“Be Brave”: Epstein Victims Beg Congress to Release the Files

Jeffrey Epstein’s victims are pleading with Congress to release the Epstein files.

In a haunting letter, the family members of deceased abuse survivor Virginia Giuffre—along with several victims who have accused Donald Trump of participating in Epstein’s child sex trafficking ring—asked lawmakers to “be brave” in the coming days as they vote to potentially make the case files public.

“There is no middle ground here. There is no hiding behind party affiliation,” they said, in a letter jointly addressed to members of the House and Senate.

“Epstein and [Ghislaine] Maxwell’s crimes exposed a double standard of justice, where rich and powerful men and women evade repercussions. Despite years of work to bring them to justice, most of Epstein and Maxwell’s co-conspirators remain completely free, continuing to amass power and prestige, living without apparent shame.

“As you gather with your family this season, remember that your primary duty is to your constituents,” the writers continued. “Look into the eyes of your children, your sisters, your mothers, and your aunts. Imagine if they had been preyed upon. Imagine if you yourself were a survivor. What would you want for them? What would you want for yourself? When you vote, we will remember your decision at the ballot box.”

Pressure on lawmakers dramatically ramped up this week after a discharge petition to force a vote on the files’ release succeeded. Just ahead of the petition passing, the House Oversight Committee released more than 20,000 documents Wednesday that it had obtained from Epstein’s estate, revealing that Trump was a frequent topic in correspondence between Epstein and his pen pals.

In a 2011 email, Epstein expressed he was grateful Trump had stayed quiet about details of his life. The “dog that hasn’t barked is Trump,” Epstein wrote, despite the fact that Trump had spent hours at one of Epstein’s properties with a known victim.

In a 2017 exchange with former Treasury Secretary Lawrence Summers, Epstein said that Trump was the worst individual he knew.

“I have met some very bad people, none as bad as Trump,” Epstein wrote. “Not one decent cell in his body.”

When queried by Trump biographer Michael Wolff in 2019 about the extent of the president’s knowledge of abductions of young girls, Epstein remarked: “Of course he knew about the girls he asked Ghislaine to stop.”

The White House immediately brushed off the reports, with press secretary Karoline Leavitt insisting that the emails prove nothing. Trump, in turn, has accused Democrats of inventing the Trump-Epstein connection, repeatedly referring to it as a “hoax.”

In the halls of Congress, conservative lawmakers are turning on Trump. Senior Republicans privately expect dozens of their party members—“possibly 100 or more”—to vote in favor of a bill that would make the federal government’s trove of Epstein files publicly available, Politico reported Wednesday. A handful have already voiced their intention to back the forthcoming bill, including Representatives Eli Crane, Don Bacon, and Warren Davidson.

Border Protection commander Gregory Bovino has finally left Chicago, after a federal judge said he’d lied about using excessive force to target protesters opposing immigration operations.

During an appearance on Fox News Thursday, Bovino, who’d been tasked with leading “Operation Midway Blitz” in Chicago, said that he had retreated to West Virginia, where he was “undergoing training with several hundred border patrol agents.” Harpers Ferry, West Virginia, is home to Custom and Border Protection’s Advanced Training Center.

The CBP chief said he could soon redeploy in either New York, Chicago, or Charlotte, North Carolina, adding that he could “guarantee” that Illinois Governor Pritzker would see “a lot more” immigration enforcement in Chicago.

Earlier this week, officials told CBS News that Bovino planned to leave, taking many of his Border Patrol agents with him.

It seems that Bovino left with his tail between his legs, after suffering a lashing from a federal judge. Last week, U.S. District Judge Sara Ellis issued a preliminary injunction barring federal agents from using tear gas and other riot prevention methods against protesters, “unless such force is objectively necessary to stop an immediate threat.”

Ellis said that Bovino had admitted to lying about being hit in the head with a rock before deploying tear gas canisters on protesters in Little Village, during his hourslong deposition, and that she’d reviewed video that “disproved” his prior claim. Ellis also said she’d reviewed a trove of evidence that federal agents had used excessive force against protesters, despite little evidence of any actual criminal activity.

Her preliminary injunction requires officers to issue two clear warnings before administering crowd-control measures, to place identifiers conspicuously on their person, and to wear a body camera. In line with her request from a previous hearing, the government’s lawyer confirmed that Bovino would now wear a body camera.

Several prison employees at the facility holding Ghislaine Maxwell have been fired since internal whistleblowers revealed the extent of the child sex criminal’s cozy digs.

News of their termination came by way of Maxwell’s attorney, who on Friday cited the recent release of Maxwell’s emails by Representative Jamie Raskin earlier this week as the rationale for the prison staffers’ sudden firing.

