Release the rest of the Epstein files — now 

More than 50 years ago, whistleblower Daniel Ellsberg released thousands of pages of top-secret information that revealed how successive American presidents lied to the American people about the Vietnam War. Tens of thousands of U.S. servicemen died unnecessarily because of the cover-up.

Although the Pentagon Papers revealed a much different type of tragedy, the Epstein files will end with a similar result. One way or another, the truth will come out.  

The Pentagon Papers were a study of the Vietnam War ordered by Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara. They consisted of 47 volumes, 3,000 pages of analysis and 4,000 government documents. To hold them close, the task force that conducted the study made only 15 copies. 

Ellsberg was a contractor who worked on the study. In 1971, he put himself in legal jeopardy by giving a copy to Marcus Raskin, the late father of Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-Md.). Raskin, who worked at the National Security Council, linked Ellsberg up with The New York Times, which published the study on its front page. 

It revealed that Presidents Harry Truman, Dwight Eisenhower, John F. Kennedy and Lyndon Johnson had systematically lied to Congress and the American people about the war’s progress. They knew it was unwinnable but allowed it to continue. Although President Richard Nixon’s Vietnam policies were not part of the study, he continued the pattern. Tens of thousands of U.S. servicemen died needlessly.

The Pentagon Papers caused lasting damage to the American people’s trust in the federal government. That trust is being damaged again now by the Epstein papers, the millions of documents withheld from Congress and the American people by the U.S. Department of Justice. They may contain information about the sex trafficking of young women and even minors by powerful people in the orbit of convicted sex offenders Jeffrey Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell. 

Last November, with nearly unanimous bipartisan approval, Congress passed, and President Trump signed, the Epstein Files Transparency Act, which requires the Justice Department to publicly release all unclassified materials related to these allegations.  However, the department subsequently ignored the law’s deadline, releasing only 3 million documents that did not fully comply with the law’s instructions.

That puts Attorney General Pam Bondi, Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche and FBI Director Kash Patel in direct violation of the law. They are preventing justice for dozens of women and girls, some as young as 14, who were allegedly trafficked, raped or brutalized. The Justice Department’s failure to investigate thoroughly and prosecute spans several presidencies, both Republican and Democratic.

Raskin, who has seen many of the files, reports that Trump’s name appears “more than a million times.”  Because the president’s personal history is already riddled with allegations of inappropriate and unwanted sexual conduct with women, the Justice Department’s behavior leaves doubts as to whether the remaining files would “totally exonerate” him of wrongdoing in Epstein’s orbit, as he claims. If that is truly the case, he could remove any doubt by ordering the department to release them all now.

Congress’s credibility is now on the line. It must assert its oversight responsibility, and review the documents to determine whether there are legitimate reasons to withhold them from the public.

The Justice Department’s behavior already constitutes grounds for impeaching Bondi, Blanche and Patel. We shouldn’t assume that impeachment and conviction would be futile with Congress under Republican control. What member of Congress wants his or her legacy tarnished by helping to cover up sex crimes at the highest levels of society?  

With the entire House of Representatives and a third of the Senate facing reelection in eight months, who is willing to go on record as a co-conspirator in the Justice Department cover-up? Who wants to be on record that rich and powerful men are above the law, while children are unprotected from the vilest of crimes? And who wants to show that the Republican Party is loyal to, or afraid of, predators? 

We have seen Trump resort to dangerous behaviors to distract the country when he feels cornered. Reckless wars appear to be among them. It’s time for the government to prove it will demand justice without fear or favor. We shouldn’t have to rely on another Ellsberg to make it happen. 

William S. Becker is co-editor of and a contributor to “Democracy Unchained: How to Rebuild Government for the People,” and a contributor to Democracy in a Hotter Time, named by the journal Nature as one of 2023’s five best science books. He previously served as a senior official in the Wisconsin Department of Justice. He is currently executive director of the Presidential Climate Action Project.

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