Transcription
With a serious, important story about accountability and updates in the Epstein scandal, the Miami Herald, which broke this story wide open, we've shown you that before. We credit the Miami Herald with reopening that case on our timeline. Their top journalist on this story, Julie K. Brown, reporting that Trump may have had a lot more knowledge about Epstein than what was known at the time. You can see the headline here with serious sourcing, and we'll update that as we get into this story.
While the top update out of Washington is that Ghislaine Maxwell, of course, the convicted associate of Epstein, has now formally pled the Fifth during her deposition before Congress, and lawmakers spoke out about that.
"As expected, Ghislaine Maxwell took the Fifth and refused to answer any questions. This is obviously very disappointing. She was not at all remorseful about pleading the Fifth today. What we did not get were any substantive answers to the questions that were asked that would advance our investigation. I don't think she had the legal right to plead the Fifth Amendment. I'll just say that, but she did."
"The fact that this woman is continuing to invoke the Fifth Amendment tells us exactly what my colleagues have already stated. She is a monster. She does not care. You can hear it there. And that includes, of course, members of both parties agreeing that this was wrong."
Of course, only one party currently, the Republicans, have a DOJ that granted her leniency in her prison upgrade and a very unusual setting where she did talk. The Times reporting that she refused to answer these questions. Her lawyer said she would, quote, "speak fully and honestly if she got clemency."
Now, Maxwell spoke to I want to talk to Trump's former criminal defense lawyer who is now the number two at DOJ last summer, and at that period she answered questions not for half an hour, an hour, or clarifying. It was actually nine hours. And I want to remind everyone that our attorney said she answered every question. This went over two days. And best as we understand it, although the DOJ has not exactly been fully transparent along the way, but best as we know, she got a kind of limited treatment, a limited immunity in order to engage over there, which raises questions about why she would be willing to tell the DOJ one thing and Congress nothing. That's when she got the upgrade I mentioned, moved to a better prison, raising questions about whether that was a reward.
Now, in journalism, we can tell you that circumstantially, it looks like a reward. That's circumstantial evidence that she did something, and then DOJ, which controls the Bureau of Prisons, did something for her. But there is not, for example, some smoking gun exposition yet on exactly why someone who was the only person we know of in the U.S. serving a sentence with Epstein's crimes is getting better treatment. Pretty wild.
Lawmakers also building on the pressure and the loss they dealt Trump in the Epstein law because now they're looking at Epstein files that even we in the public and journalists haven't seen even since that release because they've got the unredacted files. One key Democrat who runs that committee, the minority side of that committee, Jamie Raskin, responding, "I believe that there were tons of completely unnecessary redactions in addition to the failure to redact the names of victims. I think that the Department of Justice has been in a cover-up mode for many months, that there are certainly lots of names of other people who were enablers and cooperators with Jeffrey Epstein that were just blanked out for no apparent reason."
Blanked out for no reason. That is a description. So if Raskin's telling the truth, that's a problem for DOJ. And if it was habitual, if it's pattern behavior defending or protecting people who are not supposed to be redacted under the law. Remember, this isn't just a dispute. That would be a violation of the law. Why does that matter? Well, it doesn't mean that someone at DOJ is going to—that's not the kind of law this is. But just as the law ultimately got so many of these documents out, violations of that law that are provable based on the material and going to court could get those unredacted documents. Ultimately, people are still going through the 3 million documents.
Among the files is new footage of Maxwell's 2016 deposition where she's asked about the schemes to traffic underage.
"Way. Did Jeffrey Epstein have a scheme to recruit underage girls for sexual massages?"
"Objective foreign foundation. If you know. So I don't know what you're talking about. To be clear, I don't know what you're talking about."
Isn't even no. It's just sort of, "I can't deal with this question." The lawyer obviously doing their job to make objections for the record, but this was the pressure that was originally building up civilly. As we know, the difference from then to now is she's been criminally convicted.
Now, there are more calls for accountability at these people who've popped up in the files, and we've been charting this on our timeline. As mentioned, we've charted how a current cabinet member, Secretary Lutnick, had claimed in public—he didn't have to, but he went out of his way to claim in public that he'd cut off contact with Epstein. That big, sweeping televised denial is now undercut by what you see there, him and Musk emailing about visiting the island. He's facing calls to resign or be fired. The House Oversight Chair says they could subpoena him. And again, this is still sometimes, on some issues, bipartisan. Here's a Republican on the matter.
"Howard Lutnick clearly went to the island if we believe what's in these files. He's got a lot to answer for, but really he should make life easier on the president, frankly, and just resign. If this were Great Britain, he'd already be gone." That's a Republican's view about the level of scandal.
And as we've been careful to point—that is not the same as the criminal standard. No one is alleging that most of the names we have mentioned, for example, tonight, were proven to be involved in the actual to the sex crimes that Maxwell was convicted of. But at the level of judgment and the problems White House has had, including delaying, denying, releasing these files even after they passed a law requiring it, you would think that the White House wouldn't want to just stand by someone who is now busted in their own. The White House is standing by Lutnick.
There's also a new revelation site that I mentioned, Miami Herald reporter Julie K. Brown reporting that in July 2006, Trump actually called the then Palm Beach police chief telling him Epstein's activities with teenage girls were well-known, that he was described or remembered to have as having said, "Thank goodness you're stopping him. I don't know what he's doing, but it's the first time everyone has known he's been doing this." That is according to a 2019 FBI interview with the police chief, which has now been revealed in these files. So again, the written records, the things that some have tried to hide are still coming out. Apparently Trump had told the police chief, according to this account, that he was around Epstein once when teenagers were present, and Trump got the hell out of there.
The journalist who broke that news story, Julie, let's turn to the actual violation as described. The DOJ, they violated the law on the deadline, and he says, and we have a lot of accounting of this today, new today, that one positive people are understandably skeptical. They say, how does this all that, if you want to all work, at least the lawmakers are going in and they're looking under those now infamous redactions. And they're saying some of they want to fit into getting where does that fit into getting to the bottom of this? What do you see happening on that process?
Well, it's good that they are aggressively looking at what these redactions are about, but I still think that the larger problem is that this case, there's no evidence that we have seen, or the victims for that matter have seen. There's no evidence that we have matter have seen that indicates that the DOJ has investigated some of these allegations that are contained in there. And this isn't just about these anonymous tipsters. There are there are allegations throughout these files that we're seeing that are from, that have people's, women's names attached to them. They're redacted, thankfully, in these, some of these places, or hopefully most of. There are allegations here and there aren't any documents to support whether they were ever interviewed. I know of at least one victim who reported her abuse in 2021, and she mentioned that she was never—there was never a follow-up. There was an intake taken, an intake form, but nobody ever reached out to her afterward and said, "Tell me about what you know what happened to you." And that was in 2021. And so there's questions to be raised, and it isn't just a Republican or Democrat issue. It is, you know, there there were problems with this DOJ throughout this past decade, at least, where it doesn't appear that they took this case seriously. Right. Yeah, and that that goes again to why.