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Ro Khanna says 2 ‘most important documents’ are missing from newly-released Epstein files – what are they?
Ro Khanna alleged that “the most important documents are missing” from the trove of Jeffrey Epstein files that were released. Here's what we know about them.
The newly-released documents on Jeffrey Epstein, released on the Justice Department’s website, have prompted criticism from various public figures, including Ro Khanna, the Democratic representative who co-authored the Epstein Files Transparency Act with Thomas Massie, a Republican. Khanna has claimed that “the most important documents are missing” from the trove of files that have been released.
“What we found out is the most important documents are missing,” Khanna said. “They’ve had excessive redactions, and the central question that Americans want to know – who are the other rich and powerful men on the island, raping these young girls or covering up – has not been answered.”
What are the missing documents?
Khanna said that the files do not appear to include two documents that Epstein’s survivors told lawmakers they want to see. These include a 60-count federal indictment outlining charges against Epstein that a federal prosecutor in Florida drew up in 2007. The second document is a detailed memorandum that summarizes the evidence that she had assembled in support of the charges.
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Just two months after these charges were drawn up, the US attorney in Florida, Alex Acosta, told Epstein that he would not be prosecuted on federal charges if he agreed to plead guilty to lesser state charges, serve a minimum of two years’ incarceration, make certain financial amends, and register as a sex offender. Acosta later served as Donald Trump’s first secretary of labor from 2017 to 2019, after which a new federal investigation into Epstein made him resign.
It remains unclear why Acosta offered that deal to Epstein. However, a 2020 review by the justice department’s office of professional responsibility found that Acosta’s office “improperly resolved a federal investigation into the criminal conduct of Jeffrey Epstein by negotiating and executing a federal non-prosecution agreement.”
Read More | Epstein files release: Why a large part of documents is redacted; DOJ explains amid backlash
Khanna has told CNN that he and Massie “explicitly drafted” the law “to cover those two documents.” He further said in an X post, “The DOJ’s document dump of hundreds of thousands of pages failed to comply with the law authored by @RepThomasMassie and me. One document, 119 pages of Grand Jury testimony, was completely redacted.”
Massie, who led the effort to force a vote on releasing the full Justice Department files on the Epstein investigation, has said that the document release “grossly fails to comply with both the spirit and the letter of the law” that Trump had signed.
