House Oversight Republicans on Tuesday released their final word on Jeffrey Epstein, a 137-page report concluding that the crimes Epstein committed after 2005 "could have been prevented and justice served had it not been for the repeated failures of law enforcement and federal prosecutors." It lands two months before Democrats take control of the House and the committee.
The report, the product of a 15-month investigation with 19 transcribed interviews and depositions, names a former Obama White House counsel, a sitting cabinet secretary, Bill Gates, billionaire Leon Black and House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries' campaign. It also finds no documents implicating President Trump.
"The federal government has failed the survivors of Jeffrey Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell's horrific crimes for decades," Chairman James Comer said. In a video released with the report, he went further: "These women endured unimaginable abuse, and the federal government failed them at nearly every turn. Had the government done its job, much of this abuse could have been prevented."
The deal and the prosecutors
The report lays much of the blame on the 2007 non-prosecution agreement struck by the US Attorney's Office in South Florida. Then-US Attorney Alexander Acosta's hands-off approach, it says, "left the investigation in the hands of potential Epstein loyalists," and the "unusually favorable" deal extended federal protection to an unknown number of "potential co-conspirators" while survivors were kept in the dark.
The committee found that Matthew Menchel, a senior decision-maker in the case, had a prior romantic relationship with his former deputy, Lilly Ann Sanchez, who went on to serve as one of Epstein's defense attorneys. Menchel did not recuse himself, and Justice Department files show he kept meeting, dining and talking by phone with Epstein after the deal, according to the report. Asked whether Menchel should have stepped aside, Acosta told the committee: "I wish I would've been informed. I was not informed. I still don't know what the details are."
Another former prosecutor, Bruce Reinhart, left the office and was immediately hired to represent Epstein associates in civil cases, and was preparing to do so while still employed there, the report says.
Epstein's sentence was a farce: he could leave the stockade "for up to 12 hours a day, six days a week" to work at what the report calls the "by all accounts fictitious" Florida Science Foundation, traveling by private car with off-duty sheriff's deputies he paid. Survivors say he kept abusing women during that work release.
The names
Leon Black paid Epstein between $158 million and $170 million, "purportedly for tax and estate planning advice," the report says. It also details a 2015 nondisclosure agreement that required Black to pay a Russian woman with whom he had a six-year affair $100,000 a month for 15 years, plus $1 million in loan forgiveness and £2 million for a UK visa, in exchange for her silence; the committee says Epstein may have helped craft such agreements. The House held Black in criminal contempt of Congress by unanimous consent on Sept. 16 after he defied the committee's subpoenas. Last week, as we reported, Black sued Rep. Robert Garcia, the committee's top Democrat, for defamation.
Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick described his interactions with his former next-door neighbor as "virtually nonexistent," but the committee confirmed a 2012 lunch with Lutnick's family on Epstein's island, Little St. James, and a 2011 meeting in Epstein's foyer. Lutnick testified that it was "unsettling" that Epstein knew of his family's travel plans.
Emails released by the Justice Department show Epstein drafting messages "seemingly in preparation to leverage sensitive information - including past relationships - against Gates" in 2013. Gates testified that he was never explicitly threatened.
Kathryn Ruemmler, President Obama's White House counsel, kept up a relationship with Epstein after his conviction and accepted Hermès, Fendi and Prada handbags, boots and a watch. In a February 2016 exchange, Epstein asked whether they were "all set for a day of joy," and Ruemmler replied, "best massage ever but not your kind of massage." Epstein answered: "shame."
The report also says Rep. Stacey Plaskett (D-VI) texted Epstein during a 2019 congressional hearing "to solicit advice on questioning a discredited witness with a vendetta against President Trump," and that Jeffries' campaign emailed Epstein soliciting a donation. Jeffries has said he had no recollection of the email.
The committee urged the Justice Department to investigate former Epstein assistant Sarah Kellen's allegations of sexual abuse against former Miami Beach Mayor Philip Levine and celebrity hairstylist Frédéric Fekkai, and to re-interview Lesley Groff, Epstein's longtime executive assistant. Levine and Fekkai have denied the allegations.
Trump, and what comes next
On the president, the report is blunt: "The consensus of every witness examined before the Committee was that President Trump - to their knowledge - was not involved in any crimes committed by Epstein and Maxwell," and no documents from the estate, the US Virgin Islands, JPMorgan, Deutsche Bank or the Justice Department implicated him. It calls the Democrats' focus on Trump an "unfounded witch hunt."
On Epstein's death, it found that guards at the Metropolitan Correctional Center missed at least 12 rounds and three inmate counts that night, leaving him without adequate supervision for nearly eight hours, but said nothing it received disproved the suicide finding.
Garcia, who is in line to take the gavel in January, called the report the product of an incomplete investigation with no public hearings. "We intend to hold real public hearings uplifting survivors and asking tough questions of the powerful men who associated with Epstein, including [President] Donald Trump," he said, according to the Epoch Times. "Our work is just getting started."