House Judiciary Committee Democrats on Monday released a 53-page report presenting what they describe as new evidence of Donald Trump's involvement in Jeffrey Epstein's sex-crime syndicate, along with allegations that the Department of Justice has worked to keep the underlying records hidden from the public. The report also formalizes the panel's call for the appointment of a special counsel. Its claims are presented by committee Democrats and have not been established by a court. The document is available on the committee Democrats' website: 2026-10.hjc-dems-staff-report-epstein-and-trump.pdf.

The report's release drew limited attention from major national outlets. Writing on Mediaite, Ana Marie Cox noted with outrage that "the New York Times and Washington Post, and all the major cable networks, have covered CheesecakeGate more thoroughly." A search of the media monitoring service Snapstream showed the three major cable news networks combined mentioned the rape allegation against Trump just twice, while the word "cheesecake" received 368 mentions in the same span (Mediaite).

What the report says

"A growing body of evidence demonstrates that Donald Trump was an active participant in Jeffrey Epstein's sexual abuse of young women during the mid-to-late 1990s," the report states. "The Department of Justice (DOJ) and Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) are doing everything they can to keep the American people in the dark about it."

Much of the evidence, the committee wrote, remains hidden behind redactions in DOJ vaults. According to the report, that evidence shows Trump lied about kicking Epstein out of his Mar-a-Lago club and "strongly suggests that Epstein introduced Trump to his wife Melania." It adds that Trump "has lied about the nature and extent of his relationship with Epstein dozens of times—incriminating behavior for someone who supposedly has nothing to hide."

The report's central conclusions rest on the accounts of 11 women. "Above all, the actual evidence we have seen," the committee wrote, "indicates that Trump abused, assaulted, and even raped numerous women alongside, and in coordination with, the most infamous sex trafficker in history."

The accounts, the report says, are united by time, place, and distinct factual similarities in how Trump and Epstein pursued, manipulated, and abused the women. With one exception, the alleged episodes took place between 1992 and 1997 in New York City and Palm Beach, at a time when Trump and Epstein were "close friends" and participated in what the report describes as a shadowy subculture organized around young female modeling.

Witnesses, the committee wrote, consistently describe modeling pageants and parties where young women and girls were forced into predatory situations and routinely taken advantage of, abused, and raped. They give similar accounts of what the report calls the competitive and sinister relationship between Epstein and Trump, and of how it was channeled into their shared pursuit of young women.

Taken together, the report concludes, the stories of these 11 women and the documentary evidence that supports and corroborates them "indisputably meets and surpasses" the FBI's standard for opening a full investigation: that "activity constituting a federal crime … may have occurred."

A new allegation from a former contestant

Julie K. Brown, the Miami Herald reporter who has reported on Epstein more extensively than anyone, said after the release that much of the material in the report comes from public records and documents made available after the passage late last year of the Epstein Files Transparency Act (Miami Herald).

What is new, Brown said, is an allegation from Beatrice Keul, a former beauty contestant from Switzerland. Keul told the committee that Jeffrey Epstein arranged a meeting between her and Trump during one of his pageants, and that Trump raped her in 1993 in New York.

The report recounts her account in detail: Later that day, Donald Trump's representative invited Keul to go upstairs at the Plaza Hotel to meet with Trump. Believing the meeting to be a lucky break for the purpose of furthering her career and education, Keul accompanied the representative upstairs. He ushered her into the suite, where, upon entering, Trump reportedly grabbed Keul from behind and forcibly raped her, tearing her dress and causing bleeding and bruising on multiple parts of her body. Keul described the rape as "brutal."

Following the assault, according to Keul's account as presented in the report, Trump sat her on the edge of the bed, repeated his promises to arrange a visa and admission to New York University, and made her promise she would keep quiet, saying, "[T]he show must go on."

Five direct accusations

Keul is one of five women who directly accuse the president of "raping or sexually assaulting them in Epstein's company or direct physical presence," according to the report:

• Beatrice Keul, whose account is comprehensively set forth for the first time in the report, credibly alleges that Trump violently raped her at a November 1993 pageant at the Plaza Hotel in New York City and that Epstein, Trump, and others used the pageant as a "hunting ground" to prey on vulnerable young women and girls;
• Stacey Williams, who offered a detailed and corroborated account of Trump sexually assaulting her in the early 1990s while she was alone with him and Epstein in an office at Trump Tower;
• Jill Harth, who has also publicly detailed Trump aggressively pursuing and violently sexually assaulting her and another woman in 1994 at a Mar-a-Lago party where Epstein and Trump were the only men present;
• Katie Johnson, who gave the FBI a detailed account of her repeated rape at the hands of Trump and Epstein in 1994 in New York City when she was a minor; and
• A Jane Doe, who gave the FBI a graphic account of Trump assaulting her when she was a minor in the mid-1980s in New York by forcibly pushing her head down to his exposed penis.

