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- [00:00]
Commercial Narrator
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- [01:05]
Ben Meisellus
Talk about the types of documents that Donald Trump fears the most in the Epstein files. And it's documents like these where Democratic Congressmember Jamie Raskin who got access to that special DOJ facility where they're showing the unredacted files. But as I'll talk about in a little bit, those are the unredacted files from the redacted files that were produced, but the unredacted are still redacted. And then there's another group of files that just millions of documents which either have been destroyed or are being hidden. So I want you all to follow that. But in any event, when Jamie Raskin and other Congress members were able to go to this DOJ facility, they found documents like this. Here's how Congressmember Raskin describes it.
- [01:50]
Congressmember Jamie Raskin
The Department of Justice has not sent forth its so called privilege log, so it's not explained yet why there might be certain redactions that have been made. I saw one document which was an email that was sent by Jeffrey Epstein to Ghislaine Maxwell which was the forward of an email that he had received from some of his lawyers giving an account of a conversation between Epstein lawyers and Trump lawyers and others about what had taken place during that 2009 period. It was during the period of the 2009 investigation and Epstein's lawyers synopsized and quoted Trump as saying that that Jeffrey Epstein was not a member of his club at Mar A Lago, but he was a guest at Mar a Lago and he had never been asked to leave. And that was redacted for some indeterminate, inscrutable reason. I know it seems to be at odds with some things that President Trump has been saying recently about how he had kicked Jeffrey Epstein out of his club or asked him to leave. And this was at least one report that appears to contradict it, but contradicts.
- [03:14]
Ben Meisellus
It also in a huge way. Why would that document be redacted? What's the privilege between Ghislaine Maxwell and Jeffrey Epstein emailing each other? There's no privilege there. But let's ask Pam Bondi what her thoughts are. Not about the stock market going over 50,000, but about the COVID up of a child sex trafficking ring. Dan Goldman, Congress member from New York, cross examined Bondi about that exact document and watch her response.
- [03:42]
Pam Bondi
I also found an email that I have right here from Jeffrey Epstein to Ghislaine Maxwell that was unredacted and it included notes of statements that Donald Trump made about his prior relationship with Jeffrey Epstein. Now, there is no reason for this to be hidden from the American people. There is no privilege. There is no attorney client privilege. And I see you're checking with your staff and I can assure you staff, this is not under attorney client privilege because it was sent from Jeffrey Epstein to Ghislaine Maxwell. Will you commit to publicly providing the unredacted version of this so that the American people can understand the extent of Donald Trump's lies about his relationship with Jeffrey Epstein?
- [04:29]
Commercial Narrator
You're about as good of a lawyer today as you were when you tried to impeach President Trump in 2016. Have you apologized for that in 2019?
- [04:37]
Pam Bondi
So will you, will you un redact this? Will you unradact this?
- [04:39]
Commercial Narrator
Will lead counsel on that privilege.
- [04:41]
Pam Bondi
I'm asking you, will you un redact this?
- [04:43]
Ben Meisellus
Privileged.
- [04:44]
Pam Bondi
Privileged. Of course. I look forward to discussing this.
- [04:48]
Ben Meisellus
More privileged objections sustained on my own. It's ridiculous stuff, but it's deeply serious as well. I want to call in Congressmember Jamie Raskin, ranking member of the House Judiciary Committee, who you all saw at that committee hearing that Pam Bondi, trainwreck Congressman, I want to talk about that hearing, but let's talk about this document because I've been laser focused on this specific document because it seems to contradict, surprise, surprise, everything that Donald Trump's been saying and it's, and it was redacted from the public. But you were able to see it. Can you talk to us about that document?
