Democratic lawmaker says House Speaker retaliated against her for speaking out on Epstein resolution

Rep. Penelope Tsernoglou (D-East Lansing) speaks in support of legislation to ban nonconsensual “deepfake” pornography before a vote in the Michigan state House on April 24, 2025. | Photo: Anna Liz Nichols

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Rep. Penelope Tsernoglou (D-East Lansing), a member of the House Oversight Committee and the Public Health and Food Security Oversight Subcommittee, as well as the minority vice chair of the State & Local Assistance Programs Oversight Subcommittee, accused Michigan House Speaker Matt Hall (R-Richland Township) of retaliation after she held a press conference calling on the chamber’s Republican leadership to vote on her House Resolution 284.

The resolution, which received broad support among House Democrats as well as Republican Reps. Jaime Greene of Richmond, William Bruck of Erie Township and Brad Paquette of Niles, sought the creation of a select committee to investigate ties between Epstein and the Interlochen Center for the Arts.

In February, NPR released a deep dive examining how Epstein and co-conspirator Ghislaine Maxwell used the boarding school as a base to prey on some of their earliest victims, citing records released by the U.S. Department of Justice alongside former campus administrators.

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“Speaker Hall’s decision to remove me from all my committee’s is truly shocking. The Speaker of the House has decided to retaliate against me for daring to publicly ask him to investigate Jeffrey Epstein. While he decided to engage in a cover-up, I chose to stand with the victims and survivors of Jeffrey Epstein in calling for a bipartisan committee to investigate his ties with Interlochen,” Tsernoglou’s statement reads.

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https://michiganadvance.com/2026/05/20/democratic-lawmaker-says-house-speaker-retaliated-against-her-for-speaking-out-on-epstein-resolution/