Epstein survivors aired a Super Bowl ad. The DOJ aired their private details.

Happy Tuesday!

Hello, Curse and Coffee friends,

Today, we explore the Epstein survivors’ Super Bowl ad.

Hit reply and let us know what you think (we read all of your kind words).

Coffee at the ready…

The take: The DOJ promised transparency into Epstein. Instead, it named the survivors and shielded the men.

What happened: Epstein survivors aired a Super Bowl PSA demanding AG Pam Bondi release the remaining files, days after the DOJ's January 30 document dump left dozens of victims' names and personal details on a government website.

Why it matters: The agency meant to protect victims outed at least 43 of them while successfully shielding the men who showed up in incriminating emails.

What to watch: Reps. Massie and Khanna reviewed unredacted files today and found six hidden men "likely incriminated" — expect those names on the House floor if the DOJ stalls. Meanwhile, Ghislaine Maxwell appeared virtually before the House Oversight Committee, invoked the Fifth Amendment, and her lawyer said she'd only speak if Trump grants her clemency.

The DOJ called it ".001% of all materials." 43 women might do the maths differently.

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The failure is almost boring in its simplicity.

Survivors' attorneys handed the DOJ a list of 350 victim names on 4 December. The DOJ needed to run a keyword search before publishing. It didn't.

Instead, nude images went up with faces visible.

FBI interview transcripts kept names intact — and at least one woman who had never come forward got outed to the world.

Survivor Danielle Bensky told NBC she first assumed carelessness, then incompetence.

Now?

"It feels a bit deliberate."

But the same department managed to redact every reference to men who emailed a convicted sex trafficker about girls.

Funny how that works.

The Transparency Act was built to expose the powerful. So far, it's only exposed the people it was meant to protect.

Whether that's deliberate or colossal incompetence, we genuinely don't know.

But the pattern is hard to unsee.

Pro: Full disclosure serves justice, and some redaction failures were inevitable across six million pages reviewed under political pressure.

Con: A basic name search would have caught every victim exposure — the DOJ had the list for two months and still failed, while men in incriminating contexts stayed hidden.

Our read: When every redaction error lands on the same side — survivors exposed, suspects protected — it stops looking like a mistake.

Henderson and Edwards' emergency letter to Judges Berman and Engelmayer, 1 Feb 2026. Documents "thousands of redaction failures on behalf of nearly 100 individual survivors," including an email listing 32 minor victims where only one name was blacked out. Called the release "the single most egregious violation of victim privacy in one day in United States history."

Source (ABC News)

43 victim names exposed. Six suspect names are hidden. — WSJ / Massie

Axios: Massie and Khanna say six "likely incriminated" men were redacted. Two hours in the reading room, and they found what 500+ DOJ reviewers missed.

Ms Magazine: Survivors speak in their own words — Raw, furious, worth every minute.

Al Jazeera: Full breakdown of the Super Bowl ad — The ad the DOJ hoped you'd miss between beer adverts.

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