- [05:21]
Congressmember Jamie Raskin
Well, I think it was the first substantive document that I got to and I think I was the first member to show up for the big opportunity to go after the unredacted materials. And, you know, there are thousands and thousands of such documents in there. And it struck me immediately that it was at odds with what Donald Trump has been saying, because he's been saying, you know, the minute I learned something went wrong or the minute he stole one of my employees, you know, the story changes, of course, but I sent him off, you know, I cut him off and so on. And this would seem to contradict that. At least what he said in that telephone interview was quite the reverse, which is he was not a member of his club, but he was a guest at the club and he was never sent away. It sounds like he was always welcome there. And remember, they were best friends for more than a decade. So this whole process, Ben, has been set up as a massive cover up. It's not designed to get at the truth. It's designed with just multiple layers of obfuscation and trap doors so that it's going to be very difficult for us to arrive at any coherent sense of what actually took place, even in terms of the crimes being committed against girls and women, much less the big picture, money relationships and power relationships that structured this conspiracy or these overlapping conspiracies.
- [06:49]
Ben Meisellus
As a former litigator, first off, the idea that there would be any type of attorney client privilege when no attorneys are even copied on there, or deliberative process privilege, when Epstein sending an email to Ghislaine, who's the is, does they work at the FBI? I mean, what are they each other's attorneys? Like, what the hell are we even talking about there? But then you go, you know, another step, you know, as a litigator, I look at this message as it being forwarded between Ghislaine and Epstein to basically imply. And the fact that there's really nothing else written in it. Just the message seems to be, Trump's playing ball. He's in 20 minutes, he said what we wanted him to say and nothing else had to even be said other than look what our lawyers are saying that Trump did to avoid having his deposition taken. Cuz he's not giving them what they want. I know, I read it that way. How'd you read it?
- [07:47]
Congressmember Jamie Raskin
I read it exactly the same way. On the privileged question, though, I would just take your point, which is right one step further, which is that federal law trumps any state privilege in any event. The whole idea that somebody says, oh well, there was an attorney client privilege, even though the attorneys weren't involved, even though this was being released to a third party who was not part of any potential privilege, thereby destroying the whole thing. Leaving all of that aside, there's a federal law that compels them to turn everything over. And the only thing that must be redacted is the names of the victims. And, of course, in more than 100 cases that we know of, on tens of thousands of pages, there were releases of the names, the addresses, the phone numbers, in some cases, even the nude images of people who should have been redacted and who were covered by what Congress passed.
- [08:47]
Ben Meisellus
When we talk about a privilege log for our audience out there that may not know what that word means, it's basically like a spreadsheet that includes the document number, and then it gives a description why it was that this document's not being produced. And because if it is a privileged document, you're not going to specifically write out all the specifics about what's said in the document, but you give a little description. This is privilege because of attorney client privilege between this person and that person, and you give a description. And we do that all the time in litigation. That's just part of what you do if you're withholding documents. The Epstein Transparency act requires a report to be prepared precisely on these redactions. And part of the COVID up here is that that report hasn't been produced. And they don't even care that it hasn't been produced. Like, it's literally built into the law. Give us a report why you're withholding. And they're like, yeah, we're just not going to do that.
