The Jeffrey Epstein controversy continues to dominate headlines, but President Donald Trump is hoping it will go away. Trump is urging MAGA Republicans to move on from Epstein, claiming that the story is a "hoax" being pushed by Democrats. But former Fox News host Megyn Kelly is saying that Trump's hardcore MAGA base has no desire to move on.

In an article published on Friday morning, August 1, Bloomberg News' Jason Leopold reports that Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests to federal law enforcement show Trump's name to be redacted from Epstein-related material.

"While reviewing the Epstein files," Leopold explains. "FBI personnel identified numerous references to Trump in the documents, the people familiar with the matter told me. Dozens of other high-profile public figures also appeared, the people said. The appearance of Trump's name or others in the Epstein files is not evidence of a crime or even a suggestion of wrongdoing. In preparation for potential public release, the documents then went to a unit of FOIA officers who applied redactions in accordance with the nine exemptions."

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Leopold adds, "The people familiar with the matter said that Trump's name, along with other high-profile individuals, was blacked out because he was a private citizen when the federal investigation of Epstein was launched in 2006. In particular, the reviewers applied two FOIA exemptions to justify their redactions."

A Trump White House spokesperson and the FBI declined to be interviewed for Leopold's article, and the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) didn't respond to him.

"If you're surprised by the revelation that the FBI used privacy exemptions to withhold the name of a sitting president, you're not alone," Leopold reports. "However, it's common practice for government agencies to redact names on privacy grounds, even when they're clearly public figures like Trump. I lost count of how many times the government invoked a privacy exemption in response to my FOIA requests to deny releasing records on public figures and government officials."

Leopold's reporting is generating a lot of discussion on X, formerly Twitter.

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The conservative group Republicans Against Trump tweeted, "NEW via Bloomberg: The FBI redacted Trump's name from the Epstein files just before higher-ups said last month that releasing the documents 'would not be appropriate or warranted.' This is what a cover-up looks like."

X user Pure Phoenix posted, "Wild how the name gets scrubbed right before they say it's 'not appropriate' to release. Feels shady — like, why the secrecy if there's nothing there? Markets might shrug, but folks like @CharlesMooreX1 would probably call this another elite handshake moment. Sketchy either way."

Another X user, Gerald Wayne, wrote, "The FBI REDACTED Donald Trump's name from the Epstein files, confirmed by Bloomberg. Let that sink in. While the media drags corpses to connect everyone else to Epstein, Trump’s name gets black ink and federal protection. Why? Because he was a 'private citizen' in 2006? So was everyone else on the damn list. This isn't about privacy. It's about selective shielding, the system protecting its own. You still think this is about justice?"

Podcaster Brian Allen commented, "BREAKING: According to Bloomberg, the FBI has reportedly redacted Donald Trump's name from the Epstein files. The same agencies that lost the camera footage… The same ones that claimed he 'wasn't in the files'.… Are now accused of scrubbing his name from documents tied to one of the largest trafficking rings in modern history. The cover-up is worse than the crime and the crime was monstrous. More to come."

Accountant Brian Coyle tweeted, "Makes Watergate look like a minor misdemeanour."

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Read the full Bloomberg News article at this link.

Members of Congress were given a chance to scour unredacted versions of the Department of Justice’s files on Jeffrey Epstein for the first time on Monday.

There are more than 3 million pages available for lawmakers to comb through following their release to the public with heavy redactions. Meanwhile, despite a law requiring all the files to be released in December, the DOJ is still sitting on another 3 million pages that have yet to be published.

Lawmakers have so far only scratched the surface of the information available. But what they’ve seen after just one day has even some of President Donald Trump’s biggest defenders reevaluating their dismissal of the Epstein scandal.

“Initially, my reaction to all this was, I don’t care, I don’t know what the big deal is,” Sen. Cynthia Lummis (R-Wyo.) told independent journalist Pablo Manríquez on Monday. “But now I see what the big deal is and it was worth investigating. The members of Congress who were pushing this were not wrong!”

