Ro Khanna named four men on the House floor with no ties to Epstein, DOJ confirms

Four of the six men that Rep. Ro Khanna read aloud on the House floor this week as "wealthy, powerful men that the DoJ hid" in the Epstein files have no connection to Jeffrey Epstein whatsoever. They were random faces in an FBI photo lineup.

The Department of Justice confirmed that the four individuals appeared in a single document — a photo array assembled years ago by the southern district of New York — and nowhere else in the massive trove of Epstein-related files. Khanna, a California Democrat, stood before Congress and branded them as men the government was shielding. The government says they were simply filler photos in a lineup.

A spokesperson from the office of Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche put it bluntly:

"Rep Ro Khanna and Rep Thomas Massie forced the unmasking of completely random people selected years ago for an FBI lineup – men and women. These individuals have NOTHING to do with Epstein or Maxwell."

The six names Khanna read were Sultan Ahmed bin Sulayem, Leslie Wexner, Salvatore Nuarte, Leonid Leonov, Zurab Mikeladze, and Nicola Caputo. Of those, only Bin Sulayem and Wexner have meaningful footprints in the Epstein files — Wexner is referenced nearly 200 times, and Bin Sulayem appears over 4,700 times. The other four were nobodies in the context of this investigation, plucked from NYPD arrest records to fill out a photo spread.

Ordinary People, Extraordinary Damage

Salvatore Nuarte lives in Queens, New York. He is not a billionaire. He is not powerful. He heard his name connected to the most infamous sex trafficking case in modern American history and called Khanna's office looking for answers.

"I don't know if they know what they are doing over there at the justice department. But how can I clear my name?"

Leonid Leonov, an IT manager also from Queens, didn't even know his name had been spoken on the House floor until a reporter called him. His name was misspelled in the files as "Leonic Leonov," but the photo and birthday matched. He was unequivocal:

"I don't even have a second or third degree connection to him. Never worked for him, nothing."

As reported by The Guardian, both men acknowledged prior misdemeanor arrests by the NYPD — the very thing that likely landed their mugshots in an FBI lineup folder. That's how photo arrays work. Law enforcement pulls images of people who roughly match a suspect's description from existing databases. It does not mean those people are suspects, witnesses, or associates. It means they have a face.

Zurab Mikeladze and Nicola Caputo could not be reached. Kentucky Rep. Thomas Massie, who worked alongside Khanna to force unredactions and co-spearheaded the Epstein Files Transparency Act, posted on X clarifying that the Caputo in the files was not an Italian politician who shares the name. Small comfort when your name has already circled the globe attached to Jeffrey Epstein's.

The Transparency Trap

There is a version of this story where Khanna and Massie are heroes — elected officials dragging a reluctant DOJ into the sunlight on one of the most politically radioactive cases in memory. And the impulse behind the Epstein Files Transparency Act is sound. The public deserves to know who enabled Epstein's operation and who the justice system protected.

But transparency without discernment is not accountability. It's a grenade.

The Guardian's own analysis found that 11 of the 20 people on the photo lineup list appeared to represent a cross-section of ordinary New Yorkers — many with minor NYPD arrests, no apparent connection to Epstein. Five women on the list had short dark hair and resembled Ghislaine Maxwell. Five men matched Epstein's general description. That's what a photo lineup looks like. It's designed to test whether a witness can identify the real suspect among similar-looking strangers.

The file appears four separate times on the DOJ website with varying redactions — a bureaucratic mess that practically invited misinterpretation. But a congressman reading names on the House floor carries weight that a document dump does not. Khanna didn't present these as "names that appear in a file we don't yet understand." He called them wealthy, powerful men that the DOJ was hiding.

Four of them were neither wealthy nor powerful. The DOJ wasn't hiding them. It was — clumsily, belatedly — trying to protect them from exactly what happened.

Khanna's Walk-Back

After the Guardian reported that administration officials confirmed the document was a photo lineup, Khanna posted on X:

"I wish DoJ had provided that explanation earlier instead of redacting then unredacting their names. They have failed to protect survivors, created confusion for innocent men, and have protected rich and powerful abusers. We must have full transparency and the truth."

Note the pivot. Khanna created the confusion by reading unvetted names on the House floor and characterizing all six as powerful men shielded by the government. Now the DOJ "created confusion for innocent men." His communications director, Sarah Drory, emailed Nuarte after he reached out:

"The Department of Justice has not been transparent in what the list was or why they redacted and unredacted your name. We will make sure to be absolutely factual and truthful once we have these facts and certainly not fuel any misimpression DoJ has created."

"Not fuel any misimpression" — after fueling precisely that misimpression from the House floor to a national audience. The passive construction tells you everything. The DOJ created the problem. Khanna was merely caught in the blast radius of someone else's failure. This is the standard Democratic playbook: act first, blame the institution second, and never quite own the damage.

The Names That Do Matter

Lost in the wreckage of Khanna's overreach are the two names on his list that actually warrant scrutiny. Wexner, the billionaire retail magnate, is referenced nearly 200 times across the Epstein files. His legal representative told the Guardian that in 2019, the assistant US attorney informed Wexner's counsel he was viewed as a source of information — not a target — and that Wexner cooperated fully before never being contacted again.

Bin Sulayem, the Emirati billionaire, appears over 4,700 times. He was identified as the recipient of an email in which Epstein wrote that he "loved the torture video." On Friday, DP World announced Bin Sulayem had resigned as CEO.

These are legitimate threads. The public has every right to ask why Wexner was contacted once and never again. The public has every right to know what "torture video" means in context. But those questions now compete for oxygen with the story of an IT manager in Queens, wondering how to clear his name — because a congressman couldn't be bothered to understand what a photo lineup is before he grabbed the microphone.

Recklessness Isn't Courage

Massie noted this week that victims' names have appeared unredacted in the files while names of some rich and powerful Epstein associates remained hidden. That's a legitimate scandal. The DOJ's handling of these documents has been inconsistent at best, protective of the connected at worst. Two people on the 20-person list were identified as victims. Their presence on an unredacted government website is indefensible.

But the answer to institutional incompetence is not congressional incompetence. Reading names into the congressional record carries legal immunity. It also carries moral weight. Khanna treated that immunity as a license and that weight as irrelevant.

Salvatore Nuarte is still trying to figure out how to clear his name. Leonid Leonov learned he'd been linked to a sex trafficker from a journalist's phone call. The powerful men Khanna actually should have been focused on — the ones referenced hundreds or thousands of times in the files — got less attention because the congressman padded his list with strangers from a photo lineup he didn't understand.

The Epstein case demands transparency. It demands accountability. It demands that the people who enabled a predator face public scrutiny. It does not demand that random New Yorkers become collateral damage in a congressman's press conference.