The House Oversight Committee released another dump of files in the Jeffrey Epstein case, and victims are speaking to both House members and to the media.

So, what is there, and what is not there? First of all, the “missing minute” of the jail tapes is apparently now present, and it shows… nothing.

The surveillance clip was among the more than 33,000 pages of documents and videos tied to Epstein’s sex-trafficking probe that were released by the House Oversight Committee late Tuesday.

In the Justice Department’s initial dump of Epstein files, an 11-hour recording from outside Epstein’s cell block at the Metropolitan Correctional Center the night he killed himself in 2019 had a minute missing just before midnight.

Critics were quick to suggest that the missing footage — which lasted between 11:58:59 p.m. Aug. 9 and midnight Aug. 10 — showed there was some type of political cover-up tied to Epstein’s death.

At the time, Attorney General Pam Bondi dismissed concerns of a wider conspiracy — insisting that the last minute of footage is deleted each night by the Bureau of Prisons as the cameras reset.

The newly released footage appears to show the camera data switching over at midnight, which led to two pieces of footage being combined.

Nothing appears to have happened in the previously missing minute recorded outside the cell block.

And as for the rest of the files? The Washington Post reviewed what was released, and pointed out that most of this has already been released previously.

A Washington Post analysis of the documents released by the committee found that at least two-thirds of them are court documents from various Epstein-related investigations and thus probably were publicly available already.

(Representative Robert) Garcia said in a statement that 97 percent of the documents contained information the Justice Department and other law enforcement agencies had already disclosed.

The only new disclosure, Garcia said previously, was fewer than 1,000 pages from U.S. Customs and Border Protection’s record of flight locations of Epstein’s plane from 2000 to 2014.

Some of the documents released by the committee on Tuesday, including a flight log from the early 1990s, appeared to be more heavily redacted than ones Attorney General Pam Bondi released earlier this year.

Between document dumps and redacted files, it seems as if all parties are just running in circles. The Biden administration had full access to the files and didn’t release anything damning. The Trump administration is now in control and is ALSO not releasing anything damning. Those who want to believe in a cover-up have to then accept the fact that both sides of the aisle must logically be involved in said cover-up, and neither side is willing to weaponize the information against the other, or… there’s nothing incriminating that can point to a single person in power that would make the media drop everything and run.

Now, the caveat, as always, is YET. We don’t YET have anything incriminating. There could always be something yet to be released that could change everything. And maybe the Epstein victims speaking up and speaking out will change something. A bipartisan group of House members met with six Epstein victims, and House Speaker Mike Johnson came away from the meeting with a lot to say.

“We just spent more than two hours with six of the Epstein victims,” Johnson told reporters following the meeting. “Some of the bravest women I’ve ever met. They’re very courageous, they shared their stories. Some of the ladies have shared these stories publicly before, but at least two of the women had never told their stories before. One for the very first time in the room, and so there were tears in the room, there was outrage.”

He continued, “I would describe it as heartbreaking and infuriating that justice has been delayed so long. Some of the women in the room began to be groomed by Epstein and his accomplices, Ghislaine Maxwell and the others, thirty years ago. There were four attorneys in the room. Some of them began civil litigation against Epstein and the Epstein evils and everything associated with it 20 years ago. This has gone on for a long, long time.”

Johnson declared, “The objective here is not just to uncover and investigate the Epstein evils, but also to ensure that this never happens again, and ultimately to find out why justice has been delayed for these ladies for so very long. It is inexcusable and it will stop now because the Congress is dialed in on this.”

For the record, the Democrats in the meeting included Ayanna Pressley and Jasmine Crockett, and if something had been said about President Trump that placed him in a negative light, they would have come tearing out of that meeting with their proverbial hair on fire to find a camera crew. And the camera crew was there. Hallie Jackson of NBC News interviewed the victims (and some of their family members) before their public press conference, and pressed them directly about two of the biggest names that have been linked to Jeffrey Epstein.

HALLIE JACKSON: I do have to ask, and I know, and it’s just something that I think we’re compelled to at this moment, with the attention on President Trump, with these questions, are at a pardon, did anybody see or hear of the President himself doing anything inappropriate, as it related to Jeffrey Epstein?

GROUP: No.

HALLIE JACKSON: Or former President Clinton?

GROUP: No.

The group does not want Ghislane Maxwell pardoned, and during the press conference today, they talked about how Epstein liked to brag about his connections to the powerful, like Trump.

Epstein victim Chauntae Davies: "I was just one of the many young women trapped in his orbit. I was even taken on a trip to Africa with former president Bill Clinton & other notable figures. In those moments, I realized how powerless I was. If I spoke out, who would believe me?… pic.twitter.com/7XsYCVCySG

— Tom Elliott (@tomselliott) September 3, 2025

Davies is the woman pictured giving Bill Clinton a neck massage in 2002 during that same trip (Kevin Spacey and Chris Tucker were also on that trip). It seems that Epstein liked to collect powerful and popular people into his orbit for his own ego, and then have these young girls around them to flaunt his own power. The question still is, did he and Maxwell sell or traffic these victims to others? Those victims stepping forward are saying they will compile their own list.

At a rally on Capitol Hill, Epstein victim Lisa Phillips said she and other survivors of Epstein and his co-conspirator Ghislaine Maxwell plan to release a list of those involved in the abuse.

“Epstein was not just a serial predator; he was an international human trafficker,” Phillips said. “And many around him knew this, many participated, and many profited, and yet, he was protected. I know what it’s like to be trafficked to others, and I know the files contain the names of powerful men who have been shielded because of their fame or fortune.”

“And let me announce now, several of us Epstein survivors have been discussing creating our own list of names,” she added to the cheers of the crowd. “We know the names. Many of us were abused by them. Now together as survivors, we will confidentially compile the names we all know were regularly in the Epstein world, and it will be done by survivors and for survivors.”

Multiple things can be true at once. Jeffrey Epstein may have never kept a list of people he trafficked these girls to, Ghislane Maxwell may be able to be interviewed and claim ignorance about big names, and the victims may be able to name the most names. Epstein clearly needed the cachet of being associated with Clinton and Trump to pass himself off as wealthy and connected, but they didn’t need HIM. It seems highly likely at this point that Epstein kept his more famous “friends” in the dark. Of course, this will all depend on what names the victims produce on their own list. The only victim that has ever named names before is the late Virginia Giuffre, and while she did get a settlement from Prince Andrew, she also had to retract an accusation against Alan Dershowitz. All that to say, a client list from the victims is going to be instantly scrutinized, and an accusation will be treated like a conviction the second a name drops. If these people are as powerful as the victims claim, they are going to have lawyers, and lots of them, to fight accusations in the court of public opinion. And they will fight dirty.

The smart move for the victims would be to create a list, give it to the DOJ without revealing any of the names, and allow law enforcement to build a case outside of the public eye. For those who say the DOJ can’t be trusted, please point to the law enforcement agency of your choice. As “satisfying” as it might be to just drop a list of names like a nuclear bomb on X for the Epstein case diehards to pore over, it will open the victims up to legal liability if they don’t have unassailable evidence of their complicity or sex crimes. Real justice, if at all possible now, should come first from the courts, and then the courts of public opinion. It’s not fair, it’s not right, but if the goal is getting the truth out, then it has to be done in a way that protects the victims.

Featured image: Jeffrey Epstein mugshot (screenshot via CBS This Morning on YouTube)