2. The Department of Justice Failed to Inform Congress of the Redactions it Made to the Epstein Files in the Final Report

Congress directed DOJ to file a report with the Senate and House Judiciary Committees listing all (1) categories of records released and withheld and (2) a summary of redactions made, including legal basis for those redactions within fifteen days of completing its production under the EFTA.

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On February 14, 2026, DOJ sent a letter in an apparent attempt to meet its reporting requirement that essentially parrots the statutory text of the EFTA while doubling down on DOJ’s assertion that it has withheld information based on “various privileges.”

First, DDF has robustly countered DOJ’s assertion of privilege in our prior letters to the DOJ Office of Inspector General. Their continued reliance on that theory is unsound and improper. Second, DOJ’s letter does not provide a summary of the redactions that DOJ “made”. Rather, it simply describes the “legal basis” for those redactions. Congress clearly intended for DOJ to provide a summary of the redactions that DOJ made, which we would anticipate would include the number of redactions by total and category. Likewise, if DOJ believes that privilege applies, it should explain every single privilege it has relied on, the type of information that has been redacted and why it has been redacted, and when it has exercised or waived privilege.

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The lack of summarization is important. DOJ has continued to over-redact the files. Pages of the files have been redacted with no explanation. And DOJ’s offer to allow only members of Congress access to the unredacted files does not comport with the EFTA. Moreover, after several members of Congress went to the Department of Justice to review unredacted versions of the Epstein files, they identified that many files had pre-existing redactions that were never appropriately un-redacted as required by the law. 

3. The Department of Justice’s List of Government Officials and Politically Exposed Persons is a Classic Case of Obfuscation by Overproduction 

Section 3 of the EFTA requires that DOJ provide the Senate and House Judiciary Committees with a list of all government officials and politically exposed persons (PEP) named or referenced in the released materials. In response to the Congressional requirement, DOJ published a list of 305 people. That list contains notable government officials and politicians, as well as dozens of celebrities, actors, comedians, and musicians. Strangely enough, the list includes the names of many people who have been dead for decades, including Elvis Pressley and Kurt Cobain.

DOJ explained in its February 14, 2026, letter that Congress did not define “political exposed persons” and thus DOJ leadership simply advised reviewers to notate any person who they thought was a PEP without any further guidance on what that term means. DOJ’s January 4, 2026, instructions to first round reviewers likewise does not provide any further information or definition of what constitutes a PEP.

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Congress was not drafting the EFTA on a blank slate. The term PEP is used extensively in both the international and domestic contexts. The term is used frequently in the banking and financial industries to refer to individuals who have been entrusted with prominent public functions, as well as their immediate family members. That is how the term is used by federal agencies for purposes of applying the due diligence provisions of the Bank Secrecy Act. It is also how the Financial Action Task Force (FATF), the premier inter-governmental body that develops policies against money laundering, defines the term.

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The inclusion of celebrities, actors, comedians, and musicians is not just incompetent: it looks very much like an attempt to obfuscate who the government officials and other prominent politicians are that were associated with Epstein.