Rep. Ro Khanna (D-Calif.) and Thomas Massie (R-Ky.), who have led the charge in Congress for the files to be released, said on Monday that six individuals who were “likely incriminated” in Epstein’s crimes had their identities blacked out by the DOJ in the files that were released publicly.

“In a couple of hours, we found six men whose names have been redacted, who are implicated in the way that the files are presented,” Massie told reporters outside the DOJ office where lawmakers viewed the files.

They did not initially specify the individuals’ names, but Massie said at least one was a US citizen and some were “high‑up” foreign officials.

Massie later revealed that one of the men on this list was Les Wexner, the ex-CEO of L Brands, which owns Victoria’s Secret. Wexner appears in the files thousands of times and was infamously one of Epstein’s most intimate financial clients.

After Massie questioned why Wexner’s name was blacked out, Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche announced it had been unredacted and said the DOJ was “hiding nothing.” The other five names remained redacted as of Tuesday morning.

The FBI closed its investigation into Epstein in July, concluding that while the financier himself abused several underage girls, along with his partner Ghislane Maxwell—who is currently serving 20 years in prison—he was not running a sex-trafficking ring that included other powerful figures.

Rep. Jared Moskowitz (D-Fla.) said the files he and other lawmakers reviewed yesterday told a much different story.

“It’s disgusting,” he said. “There are lots of names, lots of co-conspirators, and they’re trafficking girls all across the world.”

Rep. Becca Balint (D-Vt.) put it more succinctly when a Drop Site News reporter caught her on the way back from the DOJ office and asked what she learned from viewing the files.

“There’s a bunch of sick f----,” she said.

Lawmakers also said the documents contradicted Trump’s claims that he booted Epstein from membership at his Florida club, Mar-a-Lago, and disassociated from him in the early 2000s because the predator was poaching young female workers from the resort. Trump has said that one of them was the late Virginia Giuffre, then a 17-year-old locker room employee, who’d go on to become one of Epstein’s victims and most prominent accusers.

According to Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-Md.), “for some indeterminate, inscrutable reason,” the DOJ concealed a summary of statements allegedly made by Trump, provided by Epstein’s lawyers, in which the president said he never asked Epstein to leave the club.

Balint confirmed she saw the same document.

“One [document] was related to whether or not Trump had ever kicked Epstein out of Mar-a-Lago, as he claimed,” she said. “It’s not true. It’s a lie.”

The law passed in November requiring the files’ release mandates that victims of Epstein’s abuse have their privacy protected, but forbids the DOJ from redacting information to protect prominent individuals, including government officials, from embarrassment.

“The broader issue is why so many of the files they’re getting are redacted in the first place,” Khanna said. “What Americans want to know is who the rich and powerful people are who went to [Epstein’s] island? Did they rape underage girls? Did they know that underage girls were being paraded around?”

Massie and Khanna said they were disappointed to find that many of the files that were supposed to be available were still heavily redacted. Massie lamented that the DOJ had not yet provided access to the FBI’s 302 forms, which contain official summaries of interviews with witnesses and victims.

Raskin said viewing the files affirmed many of the concerns about the DOJ “over-redacting” files.

“We didn’t want there to be a cover-up, and yet, what I saw today was that there were lots of examples of people’s names being redacted when they were not victims,” Raskin told CNN. “There are thousands and thousands of pages replete with redactions. There are entire pages in memos where you can’t see anything.”

Lawmakers were given permission to view the files in a letter sent by the DOJ on Friday, following mounting criticism about the extensive number of redactions in the public release. They are required to sift through the files in a tightly-secured DOJ office and are barred from making copies available to the public, though they are allowed to take notes.

Raskin said that the office contains only four computers, making the process of sorting through more than 3 million files agonizingly slow.

