This is not new news. But if/when Alan Dershowitz ever makes it to appearing before the House Oversight Committee, I want you to know what the news will never print. It is freely available in various depositions, but the media only ever takes a tiny snippet of what's there, usually the most prurient or titillating mosel, and leaves the rest, not least because they don't want to get sued by someone like Dershowitz.

It is my full expectation that whatever happens in that committee room, if it ever does, will be underreported at best, and so I offer you an original source of what you should know about this guy, straight from one of the victims.

As many of you already know, in 2014 Virgina Giuffre joined the Palm Beach survivors in their earlier legal action against the government because Jeffrey Epstein had been given a sweetheart deal in 2007 that appeared to violate federal law -- the Crime Victims Rights Act, or CVRA -- and in the course of joining that CVRA suit she gave her personal evidence of having been trafficked. She had done so before 2014, but had largely avoided naming names. Yet this time, in 2014, Virginia Giuffre named some names. Big ones.

When she did so, some of those involved decided that their best response would be to slander and defame her. When they did, Giuffre sued back, and was then countersued and slandered more, and in the end even the lawyers were suing the other lawyers, in endless cases, some of which are still being litigated today, over ten years later.

At the very core of this overwhelming blizzard of legal activity is Alan Dershowitz.

The post link, above, is to one of the full copies of her depositions, this particular one from 2016 given in the case of Bradley J. Edwards and Paul G. Cassell v Alan M. Dershowitz, one of the secondary lawsuits that arose from the original CVRA suit against the government: Brad Edwards was Virginia Giuffre's attorney when she joined the CVRA suit on behalf of the Palm Beach survivors, and Paul Cassell is a professor of law specializing in victims' rights who assisted Edwards in bringing the suit.

Edwards and Cassell brought the original CVRA suit against the government, and together they later sued Dershowitz for defamation.

Virginia Giuffre was brought into the defamation suit and forced to undergo deposition again with Alan Dershowitz sitting in the same room, watching and listening to her reply as she was grilled about how Dershowitz had used her body at Epstein's direction and command, in Epstein's own bedroom, and about whatever other sexual assaults and experiences his legal team thought would humiliate her. (This is the reason for the trigger warning: the deposition pulls no punches.)

You do not have to be a lawyer to read these things: skip the citations, skim over the legal business, attend the text. But what you will be is shocked. Not just at what Virginia Giuffre had to say about Alan Dershowitz, which never changed throughout all these depositions and who was in the room with her throughout this deposition, (see page 3, "Also Present") but at how poorly she was treated throughout, how even her own personal safety was repeatedly ignored as the opposition lawyers repeatedly tried to bully her into giving names she had already decided were not safe for her to name, and how they repeated question after question that, in my opinion, were crafted more for their potential to humiliate and embarrass as opposed to their use in uncovering relevant truth.

The psychological pressure they put on her was immense. She never buckled.

But this was just one time out of many where she had to undergo the same thing: someone has weaponized the law to sue someone else, and as retaliation a survivor, or many survivors, are brought in once again to relive their hell while one or more of those actually responsible -- or even a direct participant, as in this case -- sits in the room to watch it happen.

ALL the victim depositions I have read have been like this, and worse. That is not to say all of them are this bad, but if any are lighter or more gentle somehow, I have yet to come across them.

And they seem to be most especially prevalent wherever Dershowitz is involved in any way.

I don't think we normies really have any idea what it means for a victim to come forward and name even a single name, and how that can disrupt entire lives for years, even decades to come, and how after so much of this turmoil, not just within the legal system but outside of it from the perpetrators, and years of fighting for the truth to come out, some of them are no longer with us. This deposition is just a fraction of what they had to bear not just once but many, many times.

As you read, take note of who is asking what and why -- I kept one copy open to the introduction (Page 2) while I read a second copy so I could keep the participants straight -- and know that if Dershowitz ever makes it in front of the House committee, it will be only a fraction of what he and his attorneys put each of the victims who spoke up through, usually multiple times.

Also note some of the bizarre redactions. For example, a special master was appointed to ensure that legal confidentialities remained legal even as lawyers were suing other lawyers: when he appears, they have redacted the word Master from his title, so you'll see a lot of Special _______ in the text. They have also bizarrely redacted the names "Bradley" and "Edwards" from this publicly filed suit.

