← The Briefing with Jen Psaki
The Briefing with Jen Psaki
Loose lips Trump blabs about covert Venezuela mission; appears to be making it up as he goes
00:42:58
As the U.S. military remains mostly opaque on the details of ongoing aggression against Venezuelan targets, Donald Trump lack of filter and braggadocious inclinations mean there is little holding him back from blurting about a recent U.S. attack. Margaret Donovan, former federal prosecutor and former Judge Advocate General officer, and MS NOW senior national security reporter David Rohde discuss what is known about what the U.S. is doing in Venezuela and whether the Trump administration is reverse engineering legal justifications for its actions.
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Antonia Hilton in tonight for Jen Psaki. We are now 11 days past the deadline Congress gave the Justice Department for releasing all of the Epstein files. And not only has the Justice Department not released all the files, the Department has only released around 130,000 pages of information so far. But the Department is now saying that they have uncovered more than a million new files related to Epstein that they did not know existed. Now that is quite an incredible revelation. And by incredible, I mean potentially not credible because it is not like the Justice Department just started looking at these files. Let's roll back the clock a little bit because it was 10 months ago in February that Trump's Attorney General directed the FBI to provide her with all files related to Epstein. Then back in March, FBI agents pulled all nighters reviewing and redacting those files in the they may be released. According to Bloomberg News, over the course of just five days from March 17 to March 22, 934 FBI employees clocked more than 14,000 hours of overtime, costing the department more than $850,000 in overtime pay to complete that review. Sources familiar with the matter told Bloomberg that one of the tasks given to some of those nearly 1,000 FBI employees was specifically to redact the name Donald Trump. Multiple outlets then reported that in May, Attorney General Pam Bondi told President Trump that his name was in the files. Then in July, the Justice Department released A memo saying that they had conducted an exhaustive review of investigative holdings related to Jeffrey Epstein. The department said that to ensure that the review was thorough, the FBI conducted digital searches of its databases, hard drives and network drives, as well as physical searches of squad areas, locked cabinets, desks, closets, and other areas where responsive material may have been stored. DOJ said it looked through all of it and determined that no further disclosure of any Epstein files would be appropriate or warranted. Again, that exhaustive review was completed by the Justice Department in July. In other words, the DOJ had already spent months taking stock of the documents it possessed long before the Epstein Transparency act was even passed. And so, fast forward, just last week, on Christmas Eve no less, they said that they had just discovered a million more documents potentially related to the Epstein case. A million documents that they apparently overlooked during that exhaustive review earlier this year. For reporters, lawmakers, survivors, something is not adding up. And neither does this. The reporter who deserves the most credit for bringing the Epstein story to light is Miami Herald reporter Julie K. Brown. To give you a sense of just how important her reporting has been, back In November of 2018, Brown published a series, a massive series about Epstein in the Miami Herald. We now know from the Epstein files that have been released that the FBI initiated its 2018 investigation into Epstein just eight days after that series was released. Julie K. Brown is likely the reason that many of us even know Jeffrey Epstein's name to begin with, which is why it is so alarming that that among the Epstein files that have been recently released were flight records of Julie k. Brown's from 2019, not flight records. Julie K. Brown found records of the flights she, the most prominent journalist covering investigating Epstein, took in 2019. For some reason, the Justice Department in 2019, that's Trump's first term in office, had those records filed away with their other materials related to Epstein. So was the first Trump administration tracking Julie K. Brown's flights? And if they were, why again, so far, the Trump administration's release and refusal to release files related to Epstein just keeps raising more questions than answers. And now, one of Trump's former closest allies, MAGA Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene, has come forward with some explosive allegations of how Trump himself is personally working to keep things from the light of day. Back in September, Congresswoman Green spoke with several Epstein victims in a closed door House Oversight Committee hearing. Greene left that hearing threatening to name names.
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Yeah, it's a scary thing to name names, but I will tell you, I'm not afraid to name names.
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And so if they want to give me a list, I will walk in.
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That Capitol on the House floor and.
