Rep. Ro Khanna revealed the names of “six wealthy, powerful men” that the Department of Justice had redacted from the Epstein files “for no apparent reason.”
Speaking on the House floor, the Democratic congressman named billionaire businessman and former Victoria’s Secret CEO Leslie Wexner, 88; Emirati businessman Sultan Ahmed bin Sulayem, 71; as well as Salvatore Nuara, Zurab Mikeladze, Leonic Leonov, and Nicola Caputo, as appearing in unredacted files related to disgraced financier Jeffrey Epstein.
“My question is, why did it take Thomas Massie and me going to the Justice Department to get these six men’s identities to become public?” Khanna asked representatives on Tuesday. He did not detail evidence of any wrongdoing against them.
The revelation comes after the DOJ made roughly three million uncensored records available to Congress upon request under the Epstein Transparency Act, following criticism that the Trump administration was not complying with the law.
The criticism stems from the fact that only about half of the roughly six million files have been released, and many documents redact the names of alleged perpetrators while leaving victims’ names unredacted.
On Monday, Khanna and Republican Rep. Thomas Massie, the two lawmakers who led the push to release the Epstein files, said that they had found “six men” who were implicated, including a “high-ranking foreign official,” after spending two hours viewing unredacted versions of the documents.
Following their visit to the Justice Department building in Washington, D.C.—where the files are available to view on computers inside a designated reading room—Massie engaged in a heated exchange on X with Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche over the redaction of the men’s names.
Massie took issue with an email exchange involving the convicted sex offender, who died in prison in 2019, and a figure he referred to as a “Sultan.” In the exchange, Epstein wrote, “Where are you? are you ok , I loved the torture video,” to which the redacted recipient replied, “I am in china I will be in the US 2nd week of may.”
In response, Blanche wrote that the Sultan’s name appears unredacted elsewhere in the files, under reference number EFTA00666117, identifying him as Sultan Ahmed bin Sulayem—later cited by Khanna on the House floor.
When Massie flagged that one redacted name belonged to a “well-known retired CEO,” Blanche responded that the document in question contained “numerous victim names” and confirmed that the redaction had been lifted, revealing it was Wexner.
“We have just unredacted Les Wexner’s name from this document, but his name already appears in the files thousands of times. DOJ is hiding nothing,” Blanche wrote.
“If we found six men that they were hiding in two hours, imagine how many men they are covering up for in those three million files,” Khanna said on Tuesday.
Massie and Khanna’s push to unredact the names of six men has led to the revelation that Wexner—whose ties to Epstein were previously reported, with a New York Times investigation describing him as “one of the most important contributors to the staggering growth of Epstein’s fortune” and whose name appears unredacted in previous files—was labeled a co-conspirator by the FBI in 2019.
Similarly, Blanche’s revelation that Sulayem was linked to the “torture” email came after Massie and Khanna viewed the unredacted files on Monday. Previous files had shown Sulayem’s unredacted name in a 2015 email to Epstein, in which he wrote that he met a girl “two years ago” and described her as “the best sex I ever had amazing body.”
Nicola Caputo is an Italian politician who served in the European Parliament and has held positions on the Campania Regional Council since 2021, according to The Guardian, but there is no other evidence linking him to the released files. On Monday, Massie suggested that one of the six men was “pretty high up in a foreign government.”
The occupations and connections of the three other men could not be determined.
In response to a question about next steps, Khanna said they plan to write a letter to the FBI, accusing the agency of being “in violation of the law,” and vowed to “expose more men that they’re protecting.”
A legal representative for Wexner said in a statement to Politico that “the Assistant U.S. Attorney told Mr. Wexner’s legal counsel in 2019 that Mr. Wexner was being viewed as [a] source of information about Epstein and was not a target in any respect. Mr. Wexner cooperated fully by providing background information on Epstein and was never contacted again.”
The Daily Beast has also reached out to the Wexner Foundation, bin Sulayem’s logistics firm DP World, and the Justice Department. The four other individuals named—Salvatore Nuara, Zurab Mikeladze, Leonic Leonov, and Nicola Caputo—could not be reached for comment.
