A left-leaning legal organization launched a lawsuit Friday that seeks to force the Trump administration to produce records over its recent handling of disgraced financier Jeffrey Epstein’s sex-trafficking case.
Democracy Forward Foundation’s suit asks a federal judge to expedite processing of the group’s Freedom of Information Act requests, which demand the Justice Department and FBI hand over records they created about Epstein in recent months.
The requests seek documents compiled for Attorney General Pam Bondi, including briefing materials she used to prepare for a May meeting with Trump, where Bondi reportedly told the president his name was in the Epstein files.
It also seeks recent communications that senior DOJ and FBI officials had about Epstein, which would include efforts made by Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche, who interviewed longtime Epstein associate Ghislaine Maxwell over two days last month.
Maxwell, who started serving a 20-year prison sentence in 2022 as a convicted accomplice to Epstein, was moved after the interview to a minimum-security federal prison camp in Texas.
The lawsuit comes as pressure grows on the Trump administration, including from many of the president’s political supporters, to release more files about Epstein, his former friend on the New York City and Palm Beach social circuits.
The issue has dominated public attention — and caused rare rebuke from MAGA influencers online — since the DOJ and FBI released a joint memo last month indicating he died by suicide in his jail cell in 2019 and had no incriminating client list, in an apparent effort to counter right-wing conspiracies about Epstein’s death and open questions about his high-profile associates.
“President Trump has repeatedly said he would release the Epstein files, his spokesperson claims his administration is ‘the most transparent in history,’ and yet, they continue to hide from the American people. The only thing transparent about the Trump-Vance administration is how clearly they continue to disregard our nation’s laws,” said Skye Perryman, president and CEO of Democracy Forward, in a statement.
The new lawsuit adds to several dozen that Democracy Forward has filed against the administration since Trump took office.
The Justice Department declined to comment on the lawsuit.
Judicial Watch, a right-leaning group, has also sued the Justice Department and FBI for documents related to Epstein. Though the two cases have some overlap, Judicial Watch’s records requests predate any of the developments in recent weeks and are aimed at uncovering older records concerning Epstein’s case.
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