FBI Scrubbed the Epstein Recordsdata. Congressman Asks: “Who Are They Protecting?”

Long before President Donald Trump reluctantly signed into law the Epstein Files Transparency Act, America’s top law enforcement agency sanitized the files it kept on the suspected international sex trafficker. That’s what one of the co-sponsors of the law said on the House floor Tuesday.

Khanna’s Speech

“The reality is that Donald Trump’s FBI scrubbed these files in March,” Rep. Ro Khanna (D-Calif.) said. Trump signed the law in November. Khanna elaborated on what that implied:

That means the survivors’ statements to the FBI naming rich and powerful men who went to Epstein’s island, who went to his ranch, who went to his home and raped and abused underage girls, or saw underage girls being paraded — they’re all hidden. They’re all redacted.

Khanna went on to label the Department of Justice’s (DOJ’s) invite to lawmakers to look through “unredacted” files a “farce,” because the FBI shipped over redacted files. It’s not the fault of DOJ attorneys, he said, because “they were just told [to] upload things that Donald Trump’s FBI had already scrubbed.” As Khanna further noted, these actions prompt the questions: “Who are they protecting? Why are they protecting these rich and powerful men? … Why are we in a country where there is no elite accountability for people who do the most heinous things?”

Khanna and Rep. Thomas Massie (R-Ky.) have been working overtime since the January 30 file dump to pressure the Justice Department into fully complying with the law. In addition to only releasing about half the documents it was supposed to, about 3 million, 70 to 80 percent of what it released was redacted in violation of the law, according to Khanna. He further said the DOJ shifted blame to the FBI, saying DOJ officials told him, “We just uploaded whatever the FBI sent us.”

FBI Concealing Information

Among the information the FBI tried to conceal was the identity of six powerful men named in the files. Khanna said the DOJ hid those names “for no apparent reason.” He then said the names on the floor. “These men are Salvatore Nuara, Zurab Mikeladze, Leonic Leonov, Nicola Caputo, Sultan Ahmed Bin Sulayem [CEO of a Dubai-based global logistics and ports operator], and billionaire businessman Leslie Wexner, who was labeled as a co-conspirator.”

Co-conspirator? Remember when the DOJ released a memo in July saying their exhaustive review “did not expose any additional third-parties to allegations of illegal wrongdoing”? And what about FBI Director Kash Patel’s consistent insistence that there is no credible evidence suggesting others were involved criminal activities?

Khanna’s not the only one suggesting the FBI may not be telling the truth. The FBI’s own internal memos do as well. An FBI document dated August 15, 2019 lists seven other potential co-conspirators to child sex trafficking, in addition to Ghislaine Maxwell. One of them is Jean-Luc Brunel, a former model scout who happened to have died by “suicide” in 2022 while awaiting trial on charges of rape of minors and trafficking minors for sexual exploitation. Another is the aforementioned Wexner.

Leslie Wexner

Wexner is the billionaire businessmen who founded L Brands, the parent company behind major retail brands like Victoria’s Secret, Bath & Body Works, Abercrombie & Fitch, and others. Those who’ve been paying attention didn’t need the FBI to cast suspicion on Wexner; the Ohio retail magnate’s ties to Epstein are well known.

In her two-volume book One Nation Under Blackmail, investigative journalist Whitney Webb fleshes out the Wexner-Epstein tie. She portrays Wexner as the person responsible for building up Epstein, and notes that he became Epstein’s biggest and essentially only major financial client starting around 1989. Oddly, he also gave Epstein broad power of attorney over his finances. This gave Epstein control over a billion-dollar fortune, which he used to build his own network. Wexner is considered Epstein’s mentor, and Webb also ties him to intelligence, crime syndicates, and “ethno philanthropy,” a term she uses to refer to his pro-Jewish, pro-Zionist activity.

In 2020, Webb published this post on her X account regarding Wexner:

Others Revealed

As for Sultan Ahmed Bin Sulayem, we recently learned he’s the one who sent Epstein a cellphone message in 2009 saying, “I loved the torture video.” The file available to the public still has Bin Sulayem’s name blacked out, but Massie revealed that he was the sender after seeing an unredacted version of the file on Monday.

The other names Khanna brought up appear to be people with low public profiles. The curious part is the U.S. government trying to conceal their identities. Appearing in the files does not make someone automatically guilty, and not everything in the files is real. There are millions of documents, many including outrageous accusations that probably aren’t true. Furthermore, there’s no telling how many false files intel agencies dropped in there.

Nevertheless, all is obviously not copacetic. We continue to unearth crumbs of information that only bolster the suspicion of a wider coverup. As Khanna said Tuesday, “And if we found six men that they were hiding, in two hours, imagine how many men they are covering up for in those three million files?”

Massie vs. Bondi

On Wednesday, Attorney General Pam Bondi appeared before the House Judiciary Committee. As expected, lawmakers had questions about the DOJ’s handling of the Epstein files release. Among them was Massie. The Kentuckian started by implying that the DOJ purposefully failed to redact the names of some victims. He also reminded her that he had to nudge the DOJ to unredact the identities of the aforementioned co-conspirators. And he pointed to a poster-sized version of an FBI FD-302 form, the kind that agents use to document witness testimonies; this was one was completely blacked out. “Who’s responsible” for doing all this? Massie asked Bondi.

Bondi said Wexner’s name was already listed 4,000 times. Not as a co-conspirator, though, Massie pointed out. That only happened after he pushed to have that specific document unredacted. He reiterated: “At what point did the FBI and the DOJ decide that Les Wexner was not a co-conspirator?” Bondi evaded. Massie had someone put on a projector the portion of the Epstein Files Transparency Act that requires the DOJ to “release the internal decision about whether to prosecute him or not, and it’s not in the files, and it’s not in the files for any of these other men.”

Bondi lobbed personal insults at Massie, calling him a “political joke,” a “failed politician,” and a “hypocrite,” and saying, “This guy has Trump derangement syndrome.” But she never answered the question.