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Attorney for Epstein Survivors Warns That Justice Is Impossible With Bondi as AG 

The Trump Justice Department is protecting the powerful at the expense of Epstein’s victims, says an attorney representing nine of his accusers.

Attorney General Pam Bondi testified before the House Oversight Committee on Wednesday, defending the Justice Department’s widely criticized rollout of the Epstein files against accusations that her department is shielding powerful men, including President Donald Trump, at the expense of survivors. 

Democrats, who reviewed the unredacted files for the first time this week, revealed that the names of “wealthy, powerful men” were improperly redacted, while the names of victims were left exposed. 

This week on The Intercept Briefing, co-hosts Jessica Washington and Akela Lacy gave their rundown of the politics stories they’re watching right now. Washington also spoke with Spencer Kuvin, an attorney representing nine of Epstein’s victims, about the failures of the Department of Justice to protect survivors. 

“From the beginning of this case, the government, both from a state and federal level, have been trying to bury this, cover it up, and avoid any full exposure of the extent of the operation that was involved here,” Kuvin said, “and they’re doing it … because of all the both political, wealthy, and powerful individuals who were involved with Epstein and knew what was going on with these young women.” 

Kuvin also spoke about the DOJ’s failure to redact the names of victims in the files, including two of his clients who were victimized as children. “The current Department of Justice has a focus on something different than victims and helping victims and prosecuting bad people that victimize these young girls,” he said. “Their focus instead appears to be on the important people — powerful people that are contained within these files and protecting them instead of protecting who needs the protection, the young victims in this case.”

Listen to the full conversation of The Intercept Briefing on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen. 

Jessica Washington: Welcome to The Intercept Briefing. I’m Jessica Washington, politics reporter at The Intercept.

Akela Lacy: And I’m Akela Lacy, senior politics reporter at The Intercept.

JW: We’re going to be doing something a little bit different this week and start off the show by discussing the topics that are on our mind as political reporters. Akela, what do you have your eye on this week?

AL: The midterms are here. There has been an onslaught of news this week from New York to Illinois to New Jersey — where after days of tearing my hair out, waiting for them to finalize the election results in the special election in New Jersey, 11 — it appears that the pro-Israel lobby strategy backfired and helped elect a progressive critic of Israel. So we’ve been writing about that. 

We also had done some reporting on AIPAC donors backing the Lieutenant Governor Tahesha Way in that race. And it appears that she is now potentially thinking about running against the winner Analilia Mejia in the next primary, which unfortunately is not that far away because there will be another race for the full term for this seat.

On Thursday, we published a story about a new endorsement in Illinois, where over the last week there’s been several ads, millions of dollars spent in four races, where AIPAC is making one of its biggest investments this cycle. Our story is about a candidate in the ninth district, Kat Abughazaleh, who is now running with the endorsement of Justice Democrats and a new pro-Palestine political action committee that launched on Wednesday and is endorsing several candidates in the upcoming midterms.

Kat Abughazaleh on the Right to Protest

JW: Can you tell me a little bit about AIPAC strategy and how they’re viewing the midterms?

AL: Yeah, so we’ve done a lot of reporting on this. Basically the 2024 midterms, AIPAC was extremely loud and vocal about its endorsements, its investments in these races, and there has been sort of a groundswell in criticism of AIPAC. Lots of groups popping up. I think we’ve seen a big shift in the number of people in the general public who are paying really close attention to how this lobby is operating in these midterms.

And in response to that, AIPAC has retreated to the way that it operated before it started spending directly on elections and launching the Super Pac and the regular PAC that many people are familiar with now, distancing itself from candidates, directing donors to fundraise for candidates that it hasn’t publicly endorsed. On the other hand, you have candidates who are fundraising with AIPAC or aware that they’re receiving tens of thousands of dollars from big AIPAC donors are saying that they’re not seeking the endorsement of this group that they’re not involved, that they’re happy to take support from whoever wants to support their campaigns. And so this has made reporting on this a little bit more difficult in some ways because we’re looking at donors where they overlap between these two groups.

We’re trying to read between the lines of statements that officials and the group are making about whether or not they’re involved in this race. And, in Illinois in particular, as I was interviewing Kat Abughazaleh on Wednesday evening, she said, AIPAC knows how toxic it is and that’s why it’s trying so hard to make it appear that it’s not involved in this race when it very clearly is. And that I think is an evergreen statement about how it’s operating in lots of races that are coming up. 

Jessie, I know you’re also focusing on the midterms. What do you have your eye on right now?

JW: Yeah. First I have my eye on all of your reporting because it’s been excellent.

AL: [Laughs.] Thank you.

JW: You have been writing a lot and really interestingly on AIPAC, so I’ve definitely been following your coverage. 

I think for me, ICE is really something I’m watching going into the midterms. In my conversations with campaigns candidates and their teams are bringing up ICE over and over again.

They recognize that part of what this election is going to be about is what kind of country we want to live in, and people are really rejecting the violence that they’re seeing really publicly. Obviously, ICE and the Department of Homeland Security has been acting in ways that are violent towards communities in much quieter ways for years. But this violence that people are seeing, they’re really rejecting. So I’m seeing a lot of traction with that, with campaigns.

And I think it’s also an interesting juxtaposition with everything that’s gone on with the Epstein files. This week and last week, you’re really seeing this idea of conservatives as protectors of the innocent protectors of the weak, the ways that they’ve been trying to champion themselves to voters fall apart, both with the ways in which voters can see that they’re not protecting the survivors connected to the Epstein files, and also the ways in which they’re seeing that the authoritarianism that they have justified on the backs of, “hey, we have to protect the weak and vulnerable” is fake. So that’s something I’m really watching, for campaigns to touch on.

AL: And I just think it’s important to note here that Analilia Mejia, who you know, was elected in New Jersey as we were talking about, made that a cornerstone of her campaign. And like I know her campaign was really pushing that information out to reporters, that something that was so successful was that they were doing these ICE trainings at her campaign events — she was a critic of Israel. She was a supporter of all these progressive policies. But that specifically — the ICE issue — was what was resonating with voters in this district that was represented by a Republican before Mikie Sherrill was elected in 2019. So in terms of this everlasting quest to unite people across the ideological spectrum, it seems like that is being really effective.

JW: Yeah, it’s definitely a message that we’re seeing campaigns latch onto and we’re seeing the public latch onto. And what you just said about the trainings, I’ve found to be so interesting, just the ways in which people have — despite being really afraid; I think it’s rational to be afraid when we’re seeing the kinds of violence publicly on video — but instead of just staying inside of their house, we’re seeing people really resonate with this moment, go out, do these trainings, get into the streets, and that energy is something a lot of campaigns are trying to harness.

Now, whether or not they turn on that same energy, the ways in which we saw the George Floyd energy, which had been harnessed by Democrats and they really lost that momentum. It’ll be curious to see if Democrats can hold onto the momentum from activists on the streets who are angry about ICE or whether we’re going to see that exact same kind of turn we saw on organizers and activists who are connected to the George Floyd protests.

AL: Also this week I’m sure people were paying attention to the electric Pam Bondi hearing and the Epstein files. Jessie, you spoke to Spencer Kuvin, an attorney representing nine of Epstein’s survivors.

JW: Yeah, I did. It was a really great conversation. Spencer drove home the ways in which the Trump justice apartment has been protecting the powerful at the expense of the victims in this case.

AL: Let’s hear that conversation.

JW: Spencer, welcome to The Intercept Briefing.

Spencer Kuvin: Thank you so........

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