Latest / DEEP INSIGHT / President Trump signs bill directing DOJ to release Epstein files
Transcript
- 0:00Speaker 1: We do have some major breaking news as we come
- 0:02Speaker 1: on the air tonight, because President Trump has now signed
- 0:04Speaker 1: the Epstein Files Bill into law, the final step to
- 0:08Speaker 1: force the Justice Department to turn over everything it has
- 0:11Speaker 1: on Epstein within the next thirty days. Part of the
- 0:14Speaker 1: President's lengthy statement, I'll read it here where he said,
- 0:17Speaker 1: quote Jeffrey Epstein, who was charged by the Trump Justice
- 0:20Speaker 1: Department in twenty nineteen, not the Democrats with an exclamation point.
- 0:25Speaker 1: Was a lifelong Democrat, donated thousands of dollars to Democrat politicians,
- 0:29Speaker 1: and was deeply associated with many well known Democrat figures.
- 0:33Speaker 1: The President goes on to write, perhaps the truth about
- 0:36Speaker 1: these Democrats and their associations with Jeffrey Epstein will soon
- 0:40Speaker 1: be revealed because I have just signed the bill to
- 0:43Speaker 1: release the Epstein files. Trump says, as everyone knows, I
- 0:47Speaker 1: asked Speaker of the House Mike Johnson and Senate Majority
- 0:50Speaker 1: Leader John Thune to pass this bill in the House
- 0:52Speaker 1: and the Senate. That of course came after he fought
- 0:55Speaker 1: the bill, but he concluded with this latest hoax will
- 0:59Speaker 1: backfire on the Demoocrats, just as all of the rest have.
- 1:02Speaker 1: Thank you all for your attention to this matter of course,
- 1:05Speaker 1: this is the bill that the President spent months trying
- 1:08Speaker 1: to kill. He has now taken credit for its passage
- 1:10Speaker 1: on Capitol Hill after it became clear that it was
- 1:13Speaker 1: going to pass at least the House. While it's a
- 1:15Speaker 1: moment that so many of Jeffrey Epstein's survivors that you've
- 1:18Speaker 1: heard from here on this show have waited so long for, it,
- 1:22Speaker 1: is notable the President did not mention the women who
- 1:24Speaker 1: fought for this bill's passage in his post tonight. The
- 1:28Speaker 1: fact also that the President didn't take the opportunity to
- 1:30Speaker 1: sign it today before cameras is notable given how many
- 1:33Speaker 1: bill signings and executive orders he has regularly turned into
- 1:37Speaker 1: lengthy oval office events and press conferences. We did hear
- 1:41Speaker 1: from the Attorney General on this matter earlier. Pambondi was
- 1:44Speaker 1: asked multiple times how her department plans to handle this
- 1:47Speaker 1: process of turning over these materials to Congress. Given the
- 1:51Speaker 1: massive amount of data on Epstein that the Justice Department has.
- 1:57Speaker 2: Does the new investigation by the Southern District of New
- 1:59Speaker 2: York US Attorney prevent the Department from releasing all of
- 2:03Speaker 2: the remaining files. So we have released thirty three thousand
- 2:07Speaker 2: over thirty three thousand Epstein documents to the Hill and
- 2:10Speaker 2: will continue to follow the law and to have maximum transparency.
- 2:16Speaker 2: What are you doing here over the next thirty days
- 2:19Speaker 2: that we understand? We will continue to follow the law
- 2:22Speaker 2: with maximum transparency while protecting victims.
- 2:27Speaker 3: Yeah, when you say the law from the Attorney General,
- 2:31Speaker 3: do you mean that you will provide all the files
- 2:34Speaker 3: by thirty days?
- 2:36Speaker 2: We will follow the law. The law passed both chambers
- 2:40Speaker 2: last evening. It has not yet been signed, but we
- 2:43Speaker 2: will continue to follow the law again while protecting victims
- 2:48Speaker 2: but also providing maximum transparency.
- 2:53Speaker 1: Now, Attorney General Bondi declined to give any explanation on
- 2:56Speaker 1: how the plan to follow the law is any different
- 2:58Speaker 1: from what the department has been doing already, especially given
- 3:02Speaker 1: it was just two months ago when the FBI director
- 3:04Speaker 1: told Congress this about those same Epstein files and their possession.
