A group of survivors of Jeffrey Epstein’s abuse gathered outside the US Capitol on Tuesday morning, demanding justice, accountability and the release of the justice department files related to the late convicted sex offender.
“It’s time that we put the political agendas and party of affiliations to the side. This is a human issue, this is about children,” Haley Robson, one of the survivors, said. “There is no place in society for exploitation sexual crimes or exploitation of women in society.”
The news conference came just hours before the House of Representatives almost unanimously passed a bill to force the release of the justice department’s cache of records related to Epstein, who died in jail in 2019 while awaiting trial on federal charges of sex-trafficking minors.
“We are exhausted from surviving the trauma and then surviving the politics that swirl around it,” Wendy Avis, who said she met Epstein when she was 14, said. “I am asking Congress, please pass the bill, please release the records, stop making survivors fight alone for the truth.”
The measure secured bipartisan support and passed the House on Tuesday.
The vote took place after it became clear that it was likely to succeed and after Donald Trump, who has spent the last few months resisting the release of the files and urging Republicans to dismiss the bid, reversed his position and called on Republican lawmakers to back the bill.
In an interview with CBS on Tuesday morning, the Democratic representative Ro Khanna, one of the Congress members leading the bipartisan push to release the files, said that he was “very surprised” by Trump’s reversal, adding that the president “was fighting Thomas Massie and me for five months”, referring to the Republican representative who has co-led the effort to force a House vote on this bill.
Khanna and Massie stood with the group of Epstein survivors and delivered remarks.
“This is one of the most horrific and disgusting corruption scandals in our country’s history,” Khanna said. “Because survivors spoke up, because of their courage, the truth is finally going to come out.”
Massie urged the Senate, where the bill gets sent if it passes the House, to “not muck it up”.
“If you do anything that prevents any disclosure, you are not for the people and you are not part of this effort,” Massie said.
The Georgia congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene, a Republican and longtime Trump ally who has also pressed for the release of the Epstein file, joined Khanna and Massie at the conference.
“These women have fought the most horrific fight that no woman should have to fight, and they did it by banding together and never giving up,” Greene said. “That’s what we did by fighting so hard against the most powerful people in the world, even the president of the United States, in order to make this vote happen today.”
Greene also referenced her recent clash with Trump, who withdrew his support for her on Friday, after her criticisms and deviations from Trump and his administration on certain topics, including the handling of the Epstein records.
“I’ve never owed him anything, but I fought for him, for the policies and for America first, and he called me a ‘traitor’ for standing with these women and refusing to take my name off the discharge petition,” Greene said.
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Robson, the Epstein survivor, also used her remarks at the news conference to speak to Trump directly.
“While I do understand that your position has changed on the Epstein files, and I’m grateful that you have pledged to sign this bill, I can’t help but be skeptical of what the agenda is,” she said. “So with that being said, I want to relay this message to you: I am traumatized. I am not stupid.”
Another survivor, Jena-Lisa Jones, also addressed Trump directly.
“I beg you, President Trump, please stop making this political, it is not about you,” she said.
“I voted for you, but your behavior on this issue has been a national embarrassment,” Jones added. “It is time to take the honest moral ground and support the release of these files.”
The Epstein case, which has for years been the subject of many conspiracy theories, has plagued the Trump administration for months. Over the summer, the administration faced backlash after the justice department announced it would not release any additional files, despite Trump’s campaign promises. The decision sparked outrage from both sides of the political aisle, with some accusing the administration of a “cover-up”.
Last week, the House oversight committee released more than 20,000 documents it received from Epstein’s estate, including an email in which Epstein alleged that Trump “knew about the girls”, which reignited scrutiny over Trump’s past ties to the disgraced financier and intensified calls to release all the justice department and FBI records.
Trump has consistently denied any knowledge of or involvement in Epstein’s crimes, and the White House press secretary, Karoline Leavitt, last week dismissed the release of the emails and accused Democrats of “selectively” leaking them “to the liberal media to create a fake narrative to smear President Trump”.
Source: US Politics - theguardian.com
