Eyes on Epstein: Subpoenas, Walkouts, and an Unredacted Email
Watch the DOJ play Whac-A-Mole with revelations
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The biggest development this week is not a single fresh bombshell. It is the growing pressure on people in power to answer for parts of the Epstein record that have already been documented, already been discussed, and too often been brushed aside. What matters is who was confronted with that record, how they reacted when pressed, and whether any of it will finally produce action.
Donald Trump Lied About His Bromance With Epstein
Remember how Donald Trump barred Jeffrey Epstein from Mar-a-Lago? That was the main basis for believing that Trump and the toxic Epstein had abruptly ended their bromance. Now, it turns out, that wasn’t true.
Rep. Dan Goldman (D-NY) stood on the House floor on March 18 and held up, up, up a blown-up poster of a document the Department of Justice had released to the public with heavy redactions — but given to Congress unredacted. The document: an October 2009 email written by Epstein’s attorney Jack Goldberger, summarizing a “20-minute phone conference” conducted “in lieu of a depo” between Trump’s attorney Alan Garten and Brad Edwards, who represented Epstein’s victims.
The unredacted version says this: When asked whether Epstein was ever expelled from Mar-a-Lago, Garten responded:
No he was not a member. May have been his guest. Never asked to leave.”
A Mar-a-Lago manager separately confirmed to Edwards:
JE never asked to leave Mar-a-Lago.
Every Democrat Walked Out
Attorney General Pam Bondi and Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche arrived on Capitol Hill Wednesday evening for a closed-door briefing with the House Oversight Committee. Within the hour, every Democrat on the committee up and left.
The sequence: Democrats asked Bondi whether she would comply with the subpoena requiring her sworn deposition on April 14. She said — repeatedly — “I will follow the law.”
She would not say yes. Rep. Summer Lee (D-PA) pressed Chairman James Comer (R-KY) on whether he would compel Bondi to appear and hold her in contempt if she refused.
Comer’s response:
“You wasted three minutes of everybody’s time kind of bitching.”
The room gasped. After the walkout, the briefing continued with Republicans. Bondi told reporters: “I made it crystal clear, I will follow the law.”
Comer told reporters the walkout was “premeditated” and said he “personally” didn’t see a reason for Bondi to do a deposition. He later posted on X: “I said Democrats were bitching and wasting everyone’s time because Democrats were bitching and wasting everyone’s time.”
Lee had filed articles of impeachment against Bondi the day before, accusing her of “breaking the law to protect pedophiles.”
House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY) said Comer was “behaving like a malignant buffoon” and demanded he apologize.
Half the Files Don’t Exist — Until You Count
CNN published a major investigative piece on March 19 — by Annie Grayer, Paula Reid, Katelyn Polantz, and Tierney Sneed — revealing that 2.5 million documents from the DOJ’s Epstein files have not been publicly released. Many of the 3.5 million pages that have been are heavily redacted.
The DOJ told lawmakers it hoped to “move on.”
Of 6 million total pages identified by the DOJ as relevant, only about half have seen daylight.
The Epstein Files Transparency Act, it turns out, contains no enforcement mechanism.
In addition, about 1 percent of the published files contained mistakes — survivor names left visible, accused persons blacked out.
Epstein’s Lawyer: Saw No Evil for 20 Years
Darren Indyke — Epstein’s personal attorney for more than 20 years, co-executor of his estate, the man Epstein named godfather to his children and the beneficiary of $50 million in a will signed two days before Epstein died — testified behind closed doors before the House Oversight Committee on March 19:
The truth is that I did not know what Mr. Epstein did after hours, behind closed doors, and in places where I was not present.
FBI files tell a different story. A Polish ex-model who worked as Epstein’s traveling assistant in 2005 told the FBI that Indyke called her into his office and instructed her to “never talk to the police.”
A second witness, “Jane,” who was recruited by Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell at the Interlochen Arts Academy in 1994 when she was a minor, dealt directly with Indyke on personal matters. Indyke denied facilitating sham marriages between Epstein-connected women — “100 percent untrue” — and pushed back on allegations that he structured cash withdrawals to avoid bank scrutiny.
When asked whether the estate had settled with the woman who accused both Epstein and Trump, Indyke would not confirm or deny — the same answer his co-executor Richard Kahn gave before his own attorney reversed it the following day.
Rep. Jasmine Crockett (D-TX) described Indyke as “defensive” of Epstein, “almost as if he still doesn’t believe Jeffrey Epstein to be who Jeffrey Epstein was.”
Indyke and Kahn recently settled a class-action lawsuit brought by survivors for up to $35 million with no admission of wrongdoing.
