"Why did Trump try so hard to block the Epstein files release?”

Summary

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Podcast Summary: Deadline: White House

Episode: "Why did Trump try so hard to block the Epstein files release?"
Date: February 25, 2026
Host: Nicolle Wallace (MS NOW)
Guests:

• Lisa Rubin (Senior Legal Reporter)
• Michael Feinberg (Former FBI Assistant Special Agent / Analyst)
• Andrew Weissmann (Former Top DOJ Official / Legal Analyst)
• Claire McCaskill (Former US Senator / Political Analyst)

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1. Episode Overview

The episode investigates explosive new revelations that former President Donald Trump—through his Justice Department—worked to block the release of documents connecting him to allegations in the Jeffrey Epstein case. The reporting, corroborated by NPR, independent journalists, and the podcast’s own team, shines a spotlight on missing FBI interviews and memoranda, a potential DOJ cover-up, and the political fallout Trump now faces, even among his base. The conversation dissects the legal, ethical, and political layers of the scandal and explores why these files—particularly those with references to a minor’s allegations against Trump—were withheld.

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2. Key Discussion Points & Insights

A. The Missing Epstein Files and Trump Allegations

• Explosive reporting reveals that DOJ has withheld files containing allegations that Donald Trump sexually abused a minor, despite a legal mandate to release all Epstein files.
• A woman, who first spoke to the FBI in 2019 about Epstein, also alleged Trump assaulted her when she was 13 or 14; the connection between her accounts is now confirmed by sources who saw unredacted files.
• Only one out of four FBI interview memos with this accuser has been released, and it lacks direct mention of Trump ([04:47]-[06:26], Lisa Rubin).
• Allegation appears in a 2025 FBI PowerPoint and spreadsheet, but the detailed notes and three remaining interview memos are missing ([12:04]-[12:53], Lisa Rubin).

Notable Quotes

“A woman interviewed by the FBI in July 2019 about her Epstein allegations is the same woman who alleged that Trump forced her to perform oral sex on him…when she was 13 or 14 years old and he subsequently hit her.”
—Host summarizing NPR and internal sources ([00:47])

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B. DOJ & FBI’s Defense vs. Reality

• DOJ claims no files are missing “unless a document falls within duplicates, privileged, or part of an ongoing federal investigation” ([00:47]).
• Guest consensus: These explanations don’t hold. Privilege is not a valid reason under the Epstein Files Transparency Act, especially for interview memos ([07:31], Lisa Rubin).
• Victim privacy could warrant redaction, but a redacted memo was already produced—DOJ had options other than total withholding.

Notable Quotes

“Privilege is not a basis that was recognized by the Epstein Files Transparency Act… And when we’re talking about a document that reflects a conversation between the FBI and a witness, there is nothing remotely attorney-client privileged.”
—Lisa Rubin ([08:07])

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C. Why Did the DOJ Block Release? — The Cover-up

• The panel agrees: Signs point to a “ham-fisted cover-up” (Michael Feinberg [14:02]), with DOJ trying to “scrub the files of anything damaging to the president.”
• Serial numbers for documents and detailed indexes make missing files obvious ([16:51], Feinberg).
• Watergate comparison: The cover-up may be more damaging than the alleged crime itself ([17:58], Feinberg; [27:11], McCaskill).

Notable Quotes

“It’s not the crime that gets you, it’s the cover-up.”
—Michael Feinberg ([14:31])

“This is a cover up that makes Watergate look like child’s play.”
—Claire McCaskill ([27:11])

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D. Political Fallout & The Manosphere’s Backlash

• Trump’s core supporters are breaking with him over the Epstein files; even voices on Joe Rogan’s podcast are calling out the administration for a perceived cover-up ([32:36]-[33:16]).
• The failure to release the files is described as “terminal cancer to Trump’s MAGA movement” and “the last straw” for some in the base.

Notable Quotes

“The Epstein scandal is definitely terminal cancer to Trump's MAGA movement. The Epstein thing for me was just the last straw in terms of you not getting things done. I’m like, oh, they’re hiding something crazy.”
— Tim Dillon, quoted by host ([32:48])

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E. Legal Reality: What Could Happen Next?

• Can the DOJ or US authorities indict foreign Epstein associates? Yes. As Feinberg explains, foreign nationality is not a legal bar if crimes were tied to US jurisdictions ([34:11]).
• Will there be accountability for Trump? The consensus is bleak; current DOJ and courts protective of Trump, but state-level prosecutions are possible due to long statutes of limitations ([37:13], Weissmann).
• The importance of document indexes: The very existence of indexes shows the memos can be accounted for, as McCaskill reiterates ([29:02]-[29:36]).

