Reps. Ro Khanna (D-Calif.) and Thomas Massie (R-Ky.) are now directly accusing President Donald Trump's administration of committing "criminal violations" in their refusal to release additional documents pertaining to convicted child predator Jeffrey Epstein.
In a Thursday letter to U.S. District Judge Paul Engelmayer (an appointee of former President Barack Obama), the two lawmakers — who are the chief sponsors of the Epstein Files Transparency Act — said the Department of Justice (DOJ) had committed "criminal violations" in its failure to meet the December 19 statutory deadline imposed by the law to release all remaining Epstein documents. They are urging the judge to appoint a special master and independent monitor to compel the DOJ to comply with the law.
"On December 19, 2025, the Department of Justice released only a portion of responsive materials. That release, however, did not comply with the statute as written," Khanna and Massie wrote. "The Department failed to meet the Act’s requirements in multiple respects, including missing the statutory deadline, asserting common-law privileges that the Act does not permit and applying extensive redactions that appear inconsistent with the Act’s expressed prohibition on withholding or redacting records to protect politically exposed persons."
The lawmakers acknowledged that while the law allows the DOJ to have discretion to make redactions in order to protect the names and identifying information of victims and to safeguard ongoing investigations, the DOJ went well beyond those guidelines and has made additional redactions "inconsistent with the Act." They also noted that the DOJ had only released roughly 12,000 documents while "more than 2 million" remain unreleased.
"[T]here is reasonable suspicion that the DOJ has overstated the scope of responsive materials, thereby portraying compliance as unmanageable and effectively delaying disclosure," the letter read. "The conduct by the DOJ is not only a flagrant violation of the mandatory disclosure obligations under the Epstein Files Transparency Act, but as this Court has recognized in its previous rulings, the behavior by the DOJ has caused serious trauma to survivors."
Khanna and Massie further asserted that Attorney General Pam Bondi had not followed a provision of the law that required her to compile a report explaining the basis for any redactions made. They told Engelmayer that without that report, "there is no authoritative accounting of what records exist, what has been withheld, or why, making effective oversight and judicial review far more difficult."
"Put simply, the DOJ cannot be trusted with making mandatory disclosures under the Act," they wrote. "While we believe that criminal violations have taken place and must be addressed, the most urgent need now is for the DOJ to produce all the documents and electronically stored information required by the Act."
"Absent an independent process, as outlined above, we do not believe the DOJ will produce the records that are required by the Act and what it has represented to this Court," they added.
Read the full letter by clicking here.
