Some of the Epstein files that the Justice Department invited members of Congress to view at a reading room at its headquarters have remained redacted, despite officials’ promises otherwise, according to two lawmakers who visited the room Monday.
“There’s still a lot that’s redacted — even in what we’re seeing, we’re seeing redacted versions. I thought we were supposed to see the unredacted versions,” Rep. Ro Khanna, D-Calif., told reporters outside the DOJ headquarters.
Khanna and Rep. Thomas Massie, R-Ky. — the co-sponsors of the Epstein Files Transparency Act that forced the DOJ to release the files after President Donald Trump signed it into law in November — said some of the documents appeared to have been redacted by the FBI or grand juries before they arrived at the Justice Department. But their law requires those original materials be unredacted.
Among those allegedly over-redacted materials are what are known as “302s,” or summaries of FBI interviews with victims, and prosecution memos.
“They have been protecting some of these men,” Khanna said. “Maybe it was not intentionally, but the law is very clear. They need to comply with the law.”
The DOJ has said that it redacted or withheld about 200,000 pages “based on various privileges.” A formal report from the DOJ to the House and Senate Judiciary Committees explaining those redactions is due within the week.
Massie told reporters he “would like to give the DOJ a chance to say they made a mistake and over-redacted, and let them unredact those men’s names.”
But, he added, “they’re already breaking the law — look, they’re way past the deadline.”
The most recent batch of files comprises more than three million pages, including 2,000 videos and 18,000 images. It was released at the end of January, despite the Epstein Files Transparency Act requiring the release of all files by Dec. 19.
The lawmakers’ visit came after the DOJ announced Friday that members of Congress could review the full, publicly released files on computers in a reading room at its headquarters beginning Monday. Doing so would require giving the department 24 hours’ notice and leaving electronics, and staff members, behind, according to a letter Assistant Attorney General Patrick Davis sent to members.
That announcement followed mounting pressure from members of Congress seeking to review the full files ahead of Attorney General Pam Bondi’s testimony before the House Judiciary Committee on Wednesday.
But several lawmakers suggested their visits hardly offered the radical transparency the DOJ’s announcement implied. In addition to the broad redactions, some documents that had been publicly posted by the DOJ and removed entirely were still unavailable to the lawmakers in the reading room, Massie said.
As of midafternoon Monday, MS NOW had seen only a handful of lawmakers visit the room. In addition to Massie and Khanna, Rep. Suhas Subramanyam, D-Va., Rep. Lauren Boebert, R-Colo., Rep. Jamie Raskin, D-Md., and Rep. Jared Moskowitz, D-Fla., also went to view the files.
In addition to Trump, the newly released files contain references to Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick, Elon Musk and other famous and prominent people. But so far there is no evidence of any criminal wrongdoing by any of the principals mentioned.
Some of the documents Massie and Khanna reviewed, they said, were revealing. The representatives found a list of “at least six men that have been redacted that are likely incriminated by their inclusion in these files,” Massie said.
Massie said one of those men “is pretty high up in a foreign government.”
One of the others, according to Khanna, “is a pretty prominent individual.” The pair said at least one of the six men was a U.S. citizen. When asked, Massie said Trump’s name was not on the list.
When a reporter asked the pair to identify the names on the list, Massie said he should wait to do so until he was on the House floor, where members have immunity under the Constitution’s “speech and debate” clause.
Some of the other lawmakers who viewed the files Monday also reported being both angered by the omissions and disturbed by the details they did see.
Raskin, one of the first lawmakers to view the files, told reporters he saw a reference to a girl as young as 9, calling it “gruesome and grim.”
Moskowitz described some of the material he saw as “disgusting” and “gross.” Other materials suggested women’s names had been redacted en masse from emails, including one that has circulated widely on social media in which the sender says: “Thank you for the fun night…your littlest girl was a little naughty.” According to Massie, the sender of that email was a woman. “It may be proper to redact that or it may not be, I don’t know,” he said. “It seems like part of the algorithm for redaction was just to redact every woman in there.” Raskin said he was also concerned about overly broad reductions compared to what was released publicly. He told reporters some redactions appeared “suspicious and baffling,” including one related to billionaire businessman Les Wexner, who has been photographed with Epstein and on a plane. Wexner has denied any involvement of Epstein’s crimes and is due to testify before Congress on Feb. 18. Raskin said those redactions “struck me as strange, because [Wexner’s] not a victim, and also his name has appeared elsewhere.” He said he didn’t know whether to chalk it up to “sloppiness and negligence” or something else. Trump’s name was also redacted “in a number of different places,” Raskin said. He said he read a conversation between lawyers for convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein and Trump discussing the 2009 plea deal, brokered by then-U.S. Attorney Alex Acosta, that led Epstein to plead guilty to a single state count of solicitation of prostitution and to register as a sex offender. Trump has denied any wrongdoing in relation to Epstein. The DOJ and the White House did not immediately respond to requests for comment from MS NOW. After leaving the room Monday, Raskin told reporters it had four computers and that he began his search by looking for keywords related to specific documents that had “puzzling redactions.” He said that according to calculations by his staffers, it would take seven years to get through the files in the current conditions established by the DOJ. It could take two months if there were 217 computers to represent nearly everyone who signed the discharge petition to force a vote on the Epstein Files Transparency Act. Raskin’s office did not immediately respond to an inquiry from MS NOW about how his staff came up with those figures. “We’re talking about a huge, staggering amount of information,” he said. Khanna and Massie said they hope the fallout from the files comes swiftly — and regardless of politics. “In this country, we have to make a decision: Are we going to allow rich and powerful people who were friends and had no problem doing business and showing up with a pedophile who is raping underage girls — are we just going to allow them to skate,” Khanna asked, “or, like other countries, are we going to have elite accountability?” ___ Peggy Helman contributed reporting.
Julianne McShane is a breaking news reporter for MS NOW who also covers the politics of abortion and reproductive rights. You can send her tips from a non-work device on Signal at jmcshane.19 or follow her on X or Bluesky. Recommended
