U.S. Representative Thomas Massie (R‑KY) at the Department of Justice office building in Washington, D.C., U.S., February 9, 2026. REUTERS/Kent Nishimura
Republican congressman Thomas Massie (R-Ky.) on Monday tore into former Fox News host Greta Van Susteren, accusing her of having an "Epstein brain worm" over a post that seemingly misunderstood his demands for the Department of Justice (DOJ).
The exchange began on Monday morning when Van Susteren — who currently hosts a show on the far-right news channel, Newsmax — shared a screenshot of a Daily Mail headline concerning Massie, noting that he labeled Trump's government the "Epstein administration" and that Attorney General Pam Bondi was being "slammed for releasing list of celebrity names."
"This is bizarre," Van Susteren wrote in a post to X. Republican Rep Massie called for ALL the Epstein files to be released and now complains when she does?
Later on in the evening, Massie — a noted critic of President Donald Trump — responded to the Newsmax host's post, accusing her in blunt terms of completely misrepresenting the current situation.
"It’s like you all have an Epstein brain worm," Massie wrote. "She needs to release more names, not fewer names. Specifically she’s withholding and over-redacting FD-302 forms and other documents that name coconspirators. Did you even watch the hearing before making this post?"
The list of celebrity names mentioned in the screenshot Van Susteren shared is, crucially, not a list of alleged co-conspirators of deceased sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein. This list of names, provided to Congress in a letter from Bondi over the weekend, contains every famous celebrity or public figure mentioned in the Epstein files at all, regardless of whether or not they were involved with his crimes, or if they ever actually met him, with many being the names of people long dead.
According to Sky News, some of the names in this list included Mick Jagger, Elvis Presley, Marilyn Monroe, George Clooney, Beyonce, Cher and Janis Joplin. Massie and others in Congress have accused Bondi and the DOJ of improperly redacting the names of perpetrators in the files, when they were only supposed to redact the names of victims.
Rep. Ro Khanna (D-Calif.), who co-sponsored the Epstein Files Transparency Act with Massie, further accused the DOJ of "muddying the waters" with this new list.
"The DOJ is once again purposefully muddying the waters on who was a predator and who was mentioned in an email," Khanna said in a statement. "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. Release the full files. Stop protecting predators. Redact only the survivor's names."
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