Democrats on the House oversight committee, led by Representative Robert Garcia, plan to call on JD Vance to testify on the Trump administration’s handling of the Epstein files following a major report on Wednesday from the New York Times, which described how the Epstein files became the source of an internal crisis within Trump’s administration.
- +Democrats to call on Vance to testify to House committee over Epstein files
Garcia will call on the committee chair, James Comer, to summon the vice-president to speak, according to a post from Max Cohen, a reporter with Punchbowl News.
Garcia will call on the committee chair, James Comer, to summon the vice-president to speak, according to a post from Max Cohen, a reporter with Punchbowl News. The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment about whether Vance would agree to appear.
According to the New York Times report, the Epstein files became the source of an internal crisis within Trump’s administration. Vance warned fellow officials the controversy represented a “huge problem” while senior aides held a series of Situation Room meetings – frequently without Trump present – to address the growing issue.
According to the Times, the White House chief of staff, Susie Wiles, felt that Vance was exaggerating the significance of the matter and believed he had “bought into the conspiracy theories”.
That reporting appears to have prompted Garcia’s request. “Why are we having meetings in the Situation Room about the Epstein strategy?” he said to Punchbowl.
The story follows months of controversy surrounding the government’s treatment of records connected to Jeffrey Epstein, the financier and convicted sex offender who died in a New York City jail in 2019 while awaiting trial on sex-trafficking charges.
The dispute intensified after a 2025 justice department memo concluded there was no evidence of a “client list”, drawing criticism from many Trump supporters. The subsequent release of millions of pages of documents under the Epstein Files Transparency Act continued to fuel attention on the issue.
According to the Times report, those participating in the meetings alongside Vance and Wiles included the then attorney general, Pam Bondi, now acting attorney general, Todd Blanche, FBI director, Kash Patel, White House communications director, Steve Cheung, former deputy chief of staff Taylor Budowich and White House press secretary, Karoline Leavitt.
Multiple attenders, including Cheung, reportedly viewed the Epstein situation as a “PR disaster”.
The report says officials explored various possible responses, including transparency measures that some privately believed would reveal little additional information. They also discussed less conventional approaches, including the possibility of using Ghislaine Maxwell to publicly defend Trump in an interview with Tucker Carlson.
Vance argued for releasing all of the files and taking action before Congress could advance the Epstein Files Transparency Act, according to the report, which would compel the administration to disclose more information.
At the same time, aides were said to be focused largely on the possibility of losing support from core Maga voters rather than concern about political opponents, suggesting that worries about their own base heavily influenced the administration’s handling of the matter.
The Times reporters wrote that numerous Trump administration officials, Bondi among them, had either “grossly underestimated or simply been blind to the voracious appetite of the Maga base for information about Epstein”.
Their reporting also states that infighting and finger-pointing spread among officials and reached a peak after the Wall Street Journal reported in July that Trump had allegedly sent Epstein a “bawdy” birthday message in 2003 accompanied by a drawing of a woman’s naked silhouette.
Trump responded by denying the legitimacy of the letter and filing a $10bn lawsuit against its publishers. A Florida judge dismissed the lawsuit in March, but the president’s legal team refiled the suit last month.
The administration is still scrambling to deal with the fallout of the botched release. The Republicans who took the hardest stances in favor of releasing the entirety of the files have seen their political careers upended by Trump.
Marjorie Taylor Greene, one of the most vocal Republicans in calling for the release of files, resigned in January after months of being lambasted by Trump. Nancy Mace, the controversial Republican congresswoman, was defeated in the South Carolina primary earlier this week, attributing her loss to her support for releasing the Epstein files, a move that prompted Trump to give his endorsement to her opponent.
Perhaps most notably, the maverick congressman Thomas Massie of Kentucky was ousted after voters rejected him in favor of his challenger, Ed Gallrein, who was recruited into the race by Trump. Massie, a lifelong Republican, had spearheaded the bipartisan Epstein Files Transparency Act alongside the Democratic representative Ro Khanna.
“Everybody’s paying a price for it,” Massie told NBC News, in reference to holding an unwavering stance in favor of Epstein file transparency. “Trump became irrationally opposed to that more than [defections on] the ‘big, beautiful bill’. It struck a nerve with him.”
More recently, scrutiny has been revived as congressional investigators have gathered fresh testimony from people associated with Epstein, including his longtime executive assistant, Lesley Groff. On Wednesday, the committee announced it would be asking Alan Dershowitz, Epstein’s former attorney, to appear before the panel.