An outgoing Republican congressman accused billionaire Leon Black and David Copperfield, the illusionist, of being co-conspirators of the accused late sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein, and repeated a call for the Department of Justice to launch an immediate investigation into the men, among others.

Thomas Massie, a Kentucky Republican who recently lost his primary to a challenger backed by Donald Trump, named several friends and associates of Epstein on the floor of the House in his bid to “shame” the Department of Justice to investigate a group of men and one woman who Massie called “perpetrators” of Epstein’s crimes. He also noted that, nearly one year after Trump signed the Epstein Transparency Act, which led to the release of millions of so-called “Epstein files”, millions more have yet to be publicly disclosed.

“The government continues to withhold over three million files” Massie said on Monday. “That’s why we’ve introduced the Epstein Files Transparency Act II, to bring the fight to the state courts, accountability to the Department of Justice and closure for survivors.”

“We want perpetrators of these crimes to be investigated and prosecuted” he added. Massie called the individuals “co-conspirators” on his Instagram account.

Black, the New York private equity investor who paid Epstein tens of millions of dollars in fees, is separately facing a threat of being held in contempt of Congress because of an ongoing standoff over demands that he appear to testify before the House oversight committee later this week, on 3 September.

Black has not yet confirmed his appearance before the committee, according to a person familiar with the matter. Black’s spokesperson did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the scheduled hearing or Massie’s comments.

Black has described his work for Epstein as tax and estate-planning services. In a previous statement before the oversight committee in June, Black wrote of his relationship with Epstein: “I did not know about this nefarious activity until Epstein was charged with trafficking in July 2019.” But Black acknowledged that he did know about Epstein pleading guilty in “2008 to state charges relating to prostitution involving a minor”.

The chairman of the House oversight committee, the Republican James Comer, has previously said he would hold Black in contempt if he did not fully cooperate with his panel’s ongoing investigation into Epstein, including by handing over subpoenaed documents.

Susan Estrich, Black’s lawyer, has rejected Comer’s assertions that Black has not been cooperative and has said that Black was being targeted in a “political witch hunt”.

Epstein’s former lawyer, Alan Dershowitz, has also not yet confirmed his appearance before the oversight committee, according to a person familiar with the matter. Dershowitz’s appearance was scheduled to take place on Wednesday. Dershowitz told the Guardian on Tuesday that he was “working on a date”.

FBI agents investigating Copperfield in 2007 said that “a clear connection” existed between the famous illusionist and Epstein, according to documents released by the Department of Justice earlier this year. Copperfield’s lawyers have previously denied he was friends with Epstein. Lawyers for the illusionist did not respond to a request for comment on Massie’s comments, accusing Copperfield of being an Epstein co-conspirator.

In a post on X on Tuesday morning, Massie said that he, along with Representatives Ro Khanna and Teresa Leger Fernández had launched a “discharge petition to collect 218 signatures” to force a vote on the new Act.

The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Ghislaine Maxwell seems to be all but guaranteed to have run out of legal avenues to challenge her conviction for her involvement in Jeffrey Epstein’s abuse of girls and young women with perhaps her lingering hopes of freedom resting on a pardon from the Trump administration.

Paul Engelmayer, a Manhattan federal court judge, last week rejected Maxwell’s contention that her constitutional rights were violated at trial and sentencing for her crimes. “Maxwell’s claims are all meritless and all or almost all are frivolous,” Engelmayer wrote in his ruling on the former British socialite’s legal gambit.

Engelmayer also rejected Maxwell’s claim that new evidence, which she said came to light during Epstein Files Transparency Act disclosures, did not support her allegations of constitutional violations. “On the contrary, to the extent it is relevant, far from exculpating her, it incriminates her or reinforces the correctness of the legal rulings,” he ruled.

Maxwell’s family said in a statement that Engelmayer’s ruling was “marked by a tone of sarcasm and disdain that, in our view, undermines the appearance of impartiality and invites scrutiny of the judge’s conduct”. They also said Maxwell “will continue to pursue every available legal avenue” for relief.

