Republicans and Democrats call for more information on Epstein case
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One of Epstein's former lawyers, Alan Dershowitz, said in an interview on 'Fox News Sunday' that the grand jury testimony was unlikely to contain the information that has most interested Trump's supporters.
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Trump has encouraged his base to move on. But the backlash seemed to be on his mind Sunday morning, when he accused 'Radical Left Democrats' of exposing the 'Jeffrey Epstein Hoax.'
Burchett also took up Trump's argument Sunday, saying that Democrats had the chance to release the materials when former president Joe Biden was in office.
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At the same time, Burchett is one of 10 Republicans who have signed on to an effort to force a vote on whether the administration should release the files. The procedural maneuver would require a majority of House members, and Burchett said he was not sure if it would succeed.
'I have no earthly idea,' he said on CNN. 'You know this town buries secrets.'
Democrats in Congress have seized on the divide that has opened up between Trump and his supporters, trying to force votes on measures that call for the release of Epstein-related files and pressing for hearings. They have rejected Trump's efforts to redirect the blame to them.
'The president blaming Democrats for this disaster, Jake, is like that CEO that got caught on camera blaming Coldplay,' said Senator Amy Klobuchar, Democrat of Minnesota, to CNN's Jake Tapper, referring to a viral video that showed the married CEO of a tech company with his arms around a woman who is not his wife.
Klobuchar, instead blamed the public's clamoring for the files on right-wing politicians, including Trump, who she said had sown distrust in federal prosecutors over the case.
'People have a reason that they want to know what's in there,' Klobuchar said. 'They believe the president when he said there's stuff in there that people should see.'
Several former federal prosecutors told the Associated Press that the Justice Department request to unseal grand jury transcripts in the prosecutions of Epstein and his former girlfriend, imprisoned British socialite Ghislaine Maxwell, is unlikely to produce much, if anything, to satisfy the public's appetite for new revelations about the financier's crimes.
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Attorney Sarah Krissoff, an assistant US attorney in Manhattan from 2008 to 2021, called the request 'a distraction.'
'The president is trying to present himself as if he's doing something here and it really is nothing,' Krissoff told the Associated Press in a weekend interview.
Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche made the request Friday, asking judges to unseal transcripts from grand jury proceedings that resulted in indictments against Epstein and Maxwell, saying 'transparency to the American public is of the utmost importance to this Administration.'
Krissoff and Joshua Naftalis, a Manhattan federal prosecutor for 11 years before entering private practice in 2023, said grand jury presentations are purposely brief.
Naftalis said Southern District prosecutors present just enough to a grand jury to get an indictment but 'it's not going to be everything the FBI and investigators have figured out about Maxwell and Epstein.'
'People want the entire file from however long. That's just not what this is,' he said, estimating that the transcripts, at most, probably amount to a few hundred pages.
'It's not going to be much,' Krissoff said, estimating the length at as little as 60 pages 'because the Southern District of New York's practice is to put as little information as possible into the grand jury.'
'They basically spoon feed the indictment to the grand jury. That's what we're going to see,' she said. 'I just think it's not going to be that interesting. ... I don't think it's going to be anything new.'
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New York Post
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