Do you support or oppose releasing all remaining unredacted federal investigative files related to Jeffrey Epstein?

Background

In November 2025, Congress passed the Epstein Files Transparency Act with overwhelming bipartisan support — the House voted 427 to 1 and the Senate approved it unanimously — and President Trump signed it into law on November 19, 2025. The law requires the Attorney General to publicly release all Department of Justice records related to Jeffrey Epstein, the convicted sex offender who died in federal custody in 2019 while awaiting trial on sex-trafficking charges. The DOJ has since released files in stages, culminating in a January 30, 2026 batch that brought the total to roughly 3.5 million pages, including more than 2,000 videos and 180,000 images. However, the rollout has drawn sharp bipartisan criticism. Lawmakers, including the bill's authors Representatives Thomas Massie and Ro Khanna, have noted that the DOJ identified over 6 million potentially responsive pages but released only about half. A January 2026 CNN poll found that 49 percent of Americans were dissatisfied with how much the government had released, while two-thirds of respondents believed the government was deliberately withholding information.

Supporters of full, unredacted release argue that transparency is essential to hold powerful individuals accountable and restore public trust in institutions that many believe failed Epstein's victims for decades. Survivor Annie Farmer called passage of the law a long-overdue victory, and Navigator Research polling from March 2026 found that 72 percent of Americans wanted more prosecutions and investigations. Opponents and cautious voices raise serious concerns about the human cost of unrestricted disclosure. Attorneys for survivors have pointed out that the DOJ failed to redact the identities of at least 31 people victimized as children, exposing intimate details to their families and the public. UN human rights experts warned that botched redactions caused real harm to victims before records could be withdrawn, calling for victim-centered procedures. Legal scholars also note that appearing in the files does not indicate criminal wrongdoing, and that uncontrolled releases risk fueling misinformation and damaging reputations without due process.

The stakes extend beyond one case. Despite millions of pages now public, no new arrests have been made in the United States based on the released files, and legal experts cite the difficulty of establishing criminal intent and the limits of aging evidence. The debate now centers on whether remaining redactions protect victims and national security or shield powerful people from scrutiny. How policymakers resolve this tension — between maximum transparency and responsible disclosure — will shape public confidence in government accountability for years to come and set precedent for how the nation handles sensitive investigative records in the future.