Latest / The Epstein Chronicles / "We Don’t Trust the DOJ”: Inside the Push for a Special Master Over Epstein Records

Transcript

"We Don’t Trust the DOJ”: Inside the Push for a Special Master Over Epstein Records · The Epstein Chronicles

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: What's up, everyone, and welcome to another episode of the
• 0:03
  Epstein Chronicles. One of the biggest issues with the Epstein
• 0:07
  Discharge petition and the law that followed it is that
• 0:10
  the law itself had no sort of mechanism to deal
• 0:15
  with people who were not being compliant. And now, of
• 0:18
  course we find ourselves in a position where the DOJ is, surprise, surprise,
• 0:24
  not being compliant. And of course there's no teeth within
• 0:28
  the bill itself or the law that holds anybody accountable
• 0:33
  for their bullshit, and the Justice Department is certainly aware
• 0:36
  of that, and that's why they continue to operate the
• 0:39
  way they do. They know there's not gonna be any
• 0:41
  trouble for them down the road. They know there's not
• 0:43
  any kind of enforcement mechanism put in place or on
• 0:46
  the books, so they can pretty much do whatever they want. Oh, sure,
• 0:51
  they're gonna have to deal with some blowback, they're gonna
• 0:53
  have to deal with people like you and I asking
• 0:56
  questions and wondering what the fuck they're doing. But as
• 0:59
  long as nobody wild with any power does anything to
• 1:01
  stop them, they're going to continue doing what they're doing.
• 1:04
  And that's because they know that if they just waited out,
• 1:07
  there's going to be other disasters that people are going
• 1:09
  to focus on. First we had Venezuela, then we just
• 1:14
  had that horrible situation in Minnesota where that young lady
• 1:19
  was shot by the Ice agents. And what they're banking
• 1:21
  on is that you're too focused on all the other
• 1:23
  tragedies in the world to stay focused on this. But
• 1:27
  I think that's their biggest miscalculation because people can chew
• 1:32
  gum and walk at the same time. People can focus
• 1:35
  on multiple tragedies at the same time. So if they
• 1:37
  think they're going to use these other crisis as some
• 1:40
  kind of shield to avoid being transparent or to stop
• 1:45
  them from following through with what the law demands, they
• 1:48
  have another thing coming. And as you all know, I've
• 1:51
  been calling for a special counsel from the very beginning,
• 1:54
  and now Rocanna and Thomas Massey are looking to appoint
• 1:59
  a special Master to oversee the whole process. And that's
• 2:03
  because everybody knows that you can't trust the Justice Department
• 2:06
  to do the right thing, so now they must be
• 2:09
  compelled to do so. Unfortunately, I don't think a Special
• 2:13
  Master goes far enough. Today's article is from The Guardian
• 2:18
  and the headline, US congressmen ask judge to appoint official
• 2:21
  the force release of all Epstein files. This article was
• 2:26
  authored by Maya Young. Two US House of Representative members
• 2:31
  have asked a federal judge to appoint the Special Master
• 2:34
  to compel the Justice Department to release all files related
• 2:37
  to Jeffrey Epstein, the disgraced financier and convicted sex offender.
• 2:42
  On Thursday, Democratic Representative Rocana of California and Republican Representative
• 2:48
  Thomas Massey of Kentucky asked US District Judge Paul Engelmeyer
• 2:52
  to release the full Epstein files as required by the
• 2:55
  Epstein Files Transparency Act. And they might be onto something here.
• 3:00
  Judge Angelmeyers had enough of the bullshit, and you can
• 3:02
  tell by the memorandums that he's filed and the opinions
• 3:06
  that he has given throughout this case. This is a
• 3:09
  man that has seen the nonsense up close, and he
• 3:13
  knows that the DJ is playing games. He knows the
• 3:16
  DJ was playing games when they asked for the Grand
• 3:18
  Jerry documents instead of just releasing what they had. So
• 3:22
  at this point, it's not like there's a lack of evidence,
• 3:25
  there's a lack of willpower so who's going to step
• 3:28
  up and do the right thing? And unfortunately nobody's done that.
