TLDR
Rep. Shomari Figures (D-AL), a former DOJ official who served as Deputy Chief of Staff and Counselor to Attorney General Merrick Garland and as White House Liaison under Attorney General Loretta Lynch, has spoken publicly about the Epstein files and cosponsored the Transparency Act — bringing insider knowledge of the very department now withholding 42% of responsive documents.
A DOJ Insider Turned Congressional Overseer
Rep. Shomari Figures represents Alabama's 2nd Congressional District and serves on the House Agriculture Committee and the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee. Before entering Congress, Figures held two senior positions at the Department of Justice: he served as White House Liaison under Attorney General Loretta Lynch and later as Deputy Chief of Staff and Counselor to Attorney General Merrick Garland (U.S. House of Representatives, 2026). These are not policy-staff positions; they are senior leadership roles that involve direct interaction with the Attorney General, coordination with the White House, and visibility into how the Department makes decisions about what to disclose, what to withhold, and how to interpret its legal obligations.
This background makes Figures one of the very few members of Congress who understands DOJ's internal processes from the inside. When the Department declared its January 30, 2026 release "fifth and final" at approximately 58% compliance with the Epstein Files Transparency Act, Figures would have understood exactly how that decision was made — which offices were consulted, which legal frameworks were invoked, and which institutional interests were weighed against the statutory mandate for disclosure (PAPER TRAIL Project, 2026).
Public Engagement on the Epstein Files
Figures has gone beyond cosponsorship in his public engagement with the Epstein case. He was interviewed on Capitol Hill by the Nexstar DC Bureau specifically to discuss the Epstein files, making him one of the members who used media appearances to keep the compliance question in the public conversation (PAPER TRAIL Project, 2026). His willingness to speak on the record about the files carries additional weight because of his DOJ background — he is not an outside critic speculating about the Department's motives; he is a former senior official describing an institution whose internal culture and decision-making processes he knows firsthand.
NPR reported on February 24, 2026 that DOJ had withheld Trump-related files from the Epstein corpus, raising questions about whether the Department's redaction decisions are being influenced by political considerations rather than legal ones (NPR, 2026). For a former DOJ official who served under two Attorneys General, the question of whether the Department is making redaction decisions on legal grounds or political grounds is not hypothetical — it is a question about institutional integrity that Figures is uniquely qualified to evaluate.
The DOJ's Institutional Culture of Withholding
Figures's experience inside DOJ gives him insight into a dimension of the Epstein compliance failure that most members of Congress cannot access: the Department's institutional culture around document disclosure. DOJ has historically defaulted to withholding rather than releasing, invoking deliberative process privilege, law enforcement sensitivity, and privacy interests as grounds for keeping records out of public view (U.S. Department of Justice, 2025-2026). The Epstein Files Transparency Act was designed to override those defaults by creating a statutory mandate for disclosure, but DOJ's interpretation of the Act — that it does not compel release of all identified responsive documents — represents exactly the kind of institutional resistance to transparency that Figures would have witnessed from the inside.
The 42% gap between identified and released documents is not simply a number. It reflects a series of decisions made by DOJ officials about which records to release and which to withhold — decisions that Figures, as a former Deputy Chief of Staff, understands at the operational level (PAPER TRAIL Project, 2026).
What Mobile Constituents Should Know
AL-2 voters in Mobile, Montgomery, and across Southern Alabama are represented by a member who held senior leadership positions at the Department of Justice under two Attorneys General and who has spoken publicly about the Epstein files on Capitol Hill. Figures cosponsored the Transparency Act and has engaged with media on the compliance question, bringing insider knowledge to the oversight effort. The DOJ has released only 58% of responsive documents, and reports indicate that Trump-related files have been withheld (Epstein Files Transparency Act, Pub. L. No. 119-38, 2025). Whether Figures uses his unique understanding of DOJ's internal processes to push for full compliance — and whether his Agriculture and Transportation committee assignments give him sufficient leverage to do so — is a question his constituents are entitled to ask of the only member of Congress who has sat in the rooms where these withholding decisions are made.
Figures's DOJ background means he understands the file handling processes that produced the 419-video surveillance corpus — and the 42% compliance gap in the department's response to the Transparency Act. His institutional knowledge of DOJ operations distinguishes him from other cosponsors who lack insider perspective on why 98% of guard gaps have no overlapping control room footage.
References
Epstein Files Transparency Act, Pub. L. No. 119-38 (2025). https://www.congress.gov/bill/119th-congress/house-bill/4405
NPR. (2026, February 24). DOJ withholds Trump-related Epstein files [News report].
PAPER TRAIL Project. (2026). Congressional oversight recipient profiles [Data set]. Script 34 output.
U.S. Congress. (2025). Epstein Files Transparency Act, P.L. 119-38.
U.S. Department of Justice. (2025-2026). Epstein document releases [Government records].
U.S. House of Representatives. (2026). Member directory [Data set].
This investigation is part of the SubThesis accountability journalism network.