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WASHINGTON (CN) — House Democrats on Friday stepped up their response to recent revelations that the Justice Department tracked their searches in the unredacted Jeffrey Epstein files, demanding that the agency immediately halt its surveillance and turn over a list of all the lawmakers it kept tabs on.
Top Democrats on the House judiciary and oversight committees also urged the Justice Department to overhaul how Epstein documents are reviewed, arguing that lawmakers and certain staff should be allowed to examine the files at the Capitol instead of at an offsite Justice Department facility.
The push followed a surprise this week after photos from Attorney General Pam Bondi’s House Judiciary Committee testimony appeared to show she had the search history of at least one lawmaker who reviewed the unredacted Epstein files. The Justice Department recently released roughly 3 million documents from the investigation into the late financier and sex offender and invited members this week to review a more sensitive, nonpublic version.
While lawmakers knew the department would log when the files were accessed, House Democrats said Friday the DOJ made “no mention” that it would track the content of members’ searches.
“In withholding this information, you deliberately concealed your intention to monitor, track and record every search we entered and every page we reviewed,” the lawmakers, led by Maryland Representative Jamie Raskin, told the attorney general in a letter obtained by Courthouse News.
The Democrats claimed Bondi and the Justice Department’s surveillance on members constituted a “flagrant assault on congressional oversight” and that the agency had violated the letter of the federal law passed last year, which directed it to publish the Epstein files.
“This surveillance of members as we perform our constitutional oversight duties, done without our knowledge or consent, is a blatant violation of the separation of powers and further evidence that this DOJ will stop at nothing to protect Jeffrey Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell’s co-conspirators, accomplices and enablers while denying justice to survivors and the American people,” wrote Raskin, who was joined by California Representative Robert Garcia and Washington Representative Pramila Jayapal.
Lawmakers also accused Bondi of violating the Constitution’s speech and debate clause, which protects members of Congress from liability for actions taken as part of their legislative duties.
They cited a 2007 D.C. Circuit decision in U.S. v. Rayburn House Office Building, where the court found the FBI violated the clause by searching a congressman’s office and seizing documents.
“[I]ndications as to what Congress is looking at provide clues as to what Congress is doing or might be about to do — and this is true whether or not the documents are sought for the purpose of inquiring into (or frustrating) legislative conduct or to advance some other goals,” the court ruled at the time.
The Democrats demanded Friday that the Justice Department commit in writing to “immediately” stop tracking what lawmakers search in the unredacted Epstein files and provide a full list of members it monitored, along with an explanation of why the information was collected.
They also told Bondi that she or a fellow representative must return to Capitol Hill before next Friday to discuss her agency’s surveillance practices and establish a new process for Congress to “meaningfully review” the files. As part of that process, they said the Justice Department should allow lawmakers and “select committee staffers” to review the documents at the Capitol without fear their searches are being monitored.
In a statement to Courthouse News, a spokesperson for the Justice Department said that the agency “has extended Congress the opportunity to review unredacted documents in the Epstein files.”
“As a part of that review, DOJ logs all searches made on its systems to protect against the release of victim information,” said the spokesperson.
Following Bondi’s pugilistic hearing in the Judiciary Committee this week, House Speaker Mike Johnson told reporters that it would not have been “appropriate” for the attorney general to consult lawmakers’ Epstein files searches but that he was still looking into the matter.
“It would obviously be an important line that’s crossed, and obviously we can’t allow for that,” said Johnson.
But other top House Republicans were nonplussed, including Judiciary Committee chairman Jim Jordan, who suggested that Democrats were being hypocritical and pointed to former special counsel Jack Smith’s collection of GOP phone toll records as part of his 2020 election interference probe.
“I think it’s pretty rich for people to raise this in light of what we’ve seen from Jack Smith,” Jordan said.
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