Lesley Groff told the House Oversight Committee that she worked for Jeffrey Epstein from February 2001 until July 2019 as his secretary/administrative assistant, handling scheduling, calls, travel coordination, calendars, and staff logistics. Her central position was that Epstein kept her separated from his criminal life, that she never witnessed abuse, never had a victim disclose abuse to her, and did not knowingly help Epstein or Maxwell commit crimes. She described Epstein as a “master manipulator” who lied to her and kept his “legitimate” world apart from his abuse, while acknowledging that she scheduled massage appointments when Epstein provided names and numbers, sometimes circulated calendars that included those appointments early on, and understood the massages as routine at the time. She said she did not personally meet the massage providers, did not know they were minors or young women, and assumed they were masseuses, even though members pressed her on why an extremely wealthy man would use rotating names and phone numbers instead of a professional massage service.

The questioning also focused heavily on Epstein’s network and whether Groff had knowledge of powerful men being provided access to girls or young women through Epstein or Maxwell. Groff repeatedly answered no when asked whether she had arranged massages for prominent figures, knew of sexual activity involving minors or young women, or knew of anyone who knowingly facilitated Epstein’s crimes. She acknowledged scheduling or connecting Epstein with high-profile contacts, including Prince Andrew, Ehud Barak, Larry Summers, George Mitchell, John Kerry, Wesley Clark, Bill Clinton-related circles, and Donald Trump phone calls, but denied arranging Trump travel during her employment and denied knowledge of Trump-related law enforcement communications. She also said she never suspected Epstein or Maxwell of working with any intelligence service. Overall, Groff’s testimony was defensive and narrow: she admitted to being part of the machinery that kept Epstein’s calendar and contacts moving, but insisted she never saw the criminal operation underneath it and never knowingly enabled it.



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The Miami Herald reports that Jeffrey Epstein’s obscure U.S. Virgin Islands offshore bank, Southern Country International, suddenly became active in 2019 after years of dormancy, moving tens of millions of dollars shortly before and after his arrest and death. The bank reportedly had no employees, held under $500,000 for years, and then processed more than $20 million between April and early July 2019. After Epstein died in federal custody on August 10, 2019, another $25 million moved through the bank, including funds from unknown sources. Investigators later examined a $15 million transfer from Epstein’s Deutsche Bank account to Southern Country the day after his death, but the FBI closed the wire-fraud probe four years later without publicly explaining why.

The story also lays out how Epstein obtained the offshore banking license in the first place, despite being a registered sex offender, and how Virgin Islands officials gave the bank unusual treatment, including waiving a requirement that it employ at least three people. The Herald notes that the bank may have been used in ways that violated territorial rules, because Southern Country was supposed to do business only with non-Virgin Islands people or companies, yet large transfers involved Epstein’s Southern Trust Company, which was based in the territory. Compliance officers at traditional banks later flagged suspicious activity, with TD Bank reportedly saying some account funding appeared designed to disguise Epstein as the source of the money. The result is another unanswered Epstein money trail: a bank created in a friendly offshore jurisdiction, largely dormant for years, suddenly moving huge sums around the exact moment the walls were closing in.



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Questions surround Epstein’s USVI offshore bank activity | Miami Herald



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The DOJ, under Todd Blanche and Donald Trump, is once again accused of treating an Epstein-related court order as optional, this time in connection with Judge Emmet Sullivan’s order in Katie Phang’s lawsuit seeking Epstein-related documents from the government. Sullivan made clear that DOJ needed to produce less-redacted material or justify the continued withholding, but instead of straightforward compliance, the department has leaned into delay, resistance, and procedural maneuvering. The central criticism is that this is not an isolated paperwork dispute, but another example of the DOJ’s long-running pattern in the Epstein matter: hiding behind redactions, process, victim-protection language, and vague claims of sensitivity while refusing to provide the public with the full accounting Congress, the courts, survivors, and citizens have demanded.

The broader point is that the Epstein case has become a test of whether powerful institutions are actually bound by the law they enforce on everyone else. If a regular citizen ignored a court order, consequences would come quickly, but when DOJ slow-walks or resists disclosure, it is treated as a legal disagreement rather than defiance. The essay argues that Judge Sullivan, Congress, the courts, and the OIG must stop accepting excuses and start imposing real consequences, whether through contempt, sanctions, sworn explanations, redaction logs, subpoenas, or independent review. Until someone with authority finally steps up and forces compliance, the DOJ will continue to manage the Epstein narrative, protect institutional reputations, and deny survivors and the public the transparency they were promised.