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I'll say every damn name that abused these women. Greene told the New York Times that after she made that threat, Trump called her to voice his displeasure. Green says she expressed her confusion over why Trump opposed her efforts so adamantly. According to Greene, Trump replied, my friends will get hurt. Greene says that was the last conversation she ever had with the president. The White House chose not to respond to a detailed list of questions and requests for comment from the New York Times for that story. Instead, they simply said that they don't have time for Greene's, quote, petty bitterness. But if Marjorie Taylor Greene's account is true, if. Which friends was Trump referring to? And what exactly is he trying to protect them from? Clearly, we cannot just trust the Justice Department to be completely transparent about these matters. Joining us now is Congressman Suhas Subramaniam, a Democrat from Virginia and a member of the House Oversight Committee. Congressman, it's good to have you on the show this evening. Good to see you. I wanna start by, of course, following up on the Justice Department's announcement last week that they found over a million more documents. Suddenly, you know, the understanding seems to be that there's a mix up of some kind between leaders at DOJ and SDNY and an office known to be an elite office, by the way, not a place that makes sloppy errors and mistakes. But what do lawmakers know at this point about the where, when and how this possibly happened?
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I think you summarized the timeline really well. Cause they have been saying since February and March that they had all these files ready to release, that they'd been doing all the reviews they needed to do. I even sent a letter with my colleagues asking them for what they define as the Epstein files and where they're being held and electronically, you know, who has access to them. Because I was worried about tampering. I was worried about the full release of the files even after we passed the law and President Trump signed the law, the Epstein Transparency act, into law. And one other thing that wasn't in your timeline that's important is the Democrats and the Republicans on the Oversight Committee subpoenaed for the release of the files in August. And so not only are they breaking the law by not releasing all of the files by last Friday, but they also have sort of ignored Congress's subpoena, which is pretty serious in and of itself. And we wanted all the files. And the idea was we would help them redact the files. We would go through them with them, but they didn't want to go through that process. They did one release, 97% of the release was public documents already. The other three weren't very helpful. And so, yeah, they've had, they've said a lot about how much they've been prepared for this moment. And yet they're somehow finding new files. And, and I think what they're trying to do here, ultimately, as they're trying to tell the public that this is an impossible task, they're trying to distract from the substance of the release of the documents. They're trying to get out as many useless documents as possible to try to bury some of the leads here. But they should know that people are very invested in making sure that people are held accountable, people who committed these crimes. And so we're going to continue to be vigilant and we're going to continue to ask the question.
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I can understand how the idea of there being a million more files here or more than a million more files can seem overwhelming and maybe, as you said, is intended to sort of turn people off from thinking they can possibly wrap their heads around all of this. Have lawmakers been briefed at all about what is in this next tranche of documents? And if you haven't, do you have any sense yourself of what you're looking for, what you have not seen yet, that you would be thinking SDNY might have had?
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I mean, there's no communication with the administration and certainly the Democrats on the Oversight committee. If there is communication with Republicans on the committee, we're not aware of it. They certainly haven't shared it with us. I will just tell you that again, you know, yeah, they may have more than a million. I suspect that they had a lot of documents and a lot of files to release, given how broad, you know, we were requesting as far as the documents. But I haven't seen the 60 plus count indictment that the DOJ had prepared before they cut the sweetheart deal with Jeffrey Epstein and the 80 plus page memo that explained that indictment. I haven't seen many of the interviews with the victims where they name names, where they talk about some of the perpetrators of these crimes, who worked with Jeffrey Epstein, who enabled Jeffrey Epstein. Those documents that I just mentioned are, you know, maybe hundreds of pages. They're certainly not millions. And so they haven't released those. And then in many of the documents they have released, they have redacted certainly Donald Trump's name. But even people that they wanted to protect, even lawyers they wanted to protect and they've done a really bad job of it. And they've failed to redact the names of victims in other cases. And so they've been incredibly sloppy in the way they've handled this from the very beginning. And, and so it begs the question, what were they doing over the past 10 months and what were they doing when they said that they had all the files ready to release back in March? You know, the answer is I think they were lying. That seems to be the most, you know, the most plausible explanation for all of this. But in any case, we're going to continue to push them. And if they're going to continue to obstruct, we will continue to explore all of our legal options. We're going to continue to get all the bank records from the financial institutions because the victim said the that those financial documents tell the story of the crimes of Jeffrey Epstein as well as who helped perpetrate them. And then we're also going to get more information from the Epstein estate, which gave us a lot of information while we were waiting for this release.
