U.S. Sen. Marsha Blackburn (R-Tenn.) is accusing Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) of blocking her request to file a subpoena for Jeffrey Epstein’s flight logs.
“@SenatorDurbin BLOCKED my request to subpoena Jeffrey Epstein’s Flight logs. What are Democrats trying to hide?” Sen. Blackburn wrote on X Thursday.
“We were trying to get my subpoenas of Jeffrey Epstein’s flight logs, and the subpoena of [Supreme Court Justice Sotomayor and her book deal — things that weren’t reported but we have found out about this through the news,” Blackburn said in a video posted Thursday evening.
“And of course the Chairman blocked it all, cut it off — that’s not how this committee is supposed to work,” Blackburn said.
Jeffrey Epstein, the New York financier who ran a child sex trafficking ring, cultivated an elite social circle consisting of several high-profile celebrities and politicians.
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Epstein was arrested in July 2019 on federal charges for the sex trafficking of minors in Florida and New York, and died in his jail cell in August 2019 while awaiting trial.
In July of this year a Department of Justice watchdog group released a report on Epstein’s death, saying a combination of negligence, misconduct and “outright job performance failures” allowed the sex trafficker to commit suicide in his cell.
Epstein’s longtime partner Ghislaine Maxwell is currently serving a twenty-year federal prison sentence after being convicted for her role in procuring and transporting minors to engage in sexual activity.
“This is a sad day in the history of the prestigious Judiciary Committee and further underscores the Left’s two tiers of justice crusade,” Blackburn said in a statement Thursday.
“Senate Democrats have long been trying to undermine the Supreme Court and Justice Clarence Thomas, but want to ignore Justice Sotomayor allegedly using her taxpayer-funded staff to coordinate speaking engagements in exchange for selling and promoting thousands of her books,” she said.
“They also don’t want to have a conversation about the estate of Jeffrey Epstein to find out the names of every person who participated in Jeffrey Epstein’s human trafficking ring,” she added.
Although apparently blocking subpoenas against Epstein and Justice Sotomayor, Sen. Durbin announced Thursday that the Senate Judiciary Committee had issued subpoenas to Harlan Crow and Leonard Leo — two major Republican Party donors who Durbin says “are at the center of the Supreme Court’s ethical crisis.”
The Republican members of the Committee staged a walkout shortly before the Democrats voted to subpoena the conservative donors, resulting in the Committee not having a quorum.
The Minority Senate Judiciary Republicans claim that the subpoenas were passed by an “illegitimate vote” due to Chairman Durbin blocking discussion and not allowing for amendments to be offered in violation of committee rules.
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Following up on her criticism of the Democratic Senate Judiciary Chairman, Sen. Blackburn again called for the subpoena of Epstein’s flight logs Friday.
“We need to uncover the names of every individual who participated in Jeffrey Epstein’s horrific human trafficking ring,” she wrote.
Maine Sen. Angus King, an independent who caucuses exclusively with majority Democrats, did not respond to an inquiry asking whether he would support the release of the Epstein flight logs.