Thomas Massie Just Named the Men DOJ Has Protected Since the Epstein Files Dropped

Kittyfly image via Shutterstock
Kittyfly image via Shutterstock

Jeffrey Epstein is dead and every man who helped him traffic children is still free.

Thomas Massie walked onto the House floor Monday night and started reading the names the government keeps sitting on.

Now he is forcing a vote that could finally answer the one question the DOJ has been refusing to answer since the files dropped.

The Names Massie Read That the DOJ Has Refused to Charge

Massie went to the floor on August 31 with a list.

He named 14 people he said should be investigated and prosecuted in connection with Jeffrey Epstein's sex trafficking network.

The names included Jes Staley, the former JP Morgan Chase executive.

They included Leon Black, the billionaire investor and co-founder of Apollo Global Management.

They included Les Wexner, the Victoria's Secret founder who provided Epstein with his Manhattan mansion and gave him access to a global network of wealth and power.

They included David Copperfield, the illusionist.

They included Tom Pritzker, the hotel tycoon and cousin of billionaire Illinois Governor JB Pritzker.

They included Prince Andrew, the disgraced British royal.

These names did not appear in the original Epstein files release as people facing federal prosecution.

They appeared as names – nothing more – while the Department of Justice maintained that the case had been handled appropriately and that what remained classified or redacted was redacted for legitimate reasons.

Massie disagrees, loudly, and on Monday night he said so from the House floor.

Congressional immunity – the Constitution's speech and debate clause – gave him the legal protection to name those names without defamation risk.

The DOJ does not have that protection.

The DOJ has a different problem: it was legally required to release those files by a law Congress passed and President Trump signed in November 2025.

And yet despite Trump’s signature on the law, the DOJ is still withholding over three million documents.

Why DOJ Has Been Blocking the Files Even After Trump Signed the Law

The original Epstein Files Transparency Act was supposed to force the release.

It passed with broad support, Trump signed it, and the DOJ published documents – heavily redacted documents, three million of which the public never saw.

The department treated a congressional mandate to release evidence of a child sex trafficking network the same way it treats a FOIA request from a journalist: delay, redact, and wait for the outrage to die down.

It did not die down.

Massie is now pushing the Epstein Files Transparency Act II, and on Monday he announced he is collecting 218 signatures on a discharge petition to force a House floor vote.

Two hundred eighteen signatures bypasses Speaker Johnson entirely.

It does not require leadership's permission.

It does not require a committee vote.

It simply puts the bill on the floor, and every member of Congress has to go on record for or against forcing the DOJ to actually comply with the original law.

The new bill would allow state attorneys general, district attorneys, and victims to directly sue the Attorney General for unlawfully withholding or redacting Epstein records.

It would grant victims access to their unredacted files.

It would require DOJ to hand classified and unredacted records to state and local prosecutors who are building their own cases.

The last provision is the one that matters most – prison sentences for federal officials who conceal, destroy, or falsify documents in those files.

The reason three million documents stayed buried is that no one inside the DOJ faced any personal consequence for burying them.

The reason Jes Staley, Leon Black, Les Wexner, David Copperfield, Tom Pritzker, and Prince Andrew have not faced federal prosecution is that the people with the power to prosecute them also have the power to decide what the public gets to read.

Massie is trying to break that loop.

He’s already arguably paid a price for forcing the issue on Epstein transparency.

Massie has opposed all foreign aid while he’s been in Congress.

Many believe securing leverage to send your tax dollars overseas was a primary goal of Epstein’s operations, that’s in addition to, and likely a part of, further enriching billionaire elites like those whose names are all over the files.  

The most conservative Congressman in the House will be leaving Capitol Hill at the end of the term.

But that simply means he now has even less to lose.

So Massie is collecting those signatures now.

The question is not whether Jeffrey Epstein trafficked children.

That is settled.

The question is who knew, who helped, who paid, and who inside the United States government decided three million documents about all of it should stay hidden from the American public after Congress explicitly passed a law saying they should not be.

Thomas Massie just stood on the floor of the House of Representatives and started reading names.

If they powers that be thought he’d back down once they primaried him out of a House seat, they were sorely mistaken.

Sources:

  • "Massie Names Names From Epstein Files and Will Move for Vote on Second Transparency Act," The New American, September 2026.
  • "Rep. Thomas Massie Escalates Fight for Epstein Files as House Returns to Washington," WHAS11, September 2026.
  • Rep. Thomas Massie, "On the House Floor Tonight, I Read the Names of Several Epstein Coconspirators," X, August 31, 2026.

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