Rising This Week: Epstein and Maxwell's survivors

Trump angered Ghislaine Maxwell's survivors by moving her to a "Club Fed" prison. Now, the survivors will be heard in court by Tuesday.

Annie Farmer after Ghislaine Maxwell’s sentencing in June 2022. (Photo by Lev Radin/Anadolu Agency via Getty Images)

Stay ahead of the news cycle with “Rising the Week,” our look ahead at the court calendar and opportunities for civic engagement.

Survivors of Jeffrey Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell — and family members of victims who are now deceased — have grown more vocal in the face of the Trump administration’s “cover up.”

The crescendo has been building in media interviews, video statements and press releases.

This week, the Trump administration will hear from survivors in federal court.

Two federal judges set a deadline of Tuesday for Epstein and Maxwell’s victims to respond to the Justice Department’s request to unseal grand jury records in redacted form. None of the line prosecutors who charged Epstein and convicted Maxwell have been involved in this effort, only three of Trump’s political appointees: Attorney General Pam Bondi, her deputy Todd Blanche, and U.S. Attorney Jay Clayton. Bondi and Blanche previously served as Trump’s personal attorneys.

Attorney Sigrid McCawley, who represents hundreds of Epstein’s survivors, revealed that the government failed to notify their clients before making their request.

When filed in court by Tuesday, the victims’ responses could ratchet up the pressure on Donald Trump, whose recent actions and comments have alarmed and enraged Epstein’s victims.

Four family members of Virginia Giuffre, born Virginia Roberts, recently sat for cable interviews where they denounced Donald Trump’s statement that Epstein “stole” Giuffre when she was a 16-year-old spa attendant at Mar-a-Lago.

“She wasn‘t stolen. She was preyed upon at his property, at President Trump‘s property,” Giuffre’s brother Sky Roberts told CNN on Thursday.

On Friday, sisters Maria and Annie Farmer and four relatives of the late Virginia Giuffre released a blistering statement denouncing Maxwell’s transfer to “a minimum security luxury prison in Texas.”

“President Trump has sent a clear message today: Pedophiles deserve preferential treatment and their victims do not matter,” they wrote.

The Farmer sisters were the first to report Epstein to law enforcement, and Giuffre’s lawsuits against Maxwell, Prince Andrew and others made her one of the most visible advocates for Epstein’s sex trafficking victims before she died by suicide earlier this year.

In their statement, the six-person coalition wrote:

“Ghislaine Maxwell is a sexual predator who physically assaulted minor children on multiple occasions, and she should never be shown any leniency. Yet, without any notification to the Maxwell victims, the government overnight has moved Maxwell to a minimum security luxury prison in Texas. This is the justice system failing victims right before our eyes. The American public should be enraged by the preferential treatment being given to a pedophile and a criminally charged child sex offender. The Trump administration should not credit a word Maxwell says, as the government itself sought charges against Maxwell for being a serial liar. This move smacks of a cover up. The victims deserve better.”

It is unclear how many survivors will choose to respond to the request to unseal grand jury records, or whether only those survivors identified in those transcripts will be invited to respond. The Epstein Victims Compensation Fund received 225 applications, and 150 people were deemed eligible for compensation. In an unsigned statement in July, the Justice Department and FBI estimated that more than 1,000 victims may exist.

On Monday morning, I will appear on “Coffee with The Contrarians” to discuss all thing Epstein. Look out for coverage of the victims’ responses on All Rise News once their letters land in court.

Having attended every day of Maxwell’s trial, I remember the moment of her guilty verdict. Deliberations stretched past Maxwell’s 60th birthday, which happened to fall on Christmas of 2021.

Four days after the holiday, Maxwell became a convicted sex trafficker on the evening of Dec. 29, 2021. I hustled outside of the Thurgood Marshall Courthouse, found a spot inside a crowded press scrum, and reported the verdict for a British documentary team that had been following the case. The title of their series was: “Who Is Ghislaine Maxwell?”

Nearly four years later, those who didn’t follow that trial closely are seeking answers to that question, and Trump loyalists like Newsmax’s Greg Kelly are concocting a revisionist history for them.

Musing that Maxwell might be “innocent,” Kelly said: “All right, granted, she hung out with Jeffrey Epstein, and I know that’s apparently not good, but she’s in jail. For how long now? Twenty years.”

Only someone who didn’t witness Maxwell’s trial — or deliberately wanted to misrepresent what emerged during it — could have made those comments. Maxwell was not convicted of “hanging out” with Epstein or merely facilitating Epstein’s predation. Prosecutors alleged, and the jury found, that Maxwell participated in the abuse. Three trial witnesses testified under oath that Maxwell touched their breasts. Giuffre also accused Maxwell of sexual abuse in her defamation lawsuit.

It’s easy to write off Kelly’s remarks as blather on the right-wing airwaves, but that would be a mistake. In 2020, Newsmax boosted Trump’s lies about the presidential election, prompting defamation lawsuits by two voting machine companies. Court records brought to light during Fox’s litigation with Dominion Voting Machines showed that Fox was afraid of losing its pro-Trump audience to alternatives like Newsmax and OAN if it didn’t follow suit. That revelation showed Newsmax’s influence within the broader conservative media ecosystem.

After Maxwell’s unusual transfer to a minimum-security prison, following her two-day interview by Trump’s former personal attorney Todd Blanche, Kelly’s remarks could be a trial balloon for justifying what already has occurred and what might come. Toward the end of Trump’s first term, the national conversation about whether he would pardon Maxwell could have seemed unthinkable.

Now, Trump repeatedly affirms that he’s “allowed” to pardon Maxwell, and the White House’s weak denial only contends that he is not considering doing so “at this time.” Staying fully informed about this story requires a memory of what happened and the ability to navigate everything that will unfold in and outside the courts. All Rise News will continue to follow it.

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