00:00Senator, thank you. There are lots of extraordinary and suspicious happenings
00:05around the Epstein case in the last few months, but just by way of background to
00:10those who may not be following each development, you have Epstein at one
00:17point describing himself as one of Donald Trump's closest friends. You have
00:21Donald Trump saying at one point that he shares a bond with Epstein over their
00:28mutual like of attractive women and pointing out that in the case of Epstein
00:33they tend to be on the younger side. You have the president recently acknowledging
00:39is upset with Jeffrey Epstein for stealing young women from Mar-a-Lago to buy Epstein
00:48for purposes that he did not disclose, the president did not disclose. Tragically in
00:54April, one of those women, one of those children, underage women working Mar-a-Lago
01:02committed suicide. She was a victim of the Ghislaine Maxwell Jeffrey Epstein sex
01:09trafficking. Just this past April she took her own life, but she was one of those
01:15women apparently that Trump was upset that Epstein was taking away from him at
01:20Mar-a-Lago. Now it certainly begs the question of what did Trump think Jeffrey
01:26Epstein was doing with these young women he was taking from Mar-a-Lago? So these
01:30are just some of the questions we hope will be answered, but of course after
01:34promising the MAGA base that he would disclose these files after Bondi promised
01:40and Kash Patel promised and Trump promised, they've reneged on this. So this is the
01:46backdrop in which the Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche goes to visit the
01:51number one co-conspirator Maxwell and and the other background piece of this
01:56is that Todd Blanche isn't just some Deputy Attorney General. Todd Blanche is
02:02Trump's former criminal defense lawyer. Todd Blanche is the guy that sat in the
02:07courtroom in Manhattan helping to defend Donald Trump against the Stormy
02:13Daniels allegations against him for which Donald Trump was convicted of multiple
02:16felonies and as you'll remember from the Judiciary Committee when Blanche came
02:20for his confirmation hearing you and I were both concerned about whether Blanche
02:26would be able to shed his role as Trump's criminal defense lawyer when he
02:31adopted the new role of being the number two person the Justice Department. So all
02:35this begs the question of when this very unusual thing happened where the
02:40number two person the Justice Department goes to talk to the co-conspirator this
02:45child sex predator is he acting as Trump's defense lawyer or is he acting as a
02:50Deputy AG and as you were alluding if this wasn't bizarre enough for a top
02:57person like that to go interview a witness is unprecedented for them to do it
03:03secretly and we don't know was this recorded we don't know was an FBI agent
03:10present it would be unthinkable to do this in the absence of an FBI agent taking
03:14down the statement but there's no evidence that took place the only thing we
03:19do know is this interview lasted nine hours and after the interview Ghislaine
03:26Maxwell got the special treatment of being moved from her prison in Florida to a
03:30minimum security prison in Texas that is like a camp in which sex predators are
03:37not supposed to be sent so why did you get that special treatment and finally
03:42one other point I would make before I yield back to you about how unusual all
03:46this is is the defense attorney representing Maxwell is friends
03:52apparently with Todd Blanche the Deputy Attorney General and when Maxwell was
03:57asked are you hoping for a pardon out of this he basically said we didn't ask for
04:03one but of course the president has said he has the power to do it they
04:08obviously want some special treatment they're already getting it but we have no
04:13record of any of this so so yes this is so unusual extraordinary
04:19unprecedented and if they think this is going to somehow answer the questions
04:24that have been raised by the refusal to turn over these documents it is the
04:28farthest thing from that wouldn't wouldn't you say I see that the center of
04:32Maryland has come to the floor to make his consent so let me yield to him since
04:38we're kind of into his time here
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