Congress
Kash Patel doubles down on his handling of the Epstein files in heated Hill testimony
Kash Patel’s Epstein files problem is not going away.
Over two days of hearings, Democrats hammered the FBI director — who once advocated for the wholesale release of the files connected to convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein — over the bureau’s reluctance to release the full trove.
They also accused Patel of seeking to protect President Donald Trump from potentially embarrassing references in the files, of giving short-shrift to Epstein’s victims and of refusing to follow all investigative leads.
“Now we’re seeing one very clear reason why you want to build a political FBI: the Epstein files,” House Judiciary ranking member Jamie Raskin (D-Md.) said Wednesday. “You want an FBI blindly loyal to Trump and to you as his enforcer so you can continue your cover-up of a massive international sex trafficking ring with more than 1,000 victims, betraying all of the survivors of the sexual violence.”
Raskin’s comments came on the second of Patel’s two-day tour of Capitol Hill, which started Tuesday in the Senate Judiciary Committee before heading over to the House’s counterpart panel. In both venues, Patel advocated for the agency’s priorities.
But his 10 total hours of testimony were also marked by intense and hostile exchanges with Democrats, often related to the Epstein investigation. And his appearance Wednesday was interrupted by Democrats moving to subpoena four major banks in an effort to obtain Epstein’s financial records — a motion that failed by a single vote.
Over the two days, Patel openly feuded with Democratic Sens. Cory Booker and Adam Schiff, as well as Rep. Eric Swalwell; he appeared to relish the verbal sparring, which the White House’s rapid response feed quickly amplified. In one heated exchange with Swalwell, Patel said he would not recuse himself from any investigations into 60 people he once labeled “government gangsters” — including Swalwell.
“I don’t give a damn what they say about me,” Patel said when Rep. Russell Fry (R-S.C.) asked him to respond to a Democratic fusillade.
On Epstein, Patel insisted the FBI is releasing as many files as possible but is hamstrung by court orders and a nearly 20-year-old deal struck between the Justice Department and Epstein that have impeded crucial avenues of investigation. He repeatedly noted that the Trump administration had released more Epstein-related files than its predecessors.
“I’m not going to break the law to satisfy your curiosity,” Patel told Democrats, who in turn countered that the FBI director is misrepresenting his own power to publicly produce new materials judges have said is in the purview of the FBI and Justice Department.
Patel heard from Republicans on the Epstein issue, too. Rep. Thomas Massie (R-Ky.) joined Democrats in pressing Patel to release witness interview summaries during the House Judiciary hearing Wednesday. Sen. John Kennedy (R-La.) said Tuesday the FBI needs to move to release Epstein-related records.
“The issue’s not gonna go away,” Kennedy said. “I think you’re gonna have to do more to satisfy the American people’s understandable curiosity in that regard.”
House Democrats proved that point Wednesday, when they forced votes on issuing subpoenas for four banks that did business with Epstein and subsequently told regulators about $1.5 billion in suspicious transactions, as well as for the purposes of obtaining testimony from FBI Deputy Director Dan Bongino and records from Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent and Bureau of Prisons Director William Marshall.
Rep. Thomas Massie of Kentucky was the only Republican to support Democrats in their attempts, which were squelched by Republicans. But failure Wednesday was not a foregone conclusion: In a House Oversight subcommittee in July, some Republicans helped push through Democratic subpoena efforts related to the Epstein files, which has resulted in the release of materials in the Justice Department’s possession.
Massie is also not giving up on a separate attempt to force a House floor vote on the more comprehensive release of the Epstein files, and only needs one more signatory to proceed.
The issue has put all of Trump’s allies in an uncomfortable position, caught between their promises of transparency and realities of operating the country’s sprawling law enforcement agencies. Patel is no exception.
“Is it your assertion that these victims aren’t credible?” Massie asked Patel Wednesday. “How can you sit here and in front of the Senate and say there are no names?”
Democrats also pressed Patel over and over again to explain his own personal reversal on the issue, as well as the bureau’s ongoing efforts to both disclose Epstein-related documents and continue to investigate his sex trafficking ring.
Pressed by Rep. Jared Moskowitz (D-N.Y.), Patel said he would consider opening an investigation into the Epstein estate over Trump’s claim that a suggestive letter in Epstein’s 50th-birthday book was forged.
“Sure, I’ll do it,” Patel said.
Rep. Tom Kean Jr. represents New Jersey’s most competitive district this November — but nobody, even his GOP colleagues, can say where he’s been for the past month.
A scion of one of the state’s most storied political dynasties, Kean’s team says the two-term congressmember is facing unspecified health issues. The New Jersey Republican hasn’t voted since March 5 and has missed almost 50 roll call votes.
