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WASHINGTON ― Several prominent MAGA names appear in a small batch of Epstein files released Friday by Democrats on the House Oversight Committee.
The six pages of documents include entries from Jeffrey Epstein’s daily schedule, showing scheduled meetings with financier Peter Thiel, along with former Donald Trump advisers Elon Musk and Steve Bannon.
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The late sexual predator socialized with all manner of powerful people, including President Donald Trump and former President Bill Clinton. The fact that someone is mentioned in the files is not necessarily an indication of wrongdoing.
Republicans accused Democrats of cherry-picking from 8,000 pages of material recently handed over to the committee by the Department of Justice.
“They are intentionally withholding documents that contain names of Democrat officials, and the information they released today is old news,” a spokesperson for Oversight Committee Chair James Comer (R-Ky.) said in an email. “We are focused on delivering transparency and accountability for the survivors, and will release documents in full.”
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Comer issued a subpoena for the files following a bipartisan committee vote this summer amid an uproar over the Trump administration’s refusal to make the materials on Epstein public. Donald Trump is reportedly mentioned in the files; the committee separately subpoenaed the Epstein estate and obtained a 2003 “birthday book” containing a creepy note Trump apparently sent to Epstein.
Epstein was convicted of soliciting child prostitutes in 2008. The latest batch from the Justice Department includes Epstein’s schedule from 2010 to 2019, the Democrats said. They released pages mentioning lunch with Thiel in November 2017, breakfast with Bannon in 2019, and a possible trip to Epstein’s private island for Musk in December 2014. It says: “Reminder: Elon Musk to island Dec. 6 (is this still happening?)”
Musk said in 2019 that Epstein had “repeatedly” tried to get him to visit his infamous island, and that he had declined.
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Bannon reportedly interviewed Epstein in 2019, before Epstein was arrested on federal sex trafficking charges, for a documentary that has apparently not been finished.
A spokesperson for the Thiel Foundation did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
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Democrats have said they don’t trust the Trump administration to hand over the full Epstein files. “It should be clear to every American that Jeffrey Epstein was friends with some of the most powerful and wealthiest men in the world,” Sara Guerrero, spokesperson for Rep. Robert Garcia (D-Calif.), the committee’s top Democrat, said in a statement. “Oversight Democrats will not stop until we identify everyone complicit in Epstein’s heinous crimes. It’s past time for Attorney General Bondi to release all the files now.”
A bipartisan effort to force a vote in the House of Representatives on legislation requiring the government to release the full Epstein files could come to fruition next month, though the bill would still have to pass the Senate.