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- [00:00]
A
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I find it very hard to believe Epstein killed himself. When I look at the, the death scene photos that are available from the cell, it all is beyond a curiosity to me. I investigated homicides that were made to look like suicide. I investigated suicides that were, you know, looked eerily like homicides. I just don't trust anything coming out of this administration in this Department of Justice. So it was interesting to see that alleged suicide note, but I am, I'm still not persuaded by it.
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A
I'm Joanna Coles, this is the Daily Beast podcast and today we're going to talk about. Well, we're going to talk about the law and we're going to talk about the illegal war in Iran. How is it possible that we got to this stage date and how come we're blowing through the 60 day deadline after which Congress is supposed to approve the war, a war, any war. We're going to talk about Epstein, what's happening there? Is anybody getting to the bottom of what's happening? And of course the new suicide note, which our guest. Well, our guest will tell you his own beliefs. He's a very experienced prosecutor and, and has seen more homicides than he cares to admit, and he doesn't think Jeffrey Epstein committed suicide. And we're going to talk about what's happening with those terrible deaths of Renee Nicole Goode and Alex Pretty in Minneapolis. What's happening to the legal case? Who is being held accountable for that? Before we get into it, please smash the subscription button wherever you get these podcasts, we really appreciate your support. We are independent media. There aren't that many of us around. And so we really, really appreciate your support. But now let's get into it with Glenn Kirschner, who was an army prosecutor and he was a federal prosecutor for 30 years. He knows the law like the back of your hand. The back of his hand, I suppose. And he also has a fantastic podcast of his own called Justice Matters, which he. Well, he's so prolific, it puts, it puts me to shame. Anyway, let's get into it with Glenn Kirschner. Glenn. Glenn Kirschner, very glad that you are joining us because as we know, Justice Matters, and I was going to kick off because of your prosecutorial background, first in the military and secondly as a federal prosecutor, by asking you about the war and obviously the secretary of war crimes, as he's now been referred to. But just as we were going on air, you mentioned to me that you had not had a day off since 2018. And I thought it was, I thought it would be really helpful for people to hear why, actually. So can we reprise that conversation and how when you and your wife get to a hotel, the first thing you do is unpack your podcasting equipment? Because I've been doing this much less time wise than you have. But I do find that wherever I go away, I'm unpacking the podcast equipment. But tell people why. As a former prosecutor, you have a new sense of mission.
- [05:04]
B
Joanna, thank you for having me back. The fight that we are in right now, and it is a fight, it's a fight for the rule of law. It's a fight for the Constitution, It's a fight for American democracy. That may sound hyperbolic, but it's not. Given what Trump and company have done to the institutions of government, what they've done to the rule of law, what they've done to the constitutional rights of all people, not just immigrants, documented and undocumented, but American citizens, visitors to our nation. We have six kids, we have four grandkids and more grandkids on the way. And this is not something that you just say, you know what, I'm just going to take a couple of weeks of downtime and step Away from this. I don't have a boss at this point after retiring from the Department of Justice after more than 30 years as a Fed. Well, let me correct myself, only my wife, my better three quarters, she's a bit of my boss and it's just she and I in this justice matter, staying seven days a week. But you don't really feel like you can step away from it, in part, I think, because the lawlessness doesn't take a day off in the Trump administration and you just feel compelled to, to keep fighting to try to stay on top of the lawlessness and the propaganda, because this administration does nothing but spew propaganda into the public square, particularly on the rule of law front. And you just feel compelled to meet the force of that every day. Translated from legalese into English, and try to set the record straight so people sort of know what's going on and they can make their life decisions accordingly about how they want to engage in this fight. But, you know, I don't want to be over the top and say this is really like a true war, like an armed conflict, although we are also in an unconstitutional war against Iran at the moment. But it feels like a type of war or a battle or a struggle. And you don't just, you know, put your weapons in the closet and vacation for a couple of weeks. You, you don't have the luxury of doing that. And that's why I'm doing this all day, every day. A video a day on my YouTube channel. We are on substack every night at 8:30pm I know you are. A community meeting where we have this huge group of justice warriors who one, want to know about what's going on on the legal front every day, and two, they want to know how to engage. So we talk about different creative, inventive ways of engaging in this fight. So you know what? As Warren Zevon, one of my favorite singer songwriters, said, I'll sleep when I'm dead, but until then, we're gonna fight every day.
