Kamala Harris explains why Biden White House did not release Epstein files
In a post-election interview on Jimmy Kimmel Live, former Vice President Kamala Harris explains the Biden administration's position — that the President should not direct the DOJ on which files to release or withhold — drawing a sharp contrast with Trump's politicization of the issue.
On December 17, 2025, former Vice President Kamala Harris addressed the Biden administration’s handling of the Epstein files during an appearance on Jimmy Kimmel Live — one of the few times a senior Biden official had publicly defended the decision not to release them.
What Harris Said
Asked by Kimmel why the Biden White House had not simply ordered the release of the files, Harris grounded her answer in Justice Department independence: “We strongly and rightly believed that there should be an absolute separation between what we wanted as an administration and what the Department of Justice did.” Pressed further, she maintained that declining to direct the DOJ “was the right thing to do.”
Her response was widely panned across the political spectrum as halting and unpersuasive. Commentators — including some sympathetic to her — noted that she struggled to explain why a principle of prosecutorial independence required withholding records the public and survivors had spent years demanding, and that she never squarely addressed whether the files should ultimately come out. The exchange aired just days before the Trump DOJ’s own statutory deadline to begin releasing files under the Transparency Act, sharpening the contrast critics drew between the two administrations’ very different failures.
The Context
Harris’s explanation highlighted a genuine institutional difference between the two administrations. The Biden DOJ under Merrick Garland withheld files through established legal processes — citing ongoing investigations, grand jury rules, and appellate proceedings. The Trump DOJ under Pam Bondi released files selectively, with heavy redactions protecting powerful figures while simultaneously leaking survivor identities.
The contrast was not between transparency and secrecy, but between two different failures — one of institutional inertia, one of active political manipulation. The Biden approach used legal process to delay; the Trump approach used selective disclosure to control the narrative while shielding allies.
Response
Legal scholars and former DOJ officials largely agreed with Harris’s description of DOJ independence as a constitutional norm — one that had been repeatedly violated by the Trump administration on other matters. Several noted that the principle had been invoked by attorneys general of both parties going back decades.
Survivors’ advocates offered a more nuanced response. While some acknowledged the institutional argument, others noted that transparency and prosecutorial independence are not inherently in conflict — the Biden administration could have supported legislative solutions or executive orders facilitating release without directing specific prosecutorial decisions. The fact that bipartisan legislation ultimately accomplished what both administrations failed to do on their own underscored this point.