As US President Donald Trump dismissed the furor surrounding newly released Jeffrey Epstein case files as distraction, a bipartisan group of lawmakers
gathered with nearly a dozen women, who said they had been abused by the late sex offender, on the steps of the Capitol on Wednesday. Their message was direct: “This is not a hoax.” One of the women made a personal appeal to the president. “President Trump, you have so much influence and power in this situation. Please use that influence and power to help us,” she said. Another survivor issued an invitation: “I cordially invite you to the Capitol to meet me in person so you can understand this is not a hoax. We are real human beings. This is real trauma.” In the Oval Office, President Trump had said: “What they’re trying to do with the Epstein hoax is get people to talk about that. We’re having the most successful eight months of any president ever, and that’s what I want to talk about.”
The statements showed the pressure on the administration as lawmakers press for broader disclosure of Epstein-related documents. Though Democratic leaders have sought to use the issue against the President, the survivors were joined Wednesday by one of Trump’s closest allies, Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene, Republican of Georgia, who said the cause should transcend politics.
“This is not about politics. This is a boiling point in American history,” Greene said, promising to support the women “in any way possible.” She later told CNN that she had spoken with Trump that morning and urged him to meet with Epstein’s victims in the Oval Office.
Also Read: ‘This is Never Going Away’: Epstein Survivors Demand Justice and Accountability
The event marked the most organized push yet by survivors and their allies to force Congressional action. Representative Thomas Massie, Republican of Kentucky, has introduced a discharge petition to compel a House vote requiring the White House to release more information, including unredacted flight logs. At the news conference, he accused the administration of withholding details “to prevent embarrassment” for “Trump’s donors and friends.”
“I don’t think he’s implicated in these files,” Massie told CNN. “But I think his donors are. I think his friends are. And I think our own DOJ and government are implicated in this too. So, you can’t trust them.”
Greene is one of four Republicans to sign the petition, a rare alliance with Democrats such as Representative Ro Khanna of California, who joined her at the press conference. Speaker Mike Johnson, Republican of Louisiana, has sought to tamp down the revolt, pointing to the release of more than 33,000 documents by the House Oversight Committee this week. He has argued the panel has the appropriate jurisdiction to “do a deep dive” into the matter. Democrats counter that most of the material was already public.
