House Democrats: 'Melania to come and testify on Epstein'

Democrats on the House Oversight Committee will ask Melania Trump to testify in the case of paedophile financier Jeffrey Epstein. This is the first effect of the unexpected public outing with which the first lady attempted, on Thursday 9 April, to distance herself from the murky affair linked to Epstein, who was Donald Trump's friend for years before falling from grace and dying in prison on pending charges of trafficking and abusing underage girls.

"If the first lady wants to clear her name, she should appear before the Commission and testify under oath," said MP Suhas Subramanyam. Ro Khanna, the initiator of the bipartisan initiative for the release of the documents, also called on the President's wife to testify before the Commission: 'She should ask her husband to release the files that are still missing and Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche to launch new investigations.

Melania Trump, from the White House, did not, however, limit herself to denying any involvement and debunking 'the lies linking me to the disgraceful Jeffrey Epstein', she also called on Congress 'to summon Epstein's victims to hear their voices in public hearings, provoking an outraged reaction from the victims themselves and their families. "Melania Trump protects those in power and shifts the burden of responsibility onto the victims," she said in a some of Epstein's victims. "We have already shown extraordinary courage by coming forward and filing complaints . To ask more of us now,' they added, 'is to shift the responsibility'. And again: 'The survivors have done their part. Now it is time for those in power to do theirs'.

Melania Trump's unsolicited declaration of innocence went even further than the evidence from official documents and e-mails, which prove the existence of a link and acquaintanceship between the first lady herself, Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell, companion and accomplice of the paedophile financier, now in prison after a 20-year sentence for child grooming. "These were casual encounters and merely casual correspondence," the first lady said.

Melania's move caught the White House staff unprepared, which had already come under fire for its chaotic handling of the case, as evidenced by the sacking of Justice Secretary Pam Bondi. Donald Trump himself has said that he was not informed about his wife's initiative: the first lady's testimony or those of the women who survived Epstein's abuse are destined, however it goes, to create new embarrassment and further problems for the president and his circle who have always tried to neutralise the scandal.