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Rank-and-file Republicans fear party leaders are making a mistake by starting their August recess early instead of voting to release files on Jeffrey Epstein, the late financier and sex offender whose connections to President Donald Trump are at the heart of a growing scandal.

The Department of Justice’s Jeffrey Epstein investigation continued to roil Washington on Tuesday, as the department pivoted—reaching out to jailed Epstein associate Ghislaine Maxwell—and the House of Representatives was dismissed early for its summer recess.

Newly uncovered photos and footage shed new light on Donald Trump’s past ties to Jeffrey Epstein. At least two black-and-white photographs uncovered by CNN confirm, for the first time, that Epstein attended the president’s second wedding in December 1993 to Marla Maples at the Plaza Hotel in New York.

Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche said he anticipated personally meeting with Maxwell, who is serving a 20-year prison sentence for sex trafficking.

Trump on Tuesday said “I don’t follow it too much” when asked by reporters about the backlash to his administration’s handling of the Epstein investigatory documents.

Drama over Jeffrey Epstein continues to plague lawmakers as they prep for August recess and an opportunity to reconnect in person with constituents.

The 2019 suicide of disgraced financier and sex offender Jeffrey Epstein in a New York jail cell generated conspiracy theories that he was killed by one of his famous connections.

Trump has unspooled comments on a litany of controversies, all of which seem designed to distract attention from the Jeffrey Epstein case.

U.S. President Donald Trump on Monday followed up his lawsuit against The Wall Street Journal over last week's Jeffrey Epstein story by banishing one of the newspaper's reporters from Air Force One for an upcoming Scotland trip.