Today I was reading about the judicial progress against another unchecked billionaire rapist and it mentioned some statements Lord Peter Mandelson made to Jeffrey Epstein upon the occasion of Epstein's conviction in 2008.

I didn't recall that exact wording, so I went to the linked article that focused entirely on the emails between Epstein and Mandelson. As I often do, I wanted to see if the quoted section was all there is or just a truncated version of a much longer exchange, so I went to find the EFTA version.

Only thing is, when I went to the DoJ site, these particular career-ending emails are gone, or are at least not found when searching by text, which is what I was doing. They're still readily found in Jmail, of course, though even the Jmail versions no longer have a link to the actual EFTA files on the DoJ site.

Here's the first email mentioned in the above-linked Guardian article, and here's the second. But nothing left on the DoJ site, even though almost 6,000 other records of Epstein's communications with Mandelson remain.

Just to see if this is going to be a thing, I went to another linked article in The Guardian that lists ten points of evidence in the Epstein -- Mendelson correspondence that suggest a close friendship, and looked up each of the quotes on both the DoJ site and in Jmail.

Many were there and findable on a text search just as they should be, but sure enough two are missing from both the DoJ site and strangely also from the Jmail archive: #3: “Peter will be staying at 71st over weekend” from Epstein to Jes Staley, June 2009; and #5: “Petie’s quitting” from Epstein to Jes Staley, May 2010.

Am I missing something? Or are the orange lackeys just back to quietly removing the rich and powerful from the EFTA releases hoping nobody notices.

A federal judge has rejected Ghislaine Maxwell’s legal effort to throw out her 2021 conviction on sex-trafficking charges and 20-year prison sentence, calling her claims “demonstrably meritless, and generally based on speculation, distortions, and/or outright falsehoods”.

In a 67-page decision filed on Tuesday, the US district judge Paul Engelmayer for New York’s southern district denied the former British socialite’s petition for relief, finding that Maxwell had failed to make a substantial showing that her constitutional rights were denied when she was convicted for her role in crimes linked to the late sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein.

Maxwell, who is serving out her punishment at a minimum-security prison camp in Bryan, Texas, had petitioned the court to vacate her conviction on grounds that there were issues at her trial, including a juror who later revealed he was a sexual abuse victim and evidence she alleged was not made available to her defense team.

Her petition, which came before the massive Epstein-related document dump by the federal government, also raised the 2007 non-prosecution agreement between federal prosecutors in Miami and Epstein, which she claimed protected her from prosecution. Maxwell was not named in that agreement.

In the decision denying the petition, Engelmayer wrote that the “vast majority” of grounds on which Maxwell made her appeal “are procedurally barred – either because Maxwell made and lost the same arguments on direct appeal, or because she could have made such arguments on appeal but elected not to do so”.

The judge also rejected that new evidence had come through the Trump administration-led US justice department’s multimillion-page release of documents. Those, Engelmayer said, “incriminates her or reinforces the correctness of the legal rulings Maxwell challenges”.

The Republican chairman of the House oversight committee has threatened to hold the private equity investor Leon Black in contempt if he does not fully cooperate with the panel’s ongoing investigation into Jeffrey Epstein, amid accusations that the billionaire is purposely delaying and disrupting the panel’s inquiry.

A letter released by Representative James Comer’s office on Tuesday, which was addressed to Black’s lawyer, revealed new details about the high-stakes clash between the powerful Kentucky congressman and Black, the co-founder of Apollo Asset Management who was Epstein’s friend and former client and paid Epstein tens of millions of dollars in fees.

“If Mr Black refuses to provide the Committee with responsive documents or refuses to appear for his scheduled deposition on September 3, 2026, the Committee will use all tools at its disposal, including contempt,” Comer said.

Susan Estrich, Black’s lawyer, rejected Comer’s assertions in a statement released on Tuesday night, saying the letter was misrepresenting the facts, and that Black was being targeted in a “political witch hunt”.

