Congressional Republicans are pressing for renewed investigations into sex crimes cases involving disgraced financier Jeffrey Epstein and accomplice Ghislaine Maxwell, accusing authorities of mishandling the case for decades.
The US House of Representatives Committee on Oversight and Government Reform on Tuesday released a new 137-page report marking the most comprehensive investigation yet by lawmakers into the federal government’s handling of the Epstein saga.
The findings condemned federal investigators and prosecutors in South Florida and Washington for alleged negligence, which the committee said allowed the late sex offender’s abuse to go unchecked as far back as 2005, when Epstein’s crimes first came to light in Palm Beach, Florida.
“What we found was both heartbreaking and infuriating,” Republican Representative James Comer of Kentucky, who chairs the committee, said in a video address.
“These women endured unimaginable abuse, and the federal government failed them at nearly every turn,” he added. “Had the government done its job, much of this abuse could have been prevented.”
The committee, which currently holds a Republican majority, is the House’s main investigative panel and has the power to subpoena witnesses and documents.
Democrats will take control of the chamber in January after a historic victory in the November 3 midterm elections, and California Representative Robert Garcia, the committee’s top Democrat, formally announced his bid to chair it in a letter to colleagues on Thursday.
Potential conflicts of interest
The latest findings cap a 15-month Republican-led congressional inquiry that involved 19 transcribed interviews and depositions, subpoenas to federal agencies, financial institutions and Epstein’s estate, and an extensive review of financial records.
Its conclusions asserted that a combination of bureaucratic indifference, missed warnings and compromised plea deals consistently shielded Epstein and his associates while denying justice to their victims.
In one such instance, GOP lawmakers sharply rebuked a controversial 2007 non-prosecution agreement in South Florida that effectively shelved Epstein’s federal case after he pleaded guilty to lesser state offences.
Florida prosecutors, working alongside the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), at the time granted him a lenient 18-month sentence alongside extensive work-release privileges, a period during which he continued to abuse women, according to the report.
The panel ascribed the outcomes to “poor judgment” and Epstein’s influence, while flagging potential conflicts of interest involving two former prosecutors, Matthew Menchel and Bruce Reinhart, then employed in the US Attorney’s Office (USAO) for the Southern District of Florida.
“Former US Attorney Alexander Acosta’s hands-off approach to the investigation and his failures to oversee the daily involvement of those at the USAO left the investigation in the hands of potential Epstein loyalists,” the report read.
Cell left unmonitored
Separately, the report blamed understaffing and institutional dysfunction at the New York federal jail where Epstein died by alleged suicide in August 2019, revealing that guards skipped 12 patrols and three inmate counts, failing to perform the required 30-minute safety checks.
Epstein was being housed in the Metropolitan Correctional Center’s (MCC) Special Housing Unit when his cell was left unmonitored for nearly eight hours the night he died.
According to testimony provided to the committee by Tova Noel, a former MCC correctional officer who performed Epstein’s final cell check, the critical lapse was simply “the MCC way”.
The committee’s report defined the jail’s institutional culture as one in which “departures from established policies and procedures had become routine”.
To deliver long-awaited accountability, the Republican-led committee urged the Department of Justice (DOJ) to interview or re-interview key witnesses and to investigate Epstein associates accused of criminal activity. The report includes testimony from a witness who accused two high-profile figures of abuse: former Miami Beach Mayor Philip Levine and French celebrity hairstylist Frederic Fekkai.
“The evidence we uncovered makes clear that the Department of Justice must interview or re-interview key witnesses, investigate Epstein associates accused of criminal activity, and ensure survivors have access to their records,” Comer said in a statement, adding that “Congress must also pass legislation protecting the ability of individuals with knowledge of sexual abuse and survivors to speak freely about these crimes, regardless of nondisclosure agreements”.
‘Witch hunt’
The report also dismissed the committee Democrats’ probe into Trump as an “unfounded witch hunt”, saying they were “obsessed with trying to implicate President Trump and insinuate that he was involved in the crimes of Epstein and Maxwell”.
Questions remain about whether the DOJ provided all required records under the Epstein Files Transparency Act, a measure passed by a near-unanimous Congress and signed into law by US President Donald Trump in November 2025.
The rushed nature of the disclosure led to “deficient redaction” that “exposed sensitive information” belonging to victims, the GOP-led report added.
The panel further recommended measures granting survivors access to unredacted personal files and urged passing the Survivor’s Voice Protection Act to prohibit using non-disclosure agreements to conceal sexual abuse.
Source: www.aljazeera.com
