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00:01Tonight on All End, it's difficult. You can't sleep at night. People are afraid to leave their
00:07homes. We just had the free press arrested this morning or last night. Massive protests in
00:14Minnesota and beyond as the Trump administration begins arresting journalists. Last night the DOJ
00:20sent a team of federal agents to arrest me in the middle of the night for something that I've
00:25been doing for the last 30 years. Tonight brand new blaring alarms over Donald Trump's creeping
00:32police state. The agents are at my door right now. This is all stemming from the fact that I
00:40filmed a protest. Then at least some of the Epstein documents the Trump White House didn't want you to
00:47see. I can assure that we complied with the statue. We did not protect President Trump. New names,
00:54new questions, and plenty of redactions in the latest release of Epstein docs.
00:59Are you still talking about Jeffrey Epstein?
01:02It All End starts right now.
01:08Good evening from New York. I'm Chris Hayes. Tens of thousands of people marched across the country
01:12today in Minneapolis, Los Angeles, New York, Chicago, Cleveland. Many of them braving sub-zero
01:20temperatures to protest the police state that Donald Trump is attempting to build before our
01:26eyes. A police state uses its power to crush dissent, to terrorize the populace, to force them to submit
01:32to its political will. It is a perversion of the policing power. And for the past year, we have watched
01:37the federal government, particularly the law enforcement aspects of it, transform under Trump
01:42as armed federal agents push into communities into accepting his wins or suffering the consequences.
01:50We have now masked secret police who have shot two nonviolent protesters dead in the streets while
01:57people recorded on their camera phones, Renee Good and Alex Pretty. We still don't even know
02:02the identities of some of those agents who work for the government who shot and killed them.
02:07Instead, today, we've got the president of the United States calling the man who was shot and
02:11killed on the street a, quote, agitator and perhaps insurrectionist. MSNOW is now reporting that ICE is
02:18planning to move into Ohio next week to target thousands of Haitian migrants, thousands of whom
02:23received explicit permission from the government to stay and to work. So this is not stopping.
02:29Those masked agents are still grabbing citizens, taking their pictures and entering them into a database,
02:35then confronting them on the streets and calling them by their name.
02:38Today, multiple current and former officials revealed to New York Times that ICE is using
02:43two facial recognition programs in Minnesota and using cell phone and social media tools to
02:48monitor people's online activity and potentially hack into phones. And agents are tapping into a
02:54database built by the data analytics company Palantir that combines government commercial data to
02:59identify real-time locations for individuals they are pursuing. Today, they topped it all off by
03:06coming for the journalists. Feds arrested four people, including former CNN anchor Don Lemon and
03:13an award-winning independent journalist, Georgia Fort, in connection with an anti-ICE protest earlier this
03:18month that interrupted a service at a church where one of the pastors is also an ICE field director.
03:23In fact, reporter Georgia Fort was awoken in the dead of night by a knock on her door from masked
03:31DEA
03:32agents, the drug enforcement agency. Why are they there? As they waited at her doorstop and looked in her
03:38windows, she posted this message to social media. I wanted to alert the public that agents are at my door
03:47right now. This is all stemming from the fact that I filmed a protest as a member of the media.
03:56It's hard
03:56to understand how we have a constant, a constitution, constitutional rights, when you can just be
04:03arrested for being a member of the press. You, and we, we've seen all these violations. All right, you guys,
04:09I got to go. They're knocking. She's coming right now. A little context here. Last year, the former
04:16Speaker of the Statehouse of Minnesota was shot and killed, assassinated by a man who showed up at her
04:21door pretending to be law enforcement. So just put that in your head. So then Fort, the vice president
04:27of the National Association of Black Journalists in Minnesota, who was one of two reporters in the
04:30courtroom when George Floyd's killer was sentenced, was taken away in the cold by those same masked,
04:36kitted out DEA agents. The feds are claiming that Don Lemon and Ford were agitators of the church
04:43protest, who conspired to, quote, injure, oppress, threaten, and intimidate multiple persons, including the
04:48clergy, staff, and congregants, depriving them of their constitutional right to free religion. I'm not making
04:54that up. That is the claim here. But as you can see for yourself, and we've been doing a lot
04:58of see for
04:59yourself recently because of the lies that emanate from this administration, here's footage of Don Lennon
05:04in that church during that protest. We're not part of the activists, but we're here just recording on them.
