Transcription
Welcome to Resistance Live. Since 2017, Resistance Live has been the go-to home for political and legal news and analysis through a decidedly progressive activist lens. I'm your host, Elizabeth Cronis Mclofflin. I'm a former Wall Street and human rights lawyer, a lifelong organizer, and a leadership and impact consultant for all those seeking to lead big progressive change in these incredibly challenging times. To get bonus broadcasts, ask questions, and more, don't forget to become a paid subscriber to the show at patreon.com/resistancelive. And to learn more about what we do to help progressive leaders everywhere, check out galearnership.com. And now, here's today's show.
Hi everybody. Welcome back to Resistance Live. It's the 14th of November, 2025, and everything is disgusting is kind of the theme of today's show. Um, I've just spent another two hours doing a deep dive into uh the Epstein documents that were released yesterday by House Oversight from the Epstein estate. And this morning I decided to start searching through them just simply using the F-word because I was really curious what that would bring up. Um, and what it uncovered was uh an entire swath of emails between Steve Bannon and Jeffrey Epstein. And when I tell you that when you string these emails together, you see a global network of influence and crime. I mean, that that's that's probably the biggest understatement I'm going to make on this broadcast for the next 12 months. Um it it's truly unbelievable. And the thing that I'm one of the big takeaways that you know I'm I'm sort of taking from all of this in on my second day in reviewing these files is that um there are such significant ways in which Epstein was controlling levers of power behind the scenes. All of which led back to Trump. Um and and that in and of itself I is a huge part of this story that goes even further beyond the sex trafficking, the rape, the victimization and into the fact that everybody knew that Epstein was doing this. There are jokes inside these emails between Bannon and Epstein about Epstein being a child rapist, literally in that language. Um, and at the same time, what Epstein was being paid for in most instances was not financial advice. You know, I mean, again, I said this this morning on Blue Sky, but it's worth repeating this. This idea that Epstein was a financeier is a lie. It's a cover. what he was being paid for was connecting the most powerful white men on the planet to one another to control the levers of power. Um, and you know, again, somebody this morning came at me and was like, "Oh no, he was blackmailing people." And I have to tell you guys from from looking at these emails in the depth that I have looked at them now for two days straight that nobody is being pressured. Nobody is being said I have photo it's being told I have photographs of you with a teenage girl you better pay me. It feels much more like um you know everybody knew what was happening. It was the least well-kept secret among this group of incredibly uber wealthy white men and what they wanted from Epstein was access to these teenage girls and connections. Um, and in and of itself, you know, this is one other thing I have to kind of like put out there. It really doesn't feel like anybody was involuntarily doing anything in relation to Epstein. It feels like everyone knew exactly what was going on and there was an understanding that Epstein was doing what he was doing and everybody was okay with it if not participating.
So, one of the things that, you know, I just want to mention here is that there needs to be I think it's a much easier, more acceptable line in some way for those of us who are survivors and even those of us who are not to think that somehow Epstein manipulated these men into giving them his money. I think it's a much more difficult thing to grasp that thousands of white men worldwide were willing to give Epstein their money in exchange for the access to teenage girls and to power that he provided. I have to tell you like the whole thing looks voluntary to me. Just entirely voluntary. And that in and of itself is disturbing because it does mean, as I said yesterday, that, you know, quite not not all that different from what QAnon was alleging. There's a cabal of incredibly powerful, super wealthy white men all over the world running things while simultaneously raping and trafficking teenage girls. Um, it it's a lot. It's it's a lot.