- 3:10Speaker 3: We have released, mister where President Trump's names in the
- 3:14Speaker 3: Epstein files and everybody else and all credible information that
- 3:19Speaker 3: we are illegally allowed to release has been released pursuant
- 3:22Speaker 3: to mister Acosta's collection of information based on the search horns.
- 3:27Speaker 3: That's all we have in our.
- 3:28Speaker 2: Possession and I'm asking you that stuff.
- 3:31Speaker 3: That's all we got. We are releasing as much as
- 3:33Speaker 3: legally allowed. We are providing everything we can legally provide.
- 3:40Speaker 1: The Attorney General did try to explain why just months
- 3:43Speaker 1: after her department declared that there was no evidence that
- 3:46Speaker 1: could predicate an investigation against uncharged third parties, she announced
- 3:51Speaker 1: those very investigations that President Trump demanded last week?
- 3:56Speaker 2: What changed since then that you launched this investigation? Information
- 4:01Speaker 2: that has come for information, there's information, that new information,
- 4:07Speaker 2: additional information, and again, we will continue to follow the
- 4:10Speaker 2: law to investigate any leads.
- 4:14Speaker 1: That would seem to differ from what the President has
- 4:16Speaker 1: been saying. Over the course of the last few months,
- 4:19Speaker 1: his team has been trying to make the entire Epstein
- 4:22Speaker 1: saga go away.
- 4:25Speaker 4: It's really a Democrat hoax. It's a Democrat hoax. It's
- 4:28Speaker 4: just a hoax.
- 4:29Speaker 2: The whole Epstein thing is a Democrat hoax. I call
- 4:32Speaker 2: it the Epstein hoax.
- 4:33Speaker 1: I don't understand why the Jeffrey Epstein case would be
- 4:36Speaker 1: of interest to anybody. It's pretty boring stuff.
- 4:39Speaker 2: It's sorted, but it's boring.
- 4:43Speaker 1: The whiplash over Trump, Bondi and Patel's hyping and then downplaying,
- 4:47Speaker 1: and then piping again. The Epstein investigations is even being
- 4:50Speaker 1: felt by some of the president's biggest supporters. In Maga,
- 4:56Speaker 1: I heard it's a hoax, and then all of a sudden,
- 4:59Speaker 1: he's going to release the well I thought there was
- 5:00Speaker 1: no files.
- 5:01Speaker 4: He wants an investigation.
- 5:03Speaker 2: Now, listen, like, what is going on. This is the
- 5:05Speaker 2: end of the Trump administration. This is the beginning of
- 5:08Speaker 2: the lame duck presidency. It's obvious to everyone.
- 5:11Speaker 4: He will trail off, he will get older, He's going
- 5:14Speaker 4: to He's.
- 5:16Speaker 3: Adorned the White House in gold. Epstein's going to suck
- 5:20Speaker 3: the oxygen out of a lot of this.
- 5:23Speaker 1: I want to start tonight with CEN Senior Justice correspondent
- 5:26Speaker 1: Evan Perez, who is among those questioning the Attorney General today.
- 5:30Speaker 1: And Evan, you know, I think she said multiple times
- 5:32Speaker 1: they are going to follow the law. What stood out
- 5:34Speaker 1: to you being inside that room today with PAMBONDI I.
- 5:37Speaker 4: Think the whiplash that they are feeling in that building
- 5:40Speaker 4: because they really have stuck their necks out to try
- 5:44Speaker 4: to defend the president in the sense that you know,
- 5:46Speaker 4: they've gone out and they said, there's nothing to see here.
- 5:48Speaker 4: We've closed the books. And then they were trying to
- 5:52Speaker 4: persuade members of Congress. You reported this, right, Lauren Wobert
- 5:56Speaker 4: and among others.
- 5:57Speaker 1: How strong are them?
- 5:58Speaker 4: Yes, that's another way to say it, but certainly they
- 6:01Speaker 4: were there to persuade them to say, look, if there's
- 6:03Speaker 4: stuff you want to see and for us to brief
- 6:05Speaker 4: you on, we're here to do that. And then you know,
- 6:11Speaker 4: the President goes out and says, we want a new investigation.
