President Trump told reporters Thursday he would support Congress holding public hearings with survivors of Jeffrey Epstein, a move that aligns him with First Lady Melania Trump's push to put victims' testimony on the congressional record.
"I'm OK with it," Trump said before departing the White House en route to Las Vegas, where he planned to attend a roundtable promoting his "no tax on tips" policy. He added a pointed observation about the survivors themselves, as The Hill reported.
The president's remarks came after the Justice Department released millions of files related to Epstein and after Democrats on the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee pushed for both Trump and the first lady to testify under oath as part of the panel's probe into Epstein's crimes. Neither Trump nor Melania Trump has been accused of any criminal wrongdoing.
Trump did not simply agree to hearings and move on. He raised a question that few in the press had bothered to ask, why some of the survivors themselves appeared reluctant to testify under oath. Trump told reporters:
"I think we've had a lot of public hearings. I'm OK with it, but I understand that the women didn't want to go under oath. That's what I heard that the women, the victims or whatever, they refused to go under oath, which was a little surprising."
That detail deserves more attention than it has received. If Congress is going to hold public hearings on a matter this serious, testimony under oath is the bare minimum the public should expect. Sworn testimony carries legal consequences for dishonesty. Anything less is a press conference with better staging.
The president also explained the personal dimension behind the first lady's involvement. Trump said:
"Melania felt strongly about it because she was accused of, that I met her through Epstein, but it turned out to be totally false."
The Trumps' names appeared multiple times in the released Justice Department files, a fact that Democrats seized on to demand their testimony. But appearing in documents connected to a convicted sex offender is not the same as being implicated in his crimes, a distinction that much of the coverage has been content to blur.
The first lady's involvement is the most striking part of this story. Melania Trump urged Congress last week to provide victims with a public hearing "specifically centered around the survivors" and the option to have their testimony entered into the congressional record. During rare remarks at the White House, she denied any relationship to Epstein or his associate Ghislaine Maxwell, calling such claims "lies."
She closed with a line that cut through the political noise. "Then, and only then, will we have the truth," Melania Trump said. That framing, survivors first, political theater second, is exactly right. The Epstein case has festered for years in part because powerful institutions treated it as a political weapon rather than a law enforcement priority. Centering the survivors' accounts under oath would be a welcome departure from that pattern.
It is worth noting that Trump previously told MSNBC NOW he did not "know anything about" the first lady's statement, a claim that drew skepticism from Stephanie Grisham, the former press secretary and Melania Trump's former chief of staff. Grisham said during an interview on CNN's "The Lead":
"And I'm going to say I called BS on our president saying he knew nothing about it because at the very least, I imagine she would have given him a heads-up if she had sent an advisory out yesterday."
Grisham has been a persistent critic of the Trump White House since her departure, and her speculation about what the first lady "would have" done is just that, speculation. But the sequence of events does raise a fair question about how coordinated the Trumps' messaging was on this front. That question, like many others in the Epstein saga, remains open.
The president is not alone in supporting public proceedings. House Oversight Committee Chairman James Comer, the Kentucky Republican leading the panel's Epstein probe, committed to holding hearings with victims once ongoing depositions concluded. He appeared on Fox News last Friday and stated plainly:
"I've always planned on having hearings with the victims."
Comer noted that some survivors were willing to participate, though most were not. That reluctance is understandable given the trauma involved, but it also complicates the political push for a grand public reckoning. Hearings without willing witnesses are hearings without substance. Comer's approach, finish the depositions, then move to public testimony, reflects a more methodical path than the one Democrats have demanded.
The broader dynamics within the Republican conference have been volatile on several fronts, making the bipartisan appetite for Epstein accountability all the more notable.
Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche offered his own endorsement at the Semafor World Economy summit on Wednesday. Asked whether he would support public congressional hearings, Blanche answered "of course" and went further, as Just The News reported:
"We have said repeatedly from day one that if there's any victim that wants to come forward and talk about what they know, whether it's something that happened by Mr. Epstein, who's dead, or another individual or individuals, that's what the FBI does."
Blanche's framing is significant. He did not limit the scope to Epstein alone. "Another individual or individuals" is an open door, one that should make anyone who enabled or participated in Epstein's crimes deeply uncomfortable, regardless of party affiliation.
Democrats on the Oversight Committee have pushed for Trump and Melania Trump to testify under oath. That demand has a political logic that is impossible to miss. With the Trumps' names appearing in the released files, Democrats see an opportunity to drag the president into a spectacle built around guilt by association.
But the push for presidential testimony also carries a risk Democrats seem eager to ignore. If the standard is that anyone named in Epstein's files should testify publicly and under oath, the witness list would extend far beyond the current White House. Epstein cultivated relationships across the political spectrum for decades. A genuinely thorough accounting would put uncomfortable questions to figures on both sides of the aisle.
That is precisely why Melania Trump's framing matters. She called for hearings centered on the survivors, not on partisan point-scoring. The victims of Jeffrey Epstein deserve a forum where their experiences are the focus, not a backdrop for the next cable news cycle. House Republicans already face internal pressures heading into primary season, and the last thing the party needs is to let Democrats turn an Epstein hearing into a campaign ad.
For all the statements of support, no formal hearing date has been announced. Comer referenced ongoing depositions that need to conclude first, but the timeline for those proceedings remains unclear. Which survivors have agreed to participate publicly, and which have not, is also unresolved.
The Justice Department's release of millions of files is itself a significant development, but the sheer volume raises its own concerns. Millions of pages can bury the truth as effectively as a cover-up if no one is tasked with distilling them into a coherent public record. Congressional hearings, done right, could serve that function.
There is also the question of what "public" truly means in this context. Will survivors be offered protections, closed-session options for sensitive testimony, for instance, while still ensuring the core findings reach the congressional record? Comer and the committee have not spelled that out. The details matter, and they matter most to the people who suffered at Epstein's hands.
Even allies of the president have shown a willingness to press for course corrections when they believe the moment demands it, as Speaker Johnson demonstrated recently on a separate matter. The Epstein question is orders of magnitude more consequential.
The Epstein case has been a stain on American institutions for years, a story of a convicted sex offender who operated in plain sight among the powerful, shielded by wealth, connections, and a justice system that failed his victims at nearly every turn. His death in federal custody in 2019 only deepened public suspicion that the full truth would never emerge.
Trump's willingness to support public hearings is the right call. So is Melania Trump's insistence that those hearings center on survivors. So is Blanche's open-door invitation for any victim to come forward to the FBI. And so is Comer's commitment to bring victims before his committee once the groundwork is complete.
The test now is whether Congress follows through, or whether the same institutional dysfunction that has plagued the House on other matters swallows this one too.
The survivors of Jeffrey Epstein have waited long enough. They deserve sworn testimony, a public record, and a Congress that treats their suffering as something more than a talking point. Anything less is just another broken promise from a city that specializes in them.