House Democrat demands investigation into 1996 FBI complaint about Epstein
Source: USA Today
Updated Dec. 23, 2025, 6:14 p.m. ET
The top Democrat on the House Oversight Committee called on the Justice Department's internal watchdog to investigate new revelations that Jeffrey Epstein was first reported to the FBI for alleged sex crimes in 1996, a decade before an official FBI investigation was opened.
"For survivors like Maria Farmer, her family, and all the people Jeffrey Epstein abused in the decades that followed this unanswered complaint, this was not merely a missed investigative opportunity—it was a profound betrayal by their own government," Rep. Robert Garcia, of California, wrote on Tuesday, Dec. 23, in a letter addressed to William Blier, the Justice Department's acting inspector general.
Garcia's request comes after a 1996 complaint filed by Maria Farmer, an Epstein accuser, was made public as part of the Justice Department's massive release of new documents in the Epstein case. In the complaint, Farmer accused Epstein of stealing pictures she took of her 12 and 16-year-old sisters and threatening to burn her house down if she told anyone about them.
An FBI investigation would not be opened into Epstein's alleged grooming and trafficking of young girls for another decade.
Read more: https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2025/12/23/epstein-files-robert-garcia-1996-fbi-complaint/87897961007/
Link to House Oversight Democrats PRESS RELEASE - Ranking Member Robert Garcia Demands Answers on FBI’s Failure to Investigate Jeffrey Epstein After Survivor Maria Farmer Warned Agency in 1996, Newly Released Records Prove
Link to LETTER (inquiry) (PDF) - https://oversightdemocrats.house.gov/imo/media/doc/garcia_et_al_to_doj_oig_re_maria_farmer.pdf
As a note that could open up a whole other can of worms, was that the FBI Director at the time was that blast-from-the-past Louis Freeh (who came with his own drama during his tenure, where that continued post-FBI, with his buddies Ghouliani and Dershowitz).