House Judiciary Committee Democrats on Monday escalated their scrutiny of President Donald Trump's ties to Jeffrey Epstein, releasing a 50-page unsigned staff report — a document prepared by committee staff rather than formally adopted by the full committee — detailing "the case against Donald Trump emerging in the Epstein Files and DOJ's desperate efforts to cover it up," according to a report from MS NOW.

The document makes clear that Trump's least favorite issue is not going away, and that the opposition party intends to press the matter further in the wake of the midterm elections. As MS NOW noted, the report contains little in the way of new evidence and repeats several allegations against Trump that the outlet characterized as "unsubstantiated."

Among its central recommendations, the report calls for "an independent special counsel to investigate the president" over his connections to Epstein and the alleged cover-up of government files related to the deceased sex trafficker, who died in federal in 2019 while awaiting trial on sex trafficking charges. It also flags Attorney General Todd Blanche's "conflicts of interest and the Justice Department's reluctance to share relevant evidence with state and foreign law enforcement." Under Justice Department regulations, the decision to appoint a special counsel rests with the attorney general — the same official the report accuses of those conflicts — and MS NOW's account did not indicate any immediate response from the department to the recommendation.

MS NOW detailed the report's most serious assertion: "The more than 50-page report alleges that Trump was 'an active participant in Jeffrey Epstein's abuse of young women in the mid-to-late 1990s.'" According to the outlet, while the report contains at least one entirely new allegation against the president, "it provides no direct evidence other than the woman's own conversations with Judiciary Committee staff."

Trump has denied for years that he engaged in any sexual misconduct with any woman connected to Epstein, and he has said he knew nothing about Epstein's crimes. MS NOW noted that the report also repeats several other longstanding, unsubstantiated allegations against him.

A Democratic Judiciary Committee source told MS NOW that the report draws on publicly available accounts as well as conversations with survivors. The source declined to provide additional details about those conversations, citing concerns for survivors' privacy, and also declined to quantify how many survivor conversations informed the report.

The report compares Trump's statements about Epstein in recent years against documentary evidence, including emails, deposition transcripts, his prior public statements, and his drawings and signatures. Among the discrepancies highlighted are inconsistencies with what Trump has said about his awareness of Epstein's crimes.

The report further alleges that Trump's Justice Department has been working to keep the public "in the dark" about the true nature of his connections to Epstein. It suggests that Blanche "may have engaged in criminal obstruction of justice while acting on a mission to protect Trump," and raises the possibility of "witness tampering and obstruction of an official proceeding" in connection with his interview with Ghislaine Maxwell, Epstein's incarcerated lieutenant, who was convicted on federal sex trafficking charges in 2021.

The report's legal analysis states: "Blanche's apparent instructions not to discuss a specific Epstein victim, and how that victim could implicate Donald Trump, could easily run afoul of 18 U.S.C. § 1512, which forbids hindering or delaying the communication of information relating to the potential commission of a federal offense to a law enforcement officer, as well as corruptly influencing the testimony of any person in an official proceeding — such as a congressional interview and investigation."