Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche on Sunday said Department of Justice officials are ready to take on impeachment proceedings or other efforts from Congress over the department’s incremental release of files related to the convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.
After the DOJ on Friday failed to release the full collection of evidence it has on Epstein and his associates, Reps. Thomas Massie and Ro Khanna, the lawmakers who brought the original discharge petition to force the documents’ release, signaled they would be looking into impeaching department officials — starting with AG Pam Bondi and her top deputies.
“Thomas Massie and I are exploring all options. It can be the impeachment of people at Justice, inherent contempt or referring for prosecution those who are obstructing justice,” Khanna said in a video message on Friday.
Blanche on Sunday defended his department’s release of the files, arguing “there is well settled law in a case like this that redacting information very much trumps some deadline in the statute.”
When asked by NBC’s Kristen Welker on “Meet the Press” whether he was worried about Massie and Khanna’s impeachment threats, Blanche replied: “Not even a little bit.”
“We are doing everything we’re supposed to be doing,” Blanche replied.
The deadline for the DOJ to release its documents passed on Friday, with the release of a first batch of about 3,000 photographs and other related documents. Many of the photographs featured Epstein alongside former President Bill Clinton and various celebrities.
A large percentage of the documents released Friday were already publicly available, and notably missing were FBI interviews with victims and internal DOJ memos on charging decisions. A CBS News analysis also found that at least 550 of the pages were fully redacted.
Khanna, in a separate Sunday interview with CBS’ “Face the Nation,” seemed to back off his impeachment threats — suggesting that the “most expeditious way to get justice for these victims is to bring inherent contempt against Pam Bondi.”
“That doesn’t require going through the courts,” Khanna said. “I believe we will get bipartisan support in holding her accountable and a committee of Congress should determine whether these redactions are justified or not.”
Democrats overwhelmingly criticized the release on Friday.
Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer said, “Simply releasing a mountain of blacked out pages violates the spirit of transparency and the letter of the law.
“For example, all 119 pages of one document were completely blacked out. We need answers as to why,” he continued.
In addition to making the overriding decision to release the Epstein files in incremental batches, more than a dozen images published within Friday’s first batch have quietly disappeared.
One of the images that has since been taken down features a overflowing desk drawer, with photographs of Trump and various women at the top. No faces were redacted in the original post.
“You can see in that photo there are photographs of women. We learned after releasing that photograph that there were concerns about those women,” Blanche said on Sunday. “It has nothing to do with Donald Trump.”
Blanche said the DOJ is further investigating the photograph after a victims rights group expressed “concern.”
Asked if the women photographed with Trump are considered to be victims, Blanche said “No, that’s not what I’m saying.” Blanche said the picture will be re-released, with facial redaction of any women found to be victims of Epstein.
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