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The DOJ, under Todd Blanche and Donald Trump, is once again accused of treating an Epstein-related court order as optional, this time in connection with Judge Emmet Sullivan’s order in Katie Phang’s lawsuit seeking Epstein-related documents from the government. Sullivan made clear that DOJ needed to produce less-redacted material or justify the continued withholding, but instead of straightforward compliance, the department has leaned into delay, resistance, and procedural maneuvering. The central criticism is that this is not an isolated paperwork dispute, but another example of the DOJ’s long-running pattern in the Epstein matter: hiding behind redactions, process, victim-protection language, and vague claims of sensitivity while refusing to provide the public with the full accounting Congress, the courts, survivors, and citizens have demanded.

The broader point is that the Epstein case has become a test of whether powerful institutions are actually bound by the law they enforce on everyone else. If a regular citizen ignored a court order, consequences would come quickly, but when DOJ slow-walks or resists disclosure, it is treated as a legal disagreement rather than defiance. The essay argues that Judge Sullivan, Congress, the courts, and the OIG must stop accepting excuses and start imposing real consequences, whether through contempt, sanctions, sworn explanations, redaction logs, subpoenas, or independent review. Until someone with authority finally steps up and forces compliance, the DOJ will continue to manage the Epstein narrative, protect institutional reputations, and deny survivors and the public the transparency they were promised.


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Epstein survivors and their attorneys have alleged that Jeffrey Epstein did not operate in the U.S. Virgin Islands as a lone predator hiding from the system, but as a wealthy, connected trafficker whose presence was tolerated, facilitated, and protected by people with power. In litigation and public filings, survivors have described Little St. James and Great St. James as isolated sites where young women and girls were abused, trafficked, controlled, and cut off from ordinary avenues of escape or help. The core allegation is that USVI officials, agencies, and politically connected figures either looked the other way, accepted Epstein’s money and influence, or helped create the conditions that allowed him to keep operating for years. The USVI’s own 2020 enforcement action against Epstein’s estate accused his network of using the islands to conceal trafficking activity and avoid detection, while later survivor criticism pushed the point further: that this was not merely institutional failure, but a pattern of access, favors, silence, and protection.

The allegations have centered on the idea that Epstein embedded himself into the territory through money, jobs, political access, permits, business entities, tax advantages, and relationships with influential locals, making him more than just a rich landowner with a private island. Survivors have argued that the USVI environment gave Epstein unusual freedom: private islands, staff, boats, aircraft, local business structures, and officials who allegedly failed to meaningfully challenge what was happening in plain sight. While not every official has been accused of a crime, and many allegations remain contested, the outrage is that Epstein’s operation appears to have flourished in a place where too many people had reason to ask questions and too few people did. That is why survivors and critics frame the USVI piece of the Epstein story as more than geography; they see it as a case study in how elite money can bend a small jurisdiction around itself until abuse becomes protected by bureaucracy, influence, and silence.






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Prince Andrew has said he met Jeffrey Epstein in 1999 through Ghislaine Maxwell, whom Andrew had known for years; other reporting has suggested questions about whether the relationship may have started earlier, but the basic public version is that Maxwell acted as the bridge between the royal world and Epstein’s world. From there, Epstein was not kept at arm’s length. He was brought into royal spaces, appeared around Andrew at elite gatherings, and became close enough that Andrew stayed at Epstein’s Manhattan townhouse even after Epstein’s Florida conviction. Virginia Giuffre later alleged that Epstein and Maxwell trafficked her to Andrew when she was 17; Andrew has denied the allegations, said he did not recall meeting her, and settled Giuffre’s U.S. civil lawsuit in 2022 without admitting liability. The larger point is that Andrew was not some distant name in Epstein’s orbit. He was one of the most visible examples of how Epstein used proximity to royalty, money, and status to launder himself socially.

As for the UK courts and institutions, the criticism is that Andrew benefited for years from layers of delay, privacy, deference, and institutional reluctance that ordinary people would never receive. The High Court was involved in the service process for Giuffre’s U.S. lawsuit, while Andrew’s lawyers fought over service issues and later tried to use sealed settlement language from Giuffre’s 2009 agreement with Epstein to shut the case down. Beyond the courts, UK police repeatedly declined to pursue Andrew over Giuffre-related allegations, while government and royal records tied to his trade envoy role were withheld for years before Parliament forced more disclosure in 2026. Those later disclosures intensified the perception that the British establishment had protected him—not always through one obvious court order, but through a fog of sealed papers, delayed accountability, official silence, and the old royal reflex of keeping embarrassing truths buried until outside pressure makes that impossible.



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After Jeffrey Epstein’s first reported suicide attempt at MCC New York in July 2019, one of the most important pieces of evidence should have been surveillance footage from outside the cell area where he was being held with former police officer Nicholas Tartaglione. That video mattered because Epstein reportedly told lawyers that Tartaglione had attacked him, while other accounts suggested Epstein may have harmed himself or staged something to get moved. Either way, the camera footage should have helped clarify what happened during one of the most consequential moments before Epstein’s death. Instead, when Tartaglione’s defense team sought the footage, prosecutors first indicated it had been preserved, only to later admit that the wrong video had been saved and that the relevant footage was gone. The explanation was that MCC staff had mistakenly preserved footage from the wrong tier, while the actual footage from outside Epstein’s cell had been overwritten by the jail’s surveillance system.

