Trump Officials Redacted Epstein Files to Protect ‘Prominent’ Individuals, Lawmakers Allege

Members of Congress who on Monday were granted access to unredacted Justice Department files related to Jeffrey Epstein said they discovered evidence that at least six men had been concealed from public view without clear legal justification, renewing accusations that the Trump Administration had improperly shielded powerful figures from scrutiny.

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Two of the House lawmakers who reviewed the files—Thomas Massie of Kentucky and Ro Khanna of California—said the redactions appeared to include one “high up” foreign government official and other prominent individuals whose names and photographs were obscured in the versions previously released to the public.

“There are six men, some of them with their photographs, that have been redacted, and there’s no explanation why those people were redacted,” Massie, a Republican, said after spending roughly two hours reviewing the documents inside a secure reading room at a Department of Justice satellite office. He added that at least one of the six men was a U.S. citizen and at least one was foreign, but declined to reveal their names. “I probably should do that from the floor or in a committee hearing,” Massie said.

Later on social media, Massie hinted that the redacted names include a “well known retired CEO” and a “Sultan.”

Their remarks came on the first day that members of Congress were permitted to examine unredacted versions of roughly three million Epstein-related files that the Justice Department has already made public in heavily redacted form. The review follows months of criticism from lawmakers, survivors, and advocates who argued that the Trump Administration had failed to comply with the Epstein Files Transparency Act, which President Donald Trump signed into law in November and requires the Justice Department to release all unclassified records related to Epstein and his associates. Epstein, a wealthy financier with extensive political and social ties, was charged in 2019 with sex trafficking of minors and died in a Manhattan jail cell while awaiting trial. His death was ruled a suicide.

Read more: How the Epstein Files Broke Britain

While the act bars redactions made on the basis of “embarrassment, reputational harm, or political sensitivity, including to any government official, public figure, or foreign dignitary,” it allows redactions only in narrow circumstances, such as to protect victims’ identities.

Yet when the DOJ began releasing documents in recent weeks, many were so heavily redacted that they offered little new information.

“These six are just what we found in two hours of a review of the files,” Khanna said. “The broader issue is why so many of the files they’re getting are redacted in the first place.”

“What Americans want to know,” he added, “is who are the rich and powerful people who went to this island? Did they rape underage girls? Did they know that underage girls were being paraded around?”

Under rules set by the Justice Department, lawmakers are allowed to review the files on computers inside a secure Justice Department satellite office reading room, though they must give 24 hours’ notice, cannot bring in electronic devices, and may only take handwritten notes.

While the Justice Department has said it possesses more than six million Epstein-related documents, lawmakers are currently being given access only to the three million that were released publicly after Congress passed the Epstein Files Transparency Act in November. 

Rep. Jamie Raskin of Maryland, the top Democrat on the House Judiciary Committee, said the department appeared to have violated that law, which requires the broad public release of records connected to Epstein, by concealing names and passages that did not meet the statute’s narrow standards for redaction. Among what he said he found was material that contradicted Trump’s public claims that he had expelled Epstein from his Mar-a-Lago club in Florida.

Raskin said that one redacted passage summarized comments attributed to Trump by Epstein’s lawyers, stating that Epstein had never been asked to leave Mar-a-Lago—material Raskin said had no legal basis to be concealed. “That was redacted for some indeterminate, inscrutable reason,” Raskin said. “I know it seems to be at odds with some things that President Trump has been saying recently about how he had kicked Jeffrey Epstein out of his club or asked him to leave. This was at least one report that appears to contradict it.” (Trump has repeatedly said that he kicked Epstein out of his club for hiring workers away from Mar-a-Lago).

“There’s no way you run a billion-dollar international child sex trafficking ring with just two people committing crimes, Jeffrey Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell,” Raskin added. “So we need to figure out what other conspiracies were involved, what other co-conspirators were involved.”

The Justice Department has not yet released a formal explanation justifying its redaction decisions. Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche has said the department withheld or redacted about 200,000 pages based on privileges such as attorney-client communications and deliberative process protections—categories that Massie and Khanna argue are not allowed under the statute.

Khanna, who alongside Massie spearheaded the legislation forcing the Justice Department to release records from the Epstein investigation, said that even the materials shown to lawmakers on Monday appeared to carry over the same redactions found in the public releases. “I thought we were supposed to see the unredacted versions,” he said, adding that the documents seemed to have arrived at the Justice Department already redacted from the FBI and grand jury materials that, under the law, are supposed to be disclosed in full.

“I don’t think that’s nefarious on the career attorneys that were reviewing it,” he said. “But they obviously haven’t gotten the production.”

Read more: Lawmakers Call for Trump’s Commerce Secretary to Step Down Over Epstein Ties

Massie said he hoped the DOJ would course correct without a prolonged confrontation. “I 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,” he said. “That would probably be the best way to do it.”

Attorney General Pam Bondi is scheduled to testify before the House Judiciary Committee on Wednesday, and lawmakers from both parties have said they want answers about how the department handled the files. With only a fraction of the records reviewed so far, Raskin cautioned that the process would be slow and painstaking.

“Of the 3.5 million documents that have been released, I probably had the opportunity to review maybe 30 or 40 of them,” he said. “This is going to be an extremely time consuming and painstaking process… There is no way before Attorney General Bondi arrives on Wednesday that we’re going to have the opportunity to go through every redaction in order to ask thorough questions.”

Other lawmakers, including Republican Rep. Nancy Mace of South Carolina, said they also planned to review the files. 

The renewed congressional focus follows months of backlash to the Trump Administration’s handling of the case. In July, the FBI and Justice Department issued a memo saying they had completed an exhaustive review and did not expect further charges, prompting outrage from victims and their advocates.

Khanna and Massie said Monday’s findings reinforced their belief that the fight over the Epstein files is far from over. “They have been protecting some of these men,” Khanna said. “Maybe it was not intentional, but the law is very clear. They need to comply with the law.”