Bipartisan group plans to bring Epstein victims to capital to speak out on files and push Congress to release them
Massie of Kentucky, who has created a headache for President Donald Trump this year after rebelling against the 'One Big, Beautiful Bill,' said that he will host a joint press conference at the Capitol with the California congressman, several survivors and their attorneys.
'I will be hosting a press conference at the Capitol, joined by survivors of Epstein and Maxwell's abuse — several of whom will be speaking out for the first time,' Massie and Khanna announced Monday in a post on X. 'The survivors deserve justice and Americans deserve transparency.'
The Epstein case engulfed the Trump administration in controversy for weeks following a Justice Department and FBI memo in early July that said no further files in the case would be released, contrary to the president's previous pledges to do so. That sparked fury among the Trump base, which has long sought their release. Trump has defended the move even as politicians on both sides of the aisle call for their release.
Ghislaine Maxwell, Epstein's former girlfriend and sex-abuse accomplice who is serving 20 years for her role in his sex trafficking scheme, was recently moved to a minimum-security prison in Texas after being interviewed by the Justice Department for information about his case.
Massie and Khanna's press conference is scheduled for September 3. The Republican representative clapped back at criticism on X that the publicity stunt was 'putting the victims at a huge risk.'
Massie said that the survivors set to attend the press conference 'thought they were getting justice' before the Trump administration 'did a 180.'
'Some might have come forward before to provide testimony or evidence already that wasn't made public,' Massie added.
Khanna is leading the charge for the Democrats on the issue and is also pushing a House Oversight subcommittee to subpoena Epstein's alleged 'birthday book.' The book is the subject of a The Wall Street Journal report that revealed the alleged existence of a 'bawdy' 50th birthday card from Trump to Epstein.
The president has denied the validity of the letter and has filed a $10 billion defamation lawsuit against right-wing media mogul Rupert Murdoch, WSJ 's parent company, Dow Jones, and the two journalists whose bylines appear on the story.
Massie and Khanna's press conference is reminiscent of a similar move pulled by Trump in 2016 to embarrass his former opponent, Hillary Clinton.
He appeared at a press conference ahead of the October 2016 televised debate with three women who accused former President Bill Clinton of inappropriate sexual contact—Paula Jones, Juanita Broaddrick and Kathleen Willey—and rape victim Kathy Shelton, whose attacker was defended by Hillary Clinton. Bill Clinton denies the allegations of the three women.
At the time, Clinton's campaign said they were 'not surprised to see Donald Trump continue his destructive race to the bottom.'
The president reportedly planned to seat the Clinton accusers in the Trump family box during the presidential debate, but it was thwarted at the last minute, according to reports.
Since deploying 800 National Guard troops to the streets of D.C. to wage a war on 'out of control' crime in the capital, the spotlight has largely moved on from Epstein, despite the efforts of some Democrats and MAGA influencers who are still up in arms over the debacle.
Still, anger remains from constituents at town halls across the country.
Doug LaMalfa, a fourth-generation rice farmer who has represented his northern California district in Congress since 2013, was booed, jeered and cursed out by angry voters Monday at the local Elks Lodge in Chico over the president's economic policies and the administration's handling of the Epstein case.
Over 90 minutes, attendees called LaMalfa a 'liar,' an 'a**hole,' and accused him of 'bull****.' At one point, when the moderator called on one person to ask a question, someone yelled: 'F*** you!'
There have been similar reported scenes earlier this year in states including Wisconsin, Georgia and North Carolina.
