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Deadline: White House 12/12/25 | ️ Breaking News December 12, 2025
Deadline: White House 12/12/25 | ️ Breaking News December 12, 2025
Deadline: White House 12/12/25 | ️ Breaking News December 12, 2025
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NewsTranscript
00:00Hi, everyone. It's 4 o'clock in New York. I'm Ali Velshi in for Nicole Wallace.
00:0819 photos that are worth a thousand words. Newly released images from the Epstein estate
00:12offer a glimpse into the world of the deceased sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, a world that included
00:17the rich, the famous, and the powerful. Folks like Donald Trump, Bill Clinton, and others.
00:22The photos have been put out by the Democrats on the House Oversight Committee.
00:26Donald Trump appears in three of the 19 photos. One was already public. The other two
00:31depict Trump with women who are not identified. This one, in black and white, shows Donald Trump
00:36standing with six women wearing leis. We don't know where or when these photos were taken.
00:41You'll recall that Trump has admitted to being friends with Jeffrey Epstein.
00:45Back in 2002, he told New York Magazine that Epstein was a, quote, terrific guy and that,
00:50quote, he's a lot of fun to be with. The reasons for their falling out, however, have shifted
00:54repeatedly. Other photos show Epstein with filmmaker Woody Allen, Bill Gates, Trump, Trump ally Steve
01:01Bannon, and Bill Clinton, who, through a spokesperson, has denied knowing anything about Epstein's
01:06crimes and has even denied having spoken to him for over a decade before Epstein's death. In fact,
01:10all of the men seen in the photos have denied any wrongdoing on their part or any knowledge of
01:16Epstein's crimes. The photos released today are part of some 95,000 images that the Epstein
01:23estate has handed over to the committee. In other words, it's just the tip of the iceberg.
01:27The ranking member of the House Oversight Committee, Democrat Robert Garcia, said this
01:30morning that Democrats plan to release more photos in the days and weeks ahead. Here's more from his
01:35press conference. These pictures, some of these photos are really disturbing. And I know we've put
01:41some out today. There are many others. And some of the other photos that we did not put out today
01:47are incredibly disturbing. Garcia then referred to the fact that the Justice Department has to
01:53release the Epstein files by December 19th in order to comply with the law passed with near
01:58unanimous support by Congress. That's now just seven days away. Congressman Ro Khanna is going to join us
02:04in just a few moments. But first, I want to bring in Miami Herald investigative reporter Julie K. Brown.
02:08Her reporting has driven the vast majority of the Epstein coverage over the years. In fact,
02:13is really the reason this continues to remain a story that we're following. Julie, great to see
02:18you again. Thank you for being back with us. What do you make of this, Julie? There's a lot
02:25of information that we already knew. There may be photos that are new to people, but it's information
02:30we knew of. As you go through these new tranches of information that come out from time to time,
02:36including today, are you discovering things that are new?
02:39I think just seeing all these people with Epstein, you know, as the cliche goes, a picture is worth a
02:47thousand words. I think that you have to wonder when you see these, you know, powerful people,
02:54intelligent people, people who are world leaders, sort of smiling and laughing with Epstein.
03:01I mean, of course, we don't know the dates that these photos were taken. But at some point,
03:08these people had to know what he was doing. I mean, even in some of the photos, the one with
03:16Bannon, you could see some photos on his desk. There's one of a partially clad woman sitting right
03:22there on his desk. I mean, there's no doubt that some of these people that were in his orbit
03:28had to know that he was engaging in sex with a lot of different women, and many of them were
03:34very young. Julie, stand by for a second. I want to bring in the Democratic Congressman Ro Khanna of
03:41California. He's a member of the House Oversight Committee. Congressman, good to see you. Thank you
03:45for being with us. Can you give me some context into these documents, these photos that have been
03:50released? I know that it's a part of a much larger tranche. So these are some of them. Give me a
03:56sense of what this is about. Well, it's a bombshell revelation. I mean, you have photos of Bill
04:05Clinton, of Donald Trump, of Bill Gates, Larry Summers, others at Epstein's properties, at, in some
04:14cases, Epstein's rape island. And this is just one fourth of the documents that are actually in
04:19the Epstein release. And we still are, of course, waiting on December 19th for all of the documents
04:27to come out. There are many such pictures, according to the survivors. And this should give us real
04:33momentum that we want to see everything. Julie, what's your sense of if lots of documents come
04:40out by December 19th or photos? Because I think there's nobody in America who knows more about this
04:44story than you do. Do you think, give me some sort of estimate, do you think there's going to be a lot
04:50more information that you'll know and that the public will be able to glean to finally put the
04:55right meat on the bones on this story and understand it properly? Well, it depends on whether the FBI
05:01and the Justice Department is forthcoming with these documents, whether they really produce them and
05:06they are transparent about it. They don't over-redact. And they actually do what the law now requires
05:17them to do. But if they do that, yes, I think there's an awful lot here. For example, with the
05:23photographs, we know from the victims that Maxwell and other assistants that Epstein had were often
05:30taking photographs of the women. And even the underage girls were often asked to pose
05:36provocatively in little or no clothing, sometimes to take pictures for Epstein as a quote-unquote gift.
