Washington — Democratic Rep. Ro Khanna took to the Home ground on Tuesday to learn out the names of six “rich, highly effective males” that the Justice Division had initially blacked out within the recordsdata on the late intercourse offender Jeffrey Epstein.
The recordsdata referenced by Khanna and reviewed by CBS Information — which have now been partially un-redacted to disclose the six names — don’t seem to immediately implicate the six males in any crimes, and Khanna didn’t allege any particular legal wrongdoing. However the California Democrat solid the redactions as failures by the Justice Division, which he accused of protecting their names “for no obvious purpose” when it launched a trove of millions of documents on Epstein.
The six males who have been named by Khanna embody billionaire Leslie Wexner, who led the dad or mum firm of Victoria’s Secret and employed Epstein to handle his cash, and Sultan Ahmed bin Sulayem, the CEO of Dubai-based logistics agency DB World. He additionally listed out 4 less-well-known individuals: Salvatore Nuara, Zurab Mikeladze, Leonic Leonov and Nicola Caputo.
Khanna says he found the six names on Monday after visiting a Justice Division workplace to view unredacted variations of the Epstein recordsdata with Republican Rep. Thomas Massie of Kentucky. The bipartisan duo co-sponsored a regulation final yr that required the Justice Division to launch nearly all of its investigative recordsdata on Epstein, with redactions allowed to guard survivors’ identities and in a handful of different circumstances.
After leaving the constructing, Khanna and Massie instructed reporters they discovered the names after looking via paperwork for a part of the afternoon. They mentioned there are possible others.
“And if we discovered six males that they have been hiding in two hours, think about what number of males they’re protecting up for in these 3 million recordsdata,” Khanna mentioned Tuesday on the Home ground.
Late Monday, after Massie pointed to a trio of documents the place the six names appeared, the Justice Division partially un-redacted these recordsdata. They embody a 2019 FBI document that refers to Wexner as a “co-conspirator,” an email correspondence between Epstein and bin Sulayem and a list of 20 names that features the 4 different males — although the context or objective of that checklist will not be completely clear, and it does not seem to incorporate allegations.
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A authorized consultant for Wexner instructed CBS Information {that a} federal prosecutor “instructed Mr. Wexner’s authorized counsel in 2019 that Mr. Wexner was being seen as [a] supply of details about Epstein and was not a goal the least bit. Mr. Wexner cooperated absolutely by offering background info on Epstein and was by no means contacted once more.” Wexner — who is called elsewhere within the paperwork — has long said he reduce ties with Epstein after his crimes have been made public. He has not been charged with against the law.
CBS Information has reached out to bin Sulayem for remark, and is making an attempt to achieve out to the opposite 4.
In a collection of social media posts on Monday asserting the redactions had been faraway from the boys’s names, Deputy Lawyer Basic Todd Blanche accused Massie of “grandstanding” and mentioned the Justice Division is “hiding nothing.”
A Justice Division spokesperson defended the division’s dealing with of the recordsdata to CBS Information, saying the division has at all times cautioned “that with 3.5 million pages, the groups could have inadvertently redacted people or left these unredacted who ought to have been.”
The spokesperson added that 4 of the six names talked about by Khanna “are solely included on this one doc out of all of the recordsdata. Wexner is referenced almost 200 instances within the recordsdata, and Sultan bin Sulayem seems over 4,700 instances.”
Because the Epstein Recordsdata Transparency Act was signed by President Trump in November, the Justice Division has launched a massive trove of records on Epstein and his convicted affiliate Ghislaine Maxwell. The recordsdata embody particulars on the intercourse trafficking investigations into Epstein and new revelations in regards to the powerful people with whom the disgraced financier cultivated shut ties — although inclusion within the recordsdata will not be proof of wrongdoing by itself.
However the division has additionally confronted criticism from congressional Democrats over its dealing with of the redaction course of. Some observers have accused the division of over-redacting the recordsdata, whereas some attorneys for Epstein survivors say the division did not correctly redact their purchasers’ names earlier than publishing the recordsdata to a authorities database.
The division has said tons of of attorneys have pored over the paperwork to search for survivors’ names — a gargantuan job given the sheer variety of information. In some circumstances, the division says it has briefly eliminated recordsdata to redact names it initially missed.
However issues about redactions continued to flow into on Monday, after the Justice Division allowed lawmakers to view unredacted versions of the recordsdata in particular person.
Democratic Rep. Jamie Raskin of Maryland instructed reporters Monday he noticed the “names of heaps of people that have been redacted for mysterious or baffling or inscrutable causes.”
