Maryland Rep. Jamie Raskin pressed FBI Director Kash Patel during an animated House Judiciary Committee hearing on Wednesday to make good on earlier promises to release the Jeffrey Epstein files.
Raskin, the ranking Democrat on the panel, charged that Patel’s tenure as director has endangered public safety.
“The important position at the FBI requires a real leader who puts public safety, national security, and the rule of law first,” the lawmaker said. “I’m afraid, Director Patel, you’ve given us reason to believe you have used the powers of the FBI to serve Donald Trump and his agenda of partisan retribution. You’ve broken your promise not to do that. You’ve betrayed Jeffrey Epstein’s victims and survivors.”
“You’ve turned your back on the career of law enforcement officers of the FBI, and as a result, you’ve left all of us less safe than before,” Raskin said.
A constitutional lawyer, Raskin played three earlier interviews with Patel to remind him and a national audience of the director’s previous position regarding Epstein’s so-called black book.
“Put on your big boy pants and let us know who the pedophiles are,” Patel said in a December 2023 interview.
When he was asked who had Epstein’s black book in that interview, Patel replied: “That is under direct control of the director of the FBI.”
Confirmed and sworn in as FBI director in February, Patel has released information only in “dribs and drabs” in response to the public pressure and congressional demands, according to Raskin.
A bipartisan discharge petition currently has 217 signatures in the House. One more signature is required for all the Epstein files to be released to Congress.
Patel said that he has released everything he has direct control over and can lawfully release, adding that three separate federal courts have control over the rest. He argued that he has made more Epstein material public than the previous two administrations.
“I’m not going to break the law to satisfy your curiosity,” Patel said.
Rep. Eric Swalwell, D-California, followed Raskin and continued to grill the director, who would not answer the question: “Did you tell the attorney general that Donald Trump’s name was in the files?”
The pair exchanged curse words as Patel denigrated Swalwell’s career in Congress. Swalwell pushed back on Patel’s claim that the federal courts barred the release of the files, quoting Judge Richard Berman, a senior judge of the United States District Court in New York.
“Information contained in the Epstein grand jury transcripts pales in comparison to Epstein investigation information materials in the hands of the Department of Justice,” Berman said.
The chairman of the judiciary panel, Rep. Jim Jordan, R-Ohio, praised Patel’s stewardship of the FBI. He noted that plans to relocate the agency’s headquarters to Greenbelt, Maryland, have been shelved by Patel.
“He’s not going to build a new headquarters outside of D.C.,” Jordan said. “He’s going to keep the headquarters right here in DC, save Americans money, save taxpayers money.”
Wednesday marked the second consecutive day of congressional hearings that examined Patel’s leadership of the FBI, including the FBI’s response to Charlie Kirk’s assassination, cuts to crime-fighting efforts, and initiatives against political violence.
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