- 16 hours ago
All In with Chris Hayes - Season 2025 Episode 192 -
Episode 19
Episode 19
Category
😹
FunTranscript
00:00The cover-up continues as Trump's DOJ releases some of the Epstein files and blacks out the
00:08rest. Some of the documents I've just been scanning them have very heavy redactions. The
00:14law is very clear that any redaction has to be justified in writing. We'll tell you what we know
00:20and what we don't as the administration drags its feet on full disclosure. It's clear that the
00:27Justice Department is just doing this at its own pace, regardless of what the law says.
00:31They're just expecting that, look, you know, this is a huge undertaking. You're just going to have
00:36to take what we give you and then we'll give you some more later. Tonight, former Attorney General
00:40Eric Holder will be here on Trump DOJ's blatant flouting of the law, plus the political fallout
00:47for an already flailing White House. I think we ought to bring Pam Bondi before the Senate Judiciary
00:55Committee demand answers as to why the department has violated the law.
01:00And Epstein survivor Jess Michaels on her reaction to today's news.
01:04But all in starts right now.
01:11Good evening from New York. I'm Chris Hayes. Well, today was the day, as you may know,
01:14December 19th, that, of course, the deadline mandated by law for Donald Trump's Department
01:20of Justice to release the Epstein files, all of them basically unredacted. And we got a release
01:26with an enormous asterisk, which is that they are very clearly violating that law, which is not
01:32surprising. It is a law that they fought at every single opportunity from shutting the entire House
01:37of Representatives down for months to not swearing in a duly elected member so she couldn't sign the
01:41discharge petition to at the last minute browbeating their own allies like Congresswoman Lauren
01:47Boebert, who was brought into the Situation Room. And ultimately, none of that worked. The law passed
01:52both houses. Donald Trump was forced into signing it clearly against his will. And so today, on the
01:58day of the deadline, they have released some and only some of the documents that they were required by
02:04that law to release. Thousands of documents, including scores of photographs of Epstein's
02:09properties, including massage rooms, along with photos of young women and vacation locales, and notably
02:15former President Bill Clinton. Now, we should note here, these are all just photos. We don't know
02:20the context in which any of them are taken, but President Clinton appears in several photos
02:25alongside Epstein, Glenn Maxwell, and redacted persons. In one image, Clinton appears with a
02:30redacted woman sitting on his lap. You just saw that. In another, he is with a redacted person in a
02:36jacuzzi. In response, President Clinton's spokesperson released a statement, reading in part, quote,
02:41The White House hasn't been hiding these files for months, only to dump them late on a Friday to
02:45protect Bill Clinton. This is about shielding themselves from what comes next, or from what
02:50they'll try and hide forever. It certainly does appear that photos of many other men have been
02:55blacked out. There are a ton of redactions, entire documents, like the one you see here,
03:00completely blacked out. And not just documents. Faces are blacked out, but not always consistently.
03:05DOJ said they blacked out the faces of victims and minors, which I think everyone agrees and the
03:12law requires them to do. They also appear to be some grown men whose identities are obscured. And
03:17get this, sources tell Fox News that more than a dozen politically exposed people and government
03:22officials' names appear in the hundreds of thousands of pages of Jeffrey Epstein files made
03:26public Friday. And in addition to protecting the victims' identities, Fox reported that the same
03:32redaction standards were applied to politically exposed individuals and government officials.
03:37If that is true, it is illegal, flatly. The federal law at issue, the one that has brought us to this
03:43point, is clear. The Department of Justice cannot redact information solely because its release might
03:50harm an individual's reputation. And if they did redact politically exposed individuals, why did they
03:57release more than a dozen photos and documents relating to Bill Clinton? I think we know, right?
04:02We're not idiots. In fact, he seems to appear more than any other public figure, including in this
04:08social media post by a White House spokeswoman suggesting the media investigate Clinton's
04:12well-documented encounters with Epstein. Now, Donald Trump's relationship with Epstein is well-documented.
04:18We have all seen the pictures of the two men together. We all remember the quote that he gave
04:22the reporter who wrote a profile Epstein about how much he loves women and how they're on the younger
04:27side. And we all know about the birthday card. Donald Trump denies writing it and sued about it,
04:32but the one where he talks about them having secrets and age being nothing but a number.