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Congressman, on the legal front, that battle to ensure accountability comes. Of course, we know that Ro Khanna, Thomas Massie, your colleagues, they're looking to potentially charge Pam Bondi with inherent contempt, something that hasn't really been done in decades. But are there ongoing conversations or behind the scenes conversations happening or even a possibility on the horizon of lawmakers, say, working with organizations, even journalists or the survivors themselves to bring a lawsuit? There's the Administrative Procedure act here.
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That's certainly on the table. And what's interesting is certainly on the oversight committee, those conversations are happening. But on the oversight Committee of the House in the Senate, they're having another conversation which I'm, you know, not privy to, but it seems like they are also looking at legal options. And then outside groups, victims, advocacy groups are also looking into this as well. And so I think they could see legal action from multiple avenues and multiple angles. And so again, it begs the question, why would they put themselves in this position? Why would Pam Bondi put herself in a position where she is essentially going to be held in contempt? Right. Why would the DOJ put themselves in a position where we get a court order from a court and then they are in a place where they may be flagrantly violating court orders? We've seen the lawlessness of this administration, but the one thing that they haven't been willing to do at times is as violate court orders. And so it would be interesting to see what happens if a court orders them to unredact some of the things they've redacted and release all of the files. It's a very interesting question and it'll be a very interesting 2026, that is for sure.
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And certainly, Congressman, if the goal with the slow walking drip, drip, drip strategy was to hope that people's attention on this issue would fade, does not look like it's shaping up that way, not for the end of this year or for the rest of the next. Congressman Suha Subramaniam, thank you so much for joining us this evening.
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Thank you.
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And coming up, a major escalation in Trump's pressure campaign against the government of Nicolas Maduro, with the President haphazardly disclosing details of a covert organization operation that amounts to the first known US Land strike on Venezuela. Lots more on this developing story after a quick break. Stay with us.
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So what are you waiting for? Don't sleep on these savings. Get to DSW asap. It's haul or nothing, people. Shop the DSW semi annual sale today. Late last week on the day after Christmas, Donald Trump went on a conservative radio show and boasted about his administration's deadly and possibly illegal airstrikes on civilian boats. However, it was not Trump's celebration of potential war crimes that caught people's attention. It was this moment.
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Every time I knock out a boat, we save 25,000American lives. We just knocked out. I don't know if you read or you saw they have a big plant or a big facility where they send, where the ships come from. Two nights ago we knocked that out. So we hit them very hard.
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This casual admission a land strike on Venezuela would mark a dramatic escalation in Trump's so called drug war. But we still do not know exactly what happened here. The White House, Pentagon and CIA all refused to comment on, let alone confirm Trump's claim. So either Trump bragged about a land strike in Venezuela that did not happen or as the reporting suggests is more likely he openly talked about an operation that he was not supposed to. Meanwhile, the New York Times and CNN both reported, citing multiple sources, that it was the CIA that conducted this strike. This reporting, I should note, has not yet been confirmed by msnow. But Trump seemingly did confirm it when he briefly took questions from reporters alongside Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
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Can you say anything more about the explosion in Venezuela that you mentioned in a radio interview? Did the military do that? Can you share any more detail about that?
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Well, it doesn't matter, but there was.
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A major explosion in the dock area where they load the boats up with drugs.
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They load the boats up with drugs.
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So we hit all the boats and.
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Now we hit the area.
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It's the implementation area. That's where they implement.
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And joining me now to break down why this escalation is so alarming to many is former army captain and federal prosecutor Margaret Donovan, who has served in the Judge Advocate General's corp along with Ms. Now senior national security reporter David Rhoad. It is good to have you both. Margaret, I want to start with you and I guess I want to begin by underscoring how odd, how mysterious all of this is, beginning with the fact that it starts with what seemed almost like throwaway comments from the President on a radio show revealing a covert or potentially covert operation. Is any of this normal standard practice and procedure? And more importantly, does any of this seem legal to you?
