White House tries to ignore Epstein controversy

Summary

All In with Chris Hayes – Episode Summary

Episode Title: White House tries to ignore Epstein controversy
Date: November 15, 2025
Host: Chris Hayes (MS NOW)
Featured Guests: Aswin Sooksang (Sotillo), Brandi Zadrozny (MSNBC), Congressman Brendan Boyle, Barbara McQuaid, Tara Setmayer, Faz Shakir

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Episode Overview

In this episode, Chris Hayes and his guests delve into the ongoing controversy surrounding the Trump administration’s efforts to suppress and deflect renewed scrutiny over Donald Trump’s ties to Jeffrey Epstein—aided by newly surfaced Epstein emails and an imminent Congressional vote to release related government files. The discussion expands into Trump’s use of federal power to target political enemies, bipartisan outrage over “Trumpian” monetary schemes in Congress, and a cultural reckoning echoing the #MeToo movement. The episode captures a moment of deep political and cultural tension, holding power to account amid efforts to bury the scandal.

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Main Discussion Points & Insights

1. Trump’s Personal Investment in Hiding Epstein Connections ([00:20]–[03:00])

• Chris Hayes outlines that Trump is devoting unusual personal attention to the Epstein fallout—especially given their well-documented years-long personal association.
• Family members of Virginia Giuffre and other survivors sent a plea to Congress, tying upcoming votes directly to lawmakers' moral responsibility.
  • Notable quote:
    “There is no middle ground here... When you vote, we will remember your decision at the ballot box.” (Letter quoted by Chris Hayes, [01:13])
• The White House and aligned media launch aggressive counternarratives to distract from Trump’s ties.

2. Deflection and ‘Whataboutism’ Tactics ([02:57]–[05:20])

• Trump directs the DOJ to investigate Democrats named in the Epstein emails, while explicitly excluding himself.

  • Trump leans on Attorney General Pam Bondi, who quickly complies.
  • “Trump wants to make this about the Democrats and not him. That ignores the fact that he was very close with Jeffrey Epstein for a number of years.” (Chris Hayes, [03:30])

• MAGA media evolves from outrage to silence or semantic games—Megyn Kelly floats claims Epstein wasn’t technically a pedophile, which Hayes and guests condemn as minimizing.

  • Memorable moment:
    “He liked 15 year old girls... I realize this is disgusting... I'm just giving you facts that he wasn't into like 8 year olds.” (Megyn Kelly, quoted by Aswin Sooksang, [04:31])

3. Coordinated Pressure and Media Intimidation ([05:21]–[09:05])

• Reporting reveals Trump’s team threatened right-wing influencers with a loss of access unless they stopped amplifying Epstein criticism.
  • Aswin Sooksang:
    “We will cut off your access if you don't stop making such a big deal about this.” ([07:34])
• However, attempts to similarly pressure elected Republicans—such as Marjorie Taylor Greene—have failed, deepening White House frustrations.

4. Congressional and Right-Wing Media Responses ([09:06]–[11:10])

• Brandi Zadrozny highlights how the recent Epstein email releases met with unusual dismissiveness from right-wing figures—contrasting with their prior promotion of conspiracies like Pizzagate.

  • “It's insane that these people are saying nothing to see here when these are the same people that brought us Pizzagate.” (Brandi Zadrozny, [09:43])

• Hayes points out the hypocrisy:

  • “Now they've got the inbox of... probably one of the most notorious sexual abusers of our time... All the people to talk to. And you've got this ‘nothing to see here’ response.” (Chris Hayes, [10:25])

5. Trump's "Show Me the Man, I'll Show You the Crime" Governance ([11:19]–[14:25])

• Trump downplays his association with Epstein during a press gaggle, shifting focus to Clinton and other elites.
  • “Jeffrey Epstein and I had a very bad relationship for many years…” (Donald Trump, [11:22])
• Aswin Sooksang frames Trump’s DOJ order as a corrupt abuse of power, “gigantically historically corrupt.”
  • “So much of Trump's governing operating principle depends on ‘show me the man and I'll show you the crime.’” (Sooksang, [13:11])

6. The Broader Cultural Context & #MeToo Echoes ([29:57]–[41:00])

• Hayes draws parallels between the Epstein disclosures and the original #MeToo movement, noting the normalization of predatory behavior in elite circles.
  • “It’s a pretty stark reminder… there was a MeToo movement for a reason.” (Chris Hayes, [31:00])
• Tara Setmayer calls for women’s solidarity beyond partisanship, lamenting “bad behavior is rewarded” and that Trump’s continued political success signals deep societal failings.
  • “Mediocrity in men is something that… extraordinary women… have to look at and go, really?” ([34:30])
• Faz Shakir connects Epstein’s “connector of power” role to Trump’s revolving policies favoring elites, noting bipartisan and popular revulsion.

7. Congressional Vote & Bipartisan Outrage over Corruption ([15:54]–[22:38])

• Discussion with Rep. Brendan Boyle about the upcoming vote to release Epstein files.
  • Boyle expects broad bipartisan support but is skeptical about Senate follow-through and Trump’s potential veto.
  • “The brilliance will take your breath away… Congratulations, President Trump, for putting out part of the fire that you yourself started.” (Boyle on tariffs, [17:24])
• Outrage over a secret provision allowing eight GOP senators to sue the DOJ for up to $1 million each for having their records lawfully subpoenaed—widely decried as “legalized bribery.”

8. DOJ Settlements, Bribes, and the Corruption Pyramid ([24:39]–[30:39])

• Legal analyst Barbara McQuaid explains how the Trump-controlled DOJ is poised to settle dubious lawsuits, sometimes for political loyalists or, potentially, for Trump himself.