04:39Why does Donald Trump hardly appear in this trove of documents except in one photo we've all seen in
04:44a desk of Epstein's? Do you think that's an accident when it was his Justice Department who was going
04:49through them? I mean, we don't know. We do know this isn't all the Epstein files. In fact,
04:54today, the DOJ admitted that they are, again, flatly violating the law, violating tonight's
04:59deadline, releasing files willy-nilly in the coming weeks. But is it willy-nilly? How did they select
05:04these files for today's release? Remember, earlier this year, the DOJ ordered an internal review
05:10that had FBI workers working around the clock, flagging Donald Trump's name,
05:15telling Donald Trump he's in the files, according to the Wall Street Journal, and then deciding back
05:20in July, after they had worked around the clock, after they had flagged Donald Trump in the files,
05:24after they had told Donald Trump he's in the files, issuing a memo saying, we're not going to release
05:28any of them, case closed. That's the same DOJ and those same very people who have now selectively
05:37dribbled out redacted files in what appears to be an obvious attempt to protect Donald Trump
05:42and cast aspersions on his political enemies. Harry Lipman served as Deputy Assistant Attorney
05:47General of the Department of Justice. Lisa Rubin is MSNOW's senior legal reporter, and they join me
05:51now. One thing I want to say here is that the law also requires the files to be searchable.
05:58That's in the law, for obvious reasons. So we should just start by saying, for much of today,
06:04the search function has either been entirely not functional or barely functional.
06:08I think that's a good way of putting it. I will also say, in fairness, that there is a big caveat,
06:14almost in bold letters, on the Department of Justice's website, saying that there may be
06:18technical problems with the searchability function. Nonetheless, you're absolutely right
06:22that the plain text of the Epstein Files Transparency Act says the files have to be publicly accessible
06:26and searchable for the same reasons that we are all discussing, because there are certain things
06:32that people want to know, right? And you want to be able to know them without looking through
06:36each and every image. That's also probably for the protection of the survivors themselves,
06:40who shouldn't have to look through each and every image or document in order to see the things they're
06:46looking for, including notes of interviews, for example, that they may have given to the FBI or
06:51the Department of Justice. So on the redactions, I mean, the law is very clear about this reputational
06:57harm. I think it's very clear that you don't want the names of victims in there, or their faces,
07:03obviously. And certainly you don't want anything like images of them in compromised positions,
07:07right? But what are the other legal grounds that one would redact here, Harry?
07:14Well, first, the law is the law. It's not a grand jury anymore.
07:19Right. It's the law. It's not a recommendation.
07:20It's the Epstein Transparency Act. So the victim's names, confidentiality, not reputational harm.
07:28And I just want to go to your upfront point about this could not be willy nilly. It must be a cover
07:35up. Just my, you know, 12 year old could do just the stats. You have one or two pictures or searches
07:44of Trump over 100 of Clinton. So it's in theory, everything they say is to try to excuse the violation
07:52of law, no doubt about it. But it makes it seem like, oh, we did our best, et cetera.
07:57What they plainly did was try to control the narrative. I'm reminded a little bit of the
08:02Mueller report. They think the first, the fronting of stuff involving Clinton and other people may
08:09obscure the stuff about Trump. But it's very, very far from what they're required to do. And on the
08:16redactions in particular, Chris, you must explain why. And in writing, of course.
08:21Yeah. And in a typical court process, that really is telling. You go through it, a court
08:25will determine. Here, is there the wherewithal to actually push back? Probably not.
08:31So one really difficult thing to ascertain here is just like, what scope are we dealing
08:35with? Are we looking at, or I saw Robert Garcia, of course, the House Oversight Committee saying
08:39his estimate was 10% of the files. I mean, I don't know what, it's very hard for us to get
08:44the denominator here. But what is your sense of what the scope of what we have compared to what
08:49there is? Or are there things you looked for that aren't there?
08:51I mean, there's tons of things that I look for that aren't there. So for example,
08:54I was looking for the FBI 302s, which as Harry knows well, are the memorialization of interviews
09:00with witnesses or people who may themselves have been participants in crimes, but nonetheless
09:05would be useful as cooperators to the Department of Justice. I saw very, very few of those things.
09:11I saw some handwritten notes of interviews with witnesses, but I didn't see any of those 302s.
09:17And in particular, I didn't see 302s where survivors would have mentioned other adults
09:21who may have been, may have understood that Jeffrey Epstein was trafficking or abusing them.
