A top House Democrat is demanding answers from the Justice Department on why it dropped its probe of Jeffrey Epstein’s alleged co-conspirators earlier this year.
Rep. Jamie Raskin, the ranking member of the House Judiciary Committee, said the investigation, which survivors of the disgraced financier’s crimes say was in the midst of gathering detailed evidence and testimony, was abandoned without explanation.
“I write to demand an explanation for why DOJ has abandoned the women and girls abused by Mr. Epstein, Ms. Maxwell, and their co-conspirators, fired or cut off career prosecutors from the case, and ceased its investigation into one of the largest sex trafficking rings in history,” Raskin wrote in a letter to Attorney General Pam Bondi.
CBS News, which obtained a copy of the message, reports the demand underscores concerns that nearly 50 survivors cooperated with prosecutors and the FBI, providing “precise and detailed” information about how Epstein, his jailed associate Ghislaine Maxwell, and others orchestrated “a sophisticated and clandestine sex trafficking conspiracy that trafficked them to at least 20 men.”
Raskin noted that these survivors “shared with DOJ and FBI the specific identities of many of these co-conspirators, how this operation was structured and financed, and which individuals facilitated these crimes.”
Raskin reportedly said the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York had been investigating the case until January 2025, when the files were transferred to DOJ headquarters in what he called “a sudden and dramatic shift in the posture of the investigation.”
Since that change, the probe “inexplicably ceased,” he wrote, citing information from attorneys representing Epstein survivors. In July, the DOJ published the results of an internal review, concluding that it had no “client list” among the collected evidence, nor did it find evidence “that could predicate any investigation against uncharged third parties.”
Those findings generated a fierce backlash from President Donald Trump’s MAGA base. The president, who had long courted conspiracy theories about Epstein and his death behind bars in 2019, has faced intense scrutiny over his own relationship with the disgraced financier in the months since.
“The Trump Administration has inexplicably killed this investigation,” Raskin added in his letter, further asking for an accounting from the DOJ of the steps taken this year to review the case, any summaries or reports produced, and staffing documents related to the probe.
“The Democrats have shut down the government and Congressional correspondence during a lapse in appropriations is limited,” a DOJ spokesperson told the Daily Beast.
“Once the Democrats stop playing games with taxpayer dollars and vote to re-open the government, we look forward to continuing our close cooperation with the Committee in pursuit of transparency, as we have already provided 33,000 pages to the House Oversight Committee—more than was ever requested by the committee when the Ranking Member’s party was in the majority.”