  • “A case that maybe would fail in court, like the case of Michael Flynn, may end up getting a big reward… because it is now, after all, Pam Bondi’s call and… Donald Trump’s call as to whether these settlements should be paid.” ([27:01])

• Chris Hayes notes attempts to block Trump from awarding himself massive settlements from the public treasury—citing Rep. Schiff’s proposed “No Torts for Trump Act.”

  • “He is the master at creating situations that require laws you didn’t know you needed.” (Barbara McQuaid, [30:08])

9. Tumult in MAGA World and Trump Ally Backlash ([37:34]–[41:20])

• As pressure mounts, Trump withdraws support from a key MAGA ally, Marjorie Taylor Greene, after her defiance on the Epstein files vote.
  • “He’s not used to [this backlash] coming from within… This is indicative of a potential dam breaking within MAGA because there he’s exposed.” (Setmayer, [38:24])
• Setmayer and Shakir agree Trump’s standing with his base is eroding due to perceived betrayals on both “affordability” issues and the Epstein cover-up.
• Shakir notes the lack of loyal scapegoats for Trump this time, compared to his first term.

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Notable Quotes & Timestamps

• Letter from Epstein victims’ families ([01:13]):

  “There is no middle ground here... When you vote, we will remember your decision at the ballot box.”

• Chris Hayes on the admin's strategy ([03:30]):

  “Trump wants to make this about the Democrats and not him. That ignores the fact that he was very close with Jeffrey Epstein for a number of years.”

• Aswin Sooksang on media intimidation ([07:34]):

  “We will cut off your access if you don't stop making such a big deal about this.”

• Brandi Zadrozny on right-wing media’s response ([09:43]):

  “It's insane that these people are saying nothing to see here when these are the same people that brought us Pizzagate.”

• Sooksang on Trump's “show me the man” style ([13:11]):

  “So much of Trump's governing operating principle depends on ‘show me the man and I'll show you the crime.’”

• Tara Setmayer on gender inequality ([34:30]):

  “Mediocrity in men is something that… extraordinary women… have to look at and go, really?”

• Barbara McQuaid on unexpected legal loopholes ([30:08]):

  “He is the master at creating situations that require laws you didn’t know you needed.”

• Setmayer on MAGA backlash ([38:24]):

  “This is indicative of a potential dam breaking within MAGA because there he’s exposed.”

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Key Segment Timestamps

• Epstein files, survivor letter, Trump’s reaction: [00:20]–[03:00]
• DOJ investigation announcements, right-wing influencer pressure: [05:21]–[09:05]
• Dismissive right-wing media reactions & Pizzagate comparison: [09:09]–[11:10]
• Trump’s “look over there” approach, attempts at distraction: [11:19]–[14:25]
• Bipartisan outrage over DOJ abuse & legal loopholes: [15:54]–[30:39]
• #MeToo echoes and women’s solidarity discussion: [31:00]–[37:34]
• MAGA defection, Marjorie Taylor Greene rebuked: [37:34]–[41:20]

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Tone & Takeaways

The episode’s tone is urgent, incredulous, and at times incredulously wry. Hayes and his guests spotlight the relentless corruption and deflection tactics at play, but also the shifting, unpredictable ground within the Republican base and right-wing media. The specter of the #MeToo movement looms large as the Epstein scandal again forces public moral reckoning.

Listeners come away with:

• A clear understanding of the White House’s desperate, and sometimes authoritarian, attempts to suppress a damaging scandal.
• A window into bipartisan disgust over Congressional self-enrichment and legal manipulation.
• A sense of growing intra-GOP unrest as Trump’s grip appears to loosen.
• The feeling that a cultural moment akin to #MeToo may be reemerging, driven by moral outrage over both the crimes and the attempted cover-up.

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For those who didn’t listen:
This episode provides not only the facts of the Epstein files saga and Trump’s growing legal and political peril, but the cultural and political stakes as leaders—and the public—are forced to reckon with old and new abuses of power.

Transcript

[Chris Hayes]

Tonight on All In, Are you still.

[Donald Trump]

Talking about Jeffrey Epstein?

[Chris Hayes]

The President orders his Attorney General to investigate everyone in the Epstein emails that's not named Trump.

[Donald Trump]

I mean, I can't believe you're asking a question on Epstein at a time like this.

[Chris Hayes]

Tonight, the ongoing scramble to escape the Epstein story and the new timeline for when Republicans will face an Epstein vote. Every single Republican will go on record and you will have to make clear whether you're on the side of a pedophile or whether you're on the side of the victims. Then about that affordability crisis.

[Aswin Sooksang]

Gaslighting the people and trying to tell them that prices have come down is not helping.

[Chris Hayes]

Why the Trump administration is finally addressing the Trump tax and the fleecing of America. Why the newest Trumpian cash grab has even Republicans pissed off. I'm just be honest, I'm very transparent with you all. I was very angry about it. But all in starts right. Good evening from New York. I'm Chris Hayes. From what we can tell, the President of the United States is not that involved in the day to day work of running the country. Donald Trump seems content spending most of his time doing things like planning the ballroom that he tore down the east wing of the White House to build, while Stephen Miller, among others, handles everything else. There is one issue where he does seem to be very personally invested, trying to cover up the Jeffrey Epstein story. And it's understandable why he might want to do that because seemingly every day, heck, every hour there's a news story reminding folks of his longtime friendship with the late child sex trafficker. Just today, family members of the late Virginia Giuffre, as well as other Epstein survivors, sent a letter to both chambers of Congress urging them to support next week's vote to release the government's Epstein files. A vote that Donald Trump has, at least in one case, personally whipped against. Quoting from the letter. Several weeks ago, when a few brave survivors stood before you and recounted their harrowing stories, many of you were shaken to your core. We urge you, when you cast your vote, please do not forget the horror you felt that day. There is no middle ground here. There is no hiding behind party affiliation. The testimonies you heard are just a fraction of the unimaginable suffering endured by more than a thousand victims alike. Adding, quote, as you gather with your family this season, remember that your primary duty is to your constituents. Look into the eyes of your children, your sisters, your mothers and your aunts. Imagine if they had been preyed upon. Imagine if you yourself were a survivor. What would you want for them? What would you want for yourself when you vote? We will remember your decision at the ballot box. This is the kind of thing Donald Trump wants you to forget. And his administration and Trump sycophants in Congress and right wing media are taking great pains to try to change the narrative.