09:28That was something that Thomas Massey said that he fully expected to see. We don't see anything
09:33approximating that. And to Harry's point about sort of strategic redactions, there was one document
09:38that I looked at today, which is a message pad. And it shows that Sandy Berger, for example,
09:43who was Clinton's national security advisor, called for Epstein. Also shows the name of a
09:46man named John Brockman, who used to host these billionaire conferences at which Jeffrey Epstein
09:51attended dinners. That may have been the context, for example, in which he attended a dinner alongside
09:55David Brooks of the New York Times, who has since denied that he had any other contact with Epstein
10:00whatsoever. But in that same document, there is a redaction of another man's name. Why is it kosher
10:07for Sandy Berger's name to be out there and John Brockman's name to be out there? But what is
10:13clearly a man's name, because it refers to a him, you may call him back at X time, for example,
10:18but that person's name is redacted. Is that for national security reasons? Is that because there's
10:23an ongoing investigation that would be jeopardized? I don't know. And I won't speculate, but I would
10:29like to know the reason why it's okay to name some and not others. And similarly with faces,
10:34there are some men whose faces we clearly see. They include Michael Jackson and Mick Jagger and
10:38Bill Clinton. And then there are other places where there are men we can't see and we know
10:42that they are men. Why? I also feel the need, just before I go back to you, Harry, with all of this,
10:46right, just to say, like, for instance, in the case of Bill Clinton, that he denies any wrongdoing
10:50having to do with, he also denies having known anything about Epstein. And also when we're talking
10:54about these, these, these sort of time contexts, I just think it's important, you know, people that
10:58are meeting with every Epstein in 2011, 2012, 2013, at that point, he had already pleaded guilty to the
11:04crime he had. There had been stories about it. Maybe they knew and maybe they didn't, but it
11:08was entered into public evidence. You know, in 1995, 1997, it's just very unclear if anyone knows
11:14what's happening, right? So we should just put, put that forward just to like, you end up in the
11:20situation where there's a certain guilt by association that's inevitable. Yes. But no one
11:24knows like timestamps or context or any of this. And to your point, like, that's why I think the emails
11:28with Larry Summers were as damaging to him as they were because well into 2019, they are having
11:34those conversations when everybody understands who Jeffrey Epstein was alleged to have been.
11:39So, Harry, the other, the, one of the big things that Julie Kay Brown has talked about,
11:42um, of course, one of the sort of the reporter who's broken a lot of this is there's still a ton
11:47of mystery around the original federal case, right? The kind of original sin of the Jeffrey Epstein
11:52story is that people came forward and he was kind of caught. And instead of being prosecuted
11:59and facing the kind of penalty one would think was commensurate with what he appears to have done,
12:05he got a sweetheart deal cut by the U.S. attorney in very highly unusual terms, right? It seems like
12:13we've got very little to nothing on that that should be in the Department of Justice's files. It
12:18was their case in this dump. So it's certainly true that 2006 was a total powderpuff deal,
12:23but there are many things that are buried here and that doesn't have anything to do with Trump.
12:29And we don't know, but I will speculate because you just do the numbers and the stats. We have
12:35really a small fraction of what they promised to deliver. No redactions explained at all. And it's just
12:43impossible statistically that everything is winnowed out involving Trump. That's what everyone wanted
12:49to see. You're certainly right. The 2006 deal that actually cost the U.S. attorney there his job way
12:56back when. When he was in the Trump cabinet the first time around. Yeah. There's a lot to unearth
13:01here. But the initial thing to unearth is where was the president, the current president? And it has
13:08to be a cover up if you just think of the numbers in that, that we do not have any information. You
13:16can't search it, et cetera. It's strategic. Can I say one thing about the president? There are some
13:20documents here that are not particularly helpful for the president. And I want to point out one of
13:24them. One of them is a civil complaint in a case called Doe versus Indyke, where the Doe plaintiff
13:29there also is one of four victims who testified in Ghislaine Maxwell's criminal trial. And at that
13:34trial, she told a version of the story that Jeffrey Epstein brought her to a party at Mar-a-Lago
13:38when she was 14 years old to introduce her to Donald Trump. In the civil complaint that her
13:43lawyers file, that story is told again. I'm just going to read from it. During one of Doe's
13:47encounters with Epstein, he took her to Mar-a-Lago, where he introduced her to its owner, Donald J.
13:51Trump. Introducing 14-year-old Doe to Donald J. Trump, Epstein elbowed Trump, playfully asking him,
13:57referring to Doe, this is a good one, right? Trump smiled and nodded in agreement. They both
14:01chuckled and Doe felt uncomfortable, but at the time was too young to understand why. So it's not
14:06the case that every mention of Donald Trump here is innocuous. I don't think that that's
14:11particularly innocuous. It doesn't mean that Trump is a criminal. It doesn't mean that he even knew
14:15that Doe was 14 years old at the time. But certainly there's a suggestion that Donald Trump
14:20understood that Jeffrey Epstein was hanging out with girls who were too young to be his girlfriend
14:25and maybe didn't inquire as to why. And just very quickly, that kind of document,
14:29the 302s with victims and survivors actually coming to the FBI, we have precious few of them.
14:36And we know there are a lot of them because a lot of people did come forward. Harry Lipman,
14:40Lisa Rubin, thank you both. Coming up, Eric Holder joins me to break down everything we know
14:44about these files in the DOJ. That's next.
14:46I think we ought to bring Pam Bondi before the Senate Judiciary Committee,
14:54demand answers as to why the department has violated the law.
14:59In their extensive redactions to portions of the Epstein files released today, which themselves
15:03are partial, and their choice of which material to release, the DOJ appears to be doing what it
15:07has been doing all year, protecting Donald Trump while going after his political enemies and also
15:11trampling the law. Eric Holder served as attorney general of the United States under President
15:16Obama, and he joins me now. Mr. Holder, you had that position at the Department of Justice,
15:22of course, as attorney general, and I never had a project quite like this, I would imagine.
