President Donald Trump was shamed for his handling of the Jeffrey Epstein files at the State of the Union address on Tuesday.
Democrats brought several Epstein survivors as guests to the president’s address at the Capitol and wore badges calling out the president’s handling of the files on the convicted sex offender.
“Stand with survivors. Release the files,” the badges read, with a black redaction box blocking the space ahead of “files,” a reference to the Justice Department’s much-criticized redactions.
Trump did not acknowledge the survivors or address the Epstein files during his record-breaking 108-minute speech.
More than a dozen of Epstein’s accusers had planned to attend the State of the Union address as Democratic lawmakers’ guests, The Washington Post previously reported.
Their presence was meant to remind Trump, who was long friends with Epstein and has tried to dismiss the focus on the files as a Democratic “hoax,” that the reality of Epstein’s abuse could not be brushed aside.
At a press conference ahead of Trump’s speech, survivors called on Trump and the Justice Department to release the remaining files and blasted the DOJ’s redactions.
“Where are the rest of the files?” said Dani Bensky, an Epstein accuser who attended the State of the Union address as a guest of Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, the Post reported.
“Why are there no investigations when there are plenty of people to investigate? Have you read them? Why is the FBI director out there partying like a college kid when he should be investigating the vast criminal enterprise?” Bensky added, calling out FBI Director Kash Patel for partying with the U.S. men’s hockey team at the Olympics in Milan this week.
An NPR investigation, published on Tuesday morning of the president’s State of the Union address, alleges that the DOJ withheld dozens of documents from its Epstein release that may pertain to a woman who accused Trump and Epstein of sexually abusing her when she was a minor, including three FBI interviews with the accuser. Justice Department spokeswoman Natalie Baldassarre told the Daily Beast that NPR wrongly stated the DOJ declined to respond to questions about what it described as missing files.
At the conference, Amanda Roberts, the sister-in-law of Virginia Roberts Giuffre, one of Epstein’s most prominent victims, declared that despite the president’s wishes, “today we are saying we will not move on, and the world is not moving on.”
Trump spent much of last year working to dissuade Republicans from voting for the Epstein Files Transparency Act, which mandated a full disclosure of the files. He has also refused to meet with Epstein survivors.
After Congress passed the bill and Trump—knowing the numbers were not on his side—was forced to sign it into law, the Justice Department missed the deadline for disclosing the files. Amid their staggered release, the DOJ has been criticized for redacting Epstein’s associates while failing to redact survivors’ names in the files.
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