For months, President Donald Trump’s base and congressional Republicans have fought over the release of files and documents related to Jeffrey Epstein, the late disgraced financier and convicted sex offender.
But Wednesday, Epstein’s survivors took the floor.
Over a dozen survivors of Epstein and his co-conspirator Ghislaine Maxwell gathered at the U.S. Capitol, first for a nonpartisan rally hosted by the organization World Without Exploitation and then at a news conference hosted by a trio of lawmakers uniting across the political spectrum to push for more transparency.
“What once kept us silent now fuels that fire and the power of our voice,” said Epstein survivor Jess Michaels. “We are not the footnotes in some infamous predator’s tabloid article. We are the experts and the subjects of this story. We are the proof that fear did not break us.”
Survivors, their lawyers and advocates came to the Capitol asking for three main things: a full release of the Epstein files, justice for survivors and no presidential pardons or concessions for Maxwell, who is serving a 20-year federal prison sentence after pleading guilty to sex trafficking charges.
“For far too long, survivors have been sidelined,” said Lauren Hersh, World Without Exploitation’s executive director. “They have been silenced. But that stops today.”
Liz Stein, an Epstein and Maxwell survivor, said the day she met Maxwell was a “sliding glass doors moment” in her life. Afterward, she said, “it felt like someone shut off the lights to my soul.”
“As survivors, we are initiated into a sisterhood,” she said. “We’re in a sorority that none of us asked to join, but we all stand here today, stronger together, because our collective voice is powerful.”
The issue of the Epstein files has animated Trump’s base but frustrated Trump, who was friendly with Epstein before becoming president and whose name is reportedly mentioned in the files though he has not been formally accused of any wrongdoing in connection with Epstein. The president, taking questions in the Oval Office on Wednesday, dismissed the files as “a Democrat hoax.”
The comment drew recriminations from survivors including Haley Robson, who said she is a registered Republican.
“I would like Donald J. Trump and every person in America and around the world to humanize us, to see us for who we are and to hear us for what we have to say,” she said at the news conference. “There is no hoax.”
And to Trump, she said: “I cordially invite you to the Capitol to meet me in person so you can understand this is not a hoax.”
Top officials now serving in the Justice Department said for years said that if Trump were elected to a second term in 2024, the department would publicly release more files connected to Epstein, who died by suicide in 2019 while in custody awaiting trial on federal sex trafficking charges.
But the level of Epstein disclosures from officials, including Attorney General Pam Bondi, FBI Director Kash Patel and FBI Deputy Director Dan Bongino, proved to be underwhelming to many in the MAGA movement. The resulting anger has created headaches for House Speaker Mike Johnson, who sent lawmakers home for a five-week recess early in July after the discord over the Epstein files effectively ground House business to a halt.
With Congress now back in session and working toward a September 30 deadline to pass a government funding bill, the bipartisan pressure over the Epstein files — and calls for transparency and justice from Epstein survivors — have ramped back up.
Danielle Bensky, an Epstein survivor, said at the rally that survivors make up “a mosaic of shattered hopes and dreams.”
“We stand together as a mosaic of stories, but we’re also finding our way back to ourselves. We are reclaiming the fragmented shards of the hopes and dreams of our past to paint a better future for the next generation of women,” she said.
A woman points while yelling at the front of a crowd of people carrying signs.
Reps. Thomas Massie of Kentucky, a Republican, and Ro Khanna of California, a Democrat, are leading a bipartisan resolution to compel the Justice Department to release the estimated 100,000 pages of files related to Epstein’s case. Johnson has argued that the measure would compromise the privacy of Epstein survivors, which survivors, who are calling for the files to be properly redacted, dispute. He has also argued that it is unnecessary because of the Oversight panel’s ongoing review of parts of the Epstein files.
Rep. James Comer of Kentucky, chair of the House Oversight Committee, on Tuesday night released some 33,000 pages of Epstein records the committee had received from the Justice Department. Most of the released documents, however, contained information that was already public. A bipartisan group of lawmakers, including Johnson and Comer, also met privately with Epstein and Maxwell survivors on Tuesday afternoon.
“The speaker of the House just offered a fig leaf. They’re gonna vote on a nonbinding resolution today that does absolutely nothing,” Massie said at the news conference Wednesday. “If you look at the pages they’ve released so far, they are heavily redacted and 97 percent of this is already in the public domain.”
Massie is attempting to force a vote on the resolution via a discharge petition, a procedural maneuver that enables members to circumvent House leadership and the influential House Committee on Rules, which controls which legislation makes it to the House floor. As of Wednesday, 141 lawmakers, including three Republicans, all women — Reps. Lauren Boebert, Nancy Mace and Marjorie Taylor Greene — had signed onto the petition, which needs 218 signatures to compel a floor vote.
Greene joined Khanna and Massie at the news conference on Wednesday morning in support of the discharge petition.
“I think they’re helping us come to together as a country,” Khanna said of survivors. “I’ve never done a press conference with Marjorie Taylor Greene before.”
Bondi and Patel are both slated to testify before the House Judiciary Committee in the coming weeks. House Oversight had previously subpoenaed Maxwell for her testimony as part of its investigation into Epstein, but Comer said in an August letter that Maxwell’s testimony would be postponed pending the outcome of her appeal of her conviction as a sex offender to the U.S. Supreme Court.
Maxwell, who had been serving out her sentence at a prison in Florida, also met with Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche in July. After the meeting, she was transferred to a minimum-security women’s prison in Texas known for housing high-profile white-collar defendants and for its more relaxed rules. Disgraced Theranos founder Elizabeth Holmes and Jen Shah, a former cast member on “The Real Housewives of Salt Lake City,” are currently serving time for fraud convictions at the prison.
“Justice and accountability are not favors from the powerful,” Michaels said Wednesday. “They are obligations decades overdue. This moment began with Epstein’s crimes, but it’s going to be remembered for survivors demanding justice, demanding truth, demanding accountability, and we will not stop until survivor voices shape justice, transform culture and define the future.”
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