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A
Well, thank you for your work and I find your YouTube channel particularly helpful because I feel like you take the complexity of the law and you explain it to people like me who aren't trained lawy. So let's get into the war. How is it even possible in America, in the United States, that we are in the middle of a completely unconstitutional war? I mean, Congress is supposed to sign off on this, even if it's an emergency war, there's a 60 day period in which they are still supposed to sign off, right? We have a 60 day deadline for them to give their acquiescence. We seem to have blown through the 60 day days. Pete Hegseth, the Secretary of Defense, war war crimes, as he's now being referred to on social media platforms, says, oh, we don't need to worry about the 60 days because we've had a ceasefire and so it doesn't count. I mean, I'm almost at a loss as to what question to ask except how did we get here? How is this possible? How is this possible that Congress rolled over, that the Republicans rolled over? Does it literally come down to the fact that they are still terrified of Donald Trump?
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B
Yeah. So how did we get here? I think the answer is pretty straightforward. How is it possible is another question that I don't think I'll have an answer to. But I'll give it a try. How we got here is we have a lawless president who needed desperately to distract from what could very well be a career ending scandal, the Epstein files. We also have a president who is a malignant narcissist and who has no empathy. And this is a vanity war. I think in part it's a distraction and in part it's a vanity war because he's like, nobody else could do this. I'm the only person who could attack Iran and, you know, permanently disable their nuclear program. And I really want to talk about that claim in a minute. But it is absolutely lawless. It is absolutely unconstitutional. And the second reason we are here is because we have one political party that has abdicated its constitutional responsibility to serve as a check against exactly what Donald Trump is doing, the Republican Party in Congress. So that's how we got here. Those two things in combination, a lawless president and a completely absent and flaccid Republican Party in Congress. You know, how is this possible? So first of all, I have to go back to my prosecution days. I was a career federal prosecutor, 30 years. First as an Army JAG prosecutor doing court martial cases back in the 80s, and then for decades at the Department of Justice, the D.C. u.S. Attorney's office. And in virtually every trial, Joanna, I argued to my, especially when I was trying murder cases and RICO cases. I would say, you know, folks, don't ask me to explain the inexplicable. Don't, you know, don't look for this to make sense, particularly when you are dealing with somebody deciding to take a human life. I can't make sense of that. But the good news is the law doesn't require you to make sense of that. It just requires that you believe the evidence proves guilt beyond a reasonable doubt. The why? We always want to know the why. But the why is not an element of the crime. And the why is something I will never be able to explain to anybody's satisfaction because it doesn't make any damn sense. That is, how is this possible? The why? We can't answer that because this is not how our government is supposed to operate. It's certainly not what the founders intended. They thought Congress would have a healthy dose of ambition and self respect and they would not let a corrupt chief executive run roughshod over their authority. But here we are.
- [12:49]
A
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B
I would like to say there is, but I happen to believe if there was some vehicle that could prod Congress into action or hell, into wakefulness, the Republican Party, somebody would have come up with it. Somebody smarter and more creative than me. It feels like we can talk about protests and we can talk about boycott, economic boycotts, and we, I mean, we can talk and all of those things are effective and important tools to put pressure on the politicians. I don't happen to believe it will move the Republicans to all of a sudden grow a spine, assert themselves and try to shut down a lawless president. And the other thing, Joanna, you know, born of frustration. I also, I'm loathe to say the next election is going to fix the problem. How many next elections have we had in the last 10 years since Donald Trump has been in power or been sucking, you know, all of the oxygen out of America even when he wasn't in power. How many next elections have we had? And every one of them have brought us to this place where we are right now? So why do we think the next election Right.
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Is. Is going to be frightening? Yeah, it's a very, that's a very, very good point.
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B
So
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what also about Secretary Hegseth, because I would imagine, first of all, we know that almost anybody that works with Donald Trump gets eventually cast aside, especially when they are overseeing what is very clearly an unpopular policy and in this case, war. Were Pete Hegseth to get fired, is there a process of, I guess, putting him on trial isn't quite the right phrase, but how is there a way of bringing him to account for overseeing this from his big chair at the Pentagon?
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B
Well, when you're a hammer, everything looks like a nail. So maybe when you're a career prosecutor, everything looks like an indictment and a criminal prosecution. And. And if the evidence is there supporting it, then that's exactly what we need to do on the accountability front. And, you know, I mean, just the easy example is he has ordered and authorized the murder of, I think we are approaching 200 people who are on boats in international waters. And there is no. And there are military experts that I've interviewed who know far more about this than I do. There is no defense. Hold on.
