Epstein’s crimes after 2005 could have been stopped, a US House inquiry finds, and it wants his associates questioned again

The US government “failed the survivors” of Jeffrey Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell for decades, according to a report released on Tuesday, US time, by the House Oversight Committee’s Republican majority.

The report, which runs to more than 130 pages, is the result of a 15-month investigation that took evidence from figures including William Barr, Pam Bondi, Bill and Hillary Clinton, Bill Gates and Maxwell herself. Its central finding is blunt: Epstein’s crimes after 2005 could have been prevented, and justice served, had it not been for the failures of federal investigators and prosecutors in South Florida and Washington.

Committee chairman James Comer said Congress must now make sure survivors can see their own records.

What went wrong in 2007?

In 2007 the US Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of Florida agreed not to prosecute Epstein federally. He pleaded guilty instead to lesser state charges, was sentenced to 18 months, was given work-release privileges and was let out early.

Federal prosecutors did not tell his victims about the deal. The committee says Epstein’s conduct and the agreement were potentially linked to two lawyers who worked in that office, and it calls for “rigorous scrutiny” of non-prosecution agreements and stricter enforcement of conflict-of-interest rules.

What does it say about his death?

Epstein was arrested again in 2019 and died in a federal jail in New York that August. The committee found that understaffing and dysfunction meant officers on two shifts missed at least 12 rounds and three inmate counts, leaving him without adequate supervision for nearly eight hours.

Who does it want questioned?

The committee asks the Justice Department to interview or re-interview key witnesses, including Epstein’s former assistant Lesley Groff, about what she may have known.

It also asks the department to investigate further the sexual assault allegations that Sarah Kellen, a longtime Epstein assistant who is also a survivor, made against two men in her interview with the committee. They are allegations, not findings, and both men have denied them.

Why are the banks in it?

Because the money moved through them. The report says financial institutions had substantial information about Epstein’s history and about transactions that raised possible trafficking and money-laundering concerns, but failed to act on it adequately, in some cases reporting activity years after his 2019 arrest.

It names American Express, saying its agents enabled travel arrangements that included decoy and dummy itineraries. No response from the company had been reported. The committee wants the Treasury Department and its financial crimes unit, FinCEN, to check whether banks are meeting their duty to report suspicious activity.

What about the 2025 file release?

The committee welcomed the release of the Epstein files under last year’s Epstein Files Transparency Act, but says the Justice Department did not communicate properly about the releases and that poor redactions exposed survivors’ personal information. It wants a process for survivors to see their own files unredacted, and it backs Comer’s bill to stop nondisclosure agreements from silencing abuse survivors.

What does it say about Donald Trump?

The Republican majority says it found no documents implicating the President in criminal activity, and that witnesses agreed he was not involved to their knowledge. It accuses Democrats of being obsessed with trying to implicate him.

Democrats reject the report as the product of an incomplete investigation with no public hearings. Robert Garcia, the committee’s senior Democrat, said they would hold “real public hearings” and keep investigating in the new Congress.

How has the Justice Department responded?

A department spokesperson said the chairman’s recommendations “have already been addressed” and that the Attorney-General has repeatedly said the Epstein case is not closed. The department also said the report fails to acknowledge that some potential co-conspirators were also victims.