Epstein information dwell: Lawmaker requires DOJ whistleblowers to come back ahead over alleged withheld paperwork | EUROtoday

Despite the administration’s attempts to distance the president from Epstein, Trump appears in a handful of photographs that have already been made public, including images of the president with his wife Melania alongside Epstein and Maxwell.

In one image, which was taken inside a desk drawer, Trump appeared to be pictured alongside a group of smiling women in a grainy photograph. The women’s identities are not redacted.

The president has not been accused of wrongdoing in connection with Epstein’s cases, and Trump has repeatedly claimed he cut ties with Epstein before he was under federal investigation.

Garcia, the top Democrat on the Oversight Committee, slammed the Trump administration for saying for months that the files related to convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein were ready to be released – only to heavily redact the materials and miss the legal deadline for releasing them in full.

“To spend this entire period of time, the last few months, claiming that you have the files ready to be released… And then this all-out effort to hide them from the public, to stop the will of Congress, to not answer the oversight subpoena. What they need to understand is that there are hundreds of FBI agents and others that are good American patriots that have worked to put these files together. They know what is in them,” Garcia mentioned Sunday on MS NOW.

Garcia urged anyone at the FBI or Department of Justice who worked on the Epstein files – who believes their work is currently being hidden – to come forward to the Oversight Committee.

Isbael Keane has the story:

Rep. Ro Khanna has been among the leading voices in Congress putting pressure on the Trump administration to release the full Epstein files.

In the face of the administration’s delays, Khanna and Rep. Thomas Massie have threatened to hold Attorney General Pam Bondi in contempt.

Speaking to The Bulwark on Sunday, Khanna mentioned he would inform Bondi the next in the event that they ever met: “I would ask her two questions: Who are you protecting? And why?…I understand they’d wanna protect Trump, but why are they trying to protect all these other people around him?”

Blanche defended the fact that photographs were redacted after initially being released on Friday, along with records from the DOJ’s investigation into convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, saying their removal had “nothing to do” with Trump.

“There are dozens of photos of President Trump already released to the public, seeing him with Mr. Epstein,” Blanche mentioned on NBC’s Meet the Press Sunday morning.

“The absurdity of us pulling down a single photo because President Trump was in it is laughable,” he mentioned. “And the fact that everybody’s trying to act like that’s the case is a reflection of their true motivation.”

(The photograph was later restored to the DOJ web site.)

Trump solely appeared within the tens of 1000’s of paperwork a handful of occasions, and one of many images that appeared to indicate the president was eliminated by the DOJ Saturday, Democrats mentioned. Trump is just not accused of any wrongdoing.

“With regard to files, we’re being very transparent,” Johnson’s Trump started. “Because Jeffrey Epstein was a terrible man, and I didn’t know him, and I liked him a lot.”

Rhian Lubin has the story.

X customers on Sunday had been fast so as to add lacking context to a Sunday tweet from the legal professional basic vowing to go after remaining criminals tied to the Epstein ring.

Under a tweet from Attorney General Bondi reaffirming the DOJ’s “commitment” prosecute Epstein-related crimes, X customers lodged a neighborhood be aware declaring the quite a few redactions and a number of deleted information within the supplies which have been launched on Epstein to the general public up to now.

It’s additionally value noting how Bondi’s assertion seems to distinction with the DOJ’s place over the summer season, that additional investigations into Epstein associates weren’t warranted based mostly on present proof.

Donald Trump could also be fuming behind closed doorways in regards to the ongoing political strain of the Epstein scandal, based on congressman Ro Khanna.

“I think Trump is genuinely very frustrated because the reality is usually he just lies about something or says, ‘Move on,’ and his base moves on,” Khanna told The Bulwark on Sunday. “If he wants to bomb people in the Caribbean, he’ll bomb people in the Caribbean. If he wants to have ICE agents rip people away from their families, they’ll have ICE agents do that…And usually the Republicans in Congress don’t say anything.”

“In his opinion, he just doesn’t understand it,” Khanna added. “Why is it that he’s losing his MAGA base over this issue?”

Republican lawmakers like Thomas Massie and Marjorie Taylor Greene have played a key role in the pressure on Trump so far, helping trigger a vote in the House that ultimately paved the way for the president to sign a law mandating the release of the Epstein files.

The DOJ admitted on Sunday it has “hundreds of thousands” of pages from the Epstein files it has yet to release, despite a Friday legal deadline to share the files with the public.

In an X post, the Justice Department said the delays were because of efforts to ensure releases complied with court orders and protected the identities of victims and minors.

“NO redactions have been or will be made to protect famous individuals or political exposed persons, “ the department wrote.

A team of roughly 200 lawyers is working on reviewing the files, the DOJ added.