Thomas Massie Takes Victory Lap After Trump DOJ Unredacts Epstein Files Names, Accuses Kash Patel of Lying to Congress

(Francis Chung/POLITICO via AP Images)

Rep. Thomas Massie (R-KY) took a victory lap after Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche unredacted a name from the release of the latest Epstein files at Massie’s urging. Massie also took a swipe at FBI Director Kash Patel and accused him of misleading Congress when he testified that the FBI did not believe Epstein had any suspected accomplices.

Massie held a press conference on Monday after viewing the unredacted files available to be read by members of Congress at the Justice Department. Massie told reporters, “what I saw that bothered me were the names of at least six men that have been redacted that are likely incriminated by their inclusion in these files. So that’s the first thing that I saw. It took some digging to find them.”

Massie later took to social media on Monday evening and posted images from the redacted version of the files, writing, “Four of the 18 redacted names on this document are men born before 1970. DOJ needs to explain why they are redacted unless they were just randoms in a line-up.”

He soon posted another image and wrote, “This is a well known retired CEO. DOJ should unredact this. Why did they redact it?”

Blanche replied to the latter post and wrote, “The document you cite has numerous victim names. We have just unredacted Les Wexner’s name from this document, but his name already appears in the files thousands of times. DOJ is hiding nothing.” Wexner is the former CEO of Victoria’s Secret, who is widely believed to have funded Epstein’s lifestyle and was one of his closest confidants.

Massie replied to Blanche with in a lengthy thread, slamming the Justice Department for redacting the names of Epstein’s associates when the law he helped craft to compel the release of the files only required the names of victims to be redacted. Massie began his thread writing:

In response to my posts on X today, DOJ

1) unredacted an FBI file that LABELS two individuals as co-conspirators

2) unredacted a file that lists several men who might be implicated

3) tacitly admitted that Sultan Ahmed Bin Sulayem was the sender of the torture video

“This is significant because Kash Patel testified to Congress that FBI had no evidence of other sex traffickers. This is FBI’s own 2019 document listing Wexner as coconspirator in child sex trafficking. It wasn’t unredacted until tonight,” added the Kentucky Republican. He continued with two more posts in the thread:

Here DOJ acts as if they were justified in redacting the men’s names simply because the document contains victims names. Tonight they learned you can redact victim names while still publishing the other names, per our law.

until tonight no one knew who sent the torture video to Epstein. I went to DOJ, unredacted the email, and reverse searched the email to discover it was a Sultans. Our law requires VICTIM’s information to be redacted, not information of men who sent Epstein torture porn!

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