Epstein Investigations and Accountability

On April 9 Melania Trump delivered a rare roughly six-minute White House statement denying she was ever Epstein's victim or close to Jeffrey Epstein or Ghislaine Maxwell, calling a 2002 email to Maxwell a casual sign-off, and urging that survivors' testimony be entered into the congressional record and heard by Congress. Her call for hearings drew mixed reactions — a group of 15 survivors warned it would shift the burden and could retraumatize victims while others supported testifying — and intensified bipartisan pressure on the DOJ and Acting AG Todd Blanche over reportedly withheld Epstein files following the department's partial release.