A top House Democrat on Tuesday accused Donald Trump of “systematically dismantling” efforts to prosecute sex crimes and hunt down traffickers, as the president faces continued pressure to make public investigative files related to disgraced financier Jeffrey Epstein.
The memo from House judiciary committee ranking member Jamie Raskin and his staff, shared exclusively with the Guardian, said that beyond refusing the demands for transparency around Epstein, who died in 2019 while awaiting trial on sex trafficking charges, Trump has also undercut efforts to hold people accused of similar crimes accountable by “systematically dismantling the offices and programs we rely on to combat human trafficking and prosecute sex crimes”.
“President Trump in office has repeatedly taken the side of criminal sex predators and violent abusers against their victims, and this pattern goes well beyond his strenuous efforts to bury the Epstein Files,” Raskin wrote in the memo.
“Far from aiding victims and survivors, President Trump consistently sides with their abusers,” he said. “His all-of-government policy to aid traffickers and sex criminals and abandon survivors has made American women dramatically less safe.”
White House spokesperson Taylor Rogers called the accusations “total nonsense” before criticizing former president Joe Biden and his handling of immigration. “Their party’s president spent the last four years coddling and apologizing for criminals and sexual predators. Joe Biden’s wide open border allowed hundreds of thousands of innocent children to be kidnapped across the southern border by smugglers and gang members illegally residing in our communities,” Rogers said.
She added that Trump had “totally secured our border to stop the trafficking of children” and “implemented tough-on-crime policies to hold these disgusting monsters accountable to the fullest extent of the law”.
Raskin’s memo to Democratic members of the judiciary committee comes in advance of testimony scheduled for Wednesday by FBI director Kash Patel, at which Democrats are expected to press him for details on the bureau’s handling of its investigation into Epstein.
Appearing before the Senate judiciary committee on Tuesday, Patel acknowledged shortcomings in how an investigation into Epstein was handled that led to the financier pleading guilty in 2008 to charges related to procuring a child prostitute. However, the director insisted that court orders prevented him acceding to Democrats demands to release more files related to Epstein.
In the memo, Raskin argues: “The Trump Administration’s sympathetic alignment with powerful sex traffickers and rapists goes far beyond its efforts to suppress the truth of what happened in one explosive case,” and pointed to several policies Trump implemented that he believes help criminals.
Among those are its dismantling of USAID, which he described as one of the most effective agencies at documenting trafficking routes and undermining efforts to use forced labor to scam Americans.
“Closing USAID has blinded federal law enforcement to developing threats overseas, allowing trafficking networks to strengthen in power, influence, and size, almost certainly leading to an increase in the number of women and children trafficked into the United States,” Raskin said.
About half of the federal law enforcement personnel who would normally be investigating criminals and terrorists are now focused on deportations as part of the Trump administration’s crackdown on undocumented immigrants, the memo said. This includes one in five FBI agents, almost two thirds of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives and three quarters of the Drug Enforcement Administration, among other agencies.
“By diverting extraordinary amounts of money and personnel to its immigration crackdown, the Trump Administration has undermined the investigation and prosecution of nearly every other law enforcement priority, including human trafficking and child exploitation,” Raskin wrote.
Trump has also cancelled hundreds of grants to local law enforcement agencies and non-profits that were used to help victims of such crimes, according to the memo. Federal funds are no longer flowing to trainings of sexual assault nurse examiners in disadvantaged areas or victim advocates employed at rape crisis centers, nor to American Sign Language interpretation for survivors of domestic violence.
Trump’s immigration crackdown has intruded into efforts to help trafficking survivors, with the memo saying one organization has been told it cannot use grant money to help anyone in the country illegally. Such a notice may violate federal law, and the groups receiving the grants typically have no way of knowing their clients’ immigration status, Raskin said.
Another group that received federal funding to work with child abuse victims had its funding terminated after more than three decades, then partially restored with instructions that “its affiliates to never again mention race, class, and gender diversity in it training materials”.
“These findings reveal the Trump Administration’s structural bias in favor of human traffickers, rapists, and sexual violators and against their victims, survivors, and opponents. The question of why this alignment exists cannot be answered in this memo, but the pattern is unmistakable,” Raskin wrote.
He also noted that several top officials, including defense secretary Pete Hegseth and health secretary Robert F Kennedy Jr, have been accused of inappropriate conduct, while the Trump administration acted to facilitate the return of “misogynist influencer” Andrew Tate and his brother Tristan from Romania, where they faced charges including rape. Dozens of those who were pardoned of charges related to January 6 had also faced trafficking and sex abuse charges before and after the insurrection, Raskin said.
The memo comes amid a spike in interest in the Epstein case, which began in July after the justice department released a report concluding that his death was a suicide, and saying no further information about the matter would be released. The assertions flew in the face of conspiracy theories Trump and his senior officials have encouraged that held Epstein was at the heart of a wide-ranging conspiracy involving global elites.
A bipartisan group of lawmakers is circulating a petition in the House of Representatives that would force a vote on legislation mandating the release of the Epstein files. The petition needs just one more signature to succeed.
Trump opposes the effort, calling it a “Democrat hoax”, but sent a deputy attorney general to interview Epstein’s accomplice Ghislaine Maxwell and petitioned unsuccessfully for release of grand jury transcripts related to the financier’s indictment.
The House oversight committee is also investigating the Epstein matter, and earlier this month released a “birthday book” containing a sexually suggestive drawing Trump appears to have made for his one-time friend.
