Republican lawmakers have moved to block a Democratic effort to force the release of the so-called Epstein files, a near-mythological trove of undisclosed information about convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein at the center of an internal political war among US conservatives.
Democrats had been pressing for an amendment to cryptocurrency legislation that would have forced the release of information and exhibits itemized in a list of evidence held by the justice department from the 2019 child sex-trafficking case against disgraced financier Epstein.
Donald Trump’s attorney general, Pam Bondi, teased a full accounting of the Epstein evidence, including a purported client list earlier this year. But 10 days ago, she changed course when she announced that the Trump administration had reviewed the evidence, concluded that Epstein had indeed committed suicide in jail, and would not release the contents that the justice department said included a thousand hours of video depicting child sexual abuse.
That set off a firestorm within Trump’s conspiracy-minded “Make America great again” (Maga) movement that the president has since tried to calm.
Democrats had weighed in on the issue, hoping to force a release of the documents. “The question with Epstein is: Whose side are you on?” California Democratic US House member Ro Khanna, the author of the Epstein measure, told Axios. “Are you on the side of the rich and powerful, or are you on the side of the people?”
Khanna promised to introduce the amendment “again and again and again”.
But Republicans on the US House rules committee voted down the amendment that would have allowed Congress to vote on whether the evidence – which includes micro cassettes, DVDs, CDs including one labelled “girl pics nude book 4”, computer hard drives and three massage tables in green, beige and brown – should be released.
Yet the federal case against Epstein, which dates back to 2005 and involves a mysterious plea that allowed to the financier to plead guilty to Florida state charges of solicitation of a minor, continues to challenge what political hardliners on the right and left believe is evidence of a nefarious nexus of international power.
The debacle has pitted Bondi and Trump – who was friends with Epstein, his Florida neighbor for many years, before disowning him – against the deputy FBI director, Dan Bongino. Bongino reportedly clashed with Bondi over the Epstein case and considered resigning as Maga megaphones including Marjorie Taylor Greene, Tucker Carlson, Steve Bannon, Megyn Kelly have called for the release of the Epstein files.
In 2023, Bongino said on his rightwing podcast: “That Jeffrey Epstein story is a big deal. Please do not let that story go. Keep your eye on it.”
The Daily Beast reported that Trump is furious at Bongino, who has not shown up for work since 9 July after a shouting match erupted between him and Bondi. Trump has sided with Bondi, leaving Bongino’s future at the FBI open to question, and the vice-president, JD Vance, was evidently called in to mediate, according to CNN.
On Monday, the drama turned to British socialite Ghislaine Maxwell, Epstein’s convicted co-conspirator in the sex-trafficking case, who has appealed to the US supreme court to uphold a non-prosecution agreement contained in Epstein’s Florida plea deal.
The US justice department petitioned the court to deny Maxwell, 63, who is serving a 20-year sentence, the request.
“I’d be surprised if President Trump knew his lawyers were asking the supreme court to let the government break a deal,” Maxwell’s attorney, David Oscar Markus, said in a statement emailed to the Guardian.
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“He’s the ultimate dealmaker – and I’m sure he’d agree that when the United States gives its word, it should keep it. With all the talk about who’s being prosecuted and who isn’t, it’s especially unfair that Ghislaine Maxwell remains in prison based on a promise the government made and broke.”
But Congress could now call on Maxwell to testify. Citing anonymous sources, the Daily Mail reported on Monday that Maxwell is interested in doing that. In some circumstances, under federal rule 35, a convicted felon can negotiate a reduction in sentence in exchange for cooperation.
Nonetheless, the government has shown little interest in doing that, especially when Maxwell was maintaining her innocence and appealing her conviction. Prosecutors made clear at the time that they considered the case closed and would not go after lesser alleged figures in the sex-trafficking conspiracy.
“It all depends on who she would be cooperating against, and what she has to offer,” defense attorney Jeffrey Lichtman told the Guardian after Maxwell’s conviction in 2021. “I would not be surprised if she had already tried to cooperate and it had failed.”
“Of all the people supposedly involved with Epstein, 99% of them never made it into the government’s evidence,” Lichtman added, venturing that the government may have been trying “to avoid any frolic by the jury – that they’d get distracted by the bold-face names – but many people didn’t get prosecuted here when it seems like they could have”.