The other two Republicans in the New Jersey delegation, Reps. Chris Smith and Jeff Van Drew, said they have called and texted Kean out of concern for his health. But so far, neither said they have heard from him. Van Drew said it’s been “radio silence.”
Several New York Republicans who have worked with Kean on key issues said similarly. Kean’s absence has largely fallen under the radar and GOP leaders haven’t addressed the issue to the conference, according to several Republicans.
One Republican, Rep. Don Bacon (R-Neb.), said he didn’t even realize Kean had been missing until he tried to find him on the House floor Tuesday.
“I was looking for him,” Bacon said in an interview Wednesday. “I didn’t know it was that long.”
“I know the congressman and his family appreciate all of the well wishes and support,” Kean consultant Harrison Neely told Blue Light News. “Please know that he will be back on a regular full schedule very soon.”
Closer to home, Kean’s allies also expect him to come back soon.
“I don’t even know the truth myself or even enough to disclose any information,” Union County GOP Chair Carlos Santos told Blue Light News. “But I have been texting with him and was told he’ll be fine and make a full recovery in the next couple weeks.”
Kean represents New Jersey’s most competitive House seat — the 7th Congressional District, a large swath across the northern and central part of the state that includes Trump National Golf Club in Bedminster. President Donald Trump narrowly carried it by one point in the 2024 presidential race, but Democratic former Rep. Mikie Sherrill carried the district by nearly two points in the 2025 governor’s race. Kean won the district by around five points in 2024.
Kean enters reelection in what could be his most challenging congressional bid to date. He faces an environment that is increasingly challenging for Republicans and the Trump administration is opening an immigration detention facility in his district while pulling funding for a major infrastructure project for New Jersey commuters — both of which have put him in a precarious position.
But Kean’s backers say his temporary absence will hardly be on voters’ minds come November.
“Everyone understands from their own family experiences that people run into unexpected health issues,” Bill Palatucci, a Republican National Committee member and attorney to the Kean campaign, told Blue Light News. “Voters will be completely sympathetic and it’s so early in the year that it will be long forgotten come the fall.”
There is a competitive Democratic primary to take on Kean, with four prominent candidates.
Democrats in the New Jersey delegation have also noticed his absence and have started to be concerned for the congressmember’s health. Those members have also not heard anything.
“It’s been a long absence,” New Jersey Democrat Rep. Rob Menendez said. “I hope he’s doing all right. But I haven’t heard anything.”
Meredith Lee Hill contributed to this report.
The Senate will kick off a marathon amendment voting session Wednesday night as Republicans aim to adopt a budget blueprint for immigration enforcement funding.
The chamber is expected to start the vote-a-rama free-for-all around 8 p.m., according to three people granted anonymity to disclose private scheduling. Senate Republicans need to adopt the budget resolution in order to subsequently pass their bill to fund Immigration and Customs Enforcement and Border Patrol through the party-line budget reconciliation process.
The Senate’s top cybersecurity official is aiming to expand the number of AI licenses and approved AI tools available to Senate staff — and it will come with a price tag.
The Senate sergeant at arms, the chief law enforcement official on Capitol Hill whose office also manages IT and logistics, is seeking a $2.8 million boost for the department’s fiscal 2027 budget for AI licenses as appetite grows in Congress for using large language models in day-to-day workflow.
“About 10 percent of Senate users have already used the free, unsupported version of this technology,” Senate Sergeant at Arms Jennifer Hemingway told the Senate Appropriations Legislative Branch subcommittee Wednesday. “Moving those users and other Senate users into Senate-supported versions of these platforms is necessary to protect Senate data.”
In March, the Senate green-lighted the use of Google’s Gemini chat, OpenAI’s ChatGPT and Microsoft Copilot in Senate offices with licenses that support enhanced data security measures compared with the free versions. Staff in the House have been using Copilot, Gemini and ChatGPT, as well as Anthropic’s Claude, approved platforms under the chamber’s internal AI guidelines.
The cybersecurity team in Hemingway’s office is currently conducting risk assessments on about 40 AI tools, she told lawmakers. The sergeant at arms plans to bring recommendations for AI tools for Senate use to the bipartisan AI Governance Board, and “if the AI products meet our defined criteria,” make more tools available to the Senate.
“The most popular on that list is Claude,” Hemingway noted. The sergeant at arms began assessing the Anthropic product March 3.
When pressed by ranking member Martin Heinrich (D-N.M.) about the sergeant at arms’ policy of issuing one license per Senate user, Hemingway explained that the protocol is designed in part to incentivize staff to use data-protected versions approved by the sergeant at arms.
“If there is demand to have more than once license per user, we’d be happy to have conversations” with the Legislative Branch panel that funds the sergeant at arms, Hemingway said, calling it a “resource issue.”
She added that staff whose work focuses on AI and who need access to multiple tools could be accommodated very quickly.
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