The Justice Department (DOJ) sent a letter to Congress on Saturday outlining its justification for redactions made in the released Jeffrey Epstein files, according to Politico.
The six-page letter to the leaders of the Senate and House Judiciary committees also included a list of “all government officials and politically exposed persons” named in the files for any reason. Several high-profile names were on the list, including President Trump.
The department noted that names appeared in a “wide variety of contexts,” ranging from individuals who directly emailed with Epstein or his associate Ghislaine Maxwell to those who had no interaction with either but were referenced in documents such as media reports.
The lack of clarity surrounding which individuals fit into which contexts drew criticism from Rep. Ro Khanna (D-Calif.), who accused the DOJ of “purposefully muddying the waters on who was a predator and who was mentioned in an email.”
“To have Janis Joplin, who died when Epstein was 17, in the same list as Larry Nassar, who went to prison for the sexual abuse of hundreds of young women and child pornography, with no clarification of how either was mentioned in the files is absured,” Khanna, one of the co-sponsors of the Epstein Files Transparency Act, wrote on the social platform X.
“Release the full files. Stop protecting predators. Redact only the survivor’s names,” he added.
The Justice Department did not immediately respond to The Hill’s request for comment.
The Trump administration has come under immense scrutiny for its handling of the investigation into Epstein’s crimes, with critics arguing it has not been transparent in the batches of documents released.
Lawmakers who reviewed the unredacted Epstein files at a DOJ office this week reported heavy, “unnecessary” redactions in the documents. Trump officials have maintained the redactions are meant to ensure victims’ identities are kept private.
Khanna and Rep. Thomas Massie (R-Ky.) said on Monday that they identified six names in the files that had been concealed, and Khanna read them on the House floor the next day.
Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche criticized the move days later, writing in a post on X that the lawmakers had “forced the unmasking of completely random people” that he said had no connection to Epstein or Maxwell.
Harmeet Dhillon, the U.S. assistant attorney general for the DOJ’s Civil Rights Division, also jumped in.
“The problem is that you put political expediency and cheap clicks/demagoguery over justice and due process, making fools of yourselves in the process. Totally avoidable and unjust,” Dhillon wrote on X in response to a post from Khanna.
Massie pushed back, arguing he “told DOJ these might be random guys in a line-up” before the names were made public.
“Todd retweeted my post, so you can’t say he didn’t see it. DOJ should have provided the same context I did when they released the names,” he wrote on X.
