Survivors of Jeffrey Epstein’s sex trafficking operation spoke Wednesday in support of releasing federal files on the Epstein case. The rally comes the day after Kentucky GOP Rep. Thomas Massie filed a discharge petition in the U.S. House, calling for a vote on his legislation telling the U.S. Department of Justice to release all of the files.
Paducah-native Annie Farmer, who was 16 years old when Epstein assaulted her, called on Congress to pass the Epstein files transparency resolution. Farmer said the public needs to see the “systemic failures” that allowed Epstein to abuse children and young women for years.
“I ask the American public to stand with us and not give up,” Farmer said. “At a time with record high levels of distrust in our institutions and a perception that there are two Americas — one for those with power and privilege and one for everyone else — passing this Epstein transparency bill is one important step that can be taken to prove to Americans that the government does not side with sexual perpetrators.”
Massie spoke surrounded by the survivors to call on two more of his Republican colleagues to sign the discharge petition. According to the clerk of the House of Representatives, four Republicans have signed the petition alongside 137 Democrats as of Wednesday afternoon.
“The Washington establishment is asking the American public to believe something that is not believable. They're asking you to believe that two individuals created hundreds of victims and they acted alone, and that the DOJ has no idea of who else might have been involved,” Massie said.
Massie stood with his co-leads on the legislation — Democratic Rep. Ro Khanna of California and Georgia GOP Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene. Khanna called the Republican co-signors of the petition “brave.” Khanna said he is confident all 212 Democrats will sign, but the petition requires 218 signatures.
The three said that signing the petition should not be considered a partisan choice, despite intense criticism from the Trump administration.
“We're united in restoring trust in government. We're here not as partisans. We're here as patriots,” Khanna said. “We begin the work of bringing this country together — progressives, independents, moderates and, yes, MAGA supporters — to demand truth and justice.”
Survivor Lisa Phillips said if the Justice Department fails to act, the survivors have discussed compiling their own list of the people who were complicit in Epstein’s abuse. Phillips said she’s not sure if they will release the list themselves, but believes it is incumbent on the government to act first.
“We know the names. Many of us were abused by them,” Phillips said. “Now together as survivors, we will confidentially compile the names we all know who are regularly in the Epstein world, and it will be done by survivors and for survivors. No one else is involved.”
The House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, led by Kentucky GOP Rep. James Comer, publicly posted more than 33,000 pages it received from the Justice Department on the sex trafficking investigations into Epstein shortly after Massie filed his petition.
However, the records, posted in a Google Drive folder, mostly contain information that was already publicly known. Democrats on the committee say at least 97% of the documents had already been made public.
The White House has fiercely criticized Massie for his efforts, while supporting the actions of Comer’s committee.
“Helping Thomas Massie and Liberal Democrats with their attention-seeking, while the DOJ is fully supporting a more comprehensive file release effort from the Oversight Committee, would be viewed as a very hostile act to the administration,” a White House official said Tuesday in a statement to CNN.
Massie angered Trump in July when he first filed legislation to force his administration to release more information about Epstein. He filed that a week after the Trump administration announced there was no evidence that Epstein kept a “client list” or died by means other than suicide in his jail cell in 2019, which confused and angered many of the president’s supporters.
Trump previously told reporters that the Epstein files are “a hoax that's been built up way beyond proportion,” claiming they were “run by” his political enemies.
“They can easily put something in the files that's a phony,” Trump suggested.
Several survivors also criticized Ghislaine Maxwell, a longtime associate of Epstein who was convicted and sentenced to 20 years for helping him sexually abuse underage girls.
The Trump administration recently transferred Maxwell from a federal prison in Florida to a minimum-security prison camp in Texas, shortly after she granted an interview with Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche. In a transcript of the interview, Maxwell said she never observed inappropriate behavior by Trump — a good friend of Epstein in the 1990s — and that she liked Trump and admired “his extraordinary achievement in becoming the President.”
Some survivors who had never spoken out publicly came to Washington, D.C. to join Khanna and Massie in calling for the petition. Marina Lacerda, who was 14 years old when she met Epstein, said she had seen the court system fail to hold Epstein accountable sooner.
“We need transparency. We are tired of looking at the news, and seeing Jeffrey Epstein’s name and saying this is a hoax. We are tired of it,” she said. “We are not going to be silenced, and I hope that my voice will bring other survivors.”
State government and politics reporting is supported in part by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting.
This story was produced by the Appalachia + Mid-South Newsroom, a collaboration between West Virginia Public Broadcasting, WPLN and WUOT in Tennessee, LPM, WEKU, WKMS and WKU Public Radio in Kentucky and NPR.
