WASHINGTON – Two members of Congress who pushed the federal government to go public with its investigations into the late sex offender Jeffrey Epstein said they have identified at least six men who were likely implicated in the financier’s well-connected murders, but declined to share names.
Reps. Ro Khanna, D-Santa Clara, and Thomas Massie, R-Ky., spent two hours at a Justice Department office Monday, the first day the unredacted files were made available for lawmakers to review. They complained that many of the files they reviewed were still redacted, suggesting they had already been censored by the FBI and other federal agencies when the Justice Department compiled them.
But Khanna and Massie told reporters afterward that they found a list of men, including a high-ranking member of a foreign government and another prominent person, who they believe were improperly ignored when the department released millions of records late last month. They added that they wanted to give Justice Department officials an opportunity to review their work and correct any errors, rather than naming the men.
“None of this is designed to be a witch hunt. Just because someone might be on the record doesn’t mean they’re guilty,” Khanna said. “But there are very powerful people who raped these underage girls. It wasn’t just Epstein.”
Epstein pleaded guilty in 2008 to procuring a minor for prostitution and then killed himself in 2019 while awaiting trial on additional federal sex-trafficking charges, sparking conspiracy theories that the government was concealing the identities of powerful figures who procured underage girls from him. After pledging to release the files during his campaign last year, President Donald Trump, a close friend of Epstein’s before they fell out in the early 2000s, backed down once in office.
So Khanna and Massie teamed up, going around Trump and Republican congressional leaders to force a vote last fall to release the documents. Their law, which passed almost unanimously in November after the president caved in, required the Justice Department to release all unclassified records in its possession related to the Epstein investigation within 30 days.
However, the process was met with public outrage: The Justice Department missed the original deadline in December, prompting Democratic lawmakers to threaten impeachment. When officials released another 3 million records late last month from several federal cases and investigations related to Epstein and his accomplices, the redactions exposed the names of the victims while protecting the identities of some people who corresponded with Epstein. Millions more documents were withheld because the department said they were duplicative, protected by attorney-client privilege or depicted violence.
A group of Epstein trafficking survivors appeared in an ad aired during Sunday’s Super Bowl, calling for more transparency and telling Attorney General Pam Bondi that “it’s time for the truth.”
Khanna – who began building a national profile on a populist pledge to go after a “corrupt elite” he called the “Epstein class” – said Monday that it was difficult to determine whether the extensive redactions followed the law or not.
The Justice Department also appears to have redacted nearly every woman’s name in the files, Massie said, including the sender of an email thanking Epstein for a “fun night” because “your little girl was a little naughty,” which drew attention online after it was published anonymously. Massie confirmed that a woman wrote it, though he said he could not look into whether lawyers redacted the file to protect the identity of a victim.
“I would like to give the DOJ a chance to say they made a mistake and overreacted,” Massie said. “That would probably be the best way to do it.”
However, the fallout is ongoing for prominent individuals who appeared in the files.
The records show that Treasury Secretary Howard Lutnick regularly interacted with Epstein for more than a decade before he died, despite Lutnick’s earlier claim that he tried to avoid Epstein after 2005. Rep. Robert Garcia, the Long Beach Democrat who investigated Epstein’s ties as the ranking member of the House Oversight Committee, called the House Oversight Committee Adam in recent days, and in recent days called Sen. D-Cif. Lutnick to resign, repeatedly accusing him of lying to the American public.
Although he himself is not involved, British Prime Minister Keir Starmer also faces a growing political rebellion because he appointed an ambassador to the US who had close ties to Epstein.
Former President Bill Clinton, who had a well-documented relationship with Epstein, and former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton will testify before the House Oversight Committee later this month under the threat of contempt of Congress charges that put them at risk of jail time.
Meanwhile, Ghislaine Maxwell, currently serving a 20-year prison sentence for conspiring with Epstein, appeared virtually before the panel on Monday and invoked her Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination. Her lawyer said she would only answer questions if Trump granted her clemency.
This article was originally published at Bay Area congressman who viewed the unredacted Epstein files says at least 6 men are involved.