Epstein Forums

Early last year, Republicans from the House Judiciary Committee were invited to a private dinner at the Justice Department. Representative Thomas Massie of Kentucky remembers asking his then girlfriend, now wife, what he should ask Attorney General Pam Bondi. She suggested he bring up Jeffrey Epstein. At first, he waved off the suggestion. But as he sat at the long formal table, set with formal china and surrounded by top Justice officials, he changed his mind.

“‘I saw you release the ‘Phase 1’ of the Epstein files,” Massie remembers asking Bondi at the April 28 dinner. “When do you think we might get ‘Phase 2’?’”

Bondi looked him in the eyes, Massie said, and explained that all that was left to be released was material she considered “child pornography” and that there was nothing more there. He didn’t follow up then, but her answer didn’t sit right.

“I suspected there was stuff that needed to come out,” he told me.

After the Justice Department announced in July that it would not share any more records, Representative Ro Khanna of California held a morning strategy meeting with his staff and asked for ideas for new bills. Sarah Drory, a young communications staffer who had never before spoken up in this meeting, had a suggestion: “What about a bill to release the Epstein files?”

The room was silent. Drory saw her more senior colleagues exchange confused or dismissive looks. One declared Epstein “a social-media thing.” On her walk home late that night, she called her boyfriend, second-guessing her suggestion. “Is that crazy?” she remembers asking him—and herself.