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To answer your first question, no. None of this is normal. It is not normal for anybody to disclose a covert operation. This is the second time the President has done that. If you remember, he did it a few months ago when he discussed that he had made a finding to authorize CIA action in Venezuela, essentially making it no longer covert. So that is not normal. But then again, this is an administration that isn't too concerned with operational security or keeping classified information classified as to whether it's legal. I would say this, and you know my position, that this entire campaign against non combatants in the Caribbean has not been supported by domestic or international legal authority as to CIA operations on land. There may be some domestic legal authority for that. We don't really know the facts. We're not even sure what was targeted. Was it drugs? Was it oil? Was it just an empty dock? But no matter what the administration thinks it may be justifying through domestic law or CIA authorities, it still has to grapple with international law. For example, the UN Charter, which would strictly forbid this type of escalation and use of force. Of course, both the US And Venezuela are members of the un so even if there is domestic authority, this does not comport with any version of international law.
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David, what do you know from your reporting about how the CIA carried out this strike? And do we know if there was any military involvement as well?
- [20:18]
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I'll be honest, I know very little. We know very little. There was some initial reporting that the Special Operations Forces might have been involved. They've denied that. It does appear to have the hallmarks of the CIA. And look this. There were drone strikes carried out around the world after 911 by the Bush administration, the Obama administration. A difference there is that there were votes by Congress authorizing the use of military force to respond to Al Qaeda. And then particularly later on in the Obama administration, there were regular briefings to the Senate Intelligence Committee. There was a story actually written by Kendallane, who's now a colleague of ours at Ms. Now, but he was working for the Los Angeles Times then. And staffers from the Senate Intelligence Committee would go out to CIA headquarters, watch videos of drone strikes, get lots of detail about how the target was chosen, was it the right person, and then watch the strikes and see if they were done properly. And in this current situation, none of that is happening. There might have been notifications. There's supposed to be notifications to the Gang of Eight. Those are the top officials in Congress, members of Congress and the Intelligence Committee, and in leadership positions. I reached out to those officials. I declined to comment. So it's just. This is all very confusing, very unusual, and all very, very hidden at this point.
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C
Margaret, you're a former army captain. You know what it takes to make these decisions. The kind of assessments, legal concerns that go into the process before a strike even happens. Can you walk us through what kind of responsibility there is on members of the military and on the federal government before they take Action like this, whether it is on boats or on land in a sovereign nation.
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Sure. So from the very beginning, you have to make sure that you are targeting a lawful target. And in the context of war, which, again, we are not in, but in the context of an actual armed conflict, you would want to identify somebody through positive identification as being a combatant or an enemy or a force that's been what we call declared hostile. So you would first want to identify that you know what it is you are actually targeting. You would also want to identify if the force has not been declared hostile, which means that no matter what they're doing and where they are, you can deem them a threat to the United States. For example, the Islamic State was declared hostile when I was in Iraq and Syria. If you didn't have a declared hostile force, then you would want to establish that there was some type of imminent threat that would enable you to respond with lethal force. An empty dock in this case would not establish that. Another interesting aspect to this is that if we were, again, in the context of an armed conflict, if we're not, we're just talking about an illegal use of military force. But in the context of an armed conflict, you may have some facilities that are dual use. That means that a dock may be used for civilian shipping, and maybe it's also used to load the enemy into some type of sea vessel for transport. So you would want to ensure that you are targeting the right thing and categorizing it as whether or not it's being used by the civilians or being used by the enemy. So, again, it's hard to say what the justification was when we're talking about a CIA strike at a loading dock, it sounds like there simply is no information that's being shared. The other interesting aspect that I think, when you consider the CIA's assessment of whether or not what they're doing is legal, the general counsel at the CIA right now is a guy named Michael Ellis. Michael Ellis is also the CIA Deputy Director, and he basically assigned himself as the general counsel when he ousted a career official a few months ago back in early October. So you have this unusual situation in the CIA right now where the deputy director is giving himself legal advice before going into these operations. So all of that should raise questions. And as you know, my position on the entire Venezuela boat campaign, I don't think that there is any legal authority for military or civilian targeting of those boats with lethal force.
