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WASHINGTON: The House Oversight Committee on Tuesday publicly posted the files it has received from the Justice Department on the sex trafficking investigations into Jeffrey Epstein and his former girlfriend Ghislaine Maxwell.
The folders contained hundreds of image files of years-old court filings related to Epstein and Maxwell. They also contained video files appearing to be body cam footage from police searches, as well as law enforcement interviews with victims with their faces obscured.
The Justice Department released the files to the committee in response to a subpoena, but the files mostly contain information that was already publicly known.
Still, pressure is growing in Congress for lawmakers to act to force greater disclosure in the case. House Republican Speaker Mike Johnson is trying to quell an effort by Democrats and some Republicans to force a vote on a bill that would require the Justice Department to release all the information in the so-called Epstein files, with the exception of the victims’ personal information of the victims.
Acting quickly, lawmakers pressing for the full release of the so-called Epstein files launched a campaign for the House to take up their bill. Meanwhile, Johnson and a bipartisan group of lawmakers met with survivors of abuse by Epstein and his former girlfriend Ghislaine Maxwell.
“The objective here is not just to uncover, investigate the Epstein evils, but also to ensure that this never happens again and ultimately to find out why justice has been delayed for these ladies for so very long,” said Johnson, R-Louisiana, after he emerged from a two-hour meeting with six of the survivors.
“It is inexcusable. And it will stop now because the Congress is dialed in on this,” he added.
But there are still intense disagreements on how lawmakers should proceed. Johnson is pressing for the inquiry to be handled by the House Oversight Committee and putting forward a resolution that directs the committee to publicly release its findings.
The files released Tuesday included audio of an Epstein employee describing to a law enforcement official how “there were a lot of girls that were very, very young” visiting the home but couldn’t say for sure if they were minors.
Over the course of Epstein’s visits to the home, the man said more than a dozen girls might visit, and that he was charged with cleaning the room where Epstein had massages, twice daily.
Some of the interviews with officers from the Palm Beach Police Department date to 2005, according to timestamps read out by officials at the beginning of the files.
Most, if not all, of the text documents posted Tuesday had already been public. Notably, the probable cause affidavit and other records from the 2005 investigation into Epstein contained a notation indicating that they’d been previously released in a 2017 public records request. An Internet search showed those files were posted to the website of the Palm Beach County State Attorney’s Office in July 2017.
If the purpose of the release was to provide answers to a public still curious over the long-concluded cases, the raw mechanics of the clunky rollout made that a challenge.
Lawmakers at 6 p.m. released thousands of pages and videos via a cumbersome Google Drive, leaving it to readers and viewers to decipher new and interesting tidbits on their own. The disclosure also left open the question of why the Justice Department did not release the material directly to the public instead of operating through Capitol Hill.
Meanwhile, Democrats and some Republicans are trying to maneuver around Johnson’s control of the House floor to hold a vote on a separate bill that would require the Justice Department to publicly release the files, with the exception of names and personal information of the victims.
The clash suggests little has changed in Congress since late July, when Johnson sent lawmakers home early in hopes of cooling the political battle over the Epstein case. Members of both parties remain dissatisfied and are demanding more details on the years-old investigation into Epstein, the wealthy and well-connected financier whose 2019 death in a New York jail cell while he faced sex trafficking charges has sparked wide-ranging conspiracy theories and speculation.