Justice Department sends House committee first batch of Epstein files

The Justice Department sent a first trove of documents from its investigation into sex offender Jeffrey Epstein to the House Oversight Committee on Friday.

The committee, chaired by James Comer (R-Kentucky), said Friday that the files include thousands of pages of documents and that these will not be released to the public until they go through a “thorough review to ensure any victims’ identification and child sexual abuse material are redacted.”

The committee in a statement Friday did not specify when that would happen but noted that the Justice Department was quick in turning over the records.

It was not immediately clear what information the documents contain. Nor is it known how many batches of documents the House could get after Friday. Committee members from both sides of the aisle are expected to have received the documents.

In a separate release unrelated to the documents handed over to the committee, the Justice Department on Friday made public transcripts and audio files of interviews conducted with former Epstein associate Ghislaine Maxwell in July.

Epstein and Maxwell were charged with sex trafficking and other crimes in 2019 and 2020, respectively. Maxwell was convicted in 2021 and is serving a 20-year sentence. Epstein was found dead in his jail cell in 2019 while awaiting trial. His death was ruled a suicide.

The records released to the committee are in response to a broad subpoena Comer submitted on Aug. 5 that requested all Justice Department documents and communications from Epstein’s case file, alongside those from Maxwell’s case file.

The Justice Department has had to decide how it wants to reply to the subpoena, and its officials have said the files contain no information that could lead to someone named in the files being charged. Those officials warned that the files contain victim information and explicit content related to the sexual exploitation of minors.

On Friday, at an Oval Office event on the 2026 World Cup, President Donald Trump said calls for the release of the files were a “Democratic hoax” meant to distract Americans from “the greatest six months, seven months in the history of the presidency.”

However, he also told reporters he would like Attorney General Pam Bondi and her Justice Department to make the records of the Epstein investigation publicly available. “I have said to Pam and everybody else, give them everything you can give them,” Trump said.

In general, the Justice Department has some latitude in how it chooses to respond to subpoenas and is typically wary of handing over private information related to investigations. If, for example, Congress wanted to issue a criminal referral because officials within the law enforcement agency failed to comply with a subpoena, the referral would go to the Justice Department and it would have to decide whether to pursue charges against its own officials. Congress could file a civil suit against the agency if it fails to comply with the subpoena, but that would require Trump’s congressional allies to escalate a fight with his administration.

The materials that the Justice Department delivered to Congress are likely to be heavily scrutinized and risk intense backlash from Trump’s base, which pressured congressional Republicans to take action after the Trump administration sparked outrage over its handling of the Epstein files.

Trump’s supporters have said the Justice Department has not been transparent in its handling of the Epstein investigation, pointing to Bondi’s decision in early July to release a Justice Department memo that said an Epstein client list did not exist and that the administration would not be releasing any further information related to the investigation.

Right-wing pundits and influencers who had promoted conspiracy theories about a Biden administration cover-up in the Epstein case accused the attorney general of lying to the American people and called for Bondi’s resignation. They also directed ire at FBI Director Kash Patel and his deputy, Dan Bongino - both of whom are also Trump appointees. Each built his reputation, in part, by hyping unsubstantiated theories about the case and accusing the FBI of hiding the truth.

In the weeks since the memo roiled Trump’s base, the Justice Department asked a federal court to release Epstein grand jury testimony; on Wednesday, a federal judge denied the request to unseal that material. That judge, Richard Berman, argued that the department has the ability to release the set of documents in its possession at any time and that those files would paint a fuller picture of the case than would the grand jury materials.