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C
And to that point, to build on what you just said there, are you at all concerned that military lawyers, as you watch all of this unfold, may be, instead of doing work on the front end to make sure that this is all legal, that they are instead looking for justifications doing that work on the back end after these strikes happen?
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Yeah, absolutely. I think that that's the real concern here. For example, the Office of Legal Counsel memo that supposedly underpins this entire operation that was first issued three days after the first strike. We have reports from congressional members who have read the memo that said that it was created on September 5, which means that this has been justified after the fact. And again, that memo, nobody from the public has seen it. Certain members of Congress have seen it, and we have been given no reason for why we cannot see at least a redacted version for what our military is doing in that theater.
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Margaret Donovan and David Rhode, thank you both so much for helping us make sense of this complicated and developing story. Coming up, a newly unsealed order in the criminal case against Kilmara Brego Garcia, the man the Trump administration mistakenly deported to El Salvador before the Supreme Court ordered his return. That order suggests a possible motivation for the Justice Department pushing for his indictment. And next, I'll talk to someone on the front lines of organizing against Trump's immigration raids in one California community. Stay with us.
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Well, first of all, thank you so much for having me. I mean, we're struggling right now. Over the past four days, we have seen agents from Los Angeles, Ventura, Santa Barbara and Santa Maria all hit our community. In the past four days, over 137 people have been taken from our communities. And those include U.S. citizens. Those include fathers. Those include single mothers or mothers who are not now turning into single mothers. Those include 16 and 17 year old minors. And so right now our community is in pain. Right. I spent all day patrolling for ice and I've spent the rest of the day supporting the families. I've had a loved one taken. On the day of my birthday, the day I turned 18, I was delivering gifts to families who have had a loved one member taken. And now, you know, we're going to spend the next few weeks going back and delivering more and more gifts because so many families have been impacted. And I mean, our families are struggling. Our Community is struggling. Everyone is afraid to go out right now. And we're just under attack in a way that we really haven't seen anywhere across the country, really. Today alone, two of our volunteers had their tires slashed by ice. One of our volunteers had a weapon pulled on them by ice. We had the California Highway Patrol, the San Luis Obispo Sheriff, the Santa Barbara Sheriff, the Santa Maria Santa Barbara and Lompoc police departments all supporting ICE and escorting them around town to kidnap more and more community members. And so right now, our community is afraid. They don't know who to call except for their own community to defend them.
- [33:19]
C
You are just 18. This is intense, heavy work to be doing day in and day out. You know, to be navigating law enforcement, to be trying to support other people's families, bring them supplies and gifts as you just described. Is this taking a toll on you? And as you look ahead to this next year and the reality that this is just year one of a four year term under this administration, how are you taking care of yourself to make sure that you're in this for the long haul? I mean, again, I can't underscore enough, just, you're 18. This is so much more than most people your age put on their shoulders.
- [34:01]
B
It's hard, right, to take care of myself right now. In the past four days, I've gotten around 16 hours of sleep because I've been having to get up at 3:30 every morning to patrol for these ICE agents and to take care of these families. You know, right now the only hope I do see is when these families get some glimpse of hope. Whenever they do get the food donated, whenever they do get funds donated to them, right? That's when I see hope. That's when I see my work and my passion being paid off. I mean, it's scary to do what I do. I mean, yesterday, right, as ICE agents were leaving the ICE office, they were saying, good night, Caesar. Right? They know who I am, they know where I live, they know what vehicle, vehicle I drive. And they have been threatening me for months, right? And so for me, it's just something I have to come to terms with because I know that my community needs my support and it needs everyone's support. Right? Right now it really is a time for everyone to decide what side of history they want to be written into. I, I train all the people in the rapid response in Santa Barbara and Sloan County. And I say this at every training, that my goal as a human right now is to make sure that no one has the excuse to say that they didn't know. Right. That in five, 10 years, no one has excuse to say, I never heard about what was happening. If they choose to do nothing, it's because they are choosing to side with the evilness of the world right now. And, you know, my goal is to. That is to bring hope to the people in my community.
- [35:44]
C
Can you break down for me how you and maybe some of the elders in your community who have seen DHS ICE operate under different administrations, how have you seen their tactics evolve in recent months? I mean, there's been a lot said about the use of masks, for example, and the way in which these agents enter communities, do not identify themselves, and don't respond when people ask basic questions like, do you have a warrant? And. And which agency are you working for? But beyond that, what are you seeing? What patterns are developing?
