Jamie Raskin makes the move Trump FEARED over Epstein

Jamie Raskin makes the move Trump FEARED over Epstein

I’m joined now by Congressman Jamie Raskin. Thanks so much for joining me. Great to be with you, Brian. So, Congressman, um the the Epstein scandal has kind of poured into the spotlight in a way that that we haven’t seen happen before. Um what are you able to do in your role on judiciary to try and compel some of the information that clearly it seems like Donald Trump has a vested interest in hiding? Well, look, every Republican that I’ve spoken to, whether it’s somebody in Congress or just like out in the street, wants this information to be released. And Donald Trump promised it. JD Vance promised it. The whole Republican establishment was behind it, including Attorney General Bondi, including Dan Bongino, including Cash Patel. And um so they want it released. And what I’m trying to explain to them is they don’t need to convince Donald Trump. They just need to convince the Republicans in Congress. Uh Jim Jordan and the Democrats on the House Judiciary Committee have the subpoena power. So we can have a hearing and just subpoena the attorney general, subpoena Cash Patel to come in, tell us everything they know, and turn over the client list and turn over the information that not only Republicans but Democrats have been demanding since the Biden administration. I called for this several years ago. Um, you know, the Epstein is a convicted sex offender who was running a child sex ring. Um, he’s gone. So, his prosecution’s over. So, there can be no prejudice there. And then meantime, you’ve got the president of the United States and all these other officials saying that there’s a client list and that there’s evidence of this sex ring taking place. And rather than have the whole country divided in an uproar about it, let’s just come clean and they should show us what they’ve got. Uh Pam Bondi said it was on her desk, take it off of her desk and bring it over to Congress. So, uh I’m sending a letter on Monday to Chairman Jordan saying, “Let’s just have a hearing and let us disclose whatever the government has to the people of the United States.” So, is Jim Jordan the only impediment then to being able to subpoena whatever information exists? Well, I don’t know that he is an impediment. I mean, we haven’t spoken uh about it yet. Um I think everybody assumed the administration was going to release this information because they said they would. And of course, right, what what with it being the thing that they had predicated their entire brand on. Oh, and Pam Bondi had that first horrible big press conference release situation where it was just a bunch of recycled flatsom and jetsum. People want to know what is really in there. And look, um, we don’t want doctorred evidence. We don’t want fabricated evidence. Um, if all of it was made up, then the public’s got a right to know. If it wasn’t made up, if it’s real, we’ve got a right to know what names are on there. And now with Donald Trump going out on a limb and saying, “Oh, just you know, leave me alone. Let’s just um you know, pretend the whole thing didn’t happen,” people are asking the question why. Well, it looks like you’re you’re you’re taking a multi-pronged approach here because this letter will go out to Jim Jordan on Monday. You’ve also reached out to Pam Bondi herself. Can you explain what what you said in your correspondence with her? Well, um, we we want the the Jacksmith’s second report released on Donald Trump’s retention, illegal retention of uh, classified documents, hundreds of them at Mara Lago. We want that report released the way the first report uh was released the way um Bondi’s predecessor uh Attorney General Merrick Garland released uh the report on Hunter Biden released the special counsel report by special counsel Robert her about Joe Biden’s um retention of a handful of classified documents. All that should be public. Okay. release that and release the Epstein file. At the very least, you got to release what’s in there that references Donald Trump, right? But go ahead and just release the whole thing. So, that’s what we said. We have not heard back from uh Pam Bondi. And unfortunately, that’s a pattern with this administration. I mean, unlike prior administrations, except for Trump, they basically don’t answer questions um and letters that have been sent in by the minority party. Congressman, what do you make of the of the whiplash back and forth between Trump and his team initially coming out and saying that this uh this file, this client list is going to be released imminently? Uh Pam Bondi suggested that it was on her desk waiting for her to just review it and then she would be able to send it out. Then suddenly on on Monday of this past week, um Trump said not only is there no client list, doesn’t exist, but the case is closed. And now you have this newest post by by Trump where he logged onto Truth Social and said that okay, it does exist, but it’s a fake Epstein list that was written by Obama, crooked Hillary, Comey, Brennan, and the losers and criminals in the Biden administration. Yeah. So, the stories are constantly changing. First, the client list was on Pam Bondi’s desk. Several people said that they saw it and they wanted it released. then it didn’t exist and now oh it exists but it’s a fabrication of the B administration which is odd since they never released anything. Um and there were still uh criminal prosecutions and potential criminal prosecutions taking place because it wasn’t um just Epstein but it was his partner in crime Maxwell and then they had a French uh confederate as well. I think his name was Jean Luke God. And uh in any event, it was it was never released. So uh they should just release the law enforcement files that exist from all of the