They woke up as anonymous New Yorkers with old police mugshots in a database. By midweek, their names had echoed through the US House of Representatives, framed as “wealthy, powerful men” supposedly shielded by the Department of Justice in the Jeffrey Epstein case. Only later did justice officials quietly confirm: four of the men Ro Khanna named on the floor of Congress have no known link to Epstein at all.
How an FBI photo lineup turned into a political flashpoint
The row began when Representative Ro Khanna, a California Democrat, and Representative Thomas Massie, a Kentucky Republican, intensified their campaign for fuller disclosure of the Epstein investigation materials.
Both lawmakers have accused the Department of Justice (DoJ) of over-redacting the trove of newly released files. They argued that powerful figures were being shielded, even as some alleged victims’ identities slipped out unprotected.
Earlier this week, Massie celebrated on X that his pressure had helped force the unmasking of a specific document: a page showing 20 faces, names and dates of birth. Jeffrey Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell appeared on that page, along with 18 others. Khanna then read several of those names on the House floor, suggesting they were part of a protected circle of influential men.
Justice officials later said that most of the people on that page were simply subjects in an old NYPD photo lineup, selected for resemblance, not for their connection to Epstein.
The southern district of New York (SDNY) had assembled the lineup years ago as part of its investigative work. According to the DoJ, four of the men Khanna named were only present in that single document across all Epstein records.
The four men caught in the crossfire
Two of the names Khanna read out were genuinely high-profile: Sultan Ahmed bin Sulayem, the Emirati billionaire who led logistics giant DP World until his recent resignation, and retail magnate Leslie Wexner, the long-time billionaire whose ties to Epstein have been widely scrutinised.
The other four were not public figures at all.
- Salvatore Nuarte, Queens, New York
- Leonid (listed as “Leonic”) Leonov, IT manager, Queens
- Zurab Mikeladze
- Nicola Caputo (not the Italian politician of the same name)
The Guardian spoke with Nuarte and Leonov. Both flatly insisted they had never met Epstein, never worked for him and had no personal or professional link to him. Each acknowledged a prior arrest by the NYPD for unrelated matters, which likely placed their photographs into a police database used to assemble the photo array.
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Nuarte, confused and upset, called Khanna’s office after learning his name had been mentioned on the House floor in connection with Epstein. His question was painfully simple: how was he supposed to clear his name?
“How can I clear my name?” one of the men asked after learning his identity had been echoed in Congress alongside Jeffrey Epstein.
Leonov, an IT manager whose name was even misspelled in the file, said he had no idea his old arrest photo would end up attached to one of the most notorious criminal scandals of the century.
The DoJ’s explanation: “completely random people”
After media questions, a spokesperson for deputy attorney general Todd Blanche provided a blunt clarification. The 20-name document, they said, was a standard investigative lineup:
The four men “have NOTHING to do with Epstein or Maxwell,” the spokesperson said, describing them as “completely random people selected years ago for an FBI lineup.”
According to the DoJ, the file was sourced mostly from NYPD records, with Epstein, Maxwell and two victims’ images drawn from other sources such as passport photographs and Palm Beach police material. Five women in the lineup looked broadly similar to Maxwell. Several men were selected for age, hair and colouring that could resemble Epstein.
Crucially, the department stressed that, across thousands of pages of releases, those four names appear nowhere else. By contrast, Wexner’s name turns up nearly 200 times, and Bin Sulayem’s appears more than 4,700 times in the files.
Khanna’s frustration and the transparency dilemma
When informed that the DoJ had identified the document as a photo lineup, Khanna did not back away from criticism. He argued that justice officials should have provided that explanation from the start instead of redacting, then unredacting, the names without context.
On X, he accused the department of mishandling both victims and bystanders. The lack of clarity, he said, had “created confusion for innocent men” while still failing to fully expose “rich and powerful abusers”.
