What Jamie Raskin saw in the unredacted Epstein files

• That document is a 2009 email exchange between Epstein and his associate, Ghislaine Maxwell, in which Epstein recounted his lawyers' account of a phone call with Trump, as Raskin previously told reporters.
• "Trump is paraphrased and quoted as saying, 'No, Jeffrey Epstein was not a member of Mar-a-Lago, but he was a guest at Mar-a-Lago, and no, we never asked him to leave,'" Raskin said in an interview at the Capitol.

The other side: Trump has denied all wrongdoing in the Epstein matter, and he's maintained that he kicked Epstein out of Mar-a-Lago for poaching spa workers.

• The former Palm Beach chief of police testified to the FBI in 2019 that following Epstein's arrest in the early 2000s, Trump claimed he threw Epstein out of Mar-a-Lago, the Epstein files show.
• Trump reportedly also told the then-police chief that "everyone has known he's been doing this" and that Maxwell is "evil and to focus on her."

Zoom in: Asked for comment, the White House pointed to three posts on X from Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche pushing back on Rep. Thomas Massie's (R-Ky.) claims about the unredacted files.

• Blanche accused Massie of sensationalizing his findings, saying for example that while the name of Les Wexner was redacted in a portion of the files naming him an Epstein co-conspirator, he "already appears in the files thousands of times."
• "DOJ is hiding nothing," he said in his posts. "Be honest, and stop grandstanding."

Driving the news: Following allegations of improper redactions in the more than 3 million files it released on Epstein, the Justice Department has begun giving members of Congress access to the unredacted files.

• Starting with Judiciary Committee members, lawmakers have access to the files on terminals at DOJ headquarters from 9am to 6pm ET, Monday through Friday.
• Several lawmakers, including Raskin, Massie, and Reps. Ro Khanna (D-Calif.) and Becca Balint (D-Vt.), viewed the files on Monday.

What they're saying: But it's about more than one email, Raskin stressed, exclaiming that the Mar-a-Lago exchange is "just one memo out of 3 million!"

• "The idea that we could get through a meaningful fraction of them is just ridiculous," he said.

• "I mean, there's tons of redacted stuff. ... And [Trump's] name, I think I put his name, and it appears more than a million times. So it's all over the place."

Following publication of this story, Raskin clarified in a statement to Axios, "In the database, I typed in the words 'Trump,' 'Donald or Don' and it came up with more than a million results."

• "I obviously didn't have the time to review each one, and I obviously cannot guarantee that every mention of a Donald is Donald Trump as opposed to some other Donald."
• Raskin said the Mar-a-Lago exchange was "one of the first documents I came across."
• He added that "the DOJ database review tool given to Members is confusing, unreliable, and clunky."

The bottom line: "To me, this whole rollout of saying that members can come from nine to five to sit at those four computers, is just part of the coverup," Raskin asserted.

• The 3 million documents that the administration has not publicly released "are the ones I'd like to see," he said.
• "The administration says that these are duplicative. Well go ahead and release them then! If they're duplicative, what's the problem? We'll be the judge of that."

Editor's note: This story has been updated with additional comments from Raskin for clarification.