Tonight in Your Rights: "A warrior with a story to tell"

Explosive revelations abound in Epstein victim Virginia Giuffre's memoirs, a pardoned Jan. 6 rioter's new "terroristic threats" charges, and more.

The front cover of Virginia Giuffre’s posthumous memoir “Nobody’s Girl”

That Virginia Giuffre’s teenage face became a symbol of the women and girls whom Jeffrey Epstein and his associates abused is no accident.

Her lawsuits against Epstein and his accomplice Ghislaine Maxwell contributed significantly to their downfalls. Groundbreaking journalistic investigations would not have been possible without mining the court records created by her lawsuits. Her cooperation was instrumental to law enforcement investigations involving Epstein’s sex trafficking network from New York to Paris. She used the money from settlements to found Victims Refuse Silence, an advocacy group for survivors later rebranded as Speak Out, Act, Reclaim (SOAR). As she puts it in her memoir, Giuffre is a “warrior with a story to tell.”

Giuffre’s posthumously published book “Nobody’s Girl” is both a gut-wrenching memoir and a richly chronicled account of a notorious true crime by one of its central witnesses. It’s not only about Epstein: Giuffre writes that she was sexually abused by her father, a family friend, and another sex trafficker before ever meeting Epstein. Giuffre didn’t live to see its release, but her book is already making waves internationally.

“A gentlemen’s agreement”

Even in death, Giuffre appears to have shaken up the British royal family. Prince Andrew gave up his royal titles days before the release of the book, and it’s little wonder. In one passage, Giuffre writes that she was at an “orgy” with Epstein, Andrew and “approximately eight other young girls” at Epstein’s private island.

Though she didn’t remember the date, Giuffre pointed to evidence suggesting that she was rushed to a New York City hospital around this time.

“My sense was that a gentlemen’s agreement had been struck between Epstein and the doctor: whatever was going on between this middle-aged man and his teenage acquaintance, the two men seemed to have agreed, it would be kept quiet,” she wrote.

Giuffre says that Epstein told her she had a miscarriage.

In other passages, Giuffre thinly disguises the identities of the powerful people to whom she says Epstein trafficked her. In a graphic passage, Giuffre says that she was raped, choked and bloodied by a “former Prime Minister” in encounters that were so violent that she knew she had to leave Epstein’s orbit. “I fear that this man will seek to hurt me if I say his name here,” Giuffre writes, even though she adds that she named him in court documents. (Court documents said that Giuffre accused former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak of sexual abuse in the past, and he denied the allegations.)

Giuffre explains why she stops short of naming names even of men who appeared in court records:

“I do not make this decision to hold back lightly. Part of me wants to shout from the highest rooftop the names of every man who ever used me for sex. Some readers will question my reluctance to name many of my abusers. If I am, indeed, a fighter for justice, why have I not called them out? My answer is simple: Because while I have been a daughter, a prisoner, a survivor, and a warrior, my most important role is that of a mother. First and foremost, I am a parent, and I won’t put my family at risk if I can help it. Maybe in the future I will be ready to talk about these men. But not now.”

“Opened the door to hell”

Co-written with journalist Amy Wallace, Giuffre’s posthumous memoirs are deeply personal, emotionally wrenching, and exacting in presenting the evidence that she amassed through decades of litigation and advocacy.

Though she didn’t testify in that trial, Giuffre delivered a message to Maxwell at her sentencing: “For me, and for so many others, you opened the door to hell.” She may have delivered similar statements to Epstein and his criminally charged French accomplice Jean Luc Brunel had both men not died in jail under eerily similar circumstances before their trials. Even her heartbreaking story of her childhood mirrors those of other girls whose difficult and tragic circumstances Epstein exploited.

Most of the coverage of Giuffre’s book highlights the passages about the powerful men she accused and the devastating accounts of her abuse. Those are important, but the account of what she did should carry much more weight than what was done to her. The public’s understanding of Epstein’s sex trafficking network couldn’t be told without reference to Giuffre’s actions. Among her many lawsuits, Giuffre joined class action litigation against one of the allegedly “complicit” banks: JP Morgan, which paid a nine-figure settlement to end the case. She doesn’t ignore that “follow-the-money” story in her memoirs.

Having died by suicide in April, Giuffre can no longer be called a survivor. A victim doesn’t sound right, either. A fallen warrior might fit the bill.

“Eliminated”

A pardoned Jan. 6th rioter has been charged for allegedly threatening to kill top Democratic Rep. Hakeem Jeffries.

State prosecutors in New York charged 34-year-old Christopher Moynihan with making a “terroristic threat.”

According to his criminal complaint, Moynihan sent multiple chilling text messages on Oct. 17, 2025, referring to an upcoming speech Jeffries planned to give in New York City.

• “I cannot allow this terrorist to live.”

• “Even if I am hated he must be eliminated.”

• “I will kill him for the future.”

CBS News reports that Moynihan allegedly planned to target Jeffries at the Economic Club of New York.

“These text messages placed the recipient in reasonable fear of the imminent murder and assassination of Hakeem Jeffries by the defendant,” the criminal complaint says.

Moynihan is in jail pending bail of $10,000 cash, $30,000 bond, or $80,000 unsecured bond, and he has an appearance scheduled on Thursday.

You can read the criminal complaint against him here.

Quick backlash to Portland troops ruling

Almost immediately after a federal appeals court issued a ruling allowing Donald Trump to deploy troops to Portland, Ore., a judge from the Ninth Circuit requested an en banc review of the decision to potentially overrule it.

The state of Oregon and Trump’s Justice Department must file written arguments by Wednesday.

I unpack the importance of the developments in two video interviews.

In brief

Columbia University graduate student Mahmoud Khalil’s attorneys urged an appeals court today to keep him released from immigration detention.

Rep. LaMonica McIver (D-N.J.) argued in federal court that the criminal case over the scuffle that took place during her visit to an immigration detention center should be dismissed for vindictive prosecution by the Trump administration.

• Read coverage of the hearings here and here.