DOJ delay continues as judge denies Epstein files special master

Thirty-three days after the Trump Department of Justice was required by law to release the Epstein Files — but failed to produce even one percent of them — a federal judge has rejected a bipartisan effort to appoint a special master to oversee production of the documents.

U.S. Reps. Ro Khanna (D-CA) and Thomas Massie (R-KY), authors of the Epstein Files Transparency Act (EFTA), went to court to make their request. On Wednesday, U.S. District Judge Paul Engelmayer declined that request, stating that he does not have the authority to appoint a special master.

“Their request is ‘important’ and ‘timely,’ but the appropriate vehicle may be a lawsuit or Congress, the judge says,” according to All Rise News editor-in-chief Adam Klasfeld.

“This criminal case does not give the Court any charter to supervise DOJ’s compliance with the EFTA,” Judge Engelmayer wrote, as New York Daily News reporter Molly Crane-Newman reported. “And the motion exceeds the bounds of permissible amici participation. This decision is without prejudice to the Representatives’ right to initiate a separate lawsuit. The Representatives are also, of course, at liberty to pursue oversight of DOJ via the tools available to Congress.”

On Tuesday, Crane-Newman reported that attorneys for the two congressmen had renewed “their push to seek a special master to oversee the Epstein files release, saying the government ‘cannot be relied upon to act with disinterest and objectively to do what is best for the survivors. It has its own conflicting interests.'”

Former Palm Beach County State Attorney Dave Aronberg, earlier on Wednesday, told MSNOW, “I don’t think we’ll see the entire file until Trump is out of office.”

“I think part of the problem here for Congressmen Khanna and Massie is that the law that they wrote is riddled with loopholes. It does not have an enforcement mechanism. So they’re trying to figure out how to get the DOJ to turn over all the documents, but there’s nothing in the law that forces them to do so under penalty of whatever,” he explained

Aronberg called it “a real big question whether or not they, as members of Congress, have the standing to get this judge in a closed case to force the DOJ to turn over the documents.”