An Epstein survivor who once cast her vote for Donald Trump in the 2024 presidential election is now voicing her disappointment over the way his administration continues to handle the Jeffrey Epstein case.
Haley Robson, who was only 16 when the disgraced financier exploited her, appeared on CNN’s OutFront with Erin Burnett and talked about the points she thinks as Trump’s biggest failures regarding the case.
According to Robson, Trump’s first mistake was “assuming you knew your voters.” The second, she said, is even more damaging: “doubl[ing] down on what you said about it being a hoax.” Robson made clear that her frustration does not stem from hostility, but from exhaustion and disillusionment.
“I’m not coming with hostility. I’m not angry. I’m exhausted. I’m tired. I am disgusted. I am not even coming from a place of anger,” she explained. “I’m just coming from a place of, how can we move on when the leader of the free world keeps calling this a hoax, when indeed it is not a hoax?”
For Robson, Trump’s repeated dismissals pile confusion on top of trauma. She described feeling like the President constantly changes his words to avoid accountability. “And then it’s just kind of this feeling of, like, you‘re throwing everything at the wall to see what sticks. And now you’re an FBI informant, and now you’re not an FBI informant. It‘s back to being a hoax.”
View this post on Instagram
She added that living through Trump’s way of handling the case is disappointing and demoralizing: “It’s very confusing. And you know, it’s appalling. I’m appalled. It gets worse and worse every day. I’m not sure that he is comprehending what I am trying to communicate to him.”
Her words directly contradict Trump’s pattern of dismissing questions about the Epstein case by labeling it an ongoing hoax. In recent weeks, he repeated to reporters that references to Epstein files or his potential connections to them were nothing more than a distraction campaign from Democrats.
“We’re having the most successful eight months of any president ever, and that’s what I want to talk about and should be talking about. Not the Epstein hoax,” Trump declared from the Oval Office.
View this post on Instagram
The controversy was further fueled when Trump was asked about an alleged birthday letter he sent to Epstein. He responded by casting doubt on its authenticity. “It’s not my signature and it’s not the way I speak, and anybody that’s covered me for a long time knows that’s not my language,” Trump insisted.
But Robson is not standing alone in her sense of betrayal. Another survivor, Jena-Lisa Jones, also said she supported Trump at the ballot box before realizing that he was only going to dismiss her lived experience.
Jones, who was just 14 when Epstein abused her, told MSNBC’s Lawrence O’Donnell that she and others were now taking their demands for accountability directly to lawmakers in Washington. “I voted for him. I voted for Trump. And for him to say what he’s saying is beyond me, because I put my hope in him and he’s supposed to protect us,” Jones said.
Epstein accuser Haley Robson says speculation that Trump might pardon Ghislaine Maxwell has left her ‘angry and disgusted’ pic.twitter.com/gIHk1r3nJb
— Piyush Mittal 🇺🇸🇺🇦🇬🇪🇨🇦🟧🌊🌈 (@piyushmittal) August 5, 2025
What unsettles Jones most is that Trump’s frequent accusations of a hoax seem to beg the question of motive. “There is no one that is accusing him of any wrongdoing, so the fact that he’s saying it’s a hoax, who are you hiding for then?” she asked pointedly. “Because if it’s not you, then who is it? And that scares me, who is it.”
With Epstein survivors speaking up and new evidence hinting at Trump’s ties with Epstein, it now remains to be seen how the Trump administration handles the case and if the survivors find the justice they are looking for.
