When it comes to the Justice Department’s files on Jeffrey Epstein, the Republican Party’s line has focused on a single talking point: None of the contents pose a problem for Donald Trump, who’s long denied any wrongdoing. Indeed, the president himself has repeatedly insisted that the latest disclosures have “100% exonerated” him in the scandal.
Those boasts appear to have been entirely based on nothing. Making matters considerably worse, however, the problem isn’t limited to what was in the Epstein files, it also includes what still remains unreleased from the files. MS NOW reported:
The Justice Department has withheld notes and memos reflecting FBI interviews from its release of the Epstein files, including interviews with a woman who accused President Donald Trump of sexually abusing her when she was a minor, MS NOW has confirmed.
NPR reported on Tuesday that more than 50 pages of notes and memos reflecting FBI interviews with the woman are not found in the Justice Department’s publicly released database of documents related to convicted and deceased sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.
The unnamed accuser, who was interviewed by FBI officials at least four times, raised serious allegations against Trump, but only one memo related to her was included in the Justice Department’s online disclosures, and handwritten notes from the interviews were excluded altogether.
None of this was lost on congressional Democrats, including Rep. Robert Garcia of California, the ranking member on the House Oversight Committee, who wasted little time in raising concerns about whether this was part of a White House cover-up.
In a written statement issued on Tuesday afternoon, Garcia added, “For the last few weeks, Oversight Democrats have been investigating the FBI’s handling of allegations from 2019 of sexual assault on a minor made against President Donald Trump by a survivor. Yesterday, I reviewed unredacted evidence logs at the Department of Justice. Oversight Democrats can confirm that the DOJ appears to have illegally withheld FBI interviews with this survivor who accused President Trump of heinous crimes. Oversight Democrats will open a parallel investigation into this.”
The news of a congressional probe does, however, come with a major caveat: Because Democrats are in the minority, they can’t call committee hearings or send subpoenas to the Trump administration. As a practical matter, Garcia and his colleagues will press Trump’s Justice Department for answers, but it can’t compel the cooperation of DOJ officials, who are unlikely to cooperate voluntarily with the Democratic demands.
That said, Oversight Committee Democrats have had success in recent months pushing new facts about the Epstein scandal into public light, and their efforts in pursuit of this new line of inquiry are worth keeping an eye on. Watch this space.
