Donald Trump and maga Republicans must respond to Jeffrey Epstein victims like Virgnina Roberts Giuffre

Echo opinion published in the Los Angeles Times:

Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor, the former prince was arrested in England on suspicion of misconduct related to his ties to child sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein. 

Immediately, I thought of the late (victim) Virginia Roberts Giuffre (1983-2025 😞😨😥), the brave survivor of Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell’s sex trafficking ring, who’d won a civil settlement from Mountbatten-Windsor after she accused him of rape (and whose memoir I co-wrote).

My next thought was this: So far, only about half of the 6 million documents that comprise the Epstein files have been released, but in the UK their contents are already causing heads to roll. Why isn’t that happening here in America❓ I know at least part of the answer.

Since the January 30th,  release of 3.5 million pages of Department of Justice investigation files, many concerned citizens around the globe have been trying, in earnest, to wade through the muck. 

It’s not an easy job. Part of that must be by design. The documents are not organized to help readers understand their context. Instead, each page is just one fragment of an exploded jigsaw puzzle, and trying to assemble that puzzle without all the pieces (and without knowing what a complete picture should look like) is proving difficult for even the most seasoned experts on evil Epstein’s and Maxwell’s many crimes.

In the avalanche of news stories, boldface names grabbed the spotlight — Epstein helped director Woody Allen’s daughter get into college, Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick spent time with his family (and nanny) on Epstein’s island, supermodel Naomi Campbell asked to fly on Epstein’s plane. 

But, despite the valiant efforts of so many outspoken survivors, the heart of this vile conspiracy is oddly pushed into the background: the brutal reality of what it felt like to be a girl caught in Epstein’s web.

Imagine❓ You are 14-year-old girl, recruited by an older female, who is being led into an upstairs room in Epstein’s Palm Beach, Fla., mansion. The man you’ve been told to call “Jeff” enters wearing only a towel and tells you to take off your clothes. You are afraid. Trapped. So you eventually strip down to your underwear. He orders you to do things to him. He masturbates. He gives you $300 and tells you to leave your phone number so he can summon you again. 

Imagine that you later get into a fight at school with a classmate who calls you a prostitute. 

Imagine that you are later involuntarily admitted to a juvenile-education facility “because of disciplinary problems that recently escalated.”

I worked for four years with Giuffre on her memoir, “Nobody’s Girl,” and the scenes I’ve just asked you to imagine are in her book. But Giuffre is not the girl at the center of that story (Giuffre was 16 — two years older — when Maxwell lured her into their den). No, the story above describes the experiences of one of more than 30 underage victims that Florida investigators interviewed in 2005 and 2006, which led to Epstein’s first arrest and, ultimately, his conviction as a sex offender. The girl in that story had her life ruined two decades ago. Imagine.

Now we know that hundreds if not thousands of girls and young women were abused by Epstein and Maxwell and their crony friends. And yet the cruel undoing of these young people keeps falling off the front pages. Is it because it’s too upsetting to imagine? Is it because it’s old news?

I’m a journalist, so I understand news cycles. But I’m still bothered by the way the visceral suffering at the core of this rotten story isn’t consistently claiming its rightful place at the front of our minds. I get it: There is so much to read about Epstein these days. But by letting our attention be drawn toward talent agent Casey Wasserman’s sexting with Maxwell, say, or by Atty. Gen. Pam Bondi’s meltdown about the high-flying Dow Jones Industrial Index being what really matters, we risk losing the plot.

This, for the record, is the plot: In 1996, a 14-year-old girl named Annie Farmer was flown to Epstein’s New Mexico ranch, where Maxwell told her to undress and began to massage her breasts; later, Epstein jumped into bed with her, saying he wanted to cuddle. This kind of grooming behavior was experienced by scores of girls and young women, many of whom reported it to the authorities. And this abuse often escalated into rape.

For Giuffre, what followed was being forced to sexually service Epstein and Maxwell’s influential friends. In sworn depositions that have been made public, Giuffre named Mountbatten-Windsor and several others of these men, all of whom issued strong denials. Some of these co-conspirators’ names have popped up in the latest tranche of public files, but Giuffre is no longer here to hold them to account, having died by suicide last April.

Only by holding our focus on what these girls and women endured will Americans have the fortitude to demand that the Trump administration give us our due. Some survivors say they cannot find their interviews in the files that have been released so far, which proves that the Department of Justice has still not met the requirements of the Epstein Transparency Act. 

Therefore, the solution is clear: Release the remaining 2.5 million pages in the Epstein files, with only the survivors’ names redacted. Next, law enforcement must rigorously interrogate the men and women who exchanged chummy emails with Epstein and played in his hideous sandbox. Until these two things occur, basic accountability and justice will remain out of reach.

Just based on what we already know, we should all find that unimaginable.

