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Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-Md.) has demanded the FBI give an accounting of the resources used to comb the Jeffrey Epstein files and explain its initial decision not to release documents connected to the deceased financier.
The letter, which comes ahead of Director Kash Patel’s testimony before the Senate next week, demands the files as well as the FBI’s rationale behind a July memo saying they would release no further information on the case after concluding Epstein died by suicide and did not keep a “client list.”
The memo said the FBI “conducted an exhaustive review of investigative holdings relating to Jeffrey Epstein” and concluded that “no further disclosure would be appropriate or warranted.”
“Obvious questions abound: why were so many agents tasked with reviewing documents that were never released? What specific instructions were they given during the review? What information did these agents uncover that led DOJ and FBI to reverse their promise to release the files, and how are these decisions related to the President?” Raskin, the top Democrat on the House Judiciary Committee, wrote in a letter to Patel.
“As you promised, and in your own words: ‘There will be no cover-ups, no missing documents, and no stone left unturned—and anyone from the prior or current Bureau who undermines this will be swiftly pursued.’”
The letter largely highlights Patel’s own fixation with the Epstein case, one that has dogged the Trump administration as members of President Trump’s own base have spent years floating conspiracy theories surrounding his death.
Patel had previously discussed such matters in multiple interviews, saying it would be “under direct control of the director of the FBI” whether to release the Epstein files, alleging in a separate interview that the bureau chose not to do so “because of who’s on that list.”
Interest in the case peaked amid reporting that Attorney General Pam Bondi told Trump in May that his name appeared among the files.
Congressional Republicans have joined Democrats in pushing forward subpoenas for the files, some of which have already been delivered to the House Oversight Committee.
That includes the so-called birthday book, which included a personal note from Trump to Epstein that the president denied existed.
The image shows the outline of a woman’s figure with a message in the middle formatted in the form of a conversation between Trump and Epstein and referencing that the two “have certain things in common” and references a “wonderful secret.”
The letter from Raskin asks for details about the number of agents who reviewed the files, the amount of time spent looking over them, and what they were told to redact.
But most of the questions pertain to the decision to not release more information.
“On what date did you first learn President Trump’s name was in the materials related to Jeffrey Epstein?” Raskin asks.
“How many times does Donald Trump’s name appear in materials related to Jeffrey Epstein in FBI’s possession?”
It also asks who determined not to release the files and the basis for doing so.
The FBI did not respond to request for comment.
The Justice Department has been complying with the House Oversight Committee subpoena, thus far releasing a tranche of mostly already-available records, along with documents from the Epstein estate, which included the birthday note from Trump.
In a letter alongside the documents, attorneys for the Epstein estate said they provided the convicted sex offender’s address book but that the contact list was not considered a client list.
“We are not aware of the existence of a ‘list of clients involved in sex, sex acts, or sex trafficking facilitated by Mr. Jeffrey Epstein,’” the estate’s attorneys wrote in a response to the subpoena obtained by The Hill, saying they had only his book of contacts.