05:10So I'm just going to be as respectful as possible. I'm not here to intimidate anybody. I'm just here to
05:16chronicle and to get some answers. Since that protest nearly two weeks ago, Donald Trump's
05:22Department of Justice has been trying to charge Lemon. In fact, last week, a federal magistrate judge
05:27and an appeals court rejected the charges as baseless. I mean, again, we said this a lot on
05:33the show. This basically never happens, right? Federal magistrate judges never knock the feds back on
05:40this sort of thing. And then they're never, ever appealed. And then it's certainly not the case
05:44that appellate court rejects it. But Lemon predicted back then that they weren't finished with them.
05:50I know the Trump administration doesn't have a healthy respect for journalism or journalists because
05:55they attack journalists at every measure. And they do that because they know the truth is not on
05:59their side. The Constitution is not on their side. Donald Trump lies more than he breathes.
06:05This is not a victory lap for me because it's not over. They're going to try again and they're
06:09going to try again. And guess what? Here I am. Keep trying. That's not going to stop me from being
06:15a journalist. You're not going to diminish my voice. This morning, they arrested Lemon in Los Angeles
06:20as he prepared to cover the Grammy Awards. All the defendants were arraigned in court today.
06:24Afterwards, Georgia Fort emerged from the courthouse and was thronged by supporters.
06:28And Lemon struck a defiant tone. I've spent my entire career covering the news. I will not stop
06:37now. In fact, there is no more important time than right now, this very moment for a free and
06:47independent media that shines a light on the truth and holds those in power accountable.
06:52Donald Trump sending government forces after critics, opponents, even those who are completely
06:58nonpartisan, but he views as insufficiently obedient across a whole array of institutions.
07:03Today, Trump announced a politically connected replacement for the Fed chair, Jerome Powell,
07:07even though Powell's term runs for another five months. And also, he is, remember, still being
07:11criminally investigated by Trump's DOJ. Then, of course, there was Wednesday's FBI raid of the
07:18Fulton County election office in Georgia, where they took boxes and boxes and boxes of ballots.
07:24That, of course, office and that county and that state, the boogeyman of Trump's 2020 election lies,
07:29feds hauling 700 boxes full of voter ballots in an operation apparently overseen by Tulsi Gabbard,
07:36the director of national intelligence, who has no law enforcement powers, but who is apparently using
07:41her access to becoming leading MAGA election truther with the full force of the federal government
07:46behind her. Again, all this is law enforcement. Law enforcement. Coming from an administration that
07:54has no qualms about breaking the law when it comes to just about anything, including releasing the
07:58Epstein files. Today, 42 days after they were legally required to release all the files,
08:05they decided to get around to it. Deputy Attorney Todd Blanche, Attorney General Todd Blanche,
08:09Trump defense attorney who still views the president as his client, according to officials
08:13he's worked with, announced the dump of 3 million new Epstein documents. Now, Todd Blanche is the same
08:18guy, remember, last year who kicked off the whole controversy when he wrote the memo saying,
08:21we've looked at every single file and we've concluded there's nothing further to see here.
08:26There's no client list. No one else is implicated. We're shutting it all down. That Todd Blanche,
08:31the one who signed his name to that document saying, we have already looked at it all,
08:35announced they got around, I guess, to looking at the documents. He said,
08:39the delays were to protect the victims. They weren't protecting Trump. And now their job here
08:44is done. Today's release marks the end of a very comprehensive document identification and review
08:51process. After submitting the final report to Congress as required under the act and publishing
08:56the written justifications for redactions in the Federal Register, the department's obligations under
09:03the, under the act will be, will be completed. This is now the second time that Todd Blanche has
09:09told us there's nothing more to see here. We're gonna have a lot more on what we're learning from
09:13those files later in the show. And there are some pretty shocking things in them. Blanche also said
09:18there was an investigation opened into Alex Preddy's death, though he suggested it wasn't a civil
09:23rights probe and he declined to give any details. He also defended the raid of that election office in
09:27Georgia and Tulsi Gabbard's role in it. And he ignored a question about the numerous federal
09:32prosecutors in Minneapolis who've resigned in protest, particularly ones who appear to have
09:36resigned because Blanche's office told them to open a criminal investigation, not into the person
09:43that shot Renee Good, but into the dead woman, Renee Good, after a federal agent shot and killed her.
09:52The point here is that federal law enforcement increasingly, day by day, acts at the directions
10:00and the whims of the man in the White House who aspires to be a dictator. And in the last
10:06few weeks,
10:06they have shot and killed two citizens who stood in their way. The wolf is at the door, America.