So, I just want to go through like a couple of the big takeaways from these emails with Bannon because, you know, I I got to tell you guys like I'm not done. What I have been through now um are a series of emails that originated about four months before Epstein was arrested in 2019 and then a a whole series of emails going all the way back to like Trump's first election. Okay. Um and there's more, you know, there's a lot more. Like he and Bannon were texting with each other sometimes a hundred times a day. Um, and one of the things that folks should be aware of is that that Epstein was coaching Bannon, giving him PR advice, giving him messaging advice, telling him what to wear, how to set up his camera shots on CNN, reviewing his performances on Anderson Cooper and CNBC to advise Bannon on how to mobilize Trump's base, talking about things like we have to make China the enemy because all the deplorables can get behind that talking about how to unify people across racial and ethnic divides to get behind Trump by claiming that like you know everybody who's a citizen of the United States is in this together. There's a lot of xenophobia and racism in these texts. Don't get me wrong. It's crazy like how casually the the racism just drips out. The anti-black racism, the Islamophobia, the sexism, the misogyny, the like constant berating of women. It's non-stop. Okay. like non-stop in these text messages. But Bannon comes across, I was thinking about this as I was like getting ready to get on the broadcast. Bannon comes across in a lot of these emails as actually being like deeply insecure as though he is really, you know, he's he he wants very much to be in control of like global politics and simultaneously he's very afraid about how he looks on camera, very afraid about the things that he's going to say or has said and how it's coming across. And Epstein is behind the scenes saying like, "Focus on this. This is your message. This is how you defend yourself as a racist. This is how you defend yourself from accusations of being a misogynist. This is how you go out there and tell the base what they need to get behind." Oo, here's a great review of how you did in your broadcast from the Vatican. Minute by minute by minute, Epstein is controlling behind the scenes what Bannon is putting out there. And that is something that I did not expect to see in this at all. Um, also by the way, just in case people were wondering, Bannon stayed at Epstein's house in Paris less than four months before Epstein was arrested in 2019. They There are jokes in there about Epstein being Bannon's assistant, booking so much private jet travel that he was the most expensive travel agent ever retained, and how there were no massages included in the services that he was providing to Steve Bannon. It's a lot. Like it's a lot. And that's on top of the fact that then there's like the two of them going back and forth about Epstein being with um MBS at the Louv four months before Jamal Kosigible's murder about Epstein and Bannon celebrating celebrating at least that's how the texts read when Jamal Kosigible was murdered by NBS. it. There are discussions about Epste meeting with people deep in Emanuel Mcronone's government, introducing Steve Bannon to the president of Mongolia, working uh behind the scenes to advise Trump. This is something else that you all should know about. Just a few months again before Epstein was arrested again in 2019, he knew that Trump was down on Pence. And there are a series of emails where Bannon is hearing for the first time from Jeffrey Epstein that Trump wanted to replace Pence with Pompeo because he considered Pence to be disloyal. So this idea that, you know, somehow um Trump and Epstein had a falling out in 2014 or 2011, the dates have been, you know, bandied about over Virginia def Jeff def Jeff def Jeff def Jeff def Jeff def Jeff def Jeff def Jeff def Jeff Fray being kidnapped out of Mara Lago is the biggest load of horseshit that we have ever been fed from Donald Trump and that's saying a lot. What it appears from these emails is that Trump and Epste were in contact as recently as a few months before Epstein was arrested. Because if Epste knows that Trump has soured on Pence and is looking to replace him with Pompeo and also knows, by the way, that Trump told Mark Kelly to fire Jared and then Jared told Mark Kelly he was fired. That information is coming from straight inside the White House. So Trump and Epstein were never separate. I mean, that's very clear from what's contained in these emails. I would argue like it's it's basically fact. Um because there's information in these texts and in these emails that Epstein would never have known if he had not talked to Trump himself. So that's that's another side of this.
