BREAKING: “BLOCKBUSTER” announcement from Justice Department on Epstein case

BREAKING: “BLOCKBUSTER” announcement from Justice Department on Epstein case

This is Democracy Watch. Mark, we have breaking news right now that relates to the Epstein case, and that is that Donald Trump and the DOJ have decided to fire Moren Comey, who is one of the prosecutors involved in the Epstein case. So, first and foremost, what are the implications of this? Okay, so if you want to know who would know what was in the contents of the Epstein file, the lawyer who prosecuted Jeffrey Epstein would know what’s in the Epstein files, right? There’s probably, you know, a handful of people who are the most intimate with the records and the the record uh and the files and the who said what and who did what. And on that short list of the most knowledgeable would be the prosecutors who handled this case. And she is according to reporting uh was one of those prosecutors was a senior prosecutor as part of that team. Uh and she has now been fired. She has been fired now in the midst of Donald Trump saying that there are files, right? After originally saying they’re not, admitting that they’re acknowledging there are files and now trying to claim that those files were put together by Democrats, by Barack Obama, by Joe Biden, by James Comey, uh by John Brennan, by you know, Hillary Clinton. like name name your soup of of like you know adult brain Donald Trump names of of of Democrats. None of that makes any sense. None of that timing works, right? I mean uh you know Epstein was was prosecuted under Donald Trump’s Department of Justice. He committed suicide or died in custody under Donald Trump’s Department of Justice. And so when you are trying to identify who has act who knows about what’s in these files, you’d start with those prosecutors. Now obviously Pam Bondi has attached dispatched other people to go back and review the files. But this is a blockbuster development. I mean this is akin to the Saturday night massacre in the um uh in the Nixon uh administration when they when he fired the special counsel. Obviously, this is not a special counsel, but literally he is firing the prosecutor who would know if not the most would be in the handful of people who would know the most about what’s in the Epstein files. Mark, this seems a little bit counterintuitive to me because presumably while she’s a DOJ prosecutor, she would have to listen to whatever Pam Bondi or Donald Trump told her to do and so she wouldn’t be able to speak out of turn. Does this not just free her up to kind of be able to speak freely in the media about what she may or may not know now that she’s no longer employed by the federal government? Look, there is a critical fact that we don’t know. Okay? And and I think we need to acknowledge to the audience. You don’t know it. I don’t know it. But, you know, it is something you and I have talked about in other videos. We’ve talked about um privately off air. I’ve written about this for democracy docket. Something happens at the end of last week that causes Donald Trump to no longer believe he can maintain complete control over these records. Okay? Like something happens that he goes from there are no Epstein files, which is what Pam Bondi basically said. She basically said there was nothing more to release. And Donald Trump on Saturday night at about 5:30 p.m. pivots away from that, away from the there is nothing more to release or there’s nothing important to release to this new position that he’s been in ever since, which is that what there would be released would not be accurate. It would be uh written by Democrats and it is not to be believed. And I have to think that whatever it is that triggered it, it changed the calculation in his head from containment to discrediting. So you’re asking a question like, but why wouldn’t he want to contain? Like why wouldn’t he want people inside the tent, right? Why would he? And what I’m saying to you is that this is just the latest example of what appears to be a systematic change in which Trump is sort of preparing for something to be released and he wants to be in the position of discrediting the people who are the records that come forward. And so from his standpoint, you know, you know, and and his supporter standpoint, having fired a prosecutor gives him the ability to say, “Well, this is a disgruntled person, you know, this was this was someone we fired, right? This is like, you know what I mean?” And so, and and and and I don’t know what it is that’s caused this shift. I mean, maybe it’s nothing. Maybe he just like, you know, like a different syninnapse fired while he was spray tanning himself. Yeah. But but that is, I think, the most logical answer. No, I I think that makes perfect sense. And it does seem like he’s given up on this idea. I think he’s come to terms with the fact that information one way or the other is going to come out. And so he’s pivoted from trying to prevent it from coming