Nicola Caputo: A politician with a question mark
The third name is Nicola Caputo. He is an Italian politician who served as a member of the European Parliament from 2014 to 2019 and later held a high position in the regional administration of Campania. However, it is important to note that although Khanna mentioned this name, there is no verified evidence in officially released documents to confirm that this is indeed this particular politician, and no direct link has been found in the files by reputable news organizations. Its inclusion on the list thus remains the subject of further investigation.
The remaining three men, Salvatore Nuara, Zurab Mikeladze and Leonic Leonov, are still largely unknown to the public. At the time of writing, it is unclear exactly who they are, what their profession was, or how they were connected to Epstein’s network. However, the fact that their names were also blacked out suggests that investigators considered them sensitive parts of the file.
Other revelations: The assistant and the dead agent
In addition to the mentioned six, thanks to the pressure of the legislators, other names were also “extracted” from the documents. Among the newly confirmed co-conspirators are Lesley Groff, Epstein’s longtime assistant, and Jean-Luc Brunel, a former French modeling agent.
Groff’s attorney, Michael Bachner, said his client was unaware of such a designation in the documents and was never notified that she would be considered a co-conspirator. On the contrary, after the interrogations, she was allegedly told that she would not be prosecuted.
Jean-Luc Brunel was arrested and accused of raping a minor, but in 2022 he was found hanged in his cell. His death was subsequently ruled a suicide, Brunel denied any wrongdoing and his lawyers said his death was not out of guilt but rather out of a “sense of injustice”.
Authorities vs. Congress
After these findings, the pressure on the institutions is increasing. Congressmen Massie and Khanna have long been outspoken in their criticism of the Justice Department and the FBI for their handling of the documents. The confusing and inconsistent blacking out of data is especially difficult to understand. “What concerned me were the names of at least six men who were covered up by the redacted data and who are probably incriminated by being included in these files,” Republican Thomas Massie said in an interview, adding that “it took quite a bit of digging to find them.”
The Republican politician said he was particularly “disappointed” that he had not seen unredacted versions of the forms known as 302s, which FBI agents use to summarize interviews with witnesses, victims or suspects in investigations.
The Ministry is not hiding anything
However, the Department of Justice defends itself by saying that it protects the privacy of victims and third parties. In an online exchange with Massie, Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche insisted that “DOJ is not hiding anything.”
A source close to the process told CNN that many of the blacked-out emails belonged to victims who later became part of Epstein’s pyramid scheme, or were anonymous email addresses that had to be withheld under the Privacy Act.
However, the congressmen were not satisfied with this explanation. They point out that access to the files is technically limited – only four computers in the satellite office are available to legislators. Democrat Jamie Raskin calculated that at this rate and the volume of three million pages, it would take Congress seven and a half years to read everything.
After viewing the documents, Raskin spoke of “numerous examples” of excessive blackening. “We didn’t want a cover-up, and yet I saw many examples today where people’s names were blacked out even though they weren’t victims,” he told .
Did she purge the files at the FBI?
Even more serious is the charge leveled by Ro Khanna. According to him, the documents that the Ministry of Justice is now making available were already “scrubbed” in March of last year – surprisingly by the FBI. Khanna claims the Justice Department received files with blacked-out passages already from the FBI.
“Trump’s FBI purged these files in March,” Khanna said on social media. The documents the Justice Department received contained redactions the FBI made at the time, he said. “The FBI files must be cleared so we know who these rich and powerful men are who raped underage girls,” he added.
In addition, FBI Director Kash Patel claimed before Congress last year that there was “no credible information” to prove that Epstein “matched” the girls to other people. This claim, however, is in direct contradiction to the internal FBI documents that are now coming to light, which refer to people like Wexner and Brunel as “co-conspirators”.
So far they are innocent
Critics now point out that despite the extensive network Epstein built and evidence of human trafficking, none of the influential men have been brought to justice except for him and Ghislaine Maxwell. However, after Epstein’s death in 2019 and the latest developments surrounding Maxwell, that too may change.
