Rep. Nancy Mace has explained how a panic attack triggered by her own alleged sexual abuse trauma forced her to walk out of a closed-door meeting with Jeffrey Epstein’s survivors in tears after she realized she shared the same fears as the women he abused.
The South Carolina Republican was photographed leaving last Tuesday’s meeting visibly upset, and she did not attend a victims’ press conference on Capitol Hill the next morning.
Posting a five-minute selfie video to X on Sunday, Mace told her 500,000 followers she was “not prepared” for the victims’ briefing, and broke down when one of the women described her fears coming to the Capitol and taking an elevator ride inside the complex.
“I have a fear of being in elevators with people I don’t know,” Mace explained, calling it a “stupid” but persistent anxiety that began two years ago.
The 47-year-old congresswoman said hearing a victim voice the same fear “hit really close to home.”
In February, Mace used a House floor speech lasting nearly an hour to name four men—including her ex-fiancé—whom she accused of committing “some of the most heinous crimes against women imaginable.”
“I rise today to call out the cowards who think they can prey on women and get away with it,” she said. “Today, I’m going scorched earth.”
All four men have denied her allegations.
Mace had earlier explained her early departure from last week’s meet, posting on her X account Tuesday: “As a recent survivor (not 2 years in), I had a very difficult time listening to their stories. Full blown panic attack. Sweating. Hyperventilating. Shaking. I can’t breathe.”
She added, “I feel the immense pain of how hard all victims are fighting for themselves because we know absolutely no one will fight for us. GOD BLESS ALL SURVIVORS.”
But Mace went further in her latest video, explaining the real-life implications of how the alleged incident affects her everyday life.
In the clip, Mace also vented at the document dump in the Epstein probe, griping about redactions and saying “there are over a thousand victims” yet “only one accomplice”: Ghislaine Maxwell, who recruited underage girls for the pedophile billionaire.
House Oversight says it released 33,295 pages on Sept. 2 while “ensuring the redaction of victim identities,” and multiple outlets noted the trove was largely previously public—save for a smaller tranche of CBP flight records.
Maxwell was convicted of sex-trafficking-related charges and sentenced to 20 years in 2022. She is currently incarcerated in federal custody.
“You can’t tell me there are over a thousand victims and there is only one accomplice. It doesn’t add up,” she said.
On Wednesday, Mace defended Trump over his relationship with Epstein and Maxwell—hours after he dismissed demands to release more Epstein records as a “Democrat hoax that never ends.”
“President Trump is the one who banned Jeffrey Epstein from Mar-a-Lago. President Trump is the one who cooperated with the feds to get this guy. President Trump is the one who is COMMITTED to protecting women and kids,” Mace wrote on X.
But her defense clashed with that of survivor Chauntae Davies, who said at a Capitol press conference that Epstein’s “biggest brag” was his friendship with Trump—and that Epstein kept an “8×10 framed picture” of the pair on his desk.
Mace closed her video with a vow to “hold the line” for survivors while pushing to unseal more Epstein files.
The Daily Beast has contacted the Justice Department for comment.
The post Nancy Mace Addresses Her Tears After Epstein Victims Meeting appeared first on The Daily Beast.
