Rep. Summer Lee, D-Pa., participates in a subcommittee hearing of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee on Capitol Hill in Washington, D.C., July 23, 2025.
Jonathan Ernst | Reuters
Rep. Summer Lee, D-Pa., in a statement on Saturday criticized the release of the first trove of documents related to the late convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein as incomplete and predominately “recycled content already made available to the public.”
Lee, a member of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, last month filed the motion to compel President Donald Trump’s Justice Department to release files related to Epstein.
The Justice Department gave Congress the first batch of documents on Friday, to comply with a subpoena issued by the committee earlier this month.
But Lee said Saturday that just three percent of the 33,295 pages of documents turned over to Congress contained new information, according to Oversight Committee Democrats’ initial review.
“The remaining 97% of pages included information previously released by the Department of Justice, the Florida Department of Law Enforcement or the Palm Beach County State Attorney’s office,” Lee said in the statement.
It wasn’t immediately clear what information the documents contained and what, or how much, was redacted.
Lee said that the only new disclosure in the tranche of documents was fewer than 1,000 pages of flight location logs of Epstein’s plane from 2000 through 2014.
“Trump’s DOJ is pretending to respond to the subpoena,” she said in the statement. “The released Epstein documents are largely thousands of pages of recycled content already made available to the public.”
Rep. Robert Garcia, D-Calif., the ranking member on the House Oversight Committee, also slammed the initial document release.
“DOJ’s limited disclosure raises more questions than answers and makes clear that the White House is not interested in justice for the victims or the truth,” Garcia said in a statement posted on X on Saturday.
A screen about the Jeffrey Epstein files is displayed at Times Square in New York City, U.S., July 23, 2025.
Jeenah Moon | Reuters
A spokesperson for the Republican House Oversight Committee said Friday that “the production contains thousands of pages of documents.”
“The Committee intends to make these records public after thorough review to ensure any victims’ identification and child sexual abuse material are redacted,” the spokesperson said.
The Epstein files have been a thorn in Republicans’ side in recent weeks as many Republicans — including some of Trump’s strongest supporters — have repeatedly urged the administration to follow through on its campaign promise and release documents connected to the case.
The release of the initial batch of files to Congress on Friday came on the same day that the Justice Department released new transcripts from its interview last month with Epstein’s accomplice, Ghislaine Maxwell.
Maxwell, who is currently serving a 20-year prison sentence, told Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche that she did not know of any wrongdoing by Trump in connection with Epstein, according to the transcripts, which also show that she praised the president.
