Jack Irel (2:32)

It can be a bit of both. It certainly was for the first clip of Todd Blanche, in which he made what seemed like an admission about Donald Trump and some photos that were released and then, of course, unreleased, because that's what we're doing at this point. But it starts right here with Christian Walker.

Interviewer (2:46)

Mr. Blanch, I want to follow up with you on what you just said. You were referencing the 15 files released Friday. They disappeared from DOJ's website yesterday, including this photo of what looks like a desk with a drawer open containing photos of Donald Trump. Just to be very clear, to put a fine point on it, why were these files taken down? You're saying it was at the direction of a judge?

Todd Blanche (3:10)

Well, you. You can see in that photo there's photographs of women. And so we learned after releasing that photograph that there were concerns about those, about those women. And the fact that we had put that photo up. So we pulled that photo down. It has nothing to do with President Trump. There are dozens of photos of President Trump already released to the public. Seeing him with Mr. Epstein, he has said that in the 90s and early 2000s, he socialized with him. So the absurdity of us pulling down a photo, a single photo, because President Trump was in it is laughable. And the fact that everybody's trying to act like that's the case is a reflection of their true motivation. But the reality is anybody, any victim, any victim's lawyers, any victim rights group can reach out to us and say, hey, Department of Justice, there's. There's a document, there's a photo, there's something within the Epstein files that identifies me. And we will then, of course, pull that off and investigate it.

Interviewer (4:06)

Are you saying that one or more of the women in one of the photos or several of the photos is a victim or a survivor of Jeffrey Epstein, and that's why you took those files down? And will they be put back up?

Todd Blanche (4:21)

No, that's not, that's not what I'm saying. We, of course, if we knew that, if we had, if we believe that that photograph cont. A survivor, we wouldn't have put it up in the first place without redacting the faces. But notwithstanding what we believe, we don't have perfect information. And so when, when we hear from victims rights groups about this type of photograph, we pull it down and investigate. We're still investigating that photo. The photo will go back up. And the only question is whether there will be redactions on the photo. And of course, if there are survivors in any of the photos, we will redact them as Congress expects us to do, as President Trump expects us to do, and as the attorn general and Director Patel directed the department to do.

Jack Irel (5:03)

So. That didn't really seem like a full answer to me. It seems like Blanche is suggesting that one of the women in the photos was a victim, which runs a little counter to the they were just hanging out and socializing narrative. What did you take away from his response? It just seemed incoherent.

Sam Stein (5:19)

Yeah, well, the most generous interpretation of the response is we were so bad at our job that we put up this photo unredacted and had to take it down. Even though we had weeks to go through this stuff, we were so bad at our job that we failed to do it properly. And it'll come back up, but we're going to redact it. It doesn't really pass the smell test, honestly, because there are plenty of documents out there with redactions. They made redactions in photos and in text documents, and so they clearly could have done the same for this, but it must have made through the filter. He doesn't actually say, as far as I can tell, that someone in that photograph, a woman in that photograph, in that photograph, reached out and said, hey, pull it down. He kind of skirts around it. He says, there's victims in there. And, you know, when people reach out to us, we will, you know, obviously protect their identity. But he doesn't say someone in that photo reached out to them. And frankly, like, you just don't get the benefit of the doubt if you're the DOJ in this case, because precisely you've been of an administration that's been fighting the release of this materials for months. And so you can't then turn around and say, look, we're doing the best we can. We're pro transparency. You know, we're. We're going to put everything out there. No, you've been fighting the release of that stuff. So, you know, again, it doesn't really make a lot of sense, and I don't think anyone's going to buy it.

Jack Irel (6:38)

Well, especially doesn't make sense in the context of another clip that we're going to check out with Todd Blanche responding to Questions about Ghisne Maxwell when this is not a guy who really likes to dive into the nitty gritty of details that actually matter. So were these victims of Epstein? Were they victims of Trump? Did they report broad abuse within the circles of these powerful men? He didn't. He didn't really say anything. He kind of wanted to allege that that's kind of what they are. There were too many photos to see if there were photos with Trump, with children, if these were women of age. But it reminds me of the moment in the. And the kind of deposition, the interview that Ghislaine Maxwell gave with Todd Blanche, and when she said, just straight up, yeah, there's tons of people in your cabinet who just love to hang out with me and Epstein. And he goes, yeah, okay, so pivoting to anything else in the world that we could possibly talk about. Yeah, it just wasn't a full answer. And, like, you're right. It leads you to just ask all of the questions that it seems like this entire time, I don't know, has there been a prediction that anyone who's like a good faith actor has made over the past six months that kind of hasn't come true about what we've expected out of these files?