10:16Michelle Goldberg is an opinion columnist from New York Times. Adam Serwer is a staff writer for
10:19The Atlantic. His latest piece is titled Minnesota Proved MAGA Wrong. And they join me now. Michelle,
10:26let me just start with you, your reaction to something that I think everyone in our industry
10:30has anticipated or expected, even planned for, which was federal agents arresting journalists that
10:37happened today. Right. And let's remember, we've already seen federal agents raid the home
10:43of a Washington Post reporter. So this has been happening, although obviously arresting them,
10:49holding them is an escalation. And I think, you know, one of the most surprising things about this
10:54administration is maybe not the authoritarianism, but the speed of it. You know, I don't know that
11:01kind of in other countries that have undergone authoritarian consolidations, they get to the
11:06arresting journalists stage this quickly. And, you know, I don't want to be too solipsistic about this,
11:13because, you know, journalists are there's there are many, many, many people who are suffering under
11:19this under this regime, who have been threatened by this regime. I do feel like personally, you know,
11:26I have you have kids, I have kids. When my kids ask, you know, what do we have to fear
11:31from this
11:32administration? I often tell them, you know, don't worry. They're not arresting journalists yet. We still
11:37have a way to go. And so for me personally, it feels like a step towards the abyss.
11:43Adam, the image that Georgia Fort, that Ms. Fort posted of the DEA agents outside,
11:51you know, obviously, let's just make a bunch of obvious points. They don't have to come in the night.
11:56They don't have to show up with a bunch of DEA agents at her door. They could they could call
12:02her
12:02and have her turn herself in like this is done as a kind of show of force to scare people
12:08and to
12:09intimidate. Yeah, that's right. And Chris, there should be no masks on cops. Police are endowed with
12:18a tremendous amount of authority on behalf of the public. And they need to be held accountable when
12:24they abuse that authority. And the only way to do that is if we know who they are. You know,
12:29criminals wear masks because they want to be able to get away with doing things that are unspeakable.
12:37And that tells you a great deal about, you know, this administration and the way that they're using
12:42police now. Yeah, there's a reason the term secret police has this resonance. And one of the stories
12:48that was in The New York Times reporting today was about a woman who had been sort of observing
12:55ICE people, folks, and then in Minnesota, and then they sort of let her down a bunch of streets,
13:01one way streets, and they get out of the car and they come to her car and they start calling
13:04her by
13:04her name because they have a facial recognition database. And to Adam's point, Michelle, it strikes
13:11me as such a perverse inversion of the privacy interests here that the officers wielding guns and in some
13:17cases shooting people at point blank range in the head and killing them have a privacy interest so strong
13:23that they can't be seen, but that citizens going about legal and constitutionally protected activity
13:30are getting captured and entered into a database.
13:35Yes. And I mean, and we've also in, I believe it was in that same article, they talked about them
13:40having technology that can get into cell phones, that can sort of do the sort of surveillance that
13:46I think most of us grew up in a world imagining you needed a warrant to do. And I think
13:52it goes to
13:53not just the lawlessness of this administration, but to the incredibly sinister and destructive role
14:00that these tech companies that have fetted Trump, that have, you know, kind of entered into these
14:06mutually financially beneficial relationships with Trump are playing in kind of creating this dystopian
14:15surveillance state with remarkably little political debate or pushback, you know, including by
14:22the erstwhile libertarians who, you know, who in the past have acted as if, you know, has acted as if
14:32the idea of having to carry like a national ID was some sort of, you know, kind of unimaginable
14:40futuristic nightmare in, um, in the United States. Yeah. They had a huge rebellion against TSA and
14:45Adam, your, your piece from, you were just in, uh, Minnesota and wrote a phenomenal piece. I think
14:50it's you and Carrie Howley pieces are the two best pieces of reporting. I read on it. Everyone should
14:54read it. Um, I had people actually in Minnesota tell me that the piece was so good that it put
14:59into
14:59words things that they couldn't quite put into words. And one of the things that I encountered in
15:04Minnesota, which has really chilled me is that a, what's inspiring is that people are not cowed and
15:10they are, they are going to resist this, but it has had an effect. Like people are scared, sometimes
15:17even a little paranoid. People are acting in ways that are the ways that you would expect people to
15:22act in an unfree society. They are there. There is a kind of pervasive sense of fear of their own
15:29government that I had never quite encountered before in the same way. What was your experience?
