Donald Trump says he’s “OK” with the survivors of Jeffrey Epstein’s abuse testifying to members of Congress but falsely claimed that they “didn’t want to go under oath.”
The president and his administration have been desperate to wind down public scrutiny into the well-connected sex offender and federal law enforcement’s handling of the cases against him and his associate Ghislaine Maxwell.
But in surprise remarks from the White House, First Lady Melania Trump last week denied any connections to Epstein and his crimes and urged members of Congress to provide survivors with a public hearing.
“I’m OK with it but I understand that the women didn’t want to go under oath, that’s what I heard,” Trump told reporters Thursday. “That the women, or the victims or whatever, they refused to go under oath. Which was a little surprising.”
Survivors have not ruled out testifying, though several victims have accused the first lady of “shifting the burden” on them in an effort to protect people in power, including the president, Department of Justice and its leadership, who have rebuffed additional investigations and refused to testify to lawmakers.
“Survivors of Jeffrey Epstein have already shown extraordinary courage by coming forward, filing reports and giving testimony,” a group of 15 survivors wrote in a statement last week.
“Asking more of them now is a deflection of responsibility, not justice,” they added.
Marina Lacerda, who was identified in a 2019 indictment against Epstein as “Minor-Victim 1, posted a video on Instagram after Melania Trump’s remarks questioning whether a hearing would produce anything meaningful.
“You want to retraumatize us and ask us to go in front of Congress and tell them our story, which we have told some of them already,” she said. “And then do absolutely nothing.”
In a separate statement, sisters Maria and Annie Farmer, who both have said they were abused by Epstein, said they are calling for “accountability, transparency and justice.”
“The federal government has long mismanaged the Epstein investigation by repeatedly ignoring survivors, violating their privacy, and refusing to release the remaining records” in the Justice Department’s possession, they wrote.
“If the federal government is truly committed to supporting survivors, it would ask us what we want and should follow the facts wherever they may lead,” they said.
Survivor Lisa Phillips told The Independent that “the opportunity to testify under oath in front of Congress” is “a huge thing.
“She has power to make that happen,” Phillips said of the first lady. “I don’t know why, or if it’s a trap or whatever it is, but she’s coming off like she’s on our side.”
Then-Attorney General Pam Bondi refused to look at Epstein survivors who sat behind her during her testimony to the House Judiciary Committee in February.
Before she was fired by Trump, Bondi was issued a subpoena with bipartisan support to sit for a deposition to the House Oversight Committee investigating the handling of the Epstein case. The Justice Department, however, said the subpoena “no longer applies.” Democrats on the committee have threatened to hold her in contempt of Congress after she skipped Tuesday’s hearing.
“Pam Bondi has answers that survivors need and deserve, and it is her responsibility to be transparent about what went wrong with the files release: delays, inappropriate redactions, sharing survivors’ personal information, and failing to meet with them,” said Lauren Hersh with World Without Exploitation, an advocacy group representing Epstein survivors.
“We hope that the House Oversight Committee stands by its obligation to ensure the deposition takes place and gets answers so that these mistakes are never repeated, and we can pursue accountability for perpetrators,” she said.
It remains unclear what prompted Melania Trump’s five-minute address last week, but she condemned “unfounded and baseless lies” and “false smears” against her from “politically motivated individuals and entities” who have sought to “gain financially and climb politically.”
She said she never had a relationship with Epstein or Maxwell, is not a witness to their crimes, and is not a victim of trafficking herself.
The first lady also called for a congressional hearing “specifically centered around the survivors” so that “each and every woman should have her day to tell her story in public, if she wishes, and then her testimony should be permanently entered into the congressional record.”
She also stressed that she did not meet the president through Epstein.
Their meeting was in 1998 at the Kit Kat Club while she was a model who had been discovered by Paolo Zampolli, who then introduced her to Trump.
Zampolli’s connections to New York’s modeling scene put him in close connection with Epstein, and Zampolli’s name appears several times in the massive tranche of documents released by the the Justice Department. Appearance in the files is not evidence of wrongdoing. He is currently serving as the Trump-appointed “United States Special Representative for Global Partnerships.”
“Melania felt strongly about it because she was accused of — that I met her through Epstein, but it turned out to be totally false,” the president said Thursday.
Both the Republican chair of the House Oversight Committee and Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche said they would support public congressional hearings with Epstein’s victims.
Oversight Committee Chair James Comer said after Melania Trump’s remarks that the committee “always planned” on having public hearings with Epstein’s victims once it concluded depositions.
“We have said repeatedly from day one that if there’s any victim that wants to come forward and talk about what they know, whether it’s something that happened by Mr. Epstein, who’s dead, or another individual or individuals, that’s what the FBI does,” Blanche said at the Semafor World Economy summit this week.
Blanche has also sought to close the book on Epstein probes, telling Fox News earlier this month that the Epstein files “should not be part of anything going forward” at the department.
🚨 BREAKING: Watch the full clip here ➤