“Working 40 hours a week on nothing else but this, it would take more than seven years for the 217 members who signed the House discharge petition to read just the documents they’ve decided to release,” he wrote in a post on social media.

Attorney General Pam Bondi is scheduled to testify before the House Oversight Committee about the handling of the files on Wednesday. Massie said he plans to grill her about why so many potential co-conspirators had their names redacted in the public release.

“I would like to give the DOJ a chance to say they made a mistake and over‑redacted and let them unredact those men’s names,” he said. That would probably be the best way to do it.“

Blanche has responded to the criticism on social media, saying, “The DOJ is committed to transparency.”

Khanna, who appeared on MS NOW’s “Morning Joe” Tuesday morning, said that based on what he saw in the public release, the opposite is true.

“ Donald Trump had the FBI scrub those files in March,” he said. “And the documents we saw already had the redactions of the FBI from March. So we still have not seen the vast majority of documents unredacted that have the survivor statements of the rich and powerful men who committed these crimes.”

Survivors of deceased sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein feel a "deep sense of betrayal" from the Department of Justice, according to a Thursday report from CNN, ripping the agency for failing to redact pieces of their personal information and accusing it of continuing to cover for their abusers.

The DOJ on Friday released what it said would be the last tranche of files related to its investigation into Epstein and his crimes, well over a month past the deadline set for it by Congress. While the agency claimed that the extra time was needed to properly and completely redact sensitive information, including the details of victims, journalists combing through the new pages have nonetheless found countless pieces of identifying information for numerous victims.

Speaking with CNN, some of these victims and their legal teams ripped the DOJ for this failure.

"To have pieces of my life be out there on display in that way, was really troublesome,” survivor Dani Bensky told CNN during a roundtable discussion. “And I know that I’m public now, yes, it hurts me — but it really hurts our survivor sisters who are still ‘Jane Does’ even more."

Bensky told the network that her name, address and phone number were listed in the new files unredacted. Other survivors have shared similar stories, with fully readable driver's licenses left untouched on some pages. Other pages also contained "dozens" of nude or partially nude images of victims as well, according to the New York Times.

Attorneys for several survivors wrote a letter urging two federal judges in New York to intervene, calling the details leaked in the new files an "unfolding emergency." They also stressed the ease with which the DOJ could have found unredacted information.

"When DOJ believed it was ready to publish, it needed only to type each victim’s name into its own search function," the attorneys explained. "Any resulting hit should have been redacted before publication. Had DOJ done that, the harm would have been avoided."

Victims are also calling out the DOJ for what they claim is a continued effort to protect the men who helped enable Epstein's abuse. Speaking with CNN, survivor Jess Michaels highlighted an FBI form in the latest release that was entirely blacked out.

"It basically outlines everything that this person experienced and shared with the FBI. It was seven pages long and four of them looked like this,” Michaels explained. “What happened to her and who did it is also reacted. So you cannot say in the same sentence: ‘There were no men, there was no list’ and redact this much of a statement. Because if there’s no men, then there’s no reason to redact it. There’s no other reason."

While Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche admitted to many "mistakes" in the latest release regarding the details of Epstein survivors, the DOJ claimed that, despite the outcry from Michaels and others, the names of no additional men were redacted, aside from FBI and law enforcement officials involved in the investigation.

The Department of Justice appears to be outright ignoring its legal obligation to disclose files related to Jeffrey Epstein, and according to a new analysis from Julie K. Brown, this presents a dangerous situation in which "no laws are safe" from being ignored by Donald Trump.

The Epstein Files Transparency Act passed in both Chambers of Congress by overwhelming margins in November, compelling the DOJ to release of its files about its investigations into Epstein, a notorious deceased sex trafficker with links to numerous high-profile public figures. The deadline for the release of these files was Dec. 17, which was over a month ago, and so far only a small percentage of the files have been released in heavily redacted form, prompting outrage and calls for accountability from lawmakers and Epstein survivors alike.