• 3:34
  We've had a lot of lip service. But where are
• 3:36
  the files? The law demands that these files are released
• 3:40
  by December nineteenth, and we only get twelve five hundred documents.
• 3:44
  So yeah, I'd say that the Department of Justice has
• 3:48
  been tested and found lacking. Criticizing the Justice Department for
• 3:53
  not releasing the full set of files on last year's
• 3:56
  December nineteenth deadline, Conna and Massey in a letters the
• 4:00
  conduct by the DOJ is not only a flagrant violation
• 4:04
  of the mandatory disclosure obligations under the Epstein Files Transparency Act,
• 4:09
  but as this Court is recognized in its previous rulings,
• 4:12
  the behavior by the DOJ has caused serious trauma to survivors.
• 4:17
  And that's really what it comes down to. You know,
• 4:21
  all of us are following along with the news, right Well,
• 4:24
  the survivors, they lived it, and they're being re traumatized
• 4:28
  every time these scumbags don't do the right thing. Instead,
• 4:32
  all we gets a bunch of lip service and a
• 4:34
  bunch of people play politics. As the leads of the
• 4:37
  Epstein Files Transparency Act, we have urgent and grave concerns
• 4:41
  about the DOJ's failure to comply with the Act, as
• 4:44
  well as the department's violation of the court order, the
• 4:48
  representative said, adding put simply, the DOJ cannot be trusted
• 4:52
  with making mandatory disclosures under the Act. I think that's
• 4:57
  the most glaring truth that's been told. Who trusts the
• 5:01
  DOJ to handle this correctly? And make no mistake, I'm
• 5:05
  not just talking about Trump's DJ, I'm talking about the
• 5:08
  DOJ in general. When it comes to Epstein. They don't
• 5:11
  want to talk about him because he's one of theirs.
• 5:14
  Oh sure, maybe not an employee of the US federal government,
• 5:18
  but certainly an asset. And if he wasn't, do you
• 5:21
  think they'd be going through the motions the way they are.
• 5:24
  Do you think they'd be causing themselves all this extra
• 5:28
  pain and suffering if you will, of course not. If
• 5:31
  Epstein was what they tell us, he is, just a
• 5:34
  lone predator with some disgusting proclivities, then they'd be falling
• 5:38
  all over themselves to release that documentation. But instead, here
• 5:42
  we are fighting tooth andel to get the DOJ to
• 5:46
  comply with a goddamn court order. Pointing to a Justice
• 5:49
  Department core filing earlier this week stating that two hundred
• 5:53
  and eighty five documents have been released, marking less than
• 5:58
  one percent of all related file and that two million
• 6:01
  more are under review. Conna and Massey cast a doubt
• 6:05
  on those figures. Yeah, those figures seem like they're bogus
• 6:08
  to me, very arbitrary. I mean, every time we turn
• 6:11
  around and they need a new excuse, Oh we found
• 6:14
  more files. Oh we had more files hanging out under
• 6:17
  the filing cabinet. Well, you know where all the files
• 6:20
  really are. Well, they're not in the possession of the DOJ.
• 6:25
  They're in some vaulted Langley and there're zero chance we're
• 6:28
  ever going to see them. Because these figures are self
• 6:33
  reported and internally inconsistent with prior representation, there is reasonable
• 6:38
  suspicion that the DOJ has overstated the scope of responsive material,
• 6:43
  thereby betraying compliance as unmanageable and effectively delaying disclosure. They
• 6:48
  said in the letter, and that's pretty much what I
• 6:51
  think they're doing. They just want to slow the whole
• 6:53
  process down. They want everybody to get tired, everybody to
• 6:57
  find something else to be pissed. Off about and they
• 7:00
  want to keep it moving, and that's always been the plan.
• 7:02
  When we're talking about Jeffrey Epstein and the ongoing cover
• 7:05
  up that still protects them. Conna and Massey also pointed
• 7:10
  to the Justice Department's failure to submit required reports within
• 7:13
  fifteen days of the deadline to the House and Senate
• 7:16
  Judiciary committees detailing redactions and other records withheld from release.
