The Justice Department has sent Congress a six-page letter defending the redactions it made in the newly released Jeffrey Epstein files — and included a list of “all government officials and politically exposed persons” whose names appear in the material.
The letter, addressed to the leaders of the Senate and House Judiciary committees, says the names show up in a “wide variety of contexts,” ranging from people who emailed directly with Epstein or Ghislaine Maxwell to those who never interacted with them but were mentioned in documents like media reports.
But the lack of context — with DOJ not specifying how or why each name appears — immediately drew criticism from lawmakers who said the list risks lumping together vastly different types of references.
Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene seized on the inclusion of what she called names that “don’t make sense,” pointing to the late singer Janis Joplin — who died in 1970 — as an example.
Other names said to be in the files, according to the new letter, are Michael Jackson, Marilyn Monroe and even Elvis Presley, along with names like presidents Bill Clinton and Donald Trump.
Greene took to X and blasted Attorney General Pam Bondi and Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche.
She also complained that the document named “all kinds of politicians including those of us who fought the hardest to release the files,” listing herself along with Reps. Thomas Massie, Ro Khanna and Nancy Mace, and suggested her own mentions stem from unrelated news stories rather than any direct Epstein connection.
She noted that she did not run for Congress until 2020 — a year after Epstein’s death — and argued that any references to her appear to stem from unrelated media reports.
“My mentions in the files are basically stories unrelated to Epstein like me criticizing Covid mask rules and covid vaccine passports,” Greene wrote.
“Why are stories about my refusal to comply with Covid tyranny and other news stories unrelated to Epstein about me listed in the Epstein files??? What kind of files are the FBI and DOJ keeping on us? What is actually going on?”
Khanna, the California Democrat, echoed Greene’s criticism, writing on X: “The DOJ is once again purposefully muddying the waters on who was a predator and who was mentioned in an email.”
“To have Janis Joplin, who died when Epstein was 17, in the same list as Larry Nassar, who went to prison for the sexual abuse of hundreds of young women and child pornography, with no clarification of how either was mentioned in the files is absurd,” the Dem congressman wrote on X.
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