Transcription
Happy to have you here on MSNBC. So, who is in charge of the U.S. Navy? Constitutionally speaking, as you know, we have civilian control of the Navy and of all the other branches of the armed services. So, so, you know, it's a civilian who's in charge of the U.S. Navy.
Do you know who the civilian is who Trump put in charge of the Navy? One hint is that he's a man who never served in the Navy, never served in the military at all. He has no known previous relationship of any kind with the Navy or with the U.S. military at all. Indeed, he was not known to have ever even shown any interest in the Navy or the U.S. military whatsoever before Donald Trump made him secretary of the Navy.
Why did Donald Trump put this guy in charge of it? I don't know. What the guy does know a lot about, what at least he is known for in the world, is his art collection. His name is John John Phelan, P-H-E-L-A-N, Phelan. That's him on the left with his wife. Mr. Phelan is an art collector and finance guy who Donald Trump put in charge of the United States Navy for some reason.
Now, is his art collecting itself perhaps Navy-related? Like, is he into paintings of ships or famous naval battles of the 19th century? No, nothing like that. In fact, it's kind of a funny story. Around the time that Trump named John Phelan to be secretary of the Navy, the art world press kind of awkwardly tried to sum up John Phelan's tastes in art. They tried to describe for the non-art world public who's just hearing about this guy for the first time, they tried to describe what John Phelan was known for in the art world, in case anybody was curious as to why Donald Trump might have landed on him, in particular, for the job of Navy secretary.
A number of art world publications eventually sort sort of settled on what I guess is a representative quote, an existing quote from a former executive at Southerbee's describing the art tastes of Trump's new Navy secretary. She described his tastes as, quote, "a celebration of the sexual side of life." The publication Artnet published photos of some of his collection in situ at one of his homes, photos that I cannot show you on TV. Other art world publications described, for example, a video art installation at one of his homes, which is just all Playboy centerfolds.
There's also famously the floor at his like $38 million mansion in Aspen, Colorado. In an interview with the artnewspaper.com, Trump's Navy Secretary John Phelan, his wife was asked by that publication, quote, "What is the most surprising place you have displayed a work?" And she answered, quote, "In the living room of our Aspen home. We have a mirrored floor. It covers the entire space. It is amazing to see people's reactions at parties when they realize what you can see in the floor, naughty and nice," end quote.
That Aspen home with the mirrored floor, that is where John Phelan hosted a gazillion-dollar fundraiser for candidate Donald Trump in August 2024. That fundraiser made news because it was one of the times Trump stated his made-up claim that prisons in the Congo were releasing all their murderers in order to ship them to the United States. He told that tall tale at the house with the, quote, "naughty surprise mirrored floor," whose owner Trump soon named to run the United States Navy, despite him having no connection to the Navy at all.
Incidentally, that Aspen fundraiser was one that Trump flew to on an airplane that had previously belonged to Jeffrey Epstein, which itself made some headlines at the time. The campaign said at the time that that was just a coincidence. But you know, in the course of time, Trump got re-elected to the presidency in November of 2024. He really did name this guy, John Phelan, the rando sexual side of life art collector with a mirrored floor to run the United States Navy. And Congress really did force Trump's Justice Department to release at least some of the government's files on Trump's front, the late convicted pedophile and child sex trafficker Jeffrey Jeffrey Epstein.
And perhaps inevitably, among the revelations in the Epstein files was this headline: John Phelan, Trump's Navy secretary, listed in Epstein flight logs. John Phelan, the billionaire art collector whom President Donald Trump appointed to oversee the U.S. Navy, appears to have traveled on at least two transatlantic flights with Jeffrey Epstein. The flight manifests list Epstein, Phelan, and a handful of other men, including Jean-Luc Brunel, a French model scout who was accused of rape during the 1990s and later of providing girls to Jeffrey Epstein. Brunel was found dead in his jail cell in France in 2022 after being charged in a related case. Authorities ruled it death by suicide. Epstein's aircraft was nicknamed the, quote, "Lolita Express" because, as some of Epstein's accusers have said, he frequently had young women and girls aboard the plane to entertain his guests.
