What do Elvis Presley, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Donald Trump, Jill Biden, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., and Marilyn Monroe all have in common?
This reads like one of those old bubblegum-wrapper riddles, but it’s real.
Answer: They’re all on a Jeffrey Epstein-related list released by Attorney General Pam Bondi this week. More precisely, the named individuals are “government officials and ‘politically exposed persons’ named or referenced” in the Epstein files, according to a letter from the AG to Congress, filed pursuant to the Epstein Files Transparency Act.
Bondi’s list is more than 300 names long and it is – seemingly by design – utterly undifferentiated nonsense. It includes obvious criminal evildoers: Jeffrey Epstein himself and Ghislaine Maxwell. Bondi also names people who were friends or business associates of Epstein’s, and (at a minimum) engaged in embarrassing (or worse) conduct: the newly-arrested Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor (no longer officially a “Prince”), Les Wexner, Kathy Reummler, Peter Attia, and many more.
And then Bondi’s list includes dozens of people who have never met Epstein and have done nothing wrong whatsoever. Marilyn Monroe died in 1962, when Epstein was nine years old; Elvis made it until 1977. A search of both names in DOJ’s “Epstein Library” reveals that they’re included simply because somebody, somewhere, referenced them in passing in some Epstein-adjacent email. The list isn’t even internally consistent. For example, the Justice Department’s Epstein Library includes various mentions of John Lennon – but he’s not included on the AG’s scattershot list along with his fellow prematurely-deceased musical prodigies. (Kurt Cobain is listed; none of this makes any sense.)
It’s a wonder Bondi didn’t include Thomas Jefferson. After all, he too is “named” in Epstein files dozens of times (by people referencing his constitutional and political writings, of course). At this point, simply being “named in the Epstein files” has no meaning, without more. Heck, if you enter my name in the search bar, you’ll get six hits. (Don’t slam your computer shut; they all involve references to articles I’ve written or on-air clips from CNN.)
Bondi’s list also includes a slew of modern lawmakers and political figures. But the vast majority of them had no involvement in Epstein’s sex trafficking ring. For example, if you search Ocasio-Cortez – who was a child when Epstein was committing his crimes – you’ll find nothing but references to public statements she has made recently as a member of Congress, and no connection whatsoever to Epstein or Maxwell. The list also includes Representatives Thomas Massie and Ro Khanna, the primary sponsors of the Epstein files law itself. Neither is remotely tied to any wrongdoing. To the contrary, both have relentlessly battled Bondi and DOJ to gain full access to internal documents.
The lesson, as always, is that Bondi and this Justice Department are simply not to be trusted. If you want to see exactly what involvement any individual had with Epstein, manually enter the name in the Epstein Library’s search bar, which actually works fairly well, and check out the results for yourself.
But even then, you’ll likely come up less than fully enlightened. Bondi explains in her letter that “[n]o 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’” (quoting a requirement from the Epstein Files law itself).
This, good reader, is bullcrap. Take for example, a 2014 email to Epstein that reads, “Thank you for a fun night… Your littlest girl was a little naughty.” The name of this skin-crawling sender? REDACTED. In a 2018 email, Epstein is informed that “I found at least 3 very good young poor but we was so tired. I will cover up this week. Meet this one, not the beauty queen but we both likes her a lot.” Who sent this one? REDACTED. Or (only one more for now, I promise), how about the person who emailed Epstein in 2017, “I met [NAME OF VICTIM REDACTED] today. She is like Lolita from Nabokov, femme miniature 🙂 So now I should send you her type of candidates only?” You guessed it: REDACTED. And then there’s the draft federal indictment that lists Epstein and four purported co-conspirators: REDACTED, REDACTED, REDACTED, and REDACTED.
Bondi ultimately tells us in the letter that DOJ is finally, totally, absolutely done producing the Epstein files. But this is at least the third time the Justice Department has declared its work finished. In July 2025, the FBI proclaimed in a memo that it had reviewed all files and “no further disclosure would be appropriate or warranted.” Then in late January, Blanche announced that “[t]oday’s release [of documents] marks the end of a very comprehensive document identification and review process.” If only saying something three times could make it materialize, DOJ would be in the clear.
Any next steps now sit primarily with Massie, Khanna, and other members of Congress. Will they accept the Justice Department’s half-assed, incoherent document production? Or will they insist on more? Massie or Khanna can apply political pressure by holding hearings or issuing subpoenas and demanding specific answers, with the threat of contempt hanging over the proceedings. Or they might file a lawsuit, though it can be tricky for members of Congress to establish standing (the ability to sue in the first place) to enforce any given law.
So what’s the game here? It’s hard to believe that some intelligent Justice Department professional would make a reasoned consideration and conclude that, yep, it makes sense and brings clarity if we bulk up the list with Elvis and Joplin and Cobain and dozens of elected officials and public figures who probably did nothing wrong. Barring that level of incompetence – I’ll give them the benefit of the doubt – the plain intent was to create a list so large, so tangled, and so utterly nonsensical that it has no practical meaning at all.
