The two congressmen who co-sponsored the law forcing the Justice Department to release its Jeffrey Epstein investigative files are now drafting articles of impeachment against Attorney General Pam Bondi, saying the department's Friday document dump fell far short of what the law required.
Rep. Ro Khanna, a California Democrat, and Rep. Thomas Massie, a Kentucky Republican, are also considering whether Bondi should be held in contempt of Congress. Khanna said no final decisions have been made, but the bipartisan pair plans to evaluate whether the Justice Department complies with the "spirit of the law" in the coming weeks.
The Justice Department did release thousands of documents by its Friday deadline. But according to Khanna, what arrived was incomplete and heavily censored.
"What we found out is the most important documents are missing."
Khanna added that the released materials contained "excessive redactions," a complaint that will sound familiar to anyone who has watched the federal bureaucracy treat transparency laws as suggestions.
The Khanna-Massie alliance is one of the more unusual pairings in Congress. A progressive California Democrat and a libertarian-leaning Kentucky Republican don't agree on much. What they agree on here is that the American public deserves to see what the Justice Department knows about a convicted sex offender whose network of powerful associates has never been fully exposed.
That bipartisan foundation makes the impeachment threat harder to dismiss as partisan theater. This isn't one party trying to kneecap the other's attorney general. This is two members from opposite ends of the ideological spectrum saying the same thing: the documents aren't there, and someone is responsible.
Khanna went further, warning that the consequences could extend beyond Bondi herself:
"Any Justice Department official who has obstructed justice could face prosecution in this administration or a future administration."
That's a shot across the bow of the career officials who actually control what gets released, redacted, or conveniently misplaced.
The thousands of pages that were released offered a few notable details. Former President Bill Clinton appears numerous times in the documents. The release included photos of Clinton swimming and images showing him with other well-known figures, including Michael Jackson and Diana Ross, AOL reports.
A spokesperson for Clinton dismissed the materials, saying the former president was not aware of Epstein's alleged crimes when the two were friendly. That has been the Clinton line for years. The documents haven't changed, and a spokesperson's blanket denial isn't exactly the kind of accounting the public has been waiting for.
The administration has acknowledged that President Donald Trump's name appears in the files. The documents released Friday make only limited references to him.
The surface-level revelations matter less than the gaps. Congress passed a law. The Justice Department had a deadline. The deadline came, and the congressmen who wrote the law say the most critical materials weren't included.
This is the permanent problem with transparency in Washington. Laws get passed with fanfare. Deadlines arrive quietly. Compliance becomes a negotiation between what the statute says and what the bureaucracy feels like handing over. Redactions multiply. Key files vanish into procedural limbo. And the public, which was promised answers, gets a carefully curated selection that raises more questions than it resolves.
The Epstein case is uniquely corrosive because the list of people who had reason to know him, and reason to want the files sealed, stretches across every power center in American life. Politics, finance, entertainment, academia. The longer the full record stays hidden, the more the silence indicts everyone.
Khanna and Massie now have three paths in front of them:
Khanna indicated the next few weeks will determine which route they take. The Justice Department's response, or lack of one, will set the terms.
The deeper issue isn't really about Pam Bondi. Attorneys general inherit bureaucracies that have their own institutional interests, and the DOJ's instinct to protect its files predates any single appointee. The question is whether Bondi will direct full compliance or allow the department's default posture of opacity to hold.
Conservatives have spent years demanding that the Justice Department stop acting as a law unto itself. That principle doesn't pause because the attorney general has an "R" next to her name. If Congress passes a law requiring disclosure, the executive branch complies. That's how the system works. That's how conservatives have always said it should work.
The Epstein files belong to the public. Every redaction needs a justification. Every missing document needs an explanation. And if neither is forthcoming, then Khanna and Massie are right to use every tool Congress has.
