Rep. Ro Khanna (D-CA) continues to call for full transparency on what the DOJ and FBI know about the late sex offender and trafficker Jeffrey Epstein’s crimes and associates.
Contemptuous of Attorney General Pam Bondi‘s decision that no further Epstein-related information would be released, Khanna remains dissatisfied with the administration’s Epstein transparency after President Donald Trump‘s most recent capitulation on Epstein — the ordering of Bondi to ask the court to release grand jury testimony about Epstein and his convicted associate Ghislaine Maxwell. (Maxwell is currently serving a 20-year sentence.)
Below Khanna tells his House colleagues that the potential release of grand jury testimony, which “courts usually don’t release,” won’t do nearly enough to reveal who Epstein’s clients were — the group which Khanna characterizes as “rich and powerful men who abused, assaulted and abandoned young women.”
In demanding more transparency and threatening a vote to compel it, Khanna says that “the Democrats are on the side of the people, the Democrats are on the side of the children” — because those “young women” he refers to above were actually underage girls, not women.
Here’s why Trump and Pam Bondi are only focusing on the grand jury testimony. The cover up continues. https://t.co/ssEsTKD96v
— Brian Tyler Cohen (@briantylercohen) July 18, 2025
Khanna also indicates that a vote in the House, as Trump knows, would mandate greater transparency and the release of far more information regarding Epstein than would be delivered by the grand jury testimony, if the courts do grant that release.
“The President knows,” Khanna insists, “that if there is a vote tonight, this body overwhelmingly would vote for the release of the files.”
Democrats are advocating for the people and the children against the powerful here, as Khanna says, but they are not alone in that advocacy. The Congressman’s certainty that the House would vote “overwhelmingly” for the Epstein files release demonstrates that the Democrats are largely in solidarity with congressional Republicans on the issue — otherwise a House boasting a GOP majority could never vote overwhelmingly in favor of what Khanna wants.
Supporting Khanna’s conviction, many MAGA Republicans — perhaps most notably Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) — have called the administration’s refusal to make good on promises to release the “Epstein Files” a “red line for many people” in her constituency and beyond.
Rep. Ted Lieu (D-CA) is also among those concurring, saying this week that the administration’s refusal of transparency is a “case of the powerful protecting the powerful and we need to have those files released.” Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-MD) floated the notion that Trump was keeping the files in house “for purposes of blackmail.”