One member of the bipartisan pair leading the effort to compel the Justice Department to release files from the Jeffrey Epstein investigation said on Sunday that only about half of the Department’s trove has been made public and warned that there would be consequences if the rest of the documents do not come out soon.
Rep. Ro Khanna appeared on NBC’s Meet the Press two days after the DOJ published a large trove of documents from the case totalling about 3.5 million pages of evidence related to the years-long investigation into Epstein, the billionaire and well-connected financier who died in prison in 2019 while awaiting trial on child sex trafficking charges.
The Democrat, who led efforts to force the DOJ to release the Epstein files along with Republican congressman Thomas Massie, told moderator Kristen Welker that the DOJ’s release on Friday, while substantial, was weeks late under the statute passed by Congress and amounted to just about half of what Congress had demanded from the agency.
“They’ve released at best half the documents. But even those shock the conscience of this country. I mean, you have some of the most wealthy individuals, tech leaders, finance leaders, politicians, all implicated in some way, having emailed them, wanting to go to Epstein’s island [even] knowing that Epstein was a pedophile,” said Khanna.
“This is the most documents that we have seen released so far in history. But it is not good enough,” the California congressman continued, warning: “If we don’t get the remaining files … and if the survivors are not happy, then Thomas Massie and I are prepared to move on impeachment or contempt.”
Khanna’s threat to impeach or hold Attorney General Pam Bondi in contempt of Congress would mark the second Trump Cabinet official to face such threats this month, as Democrats are separately warning that DHS Secretary Kristi Noem could face such consequences over the situation developing around the ICE surge targeting Minneapolis.
The latest release of documents included more than 3,000 mentions of President Donald Trump by name, and showed that Epstein was at one point in correspondence with Steve Bannon, the MAGAworld power broker and onetime White House chief strategist, just a year after Bannon’s unceremonious exit from the West Wing.
Elon Musk, who led the president’s DOGE initiative last year and remains a top financial backer of Republicans, emailed Epstein in November of 2012 asking when “the wildest party on your island” would be — an exchange that occurred four years after Epstein plead guilty in court to soliciting a minor for prostitution.
Neither Musk or Trump, or any other names associated with the files have been charged with any wrongdoing. Ghislaine Maxwell, Epstein’s confidante, remains in a U.S. prison and is reportedly seeking to have her sentence pardoned or commuted.
She is due to sit for a deposition with the House Oversight Committee, which is leading an investigation into the government’s prosecution of Epstein, later this month. The committee denied her request for immunity during her testimony, and she is expected to plead the fifth as a result.
Khanna along with Massie (who is a frequent foe of Trump’s), led the effort to pass a discharge petition through the House of Representatives last year aimed at forcing the DOJ to release all the files pertaining to the second federal investigation of Epstein in 2019. That effort succeeded, with the White House backing the vote only after it became clear that Trump’s threats and cajoling of Republicans was failing to stop an imminent rebellion by potentially dozens of members of the caucus.
On Sunday, Khanna told NBC that he and Massie had requested a meeting with Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche to discuss improper redactions in the files and the status of the remaining documents.
Blanche appeared separately on CNN and battled State of the Union co-host Dana Bash over whether the DOJ had looked into the unverified allegations made about Trump in the files. The deputy AG, formerly Trump’s personal attorney, claimed it was “unfair” to ask the agency to focus on the allegations surrounding Trump merely because he was the president.
Meanwhile, Speaker Mike Johnson denied on the same program that he has “any outstanding questions” about the president’s former relationship with a child sex trafficker. He also claimed that the administration hadn’t sought to prevent the documents from coming out.
“He says the same things privately that he does publicly: He’s never had any concerns about [the release of the files],” said Johnson.
