A spokesperson for former President Bill Clinton is urging the U.S. Justice Department to release any materials related to late convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein that it still has, saying the public is being shortchanged.
Angel Ureña, Clinton’s deputy chief of staff, wrote on X on Monday that under the Epstein Files Transparency Act, the DOJ is obligated to turn over the full record, not a partial, carefully curated dump.
Ureña said, “What the Department of Justice has released so far, and the manner in which it did so, makes one thing clear: someone or something is being protected. We do not know whom, what or why. But we do know this: We need no such protection.”
The comments came after the DOJ released photos on Friday that include images of Clinton with individuals whose identities were obscured.
One photo shows Clinton in a hot tub with a person whose face is hidden, while another shows a woman, also unidentified, sitting on his lap. Clinton has not been accused of any wrongdoing related to Epstein or his sex-trafficking operation, and Ureña reiterated that Clinton cut ties with Epstein before his crimes became public.
A brewing revolt on Capitol Hill is putting Attorney General Pam Bondi under mounting pressure as lawmakers and survivors alike had been bracing for a long-awaited document dump by the DOJ’s deadline, only to receive a partial release riddled with redactions and omissions.
The disappointment quickly turned to outrage, with critics accusing the department of slow-walking transparency while insisting it is technically complying with the law.
Republican Rep. Thomas Massie has now escalated the fight, openly threatening contempt proceedings against Bondi, a rarely used but powerful congressional tool.
Appearing on CBS’s Face the Nation, Massie accused the DOJ of flouting both “the spirit and the letter of the law,” arguing that forcing accountability is the fastest path to justice for Epstein’s victims. He said he is actively drafting contempt measures with Democratic Rep. Ro Khanna, who confirmed the effort would fine Bondi for every day the documents remain unreleased, underscoring the unusual bipartisan alignment forming around the issue.
Pressure is also mounting in the Senate.
Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer announced plans to introduce a resolution aimed at forcing compliance once lawmakers return in January, noting that the law compelling the release of the full Epstein file trove was bipartisan from the start.
That law was signed in November by President Donald Trump after sustained pressure from his own supporters and GOP lawmakers, making the administration’s failure to meet the deadline even harder to explain. While some material was released, advocates say what’s missing matters just as much as what the public was allowed to see.
The Justice Department quietly removed at least 16 documents from its public webpage containing files related to Epstein less than a day after posting them, triggering more scrutiny over what the administration is withholding from the public.
The missing materials, which were accessible Friday and gone by Saturday, included an image that drew particular attention online: a photograph showing President Trump alongside Epstein, Melania Trump, and Epstein’s longtime associate Ghislaine Maxwell, the Associated Press reported. The image appeared inside a drawer among other photos and carried a batch number ending in 468, according to journalist and political commentator Aaron Parnas.
The unexplained deletions immediately intensified speculation surrounding the long-awaited release of the files, which were made public under a law signed by Trump in November requiring disclosure by last Friday.
“Today, it’s been scrubbed from the website,” Parnas told his followers. “The link has been taken down.”
The photo was then restored on Sunday.
In a post on X, the Justice Department said, “after the review, it was determined there is no evidence that any Epstein victims are depicted in the photograph, and it has been reposted without any alteration or redaction.”
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The episode compounded the frustration already brewing over the document release itself. While tens of thousands of pages were made public, the disclosures offered little new insight into Epstein’s crimes or the prosecutorial decisions that allowed him to avoid federal charges for years.
Some of the most closely watched records — including FBI interviews with victims and internal Justice Department memos about charging decisions — were missing altogether.
Those gaps raised renewed questions about accountability in a case that has long symbolized failures at the highest levels of law enforcement. The absent records could have shed light on how investigators evaluated survivor testimony and why Epstein, despite mounting evidence, was allowed in 2008 to plead guilty to a single state-level prostitution charge.
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The omissions extend to several powerful figures long associated with Epstein, including Britain’s former Prince Andrew, who are barely referenced in the files, even as the disclosures span tens of thousands of pages. That imbalance has fueled doubts about whether the release meaningfully advances public understanding of who was scrutinized and who was not.
The Justice Department’s broader release remains far from complete. What the documents do contain are scattered insights rather than a comprehensive narrative. Among the newly surfaced materials is a previously unseen 1996 complaint accusing Epstein of stealing photographs of children, as well as records showing the Justice Department’s internal decision to abandon a federal investigation into Epstein years before he took his own life.
Trump, who was friends with Epstein for years, sought for months to keep the files sealed. Bill Clinton faced renewed scrutiny after CNN reported that Maxwell was honored at a Clinton Global Initiative event in 2013, years after allegations about her role had surfaced.
Meanwhile, House Oversight Chair James Comer is pushing to depose both Bill and Hillary Clinton as part of the committee’s Epstein probe. Comer, who subpoenaed the couple in August, has given them until Dec. 17 to respond.
Bondi’s deputy, Todd Blanche, has said federal prosecutors in Manhattan alone possess more than 3.6 million records related to Epstein and Maxwell, many of them duplicative but still largely unreleased. Many of the documents made public so far were previously available through court filings or freedom of information requests, though never assembled in one searchable location.
Others arrived heavily redacted or stripped of context. A 119-page document labeled “Grand Jury-NY,” believed to relate to federal sex trafficking investigations that led to charges against Epstein in 2019 and Maxwell in 2021, was entirely blacked out. The Justice Department also appears to have redacted Trump’s name from at least one exhibit where it had appeared in an earlier version, according to posts by the independent outlet MeidasTouch.
He brushed off the threat of contempt on NBC’s Meet the Press, saying the DOJ is dealing with nearly a million pages of documents, most of which contain sensitive victim information.
Blanche insisted that releasing materials in stages still qualifies as compliance and said some files were temporarily removed after victims raised concerns — including the image involving Trump that was later restored.
Friday’s release was heavy with photographs of Epstein’s homes in New York City and the U.S. Virgin Islands, along with images of celebrities and politicians. There are multiple previously unseen photos of former President Bill Clinton, while photos of Trump appeared largely left out.
Despite missing the deadline to release all the files, the Justice Department has said it plans to release records on a rolling basis, with Blanche citing the time required to redact survivors’ names and identifying details. No timeline has been provided for subsequent releases.
That approach angered some lawmakers who said the release has opened an indefinite waiting period for a full accounting of Epstein’s crimes and to cover up Trump’s potential involvement.
Massie wrote that it “grossly fails to comply with both the spirit and the letter of the law,” adding he will push for an impeachment investigation against Bondi.
Online reaction was mostly suspicious of the documents, with critics saying the partial release was predictable, and comments like: “No surprise here,” “Shocker,” and “Corruption at its finest.”
One person asked: “I apologize for what may be a silly question, but if the Dept of Justice is corrupt and the Attorney General is corrupt and the head of the FBI is corrupt, who exactly would charge him with obstruction of justice, arrest him and make a charges stick? And no, I’m not talking about impeachment. He’s been impeached twice and nothing has happened. Is it actually possible to have real consequences?”
A Trump supporter responded on Threads by attacking Parnas and Democrats: “You posted a AI picture fool. And those files were taken down by Democrats. You need to get a hold of Hillary Clinton. She had them removed because of her & husband were all over them,” he wrote.