Black voluntarily agreed to be questioned by the House panel in June as part of the committee’s broad investigation into Epstein, which the panel has said includes an examination of the alleged mismanagement of the federal government’s investigation into the late sexual predator; the operation of sex-trafficking rings; and the ways in which Epstein and his companion Ghislaine Maxwell “sought to curry favor” to protect their “illegal activities”.

But Black’s appearance ended abruptly – after just one hour of questioning – after members of both parties said Black was refusing to answer questions about non-disclosure agreements (NDAs). Comer, in his capacity as committee chairman, issued two subpoenas on that day in response to Black’s alleged lack of cooperation: one demanding that Black produce “all non-disclosure agreements to which he is a party” and another demanding he appear before the committee for a deposition.

This is the press release from McConnell's staff: https://www.mcconnell.senate.gov/public/index.cfm/pressreleases?ID=25E43CBF-8898-4D4C-AFFE-B31F85872009

Republican Senators Thom Tillis and John Cornyn each reneged on their promises to meet with victims of Jeffrey Epstein, with Tillis even leaving them waiting in his office for 45 minutes before they gave up.

A group of Epstein survivors on Tuesday accused Blanche and Cornyn of going back on their word, as the senators prepared to vote in favor of Todd Blanche’s nomination for attorney general after he provided a weak promise in writing to kill President Trump’s $1.776 billion “Anti-Weaponization Fund.”

“The treatment we received from senators throughout this process was just as revealing. Senator Tillis publicly invited us, on camera, to come to his office and promised to meet with us. We did. We waited for 45 minutes in his lobby, only to be told by a staffer he would not meet with us after all,” the survivors wrote in a joint statement.

“Senator Cornyn also refused to hear directly from survivors before casting his vote. Senators Tillis and Cornyn were not willing to sit across from us and answer for the vote they were preparing to cast. If they believed they were doing the right thing, they should have had the courage to look survivors in the eye and tell us why. The message was unmistakable: They wanted us to go away. We are not going away.”

Tillis’s snubbing is particularly nasty given that he made a big fuss about not voting for Blanche’s confirmation unless he met with Epstein survivors.

“Do you believe that Virginia Giuffre was a victim of Jeffrey Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell?” the House oversight committee asked Ruemmler, who served as the White House counsel in the Obama administration, during her interview with the panel earlier this month part of its investigation into Epstein.

“I don’t know,” she responded, according to a transcript released on Wednesday.

Ruemmler went on to add: “If she says that she was, I don’t have a reason to doubt that. However, there were allegations that she made that were, I believed based on my experience as a former prosecutor and as a defense counsel, that were of such a nature that they were – they lacked inherent credibility.

“Typically, when someone says, I was sex trafficked to someone, they say who, when, where, not multiple world leaders, multiple foreign presidents,” she said.

Her remarks were condemned by Giuffre’s brother and sister-in-law, who said in a statement that it as “reprehensible” to “attempt to cast doubt on Virginia, whose bravery was the reason so many other survivors stepped forward, resulting in more than 50 people having to step down from their positions of power”.

They said that “the only person who lacks credibility is Kathy Ruemmler”.

Direct link to Ruemmler’s testimony before the House Oversight Committee on July 15, 2026:
https://oversight.house.gov/wp-content/uploads/2026/07/Ruemmler-Final-Transcript_Redact-7.28.26.pdf

As Donald Trump’s former defense lawyer Todd Blanche appears poised for confirmation as attorney general, numerous Jeffrey Epstein survivors have sounded the alarm that a US justice department helmed by him would derail their pursuit of justice.

In a letter urging Republican senators Thom Tillis and John Cornyn to reject his nomination, these survivors said that Blanche’s handling of the Epstein case as acting attorney general was characterized by misstep after misstep.

Blanche, who reportedly led the disclosure of documents as required by the bipartisan Epstein Files Transparency Act, allowed the disclosure of survivors’ names, photos and identifying information – but omitted the names of accused abusers and enablers, they said.

