An Obama-appointed federal judge on Wednesday stopped yet another bipartisan Congressional attempt to ensure the Justice Department obeys the law over the release of the Epstein files.
Congress attempted to appoint an independent monitor to oversee the release of all files related to disgraced billionaire pedophile Jeffrey Epstein, but were denied by the Obama-appointed judge.
U.S. District Judge Paul Engelmayer of the Southern District of New York said he lacks jurisdiction to appoint a special master to oversee the DoJ’s compliance with the Epstein Files Transparency Act, which passed Congress with overwhelming bipartisan support and was signed into law by President Donald Trump in November.
Since then, less than one percent of the Epstein files have been released to the public as legally required. The DoJ has missed numerous deadlines.
The judge’s seven-page ruling halts a bipartisan effort by Republican Rep. Thomas Massie of Kentucky and Democratic Rep. Ro Khanna of California to participate in the Ghislaine Maxwell case as friends of the court. The two lawmakers co-authored the Epstein Files Transparency Act, which required the Justice Department to release all evidence gathered during decades of investigations into Epstein by December 19, 2025.
Engelmayer was nominated to the federal bench by President Barack Obama in February 2011 and confirmed by the Senate in July 2011 by a vote of 98-0.
“We appreciate the judge’s thoughtful consideration of our letter and we remain determined to force the DOJ to follow our law using other avenues available to us and the survivors,” Massie said in a statement.
Khanna told Fox News they will continue their effort to force the Department of Justice to release all files related to Epstein.
“We appreciate Judge Engelmayer’s timely response and attention to our request, and we respect his decision,” he said. “He said that we raised ‘legitimate concerns’ about whether DOJ is complying with the law. We will continue to use every legal option to ensure the files are released and the survivors see justice.”
The Justice Department has released only a tiny fraction of the documents in its possession over a month after the deadline. In a court filing earlier this month, Attorney General Pam Bondi and Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche revealed the DOJ has made public just 12,285 documents totaling roughly 125,575 pages — and still has more than 2 million documents to review.
In their letter to Engelmayer, Massie and Khanna called the Justice Department’s conduct “a flagrant violation of the mandatory disclosure obligations under the Epstein Files Transparency Act.”
“Put simply, the DOJ cannot be trusted with making mandatory disclosures under the Act,” they wrote. “Absent an independent process, as outlined above, we do not believe the DOJ will produce the records that are required by the Act and what it has represented to this Court.”
The DOJ’s release of only 12,000 documents out of more than 2 million documents is a flagrant and outrageous violation of the law, they said.
They also cited reports that said the Justice Department actually has more than 5 million additional documents, a number far larger than the 2 million it had disclosed.
“Because these figures are self-reported and internally inconsistent with prior representations, there is reasonable suspicion that the DOJ has overstated the scope of responsive materials, thereby portraying compliance as unmanageable and effectively delaying disclosure,” Massie and Khanna wrote.
“The conduct by the DOJ is not only a flagrant violation of the mandatory disclosure obligations under the Epstein Files Transparency Act, but as this Court has recognized in its previous rulings, the behavior by the DOJ has caused serious trauma to survivors,” they wrote.
Still, the Obama-appointed judge ruled he cannot grant the congressmen’s request because they are not part of the case that led to Maxwell’s December 2021 sex trafficking conviction.
“The only parties to the case are Maxwell and the United States, the latter represented, as is always the case, by DOJ,” the judge wrote. “The Indictment against Maxwell brought charges under six federal criminal statutes. Those were not brought under the EFTA, which did not exist at the time and is not a criminal statute. And this case is now effectively closed.”