Trump's new AG immediately put on notice by GOP rep — and warned of 'criminal' liability

Moments after President Donald Trump fired Attorney General Pam Bondi, Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche was elevated to her position and named acting attorney general, a promotion that was immediately met with a fierce warning from one Republican lawmaker.

“Congratulations AG Blanche,” wrote Rep. Thomas Massie (R-KY) Thursday night in a social media post on X. “Now you have 30 days to release the rest of the files before becoming criminally liable for failure to comply with the Epstein Files Transparency Act (EFTA).”

Massie’s warning to Blanche – who represented Trump in court following his indictment on 37 felony counts over his alleged mishandling of classified documents – comes after last year’s passage of the EFTA, which requires the Justice Department (DOJ) to publish all of its files on Jeffrey Epstein with limited redactions. Instead, the DOJ had admittedly withheld millions of files related to Epstein from the public.

A bipartisan group of lawmakers sought to hold Bondi criminally liable for allegedly violating the EFTA, including by holding her in contempt of Congress and issuing her a fine “every day” that her agency refused to publish its remaining files on Epstein. With Bondi now out as the Trump administration’s top law enforcement official, those threats have now been passed over to Blanche.

Recent comments by Blanche suggest that like Bondi, he may continue to stonewall efforts to publish the DOJ’s remaining files on Epstein. Last month, he appeared on “The Katie Miller Podcast” – the right-wing political talk show launched by the wife of White House Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller – where he dismissed claims that Epstein may have worked on behalf of foreign intelligence, and in spite of evidence suggesting otherwise.

In his interview with Miller, Blanche also dismissed the idea that Epstein had a “client list” – a colloquial term often used to describe a list of potential co-conspirators of Epstein, or individuals he or his accomplices had potentially trafficked children or young women to – going as far as to say he didn’t "know what a client list is.”