While more than 1,000 teenage girls and women were abused, not a single person other than Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell faced charges, they noted. And in a recent sit-down with survivors at Tillis’s urging, survivors “received an hour of deflection, interruption and gaslighting,” they said.

These survivors’ concerns about Blanche by no means exist in a vacuum, and have only fanned the flames of a controversy that has dogged Trump since he again took office.

A British prince was arrested at 8am and was stripped of his title; ambassadors, politicians and numerous other high-profile men lost their prestigious jobs; millions of files relating to the sex offender Jeffrey Epstein were released and a US president remains under scrutiny. So much has happened since the death of Virginia Roberts Giuffre in April last year, and the posthumous publication of her memoir Nobody’s Girl six months later, detailing for the first time the full story of her abuse by Epstein and his associates. “This year has been extraordinary,” says Sky Roberts, Giuffre’s younger brother. “I just wish Virginia was here to see it.”

He is determined that there will be many more advances to come. Giuffre had become one of the most recognisable survivors of Epstein; in the midst of grief, Sky and his wife, Amanda, have become accidental advocates. “She paved the way, and we want to keep paving that road forward for other survivors out there,” says Sky.

They’re speaking from their home in Colorado, in a room filled with photographs and mementoes, such as the butterfly motif that Giuffre adopted for her cause. They haven’t done interviews from this room before. “I see her all around me,” says Sky, who apologises for getting “teary-eyed sometimes, so just bear with me”. They have got two children, and have a background in retail management and property investing, not politics. “We got thrust into it, within months [after Giuffre’s death], we were in advocacy work,” says Sky. “A lot of it was driven by a sense of purpose. Virginia used to say, ‘How do you turn pain into purpose?’ And I couldn’t allow her story to be narrated by people that didn’t either know her or really understand who she was.”

They are about to relaunch Giuffre’s organisation Soar (Speak Out, Act, Reclaim), and are campaigning to get Virginia’s law passed in the US, which would remove the federal statute of limitations in sexual abuse cases, as well as maintain the pressure to release the rest of the Epstein documents and keep him and his associates in the public consciousness. All this against a government – and a president named numerous times in the files – that appears to be doing everything it can to make the whole thing go away.

PORTLAND, Ore. (KOIN) – Senator Jeff Merkley (D-OR) helped introduce a bill on Wednesday, aiming to hold the United States Department of Justice accountable for its handling of the Epstein files.

A group of lawmakers, led by Congressman Thomas Massie (R-KY), introduced House Resolution 9694, the Epstein Files Transparency Act II.

The bill would allow state attorneys general, the victims of Jeffrey Epstein and his co-conspirators along with members of Congress to challenge the DOJ in court for failing to comply with the original Epstein Files Transparency Act — which directed the DOJ to release materials related to the sex trafficking investigation of the late financier.

Representatives Ro Khanna (D-CA) and Teresa Leger Fernández (D-NM) are co-leading the bill in the House. Meanwhile, Senators Merkley and Ben Ray Luján (D-NM) are leading the Senate version of the bill.

The bill has several provisions, including allowing attorneys general, members of Congress and victims to sue the DOJ for unlawfully withholding, redacting, delaying, concealing, removing or failing to publish Epstein-related records.

The bill would also give victims the right to obtain full, unredacted records concerning themselves or the harm they suffered and allows state and local prosecutors access to unredacted records needed for investigations or prosecutions.

The bill additionally bans the invocation of common law privileges, such as deliberative process privileges — which can allow government agencies to withhold testimony or deliberations from third parties. That way, the government cannot try to evade disclosure requirements under the original EFTA, officials said.

“Since the Epstein Files Transparency Act was signed into law on Nov. 19, 2025, the Department of Justice has flagrantly and consistently ignored EFTA’s disclosure requirements,” said Rep. Massie.

