More material arrives – but will it satisfy the clamour for information?published at 10:25 GMT
10:25 GMT
James FitzGerald
North America reporter
Donald Trump has repeatedly said the ongoing conversation around Epstein is distracting from his work as US president. It’s a point he reiterated to reporters yesterday at his home in Mar-a-Lago, Florida.
But the pressure on his administration to release all the files that it has on Epstein, the late convicted sex offender, is not going away.
The information released by the DoJ so far has been criticised by campaigners in Washington and beyond over the amount of material that was withheld or redacted. Survivors of Epstein’s abuse said only a “fraction” of what is in the possession of the US justice department was made public.
Compounding the potential political headache for Trump was the fact that a member of his own Republican Party, Thomas Massie, joined an opposition Democrat, Ro Khanna, in threatening legal action against Trump’s attorney general, Pam Bondi, over what they saw as an incomplete release on Friday.
The justice department, led by Bondi, insists it is complying with its legal obligations to both publish the information that it holds about Epstein while also protecting his victims. As Friday came and went, it promised that more files would be made public. Some of those additional files have now landed.