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Epstein Survivors Say That Lesley Groff Wasn't Honest With Congress (7/10/26) · The Vault: The Epstein Files

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Speaker 1: What's up, everyone, and welcome to another episode of the
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Epstein Chronicles. CNN has a peace out and it's talking
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about how the survivors are calling out Leslie Groff over
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her testimony that she gave to Congress. And guess what.
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The survivors are right to call her out because Leslie Groff,
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in my opinion, like just about everybody else who has
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given testimony, lied And if you could believe it, she
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walked into Congress with the burden of history on her
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shoulders and somehow tried to place that burden back on
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to everyone else. She wasn't some stranger brushing against the
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outer rim of Jeffrey Epstein's world. She was his longtime
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executive assistant, the person tied to calendars, calls, travel appointments, logistics, routines, names, movements,
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and the machinery that kept Epstein's world humming. Now that
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doesn't make her automatically guilty of every evil Epstein committed,
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but absolutely makes her responsible for answering hard questions with
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something better than fog, self pity and selective amnesia. The
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survivors are right to be furious because their lived experience
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Colyde's head first with a version of events Groff tried
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to sell. She asked the public to believe that she
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spent nearly two decades inside the central nervous system of
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Epstein's life, will somehow never absorbing the meaning of signals
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flashing all around her. She wanted to be seen as deceived, used, isolated,
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and manipulated. But she offered that story while still minimizing
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the logistical role that she played. And I think that's
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the insult. And I think that's why Congress let her
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escape through that room without a full public accounting. Is
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just another disgrace in a case already drowning in them.
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I mean, the committee itself said her June ninth, twenty
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twenty sixth interview was part of its review into Epstein
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Maxwell sex trafficking operations, influence networks and government and failures.
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Groff's opening posture was obvious from the first breath. Shrink herself,
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soften herself, humanize herself, and turn the temperature down before
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the facts could turn it back up. She told Congress
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she was shy, frightened, sleepless, harassed, and damaged by the fallout.
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And YO, maybe some of that is true, and no
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decent person should cheer, harassment, or threats against anyone. But
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none of that answers the central question. None of that
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explains how a woman tasked with organizing Epstein's life managed
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to miss that pattern survivor say was sitting in plain sight.
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None of that squares with the record of calls, appointments, massages, travel, housing,
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and access. Groff did what people in these situations so
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often do. She built the wall of personal suffering in
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front of institutional responsibility. She didn't walk in and say,
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here is what I did, here is what I missed,
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here is where I failed, Here's where the system protected him.
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She walked in and told Congress, in effect, that Epstein
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was Doctor Jekyl, that mister Hyde was hidden from her,
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and that she was just another person fooled by the monster.
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That might be emotionally convenient, but it's not morally sufficient.
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In her statement, she denied knowing about Epstein's crimes, described
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them as a master manipulator, and said she would never
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have stayed silent had she known. The problem with Groff's
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story is not simply that survivors rejected the problem is
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that the contemporaneous record makes it impossible to treat her
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version as clean, complete, or adequate. She admitted that she
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scheduled massages for Epstein almost daily. That alone should have
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triggered the kind of questioning that tears through polite phrasing
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and gets to the ugly heart of the matter and
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Epstein's world, massage was not just a luxury appointment. It
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was the recurring cover term survivors have described for abuse, recruitment, exploitation,
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and access. When UF presents massage scheduling as a mundane
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administrative duty, she's not merely describing a calendar entry. She's
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sanitizing the mechanism. She's taking the word that sits at
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the center of Epstein's abuse pipeline and dressing it up
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as a spa routine. And that's why survivors recoil. That's
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why the public should recoil. Grop's own transcript records her
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saying that almost daily she made massage appointments, and that
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those calls could be as brief as asking whether someone
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was available at a certain time. Yo, there is a
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grotesque neatness to the defense that she was just scheduling.
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Bureaucracies are built on that line. Nobody's ever responsible for
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the whole machine because everyone claims they only touched one lever.
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One person scheduled the appointment, another opened the door, another
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drove the car, another book the room, another wired the money,
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another filed the form, another looked away, And by the
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time the victims standing in the wreckage, every adult in
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the chain insists they were too small to matter. But
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logistics are not neutral when logistics repeatedly serve abuse. A
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calendar can be a weapon. A phone call can be
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a weapon. A hotel reservation can be a weapon. Now,
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Groff's defenders can say she was not in the massage room,
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and that may be true, But the Epstein case has
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never been only about who was in the room. It's
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about who built the path to the room, who maintained
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the path, who normalized the path, who kept the names flowing,
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who kept the flights moving, who kept the apartments available,
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and who helped make the abnormal feel routine. Epstein didn't
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operate by magic. He operated through systems. He operated through staff,
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He operated through professionalized convenience. He operated through people who
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made the sorted look scheduled. That's why the eye never
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saw anything. Defense is so inadequate. A person can avoid
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seeing the final act while still helping assemble the stage.