- [09:40]
Congressmember Jamie Raskin
Yeah. So look, it came out at the end of the hearing because of a photographer's capture of some of the papers in Attorney General Bunny's burn book that they basically had been tracking. Our use of their four computers to look into the unredacted version of the 3 million out of 6 million documents that were released. Okay. And this was in the case of Pramila Jayapal, where they had given to Attorney General Bondi a document that said Pramila Jayapal's search history. And presumably they did the same thing on each one of us. In other words, they were looking at what we were looking at before she came in to testify. So they'd be prepared to answer anything that we posed to the Attorney General. Well, that's obviously a massive attack on the separation of powers, on our ability to conduct oversight within our legislative responsibilities. An insult to the speech and debate clause and the whole thing. So we would like to Use this as an opportunity for a reset where we go back to basics and say, look, this isn't working the way this is happening right now. This is not a game of hide and go seek. You've got to turn all these materials over. And we're going to need a completely new methodology for working this so we can get our staffs involved. We're not allowed to have our staff involved. And there are all kinds of Supreme Court cases that say that, that members of Congress depend on their staffs. Some describe them as our alter egos because we have so many competing responsibilities. We need staff to help on stuff like this, and we need staff to be involved and we need much greater access than we have now. But fundamentally, as you were saying, we need an explanation for why something like 200,000 pages have been redacted of the 3 million they turned over. And then what the hell happened to the other 3 million documents? The DOJ saying, well, it's duplicative. Well, if it's duplicative, just turn it over. But we know there's stuff in there that's not duplicative, including the memos relating to victim interviews. People would call up and say, I've been the victim of human trafficking, I've been the victim of rape. And there's a memo made about it. A lot of those are in there. And the reason we know those are in the 3 million withheld documents is because there are women who are survivors who are saying they cannot find them in the 3 million documents that have been turned over. There's also in there various prosecutor memoranda that were created for the original 60 count federal indictment that was traded away unbelievably for one sweetheart plea of a state count of solicitation to prostitution. So they had a huge, gigantic federal prosecution ready to go, blowing the COVID on the whole thing. And somehow it all got swept under the rug back with Alex Acosta and Alan Dershowitz and that team working with, you know, people in the doj. And I mean, we really need to try to reconstruct what happened there, right?
- [13:02]
Ben Meisellus
I mean, normally in a litigation, we would take the deposition of a PMK or a pmq, a person most qualified or post and person most knowledgeable to get the universe of documents and then direct our document request once we know the full universe. And then we would issue subpoenas to various other sources, see if things are being, you know, and there's a whole process there. So we're trying to now reconstruct a universe of documents where the DOJ is also serving as their own discovery referee and making these wild privilege claims that aren't real. But here's what I think we gather and let's let the audience know. 3 million documents have been produced thus far. And those can be referred to as the redacted. 3 million, partially redacted. These 3 million that we've seen you have access TO Technically, those 3 million now in this silo, which is very difficult to search, which we refer to as now the unredacted. But there are still redactions within that because the FBI back in March made redactions. So they took away one layer of it. But the FBI layer of redactions, there's still stuff that you can see there, but that's those 3 million corresponding. However, there still may be 3 to 5 million more additional documents that you don't even have access to. That the DOJ is just saying we're not turning these over because we either don't think they're relevant or non responsive or they've made the determination that these don't qualify for the Epstein Transparency Act. And those aren't even stuff that you've reviewed in the silo. Those are somewhere else. And who knows if documents are being destroyed, if there's a literal burn book where they're being burned. But that. And that could be 25, 50 million pages, because a document can be multiple pages. Do I kind of accurately describe the universe there?
- [15:00]
Congressmember Jamie Raskin
That is the accurate universe of all the different levels of deletion and redaction in this, the most transparent presidency in American history as it relates to the Epstein files.
- [15:11]
Ben Meisellus
So what do we do? I mean, I saw when Massie and Khanna went to federal judges and said, can you appoint a discovery referee? Which I think is a great idea. But the judges said, you know what, we can't do it in the criminal case. But you know, we're not taking any position about if a lawsuit is filed. The DOJ claims you can't file any because the Epstein Transparency act doesn't have a private cause of action. The built in. They say there's no enforcement mechanism, no judges can touch this. No one yet, as I've seen, has tried to kind of bring that lawsuit. And then you have FOIA requests that are out there in FOIA law. So what do we actually do?
- [15:51]
Congressmember Jamie Raskin
Well, you're correct that the original language of the statute does not include a private right of action. So it also doesn't necessarily give Congress standing to go to court to vindicate our rights or the public's rights under the Epstein Transparency Act. So either we're gonna have to legislate again or we're gonna have to give it a try and see how a court responds. Because we saw from Attorney General Bondi's just dumbfounding, obstructionist appearance before the Judiciary Committee, she has no interest in, in doing anything to move the ball forward in terms of our understanding of the crimes. And she's demonstrating absolutely no sympathy or interest in the plight of the victims and survivors at all.
