Two women who say they were sexually assaulted by Jeffrey Epstein urged Congress to compel the Justice Department to release all of the files on the accused sex trafficker, whose powerful friends included President Donald Trump.
Liz Stein and Jess Michaels made these comments during an interview with NBC News on Thursday, where they were joined by freshly minted Rep. Adelita Grijalva, D-Ariz.
Moments after she was sworn in on Wednesday, and with Stein and Michaels looking on, Grijvala provided the crucial 218th signature needed to bypass GOP leaders and force a floor vote on the issue.
“We need the American people to not stop putting the pressure on,” Michaels said. “We can’t stop putting the pressure, because it’s only one tiny victory.”
Stein praised the handful of Republicans who have supported their drive to open the Epstein files. “Those who voted to stand with us are on the right side of this issue,” she said.
Michaels and Stein spoke out a day after emails released by the House Oversight Committee revealed, among other things, that Epstein said Trump “knew about the girls,” but didn’t accuse him of any wrongdoing.
Trump has repeatedly denied any involvement in — or prior knowledge of — Epstein’s sex-trafficking operation and has never been charged with any criminal activity involving the Manhattan financier.
Both Stein and Michaels stressed they were not trying to use the suffering of Epstein victims for political purposes. Michaels talked about the pain of reliving her trauma every time new information comes out.
"The emotional and physical response doesn't stop," Michaels said. “We’re talking because we don’t want anyone to have to go through what we’re going through right now.”
Stein said the Trump administration “is really politicizing something that has no place being politicized.”
“And so what I would say to people is, even if your political values don’t align, to really dial this back and look at it as the crime of human trafficking,” she said.
Asked about the emails in which Trump is mentioned, Stein replied, “I don’t think anybody was surprised about their friendship.”
"I think that these emails gave some new insight into what that [friendship] might have looked like," Stein said.
But Grijalva said the 20,000 pages of emails and documents related to the Epstein investigation that were released by House lawmakers on Wednesday represent “just the tip of the iceberg.”
When asked to react to the Trump administration’s claim that the newly released Epstein emails were part of a Democratic “hoax,” Grijalva said that the president campaigned on the promise of releasing the Epstein files.
“It’s not a hoax if you can point to victims,” Grijalva said. “This is not the issue that [Democrats] ran on. Trump did.”
White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said in a statement, “The Trump Department of Justice has released tens of thousands of pages of files related to Jeffrey Epstein’s investigations and has fully cooperated with the House Oversight Committee’s requests, and has done more for transparency on this case than the Biden Administration ever did.”
“Why didn’t the Democrats care about Epstein’s victims then?” Leavitt asked.
Some emails in which Epstein mentioned Trump included the redacted name of a victim, who the White House and Republicans on the House Oversight Committee identified as Virginia Giuffre, an outspoken Epstein accuser who died by suicide in April.
The committee said on social media that the name was not redacted when it received the documents.
In one of those emails, Epstein wrote that Giuffre spent hours at his house with Trump. Giuffre never accused Trump of any wrongdoing.
Sky Roberts, Giuffre’s brother, on Thursday said the release of the emails brought a “mixed bag of emotions.” He condemned the administration for unredacting Giuffre's name, calling it “a disrespect to survivors.”
“I don’t personally know if she was involved with President Donald Trump. She said it herself that he was always very nice to her,” Roberts said.
He called for the House to vote to release the case files.
“I urge these representatives, you are up for re-election. Your people are watching you. We are watching you. Survivors need your support. Please just, just give us a hand,” he said.
His wife, Amanda, echoed that sentiment. “We’re looking to Congress to do the right thing, and we’re hopeful. We’re hopeful that this is going to happen, because I feel the American people are just done.”
Epstein died by suicide in jail in 2019 while awaiting trial on federal sex trafficking charges. His accomplice Ghislaine Maxwell was convicted in 2022 on federal sex trafficking charges and is reportedly trying to get her prison sentence commuted.
Now an anti-trafficking activist, Stein was a 21-year-old intern at a luxury department store in 1994 when she said she was introduced to Maxwell, who she said then introduced her to Epstein.
And, over the course of three years, Stein said, she was raped by Epstein, Maxwell and unnamed people to whom she was introduced.
Stein came forward after Maxwell, who had been accused of recruiting and grooming girls to be sexually abused by Epstein, was convicted. She gave a victim impact statement during Maxwell’s sentencing.
Michaels was 22 and working as a professional dancer when she met Epstein in 1991. She said her roommate told her the mogul was looking to hire somebody to give him a massage.
When she showed up at his apartment for a “trial massage,” Michaels said in a recent interview, “that is when he raped me.”
