Sen. Dick Durbin (D-IL) pushed back against Sen. Marsha Blackburn (R-TN) after the latter said that Democrats were trying to stop the release of the “Jeffrey Epstein files,” the list of associates who patronized his sex trafficking ring.
The dispute burst into the open in the confirmation hearing of Kash Patel, who is President Donald Trump’s choice to lead the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI). Blackburn asked Patel whether he would released the files, and he said that he would make the details of the case public.
In the course of her question, she said that Durbin and former FBI director Christopher Wray had stonewalled inquiries.
Durbin pushed back, claiming that he had championed the cause of sex trafficking victims, and that he had been “falsely accused” by Patel of trying to prevent the release of the files. He claimed that Blackburn had “never raised Epstein’s flight logs with me, publicly or privately.”
“You and Christopher Wray did not want those out,” Blackburn countered, saying that Durbin had silenced her from addressing the issue when he held the gavel as chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee.
Durbin claimed that he had prevented Blackburn from speaking about the issue only because of a procedural rule that limited debate to two hours.
Joel B. Pollak is Senior Editor-at-Large at Breitbart News and the host of Breitbart News Sunday on Sirius XM Patriot on Sunday evenings from 7 p.m. to 10 p.m. ET (4 p.m. to 7 p.m. PT). He is the author of The Agenda: What Trump Should Do in His First 100 Days, available for pre-order on Amazon. He is also the author of The Trumpian Virtues: The Lessons and Legacy of Donald Trump’s Presidency, now available on Audible. He is a winner of the 2018 Robert Novak Journalism Alumni Fellowship. Follow him on Twitter at @joelpollak.