Sam Stein (7:44)

So here's the thing about the files that's. Now, obviously the problem that the administration faces is that when you spend so much time fighting the release, if you don't do full disclosure on day one, you become part of the conspiracy to cover up. Right? And it's now the perception is like, okay, well, they are the ones who are controlling the release of this information. They clearly didn't want it out there in the public, otherwise they would have embraced the release early on. And conspicuously, there's only, like a handful of mentions of Trump at all. And then there was this Fox News story where they were like, yeah, we're screening for politicians. And now suddenly everyone who's committed to the idea that these documents should be made public is going to automatically say, well, what are you doing? Why are you not being forthcoming? What are you hiding? And look, they may for. I don't know. I mean, I'm open to the possibility, as ridiculous as it sounds, that maybe there's not a lot in there that we didn't already know, and maybe there's not many mentions of Trump. That would not make sense at all, considering how much contemporaneous correspondence they have in what we know already in the public record. But even if you give them that, the idea that they would just release Partial documents, they'd have all these redactions. They take documents off the web even after they released it, that an administration official would say to Fox, yeah, we're going to be screening this stuff and you know, we need to protect politicians names and things like that. Like it just, it's going to reek like you're part of a conspiracy. And that's on them. They, you know, no one else is to blame for them having to deal with this stuff other than them. They made their bed, now they're sleeping in it.

Jack Irel (9:21)

And it makes me think of two things. The first, like, what have you been doing this whole time, especially the past month? Like that doesn't make any sense. But the second is if just the information that we've seen has come out. Trump pictured with, with victims that's already been something like, I guess technically Todd Blanche is admitting there, but the descriptions, the, the alleged accounts of assault that we saw, then redacted after they were put up describing Trump, if that was all that was in these files, like that alone would be disqualifying the time Trump spent with him. That the check, you know, buying a woman who's now like aged out of the Epstein demographic like that would be disqualifying of just like being a public person, like let alone being fucking President of the United States. So my thing is like, well then where does your head go if there's more than this that's already disqualifying? I start to think back about the first term and that's why the conversation, the question about Ghislaine Maxwell was so interesting to me and kind of what the subtext of what Todd Blanche said right here was.

Interviewer (10:20)

I do want to ask you about Ghislaine Maxwell, who was of course convicted in 2021 for her role in helping Jeffrey Epstein traffic his victims. In July, you interviewed her in Florida where she was serving a tour 20 year sentence in federal prison. Just a week later, Maxwell was moved to a more permissive prison camp in Texas. Why was she moved just days after you interviewed her, Mr. Blanche?

Todd Blanche (10:48)

So that's a Bureau of Prison Security issue that, that I will not talk about.

Interviewer (10:53)

Did you have anything to do with it? Did you have anything to do with.

Todd Blanche (10:59)

Let me finish. First of all, I am responsible for the Bureau of Prisons. So every decision that they make lands on my desk to the extent it needs to. But just let me talk about the security issue. At the time that I met Ms. Maxwell, there was a tremendous amount of scrutiny and publicity towards her and the institution she was in she was suffering numerous and numerous threats against her Life. So the BoP is not only responsible for putting people in jail and making sure they stay in jail, but also for their safety. And so she was moved. She is in federal prison. She was in federal prison before. She's in.

Jack Irel (11:34)

Okay, I gotta stop it there because she has doordash, so I'm not sure it's federal prison exactly. She's got a fucking puppy. But I just like your first gut check to that because I was astounded.

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Sam Stein (13:56)

So, first of all, he's like, I'm not going to talk about it. And then he talks about it. And then the other thing, though is like, there's plenty of people in federal prison who have threats against their life while in prison. If that's the standard for moving someone to a lower security prison, then you're basically shuffling half, half the jail until.

Jack Irel (14:13)

Why is that Todd Blanche's job? Right? Like, does he handle all of those cases?

