TLDR
Rep. Ro Khanna (D-CA) served as lead cosponsor of H.R. 4405, recruited 23 Democratic cosponsors, co-reviewed unredacted files with Massie at the DOJ annex, and threatened both contempt and impeachment when DOJ declared 58% compliance "final." His request for a Special Master (an independent officer appointed by a court to oversee specific matters) to compel full document release remains pending before Judge Engelmayer (Epstein Files Transparency Act, Pub. L. No. 119-38, 2025; PAPER TRAIL Project, 2026).
The Other Half of the Equation
The Epstein Files Transparency Act needed two things to become law: enough votes and the appearance of bipartisanship. Rep. Thomas Massie supplied the Republican credibility. Rep. Ro Khanna of California's 17th Congressional District supplied everything else (Epstein Files Transparency Act, Pub. L. No. 119-38, 2025).
As lead cosponsor, Khanna recruited 23 Democratic cosponsors to join Massie's bill — giving H.R. 4405 a total of 24 cosponsors (23 Democrats, 1 Republican). That 23-to-1 ratio reveals the bill's actual political center of gravity. While Massie provided the Republican cover that prevented dismissal as a partisan exercise, the organizational work of building a cosponsorship coalition fell largely on the Democratic side of the aisle.
Bipartisan by Design
The Massie-Khanna pairing was not accidental. On matters where institutional resistance crosses party lines — and DOJ noncompliance with transparency mandates is definitionally bipartisan institutional resistance — a single-party effort is trivially dismissed. A Republican from Kentucky and a Democrat from Silicon Valley demanding the same documents from the same agency made dismissal harder.
This strategic calculation proved correct. When the House voted 427-1 on November 18, 2025, the bipartisan framing had done its work. When the Senate passed the bill by unanimous consent (a Senate procedure where a bill passes without a formal vote if no senator objects) the next day, the bipartisan framing held. The only dissent came from Rep. Clay Higgins (R-LA), whose objection was about privacy protections rather than transparency itself (PAPER TRAIL Project, 2026).
The DOJ Review
On February 9, 2026, Khanna joined Massie at the DOJ review station to examine unredacted files. DOJ had claimed its January 30 release of 3.5 million pages constituted full compliance with the Epstein Files Transparency Act. Khanna disputed this directly, noting that DOJ's own Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche had identified "more than six million pages" as potentially responsive at his press conference. The math was simple: 3.5 million out of 6 million or more is approximately 58% (PAPER TRAIL Project, 2026).
Together, Khanna and Massie identified six men whose names appeared in the unredacted files as "likely incriminated" — individuals the DOJ had deliberately redacted from the public release. The law's Section 3 explicitly requires an "unredacted list of all government officials and politically exposed persons named in the materials" (Epstein Files Transparency Act, Pub. L. No. 119-38, Section 3, 2025). The six redacted names suggest this provision was not fully honored.
Escalation
Khanna did not treat DOJ's claimed compliance as a disagreement to be resolved through correspondence. He and Massie jointly:
- Threatened contempt proceedings against DOJ officials
- Threatened impeachment for noncompliance with the Epstein Files Transparency Act
- Requested appointment of a Special Master from Judge Engelmayer in the Southern District of New York to compel full document release
- Publicly challenged the "final release" characterization
The Special Master request is the most consequential of these actions. If granted, it would create an independent officer with authority to review DOJ's withholding decisions and order additional releases — taking the compliance determination out of DOJ's own hands (PAPER TRAIL Project, 2026).
The Enforcement Gap
Khanna's escalation also highlighted the structural weakness in the law he helped pass. The Epstein Files Transparency Act contains no penalty for noncompliance. DOJ can declare 58% to be 100%, and the statute provides no mechanism for correction beyond political pressure. The Special Master request is an attempt to fill that gap through the judiciary, and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez's subsequent PETRA Act (a proposed law that would add enforcement teeth to the Epstein transparency law) addresses the same problem through new legislation (PAPER TRAIL Project, 2026).
The 200,000 pages DOJ acknowledged withholding or heavily redacting are not a rounding error. At a rate of one page per minute, those missing pages represent over 1,300 hours of reading. Whatever is in them was important enough for DOJ to redact after a 427-1 congressional mandate to release.
The Pattern
Khanna's role illustrates a recurring pattern in the Epstein transparency fight: bipartisan consensus on the principle of disclosure, followed by institutional resistance to the practice of it. The vote was 427-1. The compliance was 58%. The gap between those two numbers is where the story continues.
References
Epstein Files Transparency Act, Pub. L. No. 119-38 (2025). https://www.congress.gov/bill/119th-congress/house-bill/4405
PAPER TRAIL Project. (2026). DOJ compliance status [Data set].
PAPER TRAIL Project. (2026). Transparency Act analysis [Data set].