“The Department of Justice continues to unlawfully withhold over 3 million Epstein files that should be released to the public,” Massie continued. “In addition, the DOJ is unlawfully maintaining heavy redactions on the files it is releasing. State attorneys general and victims should have the right to sue the Attorney General of the United States to compel compliance with a transparency law President Trump signed.”

Sen. Merkley’s office noted that if the House does not consider the bill in seven legislative days, a discharge petition will be circulated. The petition would bring the bill to a floor vote without approval from a committee.

Archive link: https://megalodon.jp/2026-0717-0710-13/https://www.koin.com:443/news/politics/oregon-senator-merkley-second-epstein-files-act/

US senator Mitch McConnell on Sunday revealed for the first time that a fall led to his hospitalization, breaking the silence about the Kentucky Republican’s condition after weeks of mounting speculation about his health.

The statement included a smiling picture of McConnell with his wife, Elaine Chao, a tacit response to speculation online that he had died or was incapacitated. McConnell held a copy of Sunday’s Washington Post sports section in his hand.

EDITED URL to unlocked gift article link kindly provided by [email protected]. Many thanks!

The president’s top advisers gathered in a series of Situation Room meetings as they struggled to contain a scandal engulfing Donald Trump himself.

By Maggie Haberman and Jonathan Swan
June 10, 2026

On July 17, 2025, at around 6 o’clock in the evening, President Trump’s top officials filed into the White House Situation Room — the secure bunker where classified and high-stakes national security matters are discussed and decided. This was where President Barack Obama, along with Vice President Joe Biden, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and the president’s national security team, watched the raid that ended with the death of Osama bin Laden in 2011.

Now, however, Trump’s most senior advisers had gathered — without him — to figure out how to gain some measure of control over a very different kind of crisis threatening to engulf the presidency: the Epstein files.

Ten days earlier, the Justice Department and the F.B.I. had jointly released a memo that bluntly stated that their review had found no “client list” of powerful men for whom the notorious pedophile Jeffrey Epstein had allegedly procured underage girls and young women. Intended to put to rest years of speculation and end the pressure campaign to release the voluminous material in the department’s possession, the memo instead had the opposite effect, setting off a backlash that was notably loud among the MAGA base.

And it was about to get worse: The Wall Street Journal was preparing a damaging article about Trump’s relationship with Epstein. The president’s desperate attempts to kill the story had failed. His team now had to get everyone onto the same page about how to counter the growing swarm of attention. They needed a gesture of transparency to appease an increasingly angry base, but also a way to convey the message that the president was sympathetic to his supporters’ concerns. Which itself was a problem, because he clearly wasn’t.

Oddly, this Google Drive link was provided by the Committee itself in its associated press release as opposed to anything hosted on their own site. But you can see (it's the very last line in the release) that as of today, this is the official link.

This press release itself is worth a glance in its own right as it repeats a couple of the names offered by Ms. Kellen as Epstein co-offenders and others the Committee plans to call.

As I noted in the title, Ms Kellen has been named by multiple victims as a co-offender of Epstein. Ms Kellen, for her part in this, maintains that she was herself a victim of Epstein. Either way, she is frequently named in the files and both she and her ex-husband were friendly with Epstein until his death.

From the introduction (page 4):

This is a transcribed interview of Ms. Sarah Kellen conducted by the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform under the authority granted to it pursuant to House rule X.

Accordingly, House rule X grants the Committee broad jurisdiction for the Committee to conduct investigations of any matter at any time.

This interview was requested by Chairman James Comer as part of the Committee's investigation into the circumstances and subsequent investigations into the crimes of Jeffrey Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell; the operation of sex-trafficking rings and ways for the Federal Government to effectively combat them; the ways in which Mr. Epstein and Ms. Maxwell sought to curry favor and exercise influence to protect their illegal activities; and potential violations of Ethics rules related to elected officials.

From the introduction (page 4):

This is a transcribed interview of Tova Noel, conducted by the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform under the authority granted to it pursuant to House rule X.

Accordingly, House rule X grants the Committee broad jurisdiction for the Committee to conduct investigations of any matter at any time.

