The Democratic congressman Ro Khanna said on Tuesday that he and his Republican colleague Thomas Massie had forced the justice department to disclose the “hidden” names of six wealthy men they say are “likely incriminated” by their inclusion in the so-called Jeffrey Epstein files.
In a post on X at lunchtime, Khanna, of California, named the six as Salvatore Nuara, Zurab Mikeladze, Leonic Leonov, Nicola Caputo, Sultan Ahmed Bin Sulayem and Leslie Wexner.
Wexner is the billionaire founder of Victoria’s Secret. His extensive ties to Epstein – the late convicted sex offender and disgraced financier – were exposed in a lengthy New York Times investigation in November.
Bin Sulayem is a billionaire businessman and real estate developer from Dubai – and brother of Mohammed Ben Sulayem, the head of FIA, the body that governs the world’s motorsport championships, including the prestigious Formula One series. Email exchanges between Bin Sulayem and Epstein have been previously reported.
Attached to the post was a video clip of Khanna reading the names in the House, availing himself of protection from any defamation lawsuit by the speech and debate clause of the US constitution.
Khanna and Massie, of Kentucky, spent two hours at the justice department building in Washington DC on Monday viewing unredacted versions of the documents relating to Epstein.
The pair were co-sponsors of the Jeffrey Epstein Transparency Act that forced Donald Trump’s administration to publish its vast trove of documents into the connections and activities of the president’s former friend.
Democrats have joined the pair in claiming that there are still 3m pages locked away after the Trump administration called the matter closed with the release of 3m documents in January. The papers that were released, Democrats also argue, contained numerous unexplained redactions.
“There were six wealthy, powerful men that the DoJ hid for no apparent reason,” Khanna said, claiming that he and Massie had “forced” the department to unredact their names.
“Why did it take Thomas Massie and me going to the justice department to get these six men’s identities to become public? If we found six men they were hiding in two hours, imagine how many men they are covering up for in those … files.”
Massie said on Monday night that he was ready to name the six in Congress if needed. “What I saw that bothered me were the names of at least six men that have been redacted that are likely incriminated by their inclusion in these files,” he said.
Epstein pleaded guilty in 2008 to procuring a minor for prostitution and served 13 months in prison. Investigators determined he killed himself in jail in Manhattan in 2019 while awaiting trial on charges including sex trafficking of children.
The ensuing scandal has enveloped countless rich and powerful individuals and thrown a long shadow over Trump’s second presidency, which Democrats have attempted to leverage.
On Tuesday, theSenate minority leader, Chuck Schumer, appeared with a small group of Epstein survivors in Washington to announce a law which seeks to eliminate the statute of limitations for certain sexual offenses.
“The bill exists because people refuse to accept silence as the end of the story,” Schumer said. “It’s that simple.”
Schumer said the bill was named in honor of Virginia Giuffre, one of the most vocal Epstein survivors who died by suicide in April 2025.
“Justice should not expire, because for survivors healing does not run on a government clock,” he said. “For years, survivors of Epstein’s abuse were ignored … Even when the world finally listened, too many survivors were still told by the law, ‘It’s too late, your justice has expired.’
“Virginia’s law changes that.”
A small group of Democrats who also viewed the papers on Monday, the first day they were made available to lawmakers, accused the justice department of a cover-up for “mysterious redactions” they saw in the documents. The transparency act allows only limited redactions, mostly to protect the identities of Epstein’s victims.
“I was able to determine, at least I believe, that there were tons of completely unnecessary redactions, in addition to the failure to redact the names of victims,” said Jamie Raskin, the House judiciary ranking member.
Raskin has previously complained that about 3m documents from the Epstein files remain unreleased, despite the justice department’s insistence that its review of the Epstein case “is over”, and efforts by the White House to “move on” from the scandal.
According to CNN, Massie did not spend time searching for references to Trump, whose name appears thousands of times in the files in a variety of contexts. The president has denied any wrongdoing or knowledge of Epstein’s activities – and has called the investigation into him “a hoax”.
Separately, Howard Lutnick, the US commerce secretary, is facing growing bipartisan calls for his resignation after extensive ties with Epstein were revealed in the files. Correspondence between the pair from 2012 showed arrangements for Lutnick to travel to Epstein’s private island in the Caribbean, one of several of his residences where abuse of minors is alleged to have taken place.
And on Tuesday, while testifying before the US Senate appropriations committee, Lutnick admitted he had lunch with Epstein on that private island. Lutnick had previously said he spent “zero time” with Epstein.
In any event, Massie said his fellow Republican “has a lot to answer for” and must step down.
Khanna, after viewing the files on Monday, echoed Massie’s call. He noted that the scandal had roiled the government of Keir Starmer, the UK prime minister, and prompted at least two resignations, Peter Mandelson, the former British ambassador to the US, and Morgan McSweeney, Starmer’s former chief of staff.
“Based on the evidence, [Lutnick] should be out of the cabinet,” Khanna told Politico Playbook.
“I know Keir Starmer, I was excited when he won. And yet I believe he needs to be held accountable with what’s happened with Mandelson. In our country, we have not had that reckoning.”
In another development on Monday, Ghislaine Maxwell, Epstein’s convicted co-conspirator who procured many of his victims to be abused, refused to testify to the House oversight committee investigating the Epstein case.
Before the hearing, at which she invoked her constitutional right against self-incrimination and remained silent, Khanna noted her willingness to talk to Todd Blanche, Trump’s deputy attorney general, last summer. That was shortly before Maxwell was moved to a lower-security prison in Texas to serve the remainder of her 20-year sentence for sex trafficking.
“She must immediately be sent back to the maximum security prison where she belongs,” Khanna wrote in a post on Bluesky.
The Miami Herald reported on Monday, citing a 2019 FBI interview with Michael Reiter, then the Palm Beach chief of police, that Trump called him in 2006 to warn that Maxwell was Epstein’s operative and was “evil”. Reiter’s statement contradicted Trump’s later claims that he knew nothing of Epstein and Maxwell’s activities.
