Very well said by Rep. James Walkinshaw (D-VA11; see video, below, from Palm Beach County, where House Oversight Democrats held a field hearing today, with survivors of Jeffrey Epstein’s heinous crimes), who deserves a great deal of credit for his tenacious focus on getting out the truth about the Jeffrey Epstein scandal, as well as achieving justice for the Epstein survivors. Thanks to Rep. Walkinshaw – and others, including Rep. Suhas Subramananyman (D-VA10; see video, below) for staying on top of this and pressing indefatigably for truth and justice in this horrible case — despite every effort by Trump and his allies to hide the truth and prevent justice from being done.
- Rep. James Walkinshaw (D-VA11): “Good afternoon. I’m James Walkinshaw from Virginia’s 11th district. We’re here today in Palm Beach County — ground zero, the center, the place where Jeffrey Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell’s massive child sex trafficking ring started. We’re just miles from Mar a Lago, the place where the close friendship between Epstein and Donald Trump grew, where Virginia Giuffre was trafficked and later raped by Jeffrey Epstein. And we heard today powerful stories from survivors including, Rosa from Uzbekiststan, who was recruited and held hostage by the visa that Epstein controlled. Powerful stories, and I hope the world was watching. I specifically hope that Alex Acosta was watching, because we learned today from Rosa that she was raped time after time after time by Jeffrey Epstein while he was serving the sweetheart deal sentence that Alex Acosta gave him. While he was on unsupervised, very unsupervised release, he was continuing to commit the very crimes that women like Maria Farmer and others brought to the attention of the FBI decades ago. I hope another person was watching today. I hope Pam Bondi was watching. And I hope she saw the courage of the survivors here today, who told their stories in most cases again in front of all the cameras with all of the bright lights for the world to see. And I hope Pam Bondi will feel some shame for the fact that she has tried time after time after time to avoid public accountability. She wants to answer questions behind closed doors in private, where the world can’t see it, with no video. Well, Pam Bondi, that is not good enough. That is not good enough. You need to show one ounce of the courage that the women here today showed. They deserve your public testimony on video. The American people deserve it, too. I’ll give back to the ranking member.”
- Rep. Suhas Subramanyam (D-VA10): “I will just say that it’s because of you that we had the Epstein Files Transparency Act passed and the president himself had to sign it into law begrudgingly while in the background trying to figure out how to break it later on…It’s because of you that they won’t even hold hearings, real hearings in the oversight committee on anything anymore because they’re afraid we will subpoena more people about Epstein files and Epstein transparency act. So just think about where you’ve gotten us. I know it’s not enough. It may never be enough. someone mentioned before, but I just want to thank you for getting us this far. And I know there are a lot of girls and women around the country and around the world who thank you as well. One of the things that has driven me crazy is that there’s millions of files that have still not been released. And so this question really is for anyone, but one of the things that I remember hearing from many of the survivors last year was you’d at least like your own files files, your own witness statements.
