Virginia
Virginia Giuffre’s brother pens furious letter as Ghislaine Maxwell seeks clemency
Virginia Giuffre’s brother has penned a furious open letter to Ghislaine Maxwell as she refuses to testify over her links to pedophile billionaire Jeffrey Epstein.
The disgraced socialite declined to answer questions from a congressional committee on Monday, vowing to only speak out if she is granted clemency by President Trump.
Sky Roberts, whose sister became the poster child for survivors of Epstein and who tragically ended her own life last year, railed against Maxwell in a letter that was delivered to the committee and also shared on social media.
“Ghislaine Maxwell, you were not a bystander,” Roberts wrote. “You were not ‘misled’. You were a central, deliberate actor in a system built to find children, isolate them, groom them, and deliver them to abuse.
“You used trust as a weapon. You targeted vulnerability and turned it into access. That is not a mistake. That is not poor judgment. That is predation.”
In his letter, Roberts drew attention to his sister’s description of Maxwell.
“Ghislaine was a monster; she was often more vicious and cruel than Epstein. Put it this way: Epstein was Pinocchio, and she was Gepetto. She was the guy controlling,” Giuffre wrote in her memoir, Nobody’s Girl, which was published after her death.
Roberts slammed Maxwell for the part she played in building a “template of exploitation” that was used to abuse young girls.
“The suffering was not incidental to what you did. It was the point. It was your reward for a sadistic system you helped create.”
Maxwell, the former girlfriend of Epstein, is serving a 20-year sentence for child sex trafficking, and invoked her Fifth Amendment right to remain silent during a House Oversight Committee deposition Monday morning.
David Oscar Markus, a lawyer for Maxwell, said he advised his client to remain silent given her ongoing appeal to her 2021 conviction, but said she was “prepared to speak fully and honestly if granted clemency by President Trump.”
Maxwell remained silent when faced with questions about her knowledge of Epstein’s criminal activities, but told lawmakers that both President Donald Trump and former President Bill Clinton were innocent of wrongdoing.
House Oversight Chairman James Comer, who subpoenaed Maxwell, said he was “disappointed” in her deposition. Comer told The Independent the committee considered giving her immunity, but ultimately decided against it after speaking with survivors.
“This was something new today, obviously that’s not for me to decide, that’s for the president to decide,” Comer said.
While the president has acknowledged his ability to pardon Maxwell, he has not expressed an interest in doing so.
Roberts said in his letter that forgiveness was “neither owed, nor offered” to Maxwell, and he urged Congress to continue investigating why she had been moved to a minimum-security prison after an interview with Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche.
He ended with another direct quote from Giuffre, in which she addressed her tormenter directly:
“Ghislaine, you deserve to spend the rest of your life in a jail cell,” Giuffre wrote before her death. “Trapped in a cage forever just like you trapped your victims.”
Maxwell’s deposition followed the Justice Department’s release of three million pages of documents related to the government’s Epstein files.
Many of the documents are emails between Epstein, Maxwell, and third parties, and it is widely believed that Maxwell could shed more light on those involved.
Virginia
Virginia Supreme Court voids voter-approved redistricting referendum
On May 8, the Virginia Supreme Court ruled that the General Assembly violated the state constitution when it tried to redraw congressional districts, nullifying the results of the April election in which Virginians narrowly approved redistricting.
Electoral maps are usually redrawn once every 10 years, but multiple states began redrawing them early after President Donald Trump urged Republicans to redraw district lines to ensure more favorable results for the party in the November 2026 elections.
This started a nationwide political battle for control of the U.S. House of Representatives. Texas was the first of several states to redraw districts favoring Republicans, and Virginia Democrats had proposed a constitutional amendment to allow redistricting in order to favor Democrats.
As of May 8, Republicans had initiated redistricting efforts in eight states; Democrats had led redistricting efforts in three states, including Virginia, the Washington Post reported.
In April, Virginia voters supported the redistricting amendment with 51.7% voting for it out of more than 3 million ballots cast. It could have given Democrats up to four extra seats in the U.S. House, according to the Washington Post (subscription required).
But the Virginia Supreme Court, in a 4-3 ruling, found that there were procedural errors in how the Democratic legislature handled the process, nullifying the election results.
The Virginia Constitution says that proposed constitutional amendments must pass in the General Assembly twice before the public can vote on them: once before an election of the House of Delegates, and again after an election. According to the Virginia Supreme Court majority opinion written by Justice D. Arthur Kelsey, early voting for the general election had already been open for six weeks when the General Assembly cast its first vote on the amendment in October 2025, with more than 1.3 million voters having already cast their ballots.
“This violation irreparably undermines the integrity of the resulting referendum vote and renders it null and void,” the court majority opinion stated.
The court’s ruling means the state reverts to the old district maps adopted in 2021. Based on those maps, Virginia voters elected six Democrats and five Republicans to the U.S. House.
Following the court’s ruling, some Virginia Democrats who planned to run for the U.S. House told the New York Times that they have to abandon their campaigns, while others, such as Tom Perriello who is running for the 5th District, face much more difficult campaigns.
Virginia Democrats on Friday asked the court to pause the nullification of the referendum results while they prepare their appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court, according to VPM.
If you’ve been impacted by the Virginia State Supreme Court’s decision to nullify the results of the April 21 special election on redistricting, we want to hear from you.
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Virginia
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Virginia
Democrat Rep. Ted Lieu calls Virginia Supreme Court decision on redistricting
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