One month after the congressionally mandated deadline to release all its files on convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, the Justice Department has made only a fraction of the files public — and it remains silent on its plans to fully comply with the law.
Also keeping quiet about the DOJ delays are congressional Republicans, almost all of whom voted in November to release the records after spending months heeding President Donald Trump’s opposition to the move.
Some of them are openly admitting it’s no longer a priority.
“I don’t give a rip about Epstein,” Rep. Lauren Boebert (R-Colo.) said last week when she was asked to take stock of the month since the Dec. 19 deadline.
“Like, there’s so many other things we need to be working on,” she added. “I’ve done what I had to do for Epstein. Talk to somebody else about that. It’s no longer in my hands.”
Boebert was one of four House Republicans, alongside Thomas Massie of Kentucky, Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia and Nancy Mace of South Carolina, who joined with Democrats to force a House floor vote on the Epstein legislation when leadership resisted moving it.
The White House lobbied these lawmakers heavily to take their names off the discharge petition to compel the bill’s consideration, with administration officials at one point summoning Boebert to the Situation Room for a final plea.
Now Washington’s attention has since shifted to other political firestorms, from Trump’s military action in Venezuela to the shooting of a U.S. citizen by an ICE agent in Minnesota, and congressional Republicans are eager to move on — underscoring the extent to which the GOP remains wary of crossing swords with the president.
The public falling out between Greene and Trump was largely over Greene’s support for releasing the Epstein files — Trump called her a “traitor” — and ultimately culminated in Greene’s resignation from the House earlier this month. Trump vetoed a bill that would have supported a water infrastructure project in Boebert’s district, and administration officials privately warned Mace that her defiance would likely to cost her the president’s endorsement in the South Carolina governor’s race.
Mace has vowed on social media to “keep fighting” for justice for Epstein’s victims but has not otherwise continued the drumbeat against the Justice Department.
Rep. Anna Paulina Luna (R-Fla.), who has worked with Democrats on a House Oversight and Government Reform Committee investigation into the Epstein case, said in a recent interview she’s now more more focused on holding Bill and Hillary Clinton in contempt of Congress for not honoring the panel’s subpoena to testify about Epstein.
Hellbound and Down 