Plan comes after major New York Times report alleges files became source of crisis within Trump administration
Democrats on the House oversight committee, led by Representative Robert Garcia, plan to call on JD Vance to testify on the Trump administration’s handling of the Epstein files following a major report on Wednesday from the New York Times, which described how the Epstein files became the source of an internal crisis within Trump’s administration.
Garcia will call on the committee chair, James Comer, to summon the vice-president to speak, according toa postfrom Max Cohen, a reporter with Punchbowl News. The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment about whether Vance would agree to appear.
According to the New York Timesreport, the Epstein files became the source of an internal crisis within Trump’s administration. Vance warned fellow officials the controversy represented a “huge problem” while senior aides held a series of Situation Room meetings – frequently without Trump present – to address the growing issue.
According to the Times, the White House chief of staff, Susie Wiles, felt that Vance was exaggerating the significance of the matter and believed he had “bought into the conspiracy theories”.
That reporting appears to have prompted Garcia’s request. “Why are we having meetings in the Situation Room about the Epstein strategy?” he said to Punchbowl.
The story follows months of controversy surrounding the government’streatment of recordsconnected toJeffrey Epstein, the financier and convicted sex offender who died in a New York City jail in 2019 while awaiting trial on sex-trafficking charges.
The dispute intensified after a 2025 justice department memo concluded there was no evidence of a “client list”, drawing criticism from many Trump supporters. The subsequent release of millions of pages of documents under the Epstein Files Transparency Act continued to fuel attention on the issue.
According to the Times report, those participating in the meetings alongside Vance and Wiles included the then attorney general, Pam Bondi, now acting attorney general, Todd Blanche, FBI director, Kash Patel, White House communications director, Steve Cheung, former deputy chief of staff Taylor Budowich and White House press secretary, Karoline Leavitt.
Multiple attenders, including Cheung, reportedly viewed the Epstein situation as a “PR disaster”.
The report says officials explored various possible responses, including transparency measures that some privately believed would reveal little additional information. They also discussed less conventional approaches, including the possibility of usingGhislaine Maxwellto publicly defend Trump in an interview with Tucker Carlson.
Vance argued for releasing all of the files and taking action before Congress could advance the Epstein Files Transparency Act, according to the report, which would compel the administration to disclose more information.
At the same time, aides were said to be focused largely on the possibility of losing support from core Maga voters rather than concern about political opponents, suggesting that worries about their own base heavily influenced the administration’s handling of the matter.
The Times reporters wrote that numerous Trump administration officials, Bondi among them, had either “grossly underestimated or simply been blind to the voracious appetite of the Maga base for information about Epstein”.
Their reporting also states that infighting and finger-pointing spread among officials and reached a peak after the Wall Street Journalreportedin July that Trump had allegedly sent Epstein a “bawdy” birthday message in 2003 accompanied by a drawing of a woman’s naked silhouette.