[Congressman Brendan Boyle]

Today.

[Chris Hayes]

Trump's strategy is whataboutism, trying to tie Jeffrey Epstein to Democrats instead.

[Aswin Sooksang]

In a post earlier today, the President wrote that Jeffrey Epstein was a Democrat and therefore he is the Democrats problem, not the Republicans. In a follow up, President Trump announced that he has asked Attorney General Bondi along with DOJ FBI to quote, investigate Jeffrey Epstein's involvement and relationship with Bill Clinton, Larry Summers, Reid Hoffman, JPMorgan Chase and many other people and institutions to determine what was going on with them and him.

[Chris Hayes]

Of course the President didn't provide any evidence of wrongdoing by those men. But Donald Trump told Pam Bondi to jump and she asked how high responding to his directive, quote, thank you Mr. President. SDNY U.S. attorney Jay Clayton is one of the most capable and trusted prosecutors in the country and I've asked him to take the lead. Trump wants to make this about the Democrats and not him. That ignores the fact that he was very close with Jeffrey Epstein for a number of years. It is a well documented matter of public record that he and Epstein had a lengthy friendship. Literally. Epstein repeatedly mentioned Trump in those newly released emails. Trump is on the record about their friendship. In fact, we have video B roll we show on this program of them in that room right there leering at women. So everyone knows this. The other approach we're seeing from the MAGA movement is the maybe Epstein wasn't actually so bad anyway argument. That's the one that podcaster Megyn Kelly appeared to float this week when she shared a semantic argument about the strict definition of pedophilia.

[Aswin Sooksang]

As for Epstein, I've said this before, but just as a reminder, I do know somebody very, very close to this case who is in a position to know virtually everything. Not everything, but virtually everything. And this person has told me from the start, years and years ago, that Jeffrey Epstein, in this person's view, was not a pedophile. This is this person's view who was there for a lot of this, but that he was into the barely legal type. Like he liked 15 year old girls. And I realize this is disgusting. I'm definitely not trying to make an excuse for this. I'm just giving you facts that he wasn't into like 8 year olds, but he liked the very young teen types. That could pass for even younger than they were, but would look legal to a passerby.

[Chris Hayes]

Those comments have been widely criticized. Other Trump friendly content creators are choosing to simply not say anything at all about Epstein. As one of my next guest reports, some Trump allies appear to have been intimidated into silence. Quote, Trump's staffers were satisfied that several of the major league conservative influencers who had been momentarily up in arms about the President's cover up of the confidential Epstein files had fallen back in line and eased up on the administration. In some cases, Trump aligned influencers and activists were threatened with shunning and a loss of access to the President and his team if they didn't pump the brakes in the Epstein affair. Now that's pretty different from the first time this controversy boiled over earlier this year when there was some genuine outrage directed at Trump by the Magazphere, including by the late Charlie Kirk. The President tried to distract the country by do you remember this? Sending troops to occupy Washington D.C. an escalation of his authoritarian push that did succeed for some weeks of stealing the headlines. So now the concern is what could Trump do this time to try and get the media to stop covering the Epstein story? Will he send federal agents to harass New York as he's threatened in the past? Or is it possible he will finally go ahead with that wag the dog war with Venezuela his administration has been inching towards for months now. In fact, just yesterday, Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth announced what he's calling Operation Southern Spear to fight what the administration is calling narco terrorists in South America. And sure, we don't know if either of those things are imminent, but if they come to pass, we may not know for certain the motivations behind them. One thing though is pretty clear. Donald Trump wants the Epstein story to go away by any means necessary. And we have seen how that unfolded before. Aswin Sooksang is the senior political correspondent at Sotillo and Brandi Zadrazi, senior reporter at msnbc. They've both been covering the Trump Epstein story as well as its reception among right wing influencers and they join me now. Sweden. Let me start with you just to talk a little bit about your reporting about how the White House has been dealing with it. I mean, there's some level at which the more they try to cover it up, I think the worse it looks, frankly. But they have had some success narrowly with some of the kind of right wing media figures who had been critical of them before. Right.

[Aswin Sooksang]

And that can only take you so far because these Right wing media figures and influencers are not elected members of the Congress or the Senate. As you were showing with our Zetao reporting earlier, there had been quite a bit of a push among not just senior members of the administration, but Donald Trump himself to get these influencers to fall back in line. Like, we will cut off your access if you don't stop making such a big deal about this in a way that we disapprove of. That seemed to have sort of kind of worked. But when it comes to Trump and his lieutenants trying the exact same thing on certain Republican elected members of Congress, it seems to have largely fallen flat. And we've seen the Marjorie Taylor Greene's of the world dissent from the sitting president on this, saying that they're going to go ahead with what they want to do on the upcoming vote. And so if you talk to people close to President Trump, you will hear that he and the people closest to him are pretty frustrated with how the House Republican Caucus have been defending or failing to defend him on this issue. That is one of the major reasons that he went ahead today and publicly directed Pam Bondi, the FBI and the Department of Justice to go after people like Bill Clinton and their associations with Jeffrey Epstein to try to distract from his Trump Epstein scandal. And that is just a woefully corrupt abuse of power which is nowadays just completely commonplace in this administration.

