On Friday, the Trump Department of Justice released only some of the Epstein files it was legally required to release. Fortune described the document dump as having “landed with a thud as page after page of documents have been blacked out, with many nearly totally redacted.”
Rep. Robert Garcia, the Democratic ranking member of the House Oversight Committee is big mad.
“Oh, there will definitely be a response” to the DOJ shenanigans, Garcia told MS NOW. He said that Democrats “have been planning and waiting for this moment for a long time.” Teams are currently reviewing the documents and “absolutely actively working on a response,” he added.
Outside organizations and groups are doing the same thing, Garcia said.
“So, there is no scenario where we're going to allow [Attorney General] Pam Bondi, the DOJ and Donald Trump to continue this cover up,” he said. “They are defying the Congress right now. and I would hope that Mike Johnson, who is supposed to be leading the entire body, would actually say something and back us up for once and demand transparency and justice for the survivors.”
Don’t hold your breath on that score.
Clearly, Garcia isn’t. Cohost Alicia Menendez read Deputy Attorney General (and Donald Trump’s personal lawyer) Todd Blanche’s letter to Congress claiming that instead of complying with the law’s deadline of December 19, the DOJ would produce the documents “on a rolling basis” over the next two weeks.
Garcia started by calling BS on Blanche’s excuse that there are just too many documents to be reviewed to have them ready by the time they were legally required. He pointed out that the DOJ has supposedly been working on the documents since the beginning of the Trump administration. They were on Bondi’s desk, reviewed by Chief of Staff Susie Wiles and “They’ve had hundreds and hundreds of agents put these documents together,” he said.
Then Garcia really laid down the gauntlet.
GARCIA: I think maybe Todd Blanche thinks that we're just going to move on to the next day or two and wait for the next batch. Yet he sent us stuff today that is completely redacted. And if he doesn't think that we're going to focus like a hawk on these documents and analyze what they're actually not telling us, he's crazy.
…
They're clearly trying to hide something, divert our attention, and ensure that they continue this coverup. We've had it. The American public deserves transparency. There's an active subpoena. There's a law in place. And Donald Trump and Pam Bondi continue to, in my opinion, cover and lead a massive cover up on the Epstein files. And people are tired of this corruption.