But, you know, all of this collaboration behind the scenes, you know, again, we've got Epstein coordinating, introducing Bannon to all sorts of right-wing figures all over the world. It's Bannon and Epstein talking about, you know, the rise of a far right-wing leader in Italy, how to connect that person to Orban, how to connect that person to Shinszo Abbe, how to make sure that like the Glo Balsinaro, how to make sure this global fascist populist movement will rise, right? with Epstein cracking jokes about Bannon being the next Hitler. That's literally what is contained in these texts. And it's um it's a lot like you know I just have to point out it's a lot. What it is leading me to is a conclusion not just, you know, and I said this yesterday. I've said this many times and I'm I will I'm sure I will say it many times again is that what is contained in the DOJ Epstein files does in fact implicate the president, but it probably implicates the president in much more than just child rape and sex trafficking. What it probably implicates the president in is all this stuff that Bannon and Epste were working on behind the scenes. And I am particularly interested, by the way, because Epstein was under surveillance. There were discussions inside these texts and um and and emails about about Bannon trying to set up meetings with Epstein into the middle of 2019 when they knew and in 2018 as well when they knew that Epstein's front door in New York was under constant surveillance by the feds. And so, you know, I have real questions about who was coming and going. I'm certain they had taps on Epstein's phones. um you know who was recorded on those messages? What did the FBI have on the conversations between Trump and Epstein and Epstein and Bannon? Because by the way, there were conversations that you can see in the text they had by phone in addition to the ones that they were having by text and email. Um, and you know then on top of it you have Epstein trying to set Bannon up with Obama's former White House general counsel who happened to be one of Epstein's friends who now works for Goldman Sachs. Goldman Sachs came out yesterday and said they were standing by her even though she has all these texts with Jeffrey Epste. It's crazy. There are like conversations in these texts about uh Epstein telling Rumler, the White House general counsel under Obama, that he thought that Trump should pardon everybody involved in the Russia gate scandal after the Mueller report came out and then fake a heart attack so that he could get off scot-free. Um, there's clear indications, by the way, that Epstein was talking to the Russians while talking to Bannon and that there were there were back-end communications going on there. There's references to oligarchs. I mean, it's just unbelievable. And so when you put these two things together, you put Bannon with his enormous social media presence, his enormous far-rightwing neo-Nazi Christian fascist platforms, together with Jeffrey Epstein, who is connected to literally like every powerful white man in the world, not to mention had a lot of connections with like the Saudi kingdom, with the Abu Dhabi, with the Chinese, with Bolsinaro, with Shinszo Abbe. Right? Like you put all of this together and you have a very clear road map. Now, this is one thing I will just say about this. I'm I want the people who organize these databases to put them in a chronological order because as a trial lawyer, the stories as they develop would be much easier to string together if everything was in chronological order. But it puts together a story of an effort behind the scenes for Bannon and his allies with the help of Jeffrey Epstein creating essentially a global populist movement that puts only far-right figures into power. Um, this is all astonishing when you read the details of it. And also one of the things that I just have to point out about this is that Jeffrey Epstein also doesn't appear to be terribly smart. Um, constantly making jokes like he's a 12-year-old boy. There are records in his email of all these kind of like sexist and racist jokes. Um, and simultaneously you have Steve Bannon who, you know, is held up as this kind of like primary messenger of the far right being insecure about how he appears on camera on CNN. Like it's it's it's wild. Just absolutely wild.
Now, I want to say one thing because, you know, I try I've tried really hard in the nine years almost that I've been doing this to come on here and not be a conspiracy theorist. And you all know this is like a conspiracy theory free zone. I just want to make something really clear because I know talking about this, if you haven't read the emails, a lot of this could sound really crazy. You can go to my blue sky and you can go through all the posts that I've done this morning and yesterday and you can see the actual evidence that I'm referring to in this. You can actually read the emails. You can look at the connections that were being built ac across global governments behind the scenes by Steve Bannon with Epstein's help. So I want everybody to kind of get this. This is not conspiracy theory. These are facts from the very actors themselves who were involved in it speaking to one another in what they thought were private communications. Um, and I will just say this, okay? I don't see any way at this point that the next step of this is not the release of the DOJ Epstein files.
Now, let's talk about that for a second because there's been some movement on that since yesterday. Um, as we discussed yesterday, the discharge petition has passed now with the 218 votes now that Ghalda has been sworn in. And Mike Johnson said that he would then bring it to a vote faster than the 7-day ripening period that is ordinarily required for a discharge petition for a random House member to bring something to the vote around the control of the House, the Speaker of the House. Okay. So, there's going to be a vote on this sooner than expected. We are starting to see real cracks in the GOP. Um yet just yesterday, I mean, and this like blew me away, one of our least favorite southern gentleman senators um said that he thought that there was no way that the American public was going to be satisfied with anything less than the full release of the DOJ files. Um, and that is somebody who is like routinely aligned with Trump. Cracked a joke about how Trump would probably put out a meme just like he did with Hakee Jeff of that particular senator with a sombrero on his head, but he didn't care because the American public deserves to know. Okay, let me just say something. If you have a far right-wing white southern senator saying that in anticipation of the passage of the Epstein Files Act through the House, then coming to the Senate, there are greater riffs under the surface with the GOP than what we already know about.