- [36:19]
B
Yeah, I mean, we're seeing a lot more aggressive behavior by these ICE agents. Right. On November 13th, our community got raided by over 34 vehicles that came from LA and from Santa Maria. And on that day, there was a flash grenade thrown at me and at other volunteers. Right. In the past few days, we have seen over 30 people being taken every single day. And on average, seeing that around 10 people are being taken on a single day, and that's horrible enough. And for that to now move into 30 people being taken, I mean, it's just evil. Right. We're also seeing the increase of racial profiling, where in a single street, they took a minimum of 10 people before they even got to their vehicle on their way to work. And so we're seeing that as an increase. And yesterday, while these raids were happening in the different cities that I cover and look over, we also got a report of three men that were going around claiming they were ice, taking people into vans and just taunting them, driving them around and then unloading them, and then not actually being ice, and they are just trying to. To affect and target our people. Right. And then another thing that we've been noticing is that they are just mistreating our community. And in such a different level today, we got videos sent to us of ICE agents kicking the people that were detaining. There's one video where five men were. Five ICE agents were already on one man, and then another ICE agent proceeded to kick him. Right? Kicking them and taunting them. They're taunting and saying, we're gonna come back for you. We're gonna come back for the rest of your family. And you know where we're seeing that on a daily basis. And these families need support. A lot of these kids are now left alone with no parent. And a lot of these mothers are now left to be single. And so, you know, that's why we're also collecting funds on la culturadelmudo.org to go back to these families to make sure that they do have rent, that they do have some type of joy during this holiday season.
- [38:27]
C
Cesar Vasquez, thank you so much for joining tonight. And please stay safe. Good to see you.
- [38:34]
B
Thank you.
- [38:35]
C
Coming up, she was a teenager the first time she went to the authorities to say her pastor sexually abused. Now, decades later, she and so many other survivors may finally see justice. I'll get her reaction next. As the survivors of Jeffrey Epstein's abuse continue to push for justice in Washington, elsewhere in the country, another group of alleged child abuse survivors may finally get their day in court. For more than 40 years, Pentecostal preacher Joe Campbell led ministries for thousands of children in four different states. During that time, multiple girls came forward to accuse the pastor of repeated sexual abuse, some claiming the abuse happened when they were as young as 9 and 14 years old. But despite those allegations and despite being banished from multiple churches, Campbell was able to continue preaching and running youth ministries. He even recently ran a summer camp. Four kids. That was until earlier this month when Campbell was arrested on charges by the state of Oklahoma, charged with first degree rape and lewd or indecent acts to a child under 16. Campbell is currently behind bars in Missouri awaiting extradition to Oklahoma. He has not yet entered a plea on the charges. Oklahoma authorities began looking into Campbell after an NBC News investigation published by myself and my then colleagues back in May. Our investigation focused on a group of Campbell accusers who had come together decades later seeking accountability.
- [40:14]
E
These stories haven't changed.
- [40:16]
C
They were told to parishioners.
- [40:18]
E
They were told to clergy. They were told to parents.
- [40:21]
C
They were told to friends. Lots of people knew this story for 40 years.
- [40:26]
E
This story has not changed.
- [40:28]
C
My story has not changed.
- [40:29]
D
Your story has not changed.
