As Trump’s Epstein Scandal Spreads, Judiciary Democrats Release New Memo Detailing How Trump Administration Policy Puts Sex Offenders and Human Traffickers Before Victims and Survivors

Washington, D.C. (September 16, 2025)—Today, Rep. Jamie Raskin, Ranking Member of the House Judiciary Committee, released a new memo detailing how the Trump Administration has repeatedly sided with sex offenders and human traffickers over their victims—often rewarding sexual predators and elevating them to positions of power within the U.S. government while crippling key offices, programs, and grants that combat sex crimes and support survivors.

“President Trump in office has repeatedly taken the side of criminal sex predators and violent abusers against their victims, and this pattern goes well beyond his strenuous efforts to bury the Epstein Files. Trump is systematically dismantling the offices and programs we rely on to combat human trafficking and prosecute sex crimes,” said Ranking Member Raskin. “Our memo shows how the Trump Administration has taken a sledgehammer to our capacity to hold sex offenders to account and undermined support and services for crime victims. Far from aiding victims and survivors, President Trump consistently sides with their abusers. His all-of-government policy to aid traffickers and sex criminals and abandon survivors has made American women dramatically less safe.”

Judiciary Democrats’ new memo, “Epstein is the Tip of the Iceberg: The Trump Administration is Dismantling the Anti-Human Trafficking Infrastructure and Coddling Human Traffickers, Sexual Predators, and Rapists,” lays out how Trump’s affinity for sex offenders goes far deeper than Jeffrey Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell. As Trump has sought to block the release of new information related to Epstein and his co-conspirators, he has also used his office to dismantle the infrastructure designed to combat trafficking, prosecute sex crimes, and provide basic services to victims and survivors, and to assist and pardon accused rapists and child pornographers.

Key findings from the Committee’s memo include:

The Trump Administration has gutted offices and programs designed to combat human trafficking and violent crimes. 

• Trump’s Department of Justice (DOJ) has terminated hundreds of grants awarded to state and local law enforcement to help prevent, investigate, and prosecute violent crime, as well as those that assist survivors of sexual and domestic violence.
• Trump has shuttered critical agencies and offices that fight human trafficking—such as the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID)—while diverting federal law enforcement resources away from their work combatting human trafficking and sexual exploitation. These cuts have hamstrung the Administration’s ability to disrupt trafficking networks and prosecute crimes of sexual violence. 

President Trump pardoned accused rapists and child pornographers, supported human traffickers. 

• The Trump Administration reportedly pressed Romanian officials to lift travel restrictions on the Tate Brothers, who traveled to Florida earlier this year despite facing arrest on charges of rape and human trafficking in Romania and the United Kingdom.
• When Trump granted pardons to nearly 1,600 insurrectionists on his first day in office, hissweeping pardons also provided relief for dozens of human traffickers, sex offenders, and serial abusers.

President Trump has staffed his Administration with individuals who have a history of sexual misconduct, or have been accused of abuse.

• The top ranks of the Trump Administration include individuals who have been accused of sexual assault, sexual harassment, domestic violence, and other forms of abuse, including Pete Hegseth, Linda McMahon, and Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.

Click here to read the memo.