15:27And granting that there are genuine difficult logistical issues with managing this number of
15:33files, your reaction to what we've seen tonight in terms of whether it complies with the law and
15:39whether it's above board and can be trusted. Well, it clearly does not comply with the law.
15:46The law is very clear. The material that is in the possession of the United States Department of
15:50Justice, all of the material is supposed to be disclosed. And it's not as if they were starting
15:55from ground zero. There was a review of this material in the middle part of the year, so there was a
16:02familiarity with the materials. There are redactions that perhaps had to be made, as I understand it.
16:08We've seen wholesale redactions that are not necessarily consistent, again, with what the
16:13law said. There's a lack of investigative material, 302s, investigation reports from the FBI. But I
16:21don't think we should be surprised by this. After all, this is a Justice Department and an administration
16:26that ignores the law when it wants to. Supposed to sell TikTok? Ignore that law. You're going to rename
16:34the Kennedy Center. Ignore that law. You know, the guy who used to be a leader at the Justice
16:39Department, now a judge told lawyers in the Justice Department, you might have to go into court. And if
16:43a judge orders you to do something, you just tell them, F you. So they're acting in a way that is
16:48consistent with the way in which they have conducted themselves throughout the course of this year.
16:53And they're violating a very clear law that the Congress passed.
16:57You know, it's also the case, and I'd love for you to shed a little light on this, because
17:01I don't want to overly romanticize the before times in the Department of Justice. But one thing I think
17:05it's quite clear, and across administrations, is there really was, post-Watergate, a kind of
17:11firewall. The Attorney General saw themselves as a somewhat independent figure, even true of Jeff
17:16Sessions, under Donald Trump and the first Trump administration. And not just as the President's
17:21lawyer, and not just, you know, calling up the boss, what do you want us to do here? And in those
17:26cases, it would also allow the President to talk about the Department of Justice arm's length and say,
17:30well, don't ask me about what they're doing and releasing or not releasing, and I had nothing
17:34to do with it. All of that's completely broken down here, right? I mean, as you think about
17:39how you would have handled this as Attorney General under President Obama, and how it's
17:43being handled now, it's got to feel like a night and day, right?
17:49It's total night and day. But I don't think it's only the Obama administration. I have to think
17:54that other administrations led by Democratic or Republican attorneys general, Democratic or Republican
18:00presidents, would have handled this in a fundamentally different way post-Watergate. You know, if this
18:07material had been before me, it had been before the Justice Department, I would have been making
18:11the determinations. I would have made sure that we had adequate resources to look at these materials,
18:16to scour through these things, get all the information out in the time that we were allowed,
18:21especially given the fact that I would have been familiar with this material from the middle part
18:26of the year. And if I did not have the capacity to turn over all of the material by this date,
18:33I would have gone back to Congress and said, you know, we're going to have to ask for some more time,
18:38send a letter, ask for some emergency legislation, indicate in some way, ask in a good faith way,
18:44indicate that we simply don't have the physical capacity to comply. That's not what's going on
18:49here. These folks are thumbing their nose at Congress.
18:52That's a really excellent point. I mean, there is, you mentioned that the president renaming
18:58the Kennedy Center today by fiat, essentially, they put the letters up and it's a small example
19:05of their approach to law. Of course, the center has been named by statute. Is there a way of
19:11forcing compliance here as someone who knows the Department of Justice well, right? I mean,
19:15you know, what are you going to do to stop us is kind of their perspective. And as you see,
19:20the they have now originated the Donald J. Trump and the J. John F. Kennedy Memorial Center,
19:28I believe, which is a mouthful. Are there ways to make them comply?
19:35Well, I mean, I think you have to be creative. Are there lawsuits that can be brought by
19:39by Congress to try to enforce the statute? Contempt is certainly a possibility. And then,
19:46you know, I think Congress needs to, given the margins that we saw in the passage of this law,
19:50think about, do you want to start talking about impeachment? You know, the people who at the
19:55Justice Department are responsible for the dissemination of this information, not complying
20:01with a law, that's a basis for impeachment. And so, you know, the deputy attorney general,
20:06whoever else is involved in this, I don't know, the attorney general, whoever's involved in this,
20:10in this process, that's a, that's a nuclear option that Congress has. But given the overwhelming
20:17majorities that voted for this, given the overwhelming need for the dissemination of
20:22this material, the public interest in this, given the interest of the, of the victims,
20:27I think considering nuclear options is, uh, is totally appropriate.
20:32Yeah. Of the 535 members of Congress, one voted against it, if I'm, uh, recalling that correctly.
