Two Democratic lawmakers involved in the US congressional investigation into the disgraced financier Jeffrey Epstein on Friday condemned Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor’s “silence” in response to their request that he sit for a deposition.
Robert Garcia, the ranking member of the House oversight committee, and Suhas Subramanyam, a member of the panel, were among the Democrats who earlier this month sent the former British prince a letter seeking his cooperation in their inquiry into Epstein, who died in 2019 while awaiting trial on sex-trafficking charges.
“Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor’s silence in the face of the Oversight Democrats’ demand for testimony speaks volumes,” Garcia and Subramanyam said Friday, a day after the deadline they had set to receive Mountbatten-Windsor’s response.
Documents the committee has obtained – many of which came from Epstein’s estate – along with testimony from abuse survivor Virginia Giuffre, “raise serious questions” the ex-prince “must answer, yet he continues to hide”, the lawmakers continued.
“Our work will move forward with or without him, and we will hold anyone who was involved in these crimes accountable, no matter their wealth, status, or political party. We will get justice for the survivors.”
Democrats on the investigative committee appear to have few options to compel Mountbatten-Windsor to talk. As the minority party, they lack the power to issue subpoenas, and the Republican chair James Comer has not commented on if he would take such a step against the former prince.
Even if one was issued, Mountbatten-Windsor – who has strongly denied wrongdoing – could avoid the legal penalties for non-compliance by not coming to the United States.
The lawmakers issued their statement days after Donald Trump had signed into law the Epstein Files Transparency Act, which will compel attorney general Pam Bondi to release documents related to the government’s handling of his case within 30 days.
Trump, a one-time friend of Epstein, tried to stop the bill from moving through Congress, but backed down when it appeared clear it had the votes to pass the House of Representatives. However, the law includes exemptions for the release of documents that could undermine national security and jeopardize investigations.
Critics have accused Bondi of being a Trump loyalist who has used the law enforcement agency’s powers to protect the president and retaliate against his allies. Last week, she announced that she would investigate ties between Epstein and Democrats, shortly after Trump demanded she do so.
In a letter to Bondi on Friday, Garcia wrote that “politically motivated investigations are not a legitimate justification for withholding or redacting records” under the newly passed law.
“There is already a concern president Trump will attempt, on dubious legal grounds, to exploit a provision which allows [the] DoJ to withhold information relevant to ongoing investigations,” Garcia said, echoing a concern expressed by Republican senators this week.
He also noted that the committee is awaiting the justice department’s response to a subpoena they issued in August for documents related to Epstein, which Garcia said can be shared in their entirety with lawmakers, even if they are involved in an investigation.
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“Any additional federal investigations launched by the DoJ or the president do not impact our subpoena,” Garcia wrote, while adding that “the identity of survivors and potential victims” can be protected.
In September, the justice department turned over more than 33,000 documents to the committee in response to its subpoena, but most of them were already publicly available.
A source familiar said that the justice department is “sitting on a mountain of information” that may total up to 300 gigabytes of files. These include interview transcripts, court documents and emails, as well as records from the investigation that led to Epstein’s 2008 guilty plea to sexual abuse charges in Florida, and the sex trafficking investigation that led to his 2019 arrest in New York, sources said.
As he campaigned to return to the White House last year, Trump, alongside his allies, made statements indicating that there was more to be revealed about Epstein and his ties to global elites.
But in July, the justice department and FBI released a memo saying that they had no further information to share about his activities or relationships, while concluding that his death was a suicide, despite conspiracy theories to the contrary.
The announcement sparked an uproar among Trump’s supporters, leading to a drawn out congressional campaign to force release of government files related to the case that culminated in this week’s passage of the Epstein Files Transparency Act.
Source: US Politics - theguardian.com
