Latest / The Vault: The Epstein Files / The Epstein Investigation: Why an Independent Special Counsel Is Long Overdue (Part 1) (10/29/26)

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The Epstein Investigation: Why an Independent Special Counsel Is Long Overdue (Part 1) (10/29/26) · The Vault: The Epstein Files

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: What's up everyone and welcome to another episode of the
• 0:03
  Speaker 1: Epstein Chronicles. There comes a point when enough is enough.
• 0:09
  Speaker 1: When the excuses become so fucking ridiculous, the explanations become
• 0:13
  Speaker 1: so insulting, and the conduct of the people supposedly entrusted
• 0:17
  Speaker 1: with enforcing the law become so outrageous that sitting back
• 0:21
  Speaker 1: and pretending any of this is normal is no longer
• 0:24
  Speaker 1: an option. And when it comes to Jeffrey Epstein, we
• 0:27
  Speaker 1: passed that point a long goddamn time ago. Yet here
• 0:30
  Speaker 1: we are, nearly two decades after the American people first
• 0:34
  Speaker 1: got a glimpse of the cesspool surrounding this man, still
• 0:38
  Speaker 1: dealing with the same arrogance, the same obstruction, the same
• 0:41
  Speaker 1: carefully rehearsed bullshit, and the same parade of government officials
• 0:45
  Speaker 1: who apparently believe that accountability is something reserved exclusively for
• 0:49
  Speaker 1: people who don't have enough money or enough powerful friends
• 0:53
  Speaker 1: to avoid it. And what makes it even more infuriating
• 0:57
  Speaker 1: is the absolute contempt these people seem to have for
• 1:00
  Speaker 1: the intelligence of the American public. They don't even bother
• 1:03
  Speaker 1: coming up with convincing excuses anymore. They just tell us
• 1:06
  Speaker 1: whatever the hell they want, contradict themselves whenever it becomes convenient,
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  Speaker 1: and then act personally offended when somebody has the audacity
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  Speaker 1: to point out that their story doesn't make a lick
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  Speaker 1: of sense. We're supposed to swallow it, smile politely, and
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  Speaker 1: thank them for whatever scraps of information they decided were
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  Speaker 1: worthy of receiving. We're supposed to forget the history, ignore
• 1:28
  Speaker 1: the contradictions, and pretend that the institutions responsible for overseeing
• 1:32
  Speaker 1: this absolute catastrophe have somehow earned the benefit of the doubt.
• 1:37
  Speaker 1: And if you refuse to play along, well, then you're
• 1:39
  Speaker 1: the problem. You're the conspiracy theorist. You're the unreasonable one.
• 1:44
  Speaker 1: You're the person who simply refuses to move on. Move
• 1:48
  Speaker 1: on from what exactly? From the extraordinary deal Jeffrey Epstein
• 1:52
  Speaker 1: received in Florida? from the years of institutional incompetence and
• 1:56
  Speaker 1: staggering failures that followed, from the endless questions about who
• 2:00
  Speaker 1: knew what, who made which decisions, and why certain avenues
• 2:03
  Speaker 1: of investigation were allowed to wither on the vine? Or
• 2:07
  Speaker 1: are we supposed to move on from the spectacle of
• 2:09
  Speaker 1: government officials standing in front of the American people with
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  Speaker 1: straight faces, assuring us that everything has been handled appropriately,
• 2:17
  Speaker 1: as though repeating that phrase enough times somehow transforms it
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  Speaker 1: into the truth? Because I have to tell you, I'm
• 2:24
  Speaker 1: getting pretty goddamn tired of watching these people confuse their
• 2:27
  Speaker 1: ability to avoid answering questions with their ability to answer them.
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  Speaker 1: And don't think for one second that my disgust is
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  Speaker 1: reserved for one political party either. There's plenty of blame
• 2:38
  Speaker 1: to go around in this filthy-ass saga, and anybody who's
• 2:42
  Speaker 1: been paying attention since the beginning knows it. We've watched
• 2:45
  Speaker 1: Republicans and Democrats alike discover their outrage whenever the political
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  Speaker 1: winds make it advantageous, only to develop an astonishing case
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  Speaker 1: of selective amnesia when those same questions threaten to become
• 2:58
  Speaker 1: uncomfortable for their own side. We've watched people who couldn't
• 3:01
  Speaker 1: have cared less about Jeffrey Epstein suddenly reinvent themselves as
• 3:05
  Speaker 1: crusaders for accountability. And we've watched others who once demanded
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  Speaker 1: answers become strangely quiet when the spotlight turned in an
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  Speaker 1: inconvenient direction. And in my opinion, it's a disgusting spectacle.
