Louisiana Republican Sen. John Kennedy pressed FBI Director Kash Patel on Tuesday to continue the release of files in the Jeffrey Epstein case, specifically information about who other than Epstein, if anyone, was on the receiving end of girls and women being sex trafficked.
“The issue’s not gonna go away,” said Kennedy during the Senate Judiciary Committee’s FBI oversight hearing, where Patel was testifying. “I think you’re gonna have to do more to satisfy the American people’s understandable curiosity in that regard.”
Kennedy’s comments were notable as the Trump administration battles complaints about the Justice Department’s slow, piecemeal approach to turning over materials related to the late, convicted sex offender — including from fellow Republicans.
Patel said he agreed with Kennedy’s assessment — a stark contrast with President Donald Trump’s repeated comments that the obsession with the Epstein case was nothing more than a “hoax.”
“I am not saying that others were not trafficked and others were not involved,” Patel said. “The information we are releasing now is historic and it is also to the maximum capacity that the law allows.”
Patel during his testimony has repeatedly pinned blame on Alex Acosta, Trump’s first-term Labor secretary, as a reason for the government’s blind spots on Epstein.
Acosta, who oversaw the Justice Department’s early 2000s prosecution of Epstein, struck a plea deal with Epstein that included a non-prosecution agreement for other potential crimes. That deal, Patel said repeatedly, amounted to a “get-out-of-jail-free” card that limited the federal government’s ability to pursue certain investigative threads.
Patel also said the absence of evidence that Epstein trafficked minors to other people may be a function of those limitations. And he suggested the FBI’s decision not to release some records to the public may also be tied up because of that earlier arrangement.
