Massie and Khanna find six men 'likely incriminated' after two hours in DOJ's Epstein files

Two members of Congress walked into the Department of Justice on Monday, sat down with unredacted Epstein files for two hours, and found six men whose names had been blacked out — men they say are "likely incriminated" by the very documents the government was supposed to make public.

Six men. Two hours. Millions of files. And a federal agency that apparently hoped no one would look closely enough to notice.

Reps. Thomas Massie (R-Ky.) and Ro Khanna (D-Calif.) — the two lead sponsors of the bill that forced the public release of Jeffrey Epstein's DOJ files — emerged from a secure reading room at the Justice Department and went straight to the press. What they described should trouble every American who believed the government was done protecting Epstein's network.

What They Found

Massie laid it out plainly:

"There are six men. We went in there for two hours. There's millions of files, right? And in a couple of hours, we found six men whose names have been redacted, who are implicated in the way that the files are presented."

The two lawmakers declined to name the men publicly. But they offered enough detail to understand the scope: one is a high-ranking official in a foreign government. Another is described as a "prominent individual." These aren't peripheral figures caught in a database sweep. These are people whose names and — in some cases — photographs were actively scrubbed from the public release.

Massie also described an FBI form listing conspirators in which the DOJ redacted both the name and the photo of one of the men. Not a victim. Not a minor caught in the investigation's dragnet. A conspirator. Hidden behind black ink that Congress never authorized, as The Hill reports.

The Law Is Clear — The DOJ Broke It Anyway

The Epstein Files Transparency Act allowed for narrow redactions: victim information and materials that would jeopardize active criminal investigations. That's it. The law did not authorize the DOJ to shield the identities of men implicated in the sexual exploitation of minors simply because their names might be inconvenient.

Yet that appears to be exactly what happened. Lawmakers and victims of Epstein had already raised questions about the breadth of the redactions and the troubling fact that some names of victims were left exposed while names of the accused were covered up. Monday's review confirmed the worst suspicions: the DOJ's redaction process wasn't just aggressive — it was backward.

Massie was measured in his response, giving the DOJ room to course-correct:

"I think we need to give the DOJ a chance to go back through and correct their mistakes."

He followed with a sharper point:

"They need to check their own homework."

That's generous framing for an agency that was handed a straightforward transparency mandate and still managed to bury the names of six implicated men.

The Files Arrived Pre-Redacted

Perhaps the most significant revelation from Monday's review wasn't about names — it was about process. Massie and Khanna discovered that some of the documents arrived at the DOJ already redacted. The FBI and grand jury materials, which the law explicitly requires to be disclosed unredacted, came to the DOJ review team with information already blacked out.

Khanna explained the problem:

"The documents produced to Justice from the FBI, from the grand jury, were redacted when they got it. … I don't think that's nefarious on the career attorneys that were reviewing it, but they obviously haven't gotten the production because our law says that the FBI and the original grand jury [material] needs to be unredacted."

Read that carefully. The DOJ was supposed to have unfettered access to all files. Instead, some files showed up pre-censored — meaning the very agencies Congress ordered to hand over everything found a way to hand over less. Whether that's incompetence or something worse, the result is the same: the public doesn't have what Congress voted to give them.

The "Fun Night" Email

One document from the latest tranche had already drawn intense public scrutiny before Monday — an email from a redacted individual to Epstein thanking him for a "fun night" and adding, "Your littlest girl was a little naughty."

Massie confirmed the sender was a woman, and offered a partial explanation for the redaction:

"That was a woman that wrote that, and so it may be proper to redact it. It may not be, I don't know. It seems like part of their algorithm for redaction was just to redact every woman in there, pretty much."

The lawmakers acknowledged they couldn't determine whether the sender was a victim or something else entirely. That ambiguity itself is telling. The DOJ's blanket approach to redaction — shield every woman, apparently regardless of her role — creates a system where potential accomplices receive the same protection as victims. That's not careful compliance with the law. That's a blunt instrument that obscures as much as it protects.

Six Men in Two Hours — What's in the Rest?

The math here deserves a moment. Two lawmakers spent two hours in a room with millions of files. They found six implicated men whose identities the government actively hid from the public. Two hours. Six names. Millions of pages left unreviewed.

Khanna, to his credit, acknowledged the gravity without turning it into political theater:

"None of this is designed to be a witch hunt. Just because someone may be in the files doesn't mean that they're guilty. But there are very powerful people who raped these underage girls — it wasn't just Epstein and Maxwell — or showed up to the island or showed up to the ranch or showed up to the home knowing underage girls were being paraded around."

That statement carries weight precisely because it comes from a Democrat working alongside a Republican on one of the few genuinely bipartisan efforts in Congress. This isn't a partisan grievance. It's a simple question of institutional accountability: Who are the six men? Why were they hidden? And what else is buried in the millions of pages that no one has read yet?

What Comes Next

The Epstein scandal has always been about a system that protects the powerful at the expense of the vulnerable. For years, the assumption was that protection ended when Epstein died. Monday proved otherwise. The machinery of concealment didn't stop — it just moved from a private island to a government reading room.

Massie said he would not release the names himself. He wants the DOJ to do it — to acknowledge the over-redaction, correct the record, and comply with the law that Congress passed and the president signed. That restraint speaks well of the process.

But if the DOJ doesn't act, both lawmakers have another option. The House floor, where the speech and debate clause grants them immunity to say what the government won't. And that clock is already ticking.

The names exist. The files exist. The law is clear. The only question left is whether the Department of Justice serves the public that funds it — or the powerful men it's still protecting.