Reps. Thomas Massie (R-Ky.) and Ro Khanna (D-Calif.) said they spotted at least six names of individuals “likely incriminated” by their inclusion in the Epstein files after the two reviewed an unredacted tranche of the documents.
Members of Congress were permitted for the first time Monday to review the unredacted versions of all the Department of Justice (DOJ) files related to the convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein. Massie and Khanna were the two lead sponsors of the bill that forced the public release of the files.
“There are six men. We went in there for two hours. There’s millions of files, right? And in a couple of hours, we found six men whose names have been redacted, who are implicated in the way that the files are presented,” Massie told reporters outside the Justice Department office where lawmakers can review the files.
The two lawmakers did not name the men but said one is a high-ranking official in a foreign government while another is a prominent individual.
“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. But there are very powerful people who raped these underage girls — it wasn’t just Epstein and [his close associate Ghislaine] Maxwell — or showed up to the island or showed up to the ranch or showed up to the home knowing underage girls were being paraded around,” Khanna said.
Massie said he would not be releasing the names himself.
“I think we need to give the DOJ a chance to go back through and correct their mistakes,” he said.
“They need to themselves check their own homework.”
The law that mandated the release of the files allowed for narrow redactions, but lawmakers and victims of Epstein have raised questions about the breadth of what was blacked out and the fact that some names of victims were not.
Massie described an FBI form that listed conspirators in which the Justice Department redacted the name and photo of one of the men who was listed.
The lawmakers also shed light on one email in the latest tranche that garnered significant attention, in which one redacted individual thanked Epstein for a “fun night” and added, “Your littlest girl was a little naughty.”
Massie said that email was sent by a woman.
“That was a woman that wrote that, and and so it may be proper to redact it. It may not be, I don’t know. It seems like part of their algorithm for redaction was just to redact every woman in there, pretty much,” he said.
“We can’t parse if the person who sent that was a victim or not.”
The duo also said in reading through the unredacted files they learned that some items came to DOJ completely redacted. While the Justice Department was given parameters about what content they could redact, the review team was supposed to have unfettered access to all files.
“The documents produced to Justice from the FBI, from the grand jury, was redacted when they got it. … I don’t think that’s nefarious on the career attorneys that were reviewing it, but they obviously haven’t gotten the production because our law says that the FBI and the original grand jury [material] needs to be unredacted,” Khanna said.