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A person can claim ignorance of the crime while still
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making the crime easier to commit. A person can be
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legally insulated and morally exposed at the same time. Groff's
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testimony leaned heavily on the idea that Epstein kept her
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outside of his secret life, but that phrase collapses under
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the weight of what her job actually was. She wasn't
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outside the calendar. She wasn't outside the calls. She wasn't
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outside the travel arrangements. She wasn't outside the massage scheduling.
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She wasn't outside the contact list. She was not outside
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the daily administrative bloodstream. She may not have been inside
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every room, but she was plainly inside the operation's logistics.
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Epstein didn't need every employee to know everything. He needed
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enough people to do enough tasks without asking enough questions.
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Groff's testimony, at its most charitable, describes exactly that kind
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of functional blindness. And what did Congress do with that?
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It treated the moment like another transcript to be released,
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another file to be posted, another box to be checked.
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Congress had a witness who worked for Epstein for eighteen
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years and had a direct line into his scheduling and
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communications universe. Congress had survivors publicly saying the testimony did
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not match their experience. Congress had documentary trails, email references,
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massage lists, travel questions, housing questions, and visa related questions,
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and yet the process still felt contained, managed, polite, and bloodless.
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That's not accountability. A congressional interview is not just as
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simply because a court reporter is in the room. If
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the witness leaves with her narrative largely intact and survivors
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leave feeling gas lit again, the process has failed and look.
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One of the most insulting parts is that Groff wanted
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the moral benefits of remorse without the burden of accountability.
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She said Epstein was a monster. She said she was fooled.
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She said she now believes victims. She said she would
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have acted differently had she anne. But that formulation keeps
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her safely positioned as someone acted upon, not someone who acted.
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It turns her into another casualty of Epstein's manipulation, rather
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than a participant in the environment that allowed them to continue.
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That doesn't mean she must be painted as Epstein or Maxwell.
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It means she does not get to borrow the language
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of victimhood to avoid the harder language of responsibility. Yeah,
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regret is not accountability. Sympathy for survivors is not accountability.
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Calling Epstein evil is not accountability. And I think that
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the survivor's anger is especially justified because many of them
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have spent years watching adults around Epstein reinvent themselves. After
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the fact. The same people who once treated them as powerful, glamorous, brilliant, useful, generous, connected,
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or untouchable now describe them as a master deceiver who
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fooled them all. Funny how that were works. When Epstein
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was alive and useful, he was a gateway to money, status, planes, universities, politicians, businessmen, royalty, scientists,
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and social prestige. When the walls closed in, he became
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a shadowy manipulator who somehow hid everything from everyone. That
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transformation is too convenient. It asked survivors to accept that
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the man who made their lives hell also maintained an
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invisible force field around every adult who could have intervened.
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Survivors a retired of that story because it always ends
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in the same place. The dead predator carries all the blame,
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the living enablers carry none of the consequence, and the
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record gets buried under carefully rehearsed helplessness. Now Grop's poor
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recollection theme was another glaring problem. Of course, some memories
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fade after twenty years. Nobody reasonable expects a witness to
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recall every appointment, every call, every name, every document, or
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every errand. But when the pattern of forgotten details consistently
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protects the witness from sharper accountability, skepticism is not only fairer,
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it's required. The transcript shows repeated moments where questions about lists, descriptors, travel, housing, visas,
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or specific arrangements were met with uncertainty, lack of recall,
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or narrowed explanations. That does not automatically prove intentional deception,
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but it does prove why survivors are right to demand
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more than I don't know. As a final public answer,
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memory failure cannot become the official solvent used to dissolve responsibility.
