House Republicans find federal failures in Epstein investigations

Federal authorities could have prevented some of Jeffrey Epstein’s crimes after 2005, but investigators and prosecutors failed to act on evidence of his abuse, Republicans on the House Oversight Committee concluded in a report released Tuesday.

The report follows a 15-month investigation that included witness interviews and reviews of government documents and financial records. It examines how Epstein and his longtime associate Ghislaine Maxwell avoided accountability as they sexually abused and trafficked young women and girls. Epstein died in 2019 while awaiting trial on sex trafficking charges. Maxwell was later convicted of child sex trafficking.

“At nearly every stage, the cases reviewed by the Committee raise troubling questions about how Jeffrey Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell, who sexually abused and trafficked young women and girls, avoided accountability for so long,” the committee’s Republican majority wrote.

The report focuses in part on a 2007 agreement with the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of Florida that allowed Epstein to avoid federal prosecution. He pleaded guilty in Florida state court in 2008 to two prostitution charges, including soliciting prostitution from someone under 18. The committee said federal prosecutors failed to fully investigate allegations in other states.

“While some of these failures involved an exercise in poor judgement by the USAO, others appeared to be the result of Epstein’s pervasive and wide-reaching influence,” the report said.

According to CBS News, the committee said Epstein received extensive work release during his state custody for what it called a “sham company” and continued to abuse women during that period. The report also described a “willful ignorance” among employees who arranged his daily activities and powerful associates who said they did not suspect his crimes. Billionaires Leon Black, Bill Gates and Les Wexner, as well as Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick, told the committee they had no knowledge of the abuse, CBS News reported.

The BBC reported that the committee attributed Epstein’s death in a New York prison to institutional failures, including staffing shortages, poor recordkeeping and lax security. The report said testimony could not definitively resolve certain theories about his death, including questions about a gap in surveillance footage. It also faulted the Justice Department for document releases that exposed survivors’ sensitive information, according to the BBC.

The report recommended that the Justice Department pursue new investigations and that Congress pass legislation to prevent nondisclosure agreements from being used to silence survivors, CBS News reported. Committee Chairman James Comer called on the department to investigate Epstein associates accused of criminal activity. Epstein was “shielded and enabled by powerful connections and a justice system that repeatedly failed his victims,” Comer said.

The report accused Democrats of pursuing an unfounded effort to implicate President Donald Trump and said its document review found nothing implicating him, the BBC reported. Trump has said he and Epstein were once friendly before falling out in 2004. His appearance in Epstein-related documents does not itself suggest wrongdoing.

Representative Robert Garcia, the committee’s top Democrat, called the report the product of “an incomplete investigation and zero public hearings.” He accused the Justice Department of withholding more than 2.5 million pages of documents and said Democrats intend to hold public hearings with survivors and question powerful people who associated with Epstein, including Trump.

“We will not allow the President and his allies to dismiss this investigation,” Garcia said.