One of President Donald Trump’s most persistent legal foes is going after the Epstein files.
Norm Eisen—the former White House ethics chief under former President Barack Obama and a longtime critic of Trump—has filed a sweeping Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request demanding the Justice Department and Federal Bureau of Investigation hand over any files related to disgraced financier Jeffrey Epstein that may reference the former president.
“The govt’s credibility is hanging by a thread—& now they’re pushing a lie the MAGA base isn’t even buying!“ Eisen wrote on X. “We filed FOIAs to find the truth, because the Epstein files are real, & so is the Trump regime’s threat to democracy.”
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“The public needs to know what these files say about the most powerful man in the world—and what Trump’s appointees in government, such as Bove, Bondi, and FBI Director Kash Patel, knew and when they knew it," Eisen added in a Substack post.
The president has faced a revolt among his conspiracy-minded supporters since the Justice Department and FBI concluded in a July 6 memo that Epstein died by suicide while awaiting trial in prison, rather than being murdered, and that no “client list” of wealthy co-conspirators exists. The news has sparked a backlash and calls for Attorney General Pam Bondi to resign.
“Trump, of course, wants us to talk about anything but this,” he said.
Earlier this month, Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard accused Obama of cooking up intelligence on Russian election interference in a “treasonous conspiracy” against Trump, which critics have assailed as a thinly veiled attempt to distract from the controversy.
Filed through Eisen’s watchdog group, the Democracy Defenders Fund, the bombshell request requests any Epstein-related documents that have been reviewed by Bondi, Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche, Principal Associate Deputy Attorney General Emil Bove, FBI Director Kash Patel, and FBI Deputy Director Dan Bongino.
Eisen’s FOIA filing also asks for any internal communications between Bondi and associates that discuss how to “approach or address references to Donald Trump or Mar-a-Lago” and materials produced in any meetings in which the case was discussed.
Bondi told Trump earlier this year that his name appears in the materials. Trump has denied she did so. The DOJ has so far refused to comment on the matter.
Eisen has been a persistent Trump foe: He filed one of the first emoluments lawsuits against the president and served as special counsel for the Judiciary Committee during his first impeachment, writing an insider account about the proceedings, A Case for the American People.
Eisen, a co-founder of the nonpartisan watchdog group Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW), has spent years scrutinizing Trump’s business entanglements, foreign profits, and alleged abuses of power.
The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment. The DOJ declined to comment.