Now, I want to go through this from the perspective of again of the procedures for this because this is a bill. Okay, I want to make this really clear. It's a bill. You know, schoolhouse rock with me. Okay, I'm just a bill and I'm only a bill and I'm sitting here on Capitol Hill. It's a bill. It has to go through the process of being approved in the House, approved in the Senate, sent to Trump's desk for signature where he will doubtless veto it. So, the question now, as I said yesterday, is can we get to a veto proof majority? That's twothirds of the House and twothirds of the Senate. There are indications right now that more than a hundred Republicans may vote in favor of this when it comes to the floor of the House. Okay, that by the way will probably get us to a veto proof majority. Then we've got the Senate. And the Senate is where the real pressure has to come because of the filibuster. All right, because reminder, to overcome the filibuster, you need a twothirds vote. And to overcome a veto of Donald Trump, you also need a twothirds vote. So, as I said yesterday, there is a need for everyone right now. It wasn't Lindsey Graham, it was Kennedy. There was there's a need right now for everyone to um call your senators and demand the release of the Epstein files. You should also call your reps. I said this yesterday, but like this is your homework today. Call your reps and senators and demand the release of the Epstein files because I will tell you right now, the Bannon Epstein connections are revolting enough. What is contained in these documents is terrifying enough. I have questions. I was putting on my makeup to come on the air and I have really serious questions, like good faith questions based on what I saw in these emails about whether or not the murder of Jamal Kosigible was engineered behind the scenes by Epstein and Bannon. Like I have huge questions about that. There there there's information in here that actually looks like they could have been a part of it. So I just I just want to make this really clear, okay? What we have seen so far is just the tip of the iceberg. We know the DOJ has photographs and videotapes, but beyond that, they have what's been produced to them through subpoenas, subpoenas for documents, what's been produced to them subject to warrants that were issued for surveillance. Like, these are all things that we need to know that we deserve to know. We deserve to know whether or not the president was actually engaged in raping children. Yes. But we also deserve to know like what was going on behind the scenes here between Epstein and Trump, between Epstein Trump and Bannon, between Epste and Bannon and everyone in Trump's inner circle, between all of those people and these international farright-wing figures. So again, I I like the way that this is going to go down has everything to do with how the American public responds to it. And so I just want to implore all of you to please make your phone calls today. Call your representative e even and especially if they're MAGA. Call your senators even and especially if they're MAGA. Demand the release of the Epstein files. It must be done. Like it must be done.
Okay. Um couple people are asking me like what does this mean in terms of prosecution? Well, that's a huge question and I did answer it yesterday, but I'll just give you the short version here. As long as Pam Bondi is in charge of the DOJ, nobody's going to be prosecuted for this. But but there are huge developing events in Europe surrounding Epstein Bannon and what they were up to. Okay? Because Epstein, as many of you know, had a house in Paris. As I already said, Bannon stayed at that house in 2019, a few months before Epstein was was arrested. One of the things that um that everybody should be aware of is that a lot of these international meetings, a lot of these like conspiracies were birthed overseas. Okay? And if international figures are involved in them, that leads to jurisdiction by the Hague. Now, Jeffrey Epstein is dead. Okay? So, Jeffrey Epste is not going to be brought before the Hague. Whether or not other international figures who are implicated in this could be is a very big question. Okay. Um and you know I just have to say that I have no idea how this is all going to play out. You know there like one of Mcronone's adviserss for culture had Jeffrey Epste and Steve Bannon at his house in 2019. I don't know what for like they had meetings right there are meetings with international figures like all over the world Rome Paris in Italy other places in Italy AC like overseas in Brazil right like Ben was all over the place spewing this stuff at the time. So, you know, again, we have just tremendous um tremendous things to come, I think, on this. Um, and we have no idea where the direction is going to end. Um, and I just have to say one thing to the person in the comments who was saying that Epste was Trump's Navali. No. No. Noni was a freedom fighter for democracy who was murdered by Vladimir Putin. Epstein was a child rapist who was engaged in trying to overthrow international governments behind the scenes with Steve Bannon. Please don't smear Navali's name with an association like that. Like that's pretty disgusting. Okay.