Sam Stein (14:17)

Oh, it's nutty. It doesn't. Again, it's like they're intervening in very conspicuous ways. They're like, well, we don't really want to talk about it, but, you know, we're sympathetic. I mean, basically saying that we're sympathetic to her case. Why was he sympathetic to her case? Like, what, What, Even if she felt threatened, like, is that, is that a point where you have to intervene as the Deputy Attorney General? I mean, come on. Now, the larger point I was going to make, though, and it hasn't really to do with this, although I guess it I suppose does, and hopefully I can make it articulately. But let's. Let me try.

Jack Irel (14:48)

I bet I gotcha.

Sam Stein (14:49)

And we'll see. We'll see. It's been a long day. They have been saying for a while now, and this is prior to all this stuff being released, that if there was something in these documents about Donald Trump, the Democrats would have released it a long time ago. This has been their talking point forever. And it's always sort of struck me as a very telling talking point about their own motivations. What they were saying is we feel like, you know, the DOJ under any president, would, in a political manner, release materials to benefit their president, their. The president they serve, or to hurt their president's opponent. They say, of course, any Democratic DOJ would release stuff to hurt Donald Trump. That's just what a DOJ does. So they've conceded at the jump that they are not above taking political motivations when it comes to the release of this material. Now, it's their job to release this material. And so we should, of course, expect that they are going to act with political motivations. They've admitted that that's what they would do. They're surprised the Democrats didn't Do it. And so when they are putting out selective material, we have to take them by their word that they are not going to put out stuff that would hurt the President they serve, but that they would put out stuff to hurt the President's opponents. In this case, we have a trove of photos of Bill Clinton in hot tubs and pools and stuff like that. And you're like, well, that's, you know, telling that those are the only photos that they're releasing. But it's not because, of course, they've already admitted that they would do politically motivated selective releases. Does that make sense?

Jack Irel (16:27)

Yeah. And it kind of reminds me of just like, I don't know, I had this thought on, on Friday and I've really been thinking it this whole time, which is like, in many ways why it's been weird. It felt weird a lot of the times discussing, like, the kind of conspiracy nature of the Epstein files, because I saw, I don't know if you follow, what is it like Autism Central is what it's called. It's some like, maga.

Sam Stein (16:49)

Yeah, I know the channel.

Jack Irel (16:50)

Yeah, yeah, yeah. I'm so glad.

Sam Stein (16:52)

Probably, probably based in Malaysia or something.

Jack Irel (16:54)

Certainly. I'm glad that we both have to know what that is. That's really, that's really great for our lives. Fantastic. But it was a response to a photo of Epstein with what looked like a toddler. Like, it was a girl, like, within, like pajama pants. It was like Cookie Monster or something like that. The response is like, oh, my God, this is getting bad. It's not fun anymore. It's like, what the fuck did you think was going to be fun about this? And that's the thing with the Epstein conspiracy, is that it's never been a conspiracy. He was a real guy. And I think that's another thing that the, the administration is waking up to, is that they thought that this whole thing with the Clinton and, and Bill Gates would still be viewed as kind of funny. They thought that it was going to be a big meme. There were a lot of responses where it's like Clinton with a, with a victim with her face blacked out is like, oh, Bill, you dog. Like, there were some of that, but also, why aren't these men getting locked up? And when you have even the MAGA people who never took this seriously, who thought it was a Netflix documentary and a conspiracy theory waking up to that, then it gets really difficult to not bring full transparency or to try to deny this truth of Trump being in the files and him calling it A hoax. When you finally see that they're waking up, that this is not like a gambit or a game or fun or look at Bill Clinton and let's make some jokes about it, then it. Then it gets really difficult. And I think that's what they're struggling with most.

Sam Stein (18:14)

And it does sort of pulls back the veil that a lot of this, for a lot of people really wasn't about, you know, a sex predator and the victims. It was about when they thought that it would hurt Democrats and. And rich people who supported Democrats. They thought it was a good cudgel. And now it's, you know, it's not as good a cudgel for them anymore. And so it. It makes. It makes it very clear that for a good many of them, it really wasn't about the victims. It was about the political scores.

Jack Irel (18:43)

Yeah. And that same feeling of the, the. This is a. This is a joke. This is a hoax. This is all fun is actually something that Todd Blanche was confronted with towards the end of this interview. And again, I think that his response was quite telling.

Interviewer (18:55)

We're talking about President Trump in relation to this. For months, he urged Republicans to stop pushing for the files to be released. He dismissed the Epstein files as a hoax. I want to play a little bit of what he has said about the Epstein files before he signed the law. Take a look.

