A woman with large-rimmed glasses and long brown hair stands behind a wooden podium. Behind her, running the entire length of the room in downtown Manhattan, is a bookcase, full of identical white-bound files.“In 2019, the FBI put out a tip line for victims and anyone that had information about Jeffrey Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell,” she said. “I called that tip line in September of 2019, and I told them not only the story of what happened to me back in July of 1991, but also about the woman that brought me to Jeffrey.”Epstein survivor Jess Michaels goes on to read excerpts from the Epstein files aloud – dispassionately; verbatim. It’s the morning of Tuesday 19 May. For 24 hours straight, beginning the previous day at noon, survivors like Michaels, together with lawyers, politicians, actors, and advocates, take turns reading aloud excerpts from the 3,747 bound volumes of the publicly released Epstein files.Meanwhile, over in the UK, Surrey Police announced that it was investigating two allegations of historic child sexual abuse following information released in the Epstein files – one relating to locations in Surrey and Berkshire in the mid-1990s to 2000, and another concerning west Surrey in the mid-to-late 1980s.Epstein survivor Jess Michaels reads excerpts from the files on the paedophile financier, stacked along the wall behind her, during a 24-hour filibuster in New York (Youtube)Then on Friday, police urged a woman who claims to have been sent to the UK by Jeffrey Epstein to have sex with the then-Prince Andrew to come forward and speak to investigators. Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor was arrested in February on suspicion of misconduct in public office, but it is understood that allegations of sexual misconduct are part of the investigation.Officers have made an appeal to the woman and said their “door is open” after it was claimed that she had been brought to the UK for a sexual encounter with the then-prince at his residence at the time, Royal Lodge, in 2010. Police are said to have contacted the woman’s lawyers, as well as the US Department of Justice, to obtain original documents released as part of the Epstein files, as part of their wider investigation.Surrey Police have called for a woman who claims to have been sent to the UK to have sex with Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor to come forward (PA)“In terms of Epstein victims and survivors, we hope that anyone with relevant information will come forward, and I really want to stress that our door is open,” said Oliver Wright, the assistant chief constable for crime and criminal justice at Thames Valley Police.So in the UK, powerful men are feeling the fallout – directly or indirectly – from the release of the Epstein files. In the US, it couldn’t be more different. While the tentacles of the abuse allegations have touched the highest political offices, boardrooms and celebrity powerhouses – no arrests have been made following the release of the latest shocking Epstein files. Nor is anyone under active investigation. Investigators may be digging up Epstein’s Zorro ranch, but those who may know where the “bodies are buried” metaphorically, could literally be getting away with, if not “murder”, then serious crime.The recital event – the Epstein filibuster – was the brainchild of attorney and reality TV star Eliza Orlins, together with the Save America Movement, the anti-Maga organisation co-founded by former Republican strategist Steve Schmidt, and the nonprofit Institute for Primary Facts, whose temporary pop-up exhibit in New York City is showcasing the bound Epstein files. It provocatively titled the exhibit “The Donald J. Trump and Jeffrey Epstein Memorial Reading Room”.Visitors look at a tribute to the survivors and victims of Epstein’s crimes, where 3.5 million pages of the Epstein files are displayed in New York City on 11 May (AFP/Getty)Thousands are watching online and Michaels looks towards her audience and says, “That felt like a pretty hot tip to give the FBI. But no one followed up with me. I kept continually calling the FBI, Southern District of New York, and the detective Walter Harkins, who was with the NYPD sex trafficking force that was calling back people that had given tips.”Even though she kept calling, it was a year and a half until an FBI agent even took her statement. That agent “sat on the phone with me for over an hour … said that somebody should have followed up with me. And then I never heard from that FBI agent again,” she says.Mary Corcoran, the co-founder and executive director of Save America Movement, told The Independent that the filibuster was a direct response to a shadow hearing by Democrats on the House Oversight Committee in Florida. That hearing, in mid-May, took place a few miles from Epstein’s former mansion, and was designed to hear direct testimony from Epstein survivors as the Republican majority refused to hold official proceedings.