A Jeffrey Epstein survivor who once supported Donald Trump is now pleading with him to stop dismissing victims like her. Jena-Lisa Jones, who was just 14 when Epstein abused her, spoke on MSNBC’s The Last Word Wednesday night after a day on Capitol Hill with other survivors. They had gathered to demand the full release of Epstein’s files.
Jones told host Lawrence O’Donnell that standing outside the Capitol and speaking out was “intense” and felt like “putting my life on the line.” She grew emotional when O’Donnell assured her the public believes survivors, noting that Trump does not.
Earlier in the day, during a meeting with Polish President Karol Nowrocki, Trump brushed off the Epstein files push as “a Democrat hoax that never ends.” His dismissal came just after a planned flyover interrupted survivors as they described their abuse.
Jones was stunned. “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,” she said.
She continued, “For him to say that this is a joke and that it’s sides, this is not sides. We will say it time and time again, none of us are up there accusing him of anything. 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.”
Jones also declared, “the government has been protecting Jeffrey Epstein from the beginning.” Asked what she would say directly to Trump, knowing he sometimes watches the show, Jones brought up his daughters. “You have daughters. You know what it is like to raise children and to be a parent. Outside of all this hoopla that you’re the president or you’re Donald J. Trump and you have your Trump stuff, you know what it is to be a parent. You know that. Could you imagine if that was your daughter that was trafficked to people? Could you imagine your 14-year-old daughter having to go through what we had to go through?”
She added that hearing him call it a hoax was crushing. “And then you sit here and say what you said. You should be supporting us, you should be backing us. We spoke our truth and you are telling us pretty much that we’re lying. I put my hope in you when I voted for you and you can’t even back us when we need you the most? We need to heal, we’re not healing.”
Trump later told reporters, “Nobody’s ever satisfied. But it’s really a Democrat hoax, because 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.”
The comments came one day after the Republican-led House Oversight Committee released more than 30,000 documents tied to Epstein. Most of those documents were already public, leading Democrats to accuse Republicans of covering up key information.
“There is no hoax,” survivor Haley Robson said during the Capitol Hill event. “The abuse was real.” Robson, who identified herself as a Republican, was joined by other survivors including Chauntae Davies, who recalled that Epstein bragged about knowing Trump and even kept a framed photo of the two of them on his desk.