Republican Rep. Thomas Massie has called out FBI Director Kash Patel after newly released Justice Department documents called his testimony on Jeffrey Epstein’s sex trafficking conspiracy into question.
“Kash Patel testified to Congress that FBI had no evidence of other sex traffickers,” Massie wrote in an X post late Monday night. “This is FBI’s own 2019 document listing [Leslie] Wexner as coconspirator in child sex trafficking.” Wexner’s name had initially been redacted in the document but was unredacted after Massie publicly questioned the decision to keep the identity of the “well known retired CEO” under wraps.
It is unclear if Patel, dubbed ‘Keystone Kash’ after the cops of silent movie fame for his bungled handling of several high-profile investigations, knew of that particular document’s existence when he testified before the Senate Judiciary Committee on Sept. 16.
“There is no credible information, none, if there were I would bring the case yesterday, that he trafficked to other individuals, and the information we have, again, is limited,” Patel said at that time.
Wexner, the billionaire founder of L Brands, which owns Victoria’s Secret and Bath & Body Works, was allegedly one of Epstein’s most powerful patrons and financial benefactors.
He denies enabling Epstein by giving him money, access, and legitimacy over the course of their decades-long friendship. He has also denied allegations that he turned a blind eye or failed to act on Epstein’s sexual abuse of children and young women.
Massie also questioned the Justice Department’s rationale for redacting Wexner’s name and then acting “as if they were justified in redacting” it “because the document contains victim names.”
“Tonight they learned you can redact victim names while still publishing the other names, per our law,” he quipped on X.
He also addressed an email from the Epstein Files, widely circulated on social media, in which the disgraced financier said he “loved the torture video” he’d been sent by a redacted sender.
Information contained elsewhere in the files since appears to have identified that person as Sultan Ahmed bin Sulayem, the Emirati businessman and CEO of global ports company DP World.
“Our law requires VICTIM’s information to be redacted, not information of men who sent Epstein torture porn!” Massie wrote.
The Kentucky congressman, along with his Democratic counterpart Ro Khanna and Republican former colleague Marjorie Taylor Greene, spearheaded efforts last year to force the Donald Trump administration to release millions of Justice Department files on Epstein’s crimes.
Trump, himself once a close friend of Epstein’s, resisted that pressure until November, when he finally signed a bipartisan law requiring full release of those documents by a Dec. 19 deadline, subject only to redactions for the sake of protecting victims’ identities.
The DoJ mustered only a limited release by that date, and has yet to provide a similarly mandated rationale for its redactions, which critics say have in many cases been made to protect the disgraced financier’s associates rather than survivors of his crimes.
As of Jan. 31, the department has now published three million documents, accounting for roughly half of the estimated materials in its possession. Officials say the remaining files remain subject to review and that they have no plans to release more at this time.
Massie has since gone on the offensive over both the legal justifications for withholding that information and the basis of redactions made to the files that have already been made public.
He and Khanna met with DoJ officials on Monday, when they were granted access to view unredacted versions of key files in a secure reading room.
They now claim to have identified at least six men whose names had been removed from public copies of those documents despite being “likely incriminated” by their contents.
The Daily Beast has contacted the FBI, along with Wexner’s and bin Sulayem’s representatives for comment on this story.