“We were all watching and I flipped over to CNN and The New York Times, and other mainstream media, and no one was streaming it,” Corcoran said. “I thought, oh my God, every single word that these women are saying, every single thing that their lawyers are saying, should be required viewing.”The filibuster, with close to 15 survivors participating, was, Corcoran said, “meant to stop time”. It was up to individual speakers to decide what portion they wanted to read from the Epstein files, or if they just wanted to give their testimony. Between December, 2025 and March 2026, the US The Department of Justice released nearly 3.5 million pages in compliance with the Epstein Files Transparency Act, which was signed into law by President Trump. The reason we did this was to force eyeballs and attention on this issue to ensure that we can put enough public pressure … to ensure that these women get accountability and justiceMary Corcoran, co-founder of Save America MovementBut, as Corcoran points out, that amounts to less than half of the actual files in existence. The official reason provided by the DOJ for withholding the remaining records is that they fall under strict legal exemptions, including victim privacy, active investigations, and explicit material. To Corcoran, this is beyond insulting. “We are aligned with the victims calling for the full, un-redacted files, with the exception of victims’ names, to be released,” she says. “We want lawful transparency to occur. … [We should be] able to look at this evidence and pursue justice and accountability for these 1,400 known victims.”It is also the case that while the latest partial release was enough to prompt the police in the UK to announce a formal criminal investigation, nothing similar is happening in the US. And this is what campaigners are determined to change. Federal prosecutors in New York were investigating Epstein’s co-conspirators, but in January 2025, after Trump was sworn into office, they were ordered to transfer the case files to the Department of Justice in Washington, DC Democratic congressman Jamie Raskin said that since then, “the investigation into co-conspirators has inexplicably ceased”.However, Corcoran says the common thread in all of this is powerful men. “I want to make something very, very clear – while there are political outcomes associated with what we’re doing in terms of helping Americans understand the facts, the reason we did this is not for the midterm elections. “The reason we did this was to force eyeballs and attention on this issue to ensure that we can put enough public pressure … to ensure that these women get accountability and justice for what they have been through. That said, the fact that Donald Trump appears 38,000 times in the Epstein files is an important thing for people to understand.” Many politicians, celebrities and other high-profile individuals appear in the Epstein files for innocuous reasons and featuring in the Epstein files does not indicate wrongdoing. Trump has always denied any wrongdoing relating to Epstein and says the release of the files has exonerated him.Corcoran said it’s vital to ensure that the cabal of powerful men who were involved in the abuse of young women are brought to justice in the service of American values. So far, America is a long way from delivering that justice.Thomas Massie, a Republican vocal on the full release of the Epstein files, has just been beaten in the Kentucky House primary by a challenger favoured by Trump (Getty)While things seem to be moving in the UK, Corcoran says that with the exception of Republican politicians like Thomas Massie, who filed a petition in support of the Epstein Files Transparency Act and just lost his Kentucky House primary to a Trump-backed challenger, she isn’t expecting any other members of his party to even back a proper investigation. “Almost none of them have grown a spine and are willing to stand up on this issue and demand that these files are fully released, that these women get the justice that they deserve. For now it is Trump's party and he rules with an iron fist.”Back in The Donald J. Trump and Jeffrey Epstein Memorial Reading Room, survivors of Epstein’s abuse line up to speak at the podium. Lisa Phillips, reads an excerpt; she has a message for others like her: “Do not be afraid to come forward,” she says. “You are not alone anymore. We now have support. We now have strength. And together our voices are far more powerful than the people who tried to silence us.”This may seem to ring hollow in the context of the DOJ not publicly announcing any active criminal probes into specific high-profile Americans, but campaigners remain steadfast. Virginia Giuffre spent years being dismissed before her testimony helped convict Ghislaine Maxwell and ultimately forced Mountbatten-Windsor from royal life. She took her own life in April 2025, at the age of 41, before she could see the full weight of what she had set in motion – but her brother’s fury at the DOJ’s latest release, which exposed survivors’ names while shielding alleged perpetrators, is a reminder that her fight has been inherited, not buried.FBI internal communications suggest there could be well over a million documents still unreleased, data seized from Epstein's devices. The bipartisan authors of the Epstein Files Transparency Act have also formally demanded to see the unredacted files to check the government is even obeying its own law. As Surrey Police this week opened a fresh criminal investigation based on disclosures that have been public for months, the question for Americans becomes harder to ignore: if this evidence is enough to prompt arrests across the Atlantic, what exactly is Washington waiting for.