This interview was requested by Chairman James Comer as part of the Committee's investigation into the circumstances and subsequent investigations into the crimes of Jeffrey Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell, the operation of sex-trafficking rings and ways for the Federal Government to effectively combat them, the ways in which Mr. Epstein and Ms. Maxwell sought to curry favor and exercise influence to protect their illegal activities, and potential violations of ethics rules related to elected officials.

Note: Tova Noel received intermittent "mystery payments" from April 2018, over a year before Epstein was arrested, until the day before Epstein's death. While the FBI subpoenaed her bank records in 2019, and the DoJ-OIG* interviewed her directly pursuant to their deferred prosecution agreement with her that was finalized in December 2021, they never asked her about these payments.

In this hearing by the House Oversight Committee, the committee members did inquire into the "mystery payments" Ms. Noel received shortly before Epstein's death, but didn't get much in the way of answers.

*DoJ-OIG: Office of the Inspector General for the Department of Justice (DoJ has oversight of the Bureau of Prisons, and it is the DoJ-OIG that investigates misconduct involving prisons and BoP personnel)

EDITED TO ADD: The transcript is now up on https://oversight.house.gov/ (official government site for the committee) and you can definitely download it from there now:

https://oversight.house.gov/wp-content/uploads/2026/06/Final-Bondi-Transcript.pdf

From the introduction (pages 4 - 5):

This is a transcribed interview of former Attorney General Pamela J. Bondi, conducted by the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform under the authority granted to it pursuant to House rule X.

Accordingly, House rule X grants the Committee broad jurisdiction for the Committee to conduct investigations of any matter at any time.

This interview was requested by Chairman James Comer as part of the Committee's investigation into the circumstances and subsequent investigations into the crimes of Jeffrey Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell, the operation of sex-trafficking rings and ways for the Federal Government to effectively combat them, the ways in which Mr. Epstein and Ms. Maxwell sought to curry favor and exercise influence to protect their illegal activities, and potential violations of ethics rules related to elected officials.

Her remarks, delivered during a closed-door interview before the House Oversight Committee, were a candid admission of her own powerlessness.

May 29, 2026 - Updated 6:21 p.m. ET

Pam Bondi, fired as attorney general by President Trump in April, insisted on Friday that she had little real authority in overseeing the release of the Jeffrey Epstein files, putting responsibility squarely on her former deputy and successor, Todd Blanche.

Her remarks, delivered during a closed-door interview before the House Oversight Committee, were a bracingly candid admission of her own powerlessness that belied her nominal role as one of the most powerful figures in government. It was a noticeable shift from her past appearances on Capitol Hill, when she resorted to maximum-volume attacks on Democrats who raised questions about her performance or challenged her authority.

Ms. Bondi told committee members that Mr. Blanche was managing “the entire investigation,” Representative Robert Garcia of California, the ranking Democrat on the committee, said after emerging from a tense session Ms. Bondi had long sought to delay or dodge.

She added in the hearing that Mr. Blanche was responsible for determining which documents would be released, another person present for her testimony said, describing how she also repeatedly punted to Kash Patel, the director of the F.B.I.

Current and former Justice Department officials, speaking on condition of anonymity to discuss internal conversations, disputed Ms. Bondi’s characterization. She was not only informed of every key development in the Epstein case, they said, but signed off on every major decision — including by issuing a memo in July 2025 that formally ended the government’s review of the files.

Ms. Bondi, in a social media post after she left the interview, praised Mr. Blanche’s “herculean task” of handling the Epstein case, said he was an “incredible” attorney general and denied there was any friction between the two.

Asked by lawmakers about key details of the Epstein case, Ms. Bondi expressed ignorance and flatly declined to answer any queries involving Mr. Trump. She urged committee Democrats to ask Mr. Blanche instead of her as they pelted her with inquiries about the Justice Department’s missteps in releasing the files, like publishing information that identified or embarrassed Epstein victims, Mr. Garcia said.

