Transcript
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That's promo code gift. I wanna start by telling you all that Donald Trump is about to give a speech in North Carolina. He's still at it, God bless him. He's still trying to sell his failed economic policies to voters. It went so well earlier this week, and I just mentioned that. Not because we're gonna play it for you. We are not gonna play it for you, but just because it's a little bit hilarious, given what's been happening back here in Washington today. And I just mentioned this a little bit with Chris, because today was, of course, the deadline for the Trump administration to release the Epstein files. Today was the deadline. They've had it for a while and they came very short of meeting that bar. I mean, today the Justice Department did release hundreds of thousands of pages, so lots of pages. But. And this is a big. But only a teeny tiny portion of it was new. And just to give you a sense, earlier tonight, Congressman Robert Garcia, I just mentioned this. He's the ranking member of the House Oversight Committee, estimated that we may only be seeing about 10% of the documents, documents DOJ has in its possession. Just 10%. I just wanted to repeat that again for all of you. That definitely does not come remotely close to what they were required to do under the bill that passed Congress last month with the support of every single senator and representative. Every single one, save one guy, Clay Higgins. Still can't explain that one. But the bill, again, remember, it was also signed into law by President Trump himself the next day, because that bill required that all the Epstein files, with only narrowly defined exceptions like the identity of survivors or national security concerns, were required to be released by midnight tonight. And they would have to explain those, too, by the way. Now, by the Justice Department's own admission, the batch of materials they made public today are just a fraction of what they were supposed to release under the law. But nevertheless, this release of documents was about as full and transparent as we have come to expect from this administration. When I wasn't like, bowled over shocked, it wasn't fully complete, I'm sure you weren't either. Which is to say this is not very transparent at all. And there isn't really much of an excuse for that. I mean, we already know the Department of Justice has already pored over these documents at least once before, thanks to reporting from Bloomberg's Jason Leopold, who know we know that the Trump administration was making FBI agents pull all nighters to review what was in these documents as far back as March. And thanks to his relentless, and I mean relentless, Freedom of Information act request, Jason Leopold may be the one reporter in this country who actually has a sense of just how big the full universe of the Epstein files actually is and how much manpower has been dedicated to reviewing it and, of course, the scope of what they may be holding back. And he's going to join me here later this hour to help us understand what is and is not in this release, but right now, because right now we don't know just what the Trump administration has omitted from this release altogether. We have no idea. We don't know the whole scope of it. And many of the documents that were released today look like this. You can see on your screen pages and pages and pages of redactions, blacked out text and images. I mean, one of the files has more than 100 pages in a row that are fully redacted. But here is some of what we have been able to see. The documents include a handwritten note telling someone to send a bucket of roses to a high school as part of a list of errands. We don't know the context in which that note was written. There's also this photo of what appears to be an Amazon order of books that include titles like this quote, slavecraft, Roadmaps for Erotic Servitude and A Workbook for Erotic Slaves and Their owners. And the files include a handwritten note labeled An Important Message for JE that reads, I have a female for him. We don't know the context for that message either. None of it, all of it is gross and creepy sounding, to state the obvious. Now, the documents also include a previously unreleased FBI complaint from 1996 made by Epstein accuser Maria Farmer, alerting the FBI to Epstein's interest in child pornography. While Farmer has been vocal about having made that complaint, the actual document has never been made public before. And some people accuse Farmer of making it up. Can you imagine that living through that? But today, she has been vindicated. And later this hour, I'm going to get a reaction from the family of another one of Epstein's survivors, the late Virginia Roberts Duffre. To nobody's surprise, in an incredibly obvious attempt to move the focus to another president, this initial batch of files also included a number of photos of former President Bill Clinton, many in the company of Jeffrey Epstein. We don't know the context in which these photos were taken, and all the redactions were done by the Department of Justice and not msnow. Now, the release of those particular photos does seem to undermine the idea, though, that materials could be withheld from the public because of the investigation Trump ordered into several prominent Democrats with ties to Epstein, including, of course, Bill Clinton. And we'll have to wait and see if they're brazen enough to try and use any possible investigation as a shield to avoid further releases out after today, we will see they are capable of anything. Now, earlier tonight, a spokesperson for former President Clinton released a statement saying in part, the White House hasn't been hiding these files for months, only to dump them late on a Friday to protect Bill Clinton. This is about shielding themselves from what comes next or from what they'll try and hide forever. But frankly, none of the documents we've reviewed today sheds as much light on Jeffrey Epstein's creepy and predatory behavior and that of many people around him, as well as his relationship with the current occupant of the Oval Office, as the two blockbuster pieces of reporting on Epstein published by the New York Times this week. One of those stories explores how Jeffrey Epstein and Donald Trump forged a close friendship over their pursuit of women. And one of the reporters behind it will also join me here later this hour. Now, despite what we can all see with our own eyes, which it's very clear, we can go on the website and look at the documents ourselves, see all these redactions, see all these blacked out pages, this release does not even come close, of course, to meeting the requirements of the law. And it seems to include a selective set of photos. As I've noted, the Trump team's approach is remarkably to Keep patting themselves on the back. I mean, today, Ms. Now obtained a letter sent to members of Congress by the Deputy Attorney General. Todd Blanchett claims, without a hint of irony, I'd note that, quote, the Justice Department's commitment to transparency and compliance with the law has been historic. Okay, I don't know about that. Now, the administration seems to think that we should all feel satisfied with this teeny, tiny partial release of the Epstein files. That's if they tell us. If Todd Blanche tells Congress in a letter, they're all going to be sat. I suppose that everybody, all of us, will all be satisfied and move on. The survivors will be satisfied and move on. And that has sort of been their M.O. from the beginning. I mean, over and over again, we have watched this administration try to close the book on the Epstein saga to really some fractional part of the record and say, there you go, case closed, nothing more to see here. But time and time again, that strategy has failed. It's only heightened the resolve of the public. It's only heightened the resolve of the survivors and the resolve of members of Congress to keep pushing for more transparency. And there is no indication that strategy will work this time either. Already, Republican Congressman Thomas Massie is saying that the Justice Department's partial release, quote, grossly fails to comply with both the spirit and the letter of the law. So the fight for this information isn't over. That's important. It's just getting started. I have two great guests joining me here to kick off the show. Andrew Weissman is the former general counsel at the FBI. Julie K. Brown is an investigative reporter for the Miami Herald responsible for breaking the Epstein story wide open all the way back in 2018. There are no two people I'd rather be talking to at the start of the show tonight. I'm so grateful to both of you. Andrew, let me just start with you. I know you've been poring through these documents, the ones that have been released. They've only been searchable for a couple of hours now. Let me start by just asking you to give us your big picture take on kind of what happened today. What we know, if there's much new we do know.
