Feb. 15 (UPI) — The Department of Justice said in a letter to Congress that it has released all the files related to sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.
The letter, sent to lawmakers on Saturday night, also included the names of more than 300 “politically exposed persons” who are mentioned in the overall Epstein files, which includes former presidents, politicians, business people and artists.
Attorney General Pam Bondi and Deputy Attorney General sent the letter to inform the leaders of the House and Senate judiciary committees — Sens. Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, and Dick Durbin, D-Ill., and Reps. Jim Jordan, R-Ohio, and Jamie Raskin, D-Md. — that it has completed its review and release of the appropriate records related to Epstein.
The six-page letter is meant to confirm that the department has “released all ‘records, documents, communications and investigative materials'” in its possession, and includes lists of categories of records that have been released and withheld, a summary and basis for redactions, and a list of all government officials and politically exposed people in the documents that DOJ has released.
Congress in December passed the Epstein Files Transparency Act to require the Justice Department to release all unclassified records in a searchable and downloadable format.
While its deadline was Dec. 19, the department did not release the records until January, and when it did so, it was in a single release of a database that, while searchable, was not well-organized and or carefully redacted — including with the publication of the names of Epstein’s victims.
Congress has also been permitted to review unredacted versions of the documents.
The letter comes days after Bondi was grilled by members of both parties in a Congressional hearing that included shouting matches between the attorney general and some members of the committee holding the hearing.
Among the several hundred names included in Saturday’s letter are “all persons” whose names appear at least once in the released Epstein documents, Bondi and Blanche wrote.
“Names appear in the files released under the Act in a wide variety of contexts,” they wrote. “For example, some individuals had extensive direct email contact with Epstein or [Ghislaine] Maxwell while other individuals are mentioned only in a portion of a document, including press reporting, that on its face is unrelated to the Epstein and Maxwell matters.”
Among the names are Beyonce, Bill Cosby, Fidel Castro, Bruce Springsteen, Alyssa Milano and Diana Ross, Ben Shapiro and a host of other politicians, artists and business people and their spouses.
