Washington (AFP) — United States lawmakers began reviewing the unredacted files on convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein Monday, and expressed concern that some names have been removed from the records which have been released to the public.
The Epstein Files Transparency Act (EFTA), passed overwhelmingly by Congress in November, compelled the Justice Department to release all of the documents in its possession related to Epstein.
It required the redaction of the names or personal identifying information about Epstein’s victims, who numbered more than 1,000 according to the FBI.
But it said no records could be “withheld, delayed, or redacted on the basis of embarrassment, reputational harm, or political sensitivity, including to any government official, public figure, or foreign dignitary.”
Representative Jamie Raskin, a Democrat from Maryland, was among the Democratic and Republican lawmakers who examined the unredacted Epstein files at a secure Justice Department location on Monday.
“I saw the names of lots of people who were redacted for mysterious or baffling or inscrutable reasons,” Raskin told reporters.
“There are certainly lots of names of other people who were enablers and cooperators with Jeffrey Epstein that were just blanked out for no apparent reason,” he said.
Representative Thomas Massie, a Republican from Kentucky, said he discovered the names of six men whose identities have been redacted from the released documents and who “are likely incriminated by their inclusion in these files.”
Representative Ro Khanna, a Democrat from California, said “there’s no explanation why those people were redacted.”
They declined to provide their identities but Massie said one of them “is pretty high up in a foreign government” and Khanna said one of the others “is a pretty prominent individual.”