• 3:19
  Speaker 1: And I'm not interested in pretending otherwise just because somebody
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  Speaker 1: happens to be wearing the right political jersey. But something
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  Speaker 1: has changed. And for once, there's an opportunity to demand
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  Speaker 1: something more substantial than another round of congressional grandstanding and
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  Speaker 1: empty promises. The question now is whether anybody in Washington
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  Speaker 1: has the courage to follow through when the cameras are
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  Speaker 1: turned off, the microphones are unplugged, and the investigation starts
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  Speaker 1: getting close to people who are accustomed to never being questioned.
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  Speaker 1: Because that's where all of this tough talk usually goes
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  Speaker 1: to die. Everybody wants accountability until accountability shows up at
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  Speaker 1: their own front door. Everybody wants transparency until the documents
• 4:00
  Speaker 1: start exposing their friends. And everybody wants justice until delivering
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  Speaker 1: it requires confronting the very institutions and individuals whose reputations
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  Speaker 1: they have spent careers protecting. Look, I don't want another
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  Speaker 1: speech about how seriously this matter is being taken. I
• 4:17
  Speaker 1: don't want another carefully managed hearing where the toughest questions
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  Speaker 1: are dodged. the most important witnesses suddenly develop memory problems,
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  Speaker 1: and everybody walks away congratulating themselves for a job well done.
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  Speaker 1: I don't want another government official telling me I should
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  Speaker 1: trust the process that has spent the better part of
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  Speaker 1: 20 years giving me reasons not to trust it. I
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  Speaker 1: want somebody to finally have the guts to start pulling
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  Speaker 1: on the threads, no matter whose expensive suits start coming apart.
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  Speaker 1: I want the people who made these decisions to have
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  Speaker 1: to explain them to somebody who isn't interested in helping
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  Speaker 1: them save face. And I want the entire rotten history
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  Speaker 1: of this affair dragged into the light. Not because some
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  Speaker 1: politician thinks it'll win a few extra votes in November,
• 5:02
  Speaker 1: but because this country has spent far too long accepting
• 5:05
  Speaker 1: a standard of justice that seems to change depending on
• 5:09
  Speaker 1: who is standing in the defendant's shoes. Well, my fucking
• 5:12
  Speaker 1: patience has run out. The excuses have run out. And
• 5:16
  Speaker 1: as far as I'm concerned, the people who have spent
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  Speaker 1: years telling us there's nothing left to see, have run
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  Speaker 1: out of reasons why we should believe a goddamn word
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  Speaker 1: they say. Because the question we're confronting now isn't simply
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  Speaker 1: what Jeffrey Epstein did, or who he surrounded himself with.
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  Speaker 1: It's whether the American justice system is actually capable of
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  Speaker 1: examining its own failures without circling the wagons, protecting its own,
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  Speaker 1: and insulting the intelligence of everyone watching. And judging by
• 5:45
  Speaker 1: what we've witnessed so far, Anybody who thinks we should
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  Speaker 1: just hand these people another blank check and hope for
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  Speaker 1: the best has lost their fucking mind. So today, we're
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  Speaker 1: going to talk about what it would actually take to
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  Speaker 1: break this cycle of excuses, evasions, and institutional self-preservation. And
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  Speaker 1: more importantly, we're going to talk about why the people
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  Speaker 1: who have presided over this disaster should no longer be
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  Speaker 1: allowed to dictate the terms of how it gets examined.
• 6:12
  Speaker 1: Because I've had it with the bullshit. And I suspect...
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  Speaker 1: I'm not the only one. For nearly two decades, the
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  Speaker 1: American people have been asked to accept one insulting explanation
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  Speaker 1: after another for why the Jeffrey Epstein scandal never seems
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  Speaker 1: to produce the accountability its documented history demands. We've been
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  Speaker 1: handed excuses, narrow reviews, selective disclosures, bureaucratic shrugs, and lectures
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  Speaker 1: about why it's supposedly time to move on. We've watched
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  Speaker 1: officials treat legitimate questions about prosecutorial decisions and as though
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  Speaker 1: asking them were itself some kind of offense. We've been
• 6:50
  Speaker 1: told to trust institutions that already had repeated opportunities to
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  Speaker 1: confront Epstein and repeatedly failed to finish the job. And
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  Speaker 1: whenever the pressure becomes unbearable, somebody produces another carefully worded
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  Speaker 1: assurance that all the appropriate procedures have been followed. Appropriate
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  Speaker 1: for whom? Certainly not the girls who were abused while
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  Speaker 1: lawyers and prosecutors bargained over Epstein's future. Certainly not for
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  Speaker 1: a public still trying to understand how an operation involving
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  Speaker 1: so many locations, employees, transactions, and powerful acquaintances escaped meaningful
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  Speaker 1: scrutiny for so long. The demand for a special counsel
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  Speaker 1: is no longer an extravagant response to a notorious case.
