00:00Yet this administration in the Situation Room calls an emergency meeting at which Todd Blanche was there to say,
00:08what are we going to do? Because the president appears in the Epstein files hundreds of times.
00:15They didn't get together to say, this is really bad. This is eroding trust in the justice system.
00:20This is eroding trust in the rule of law. We have to find a way to hold powerful people accountable.
00:26No, they came together with Todd Blanche in the room. How do we protect the president?
00:31Mr. Chairman, I am shocked. I think I've been here 14 years.
00:36I have not seen something as farcical as what I've witnessed over the last few weeks.
00:40We have a nominee that it seemed like some of my colleagues in a noble way were saying is unqualified
00:47unless he gives some kind of guarantee
00:50that what we now know on both sides of the aisle, Americans think is absolutely outrageous.
00:56A slush fund had been created for the president to dole out to people who've done the most awful things.
01:02Literally, people that stormed the Capitol and beat police officers in this building would not get taxpayer dollars as some
01:12kind of reward.
01:15Universal disagreement on that and the fact that a president of the United States is not above the law and
01:21shouldn't be able to cheat on their taxes.
01:24And so I sat back for days now looking forward to us at least of all the things that Todd
01:31Blanche has done that is disqualifying for this job.
01:33I thought at least we were going to be able to get an end to that nightmare.
01:42And here's the thing, Mr. Chairman.
01:50Here's the thing, Mr. Chairman.
01:53You even have conservatives coming out and saying these things are not worth the paper they're drawn on.
02:02I have a lot of respect for my colleagues, love the state of Texas, but I'm going to say it
02:07very clear.
02:08This is all hat and no cattle.
02:11It's hard for me to say this as a plant-based guy, but where's the beef?
02:15Where's the beef?
02:17This is ridiculous.
02:19We got nothing, no guarantees whatsoever that this slush fund still can't go forward.
02:26We got nothing that the president of the United States can't cheat on his taxes and have no accountability.
02:34Dear God, folks, it's not like we're talking about a president who is a saint.
02:41No president in the history of this country has been caught in tax cheating more than this one.
02:46A Pulitzer Prize winning documentation of his tax cheating came out in 2018.
02:54Pulitzer Prize.
02:56Donald Trump said, I'm going to sue you.
02:58It's all wrong.
02:59That suit was thrown out because the president is a tax cheat.
03:04But it didn't stop with that.
03:06He was a tax cheat with his nonprofit as well.
03:09He created a so-called charity.
03:11But what did he do with that charity?
03:13It was cited by the state of New York for self-dealing, for tax cheating, and was shut down.
03:21We have a known arsonist, and we have just in this committee given him a whole barrel full of gasoline
03:29to light on fire our tax laws and have no accountability for the conflagration.
03:36This is so ridiculous that we are sitting back here and allowing this to happen.
03:43A president that we know is a tax cheat.
03:46That is a fact.
03:48That is a fact.
03:50We have now just given him an immunity to his tax cheating.
03:54Now here's an admission I'm going to make to my colleagues on the other side.
03:59We've had presidents that have done things that, to me, do not pass the smell test and do not pass
04:05the appearance of impropriety.
04:07I think this committee should pass a law that no children of presidents should be able to grift off their
04:13parents' office.
04:15To me, it is ridiculous the corruption that we have normalized in America.
04:19That presidents' children can go out and sit on boards and make money.
04:26That is wrong, and that is corrupting.
04:29But they have become so obsessed with the millions that the Bidens have made that they have ignored completely the
04:39billions of dollars that the Trump family is making.
04:43That is like being obsessed and using a magnifying glass to study the stain on the living room carpet when
04:51behind you is a mountain of excrement covering the living room couch and coffee table.
04:59This is so outrageous, the lack of proportionality going on to my colleagues, it is laughable.
05:06This is absolutely insane that we have a president of the United States that has now made $2 billion.
05:13Doing what?
05:15Wow, he's such a shrewd businessman.
05:16Let me create my own crypto coin and have foreign nations invest in it.
05:21Oh, and by the way, if you are a corporation in America, put my children on the board and they'll
05:26get no bid contracts.
05:29We are, this is the Judiciary Committee.
05:32We're supposed to be checking and balancing this nation.
05:38Why have people on both sides of the aisle given up on any trust in government?
05:43It's because we're surrendering any shred of integrity left.