That explanation has never satisfied critics because it lands in the middle of a case already defined by impossible coincidences, bureaucratic failures, and missing accountability. The public was asked to believe that, in one of the most scrutinized federal detainee situations in modern history, the Bureau of Prisons failed to preserve basic surveillance footage from the first major warning sign before Epstein died. Even worse, the loss of that footage did not produce a clear, public accounting that answered the obvious questions: who was responsible for preserving it, who checked whether the correct footage had been saved, why the mistake was not discovered sooner, and why no one appeared to face meaningful consequences for losing evidence tied to Epstein’s safety. The result is a vacuum where suspicion thrives, because the official explanation may describe a clerical or technical failure, but it does not rationally explain how the federal government mishandled evidence this important in a case this explosive.


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The recent Epstein files dump has finally produced documentary confirmation of what Maria Farmer has said for decades: in 1996, she formally warned the Federal Bureau of Investigation about Jeffrey Epstein, and those warnings were effectively ignored. For years, the FBI refused to confirm or deny Farmer’s account, while she was publicly portrayed as unreliable or exaggerating. The newly released records show that federal authorities were aware of Epstein’s conduct far earlier than they ever admitted. This reframes the Epstein story away from bureaucratic incompetence and toward deliberate institutional inaction. The documents establish that Farmer was not speculating or theorizing—she was reporting crimes in real time. Instead of being treated as a key witness, she was sidelined. The result was years of unchecked abuse that could have been interrupted. The files now make clear that the FBI knew exactly who Epstein was long before his eventual prosecution.

The unanswered question is why those warnings were ignored, and the files intensify—not resolve—that mystery. One plausible explanation, long suggested by Farmer and others, is that Epstein’s status as a potential or actual confidential informant made him untouchable. That possibility would explain the extraordinary resistance to releasing Farmer’s records and the institutional hostility she encountered.    One thing is for certain and is now backed by documentation: she told the truth as she understood it, and the authorities failed to act. The FBI’s silence and obstruction allowed Epstein to continue operating with impunity. History has now caught up to Farmer’s account. What remains is a moral reckoning for the institutions that ignored her—and an overdue acknowledgment that she was right from the beginning.



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Justice Department records reveal that UBS facilitated a series of financial transactions that enabled Ghislaine Maxwell to purchase a secluded New Hampshire property where she later hid before her arrest in 2020. Even after receiving a grand jury subpoena tied to a federal sex trafficking investigation, the bank processed a transfer of nearly $8 million from a trust connected to Maxwell. That money was then routed through multiple accounts before being used to acquire the estate known as “Tucked Away.” The timing of these transactions—occurring while Maxwell was under increasing scrutiny—raises serious concerns about how closely the bank monitored or responded to obvious risk factors.

The broader financial trail shows that UBS had managed significant assets for Maxwell over an extended period, continuing to facilitate transactions even after Epstein’s arrest and as investigations intensified. The property purchase was later flagged by authorities as potentially involving proceeds linked to trafficking activity, underscoring the scale and complexity of the financial network surrounding Epstein and Maxwell. Altogether, the situation highlights how major institutions continued servicing high-risk clients despite mounting red flags, allowing critical financial movements to proceed unchecked during a pivotal moment in the investigation.





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source:

Exclusive: How UBS helped Epstein accomplice Maxwell buy her hideout, 'Tucked Away' | Reuters






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The committee chaired by James Comer was presented as a serious effort to expose the truth behind the Epstein scandal, but in practice it operated more like a containment mechanism than a genuine investigation. Instead of aggressively pursuing the deeper financial, institutional, and international networks surrounding Jeffrey Epstein, the committee stayed confined to surface-level material that had already been widely reported. Its pacing was slow to the point of being strategic, releasing limited information in controlled bursts that drained public momentum rather than building pressure. Key lines of inquiry were avoided altogether, particularly those that could implicate powerful institutions or expand the scope beyond a manageable narrative. This was not oversight in any meaningful sense—it was narrative management disguised as accountability, designed to give the illusion of action while ensuring nothing truly destabilizing came to light.

The shift from promises of “full transparency” to a quiet push toward “moving on” was not accidental—it was enabled by the committee’s own conduct. By dragging out the process, narrowing its focus, and controlling what was released, Comer and his colleagues created the conditions for public fatigue, making it easier to justify closing the book before the real questions were answered. The fact that a discharge petition was required to force additional material into the open exposes just how resistant the committee was to genuine transparency. Without that external pressure, the public likely would have been left with a sanitized, incomplete version of events presented as the final word. Far from uncovering the truth, Comer’s committee functioned as a gatekeeper, protecting the boundaries of the narrative and ensuring the most consequential aspects of the Epstein network remained out of reach.



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