When Epstein’s Victims Won’t Go Away - 4/6/26
Admit it: you probably haven’t been thinking about Jeffrey Epstein as much recently.
That’s understandable. Our country is at war in the Middle East. Before this latest conflict with Iran, the president’s international adventurism in Venezuela, Cuba, Ukraine, Greenland, and Gaza had consumed an immense amount of public and media attention. All this on top of domestic challenges such as inflation and affordability, immigration and ICE, a government shutdown, and too many other controversies, scandals, and other assorted sideshows to count. So it’s easy to see how the Epstein files might slip off of our collective radar.
But Epstein’s victims, the survivors and their families, will not allow that to happen. They provided a visceral reminder of their tenacity and their staying power last week, when the family of the late Virginia Giuffre urged King Charles III to meet with them during his visit to Washington later this month. The financier and sex offender had close ties to the king’s younger brother, Andrew, who has been accused of forcing Giuffre to have sex with him on three separate occasions, the first when she was 17 years old. And now her family has inserted the story back at the center of the American political consciousness.
The Epstein scandal has emerged as a major political headache for Trump, as many of his supporters have long believed that Epstein was protected by an elite government cabal and are suspicious that Trump’s Justice Department has covered up relevant information from their investigation. The controversy was a major contributing factor to Attorney General Pam Bondi’s firing by Trump last week, and it was notable that her former deputy and acting replacement, Todd Blanche, made it clear on his first day in the new job that the department has fulfilled its legal obligations and should now "turn the page."
Blanche also did his best to shift the discussion in a new direction, announcing an investigation into California’s massive hospice fraud crisis. But as deep as Trump’s animosity toward the Golden State and its governor, Gavin Newsom, this inquiry is unlikely to satisfy the president’s MAGA base. This has created a major problem for Republican candidates running in this November’s midterm elections. GOP voters are already much less motivated to turn out than they were when Trump himself was on the ballot in 2024, and the combination of the nation’s stubborn inflation, the recent controversies regarding ICE deployments, and the aggressive international agenda that Trump has forwarded are creating additional challenges for him and his party as they look for ways to motivate his most loyal supporters in the fall.
King Charles’ visit will be an extremely high-profile reminder to Americans of why they were so preoccupied by the Epstein scandals for such a long time. Regardless of whether he meets with the Giuffre family or not, the controversy will dominate his visit. Queen Camilla has been a long-standing advocate for survivors and victims, and Charles has stripped Andrew of his prince title and other honors. But that will offer him little protection if he does not agree to a meeting. Trump has been eager for a royal visit for months; he will not be pleased if all the pomp and circumstance he will arrange is overshadowed by questions regarding his past association with Epstein. But this story is not going away.
This entire episode also indicates how determined, how resourceful, and how relentless Epstein’s survivors and their families can be. They are motivated by the deepest and most righteous fury imaginable, and their justifiable anger has the potential to cut through most of the usual campaign trail blather. Few of Trump’s core supporters would ever dream of voting for Democratic candidates in November. But they could certainly stay home in large numbers, and that will be enough to cost Republicans their majority in at least one house of Congress.
Trump and his advisors recognize the need to remotivate his troops. That’s why he is so determined to end the Iran war as soon as possible. It’s why he has been advocating so strongly for legislation that would aggressively limit mail voting and require identification for voter registration and voting on election day. And now the ghost of Jeffrey Epstein is back as yet an additional challenge when he least needs it.