Khanna’s office later sent an email to Nuarte acknowledging the uncertainty. His communications director, Sarah Drory, wrote that the DoJ had “not been transparent” about what the list represented or why names were alternately blacked out and revealed. She promised to stick to the facts and not add to any “misimpression” created by the department.
Massie and the politics of the Epstein files
Massie, co-sponsor with Khanna of the bipartisan “Epstein Files Transparency Act”, has taken an aggressive stance toward the DoJ’s handling of the release. He has highlighted that victims’ names have sometimes appeared unredacted, even as the identities of certain wealthy associates stayed obscured.
Pressed with detailed questions, Massie’s office pointed only to a single post on X clarifying that the “Nicola Caputo” on the file was not an Italian politician with the same name. Little else was said about the risk to the ordinary Caputo caught by coincidence.
The real stakes: reputations, victims and public trust
This clash shows how a legitimate demand for transparency can rapidly collide with individual privacy and accuracy.
| Stakeholder | Risk in mismanaged unredactions |
|---|---|
| Former suspects / lineup subjects | Reputational harm, online harassment, long-term search-engine stigma |
| Victims | Unwanted exposure, retraumatisation, loss of control over their story |
| Public | Misinformation, misplaced outrage and reduced trust in official disclosures |
| Justice system | Credibility damage, more cautious future cooperation from witnesses |
Once a name is linked to Epstein in a public hearing, the connection can linger online for years, regardless of later corrections. For the four men wrongly implied to be in Epstein’s orbit, the reputational clean-up will likely be far harder than the initial mention.
Bin Sulayem, Wexner and the real power names in the files
While those four men appear to be collateral damage, the files do contain extensive references to individuals with genuine ties to Epstein.
Sultan Ahmed bin Sulayem was revealed to be the recipient of an email in which Epstein wrote that he “loved the torture video”. After his name surfaced, Bin Sulayem resigned from his role at DP World, the state-linked Dubai logistics giant, the company announced on Friday.
Wexner, meanwhile, has long faced questions about his relationship with Epstein, who once had sweeping control over Wexner’s financial affairs. A legal representative for Wexner said an assistant US attorney told him in 2019 that he was treated as a source of information, not a target, and that he cooperated fully before prosecutors moved on.
High-profile names are present in the documents, but their legal status ranges from suspect to source, from witness to mere recipient of an email.
How photo lineups work — and why they are risky in public releases
The controversy also highlights how routine police techniques can create long-term digital footprints. Photo arrays or lineups are widely used to help witnesses identify suspects. Officers often assemble them by selecting people who resemble a target on age, race, hairstyle and general appearance, many drawn from prior arrest photos.
Being included does not mean a person was charged in that specific case, let alone convicted. Yet in a high-profile context, the nuance easily vanishes. A name near Epstein’s in a federal release can look, to a casual reader, like proof of association.
A more careful release process could, for example, keep the images needed for public scrutiny while stripping out names and dates of birth where no direct link exists. Alternatively, each batch of documents could be accompanied by a short technical note explaining why certain people appear and what their role, if any, was.
Practical lessons for future high-profile disclosures
For readers trying to interpret big document dumps from sensitive cases, a few mental checks help reduce the risk of misconception:
- Treat a single appearance of a name very differently from thousands of references.
- Look for context: is the person described as a victim, a witness, a recipient, a suspect, a source?
- Be cautious with social media claims that connect unfamiliar names directly to scandal without supporting detail.
- Remember that lineups and contact lists can contain people who never chose to be part of the story.
For lawmakers, the episode shows how easily a transparency push can produce splashy headlines while inadvertently harming bystanders. Demanding fewer redactions without parallel demands for clearer explanations can leave ordinary people carrying the weight of insinuation that was never meant for them.
As Epstein’s legacy continues to generate documents, leaks and political fights, the way names are handled will keep shaping who gets scrutiny, who gets hurt and who, quietly, slips from view.