The Department of Justice’s latest release of nearly 30,000 more Jeffrey Epstein files on Tuesday pointed to a number of previously unknown connections between Epstein and President Donald Trump — and Democrats want answers.
“The new DOJ documents raise serious questions about the relationship between Epstein and Donald Trump. And why are Epstein’s co-conspirators being protected? What else is the DOJ hiding?” Democrats on the House Oversight Committee wrote on X. “This is a White House cover-up and we are going to end it.”
Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., took particular interest in that 2019 email exchange released Tuesday that mentions 10 potential Epstein co-conspirators.
“The Department of Justice needs to shed more light on who was on the list, how they were involved, and why they chose not to prosecute,” Schumer said in a statement. “Protecting possible co-conspirators is not the transparency the American people and Congress are demanding.”
(Schumer has already said he plans to press his colleagues to take legal action against the DOJ for failing to comply with the Dec. 19 deadline to release the files when the Senate returns.)
And Rep. Pramila Jayapal, D-Wash., a member of the House Judiciary Committee, said on MS NOW that “everything in these files seems to indicate that, No. 1, Trump was deeply engaged with Epstein.”
The comments came just hours after the Justice Department, in the early hours of Tuesday morning, released a giant trove of Epstein files — the second document dump after Congress passed a bill requiring the release of all Epstein information in the government’s possession by Dec. 19.
Trump, for his part, has repeatedly denied knowing about Epstein’s alleged sex trafficking and has said he mostly stopped associating with Epstein in the mid-2000s.
The first release on Friday was mostly a rehash of materials that were already public. But the tranche of documents that went public Tuesday includes a number of new materials mentioning Trump.
In one email exchange from January 2020, an assistant U.S. attorney — whose name is redacted — wrote that, according to flight records, Trump flew on Epstein’s private jet “many more times than previously has been reported (or that we were aware), including during the period we would excerpt to charge in a Maxwell case.”
The email goes on to allege that Trump “was a passenger on at least 8 flights between 1993 and 1996,” including at least four that Ghislaine Maxwell was on as well. On one of the flights in 1993, the email alleges, the only passengers listed were Trump and Epstein. On another flight, it was just Epstein, Trump and a 20-year-old woman, with more information redacted. On two other flights, according to the email, two of the passengers “were women who would be possible witnesses in a Maxwell case.”
Trump has previously denied flying on Epstein’s plane, writing on Truth Social in January 2024 that, “I was never on Epstein’s Plane, or at his ‘stupid’ Island.”
Sen. Adam Schiff, D-Calif., juxtaposed Trump’s Truth Social post claiming he never flew on Epstein’s plane with the document published Tuesday: “Release ALL the Files,” Schiff wrote on X.
But much of the context surrounding these documents is absent, and it’s unclear what’s real or fake.
For instance, the DOJ said Tuesday afternoon that a letter Epstein allegedly wrote to Larry Nassar — a convicted sex offender who abused girls while working as a doctor for Team USA gymnastics — is fake, according to the FBI.
The DOJ said the handwriting does not match Epstein’s, the letter was postmarked after Epstein’s death in Virginia — he was in jail in New York — and the return address does not list proper information for Epstein when he was in jail.
Still, that letter caught the attention of some Democrats, like Sen. Tina Smith, D-Minn., who deleted a post she made on X connecting Trump with Epstein and Nassar.
As more documents are released, Democrats say there are only more questions about the president.
“The new documents that Congress has forced the Department of Justice to release make one thing clear: we are witnessing a criminal White House cover-up,” Rep. Robert Garcia of California, the top Democrat on the House Oversight Committee, said in a statement Tuesday. “We need answers from the President about his relationship with Jeffrey Epstein and why his DOJ continues to defy the law and hide documents. They appear to be protecting powerful men who raped and abused women and girls.”
“The President may want to end our investigation and call it a hoax, but our message to him is simple: we are just getting started,” Garcia added.
Meanwhile, a document released as part of a previous tranche of files has prompted Garcia to call on the DOJ’s acting inspector general to investigate the FBI for its “failure in the 1990s to adequately respond to or investigate allegations of misconduct by Jeffrey Epstein.”
In his letter to the IG’s office, Garcia cites a two decade-old FBI complaint about alleged child pornography.
“Epstein’s crimes were first reported to the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) in 1996, nearly a decade before Palm Beach police opened the investigation that resulted in Epstein’s first indictment,” Garcia wrote.
“The American people, and especially Epstein’s survivors, deserve the truth,” he continued.
While it was mostly Democrats calling out Trump for these latest revelations, one Republican spoke out on Tuesday: Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, R-Ga.
The retiring lawmaker — who was once one of Trump’s loudest cheerleaders — quote tweeted a post on X where an Epstein survivor alleges in the new documents that she was kept in a stall and raped by Epstein when she was a child.
“This is horrifying,” Greene wrote. “Trump called me a traitor for fighting him to release the Epstein files and standing with women who were raped, jailed in stalls, and trafficked to men.”
“Only evil people would hide this and protect those who participated,” Greene continued. “I pray for these women.”
