Democrats on the House Oversight Committee are decrying what they say is a lack of new records in the Jeffrey Epstein files that the Justice Department provided to the panel Friday.
“Only 3% of the documents given to the Oversight Committee are new. The rest are already in the public domain. Less than 1% of files have been released. DOJ is stonewalling,” Rep. Ro Khanna of California said in a statement Saturday as he called for the full release of the files.
Rep. Summer Lee of Pennsylvania in a statement also claimed that the DOJ’s files are “largely thousands of pages of recycled content already made available to the public.”
The oversight committee earlier this month subpoenaed the Justice Department for any Epstein-related files, along with communications between former Biden administration officials and the DOJ related to Epstein, as many of President Donald Trump’s supporters seek more information and transparency about the case. The committee has also subpoenaed high-profile witnesses to testify, including the Clintons.
According to Lee, the “only new disclosure” is fewer than 1,000 pages from Customs and Border Protection’s “log of flight locations of the Epstein plane” dating from 2000 to 2014 and “forms consistent with reentry back” to the United States.
Lee said the other records DOJ handed over that were already released include: video from the correctional center the night of Epstein’s death, a DOJ inspector general report on Epstein’s death, communications between the Bureau of Prisons and DOJ about Epstein’s death, Attorney General Pam Bondi’s memo on releasing the Epstein files, and court documents from Epstein accomplice Ghislaine Maxwell’s trial and Epstein’s criminal case in Florida.
Asked to respond to the claims from Khanna and Lee, a House oversight spokesperson told CNN that the committee “continues to review the 34,000 pages of documents and has no further update at this time.”
“It’s important to note that this is the first batch of documents from the DOJ, with more to come,” the spokesperson said in a statement.
The committee had said it plans to make the Epstein files public after a “thorough review” to ensure victims’ identities and other sensitive matters are redacted.
It’s unclear how soon the records will be publicly released.
The DOJ turned over the records to the committee the same day it released a transcript of the interview that Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche conducted with Maxwell.
Democratic Rep. Robert Garcia, the top Democrat on the oversight panel, in a statement accused the DOJ of releasing the Maxwell transcript “to distract from their continued White House cover-up.”
CNN has reached out to the Department of Justice for comment.