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Nearby, the giant bust of Kennedy may have shed a tear or two as Trump, wearing dark suit, white shirt and red tie, strode into the marble-walled, red-carpeted Hall of Nations to continue his hostile takeover of the nation's capital – and the country's cultural life. The 100ft-high arts complex on the banks of the Potomac River and its annual arts awards might seem trivial in the scheme of Trump's authoritarian crusade. But there are few better measures of how his second term is proving more ambitious, intentional and effective than his first. Trump 1.0 never set foot in the Kennedy Center. Each year the Honors took place without him, with recipients including his critics such as as Cher, Lin-Manuel Miranda and Sally Field. And there were diverse lineups: Gloria Estefan, LL Cool J, Lionel Richie, Debbie Allen, Berry Gordy, Gladys Knight and Queen Latifah. Trump 2.0 has been a very different proposition in his targeted approach to immigration and crime, his vendettas against political opponents and his bullying of law firms, media companies and universities. Suddenly the Kennedy Center, like the Smithsonian Institution's museums, finds itself in the line of fire of Trump's war on woke. Like Shakespeare's Richard III, who feigns reluctance to take the throne as a tactic to appear more virtuous, Trump claimed he didn't really want to take on hosting responsibilities when his staff asked. 'I said: 'I'm the president of the United States! Are you fools, asking me to do that?' 'Sir, you'll get much higher ratings.' I said: 'I don't care, I'm president of the United States. I won't do it.'' But then, in his telling, his chief of staff, Susie Wiles, intervened. 'I said, OK, Susie, I'll do it. That's the power she's got. So I have agreed to … They're going to say: 'He insisted.' I did not insist but I think it will be quite successful actually. It's been a long time. I used to host The Apprentice finales and we did rather well with that.' The Kennedy Center Honors were established in 1978 and recipients have included George Balanchine, Warren Beatty, Aretha Franklin, Tom Hanks, Arthur Miller, Stephen Sondheim and Barbra Streisand. Trump remarked: 'I wanted one. I was never able to get one.' A group of Trump lackeys sitting stage left burst into laughter then realised he wasn't joking and fell silent. 'It's true, actually. I would have taken it if they would have called me. I waited and waited and waited and I said: 'To hell with it, I'll become chairman and I'll give myself an honour. Maybe next year we'll honour Trump, OK?' All right, now that time he was joking. Wasn't he? Trump announced a characteristically white male-heavy list for this year's honourees: actors Michael Crawford and Sylvester Stallone, singers George Strait and Gloria Gaynor, and members of the rock band Kiss. As he spoke of each, a curtain was pulled back on their photo in very retro, low-tech style. Crawford, he noted, was born in England in 1942 and made his Broadway debut in 1967. 'I was there. I shouldn't say that but I was there. It seems like a long time ago, and he became an international sensation in the 1980s for his original portrayal of the Phantom of the Opera – one of the greatest ever, ever, ever, ever.' It was hardly surprising from a man whose cultural tastes refuse to acknowledge the existence of the 21st century, though there was no mention of the 70s British sitcom Some Mothers Do 'Ave 'Em in which Crawford played accident-prone Frank Spencer, known for the catchphrase 'Ooh Betty!' Sign up to This Week in Trumpland A deep dive into the policies, controversies and oddities surrounding the Trump administration after newsletter promotion Stallone's characters Rambo and Rocky are more Trump's style: macho, muscular, primal, violent, taking no prisoners. The kind of great white hopes that he would now like to see policing the streets of Washington. The president mused: 'Rocky, Rambo – if you did one, you're good. You do two? 'I'll never forget I was a young guy and I went to see a thing called Rambo and it had just come out. I didn't know anything about it but I was in a movie theatre – like we used to go to movie theaters a lot – and I said: 'This movie is phenomenal! What the heck?' And that turned out to be a monster.' Trump described Stallone as one of the biggest names on the Hollywood Walk of Fame but then remembered this is supposed to be all about him. 'In fact, the only one that's a bigger name on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, they say, is a guy named Donald Trump. I'm on the Hollywood Walk of Fame too, if you can believe that one.' Strait, Gaynor and Kiss met with his approval too. Trump might have stopped five wars in the past six months, by his own estimate, but he still had time to handpick the Kennedy Center honourees and make sure no agitators, dissidents or subversives slipped through the net. The role of the artist is the worship of Trump. 'I would say I was about 98% involved,' he remarked. 'They all went through me … I turned down plenty. It went too woke. I turned I had a couple of wokesters. Now, we have great people. This is very different than it used to be. Very different.' The Oscars, he said, now gets 'lousy ratings' because 'it's all woke' and 'all they do is talk about how much they hate Trump.' Just as he is vowing to make Washington DC beautiful again, Trump has big plans for the Kennedy Center, which at least one Republican in Congress has proposed renaming after him. Trump promised to 'fully renovate' the entire infrastructure, ripping out and replacing all the seats, and make it a 'crown jewel' of arts and culture in the US. 'The bones are so good,' he cooed. But if his White House desecration is anything to go by, expect the Kennedy Center to become a monument to dictator chic, dripping in rococo gold and festooned with garishness. Another Kennedy quotation inscribed on the exterior marble wall says: 'This country cannot afford to be materially rich and spiritually poor.'
