A former Republican Party representative has suggested the staggered release of Jeffrey Epstein's files is intentional as the administration are "hoping we forget" about the release.
In November last year, the Senate agreed in a near-unanimous vote to pass the Epstein files bill, with the legislation signed off by Donald Trump, despite his initial opposition to the documents' release. Though the federal law states the majority of documents must be ready to publish by December 19, less than 1% of the files have been shared with the public.
Pam Bondi, the US attorney general, wrote that there are "more than two million documents potentially responsive to the Act" and that the administration are still working through the backlog.
The Department of Justice confirmed last week that only 12,285 documents of 125,575 pages had been officially released, according to The Guardian. Former GOP rep Adam Kinzinger believes this slow trickle of documents is intentional, and that the administration's sudden surge in country takeover plans is a distraction.
In a video uploaded to his YouTube channel, Kinzinger said, "It's easy to forget that the Epstein files still need to be released. They've released thousands of documents but they recently admitted to finding five million more documents."
"Now according to the law, these things should already have been put out. But now it's like they're hoping that we forget about it. Keep in mind that when the Republicans were running the Epstein files, and you see this with the online right, there was this demand that they be released but this was synonymous with the assumption or the accusation that this was all Democrats in the files."
"Now the weird thing is, I've never seen anyone on the left or centre say, 'Yeah, release the Epstein files except for the Democrats.' No, I think they've all said, 'Release them all, release everybody.'"
Kinzinger went on to claim the Department of Justice could be "stalling to protect Donald Trump" who has featured in the already released Epstein files.
"But if you still think the Department of Justice is playing the independent role it was intended to and not just acting as Donald Trump's lawyers, I'm sorry, you haven't been paying attention,' Kinzinger said. "We need to continue, even with all the chaos going on, to demand and call for the Epstein files to be released because the American people deserve to know the truth."