Manhattan’s top federal prosecutor said Friday that a judge does not have the authority to appoint a neutral expert to oversee the in the sex trafficking investigation of financier and British socialite .
U.S. Attorney Jay Clayton sent a letter to Judge Paul A. Engelmayer stating that he must turn down a request made this week by the congressional co-sponsors of the Epstein Files Transparency Act to name a neutral expert.
California Democratic Rep. Ro Khanna and Kentucky Republican Rep. Thomas Massie say they have “urgent and grave concerns” about the slow release of only a tiny portion of the millions of documents that started last month.
In a filing to the judge, they stated they believe “criminal violations have happened” during the release process.
Clayton, however, argued that Khanna and Massie do not have standing in the court to seek the “extraordinary” relief of appointing a special master and independent monitor.
He said Engelmayer “lacks the authority” to grant such a request, especially because the congressional representatives who made the request are not parties to the criminal case that led to Maxwell’s and her subsequent 20-year prison sentence for recruiting girls and women for Epstein to abuse and helping with that abuse.
Khanna said Clayton’s response “misunderstood” the intent of their request.
“We are informing the Court of serious misconduct by the Department of Justice that requires a remedy—one we believe this Court has the authority to provide and which victims themselves have asked for,” Khanna said in a statement.
“Our goal is to make sure DOJ follows through on its promises to the Court and meets its legal obligations under our law,” he added.
Epstein died in a federal jail in New York City in August 2019 while waiting for trial on sex trafficking charges. .
Clayton said in the letter that the Justice Department plans to update the court “again soon” on its progress in handing over documents from the Epstein and Maxwell investigative files.
The Justice Department has said the release of the files was delayed by redactions needed to protect the identities of abuse victims.
In their letter, Khanna and Massie wrote that the Justice Department’s release of only 12,000 documents out of more than 2 million being reviewed was a “blatant violation” of the law’s release rules and had caused “ .”
“Simply put, the DOJ cannot be trusted to make the mandatory disclosures required by the Act,” the congressmen said as they asked for an independent monitor to be appointed to ensure all documents and electronically stored information are made public right away.
They also suggested that a court-appointed monitor should have the power to write reports about the real nature and scope of the document production and whether improper redactions or behavior have taken place.