15:35Yeah. First, I just want to say that the people who are doing this, uh, are doing it a great
15:40personal risk. I mean, they understand now that the government can kill you, uh, and then, you know,
15:46smear you as a terrorist and refuse to investigate your death if it feels like it. So every single one
15:51of these people understand that they might end up, uh, you know, being the next Renee Good or Alex
15:57Freddie and they're out there anyway, because they want to protect their neighbors. And I thought that
16:02was, um, that was an extraordinary thing to witness the level of commitment that these people have had
16:07to protecting their neighbors, to making sure they're fed, to delivering them food at home, to
16:13helping them with rent. Um, you know, I think in some ways the horror of what the Trump administration
16:19is doing, um, has almost obscured this incredible response. Yes. Uh, that I think deserves to be,
16:27um, paid attention to because I think it's, it's the, uh, it's a kind of civic resistance that only
16:33occurs under an oppressive government. And I think it tells us a great deal about where we are as a
16:38country at this moment. You know, there's this, this cliche that's, you know, actually I think
16:43pretty instructive, the what, what if you saw it in another country, right? And we've all kind of gone
16:46through this thought experiment, but, um, you know, from, from people hiding people in the back seats of
16:52cars so they could drive them around and make sure that the mass secret agents don't get them to,
16:57mass secret police shooting and killing people in the middle of the street to Michelle, the director
17:03of national intelligence running an operation that's seizing ballots from like an opposition
17:12stronghold, right? That's what's happening. The head, the spy master of the country just went to
17:18seize a bunch of ballots from the opposition stronghold in Fulton County. That's, you know,
17:23I mean, it doesn't get plainer than that. Right. And to bring it back to where we started,
17:28you know, journalists being arrested and the administration then, you know, kind of putting
17:33Don Lemon's face out there with a handcuff or with a chain emoji, you know, so both sort of, um,
17:40you know, arresting journalists and boasting about it in an attempt to intimidate other journalists.
17:48I think it's, it's very clear and it's, it's hard. I think when you're in the country to internalize
17:54it the way that it would be very obvious to you, if you were watching this play out somewhere else,
17:59um, my hope is that people in other countries respond to this, the way that they would respond
18:05to any country that they saw going down an authoritarian pathway with, you know, kind of with boycotts,
18:12with, with, with exerting some sort of pressure, whatever pressure they can, um, on behalf of,
18:20you know, kind of the people in this country that still want to be free.
18:24Yeah. I mean, is everyone going to just send their world cup teams here
18:28to like be in hotels that get raided by ice and like, Adam, to your point, this is really important.
18:36I think that the, the point you made about resilience, like the one, the thing that gives
18:41me hope is that they're so obsessed with optics and, and they're, they're so sort of playing things
18:48minute by minute. They don't, I think, truly appreciate how repulsed people are by all this
18:56and how organic and steely their resolve is, particularly Minnesota in the face of this.
19:03I think the issue for them is that their commitment to universalism was always superficial.
19:10It was always fake. And so they assume that their political opponents feel the same way that the
19:17left's universalism is not sincere, uh, that they'll abandon it under any kind of serious pressure.
19:24And I think what's happened is they are surprised by the strength and resilience of people in Minnesota
19:30that they are not jettisoning their values, that they are defending their neighbors, regardless of where
19:35they came from. I think they did not expect that. I think they expected to be able to go in,
19:40steamroll everybody because they believe their own hype about their own political opponents.
19:46Michelle Goldberg and Adam Serwer, thank you both. Appreciate it.
19:51Coming up, another huge dump of Epstein files and some real interesting stuff in there,
19:56raising a lot more questions than answers. That's next.
20:00It has been 42 days since the legal deadline for the Department of Justice to release
20:05all of its files related to Jeffrey Epstein. Today on Friday, we got another dump of documents.
20:10DOJ released roughly three and a half million files on its website. Out of six million pages,
20:14it says it identified. A team here at MSNOW is actively going through all these files and two
20:19members of that team are here, Lisa Rubin, senior legal reporter, and Fallon Gallagher,
20:23legal affairs reporter. They both joined me now. It's great to have you here.
20:26I just want to be transparent here, which is that every time this happens, it's too much information
20:32for anyone to process, right? So we're all trying to make our way through the best we can in a
20:39very
20:39short period of time. Let me just start with you, Lisa, of top lines to the extent that you have
20:44them.
20:45This was sloppy. My first top line is, this is sloppy. I watched Todd Blanche today describe what he was
20:51about to produce and say a million ways from Sunday that the Department of Justice had been
20:56extraordinarily diligent in trying to protect victims and ensure their safety and privacy.
21:01And what I found when I started to go through the documents, Chris, was at this point, I'm up to
21:06almost 20 names of survivors that I recognize personally. Now, I'm differently situated than most
21:12members of the American public. I know this story really well. I know many of the names,
21:16including the real names of people who have testified at trials by pseudonyms. But these
21:24names are splashed everywhere carelessly. I even found a driver's license of a known victim with her
21:31picture and her name. And somebody took the care to redact her address, but not the rest of it. And
21:37it's that level of carelessness that makes me want to say to Todd Blanche,
21:44really? This was the level of care that you kept telling two Southern District judges you needed
21:49more time to produce. There was no reason to dump 3 million documents all at once. They could have
21:54back-channeled with Congress. They could have even thought about how to get congressional enactment
22:01passed for an extension. But they didn't. They basically said to themselves, well, the privacy of
22:06victims is more important than getting this done by a deadline. And therefore, we're going to take more
22:10time. We're confident that the case law protects us in that respect. And yet, what did they do?