- [40:31]
C
And still yet he runs the A camp for children. People are saying it happened so long ago. Just leave it. Leave it alone. Why? Why leave it alone? If there's a chance, if there's just a chance that he can be held accountable, I want to tell my story. Many of the women we spoke to for that story were told that the statute of limitations had elapsed on their allegations against Joe Campbell. But Oklahoma prosecutors now argue that a frontier era law is on their side and that the statute of limitations was actually paused when Campbell left the state in the 1980s. They charged Campbell based on allegations brought by a woman named Carrie Jackson, who says Campbell molested her for years during the early 1980s in Tulsa. She says she told church officials about the abuse at the time, but those leaders claimed her allegations were not credible and allowed Campbell to continue to preach. Soon, Campbell left Oklahoma and moved to a church in Missouri. One of the women we spoke to during our investigation was Phaedra Creed, who was adopted by Joe Campbell and his wife in Missouri at age 14 and says Campbell would regularly abuse her at night, night after night, while his wife and children slept upstairs. She told a trusted adult who went to church leaders and then got the police involved. Authorities in Missouri charged Joe Campbell with abusing Phaedra Creed in the late 80s, but she says pressure from her church and her community shamed her out of testifying against him in court, and the charges against him were eventually dropped at that time. Today, she is one of the many women who has come forward seeking justice, and Phaedra Creed joins us now. Phaedra, it is so good to see you. Tell me, how did it feel? I have to know. How did it feel to hear that Joe Campbell was arrested and is now behind bars with no bail in Missouri? What does this moment mean for you?
- [42:32]
E
I think it's. I think I have a lot of mixed emotions with it right now. Some of that is I think that anytime you have a situation like this, it does bring a sense of gravity, and we go through a lot of reflection because we need the legal system to actually do its job.
- [42:49]
C
You know, there's a lot of conversation right now about what justice for survivors of sexual abuse should look like because the Epstein files have become so central in our national dialogue. What do you believe the women, the survivors, who've come forward in that case deserve now? And what would your message be to people who tend to say things like, this was decades ago, and we've done all that we can do?
- [43:19]
E
I'm very proud of Oklahoma for the work that they are doing because some states have modernized these laws. But I'm still very frustrated, especially with Missouri. As you know, his arrest was not based upon my particular case in my particular story. And so for me, I still feel like I need some validation with that. I wish that Missouri would kind of get with the ball and be able to do what they need to be able to do to be able to get some justice in this case. I feel like some states seem to continue to prioritize procedure well over the people that they need in their, in their states. And it's the same thing in those type of cases. Victims need to be heard. It's not a matter of victims just coming forward. We need to be heard. We need to know that we are being believed. And that's where the true justice comes, in my opinion.
- [44:15]
C
Do you feel any fellowship with the women who've come forward in the Epstein case who have gone, traveled to the Capitol, tried to tell their stories about what, what a powerful man did to them?
- [44:27]
E
Yes. I feel like it almost gives us a sense of belonging because we need to be heard. And sadly, what frustrates me the very most is if it's not just about the crime that is happening behind closed doors, the damage can actually come from what's happening outside in our culture as well. And with. And I say that because I myself was bullied, I was harassed. Coming forward meant that I was losing my sense of community. It meant that I was los my reputation and even my sense of belonging. And just because they wanted me to be able to stay quiet.
- [45:04]
C
I was.
- [45:05]
E
Harassed by a culture because they did not want to be the ones to deal with the truth.
- [45:10]
C
I think some people see parallels to our current moment. I want to know, Phaedra, if you could Talk to your 14 year old self today, what would you tell her?
- [45:23]
E
I really think that when it comes to that, I would probably tell her to she was not alone and that she could get through this. I have so much guilt because I never finished that situation and to know how many other people could possibly be abused after I was. And if I could go back, I wouldn't have let anyone hold me down. Which is exactly why I'm doing what I'm doing now. Because now I have a voice and I'm no longer frightened. And I will be there to tell my truth. I told my truth in 1988 and 1989 and I will tell my truth now.
- [46:05]
C
Did you ever think this day would come when you had the chance to tell your truth again on a national stage and you may even get an opportunity to see him go to trial and be held accountable?
- [46:20]
E
I honestly did not think this day would ever come. And I spent a lot of time talking to my family. I spent a lot of time praying about the situation and just knowing that if I was going to do this again, I wanted. I was just praying for movement, praying for movement, something to finally, finally take place.
- [46:43]
C
And here it is. Phaedra Creed, so lovely to see you. Thank you for your bravery, for all the time that you spent speaking with me. And our team to share your story. We don't take it lightly and we're so grateful for you and I'm so.
- [46:58]
E
Thankful for all the work that you all have done and to be able to bring this to light. We are making a difference. We are going to change lives and we're going to change that culture for future victims.
- [47:10]
C
We are going to be right back after this break. That does it for me tonight.
- [47:17]
B
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