WASHINGTON: Victims of notorious sex offender Jeffrey Epstein said Wednesday they were compiling a confidential list of his associates who abused underage girls.

President Donald Trump, a one-time close friend of the deceased financier, sought meanwhile to dampen the enduring political furor over the Epstein case.

“This is a Democrat hoax that never ends,” Trump told reporters at the White House.

“They’re trying to get people to talk about something that’s totally irrelevant to the success that we’ve had as a nation since I’ve been president,” he said.

Trump’s comments came as eight of Epstein’s victims held an emotional news conference at the US Capitol, where some of them spoke publicly for the first time about the sexual abuse they suffered.

Some of the women were as young as 14 when introduced to Epstein.

Epstein died in a New York jail cell in 2019 while awaiting trial for sex trafficking of underage girls.

The news conference was held a day after a House of Representatives committee released 33,000 documents from the investigation into Epstein and his accomplice Ghislaine Maxwell, who is serving a 20-year prison sentence for sex trafficking.

“We were just kids,” said Marina Lacerda, who said she was paid $300 to give “an older guy” a massage at his New York mansion.

The women urged the Justice Department to release all of the Epstein investigation files and for Congress to pass a bill compelling their publication.

Many of Trump’s supporters have been obsessed with the Epstein case for years and have held as an article of faith that “deep state” elites were protecting Epstein associates in the Democratic Party and Hollywood.

They were further incensed in July when the FBI and Justice Department said that Epstein had committed suicide, did not blackmail any prominent figures, and did not keep a “client list”.

Published in Dawn, September 4th, 2025