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United States First Lady Melania Trump has denied any connection to disgraced financier and convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein in a rare speech delivered from the White House.<\/p>\n
During the brief address on Thursday, Melania referenced years-long speculation over her connection with Epstein, as she called for Congress to hold a hearing for Epstein survivors.<\/p>\n list of 3 items<\/span>end of list<\/span><\/section>\n She maintained that she was not a \u201cvictim\u201d of Epstein, who died in a Manhattan jail in 2019 while awaiting trial on sex trafficking charges. His death was later ruled a suicide.<\/p>\n The first lady also denied having a friendship with Epstein\u2019s girlfriend, Ghislaine Maxwell, who was convicted of child sex trafficking in 2021, after a 2002 email between the pair resurfaced.<\/p>\n \u201cTo be clear, I never had a relationship with Epstein or his accomplice, Maxwell. My email reply to Maxwell cannot be categorised as anything more than casual correspondence,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n That email, which was partially redacted, was released this year by the Department of Justice alongside millions of files related to the agency\u2019s investigation into Epstein.<\/p>\n The release was compelled by a law passed by Congress last November, amid ongoing speculation about Epstein\u2019s influential social circle, which included President Donald Trump.<\/p>\n President Trump has acknowledged a past friendship with Epstein but has denied any knowledge or involvement in criminal activity. His name appears thousands of times in the released documents.<\/p>\n During Thursday\u2019s statement, the first lady focused heavily on reports and rumours that she had met Trump on Epstein\u2019s private plane in 2000.<\/p>\n That included a Daily Beast report, which cited the transcript of an interview between a former Epstein assistant and the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), released as part of the Epstein files.<\/p>\n Melania has said she met Trump at a party in 1998, two years before she met Epstein at an event with Trump.<\/p>\n \u201cMy name has never appeared in court documents, depositions, victim statements or FBI interviews surrounding the Epstein matter,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n \u201cI have never had any knowledge of Epstein\u2019s abuse of his victims. I was never involved in any capacity. I was not a participant. Was never on Epstein\u2019s plane and never visited his private island.\u201d<\/p>\n The first lady added that she and her lawyers have \u201cfought these unfounded and baseless lies with success\u201d.<\/p>\n Democratic political strategist James Carville and publisher HarperCollins UK last year issued apologies for statements on Melania and Epstein\u2019s relationship.<\/p>\n Author Michael Wolff sued the first lady last year after he said he was threatened with legal action for his writing related to her relationship with Epstein.<\/p>\n It was not immediately clear why Melania chose Thursday to make the rare public statement.<\/p>\n While some lawmakers have repeatedly charged that the Department of Justice has not released all of the Epstein files, public attention has been largely diverted by the US-Israeli war with Iran. Still, members of Congress continue to probe Epstein\u2019s crimes.<\/p>\n Last week, Trump abruptly fired US Attorney General Pam Bondi, in what some saw as an effort to move beyond the scandal.<\/p>\n Melania did not point to any inciting incident that motivated her to speak, saying only, \u201cThe lies linking me with the disgraceful Jeffrey Epstein need to end today.\u201d<\/p>\n Finishing the address, Melania joined bipartisan lawmakers who have called for a public hearing in Congress for Epstein survivors. Both the US House of Representatives and Senate remain controlled by Trump\u2019s Republican Party.<\/p>\n To date, no one beyond Epstein and Maxwell have been charged in the US for crimes related to the sex-trafficking ring the pair led.<\/p>\n \u201cI call on Congress to provide the women who have been victimised by Epstein with a public hearing specifically centred around the survivors. Give these victims their opportunity to testify under oath in front of Congress with the power of sworn testimony,\u201d Melania said.<\/p>\n \u201cEach and every woman should have her day to tell her story in public, if she wishes, and then her testimony should be permanently entered into the Congressional Record. Then, and only then, we will have the truth.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n United States First Lady Melania Trump has denied any connection to disgraced financier and convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein in a rare speech delivered from the White House. During the brief address on Thursday, Melania referenced years-long speculation over her connection with Epstein, as she called for Congress to hold a hearing for Epstein survivors. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":18371,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-18370","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-us-canada-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18370","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=18370"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18370\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/18371"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=18370"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=18370"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=18370"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}Recommended Stories <\/h2>\n
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