Speaker Mike Johnson said Thursday he disapproves of the Justice Department surveilling lawmakers who come to agency headquarters to review the unredacted Jeffrey Epstein files.
“I don’t think it’s appropriate for anybody to be tracking that,” Johnson told reporters. “So I will echo that to anybody involved with DOJ, and I’m sure it was an oversight. That’s my guess.”
This week, members of Congress have been invited to a DOJ office building to read materials related to the federal case against Epstein that have not been scrubbed for public consumption.
“Members should obviously have the right to peruse those at their own speed and with their own discretion,” Johnson said.
But revelations came to light Wednesday, when Attorney General Pam Bondi was testifying before the House Judiciary Committee, that the department might be keeping tabs on which documents lawmakers are viewing on official computers. During Bondi’s appearance on Capitol Hill, a photo was taken of her research binder that revealed a print-out page of the “Search History” for Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.).
“It is an outrage that DOJ is tracking Members’ investigative steps undertaken to ensure that DOJ is complying with the Epstein File Transparency Act and using this information for the Attorney General’s embarrassing polemical purposes,” said Rep. Jamie Raskin of Maryland, the top Democrat on the Judiciary Committee, in a statement.
Jayapal said in an interview with NPR that she had also raised her concerns with Johnson.
House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, at his weekly news conference Thursday, said he would follow up to ensure Johnson is pressing the matter with the DOJ directly and “make clear to him that his job is to defend this institution.”
Jeffries continued, “it does violate the principles of separate and co-equal branches of government. And of course, my Republican colleagues should be denouncing it, but they will not, because they simply are reckless rubber stamps for Donald Trump’s extreme behavior.”
Asked whether Democrats would seek reprisal for the DOJ tracking, Jeffries said “accountability can either happen right now” or “in the aftermath of the November midterm elections,” when the New Yorker is bullish that his party will retake control of the House.
A Justice Department spokesperson did not immediately return a request for comment about the motivation behind monitoring lawmakers’ searches or plans to stop the practice.