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  Speaker 1: It's the bare minimum response to a federal government that
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  Speaker 1: squandered the benefit of the doubt. On October 26th, House
• 7:40
  Speaker 1: Judiciary Committee Democrats finally put that demand in into unmistakable terms.
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  Speaker 1: Led by Jamie Raskin, they called for an independent special
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  Speaker 1: counsel to investigate potential Epstein accomplices and the Justice Department's
• 7:54
  Speaker 1: handling of the evidence. Their report raises grave accusations involving
• 7:59
  Speaker 1: President Trump and claims that federal authorities have suppressed or
• 8:03
  Speaker 1: sidestepped relevant information. Those accusations require genuine testing, not a
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  Speaker 1: declaration of guilt by a congressional committee or and not
• 8:12
  Speaker 1: a blanket dismissal by the president's allies. That is precisely
• 8:16
  Speaker 1: what criminal investigators are supposed to do. Yet the political
• 8:21
  Speaker 1: calendar has already made the issue radioactive, and the danger,
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  Speaker 1: is a serious demand, will be reduced to another election
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  Speaker 1: season slogan. Yo, I'm glad the Democrats finally reached for
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  Speaker 1: the right tool. I'm also furious it took so long
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  Speaker 1: for such a basic proposition to gain organized political force.
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  Speaker 1: The Epstein case was never a mystery that appeared out
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  Speaker 1: of thin air last week. Its failures have been sitting
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  Speaker 1: in plain sight for years, waiting for somebody with authority
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  Speaker 1: to treat them as something other than a public relations nuisance.
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  Speaker 1: And to understand why an independent prosecutor is warranted, go
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  Speaker 1: back to Palm Beach, where police began investigating Epstein in
• 9:03
  Speaker 1: 2005 after a complaint involving a 14-year-old girl. Investigators uncovered
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  Speaker 1: evidence of a wider pattern of abuse, and federal prosecutors
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  Speaker 1: eventually assembled a case that contemplated dozens of charges. In
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  Speaker 1: May of 2007, an assistant U.S. attorney prepared a draft
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  Speaker 1: indictment containing 60 counts. That's not the image of a
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  Speaker 1: case with no leads and no evidentiary substance. It's the
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  Speaker 1: image of a case that required serious charging decisions and
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  Speaker 1: an honest accounting of who had done what. Instead, the
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  Speaker 1: prosecution was steered toward a negotiated settlement that protected Epstein
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  Speaker 1: from federal prosecution for the covered period. The agreement was
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  Speaker 1: signed in September of 2007, and the state plea followed
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  Speaker 1: in 2008. By the time the public appreciated the breadth
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  Speaker 1: of what had happened, Epstein had obtained an extraordinary reprieve
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  Speaker 1: from the federal prosecution. criminal process. The most important question
• 10:02
  Speaker 1: was no longer merely what he had done. It was
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  Speaker 1: why people entrusted with pursuing him had chosen the path
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  Speaker 1: that spared him federal trial. That 2007 agreement is the
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  Speaker 1: original wound that's never healed. It provided for non-prosecution not
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  Speaker 1: only of Epstein, but also of certain potential co-conspirators, a
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  Speaker 1: provision whose practical scope deserves renewed examination. The victims were
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  Speaker 1: not meaningfully brought into the process before the deal of
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  Speaker 1: enormous consequence was reached. Lawyers for Epstein enjoyed access, negotiation,
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  Speaker 1: and bargaining power that the girls he victimized could have
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  Speaker 1: only dreamed of possessing. The department's own later internal review
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  Speaker 1: found that former United States Attorney Alexander Acosta exercised poor judgment,
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  Speaker 1: even as it declined to find professional misconduct. Therein lies
• 10:52
  Speaker 1: the frustration that has poisoned public confidence ever since. An
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  Speaker 1: institution can acknowledge an indefensible outcome while concluding that none
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  Speaker 1: of its officials violated the narrow standards used to evaluate them.