05:44So there's a lot of disturbing, as the representative said earlier, there's probably a lot of disturbing
05:52photographs and video material in there. Congressman, there is some chance, as Julie says, that the
05:58Department of Justice will use all sorts of tricks to delay this. Redactions, the idea that anything
06:05having to do with an ongoing investigation can't be released. Tell me about the information that
06:09you would like the Justice Department to release versus the information you are getting access to
06:15from the estate. Because I don't know if the public understands what's the difference
06:20in those two tranches of information. Well, first, Ali, let me just say about Julie. I have so much
06:26admiration for her journalism. She has been covering this for over a decade at a time where no one cared
06:35about these survivors. And there are over 1,000 survivors, and they deserve justice. Now, we're
06:40getting some of the documents from the Epstein estate. As you know, that happened because I was
06:44on Lawrence O'Donnell's show. Bradley Edwards gave me a tip. We sent a letter. And those documents
06:49are coming from Epstein's estate. Separately, now you've had three federal judges, a federal judge in
06:55Florida, and two federal judges in New York say that the Justice Department needs to produce the
07:01documents, including what was in the grand jury, including discovery. What do we need? We need
07:06information about the photographs that were on Epstein's computers. We need the witness memorandum
07:12that the FBI wrote, many of them talking to many different men. We need documents such as the case
07:19that happened in the Virgin Islands and questions that and documents concerning that. The Justice
07:24Department has access to them. The Justice Department has access to financial records.
07:29Were they loans to Donald Trump? Or did Donald Trump provide loans to Epstein? Did other people
07:33provide loans and money to Epstein? All of that needs to come out. And now three federal judges have
07:40said that to comply with the Epstein Transparency Act, the Justice Department must release those documents.
07:46Julie, I share the representative's view of you. You are a journalist journalist.
07:50But talk to me about motivations here. There are some people who are motivated by the fact that
07:56they believe there's a conspiracy theory here and things have been done. There are others who think
08:00that sometimes just by being rich and connected, you get away with things. There are still others
08:05who are mostly concerned with this, either on a salacious basis or the fact that perhaps it could
08:10lead to the end of Donald Trump. But I would argue, and maybe I'm wrong, I would argue that concern
08:14about the survivors is at best a distant fourth. And that's sort of disappointing and sad. And that's
08:20something you've talked about and written about. Well, that's the reason I took up this story to
08:25begin with. Because I knew it. Everybody knew about Jeffrey Epstein. And everybody had stories before
08:31me. You know, I wasn't the first reporter to cover this. But I just felt like it was a mystery. It was
08:39inexplicable to me how he got away with his crimes. And especially when there were so many women,
08:44young women, underage women who were victimized. So how does that happen? And that's how I started
08:50my investigation. I still think that question isn't answered. I still think that should be
08:55paramount on everyone's minds. It doesn't matter whether you're Republican or Democrat or what your
09:01political beliefs are. This is a crime. And it should be viewed as a crime. And everyone,
09:07Republicans, Democrats should consider this something that we have to resolve. And we have
09:13to bring justice for these crimes to these survivors. Congressman, this is one of the very
09:18few things that are bipartisan these days. You've been working in a bipartisan fashion with some of
09:23your Republican colleagues. Talk to me about continued avenues. You mentioned that you're on
09:27Lawrence's show and you got sort of a hint or a tip about things you can do. And that has led to
09:31some of this documentation. What else can happen? Because I think there's no doubt that no matter
09:36what exists, the Justice Department will slow walk the release of information they have.
