Politics
NEW: Kash Patel Issues Major Update On Epstein Files Timeline: ‘Near Future’
FBI Director Kash Patel made a surprise announcement about the future of unreleased files in the Jeffrey Epstein investigation, telling a U.S. Senate committee hearing on Thursday that many of the final documents and video files will be made public in the “near future.”
While testifying about the status of the Bureau’s budget and his effort to purge career bureaucrats stymying the administration’s agenda, Patel took questions from Republican U.S. Sen. John Kennedy (R-LA) who asked if he plans to release “all the information” about Epstein’s abuse of underage girls and the events surrounding his 2019 death in a poorly-monitored jail cell.
“Are you going to release all the information about that?” Kennedy asked.
Patel replied, “Senator, we are working through that right now with the Department of Justice.”
Asked how long it may take, he responded, “In the near future.”
“We’ve been working on that and we’ve been doing it in a way that protects victims and also doesn’t put out into the ether information that is irrelevant for production for production [to] the public.”
WATCH:
The withholding of files related to the government’s Epstein investigation has long fascinated the minds of conspiracy theorists who continue to allege that his death was not a suicide. An exhaustive report concluded in 2023 that his death was not suspicious and faulted staff at the prison where he was being held for leaving him unmonitored for long periods of time.
On Wednesday, U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi appeared to walk back the notion that a full public accounting of the Epstein files would occur, saying that FBI agents are continuing to review videos showing Epstein in the middle of committing abuse and that their release would be debilitating for the survivors.
“The FBI, they’re reviewing. There are tens of thousands of videos of Epstein with children or child porn. And there are hundreds of victims,” she said outside the White House. “No one victim will ever get released. It’s just the volume, and that’s what they’re going through right now. The FBI is diligently going through that,” she added.
A batch of Epstein documents released in February ultimately disappointed observers who lamented that most of the files contained information that had already been made public during the late pedophile philanthropist’s various court cases. In March, Bondi sent a letter chiding Patel, who in turn blamed career bureaucrats for stymying his search.
“Despite my repeated requests, the FBI never disclosed the existence of these files,” she wrote at the time.
Bondi, who served as Florida’s attorney general from 2011 to 2019, suggested then that the Epstein investigation was not finished and that more criminal charges may be on the way.
“You have to hold individuals who are indeed rapists accountable. We have to have them tried,” Bondi said.
While the investigation remains ongoing, victims of Epstein and his mistress Ghislaine Maxwell continue to suffer. Last month, Virginia Giuffre, who was repeatedly abused by Epstein in her teens, took her own life after suffering near-fatal injuries in a car accident.
