Jeffrey Epstein FBI records targeted in Senate Judiciary probe after document dump
Senators are demanding "complete and unredacted" files on sex traffickers Jeffrey Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell from the Federal Bureau of Investigation.
Republicans on the Senate Judiciary Committee, which has congressional oversight of the FBI, are pushing to subpoena the bureau for all records pertaining to sex traffickers Jeffrey Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell a day after a federal court in New York finished unsealing more than 200 files regarding the pair.
"While redacted portions of Jeffrey Epstein’s flight logs and Ghislaine Maxwell’s black book have been released in various lawsuits, we need the complete and unredacted versions from his estate and the FBI," Sen. Marsha Blackburn, who has spearheaded the effort to blow the lid off of secrecy surrounding Epstein's misdeeds, said in a statement Wednesday morning.
FBI agents raided properties including Epstein's New York City mansion and Little St. James, his private island in the U.S. Virgin Islands, after his arrest in early 2019. His death in a federal jail cell was officially ruled a suicide – although his brother is among many Americans who have questioned that conclusion.
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"The American people deserve to know what happened regarding Jeffrey Epstein and prominent American business and political leaders," said Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., the top-ranking Republican on the committee. "I fully support and very much appreciate Senator Blackburn’s longstanding efforts to bring transparency to the Epstein debacle."
On Tuesday, unsealed documents revealed Epstein victim Virginia Giuffre had accused former Democratic New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson of trafficking her. She also accused the ex-girlfriend of Democratic New Jersey Sen. Bob Menendez of participating in Epstein's "orgies."
Richardson died in September. That document was later stricken from the record. In more than 200 filings unsealed in the wake of a 2015 lawsuit between Giuffre and Maxwell, none of them included Epstein's highly anticipated "client list."
Sen. Dick Durbin, D-Illinois, has so far stalled a vote on Blackburn's subpoena requests.
"I will be demanding a vote on these subpoenas whenever possible at Judiciary Committee meetings until the American people get the full truth and victims get the justice they deserve," Blackburn said Wednesday.
Other prominent figures accused of wrongdoing include Jean-Luc Brunel, a French modeling mogul who, like Epstein, died in jail awaiting trial on trafficking charges, and the British Prince Andrew, who was photographed with an underage Giuffre.
The highly anticipated release of the names comes as Republicans in Congress, led by Tennessee's Sen. Blackburn and Rep. Tim Burchett, have demanded an unredacted list of Epstein associates who flew on his private jet. Portions of the flight log had been made public in Maxwell's criminal trial.
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Blackburn is also vying to subpoena Epstein's estate for his unredacted flight logs and communications records.
Last year, a group of Epstein's victims sent a letter to the FBI demanding an investigation into the bureau's early handling of the investigation. A lawyer for the accusers said they flagged federal investigators to Epstein's crimes as early as 1996.
"[D]espite subsequent repeated red flags that Epstein trafficked girls and collected sexualized images of children, the FBI appears, for years, to have done little to investigate and prosecute Epstein’s sex trafficking and, to date, done nothing regarding reports of possible [child sex abuse]," the lawyer wrote.
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Authorities eventually arrested him a decade later, and he got a controversially lenient plea deal in 2008. In 2019, after the Miami Herald exposed aspects of that case conducted behind closed doors, federal prosecutors sought new charges against him.
Maxwell is serving a 20-year federal prison sentence for grooming and sex trafficking. She is appealing her conviction.
Fox News' Bradford Betz contributed to this report.