CNN was first to report on Navy Secretary John Phelan's flights with Jeffrey Epstein. They also published this flight log from the Epstein files, where you can see the Navy secretary's name listed there. He's number nine on the flight manifest. Nobody has claimed there were definitely any young women on board this plane or girls on board this plane, but we don't know who the other six people are whose names are redacted from this flight manifest for whatever reason. Why? Why were those people having their names redacted?
MSNBC contacted the U.S. Navy about John Phelan's connections to Jeffrey Epstein and Phelan's time on board Epstein's plane. The Navy is offering no comment. But today was the first day that members of Congress were allowed, under very strict conditions, to physically go to the Justice Department where they were allowed to see unredacted versions of some Epstein documents. Judging by the reaction from members of Congress like Jamie Raskin, who took advantage of this opportunity today, members of Congress today seem just as frustrated as ever about what the Trump administration is doing and continues to do with all this Epstein-related material.
"There were to be no redactions in order to spare there were people, embarrassment or political disgrace. We didn't want there to be a cover-up, and yet what I saw today was that there were lots of examples of people's names being redacted when they were not victims. And so we still haven't gotten from the DOJ their privilege laws. And so we're going to have a look at the drug explaining why certain redactions were made, but I can tell you that I saw a whole bunch of them that seemed very suspicious and baffling to me. Donald Trump's name was redacted in a number of different places, and I saw one conversation between Epstein lawyers and Trump lawyers relating to the 2009 investigation, which had been redacted. And I don't see any particular reason that it should have been. Donald Trump's name is all over these files, all over it. I mean, thousands and thousands of..."
"One thing that came out in the release last month was a bunch of tips run through the tip line, including about President Trump and potentially with a 13-year-old girl? Did you get to see any of the how those tips were investigated? Did you feel comfortable about them being dismissed?"
"I saw nothing about that. But if you spend any real time with these files, you will see references to 17-year-old girls, 16-year-old girls, 14-year-old girls, 11-year-old girls, 10-year-old girls, and I saw a reference today to a 9-year-old. So it's a really gruesome and grim story. And I think in order to see our way through this and to try to make progress on criminal investigation and prosecution, and some kind of social redemption from this whole nightmare, we need to listen to the survivors."
Judy Woodruff. Woodruff. Woodruff. As Congressman Raskin said there. As Congressman Raskin said there. Trump's Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick is also all over the files, including in the files, apparently trying to negotiate a trip to Epstein's island. The top Republican Party donor in the country by far, Elon Musk. He's all over the files, including trying to get Epstein to invite him to what Musk called his, quote, "AND THEY ARE FLYING ON EPSTEIN'S THEY ARE FLYING ON EPSTEIN'S PLANE WITH WHO KNOWS WHO. BUT ONE OF THE PEOPLE ON BOARD THE PLANE WAS THE FRENCH MODELING SCOUT GUY WHO KILLED HIMSELF IN JAIL WHEN HE WAS CHARGED WITH EPSTEIN-RELATED TRAFFICKING CRIMES. THERE'S NO CRIMINAL ALLEGATIONS AGAINST ANY OF THESE MEN FROM THE TRUMP ADMINISTRATION THAT I JUST MENTIONED, BUT THEY'RE ALL STILL IN PLACE IN THE ADMINISTRATION AND IN REPUBLICAN POLITICS, AT LEAST AT THIS HOUR."
One guy who did lose his job in this country is the chairman of Paul Weiss, which is a very fancy, very powerful, very rich New York law firm. That law firm and its previous now chairman Brad Karp became very, very famous in the past year as quote "the face of capitulation to Donald Trump in his return to the White House." Soon after Trump was sworn in for his second term, Trump, you'll recall, started threatening elite law firms with executive orders of dubious legal weight. Brad Karp's law firm, Paul Weiss, was one of the firms that was threatened. And Brad Karp was the guy who immediately rushed to the White House to try to appease Trump, to have a conversation with Trump about getting his firm off the hook. The conversation was described as beginning, quote, "with a prolonged discussion of golf." And that may be where it started. But where it ended was with Brad Karp, the chairman of Paul Weiss, promising that his elite law firm, Paul Weiss, would donate $40 million worth of free legal services to Donald Trump's pet projects as a way of trying to appease Trump so he wouldn't be mean to the firm anymore.