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The Fivestack was supposed to count five stories but we could not turn our eyes away from today. Lev Parnas walked out of a Florida Senate hearing on Jeffrey Epstein, called in, and the show became one story. The story is what Donald Trump’s Department of Justice has done to the women who survived Epstein —Today’s show is dedicated to them.
5️⃣ THE HEARING REPUBLICANS WOULDN’T HOLD
House Oversight Democrats drove to West Palm Beach. The committee in the majority — the Republicans — refused to convene the hearing in Washington. So the minority held it themselves, in the county where federal prosecutors handed Jeffrey Epstein his 2008 sweetheart deal, across the bridge from Mar-a-Lago.
Security was tight. Local press showed up. Jim Acosta walked in. Tara Palmieri walked in. Katie Phang walked in. The major networks did not. Lev Parnas got the call from the Oversight team the night before, drove down, sat in the room, and live-streamed the hearing publicly because the committee told him he could. Schumer was not there. Jeffries was not there. Massie was not there. Marjorie Taylor Greene was not there. Survivors who waited thirty years for a hearing got the hearing they could organize themselves, and only one of the two parties came.
4️⃣ MARIA FARMER, THIRTY YEARS LATER
Maria Farmer was the first witness. She was not in the room — she had just been discharged from the hospital after twenty-three nights in the last month, several of them in the ICU. She recorded her statement and the committee played it. The voice was not strong. The statement was steel.
“My name is Maria Farmer. I am the whistleblower who reported Jeffrey Epstein, Ghislaine Maxwell, Les Wexner and others to the FBI 30 years ago in 1996.”
She walked through the file. The 1996 report to the New York City 6th Precinct. The commanding officer who told her local police could only handle the local arson and to take the rest to the FBI. The FBI agents who said they recognized some of the names. The thirty years of nothing that followed. The 2006 federal trial they pulled her into and then the sweetheart deal that closed it. The death threats. The arson threats to her apartment. The Hodgkin’s lymphoma. The brain tumor. The Addison’s disease that landed her in the ICU last month.
She wants her FBI file. She has FOIA’d it. She has sued for it. The government’s most recent response told her they will get back to her in November 2027.
She named the women whose lives the FBI’s inaction cost — Virginia Giuffre, Anushka DiGiorgio, Chante Davies, Marika Chartone, Danny Benski, Jenna Lisa Jones, Ashley Rubright, Jennifer Rose. She called Virginia “the backbone of this case” and “the shining star and guiding light” the survivors are still walking behind.
3️⃣ ROSA — DOXED 540 TIMES
The next testimony broke the room. Rosa came to New York at eighteen from Uzbekistan, signed by the MC2 modeling agency, paid one hundred dollars a week. The agency took her passport. The agency paid her enough that she could not leave. She was trafficked.
She had spent the last decade rebuilding. She had been a Jane Doe — her name redacted from every court filing in every case. The redaction was the only thing standing between her past and her present life.
In January, Donald Trump’s DOJ released the Epstein files in compliance with the Transparency Act. They unredacted her name. Five hundred and forty times.
“I kept my identity protected as Jane Doe. I woke up one day with my name mentioned over 500 times. While the rich and powerful remain protected by redaction, my name was exposed to the world. Now reporters from across the globe contact me. I cannot live without looking over my shoulder.”
A congresswoman in the room asked her what justice would look like. Rosa told her that’s not the survivor’s job. That’s the lawmaker’s job. Enough with the survivors being pressured to testify.
2️⃣ THE 14-YEAR-OLD AND THE BRIDGE
The fourteen-year-old from the other side of the bridge testified next. Lev described it on our show — across the Royal Park Bridge from West Palm Beach to Palm Beach island, you have trailer parks on one side and Mar-a-Lago on the other. The fourteen-year-old grew up watching the lights.