Notable Quotes

“[The memos] exist. The FBI put them in the index. They are there. We need to see them. The longer we go without seeing them, the bigger problem it is for this administration.”
—Claire McCaskill ([29:02])

“The quickest way to solve the problem is… they could put those memorandum out. Or how about like 10 minutes from now?”
—Claire McCaskill ([41:11])

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F. The Big Picture: Why the Scandal Resonates

• The story taps into larger public distrust: “90% of Americans have heard about the Epstein files; about 60% disapprove of Trump’s handling.”
  —Nicolle Wallace ([24:29]).
• Survivors and families will attend Trump’s State of the Union, literally facing him as symbolic accountability ([18:30]-[19:51]).
• Panel underscores: This is about both justice for victims and the integrity of US institutions.

Notable Quotes

"Those two things feel like they can’t possibly be consistent.”
—Nicolle Wallace, questioning the official narrative vs. the evidence ([39:16])

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3. Timestamps for Important Segments

• 00:47: Nicolle Wallace sets up the explosive new allegations and outline of missing files.
• 04:19-04:46: DOJ officials and legal analysts challenge the DOJ’s public explanations for withholding.
• 06:26-11:42: Lisa Rubin explains what’s confirmed, still missing, and the legal/ethical holes in the DOJ’s argument.
• 13:47-16:51: Feinberg on how FBI documentation and PowerPoints reveal the (incomplete) paper trail.
• 21:48-24:29: Weissmann details legal ramifications of incomplete disclosure and implications for DOJ credibility.
• 27:11-29:36: McCaskill maps out prosecutorial logic, links the memos to a broader pattern of cover up.
• 32:36-33:16: “Manosphere” and Rogan commentary on the damage to Trump among his most fervent supporters.
• 34:11-37:13: Legal scope: Could DOJ indict foreign Epstein associates, and will state courts step in?
• 41:07-42:36: McCaskill and Wallace sharpen the focus on the three key missing memos.
• 43:38: Panel wraps up, reiterates documents’ significance to justice and public trust.

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4. Memorable Moments & Quotes

• “[This] makes Watergate look like child’s play.” —Claire McCaskill ([27:11])
• “Oftentimes it’s not the crime that gets you, it’s the cover-up.” —Michael Feinberg ([14:31])
• “The Epstein scandal is definitely terminal cancer to Trump’s MAGA movement.” —Tim Dillon ([32:48], as cited by Wallace)
• “90% of Americans have heard about the Epstein files. About 60% disapprove of Trump's handling…” —Wallace ([24:29])
• “They wrote the chapter headings and what's missing are the chapters.” —Wallace ([29:26])

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5. Tone and Energy

• Speaker tone remains sober, meticulous, occasionally incredulous—determined to ground accusations in journalistic and legal fact.
• Meticulous emphasis on sticking to evidence and keeping public focus on the missing memos and interview records.

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6. Conclusion

The episode exposes why the Trump administration fought so hard to block the release of Epstein files—an alleged effort to suppress accusations against the president himself. The panel persuasively critiques the official DOJ explanations, highlights political consequences for Trump, and underscores a profound public thirst for accountability. The unraveled paper trail of missing memos and incomplete disclosures sets the stage for further investigations, both journalistic and legal, while affirming the power of persistent reporting.

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Transcript

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[News Reporter Nicole]

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[Host/Moderator]

Hi there everybody. It's four o'clock in New York. There is explosive brand new reporting. New today we on missing Epstein files and shocking testimony from a witness that has made an accusation against none other than Donald Trump himself. It is reporting that suggests a cover up inside the Trump Justice Department and could be, could be a possible explanation to a question that has dogged Donald Trump throughout the entirety of his second term as president. The entirety really of the Epstein scandal. In the face of major public backlash, including from deep inside his own political coalition, why is Donald Trump working so hard to block the release of the Epstein files? Our colleagues Lisa Rubin and Michael Schnell confirmed news first reported by independent journalists Roger Sullenberger and NPR that the Justice Department has withheld files that contain allegations that Donald Trump sexually abused a person who was a minor at the time. That is despite the fact that the Justice Department is now legally mandated to to publicly release all of the Epstein files. NPR reports that more than 50 pages of notes and memos about the FBI's interviews with this accuser are missing. A source who has viewed the documents tells us this, quote, a woman interviewed by the FBI in July 2019 about her Epstein allegations is the same woman who alleged that Trump forced her to perform oral sex on him 35 years ago when she was 13 or 14 years old and he subsequently hit her. That allegation appears in a 2025 PowerPoint presentation detailing each of the FBI's Epstein related investigations and a spreadsheet of unconfirmed tips that were called into the Bureau's National Threat Operations Center. Ms. Now can report that the FBI interviewed her four times. A memo from only one of those four times one of those four interviews is publicly available. In a tweet. The Justice Department denies that anything has been deleted, adding this explanation, quote, all responsive documents have been produced unless a document falls within one of the following duplicates, privileged or part of an ongoing federal investigation, end quote. We have also reached out to the White House for comment and have yet to hear back. In a Statement for npr. However, the White House claimed that Trump has been, quote, totally exonerated on anything related to Epstein. Now, we do not know if this allegation made against Donald Trump about a 13 or 14 year old victim is true, but we do know what the FBI thought. We know what they did. At least we know they took it seriously enough to interview this person several times and that the accusation came up again in 2025 while Donald Trump was president again and facing massive pressure to release the files, which of course leads us really to have more questions. As NPR reports, the accuser's name was being circulated by the FBI in late July and early August with the purpose of setting up an interview that would be weeks after the release of the memo that kicked up the public firestorm around the case. That memo said, quote, we did not uncover evidence that could predicate an investigation against uncharged third parties, end quote. Two months later, Kash Patel said this under oath.