[Chris Hayes]

Brandi, you write that to be sure, there are lots of questions on maga's fringes about these newly released emails, which come from a larger set of some 23,000 documents lawmakers obtained from the Epstein estate. This time, instead of firing up conspiracists, the unearthed communications met with a reaction on the right that was swift and uncharacteristically dismissive. Nothing to see here. Are you surprised by that?

[Tara Settmeier]

Yes.

[Brandi Zadrozny]

Yes. I mean, again, when you get an email that says something like Trump or the dog that hasn't barked yet is Trump. I mean, it was not since the Wall Street Journal birthday card have we seen something that seems so just laden with subtext.

[Chris Hayes]

Yes.

[Tara Settmeier]

It's so much fun.

[Brandi Zadrozny]

What would he bark about? Why hasn't he barked? Who would be asking him questions? What would they ask? And then Ghislaine Maxwell said, I have been thinking about that, too. Why have you been thinking about that? Right. That is the question. I ran to Alex Jones show. I ran to Steve Bannon's show. I ran to see what Jack Posobec had to say. And all of them either said nothing or like Alex Jones said, it's a nothing burger. It's insane that these people are saying nothing to see here when these are the same people that brought us Pizzagate.

[Chris Hayes]

Exactly. I mean, these were people that took John Podesta's entire inbox and completely fabricated a child sex trafficking story based on invented code words.

[Brandi Zadrozny]

Out of pizza and a napkin.

[Chris Hayes]

Out of pizza and a napkin. Now they've got the inbox of actually probably one of the most notorious sexual abusers of our time. I mean, the Department of Justice says 1000 women and girls. A thousand. All the people to talk to. And you've got this. Yeah, this response. It's also the case, we should note in these emails, as the Wall Street Journal pointed out, that Trump is in a lot of them now. We should note also he gets elected president, he starts running in 2016, and a lot of them happen around that. Right. So he's sort of. He's being mentioned in a bunch of different contexts, but he's in them a ton. Swin, Trump has done an uncharacteristic running from the media thing because he's so clearly like at his wit's end about this. But he did gaggle on Air Force One. I wanna just play you where he just tried to kind of reiterate this kind of look over there, a squirrel approach. Take a listen. What did Jeffrey Epstein mean in his.

[Aswin Sooksang]

Emails when you said you knew about the girls?

[Donald Trump]

I know nothing about them. They would have announced that a long time ago. It's really, what did he mean when he spent all the time with Bill Clinton, with the president of Harvard, who, you know, that is Summers, Larry Summers, whatever his name is, and all of the other people that he spent time with. Jeffrey Epstein and I had a very bad relationship for many years, but he also sought strength because I was president. So he dictated a couple of memos to himself. Give me a break. You're going to find out. What did he know with respect to Bill Clinton, with respect to the head of Harvard, with respect to all of those people that he knew, including JP Morgan Chase. Yeah.

[Chris Hayes]

There's nothing incriminating in the Venezuela.

[Tara Settmeier]

Sir.

[Chris Hayes]

Quiet, quiet, quiet. It ends there. Swin, one of the things I wanted to ask you is the order for the DOJ to investigate today, you know, eagerly taken up by Pam Bondi, we should note, is in direct contradiction to the whole thing that got this controversy going in the first place, which was the memo earlier this year from the Department of Justice saying, we've looked at everything. Here's the July memo from the FBI to ensure the Review was thorough. The FBI conducted dual searches of its database hard drive, network drive, as well as physical searches of squad areas, locked cabinets, desks, closets, other areas where responsive material may have been stored. These searches uncovered a significant amount of material, including more than 300 gigabytes of data and physical evidence. This systematic review revealed no incriminating client lists. There's also no credible evidence found that Epstein blackmailed prominent individuals as part of actions. We do not uncover evidence that predicate an investigation against uncharged third parties. An investigation against uncharged third parties was literally what he ordered today.

[Aswin Sooksang]

You can say that so much of Trump's governing operating principle depends on show me the man and I'll show you the crime.

[Chris Hayes]

Yeah, right.

[Aswin Sooksang]

He has done this to so many victims and political opponents already, he's going to do it to so many more. And look, I'm not here to defend the integrity of people like Bill Clinton or Larry Summers, but this is a situation where he and his people have marshaled a tremendous amount of resources, tremendous amount of taxpayer funded resources across different branches of the federal government to try to get the public to not pay attention to his association with Jeffrey Epstein and what may or may not be in the federal confidential filings initiate this massive cover up and order in the open the Department of Justice to sic itself on his political enemies in the Democratic Party. I said this earlier, but it sometimes feels like we get numb to how gigantically historically corrupt this stuff is. Under any other presidency, even taking out the context of maybe the world's most notorious billionaire pedophile, this would be a legacy defining scandal that would lead to maybe the downfall of entire government. But with President Trump in his second term, it's just another Friday part of.

[Chris Hayes]

Why the Epstein story so captured the imagination. A lot of people, it's a horrible and world story. It also does have like a million. This guy really was like this. I mean, as you see from the inbox, right? I mean he's like passing along like here's a piece to ill Yemeni and here he's talking to Ehud Barak and then he's putting together, here's Noam Chomsky writing in with a character reference. It's like I can't think of a person who seems to have been connected to as many people. Do you think? I guess my question is, do you think their ability to suppress this amongst right wing influencers is more successful more broadly in terms of like Internet curiosity or is that just gonna take that over?

