Epstein survivor who voted for Trump says his conduct over file release is ‘national embarrassment’

WASHINGTON, DC: A Jeffrey Epstein survivor who voted for Donald Trump called his conduct over the fight to release Epstein-related files a “national embarrassment.”

Jena-Lisa Jones, who was groomed and abused by Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell when she was a teenager, showed up on Capitol Hill on Tuesday. Hours before the Senate passed the "Epstein Files Transparency Act" to make the Department of Justice’s Epstein files public, Jones accused Trump of turning the whole thing into a political circus instead of taking accountability.

“I beg you, President Trump, please stop making this political,” she said. “You are our president. Please start acting like it. Show some class. Show some real leadership. Show that you actually care about the people other than yourself.”

She added, “I voted for you, but your behavior on this issue has been a national embarrassment.”

Jones was just 14 years old when she first met Epstein. She later agreed with CNN's Kaitlan Collins that he should invite survivors to the Oval Office. “He owes us that much. He owes us an apology. I think that would be one way of showing some remorse for this drawn-out process that didn’t need to be," she said.

White House responds

Abigail Jackson, White House spokeswoman, told Newsweek in an email on Tuesday, “Democrats and the media knew about Epstein and his victims for years and did nothing to help them while President Trump was calling for transparency, and is now delivering on it with thousands of pages of documents as part of the ongoing Oversight investigation.”

Trump himself took to Truth Social on Sunday, demanding Republicans vote to release the Epstein files because they “have nothing to hide,” and insisting it was finally time to move on from what he called the “Democrat hoax.”

The US president wrote, “As I said on Friday night aboard Air Force One to the Fake News Media, House Republicans should vote to release the Epstein files, because we have nothing to hide, and it’s time to move on from this Democrat Hoax perpetrated by Radical Left Lunatics in order to deflect from the Great Success of the Republican Party, including our recent Victory on the Democrat Shutdown.”

This comes after Trump originally brushed off calls for their release as just a “hoax” before flipping his stance once GOP support began piling up.

A defining moment for survivors

The push to dump the Epstein files into the daylight has become a defining moment and probably the closest thing to accountability survivors have seen in decades. Advocates say "the outcome will determine whether the US government acknowledges institutional failures and delivers justice to countless victims," Newsweek reported.

Survivors rallied again on Wednesday at a DC press conference as lawmakers geared up for the House vote on the “Epstein Files Transparency Act.” The bipartisan bill is backed by Reps Ro Khanna (D-Calif) and Thomas Massie (R-Ky), and would force the DOJ to release its Epstein-related files within 30 days, with redactions only for victim protection.

Khanna, Massie, and Rep Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga) were hosting the survivors on Capitol Hill Tuesday morning.

The final push for releasing the files came after the House Oversight Committee dumped more than 20,000 pages of Epstein’s communications with power brokers across politics, banking, and entertainment. The big release is expected to expose even more connections between Epstein and other VIPs who may have dodged the controversy.