Epstein survivors say they are hopeful a Democrat-controlled Congress will bring more accountability.
“We need those that harmed us to be held accountable, and we need to see actual people being brought into Congress,” Epstein survivor Sharlene Rochard told Scripps News. “We need the files turned into trials.”
Some members of Congress appear to be listening. Outgoing Republicans have supported a petition to circumvent the current leadership and force a House floor vote to release unredacted Epstein files.
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All 214 U.S. House Democrats and four outgoing Republicans have signed a discharge petition to strengthen enforcement of the Epstein Files Transparency Act. The petition, which crossed the 218-signature threshold on Wednesday, could bring the bill straight to the House floor for a vote, bypassing House Republican leadership.
The bill (H.R. 9694) would amend the Epstein Files Transparency Act (Public Law 119-38). Among its provisions, it would:
- Grant legal standing to Epstein survivors, state attorneys general, and members of Congress, allowing them to file federal lawsuits against the Justice Department (DOJ) to compel the release of unredacted or withheld Epstein files.
- Give survivors the right to obtain full, unredacted FBI interview reports about themselves, and require the DOJ to share unredacted files with state and local prosecutors for their own investigations.
- Prohibit the DOJ from invoking common law privileges (such as attorney-client or deliberative process privileges) to delay or redact the records.
- Allow documents handed over to states to be publicly disclosed in court proceedings.
Republican Rep. Thomas Massie of Kentucky and Democratic Reps. Ro Khanna of California and Teresa Leger Fernández of New Mexico co-sponsored the petition.
The announcement that the discharge petition had reached 218 signatures came a day after the Republican-led House Oversight Committee released its report on the mishandling of the Jeffrey Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell investigations. It cited failures by law enforcement, federal prosecutors and those around Epstein to allow him to continue to abuse women years after he became a convicted sex offender.
The report said testimony by Epstein’s executive assistant, Lesley Groff, and two of his “closest employees,” Richard Kahn and Darren Indyke, among others, that they had no knowledge of his abuse was not credible.
“The Committee’s investigation instead tends to show that the willful ignorance of those in Epstein’s orbit enabled him to continue his offenses for so many years,” the report said.
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The majority report, written by Republicans, concluded that “President Trump’s lack of involvement is confirmed by numerous lines of testimony,” and claimed Democrats were “obsessed with trying to implicate President Trump and insinuate he was involved in the crimes of Epstein and Maxwell.”
The top Democrat on the House Oversight Committee, Rep. Robert Garcia, who is poised to take over the leadership in the new Congress in January said in a post on X “We will not stop until we get justice for the survivors of Jeffrey Epstein, and that means real public hearings, getting all the millions of documents, holding folks accountable that have been involved in the crimes and getting real answers from who someone that Jeffrey Epstein called his best friend, and that's Donald Trump.”
“If you've abused and you're a co-conspirator of Jeffrey Epstein and you've abused and raped women and children, you should lawyer up,” Garcia said on the steps of the Capitol on Wednesday.
