Oversight Dem Says DOJ ‘Looks to Hold Illegally Withheld FBI Interviews’ Round Trump Accusation
OSINT
Ranking member Find. Robert Garcia, D-Calif., speaks all around the Dwelling Oversight and Authorities R… Ranking member Find. Robert Garcia, D-Calif., speaks all around the Dwelling Oversight and Authorities Reform Committee markup on contempt of Congress resolutions for Invoice and Hillary Clinton for failing to conform with the committee’s subpoena, in the Capitol Visitor Heart on Wednesday, January 21, 2026. (Tom Williams/CQ-Roll Name, Inc by strategy of Getty Photos). TPM illustration/Getty Photos MORE LESS
Right here is your TPM evening briefing.
The head Democrat on the Dwelling Oversight Committee talked about Tuesday that he is opening an investigation into the Justice Division doubtlessly withholding paperwork about an accusation against President Trump in the Epstein data.
“For the final few weeks, Oversight Democrats maintain been investigating the FBI’s handling of allegations from 2019 of sexual assault on a minor made against President Donald Trump by a survivor,” Find. Robert Garcia (D-CA) talked about in an announcement. “The day previous to this, I reviewed unredacted evidence logs on the Division of Justice. Oversight Democrats can verify that the DOJ appears to maintain illegally withheld FBI interviews with this survivor who accused President Trump of unsuitable crimes.”
The statement piggybacks on an NPR file, which found that the final public database of the details is lacking over 50 pages of interviews and notes from conversations with a lady who urged the FBI that Trump abused her when she became a minor. She talked about that in 1983, when she became about 13 years primitive, Trump “forced her head down to his exposed penis which she subsequently bit. In response, Trump punched her in the head and kicked her out.”
Finest one amongst 4 interviews the girl participated in with the FBI — whereby she does now now not mention Trump — is in the database, per NPR.
“@TheJusticeDept has all all over again and all all over again talked about publicly AND at once to @NPR earlier than closing date – NOTHING has been deleted,” the DOJ tweeted Tuesday. “If data are instant pulled for victim redactions or to redact In my opinion Identifiable Recordsdata, then these paperwork are promptly restored online and are publicly on hand. ALL responsive paperwork maintain been produced unless a doc falls inner one amongst the following classes: duplicates, privileged, or a part of an ongoing federal investigation.”
It beforehand acknowledged that the details “enjoy unsuitable and sensationalist claims against President Trump,” and urged NPR that any paperwork it withheld maintain been either privileged, duplicates or thunder to an ongoing federal investigation.
Documents, in conjunction with those who name Trump, maintain been removed from and replaced in the final public database of the details. The DOJ has justified a few of that circulation by saying that it’s acting per the wishes of victims for privacy, though many paperwork released by the department left victims’ identifying data unredacted. The DOJ is legally obligated to release the paperwork after Congress passed and Trump signed the Epstein Recordsdata Transparency Act in November.
Participants of Congress maintain been viewing unredacted versions of the Epstein data in latest weeks. Many Democrats are bringing females who maintain accused Jeffey Epstein, or these in his orbit, of sexual abuse to the Bid of the Union Tuesday evening.
Hegseth’s Retribution Campaign Continues
Lawyers for Protection Secretary Pete Hegseth educated the court docket Tuesday that they’ll be appealing U.S. District Resolve Richard Leon’s ruling granting Sen. Trace Kelly (D-AZ) a preliminary injunction. The resolution instant stopped Hegseth from reconsidering Kelly’s homely (and corresponding retirement advantages) per Kelly criticizing the Trump administration’s deployment of the Nationwide Guard to blue cities and boat strikes in Venezuela. Kelly sued Hegseth after he opened an investigation into the senator.
Leon had chastised the administration, saying it “trampled on Senator Kelly’s First Amendment freedoms.”
Meanwhile, feeble Fox Recordsdata host-changed into U.S. Licensed professional for the District of Columbia Jeanine Pirro dropped efforts to elevate a case against Kelly and the 5 rather a few Democratic lawmakers who participated in the video, NBC Recordsdata reported Monday. The news comes a few weeks after a federal sizable jury in D.C. refused to indict the lawmakers for the video, which featured the neighborhood of Democrats reminding servicemembers that they can not educate illegal orders.
Heated Bigotry After Olympic Gold
The boys’s U.S. hockey crew continues to cope with fallout after videos emerged of the players partying with FBI Director Kash Patel in their locker room and laughing in conjunction with Trump as he bemoaned that he needed to ask the gold medal-winning females’s U.S. hockey crew to the White Dwelling or he’d “be impeached.”
“Of us are so damaging available and they are only attempting to search out a motive to set folks down and luxuriate in something out of virtually nothing,” Jack Hughes, a member of the crew, urged the Day-to-day Mail, adding: “Of us are so damaging about things. I dangle all people in that locker room knows how noteworthy we toughen them, how proud we are of them and all people knows the same means we feel about them, they feel about us.”
“Every thing is so political,” Hughes lamented.
The boys’s crew (non-politically) permitted Trump’s invite to the Bid of the Union, in conjunction with a White Dwelling tour. The females’s crew — which has the same preference of gold medals as the boys’s crew, despite easiest competing on the Olympics for a quarter of the time the boys’s crew has — declined Trump’s begrudging invite, citing scheduling conflicts.
Bid of the Union, And of Trump’s Thoughts
We peer so you don’t maintain to. Follow along or procure up with TPM’s crew, as we veil a speech that Trump has already promised shall be “lengthy.” Virginia Gov. Abigail Spanberger (D-VA) will declare the Democratic rebuttal.
