Hi there, everyone. It's 4 o'clock here in Washington, D.C. I'm Alicia Menendez in for Nicole Wallace.

Donald Trump's Department of Justice is continuing their desperate attempts to move on from the Epstein files.

Days after Attorney General Pam Bondi told lawmakers they should focus on the Dow instead of the heinous crimes of the

deceased sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, her department sent a letter to Congress, claiming that they have

released all of the documents that the Epstein Transparency Act required them to. That's despite the fact

that roughly half of these six million documents the DOJ has have not been publicly

released. In trying to defend the department's sloppy redactions with the files that have been

released, the letter states that nothing has been withheld, quote, on the basis of embarrassment,

reputational harm, or political sensitivity. DoJ also release a list as required by law of politically

exposed persons. It's a list of more than 300 notable names that appear in the Epstein files.

But as MS Now reports, the list included people who, quote, had no direct dealings with Epstein

and have long been dead, including Marilyn Monroe,

Elvis Presley, and Ronald Reagan.

Adding, quote, the letter does not differentiate between people mentioned in news stories

who likely had little or no connection to Epstein and those who were shown to have communicated

with Epstein, Maxwell, and other associates.

The co-authors of the law that required

the files to be released slam the Justice Department's latest move, Congressman Roe Conno, writing,

quote, the DOJ is once again purposefully muddying the waters on who was a predator and who was

mentioned in an email. To have Janice Joplin, who died when Epstein was 17 in the same list as Larry Nassar went to prison for the sexual abuse of hundreds of young women and child pornography, with no clarification of how either was mentioned in the files, is absurd.

Release the full files. Stop protecting predators. Redact only the survivors' names.

And here's why Republican Congressman Thomas Massey said the Trump administration wants to forget about the Epstein files.

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