GOP Rep Rips Trump and Kash Patel for Covering Up Epstein Files Case

Republicans are turning the heat back up on the Trump administration for its handling of the Epstein files.

Kentucky Representative Thomas Massie torched FBI Director Kash Patel over the weekend after he caught the bureau chief off guard on information that Patel should have already been privy to.

“I told Director Kash Patel that the FBI has names of 20 men to whom Jeffrey Epstein trafficked women and girls,” Massie wrote on X. “This basic fact seemed to surprise him. Why?

“Is the FBI withholding those names to protect the President’s rich and powerful friends?” Massie continued, before demanding that the administration “release the Epstein files.”

Massie has been fighting for the release of more documents related to the investigation into Jeffrey Epstein, the deceased pedophilic sex trafficker with connections to the rich and powerful, including President Donald Trump.

“I believe that Trump is trying to protect rich and powerful people who are his friends, and that is why this material is not getting released,” Massie told CNN last week.

Even Patel ferociously argued for the total release of the Epstein files—before he formally entered the Trump administration. Months before Patel’s name was floated to run the bureau, Patel had told podcaster Benny Johnson that he believed the documents were being shielded from public view because of “who’s on that list.” During his confirmation hearing, the 45-year-old swore there would be “no stone left unturned” in the quest to make the Epstein files completely transparent.

But it all came to a head during a heated House Oversight Hearing Wednesday, when members of the lower chamber forced the bureau chief to confront the incongruencies between his prior stances and his recent lagging actions.

“This spring, you ordered hundreds of agents to pore over all of the Epstein files, but not to look for more clues about the money network, or the network of human traffickers,” said Representative Jamie Raskin. “You pulled these agents from their regular counterterrorism or drug trafficking duties to work around the clock—some of them sleeping at their desks—to conduct a frantic search to make sure Donald Trump’s name and image were flagged and redacted wherever they appeared.”

Raskin then highlighted a July memo from the bureau, in which Patel and Attorney General Pam Bondi determined “no further disclosure” regarding the Epstein files and the FBI’s investigation “would be necessary or appropriate.”

President Trump, a slumlord at heart, is quietly halting enforcement of the Fair Housing Act, a massive piece of civil rights legislation that made it illegal to deny housing to someone based on their race, gender, religion, disability, or familial status.

Whistleblowers at the Housing and Urban Development’s fair housing office told The New York Times that Trump officials have made it harder for them to investigate and prosecute landlords and real estate agents who don’t abide by the guidelines of the Fair Housing Act. One HUD memo from a Trump appointee told employees to abandon “tenuous theories of discrimination” and that any research or content that was “contrary to administration policy” would be cut out. Lawyers have also reportedly been blocked from communicating with certain clients without prior approval from the Trump administration.

“I never thought I would be in this position,” said fair housing lawyer Paul Osadebe, who was informed he’d soon be reassigned. “We have people who are trying to destroy a baseline that people relied on.”

HUD has only made four charges of discrimination since Trump took office. It usually has 35 per year. The fair housing office has been slashed heavily by DOGE cuts, with only six lawyers remaining and another staff reduction coming on October 5. The disdain for HUD’s fair housing arm makes it clear that the Trump administration sees it as some DEI excess and not an incredibly important watchdog for Americans everywhere.

“With one email, the entire process was shut down,” former fair housing enforcement director Jacy Gaige told the Times. “It essentially stopped the settlement process, which is time sensitive because complainants and respondents come to an agreement about what they want to do to resolve a case. And often that is driven by specific deadlines that are occurring in people’s lives.”

Meanwhile, the few lawyers still left at HUD are drawing in urgent requests for support, especially from women who file complaints under the Violence Against Women Act.

“These are life and death requests,” said Osadebe. “These women are legitimately in mortal danger, and often without the government stepping in, nothing will be done.… This is a deliberate plan, and it’s about shutting down fair housing.”

Trump’s HUD spokeswoman, Kasey Lovett, has dismissed this narrative as “patently false” and blamed the stagnation in the fair housing office on the “deeply inefficient case system” of the Biden administration.

The Pentagon’s latest round of press restrictions go too far, according to the president.

Donald Trump criticized the War Department while en route to Charlie Kirk’s memorial service Sunday, scolding the defense agency for forbidding reporters from publishing “unauthorized” reports—even if they’re founded on nonclassified information.

“Should the Pentagon be part of deciding what reporters can report on?” a reporter asked.

“No, I don’t think so,” Trump responded, steps away from Marine One. “Nothing stops reporters. You know that.”

