The U.S. Department of Justice has released a list of 300 politicians and public figures named in the Jeffrey Epstein files after Attorney General Pam Bondi told Congress that all documents related to the case had been made public.
Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche and Bondi said they are still withholding privileged material. However, they shared a list of government officials and other individuals who appeared in the files in a letter to the leaders of the House and Senate Judiciary Committees. They emphasized that being named in the Epstein files does not indicate wrongdoing. “The Department released all ‘records, documents, communications and investigative materials in the possession of the Department’ that ‘relate to’ any of nine different categories,” Bondi and Blanche wrote.
The list includes President Donald Trump, Barack Obama and Michelle Obama, Bill Gates, and Bill Clinton and Hillary Clinton. Also named are Prince Harry, Woody Allen, Kamala Harris, Mark Zuckerberg, Bruce Springsteen, Elon Musk, Pope John Paul II, Nancy Pelosi, House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, Beyoncé and others. The release comes as autopsy photos of Jeffrey Epstein revealed severe neck injuries.
The DOJ explained that many individuals were referenced “in a portion of a document (including press reporting) that on its face is unrelated to the Epstein and Maxwell matters.”
Under the Epstein Files Transparency Act, the DOJ had a Dec. 19 deadline to publicly release all files related to the convicted sex offender.
The Epstein files contain details about organizations allegedly linked to the financier, including information about trafficking and financial operations, as well as internal DOJ emails from agents investigating him and his associates.
According to the DOJ, hundreds of lawyers reviewed roughly 6 million pages of documents and released more than 3.5 million pages of material weeks after the deadline.
Bondi and Blanche said the department withheld files protected by “deliberative-process privilege, work-product privilege, and attorney-client privilege.” The DOJ also redacted victims’ names and removed personally identifiable information.
Blanche previously said a “small number of documents” remain tied up in litigation and will be made public if a court approves their release.
“No records were withheld or redacted ‘on the basis of embarrassment, reputational harm, or political sensitivity, including to any government official, public figure, or foreign dignitary,'” Bondi and Blanche said. “Any omissions from the list are unintentional and, as explained in the previous letters to Congress, a result of the volume and speed with which the Department complied with the Act.
“Individuals whose names were redacted for law-enforcement sensitive purposes are not included.”
Officials sent the letter to Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley and ranking member Dick Durbin, along with House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jim Jordan and ranking member Jamie Raskin on Saturday.
For unknown reasons, Bondi did not sign the letter, though Blanche did; her name appeared printed above his. The files include certain accusations and tips that the DOJ could not verify and ultimately deemed unreliable.
Last week, Rep. Ro Khanna, who co-led the Epstein Files Transparency Act alongside Republican Rep. Thomas Massie, took to the House floor to read six names from the files. He accused the DOJ of hiding “wealthy and powerful men that the DOJ hid for no apparent reason.” The speech and debate clause of the Constitution protects lawmakers from certain liabilities, including defamation, when acting in their official capacity.
The DOJ later said four of those names appeared in a Southern District of New York photo lineup with no known connection to Epstein. “The ‘problem’ is that you didn’t come to us, but immediately ran to X and the House floor and made false accusations about four men, while we were checking the facts,” Blanche wrote on X.
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