09:44Well, let me first say that for Thomas Massey, myself, Marjorie Taylor Greene, Nancy Mace,
09:49Lauren Boebert, the three Republican women who stayed on the discharge petition despite enormous
09:54pressure from the White House and Speaker Johnson, it was about the survivors. It was because we heard
10:00their stories. And the survivors are what moved America. There are two press conferences in front
10:07of the Capitol. Someone said to me who wasn't involved with Epstein sexual abuse, but had just
10:13faced sexual assault, that this was the first time she felt that the government saw her, that the
10:18government did something to validate her. So for us, this is personal. We've met now a lot of these
10:25survivors. We're going to insist that those federal judge decisions be obeyed. We have requested a
10:33meeting with Pam Bondi. Now, look, so far, the Justice Department has said that they're planning
10:37to comply with those decisions. But as Julie pointed out, there's a lot of documents. And the
10:44question is, what are we going to get? I don't expect we're going to get all of them December 19th,
10:48but we'll have a pretty good sense of how difficult it's going to be to get all of them. I certainly am not
10:54going to rest until we get all of them with the victims protected. Julie, let's talk about
10:59Ghislaine Maxwell, because there's a lot of headlines about her. There's a lot of machination
11:03on her part to get a commutation of her sentence. Nobody in the administration has said that's a
11:10non-starter, but this is a convicted sex offender who already, as a result of a very unorthodox
11:16interview with the deputy attorney general, seems to be getting preferential treatment. What's your
11:21sense of what Ghislaine Maxwell's role in this current set of developments can be?
11:28Well, I think that she's aiming for her pardon. I think that she has, I think she knows a lot of
11:34information. She obviously knows who was involved with Epstein, who helped Epstein. She really can
11:40provide a key for exactly how it operated. But of course, during her trial and even after,
11:46she's claimed she didn't know anything. She had no information. So I personally suspect that she's
11:54going to start, if she doesn't seem like she's going to get a pardon, I think she's going to,
11:59if she hasn't already started leaking information, in order to send a message to some of these important
12:04people that she knows where the skeletons are. And I just think that she's just waiting and wondering
12:12what's going to come out before she starts really moving forward with a pardon or a commutation of
12:19her sentence. And that's one side of the coin, Congressman. The other side is what Donald Trump
12:23knew and when he knew it. The Wall Street Journal reporting today that Donald Trump, the Justice
12:29Department told Donald Trump in May that his name is among many in the Epstein files. When Justice
12:34Department officials reviewed what Attorney General Palm Bondi called a truckload of documents related to
12:39Jeffrey Epstein earlier this year, they discovered that Donald Trump's name appeared multiple times,
12:43according to senior administration officials. In May, Bondi and her deputy informed the president
12:47at a meeting in the White House that his name was in the Epstein files, the official said. Many other
12:52high-profile figures were also named, Trump was told. Being mentioned in the records isn't a sign of
12:58wrongdoing. And that's a fact. It's not a sign of wrongdoing. But there's an inconsistency here
13:03about what Donald Trump says about his relationship with Jeffrey Epstein. Again, this may lead to no
13:08wrongdoing whatsoever. But whether you're a conspiracy theorist, or you're just somebody
13:13who wants to get to the bottom of this, or you'd like somebody to get, you're somebody who wants to
13:16get justice for the victims, there is an inconsistency with the stories that come from
13:21Donald Trump and the White House about their relationship or his relationship with Jeffrey
13:25Epstein. Well, all that so often happens in Washington, the cover-up is far worse than the
13:32original crime. Many people voted for Donald Trump. They knew that he wasn't a saint. They knew that
13:40he had affiliation with people like Epstein. But what they thought is he would expose the system,
13:45that there are a bunch of rich and powerful men who have too much control in our government,
13:49who intimidated young girls and said, we control the FBI, we control the police, you can't report us.
13:56And that he was going to expose this. He was going to expose a group of rich and powerful men
14:00who don't share small-town American values, who feel the rules don't apply to them. And the reason
14:05there's been such outrage is not because he wrote a birthday letter to Jeffrey Epstein. It's not because
14:12his name is in the files. It's because he's gone back on that fundamental promise to expose this
14:17Epstein class. And my view remains, as do some Republicans, that he should just get it out there,
14:23both because it's the right thing to do and because it's the politically smart thing to do.
14:27And Julie, that, I guess, becomes the common thread between people who have different
14:33motivations for wanting information out of this. And that is just tell me what the truth is. And I
14:38remember from your reporting all those years ago, that's all you were trying to get at as a journalist.
14:42What actually happened here? Do you sense we're getting closer to this?