Legal veterans said, however, that Maxwell had virtually exhausted all her court-based routes. With Maxwell apparently running out of legal pathways, many have wondered whether Donald Trump will at some point deliver a Hail Mary – a presidential pardon.

Today I was reading about the judicial progress against another unchecked billionaire rapist and it mentioned some statements Lord Peter Mandelson made to Jeffrey Epstein upon the occasion of Epstein's conviction in 2008.

I didn't recall that exact wording, so I went to the linked article that focused entirely on the emails between Epstein and Mandelson. As I often do, I wanted to see if the quoted section was all there is or just a truncated version of a much longer exchange, so I went to find the EFTA version.

Only thing is, when I went to the DoJ site, these particular career-ending emails are gone, or are at least not found when searching by text, which is what I was doing. They're still readily found in Jmail, of course, though even the Jmail versions no longer have a link to the actual EFTA files on the DoJ site.

Here's the first email mentioned in the above-linked Guardian article, and here's the second. But nothing left on the DoJ site, even though almost 6,000 other records of Epstein's communications with Mandelson remain.

Just to see if this is going to be a thing, I went to another linked article in The Guardian that lists ten points of evidence in the Epstein -- Mendelson correspondence that suggest a close friendship, and looked up each of the quotes on both the DoJ site and in Jmail.

Many were there and findable on a text search just as they should be, but sure enough two are missing from both the DoJ site and strangely also from the Jmail archive: #3: “Peter will be staying at 71st over weekend” from Epstein to Jes Staley, June 2009; and #5: “Petie’s quitting” from Epstein to Jes Staley, May 2010.

Am I missing something? Or are the orange lackeys just back to quietly removing the rich and powerful from the EFTA releases hoping nobody notices.

A federal judge has rejected Ghislaine Maxwell’s legal effort to throw out her 2021 conviction on sex-trafficking charges and 20-year prison sentence, calling her claims “demonstrably meritless, and generally based on speculation, distortions, and/or outright falsehoods”.

In a 67-page decision filed on Tuesday, the US district judge Paul Engelmayer for New York’s southern district denied the former British socialite’s petition for relief, finding that Maxwell had failed to make a substantial showing that her constitutional rights were denied when she was convicted for her role in crimes linked to the late sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein.

Maxwell, who is serving out her punishment at a minimum-security prison camp in Bryan, Texas, had petitioned the court to vacate her conviction on grounds that there were issues at her trial, including a juror who later revealed he was a sexual abuse victim and evidence she alleged was not made available to her defense team.

Her petition, which came before the massive Epstein-related document dump by the federal government, also raised the 2007 non-prosecution agreement between federal prosecutors in Miami and Epstein, which she claimed protected her from prosecution. Maxwell was not named in that agreement.

In the decision denying the petition, Engelmayer wrote that the “vast majority” of grounds on which Maxwell made her appeal “are procedurally barred – either because Maxwell made and lost the same arguments on direct appeal, or because she could have made such arguments on appeal but elected not to do so”.

The judge also rejected that new evidence had come through the Trump administration-led US justice department’s multimillion-page release of documents. Those, Engelmayer said, “incriminates her or reinforces the correctness of the legal rulings Maxwell challenges”.

The Republican chairman of the House oversight committee has threatened to hold the private equity investor Leon Black in contempt if he does not fully cooperate with the panel’s ongoing investigation into Jeffrey Epstein, amid accusations that the billionaire is purposely delaying and disrupting the panel’s inquiry.

A letter released by Representative James Comer’s office on Tuesday, which was addressed to Black’s lawyer, revealed new details about the high-stakes clash between the powerful Kentucky congressman and Black, the co-founder of Apollo Asset Management who was Epstein’s friend and former client and paid Epstein tens of millions of dollars in fees.

“If Mr Black refuses to provide the Committee with responsive documents or refuses to appear for his scheduled deposition on September 3, 2026, the Committee will use all tools at its disposal, including contempt,” Comer said.

Susan Estrich, Black’s lawyer, rejected Comer’s assertions in a statement released on Tuesday night, saying the letter was misrepresenting the facts, and that Black was being targeted in a “political witch hunt”.