prosecutions and all of the prosecutors in police, whether in Florida or New York or Europe or anywhere else. What do what do you make of this new kind of talking point that’s kind of emerged on the right where a lot of folks are really upset at Pam Bondi? Do you think that in an administration where I mean we’ve seen these cabinet meetings where they go around the table and take turns uh genulecting at the altar of Trump. Do you really believe that the buck here stops with Pam Bondi or do you think that anything that’s going to happen is going to happen at the behest and and command of Donald Trump himself? Well, of course, that’s what Pam Bondi has said. I mean, they’ve taken the Justice Department, which traditionally has been um a huge force of lawyers that represent the rule of law, the Department of Justice, the government of the United States, and the interests of the American people, and the Constitution, and they turned it into the personal law firm of Donald Trump. They don’t pretend it’s anything else. So, obviously, they’re acting in Donald Trump’s own interest. They don’t pretend to be doing anything else. So it means either Donald Trump is himself implicated uh and we know that he knew um Epstein well we know that Elon Musk has said that he’s in the uh the files themselves files in the files and we know that there’s lots of photographs of them together and we know that Donald Trump himself has spoken openly about his friendship of uh Epstein and how Epstein admired women as much as he did, but he liked younger ones. I mean, so he clearly knew what was going on. They have, for some reason, been able to make political hay out of this whole thing for so long for whatever reason. Enough. Let’s put it to rest. Release everything. Let’s come clean. Like, we don’t uh we don’t need to generate more paranoia um in the country. Uh we need to just set the record clear. And Epstein is gone. And there’s no reason that we shouldn’t be able to release this list. So either Donald Trump is protecting himself because he’s on it and or he’s protecting other people who are on it and or there are people that he wants to have leverage over. You know, Donald Trump, as we’ve seen over the last half year, is all about leverage. Leverage over the law firms. I’m going to hold executive orders against you. I’m going to prevent you from going into federal government buildings or getting federal security clearance unless you do X, Y, or Z. I’m going to lord it over Harvard University and Columbia University and all the colleges unless you do X, Y, and Z. And so, um, you know, if he’s not on there, or maybe he is, but in any event, if there’s other people on there and he thinks he can use this against them, that’s another possibility. But in any event, there is a very compelling public interest now in just coming clean and releasing these documents to the public. You know, Megan Kelly is one of probably the biggest voices that’s that’s decided that Pam Bondi should be the scapegoat for all of this. Do you think that in in a scenario where Pam Bondi either resigned or or was fired that some subsequent attorney general would suddenly be the one to release the files that Pam Bondi wouldn’t under Trump? Well, again, it all goes back to Trump and what Trump wants to do. I’m sure Bondi will follow him, right? Uh, for some reason, they’ve done a complete 180 degree U-turn on this and now they don’t want anything to come out. And look, you know, this is a situation where there are entire forces on the right with QAnon that have built, you know, not just intense interest in this case, but kind of a whole political theory around satanic child sex abuse rings. Um, and you know, when all that first started, you remember they went to Comet Pizza. They were blaming everything on Democrats and Democrats just look at like at them like they’re from outer space. Like this is just deranged stuff. But we’ve got a case with Epstein where this is real, where there is a real child sexual abuser and uh he had parties and he had a whole social network around it. and they should release what’s there so we can dispel the paranoid part of it and get to the facts of what actually happened. You know, one one element of the long winding screed that Trump posted and this was the part that I read before was his blame of Obama, Clinton, Comey, Brennan. And we’ve seen instances in the past where Trump will make up a lie but then go to the ends of the earth to substantiate that lie. He said, for example, that he won the 2020 election. He went so far as to incite an insurrection of the US capital to try and substantiate that. He wanted to to take voting machines out of Georgia. I mean, the the crimes were just endless in his effort to manifest into reality to try and prove um his his lies. All of these things to basically just prop up his ego. This is kind of a similar situation where he has a major issue that he’s contending with um that could that could determine whether or not, you know, people are going to are going to continue to support him moving forward or not. And he’s already laid the groundwork with a bunch of people who he’s decided are going to be the scapegoats here. And so, do you have any concern as it relates to Comey or Brennan or or Clinton or Obama that he might go to the mat with this lie in very much the same way that he did with the the rigged 2020 election lie? Well, certainly he will. Um, and he will try to get, you know, his followers to believe in another concoction. I mean, a certain point he just piles lie on lie on lie and then you have to accept an alternate universe. You know, Voltater said um anyone who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities. And we saw that on January 6th, 2021. Uh Joe Biden beat him by more than 7 million votes. And just to give you