22:14They revealed and splashed victim information all over it anyway.
22:17The big, Phelan, let me start on this, right? So the big thing that was sort of pinged around social
22:22media, and I want to sort of start with that because people might have seen it, right, is there are
22:26a few
22:27incredibly upsetting, detailed allegations of really awful sexual assault engaged in by Donald Trump.
22:36I want to be very clear about the context of that information for people watching,
22:40particularly people that today saw that cross their feeds.
22:42And what that was is there was a spreadsheet that was compiled by DOJ in August of 2025. So when
22:48they were
22:49getting all these materials together because they knew presumably they would have to release them.
22:52There are a number of complaints that apparently came to the FBI from victims alleging various things.
22:58And I want to be abundantly clear that these complaints were not necessarily substantiated and they were not
23:04necessarily investigated by authorities. We do not know for sure that they happened, but they are compiled in this spreadsheet
23:10and they're there.
23:12But what's really noticeable or notable about that is that at one point earlier this morning when everything was released
23:18is that this document was on the DOJ's website and then it was removed and then it was put back
23:23with no explanation.
23:25And what's really stunning about that is that this is not the first time that happened. We remember when we
23:29had the initial drop of these documents in December, there was a photo with Donald Trump that was removed.
23:35You can see him in the background. It's a photo that we've seen a million times before. It's Trump, Melania,
23:39Ghislaine and Jeffrey Epstein all together.
23:41And that photo is removed and then added. And they say it was because there were victims who weren't redacted.
23:46And so then they went in and redacted those photos of women. But again, this is now a pattern.
23:50Can I I want to just stay on this because I think probably our viewers encountered this online today. Right.
23:55Because it's like incredibly lurid and despicable and awful. Right.
23:59And again, just in terms of like what how should I think about this, the epistemic status of this thing?
24:05You're talking about the Trump allegations? Yeah. And any of those like I'll give a comparison.
24:11I remember when Brett Kavanaugh was was facing his hearings and at a certain point there was like they began
24:16to publicize every like tip that came into congressional offices.
24:19And it clearly included people who were very obviously mentally unwell and delusional and creating all sorts of.
24:25And this was actually used by Republicans to kind of discredit the very real allegation that Kavanaugh was facing.
24:32It was just a barrage of stuff. I was on a boat with. How do we think about the status
24:37of this stuff?
24:38I'm so glad you said that, because a lot of the tips that Fallon is talking about on this spreadsheet
24:42came into the FBI through something called the National Threat Operations Center.
24:46And the last production that we saw, we saw these tips verbatim as they were called in.
24:51And as you said, many of these tips came from people who were obviously unwell on the face of them.
24:58They contained a lot of allegations that couldn't possibly be true.
25:02Things about people being in places at times that just didn't exist in real life.
25:06And I believe I could be wrong, but I think one of these included an allegation about a celebrity who's
25:11now dead.
25:12Right.
25:12So obviously that celebrity was not bringing forward this type of an allegation.
25:16So can I, can I say something?
25:17I would compare it to the difference between some of these tips, for example, and something like the birthday book,
25:23about which I think there are legitimate questions.
25:26There is clearly a relationship between Donald Trump and Jeffrey Epstein that has not been thoroughly fleshed out.
25:31My bigger concern about Donald Trump is not about the behavior that he engaged in himself, but the behavior that
25:37he witnessed and did not call to anybody's attention.
25:40He has said repeatedly that he kicked Jeffrey Epstein out of Mar-a-Lago because the guy was a creep.
25:45And yet that wasn't any information that he shared with us, the American public, much less authorities.
25:51That to me is much more troubling than some of these allegations about what Donald Trump may or may not
25:55have done in the 1980s with, you know, underage girls.
25:59OK, so then we have, we do have some documents that seem to be compiled by the Department of Justice
26:03about his inner circle, about people that he's connected to.
26:06Yeah, of course. So we learned some new names, I would say, this time. We see those emails with Elon
26:10Musk.
26:11There were some back and forth in 2012 to 2014, which is after he was a known convicted sex offender.
26:18Elon Musk explicitly asking him, when will be the most wild day night for me to come to your island?
26:24Right. And wanting to go there with his then-girlfriend for that wild party.
26:28And so there are a number of emails back and forth. We saw some other notable names.
26:32There's some email traffic with Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick.