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A
You're talking about the boats in the Caribbean, nothing to do with the Gulf. Right? Okay, right.
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B
Talking about the boat strike. Because this is the easy, the easiest example of crimes. There's no defense in domestic law. There's no defense in international law. There's no defense under the law of war for killing people who are on in boats in the Caribbean or international waters anywhere because they might happen to have drugs on board. What we do is we interdict those boats, typically using the Coast Guard. We seize evidence of crime, we bring them to the United States. We honor the Constitution by giving them their due process rights, and we try them. And if a jury sees fit, they are convicted and they're punished. That's what we do. So I believe that Pete Hegseth needs to be brought to justice for any number of unlawful acts, starting with those, because those are the easy ones to prove. It gets murkier, undoubtedly, when you're talking about launching an unconstitutional war against a foreign country. And listen, presidents, I think, have stepped a toe over the constitutional line over and over and over again when it comes to armed conflict around the world, maybe short of a declared war. But, you know, when I saw Pete Hegseth testify before Congress recently, and Representative Adam Smith exposed him, cross examined him, and made him look like the yammering fool that he is. And he's a dangerous fool because he's endangering the lives of both our troops in this unconstitutional war and innocent Iranians, including entire schools full of young girls. Right. When I saw Adam Smith, and that
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A
was on the first day, the very first day of bombing
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B
when I saw Adam Smith cross examine him by saying, you know, you said that we had to go to war 60 days ago because there was an imminent nuclear threat that Iran posed to the United States. And yet you also said that the US quote, totally obliterated Iran's nuclear program. And then you know what Pete Hegseth came back with? He said, well, yes, we totally obliterated it, but they still had ambitions and aspirations to reconstitute their nuclear program. And Representative Smith, and I can quote him, he said, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, wait a minute. He said, imminent. An imminent threat means we are about to suffer a nuclear attack from Iran. Ambitions and aspirations are things that people hope to accomplish in the future. So Pete Hegseth can't even keep his own bullshit straight. And I don't know who he thinks he's fooling, maybe only the gullible and the stupid. But what I know he's doing is endangering U.S. service members and innocent Iranians. I'm not talking about the regime. You know, my wife, my better 3/4 lived through the revolution in 1979 in Iran. And she's seen this movie before. She lived this movie before. Yes, we need to dislodge that regime, but for gosh sakes, the ends can never justify the means. We have to do it lawfully and constitutionally or we lose all moral authority. And look at where we are right now. Donald Trump has created a global crisis, certainly an energy crisis. And now what is he desperately trying to do? Take us back to where we were before he launched an unlawful war against Iran. It's like, yeah, great work, sport. Ryan Reynolds here from Mint Mobile. I don't know if you knew this, but anyone can get the same Premium Wireless for $15 a month plan that I've been enjoying. It's not just for celebrities. So do like I did and have one of your assistant's assistants switch you to Mint Mobile today. I'm told it's super easy to do@mintmobile.com
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A
Switch upfront payment of $45 for three month plan equivalent to $15 per month. Required intro rate first three months only, then full price plan options available, taxes and fees, extra fee, full terms@mintmobile.com, free. Yeah, it's extraordinary. So, Glenn, does the President, or how does the President also get held accountable? I mean, obviously we know from the SCOTUS ruling that he has almost 100% immunity from things that he does as a president. Were he to be voted out. Let's assume in 2028 there are elections that President Trump is still with us. But he, he then leaves peacefully and is replaced by someone else. What would be, or is there a way of holding him accountable?
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B
There is. And this is where, you know, every night in our community meetings, we look for points of light amidst the Trump induced darkness. We look for a little bit of a silver lining lurking behind the big dark orange cloud that is Donald Trump. And, and they are out there. You know, we've already put in the rearview mirror the two criminal prosecutions that were up and running against Donald Trump when he got reelected. One, let's start down in Florida with the classified documents case. Yes. Judge Aileen Cannon, not being an honest broker of the law, dismissed that case, but she had no lawful basis to do it. So where was that case when Donald Trump got reelected? It was in the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals. I will put my full dollar bet. That's my maximum bet, one dollar. I'm not a betting man.
