Jamie Raskin, House judiciary ranking member, criticized the department after reviewing the unredacted Epstein files at a government facility in Washington DC on the first day they were made available to lawmakers.
Under the Epstein Files Transparency Act passed by Congress in November, the justice department has publicly released millions of files related to Epstein, who socialized with prominent global elites including Donald Trump and died in 2019 while awaiting trial on sex trafficking charges.
Raskin told reporters that he wanted to view the complete files to better understand how the justice department handled the redaction process.
The justice department has released a total of about 3.5m files related to Epstein, and Raskin said there were around 3m more awaiting release.
“I saw the names of lots of people, who were redacted for mysterious or baffling or inscrutable reasons,” Raskin said.
He noted Les Wexner, the Victoria’s Secret founder whose association with Epstein is public, is among those whose names were deleted.
Raskin noted the files were enough to spark a political firestorm in the UK but not in the US even though Trump – unlike Starmer – is mentioned repeatedly in the files. »
