Oversight Project’s Statement on the Epstein Discharge Petition
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
November 18, 2025
Washington, D.C. — Congress’ poorly written and thought-out discharge petition will do little to meaningfully inform the public regarding their true concerns about the sordid Epstein scandal. This exercise in political theater is yet another example of Congress appearing to fix a problem, failing to do so, and then patting themselves on the back in public while pretending they got the job done. It is cheap political grandstanding.
Americans want to know what connections Jeffrey Epstein had with the intelligence community, both foreign and domestic. The Attorney General, after stating that she did not know if Epstein had intelligence equities, promised from the White House that she would get back to us on that matter. She has not.
If the intelligence community was aware of what was happening with Epstein and looked away so that it could profit from the information derived, then it should be subject to an absolute overhaul. If the intelligence community was somehow completely unaware of rampant illegal and morally reprehensible activities by some of the world’s most powerful people, then it also should be subject to an absolute overhaul.
The discharge petition is weak and poorly drafted. First, it applies only to records in the possession of the Justice Department. What about the rest of the U.S. government? Second, it has no enforcement mechanism if the Executive Branch refuses to comply. It doesn’t define what compliance even looks like. The American people are once again in the dark on what successful implementation looks like. Third, the discharge petition leaves extraordinary discretion to the Executive Branch to determine what information gets released. It borrows privacy provisions from the Freedom of Information Act that have been abused for decades and used to invalidly redact information. It presumably leaves the Justice Department the discretion to determine whether releasing materials will implicate ongoing investigations and implores the Attorney General to declassify information “to the maximum extent possible.” That’s not transparency, that’s begging.
A standard congressional subpoena, if enforced, would have had more teeth than this.
While Republican politicians may think this meaningless action solves a political problem for them, particularly as Democrats breathe false light into the matter to attack President Trump, this only guarantees that the public scandal will live on.
The truth is that this whole imbroglio has been a debacle from the start. The FBI and DOJ’s highly unusual and incoherent memo in July purporting to shut down the whole matter after what they called an “exhaustive review” of existing material ensured that this plane would never be landed without massive contradictions.
We would rather not be speaking about the Epstein scandal, but we started the Oversight Project to represent the interests of everyday Americans who want to see accountability. There is no denying that everyday Americans are deeply interested in this matter. Professional Washington, D.C. would prefer they not be. But everyday Americans are sick and tired of seeing a different set of rules applied to the rich and powerful. That is true for an economy that isn’t working for them as much as it is true for the lack of transparency and accountability with the Epstein scandal.
The government can either come clean or not, but fake half measures out of Washington D.C. do nothing but guarantee a continued loss of faith in our institutions. Remember that it is your government, and they work for you.