In one remarkable exchange, Ms. Bondi claimed to have played no role in the drafting or release of the July 2025 memo — now seen as a major blunder that fed a political backlash, claims of a cover-up and eventually paving the way for the Justice Department’s full release of the files.

When asked if she knew what information was used to put a stop to the review, Ms. Bondi told committee members that they needed, yet again, to ask Mr. Blanche and Kash Patel, the F.B.I. director, not her.

How did Ghislaine Maxwell, Mr. Epstein’s imprisoned accomplice, manage to secure a transfer to a more comfortable federal prison last year — after sitting for an interview with Mr. Blanche, then the deputy attorney general?

Ms. Bondi said she had no idea about it until she read about in the news.

To lower the stakes of Friday’s hearing, Ms. Bondi and committee Republicans agreed to conduct a “voluntary” interview rather than a sworn deposition that would have been legally binding, or a formal committee hearing with greater consequences and heightened scrutiny.

The hearing took place early on a Friday of a holiday week, with most of Congress, including all but one of the committee’s Republicans, out of town.

Most of the committee’s Democrats attended, and relished the opportunity to grill, leaving Ms. Bondi without the support of her fellow Republicans.

The exception was the committee’s chairman, Representative James R. Comer of Kentucky, who had to be there, and offered her a polite thank-you for appearing before the panel a second time.

“I appreciate that she’s coming back today,” he told reporters as he headed into the interview.

Ms. Bondi’s exit from the Justice Department was hastened by a disastrous appearance before a House committee in February, when she hurled insults, stonewalled questioners and refused to make eye contact with several of Jeffrey Epstein’s victims in the audience.

On Friday, some of those same women gathered outside the closed-door committee room to criticize Ms. Bondi, but also to make the point that she was not the only one who needed to be held accountable.

“I really hope that we are not using Pam Bondi as a scapegoat,” said Danielle Bensky, one of the survivors. “I feel that Todd Blanche is actually more dangerous in a lot of ways than Bondi.”

That Ms. Bondi was compelled to testify at all reflected the growing anger in her own party about the department’s erratic actions in the Epstein case that grew from a conspiracy theory sideshow into a crisis that engulfed the Trump presidency.

In mid-March, Representative Nancy Mace of South Carolina and four other Republicans on the committee blindsided their own leadership, and Ms. Bondi, by joining Democrats to vote to subpoena her to testify under oath behind closed doors about the Epstein case.

Mr. Comer scheduled a deposition for April 14.

Ms. Bondi and Mr. Comer began quietly working together to avoid the deposition. To ease the pressure, Ms. Bondi appeared at the Capitol on March 18 for a briefing with members of the committee. Democrats pelted her with questions, then stormed out, saying her appearance was no substitute for her sworn, transcribed testimony.

She was fired on April 2, and weeks of negotiations followed to determine the format of Ms. Bondi’s interview — which Democrats have criticized as an attempt to shield the former attorney general and her party from answering questions under oath in a televised spotlight.

Democratic lawmakers questioned the unusual presence of Harmeet Dhillon, the assistant attorney general for civil rights, at Ms. Bondi’s side, where she frequently intervened to advise Ms. Bondi not to answer questions.

Democrats have accused Ms. Dhillon of serving as an enforcer to ensure that Ms. Bondi did not answer potentially damaging queries, but Ms. Dhillon has said she was appearing as Ms. Bondi’s private lawyer.

Glenn Thrush covers the Department of Justice for The Times and has also written about gun violence, civil rights and conditions in the country’s jails and prisons. Michael Gold covers Congress for The Times, with a focus on immigration policy and congressional oversight.

Also from NYT today on the same subject:

May 29, 2026, 12:10 p.m. ET
Glenn Thrush

Democratic lawmakers questioned the presence of Harmeet Dhillon, the assistant attorney general for civil rights, at Pam Bondi’s side in her interview before the House Oversight Committee on Friday. Dhillon frequently intervened to advise Bondi not to answer questions.