Um, so in any event, I think we have to be thoughtful, okay, about how we talk about this and also reasonable about the expectations because the um the the associations that are that are coming to light here behind the scenes raise very serious questions about leverage and control and illegality. And you know, even for somebody like me, right, who practiced um you know, a lot internationally, right, I had cases involving environmental crimes and human rights violations when I was practicing that had me traveling all over the world very similarly. I can't predict how this is going to come out. I can't predict how this is going to play. I can tell you though that I think that Steve Bannon, as recently as a few months before Epstein w was arrested, was very deep in criminal conduct with Jeffrey Epstein. Like very deep, very deep. And you know, the the questions now are where is this going to end? Um, and some of that again has to do with the pressure that we put on our elected officials. So, it's a lot. I mean, it's just a lot. And I know that these last two broadcasts today, the last couple days, you guys have felt like a fire hose. That's the experience of going through these emails. It's literally like, you know, you you drop the f-word into the search bar, like I did this morning at 8:30 a.m., and it is email upon email upon email upon email of horrific conduct, crimes, conspiracies, negotiations with foreign figures, influence via the media, like connections to artists and and geneticists because he was obsessed with with like eugenics, right? connections to academics who are advocating for far right-wing policies, connections to lawyers internationally, all of these meetings all over the world. It's just unbelievable. Absolutely unbelievable. Um and yet it's true, which makes it worse.
Um okay. Uh couple other issues that we have to touch upon today related to um the budget bill and everything else having to do to deal with it. Um okay. Uh, somebody asked a question about like what do we do with our representatives who will not call for Schumer's removal. Well, you know, Indivisible, as we've talked about here, have already started a campaign on this and there will be there is going to be more about this as we head into the 2026 midterms because of the sellout of Americans on healthcare. Um, part of the pressure campaign by Indivisible is designed to get those people up for reelection in the Senate to call for new leadership at the top of the Democratic party in that body. And so we have a long way to go from here and there, from here to there. And you know, the best way to get involved in that is to actually get involved in Indivisible's work on that front. They have a box for that campaign on their homepage at indivisible.org. Please go there, read what it is about because it's really about primary season and um and you know follow up and get involved. That's the best way to do to do that. All right. Similar, I was asked about this clause in the budget bill that allows the eight representatives who were investigated after January 6th to be compensated using taxpayer dollars for having their phones investigated as potentially being insurrectionists. Yes, it is obscene. We don't know if it's going to make it like, you know, I mean, it's like it's now passed the House and the Senate. So, presumably there will be something in there is something actually in the final bill that was signed by Trump that allows it. But whether or not it will survive a court challenge because that could be coming is um is yet to be seen. All right. Um and I will just say one thing to the person who is saying that Schumer might have been playing 5D chess. I discussed the fact that that is absolutely not true on yesterday's broadcast and you can go back and watch it. So, I don't know what's going to happen with the payoff to these eight far right-wing representatives. Okay. Whether or not that money actually gets paid out is a question, but it is in there. Yes, it's horrifying. Jeffrey's really Jeffre is really mad about it. Um, okay. I have one other note here. Uh, yes, that's actually what I just talked about. Okay.
Um, and then one last thing, which was a really good question actually from some fellow survivors. You all know I am a survivor of CSA. I've been very public about this. Um, and you know, you also know that I did human rights litigation that involved really serious allegations of um, like there's no way to put it, sex trafficking and crimes against humanity. Um, somebody asked a question as a survivor of like how to tolerate what we're learning from the Epstein files. Um, and you know, I want to just like say a couple of words about that because there are places where you do need to be cautious about this. Like I want to just mention to everybody. I know that there are these images circulating on the internet that claim to be of Trump and like a pile of blonde teenage girls on private jets. Many of those images are AI generated. Like I want people to remember here that not everything that you see on the internet is real. Okay? So, some of this stuff is being designed by bad actors or people who wish that they had evidence like that and thrown out on the internet for clicks and and follows. All right? So, first and foremost, I really do want people to be thoughtful about what you see and asking yourself if you know that it's real. Okay? I have seen some very big names posting images that I know are AI generated because if you backtrack them through Google images, you find the original image and it's not Trump. So, I want people to be very mindful about that. First and foremost, second of all, you know, my advice to survivors is like, you've got to take breaks right now. You do not need to