- 6:13Speaker 4: I I want another investigation, and they do that, and
- 6:17Speaker 4: then he sort of pulled the rug, pulls the rug
- 6:20Speaker 4: from out of under them on Sunday by saying, Okay,
- 6:23Speaker 4: now vote for this bill that he was using the
- 6:27Speaker 4: Justice Department all along to try to fight. So they
- 6:29Speaker 4: are feeling the whiplash, and now they're kind of left
- 6:31Speaker 4: in a very difficult place. Pambondi is now, you know,
- 6:34Speaker 4: obviously there is an investigation, and so she has to
- 6:37Speaker 4: navigate how to release documents within those thirty days that
- 6:41Speaker 4: they're going to comply with the law but also satisfy
- 6:44Speaker 4: the rules that are you cannot release documents that may
- 6:47Speaker 4: be relevant to an ongoing investigation.
- 6:49Speaker 1: Well, and so the President signed it today thirty days
- 6:53Speaker 1: from today would be December eighteenth, and so do we
- 6:55Speaker 1: have any idea what the Justice Chartment's game plan is
- 6:59Speaker 1: in terms of what they're going to release if they
- 7:01Speaker 1: have more than three hundred gigabytes of data and material.
- 7:05Speaker 4: Well, one of the things that we know is that
- 7:06Speaker 4: some of the document the documents have already been redacted,
- 7:09Speaker 4: for instance, to remove the names of victims. Anything that
- 7:13Speaker 4: would protect would that would harm victims has already been done.
- 7:17Speaker 4: The big question is can they release documents related to
- 7:20Speaker 4: some of the uncharged people who associated with Epstein but
- 7:25Speaker 4: who are not accused of any wrongdoing. There is a
- 7:28Speaker 4: law that is supposed to protect their privacy, and so
- 7:31Speaker 4: that's kind of the big difference here. Some of the
- 7:33Speaker 4: documents that the kind of things that you saw this
- 7:35Speaker 4: week from that were released by the Democrats, right, And
- 7:39Speaker 4: you know, obviously Larry Summers is an example of what happens.
- 7:42Speaker 4: Those people still associated with Epstein, even though he had
- 7:46Speaker 4: been convicted in Florida, continued to communicate with him. They're
- 7:50Speaker 4: not accused of any wrongdoing, and so now all of
- 7:53Speaker 4: those communications, I think are are fair game to be released.
- 7:56Speaker 1: Yeah, And that's a good point because I think Mike
- 7:58Speaker 1: Johnson was one of the leading is saying that other
- 8:00Speaker 1: people could get swept up in this. It's tritentally just
- 8:03Speaker 1: be embarrassed by this. I mean Larry Summers, it's reporting
- 8:06Speaker 1: tonight he's not going to be teaching at Harvard anymore
- 8:08Speaker 1: while he's under investigation. That's according to the Harvard Crimson.
- 8:11Speaker 1: But I mean that is exactly what President is pointing
- 8:14Speaker 1: to in his very lengthy post tonight, as he's saying
- 8:17Speaker 1: this is going to be way worse for Larry Summers
- 8:18Speaker 1: and for Democrats than for me. I mean, he seems
- 8:20Speaker 1: to want that information to come out.
- 8:22Speaker 4: Well, yeah, I mean we don't know, because there's got
- 8:24Speaker 4: to be there. They're going to be mentioned of President
- 8:26Speaker 4: Trump in these additional documents. We know that that is
- 8:29Speaker 4: actually one of the problems here for him. But the
- 8:33Speaker 4: issue is are there other people who again have not
- 8:36Speaker 4: been credibly accused of any wrongdoing, and do their lives
- 8:40Speaker 4: get upended that? And you could argue right that if
- 8:44Speaker 4: you knew he was a convicted sex offender and you
- 8:48Speaker 4: continued to associate with him, then what happens You know,
- 8:52Speaker 4: you knew what was going to happen eventually.
- 8:54Speaker 1: Yeah, Evin Prez, thank you for that reporting. We'll see
- 8:56Speaker 1: what the Justice Department does now that that thirty day
- 8:58Speaker 1: clock is ticking