Epstein files live: Lawmaker calls for DOJ whistleblowers to come forward over alleged withheld documents

With three years left in President Donald Trump’s second term, half of Americans are already thinking about the 2028 presidential election, a new poll found.

Around 22 percent of U.S. adults said they’ve thought about the 2028 election “a lot” while 28 percent said they’d considered it “some,” according to a new CNN-SSRS poll.

On the Democrat side, California Governor Gavin Newsom came in first with 6 percent of respondents mentioning him. He was followed by former Vice President Kamala Harris with 3 percent.

Around 11 percent of respondents said they wanted Vice President JD Vance to launch a bid in 2028, with just 2 percent naming Secretary of State Marco Rubio.

Kelly Rissman has the full story…

The photograph revealed a drawer in one of Epstein’s cabinets, which contained a tranche of images of Donald Trump.

Trump has long denied any wrongdoing in the Epstein case and has not been charged with any crime.

Blanche has claimed that “concerns” were raised about the picture, prompting the Trump administration to pull the image.

It has since been reuploaded.

Despite the administration’s attempts to distance the president from Epstein, Trump appears in a handful of photographs that have already been made public, including images of the president with his wife Melania alongside Epstein and Maxwell.

In one image, which was taken inside a desk drawer, Trump appeared to be pictured alongside a group of smiling women in a grainy photograph. The women’s identities are not redacted.

The president has not been accused of wrongdoing in connection with Epstein’s cases, and Trump has repeatedly claimed he cut ties with Epstein before he was under federal investigation.

Garcia, the top Democrat on the Oversight Committee, slammed the Trump administration for saying for months that the files related to convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein were ready to be released – only to heavily redact the materials and miss the legal deadline for releasing them in full.

“To spend this entire period of time, the last few months, claiming that you have the files ready to be released… And then this all-out effort to hide them from the public, to stop the will of Congress, to not answer the oversight subpoena. What they need to understand is that there are hundreds of FBI agents and others that are good American patriots that have worked to put these files together. They know what is in them,” Garcia said Sunday on MS NOW.

Garcia urged anyone at the FBI or Department of Justice who worked on the Epstein files – who believes their work is currently being hidden – to come forward to the Oversight Committee.

Isbael Keane has the story:

Rep. Ro Khanna has been among the leading voices in Congress putting pressure on the Trump administration to release the full Epstein files.

In the face of the administration’s delays, Khanna and Rep. Thomas Massie have threatened to hold Attorney General Pam Bondi in contempt.

Speaking to The Bulwark on Sunday, Khanna said he would tell Bondi the following if they ever met: “I would ask her two questions: Who are you protecting? And why?…I understand they’d wanna protect Trump, but why are they trying to protect all these other people around him?”

Blanche defended the fact that photographs were redacted after initially being released on Friday, along with records from the DOJ’s investigation into convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, saying their removal had “nothing to do” with Trump.

“There are dozens of photos of President Trump already released to the public, seeing him with Mr. Epstein,” Blanche said on NBC’s Meet the Press Sunday morning.

“The absurdity of us pulling down a single photo because President Trump was in it is laughable,” he said. “And the fact that everybody’s trying to act like that’s the case is a reflection of their true motivation.”

(The photo was later restored to the DOJ website.)

Trump only appeared in the tens of thousands of documents a handful of times, and one of the photographs that appeared to show the president was removed by the DOJ Saturday, Democrats said. Trump is not accused of any wrongdoing.

“With regard to files, we’re being very transparent,” Johnson’s Trump began. “Because Jeffrey Epstein was a terrible man, and I didn’t know him, and I liked him a lot.”

Rhian Lubin has the story.