More than 100 Epstein victims will attend Washington rally Wednesday

Julie K. Brown and Emily Goodin, Miami Herald on Sep 2, 2025

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More than 100 survivors of Jeffrey Epstein are expected to attend a rally Wednesday in Washington, D.C., as a bipartisan congressional effort gains steam to force the U.S. Department of Justice to make public its controversial files on the disgraced sex trafficker.

Two lawmakers, Rep. Thomas Massie, R-Ky., and Rep. Ro Khanna, D-Calif., are pushing for a vote in the U.S. House of Representatives that would mandate U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi to release the files on the Epstein case. The lawmakers are holding a news conference 10:30 a.m. Eastern time Wednesday on the steps of the U.S. Capitol with 10 survivors, some of whom have not spoken publicly before.

In advance of the news conference, some 100 survivors are expected at a rally organized by several victim advocate groups near the Capitol.

“The voices of survivors have been omitted from the conversation for far too long,” said Lauren Hersh, National Director of World Without Exploitation, one of the groups organizing the event.

“This is the moment to stand united to ensure that those who’ve been exploited and abused are heard loud and clear.”

Epstein victims have mobilized in recent weeks as his convicted accomplice, Ghislaine Maxwell, appears to be pressing for a pardon from President Donald Trump. In July, she was interviewed by Deputy U.S. Attorney General Todd Blanche, and was then moved from a maximum federal prison in Tallahassee, Florida, to a minimum-security prison in Texas.

The lawmakers also could be using Wednesday’s event as a form of public pressure. Massie and Khanna’s resolution — if it passes the House — would then have to be passed by the Senate before going to Trump for his signature. It’s unclear how quickly Senate Republicans will want to bring the matter to the floor and whether Trump would sign it.

Meanwhile, the House Oversight Committee is expected to meet Tuesday with a group of Epstein survivors. In recent weeks, they have issued subpoenas to prosecutors and other former government officials who they want to question about the various investigations into Epstein, who sexually abused more than one hundred girls and women over two decades starting in the mid 1990s.

Committee Chairman Rep. James Comer, R-Ky., is demonstrating his extensive efforts to retrieve any new information on the case. On Sunday, he asked Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent to produce any Suspicious Activity Reports tied to Epstein and his sex trafficking network. The department is in charge of investigating the financial aspect of sex trafficking.

The deadline for the documents to be turned over is Sept. 15 and Comer said they were tied to the panel’s investigation of the possible mismanagement of the federal government’s investigation of Epstein and Maxwell.

Thus far, no new information from the case has emerged. The Justice Department has only turned over its first tranche of files to the Oversight committee but Democrats said they contained mostly old information. No date for the next delivery has been announced.

A New York financier whose source of wealth has always been shrouded in mystery, Epstein was first arrested in 2006 on allegations that he had sex with underage students from a Palm Beach, Florida, high school. He ultimately pleaded guilty to minor solicitation charges and served a 13-month jail term in Palm Beach. In 2019, he was rearrested on new charges in New York, following the publication of a Miami Herald investigation, “Perversion of Justice,” which detailed how Epstein and his lawyers successfully lobbied federal prosecutors to give him a secret plea deal, minimizing his crimes and providing unusual immunity to others involved in his sex trafficking operation.

After Epstein’s death, Maxwell — a British socialite who worked for Epstein — was indicted and convicted on sex trafficking charges. She is appealing her conviction to the U.S. Supreme Court.

The Epstein case has garnered worldwide attention in part because of widespread conspiracy theories promulgated by Trump supporters and other social media influencers who claim there is “an Epstein list” of wealthy and powerful people who were involved in Epstein’s crimes.

Trump, who initially favored releasing the files, has faced a backlash from his supporters after Bondi abruptly announced in July that there was no list and the files would remain sealed.

This came after she had promised supporters In February that the files were on her desk, then gave a group of social media influencers about 200 pages of documents that were of old material, long in the public domain.

Last month, U.S. District Judge Richard Berman rejected a Justice Department request to unseal grand jury records involving the Epstein federal cases. Berman noted that the grand jury files represented a distraction from the real issue — which is that the Justice Department has the power to release all the relevant material involving Epstein to the public.