Rep. Debbie Dingell (D-Mich.) said on Monday that there is “enormous pressure” to release all the files related to Jeffrey Epstein, the late, disgraced financier and convicted sex offender.
“I think that when we return, there’ll be enormous pressure again for the Epstein files to be made public. I think this, well, I have not talked to Ro, but I am someone who has worked with domestic violence and sexual assault survivors my entire life, and their stories…you know, many of them are afraid,” Dingell said in a CNN interview, referring to Rep. Ro Khanna (D-Calif.), who is spearheading a bill with Rep. Thomas Massie’s (R-Ky.) to force a vote requiring the Department of Justice (DOJ) to release documents related to Epstein.
Earlier this summer. President Trump’s administration faced pushback over its handling of the documents in the Epstein case, particularly after the DOJ and FBI published an unsigned memo stating that Epstein died by suicide in a New York prison while awaiting trial in 2019 and did not keep a so-called “client list.”
Khanna and Massie will hold a joint press conference at the U.S. Capitol on Wednesday. They will be joined by Epstein victims and victims of Ghislaine Maxwell, his co-conspirator.
“It makes me sad, but if people hear their stories in the way that I think they are likely to, because they wouldn’t be going on the Capitol steps, they’re very real stories, and I think it will touch the hearts of many Americans,” Dingell told host Audie Cornish. “And Americans are going to continue to say, ‘Release those files.’”
On Sunday, Khanna said on NBC’s “Meet the Press” that the press conference “will be explosive” and “many” of the victims who will be at the press conference “have never spoken out before.”
Massie on Monday said he hopes that House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) “will listen to the pleas” of victims and “quit trying to block a vote on our legislation to release the Epstein files.”
