An Epstein survivor who voted for Donald Trump in the 2024 presidential election has spoken out about his administration’s two biggest mistakes in the handling of the Jeffrey Epstein case.
Haley Robson, who was abused by the pedophile financier when she was 16 years old, told CNN’s Erin Burnett that the president’s first mistake was ”assuming you knew your voters,” and that his second mistake was what he’s doing now: “doubl[ing] down on what you said about it being a hoax.”
“I‘m not coming with hostility. I‘m not angry. I‘m exhausted. I‘m tired. I am disgusted. I am not even coming from a place of anger,” Robson continued.
“I‘m just coming from a place of, how can we move on when the leader of the free world keeps calling this a hoax, when indeed it is not a hoax? And then it‘s just kind of this feeling of, like, you‘re throwing everything at the wall to let it stick. And now it‘s, you‘re an FBI informant, and now you‘re not an FBI informant. It‘s back to being a hoax.”
”It‘s very confusing. And you know, it‘s appalling. I‘m appalled. It gets worse and worse every day,” she told Burnett. ”I’m not sure that he is comprehending what I am trying to communicate to him.”
Trump has repeatedly attempted to dismiss questions about the Epstein files, particularly as they relate to any potential appearances he may make in them, by claiming the story is a “Democrat hoax that never ends” and one designed to distract from what he calls the successes of his presidency.
“We’re having the most successful eight months of any president ever, and that’s what I want to talk about and should be talking about. Not the Epstein hoax,” he told reporters in the Oval Office last week.
Asked on Tuesday night about a birthday letter he allegedly sent to Epstein, Trump again pushed the idea of a hoax, claiming, ”It’s not my signature and it’s not the way I speak, and anybody that’s covered me for a long time knows that’s not my language.”
Robson is not the only Epstein survivor who voted for the president and feels betrayed by his attempts to dismiss their experiences as a hoax.
Jena-Lisa Jones, who was abused by Epstein when she was just 14, spoke to MSNBC about why she and other survivors, including Robson, were taking their quest for justice to the U.S. Capitol.
“I voted for him. I voted for Trump. And for him to say what he’s saying is beyond me, because I put my hope in him and he’s supposed to protect us,” Jones told Lawrence O’Donnell.
She continued, “There is no one that is accusing him of any wrongdoing, so the fact that he’s saying it’s a hoax, who are you hiding for then? Because if it’s not you, then who is it? And that scares me, who is it.”