[Legal/Investigative Analyst]

Who, if anyone, did Epstein traffic these young women to besides himself himself?

[Commercial Announcer]

There is no credible information, none. If there were, I would bring the case yesterday that he trafficked to other individuals. And the information we have, again is limited. So the answer is no. 1 for the information that we have in the files, in the case file,

[Host/Moderator]

no one Files were withheld. Why did the attorney general, Pam Bondi, tell Congress in a letter 10 days ago that, quote, no records were withheld or redacted on the basis of embarrassment, reputational harm or political sensitivity, including to any government official, public figure or foreign dignitary. We're also learning about these missing files. On the same day of Donald Trump's State of the Union address, a half a dozen Democrats will bring survivors of Jeffrey Epstein's abuse to Congress to watch that speech. Missing files from the criminal cases into deceased sex offender Jeffrey Epstein related to Donald Trump himself is where we start today with some of our favorite reporters and friends. Former assistant special agent in charge of the FBI, national Security intelligence analyst Michael Feinberg is here. Plus former top official at the Justice Department, legal analyst Andrew Weissman joins us with me here at the table. Our senior legal reporter Lisa Rubin's here and political analyst former Senator Claire McCaskill is here. Lisa, I want to pull back the curtain for our viewers who I think have gotten to know a lot of the survivors that we get to talk to together here and I think have become pretty steeped in the facts and the lines of reporting and just talk a little bit about what we have in the introduction and the reporting that you credit in your own reporting. Today that an independent journalist had some of this reporting. For weeks, other news organizations have been pursuing that line of reporting, and NPR really blew it out, blew it open today with their reporting. You quickly matched it as it was reporting you've been working on for a long time.

[News Reporter Nicole]

Well, we have. And Nicole, I think one of the things that prevented us and other mainstream media outlets from reporting on this sooner was it wasn't entirely clear how Roger Sullenberger had connected the dots, had reported last week that there was an accuser. We had known about this accuser because we could see those 2025 FBI documents reflecting the fact that at some point a woman came forward to say that when she was 13 or 14 years old, Donald Trump had sexually assaulted her and physically abused her, too, in the form of hitting her. What we didn't know is that how to connect the dots between that woman, the woman in the 2025 accounts, and the woman Roger Sullenberger said she was, which was someone who the FBI had Talked to in 2019 who had accused Jeffrey Epst also of abusing her when she was a teenager in the 1980s. It's because we now have a human source who has seen the documents and has confirmed for us that the name in the unredacted documents matches both accounts that we can now say that the Woman discussed in 2025 as having made these allegations against Donald Trump is also the same person who was interviewed by the FBI not just once, but four times in 2019 after she first came forward to say she had information about Jeffrey Epstein. There is a lingering mystery, though, and one of the reasons that I think people like Roger and NPR and we are interested in the missing documents is because on the face of the one FBI interview memo that we do have, that allegation against Donald Trump is not included therein. At one point during that interview, the woman tells her account to the FBI agents of how she comes to understand that a man she knew only as Jeff in the 1980s for whom she was supposed to babysit, only to discover that there was no wife or children in the house. How she came to learn that that man was Jeffrey Epstein, she says it's because someone that she confided in at the time sends her a text message with a photograph of Jeffrey Epstein. And then she asked the FBI agents whether she can crop that photo because somebody else is pictured in it and she doesn't want to incriminate that person, nor does she want to do anything that would expose her to retaliation. As her then lawyer explains, that's when the FBI agents document that the other person in the photograph is Donald Trump. And she appears to be very sensitive about, ask her, have you ever met that person? And she acknowledges that she has, but does not further elaborate. Other than that, however, there is nothing about Donald Trump on the face of that 2019 interview with the woman. But we do know from an index of witness statements that is also in these files that she spoke to the FBI on three other occasions. And all four interviews, the handwritten notes taken by an FBI agent who was present has not been shared with the public. And each of those three successive FBI interviews that follow the first one, those also aren't present. And the department's explanation today, I think, defies credulity in some ways. First of all, nobody is asserting that the documents were deleted. The allegation, I would say, or rather the implication of what we're seeing in the files is that they were never produced in the first place. And the question is why? Because they are right to say there are certain cognizable reasons why you would withhold documents. One of them is for victim privacy and safety. And yet we also know that they've produced one such interview memo already with heavy redactions. That option was certainly available to them. They also claim that they are withholding certain documents on the basis of privilege. Privilege is not a basis that was recognized by the Epstein Files Transparency act as any reason why the Department of Justice was entitled to hold things back. But even if it were, Claire knows, as a former prosecutor that Andrew certainly knows that when we're talking about a document that reflects a conversation between the FBI or Department of justice officials on one side of the table and a witness on the other, there is nothing in that back and forth that could be remotely attorney client privileged. And it's not even clear that it could qualify for what the Department calls deliberative process privilege, particularly when they have produced so many other memoranda of witness interviews, it just doesn't hold up. And so I think it's important that we continue to hold the Department to account and ask them, why aren't these other three interview memos in the files? Where are the notes? And we should also look at the indexes that they've provided for other witness statements. There are more than 540 witnesses whose statements they produced to Ghislaine Maxwell's lawyers in the lead up to her criminal trial. It may be that for many of those witnesses as well, including people that we consider to be critical to the Epstein saga, there are also Missing memoranda and notes. There's also a separate index for those people who were expected to testify at Ghislaine Maxwell's trial. I can tell you from looking at them, while we have, for example, there's one witness who testified in Ghislaine's trial as Jane, she has a Trump accusation of her own. It's not that Trump sexually assaulted her, but it's that when she was 14 years old, she was brought to Mar a Lago by Jeffrey Epstein to meet Donald Trump. And she has never wavered in that she said that to the FBI consistently. People close to her and other interview memoranda have said that, and she testified to that at trial. And yet the handwritten notes that underlay her interview memoranda, those are missing as well.