Amy Wallace is a journalist and author who collaborated with Virginia Roberts Giuffre on her memoir, “Nobody’s Girl.”

America does not have an Attorney General she is actually a shape shifter something a cat might find to drag in- Impeach Bondi!

Echo editorial board opinion published by The New York Times:

A direct quote from the despicable Pam Bondi’s hearing. Can someone please explain the connection between the Dow being “over 50k” and getting justice for Epstein’s victims… because I’m stumped❗Christina Lorey's Post

"Blondie-Bondi" hearing in the House Judiciary Committee room this week (February 2026) offered a grim tableau of the state of American justice. Sitting in the gallery were victims of Jeffrey Epstein, women who have waited decades for clarity and accountability. Sitting before them was Attorney General Pam Bondi. When offered the opportunity to apologize to these women for the Department of Justice’s disastrous handling of the Epstein files, Ms. Bondi didn’t just decline; she sneered. Instead, she demanded that Democrats apologize to Donald Trump.💢❗

She proceeded to subject committee members from both parties to schoolyard taunts. She called the ranking member a “washed-up, loser lawyer.” She derided Thomas Massie — a Kentucky Republican who helped force the release of the Epstein documents after Mr. Trump and Ms. Bondi had kept them hidden — as a “failed politician.” And at one point, in a bizarre non sequitur, she responded to a question she did not like by boasting that the Dow Jones industrial average had surpassed 50,000 points.

"Blondie-Bondi’s" performance was more than just political theater. It was a final indignity in a process that has victimized Epstein’s victims all over again. Under the guise of transparency, the Justice Department has managed to expose the victims to further humiliation while shielding the powerful behind a wall of redactions.
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The department’s release of these files has been dominated by incompetence. "Blondie-Bondi" has long had the authority to make them public, but she spent months refusing and yielded only after Congress forced her hand. 

Then, her department was tasked with a clear mandate: release the information while protecting the victims’ privacy, national security and active investigations. Instead, in a grotesque failure, the D.O.J. uploaded dozens of unredacted images to its website, including nude photographs of young women and possibly teenagers. 

As Annie Farmer, a survivor who testified against Ghislaine Maxwell, who was Epstein’s evil partner and associate, noted, it is “hard to imagine a more egregious way of not protecting victims.” "Blondie-Bondi’s "department shattered the trust of women who had already been betrayed by the legal system once before.

Yet observe the Justice Department’s selective efficiency: While it was careless with the dignity of survivors, it has been more fastidious about protecting the reputations of some members of the elite. Mr. Massie and Representative Ro Khanna, the Californian who has also been central to the release of the documents, have reviewed the unredacted files, and they report that nearly 80 percent of the material remains hidden, including the identities of six wealthy, powerful men. The Justice Department has not even offered a convincing public explanation for these redactions. The Trump administration’s history of disingenuousness around the Epstein files — and its use of the Justice Department to protect political allies and investigate perceived enemies — offers ample reason to be skeptical. This appears to be a weaponized document dump disguised as a reckoning.

A close reading of the released emails suggests that what is being protected is the comfort of a class of people who believed they were untouchable. The files released reveal a merito-aristocracy that traded favors, influence and access. They depict a transactional world where Kathryn Ruemmler, a former White House counsel for Barack Obama, could joke with a registered sex offender, strategize about her career prospects and accept gifts of designer bags.

Howard Lutnick, Trump’s commerce secretary, claimed he “barely had anything to do” with Epstei,n but in fact visited his private island. We read of elites seeking entry to golf clubs, advice on dating,
introductions to celebrities and college admission for  their children.

The files reveal a barter economy of powerful people who, at best, looked the other way. As Anand Giridharadas has noted, these documents show us “how the elite behave when no one is watching.” They reveal a world where character is irrelevant and connection is everything.

Donald Trump’s role in the selective release deserves attention. While he has railed against the swamp, his administration continues to hide vast amounts of Epstein information. Donald Trump's own history with Epstein apparently included a bizarre birthday note wishing that “every day be another wonderful secret.” And some of the redactions involved Donald Trump. 

Americans cannot accept vague excuses for protecting the identities of Epstein’s associates. A two-tiered justice system that coddles the powerful and revictimizes the vulnerable is a violation of American values. The survivors in that hearing room deserved an apology. More than that, they deserve the truth about Epstein and his disgusting friends, unspun and fully exposed.

P.S. King Charles III even disowned Andrew, his own brother❗

King Charles III's brother Andrew officially no longer a prince
Andrew is the third-eldest child of the late Queen Elizabeth II.

Let me get this? No one denies the purpose of Jeffrey Epstein's recruitment of young girls was sexual but is more intel beneath the service?

Opinion echo published in The New York Times by Ross Douthat:  

Jeffrey Epstein and Donald Trump were friends and neighbors in Manhattan where they lived only a few blocks away from each other.

