Democrats Lay Out the Case Against Donald Trump in the Epstein Files

Democrats on the House Judiciary Committee want an independent special counsel to investigate President Donald Trump’s ties to Jeffrey Epstein. On Monday, they released a report arguing that the Justice Department has spent the past year protecting him.

The unsigned staff report accuses Attorney General Todd Blanche, Trump’s former defense lawyer, of conflicts of interest and potential obstruction. It also says the department has resisted sharing evidence with Congress and with state and foreign investigators.

The report, which runs more than 50 pages, arrives eight days before the midterm elections. It draws on FBI interview summaries, documents released under the Epstein Files Transparency Act, the transcript of Ghislaine Maxwell’s interview with the Justice Department, court filings, news reports and whistleblower information.

Trump has denied any wrongdoing related to his relationship with Epstein.

What the Report Alleges

The report argues that Trump was an “active participant” in Epstein’s abuse of young women in the mid-to-late 1990s, and that the Justice Department and FBI are working to keep that evidence from the public.

At its center are accounts from 11 women. Five directly accuse Trump of rape or sexual assault in Epstein’s presence. Among them:

• Stacey Williams, a former model, says Trump groped her in his Trump Tower office in 1993 while Epstein was present. CNN previously interviewed three women she told about the incident in 2006, 2015 and 2018.
• Beatrice Keul, a former beauty pageant contestant, told committee staff that Trump raped her at a 1993 pageant at the Plaza Hotel in New York, an event the report says Epstein used to recruit young women.

Other accounts in the report include allegations involving girls who were minors at the time, drawn from lawsuits and FBI records.

The report is explicit about the limits of some of its evidence. It says one woman’s claim could not be independently verified, that several accounts are secondhand, and that at least one woman named in the files does not explicitly accuse Trump of misconduct. Maxwell disputed one woman’s account during her DOJ interview.

The report also argues that Trump has repeatedly made false statements about his relationship with Epstein, including his June 2025 claim that he kicked Epstein out of Mar-a-Lago, which it says a 2009 DOJ document contradicts.

Committee Democrats say the evidence meets the FBI’s own standard for opening an investigation: that a federal crime “may have occurred.”

The Case Against Blanche

Much of the report focuses on Blanche, who went “from being Donald Trump’s personal attorney to his personal Attorney General,” in the report’s words.

It centers on Blanche’s July 2025 interview with Maxwell, Epstein’s convicted accomplice, which the report says came just before her House Oversight appearance. According to the transcript, Blanche repeatedly steered Maxwell away from one victim’s allegations, telling her at one point, “Let’s not talk about individuals.” Shortly afterward, Maxwell was transferred to a minimum-security prison camp, which the report says conflicts with Bureau of Prisons policy for sex offenders.

The report says the interview “potentially constituted witness tampering and obstruction of an official proceeding,” and that Blanche “may have engaged in criminal obstruction of justice while acting on a mission to protect Trump.”

Blanche has defended the department’s handling of the files, saying it “undertook a Herculean task” to review millions of documents. In June, a federal judge found that Blanche had effectively conceded the department was violating the Epstein Files Transparency Act. The department is appealing.

What DOJ Is Accused of Hiding

The report catalogs what it describes as a pattern of concealment:

• Moving the Southern District of New York’s Epstein investigative files to Washington in January 2025.
• Closing the investigation in July 2025 after declaring it “did not uncover evidence that could predicate an investigation against uncharged third parties.”
• Withholding FBI interview records. The report cites CBS reporting that more than 70% of roughly 5,000 indexed documents could not be found in the public release.
• Withholding handwritten FBI notes from a victim interview as “duplicative.” Those notes were reportedly later shared with a conservative journalist.
• An internal FBI “Prominent Names” slide deck prepared ahead of the Maxwell interview.
• Reluctance to share evidence with state and foreign law enforcement.

The report also says the DOJ is shielding other potential co-conspirators, naming Paolo Zampolli, Leon Black, Jes Staley, and Les Wexner. Zampolli, Black, and Staley have all appeared in COURIER’s Epstein coverage, and Zampolli has his own Epstein Class timeline.

The Response

“The women who survived Epstein deserve to be heard,” said Rep. Jamie Raskin, the top Democrat on the House Judiciary Committee. Raskin said Congress “must have the complete files required by law” and that an independent special counsel must investigate Epstein’s associates and the department’s handling of the case.

White House spokesperson Lauren Bis told Politico that Trump has been “totally exonerated on anything related to Epstein” and “has done more for Epstein’s victims than anyone before him.” The White House dismissed the report as a partisan distraction.

Democrats can’t name a special counsel themselves, and they concede the Trump administration is unlikely to do it for them, The Daily Beast reported. Their fallback is Congress’ own tools: oversight, legislation and, if they win the House on Nov. 3, subpoenas and hearings.

Why It Matters Now

The report lands in the final stretch of a campaign in which the Epstein files have become a central issue. Democrats have spent about $36 million on Epstein-related ads this cycle, according to an AdImpact analysis cited by Politico Playbook. One GOP pollster told Playbook that “Republican pollsters have seen the Epstein issue break through down the homestretch.”

For survivors, the question is the same one they’ve been asking for years: whether anyone in power will investigate the people around Epstein, or whether the government will keep investigating only itself.

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