Epstein’s longtime close associate is now serving a 20-year sentence in prison for sex trafficking. After the publication of the documents, she testified for the fifth time before the Oversight Committee of the House of Representatives, but she exercised her rights under the Fifth Amendment to the Constitution to avoid answering questions that would incriminate her, and the testimony was passed in silence.
“Ms. Maxwell is prepared to speak fully and honestly if President Trump grants her a pardon,” attorney David Oscar Markus said. “Only she can give the full version. Some may not like what they hear, but the truth is important. For example, both President Trump and President Clinton are innocent of any wrongdoing.”
“Only Ms. Maxwell can explain why, and the public is entitled to that explanation,” Markus added. So it may happen that he will deny any of Trump’s guilt in his quest for freedom. And this despite the fact that the Democratic Representative for Maryland Jamie Raskin said that Trump’s name appears in the files “more than a million times”.
Suspicious redaction of Trump’s name
Lawmakers also targeted references to President Donald Trump. Jamie Raskin said that Trump’s name was blackened in several places where it was not justified. He cited a 2009 email thread between Epstein and Trump’s lawyers as an example.
Raskin paraphrased the entire email thread: “Epstein’s lawyers summarized and quoted Trump as saying that Jeffrey Epstein was not a member of his club at Mar-a-Lago, but was a guest at Mar-a-Lago and was never asked to leave. And that was covered up for some indeterminate, inscrutable reason.”
But Republican Thomas Massie added that he had not seen Trump listed as a potential co-conspirator in his investigation. Trump has long denied any wrongdoing and claims he kicked Epstein out of the club because of his inappropriate behavior.
Attacks instead of apologies
Tensions between Congress and the Justice Department came to a head during Attorney General Pam Bondi’s hearing before the House Judiciary Committee on Wednesday. The hearing, which was accompanied by an extremely offensive atmosphere, was marked by the presence of Jeffrey Epstein’s victims right in the hall.
When Democratic Congresswoman Pramila Jayapal called on Bondi to apologize to the women in attendance for the department’s failures — namely, that authorities failed to delete their sensitive personal information while protecting the names of the suspects — the prosecutor refused. Instead, she decided to attack – on those present, but also on the previous management of the department.
Hot moments also occurred during a direct confrontation with Thomas Massie, who caught Bondi on the topic of purposefully blackening names, including billionaire Les Wexner. Massie pointed out that the department hid Wexner’s name precisely in those passages where he was associated with criminal activity, while elsewhere in the files it was declassified.
Bondiová tried to defend herself by claiming that the mistake was corrected “within 40 minutes”. But Massie reminded her, “Within 40 minutes of the moment I caught you in the act.” Thus, Massie indicated during the hearing that if he and his colleagues had not pointed out the failure, the DOJ would have continued to cover up the likely accomplices. However, Bondiová responded to factual arguments with personal insults and called Massie’s answer a “failed politician”.
Looking at the secretary’s performance, it almost seemed that her goal was not to answer questions from the public, but to defend Donald Trump. Bondi has repeatedly denied any evidence against the president, despite congressmen citing specific passages from the files. She also tried to turn the debate to unrelated topics, such as the growth of the stock market under the current administration. The highlight was when she accused Congresswoman Becca Balint, the granddaughter of a Holocaust victim, of not doing enough to combat anti-Semitism, after which Balint left the room in protest.
Double standard?
The current situation in the US contrasts so sharply with the way the scandal was dealt with abroad. Ro Khanna pointed to the UK where Prince Andrew had to face the consequences.
“You have the British monarchy having to answer questions … and yet we haven’t had that kind of reckoning in our country,” Khanna said. “People in power, whether in government, finance or technology, if implicated in files in a morally shameful way that shocks the conscience, should be held accountable, regardless of political affiliation.”
While the public learns the names of the first six men, the question remains what else is hidden in the millions of pages of documents that politicians have access to only through four computers and under the strict supervision of the same institutions that for years failed to prosecute Jeffrey Epstein’s accomplices.
