House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.) said Monday the Trump administration should release all of the files related to the disgraced late-financier Jeffrey Epstein, and Congress should intervene to force that release if the administration doesn’t act on its own.
Jeffries said there’s no good reason for the Justice Department to keep those details under wraps unless officials have something to hide a veiled nod to speculation that Trump, who had crossed paths with Epstein in years past, is in the files.
“The American people deserve to know the truth,” he told reporters in the Capitol. “What, if anything, is the Trump administration and the Department of Justice hiding?”
Epstein died in 2019 in a Manhattan prison cell, where he was awaiting trial after his arrest for the sex trafficking of minors. But his case has been a rallying cry for right-wing conspiracy theorists many of them avid Trump supporters who have alleged the government is in possession of Epstein’s client list but hasn’t released it to protect powerful “elites” in high places of government and business.
Some of those voices have since been promoted to powerful posts in the Trump administration including Attorney General Pam Bondi and FBI Director Kash Patel leading to high expectations from the MAGA faithful that Trump would release the full trove of Epstein files in his second term.
In February, Bondi fueled those hopes when she said she had Epstein’s client list on her desk “right now” and was ready to release it.
Last week, however, the DOJ issued an unsigned memo asserting the agency has no evidence that Epstein kept a client list or attempted to blackmail powerful figures who might have engaged in illegal sexual activities.
“We did not uncover evidence that could predicate an investigation against uncharged third parties,” the memo reads.
The DOJ also stuck by its earlier assessment that Epstein died by suicide another detail that angered many of Trump’s supporters, who have suspected there was foul play to silence Epstein.
The memo infuriated many of Trump’s supporters and severed a MAGA movement that’s practically defined by its steadfast loyalty to the president.
Jeffries said only two scenarios surrounding the Epstein saga are possible: Either Trump and some of his most prominent supporters including Bondi and Vice President Vance “intentionally lied to the American people for years” to bolster their warnings that sinister “elites” run the country. Or the DOJ is now concealing evidence of that plot to protect the president’s interests.
“Option 1: They lied for years. Option 2: They’re engaging in a cover-up. At this point. it seems reasonable that it can only be one of the two things,” Jeffries said. “And so it’s Congress’s responsibility, in a bipartisan way, to ask the questions and try to get answers on behalf of the American people.”
Trump has sought to defuse the internal MAGA outcry, defending Bondi and urging his supporters to move on, while also falsely blaming Democrats for fueling the conspiracies surrounding Epstein.
“Obama, Crooked Hillary, Comey, Brennan, and the Losers and Criminals of the Biden Administration, who conned the World with the Russia, Russia, Russia Hoax, 51 ‘Intelligence’ Agents, ‘THE LAPTOP FROM HELL,’ and more … created the Epstein Files, just like they created the FAKE Hillary Clinton/Christopher Steele Dossier,” Trump posted Saturday on Truth Social, the media outlet he owns.
Jeffries rejected that argument on Monday, noting the Epstein conspiracies have long been a celebrated cause of the right.
“Democrats didn’t put the Jeffrey Epstein thing into the public domain,” he said. “This was a conspiracy that Donald Trump, Pam Bondi, and these MAGA extremists have been fanning the flames of for the last several years, and now the chickens are coming home to roost.”
Several Democrats on Capitol Hill have already introduced legislation designed to force the administration to release all of its Epstein files. Jeffries said he hasn’t examined those resolutions, but voiced strong support for the concept.
“I think transparency and sunlight for the American people is always the better course of action,” he said.
