Amid allegations of cover-up, House Judiciary Committee members seek access to full Epstein case files
Democratic members of the U.S. House Judiciary Committee are calling on the Justice Department to make immediate arrangements to view the entire case. Jeffrey Epstein case files. In a formal inquiry sent Saturday, lawmakers said the need for a review of the documents was “urgent,” in part because of an upcoming public committee hearing with Attorney General Pam Bondi.
The committee’s investigation, a copy of which CBS News obtained Saturday, says the panel is questioning why the Justice Department has released only half of the estimated pages of the Epstein files.
“Our review is particularly urgent because the DOJ itself claims to have identified more than 6 million potentially responsive pages, but after releasing only about half of them – including more than 200,000 pages redacted or withheld by the DOJ – it strangely says it has fully complied with the (law),” the letter said.
The investigation, signed by the panel’s ranking member and Maryland Democrat Rep. Jamie Raskin, is addressed to Assistant U.S. Attorney General Todd Blanche. This reminded Blanche that he had previously said that if any member of Congress wishes to review portions of the records “in any unredacted form,” they are welcome to make arrangements to do so.
“The Democratic members of the House Judiciary Committee wish to review the records,” the letter said.
Democrats on the Judiciary Committee are not the first to request access to the full records. In a formal request sent Friday evening, Reps. Thomas Massie and Ro Khanna requested “access to unredacted documents from the Jeffrey Epstein files in order to fulfill Congress’s oversight responsibilities and ensure survivors receive the transparency and accountability they deserve.” Massie, a Republican from Kentucky, and Khanna, a Democrat from California, sponsored the 2025 legislation that passed Congress and required the full release of Epstein’s records.
Congressional investigations into the Justice Department question whether the Trump administration is withholding documents without justification.
“We seek to ensure that your redactions comply with the law’s requirements that records be released only in specified circumstances, such as to protect victims’ personally identifiable information, and not on the basis of embarrassment, reputational damage, or political sensitivity, including with respect to any government official, public figure, or foreign dignitary,” the letter from Judiciary Committee Democrats said.
Blanche defended the agency’s release and redactions of the document during a news conference Friday.
“When we said we weren’t legally allowed to release documents, that’s a fact,” he said. “That was true, it remains true today, and with the passage of the law, we are now able and directed to release documents, and that is what we are doing.”
Epstein survivor groups have blasted the Trump administration for its handling of the cases, including Friday’s release.
“The Department of Justice cannot claim that it has finished releasing the records until all legally required documents have been released and every attacker and accomplice has been fully exposed,” a group, which included Epstein survivors Annie Farmer and Dani Bensky, wrote in a statement Friday.
The Justice Department did not immediately respond to requests for comment on the congressional investigations.