Jack Irel (19:10)

It's all been a big hoax. It's perpetrated by the Democrats and some stupid Republicans. I don't understand why they would be so interested. He's dead for a long time. It's shorted, but it's boring. This is a Democrat hoax that never ends.

Interviewer (19:27)

Are the Epstein files a hoax? Mr. Blanche.

Todd Blanche (19:33)

What president Trump is saying is not that the Epstein files are a hoax. It's his game that Democrats have been playing for the past nine months around the Epstein files. That is a complete and total hoax.

Interviewer (19:44)

Well, it's Republicans pushing for the.

Todd Blanche (19:46)

Many years.

Interviewer (19:46)

Some of the Republicans are pushing for the release, too. Just to be clear.

Todd Blanche (19:50)

Well, that's different. That's different. To be clear, releasing the files.

Jack Irel (19:55)

I got to stop it there. That's different.

Sam Stein (19:58)

Why is it different?

Jack Irel (19:59)

One, why is it different? And two, what is the game that Democrats are playing around the release like? That's the question that, that I don't understand. That's like the theory of the case of the. Of the political pawn that they view this to be. And then again, like, it is so telling if they're saying, okay, well, when we didn't have the power to release it, we were talking about Epstein and now that Democrats don't have the power to release the files when, of course, we've been able to move the discharge petition, whatever. But like, when now they don't. So they're using it as a political pawn. They're openly admitting that it is just a fun thing to bounce back and forth when you don't have the power. Like that is his view of it.

Sam Stein (20:36)

Fundamentally, it doesn't take a genius to go back three, four years ago and pull up any clip of JD Vance or Cash Patel or Dan Bongino or any of these people being like, this is the most existentially important issue of our time. We have to expose the cabal. It goes deep, much deeper than people think. So, you know, you got to live by your own words. And it's not a hoax, obviously. And one more time, it would have all been settled. We would have been in the same exact place if back in the spring when this thing first started gaining steam, Pam Bondi and Kash Patel didn't come out and say, oh, there's nothing there. We looked at the files. Nothing there. I mean, that's it. Like, they, they were the ones who engaged in what is ostensibly a cover up, even after having pushed for the files release. They acted shady throughout. And so you're just being held to your own words. There's no hoax. But I agree with you. It's like, you know, if you look at it as simply a political football and if you're in one camp or the other and you're in the minority at this point and you want to, you know, make you make the president squirm, like, if that's what you think it is, then you're going to act this way. You're going to call it a hoax. But it's not. And I'm coming around to your interpretation, I suppose, about Todd Blanche's appearance. It did, it wasn't, it wasn't the most adroit Sunday show appearance.

Jack Irel (21:54)

Wasn't in, wasn't an A plus plus plus plus plus. That's not where you landed.

Sam Stein (21:58)

No, I wouldn't give it, I wouldn't give it that. No, I, I would go a little lower than the plus plus plus plus plus. Not even in the A's, to be honest.

Jack Irel (22:05)

Well, good. On Kristen Welker, there was only other one bad. There was one bad clip from her today. She, instead of asking Lindsey Graham about the Epstein files, asked about Erica Kirk.

Interviewer (22:13)

Erica Kirk, the widow of conservative activist Charlie Kirk, who was assassinated in September. This Week endorsed Vice President J.D. vance for president in 2028. What do you make of that? Would you endorse Vice President J.D. vance for president? At this point.

Ghostbed Advertiser (22:31)

I'm worried about tomorrow.

Todd Blanche (22:33)

But that's a big day for jd.

Jack Irel (22:35)

We don't need a rag on Kristen too much.

Sam Stein (22:36)

I like Kristen. She's fine.

Jack Irel (22:38)

She did a good job and I think we did as well. I think we get an A plus plus.

Sam Stein (22:41)

Thank you, Jack.

Jack Irel (22:42)

I appreciate that. Let us know in the comments. Did we do better than Todd Blanche? Because if that's the rating system, then I feel fucking swell about this episode. I feel good.

Sam Stein (22:50)

I feel good about that one.

Jack Irel (22:51)

Yeah. For the bull work, I'm Jack Irel. Sam, always good to see you, man.

Sam Stein (22:54)

Take care, buddy. Have a happy holiday.

Jack Irel (22:56)

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Sam Stein (23:44)

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Yep.

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