Fallout from the handling of the convicted sex offender’s cases continues to cast a shadow over President Donald Trump’s second term.
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Like other powerful figures before her, the former top lawyer for Goldman Sachs made her way to Capitol Hill on Wednesday to answer for her relationship with the late financier and sex offender Jeffrey Epstein. Behind closed doors, the House Oversight Committee grilled Kathryn Ruemmler about chummy emails she exchanged with Epstein that appeared in investigative files released last fall by the Justice Department.
Across the Capitol, two figures involved in that flubbed disclosure and its fallout for the Trump administration faced their own sharp questions. In separate Senate confirmation hearings, Democrats pressed Todd Blanche, President Donald Trump’s nominee for attorney general, and Jay Clayton, his pick for director of national intelligence, about sloppy redactions that exposed explicit photos and other personal information of Epstein’s victims.
More than half a year after lawmakers passed a law that forced the Trump administration to release long-sought documents from the government’s case against Epstein, the issue continues to roil Congress.
The coincidental convergence Wednesday of three hearings in which Epstein played, to varying degrees, a prominent role illustrates how enduring the scandal has become in politics and how it continues to cast a shadow over Trump’s second term.
During a taping of “The Joe Rogan Experience,” Vice President JD Vance acknowledged the administration had overstated what it could provide to the public as it was “trying to respond to the political moment.”
“We absolutely screwed up the comms of the Epstein files. Like, we just did,” Vance said on the podcast. “But do I think the reason we screwed up the comms is because we were trying to hide something? No.”
Ruemmler was the latest in a parade of people from Epstein’s orbit — including former president Bill Clinton and Microsoft founder Bill Gates — to appear before the House Oversight Committee. The panel has spent months probing how Epstein’s political and business connections may have helped him escape accountability for running an alleged sex trafficking ring.
Judges and lawmakers say that over decades, Epstein abused, trafficked and molested scores of girls, many of whom have since come forward in court and other public forums. Federal authorities arrested Epstein on sex trafficking charges in 2019 and he died in custody later that year in what was ruled a suicide.
Emails included in the Epstein files documented a longstanding correspondence with Ruemmler, a former White House counsel to President Barack Obama, who offered advice to Epstein on how to handle questions about his 2008 charge for soliciting prostitution from a minor, for which he ultimately pleaded guilty. Following a public outcry, Ruemmler announced in February that she would resign from Goldman Sachs at the end of June.
In her opening remarks to the committee, Ruemmler expressed regret for her dealings with Epstein but said she had never witnessed any criminal activity — testimony that Democrats said rang untrue.
“[If] I had seen or heard any evidence suggesting that he was abusing women or girls, I would have immediately reported him,” Ruemmler said, according to prepared remarks.
With the committee’s work largely taking place out of view, the ongoing inquiry has offered Democrats another cudgel to go after Trump and his agenda.
Outside of the hearing Wednesday, Rep. Robert Garcia (D-California), the top Democrat on the committee, said Blanche’s handling of the Epstein files should disqualify him from becoming the country’s chief law enforcement officer.
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“Under no circumstance should the Senate confirm Mr. Blanche as attorney general,” Garcia said. “Mr. Blanche is someone that completely, completely made a mockery of the whole Epstein investigation.”
While running for president in 2024, Trump fanned conspiracy theories that Epstein was killed to protect powerful people whom he provided underage girls for sex. Trump pledged to release Justice Department files related to Epstein’s 2019 arrest, which many believed would expose a client list.
Then after taking office last year, the Trump administration reversed course, affirming that Epstein died by suicide and declining to make more documents public. That fueled new speculation on social media that Trump had become part of the cover-up after learning that his name appeared in the investigative files.
Trump and Epstein had a close friendship before falling out in the mid-2000s, but authorities have not accused Trump of participating in Epstein’s criminal conduct.
Led by Reps. Thomas Massie (R-Kentucky) and Ro Khanna (D-California), Congress voted in November to compel the Justice Department to release its unclassified records related to Epstein, with some exceptions.
The ensuing disclosure, overseen by then-deputy attorney general Blanche, was delayed and plagued with errors revealing sensitive data or unnecessarily withholding relevant information. Lawmakers complain that millions of documents have never been released.
Blanche — who as acting attorney general approved a deeply unpopular agreement this spring with Trump to create a $1.8 billion fund for people claiming to be targeted by political prosecutions — has drawn skepticism even from some Republicans and faces a tough path to confirmation in a closely divided Senate.
With several Epstein accusers watching, Blanche apologized during his confirmation hearing Wednesday for mistakes in the Epstein file redactions. But under questioning from Democratic senators, he largely defended his handling of the release and his decision to meet last summer with Ghislaine Maxwell, the former Epstein assistant and girlfriend who was convicted of sex trafficking in 2021.
“This administration, when it comes to Jeffrey Epstein, has been more transparent than any past administration, than Biden was or anybody else,” Blanche said.
Critics of Clayton, currently the U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York, have not brought up the Epstein files as often in their objections to his confirmation. His office, which had handled the Epstein prosecution in 2019, joined Justice Department lawyers to review documents before release.
But the chaos still hangs over him. On Wednesday, Sen. Martin Heinrich (D-New Mexico) pushed Clayton to take responsibility for fumbling the redactions.
“Harry Truman used to have a sign on his desk that said, ‘The buck stops here,’” Heinrich said. “Who has that sign on their desk in this case?”
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“For the Southern District documents, it was me,” Clayton said.