be in the middle of this. I am choosing to be in the middle of this, but please keep in mind that I was trained as a lawyer and then practice law as a trial lawyer for 15 years in human rights cases and financial fraud cases. And I have like a training and a depth of experience that allows me to hold the container for this that most people don't. All right? like and you know that's on top of like you know decades and decades of therapy and various practices and medication and other things that have allowed me to kind of like heal and recover in a way that lets me process this. That said, I still got physically ill at the at the end of last night. Like I had a really bad stomach ache that I couldn't kick and I went I went to bed at 8:00 and that's trauma, right? Like that's the my physical response to bearing witness to this with my enormous bandwidth that has been cultivated by experience training and work. All right. So, I do want people to be mindful that you are not under any obligation whether you are a survivor or not to immerse yourself in this material in the way that I am choosing to do so or the way that like the media is doing right now. And if you find yourself in a place where there is um you know a physical response happening in your body to the effect that like you're not feeling well, you should absolutely close your phone, put it down, stick it in a drawer, walk away from the computer, and take a break for as long as you need to. I I mean like that's the best advice I can give. And I will also just tell you this, you do not have to read the things that I am posting. You don't if you don't want to watch the broadcast on a day where I'm talking about Etsy, I'm totally cool with that. Okay, everybody needs to do the things that they need to do right now to stay sane through all of this. All right. And particularly, it's really important for survivors to rely on our support networks as all of this comes out because the fact that there was a global group of incredibly wealthy white men, either complicit in an enormous worldwide sex trafficking ring that victimized a hundred teenage a thousand teenage girls at least, um, or or were actually participating in those crimes themselves, like would trigger anybody. body. It would trigger anybody. It's like it's horrible, right? Like it's unfathomable in many sense. It's it's like hard sometimes even reading these documents to really believe what you're reading because the scope of this is so big. So please take care of yourselves. Like that's really my best advice. Just like take care of yourself. Take breaks. Don't read it if it's going to be triggering. God knows I've had to do that many times with other forms of news. So um I will I'm going to continue working through this stuff today as much as I can. Um, I am again parsing through this using skills that I had over 15 years as a trial lawyer. So, I know how to search these documents in particular ways too with like boolean search terms and legal strategy to try to find the things that are the most important. Um, and I will continue doing that and posting it on blue sky and you can follow it there if you would care to. But, um, I really want people to take very good care of themselves right now in all of this because it's a lot to hold and it's a lot to comprehend and it would fry your brain. It fries your brain frankly to to see the reality of this. Um, so yeah, so that's that.
There will be a bonus broadcast today for all our Patreon subscribers. If you want to join us, you can get 20% off an annual subscription right now using the code fall 2025. That broadcast will be at 3 p.m. today. And I chances are very solid that I will also be talking about new things I found in the Epstein files then. So if you want to get in on that, please become a subscriber. Also, I decided this morning to take like two hours away from my regular job, which by the way, you know, includes things that I was supposed to be doing like editing next week's educational video um in conjunction with our video editor in LA. Um I I opted out of that. So, if you want to kick me a tip, you know, I'm actually just going to do this for all the work that I'm doing. Um here is my Venmo, which is Elizabeth Cronis McGlofflin, all one word. or you can cash at me at ECMlofflin. Uh if you want to kick me a tip for all the hard work because it did take time away from my day job and it's going to take more today. And I will catch everybody else on the bonus broadcast today at 3 p.m. Please subscribe to this channel, give this video a thumbs up, share it with your friends and family if you think they'd find it interesting or helpful. Um, and I will catch you all back here last week. By the way, for the person mentioning me too, there is an enormous discussion between Bannon and Epstein in these documents on an off andon basis over years about men that they knew and were friends with being brought down by me too. So like keep in mind Epstein was really good friends with Harvey Weinstein, really good friends with Brett Ratner, had Johnny Depp and Marilyn Manson on a on an agenda for an event he was planning. So just be aware. All right, my friends. I will catch you all back here next week live. I will see our subscribers today at 3M. And thanks everybody for your support. All right, bye.
That's our show for today, folks. Thanks so much for being here at Resistance Live. To get more out of the show, including bonus broadcasts, the answers to all your most pressing political and legal questions, and way more, head on over to patreon.com/resistancelive, and become a paid subscriber. And don't forget to hit subscribe here on your favorite podcasting platform to make sure that you never miss an episode. See you next time.