Hey. Remember the Epstein Files?
Congress’s legal fight with the administration is far from over.
It’s never going away, is it?
Given the chaos President Donald Trump has inflicted on the public since the start of the new year, it would be understandable if the Epstein files have slipped your mind. To get you back up to speed quickly: Lawmakers from both parties consider the Justice Department’s piecemeal release of files so far to be wholly inadequate to what the law requires.
They’re not treating it as a small thing, either. In light of the DOJ’s unexplained redactions and withheld documents, some members of Congress are pursuing legal action to force compliance, while others are gaming out potential legislative punishments for Attorney General Pam Bondi.
Reps. Ro Khanna (D-Calif.) and Thomas Massie (R-Ky.), who led the successful discharge petition for the bill Congress passed almost unanimously and Trump signed in November, have requested the courts act to stop the administration’s flouting of the law.
In a letter last week to Judge Paul Engelmayer of the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York, Massie and Khanna wrote that the DOJ
failed to meet the [Epstein Files Transparency] Act’s requirements in multiple respects, including missing the statutory deadline, asserting common-law privileges that the Act does not permit, and applying extensive redactions that appear inconsistent with the Act’s expressed prohibition on withholding or redacting records to protect politically exposed persons. . . . Put simply, the DOJ cannot be trusted with making mandatory disclosures under the Act.
For that reason, Massie and Khanna wrote, they were requesting that the judge appoint a “Special Master and/or Independent Monitor for the purpose of ensuring all the documents and electronically stored information are immediately made public” in accordance with the law.
During House votes on Wednesday, Khanna told me they are waiting to see how their judicial request plays out before pursuing additional legislative action. Rep. Robert Garcia (D-Calif.), the ranking Democrat on the House Oversight Committee, told me there’s also “a lot of appetite” for Congress to explore additional punishment for Bondi, especially if Engelmayer doesn’t play ball in appointing a special master.
“Hopefully the judge will get a response from the DOJ, and then, depending on that response—which I imagine won’t be a good one—we’ll have additional further action, because the DOJ has to be compelled to release the rest of these files,” he said.
Prior to their letter to Judge Engelmayer, Massie and Khanna mused about actions lawmakers could take against Bondi, including inherent contempt and even impeachment. Quite a few House Republicans resisted pressures from the White House to back off the original discharge petition. However, going after a cabinet secretary in an election year might be too big a thing to ask of them.
Just a Bill not on Capitol Hill
Former apex Democrats Bill and Hillary Clinton didn’t show up to their depositions before the House Oversight Committee this week. As I reported in Tuesday’s edition of Press Pass, Republicans emerged from the non-hearing rather upset.1 Democrats were nowhere to be found.
The Clintons brushed their summons aside, characterizing it as a cynical political ploy. They framed their resistance to the committee as an in-kind contribution to the great liberal resistance effort. But after talking with some Oversight Committee Democrats, I’ve come to think the Clintons might have miscalculated.