Former Biden White House press secretary Jen Psaki raised alarm recently about an international ‘web’ surrounding Jeffrey Epstein’s sex-trafficking case, echoing remarks from many Democrats who have seized on the politically expedient topic in the wake of the Department of Justice releasing Epstein’s unclassified case files.
‘It is Trump, yes. … But it is the wealthy, the elites, and basically every faction of the world,’ Psaki, a political analyst for MS Now, said in a video clip. ‘It’s global leaders. It’s people in the business sector. It is people in Hollywood probably, who knows. It is a bunch of people who think that they can get away with anything.’
Democrats have since last year claimed that Epstein’s case has newfound salience because Trump, once among Epstein’s many wealthy friends before Epstein was accused of trafficking underage girls, was, in their view, suspiciously dismissive of the files when he took office.
Republicans have countered, however, that Democrats had full access to the documents for four years under the Biden administration — when Psaki served as the chief White House spokesperson — and neither released them nor uncovered information damaging to Trump. Fox News Digital reached out to Psaki for comment.
Rep. Jamie Raskin, D-Md., ranking member of the House Judiciary Committee, told Fox News Digital claims of Democratic inconsistency ‘are seriously detached from reality’ and pointed to his own investigations dating back to 2019 into former Trump Labor Secretary Alex Acosta’s handling of a 2008 plea deal with Epstein.
Raskin argued the Democratic Party has not shifted, but rather that the Trump administration has.
‘Trump abruptly killed the ongoing federal investigation into Epstein’s co-conspirators when he took office,’ Raskin said, alleging the administration undertook a ‘massive redaction project’ to hide evidence of Trump’s and others’ ties to Epstein.
The DOJ in January released more than three million pages of files but signaled that another three million were withheld because they contained victim information or were protected by various privileges.
‘Democrats have always fought to support an investigation of Epstein’s co-conspirators,’ Raskin said. ‘We have always been on the side of full transparency and justice for the victims.’
House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, D-N.Y., has made similar remarks, saying, ‘All we want is full transparency, so that the American people can get the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth.’
The heightened Democratic push for transparency comes after years during which the party showed more intermittent interest in Epstein’s case, which some Democrats have attributed to the sensitivity of seeking information while Epstein associate Ghislaine Maxwell’s sex trafficking case was pending and while some of Epstein’s victims were pursuing litigation.
But the Democrats’ new, unified fixation on Epstein has come as Republicans have struggled to manage the issue, which has caused intra-party fractures.
The files became a political thorn for the administration after Attorney General Pam Bondi’s chaotic rollout last year of already-public files by the DOJ, which enraged a faction of Trump’s base who had been expecting new information.
The DOJ said at the time that it would not disclose further files because of court orders and victim privacy and said the department found no information that would warrant bringing charges against anyone else. In a turnabout, however, Bondi ordered a review, at Trump’s direction, of Epstein’s alleged connections to Democrats, including former President Bill Clinton.
The president, who was closely associated with Epstein but was never accused of any crimes related to him, also relented to months-long pressure to sign a transparency bill last year that ordered the DOJ to release all of its Epstein-related records within 30 days. Among the most vocal supporters of the bill was former Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, R-Ga., which resulted in her highly public falling out with the president, whom she once fervently supported.
The Epstein saga has also plagued the administration because some of Trump’s allies, now in top roles in the DOJ, once promoted the existence of incriminating, nonpublic Epstein files, including a supposed list of sexual predators who were his clients. FBI Director Kash Patel, for instance, said in 2023 the government was hiding ‘Epstein’s list’ of ‘pedophiles.’ But the DOJ leaders failed to deliver on those claims upon taking office.
House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., meanwhile, faced accusations from Democrats that he kept the House in recess for about two months in the summer to avoid votes on Epstein transparency legislation. Johnson shot back that Democrats had, in his view, been lax on the Epstein case until Trump took office.
‘We’re not going to allow the Democrats to use this for political cover. They had four years,’ Johnson told reporters at the time. ‘Remember, the Biden administration held the Epstein files for four years and not a single one of these Democrats, or anyone in Congress, made any thought about that at all.’
The House Oversight Committee has also spurred infighting over how Epstein material has been handled, as it has been actively engaged in subpoenaing, reviewing, and releasing large batches of Epstein-related records from both the DOJ and Epstein’s estate.
Committee Republicans have said their Democratic counterparts ‘cherry-picked’ material to release, such as photos featuring Trump and Epstein, and that they ‘keep trying to create a fake hoax by being dishonest, deceptive, and shamelessly deranged.’