(Reuters) -U.S. President Donald Trump, Democrats and Republicans made heated remarks on Tuesday as the House of Representatives voted in favor of forcing the Department of Justice to release records related to late convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein. Here are some quotes from the day:
US PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP
“I have nothing to do with Jeffrey Epstein. I threw him out of my club many years ago because I thought he was a sick pervert.”
JENA-LISA JONES, who said Epstein sexually abused her when she was 14
“Please stop making this political. It is not about you, President Trump. I voted for you, but your behavior on this issue has been a national embarrassment.”
REPRESENTATIVE THOMAS MASSIE, a Republican from Kentucky
“The DOJ is protecting pedophiles and sex traffickers. The time for that to stop is now … How will we know if this bill has been successful? We will know when there are men, rich men, in handcuffs, being perp-walked to the jail. And until then, this is still a cover-up.”
REPRESENTATIVE MARJORIE TAYLOR GREENE, a Republican from Georgia
“This was a fight that we should have never had to wage. It should have been the easiest thing for every single member of Congress, it should have been the easiest thing for the Speaker of the House, it should have been the easiest thing for the President of the United States to release all the information, every single file, on behalf of these American women.”
WENDY DAVIS, one of Epstein’s accusers
“None of us here signed up for this political warfare. We never asked to be dragged into battles between people who never protected us in the first place. We are exhausted from surviving the trauma and then surviving the politics that swirl around it.”
“When survivors travel to speak, to advocate, to stand for the truth, we do it with our own money from our own pockets, carrying our own fear, shaking in our own bodies. There is no team. There is no paycheck. It’s just us hoping our voices make a difference. And it puts a pit right in your stomach because you know you’re standing on the right side of history, but standing on the right side of history is not a comfortable place to be. It never has been.”
REPRESENTATIVE RO KHANNA, a Democrat from California
“These rich, greedy men abused American values. They abused what’s sacred about this country … and it is time that they’re going to have a reckoning. The Epstein class is going to go, and the reason they’re going to go is because the progressive Left and the MAGA right, and everyone in between, is finally waking up against this rotten system.”
HALEY ROBSON, one of Epstein’s accusers, while holding up a childhood portrait of herself outside the Capitol
“I want everybody to take a look. I know everybody sees us today as grown adults, but we are fighting for the children that were abandoned and left behind in the reckoning. This is who you’re fighting for. This is who Congress is fighting for. This is who the House of Representatives are fighting for, and hopefully the Senate will fight for us, too.”
(Compiled by Jonathan Allen, Nolan McCaskill and David Morgan; Editing by Lisa Shumaker)
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