The Accountant: He Could Neither Confirm Nor Deny
Richard Kahn, Epstein’s longtime accountant and co-executor, testified on March 11 for roughly seven hours. He is mentioned more than 50,000 times in the DOJ Epstein files.
When Rep. Ro Khanna (D-CA) asked about one of the victims, Kahn testified that the estate had reached a settlement with her.
The next day, Kahn’s attorney contacted committee staff to walk it back, claiming his client could “neither confirm nor deny” the settlement.
Khanna, along with Rep. Robert Garcia (D-CA), sent a formal letter calling the shifting account “extremely concerning.”
Kahn also admitted to impersonating Epstein in communications with banks, and confirmed that Epstein spoke about Donald Trump “a lot.”
Although Kahn, as is pretty routine, stated he had seen no transactions between Epstein and Trump, he did name five clients who paid Epstein directly: Les Wexner, Leon Black, Glenn Dubin, Steven Sinofsky, and the Rothschild family.
Another Version of ‘The Dog Ate My Homework’
The FBI interviewed a woman four times who said she’d been raped by both Epstein and Trump. But they released only one document — a July 2019 memo that didn’t mention Trump. The three interviews that did were excluded. The DOJ’s explanation:
They had been “incorrectly coded as duplicative.”
The victim, a woman from South Carolina, contacted the FBI shortly after Epstein’s July 2019 arrest. She said a man named “Jeff” had raped her in the 1980s when she was about 13. She later identified him as Epstein.
In her second interview, she told agents that Epstein took her to a “very tall building with huge rooms,” where he introduced her to Trump. Trump allegedly told everyone to leave and said:
Let me teach you how little girls are supposed to be.
She said Trump then pushed her head down and tried to force her to perform fellatio. She said she bit him hard, at which point, she claimed, Trump struck her and yelled:
Get this little bitch the hell out of here!
In her third interview, agents wrote that she said she received threatening telephone calls, and described several incidents where she was “almost run off of the road” by other cars.
In her fourth interview, which occurred about two months after their last meeting, she was asked to provide more detail about Trump, to which she responded:
What’s the point… when there was a strong possibility nothing could be done about it.
After NPR identified the missing records in February, the DOJ released 16 new pages on March 5. An additional 37 pages remain unaccounted for with no explanation.
Another Unexplained Removal
A second woman described Epstein taking her to Mar-a-Lago to meet Trump when she was about 13. The FBI memo reads:
EPSTEIN told TRUMP, “This is a good one, huh.”
That interview was briefly removed from the DOJ’s public database after the January 30 release and republished three weeks later.
There still hasn’t been any explanation for the removal.
David and Goliath
Reps. Thomas Massie (R-KY) and Khanna, who wrote the Transparency Act, are weighing legal action against the DOJ for noncompliance.
A federal judge declined to appoint an independent monitor but told them they were free to file a separate lawsuit.
They are also drafting new legislation with explicit enforcement language. The law they passed has no mechanism to make anyone comply with it. Massie said,
If I knew the attorney general was going to break the law, I would have added a private cause of action.
There has never been a law in modern American history that has exposed more of the global elite. It’s been a window into the Epstein class. Rich and powerful people who acted as though they were above the law.
Massie and Khanna are also discussing the possibility of joining survivors in suing to compel release of the remaining 2.5 million pages.
What Did the DOJ Know, and When?
In 2015, a secretive intelligence and law enforcement unit of the DEA (and a transnational crime fighting task force) opened an investigation into Epstein and others. It focused on money laundering, drug trafficking, and the procurement of Eastern European prostitutes for high-profile clients.
Sen. Ron Wyden (D-OR), a member of the Senate Finance Committee, cannot get from the DEA an unredacted report on those activities — because Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche is blocking his attempts to get it. Here are excerpts from a scorching letter Wyden fired off to Blanche on March 18:
It has come to my attention that you are preventing the Drug Enforcement Administration (“DEA”) from producing an unredacted copy of a report I requested regarding drug trafficking and money laundering by Jeffrey Epstein…
According to a confidential tip received by my staff, DEA Administrator Terry Cole was ready to provide an unredacted copy of the memorandum, but you stepped in to prevent him from doing so….
Your alleged interference in this matter is highly disturbing, not just because it continues the DOJ’s long-running obstruction of my investigation, but also because of your bizarrely favorable treatment of Ghislaine Maxwell…
It suggests the government had ample evidence [emphasis added] indicating he was engaged in large scale drug trafficking and prostitution as part of cross-border criminal conspiracy and that Epstein was likely pumping his victims, including underage girls, with incapacitating drugs to facilitate abuse. I am at a loss to understand why you are blocking further investigation of this matter….
Wyden said he was “at a loss” as to why the government is blocking further investigation. But that is actually the least of the mysteries here.
