LGBTQ Nation - “What is Donald Trump hiding?” Gay Rep. calls out “cover-up” over Epstein files

Rep. Robert Garcia (D-CA), the ranking Democrat on the House Oversight Committee, is accusing the White House of orchestrating “a huge cover-up” of government files detailing investigations into the high-profile accomplices of now-deceased child sex trafficker Jefferey Epstein.

In an interview posted Wednesday on X by political commentator Aaron Parnas, Garcia said that White House staffers have been calling Republican lawmakers to pressure them not to sign onto a bipartisan discharge petition that would compel the full release of Epstein-related records. “I know for a fact that [The] White House [is] calling Republican members right now telling them not to sign the petition,” Garcia said.

“What is Donald Trump hiding?” Rep. Garcia asked Parnas.

Earlier this week, the House Oversight Committee released more than 33,000 Department of Justice (DOJ) documents on Epstein in response to a subpoena from Chair Rep. James Comer (R-KY). However, Garcia and other Democrats quickly criticized the release, noting that 97% of the files were already public. Garcia dismissed the disclosure as “a joke.”

“Very little is new,” Rep. Garcia recently said in an interview with MSNBC. “There is a massive White House coverup going on right now.”

Garcia pointed out that both Donald Trump and Attorney General Pam Bondi have the authority to make all Epstein records public but have chosen not to. “They have the power right now to get all the files out to the American public,” Rep. Garcia said during his MSNBC interview.

Trump has repeatedly called the issue a “Democrat hoax,” despite reports that his name appears in the Epstein files. Bondi at one point said she had the “client list” on her desk and planned to release them, but later claimed that such a list did not exist.

“I think that we’re at the point now where the president is so obsessed with calling this a hoax that, we, the American public, I think now deserve some answers,” Rep. Garcia said in an interview this week with The Contrarian.

Rep. Garcia has been leading Democratic efforts to force the DOJ to release the Epstein files. In August, he announced that Epstein’s estate agreed to provide the committee with Epstein’s “birthday book” — a document reportedly including a birthday letter from Trump — along with other sensitive materials. According to Garcia, many of the unreleased records originate from Florida, where Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate is located.

Earlier this week Rep. Garcia joined lawmakers and over a dozen survivors of Epstein and his co-conspirator Ghislaine Maxwell during a nonpartisan press conference at the U.S. Capitol to demand the DOJ release the Epstein files. Several said that they were teenagers when Epstein and Maxwell exploited them.

“The days of sweeping this under the rug are over. We the survivors say ‘no more,'” Epstein survivor Anouska De Georgiou said. “I’m no longer weak, I am no longer powerless and I’m no longer alone.”