A little more than a year ago, current administration officials were hyping the Epstein files, telling Americans the documents would probably prove that Jeffrey Epstein operated a child sex-trafficking network involving elite associates. Today, the same officials who promised transparency appear to be concealing and obfuscating the Epstein files from the American public.
On Feb. 21, 2025 Attorney General Pam Bondi was asked by Fox News about an Epstein “client list,” and she responded by claiming that it was “sitting on my desk right now to review.” Then in May 2025, Bondi told Americans, “There are tens of thousands of videos of Epstein with children or child porn.”
Rep. Thomas Massie (R-KY), who was with Rep. Ro Khanna (D-CA) the driving force behind the Epstein Files Transparency Act, told The American Conservative that Bondi said the same thing to him at a dinner on April 28, 2025.
“DOJ had invited all of the House Republicans on the Judiciary Committee to have dinner at Pam Bondi’s office, and this hadn’t happened in decades. Of course I went, Jim Jordan said we could each ask a question of the attorney general,” said Massie. “I asked about the Epstein files. I asked her when we’re going to get phase two of the Epstein files and she said, ‘Oh my, it’s just a bunch of child pornography.’ And the way she said it to me at the time seemed to be like there was nothing more that I should want to look at. That’s what raised my suspicions.”
If those sorts of files existed, they have not been released so far, other than scattered possible references to sex trafficking within the emails. Massie said that the DOJ continues to withhold relevant Epstein documents from the American public despite his law requiring the federal government to release them.
“Here’s the files that they have that they need to release, that they’re not releasing, that they are legally obligated to release. In our legislation it says that the DOJ has to release internal emails including emails and notes, about decisions on whether to prosecute or not, whether to investigate or not,” said Massie. “I haven’t seen those documents in these files, and I do believe that the DOJ is intentionally withholding them.”
At Wednesday’s House Judiciary committee hearing for Bondi, a viral dispute arose involving the Justice Department’s prior redaction of a 2019 FBI report that identified Les Wexner in a section listing alleged co-conspirators in child sex trafficking. Massie pressed the attorney general on why Wexner’s name had been blacked out in the version initially provided to Congress.
The American Conservative and Drop Site News have reported extensively on Wexner, how he and Epstein worked closely together since the 1980s, their ties to a CIA proprietary company called Southern Air Transport, and their aggressive lobbying together on behalf of the Israeli government.
Bondi did not provide any straight answers to any of Massie’s questions about either man, instead accusing the congressman of having “Trump derangement syndrome.”
“The smoking gun is that document,” Massie said. “I went out and I pressured the DOJ to release [Wexner’s] name, to unredact that, and they did. It begs a few questions, none of which Pam Bondi would answer. One of the questions is: Who is the individual who put that redaction on that document? The DOJ can track that. This is done on a computer, and they know exactly who made that redaction.”
The rebuttal provided by Bondi and Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche in response to Massie’s discovery request was that the DOJ has already released thousands of documents with Wexner’s name in them, supposedly proving that the DOJ has nothing to hide when it comes to the Ohio billionaire.
But, per Massie, Bondi’s DOJ “redacted the one document that shows that the FBI considered him to be a co-conspirator.” The DOJ has not yet explained why Wexner was ultimately removed from that list and never prosecuted.
“I have a law passed that Donald Trump signed that requires them to tell me why they removed [Wexner] from the list of co-conspirators,” said Massie.
Massie has argued that the implications of the Epstein files exceed the scale of both Watergate and Iran–Contra. Asked whether the disclosures could lead to an investigative congressional body comparable to those created after those scandals, Massie says that it is unlikely: “Who would chair it? Jim Jordan, who tried to truncate my time in this last hearing? Mike Johnson? Who fought every step of the way to keep the legislation from being passed?”
But according to Massie, “in some ways,” the Epstein Files Transparency Act is “better than a committee because it lasts forever.”
“The next AG has to abide by it. The next AG could prosecute the previous AG based on the Epstein Files Transparency Act,” he said. “We’ve got such a toehold that nobody’s ever got written into U.S. law. I think what we have now is better than in committee, and we haven’t even exhausted that avenue yet.”
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