14:48Oh, gosh, it's hard to say. I don't think anybody in the public,
14:53anyway, really understands how big this is. This is a huge global sex trafficking and probably money
15:03laundering network. And I, you know, it could take a long time before we really find out exactly how it
15:11operated. It was it was global. There were people in Russia involved all over the world. And so,
15:18you know, I'm not sure how much the FBI really did their job in investigating this, quite frankly.
15:24In fact, I feel like we're getting more information from his estate through the oversight committee
15:30than we probably ever would have gotten out of the government files.
15:35Thanks to both of you, not just for being here to explain this to us, but both of you have taken
15:39very active roles in trying to get information out about about this case and make everybody
15:44better informed about it. So we appreciate it. Julie Kay Brown, thank you for joining me today.
15:49And of course, Congressman Ro Khanna, member of the oversight committee and co-sponsor of the Epstein
15:53Files Transparency Act. All right, when we come back, Trump upping the pressure on Venezuela and its
15:57leader with sanctions and threatening land strikes could be next after seizing an oil tanker
16:02off the coast there, leaving everyone wondering what his end game actually is. Plus, a top U.S.
16:08general contradicting Donald Trump and his calls for the military to be used
16:12against the so-called enemy within. We'll show those remarks to you. And later in the show,
16:16beating back an intense White House-led pressure campaign, bipartisan lawmakers in Indiana said
16:21no thank you to Trump's gerrymandered maps. All those stories and more when deadline White House
16:26continues after this. Don't go anywhere. Donald Trump is pushing his most aggressive military
16:32action yet in Venezuela, land strikes. I guess now we're not treating them so good.
16:37But if you look at the drug traffic, drug traffic by sea is down 92 percent.
16:44And nobody can figure out who the 8 percent is because I have no idea. Anybody getting involved
16:50in that right now is not doing well. And we'll start that on land too. It's going to be starting
16:54on land pretty soon. Take note of the fact that he's justifying this with drug trafficking is when
17:00I talk about this in a while. We started what started as the administration calling it an effort
17:07to help keep harmful narcotics off of American streets has devolved into a potential war with
17:12one of the world's most oil rich nations. That threat comes amid new sanctions placed on Venezuela
17:17and its leader, Nicolas Maduro, the guy on the right by the Trump administration. The new sanctions
17:22target three nephews of the wife of Mr. Maduro and six shipping shipping companies. The administration
17:28has also not ruled out additional oil tanker seizures. This is the one that happened a couple
17:33of nights ago. Maybe it was last night. And since September, two nights ago. And since September 2nd,
17:37there have been at least 22 boat strikes, which have killed 87 people. And through all of these
17:42actions, the administration has not been accountable to anyone or the law. The administration has yet to
17:48publicly release a legal justification or the written orders for the mission, which was due to Congress
17:54months ago. I want to bring in the former deputy national security advisor, the president of Barack
17:58Obama, Ben Rhodes, and the White House correspondent, Laura Barone Lopez joins us as well. Welcome both
18:03of you. Thank you for being with us. Laura, latest information from you from the White House, because
18:07this situation is remarkably kinetic. We've got the ongoing questions about these attacks on these boats
18:11that Pete Hegsitz refuses to give sort of consistent information on. And then we've got the seizure of
18:16this very large, cruel crude oil tanker and the expectation that there might be more of those.
18:22And now talk about a land attack. Where are we on this? Right. Well, it appears that things just
18:28continue to be escalating now. And as you noted, the justification has kind of varied. Even yesterday
18:34in the Oval Office, when the president was asked why, essentially, he said there are for a lot of reasons
18:40was the why was the justification, including he even mentioned immigration and seemed to be saying
18:46because of the flow of migrants from Venezuela was another reason. And then he mentioned drug
18:50trafficking. And so the White House officially has been saying that they seized this oil tanker
18:56because it was a part of the larger illicit trade and funding of Venezuela's drug trafficking.
19:04But again, there are so many questions that they're not necessarily answering and that a number of
19:09lawmakers on Capitol Hill, including even Republicans, are trying to get answers on, which is what is the
19:15legal justification? Why did they escalate to seizing an oil tanker in addition to these boat
19:20strikes? You know, alone, they're just trying to get justification, legal justification for the boat
19:25strikes and get some kind of reckoning there, which they will. A number of lawmakers on the Hill believe
19:32that the boat strikes in and of themselves, let alone second strikes or double tap strikes like the
19:37one on September 2nd that killed survivors may be illegal. A number of lawmakers, including Republicans,
19:42believe that the whole operation could very well be illegal.
19:47Ben, there's so much here. But let's just start with the fact we have 14,000 troops in the region.