• 7:22
  They never had any plans of doing that. What they
• 7:25
  wanted to do was drop all those documents and cause confusion.
• 7:30
  How many people can navigate all the names, How many
• 7:32
  people know all the stories? How many people know the
• 7:36
  keywords to look for? Not very many? And that's what
• 7:39
  they were relying on. And the end goal, of course,
• 7:42
  is for you to throw up your hands in defeat
• 7:44
  and say I've had enough. To date, no such report
• 7:47
  has been provided. Without it, there is no authoritative accounting
• 7:51
  of what records exist, what has been withheld, or why,
• 7:55
  making effective oversight and judicial review far more difficult, they said.
• 8:00
  As part of their request, Conna and Massey asked Engelmeyer
• 8:03
  to allow an independent monitor to be given authority to
• 8:06
  notify the court about the true nature and extent of
• 8:09
  the document production and if improper redactions or other improper
• 8:14
  conduct is taking place. And I think this is a
• 8:17
  step in the right direction, but it doesn't go far enough.
• 8:21
  I think that the only way to go here is
• 8:22
  a special prosecutor, somebody that has the power to actually
• 8:27
  hold people accountable, not just make recommendations to the DOJ.
• 8:31
  Oh hey, I think you should hold yourself accountable. How
• 8:34
  does that work out? Usually? Absent an independent process is
• 8:37
  outlined above, we do not believe the DOJ will produce
• 8:41
  the records that are required by the Act and what
• 8:44
  it has represented to this court, the representative said. So
• 8:47
  it's going to be really interesting to see what Judge
• 8:50
  Ingelmeyer ends up deciding. And like I was saying earlier,
• 8:53
  he seems to be at a point where he's done
• 8:55
  with the bullshit. So I think that it's going to
• 8:58
  be an uphill battle for the DC to keep these
• 9:01
  files sealed, and to keep them sealed in a way
• 9:05
  that is conducive to their plan, you know, the plan
• 9:08
  to drip, the plan to release just a little bit,
• 9:11
  the plan to give you just enough. Well, hopefully the
• 9:14
  judge takes a look at that and sees it and
• 9:18
  demands that the DOJ does the right thing, but again,
• 9:21
  how do you enforce it? That's the real problem here.
• 9:25
  There's no enforcement mechanism that was tied to that bill,
• 9:29
  So you're at the mercy of the Justice Department or
• 9:32
  the slow moving bureaucracy. Now, yesterday we were talking a
• 9:36
  little bit about the OIG, but you wont know how
• 9:39
  I feel about the OIG and what they can do
• 9:41
  and what they can't do. So it's kind of just performative.
• 9:47
  The only way to really get to the bottom of
• 9:49
  this is with a special prosecutor with the power to
• 9:52
  subpoena and the power to hold people accountable. Anything short
• 9:56
  of that, we're just spinning our wheels in neutral. Now. Look,
• 10:00
  might get some more information, we might get some more
• 10:02
  fancy reports, but even when the OIG gets involved, nothing happens.
• 10:08
  And as you're gonna see later on today when I
• 10:11
  upload the alex Acosta interview with the OIG investigator, that
• 10:16
  the OIG investigators really weren't buying alex Acosta's story. And
• 10:20
  when you compare what a Costa said then to what
• 10:22
  he says now, things just don't add up. And the
• 10:25
  Justice Department is aware of that, and they know that
• 10:28
  we'll put the pieces together when this documentation is released,
• 10:32
  and that's why they continue to drag their feet. So
• 10:34
  will a special Master do the trick? I don't think so.
• 10:38
  But I think that row Conna and Thomas Massi are
• 10:41
  certainly on the right path because the next step up
• 10:44
  is an Inspector General or special counsel, and if we
• 10:48
  really want to get to the bottom of this, that's
• 10:51
  where we start. All of the information that goes with
• 10:56
  this episode can be found in the description box.