WASHINGTON — Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche personally intervened to prevent the Drug Enforcement Administration from providing Congress with an unredacted copy of an Epstein document marked unclassified on every page, according to a letter released Wednesday by Senator Ron Wyden. The document, a 69-page DEA memorandum from 2015, details a multi-year investigation into drug trafficking, prostitution, and money laundering by Jeffrey Epstein and fourteen associates. The word “UNCLASSIFIED” appears at the top of all 69 pages.
Blanche, who served as Trump’s personal criminal defense attorney before being appointed to the nation’s second-highest law enforcement position, responded to the accusation on social media by calling it “completely fabricated.” The letter from Senator Wyden, which cites a confidential tip and describes the DEA redirecting congressional inquiries to Blanche’s office, remains available on the Senate Finance Committee’s website.
An Unclassified Epstein Document Blocked From Congress
The memorandum at the center of the dispute was produced by the director of the Organized Crime Drug Enforcement Task Forces Fusion Center and relates to a DEA investigation codenamed “Operation Chain Reaction.” The heavily redacted version released in the DOJ’s January Epstein files dump reveals that the investigation was opened in December 2010 and remained active through at least 2015, targeting Epstein and fourteen others for suspicious wire transfers tied to narcotics and prostitution in the U.S. Virgin Islands and New York City. Law enforcement sources told CBS News that internal case coding indicated agents were investigating “club drugs” including ketamine, ecstasy, and GHB.
Senator Wyden requested the unredacted document from DEA Administrator Terrance Cole on February 25, with a March 13 deadline. According to Wyden, a confidential source informed his staff that Cole was prepared to comply before Blanche’s office stepped in. The DEA subsequently directed all questions about the document to the Deputy Attorney General.
“By withholding this unclassified document from the U.S. Congress, you are covering up for pedophiles and obstructing my investigation,” Wyden wrote in his letter to Blanche.
A Pattern of Withholding Epstein Files
The dispute is the latest in a series of conflicts between congressional investigators and the Trump administration over Epstein-related records. In February, the Wall Street Journal reported that the DOJ had withheld FBI interview summaries from a woman who accused both Epstein and President Trump of sexual abuse when she was a minor. The department released one of four interview summaries with the woman; the three it withheld were the ones in which she discussed the President. The DOJ later said the files had been “incorrectly coded as duplicative.”
Separately, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent has repeatedly refused to produce Epstein-related financial records to the Senate Finance Committee. Wyden’s investigation has established that those records document Epstein transactions totaling at least $1.5 billion, including the names of women and girls he may have trafficked and potential violations of federal anti-money laundering law by JPMorgan Chase and other banks. A Senate Finance Committee analysis found that JPMorgan retroactively filed suspicious activity reports covering nearly $1.3 billion in Epstein transactions after his death, having reported only $4.3 million while he was alive.
The Produce Epstein Treasury Records Act, which Epstein survivors publicly endorsed, was blocked by Senate Republicans on March 3.
A Task Force That No Longer Exists
Wyden’s letter noted that the OCDETF task force — the unit that ran Operation Chain Reaction — was officially dismantled by the Trump DOJ in November 2025. The Reagan-era unit was designed to coordinate investigations into transnational organized crime, drug cartels, the Russian mafia, and major money laundering operations. Its Fusion Center, which produced the Epstein memorandum, served as a clearinghouse for intelligence sharing between federal law enforcement agencies.
Neither Epstein nor any of the fourteen co-conspirators were ever charged with drug trafficking or financial crimes in connection with Operation Chain Reaction. The names of all fourteen associates remain redacted. So do the investigation’s conclusion, its results, and the reason no charges were filed.
Senator Wyden has previously expressed concern that “the DEA and DOJ during the first Trump Administration moved to terminate this investigation in order to protect pedophiles.” The current Trump administration did not respond to requests for comment on why the first Trump administration may have ended the investigation, or on why the current administration subsequently dissolved the unit that conducted it.
Historical Parallels
As historian Heather Cox Richardson noted, Wyden’s letter echoes the September 2019 letter in which then-House Intelligence Committee Chair Adam Schiff accused the Acting Director of National Intelligence of illegally withholding a whistleblower complaint to protect the President. That complaint led to Trump’s first impeachment, in which lead impeachment manager Schiff warned that Trump was “a man without character” who could not be trusted “for one minute, not for one election.” Republican senators acquitted Trump, with only Senator Mitt Romney crossing party lines on the abuse of power charge. A subsequent book revealed that Senator Ted Cruz privately told Trump’s legal team that no senator believed the President’s denial, while Senator Lindsey Graham reportedly walked into the Republican cloakroom and said they were “F**KED.”
Both senators voted to acquit.
Blanche, who is now responsible for the department’s handling of the Epstein files, also oversaw the transfer of convicted Epstein associate Ghislaine Maxwell to a minimum-security facility. Legal experts are divided on whether this constitutes a conflict of interest, largely along the lines of whether they are currently employed by the Department of Justice.
Related coverage: Epstein Files Release Delayed by Forces Unknown to Officials Who Control the Timeline
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