20:36Final question on this, uh, is, is just, we talked about those 302s. I mean,
20:41it does seem to me that there must be files in there that are both witness statements,
20:47also internal files about that Justice Department case, again, prior to the time that you were
20:51attorney general in 2006, up to 2008, that, that, that really, like I said, is kind of the original
20:56sin, I think, of this story that we're not seeing. Do you, do you feel that those are important to get
21:01in the public eyes too? Absolutely. I mean, all of the story needs to be told. We need to understand
21:08what the considerations were that made that sweetheart deal that Epstein got. Why did that
21:14happen? What information did the Justice Department possess at that time? And then really kind of
21:19look through, uh, the history of this case as it existed, um, within the Justice Department.
21:23Now, this, this story needs to be told from the beginning all the way up to the present,
21:28including what is, what has the Justice Department done, um, this year with regard to these materials?
21:34What kinds of communications has the Justice Department had, uh, with regard, with regard to the
21:38White House concerning what materials would be, uh, would be turned over? If in fact, there was
21:43some kind of collusion between the White House and the Justice Department, that is something that
21:47needs to be surfaced as well. It's a great point. Um, while I have you here, I do want to ask you,
21:52you have spent a lot of time and focus and energy on, uh, the attempts now blatant by the president to
22:00sort of get Republican controlled state houses to gerrymander their maps, to essentially artificially
22:07pad the margins of Republicans and essentially attempt to voter proof the Republican majority,
22:13uh, so that the, the people drawing the maps and the lines get to decide who, who represents the
22:21country as opposed to the voters. Where do you think that effort stands given what's happened,
22:26given that, that huge success in California, given noises happening in other states as well,
22:31where do you see things standing right now? Well, I think the effort is not going as they
22:36expected. I think first off, they thought the Democrats would simply kind of roll over,
22:41maybe write an op-ed, you know, appear on television and bemoan their fate. And Democrats got tough. And
22:47we started, it started in, in California with, you know, with Prop 50, a robust response to what
22:52happened, um, in Texas. But I also think we've seen, you know, Republicans who are in the states,
22:57who are not really in the same place as Republicans in this White House are, they see that if they do
23:02these kinds of things, they run the risk of losing, um, their own seats. And we saw what happened in,
23:07in Indiana, where much pressure was placed on, uh, Republican representatives there. And they
23:13courageously, given the fact that they were looking at physical, um, threats, looking at, uh, political
23:19threats, decided that they were not going to do that, which the White House wanted them to do.
23:23And so I, I think it's not going nearly as well. And I think an important point here is that,
23:28you know, they look at those five seats they think they want to try to get in Texas. That's on the
23:32basis of the 24 presidential election. If you look at the 20 election, the 2022 election, um, that five
23:39seats probably converts to maybe two, possibly three seats. And so I think it's not going nearly as well
23:47as they, um, as expected. And they've raised, they've raised the consciousness of the American people
23:51to this whole problem of gerrymandering. And everybody, everybody is, is against it.
23:57Uh, Eric Holder, former attorney general and director of the National Democratic
24:01Redistricting Committee, which spends a lot of time working on this. Thank you so much for coming
24:05on tonight. I really appreciate it. Thanks for having me. Coming up, Congressman Jim Hines joins
24:10me right here on a very, very busy news day. That's next. Don't go anywhere.
24:15As we continue to sift through pages and pages of the heavily redacted Epstein files,
24:20the Justice Department released today. Most Democrats on Capitol Hill tonight are saying
24:23the release is far from sufficient. Congressman Jim Hines is a Democrat at Connecticut. He's
24:28also the ranking member of the Intelligence Committee. And he joins me now. It's good to
24:31have you here. Thanks for having me. Um, your colleagues, you are one of the, I guess, you
24:35know, all but one members of Congress to vote for this law. Um, it does seem a very clear
24:40law and it seems very clearly written to avoid mischief. And it sort of seems like the DOJ
24:46is doing exactly what the law was written to stop them from doing. It does. And, you know,
24:51to me, since I spent a lot of my time in the national security, uh, world, it, uh, feels a lot
24:56like the double tap video. Hegseth releases a video every single day when they blow up a boat,
25:02but, Oh, this video we can't release because the classification, the same with the Epstein files,
25:07right? They've had a year to think about this. They've had months after which Donald Trump said,
25:12yeah, we should do this. You know, they knew this was coming, but all of a sudden it's an immense
25:16administrative burden to produce these things. So, you know, I mean, you said it earlier in the
25:21show, right? You know, when they feel it's not convenient to abide by the law on Twitter
25:25or on 15 other things, they don't abide by the law. And that's what they're doing right here.
25:28Um, you're, you're on the Intelligence Committee and you've been, uh, in the Intelligence Committee
25:32for a while. You know, there's been a lot of reporting about Epstein and his possible links to
25:36intelligence services, our intelligence services, foreign intelligence services.