out, saying that the files are non-existent because he he took so much flak for that. I mean, it was so it was so widely panned from left and right that him saying that they’re not there was not a tenable position. And so now he’s gone all in on laying the groundwork to pretend that this is some uh concoction of the communist Marxist Democrats. What he’s looking to do is basically to to sort this into the same partisan um bucket that any other that any other, you know, the the the Russia Russia Russia hoax or the 51 whatever, like all of his, you know, all of his um conspiracy theories. He wants this to become that. And so he’s given up on trying to say that the Epstein files are are are not real. He knows they’re going to come out. Now it’s just a matter of discrediting them so so fully that they just seem like uh you know some some democratic creation. Um but it’s worth it’s worth asking does I mean going back to the question I asked before does uh Moren Comey have the ability to speak freely now that she’s no longer at the DOJ. I mean she has more freedom to speak freely but you know she still has professional ethical obligations. She still has grand jury secrecy obligations. So, I don’t think this is going to be a gamecher in the sense that I don’t believe she is going to, you know, spill facts and information that is under seal or otherwise protected. But we’ve seen other instances, including, by the way, other prosecutors from this very office, from the Southern District of New York. Remember, this is the office that Emil Boie uh and Pam Bondi tried to pressure to drop the charges, drop the indictment against Eric Adams that caused several resignations of of the acting US attorney and other um and other uh uh figures in that office because they felt like they were being pressured to do something uh that is unethical. And that led those prosecutors to then write public letters. So the point I’m making is that they would, you know, they were able to be more free, right? Danielle Sassoon was able to be more free and in fact identified the fact that Emil Boie had um instructed that her staff not take notes, for example, or destroyed their notes that they had taken and that there had been a quid proquo offered in her view by Eric Adams’s lawyers. That those are the kind of facts that if she had stayed on the payroll, obviously she would not have been able to disclose that that that um came out as a part of her resignation. So, you know, we don’t know how free um this this uh prosecutor, this former prosecutor now will feel uh to be able to speak, but I think that from the Trump administration standpoint, you know, they are taking they are giving themselves a plausible villain, you know, a plausible argument that this person has bias for whatever whatever theory they need to spin next. Now, I think that one of the ways that this story needs to be advanced, and you know, not that I count on the legacy media to do much, but maybe they’ll maybe maybe they’ll be up for this. Um, is who fired uh who fired Miss Comey? Yeah. You know, was it the US attorney in the Southern District of New York, which again has been the you know, we’ve seen a lot of uh a lot of uh uh uh resignations around that office over being pressured to do things. Was it uh you know Blanch or Boi or some other you know intermediate? Was it Pam Bondi? You know you and I assume that you know Pam Bondi doesn’t you know get a Diet Coke from the fridge without checking with Donald Trump but we don’t know where it is. And I think that will be a critical set of facts to be uncovered because certainly you would not expect that a line assistant in the US attorneys in the southern district of New York would would garner the attention of anyone outside of you know their immediate supervisor in the southern district of New York. So we haven’t heard the reason for this like was there reason given the determination and where in this chain did this originate because I think that will also tell us a lot about you know whether the you know what how this connects up to the Epstein matter. It’s also worth asking here, is it possible that good prosecutors, ethical prosecutors who worked on this Epstein case, are being pushed out so that so that they can be replaced by unethical prosecutors who may be handpicked by Donald Trump, who may be willing to offer up a narrative that is that more closely aligns to the to the narrative that Trump is trying to push here. Yeah, that’s also, by the way, I’m glad you raised that because I had not thought about that, but that’s a but that is also a um a plausible theory here. And of course, that would more closely hue to the Eric Adams case. Like remember what happened in the Eric Adams case is the Southern District of New York had indicted the former mayor or I’m sorry, the current mayor, not the former mayor, had indicted the mayor. uh and uh the department of justice, the attorney general and the higherups uh pressured the southern district to drop the