- [16:41]
Ben Meisellus
So what we could be seeing potentially is another discharge petition that would probably have to be instituted that basically says, we're making an amendment to the Epstein Transparency Act. We've now created a cause of action. Members of Congress can bring the case. Something like that is possible.
- [16:58]
Congressmember Jamie Raskin
Something like that is possible. I mean, and we'll see. At that point, of course, the Republicans were drag kicking and screaming to vote for the Epstein files Transparency Act. They did everything they could to kill it. And then when we brought over enough Republicans, including Marjorie Taylor Greene and Nancy Mason, Lauren Boebert, as well as Tom Massey, at that point, they could see, they could read the writing on the wall, they could see where it was going. And then they all decided they would vote for it so that they would not, you know, get challenged back home or over it. And then Trump ran out in front of the parade and said, oh, yes, I've been leading this all along. Well, that's a joke. And then, you know, every. The whole world could see that Bondi is actively sabotaging and sandbagging our ability to get any information out. So I think we're going to need to keep all the pressure we can on this, at the same time understanding that there are other ways that information can come out and will come out. And that is because of this growing and growingly fierce survivors community.
- [18:03]
Ben Meisellus
Final question. When I, during the, during whatever I even want to call that, I was called testimony of Pambandi, but I truly don't even know what I was observing. You know, a lot of ad hominem attacks directed at you. She goes, she goes, you know what, Raskin? You're not a real lawyer. Raskin, you're not a real lawyer. You know, at first I'm thinking to myself, if there's anybody who's a real lawyer up there, it's Raskin. I mean, our Harvard law constitutional law scholar. Then I'm thinking to myself, you know, you don't have to say whatever you want to say, but the guy next to you never passed the bar exam. Who Leads the House Judiciary Committee in Jim Jordan. I'm like, so literally, the non real licensed lawyer is the person the Republicans have chairing that committee, which is a whole. Which is a whole other thing. But how do you deal with that? I mean, how do you respond to that in that moment? Not to take the bait, to stay focused on the mission, but also knowing that you're speaking to someone who's beclowning herself?
- [18:56]
Congressmember Jamie Raskin
Yes. Oh, man. Well, that's gonna take another hour to get through all that. Just to be fair to Jim Jordan, he certainly never passed the bar. I'm not certain he ever took the bar. It's not clear to me whether or not he did. And I say that because my dad, who was a dazzlingly brilliant man and a concert pianist, decided he wanted to.
- [19:18]
Ben Meisellus
Go to law school.
- [19:18]
Congressmember Jamie Raskin
And he went to the University of Chicago Law School. He went for a very specific purpose. He wanted to figure out whether law could end war. And this was in the wake of the Holocaust and Nazism and fascism, but anyway. And he skipped every class that wasn't related to that, to the point where the professors would call on him first and everybody would laugh, and then they would start the business of the day. Anyway, my dad graduated from law school and he never took the bar because he wasn't interested in being a practicing lawyer. So I don't hold that against anybody. I don't have Pam Bondi's snob reaction about people who are not lawyers, whether or not they went to law school in the first place. And a lot of people have risen to my defense by citing where I went to law school and where she went to law school. Look, I've been very proud of Harvard these days for standing up against Trump. That's great. I was ashamed of Harvard for their complicity with apartheid South Africa. And when we were students there, we were fighting to get Harvard to divest. And there are lots of professors there whom I loved and whom I love, like Larry Tribe, who was my constitutional law professor, like Randy Kennedy, like Duncan Kennedy, like Martha Minow. They're people who I look up very highly to. But then there are people like Alan Dershowitz who are there. And Dershowitz, I think, is just a walking scandal in the legal profession in terms of the things that he's done and the things that he said. And I think that the whole Epstein debacle shows that only further. So look, all of which is to say when she says you're not a real lawyer or you're a washed up lawyer or whatever, I mean, again, all that stuff, we have to try to disregard the ad hominem attacks, which we understand are a logical and rhetorical fallacy, and instead look at the underlying meaning. And what makes somebody a real lawyer? What makes somebody a good lawyer or a great lawyer? Well, I tried to gesture at that in my opening remarks, in my opening statement, where I said, you have to identify with the people who are the victims of injustice and criminal violence and not with their perpetrators. And if all you do is serve the people in power, which is what Pam Bondi does, then you are not a good lawyer, much less a great lawyer. You're just a hired gun and you're willing to do anything for people who will implicate you in shameful actions. And unfortunately, that's where she is with Donald Trump and with Kristi Noem and the things she's defending. American citizens being gunned down by their own government and this massive cover up that goes back now a couple of decades in terms of a global international human trafficking ring. And so I would say to her, if you're gonna stand with the victimizers and not the victims, then you're not a real lawyer.
