Jamie Raskin accuses DoJ of cover-up after viewing unredacted Epstein files

A top House Democrat on Monday accused the justice department of making “mysterious redactions” to documents related to Jeffrey Epstein that obscured the names of abusers, while also allowing the identities of the disgraced financier’s victims to become public.

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. The measure allows for the files to be redacted in limited circumstances, such as to protect the name of Epstein’s victims, but some of the documents made public have nonetheless included identifying details.

Raskin told reporters that he wanted to view the complete files to better understand how the justice department handled the redaction process.

“I went over there, and I was able to determine, at least I believe, that there were tons of completely unnecessary redactions, in addition to the failure to redact the names of victims, and so that was troubling to us,” Raskin told reporters.

He accused the justice department of being “in a cover-up mode” and breaking the law.

“They violated that precept by releasing the names of a lot of victims, which is either spectacular incompetence and sloppiness on their part, or, as a lot of the survivors believe, a deliberate threat to other survivors who are thinking about coming forward, that they need to be careful because they can be exposed and have their personal information dragged through the mud as well,” Raskin said.

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. The Maryland congressman said he was only able to review about 30 to 40 of the unredacted files that had been released at one of four computers set up at the justice department facility, which lawmakers must enter without bringing any electronic devices, or staff members who have been researching the issue alongside them.

“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.

Another redacted document Raskin said he saw in full was an email Epstein had sent to his associate Ghislaine Maxwell, which contained an account from his lawyers of a conversation with attorneys representing Trump that occurred around 2009.

Trump was quoted in it as saying that while Epstein was never a member of his Mar-a-Lago club, he had been a guest and was never asked to leave, which would contradict statements from the president that he had at one point barred him from his Florida property.

Pam Bondi, the attorney general, is scheduled to testify before the House judiciary committee on Wednesday, and Raskin said he would raise the redactions with her.

“We’re going to start by posing questions directly to attorney general Bondi about the process that produced such flawed results, and that has created such mystery,” Raskin said.

“But also, we want to get a commitment from the Department of Justice to clean it up as quickly as possible, and to get them to release the millions of other documents that are still out there.”

Separately on Monday, Maxwell, who is serving a prison sentence after being convicted of child sex trafficking charges, refused to answer questions during a deposition by the House oversight committee, which has taken the lead in investigating the government’s handling of Epstein’s prosecutions.

In the UK, Keir Starmer’s government has been rocked by revelations of ties between Epstein and Peter Mandelson, whom the prime minister appointed as ambassador to the US.

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.

“It is a huge political scandal [in Britain], and I’m just afraid that the general coarsening and degradation of American life has somehow conditioned people not to take this as seriously as we should be taking it,” Raskin said, noting that files he has seen contain discussions regarding girls as young as nine years old.

“I hope the whole country is focusing on the absolute gravity of the crisis that we’re in.”