25:40And in a lot of the emails, uh, that have surfaced, he's clearly like doing a lot of
25:45international deal-making, right? He's got some guy wants to sell someone on some peace plan.
25:50He's talking to the Russians. He's talking to Israelis. He's talking to a bunch of people.
25:54Do you know if he was involved as an intelligence asset?
25:57I don't think so. I don't think so. I mean, if you, if you sort of, if you're willing to go through
26:02the soul crushing erosion of actually understanding this guy, here's a guy who made a lot of money in
26:08ways. I don't fully understand, but he made a ton of money. And now like so many people who make a
26:11ton of money, he's looking for legitimacy. So he devotes his life to, you know, approaching very
26:16famous people, many of whom are going to be embarrassed and already are embarrassed by the
26:20disclosures that have been made. And so, you know, the aura of international man, a mystery is a helpful
26:25thing for a guy who made a bunch of money and otherwise has no sort of particularly compelling,
26:29uh, characteristics. So no, I don't sitting where I do in the Congress, I don't have any reason to
26:34believe that he was in any way involved with us intelligence or quite frankly, any other sort of
26:38national security related stuff. You just mentioned that, uh, double tack video and, and, and the sort
26:43of selective transparency. You're one of the people that has seen, uh, the video of the shipwrecked
26:48individuals on the hull of a boat. Um, I've talked to some of your colleagues. I haven't got a chance
26:53to talk to you since you've seen it about what your determination is of what you saw and whether the
26:57public should see it. Yeah, yeah, no. And I mean, uh, I was a little shaken when I came out of the
27:01meeting in which I watched this thing and I've over the years watched a lot of, uh, videos of
27:07lethal activities that we've taken against terrorists. This one was really hard. You know,
27:11most of the videos I get to see of our counter-terrorist activities, which, you know,
27:15happen in places like Yemen, et cetera. Um, you know, guys with AK-47s and grenades and bombs and
27:20they're on their way to do something really horrible. And, you know, the, here you have, I mean,
27:25if I just can summarize this very quickly, you have two individuals who have just had a,
27:29a huge bomb go off above their heads. They're probably wounded in ways that, you know,
27:34aren't immediately visible. They have no radios. They have no guns. They're about to slip under
27:37the waves. And yet the administration would have you believe that they are maybe in a position to
27:44continue hostilities. These guys are 30 minutes from death. And what we did was we just accelerated
27:48that death by 30 minutes through a, you know, a summary execution. And that is really, if you
27:53believe in the ideas and values of the United States, and even if you stipulate that these are bad guys
27:58because they're running cocaine, that is a very, very hard video to watch. And the administration
28:02is not releasing it because they know that when the American people see that video, 10, 15% of
28:07Americans are going to say, this is not my country. Um, we have seen an expansion of these operations.
28:14Um, I think there's, there were, there's, uh, two boat strikes yesterday that killed five people.
28:20The death toll is now up to a hundred. Um, this doesn't seem to me to be going in the right
28:26direction. It seems like it's growing. Is that a fair assessment? Um, it's absolutely growing.
28:32And I mean, one question that those of us who do oversight need to think about is not only is it
28:38growing in its intensity, number of strikes a day, but what happens when they decide to do something
28:43on land, you know, by the way, and this is one of the critical issues. What, if we're going to sort of
28:48execute criminals, cause these guys are criminals without a trial, without arrest, without alleged
28:56criminals, that's right. That's exactly right. You know, where does that stop? You know, are we a
29:02year away from endowing the federal police forces to simply walk up to drug dealers on the 42nd and
29:08Broadway and shoot them in the head? I mean, this is one of the many questions that Congress should
29:12be considering, right? The constitution says, you know, any war, any hostilities, we get to debate
29:20the many, many issues associated with this, including the ones you've raised, which is how
29:23big does this get? What's the probability of a mistake? The Venezuelan Navy is apparently now
29:28escorting these tankers out of Venezuela. When a Venezuelan naval ship is, you know, 200 meters from
29:36a U.S. Navy frigate and, you know, things, munitions start getting exchanged. We're in a hot war.
29:42Without a peep from the people's representatives in the United States Congress. I mean, it seems
29:46very clear if you listen to what Susie Wiles said in that Vanity Fair interview, where she said,
29:50this is a, we're trying to squeeze Maduro until he cries out cold, essentially. And if you listen to
29:55the new, you know, the new rationale, first it was fentanyl, and then everyone pointed out these
29:58aren't fentanyl, Ralph. It's not fentanyl. There's no fentanyl. Which is twice the lethality of cocaine,
30:03right? Two times or more, a number of Americans die from fentanyl than from cocaine. So it was first
30:07it was fentanyl, and then it was cocaine, and then these are narco terrorists, and now it's
30:10they kicked American oil companies out of the country in 2006, 2007, and we want it back.