[Brandi Zadrozny]

I mean, for all the reasons that you just said like this is a fascinating case on its own. Apart from that, this is a conspiracy involving the President of the United States to hide this information.

[Chris Hayes]

That's exactly what it is.

[Brandi Zadrozny]

I can't even believe that he is.

[Chris Hayes]

Working with other people in the White.

[Brandi Zadrozny]

House to keep this secret. And that is the interesting thing about all of these MAGA influencers and stuff like that. Like they all have his. But there is something at the bottom of all of their saying. And they're all saying, but we want these files. Like that is still very much the case. Alex Jones to Megyn Kelly say, what are you hiding? Why won't you just release it just like that reporter? It's the one unifying thing. Seemingly everybody wants to know that what's in those files. They want them.

[Chris Hayes]

Yeah. Aspen Soob saying Brandi Zadrozny, thank you both. Appreciate it. Coming up, why Donald Trump is finally starting to lift the Trump tax. And what we know about the timing of the Epstein vote with Congressman Brendan Boyle. That's next. Back in April, with much fanfare on so called Liberation Day, Donald Trump unilaterally imposed hundreds of billions of dollars of taxes on the American people by slapping tariffs on the goods that we all buy. And he brags about it all the time, lying that other countries pay the tariffs, not Americans, certainly not the American consumer. Then last week, Republicans got their clocks cleaned in elections across the country, in large part because people are finally saying, wait a minute, prices haven't come down. In fact, they've gone up. So the Trump administration is desperately searching around for a solution to their political problem and they found one. That is a truly brilliant idea. How about we remove some of the tariffs on goods people buy that are driving prices up. Now, if only they could find the clown that imposed those tariffs in the first place. Congressman Brendan Boyles, a Democrat from Pennsylvania representing North Philadelphia, and he joins me now. Congressman, I really did have to chuckle today when I saw today's announcement after they so strenuously told us that tariffs don't jack up prices, that they're gonna now be giving tariff relief for grocery items like bananas and coffee and other things that clearly have gone up in price and clearly been affected by the tariffs.

[Congressman Brendan Boyle]

The brilliance will take your breath away. Yeah. Congratulations, President Trump, for putting out part of the fire that you yourself started about six months ago. But already damage has been done to our economy. The average household in the United States will pay more than $1,800 more than they otherwise would have paid for household goods from last spring up until this upcoming Spring, that is a massive tax increase. When we think of it, about an extra $150 a month. And then in terms of what it's done to our gdp, it has shaved off a significant percentage, about 1/2 of 1%. So the reality is that the interest rates that of course we pay on our mortgages, student loans, auto loans, et cetera, they would already be lower because the Fed would have been able to lower rates at a faster rate this year if not for the inflation resurgence that this president caused through his nonsensical tariff policy.

[Chris Hayes]

We it's looking, the reporting is indicating that this vote on the Epstein files is likely to happen on Tuesday. What are you anticipating in terms of how Republican House leadership plays this? How much the White House goes to bat, to whip on this vote?

[Congressman Brendan Boyle]

Yeah. So I've also been told by some Republican colleagues that they have been told by their leadership that it will be Tuesday. I expect this vote to pass. I mean, the White House did absolutely everything it possibly could to prevent the petition, the discharge petition, from getting the necessary 218 signatures. Remarkably, Mike Johnson kept us out of session for almost two months in order to delay getting the 218 signatures. But now that has happened, we will have the vote on Tuesday and I expect it will pass by a large bipartisan majority. But here's the thing. Don't take false comfort from that, because there is, I think it's rather unclear whether or not this bill will get a vote in the Senate. If it does and it passes there, then we actually need President Trump to sign it. What are the odds that this president will actually sign something that he has been so strongly fighting against for months and months? I do fear that even if this were to pass the House, even if it were to pass the Senate, the president would veto it and he would have enough Republicans who would vote to sustain that veto.

[Chris Hayes]

Do you think there will be. It does seem to me, I mean, obviously the Senate doesn't want to take it up, but it does seem to me that the margins matter on this Tuesday vote and that might be part of the reason they whip it, which is that, you know, if it's, if you got 300 yeses or 350, I mean, it's a huge margin. It might be tough for the Senate. Right. Doesn't it put some pressure on them?

[Congressman Brendan Boyle]

Yeah, that's a good point. It would. I will say, though, for the House Republicans who have been, you know, probably telling the White House one thing and publicly telling the MAGA base something else, it's Easier to duck putting your signature on a discharge petition than it is to actually duck a public vote and a recorded vote in the House of Representatives. So I do think this is going to be a fairly large majority on Tuesday.

[Chris Hayes]

You mentioned the Senate. I want to ask you about this provision that was inserted the last minute into the continuing resolution to keep the government open. We're going to do a little bit more on it ahead. But since I have you here, it seems like across the ideological spectrum, people in the House are apoplectic. It basically allows eight senators who had their records looked at perfectly lawfully the way that any citizen might have them looked at in a criminal investigation, totally above board and by the book, could sue for 500,000, maybe as much as a million dollars, and they could sue the Department of Justice. So Trump could just like order the Department of Justice settle with them. How furious are the members in your chambers?

