By Steve Neavling
The Justice Department has agreed to provide Congress with documents from the Jeffrey Epstein sex trafficking investigation, the chair of the House Oversight Committee said Monday.
“There are many records in DOJ’s custody, and it will take the Department time to produce all the records and ensure the identification of victims and any child sexual abuse material are redacted,” Rep. James Comer, R-Ky., said in a statement. “I appreciate the Trump Administration’s commitment to transparency and efforts to provide the American people with information about this matter.”
The records are set to begin arriving Friday under a subpoena the committee issued earlier this month, the Associated Press reports. Lawmakers had sought documents and communications from the case files of Epstein and his former girlfriend, Ghislaine Maxwell, as well as records tied to earlier federal investigations and communications between the Biden administration and the Justice Department.
The agreement came weeks after the FBI and Justice Department announced they would not release more Epstein records, a decision that angered Trump’s base and raised new questions about transparency. Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche interviewed Maxwell at a Florida courthouse last month, though no records of that discussion have been made public.
Epstein, a wealthy financier, was found dead in a New York jail cell weeks after his 2019 arrest. His death was ruled a suicide. Maxwell was convicted in 2021 of helping recruit teenage girls to be abused by Epstein and is serving a 20-year sentence.
