Attorney General Todd Blanche
“We did not redact images of any men unless it was impossible to redact the woman without also redacting the man. We did not protect President Trump. We didn’t protect or not protect anybody.”
That was Todd “Boy Cohn” Blanche earlier this year, explaining how the Department of Justice was handling redactions of sensitive information as it complied with the Epstein Files Transparency Act (EFTA).
At the same press conference, Blanche also promised DOJ was going to prosecute men involved in trafficking. “If we learn about information and evidence that allows us to prosecute them, you better believe we will.” But then he added this qualification: “I don’t think that the public or you all are going to uncover men within the Epstein files that abuse women.”
Regular readers of the Freakshow will know at a glance that that statement is not true. The files contain plenty of information and evidence suggesting that some men – both named and unnamed – appear to have participated in Epstein’s trafficking operation as scouts or johns, while many, many more appear to have been aware of the activities but done nothing about them.
And over the past six months, we have uncovered the names of numerous men – and one non-victim woman, Kathy Ruemmler – whose identities are concealed in some or all versions of the files. Among the mysteriously redacted: the late sex traffickers Daniel Siad and Jean-Luc Brunel; Steve Bannon; former Prince Andrew’s top aide David Stern; Epstein’s brother Mark Epstein; Epstein’s great benefactor Les Wexner; Wall Street titans Leon Black and Glenn Dubin; former Colombian president Andrés Pastrana; former British ambassador to the U.S. Peter Mandelson; disgraced Dubai businessman Sultan Ahmed bin Sulayem; Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman; former French minister Jack Lang; Kathy Ruemmler; and former Sen. George Mitchell.
How we uncovered these names varied from case to case. In many instances, there was another, unredacted copy of the same email, text message, or photo elsewhere in the files (suggesting a concerning lack of consistency in the redaction process). We also made some determinations based on an abundance of context clues.
Here is a sampling of some of the mystery-man redactions we have identified:
Daniel Siad is redacted in this conversation with Ghislaine Maxwell. The context of the email is that Epstein and Maxwell had just returned from Havana, where they had a five-hour lunch with Fidel Castro. Four days later, Siad sent Maxwell an email (“Hello from Havana”), which she forwarded to Epstein. For some reason, DOJ saw fit to redact Siad’s name.
Peter Mandelson can be identified as the redacted sender of this email reading: “Find me someone to be really nice to in Dubai.”
References to Leon Black are redacted multiple times in this email from Epstein recruiter Irina Chernova, discussing with Epstein a “good bye gift” she had received from Black (more on the relationship between Black and Epstein’s Russian recruiters in our The Billionaire and the Recruiters Freakshow series). Black is also redacted in this court filing from the U.S. Virgin Islands’ litigation against JPMorgan over the bank’s financing of Epstein’s trafficking there. Many other men are named in the document – but another Wall Street titan, hedge funder Glenn Dubin, is redacted. Dubin and his wife spent considerable time on Epstein’s island and they are also named in a deposition by an Epstein employee who alleged that one of their nannies was a terrified underage Swede who said Ghislaine Maxwell had taken away her passport in the Caribbean.
Les Wexner, the Ohio billionaire who was Epstein’s great benefactor, and Jean-Luc Brunel, the modeling agent accused of procuring girls for Epstein, are both mysteriously redacted in some copies of a 2024 internal FBI document summarizing the Epstein case and laying out the investigation timeline.
Former Colombian president Andrés Pastrana is the redacted sender of this email; the redacted recipient is Ghislaine Maxwell. Pastrana mentions Maxwell’s plans to “be in Arkansas with Clinton” and he is redacted again in an email from Maxwell mentioning Jeffrey’s “ideas for the conference.” Pastrana had flown to Cuba with Maxwell and Epstein a week earlier and afterwards sent Ghislaine a warm email in Spanish – his name again redacted – saying that el Comandante had a wonderful time.
Note: In an email the previous day, Daniel Siad mentioned that he was in Havana “taking care of” someone he calls “Andreas a great gentelement [sic],” a possible reference to Pastrana. The Freakshow has so far not determined what “taking care of” meant.
Some redactions look less like victim protection and more like protection from embarrassment.
The DOJ went to town with the blackout ink on former Prince Andrew’s aide David Stern. Stern can be identified as the redacted sender in numerous emails to Epstein on the topic of “lots of P” (P being Pussy), because in other messages, he is not redacted while discussing exactly the same thing.
Here is Stern wishing Epstein “lots of P” for his birthday in 2012, and again for the new year; making plans with Epstein to buy the Dukes Hotel in London with “room for lots of P”; on the lookout for new assistant P for Jeff in St. Moritz; and lamenting the hot weather and lack of good P in London.
