In September, as Democrats threatened to filibuster Congress by forcing a vote on releasing the Epstein files, House GOP leaders devised a strategy to isolate themselves and implement President Donald Trump’s demand to close the case.
Rather than face a vote that many Republicans desperately wanted to avoid on whether the files should be released, they will pass a measure directing the House Oversight Committee to continue the investigation into the Epstein case that it has been conducting for weeks.
This move was completely symbolic. No vote was needed to allow the Republican-led commission to continue the work it began in July. Democrats were able to force the president to subpoena the Department of Justice for information about its investigation into convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.
But the maneuver gave Republicans the opportunity to show their voters, many of whom were angry after the Trump administration closed its investigation into Epstein without making the revelations promised by top officials, that their representatives in Congress are committed to transparency. The committee’s investigation was intended to give the GOP some political cover while fending off a growing wave of pressure on the administration to reveal more about its investigation into Epstein, who died in prison in 2019.
However, if the committee’s investigation was intended to relieve political pressure on Republicans and Trump, it clearly had the opposite effect. The Republican-led panel, almost despite itself, produced a number of startling revelations that intensified the drumbeat of demands for greater transparency and drew attention to Trump’s past ties to Epstein. In doing so, the committee helped push House Speaker Mike Johnson to schedule a vote he has long avoided — now expected next week — on whether to demand that the Justice Department quickly release all of its Epstein files.
That’s partly because of how widely the committee casts its net as it seeks to shift focus away from the Trump administration’s handling of the issue. Rep. James Comer, chairman of the Oversight Committee, has issued subpoenas to a range of other sources, including a wide range of documents from Epstein’s estate.
It was Coomer’s subpoena to the estate that led to the publication in September of a sexually suggestive drawing and note, apparently signed by Donald Trump, a document from a book prepared for Epstein’s 50th birthday, which Trump insisted he did not create.
The Epstein estate also produced the three email conversations that Democrats selectively released Wednesday morning that suggested Epstein believed Trump may have been more aware of his abuse than the president admitted. They were included in a trove of tens of thousands of additional pages of documents released by Republicans soon after, which increased scrutiny of Trump’s relationship with Epstein.
Trump, his allies and aides have rejected the disclosures, arguing that Epstein was discredited, a convicted sex offender and had a long-standing feud with Trump. The president called the emails a “hoax,” and top Republicans accused Democrats of cherry-picking the material to create an “apparent distraction” from their failure to win concessions during the government shutdown.
Although Democrats forced the committee to subpoena the Justice Department for investigative materials, the effort bore little fruit. Although the department gave the committee more than 33,000 pages in late summer, the files largely contained information that was already publicly available.
Coomer defended the investigation, even though it produced a series of materials that angered Trump. He told reporters on Wednesday evening that the matter will continue.
“We did everything we said we would do on the oversight committee,” he said. “I asked for the estate.”
He said the committee was looking beyond Trump to explore Epstein’s well-documented connection to a network of powerful elites, including former President Bill Clinton.
“There are a lot of high-profile people who were associated with Epstein,” he said. “Now, whether they did anything wrong or not, that’s what we’re investigating.”
Johnson continued to put Comer’s investigation on hold as his preferred path to transparency. After trying to force a vote on a bill demanding the removal of a major hurdle in the Epstein files on Wednesday, Johnson called the bill “reckless” and “completely controversial” before pointing to Comer’s investigation.
It was Democrats on the committee, led by Rep. Robert Garcia of California, who initially pushed the committee’s investigation. During an unrelated hearing, they were forced to vote on a subpoena to the Justice Department for the Epstein files.
The gambit worked: a group of Republicans joined them, although they expanded the scope to include a group of political figures, including William Barr, who was one of Trump’s attorneys general in his first term.
Barr’s testimony supported some of the Trump administration’s more recent claims. He said he had no knowledge of the so-called client list — a list that many involved in the case have long said does not exist — and that he was not aware of any evidence that would implicate Trump in Epstein’s sex trafficking operation.
Days after that testimony, Comer sent the first subpoena to Epstein’s estate.
Because the Justice Department has not disclosed details of its materials, it is difficult to know how much overlap there is between its files on Epstein and the precious files from Epstein’s estate that the oversight committee has released so far.
Democrats continued to demand that the Justice Department provide more of its materials. But they say they kept up the pressure, and that their release of files from Epstein’s estate prompted Republicans to release more material.
“We’ve been very aggressive,” Garcia, the committee’s top Democrat, said Wednesday. “We’re nervous. I think we’re guided by justice for survivors.”
Throughout the process, Comer emphasized that his committee’s focus would be transparency, and that it would continue to release materials as long as they were properly redacted to remove child sexual abuse material and delete identifying information for victims.
However, it was Republicans who identified Virginia Giuffre as the unnamed victim, who was referenced in two of the letters Democrats released on Wednesday, in which they withheld her name. The GOP argued that fuller context was needed to clear Trump of wrongdoing, since Giuffre has said she never witnessed him engaging in Epstein’s abuse.
Republicans are still struggling to balance their constituents’ calls for more transparency with their loyalty to Trump, who has made clear he wants the Epstein talk to go away. On Wednesday evening, Rep. Tim Burchett of Tennessee sought to table the bill requiring the release of the Epstein files and pass it without a recorded vote, drawing objections from Democrats, who sought a GOP record on the matter.
Not long after, Johnson relented and said he would table the bill next week, cutting out the waiting period supporters would have faced before they could force a vote.
“In the meantime, I will remind everyone that the Oversight Committee is working around the clock,” Johnson added.
This article originally appeared in the New York Times.
(Tags for translation) Jeffrey Epstein investigation