The DOJ claimed when it released the small batch of files last month that considerable work was needed to prep the millions of files for release, specifically to make sure the names of victims and other innocent parties are not exposed. Given Trump's months-long resistance to releasing the files and his long-time friendship with Epstein, many in the public suspect that the DOJ is stalling the release of the files because they might implicate the president in the trafficker's crimes, or at least show that he was aware of them for years. Reports from last spring indicated that Trump had been informed that his name was in the files.

Brown is a veteran reporter widely credited with first bringing Epstein's story to national attention with her Miami Herald stories about his lenient plea deal from 2008. In a Substack piece published Friday, she cast doubt on the DOJ's stated reason for delaying the release of the files, suggesting that it is unrealistic that this much time would be needed for redactions if the department was not engaged in a massive cover-up.

"If all you are redacting is the names of victims, that could have been done efficiently months ago. And didn’t the DOJ already spend $1 million to scour the files last Spring?" Brown wrote. "In March, Bloomberg’s Jason Leopold reported that FBI Director Kash Patel had tasked 1,000 FBI agents to work on making the files ready for public review."

Brown further warned that if Congress allows the DOJ to keep ignoring the Epstein Files Transparency Act, as she believes it is doing, it poses a major risk for all laws in the future, as it creates a precedent for the administration to ignore any and all laws they disagree with.

"If Congressional leaders don’t respond, it means no legislation, no laws, are safe," Brown wrote. "What is to prevent others from ignoring laws passed by Congress? Are we just a nation that only complies with laws we like or agree with? If leaders of Congress do nothing, they will render all legislation they pass open to being ignored. Our founders considered the Rule of Law a cornerstone of our Democracy. It means that all people, including government officials, are equally accountable to the law. Ignoring this principle will cause significant harm to the foundations of all our institutions."

The investor and one-time employer of trafficker Jeffrey Epstein will appear behind closed doors on Wednesday to talk about how, after knowing him for over a decade, he had no idea what was going on behind closed doors.

Axios reported Wednesday that 88-year-old Les Wexner was "personally, professionally and financially tied to convicted sex offender Epstein for decades."

According to Wexner, Epstein misappropriated $46 million in 2007, and at that point, he cut ties. While Wexner was ordered to Washington to testify, he's now meeting with lawmakers in Ohio.

One controversy is that Wexner's relationship with Epstein coincides with his time as chair of the Ohio State University board of trustees. That was also the era in which campus doctor Richard Strauss was alleged to have sexually abused 177 students. Wexner is slated to testify about that in the coming months.

Wexner, the founder of The Limited, Express, Victoria's Secret, Lane Bryant, Abercrombie & Fitch and Bath and Body Works, to name a few, is worth about $9.1 billion.

Like Trump, he too did a drawing of breasts in the infamous "birthday book" for Epstein's 50th.

"Dear Jeffrey, I wanted to get you what you want ... so here it is ...." Wexner wrote on the page. The drawing followed before he wrote, "Happy birthday. Your friend, Leslie."

Former Deputy Assistant Attorney General Tom Dupree told CNN that he expects Wexner to tell the House Oversight and Reform Committee that he'll invoke his Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination. He acknowledged that if Wexner truly didn't know and did nothing wrong, he might be open to telling his own story, but he expects he'd plead the Fifth.

Before Epstein allegedly hanged himself, Wexner was subpoenaed by a grand jury in New York to answer questions. He, along with eight others were to be questioned by the FBI, News Nation reported Tuesday evening in a report saying that files allege Wexner was allegedly a "co-conspirator."

The subpoena listed sex trafficking violations but did not specify the target of those potential crimes.

The same report cited an email titled “Epstein – Cellmate Interview” from July 24, 2025, which involved "a redacted individual at the FBI NY Violent Crime Threat unit," who spoke to a person whose name was redacted. They asked the person to “write me a sentence or two for the below are the salacious statements made against the individuals in the file.”