Here, comedian Bobby Slayton is redacted while wishing Epstein a Happy New Year and, of course, a year with lots of pussy.
Some of the redactions do indeed look accidental. Tom Pritzker is all over the Epstein files, but is redacted in one entirely anodyne Maxwell email from 2001: “See you at 71st at 9.15pm Then I will feed you [sic].” It’s also possible that this single redaction is only one of others yet unmasked.
Other examples are harder to explain. Why would the late Wall Street tycoon and Epstein mentor Ace Greenberg’s name be redacted from Epstein’s Bear Stearns background check paperwork? Reputation protection? Brother Mark Epstein’s name and relationship to Jeff are redacted in the same file.
There are mysteriously redacted male faces in photographs, too. Redactions in two photos cover the face of Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman. Two men flanking a woman or girl are concealed in this image. And in another redacted image, Sen. George Mitchell sits beside Jeffrey Epstein, holding a redacted small child (probably Mitchell’s child and not a victim).
Some redactions were contested early on. In February, Reps. Thomas Massie and Ro Khanna, who had seen both the original and redacted documents, grilled Blanche about the hidden identities. Massie pointed to a document containing 20 names, 18 of which had been redacted. Blanche claimed the document had “numerous victim names” and that DOJ had “unredacted all non-victim names.”
At the same hearing, Blanche also defended the redaction of Sultan Ahmed bin Sulayem’s name in a notorious email in which Epstein tells the redacted Sultan that he “loved the torture video.” Blanche claimed it was initially redacted because the material contained an email address constituting personally identifiable information.
A February 2026 report to Congress, signed by Pam Bondi and Blanche, alphabetically listed the names of dozens of men and a few women – from Alexander Acosta to Paolo Zampolli – who were government officials or “politically exposed” and/or appeared in the files at least once. The letter stated that “No records were withheld or redacted on the basis of embarrassment, reputational harm or political sensitivity, including to any government official, public figure or foreign dignitary.”
Melania Trump is on the list, along with Donald Trump, but based on our review, that list is incomplete. The missing include Dubin, Stern, Pastrana, Greenberg, and Mitchell. Mitchell’s omission can’t be explained simply by his being deceased since Kurt Cobain and Janis Joplin are both included.
If we take DOJ at its word that nobody was omitted or redacted to spare embarrassment or reputational harm, then there must be some other explanation for masking those men.
The only official excuse is in a footnote to the February report:
Any omissions from the list are unintentional and, as explained in the previous letters to Congress, a result of the volume and speed with which the Department complied with the Act. Individuals whose names were redacted for law-enforcement sensitive purposes are not included.
It’s entirely possible that some of the redactions (and un-redactions) are mistakes. But others are clearly deliberate. And Blanche has never defined what “law-enforcement sensitive purposes” actually means.
Blanche made his first public statement on the Epstein files on July 22, 2025 to announce that he would be interviewing Ghislaine Maxwell in person.
Six months later, announcing DOJ’s compliance with the Epstein Files Transparency Act, he cautioned that the public’s “hunger or a thirst for information” would probably not be satisfied by the documents because he “[didn’t] think that the public or you all are going to uncover men within the Epstein files that abuse women.” Now that he is Attorney General, Blanche has repeatedly doubled down on that position.
Meanwhile, his and DOJ’s explanations for what remains hidden continue to evolve. Tellingly, the excuse they’re using now for withholding handwritten FBI notes – that they are “duplicative” – was never mentioned in the early explanations.
Journalist Katie Phang’s lawsuit against Blanche prompted the DOJ to acknowledge that 200,000 pages in the files had been redacted or withheld based on various privileges. The judge in that case has so far appeared to side with Phang on the transparency issue and has threatened the DOJ with a contempt of court citation for failing to adequately explain various mystery redactions.
Protecting the men in the files from embarrassment or worse is apparently of higher importance than investigating any of them for knowledge of or involvement in Epstein’s crimes.
This is not the case in Europe. Norway is investigating two Epstein pals. At least two of the DOJ’s redacted men – Lang and Mandelson – are under investigation in France and the UK. Daniel Siad was also under investigation in France before he died.
So we have another sordid Trumpy milestone: his top law enforcement agency stands alone among the Western nations, not only turning a blind eye to a global trafficking and influence network with abused girls and women at its core, but actively hiding their names in file releases demanded by Congress.
Nina Burleigh is a journalist, author, documentary producer, and adjunct professor at New York University's Arthur L. Carter Journalism Institute. She has written eight books including her recently published novel, Zero Visibility Possible.
Katie Chenoweth is associate professor of French at Princeton University and an investigative researcher
Reprinted with permission from American Freakshow
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