[Host/Moderator]

Okay, so that's the missing piece. Let me deal with the human story that's being told. So A child, a 13 or 14 year old, was or allegedly reported this hideous sexual assault followed by a physical assault, and accuses Donald Trump.

[News Reporter Nicole]

But we don't know where she did that or how she did that, because the only document that tells us that she made that Accusation is a 2025 spreadsheet and an accompanying presentation that the FBI put together when they were theoretically sort of getting their minds around the fact that they might have to produce files in response either to a subpoena or to some act of Congress, but the underlying document memorializing her making that accusation, which I imagine would be an accusation longer than two or three lines which appear in the spreadsheet that we have from the FBI or their presentation, we don't know where that is. When did this woman say that? We know it's the same woman, but we don't know when she said it, to whom she said it, who was in the room and how she detailed it. Those are mysteries that the American public deserves answers to.

[Host/Moderator]

Nicole. Well, Michael Feinberg, let me bring you into this and talk to me like I'm a dummy. The FBI, many of my friends on the right will say she is a dummy. And I'll give them that. The FBI in 2025 takes an allegation that allegedly happens to a 13 or 14 year old who describes a sexual assault followed by a physical assault. The FBI in 2025 was run by Kash Patel and Dan Bongino and Pam Bondi has handed out massive white binders and Donald Trump has gone on Fox and said, yeah, we'll release this stuff. Most of this stuff. Just talk me through what has to precede that for People at the FBI working for Kash Patel in 2025 to have this allegation in a document.

[Legal/Investigative Analyst]

So I think it's important to note. I'm going to nitpick a little bit with your language and say that the people at the FBI are not working for Kash Patel. And I'm not saying that I.

[Host/Moderator]

Thank you. No, I appreciate that.

[Legal/Investigative Analyst]

But the reason it's important for this discussion is that the people who work violent crimes against children, the people who work human trafficking, the people who work public corruption believe deeply in their mission. And they are not going to hide or obfuscate facts simply because Cash Patel or Todd Blanche or Pam Bondi wants them to. And if it was part of the case file, I imagine that none of them withdrew it. And they're the ones who know the file best. What I suspect happened here was that there was probably a ham fisted account by Department of Justice or FBI, very senior executives to sort of scrub the files of anything damaging to the president and some documentation slipped through. And to quote a cliche that everybody who's ever worked in politics or government, government knows, oftentimes it's not the crime that gets you, it's the COVID up. And what appears to be happening here is that there was a very poorly done cover up because they didn't bother to realize that they had put serial numbers on all the documents they produced. So if some went missing or never showed up, it was gonna be patently obvious to anybody who had the time and the patience to go through the entirety of the production.