Black voluntarily agreed to be questioned by the House panel in June as part of the committee’s broad investigation into Epstein, which the panel has said includes an examination of the alleged mismanagement of the federal government’s investigation into the late sexual predator; the operation of sex-trafficking rings; and the ways in which Epstein and his companion Ghislaine Maxwell “sought to curry favor” to protect their “illegal activities”.

But Black’s appearance ended abruptly – after just one hour of questioning – after members of both parties said Black was refusing to answer questions about non-disclosure agreements (NDAs). Comer, in his capacity as committee chairman, issued two subpoenas on that day in response to Black’s alleged lack of cooperation: one demanding that Black produce “all non-disclosure agreements to which he is a party” and another demanding he appear before the committee for a deposition.

This is the press release from McConnell's staff: https://www.mcconnell.senate.gov/public/index.cfm/pressreleases?ID=25E43CBF-8898-4D4C-AFFE-B31F85872009

Republican Senators Thom Tillis and John Cornyn each reneged on their promises to meet with victims of Jeffrey Epstein, with Tillis even leaving them waiting in his office for 45 minutes before they gave up.

A group of Epstein survivors on Tuesday accused Blanche and Cornyn of going back on their word, as the senators prepared to vote in favor of Todd Blanche’s nomination for attorney general after he provided a weak promise in writing to kill President Trump’s $1.776 billion “Anti-Weaponization Fund.”

“The treatment we received from senators throughout this process was just as revealing. Senator Tillis publicly invited us, on camera, to come to his office and promised to meet with us. We did. We waited for 45 minutes in his lobby, only to be told by a staffer he would not meet with us after all,” the survivors wrote in a joint statement.

“Senator Cornyn also refused to hear directly from survivors before casting his vote. Senators Tillis and Cornyn were not willing to sit across from us and answer for the vote they were preparing to cast. If they believed they were doing the right thing, they should have had the courage to look survivors in the eye and tell us why. The message was unmistakable: They wanted us to go away. We are not going away.”

Tillis’s snubbing is particularly nasty given that he made a big fuss about not voting for Blanche’s confirmation unless he met with Epstein survivors.

“Do you believe that Virginia Giuffre was a victim of Jeffrey Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell?” the House oversight committee asked Ruemmler, who served as the White House counsel in the Obama administration, during her interview with the panel earlier this month part of its investigation into Epstein.

“I don’t know,” she responded, according to a transcript released on Wednesday.

Ruemmler went on to add: “If she says that she was, I don’t have a reason to doubt that. However, there were allegations that she made that were, I believed based on my experience as a former prosecutor and as a defense counsel, that were of such a nature that they were – they lacked inherent credibility.

“Typically, when someone says, I was sex trafficked to someone, they say who, when, where, not multiple world leaders, multiple foreign presidents,” she said.

Her remarks were condemned by Giuffre’s brother and sister-in-law, who said in a statement that it as “reprehensible” to “attempt to cast doubt on Virginia, whose bravery was the reason so many other survivors stepped forward, resulting in more than 50 people having to step down from their positions of power”.

They said that “the only person who lacks credibility is Kathy Ruemmler”.

Direct link to Ruemmler’s testimony before the House Oversight Committee on July 15, 2026:
https://oversight.house.gov/wp-content/uploads/2026/07/Ruemmler-Final-Transcript_Redact-7.28.26.pdf

As Donald Trump’s former defense lawyer Todd Blanche appears poised for confirmation as attorney general, numerous Jeffrey Epstein survivors have sounded the alarm that a US justice department helmed by him would derail their pursuit of justice.

In a letter urging Republican senators Thom Tillis and John Cornyn to reject his nomination, these survivors said that Blanche’s handling of the Epstein case as acting attorney general was characterized by misstep after misstep.

Blanche, who reportedly led the disclosure of documents as required by the bipartisan Epstein Files Transparency Act, allowed the disclosure of survivors’ names, photos and identifying information – but omitted the names of accused abusers and enablers, they said.

While more than 1,000 teenage girls and women were abused, not a single person other than Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell faced charges, they noted. And in a recent sit-down with survivors at Tillis’s urging, survivors “received an hour of deflection, interruption and gaslighting,” they said.

