Former State Department official Mike Benz called the Central Intelligence Agency’s (CIA) response to Jeffrey Epstein’s 2011 FOIA request a “bombshell” during a Tuesday episode of “The Joe Rogan Experience.”
The Department of Justice (DOJ) on Friday released more than 3 million pages of records about Epstein, including the CIA’s response. Benz said on the podcast that Congress could quickly act to compel the CIA to release its documents related to Epstein, asserting the agency probably held several decades worth of records on the deceased sex offender.
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“Jeffrey Epstein was not a public figure at all in 1999. He didn’t come into public awareness, public attention, until 2001, 2002 … he was a private figure in 1999 when he FOIA’d the Central Intelligence Agency for records … anybody who wants to be a hero right now … These are not classified documents,” Benz said. “FOIA responses are not classified. So, anybody right now can FOIA the Central Intelligence Agency for all records and communications related to the CIA’s written communications with Jeffrey Epstein via his lawyer both in 1999 and 2011.”
He then paraphrased the CIA’s 2011 response to Epstein.
“What it says is, ‘We have received your request for your client Jeffrey Epstein’s records search under the Freedom of Information Act. We’ve granted the request to search for all open and acknowledged agency affiliations between Jeffrey Epstein and the CIA,’” he said. “‘We have run that search. And the answer is no documents are responsive to the request.’”
“And then it says in the next paragraph, ‘With respect to your request that touches on classified documents, we can neither confirm nor deny the existence or non-existence of any such documents,’” he continued. “‘So you can consider this a partial denial of your FOIA request.’”
Benz said the CIA’s response indicated Epstein’s request “touched on something classified.”
“To me, this is a bombshell and should prompt [Democratic California Rep.] Ro Khanna and [Republican Kentucky Rep.] Thomas Massie and the 427 members of the House of Representatives and 100% of the US Senate to pass the same bill that the United States Congress did in 1992 for the JFK Records Collection Act, when the CIA was forced by law to stand up an independent auditing body to review all classified records relating to the JFK assassination for the first time ever and then declassify them over months and years through the work of that independent board,” he said.
Benz argued that the newly released document should cause the House and Senate to enact the bill in a nearly unanimous bipartisan manner like they did with the Epstein Files Transparency Act, which made all related unclassified DOJ records public. He explained that Congress could pass a similar bill specifically for CIA files.
“That’s actionable immediately. Who’s going to want to be on the other side of that in Congress? … it would solve the mystery,” he said. “All we need is one brave member of Congress to get the ball rolling and stand up that bill. And you can just copy paste the 1992 JFK Records Collection Act and just substitute JFK for Jeffrey Epstein.”
The Friday release unveiled communications Epstein had with figures including former White House adviser Steve Bannon, Elon Musk, Secretary of Commerce Howard Lutnick and multiple European officials.
Moreover, after months of defiance, former President Bill Clinton and former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton on Saturday offered to testify to the House Oversight Committee for its Epstein investigation.
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