“The DOJ Cannot Be Trusted”: Inside the Epstein Files—and the Battle for Accountability

As the Epstein documents drip into public view, Rep. Robert Garcia argues the real story is not what’s been released—but what remains hidden, and what it reveals about power, secrecy, and democratic trust.

In American politics, few things are as corrosive as the suspicion that truth is being rationed. Fewer still cut as deeply as the belief that justice itself is selective. For Robert Garcia, the ranking Democrat on the House Oversight Committee, the slow, partial release of records tied to the late financier and convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein has become a defining test of institutional credibility.

“The Department of Justice cannot be trusted,” Garcia told 'TELL IT LIKE IT IS' Magazine in a wide-ranging interview that read less like a partisan skirmish than a moral indictment. At stake, he argued, is not only whether survivors receive long-delayed clarity, but whether Americans can still believe that transparency applies to the powerful as rigorously as it does to everyone else.

At the center of the dispute is volume—and absence. More than three million pages have been released from the Epstein investigation, yet Garcia and other Democrats say that number masks a deeper problem: compliance. A congressional subpoena, issued months before Congress passed a transparency law, remains only partially fulfilled. The United States Department of Justice, Garcia contends, is invoking statutory carve-outs to avoid producing materials that the subpoena plainly demands.

“The DOJ says this is over,” Garcia said. “We believe it’s just beginning.”

The clash highlights a tension that has become familiar in the Trump era: Congress’s investigative authority versus an executive branch adept at delay. President Donald Trump campaigned on transparency around Epstein, Garcia noted, only for momentum to stall once governing began. Documents emerged in fragments, often without context, feeding both public curiosity and public mistrust.

Garcia is careful to draw a line between evidence and speculation. There is no single “list,” he said—no neat ledger of names. But survivors, he insists, have described co-conspirators and enablers whose actions are reflected across emails, photos, and financial records still out of public reach. Accountability, in this telling, is cumulative: a mosaic assembled from corroborated detail, not a smoking gun.

That insistence on verification is also Garcia’s answer to critics who warn that Democrats risk amplifying conspiracy thinking once associated with the far right. Oversight, he said, is methodical work—following leads, discarding dead ends, and returning, again and again, to primary documents. “We focus on facts,” he said. “That’s the guardrail.”

If Democrats retake the House this fall, Garcia is widely expected to become Oversight chair, a role that would restore full subpoena power to the committee. Yet even then, enforcement would remain uncertain. Courts move slowly; executive resistance can be relentless. Garcia’s most potent lever, he argues, is public pressure—the steady illumination of what remains unseen.

House Oversight Committee Ranking Member Robert Garcia (D-Calif.) gives
an interview to 'TELL IT LIKE IT IS' Magazine in his office on Capitol
Hill on Feb. 3, 2026. | Michele Robinson/'TELL IT LIKE IT IS' Magazine

That strategy extends beyond Epstein. Garcia previewed investigations into the federal workforce upheavals linked to DOGE initiatives associated with Elon Musk, algorithmic pricing practices that may be squeezing consumers, and what he calls a broader culture of corruption across agencies. He described close coordination with House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, framing Oversight as both a watchdog and a reform engine.

Impeachment, while never “off the table,” is not the immediate focus. The caucus is currently pursuing action against Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem, even as it documents what Garcia calls a pattern of constitutional disregard at the top of government.

Ultimately, the Epstein files are less about a single scandal than about the architecture of accountability. Who decides when an investigation is finished? Who gets to withhold information—and why? And how much secrecy can a democracy tolerate before trust gives way to cynicism?

For Garcia, the answer is clear. “Justice for survivors,” he said, “means the truth—fully told.” Until that happens, the files will remain open, in law if not yet in fact.

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-- By James W. Thomas

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