Washington — Democratic Rep. Ro Khanna took to the House floor on Tuesday to read out the names of six men that the Justice Department had initially blacked out in the files on the late sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.
The files referenced by Khanna and reviewed by CBS News — which have now been partially un-redacted to reveal the six names — do not appear to directly implicate the six men in any crimes, and Khanna did not allege any specific criminal wrongdoing. The Justice Department said Friday that some of the men were “completely random” and had no connection to Epstein.
But the California Democrat cast the redactions as failures by the Justice Department, which he accused of shielding the names of “wealthy, powerful” people “for no apparent reason” when it released a trove of millions of documents on Epstein.
The six men who were named by Khanna include billionaire Leslie Wexner, who led the parent company of Victoria’s Secret and hired Epstein to manage his money, and Sultan Ahmed bin Sulayem, the former CEO of Dubai-based logistics firm DP World. He also listed out four less-well-known people: Salvatore Nuara, Zurab Mikeladze, Leonic Leonov and Nicola Caputo.
Khanna says he discovered the six names on Monday after visiting a Justice Department office to view unredacted versions of the Epstein files with Republican Rep. Thomas Massie of Kentucky. The bipartisan duo co-sponsored a law last year that required the Justice Department to release virtually all of its investigative files on Epstein, with redactions allowed to protect survivors’ identities and in a handful of other circumstances.
After leaving the building, Khanna and Massie told reporters they found the names after searching through documents for part of the afternoon. They said there are likely others.
“And if we found six men that they were hiding in two hours, imagine how many men they are covering up for in those 3 million files,” Khanna said Tuesday on the House floor.
Late Monday, after Massie pointed to a trio of documents where the six names appeared, the Justice Department partially un-redacted those files. They include 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 includes the four other men — though the context or purpose of that list is not entirely clear, and it doesn’t appear to include allegations.
Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche said in a Friday evening social media post that some of the men were “completely random people selected years ago for an FBI lineup.” Blanche was likely referring to the four men who appeared on the list of 20 names, which was in a document that also included redacted photographs of 20 people.
“These individuals have NOTHING to do with Epstein or [associate Ghislaine] Maxwell,” Blanche continued, faulting Khanna and Massie for forcing their “unmasking.”
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A legal representative for Wexner told CBS News that a federal prosecutor “told Mr. Wexner’s legal counsel in 2019 that Mr. Wexner was being viewed as [a] source of information about Epstein and was not a target in any respect. Mr. Wexner cooperated fully by providing background information on Epstein and was never contacted again.” Wexner — who is named elsewhere in the documents — has long said he cut ties with Epstein after his crimes were made public. He has not been charged with a crime.
CBS News has reached out to bin Sulayem for comment, and is attempting to reach out to the other four.
In a series of social media posts on Monday announcing the redactions had been removed from the men’s names, Blanche accused Massie of “grandstanding” and said the Justice Department is “hiding nothing.”
A Justice Department spokesperson defended the department’s handling of the files to CBS News, saying the department has always cautioned “that with 3.5 million pages, the teams may have inadvertently redacted individuals or left those unredacted who should have been.”
The spokesperson added that four of the six names mentioned by Khanna “are only included in this one document out of all the files. Wexner is referenced nearly two hundred times in the files, and Sultan bin Sulayem appears over 4,700 times.”
Since the Epstein Files Transparency Act was signed by President Trump in November, the Justice Department has released a massive trove of records on Epstein and Maxwell. The files include details on the sex trafficking investigations into Epstein and new revelations about the powerful people with whom the disgraced financier cultivated close ties — though inclusion in the files is not evidence of wrongdoing on its own.
But the department has also faced criticism from congressional Democrats over its handling of the redaction process. Some observers have accused the department of over-redacting the files, while some attorneys for Epstein survivors say the department failed to properly redact their clients’ names before publishing the files to a government database.
The department has said hundreds of lawyers have pored over the documents to look for survivors’ names — a gargantuan task given the sheer number of records. In some cases, the department says it has temporarily removed files to redact names it initially missed.
But concerns about redactions continued to circulate on Monday, after the Justice Department allowed lawmakers to view unredacted versions of the files in person.
Democratic Rep. Jamie Raskin of Maryland told reporters Monday he saw the “names of lots of people who were redacted for mysterious or baffling or inscrutable reasons.”