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Okay, I can see that.
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B
Yeah. On the 11th Circuit reversing that dismissal and returning it to the trial court. Hopefully another judge who's not biased for trial. And because Jack Smith was compelled, because he got reelected and DOJ says you can't prosecute a sitting criminal president, he was compelled to dismiss it without prejudice. That case can and I would argue must be rebrought the minute Donald Trump is no longer president. And the law allows that. Let's move up to D.C. the January 6th. This is even better news, I think. When Donald Trump was reelected, what was the posture of that prosecution against Donald Trump, those four indicted felony charges? Judge Tanya Chutkan was litigating the question of whether those four felony charges survived the Supreme Court's presidential immunity ruling because he wasn't acting in his official capacity as the president when he committed those crimes. He was acting as a really a private citizen, a candidate who was seeking to retain power unlawfully after losing an election. That case was dismissed without prejudice. Those are magic words that mean you can re indict him and you can get that case back on track. Those two cases will absolutely survive the presidential immunity ruling because one, the classified documents case, he committed those crimes when he had after he left office. So that doesn't even have an argument supporting presidential immunity. And the January 6 prosecution, he was acting as a candidate, slash private citizen, not as a president. So those two cases must be rebrought, win, lose or draw. And they have to be litigated to their conclusion. So the good news Joanna is. And this is not Pollyanna. This is not magical thinking. Any crime Donald Trump committed this time around while in office, we have to litigate, whether it was an official act of the presidency, part of what the Supreme Court calls his core constitutional functions, or it wasn't. And if it wasn't, he doesn't get presidential immunity and he can be tried on. So there are absolutely legitimate, lawful vehicles to prosecute him and hold him accountable for his crimes. We just have to have the will to do it. We have to try accountability this time around. We didn't do it in 74 with Richard Nixon. We didn't do it in 2021. Quickly and aggressively enough against Donald Trump, we've got a third shot. And if we take that shot, we might make that shot. But if we decline to take the shot, I don't think we get to keep our republic.
- [25:26]
A
Wow. You think it's that serious? So the other question I wanted to ask you about was, you know, we saw two people shot in Minneapolis by ice, Renee Nicole Goode and Alex Pretty, an ICU nurse. What is happening with those cases? Who is being brought to justice? Who is being held accountable? We saw Kristine Ohm, who was head of Homeland Security. She was. Was fired by Donald Trump, but apparently not for the incompetence and the violence in Minneapolis, but more to do with the fact that she spent a quarter of a billion dollars on an ad campaign featuring herself supposedly warning migrants not to come here, and then saying that Donald Trump knew about it when he obviously didn't want to know about it, regardless of whether or not he actually did. So where are we on the case? Because if I were a family member of Alex Pretty or Renee Nicole Goode, I would be beside myself at this point that. That the law seems to be moving so slowly.
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B
We are on a very slow road to accountability in those two cases. But the good news is, again, here's the point of light. I think it's District Attorney Mary Moriarty in Hennepin county is actively investigating the Renee Good murder. And I shouldn't say murder. Homicide. Homicide is death at the hands of another. It doesn't necessarily connote a crime, but murder. And manslaughter does connote a crime. Criminal homicide.
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A
Well, that's an interesting difference.
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B
Yeah, she's in. She's investigating the homicide of Renee Goode, and importantly, she's litigating to try to get the Department of Justice to turn over the evidence in a very real sense. And I never thought I would say this about my beloved professional Home for decades. The Department of Justice. They are obstructing justice by refusing to give the state prosecutorial authorities the evidence in both the Renee Goode homicide and the Alex Preddy homicide. You know, they're almost just like hiding out the killers in the basement of the Department of Justice, figuratively speaking. But District Attorney Mary Moriarty is having none of it. The first thing she did was she made a formal demand of the federal government under what are called the TUI regulations, to provide her the evidence that she needs to conduct an investigation and prosecution. You know, under the state law in Minnesota, they said no. Take a flying leap. So then she filed a lawsuit demanding that a federal judge turn over, order the Department of Justice to turn over the evidence. That litigation is underway. This is not going to happen quickly or easily. But remember, DA Moriarty is also the one who issued the first arrest warrant for an ICE agent for assaulting citizens of Minnesota. And there has been a second arrest warrant issued by another state. I forget Arizona, New Mexico. I forget where it is, but. So she is kind of sawing the accountability wood day after day after day. We're not hearing about it, particularly not in corporate media, but those cases are slowly moving forward. Now, let me tell you, the Alex Preddy case, when I assess the evidence, I was a homicide guy for 22 of my 30 years as a prosecutor in the courts of Washington, D.C. you know, that is colloquial speaking. That's an execution. It is certainly a criminal homicide because what they did there, and we saw it with our own eyes. So they.