26:36Again, I want to be really clear, though, that there is no evidence of wrongdoing from any of these people
26:40in these documents at this point,
26:42which is something that Todd Blanchett said earlier.
26:44He said, you know, all these things have been investigated and there's no need for prosecution towards anyone.
26:49But definitely some new names today.
26:51Including the owner of the Giants, Stephen Tisch, who was actually going back and forth about essentially procuring women and
26:58dates.
26:59Yes. And asking Jeffrey Epstein if certain of the women were civilians or pros.
27:04And that, I thought, was particularly disturbing.
27:07OK. So I want to just, the last part here, though, because it does seem like there's, as we chip
27:11away, there is some progress here a little bit.
27:13Yes.
27:14In these documents, the Epstein case, two instrumental recruiters of children for Epstein.
27:19That's one document. And it has colon redacted names.
27:23Right. And then we also have the Jeffrey Epstein sort of map here that we just put up there, which
27:28is like the different people around him.
27:31These two feel closer to what people have been talking about vis-a-vis the Epstein files than almost anything
27:37else we've gotten.
27:37I would say, first of all, I think that the one you're talking about that sort of draws the constellation
27:43of people around Jeffrey Epstein seems to be sort of a early stage document made by people, perhaps the FBI,
27:51as they're trying to understand the Epstein orbit and universe.
27:55With respect to the document that has two redacted names with respect to recruiters, all I would say about that,
28:00Chris, is I would urge some caution about that.
28:02Because there was a period of time where the Department of Justice thought about certain people as criminals that we
28:07have later thought about as survivors.
28:10Correct. And people who stand in both positions. So that is just a note of caution about that.
28:15Okay. And final thing here. One of the few documents explicitly named in the law that was signed into law
28:21is the original charging documents for the case that was worked up to charge Jeffrey Epstein in Florida that was
28:28never brought. Do we have that yet?
28:29I haven't seen that.
28:31That's the one that they wrote into the law. Ro Khanna is very focused on it. And that is one
28:35we don't appear to have yet.
28:37But that said, there are three million documents that came out today.
28:40It might be in there.
28:41Lisa Rubin, Fallon Gallagher, we're going to keep going through these. Thank you. I appreciate it.
28:45Still ahead, as Trump's DOJ still leaves many open questions with their latest document up, Congresswoman Summer Lee on the
28:52push for full disclosure. Next.
28:58Since last year, Democrats, along with a few select Republicans, have been pressing Donald Trump's Department of Justice to release
29:03its files, all of them, related to child sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein.
29:07Among the Democrats pushing the DOJ hardest is Pennsylvania Congresswoman Summer Lee.
29:12She initiated the bipartisan effort to subpoena DOJ for release of the full unredacted files.
29:17And she joins me now.
29:19Congresswoman, you had pointed out before on the show that the law itself that was passed almost unanimously and signed
29:24into law by Donald Trump wasn't actually necessary because the DOJ could have just responded to the subpoena comprehensively.
29:30They're now 45 days late on their document production, but they have put a lot online.
29:35What's your reaction to what we're seeing today?
29:38Certainly.
29:39You know, I maintain that.
29:41At the end of the day, you know, right now they just released this pretty big tranche, you know, three
29:46million documents.
29:47You know, I think it's about half of what we expect that they have.
29:51And what they're saying right now is that this is going to be the last tranche because everything else is
29:57basically they're able to kind of keep away from folks because of a loophole that allows for them to conceal
30:03or to keep back any documents that are in an active investigation.
30:08We keep referencing the subpoena from back in August because that loophole doesn't exist.
30:14There's nothing that should keep them from releasing all of the unredacted files, say, for, of course, the identities of
30:24survivors to the committee itself.
30:26The committee is equipped to receive, you know, sensitive data, sensitive materials.
30:32That's why it's still important to note that they are still not in compliance because we also have a subpoena
30:39on top of the Epstein Transparency Act.
30:42So that's OK.
30:43So that's interesting.
30:44I hadn't thought of that because I was a little confused by Blanche saying, like, you know, there's six million
30:47total.
30:48There's five hundred thousand before.
30:49Here's another three.
30:50And we're done.
30:51I was like, well, but wait, my math says that there's a lot more and that they're saying that those
30:56are all not those don't have to be released under the law.
30:59Your point is that there's a subpoena under which they have to be released to your committee.
31:05Yeah.
31:05And that subpoena is as legally binding as the law has been.
31:10Right.
31:10So when we think about the fact that, you know, you said they've been 45 days late.
31:14The reality is, is that this has been months and months and months.
31:18The slow drip has been intentional.
31:20Of course, we just heard that they've not done any sort of expert job and redacting in the first place.