She has said she is appearing as Bondi’s private attorney — but Democrats accused Dhillon of serving as an enforcer and spy to ensure that Bondi did not answer potentially damaging queries.

May 29, 2026, 12:04 p.m. ET
Glenn Thrush

The former attorney general Pam Bondi flatly refused to address any questions about President Trump’s appearances in the Jeffrey Epstein files. When asked why she wouldn’t answer, Bondi cited a deal with the committee’s Republican leadership allowing her to “voluntarily” testify on issues of her choosing, Democratic committee members said outside the committee room.

Quote taken from the video featuring Ranking Member Robert Garcia D-CA (same link):

I also personally asked the former A.G. five times and five different questions about her conversations with President Trump, whether he directed her at any given time on the Epstein files, what he knew, what he asked her to redact or not, and she refused to answer any questions about President Trump. In fact, she said that she would not speak or respond to any questions that had anything to do with President Trump.

Groff worked for Epstein for 18 years, from 2001 until his arrest in July 2019. No criminal charges have ever been brought against her (or anyone else connected to Epstein, apart from Maxwell). Since Epstein’s death, in August 2019, Groff has remained almost invisible and spoken only through her lawyers. Recent photographs have shown her going to pilates or walking her dog near her home in Connecticut, off-duty and low-key. Compared to the royals, politicians, billionaires and professors who have featured in the Epstein files, Groff is low status – a non-celebrity with no public reputation to lose. But when you search for her name in the files, you receive more than 160,000 results, more than anyone else. (I have read perhaps 10,000 of these, a fraction.) No one was more regularly in contact with Epstein, day-to-day.

After the release of the Epstein files, the US Congress’s committee on oversight and government reform decided to review the possible mismanagement of the federal government’s investigation into Epstein and Maxwell’s crimes. On 3 March 2026, they sent a letter to Groff asking her to attend an interview in Washington on 9 June: “The Committee believes you have information that will assist in its investigation.” They believe, in other words, that Groff knows more than she has ever said she knows.

Beyond her laughable attempt to overcome years of her own history with Jeffrey Epstein -- thoroughly documented both privately and in the media -- by simply ordering discussion of it to stop, Mrs. Trump has called for a hearing not for the perpetrators, nor for Epstein's co-conspirators, but a hearing in which the survivors testify.

I wish I were joking, but no. The linked BBC article, which focuses more on Mrs. Trump's well-established, undeniable ties to both Epstein and Maxwell, also has information on this proposed hearing:

In a surprise announcement on Thursday, the first lady called for congressional hearings for survivors of Epstein's sex trafficking.

Melania Trump on Thursday additionally called on lawmakers to "give these victims their opportunity to testify under oath in front of Congress with the power of sworn testimony".

"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 said. "Then, and only then, we will have the truth."

Family of Epstein accuser Virginia Giuffre, Sky and Amanda Roberts, and other survivors told BBC Newsnight that they "have already shown extraordinary courage by coming forward, filing reports, and giving testimony.

"Asking more of them now is a deflection of responsibility, not justice," they said in a statement. They accused the first lady of protecting "those with power", including members of her husband's administration who they said still have not released all of the investigative files related to Epstein.

"Survivors have done their part," they said. "Now it's time for those in power to do theirs."

EDITED to note: I did not realize when I posted this that it was actually written in October, 2025 about an older NYT op-ed, because the complaint is exactly the same. Fresh off the current NYT article linked here, I happened to see this in the sidebar of the Common Dreams article about Saturday's (March 28, 2026) protests and assumed it was about the current NYT op-ed. My error. Thanks to @[email protected] for pointing it out.

For those who haven't read it, this is the NYT article in question. I should note that the author gets thoroughly schooled in the comments:

A Challenge for ‘No Kings’ Protests, the Third Time Around -- by Jeremy W. Peters for the NYT

Archive.world link
(I am aware this site has problems, but it has the content. If you have a better archive link, please post it)