Raskin Calls for Special Master to Be Put in Charge of Epstein Files Release

On MS NOW’s “Deadline” Tuesday, Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-MD) said Congress needs to appoint a special master to take charge of the release of the Epstein files.

Raskin said, “The statute itself, the one written by Massie and Khanna, doesn’t have any enforcement provisions. So we’re forced to look at what other means of enforcement are there in federal law or in the Constitution. And one of them, of course, would be to refer uncooperative people to the Department of Justice for prosecution, but of course we’re essentially referring them to themselves, to the Department of Justice. So that seems to have limited utility in this situation. Congress has the inherent power to impose sanctions on In other words, if the majority that passed this law came together, we could say that Justice Department officials are in contempt of Congress and then propose a whole panoply of civil or criminal sanctions, if it came down to it.

“But I would say that before we get to that, what we really need here is to appoint a special master, who is outside of the Department of Justice, who is a neutral magistrate or judge who would obtain all the documents, who everyone could trust to turn over the documents with the appropriate redactions to protect the victims and the survivors, but also to not cover them up in the interest of various political factors for the other people involved,” he continued. “I think that’s something that we should try to get a bipartisan majority in Congress, the appointment of a special master. Because leaving Pam Bondi and Kash Patel to deal with it obviously hasn’t gotten us out of the political impasse that we find ourselves in.”

He added: “It would be better to have someone like a neutral magistrate, a special master, tasked with doing that. And that’s something that, you know, we can raise when we get back to Congress.”

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