[Host/Moderator]

So I appreciate the note and I take it, and the men and women of the FBI certainly are entitled to that, I think, space that you're giving them. And so I wasn't suggesting that the men and women who work on trafficking or sex crimes or violent crimes were part of a cover up. I am curious though, at a moment when even your own account of leaving the FBI it is so abundantly clear that no one touches Donald Trump, that no cases against Donald Trump will be brought, that the cases worked by Jack Smith and his team have been put in the wood chipper to not see the light of day. How does this end up on a PowerPoint in 2025? What are the possible things? I mean, did they have a 302 is an FBI interview transcript? Did they have interview transcripts? Are those the four interviews? I mean, it seems that someone at The FBI in 2019 tried to run this down in interviewing this person four times, this potential victim four times. Is that the paper that would have led to this entry in the 2025 PowerPoint spreadsheet, most likely.

[Legal/Investigative Analyst]

And there's actually, I suspect, a fairly non nefarious reason for the existence of the PowerPoint. As Andrew can also testify. The FBI has what I will call an unhealthy obsession with briefing matters to new object, new executives and up the chain of command. And one of the ways that that is frequently done is a case agent will provide a summary PowerPoint to an incoming executive, to a field office or to headquarters covering the major wave tops of any investigation and any potentially sensitive points that may surface later. I suspect that's all this PowerPoint was. But the PowerPoint does give force to the suggestion that there was serious investigative activity done to ferret out whether these allegations against the President, the now president, were true. It is not usual to do four interviews in a row absent extenuating circumstances. And once again, I think they just really mishandled the COVID up that they were trying to carry out. And as a result, certain documents got through. The natural extrapolation from reading them is that there are more documents. And once again, Congress has been deceived, the American public has been deceived, and there has been another chunk taken out of the Justice Department's integrity.

[Host/Moderator]

Yeah, we are not going to rush through this story because I think at every turn we want to be fair to absolutely everyone involved and get it right. So this is how this is going to go this hour. No one's going anywhere and we're going to bring Claire and Andrew into this very conversation. On the other side of a short break. Also ahead for us, much more on this bombshell of a revelation. We'll show you how this reporting could be the answer to why Trump has defied his own base of support, something he doesn't do very often on this issue for as long as he has. Plus, the drama behind these missing files is of course taking place the very same day. Survivors will be on Capitol Hill where Donald Trump will have no choice but to see them in his sight. They'll be right in front of him as he delivers his speech tonight. Two of tonight's attendees will be Epstein victim Virginia Giuffre's brother Sky Roberts and her sister in law Amanda Roberts. And we are so thankful that they have taken some time to talk to us today. We'll have them in the next hour. Later in the show today, mark four years since the start of the war in Ukraine, there are tragically no signs of a significant drawdown. We'll look at Ukraine's fight against Putin's autocratic and brutal regime. We have all those stories today and much more when Deadline White House continues after a quick break. Don't go anywhere.

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taken care of with VRBoCare. Help is always ready before, during and after your stay. We've planned for the plot twists, so support is always available. Because a great trip starts with peace

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of mind, CIDP can make your daily routine feel not so routine. The good news, with a self injection for chronic inflammatory demyelinating polyneuropathy, you have the option to treat at home. Discover [e-mail] and talk to your doctor. That's cidpselfinjection.com brought to you by Argenics. Just yesterday I actually looked at this tranche of documents that was being described to you. So we've been investigating this allegation now for a few weeks. And what I can confirm to what Lisa said and other reporting is that I have seen the manifest document that lays out the series of documents that includes interviews and other files. I have seen other interviews and documentation with this survivor. But those additional documents seem to be missing. And that's something that I confirmed as of yesterday in my visit to the Department of Justice. The idea that there is a possible cover up or that we are hiding actual documentation of an alleged crime by the President of the United States of which a survivor appears to have made, is incredibly serious. And the DOJ has to explain to the public where are these possible documents and what do they say?

[Host/Moderator]

ANDREW weissman, I always thought there would come a point in time when the Department of Justice would desperately, desperately miss its independence and desperately miss the imprimatur of standing on the side of the rule of law. And I feel like this might be that moment.

[Commercial Announcer]

Yeah, except if you're there with the one and only one job, which is loyalty to the president, this is one where it really, I think one can get lost in the weeds because here's the way that you could deal with this if, if there was nothing to hide, which was that you'd have the president and Pam Bondi tell the American people and you'd have a certification to Congress that every single document that relates to Donald Trump was turned over, that every photograph related to Donald Trump was turned over, and that there is nothing related to Donald Trump with his name on it with a photo of him that has not been disclosed. And the fact that we get a statement that says, oh, well, we've turned over everything except for duplicates, privileged material and ongoing investigations, that's not saying that you turned everything over. As Lisa pointed out, privileged material is an amorphous category where privileges have been under the statute. They said that doesn't apply. Duplicates. Why are you withholding duplicates? Why is that even a category? Just turn it over. Who would make that decision? Not just if it's just duplicates, why is that some category and then an ongoing investigation? That's one where, as you pointed out in your introduction, Nicole, in July, the Department of Justice and the FBI said that there was no material to predicate an investigation, period. The end. So what changed? We also have last week Pam Bondi in her testimony, and I'm using air quotes because it's really hard to actually call it testimony. She had an aside where she said, well, everybody knows there's no allegation and no evidence of criminality by the president. Well, if she has gone through all of these documents, then there is an allegation. It may not be one that she believes, but there is an allegation. So this is one where if there is no cover up, why are they behaving like there is?

