Epstein file redactions reveal victims as young as nine and implicate a high-level government official, lawmakers say

The remaining Department of Justice files on Jeffrey Epstein include the revelation that one of the pedophile’s victims was just nine years old and that a senior official in a foreign government was allegedly involved in his sex trafficking network, lawmakers have said.

Democratic congressmen Jamie Raskin and Ro Khanna and Republican Thomas Massie visited the DOJ on Monday to review the remaining files withheld from publication due to their sensitivity via a secure terminal.

As they emerged from the department’s headquarters in Washington, D.C., the trio raised questions about why some of the material had been redacted by government lawyers.

“You read through these files, and you read about 15-year-old girls, 14-year-old girls, 10-year-old girls,” Raskin said.

“I saw a mention of a nine-year-old girl today. I mean, this is just preposterous and scandalous.”

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Massie – the Kentucky GOP representative who risked the ire of President Donald Trump by partnering with Democrats to help spearhead the passage of the Epstein Files Transparency Act through Congress in November – said he had seen a reference to an individual who is “pretty high up in a foreign government” as being involved in the disgraced financier’s circle.

“There are six men, some of them with their photographs, that have been redacted, and there’s no explanation why those people were redacted,” added Khanna. “That’s really concerning.”

Massie questioned the decision to withhold the names of those men and said he will “probably” broadcast their identities “from the floor or in a committee hearing” where privilege granted him by the Speech and Debate Clause would shield him from potential lawsuits.

Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche replied to a series of posts by Massie on X (Twitter) Monday night in which the congressman complained about redactions to the files, telling him that the DOJ is “committed to transparency” and, in one instance: “Be honest, and stop grandstanding.”

The Independent has reached out to the DOJ for further comment.

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“What we’re after is the men who Jeffrey Epstein trafficked women to,” he said, adding that he intended to hold off from naming the men in order to give the DOJ opportunity to “correct their mistakes.”

“We didn’t want to see any redactions of the names of co-conspirators, accomplices, enablers, abusers, rapists, simply to spare them potential embarrassment, political sensitivity or disgrace of some kind,” Raskin said.

“And yet nonetheless, the Epstein… documents that were released are filled with redactions of names and information about people who clearly are not victims and may fall into that other category.”

The near-unanimous passage of the Epstein Files Transparency Act last fall set in motion a 30-day deadline for the complete release of the DOJ’s files on Epstein, who died by suicide in a New York City jail cell in August 2019 while awaiting trial.

But the department published only a small portion of the files on December 19, followed by a second, slightly larger tranche on December 23, and then, five weeks later, a much bigger release, consisting of three million pages of documents, including 2,000 videos and 180,000 images.

Blanche said at a White House press briefing in support of the January 30 release that the approximately 3.5 million files published were all the DOJ could safely make available from the more than six million in its possession without compromising the victims of Epstein’s crimes.

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However, many have been left dissatisfied with the handling of the release, and a group of Epstein survivors ran a TV spot during Super Bowl LX Sunday, calling for the publication of the remaining documents and telling Attorney General Pam Bondi: “It’s time to tell the truth.”

The document drop also stoked fresh outrage over the conduct of some of Epstein’s associates, most notably Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor and former U.K. ambassador to the U.S. Peter Mandelson, prompting Khanna to say Monday: “This is the most vulnerable the British monarchy has ever been.”

While Trump has insisted it is now time to “move on” from a scandal that has dogged his second presidency so far, it shows little sign of going away.

Also on Monday, Epstein’s former girlfriend and associate Ghislaine Maxwell appeared virtually at a closed-door hearing on Capitol Hill, only to repeatedly plead the Fifth and refuse to discuss his crimes.

Her lawyer, David Oscar Markus, said his client was “prepared to speak fully and honestly if granted clemency by President Trump.”

Republican House Oversight Committee chairman James Comer described the convicted sex offender’s decision as “very disappointing” but “expected.”