Democrats in Congress, Relatively Silent for Years About Jeffrey Epstein Case, Are Suddenly All About Transparency

House Democrats have formally called on the Department of Justice to release documents related to Jeffrey Epstein’s sex-trafficking case, specifically those that mention or reference President Trump. The request, led by the Judiciary Committee’s ranking member, Congressman Jamie Raskin, alongside 15 other Democrats, came in the form of a six-page letter addressed to Attorney General Bondi. The letter accused Ms. Bondi of withholding files to shield Mr. Trump from potentially damaging disclosures.“Stop protecting your boss and former client, release the Smith report in full without redactions immediately, and publicly release all documents in the Epstein files that mention or reference Donald Trump,” the Democrats said in their letter.The Democrats have watched gleefully as civil war has erupted in the MAGA world over Ms. Bondi’s attempt to end the Epstein saga. While they’ve been relatively silent for years about the case — President Biden never called for the release of the Epstein files — they now smell blood in the water and want everything out in the open. On Wednesday, Senator Wyden, an Oregon Democrat, told All Rise News that he handed the Trump administration a “ready-made” case that it’s “sitting on” about Epstein’s relationship with major Wall Street banks.“I know for a fact that the Trump administration is sitting on an Epstein file that contains new actionable information,” he claimed, without divulging what that “information” might be.The push from House Democrats follows a controversial, now-deleted post by Elon Musk that claimed Mr. Trump’s name appears in the Epstein files. Mr. Musk wrote in June, “Trump is in the Epstein files. That is the real reason they have not been made public.” He later apologized.Mr. Musk jumped back into the fray on Tuesday, claiming that a former Trump adviser and longtime MAGA personality, Steve Bannon, is “in the Epstein files.”The Democrats’ letter arrives days after the justice department and FBI issued a memo stating that there was no secret “client list” associated with Epstein; that the convicted sex offender did not blackmail anyone; that no one else is expected to be charged in the matter; and that Epstein killed himself while awaiting trial in a Manhattan jail cell. Mr. Raskin and other Democrats criticized Ms. Bondi for previously hyping up the Epstein documents, including a February interview in which the attorney general claimed the FBI was reviewing “tens of thousands of videos of Epstein with children or child porn.” In a Cabinet meeting at the White House on Tuesday, Ms. Bondi changed her story. “Also, to the tens of thousands of videos, they turned out to be child porn downloaded by that disgusting Jeffrey Epstein,” she said. “Child porn is what they were. Never were they going to be released, never going to see the light of day.”Mr. Trump was clearly annoyed by a question about Epstein at that same Cabinet meeting, saying, “Are you still talking about Jeffrey Epstein? This guy’s been talked about for years. We have Texas, we have this — we have all of these things, and are people still talking about this guy? This creep? That is unbelievable. Do you want to waste the time?”Epstein was a large contributor to Democrats, giving at least $80,000 combined to the Democratic National Committee and its Senate arm between the late 1990s and the early 2000s, according to Federal Election Commission records. In 2023, when a Republican senator, Marsha Blackburn of Tennessee, sought to subpoena Epstein’s flight logs, the move, she said, was blocked by Senator Durbin of Illinois. “[Durbin] BLOCKED my request to subpoena Jeffrey Epstein’s flight logs. What are Democrats trying to hide?” Ms. Blackburn posted on X after calling it a “sad day in the history of the prestigious Judiciary Committee.”She also said Democrats “don’t want to have a conversation about the estate of Jeffrey Epstein to find out the names of every person who participated in Jeffrey Epstein’s human trafficking ring.”The prospects of the Democrats’ latest demand being met appear slim, however, given their minority status in the House. Republican members of the Judiciary Committee have shown little interest in joining the effort.

Democrats in Congress, Relatively Silent for Years About Jeffrey Epstein Case, Are Suddenly All About Transparency

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