Representatives Ro Khanna and Thomas Massie are attempting to hold Attorney General Pam Bondi in contempt and fine her for every day she doesn’t release the full Epstein files. 

The representatives’ bipartisan bill requiring the Justice Department to release the files passed through Congress, leading to the release of hundreds of thousands of heavily redacted images and documents on Friday. But the DOJ  didn’t release all of the files by the deadline. Khanna is worried about the DOJ’s “selective concealment” of documents that may implicate President Trump, who was a good friend of Jeffrey Epstein. The DOJ has already been criticized for redacting many names from the files, including Trump’s, a move totally devoid of transparency.

“The quickest way, and I think most expeditious way, to get justice for these victims is to bring inherent contempt against Pam Bondi,” Massie told CBS’s Face the Nation. “Ro Khanna and I are talking about and drafting that right now.

“Our goal is not to take down Bondi,” Khanna told The Washington Post. “Our goal is to get the documents out for the survivors. Our goal is to take down the rich and powerful men who went to rape island and covered up the abuse.”

It is unclear whether Massie and Khanna’s effort to hold Bondi in contempt will be fruitful, as the Justice Department and Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche have already rejected the notion.

What is clear is that both parties are tired of the dawdling, the dishonesty, and the redactions. 

“The administration has struggled for months and months with something that they initially ginned up, and then sort of tried to tamp down,” Republican Senator Rand Paul told ABC on Sunday. “So any evidence or any kind of indication that there’s not a full reveal on this, this will just plague them for months and months more. So my suggestion would be: Give up all the information.”

Newly released transcripts of Ghislaine Maxwell’s July interview with the Justice Department depict a surprisingly chilly relationship between Donald Trump and Jeffrey Epstein, despite varied reports that the glitterati socialites were each other’s closest friends.

In transcripts made available Friday by the Epstein Files Transparency Act, Maxwell noted that Trump was “always very cordial and very kind” to her, and that she admired his “extraordinary achievement in becoming the president.”

“So that is the sum and substance of my entire relationship with him,” Maxwell told Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche, according to the transcript.

Trump was photographed with Maxwell several times over his long friendship with Epstein: She and Trump partied together, attended fashion shows together, and went “out on the town” together, according to a 1997 postcard.

When asked about Trump’s relationship with the notorious child sex trafficker, Maxwell was equally reserved.

“I don’t know how they met, and I don’t know how they became friends,” Maxwell said. “I certainly saw them together and I remember the few times I observed them together, but they were friendly. I mean, they seemed friendly.”

She went on to claim that she had only ever seen the socialites together in public, and never in private—despite flight logs indicating that Trump flew aboard Epstein’s private jet several times and an email from Epstein’s estate in which he said Trump was “with” him on Thanksgiving 2017.

“I think they were friendly like people are in social settings. I don’t—I don’t think they were close friends or I certainly never witnessed the President in any of—I don’t recall ever seeing him in his house, for instance,” Maxwell said.

“I actually never saw the President in any type of massage setting,” she continued, casually referring to a grooming tactic she and Epstein would employ to bypass nonconsensual sexual contact. The larger Epstein files release Friday included a note detailing some 254 masseuses in Epstein’s contact files.

“I never witnessed the President in any inappropriate setting in any way. The President was never inappropriate with anybody. In the times that I was with him, he was a gentleman in all respects.”

That would be very surprising, considering that Epstein and Trump allegedly enjoyed being sexually inappropriate in public together, reportedly bonding over “trophy hunting” women. Further still, Trump has openly boasted about his sexual entitlement, claiming that he likes to “grab” women “by the pussy.”

Maxwell was sentenced in 2022 to 20 years in jail for playing an active role in Epstein’s crimes, identifying and grooming vulnerable young women while normalizing their abuse at the hands of her millionaire boyfriend. Maxwell’s attorneys have pressed the White House for a pardon for several months now, and the British ex-socialite signaled in a court filing earlier this month that she would ask a court to free her from her captivity.

Whether the DOJ interview was intended as a quid pro quo is still unclear, but shortly after the information exchange, Maxwell—one of the worst sex criminals of the century—received an extremely cushy transfer, shipping her from a Florida prison to a low-security prison camp in Texas that lawmakers have described as “not suitable for a sex offender.”

Of course, in the same testimony, the famed manipulator also vehemently denied that “anything inappropriate happened” while she was with Epstein.

“I never saw a tear,” Maxwell told Blanche.

Trump has not been charged with any crimes related to Epstein or Maxwell.

Surprise, surprise: President Donald Trump was in Jeffrey Epstein’s contact list.

Buried in the massive trove of documents released by the Department of Justice Friday........

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