Family of Epstein Victim Targets Republican Jeff Crank in New Ad

There is a particular weight that attaches to a political advertisement when the people appearing in it are not actors or surrogates but the family of a victim—when the grief is real and the grievance is specific, and the camera captures not a performance but a reckoning. In Colorado's Fifth Congressional District, that weight has now arrived. On Monday, the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee released a television ad featuring Sky Roberts and his wife, Amanda Roberts—the brother and sister-in-law of Virginia Giuffre, one of Jeffrey Epstein's most prominent victims, who died by suicide last year. The ad targets Republican Representative Jeff Crank, accusing him of refusing to meet with Giuffre's family and of voting to block the release of federal files related to Epstein .

The ad opens with Sky Roberts speaking directly to the camera. "My sister Virginia was one of Jeffrey Epstein's victims. She spent her life trying to expose the truth. After she died, we promised to carry on her fight," he says. Amanda Roberts continues: "But our own Congressman Jeff Crank refused to meet with us. Then, when he had the chance to expose the truth and release the Epstein files, he repeatedly voted to cover them up." The ad concludes with Sky Roberts saying, "Jeff Crank covered up Epstein's crimes to protect Donald Trump. He has no business being in Congress" .

The Robertses are constituents of Crank, who is facing a competitive re-election race against Democrat Jessica Killin, an Army veteran and former congressional aide. They say they repeatedly asked to meet with Crank and were refused. They eventually met with his district director, but not the congressman himself . They joined protests outside his Colorado Springs office and participated in news conferences urging him to advocate for more transparency around the Epstein files . "At the end of the day, the bare minimum of this job in this role is to hear your constituents," Amanda Roberts said. "How can you stay with your constituents and vote according to their needs if you have no idea what their needs are?" .

Crank did not sign onto the bipartisan discharge petition that helped force a vote on the release of the Epstein files, and he voted to block consideration of the Epstein Files Transparency Act on the House floor. In the final vote, however, he joined nearly every member of the House to approve the legislation . His campaign has not issued a detailed response to the ad. The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee described the ad as part of a broader effort to hold Republicans accountable for their handling of the Epstein files .

The ad represents a new phase in the political afterlife of the Epstein case—a phase in which the families of victims are not merely witnesses but participants, using the tools of electoral politics to continue a fight that the criminal justice system did not finish. Virginia Giuffre spent years pursuing accountability, first against Epstein and then against others she accused of complicity. She died by suicide in 2025, but her family has chosen to carry the work forward—not in a courtroom, but on the airwaves of a contested congressional district in Colorado. The ad is thirty seconds long. The fight it represents is much older.

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Sources: The New York Times, The Guardian, Washington Post, NBC News, DCCC