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A
Exactly. We saw it.
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B
We saw it propagandized their way out of what happened. They criminally threw a woman to the ground for no legitimate law enforcement reason. That's an assault. When Alex Preddy, as you say, a VA nurse went over to help her. They put him on the ground, face down, they disarmed him, and they shot him in the back. That is an unlawful use of force by the police. So I believe the Minnesota state court authorities will continue to saw the accountability Wood. And I do think ultimately there will be charges and there must be a trial, because the only way to achieve accountability, and this goes for when Donald Trump falls from power, and he will, is all of the crimes that are being committed against the American people by Donald Trump and his corrupt administration. That evidence has to be given to a grand jury and the grand jurors, regular folks from just all around the community. They are the conscience of the community, and they decide whether there's enough evidence to indict if they decide to indict, then the prosecutors go into court. I hope to be part of this effort beginning in 2029, when the rule of law comes back into the light of day, then you try the case, and you deliver the case to the capable hands of 12 citizens sitting in a wooden box as the trial jury, again sitting as the conscience of the community. And Joanna, in my view, at that moment, accountability is over. Because win, lose or draw, we try the case honestly, aggressively, and apolitically, and then we let the members of the community decide. And that is what accountability looks like, regardless of whether it's a conviction, an acquittal, or a hung jury, because they can't unanimously agree on the verdict. That, in my book, is accountability.
- [31:21]
A
And, Glenn, that's fascinating to hear you describe grand juries as the conscience of the community in something like this, where it's clear there has been a political mandate for certain behaviors by government departments or by ice. In this particular case, is there a way of holding the politicians accountable? I mean, could Kristi Noem be held accountable here? We heard her giving press conferences after both deaths. And again, we also saw the death of Renee Nicole Goode. She was in her car, a mom of four, trying to drive away, when someone literally leans into the window and shoots her. Three, if not four times. We heard Kristi Noem come out and say both of them were domestic terrorists. Is this a case where it's literally the person that held the gun and was shooting the gun that is the only person that can be put on trial? Or is there ever a situation where. Well, I guess where the policymaker is also on trial?
- [32:31]
B
That's a great question. The only way you can hold accountable people beyond the actual perpetrator, the person who pulled the trigger, is if you have evidence that it was part of a criminal conspiracy. Now, all a criminal conspiracy is is an agreement between two or more people to commit a particular crime or a crime that is foreseeable as a result of the agreement you enter and one step in the direction of the commission of the crime. We call that an overt act. If there's an agreement and there is one overt act, the crime of criminal conspiracy is complete. Whether or not the ultimate goal of the conspiracy, the crime you agree to commit, whether it is committed or not. Just a very quick example. If three people agree to rob a bank tomorrow and one goes out and steals a car to use as the getaway vehicle, one goes out and gets a gun to use in the robbery, and then the next day they all get Together, they're like, you know what? We probably shouldn't rob the bank. Guess what? They've already committed the crime of conspiracy to rob a bank. Why? They agreed to do it, and they took steps in the direction of the commission of the crime, even if they abandoned it before they go through with it. So, you know, it's. It's a hard question because you have to have a full, fair, aggressive, apolitical investigation to see whether, for example, others are involved in a conspiracy to deprive Americans of their rights, their civil rights, their constitutional rights. And it sure looks like, short of the shootings, the actual fatal shootings, it sure looks like Trump and Nome and company are in a de facto conspiracy to deprive Americans and documented immigrants and undocumented immigrants of their civil rights and their constitutional rights. That will be a massive undertaking by way of criminal investigation. But, you know, some people say it's just too big a criminal mess to get our arms around. And I always say it's too big a criminal mess not to get our arms around if we really care about the rule of law and accountability, particularly by our government officials.