[Host/Moderator]

Andrew, 90% of Americans have heard about the Epstein files. About 60% disapprove of Trump's handling of the Epstein files. The mystery has been why is Trump taking on so much political water over an issue if he is, as he keeps saying, there's nothing to see here. Do you feel like this reporting that Lisa's done, that NPR has done, that independent journalists have done, offers an explanation?

[Commercial Announcer]

I do, and I think there's going to be more. I think that it's not just going to be this allegation. I completely agree with Michael that this looks like a sloppy cover up, just similar to sort of Watergate where they got caught. And that's not to suggest that there and I'm just speculating that there isn't more. And I think where there could easily be more is something that I have been very focused on, which is the lack of a really thorough investigation. Various reporters are really looking into this issue of where are all the videotapes, where is all the material that was at least reported and people thought Jeffrey Epstein was recording people and there's reason to think that he wasn't, but there's also reason to think that he was but where is all of that material? And there's a suggestion that that has not been found nor that it's really been looked for carefully. We do know from Todd Blanche, for instance, that he has said that the material that came from the Epstein estate was something that the Department of Justice did not have. He said that when he said, the reason I didn't ask Ghislaine Maxwell about it is because we at the Department of Justice did not have it. So I think that there is a lot more evidence that is out there. And I think this is where good investigative journalists and Congress can do their job. And it is where these sort of flat out statements by Pam Bondi and Kash Patel I think are going to be paper thoroughly thin, unfortunately, as many of their statements in the past have been. And so I think there is a lot more to come.

[Host/Moderator]

Let me show you how. Actually, Claire, let me ask you to put your prosecutor hat on before I ask you to put your senator and political hat on. What do you see in this reporting?

[Former Senator Claire McCaskill]

I see that there were four interviews done around an explosive allegation in 2019 when Donald Trump was the sitting president of the United States. I see that one of those memoranda came out in the release of the files and it happens to be a memorandum that doesn't mention Donald Trump and the other three didn't. I see that none of the notes from any of those interviews were released. And if I was doing an opening statement as to why there should be an enforcement action against the Department of Justice under the statute that was passed bipartisan margin by Congress, that's where I'd start. And you know, they've got to produce those other memorandum. They cannot get away with not producing the three other memos of the other interviews that were done of this same victim who made an explosive allegation against the sitting president of the United States. This is a cover up that makes Watergate look like child's play.

[Host/Moderator]

It's an important time capsule note that I'm really glad you're putting back in our brains. She was interviewed four times in 2019. Donald Trump was president. Correct. What does that say?

[Former Senator Claire McCaskill]

Well, it says, you know, first of all, if she was a completely uncredible witness and, you know, the other members of this panel are more steeped in the federal system than I am, but I can't imagine a detective in a sex crimes unit going back to a victim four times. If they thought she was completely uncredible, they would follow up because this was big stuff and they needed. Now, maybe ultimately they decided that there were too many problems with her version of what she said or whatever. But the bottom line is there's four memos out there and we've only seen one. And somebody has some explaining to do.

[Host/Moderator]

And our source on the existence is this current. Correct.

[Former Senator Claire McCaskill]

They screwed up. First of all, I think they put all that massive amount out there thinking nobody would go into the details because there was so much of it. But clearly someone has and they figured out that they index these memorandums. They exist. The FBI put them in the index. They are there. We need to see them. And the longer we go without seeing them, the bigger problem it is for this administration.

[Host/Moderator]

It's an important point that they wrote. If you look inside the COVID of a book, they wrote the chapter headings and what's missing are the chapters. But we know they exist because they wrote chapters.

[Former Senator Claire McCaskill]

Well, just like when you go in a book, you go to the index to find what's in the book. Well, it's in the index, it ain't in the book.

[Host/Moderator]

Right? Right. All right, we're going to keep up this pace. No one's going anywhere. We'll be right back with much more. I will show you on the other side of the break exactly how this is playing in the much ballyhooed manosphere. Don't go anywhere.

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your regularly scheduled listening.

[Host/Moderator]

Before the break, Andrew Weissman mentioned video evidence. The reason so many millions of people are hungering for the release of the video evidence is because Kash Patel once appeared on a little itty bitty podcast named the Joe Rogan Show. I think that's what it's called and talked about gazillion gigabytes of video evidence. Here's where the manosphere, including Joe Rogan, Donald Trump would not be president without Joe Rogan's support. I do not believe. Here's where Joe Rogan and friends stand today on how Donald Trump is handling the release of, of video evidence and everything else when it comes to the Epstein files. This is a line in the sand. This one's a line in the sand.