The unidentified person alleged, “Steve Scully stated Wexner was #1 on Epstein’s speed dial.” It added, “Epstein earned his money from having sex with Wexner.”

“We don’t know what was on Epstein’s phone. The latter allegation is untrue. We don’t know who made the statement or the motives behind it,” Wexner’s spokesperson told News Nation.

On another 2020 form, a woman said she frequently saw Epstein and Wexner together, saying that Wexner was surrounded by models under 18, a redacted FBI intake form said.

Wexners’s spokesperson said, “We understand the complete statement referenced helping to get people to work at parties ‘in catering or other positions,’ which seems neither unusual nor inappropriate. It is also common for certain areas of a private home to be restricted.”

In a statement to NewsNation, the spokesperson also said, “The Assistant U.S. Attorney told Mr. Wexner’s legal counsel in 2019 that Mr. Wexner was neither a co-conspirator nor target in any respect. Mr. Wexner cooperated fully by providing background information on Epstein and was never contacted again.”

Another FBI document from July 2019 cited a man named “Adrian” whose name is redacted. The person claimed that he was a bodyguard for Wexner during 1991 and 1992. He said that Epstein was able to buy his mansion from Wexner for $20. But Wexner's spokesperson said it was $20 million.

“Adrian stated he had been to Epstein’s Palm Beach home and noted that there were young girls there, but assumed they were family. Adrian was told by another bodyguard to keep to yourself and not ask questions,” the memo read.

Wexner's spokesperson denies this.

One Republican lawmaker revealed that Wexner's name was redacted in several documents released by the FBI when it wasn't supposed to be.

Rep. Thomas Massie (R-Ky.), who sits on the House Oversight and Reform Committee, called the "cover-up" by the Justice Department "bigger than Watergate."

Under the law passed by Congress, no names were supposed to be redacted other than those of survivors of abuse.

CNN reported that the released documents show that there was at least one young woman who testified she was trafficked to Wexner while she was underage. Wexner also denies this.

In one message, CNN reported that Epstein wrote to Wexner, “You and I had ‘gang stuff’ for over 15 years. I have never once, not once, done anything , but protect your interests. I owe a great debt to you, as frankly you owe to me.”

It then added, “I had no intention of divulging any confidence of ours.”

Wexner's spokesperson said that no such note was received.

“The draft appears to fit a pattern of outlandish and delusional statements by Epstein, in the newly released documents, made in desperate attempts to perpetuate his lies, proclaim his innocence, and meet with individuals who had ended their relationships with him,” the spokesperson said.

"There is a lot they want to learn," Dupree told CNN on Wednesday morning.

"As you note, his name has been all over the Epstein files. He's been close to Epstein for many years. Very, very close. Financially connected. And I think the congressional investigators are going to be interested in knowing what Wexner knew. Was aware of what Epstein was doing. They're going to want to get a better understanding of the financial ties between the two. In other words, Epstein had very strong connections to all sorts of wealthy individuals."

He said that Wexner is a perfect example of the rich and powerful people Epstein had relationships with.

Congress will want to know "what Wexner knew and how he developed such a close relationship to Epstein over all these years without apparently having any inkling maybe he did that something more nefarious was going on," said Dupree.

CNN's Joe Jackson said that officials will also likely want to know other names connected to Epstein.

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Former President Bill Clinton and former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton walked into a House hearing and exposed the real cover-up involving the investigation files for trafficker Jeffrey Epstein.

Columnist Paul Waldman penned a piece Saturday shaming Republicans in the House Oversight and Reform Committee for spending more time on "Pizzagate" conspiracy theories than on helping survivors of Epstein's decades of abuse.

While Republicans hoped to "embarrass Democrats," Waldman said, they "ended up embarrassing themselves."

