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On a chilly Tuesday morning, over a dozen survivors of Jeffrey Epstein gathered at the U.S. Capitol on the precipice of a hard-fought victory: a vote to release the federal government’s files on the disgraced financier and convicted sex offender with ties to many powerful people. 

For the survivors, the vote marked long-delayed justice for their younger selves, who were represented in the photos many of them held — proof of innocence stolen and dreams shattered. 

“I want everybody to take a look,” survivor Haley Robson said as she held a picture of herself as the teenager she was when she met Epstein. “I know everybody sees us today as grown adults, but we are fighting for the children that were abandoned and left behind in the reckoning. This is who you’re fighting for.” 

Jena-Lisa Jones, who also brought a photo of her younger self, said: “I was in ninth grade. I was hopeful for life, and he stole a lot from me at 14.” 

Survivor Marina Lacerda, who encountered Epstein at age 14, rebuked a statement from conservative commentator Megyn Kelly downplaying Epstein’s abuse because his victims were teens and not younger children. 

“This is a dangerous and incorrect notion,” Lacerda said. “When we talk about how children at 14 should still be treated as children, I ask you to look at the young people around you. Remember when you were that age?”

Survivor Danielle Bensky asked the assembled crowd to close their eyes and picture a child close to them between the ages of 14 and 18.  “I want you to think about what they feel like, what is their energy? What do they smell like? What sound do they make when they laugh?” she said. 

“Now, I want you to picture a pair of giant looming wooden doors and an overbearing marble landing. Those are the doors to Jeffrey Epstein’s house,” she continued. “Do you allow that child to enter or not? If the answer is yes, you would allow entrance, you stand with predators. If the answer is no, then congratulations, you’re on the right side of justice.” 

The survivors spoke ahead of a vote in the House of Representatives on a bipartisan bill to compel the full release of the Justice Department’s files on Jeffrey Epstein. The bill is expected to pass.

The Epstein Files Transparency Act, sponsored by Reps. Thomas Massie and Ro Khanna, directs the Justice Department to release the estimated 100,000 pages of files it has related to Epstein, who died by suicide while awaiting trial on federal sex trafficking charges in 2019.    

Khanna said Tuesday that the bill’s passage was “a reckoning” for “the Epstein class.”

“Because survivors spoke up, because of their courage, the truth is finally going to come out,” he said. “And when it comes out, this country is really going to have a moral reckoning. How did we allow this to happen?”

The public push to release more of the Epstein files has drawn support from across the political spectrum, but the vote to release the files did not come easily. Massie, a Kentucky Republican, and Khanna, a California Democrat, used a procedural tool known as a discharge petition to circumvent House leadership, which had opposed the bill for months, and get the bill to the House floor. The legislation will next go to the U.S. Senate, where 17 Republicans would need to vote with Democrats to reach the 60-vote supermajority threshold required to pass it.  

The Epstein matter also caused discord within President Donald Trump’s base of supporters and frustrated Trump, who has repeatedly dismissed the matter as “a hoax.” Trump was friendly with Epstein in the 1990s and early 2000s, but has said the two had a falling out before Epstein became a convicted sex offender in 2008. Trump has not been formally accused of any wrongdoing. 

Trump also had a public falling-out with GOP Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia, one of three Republican women who refused to remove their names from the discharge petition, insulting her with epithets like “Marjorie Traitor Greene” over the weekend. Greene has said she has faced threats because of the president’s criticism.

“By fighting so hard against the most powerful people in the world, even the president, in order to make this vote happen, I was called a traitor by a man that I fought for six years for,” she said at the news conference. “I gave him my loyalty for free. I’ve never owed him anything.”

The fight over the Epstein files, Greene said, “has been one of the most destructive things to MAGA.”

After months of opposing the Epstein files bill, Trump reversed course Sunday night, posting on Truth Social: “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.”

Some of the Epstein survivors who spoke on Tuesday weren’t convinced by his about-face.

“While I do understand that your position has changed on the Epstein files, and I’m grateful that you have pledged to sign this bill. I can’t help but to be skeptical of what the agenda is,” Robson said, referring to Trump. 

“So with that being said, I want to relay this message to you: I am traumatized. I am not stupid.”

Jones implored Trump to stop politicizing the matter and to “show some class.”

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

Epstein pleaded guilty in 2008 to state-level counts of soliciting a minor for prostitution in Florida as part of a controversial nonprosecution agreement that effectively shut down an FBI investigation into sex trafficking. In 2019, after the Miami Herald published an investigation into the accusations against Epstein and the terms of his plea deal, federal prosecutors in New York charged Epstein with sex trafficking conspiracy. They said in an indictment charging him that he “sexually exploited and abused dozens of minor girls” in Florida and New York.  

The House Oversight Committee has released tens of thousands of documents it has obtained from the Justice Department and Epstein’s estate as part of its investigation.

Last week, lawmakers released some 20,000 emails they had obtained from a subpoena of Epstein’s estate. The emails show that Epstein was in correspondence with many influential figures well after he pleaded guilty to state-level sex offenses. In many of the emails, Epstein muses about what Trump knew about the case against him, alternatively insulting Trump and casting himself as a Trump insider.  

In addition to getting the files released, survivors said Tuesday they’re focused on taking down the systems that enabled those like Epstein. 

Epstein survivor Lisa Phillips said survivors were launching “something historic” in the first national survivor-led political movement in America.

“For too long, survivors have watched others speak for us, and while we are grateful for our allies in Congress on both sides, we’ve realized something — this fight belongs to us,” Phillips said. “We lived it, and we know the truth, and we will not wait quietly for institutions to decide when we’re allowed to speak.”