some contextual contrast there, Trump beat Kamla by two million votes. And they call that a landslide. But any event, um Biden in 2020 beat Trump by a landslide three times as big and they denied it and he incited a violent insurrection. They tried to organize a political coup to overthrow the election. All of his alleged evidence was rejected by more than 60 federal and courts, including by seven judges he had himself named to the bench. Um, and they’ve never been able to prove anything. His own homeland security person in charge of uh cyber security and election security said it was the most secure election in American history. And yet he continued to propound that lie to incite an insurrection against the constitutional union. And then um continues to promote that falsehood to this day. In fact, it’s in the uh truth social missive that you just cited. it was in the one he sent out saying that he’s going to get the attorney general to work on that. So, uh, you know, I hope that people will see Donald Trump’s absolutely convenient relationship to the truth. Um, if he happens to bump into the truth and it’s to his benefit, he’ll embrace it. But otherwise, um, he’s going to lie, uh, all the way to the heavens about it and, you know, and drag everybody else into hell around it. And that’s what happened on January 6th. And let’s finish off with this. This does feel like the first moment. I mean, there have been a lot of lies and and we’ve seen that Trump’s base is exceptionally willing or uniquely willing to believe a lot of the that he pedals, but this seems to be an instance where even his most devoted followers don’t seem to be um taking the bait here. Uh Benny Johnson kind of was offered up some speechless response to to what uh to what Trump was saying. the rest of his mouthpieces don’t seem particularly uh convinced um by his rambling screed. And so in this moment where there does seem to be at least a degree of openness that we haven’t seen before to the truth about what this is, which very much looks like a conj job by by Trump. What would your message to to folks who had previously believed everything that Trump had been pedalling? What would your message to those folks be in light of um this new development now? Well, what I want to say is Donald Trump did not campaign on throwing 14 million Americans off of their Medicaid health insurance, but that’s what he’s in the middle of doing. He did campaign on releasing the Epstein files in their entirety, including the client list. And suddenly he wants to do this 180°ree U-turn on that and you know abandon this pledge that he made to the people who voted for him and to the whole country. And um of course we support transparency in government and he said he wants to be the most transparent administration uh in history and now seems to be scrambling to cover this thing up for some reason. Look, um, our politics are different. Like on our side, we don’t try to think in terms of conspiracy theories. We try to think in terms of who government is going to help and who they’re going to hurt. But the government right now is hurting working people and working families in a really bad way while building up a huge militarized bureaucracy with ICE while cutting a huge tax break for the wealthiest uh people in the country. Um, and so we would prefer to get back on course where the government is an instrument for the common good of everybody. But he has convinced a lot of people to think in terms of conspiracy theories and he’s invested a lot into the conspiracy theory um about Jeffrey Epstein. He should release all of those files. Nobody should be afraid of the truth. Now, we should be afraid of them concocting things and altering documents and making things up because we’ve seen them do that before. You know, we can look at the integrity of the evidence when it’s released, but release the evidence that was produced by law enforcement agencies as it was produced and let the people judge. So, uh we’re not caught up um in, you know, all of the theatrics and the hysteria around this. Let’s just deliver the facts uh to the people. Uh child sex abuse has obviously been a huge problem in a lot of institutions in our society and abuse of even college students and college athletes has been a huge problem. Um uh both female and male college athletes. Um and there is a problem with institutionalized sexual abuse. And so we should come clean with those things that we know about whoever is participating in that and we should be able to separate the fact from the fiction. Well, perfectly put and thank you for putting the pressure that you’re going to put on Jim Jordan um to get whatever the files that exist um to to be brought into the light of day. And uh thank you also for the time today. I appreciate it very much. It’s great being with you, Brian.

INTERVIEW: Brian interviews Jamie Raskin about his impending letter to Jim Jordan demanding the Judiciary subpoena the Epstein files.

For more from Brian Tyler Cohen:
Straight-news titled YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@briantylercohennews
YouTube (español): https://www.youtube.com/@briantylercohenespanol
Order my #1 NYT bestselling book: https://www.harpercollins.com/pages/shameless
Newsletter: https://plus.briantylercohen.com
Twitch: https://www.twitch.tv/briantylercohen
Apple Podcasts: https://apple.co/36UvEHs
Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/0066rKCBIycIMI4os6Ec5V
Twitter: https://twitter.com/briantylercohen
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/briantylercohen
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/briantylercohen
TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@briantylercohen
Bluesky: https://bsky.app/profile/briantylercohen.bsky.social
Threads: https://www.threads.net/@briantylercohen