Mike Davis, founder of the conservative Article III Project and a former clerk to Justice Neil Gorsuch, said Tuesday the department’s manpower has been consumed by demands for transparency surrounding Epstein-related files, slowing progress on inquiries linked to what Trump often refers to as the weaponization of the justice system against him and his allies during the Biden administration.

Want accountability for lawfare against Trump and his allies?

Then stop demanding every good person at the Justice Department sit through months of Epstein document review.

There is no accountability on lawfare right now because Massie and his Democrat buddies have Trump’s… pic.twitter.com/poQCXUREfO

— 🇺🇸 Mike Davis 🇺🇸 (@mrddmia) February 17, 2026

“If you want to bring accountability for the lawfare against President Trump, his aides and his allies, then let’s not demand that every good person in the Justice Department has to sit through months and months of document review,” Davis, who previously called himself Trump’s “viceroy,” said during an interview on Real America’s Voice.

A source familiar with the DOJ’s internal deliberations told the Washington Examiner the scope of the review required an unusually large commitment of personnel.

“By definition, we had 500 lawyers and leadership in the Office of the Deputy Attorney General and Office of the Attorney General and the National Security Division and the Criminal Division working on this for several months,” the source said.

Davis’s comments reflect growing frustration among some Trump-aligned legal advocates who say congressional pressure to release Epstein materials has monopolized finite departmental resources at a time when Attorney General Pam Bondi is under pressure to produce results from her “Weaponization Working Group.”

Bondi launched that initiative shortly after taking office last year to review controversial investigations into Trump and his allies, including cases brought by former special counsel Jack Smith and state prosecutors in New York and Georgia. The group has yet to release public findings, even as Trump has urged faster action, and DOJ personnel are now expected to meet more frequently to accelerate the work.

Davis’s remarks have also drawn criticism from some figures in Trump’s broader political orbit.

This is pathological gaslighting…

It went from “things are happening, Pam Bondi is doing great, it doesn’t happen overnight, be patient, don’t be a black-piller and a panican, things are going on behind the scenes you just don’t see them”

to

“It’s not happening, and it’s… https://t.co/KltV5Tq4tB

— Viva Frei (@thevivafrei) February 17, 2026

David Freiheit, a pro-Trump lawyer and online commentator better known as Viva Frei, pushed back on Davis’s remarks, responding on X that his explanation amounted to “pathological gaslighting” and suggested the messaging had shifted from urging patience to blaming transparency advocates for delays.

The demand on DOJ resources intensified after Reps. Thomas Massie (R-KY) and Ro Khanna (D-CA) spearheaded the bipartisan Epstein Files Transparency Act with a Dec. 19 deadline, giving the department just 30 days to procure the documents for public release.

The DOJ failed to meet that deadline, though it did accomplish making a digital Epstein Library publicly available by the date, with a pledge to continue releasing additional files on a rolling basis. Bondi announced Saturday that all Epstein files have been published in compliance with the transparency act, following the Jan. 30 release of more than 3 million files in the department’s possession.

In response to public frustrations about additional redactions aired by Massie, Khanna, and other transparency advocates, the department has, in recent days, continued to remove redactions from documents flagged by lawmakers that they said included names of possible Epstein coconspirators.

Khanna last week read several recently unredacted names from the files on the House floor, describing them as powerful figures whose identities had been concealed. But DOJ officials responded by acknowledging four of those individuals had no apparent connection to Epstein and instead appeared in a photo lineup compiled years earlier by investigators in the Southern District of New York.

Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche said in an X post last week that the lawmakers had “forced the unmasking of completely random people selected years ago for an FBI lineup” who had “nothing to do with Epstein or Maxwell.”

.@RepRoKhanna and @RepThomasMassie forced the unmasking of completely random people selected years ago for an FBI lineup- men and women. These individuals have NOTHING to do with Epstein or Maxwell. https://t.co/9nPAMCU83n

— Todd Blanche (@DAGToddBlanche) February 13, 2026

Two of the men publicly identified denied any relationship with Epstein and said they were unaware their names had surfaced until contacted by reporters. Both acknowledged prior unrelated arrests that may have resulted in their photographs being included in law enforcement databases.

LES WEXNER TESTIFIES HE WAS ‘CONNED’ IN EPSTEIN RELATIONSHIP BUT DID ‘NOTHING WRONG’

Davis, however, has accused these lawmakers of politicizing the problem and diverting attention from investigations into what Trump and his allies describe as improper prosecutions during the previous administration.

DOJ officials say the Epstein review and the weaponization inquiry are separate efforts, though both draw on personnel across divisions. A department spokesperson declined to discuss specifics but told NBC News earlier this month the working group is “diligently working to restore integrity to the Department of Justice.”