[Congressman Brendan Boyle]

It's legalized bribery. And by the way, it's a million dollars minimum, because just it's a very long story. But essentially, the way it's drafted, each one of those eight Republican senators would qualify twice, meaning it would be a minimum of a million dollar payday. It's very likely unconstitutional. It's likely against Senate rules. And by the way, this would only apply to members of the United States Senate. No other group, no other protected class. Now suddenly US Senators are a protected class. What it also shows you is each one of those eight Republican senators who voted for this bill probably violated Senate ethics rules, because there is a provision in the Senate rules the same way there is in the House, the same way there is in almost every state legislature that you can't vote for a bill that will uniquely enrich you as a standalone, not as a larger group or entity. That's clearly what they did. They just voted for something in which they are one of only eight people out of 340 million in the United States who will get a million bucks.

[Chris Hayes]

Congressman BRENDAN Boyle. Yeah, we'll see. I mean, there's gonna be a vote next week, I think, to strip it out. We played that Mike Johnson sound, of course. Same issue there, right? It's gotta go back to the Senate. We'll see what happens there. Congressman Brendan Boyle, thank you so much. Still ahead, as we just mentioned, the brazen corruption that's making MAGA Republicans blush. The latest Trumpian fleecing of America in Congress next. I'll just be honest. I'm very transparent with you all. I was very angry about it. I was. And a lot of my members called me and said, did you know about it? We had no idea. That was dropped in at the last minute, and I did not appreciate that, nor did most of the House members. There is rare bipartisan anger on Capitol Hill over what looks like a handful of Trump backers in the Senate attempting to pull a heist on the public treasury. A tiny provision in the bill that ended the shutdown, inserted at the 11th hour, allows eight particular Republican senators and nobody else to sue the Trump controlled Department of justice for at least half a million dollars each, and probably more, because the FBI legally obtained data about their phone calls and texts through a judge as part of the January 6th investigation. Now those senators can sue a DOJ that is controlled by Donald Trump, who can just order the department to pay a settlement. Even House Republicans are appalled at the arrangement. Speaker Mike Johnson has promised a vote next week to repeal it. But either way, it looks like the Senate is warming up to one of Donald Trump's true innovations in American government, using lawsuits and legal settlements as a de facto system of bribes and payoffs. Barbara Woolcaid is an MSNBC legal analyst as well as a former U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of Michigan, and she joins me now. Barbara, I think I know the answer to this question. Is there any actual cause of action or injury here for someone to sue a government that legally obtained their records in the course of criminal investigation through judges?

[Barbara McQuaid]

No, absolutely not. The tool that was used here by special counsel Jack Smith is very common and very routine. There's a federal statute. Prosecutors refer to it by its number, 2703D. And it's a very typical a technique that's used to obtain phone records. It's not the content, it's not a wiretap, but it is an effort to find out who is talking with whom as part of an investigation into perhaps a conspiracy or other communications. And so there's nothing wrong with doing that. A court ordered it. The idea that somebody has been wronged because they were investigated is simply a non starter, in my view.

[Chris Hayes]

I mean, correct me if I'm wrong here and I don't know the jurisprudence on this well, but here's my sense. If I, a private citizen, had this done to me because the federal government was investigating someone I was calling and they were indicted for a crime, there's investigation. There's no universe in which I could successfully sue the government over that. Right?

[Barbara McQuaid]

That's right, Chris, because you have suffered no wrong. I mean, lawsuits are about giving people remedies when there has been some sort of Harm. They have had some sort of damage to their rights. There's been some financial loss, there's been some personal injury. This is a perfect, perfectly lawful law enforcement technique. And so the idea that people are going to be able to collect money as a basis of this, it really suggests to me that it's more of an effort to spread a false narrative than it is to compensate anybody for some lawful legal claim.

[Chris Hayes]

Well, and here's where. So now we get the second part of this, because you might think to yourself, well, this is nuts, but they're never gonna win in the court. But of course, they don't have to win because the other party they're suing can offer to settle. Which brings us to this headline today. Michael Flynn, DOJ, in settlement talks over $50 million claim. The administration has been in talks since at least late summer to resolve lawsuits brought by Trump's first national security adviser, Michael Flynn, and former senior White House lawyer Stefan Passatino. According to court filings, the negotiations mark a shift from the Justice Department's position during the Biden administration, when government lawyers successfully bought both cases. So you could just order the Department of Justice, in the case of Michael Flynn, who again pleaded guilty, to settle. Right? Like, can't they do that? I mean, obviously not ethically, but it seems like they could just do that.

[Barbara McQuaid]

Yeah. So the reason for this law, it makes a lot of sense. It is before you file a lawsuit, you should reach out to the Justice Department and say, hey, I think I've got this claim. Are you willing to settle it out of court? Or are you gonna make me go through the hoops and file a lawsuit where we'll all spend a lot more money? What do you say we resolve this? And many times the Justice Department does that. We had cases, you know, where somebody got in a car accident with a postal truck, for example, and they might have a broken leg and say, I want to sue for $10,000. We might negotiate with them and end up awarding them some amount that we thought was fair for their compensation and for their harms and injuries. But then if you say no, they have to go to court and test that in court, and maybe a jury awards them with damages and maybe they don't. But here, the case never has to go anywhere. A case that maybe would fail in court, like the case of Michael Flynn, may end up getting a big reward for Michael Flynn, because it is now, after all, Pam Bondi's call and Michael Todd Blanche's call and ultimately Donald Trump's call as to whether These settlements should be paid.

[Chris Hayes]

Yeah. I mean, you can imagine, obviously this is unthinkable before Donald Trump, right? And certainly in the post Watergate era, the DOJ is the lawyer for the government. Like to your point, right, Someone gets hit by a mail truck, right? The Department of Justice are the ones who are in court dealing with that. And this is unthinkable prior. But I mean, Donald Trump could just say to Pambani, like, give him 30 mil, right?

