Mark Epstein, brother of the late sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, has alleged that the Epstein files are being edited to remove Republican names
"The reason they're going to be releasing the files ... is that they're sabotaging these files," Mark told NewsNation
Mark's comments come shortly after President Donald Trump encouraged House Republicans to vote to release the files
Mark Epstein has claimed that the files on his late brother, convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, are allegedly being edited to remove names of Republicans.
In a phone interview with NewsNation on Monday, Nov. 18, Mark claimed he had been told by an unnamed source that names of conservative politicians were being redacted from the long-awaited Epstein files. Mark's comments come shortly after President Donald Trump encouraged House Republicans to vote to release the files, a shocking reversal from his previous opposition to do so.
Mark claimed that the Trump administration's sudden shift is because the files are being edited so that they are no longer incriminating for Republicans in power.
Multiple reports since Trump's second inauguration have claimed that the president's name appears in the files. Jeffrey and Trump had a documented friendship for years prior to the disgraced financier's arrest and downfall.
Jeffrey was arrested in July 2019 and charged with one count of sex trafficking of minors and one count of conspiracy to engage in sex trafficking of minors.
One month later, while he was awaiting trial at Metropolitan Correctional Center in New York City, Jeffrey died in an apparent suicide.
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Could Trump destroy the Epstein files?
While presidents are immune from prosecution over their official conduct, ordering the destruction of documents from a criminal investigation would not fall under presidential duties, legal scholars said, exposing Trump to charges of obstructing justice if he were to do so.
“Multiple federal laws bar anyone, including the president or those around him, from destroying or altering material contained in the Epstein files, including various federal record-keeping laws and criminal statutes. But that doesn’t mean that Trump or his cronies won’t consider trying,” said Norm Eisen, who served as chief ethics lawyer for President Obama and counsel for the House Judiciary Committee during Trump’s first impeachment trial.
The Democracy Defenders Fund, a nonprofit organization co-founded by Eisen, has sued the Trump administration for all records in the Epstein investigation related to Trump, warning that “court supervision is needed” to ensure Trump doesn’t attempt to subvert a lawful directive to release them.
“Perhaps the greatest danger is not altering documents but wrongly withholding them or producing and redacting them,” Eisen added. “Those are both issues that we can get at in our litigation, and where court supervision can be valuable.”
Jeffreys-Jones also said that Trump may attempt to order redactions based on claims of national security. But “this might be unconvincing for two reasons,” he said.
“Trump was not yet president at the time,” he said, and “it would raise ancillary questions if redactions did not operate in the case of President Clinton.”
Last week, Trump directed the Justice Department to investigate Epstein’s ties to Democratic figures, including Clinton, former Treasury Secretary Larry Summers, and Reid Hoffman, LinkedIn’s co-founder and a major Democratic donor.
He made no request for the department to similarly investigate Republicans.
Times staff writer Ana Ceballos contributed to this report.