DOJ sends letter to Congress with list of people named in Epstein files, including Trump: Report [View all]

Source: The Hill

02/14/26 10:59 PM ET


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.

Read more: https://thehill.com/homenews/administration/5739338-justice-department-epstein-files/

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