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Congress even warnder at the start that knowingly false statements
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fake memory lapses have truths or omissions necessary to make
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an answer truthful could carry criminal consequence. The visa and
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travel material is particularly disturbing because it points to the
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wider machinery around Epstein, not just the massage calendar. When
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questions turn to tickets, hotels, apart, men's visas, and foreign
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women entering the United States, Graff repeatedly framed her role
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as narrow and directive based. She was asked to buy
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a ticket, she was asked to check a hotel. She
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was asked whether something was refundable. She didn't know who paid,
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She didn't know the purpose. She had no idea whether
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the women met Epstein. She did not know whether they
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gave massages. Look, that kind of testimony might be legally cautious,
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but it's morally nauseating because the question is not whether
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she personally designed the entire pipeline. The question is how
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many pieces of the pipeline passed across her desk while
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she chose not to understand the shape of the thing
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being built. In one exchange graph, acknowledge facilitating tickets and
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hotel arrangements connected to a visa issue while saying she
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did not know the purpose of the woman's travel or
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who paid the housing question make the same point. Epstein's
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apartments were not abstract assets floating in the sky. They
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were physical spaces controlled by a predator, used by a
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network connected to a world where young women and girls
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were removed, lodged, introduced, summoned, and exploited. When Groff was
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asked about arranging housing at three oh one East sixty
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sixth Street, her answers again retreated into possibility, direction, uncertainty,
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and lack of specificity. Maybe she arranged apartments for men
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and women. Maybe a person was placed there. Maybe she
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did not know what happened after that. This is the
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language of administrative insulation. It's the language of a person
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who wants credit for being too peripheral to know and
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too busy to notice. But the survivors are not obligated
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to accept that. The public is not obligated to accept that.
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Congress should not have accepted that as the end of
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the road. And look, there is something profoundly obscene about
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the way the Epstein operation keeps producing helpers who insists
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they were also some and how helpless. Everyone was intimidated,
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everybody was manipulated, everybody was compartmentalized, everybody was just following instructions.
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Everybody was deceived by the same dead man. Everybody had
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bad memory. Everybody now supports the survivors. Everybody now wishes
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that they had known. But Epstein did not run on
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one person's evil alone. He ran on a culture of permission.
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He ran on useful blindness. He ran on the willingness
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of adults to accept obscene routines because the paycheck cleared,
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the boss was powerful, the names were impressive, and the
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consequences never arrived. That's the world growth worked in. That's
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the world she helped keeped organized. That's the world she
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now wants to describe as if it happened around her
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rather than through her desk. Croft's testimony should outrage people,
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not because it's the worst thing in the Epstein case,
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but because it's so typical of the Epstein case. It's
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another episode in the long running pageant of partial truth.
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It gives enough detail to sound cooperative, enough emotion to
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sound wounded, enough condemnation of Epstein to sound righteous, and
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enough memory failure to avoid the deepest accountability that formula
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has protected Epstein's orbit for years. It lets witnesses a
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pure forthcoming while preserving the central mystery. It lets Congress
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claim progress while survivors hear the same evasions in new packaging.
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It lets the public receive another transcript instead of a reckoning.
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And that's why Grop's testimony cannot be allowed to sit
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there as some final word. It's not the final word.
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It's a challenge to Congress to prove that the process
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has teeth and look, the ugliest truth is that survivors
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once again had to do the moral work that the
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institutions refuse to do. They had to call out the contradictions.
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They have to say the testimony did not match their experience.
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They have to remind the country that massage was not
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harmless language in Epstein's universe. They had to drag the
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conversation back from Groff's discomfort to Epstein's victims. They had
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to insist at claims of ignorance or not answers. They
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had to demand that proximity to power not be converted
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into innocence. That has been the survivor experience from the beginning.
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Tell them the truth while adults with authority manage the damage.
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Congress should be amplifying that truth, not cushioning the people
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who helped keep Epstein's world functional. The survivors are not
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being unreasonable, They're refusing to be gas lit one more time.
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Leslie Groff had a chance to do something bigger than
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protect herself. She had a chance to fully open the machinery.
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She had a chance to say what the culture was,
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how the routines worked, who called, who visited, who traveled,
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who arranged, who paid, who asked questions who did not,
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and how a criminal enterprise hid behind elite normalcy. Instead,
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she offered a tightly controlled portrait of distance from the
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very world she helped organize. And I think that's why
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the survivor's anger is justified, and that's why the process
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deserves contempt, because once again Epstein is dead, Maxwell is
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in prison, Survivors are still carrying the weight, and the
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supporting cast keeps walking into official rooms with lawyers, statements,
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memory gaps, and rehears sorrow enough, If Congress cannot turn
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that into real accountability, then it's not exposing the Epstein
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cover up. Instead, it's becoming another chapter of it. All
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of the information that goes with this episode can be
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found in the description box.