Bay Area congressman who viewed unredacted Epstein files says at least 6 men are implicated

WASHINGTON - Two members of Congress who pushed the federal government to publicly release its investigations into the late sex offender Jeffrey Epstein said they had identified at least six men who were likely incriminated in the well-connected financier's crimes, but declined to share the names.

Reps. Ro Khanna, D-Santa Clara, and Thomas Massie, R-Ky., spent two hours at a Justice Department office on Monday, the first day that unredacted files were made available for lawmakers to review. They complained that many of the files they looked at were still redacted, suggesting that they had already been censored by the FBI and other federal agencies when the Justice Department compiled them.

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But Khanna and Massie told reporters after that they found a list of men, including a high-ranking member of a foreign government and another prominent individual, which they believe was improperly blacked out when the department released millions of records late last month. They added that they want to give Justice Department officials an opportunity to check their work and correct any errors, rather than naming the men.

"None of this is designed to be a witch hunt. Just because someone may be in the files doesn't mean that 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 died by suicide in 2019 while awaiting trial for additional federal sex-trafficking charges, sparking conspiracy theories that the government was hiding the identities of powerful figures who had obtained 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, backtracked once in office.

So Khanna and Massie teamed up, going around Trump and Republican congressional leaders to force a vote last fall for disclosure of the documents. Their law, which passed nearly unanimously in November after the president relented, required the Justice Department to publish all unclassified records in its possession related to the Epstein investigation within 30 days.

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Yet the process has been met with public outrage: The Justice Department blew past its initial deadline in December, prompting Democratic legislators to threaten impeachment. When officials released another 3 million records at the end of last month from multiple federal cases and investigations related to Epstein and his accomplices, improper redactions exposed the names of 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 that aired during Sunday's Super Bowl demanding more transparency and telling Attorney General Pam Bondi that "it's time for the truth."

Khanna - who has begun building a national profile on a populist pledge to go after a "corrupt elite" that he has dubbed the "Epstein class" - said Monday that it was difficult to determine whether the extensive redactions complied with the law or not.

The Justice Department also appeared to have redacted nearly every female name in the files, Massie said, including the sender of an email that thanked Epstein for a "fun night" because "your littlest girl was a little naughty," which caught attention online after it was published without a name. Massie confirmed it was a woman who wrote it, though he said he could not parse if lawyers had redacted the record to protect the identity of a victim.

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"I would like to give the DOJ a chance to say they made a mistake and over-redacted," Massie said. "That would probably be the best way to do it."

Nevertheless, the fallout is ongoing for prominent individuals who appeared in the files.

Records show that Treasury Secretary Howard Lutnick interacted regularly with Epstein for more than a decade before he died, despite Lutnick's earlier assertion that he had tried to avoid Epstein after 2005. Rep. Robert Garcia, the Long Beach Democrat who has been investigating Epstein's ties as ranking member of the House Oversight Committee, and Sen. Adam Schiff, D-Calif., called in recent days for Lutnick to resign, repeatedly accusing him of lying to the American public.

Though he is not himself implicated, British Prime Minister Keir Starmer is also facing a growing political rebellion because he appointed an ambassador to the U.S. who had close ties to Epstein.

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Former President Bill Clinton, who had a well-documented relationship with Epstein, and former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton will sit for a deposition before the House Oversight Committee later this month under the threat of congressional contempt charges that put them at risk of imprisonment.

Meanwhile, Ghislaine Maxwell, who is 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 grants her clemency.

This article originally published at Bay Area congressman who viewed unredacted Epstein files says at least 6 men are implicated.

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