Two bipartisan members of Congress walked into a Department of Justice reading room on Monday with a simple mission — see what was being hidden in the Epstein files. What they found after just two hours of searching was enough to ignite a firestorm.
Reps. Thomas Massie of Kentucky and Ro Khanna of California — the two lawmakers who co-authored the Epstein Files Transparency Act signed into law by President Trump in November 2025 — announced that they had identified at least six men whose names had been improperly blacked out from the government’s massive trove of documents related to convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.
“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 declared on the House floor the following day.
The Names That Were Hidden
Under intense public pressure, the DOJ began unredacting names that evening. Among the most notable were three individuals listed in a 2019 FBI document as alleged co-conspirators of Epstein.
The first was Les Wexner, the 88-year-old billionaire and former CEO of Victoria’s Secret parent company L Brands. Wexner’s relationship with Epstein stretches back to the 1980s, when the disgraced financier managed his money. Wexner has long maintained he severed ties after learning of Epstein’s criminal behavior, and his legal representative told NBC that prosecutors informed Wexner in 2019 that he was neither a target nor a co-conspirator in any investigation. He has never been charged with a crime.
The second was Lesley Groff, Epstein’s longtime executive assistant who worked at his Palm Beach residence for decades. Groff has denied any knowledge of Epstein’s criminal activities, though multiple victims accused her in lawsuits of facilitating abuse. Her attorney stated she was never notified by law enforcement that she was considered a co-conspirator and was told she was not being prosecuted after voluntarily cooperating with investigators.
The third was Jean-Luc Brunel, a late French modeling agent who was arrested on charges including the alleged rape of a minor. Brunel was found dead in his Paris prison cell in 2022 while awaiting trial. Authorities ruled his death a suicide. He had denied all allegations against him.
The “Torture Video” Email
Perhaps the most disturbing revelation to emerge from the files involved an email sent by Epstein on April 25, 2009, to a redacted recipient. The message read simply: “Where are you? Are you ok, I loved the torture video.”
Massie flagged the email on social media, noting that the recipient appeared to be “a Sultan.” Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche responded that the name was already available in unredacted form elsewhere in the files — identified as Ahmed bin Sulayem, an Emirati businessman who serves as CEO of DP World. The recipient responded to Epstein saying he was in China and would be back in the United States in May. It remains unknown what “torture video” Epstein was referring to.
DOJ vs. Lawmakers: A Public Clash
The revelations sparked a heated public exchange between Massie and Deputy AG Blanche. After Massie posted about the redactions on social media, Blanche fired back, accusing the congressman of “grandstanding” and insisting the DOJ was “hiding nothing.”
Blanche argued that Wexner’s name already appeared in the files thousands of times and that certain redactions were required by law to protect victims’ personal information. But Massie pushed back sharply, drawing a distinction between protecting victims and shielding powerful men.
A DOJ spokesperson later acknowledged that with 3.5 million pages of documents, review teams may have “inadvertently redacted individuals or left those unredacted who should have been.”
Six Names, More Questions
In total, Khanna read the names of six men on the House floor under the protection of the Speech and Debate Clause. Beyond Wexner, Groff, Brunel, and bin Sulayem, three additional names — Leonic Leonov, Zurab Mikeladze, and Salvatore Nuara — were unredacted, though little public information is available about their connections to Epstein.
Lawmakers say at least four additional names remain redacted, and they are pushing the DOJ to comply fully with the Epstein Files Transparency Act. Other members of Congress who reviewed the files, including Rep. Jamie Raskin, confirmed seeing widespread over-redactions beyond what the law permits.
As Khanna put it on the House floor: “We have to ask ourselves — are we in America going to have elite accountability?”
The answer, it seems, is still being decided — one unredacted name at a time.