30:17Which, I guess, points for honesty about what we're up to. But it also seems that the rationale
30:21here is clearly, essentially, a regime change war for oil. Now it seems, and I'm not, that's not my,
30:28like, I'm not sloganeering here. That seems to be the stated rationale of the government.
30:32Yeah, yeah. Look, I think these bow strikes are two things. Number one,
30:35they are a Hollywood-esque reality show, performative demonstration of President Trump's
30:41determination to stop drug flows. Now you and I both know, in fact, anybody who thinks about it
30:46knows that if wild success on these boats simply means that they're going to start putting cocaine
30:50on airplanes. They're going to start putting cocaine on the back of donkeys and crossing Panama. So
30:54that's wild success. So it's performative. And then number two, yes, they believe, I think this is a
31:00little crazy, but they believe that this is somehow pressure on Maduro. Because, look, I think our
31:05Secretary of State, Marco Rubio, you know, Latino heritage, you know, Cuban-American, Miami, he
31:12knows Latin America. So he thinks two things. Number one, he would love to see this regime go down. And
31:16look, this is a bad regime. This is a very, very bad, illegitimate regime. He would love to see that
31:21regime go down. And this is sort of my unpopular opinion. But I think he's too smart to just say,
31:26what we ought to do is land the Marines on the shores of Maracaibo, because he knows the history
31:31of Marines climbing Latin American beaches. Congressman Jim Hines, always good to have you
31:35here. Thank you. Thanks. Still to come, Epstein survivor Jess Michaels joins me on her reaction
31:40to today's developments. That's next. One of the reasons the Epstein files are finally being released
31:50is thanks to the tireless work from the survivors of the disgraced late sex trafficker, the people who
31:55came forward to demand justice for what was done to them. In a letter to Congress explaining the
31:59document review process, Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche says they found 1,200 names of
32:05individuals who are identified as either victims or their relatives. Blanche says those names have been
32:09redacted. Jess Michaels is an Epstein survivor, and she joins me now. Jess, we had you into the program a few
32:15weeks ago, talking about your efforts to get to this point and your anticipation. What is your reaction to
32:22what we have seen so far? It's clearly a justice department that doesn't follow through with
32:31justice. So it's very disappointing. It's frustrating. And at the same time, it's also really validating
32:40that this is exactly why we needed to advocate for an actual act of Congress to try to get any
32:46transparency or accountability. You know, one of the one of the documents we do have
32:51is the first ever law enforcement complaint, as far as we know, about Jeffrey Epstein from a woman named
32:59Maria Farmer. And she was talking about Epstein. And it's categorized as child pornography is the
33:07complaint. And she basically saying that I think I think she's basically saying I don't have actually
33:12that document in front of me. And I can't read it off the screen there, but essentially says
33:15that Epstein and that Maxwell had stolen pictures of her younger sister in bathing suits and had asked
33:25to take more pictures. And she had been really creeped out and upset by this and said she was
33:30going to go to the authorities. And he threatened to burn her house down. This is in 1996. Nothing
33:35would happen again for another 10 years. And I just your reaction to seeing that there in black and
33:41white. We now have a documented record of the first time someone said someone needs to take a look at
33:47this guy. Yes. Maria is the original whistleblower on Jeffrey Epstein, putting Jeffrey Epstein on the
33:57FBI's radar, and they did nothing. And that went on for now. Now we're going on almost 30 years.
34:05Maria Farmer actually said this. She said, I waited 30 years. I can't believe it. They can't
34:12call me a liar anymore. Because some people said she said that she went to the FBI, and people said
34:16she didn't. She said she was grateful to be vindicated, but heartbroken the FBI did not take
34:21steps to stop Mr. Epstein until years after her report. Are there aspects of this you particularly
34:26want to see? I was talking earlier about for myself, I'm really interested in understanding what
34:31happened with that sweetheart deal with Alex Acosta and the U.S. Attorney's Office. Are there
34:34things that you're looking for here? Yes, exactly. The sweetheart deal. The financial records,
34:41I think, are going to be the most telling of the crimes that were committed. But there are very
34:46specific things that as a survivor I'm looking for, we've discussed it together. We want to hear
34:52the tip line, how many survivors actually came forward when that 2019 tip line went public and stayed
35:00public for many months. So they were collecting names and stories for a very long time. I want to
35:05see my own victim statement that I made that was supposed to be used in Ghislaine Maxwell's prosecution.
35:12And it never was. I was never entered into the victim notification system. And I never heard
35:19anything ever again.
35:20That's interesting. So yes, your own statement you would like to see. What is your message to the
35:29Justice Department or to the administration if they think they could kind of do this today and
35:35melt into the holiday week and everyone's going to forget about it?
35:41This was the deadline. There was not an extension of that deadline. There was no communication
35:51from the DOJ what this day was even going to look like for survivors. They never reached out to our
35:57attorneys. There was no public statement made by the Department of Justice to say this is what how it's
36:02going to roll out on that day. And so I think actions speak louder than words. And they have disobeyed the
36:12law, the law that was signed by the president. And I don't think there's any more. There's no more leeway.