- [34:48]
A
Wow. And also, it's hard to know whether or not that's what people want their politicians to do or whether or not to say, let's put that behind us. Let's focus on rebuilding America for the future. Well, that's a subject we should come back to for another podcast. So at the beginning of this conversation, we were talking about the war and the value to Donald Trump of the war, distracting from a scandal which could bring down his presidency, namely, of course, the Epstein scandal, which he claims he's been completely absolved from all wrongdoing. And yet we know that he was Jeffrey Epstein's best friend for 10, if not 15 years, where the two of them palled around together. There was a suicide note released. The New York Times covered it and had a picture of Jeffrey Epstein's sort of very scrawly, surprisingly scrawly, I thought, handwriting, though who knows what state of mind he was in. If it's a genuine suicide note, which the Justice Department is claiming it is, does this have any bearing at all on anything?
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B
You know, I. It's really hard for me to accept anything that Todd Blanche and this Department of Justice says, because we have seen them lie, we've seen them contradict themselves. Todd Blanch, I mean, recently just directly contradicted himself in the Southern Poverty Law center case, which just is mind blowing to me because you're not supposed to talk about A defendant in a case that you have indicted. And he lied about the Southern Poverty Law center and then changed his tune on Fox News and admitted that he wasn't accurate the first time. So I just don't trust it. I mean, they can put all of the, you know, Epstein information in the public square that they want, and I'm not really going to credit it, unless and until we see all of the Epstein files delivered to a special master, which is an arm of the court, somebody that the judge appoints to get to the bottom of governmental shenanigans. And the special master thoughtfully assesses everything in the Epstein files and then recommends to the judge what should be disclosed under the Epstein files Transparency act, what doesn't need to be disclosed because the law doesn't require it, what can be redacted, what can't be redacted. Unless and until that happens, Joanna, I don't believe anything that Todd Blanche tries to peddle to the American people. So is that an authentic note? Is it not an authentic note? Again, as an old homicide guy who has seen more autopsies than I care to remember, and, you know, was steeped in all things, you know, forensic pathology, medical examiners, rulings on cause and manner of death, I find it very hard to believe Epstein killed himself. I was talking to Julie Brown not too long ago, and, you know, I believe I'm accurate in saying the original medical examiner, forensic pathologist in New York, who actually performed the autopsy, as we say, had hands on the body, had some open questions. But the. After the completion of the autopsy. But then I think it was the chief medical examiner in New York ultimately made the ruling. All of it. When I look at the. The death scene photos that are available from the cell, it all is beyond a curiosity to me. I investigated homicides that were made to look like suicide. I investigated suicides that were, you know, looked eerily like homicides. So, you know, I just don't trust anything coming out of this administration in this Department of Justice. So it was interesting to see that alleged suicide note, but I am. I'm still not persuaded by it.
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A
Wow. Oh, I wasn't expecting you to say that, actually. So last time we talked, Pam Bondi was still Attorney General. She was fired for her mishandling of the Epstein files. You're positing the idea of a master being put in charge of them. How can anyone get their head around these 3 million files? And we're still told there's another 3 million to go. We've now got Todd Blanche, the second of Donald Trump's personal lawyers that he's put in charge of the Department of Justice. The first, obviously being Pam Bondi. When you go to the Department of Justice, there is an enormous banner of Trump's head hanging, or face, I should say, hanging over the side of it as if to make it clear. This is the Donald Trump Department of Justice. It's quite incredible. How do you think the Epstein files can be resolved for people? Because I think a lot of people have just given up at this point. I mean, certainly a lot of the victims I talk to think there will be no justice brought to bear. What even is the way to start? Should we feel confident that people are going through them and finding threads they can make a tapestry out of? What even are we to think about the Epstein files at this point?
