A survivor of Jeffrey Epstein’s abuse who voted for Donald Trump has demanded an apology from the president, who campaigned on releasing files related to the late convicted sex offender and then flipped.
Jena-Lisa Jones, who Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell abused as a teen, said that during Trump’s presidential campaign, he had worked with lawyers for the survivors.
A conspiracy theory around Epstein’s death also fired up some in Trump’s base.
“[Trump] 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,” Jones said on CNN’s The Source with Kaitlan Collins.
The House and Senate have voted to release files related to Epstein, the disgraced financier and convicted sex offender who died by suicide while in federal custody in New York City in August 2019 as he awaited trial on new sex trafficking charges.
Trump had repeatedly characterized efforts to make the files public as a Democratic “hoax,” despite indicating during his presidential campaign that he would be willing to declassify the records.
The House vote helped shift Trump’s position. Although he had spent months urging Republicans to block the effort and questioning the motives behind the push, he reversed course and publicly called on GOP lawmakers to support the bill.
“He really ran his campaign on this, this is why I voted for him,” said Jones, accusing the president of politicizing the issue.
Jones claimed the president had been working with survivors’ attorneys, “but then he completely flipped.”
“The release of these files has been so important for so long that when he ran with that, I really had some hope that someone was going to do something about it, no matter what the motive was behind it… that he was going to release them in solidarity with us,” she said.
Jones added, “He was even working with our lawyers and stuff, so it was really hard to go from helping us to completely turning on us and then calling it a Democratic hoax when he knew it wasn’t.”
Trump suggested during last year’s presidential race that he’d be prepared to release the Epstein files.
“Yeah, yeah, I would,” he said in an interview with Fox & Friends in June 2024. “I guess I would. I think that less so, because you don’t know—you don’t want to affect people’s lives if there’s phony stuff in there, because there’s a lot of phony stuff in that whole world.”
In February, the Trump administration declassified and released files related to Epstein, but they were highly redacted and did not offer major revelations. The FBI said in a July memo that a “systematic review revealed no incriminating ‘client list.’”
The White House has repeatedly pushed back after reports emerged that Trump was told in May that he was in files related to Epstein. Trump and Epstein were once friendly, but the president said they fell out in 2004.
The Daily Beast contacted the White House for comment.
Officials in the first Trump administration determined that Epstein’s death was a suicide, but conspiracy theories that he was killed to shield high-profile individuals have proliferated nonetheless.
The House voted overwhelmingly— 427-1—to force the Justice Department to release records on Epstein, following months of pressure from lawmakers. The Senate then unanimously approved a bill to release the Epstein files. It will next be sent to Trump, who has said he intends to sign it into law.
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