US Justice Dept sent Congress Epstein files that were already public, Democrats say
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This undated trial evidence image obtained in 2021 shows the late US financier Jeffrey Epstein and British socialite Ghislaine Maxwell.
PHOTO: AFP
Catie Edmondson
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WASHINGTON – The “overwhelming majority” of documents the US Justice Department gave Congress in response to a subpoena for all information from its investigation into disgraced financier Jeffrey Epstein had already been publicly released, the top Democrat on the House’s principal investigative committee said on Aug 23.
The Justice Department began sending material on Aug 22 to the House Oversight Committee, which had demanded all records by Aug 19, providing a total of 33,295 pages.
But Democratic Representative Robert Garcia of California, the ranking member, said that of the files the committee had received, only 3 per cent contained new information. The remaining 97 per cent of the pages, he said, had information previously released by the Justice Department, the Florida Department of Law Enforcement or the Palm Beach County State Attorney’s Office.
Among those files were video footage from the Metropolitan Correctional Centre in New York from the night of Epstein’s death; Supreme Court filings from Ghislaine Maxwell, his long-time associate who is serving a 20-year federal prison sentence; a Justice Department inspector-general’s report on Epstein’s death; and a memo from Attorney-General Pam Bondi to Federal Bureau of Investigation director Kash Patel.
The only new information, Mr Garcia said, was fewer than 1,000 pages from the Customs and Border Protection’s log of flight locations of Epstein’s plane from 2000 to 2014 and “forms consistent with re-entry back to the US”.
A Republican spokeswoman for the committee declined to confirm or deny the contents of the documents, saying that the panel was continuing to review them. She said the material was only the first batch of documents from the Justice Department and that more would be forthcoming.
A spokesperson for the Justice Department did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The committee has not publicly released the files the Justice Department provided the panel on Aug 22, though the spokeswoman had said it intended to do so after a thorough review to ensure any victims’ identification and child sexual abuse material were redacted.
On the same day, the Justice Department also released transcripts and audio of two days of interviews in late July between Maxwell and Deputy Attorney-General Todd Blanche, the department’s No. 2 official.
House Republican leaders still appear likely to face a bipartisan effort early in September to force a floor vote on a public release of the files. NYTIMES