Unfortunately, a government’s white-knuckled control on the flow of information does stop reporters from disseminating information. Under War Secretary Pete Hegseth’s new rules, journalists are required to pledge that they would not report on anything from the department that had not been approved for official release. The new policy, announced Friday, would have journalists either report government-sponsored propaganda or have their press credentials revoked.

But even those inside the Pentagon are not on board with Hegseth’s Orwellian scheme. By Monday, three Pentagon officials had already decried the initiative, with one insider telling The Intercept that the rules were a “mockery of American ideals.”

“The idea they want editorial control over the press is something I expect from a banana republic, not the United States,” the same official told The Intercept.

Representatives for America’s media institutions, meanwhile, came out in full force against the restrictions.

“This is a direct assault on independent journalism at the very place where independent scrutiny matters most: the U.S. military,” National Press Club president Mike Balsamo said in a statement. “If the news about our military must first be approved by the government, then the public is no longer getting independent reporting. It is getting only what officials want them to see. That should alarm every American.”

For months, paranoia in the Pentagon has swelled while Hegseth’s inner circle has continued to shrink. This latest act of censorship is another step in Hegesth’s long journey to rein in his department. So far during the Fox News star’s short tenure atop the military agency, the Pentagon has experienced several astounding leaks that have rattled the Trump administration and its credibility on the international stage.

Those include instances in which The Atlantic’s editor in chief was invited into a Signal group chat between multiple Trump officials where they discussed real-time updates to a U.S. airstrike in Yemen, and another eyebrow-raising situation in which Hegesth intervened in U.S. foreign policy by suspending an aid shipment to Ukraine without notifying anyone—including the president.

President Donald Trump delivered incoherent remarks as he departed for the memorial of Charlie Kirk, claiming the event would be a “time of whatever.”

Trump told reporters outside the White House that he was going to “celebrate the life of a great man today. Really a great man. He’s a young man, but a great man.”

“And we look forward to it. It really is,” Trump continued confusedly. “We want to look at it as a time of healing, a time of whatever.”

Trump has struggled to convey sincere sorrow over Kirk’s death. Just days after his right-wing ally was fatally shot in Utah, Trump repeatedly responded to questions about Kirk by plugging his own plans to add a $200 million ballroom to the White House.

The president also reportedly missed a September 15 vigil for Kirk at the Kennedy Center in favor of going golfing.

True to his word, Trump used the “time of healing” for whatever. The president spent most of his address at Kirk’s memorial complaining about his personal grievances, and even contradicted remarks from Kirk’s widow by promising to enact more political violence and retribution against his administration’s perceived enemies.

A new Forbes report reveals that the Trump family has profited enormously from the presidency, doubling its fortune to a total of about $10 billion.

For Donald Trump, the year of his White House comeback has also been “the most lucrative year of his life,” with the president raking in $3 billion, two-thirds of which came from cryptocurrency—including his meme coin and World Liberty Financial, a crypto company started by his family and that of Steve Witkoff, his Middle East envoy.

World Liberty is notably at the center of a scandal, as The New York Times revealed last week. In May, the firm secured a $2 billion investment from an Emirati royal who just  happens to control a company that—per a deal with the United Arab Emirates that was announced two weeks later, and which Witkoff helped negotiate—will receive precious AI computer chips from the U.S. government.

Trump’s second son, Eric Trump, has seen his wealth balloon from $40 million last year to an estimated $750 million, in large part thanks to crypto. His older brother, Don Jr., is worth $500 million, compared to $50 million last year, having also cashed in on crypto and “the anti-woke economy,” among other ventures. The president’s youngest son, Barron Trump, is worth $150 million at 19 years old—again, largely from crypto.

Melania Trump, Forbes reports, has profited in both “typical First Lady ways (books, speeches, a documentary)” and “unquestionably Trumpian ways.” The latter category includes her own meme coin, $MELANIA—whose inauguration-eve launch was quite a shady affair: A group of crypto traders took in nearly $100 million by buying $MELANIA minutes before it was announced, then off-loading most of their holdings when its value then spiked.

The president’s daughter Ivanka is worth an estimated $100 million, and her husband, Jared Kushner, is now a billionaire, with a major contributor being a private equity firm he founded the same month Trump left the White House in 2021. Kushner was a senior adviser in the first Trump administration, and has since relied on relationships he built during his tenure to court investors.

Across the board, according to Forbes, the president’s family has doubled its net worth since the 2024 election.