These survivors’ concerns about Blanche by no means exist in a vacuum, and have only fanned the flames of a controversy that has dogged Trump since he again took office.

A British prince was arrested at 8am and was stripped of his title; ambassadors, politicians and numerous other high-profile men lost their prestigious jobs; millions of files relating to the sex offender Jeffrey Epstein were released and a US president remains under scrutiny. So much has happened since the death of Virginia Roberts Giuffre in April last year, and the posthumous publication of her memoir Nobody’s Girl six months later, detailing for the first time the full story of her abuse by Epstein and his associates. “This year has been extraordinary,” says Sky Roberts, Giuffre’s younger brother. “I just wish Virginia was here to see it.”

He is determined that there will be many more advances to come. Giuffre had become one of the most recognisable survivors of Epstein; in the midst of grief, Sky and his wife, Amanda, have become accidental advocates. “She paved the way, and we want to keep paving that road forward for other survivors out there,” says Sky.

They’re speaking from their home in Colorado, in a room filled with photographs and mementoes, such as the butterfly motif that Giuffre adopted for her cause. They haven’t done interviews from this room before. “I see her all around me,” says Sky, who apologises for getting “teary-eyed sometimes, so just bear with me”. They have got two children, and have a background in retail management and property investing, not politics. “We got thrust into it, within months [after Giuffre’s death], we were in advocacy work,” says Sky. “A lot of it was driven by a sense of purpose. Virginia used to say, ‘How do you turn pain into purpose?’ And I couldn’t allow her story to be narrated by people that didn’t either know her or really understand who she was.”

They are about to relaunch Giuffre’s organisation Soar (Speak Out, Act, Reclaim), and are campaigning to get Virginia’s law passed in the US, which would remove the federal statute of limitations in sexual abuse cases, as well as maintain the pressure to release the rest of the Epstein documents and keep him and his associates in the public consciousness. All this against a government – and a president named numerous times in the files – that appears to be doing everything it can to make the whole thing go away.

PORTLAND, Ore. (KOIN) – Senator Jeff Merkley (D-OR) helped introduce a bill on Wednesday, aiming to hold the United States Department of Justice accountable for its handling of the Epstein files.

A group of lawmakers, led by Congressman Thomas Massie (R-KY), introduced House Resolution 9694, the Epstein Files Transparency Act II.

The bill would allow state attorneys general, the victims of Jeffrey Epstein and his co-conspirators along with members of Congress to challenge the DOJ in court for failing to comply with the original Epstein Files Transparency Act — which directed the DOJ to release materials related to the sex trafficking investigation of the late financier.

Representatives Ro Khanna (D-CA) and Teresa Leger Fernández (D-NM) are co-leading the bill in the House. Meanwhile, Senators Merkley and Ben Ray Luján (D-NM) are leading the Senate version of the bill.

The bill has several provisions, including allowing attorneys general, members of Congress and victims to sue the DOJ for unlawfully withholding, redacting, delaying, concealing, removing or failing to publish Epstein-related records.

The bill would also give victims the right to obtain full, unredacted records concerning themselves or the harm they suffered and allows state and local prosecutors access to unredacted records needed for investigations or prosecutions.

The bill additionally bans the invocation of common law privileges, such as deliberative process privileges — which can allow government agencies to withhold testimony or deliberations from third parties. That way, the government cannot try to evade disclosure requirements under the original EFTA, officials said.

“Since the Epstein Files Transparency Act was signed into law on Nov. 19, 2025, the Department of Justice has flagrantly and consistently ignored EFTA’s disclosure requirements,” said Rep. Massie.

“The Department of Justice continues to unlawfully withhold over 3 million Epstein files that should be released to the public,” Massie continued. “In addition, the DOJ is unlawfully maintaining heavy redactions on the files it is releasing. State attorneys general and victims should have the right to sue the Attorney General of the United States to compel compliance with a transparency law President Trump signed.”

Sen. Merkley’s office noted that if the House does not consider the bill in seven legislative days, a discharge petition will be circulated. The petition would bring the bill to a floor vote without approval from a committee.

Archive link: https://megalodon.jp/2026-0717-0710-13/https://www.koin.com:443/news/politics/oregon-senator-merkley-second-epstein-files-act/