Beyond her laughable attempt to overcome years of her own history with Jeffrey Epstein – thoroughly documented both privately and in the media – by simply ordering discussion of it to stop, Mrs. Trump has called for a hearing not for the perpetrators, nor for Epstein’s co-conspirators, but a hearing in which the survivors testify.
I wish I were joking, but no. The linked BBC article, which focuses more on Mrs. Trump’s well-established, undeniable ties to both Epstein and Maxwell, also has information on this proposed hearing:
In a surprise announcement on Thursday, the first lady called for congressional hearings for survivors of Epstein’s sex trafficking.
Melania Trump on Thursday additionally called on lawmakers to “give these victims their opportunity to testify under oath in front of Congress with the power of sworn testimony”.
“Each and every woman should have her day to tell her story in public if she wishes, and then her testimony should be permanently entered into the congressional record,” she said. “Then, and only then, we will have the truth.”
Family of Epstein accuser Virginia Giuffre, Sky and Amanda Roberts, and other survivors told BBC Newsnight that they "have already shown extraordinary courage by coming forward, filing reports, and giving testimony.
“Asking more of them now is a deflection of responsibility, not justice,” they said in a statement. They accused the first lady of protecting “those with power”, including members of her husband’s administration who they said still have not released all of the investigative files related to Epstein.
“Survivors have done their part,” they said. “Now it’s time for those in power to do theirs.”
Given that the survivors at every turn are asking for privacy, for protection, and that their own names be redacted from the process, this is, in my own opinion, nothing short of a brutally insane twisting of the judicial process to force the victims to carry the weight of it all.
Also, Mrs. Trump’s statement becomes even more farcical for anyone aware of the Congressional Record of which she speaks.
Yeah, no. As any historian will tell you, if you want truth, the Congressional Record is not the first place you go look for it. From Wikipedia,
What this means in practice is that there is a certain amount of time during which any member can edit and even remove whatever they want from the official record of what they said, among other allowed changes. Thus it is not nearly so much a record of what was actually said, as it is a record of what a member would have liked to say.
Add to this the fact that the other Epstein-related depositions have been conducted privately and under very different rules via subpoenas issued by the House Oversight Committee, and any survivor would be unwise, at best, to engage in any part of this charade: they would have no protection whatsoever not only from the public, but from the very members of the Committee they would be testifying in front of, or whatever body of Congress actually conducts this circus.
To put it bluntly, for every Ro Khanna or Thomas Massie who genuinely wants to see the truth come out, there are a hundred Gym Jordans and James Comers and Lindsey Grahams who desperately want the survivors to shut the fuck up, and will do whatever immoral, illegal act they have to do to make sure that happens.
If Melania Trump had set out to victimize the survivors further, she literally could not have done a better job than this.