31:26So it's very clear that they're not trying to be as transparent as they should be, that this is still
31:31obstruction and that Trump's DOJ is still unwilling to cooperate and to help in any way to ensure that there
31:38is true accountability for these survivors,
31:41to accountability for any of the people who are being protected right now in these files.
31:46Yeah, it does. It also seems like just at the most basic level, an amazing way to keep the story
31:51alive is just to hold back three million documents that you've told everyone that are there, but they can't see.
31:56I want to I want to ask you about one individual who did show up in these documents.
32:00You might know his name is Elon Musk, just reading a few Elon Musk emails to one Jeffrey Epstein in
32:072013, by the way.
32:08So this is not this is after he was a convicted sex offender and after much had been made of
32:14the kind of individual this was and the sorts of things he'd done.
32:18He's saying that it's going to be him and Cholula, his then girlfriend.
32:22What day night will be the wildest party on your island?
32:25Asking Jeffrey Epstein, like, when is the wildest party on Epstein Island going to be?
32:29He also said we'll be in BVI St.
32:31Bart's area over the holidays.
32:33Is there a good time to visit?
32:34Jeffrey Epstein says any day first through eighth.
32:37Play it by ear if you want.
32:38Always space for you.
32:41And also, Elon Musk gave him a tour, apparently, at SpaceX.
32:47When can Elon Musk meet J.E. at SpaceX?
32:51So it does seem like the two men had perhaps more contact than previously was realized.
32:59Listen, this is what I will say.
33:02We have and I will say that oversight, Dems, we've maintained from the very beginning that no matter who it
33:08is,
33:08we want to ensure that there is accountability, whether that person is a Democrat or a Republican or a prince
33:16or a president, right?
33:17My issue is that when, you know, Elon Musk or President Trump shows up in these files, you know, there's
33:24a deafening silence.
33:25But when it's, you know, other folks, you know, there is this rush to say, listen, we're telling you it's
33:30a Democratic thing.
33:31This is what makes me think that they are not being honest, that they're not being, that they're not just
33:37being serious about real accountability and about true transparency.
33:41There should be more of a push to make sure that we're bringing them in.
33:45The Republicans, when we got that subpoena back in July, they were intent on making sure that we also subpoenaed
33:51other people.
33:52They did not subpoena.
33:53They have not yet subpoenaed Elon Musk.
33:55They have not subpoenaed the president himself.
33:58And these are all people who we now know are in the files.
34:00I would like them to keep that same energy so that we can actually get to the bottom of this.
34:05And I want to be very clear here.
34:06There is no accusation of wrongdoing against Elon Musk.
34:09Appearing in the files does not imply wrongdoing, particularly certainly not at a criminal level.
34:14But it is also the case that people are allowed to form their reputational conclusions about public figures in the
34:23world who are, for instance, in one case, Larry Summers,
34:27seeking dating advice about how to date a student.
34:30From Elon, from Jeffrey Epstein or procuring dates with women or asking which will be the wildest part of your
34:38island.
34:39You're everyone's allowed to have reputational conclusions around that.
34:42And do in any, in every instance, right?
34:46We call it guilt by association.
34:48Now, I'm not somebody who is actually proposing guilt by association.
34:51Right, no.
34:52I'm proposing that we release every single document that exists with the DOJ right now that we carry on with
34:59our investigation through the Oversight Committee.
35:01We have work to do still, right?
35:03We have subpoenas that are still out for Deutsche Bank, for J.P. Morgan, right?
35:07We have a subpoena for Ghislaine Maxwell because we actually are trying to do an honest fact-finding mission.
35:13And, you know, the survivors, they've told us to follow the money.
35:17Many names will pop up.
35:18I'll tell you what, though.
35:19When we have seen everything that there is to see, when we can assure that there are no more secrets,
35:24we'll be able to draw better conclusions.
35:27So until those files are released, until they stop this drip, yeah, many people are going to be guilty or
35:33at least they're going to suffer through the insinuation and through guilt by association.
35:37This is now, you know, they're doing this to themselves at this point.
35:41All right, Congresswoman Summer Lee, thank you so much for your time.
35:45Still to come as thousands of Minnesotans march today in protest of Trump's oppression, the surge of people standing up
35:51for America.
35:52That's next.
35:59Donald Trump wants to cow Americans who don't support them.
36:02He wants to scare people off from protesting.
36:04He wants to intimidate journalists from covering what's happening.
36:07He wants to frighten ordinary folks who are standing up for their neighbors.
36:11But one thing I saw up in Minneapolis, and it really blew my mind, is that people are not cowed.
36:16In fact, they are the opposite.
36:17They are more motivated than ever to resist.
