What to Know
Press secretary Karoline Leavitt really just says whatever she wants when she is questioned by the press. At least, sometimes, it seems that way to her critics. When she was asked about the White House’s thoughts on the release of more files about Jeffrey Epstein, Donald Trump’s right-hand woman said, “We’re moving on from that.”
The Department of Justice had a similar sentiment about not only the Epstein files, but also about what the survivors of abuse at the hands of Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell have to say. One of the survivors, Elizabeth Stein, spoke to reporters after a meeting with the DOJ and responded to the stance of “moving on” from the files, something she and other survivors don’t have the luxury of doing.
Epstein Survivor: We keep hearing Karoline Leavitt and the DOJ saying they are 'moving on from this.' I wish that we could pic.twitter.com/OoEbKO4L2D
— Headquarters (@HQNewsNow) February 11, 2026
One of Jeffrey Epstein’s survivors said she can’t just “move on.”
Stein spoke to reporters before Attorney General Pam Bondi’s February 2026 testimony at a House Judiciary Committee hearing. She stood with men and women behind her. Among them were more survivors. But Stein addressed what the DOJ and what Leavitt had said about moving past the files and the allegations of years of abuse from Epstein.
“We keep hearing our press secretary and our Department of Justice saying they’re moving on from this,” Stein told reporters. “I wish that we could. I met Epstein [and] Maxwell when I was 21 years old. I’m nearly 53 now. We cannot move on as survivors of this crime, and as citizens of this nation, without changing this narrative. So I ask you all to stand behind us and demand accountability for our government, because we certainly are going to.”
What’s Leavitt’s official stance on Epstein’s survivors’ continued efforts to expose more details about the files and get the justice they deserve? In November 2025, Leavitt said during a press briefing at the White House that the released Epstein emails “prove absolutely nothing other than the fact that President Donald Trump did nothing wrong.” She also said that Trump kicked Epstein out of Mar-a-Lago because he was a “pedophile.”
But now, Leavitt is intent on moving past any talk of the Epstein files.
When the clip of Stein speaking to reporters about Leavitt and the DOJ was posted on X (formerly Twitter), others commented on the post to share theory support.
“‘I wish that we could’ is the most devastating sentence in this entire story,” one user wrote. “Survivors don’t get to ‘move on.’ The government telling them to while simultaneously protecting the people who hurt them is a second betrayal from the same system that failed them the first time.”
Someone else added, “Karoline Leavitt is nothing but Trump’s megaphone. Moving on without restitution for those victims who were Epstein’s criminal past time is nothing but a cover-up for him and those involved in these horrendous crimes. She should either resign or be impeached.”