05:47And now we're letting an attorney general become the highest law enforcement officer in the land and putting no holds
05:57whatsoever.
05:58I had hoped for two weeks that we would get something.
06:02Two weeks that we would have something substantive to stop the world's greatest presidential tax cheat from cheating.
06:10And we've done nothing.
06:11And this man is going to now sail to the floor and history is going to show it.
06:18I know what's going to come out in history on this president.
06:21And I know what's going to come out on Todd Blanche.
06:24And the simplest way that should outrage any shred of decency my colleagues have.
06:30Because this isn't left or right.
06:32This isn't presidential enrichment.
06:35This is the deepest, most sacred urgency of this committee.
06:41And I know colleagues on both sides care about it.
06:45Victims of crime should have justice.
06:52And here in the United States of America, one of the greatest sex trafficking rings we've ever seen.
07:00When only two people, over a thousand women, sexually assaulted and raped.
07:07Only two people have been held accountable.
07:10There are other criminals out there that haven't been found.
07:14And what did the man that we're talking about becoming the attorney general of the United States, what did he
07:19do?
07:20Well, he joined in the situation room in the White House.
07:24Y'all know what the situation room is, right?
07:26This is where we go to deal with the greatest national security threats in a classified room.
07:33To deal with the safety of our nation.
07:37And yet this administration, in the situation room, calls an emergency meeting at which Todd Blanche was there to say,
07:45what are we going to do because the president appears in the Epstein files hundreds of times.
07:52They didn't get together to say, this is really bad.
07:55This is eroding trust in the justice system.
07:58This is eroding trust in the rule of law.
08:00We have to find a way to hold powerful people accountable.
08:03No.
08:04They came together with Todd Blanche in the room.
08:06How do we protect the president?
08:09And what happened after that?
08:11One of the most unusual things in the history of our country happened after that.
08:16Todd Blanche, at the highest heights of our Justice Department, ran to the prison of Ghislaine Maxwell.
08:25This is unprecedented.
08:27This is, lawyers tell me, untoward.
08:30This is corrupting.
08:31He didn't study the case files.
08:34He didn't talk to the prosecutors.
08:35No, he ran to the jail cell and met with her for two days, insulting every single Epstein victim that
08:43had been asking for a meeting for years.
08:48And after two days of meetings, did we get information that led to an indictment?
08:54No.
08:55Did we get information that led to new opens of investigations?
08:59No.
09:00Did we get one more conviction?
09:02No.
09:03What did we get?
09:04That a convicted sex offender was able to leave her confinement and go to the cushiest prison in our land.
09:14That by Bureau of Prison Law, by DOJ Law, is a violation of their principles.
09:24So Ghislaine Maxwell is sitting in the lowest possible confinement after giving no information that helped us get one more
09:35investigation started and has been silent.
09:40And the man responsible for that, we are about to make the Attorney General of the United States of America.
09:49This man is not our lawyer.
09:53He is not America's lawyer.
09:56He is about to become Trump's sword against his adversaries and shield against any scrutiny.
10:03The shield is going to shield him from tax cheating.
10:06The shield is going to shield him from investigation for any involvement he may have had in Epstein's deeds.
10:13And the sword, I've seen it, unprecedented that the Attorney General should investigate colleagues here on this committee.
10:24See, this is farcical.
10:27It would be literally laughably funny if it wasn't so dangerous.
10:32We are about to put a person in one of the most powerful positions in the land.
10:38Vital for not only enforcing the law, protecting national security, but also vital for upholding our democracy.
10:47And my Republican colleagues sound like Jan Brady, Marsha, Marsha, Marsha, Biden, Biden, Biden.
10:55You are worried about a pickpocket, a pickpocket when it comes to grand theft larceny.
11:04When it comes to our democracy, you're worried about someone who is doing petty theft while there is the murder
11:12of our democratic traditions going on before our eyes.
11:16We are in dangerous waters, folks.
11:19We are in dangerous waters.
11:21We are turning the ideals of justice and this committee into a mockery by letting the least qualified person,
11:29a person proven to do Donald Trump's will over the law.
11:33He is about Trump and not truth.
11:36He is about corruption and not the Constitution.
11:38He is about being Donald Trump's lawyer and not the people's lawyer.
11:42This is so deeply wrong.
11:45We will rue the day that we let this man have this much power under such a corrupt president.
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