prosecution. And essentially the good prosecutors, the ethical prosecutors said, “I we can’t do that. We have to resign.” And ultimately, you know, uh one of them wrote a resignation letter saying, “You will find a fool or a coward to do this. It was never going to be me.” Yeah. And so there is some reason to believe that this Department of Justice thinks that if it has a recalcitrant prosecutor that is refusing to do something that they believe unethical that they can push them out and replace them with someone who will be more pliable. Right. And and I mean we we’ve again to your exact point we have seen that happen before and it looks like this administration is in I mean looks like Donald Trump himself is in such dire straits here is so desperate to to reclaim uh ownership of the narrative that I wouldn’t be surprised if he was finding people that he could put in place now so that if and when some damaging information comes out notwithstanding what people like Moren Comey might say on the outside but he’ll have the full power of a very compliant DOJ behind him backing up whatever it is that he claims. Right. And and I think that, you know, you said something here that, you know, relates to this uh a little bit to the side, but I think is really important. I don’t think I’ve heard anyone say. You mentioned like Donald Trump and his administration. This really feels very much like Donald Trump alone. You know, you know, JD Vance, as you recall, told Theo Vaughn that these polic and we and we have seen the vice president come out and defend Donald Trump’s positions on things where Donald Trump needed to be defended. For example, you know, he remember he took on the the MAGA base over the bombing in Iran, right? Like you saw you saw him step forward and he has been a loyal soldier on that. I don’t think we’ve heard from him. I don’t think we’ve heard from JD Vince. I don’t think we’ve heard from Steven Miller. I don’t think we’ve heard from a lot of the voices uh from the administration. Yeah. I mean, Dan Bonino, I don’t even know if he’s come back to work yet. You know what I mean? That’s right. And so, and and so the question is, is Donald Trump sort of like, you know, walking the proverbial halls talking to the paintings, you know, uh where he is making these decisions alone or is there some infrastructure around him? It doesn’t appear that the usual infrastructure which in his world is external. you know, he picks up the phone, he calls this right-wing podcaster, that right-wing activist, Laura Loomer, whatever. Like, it doesn’t feel like that that world is with him. And so, you know, one wonders what is the what is the decision-making structure around him? And by the way, just as it relates to to Moren Comey, is is this if if they’re not releasing any information as to why she was fired, I mean, does she have grounds to be able to to to fight this? I I know that I presume that that prosecutors here have to be fired for cause. I don’t want to get mired too much in in the legal intricacies of this thing because it doesn’t really matter here, but I’m just curious as it relates to her, you know, what what her next steps are and what her rights are. Yeah. Look, I I think she’s been Look, she’s been told something. Okay. like she’s been told a reason like you know whether she was terminated appropriately or inappropriately it is going I am very confident it is going to come out in the short term in the near term rather than long term what the grounds are for firing I mean this is a very tightknit office some of the early reports suggest that she had a lot of friends and public and not public but you know private uh displays of support among her colleagues it is not going to a private the reason that was given whether that reason was protextual or that reason was genuine like that’s going to come out and so what she does with that I think is an open question you know frankly I was very surprised I assume you were surprised that we saw um some pretty conservative law and order um prosecutors very publicly very publicly explain their separation from that office with regard to the Eric Adams matter. We have more recently um seen uh a whistleblower uh from Maine justice who’s testifi who’s provided evidence in the in the Boi confirmation process be pretty loud about like the circumstances. So these federal prosecutors tend not to be shrinking violence particularly in that office. So I would be very surprised if we don’t learn in the coming days what the rationale for her departure was. And to the extent it is laid at the feet of individuals in that office, I think there’s going to be, you know, you’re we’re that I think is going to more likely than not come out. We’re going to know what the reason was and what the level of decision maker was. Teller Cohen. I’m Mark Elias.

Democracy Watch episode 344: Marc Elias discusses a “blockbuster” announcement from DOJ about the Epstein case.

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