Here’s the thing about the victims of Jeffrey Epstein: they’re not going away. In fact, they’re hellbent on forcing Congress to pay attention after being ignored for decades. That’s why I’m launching The Reckoning, a series spotlighting how survivors are taking justice into their own hands because no one else will. These reports will track how they’re breaking chains of silence and demanding accountability from leaders while the Justice Department still refuses to release the Epstein files.
Part one of the series zeroes in on Epstein survivor and Alaskan Marijke Chartouni, who has turned her attention to Republican Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska), the deciding vote on September 10 to block the release of the Epstein files. Chartouni uncovered Murkowski’s longstanding ties to Ghislaine Maxwell’s husband, Scott Borgerson, and the many occasions Murkowski appeared on stage with Maxwell at ocean-advocacy conferences. They were appearances that, intentionally or not, helped launder Maxwell’s name even as she was publicly linked to Epstein.
Ghislaine Maxwell and her husband Scott Borgerson met in 2013 at the inauguraal Arctic Circle Forum in Iceland where Murkowski beamed in by video.
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Chartouni’s foray into opposition research came after a crushing moment: she was misled by Rep. Harriet Hageman (R-Wyo.) at Reagan National Airport into believing that she had voted for the bipartisan Epstein Files Transparency Act, co-sponsored by Reps. Thomas Massie and Ro Khanna, which needed only two more votes at the time. Chartouni burst into tears of joy. But it was a lie. Hageman had only backed Speaker Mike Johnson’s countermeasure, which was a move designed to bury the issue in the sham investigation run by the House Oversight Committee.
Chartouni was devastated but she quickly learned the vocabulary of Washington: spin, obfuscate, deceit. She and her fellow survivors refuse to fold. If anything, Hageman’s duplicity made them more determined. “We’re sharing info and lobbying,” Chartouni texted me. They’re now playing D.C. at its own game, using one of its sharpest tools: opposition research.
So when Murkowski cast that fateful vote on the Epstein files, Chartouni took it personally.
“She needs to be shamed!” the usually soft-spoken survivor told me. “I’m from Alaska. It’s personal.”
And she didn’t stop there. She started digging. Why would Murkowski, who has occasionally broken with Trump and previously suggested the files should be released, suddenly reverse course?
What she uncovered was a tangle of connections between Murkowski, Maxwell, her husband Borgerson, and Anchorage Daily News publisher and political donor Alice Rogoff. Through the Arctic Circle conference circuit, Murkowski repeatedly spoke at the same conferences as Maxwell, a well-known convicted sex offender’s right hand and later a convicted trafficker herself. For Murkowski, the release of those files isn’t just about Epstein. It’s about reminders of who she chose to share a stage with, and what that signified.
Chartouni passed her findings to me, and with my team including ace researcher
For more than a decade, Murkowski has moved in the same Arctic policy circles as Maxwell, Borgerson, and Rogoff.
Borgerson: Maxwell’s Husband, Murkowski’s Colleague and Stakeholder Before Scott Borgerson was known as Maxwell’s partner, he was a rising star in Arctic maritime investments. Then, a married man with two children, he met Maxwell in 2013 at the inaugural Arctic Circle Forum in Iceland, where Murkowski also spoke. But their overlap began earlier:
· 2009: Murkowski and Borgerson both testified at a Senate Foreign Relations committee hearing; she later featured an article in which he’s quoted on her website when she argued to Ratify the ‘Law of the Sea’ treaty, which would expand Alaska’s territory.
Scott Borgerson and Lisa Murkowski gave speeches at the Arctic Imperative Summit in 2011.
· 2016: Borgerson moderated a conversation with Murkowski at the Council on Foreign Relations.
Scott Borgerson (far right) moderates a conversation featuring Senator Murkowski in 2016.
Borgerson’s firm, CargoMetrics LLC, stood to profit from Arctic shipping routes—an issue central to Murkowski’s constituency. The horrors of the Epstein files would make some question the judgement of Murkowski to continue to associate with Borgerson who was in a relationship with Maxwell, a woman so closely linked to the sex offender Epstein who she remained in contact with long after he was indicted in 2008, even if her state stood to benefit.
“[Senator Murkowski] met Maxwell in passing at an international conference more than 10 years ago, never spending meaningful time with her or having any substantive conversation with her, and was completely unaware of her crimes or her association with Jeffrey Epstein,” her spokesperson Joseph Plesha said in a statement. “There is no further connection between them, and to suggest otherwise is simply false.”
Her office did not respond to follow up questions about her longstanding relationship with Borgerson.
✦ Keep reading for even further connections to Ghislaine Maxwell and Epstein and what this might mean for Sen. Murkowski.
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