[Legal/Investigative Analyst]

Yeah.

[Commercial Announcer]

He is rebuking the base like, almost like spitting in their face like they are asking for it. He campaigned on it.

[Legal/Investigative Analyst]

Pam Bondi and Cash Patel, the Keystone Cops were like, this thing's not even real.

[Commercial Announcer]

The Epstein scandal is definitely terminal cancer to Trump's MAGA movement. The Epstein thing for me was just the last straw in terms of you not getting things done. I'm like, oh, they're hiding something crazy. You have the Justice Department 100% trying to suppress and cover all this up. And then the stuff we get is so damning, I can't even imagine what we're not being given. So this is not good. None of this is good for this administration. It looks terrible.

[Host/Moderator]

It looks terrible.

[Commercial Announcer]

It looks terrible for Trump when he was saying that none of this was real. This is all a hoax. This is not a hoax. Pam Bondi, here she is crashing out, as the kids would say, crashing out

[Legal/Investigative Analyst]

about why she has not indicted any of the billionaires, kings, prime ministers, ex presidents that are on the Epstein list.

[Commercial Announcer]

Now we know the answer to that.

[Legal/Investigative Analyst]

The answer to that is that she's not able to.

[Host/Moderator]

Michael Feinberg, let me come back to you on that last point. And I try not to get my legal advice from. The gentleman's name is Tim Dillon. But is there any, I mean, could the United States of America investigate Jeffrey Epstein and indict a British prince, for example.

[Legal/Investigative Analyst]

Yeah, I mean, the Justice Department indicts international actors all the time. I worked in counterintelligence, I think, think conservatively, I would say 95% of the people I indicted were foreign nationals. Now, there has to be some nexus, however, attenuated to some venue in the United States or an act that affected, for example, the commerce of the United States or involved its wires. But the fact that somebody is a foreign national is no bar to prosecution. In fact, in the recent past, we've invaded countries like Venezuela specifically to get such individuals.

[Host/Moderator]

And I was being a little facetious. I guess my real question is, if the UK is going to investigate former Ambassador Mandelson and former Prince Andrew, what will those investigations yield? They obviously will deal with things that took place in the U.S. virgin Islands and in Manhattan and potentially in New Mexico and most likely in Palm Beach, Florida.

[Legal/Investigative Analyst]

Well, yeah, there's two questions here, both of which are unstated. The first is could those prosecutions abroad create evidence that allows individuals in the United States to be indicted? Certainly both of the individuals you just mentioned are not young men. They have a lot to lose by spending the rest of their lives in prison. I have no doubt that they will, to use the parlance Andrew and I used to use, flip and give evidence on coconspirators. The other question though is will there ever be an investigation or prosecution of the President if he was involved? It seems very unlikely. Certainly under this Justice Department there are going to be statute of limitations issues thereafter. But I can't see anybody on the seventh floor of the FBI or in the largest offices at the RFK Building, allowing the President not just to be investigated, but to even have an insinuation tossed his way by anybody in the government. And even if they get there, we can't ignore that. We have a Supreme Court that has bent over backwards every opportunity it's gotten to shield this President from any sort of criminal consequences for his behavior, whether in or out of office.

[Host/Moderator]

Yeah, I mean, I guess, Andrew, on that last point, it's very difficult to describe any of this alleged conduct as an official act. So he won't be able to use that lifeline.

[Commercial Announcer]

He won't. I also think that it is useful to think about what the state might do. We obviously, in my view, have a Department of justice that has demonstrated it's engaged in a cover up. It is in violation of the Epstein Transparency act as we speak. So it is. It's clearly doing that for a Reason, but the states have jurisdiction over sex crimes as well. And there are very long statutes of limitation. It's noticeable that in one of the documents that was disclosed, the Southern District of New York, when it was investigating and bringing its case against Epstein and Maxwell, they gave a sort of directive. It's not enforceable, but they gave a directive to the local Manhattan district attorney's office to stand down on its case. And that could have really delayed any sort of investigation. But that's not an order and it's not something that they have to follow now. And it's not the only state in the Union. So there, there really are other avenues to explore, including where other documents, where other witnesses could be, the reporting about the numerous storage facilities that Epstein apparently was renting, which don't make a lot of sense when you own so many properties that are so huge that you have so many storage facilities. And what's there? Again, there may not be anything. But as Michael and I know from doing investigations, you know, you run down every ground ball because you don't know where the evidence might be. And it doesn't appear that that kind of sort of, you know, scouring the earth kind of investigation has been done. And so again, I think keep your eye on what's to come.