While speaking to the committee, Secretary Clinton flipped the script on Republicans as they hoped to humiliate her. Instead, she highlighted just how unserious the GOP has been when it comes to handling the Epstein case.

"This is the nature of the Republican response to the unending Epstein scandal: from Congress, the kind of buffoonery represented by the Clinton deposition; and from the administration, an insistence that Trump is unconnected to or 'exonerated' from a scandal whose central figure long counted the president as a friend," wrote Waldman.

He went on to mock claims from President Donald Trump's Justice Department that it would investigate itself to better understand what went wrong in the Epstein investigation.

It noted that there isn't merely one set of missing documents, "But among the millions of pages of Epstein files that have been released were massive amounts of heavily redacted documents with names and other information blacked out. In some cases, that was done to protect the identity of victims, but not all."

He recalled reports from last July in which Sen. Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) wrote a letter to the DOJ saying he was made aware of as many as 1,000 FBI personnel sifting through the files to "'flag' any records in which President Trump was mentioned."

Bloomberg News later reported that Trump’s name was removed from all of the files for "privacy" reasons.

Thankfully, the DOJ isn't made up of "the skilled operators" necessary of carrying out an expert conspiracy. Instead, Waldman said the "bumbling partisan hacks. ... They’d have a tough time mounting a comprehensive cover-up of Trump’s ties to Epstein, simply because those ties are so public and extensive."

While Republicans might be trying desperately to tie Epstein to the Democrats, and make it go away, Waldman explained that the scandal is bigger than a typical political scandal. What happened to the girls and women is horrific, but the anger goes beyond getting them justice and dips into the anger Americans have over elite, powerful men getting away with such crimes. Both sides of the political aisle are angry, "no matter how many times Trump says he was 'totally exonerated.'"

There is no greater example of the powerful elite that gets away with whatever they want, Waldman said, recalling his father bailing Trump out of financial blundersand funding his projects. He even admitted in the "Access Hollywood" video that he can assault women and get away with it because he's "a celebrity."

“When you’re a star, they let you do it. You can do anything," Trump said in the video.

"That’s the rot in the American elite that this scandal has revealed," Waldman closed. He argued that whatever distractions Republicans try to throw up, it won't help the scandal disappear.

President Donald Trump and his administration have been hit with an onslaught of lawsuits since his return to the White House, but according Newsweek, on Friday they received some rare legal pushback from a conservative organization.

Per Newsweek's report, Judicial Watch, a conservative nonprofit, filed a lawsuit against the Department of Health and Human Services, alleging that the agency had failed to provide a timely response to its Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request. The group requested survey information pertaining to abortion-related research at a facility in Pittsburgh.

The request was initially submitted on May 30 of last year, and according to the filing, while it was acknowledged by HHS on the same day, the organization has not heard back about it since then. The nonprofit is looking to obtain "All documents and communications of officials in the Office of Extramural Research concerning the Final Research Performance Progress Report (FRPPR) for the GUDMAP program at the University of Pittsburgh (Project Number U24- DK110791-01)," as part of an investigation for fetal tissue research programs using federal funds.

"As of the date of this Complaint (Jan. 2, 2026), Defendant has failed to: (i) determine whether to comply with the request; (ii) notify Plaintiff of any such determination or the reasons therefor; (iii) advise Plaintiff of the right to appeal any adverse determination; or (iv) produce the requested records or otherwise demonstrate that the requested records are exempt from production," the lawsuit alleged.

Newsweek noted that this lawsuit is among many that the Trump administration has faced for its alleged failures to comply with FOIA requests in a timely manner. Judicial Watch, for example, also sued the Justice Department over allegations that its FOIA request for "records about the alleged transfer of fetal tissue" was not answered sufficiently.

“Americans have a right to know basic information about the taxpayer-funded abortion industrial complex," Tom Fitton, president of Judicial Watch, said in a statement. "As long as the government continues to fund these gruesome projects, Judicial Watch will work to expose them.”