“The release to the media by Congressman Raskin, of Ms. Maxwell’s privileged client-attorney email correspondence with me is as improper as it is a denial of justice,” Leah Saffian, a California-based attorney who has long represented Maxwell, said in a statement.

“There have been appropriate consequences already for employees at Federal Prison Camp Bryan,” Saffian continued. “They have been terminated for improper, unauthorised access to the email system used by the Federal Bureau of Prisons to allow inmates to communicate with the outside world.”

Maxwell was transferred to a minimum-security prison camp mere days after she met with Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche in July to help curate a new list of Jeffrey Epstein’s potential associates.

The information exchange resulted in an extremely cushy transfer for Maxwell—one of the worst sex criminals of the century—shipping her from a Florida prison to a low-security prison camp in Texas that lawmakers have described as “not suitable for a sex offender.”

The British ex-socialite has since raved about her new digs, celebrating the difference between the two facilities as akin to having “dropped through Alice in Wonderlands [sic] looking glass,” according to emails obtained by the House Judiciary Committee.

She has also been granted many privileges not typically afforded to inmates, including meal service in her cell, unlimited toilet paper, and access to private visitations in a chaplain’s office outside standard visiting hours. Her requests to be separated from other inmates have also been granted, with tables and cellmates reportedly being relocated at her whim.

Maxwell was sentenced in 2022 to 20 years in jail for playing an active role in Epstein’s crimes, identifying and grooming vulnerable young women while normalizing their abuse at the hands of her millionaire boyfriend. Maxwell’s attorneys have pressed the White House for a pardon for several months now.

Kash Patel allowed a radio host conspiracy theorist to fill the number two spot at the FBI without first passing a polygraph test.

Deputy Director Dan Bongino reportedly received a waiver for a polygraph test, according to four people who spoke anonymously with ProPublica Friday.

Typically, polygraph tests are required to establish approval for the “Top Secret” security clearances necessary to work at the agency. Recipients are asked questions about their criminal history, drug use, foreign contacts, and any mishandling of sensitive documents. Their results are used to determine whether they can have access to classified information.

It seems that Bongino may not have been asked about any of this, and yet, as deputy director, he has access to a trove of sensitive information, including the President’s Daily Brief, that collates essential information from the intelligence community. He is also responsible for day-to-day operations at the FBI and green-lighting surveillance operations.

Those familiar with Bongino’s rise to deputy director, after he had no prior experience at the agency, said issuing him a waiver was unprecedented. Multiple former FBI officials told ProPublica that they could not recall a single instance where a top-ranking official such as Bongino had received a waiver for a polygraph test, or anyone who had failed one.

Bongino and two other top-ranking officials reportedly received waivers from Patel.

In a statement to ProPublica, FBI spokesperson Ben Williamson said: “It is false that the individuals you referenced failed polygraphs.”

“The FBI follows all laws and procedures on personnel security measures, and any implication otherwise is false,” Williamson wrote. “Furthermore, while the FBI does not comment on confidential security information, particularly in matters of personnel, this article is riddled with falsehoods—it misrepresents polygraph protocol, inaccurately portrays FBI security measures, and makes multiple false claims about FBI employees who have done nothing wrong.”

The spokesperson also claimed that polygraphs were “not required” for political appointees at the agency. But several experts, including Daniel Meyer, a former executive director for the inspector general of the Intelligence Community External Review Panel, and three other lawyers specializing in national security told ProPublica that those Schedule C employees would not typically be excluded from the tests.

A former senior FBI official told ProPublica that while the existence of the waiver may suggest Bongino did not pass the polygraph test, it was possible he received a preemptive exemption. The outlet could not determine whether Bongino sat for a polygraph test.

Michael Flynn is seeking restitution from the government to the tune of $50 million.

Donald Trump’s onetime national security adviser is now negotiating a settlement with his Department of Justice, claiming that he was unjustly prosecuted by former special counsel Robert Mueller for lying to the FBI about conversations with a Russian official. Flynn initially pleaded guilty and then fought the prosecution, eventually receiving a pardon from Trump in 2020.

Flynn later filed a lawsuit against the government for damages, only to have a federal judge dismiss the case in December last year. While the Biden administration fought Flynn’s case, the Trump administration seems open to a settlement.

The move mirrors Trump’s attempt to get $240 million from the DOJ to settle his own claims of politically motivated prosecution. Flynn notoriously lasted only 22 days as Trump’s first national security adviser in 2017, resigning over his conversations with the Russian ambassador to the U.S. at the time, Sergey Kislyak.

Since then, Flynn has been one of the leading evangelists of the QAnon conspiracy theory and has also pushed Christian nationalism. If he actually gets his hefty settlement (with Trump’s approval), it’ll show that he’s still friendly with the president and the Republican Party, leaving the door open for conspiracy theorists to push their agenda.