[Host/Moderator]

I have to sneak a one more break. I mean, I want all of you though, to think about this. For the other side. It seems that we have this look that we never get, like an MRI inside a prolific child sex trafficker who trafficked women. Some were girls, some were women, all are victims to powerful men. And we have the current scandal of the current director of the FBI and the current dagger saying there are no co conspirators, There is nothing that predicates further investigation. Those two things feel like they can't possibly be consistent. I want to press all of you on that. On the other side of a short break. Don't go anywhere.

[Legal/Investigative Analyst]

We said in July, and it remains as true today as it was in July, if we had information, we, meaning the Department of Justice, about men who

[Commercial Announcer]

abused women, we would prosecute them.

[Legal/Investigative Analyst]

Right. We talked about the work that we're doing. That's why I said that I said this earlier. There's this built in assumption that somehow there's this hidden tranche of information of men that we know about that we're covering up or that we're choosing not to prosecute. That is not the case. I don't know whether there are men out there that abuse these women.

[Host/Moderator]

Claire, if he wants to be given the benefit of the doubt. There's a really simple way for Todd Blanche to have credibility on that statement, to make it true. And it involves disclosure.

[Former Senator Claire McCaskill]

Yeah. This is where it all falls apart for them. They can say, you know, she can say, there's a binder on my desk, and then say, well, I didn't mean it and I was lying.

[Host/Moderator]

Right. Pam Bondi is our source for the list. Yeah, exactly.

[Former Senator Claire McCaskill]

Exactly. And, you know, but we just have to stay focused. There are four memorandum interviewing this witness who accused the President of the United States of sexually assaulting a child. Four memorandum interviewing her. They only released one of them. Where are the other three? We just need to keep it that simple because clearly they withheld those memorandum because Donald Trump is in them. So all the things they're saying are not true. They are not. They're protecting Donald Trump. Now, maybe those memorandum come out and she didn't mention Donald Trump in any of those either. I think that's unlikely. But the quickest way to solve the problem is, you know, what they could do tonight? They could put those memorandum out. Or how about like 10 minutes from now they put those memorandum out and

[Host/Moderator]

then they'll be strong. It's possible. Yeah. I guess. If you want to take Kash Patel testifying under oath that there were no one else was involved in sex trafficking, if you want to take that statement I just played from Todd Blanche, if you want to call Pam Bondi an outlier who was making up a list on her desk, I guess maybe she would say, I didn't mean that there was a list. I don't know what that statement was. She made it on Fox. Not under any persistent pressing. You can answer all these questions by simply releasing the rest of the material. There are millions of documents unreleased. And to Claire's point, four in particular, that would. Three in particular, that would clear this up well.

[News Reporter Nicole]

And I want to just emphasize, Nicole, that with respect to the documents that are out there, 3 million pages is a whole lot of documentary evidence to go through. I think Andrew and Michael know full well how long it really takes to boil the ocean with respect to them. The fact that we haven't discovered credible evidence of other people participating in that sex trafficking today doesn't mean that evidence doesn't exist. We also know that there are a handful of women, based on the same presentation from which we got the accusation about Trump, that there were other accusations made about a handful of individuals in Epstein's inner circle who were said to have assaulted or raped women themselves. In some cases, those Those accusations may be passed the statute of limitations for state crimes. Andrew was mentioning that states are just as empowered as a federal government is to prosecute sexual assault and abuse. It may be that they're past that statute of limitations in order to do so. But it's not the only form of accountability. And I hope we can talk about more at another time.

[Host/Moderator]

Of course. Did you get a wrap in your ear?

[News Reporter Nicole]

I did.

[Host/Moderator]

I hope you didn't feel cut off. This is so important. I'm so grateful to all of you for spending the whole hour. I don't know if that's what we asked for. So anyone that had plans at 4:30, I'm sorry. Lisa Rubin, Michael Feinberg, Andrew Weiss. Weissman, thank you for joining me today. Claire comes back in the next hour because we never get enough. Claire, one more break. We'll be right back. Another shocking headline in the story about Kash Patel. The FBI director's use of The FBI jet, Ms. now is now reporting that the FBI director's travel contributed to a delay in reaching the scene of a mass shooting. Her colleagues Carol Lennig and Kendallanian report this quote, agents with the FBI's elite evidence response Team were delayed in reaching the scene of a mass shooting at Brown University in December because there was no FBI plane available to take them to Rhode Island. That's according to three sources and a whistleblower's account newly provided to Congress. The Evidence Response Team instead had to drive through the night amid a snowstorm to reach the University in Providence, Rhode island, by 9:00 the next morning. That's according to the whistleblower account. An FBI spokesperson disputes the allegations, but said he would investigate the matter more deeply after the break. Some survivors and the family of those who were victims of Jeffrey Epstein's abuse will be at Donald Trump's State of the Union address tonight to serve as a human reminder to him that they will not go away. We'll have a chance to talk to the family of Virginia Giuffre after a quick break. Stay with us.

[Legal/Investigative Analyst]

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