Her parents were addicts. She walked across the bridge. Epstein’s network picked her up. She was trafficked. She survived. And when she finally made it back to a sheriff’s deputy who was, in the lawyer’s words, “trying like a superhero,” three private attorneys flew in — Roy Black, Alan Dershowitz, and a third New York lawyer — and ran the case into the ground. Private investigators dressed as Palm Beach sheriff’s officers intimidated the witnesses. Dershowitz produced grade-school records that the girl had smoked weed once. The reputation got dismantled in the local paper. The witnesses dropped.
But here is the part Lev could not get past. The DOJ told the fourteen-year-old she could be prosecuted herself. For prostitution. At fifteen and sixteen years old.
She asked the question on the record. Is there even a statute for that? Is there a criminal statute for a 15-year-old to be charged with prostitution?
🎯 GROUND NEWS BLINDSPOT — TODAY
The Palm Beach hearing was on today’s Ground News Blindspot — a story being covered by local Florida press and Substack, and quietly ignored by the major national networks. The second Blindspot story today was Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche announcing the DOJ will subpoena reporters who receive classified information about Iran-war leak investigations. Sixty-four percent of the coverage of that second story is right-leaning, celebrating “accountability.” The left-leaning and center coverage is thin. The two Blindspots share the same DNA — Trump’s DOJ choosing which truths the country gets to hear, and which journalists are allowed to report them. Ground News tracks the bias spread on every story so you can see who is covering it, who is hiding it, and where your news is steering you. Today’s FiveStack is brought to you by GroundNews — FiveStack viewers get 40% off their Vantage plan.
1️⃣ THE DOXING WAS THE POLICY
This is what we keep telling you on Narativ. The cruelty is not a byproduct. The cruelty is the design.
Trump’s DOJ had two options when it released the Epstein files. Redact the survivors and reveal the perpetrators, or reveal the survivors and redact the perpetrators. They did the second one. Five hundred and forty unredactions of one woman’s name. The accusations against Trump in the files — those got cut. The names of the trafficked women — those got published. The lawmaker in the room said it on camera: we’re pretty sure he did this to make these women shut up. Lev was sitting in the gallery. He could not disagree.
And while the doxing was running, Trump was firing the FBI agents who could have helped. Brian Driscoll, second-in-command at the Bureau, told Anderson Cooper this week that he was fired for refusing to put together political-target lists. Driscoll’s lawsuit names thousands of FBI agents — including the child-trafficking units — who were reassigned or fired. The Acting Attorney General is Todd Blanche, Donald Trump’s personal defense lawyer, the man who, in Trump’s own words on tape, “kept me out of jail.” Blanche announced today that reporters who write about DOJ investigations will be subpoenaed. He posted it on X.
Maria Farmer cannot get her own FBI file. The reporters trying to read the Epstein files are now legal targets. The fourteen-year-old who walked across the bridge was almost prosecuted herself. Rosa cannot stop looking over her shoulder. And the men whose names are still redacted in those files are on a plane to Xi Jinping with Elon Musk and Tim Cook.
THE PATTERN
The captured Justice Department is not protecting the survivors. The captured Justice Department is protecting the perpetrators by re-traumatizing the survivors. Lev called it the Epstein class — the people in the powerful seats on both sides of the aisle who have reasons to keep the file half-redacted forever. The hearing today in Palm Beach was the work the captured DOJ refuses to do, done by the minority party with no subpoena power and no cameras. It was also the work Narativ has been doing in our Epstein archive for years.
Maria Farmer waited thirty years and ended up in the ICU. Rosa rebuilt her life and lost her redaction. The fourteen-year-old got told she could be prosecuted herself. The country has now been told, in the same week, that the reporters covering the case will be subpoenaed and the former president who oversaw the original assessment of who installed Trump is the new target.
Across the bridge from Mar-a-Lago, the women showed up. The cameras did not. The Republicans did not. The Acting Attorney General is threatening every journalist who would have covered it. Day 478. Maria Farmer wants her file. The country needs to want it for her.
The Fivestack airs Mon–Fri 3 PM ET. Dean Blundell and Zev Shalev. [narativ.org]
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