36:20They're coming out and standing up all over the country today, in Minneapolis and Los Angeles and New York, as
36:25well as Chicago, where it's like near whiteout conditions by the end of March, among other cities.
36:30And, of course, have been over the last year.
36:37Ezra Levin is a co-founder and co-executive director of Indivisible, which is one of the key organizers in
36:42the No Kings protests.
36:42They have just announced the date of the next one, March 28th.
36:48Ezra, as someone who's very plugged in to how people are channeling the frustration, the rage, the despair they felt,
36:55particularly after watching two Americans shot dead in the streets, what have you been seeing at the ground level from
37:02the folks that are organizing?
37:06Look, at the national level, I'm seeing the most statistic, inhumane actions from a federal government that I've ever seen
37:14or read about.
37:15And then at the exact same time, at the local level, I'm seeing what I think you saw in the
37:22Twin Cities, which is the most beautiful displays of humanity that you can imagine.
37:27And if this regime thought that it could cow Americans into submission by bullying them, threatening them, attacking them, and
37:35in some cases murdering them, they've got another thing coming.
37:38A couple days after Alex Preddy was murdered and after the regime tried to smear his reputation, tried to propagandize
37:47against him, and tried to threaten others to stop doing what he was doing,
37:51We, with the No Kings Coalition, had more than 200,000 people on an ice watch training for people to
38:00learn how to do exactly what Renee Good was doing, exactly what Alex Preddy was doing, standing up in defense
38:07of their neighbors, exercising their First Amendment rights.
38:10I was talking to Twin Cities Indivisibles on the ground, and the flagship No Kings 3 event is going to
38:16be in the Twin Cities on March 28th.
38:18And as you said, there were 7 million people out for No Kings 2 back last October.
38:24They said this one's going to be bigger, much bigger.
38:28That point you made about ice watch training.
38:30I want to say this because I've struggled with how to say this since getting back from Minnesota, but we
38:35use the term protest a lot.
38:37And obviously, like, the big marches are protests.
38:40But 99 percent of what's happening in the Twin Cities right now, and this has also been true in places
38:45like Chicago and Los Angeles,
38:46has been true in the last week in Maine, where they've had a sort of smaller version of this, 99
38:50percent of it I wouldn't even describe as protest.
38:53I mean, it's very concerted sort of tactical efforts to nonviolently jam a crowbar in the wheels of the mass
39:02deportation machine,
39:03to basically stand up for people however you can in this very tangible way,
39:09and in a way that, again, comes with genuine physical risk, as we have seen.
39:15Yeah.
39:17I think you're pointing to something very real here, which is that a protest, even a historic protest,
39:25like a No Kings protest, is a tactic.
39:28And a tactic should fit into a strategy, and a strategy should help you achieve your goal.
39:32Our goal is simple.
39:34We want to safeguard American democracy and prevent the authoritarians from cementing control over all the levers of power.
39:41Our strategy to get there is also simple.
39:44Organized, nonviolent, overwhelming people power.
39:47And one of the tactics is a massive national protest that welcomes in new people,
39:54that pops the bubble of inevitability and invincibility from this regime.
39:57But it can only be one of the tactics, because what we're seeing in the Twin Cities is exactly what
40:02you said.
40:03It's not just protests.
40:05It's people putting their shoulders against the regime and stopping the attack on their neighbors,
40:13using their constitutional rights, exercising their constitutional rights to protect them.
40:18And if we are going to get through this year, Chris, it's going to take more than just protest.
40:24It's going to take more than just training.
40:25It's going to take more than just the historic level of showing up that we've seen.
40:29We're going to have to learn from the Twin Cities and replicate what they've been doing on the ground there
40:34in communities across the country.
40:37That's where we're headed.
40:39No Kings is a way for us to take steps in that direction.
40:42But that is the end point, is ultimately winning and safeguarding elections with mass public involvement at the local level.
40:50Yeah, this point, this post you guys had, the date for the next No Kings Day is set.
40:55But this is a save the date, not a sit back and wait, which I think is an important point.
40:59I want to just play about, you know, we all we all talk about like it's very cold, Minnesota,
41:03and it becomes this kind of background, almost, you know, cliche.
41:07Truly, it is incredibly cold.
41:09And truly, there is a difference between people coming out in that weather and coming out in the middle of
41:14May or June.
41:15I want to just show this little clip.
41:17We have it from Chicago as the as the march there with I think a ton of people was ending
41:23and they were just like absolutely outside in the snow and they are cheering.
41:28I believe I believe that we will win as they are in the loop in whiteout conditions ever as 11.
41:36Thank you so much.
41:37Really appreciate it.
41:39Thank you, Chris.
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