‘Neither are in the release!’ Lawmaker says 'most important' Epstein docs are 'missing'

Rep. Ro Khanna (D-CA) sounded the alarm late Friday night over two crucial documents he says are “missing” from the Justice Department’s release of files on Jeffrey Epstein, documents he said he knows are held by the agency and described as the “most important.”

“What we found out is the most important documents are missing,” Khanna said, speaking with CNN’s Kaitlan Collins Friday night.

“They’ve had excessive redactions, and the central questions that Americans want to know – who are the other rich and powerful men on the island raping these young girls – has not been answered.”

The DOJ released thousands of files Friday related to Epstein, which it was compelled to by law after the passage of the Epstein Files Transparency Act, introduced by Khanna and Rep. Thomas Massie (R-KY). The DOJ has been criticized, however, for withholding hundreds of thousands of files, which some say is a blatant violation of the new law.

And among those withheld files, Khanna claims, are two documents that he said the law was explicitly written to apply to – a criminal indictment of Epstein drafted before he was given his “sweetheart deal” in the late 2000s, and an 82-page DOJ memo of Epstein’s alleged crimes.

“Neither are in the release!” Khanna exclaimed.

Epstein, who died in 2019 while awaiting trial on sex-trafficking charges, was first convicted of sex crimes in 2008 after receiving a generous plea deal, one that saw him plead guilty to one count of child prostitution, and despite the FBI having identified as many as 40 potential minor victims. The prosecutor who offered Epstein the deal – Alexander Acosta, Trump’s former labor secretary – allegedly said he offered the deal because he was told Epstein “belonged to intelligence” and that he should “leave it alone.”

“Thomas Massie and I explicitly drafted it to cover those two documents,” Khanna continued. “Now, I know what they’re thinking: they think it’s gonna be Christmas, they’re gonna do this release and people are gonna move on. I would just remind them, that’s what the Trump administration thought when they shut down Congress early before the August recess.”