House Oversight Committee Releases 137-Page Epstein Report Faulting Decades of Federal Mishandling
Republican staff of the U.S. House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform released a 137-page report on November 10 titled "A Review of the Federal Government's Mishandling of the Jeffrey Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell Criminal Investigations." Chairman James Comer said the 15-month inquiry conducted 19 transcribed interviews and depositions and reviewed records from the Justice Department, the Epstein estate and financial institutions; witnesses included Bill Clinton, Hillary Clinton, Bill Gates, Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick and former Attorney General Bill Barr.
The report says the federal government failed survivors for decades: crimes that could have been prevented after 2005 occurred because of investigative and prosecutorial failures in South Florida and Washington. In 2007 the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Southern District of Florida entered a non-prosecution agreement under which Epstein pleaded to state charges, was sentenced to 18 months, served about 13 months with broad work release, and victims were not notified.
The report also says that on the night of Epstein's 2019 death in a New York federal jail, understaffing and systemic failures led two guard shifts to miss at least 12 rounds and three counts, leaving him without proper supervision for nearly eight hours. It criticizes the Justice Department's communication and redactions after the 2025 Epstein Files Transparency Act, including disclosure of survivors' sensitive personal information, and faulted financial institutions for missing clear signs of trafficking and immigration fraud. The report says the records reviewed contained no material implicating Donald Trump in Epstein or Maxwell crimes.
The committee recommended that the Justice Department interview or re-interview key witnesses, investigate new sexual-assault allegations and let survivors view their own files unredacted, and urged passage of Comer's Survivor's Voice Protection Act to limit nondisclosure agreements imposed on sexual-assault survivors. A Justice Department spokesperson responded that the Epstein case is not closed. The committee's ranking Democrat, Robert Garcia, criticized the report as based on an incomplete investigation with no public hearings and said the Justice Department is still withholding more than 2.5 million pages.
Source: U.S. House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform
Published by GSM · USA (original Chinese edition)
Photo: 图：美国国会大厦西立面（资料图）。图：美国国会大厦建筑师办公室，公共领域，经维基共享资源 / The west front of the U.S. Capitol (file photo). Photo by the Architect of the Capitol, public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
