Washington — Rep. Ro Khanna, a California Democrat, and Rep. Thomas Massie, a Kentucky Republican, are holding a news conference Wednesday alongside survivors of late sex offender Jeffrey Epstein’s abuse, amid calls for greater transparency on the files.
Some of the women, who will be joined by their attorneys, are set to speak publicly for the first time about the abuse, after renewed attention on the files in recent months.
Epstein was facing trial on sex trafficking charges when he he died in federal custody in 2019 in what numerous investigations deemed a suicide. And after the Justice Department issued the findings of an internal review in July that found no “client list” or evidence that Epstein had blackmailed prominent figures, interest in the files swelled, spurring calls for greater transparency from the Trump administration and dividing the president’s base.
Wednesday’s news conference comes as Democrats and some Republicans have pushed for the release of the files. Massie filed a discharge petition on Tuesday to attempt to force a House vote on his and Khanna’s legislation compelling the Justice Department to publicly release the files.
“The objective here is not just to uncover, investigate the Epstein evils, but also to ensure that this never happens again, and ultimately, to find out why justice has been delayed for these ladies for so very long. It is inexcusable, and it will stop now, because the Congress is dialed in on this,” Johnson said Tuesday about the vote.
Meanwhile, members of the House Oversight Committee met privately with the survivors on Tuesday. And the committee made public a portion of the documents late Tuesday, releasing more than 33,000 pages of files that included court documents and flight records, along with video and audio recordings. CBS News reviewed the files and confirmed that a large majority of them had previously been made public. Democrats on the committee claimed that 97% of the documents released Tuesday were already public.