19:52We got F-35s. We got an air carrier strike group there. And then to Laura's point, we got it could be
19:59about drugs, could be specifically about fentanyl, which Venezuela doesn't make, or cocaine on boats that
20:04aren't going to the United States, couldn't possibly get to the United States. An admiral involved in this
20:09has said very clearly those boats are not going to the United States. Now, maybe it's about
20:12immigration. You were in the government. You understand there are rules. They're not that
20:20complicated. You have to get permission to do this if you're going to launch strikes. You can't
20:24just decide you're in a war on drugs and you can't just decide people are terrorists.
20:30Yeah, absolutely, Ali. And there's just no legal authorization for this whatsoever.
20:34They're not even really pretending there is. There's no act of Congress authorizing these strikes
20:38against these boats. It needs to be emphasized. Venezuela is not a source of fentanyl coming into
20:44the United States. That's precursors from China going through Mexico. Venezuela is not even a
20:48particularly leading source of other types of drugs coming to the United States, you know,
20:52compared to Mexico or Colombia, right? And so there's just no legal basis to be fighting a war
20:58against drug trafficking boats. There's no evidence even of the drugs on the boats that is really being
21:04presented in a consistent way. And look, this all feels like it's about a regime change operation
21:10against Venezuela. You don't need, even if you are fighting war against drug trafficking,
21:14you don't need an aircraft carrier. You don't need over 10,000 U.S. personnel to blow up some boats
21:18in the Caribbean. So the massive military force, the seizing of the oil tanker, this all feels like
21:26the precursor to an effort to change the regime in Venezuela. And there too, we'd ask, you know,
21:31Maduro, not a good guy, but he's been there for well over a decade. Why are we doing this now?
21:36And Donald Trump has just never given an explanation to Congress or the American people
21:41about what we're doing here and what could be like a regime change war.
21:47Yeah. And he tried a version of this in his first administration. But Laura, that's a big deal.
21:52Regime, I mean, there are lots of regimes in the world that are actually illegitimate. This may be one
21:57of them and are bad and are bad for their own people. There's no popular support generally for
22:03major military action for regime change. But the administration is, they're not making a big
22:11secret of the whole thing. They're trying to get rid of Maduro. No, that's right. I mean,
22:14they are essentially making this pretty well known how they feel about the regime, what they want done.
22:22The fact that they don't feel really as though they're constrained in any way and they are taking
22:27step by step more aggressive action and they don't really expect much pushback or oversight from
22:35Congress, despite the fact that we've seen a few more Republicans become outspoken on this area,
22:39be it the boat strikes or be it the escalations on the oil tanker and the potential conversation
22:45about some kind of land campaign. They feel as though they can essentially, the president feels as
22:51though, and those around him as though he can essentially take the actions that he wants
22:54to take and that there won't be many repercussions. Now on the issue of a land campaign, I'll just say
23:00when we talk about the politics of this a bit, Ali, back in the campaign trail, when I talked to a
23:05number of people who were planning to vote for Trump, including young voters, they kept repeating over
23:11and over again, the idea of forever wars, the idea of more and more wars that the U.S. may get involved
23:17in. And the idea of American troops on the ground was something that these young voters, especially
23:21young men, did not want to see at all. And that was one of their big reasons for voting for President
23:26Trump. And so the fact that now we hear the president toy with the idea of potentially starting
23:32some kind of land operation is another thing that could end up not sitting very well with his base.
23:38That's very strange. Ben, when you look at countries that are considered adversaries, Iran,
23:45Russia, Venezuela, these are all countries that have one thing that they can sell a lot of to get
23:50foreign currency. They need dollars to operate their economy. Venezuela sells its oil at a discount to
23:56the world because it's sanctioned oil. I would assume if America seizes enough of these boats,
24:02these very large crude carriers, that it could have some impact. I mean, I don't know what impact it has
24:07on the average Venezuelan because life is very bad economically if you're the average Venezuelan.
24:12So I don't know how much worse it gets because of this. But is there a way that this does end up
24:16pressuring Maduro to leave? Because the White House is implying that those kinds of discussions are
24:21underway. Yeah, it puts a lot of pressure on Maduro. If it denies him revenue, it definitely puts a
24:29squeeze on him. But look, the reality is we've seen this movie before, Ali. I mean, if he leaves,
24:34which I don't think is guaranteed. I mean, he's a revolutionary type figure. He probably doesn't
24:38trust that he'd be safe anywhere outside the country. He may choose to stay and fight. But even
24:44if he leaves,
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