attorney General Pam Bondi determined “no further disclosure” regarding the Epstein files and the FBI’s investigation “would be necessary or appropriate.”
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