‘We’re going to be on his a–‘: Dems slam Trump DOJ ‘cover up’ amid suspicious Epstein file redactions

After members of Congress reviewed redacted documents from the Epstein files, Trump’s Department of Justice is being accused of a “cover-up.”

Democrats in Congress are vowing to hold the Trump administration accountable amid the U.S. Department of Justice’s suspicious redactions of the FBI files related to child sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein.

“We’re not going to stop,” U.S. Rep. Jasmine Crockett, a Democrat from Texas on the U.S. House Committees on Oversight and Judiciary, told reporters Monday on Capitol Hill.

Referring to President Donald Trump, who is mentioned more than 5,000 times in the Epstein files, and previously tried to prevent their release before caving to political pressure, Crockett affirmed, “We’re going to be on his ass.”

After reviewing redacted documents from the Epstein files, U.S. Rep. Jamie Raskin, a Democrat of Maryland who is the ranking member of the Judiciary Committee, accused Trump’s DOJ of “cover-up.”

“I think that the Department of Justice has been in a cover-up mode for many months and has been trying to sweep the entire thing under the rug,” he told reporters on Monday.

Simultaneously, Epstein’s co-conspirator, Ghislaine Maxwell, who is serving 20 years in prison, pleaded the fifth during virtual testimony before the House Oversight Committee. During the deposition, Maxwell’s attorney said she was prepared to clear Trump’s name of criminal wrongdoing if the president granted her clemency.

There are several redactions in the more than 3 million documents in the Epstein files that have raised alarms among Democrats and even Republican Rep. Thomas Massie of Kentucky, who co-sponsored the Epstein Files Transparency Act alongside Rep. Ro Khanna of California.

Khanna and Thomas Massie said there were specifically six men in files whose names were redacted. Massie threatened to publicly release the names himself if the DOJ did not reverse the redactions.

Rep. Raskin called out the DOJ for not redacting some of Epstein’s underage victims despite doing so for individuals who were not victims, some of whom he said were “well-known.”

The congressman said one document mentions Epstein’s time spent at Mar-a-Lago, Trump’s social club in Palm Beach, Florida. He told reporters an email from Epstein’s lawyers recounted a conversation between them and Trump’s attorneys regarding Epstein’s federal conviction related to child prostitution.

“Epstein’s lawyers synopsized and quoted Trump as saying that Jeffrey Epstein was not a member of his club at Mar-a-Lago, but he was a guest at Mar-a-Lago, and he had never been asked to leave. And that was redacted for some indeterminate, inscrutable reason,” Raskin explained.

That information appears to contradict earlier statements made by President Trump that he kicked Epstein out of his club because Epstein was poaching his workers at a spa at Mar-a-Lago.

Suspicions related to the Epstein files have continued to grow after the DOJ failed to release all of the files by Dec. 19, as required by the Epstein Files Transparency Act, which was passed by Congress on Nov. 19. On Wednesday, U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi, a fierce loyalist to Trump, will testify at a hearing before the House Judiciary Committee. She most certainly will be grilled by members of Congress about the administration’s rollout of the Epstein files.

“The other part of it is that we have a 34-count convicted felon, and there are people that are still shielding him from any type of accountability as it relates to a child sex trafficking ring,” Rep. Crockett told reporters on Monday. “It is time to take the blinders off, like, I don’t understand why we are pretending like any of this is normal.”

She added, “Right now we know that they were willing to try to throw the Clintons in prison for not showing up [to testify before Congress], yet, they won’t even allow us to bring other people into committee who we know are mentioned in these files and mentioned so much more.”

When asked about the Epstein files last week, Trump suggested that the country move on from talking about the sex trafficking scandal.

“I think it’s really time for the country to get onto something else,” he told White House reporters inside the Oval Office.