The political context

The Alternet column that highlighted the report argued that its timing was not an "October Surprise" aimed at the midterm elections the following week, and that it would not change the election's outcome. That, the author suggested, is precisely why the Washington press corps has largely ignored it: the ghastly substance of the document — evidence of violent sex crimes against women and girls by the president — has been treated as insufficiently consequential because it is not expected to affect the election.

The column instead characterized the report as a kind of preview of what to expect from a Democratic-controlled House in the two years leading to the next presidential election. Whether impeachment follows remains an open question, the author wrote, but there is no downside to subjecting Trump to "endless grinding exposure": the weaker he becomes politically, the more cracks will appear in his coalition. "If you think he's unpopular now, wait until Robert Garcia, the Judiciary's ranking Democrat, gets going," the column warned.

The author also stepped back from electoral politics, writing that the women are real people, the crimes against them are real, and they should see justice. More broadly, the column argued, a republic cannot survive if elites who act with impunity toward law and morality are allowed to carry on without fear of accountability. Trump, at 80, will probably never see a jail cell, the author conceded, "but he is not alone": many elites enabled him along the way because they thought something was in it for them. "There must be a price for impunity, and someone must pay it," the column concluded. "This report isn't going to affect the election. It's not going to bring justice. And it's certainly not going to restore law and order. But I hope it's the first of many steps toward that end."

A viral exchange over faith and the First Amendment

The same Alternet column also recounted a separate moment that circulated widely online: a confrontation involving Abdul El-Sayed, Michigan's Democratic Senate candidate. At a recent event, a man known as Tommy pressed El-Sayed to disavow Egypt's Muslim Brotherhood. The implicit allegation, the column noted, was that El-Sayed was in cahoots with the terrorist organization because he is Muslim and of Egyptian lineage — and that if he did not disavow it, he was one of them.

In video of the exchange, El-Sayed turned the question into a reminder of the meaning of the First Amendment, positioning himself, a Muslim, as the defender of religious freedom while his questioner, a self-identified Christian, appeared to prefer codifying his own faith into law. The takeaway, the column suggested: who is the real radical?

The video went viral and provoked a flurry of online commentary. Among the analyses the column singled out was that of the Reverend Dan Schultz, a Wisconsin pastor and contributor to the Editorial Board, whose 14-point commentary is reproduced there with his permission (Bluesky).

El-Sayed, that commentary argued, was prepared for the question but also exploited significant holes in GOP strategy. The premise of the attempt at a gotcha question was rooted in Christian nationalism — and, more precisely, in "Christian normalism": the assumption that "normal" voters are Christians, that normal Christians reject Islam as antithetical to their faith, and that conservative Christian values should be written into governance.

The question also appeared designed to tap into fears about Michigan's rapidly growing Arab population and out-state resentment of the Detroit metro area. The column suggested the questioner was less interested in turning the room than in provoking a gaffe that could be shared on social media — one reason such stunts are staged in towns like Caro rather than Dearborn.

What Tommy may not have known, the column observed, is that many of Michigan's Arabs are in fact Christians — perhaps up to half — making it difficult to other them on that basis. The crowd, which appeared to consist mostly of El-Sayed supporters, showed little inclination toward othering on the basis of religion, race, or geography, and cheered loudly for El-Sayed's repeated reference to freedom of religion "or no faith."

The column argued that the conservative base has convinced itself that most voters share its biases and preferences. That may have worked in 1980s Michigan, and in 2024 voters might have overlooked nationalism in hopes of a better economy. But in 2026, with Republicans having failed dismally on the economy and on governance more broadly, the column contended, it is easy for voters to see that all the party has to offer is white Christian nationalism.

That dynamic, the author wrote, gives someone like El-Sayed the opening to speak and react confidently. He knows his questioner arrives with a bluff and a weak hand; the only people who care about his rejecting the Muslim Brotherhood will not vote for him anyway, so he does not have to dodge or weave. He can attack — and, in the column's assessment, attack he does, brilliantly.

El-Sayed's framing of the Constitution drew particular praise: he presented it not primarily as a secular counterweight to Christian chauvinism, but as a neutral operating system that Americans buy into as the rules of the game. The weight of his counterpunch, the column argued, lay not in labeling his questioner a bigot, but in the observation that the questioner will not agree to play by the same set of rules he demands El-Sayed play by.

The column closed with a broader electoral lesson: Republicans, in Michigan and nationally, have fundamentally misunderstood the electorate, a miscalculation that may cost them for a long time to come. To be pithy about it, the author wrote, if you're going to run the "divide and conquer" flim-flam, you have to convince the marks there's something in it for them. The GOP cannot do that — which leaves the opening for somebody like El-Sayed to expose the con for what it is.