Overview
- Attorney General Pam Bondi defended the Justice Department’s compressed review of more than three million Epstein-related pages, saying any redaction mistakes were inadvertent and corrected when identified.
- Lawmaker Jamie Raskin accused Bondi of a cover-up and faulted the department for turning over roughly half of what Congress subpoenaed under the Epstein Files Transparency Act, which bars redactions for reputational reasons.
- Reps. Ro Khanna and Thomas Massie said they found six men’s names unnecessarily blacked out during an unredacted review, prompting the DOJ to partially un-redact files that referenced Leslie Wexner, Sultan Ahmed bin Sulayem and four others.
- The DOJ and outside reviews acknowledged sloppy or inconsistent redactions that exposed victims’ identifying details and images, with officials saying teams removed and reissued files to better protect survivors.
- Bondi repeatedly sparred with Democrats, declined to apologize to survivors when pressed, and faced broader claims that the department is being used for political retribution, as Ghislaine Maxwell’s recent deposition featured her invoking the Fifth.