Rep. Thomas Massie (R-KY) derided President Donald Trump for his lack of transparency related to the Epstein files, going so far as to claim the president is in charge of the “Epstein administration.”
“Donald Trump told us that even though he had dinner with these kinds of people in New York City and West Palm Beach, that he would be transparent, but he’s not,” the congressman said on the ABC News Sunday morning news program This Week. “He’s still in with the Epstein class. This is the Epstein administration, and they’re attacking me for trying to get these files released.”
Within the Trump administration, Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick and Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services Administrator Mehmet Oz are facing scrutiny for their past relationship with Jeffrey Epstein, the extent of which is seen in the files.
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Neither administration official nor Trump has been accused of any criminal behavior in relation to Epstein’s sexual crimes.
Since returning to the White House last year, Trump has tried to distance himself from his past relationship with the convicted sex offender. At several points, he claimed Democrats were pushing the Epstein files as a “hoax” to undermine his administration.
Trump later signed the Epstein Files Transparency Act, a bill passed by Congress to compel the Department of Justice to release all Epstein-related records in full and in a timely manner, as a way to expose Democrats’ ties to the late financier.
The DOJ maintains it is complying with the law by disclosing millions of records, but members of Congress continue to apply pressure on the department’s leadership.
Massie, for one, was not fond of answers made by Attorney General Pam Bondi during a contentious hearing in front of the House Judiciary Committee on Wednesday.
Asked on ABC if he has confidence in Bondi as attorney general, Massie replied, “I don’t think Pam Bondi has confidence in Pam Bondi. She wasn’t confident enough to engage in anything but name-calling in a hearing. And so no, I don’t have confidence in her.”
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The Kentucky Republican cited Bondi’s evasive response to his question about the redaction of former Victoria’s Secret CEO Les Wexner’s name from a certain document.
“She wouldn’t give me an answer,” he said. “But ultimately, it’s her who is responsible for the document production,” not Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche.
Blanche is seen as the DOJ’s public face in releasing the Epstein files. Massie argues Bondi can’t assign her responsibility to lower-level officials, according to the transparency law he co-led with Rep. Ro Khanna (D-CA) late last year.
Massie and Khanna both visited the DOJ headquarters in Washington, D.C., last Monday to view the unredacted versions of the Epstein files. One of their takeaways was that the department allegedly “took down” some documents before their arrival.
“They took down some of the most significant documents,” including two “involving Virginia Giuffre’s case” and a “picture of Epstein in a room where it’s got CIA written on the boxes,” Massie added. “We want to be able to look at all these files. They can’t keep those documents down after they’ve already produced them.”
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After seeing some of the files himself, Khanna read the names of six men who were improperly redacted from the publicly available Epstein files. On the House floor, the Democrat said the six men were Salvatore Nuara, Zurab Mikeladze, Leonic Leonov, Nicola Caputo, Sultan Ahmed bin Sulayem, and Wexner. Massie and Khanna believe the men were “likely incriminated” in the files.
Blanche was displeased with Massie and Khanna for revealing the names of the six men, claiming on social media that they “made false accusations about four men, while we were checking the facts.” In a prior post, the deputy attorney general said those four men “were only included in that one document out of all the files,” while Wexner and Sultan bin Sulayem “were unredacted in the one document, and are referenced in the files nearly two hundred times and over 4,700 times respectively.”