President Donald Trump’s new attorney general insists that the Department of Justice has to move on from the Epstein files—while denying that the controversy cost his former boss her job.
Todd Blanche, 51, was installed as acting attorney general on Thursday after DOJ chief Pam Bondi was unceremoniously fired by Trump.
Bondi’s botched handling of the release of millions of documents relating to the late pedophile Jeffrey Epstein saw the president lose confidence in her abilities, with the saga still haunting Trump in the run-up to November’s midterm elections.
During his most recent presidential campaign, Trump appealed to MAGA’s conspiracy theorist base by promising to release all the documents uncovered during the FBI’s investigation into Epstein and his jailed accomplice Ghislaine Maxwell.
Now Blanche, who represented Trump in his 2024 criminal trial and personally interviewed Maxwell before her unexpected transfer to a low-security prison last year, has used one of his first TV appearances as acting AG to insist that the Epstein era is over.
In an interview with Fox News’ Jesse Watters on Thursday, Blanche was asked, “Now, the Epstein files, you’d agree, not handled well?”
Stumbling over his words initially, Blanche replied, “First of all, I have never heard President Trump say the attorney general was... anything that happened to her had anything to do with the Epstein files.”
Blanche dismissed the Epstein files as “a saga that has lasted for the entire past year” before referencing the transparency act Trump eventually signed to release the files, following intense pressure and a near-unanimous bipartisan vote in Congress.
“The Department of Justice has now released all the files with respect to the Epstein saga,” Blanche continued, noting he and Bondi had “voluntarily” appeared in front of Congress as part of a hearing into the release of the documents. During that hearing, Bondi refused to turn to face Epstein survivors behind her.
“We have made (it possible for) every single congressman, senator... to come and see any document redacted (or) unredacted that they want. And so I think to the extent the Epstein files was a part of the past year of this Justice Department, it should not be a part of anything going forward.”
Blanche mirrored the president’s statement from February when he said of Epstein that it was “really time for the country to get on to something else.”
“Nothing came out about me,” Trump added. Trump was a long-time friend of the late sex offender and features repeatedly in the Epstein files, but has consistently denied any wrongdoing.
Watters then asked Blanche who Epstein was spying for, considering he had read all the files. “I have no idea if he was a spy,” Blanche said, before reverting to his default setting of praising Trump.
“Nobody talked about the Epstein files for four years during Biden,” Blanche claimed. “So when President Trump said ‘Let’s release the Epstein files’ and the law was passed that allowed us to legally do it, we did it.”
A confused Watters said, “OK, I’m not sure you totally get what people feel about that, but I want to move on.”
Embarrassingly, Blanche’s claim to Watters that the DOJ had now released all the Epstein files was quickly hit with a community note on X.
“The DOJ has not released all Epstein files; it identified more than 6 million potentially responsive pages but released nearly 3.5 million,” the note clarified for viewers.
California congressman Robert Garcia was quick to call Blanche out on his statements about all the documents being released and the DOJ moving on from the “saga.”
“This is a lie,” Garcia posted on X. “About 50% of the files have been released and per our subpoena it’s illegal to withhold them.”
He added, “Blanche may think it’s over, but we are just getting started.”
Last month, Blanche’s standard claim that all the Epstein files have now been released was even called out by MAGA podcast host Katie Miller, a self-confessed conspiracy theorist and wife of White House Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller.
Appearing on Miller’s podcast, Blanche said the claim that the DOJ had only released 3.5 million of 6 million pages of evidence associated with the criminal was untrue.
“There’s still 3 million held back, not all of them are public,” Miller said to Blanche.
“No they’re all public,” Blanche insisted. “There’s a narrative that there’s 3 million pages that are being held back. They have nothing to do with Epstein. What we did to make sure we didn’t leave a single page out—we over-collected.”
He claimed “every single page” that has anything to do with Epstein “has been produced” unless there was a legal reason to redact it.
An investigation by NPR in February into “dozens” of withheld pages, including files relating to allegations Donald Trump had sexually abused a minor, saw further pages released. Trump has denied the allegations.
The Justice Department repeatedly told NPR that any documents still being withheld were “privileged, are duplicates or relate to an ongoing federal investigation.”
Blanche has already attempted to downplay the appearance of high-profile names in the Epstein files this year.
After February’s dump of 3 million pages from the files that included previously unseen references to Trump, Bill Clinton, Bill Gates, the former Prince Andrew, and Elon Musk, The Ingraham Angle host Laura Ingraham asked Blanche about the possibility of prosecution for anyone in the files who had “partied” with Epstein and had “relations” with minors.
“I’ll never say no, and we will always investigate any evidence of misconduct, but as you know, it’s not a crime to party with Mr. Epstein,” Blanche said.
“So as horrible as it is... it’s not a crime to email with Mr Epstein. Some of these men may have done horrible things and if we have evidence that allows us to prosecute them, you better believe we will.”
Blanche repeated, “It’s also the kind of thing that the American people need to understand, that it isn’t a crime to party with Mr Epstein.”