36:20This was it. This was your chance. And you failed.
36:26Have you been in contact with other survivors? I know a lot of you have become quite close through this process
36:31and have been organizing in a really remarkable way. Have you been in contact with any of them today?
36:39Yeah. Yes. Yeah. It's been a it's been a rough day, Chris. I got to tell you, we're exhausted.
36:46We're frustrated. And we're also really supporting each other to keep going. And I'm very inspired by all
36:56of these women and stand with Maria Farmer as that very first whistleblower who started this so long
37:04ago, who actually has a case right now against the government for negligence. So we're it's a rough
37:14day. It's it's it's a rough day. And we're still standing. Yeah. And my next question was, can you
37:21foresee I mean, your advocacy, you and so many survivors advocacy has been the reason that we
37:28have arrived at this point against the will of this administration, which clearly did not want to
37:33get here. Can you foresee a situation in which you're back on Capitol Hill or you're back in
37:39Washington, you know, in a few weeks, in the next year to to to make them comply with this law that
37:46you so successfully advocated for? Definitely, because it's not just about us anymore. This is
37:53about the American people who showed up in unprecedented amount of support to get Congress
38:02to vote for this this bill to become a law. And no, we are we are nowhere near done. This is just the
38:10beginning. We know we're just at the bottom of the next mountain. My expectations were
38:16really low for today anyway. So they were my expectations were clearly met. And we definitely
38:25expect that this was not going to end today. Jess Michaels, your own victim statement,
38:32that's such a it's going to stick with me. And I'm going to look for that in these disclosures. I
38:38think it's fair that you want to see that out in the public and you have the most right of anyone
38:43to want to see it outside in the public. Jess Michaels, thank you so much for your time
38:48tonight. I really, really appreciate it. We'll be right back.
38:54Last night, authorities found the suspect in the Brown University shooting dead in a New Hampshire
39:00storage facility with what officials described as a self-inflicted gunshot wound. It appears
39:05he had been dead for two days when they found him. Authorities identified him as Claudio Manuel
39:10Neves Valente, a 40-year-old former graduate student at Brown who studied physics for about
39:16a year and a half. And then in the midst of this resolution, which is a huge sigh of relief for so
39:21many people around my alma mater who have been freaked out, uh, understandably after a five-day
39:26manhunt. I don't want to lose sight of something else that happened, which is this very strange and
39:31incredibly upsetting and in fact, enraging story about how opportunists on the internet from the
39:38right tried to sow rumors and innuendo that targeted a very real person who was victimized
39:44through no fault of their own. Earlier this week, a torrent of social media posts from far-right accounts
39:49falsely claimed with zero actual evidence that the gunman was a Palestinian student at Brown
39:53University. And this was a vicious and baseless accusation born of ideological animus
39:58and bigotry. But it didn't just stop with, like, random online trolls. Trump's U.S. Assistant
40:05Attorney General, Harmeet Dillon, elevated it. And that prompted the conspiracy mongers to accuse Brown
40:12of covering up when they had to pull down the pages connecting to the student to obviously protect
40:19that student. And then Congresswoman Elise Stefanik amplified the dangerous hysteria,
40:25promising on social media to haul the president of Brown into Congress to testify under oath as if
40:31she was in on it somehow. All because what they were trying to do was protect a student who was being
40:37liable. And then when they did that, even now, authorities have identified the shooting suspect.
40:44Dillon and Stefanik have not deleted their posts. This is a student who did nothing wrong on a campus
40:51that is already in mourning. Today, that wrongly accused student released this statement about the
40:57pain and nightmare those posts cause. Quote, the past few days have been an unimaginable nightmare.
41:03I woke up on Tuesday morning to unfounded, vile, Islamophobic, and anti-Palestinian accusations
41:08being directed toward me online. Instead of grieving with my community in the aftermath of the horrible
41:13shooting, which, of course, led to students dead, I received nonstop death threats and hate speech.
41:19The student's lawyer added, quote, these baseless attacks not only smeared this student, they also
41:24likely distracted law enforcement from pursuing legitimate leads. Bad faith actors moved to pin
41:29the shooting of my client on the mere basis of his being Palestinian. These claims about my client are
41:34not just attacks on his character, but also attempts to vilify Arab and Muslim members of our communities
41:39and to bolster anti-Palestinian racism in this country. Today, Elise Stefanik announced that she is
41:44dropping out of her race to run for New York governor, and she's leaving Congress. And I have to say,
41:49someone who engaged in the kind of things she did in the wake of something this horrible
41:54doesn't really deserve to be in public life. That is all for this week.
41:57The briefing with Jen Psaki starts right now. Good evening, Jen.
Be the first to comment