MTG: ‘I’ll say every damn name’ in Jeffrey Epstein list

ATLANTA, Ga. (Atlanta News First) - Northwest Georgia’s U.S. Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene was among those on the steps of Capitol Hill in Washington, D.C., calling for a full disclosure of files related to the case of Jeffrey Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell.

“I’m not afraid to name names,” Greene said Wednesday morning. “If they want to give me a list, I will walk in the Capitol on the House floor, and I’ll say every damn name that abused these women. I can do that for them, and I’d be proud to do that.”

Greene was participating in a “Stand With Survivors” rally. Its goal, organizers said, was to stop protecting people connected to the late convicted sex offender and Maxwell, his girlfriend and associate.

On Tuesday, the U.S. House Oversight Committee publicly posted the files it has received from the Justice Department on the sex trafficking investigations into Epstein and Maxwell, responding to mounting pressure in Congress to force more disclosure in the case.

The files mostly contain information that was already publicly known or available. The folders — posted on Google Drive — contained hundreds of image files of years-old court filings related to Epstein, who died in a New York jail cell in 2019 as he faced charges for sexually abusing teenage girls, and Maxwell, who is serving a lengthy prison sentence for assisting him.

“Let’s recognize the fact that the administration before, and before, and before and before, never did anything about [the Epstein case],” Greene said. “This is a culmination of everyone who worked together to silence these women and protect Jeffrey Epstein and his cabal.

“This is not about politics,” she continued. “This is a boiling point in American history.”

Besides Greene and U.S. House Speaker Mike Johnson, survivors of Epstein’s abuse met with a bipartisan group of lawmakers.

“The objective here is not just to uncover, investigate the Epstein evils, but also to ensure that this never happens again and ultimately to find out why justice has been delayed for these ladies for so very long,” said Johnson, R-La., after he emerged from a two-hour meeting with six of the survivors.

“It is inexcusable. And it will stop now because the Congress is dialed in on this,” he added.

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Johnson is pressing for the inquiry to be handled by the House Oversight Committee and supporting the committee as it releases its findings.

More from the Associated Press:

The committee’s release of the files showed how lawmakers are eager to act on the issue as they return to Washington after a month-long break. They quickly revived a political clash that has flummoxed House Republican leadership and roiled President Donald Trump’s administration.

House Republican Speaker Mike Johnson is trying to quell an effort by Democrats and some Republicans to force a vote on a bill that would require the Justice Department to release all the information in the so-called Epstein files, with the exception of the victims’ personal information.

What’s in the released files

If the purpose of the release was to provide answers to a public still curious over the long concluded cases, the raw mechanics of the clunky rollout made that a challenge.

At 6 p.m., the committee released thousands of pages and videos via the cumbersome Google Drive, leaving it to readers and viewers to decipher new and interesting tidbits on their own.

The files released Tuesday included audio of an Epstein employee describing to a law enforcement official how “there were a lot of girls that were very, very young” visiting the home, but he couldn’t say for sure if they were minors.

Over the course of Epstein’s visits to the home, the man said, more than a dozen girls might visit, and he was charged with cleaning the room where Epstein had massages, twice daily.

Some pages were almost entirely redacted. Other documents were related to Epstein’s Florida prosecution, which led to a plea deal that has long been criticized as too lenient — including emails between the defense and prosecutors over the conditions of his probation after his conviction.

Barbara Burns, a Palm Beach County prosecutor, expressed frustration as the defense pushed for fewer restrictions on their client: “I don’t know how to convey to him anymore than I already have that his client is a registered sex offender that was fortunate to get the deal of the century.”

Some of the interviews with officers from the Palm Beach Police Department date to 2005, according to timestamps read out by officials at the beginning of the files.

Most, if not all, of the text documents posted Tuesday had already been public. Notably, the probable cause affidavit and other records from the 2005 investigation into Epstein contained a notation indicating that they’d been previously released in a 2017 public records request. An internet search showed those files were posted to the website of the Palm Beach County State Attorney’s Office in July 2017.

Rep. Robert Garcia, the top Democrat on the House Oversight Committee, chided Republicans on the panel for releasing material that he said consisted almost entirely of already available information.

“The 33,000 pages of Epstein documents James Comer has decided to ‘release’ were already mostly public information. To the American people — don’t let this fool you,” Garcia said in a statement.

The disclosure also left open the question of why the Justice Department did not release the material directly to the public instead of operating through Capitol Hill.

Push for disclosure continues

Meanwhile, Democrats and some Republicans were still trying to maneuver around Johnson’s control of the House floor to hold a vote on their bill to require the Justice Department to publicly release files. Democrats lined up in the House chamber Tuesday evening to sign a petition from Rep. Thomas Massie, a Kentucky Republican, to force a vote. Three other Republicans also supported the maneuver, but Massie would need two more GOP lawmakers and every Democrat to be successful.

If Massie, who is pressing for the bill alongside Rep. Ro Khanna, D-Calif., is able to force a vote — which could take weeks — the legislation would still need to pass the Senate and be signed into law by Trump.

The clash suggests little has changed in Congress since late July, when Johnson sent lawmakers home early in hopes of cooling the political battle over the Epstein case. Members of both parties remain dissatisfied and are demanding more details on the years-old investigation into Epstein, the wealthy and well-connected financier whose 2019 death has sparked wide-ranging conspiracy theories and speculation.

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