Information Availability — Week of Feb 9, 2026

This week, two members of Congress raised alarms about federal agencies failing to comply with transparency laws — one involving the FBI's handling of Epstein investigation files, the other involving a financial regulator's decision to stop publicly reporting certain bank fee data.

In a House floor speech, Rep. Ro Khanna described visiting the Department of Justice with Rep. Thomas Massie to review files required to be disclosed under the Epstein Files Transparency Act. He said they found 70–80% of the files still redacted and six individuals whose identities had been improperly hidden. He alleged the FBI had "scrubbed" the files before the law was even passed, and that DOJ simply uploaded whatever the FBI sent rather than the unredacted originals the law requires. This might matter because if agencies can pre-redact files before a transparency law takes effect, it could render congressional disclosure mandates unenforceable — weakening Congress's ability to compel executive branch accountability.

Separately, Sen. Elizabeth Warren entered into the record a GAO opinion finding that the National Credit Union Administration broke procedural rules when it stopped requiring large credit unions to publicly report overdraft and fee income. The GAO concluded NCUA should have submitted this policy change to Congress for review but did not. The practical effect was to move fee data from public reports to confidential files not available through public records requests.

There are reasonable alternative explanations. The FBI may have applied routine privacy and classification redactions — not targeted "scrubbing" — and the dispute may reflect a genuine disagreement about what the new law requires. The fact that DOJ released the six names when challenged suggests possible bureaucratic error rather than intentional concealment. For the credit union matter, NCUA may have sincerely believed its action didn't require congressional submission, a common type of regulatory disagreement.

Still, both cases share a common thread: public access to information that Congress intended to be available was reduced through executive branch action, and it took direct congressional intervention to surface the problem.

Limitations: This analysis is based on congressional floor speeches, which represent the speakers' perspectives. The underlying factual claims have not been independently verified, and agency responses may offer additional context.