Ross Douthat writes: For those of us with a sincere, nonpartisan interest (I swear😉😜😂) in the Jeffrey Epstein scandal, it was a good week:

• First the Democrats, with an eye to hammering Donald Trump, released a few redacted Epstein emails in which the president’s name featured prominently; 
• Then, the Republicans, presumably with an eye to burying the Democratic leak, released thousands more Epstein documents.
• Ho-ho-ho❗😮🎅With this kind of tag-team effort, we’ll have the whole story out in the open by 🎄Christmas❗

A word of caution, though, for those liberals who are relative newcomers to the tragic Epstein saga, for so long a mostly conservative (obsession❗) fixation. 

Instead, there is a dark conspiratorial thrill that comes with encountering the reality, amply displayed in the latest round of disclosures, that so many American elites were perfectly comfortable being buddy-buddy with a trafficker of teenage girls.😳 

And because both right and left have pivoted away from the Bill Clinton-era neoliberal center, the fact that Epstein had (to quote the left-wing writer Jeet Heer) “very banal centrist politics with the same gestalt as 90 percent of U.S. elite since 1990s” makes him an ideal symbol of elite perfidy  (i.e. deceitfulness) for both progressives and populists alike. (Maine Writer: IMO Bill Clinton has paid plenty for his "perfidy" regarding his history with women because the right wing "perfidy" won't allow him to forget about it. So, going back over this same old history is useless intelligence.)

But, it’s important not to let that conspiratorial thrill outrun the actual facts. The new tranche of information confirms, yet again, the moral squalor of various powerful Americans. 

Yet, it still leaves us short of definitive answers about the outstanding Epstein questions: Did other powerful men have sex with the underage girls that he trafficked❓ What were his connections, if any, to the world of intelligence❓ And what unrevealed details have made Trump so intent on preventing further disclosure❓

I thought we might be closer to answers to the last question when I read the first email that the Democrats released, a 2011, note from Epstein to (the evil😈) Ghislaine Maxwell, shortly after his release from prison: “I want you to realize that the dog that hasn’t barked is Trump … [VICTIM] spent hours at my house with him, he has never once been mentioned. Police chief, etc. I’m 75 percent there.”

With the name redacted, this email suggested there might well be an as-yet-unknown victim with whom Epstein assumed that Trump had a sexual encounter. 

But, the hidden name turned out to be the late Virginia Giuffre, the most famous of Epstein’s victims, who had worked for Trump at Mar-a-Lago and who specifically and repeatedly denied that the future president had sex with her or any other girl, even as she made allegations against many other powerful figures.

Just because she denied it doesn’t mean it didn’t happen, the suspicious reader might say, which is true. 

There are reasons to doubt the reliability of some of Giuffre’s accusations, so it’s possible she was also unreliable in her non-accusations. But still, those non-accusations mean that this email is not the smoking gun proving Trump’s complicity in sex crimes. 

And you could also read it as Epstein speculating that Trump was the person who ratted him out to the Palm Beach police, which would actually dovetail with a narrative some of Trump’s defenders have tried to spin up.

Meanwhile, the documents release also includes a much later email from Epstein, a stream-of-consciousness ramble sent to himself shortly before his last arrest in 2019, in which the financier seems to describe his operation (“200 dollars for a rub and tug … no sex … most in thier mid twenties …”) and then says Trump “came to my house many times in that period” but “never got a massage,” before turning to a long complaint about how Trump took advantage of him in a real estate deal (duh, ya' think❓). The emails suggest:

• First, that it was normal for Epstein’s friends to have sexual encounters (if not sexual intercourse); 
• Second, that Epstein at least wanted people to think the girls in involved were not minors; 
• And third, that Epstein had a longstanding grudge against Trump but probably did not have some secret tape of Trump getting a massage or more.

In which case the ultimate truth could be squalid (powerful men getting "hand jobs" from masseuses whom they thought were over 18) without being a Grand Guignol conspiracy (powerful men knowingly trafficking minors to facilitate some kind of “Eyes Wide Shut” scenario). And something similar could be the case with the intelligence-world questions: YES❕ There is evidence that Epstein used his connections to assist Israel intelligence on various projects, but nothing indicating that he was running a sex-and-blackmail operation on its behalf.

But then, the great question remains: Why doesn’t Trump want more disclosure❓

It’s possible that he just doesn’t like the embarrassment of having everyone reminded that he was one of the rich creeps in the Epstein circle. Or, it’s possible that there’s something truly sensitive related to Epstein and intelligence that has yet to be revealed.

Or, it’s possible that there is some thread remaining here, and not necessarily the obvious one, that the president really, really doesn’t want to see get pulled.

Ross Douthat has been an Opinion columnist for The Times since 2009.