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Ben Meisellus
Well, I'll just say this one thing, too. I don't hold it against anybody for not taking the bar exam or even not passing the bar exam. So I don't wanna be this bar exam. But I will say this, that doesn't mean you have to serve Congressmember Raskin as the chair of the House Judiciary Committee. And the example of your father, I don't recall him being the number one person on the Judiciary. I'm just. I'll give you my preference. The person who has the most important job in the Judiciary Committee, like, dealing with, like, laws. I want. I want that person to pass the bar exam. That's where.
- [22:56]
Congressmember Jamie Raskin
Yeah, well, sometime I'll come back and I'll talk to you about my dad's career because he was also indicted during the Vietnam War period. My dad worked for President Kennedy and he left President Kennedy and he founded a think tank called the Institute for Policy Studies. But he was indicted with Dr. Spock and William Sloan Coffin and some other people for conspiracy to aid and abet draft evasion. And my dad's position was that it was an illegal war in Vietnam and had never been declared and there were war crimes taking place. And he was the one who really upheld the banner of legality and international law in that trial. And ultimately, all of them had their conviction, their convictions dissolved. But my dad was the one defendant who was acquitted by the jury because he essentially put he and you know, one of his lawyers, Telfer Taylor, who was the war crimes tribunal lawyer, of course. But they put the government on trial for being at odds against the rule of law. So I think it's important to stand up for the rule of law. Obviously, you don't have to be a lawyer to do it. And as we've seen from all the lawyers swirling around Donald Trump, whether it is Ed Martin or it's Pam Bondi or it's Rudy Giuliani, there are a lot of lawyers who can do some very discreditable and outrageous and unethical things. And then there are a lot of people who can stand up for the law and the Constitution who decided never to go to law school or never had the opportunity to.
- [24:29]
Ben Meisellus
Well, two great lawyers who are going to be very jealous after this interview, Harry Lippman and Michael Popak, because the new Legal AF with Ben Meisellus and Congressmember Jamie Raskin is coming soon. My new co host, Congressmember Jamie Raskin. I appreciate all the work you're doing in all seriousness as the ranking member of the House Judiciary Committee, and thanks for fighting back, pushing back, and we're grateful for all the work you do.
- [24:53]
Congressmember Jamie Raskin
Thank you, Ben. And thanks for what you do every day. The press is not the enemy to the people. You're the people's best friend and you're a great example of that.
- [25:01]
Ben Meisellus
Thank you so much everybody. Hit subscribe let's get to 6 million. Want to stay plugged in? Become a subscriber to our substack@midasplus.com you'll.
- [25:08]
Congressmember Jamie Raskin
Get daily recaps from Ron Filipkowski, ad.
- [25:11]
Ben Meisellus
Free episodes of our podcast and more exclusive content Only available@midasplus.com.
- [25:20]
Commercial Narrator
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