[Barbara McQuaid]

Yes, absolutely right. And once again, why would he do that? I mean, some of it, I suppose, is to reward loyalists, but it also does advance this false narrative. Just like the payment of $5 million to Ashley Babbitt's family, previously denied because it was considered that she had committed a wrongful act and that her death was not any sort of illegal act. But now suddenly it's changed. It's the $5 million and it suggests that the government did something wrong in protecting the Speaker's lobby.

[Chris Hayes]

And then at the very top of this just unspeakably sordid pyramid of corruption, we have the reporting again of Donald Trump's own lawsuit in which he has sued the government for the criminal investigations against him. I think it's fair to say meritless claims, certainly the kind of claims that if anyone else would get laughed outta court, like good luck trying to sue the government over criminal investigations, even when they actually did railroad you, by the way. Cuz I know people that work in that law and it's really hard to do so. Now he's sitting on both sides of the table running the Department of Justice and he's suing them. Senator Schiff is trying to make sure that he can't just hand himself $230 million of the public treasury. He's introducing no Torts for Trump act, which would prevent sitting presidents from seeking taxpayer funded payouts. The move follows reporting that Trump asked the Justice Department to pay him a settlement of roughly 230 million in compensation for its investigations into him. This seems to me a good statutory response to a problem I didn't know we had until Trump.

[Barbara McQuaid]

Yeah, you know, give Trump some credit. He is the master at creating situations that require laws you didn't know you needed. So many of the things he does defy clean criminal laws, civil laws, because no lawmaker ever imagined that someone would try to do these things. But it does make perfect sense, doesn't it? If the President is, as Donald Trump claims, the chief law enforcement officer and the boss of everybody at the Justice Department, then how can he pay himself? He's even said so, you know, a jury in his own case.

[Chris Hayes]

Yeah, well, he said actually when he was talking. Yeah, it's a little weird, you know, sounds a little weird to do that. So. Yeah, well, it does sound weird. So we'll see if Adam Schiff gets any pickup in the Senate among the eight senators who just voted to give themselves this same sort of power. Barbara McQuaid, thank you very much.

[Tara Settmeier]

Thanks, Chris.

[Chris Hayes]

Still to come, the renewed push for accountability from the Epstein emails and why it feels like maybe we could use another MeToo moment next. Remember back when Donald Trump was president, the first time we had this whole cultural movement catalyzed by Trump? There was a massive public outcry when the infamous Access Hollywood tape dropped and Trump was well elected anyway. And the day after Trump's inauguration, about half a million people flocked to the National Mall to join the Women's March protesting his administration. And then later that year, multiple women came forward with allegations of predation by people like Harvey Weinstein and Matt Lauer and a long who's who's list of other powerful men accusing them of behavior that had been kept secret or swept under the rug for years and treated as acceptable behavior. The MeToo movement was a genuine cultural backlash against the permission structure that turned a blind eye to these abuses in all sorts of parts of American society. And in some ways, 2024 was this anti MeToo election. Right? I mean, Donald Trump and the people around him proud of the fact that they were unaccountable. But now with the release of these Epstein emails this week, it's a pretty stark reminder There was a MeToo movement for a reason. Faz Shakir is a senior advisor to Senator Bernie Sanders, executive director of More Perfect Union. Tara Settmeier is founder and CEO of the Seneca Project, former Republican communications director on Capitol Hill. And they joined me now, Tara, I'm just so struck as I go through these emails of reconnecting with why we had that volcanic cultural moment around me too in the first place. Like watching all this sort of glad handing back slapping of all these people with a guy who in some of these emails makes jokes about his own, like predatory behavior and that it had somehow been normalized so much. And I feel like there's something about Trump being at the heart of this and the repulsion he initiated the first time that there was kind of a backlash to that feels like there's something seismic culturally sort of right about to blow. What do you think?

[Tara Settmeier]

Well, I think that it speaks volumes about where we are as a society and where for us as women, I mean, it's partly why I co founded the Seneca Project. We needed to give women a permission structure to vote in their best interest, regardless of who they may have voted for before and to realize that what's happening to women is bigger than partisanship. But cognitive dissonance is a hell of a drug. And I think that we've seen oftentimes in our society that bad behavior is rewarded. And the fact that men seem to get away with so much, that women sometimes are like, what more do we need to do here? How much more do we need to speak up and what do we need to do for you to believe us? And yet men still seem to get away with it. Mediocrity in men is something that for women, extraordinary women, we often have to look at and go, really? This is what we have to deal still deal with in 2025. The fact that Donald Trump, someone who brags about abusing women, who has predatory behavior, who bragged on video about grabbing women to get elected not once but twice, and to have the majority of white women still vote for him is I think something that we need to take a look at as a culture. As to, there's a lot of factors here. We're not going to solve it in this segment tonight, but I think there's a lot of self reflection that needs to happen because for us at Seneca and the content that we produced saying to women, listen, it's a time for choosing, it's bigger than partisanship what's happening to us. We're the only group to lose a right. And here's someone and a group of people that in an ideology that wants to take us back to an era where we didn't have equal rights. So what are you doing considering voting for someone that thinks this way of you? And yet here we are. So I think now this was the Epstein episode is so repulsive and so evil because now we're talking about children and we're talking about predatory behavior on young women. That is an evil cabal that a lot of rich and powerful people are behind. And potentially now the President of the United States is adjacent to this in some way and it's forcing us to have this conversation in a very serious way.