- [40:26]
B
Well, we know nobody at the Department of Justice is going through them. If we credit Todd Blanche's assertion that the Epstein files are done, they're behind us, we're not revisiting them, which I think in spirit violates the Epstein files Transparency act, because, as you say, there are reports that are, there are still millions of documents that have not been publicly disclosed, and they are required to be publicly disclosed under the federal law. I'm glad that you brought up Donald Trump ordering that his, you know, a banner of his face kind of be, you know, hanging limply off the Department of Justice. And I, I actually am glad he did that because now there is no mistaking the Department of Justice to be a legitimate law enforcement agency that is doing the work of the American people. It is doing the work of Donald Trump, at least the dirty DOJ leadership, not all of the rank and file. So how do we move forward in the Epstein files matter? I think one possible way is by the lawsuit that our friend, independent journalist Katie Fang just filed because she said, listen, you're violating my first amendment right as a member of the press, freedom of the press, to access documents that by federal law I am allowed to access because they should be disclosed publicly. And if you look at the very end of her 15 page complaint, her lawsuit, she asks the judge, Judge Emmett Sullivan, who has been assigned to preside over this lawsuit, for a special master to be appointed. And I think that's the only hope is if the judge orders a special master to be appointed and orders the Department of Justice to deliver all of the files to the special master. So the special master, kind of as an arm of the judge, can make these decisions in accordance with the Epstein Files Transparency Act. But my lingering concern will be will the Department of Justice turn over all the files in compliance with a court order? Because you mentioned Pam Bondi being fired. And I think we are all drawing reasonable inferences about why Donald Trump threw her under the bus. And I certainly think the Epstein files had something to do with it. I actually think this is my own reasonable inference that when Pam Bondi reluctantly, belatedly disclosed an interview write up of a victim, what's called an FBI 302, and that victim is a 13 to 15 year old girl who asserted directly that Donald Trump sexually assaulted her and then battered her, punched her, that's an assault. More precisely, it's a battery, which is a type of assault. That's what we call direct evidence of crime, not circumstantial evidence. When a victim reports something out of their own mouth that happened to them, that is what the law deems to be direct evidence of a crime. I have to believe, Joanna, that when she belatedly released that evidence, Donald Trump probably said, where is my Roy Cohn? I can't believe my attorney general released that damaging information about me. She's gone. I have a feeling that was part of it. And I think the other part of it was she tried but failed to successfully prosecute Donald Trump's perceived enemies who had committed no crime, really. And because she fell down on both of those tasks, he pulled Todd Blanche in off the bench. And the first thing Todd Blanch says is, you know, if Donald Trump fires me, I will say, thank you, sir, I love you. I think the message was sent that Todd Blanche will do anything, law be damned, to make sure, you know, he is doing Donald Trump's dirty work. So, you know, you know, I do have some hope that we can make progress on the Epstein files transparency act front, but it's going to be a long uphill battle. I will say Judge Emmett Sullivan, the presiding judge who also presided over Mike Flynn's case, he's up to the task. He is a fierce jurist. He is something of a lion in criminal justice circles in the courts of Washington D.C. and I look forward to Katie Fang's litigation.
- [45:02]
A
Well, and we should point out you can follow Katie Fang on Substack, where she has a very popular A stack, I guess we call it, and it's a very interesting lawsuit that she's brought and yeah, let's hope it brings some kind of restitution for, for the victims. Glenn, it's always interesting to talk to you. I highly recommend your own channel, Justice Matters. You really get to the nub of it and you talk, you talk with obviously great expertise and experience about things that we never expected to need to talk about in America. I'm sure you thought you were going to go into retirement with your six kids and your grandchildren and lecture from time to time. You never expected the urgency of this moment. But you remind us all that it's not Donald Trump's Justice Department, it's the American Justice Department, and we need to make sure that it stays that way. Thank you so much for joining us and very much hope you will come back and keep us up to date with what's happening in Minneapolis. Keep us up to date with what's happening with the Epstein files. Keep us up to date with what's happening with the illegal war in Iran. It's remarkable. But thank you so much for shedding light. And as you say, there are many points of light in what can feel like a dark moment.
- [46:28]
B
Well, Joanna, thank you for having me back and I hope we do it again.
- [46:36]
A
Wow. I didn't expect Glenn Kirschner to be a conspiracy theorist. I suppose that's what we call people who doubt that Jeffrey Epstein committed suicide. I, I found the note. Well, very strange. That handwriting is super bizarre, but again, who knows what your handwriting is like if you're, if you're writing a suicide note. Anyway, I love having Glenn on. He explains the law so clearly. He understands it and he's got real practical working knowledge of it, too. He's seen so many juries, he's seen so many homicides as he was talking about that he really just brings real life experience as well as the theory of the law to bear on. Well, on all things, really. If you have been. Thank you for joining us. A big shout out to our production crew. Ryan Murray, Rachel Passer, Heather Passaro and Neil Rosenhaus. I will be back tomorrow with Inside Trump's Head and Michael Wolff, who else? Have a good evening. So the good news is we have so many bebeast tier members now, there are too many names to read out. And we really appreciate your support. Thanks to our production team, Ryan Murray, Rachel Passer, Heather Passaro, Neil Rosenhaus.