Three women scorned over Epstein threaten Trump’s survival

A year and a month into his second term, Donald Trump’s presidency appears to be fracturing, most immediately thanks to a self-inflicted Department of Homeland Security shutdown and a looming Supreme Court decision on his global tariffs.

Trump has also clashed with lawmakers over loyalty, with Republicans from Sen. Tim Scott (R-SC) to Sen. Roger Wicker (R-MS) calling him out over the racist Obama video Trump posted online. Then there’s the fallout from the immigration crackdown in Minnesota, which has triggered a collapse in support among the young men and Latinos who put Trump back in the White House.

Caught between adverse judicial outcomes and alienation from traditional allies — Marco Rubio’s Christian nationalist speech at the Munich Security Conference was particularly off-putting — Trump faces a mounting crisis that threatens to derail him before he can even attempt to address pie-in-the-sky promises such as lowering grocery prices and ending the war in Ukraine.

And yet the real danger may come from a trio of scorned women: Reps. Nancy Mace (R-SC) and Lauren Boebert (R-CO), and Marjorie Taylor Greene, the former congresswoman from Georgia.

They are none too pleased — frankly, they are pissed off — about how Trump and Attorney General Pam Bondi bungled the Epstein files release.

Like Trump, their former idol, they are brash, unpredictable, and unapologetic. (Well, MTG is sort of apologetic, if you believe her.) That’s what makes their rising anger over Epstein so combustible. In a party where loyalty to Trump is sacrosanct, these three firebrands broke ranks. And they didn’t just murmur dissent. They torched it.

Over the weekend, all three erupted at Bondi’s absolutely stupefying memo announcing the “end” of the Epstein files release. Their reactions were harbingers of trouble.

Mace warned: “I think we ran out of patience a long time ago, and we’re honey badgers, and so I hope that … there will be more of us that will speak out.”

Greene fumed: “All of you MAGA influencers and the rest mocking the seriousness of women who were trafficked and raped as teenagers and young women look like cult fools. Good luck trying to get women to vote for Republicans in the midterms, you insensitive clowns.”

Boebert railed: “Terrifying language in the Epstein Files I viewed yesterday … Emails about torture. Frequent talk of ‘consumption’? A restaurant called ‘The Cannibal’… These are sick, sick people.”

Last year, when Rep. Thomas Massie (R-KY) filed a discharge petition to force a House vote on releasing the Epstein files, the Trump administration called it a “hostile act.”

The affair was supposed to die quietly. Instead, Mace, Boebert, and Greene were among the few Republicans willing to sign on early and force the vote into daylight.

Trumpworld launched an intense pressure campaign, including private meetings urging the three to back off. They refused. In November, the House vote passed 427–1, and Trump signed the legislation.

The DOJ rollout of the files, however, has been deplorable. Deadlines have been missed and victims’ names and personal information left unredacted, while alleged Epstein co-conspirators, Les Wexner among them, have been given a shield.

On Saturday, Bondi sent a letter to Congress claiming the DOJ had fulfilled its obligations under the Epstein Files Transparency Act by releasing more than 3 million pages.

Case closed?

Not according to lawmakers. Not according to victims. And certainly not according to Mace, Boebert, and Greene. If the Epstein saga is a book, we’ve only seen the intro.

Survivors and members of Congress argue that key internal memos remain withheld and names of alleged abusers are still redacted. Bafflingly, Bondi’s memo included long-dead celebrities on a list of “politically exposed” individuals, Elvis Presley and Marilyn Monroe alongside figures disgraced by association with Epstein including former Treasury Secretary Lawrence Summers, former Paul Weiss CEO Brad Karp, and Hollywood heavyweight Casey Wasserman.

Here’s the thing: as with the rest of this mangled release and botched attempt to squash the story, inserting names like Janis Joplin, Kurt Cobain, and Pope John Paul II looked suspiciously like another smokescreen, another “look over here” moment, another distraction designed to blur relevant connections to Epstein.

Beyond the shenanigans was Bondi’s cold, crass refusal to apologize to Epstein survivors seated directly behind her in a House Judiciary Committee hearing last week.

For many, that was the final betrayal.

The three GOP women are hardly known for sisterhood politics but they are now resoundingly advancing just that.

Mace has promised to go “full-blown scorched earth,” in pursuit of accountability.

That doesn’t suggest capitulation.

Trump likes to dominate women, or so he thinks, and he likes to humiliate them too. Does “Quiet, Piggy” ring a bell? But what makes Mace, Boebert, and Greene tricky is that they are his people. They speak the language of the base. They helped build it.

And when they accuse his DOJ of hiding the truth about Epstein, it perks up the ears of MAGA conspiracy theorists.

Trump signed the release bill under enormous pressure. But the DOJ has turned a festering wound infectious. The redactions, the unredacted names, Bondi’s bonkers memo, and her refusal to apologize all feed the perception that the powerful are being protected.

Greene has positioned herself as a leading outside voice calling for the “full-blown scorched earth” approach Mace promises too. As the Epstein fiasco unfolds, Greene’s voice will only grow louder, a counterweight in MAGA, demanding answers.

These three women are set to continue reading names into the Congressional Record, demanding jail time, going to war with the DOJ, tightening the screws on Trump.

He has survived indictments, impeachments, insurrections. But surviving scorned women, allies turned insurgents, fighting for victims, may prove a more grievous challenge altogether.

• John Casey was most recently Senior Editor, The Advocate, and is a freelance opinion and feature story writer. Previously, he was a Capitol Hill press secretary, and spent 25 years in media and public relations in NYC. He is the co-author of LOVE: The Heroic Stories of Marriage Equality (Rizzoli, 2025), named by Oprah in her "Best 25 of 2025.”