House Democratic Leader Hakeem Jeffries made a surprising admission Monday about how Democrats view their new effort to secure additional documents related to the late convicted sex predator Jeffrey Epstein.
Jeffries, who has been waging a weeks-long campaign hammering the Trump administration to release the full collection of materials related to Epstein, admitted that Democrats did not demand transparency when former President Joe Biden was in the Oval Office. The Democratic leader’s response highlighted his caucus’ newfound concern over the handling of documents related to the disgraced financier and fed into GOP lawmakers’ claims that Democrats are using the episode for their political gain.
“The far right, Donald Trump, right-wing conspiracy theorists and others are the ones who have put this Jeffrey Epstein thing in the public domain,” Jeffries said in response to a question asked by the Daily Caller News Foundation.
“No one looking at the facts disputes that this isn’t anything that any of us as House Democrats have been focused on ever — in terms of trying to fan the flames of what may or may not happen,” the Democratic leader added. “Once it has broken into the public domain, and there’s a clear desire on behalf of the American people to get more information, then the right thing to do is to present the facts and the evidence to the American people.”
However, Jeffries’ statement seemed to gloss over the fact that a faction of the American public, including some of the president’s supporters, have been demanding answers related to the government’s prosecution and incarceration of Epstein since he died in a New York prison cell in 2019.
Democrats were largely silent on government transparency during the Biden administration and conducted no oversight over the Biden administration’s handling of documents related to Epstein. The Democratic National Committee notably mocked speculation over Epstein’s death as “baseless conspiracy theories” in 2019.
The Department of Justice (DOJ) and FBI published a joint memo on July 6 that Epstein died by suicide and did not maintain a client list. Trump directed Attorney General Pam Bondi to release all relevant grand jury testimony following demands from some of his supporters and GOP lawmakers to publish additional documents related to Epstein.
Speaker Mike Johnson has torched Democrats for demanding government transparency when they were largely silent on the matter when Biden was president.
“House Republicans aren’t going to be lectured on transparency from the Democrat Party that worked to cover up President Biden’s lack of fitness for office and his scandalous use of the autopen,” Johnson posted on the social media platform X on Tuesday.
Johnson told reporters Monday that he would not bring a GOP-backed non-binding resolution urging the DOJ to release records related to Epstein to the floor before the August recess. The measure passed out of the House Rules Committee, but Johnson said he wants to give the Trump administration more time to release materials related to Epstein in the government’s possession.
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