One Republican member of Congress from Georgia, who is angling for President Donald Trump's endorsement in next year's U.S. Senate primary, recently told a constituent that he believed Trump was indeed named in the Department of Justice's (DOJ) unreleased materials pertaining to convicted child predator Jeffrey Epstein.
That's according to a Tuesday article in the conservative-leaning Washington Examiner, which reported on an audio clip of Rep. Mike Collins (R-Ga.) at a Republican event earlier this month. Collins, who is a two-term congressman from the Peach State, told a constituent at a Muscogee County Republican Party event in August that he believed reports that Trump was mentioned in the Epstein files, though only in an innocent context.
"Regarding the Epstein files, do you think Trump is in there?" The constituent is heard asking Collins.
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"Yeah, sure he's in there!" Collins said. "Because he's the one telling the FBI about it. He's the one that kicked the guy out of Mar-a-Lago, and then called the FBI. Yeah, he's in there."
"But what's going to happen? I mean, are you going to vote to release [the files]?" The constituent responded.
"Oh, we need to release them. I have no problem releasing them," Collins said, though he added that it should be up to the federal judiciary to publicly release the documents with redactions to protect Epstein's victims.
As Collins mentioned, Attorney General Pam Bondi told Trump he was mentioned in the DOJ's unreleased Epstein evidence in May. And when the FBI was combing through the files earlier this year, they were instructed to "flag" Trump's name whenever it came up, according to Senate Judiciary Committee ranking member Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) And while Collins asserted that it was up to judges to release the files, there is currently nothing stopping the Trump DOJ from releasing the estimated 100,000 pages of Epstein documents it has in its possession. ABC News reported in July that among the unreleased evidence the FBI has categorized include a logbook of visitors to Epstein's private island compound, along with a "document with names," which could be the rumored "client list" that Bondi has said does not exist.
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Listen to the audio clip below, or by clicking this link.