[Chris Hayes]

Well, and I think Faz, part of the political peril here is that you've got the, there's sort of access of sort of establishment, anti establishment or sort of insider outsider which I think has been kind of crucial to Trump, right? The sort of notion of him as outsider against the insiders. And one of the things I think you've seen the last week, like between the elections last Tuesday and a week ago for Democrats and this like, problem with affordability, the kind of cultural sense of him as connected billionaire, not looking out for working people and connected to the Epstein mess, all puts him in the insider category as opposed to the outsider category, if that makes sense.

[Faz Shakir]

Yeah, absolutely. And as much as there's the prostitution ring, sex trafficking ring run by Jeffrey Epstein, which Donald Trump seemed to have some relationship or understanding of or knowledge of, who knows, we'll find out as we get into this. There's also the sense that Jeffrey Epstein was a connector of power. He was doing all this to connect money and wealth and power. He wasn't running it for working class people. He's running it for giving Donald Trump and people like him more ability to execute agendas for the elites. And when you look at how Donald Trump was utilizing Epstein and how Epstein utilized him, the agenda that now he's pursuing is very consistent with it. These are the rings of people for whom he does work for, for whom his agenda works. Then when you take it from the lens of women and you're saying, okay, I'm getting cut on Medicaid, I've got attacks on public school teachers, I've lost right to Roe, it is. I'm not only the loser, I'm also not only shamed by Donald Trump's policies, I also see who he works overtime for, the entire ring, the cabal.

[Chris Hayes]

There are some developments here. So one of the interesting, you know, one of the interesting dynamics in all this, I think on the discharge petition, right, is that you have Massie and then you have three very, very trumpy Republican women, Nancy Mace, Lauren Boebert and Marjorie Taylor Greene. And clearly there was pressure put on all three to get off that discharge petition. And clearly there's a lot of anger in the White House that they did not. And so tonight, Trump has withdrawn his support of Marjorie Taylor Greene. He just posted saying, I'm withdrawing my support and endorsement of Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene of the great state of Georgia. The post goes on for so long that we would be here till 10pm Lots of, lots of ranting, lots of anger. Calls her wacky, basically says she's mad because he told her not to run for Senate. But this is an interesting development. Tara, what do you make of it?

[Tara Settmeier]

Well, it's part of the undoing of Donald Trump. He's been melting down the last couple of days here because his normal Tactics. It's predictable. It's the greatest hits. It's not working the same way. Yeah, he hasn't really faced this level of backlash from his own people. He's used to this coming from the political opposition. He's not used to it coming from within. And I think this is indicative of a potential dam breaking within MAGA because there he's exposed. Donald Trump has always been a fraud. He's never give a damn about the actual base that elected him and they're recognizing that. He's betraying them in every way from the affordability issue. He promised them life would be better. It's not on the America first agenda. He's running around the world doing illegal things internationally and getting us involved in places we shouldn't, shouldn't be. That's not America First. He's bailing out Argentina farmers while our own farmers are filing for bankruptcy. Soybean farmers and ranchers and with SNAP benefits. And what's happening with the government. His own people are impacted by this. Rural hospitals closing, health insurance going up. Their lives are not better. Donald Trump has betrayed them. And Marjorie Taylor Greene, for goodness sakes of all people has actually pointed this out. Now her motivations for this are probably purely political and expediency. I mean, you know, she hasn't had to come to Jesus moment. She recognizes that there is an opening for her to set her own lane here because Donald Trump's brand of politics and his populism is starting to wane because his own people are starting to recognize that he's a fraud and doesn't give a damn about them either. And they're starting to question it. And she's positioning herself to be a champion for that. It's a fascinating dynamic.

[Chris Hayes]

Yeah. It also feels like this is the last 10 days. FAZ are the first time that like the notion of him as a lame duck feels like it's in the air. Right?

[Faz Shakir]

Yeah.

[Chris Hayes]

Right.

[Faz Shakir]

And the lashing out. I would appreciate Marjorie Taylor Greene. I mean, I know, you know, people are going to doubt her motivations and raise concerns. Is she personal integrity doing this? I will say when you do these kinds of things, you get tons of arrows. It is not going to be easy for her. I think she even had a partner who is, you know, close with Donald Trump as a media person and even personally and every professional which way they'll go after it's going to be nasty. And thankfully she has started and she's part of a movement that is occurring weirdly. Elon Musk did a little bit at the beginning. The Epstein thing has not. It almost began the fall of Donald Trump in the second term when you saw that the movement of people raising this concern, Trump trying to hide from it, metastasizing a political movement you see in Tucker Carlson, so many others, Joe Rogan starting to raise more concerns. What did we just vote for here? What are the values and what is the agenda of this guy? You can see that that started the peeling off in the second term. And unlike the first term, by the way, when Alexander Acosta took the fall for him, he doesn't have somebody taking it out. It's all on him.

[Chris Hayes]

Fashion. Tara Settmeier, thank you so much. We'll be right back. It's a bittersweet moment for us here at all in this is our final show being broadcast from the world famous Rockefeller center in New York City. I've been working at 30 Rock for 13 years on this show. A couple more years before that. And tonight we're moving out. When next we join you on Tuesday night. We'll be coming from a new set, new building on a newly named channel Ms. Now. And while that's kind of a big deal for us, for you, beyond the new name and some new graphics, you will literally never know the difference. We'll be right here in the same spot on your same TV with the same show on the same mission, maybe new mugs. We're going to miss this place, but we're excited about the next chapter and we're so lucky to have you at home along for the ride with us. With us. Thank you. And we'll see you next week. That does it for all in. You can catch us every weeknight at 8 o' clock on Ms. Now. Don't forget to like us on Facebook. That's Facebook.comAllnWithChris.