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  Speaker 1: It can identify failures and how victims were treated while
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  Speaker 1: leaving the architecture that produced those failures largely untouched. Now,
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  Speaker 1: that may satisfy an internal review, governed by a particular
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  Speaker 1: disciplinary definition, it does not answer the far more expansive
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  Speaker 1: question of whether every relevant decision, communication, influence, and possible
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  Speaker 1: criminal act was independently examined. The distinction between a disciplinary
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  Speaker 1: review and a criminal investigation matters more than a political
• 11:35
  Speaker 1: performer's arguing about Epstein's care to admit. The Office of
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  Speaker 1: Professional Responsibility examined whether department lawyers breached particular standards, during
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  Speaker 1: the Florida Resolution. A special counsel could pursue a different mission,
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  Speaker 1: including potential obstruction, false statements, unlawful interference, and offenses connected
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  Speaker 1: to the broader trafficking network, wherever the evidence and statutes permit.
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  Speaker 1: That's not permission to invent crimes simply because the first
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  Speaker 1: inquiry produced an unsatisfying answer. It is permission to investigate
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  Speaker 1: criminal predicates rather than treat the boundaries of an old
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  Speaker 1: professional responsibility review as the boundaries of the truth. The
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  Speaker 1: prosecutors who negotiated the deal are witnesses to their own decisions.
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  Speaker 1: The supervisors who approved it may also be witnesses. The
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  Speaker 1: people who communicated with Epstein's defense team may possess records
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  Speaker 1: that have never received a genuinely independent examination. The chain
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  Speaker 1: of decision-making deserves to be reconstructed document by document, person
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  Speaker 1: by person, and meeting by meeting. No office should get
• 12:40
  Speaker 1: to grade its own performance and then pronounce that the
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  Speaker 1: subject is now closed. For nearly two decades, the American
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  Speaker 1: people have been subjected to one of the most insulting
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  Speaker 1: displays of institutional arrogance in the history of the Department
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  Speaker 1: of Justice. And the Jeffrey Epstein scandal remains a living,
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  Speaker 1: breathing embodiment of everything that is rotten about the American
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  Speaker 1: system of justice. We've been lied to, stonewalled, patronized, and
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  Speaker 1: lectured by government officials who seem to believe that the
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  Speaker 1: American people are too stupid to recognize when somebody's pissing
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  Speaker 1: on their shoes and telling them it's raining. We've watched
• 13:18
  Speaker 1: one administration after another promise accountability only to retreat behind
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  Speaker 1: bureaucratic excuses whenever the investigation threatens to become genuinely uncomfortable.
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  Speaker 1: We've been told that the matter is settled, that the
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  Speaker 1: investigation is finished, that all relevant evidence has been examined,
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  Speaker 1: and that anybody demanding further answers is somehow participating in
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  Speaker 1: a conspiracy theory. Meanwhile, the documented history of prosecutorial failures,
• 13:45
  Speaker 1: extraordinary legal accommodations, and unresolved questions continue to grow more
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  Speaker 1: damning with every passing year. Now the Democrats on the
• 13:54
  Speaker 1: House Judiciary Committee finally calling for the appointment of an
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  Speaker 1: independent special counsel were hearing something that should have been
• 14:00
  Speaker 1: demanded years ago. And it's about damn time. Although the
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  Speaker 1: fact that it's taken this long is itself an indictment
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  Speaker 1: of the whole political establishment. Enough of the half-measures. Enough
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  Speaker 1: of the carefully choreographed congressional theater and enough of allowing
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  Speaker 1: the very institutions responsible for the failures to decide whether
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  Speaker 1: their own conduct deserves further investigation. The American people don't
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  Speaker 1: need another committee hearing where witnesses pretend they can't remember
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  Speaker 1: what happened and they certainly don't need another self-congratulatory press
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  Speaker 1: conference from the DOJ. What this country needs is an
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  Speaker 1: independent criminal investigation with the authority, resources, and institutional distance
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  Speaker 1: necessary to rip the entire mask off this scandal and
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  Speaker 1: expose whatever is hiding underneath. All right, folks, we're going
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  Speaker 1: to wrap up episode one right here. In the next episode,
• 14:53
  Speaker 1: we're going to pick up where we left off. All
• 14:56
  Speaker 1: the information that goes with this episode can be found
• 14:59
  Speaker 1: in the description box.