Will Epstein's victims force Trump to release more files?

0:01BBC Sounds, music, radio, podcasts. The Jeffrey Epstein scandal, the saga that just will not go away for Donald Trump, burst back into flames in Washington this week as survivors of Epstein's abuse came together in DC and formed the biggest gathering actually of his victims in over six years. And they were here to support a bill that would force the release of the entire Epstein files. You had people like this woman, Anoushka Di Giorgio, who appealed directly to the president. I am no longer weak. I am no longer powerless. And I'm no longer alone. And with your vote, neither will the next generation be.

0:42President Trump, you have so much influence and power in this situation. Please use that influence and power to help us. Because we need it now and this country needs it now. These survivors are now threatening to compile their own list of abusers if there is no other way to get those names into the public domain. Welcome to AmeriCast. AmeriCast. AmeriCast from BBC News. You're gambling with the lives of millions of people. You're gambling with World War III. President Trump's message is very simple. We are done being taken advantage of. Mr. President, in the name of our God, have mercy upon the people who are scared now.

1:22Are you supportive of these onesies? I'm supportive of vaccines. What is happening? Like, this is not America. This is a terrible nightmare. This is what victory feels like. Yeah!

1:44Hello, it is Sarah here in the BBC's Washington Bureau. And it's Anthony, right next to Sarah here in Washington, D.C. And it is Mariana, a.k.a. misinformation, in the worldwide headquarters in London. Anthony, Mariana, we're really going to have to talk about what's been going on with Jeffrey Epstein, because we're in this position where Congress broke up early, essentially, a few weeks ago, to stop there being too much talk of Jeffrey Epstein, too many attempts to get all of these controversial files released. They've just come back into town, haven't they, Anthony? And it's all bubbled up again.

2:15Yeah, if they thought that a month off would allow cooler heads to prevail and for the story to disappear underneath the waves because of everything else Donald Trump has been doing. No, they're wrong. What the Democrats were doing, as you mentioned, leading into this was that they were forcing votes on pretty much everything to try to get a full release of the Epstein files. Now that they're back, they are cooperating with one Republican member of Congress, Thomas Massey, to force a vote, to gather enough signatures on a petition to force a vote in the House of Representatives, one that the leadership there, the Republican leadership cannot avoid.

2:52And so the big push has been in that area, although we've seen some things in some of the committees as well. Yeah. And really ramping up the pressure was when a bunch of Epstein survivors, as they're calling themselves, women who had been abused by Jeffrey Epstein and his circle of associates, all turned up on Capitol Hill yesterday with a huge placard reading Epstein Files Transparency Act, which is, of course, the legislation you're talking about, Anthony and if you listen to them in their own words and they're they're they're very powerful they're pretty persuasive and they say they're going to try and do what they can to get this information into the public domain.

3:29One of the women in that group was Lisa Phillips and she said that they have between them started compiling a confidential list of Epstein associates who they say were involved in that abuse. We are not asking for pity we are here demanding accountability and I'm demanding justice. Congress must choose. Will you continue to protect predators or will you finally protect survivors? And also, I would like to announce here today, us Epstein survivors have been discussing creating our own list. We know the names. Many of us were abused by them. Now together as survivors, we will confidentially compile the names we all know, who are regularly in the Epstein world.

4:15And it will be done by survivors and for survivors. No one else is involved. Stay tuned for more details. It's really interesting what she says there about the no one else is involved because so much of the conversation about this list or lack of list has centred around the current president, obviously Donald Trump, and accusations that he's somehow not releasing it or is linked to it. obviously accusations he's very very much denied but when there have been for example conversations then with Ghislaine Maxwell one of Epstein's associates who's in prison about this again there's been this feel of well is this happening independently or is this happening because of political pressure politicians close to Donald Trump have met with you know in government have met with her to talk to to have conversations about this list and and you know to make it clear that Donald Trump wasn't involved in abuse and all of those kinds of things but certainly in the online world there have been these real questions over the independence and the transparency and so it's really interesting that the survivors have very much tried to separate themselves from those ideas and say look we are actually going to do something which is the truth what we see as the truth what what what happened to us and talk about our experiences um and we've had this question from an americaster this email is from mist who says why can't the victims name them it would be painful and horrible to relive i believe there are ndas involved and what's been submitted in court may be confidential, but isn't all that rather void, even without a bill?

5:40Couldn't those who suffered release their own list? Red tape and law be damned. What do you think, Sarah, Anthony? I think it sounds terrifying, frankly, in the current political environment where you've got an administration that's not afraid to name names and go after people if they think that they're attacking them in some way. And we'll be talking in the same vein to Miles Taylor about something similar later, but also in your world, Mariana, online, where if somebody gets any prominence or controversy around them, the vitriol and abuse that you can suffer online and that can have real world effects as well with acts of violence in people's homes being targeted.

6:17And frankly, the people who are the most exercised about this Epstein case are some of the people I personally really, really would not want to upset online. I mean, I don't know if I'm being overly cautious about this. But frankly, I mean, you know, brave people, it takes them to stand up to speak truth to power. But wow, no, I wouldn't want to get involved in that. Yeah, obviously, they're stepping into a political firestorm and one where there are so many people pouring over every single little bit and bob of this story, looking for conspiracies, looking for cover ups, that there is a danger in being even tangentially connected to this.

6:55But I think it's fascinating, though, that they have focused on the list that they're compiling. Because that, as Marianna said, that was what everyone was talking about. Is there a list? Isn't there a list? A client list? The Trump administration said there is none. And that was what set off a lot of this controversy to begin with. So now here we are, the victim saying, well, we're going to make our own list. If there wasn't a list, we are going to will one into existence. And that may have a lot of people nervous. I mean, there's one person who was accusing Donald Trump of being set up by Epstein and accusing Donald Trump of inappropriate behavior.

7:33So if you can imagine, there are other people like that who will put names onto a list. And if that somehow gets out and is made public by this group, one, there could be legal vulnerability to anyone making these accusations. But two, it also could be very politically damaging for anyone on that list. We saw that with the Me Too movement. Yes, yes, of course. And that was, yeah, in different times taking on a different adversary. Now, it's really interesting that one of Donald Trump's most loyal supporters, Marjorie Taylor Greene, the Georgia congresswoman, she's normally at his side defending him ferociously.

8:12But actually, on this Epstein thing, she's broken with him. She's criticized him publicly. She's signed on to Thomas Massey's bill that we'll talk about in a minute. And she's said this as well about not being scared of naming names. These are some of the richest, most powerful people in the world that could sue these women into poverty and homelessness. Yeah, it's a scary thing to name names, but I will tell you, I'm not afraid to name names. And so if they want to give me a list, I will walk in that Capitol on the House floor and I'll say every damn name that abused these women. I think what's difficult is because it's become so politicised.

8:49It's like you hear Marjorie Taylor Greene speak there. Marjorie Taylor Greene has a track record of sharing a whole range of conspiracy theories and disinformation on social media. She wouldn't call them that. She would very much defend herself against those. But she's always been, for example, particularly engaged with the conspiracy theories that talk about paedophilia, that talk about sexual abuse. So it doesn't surprise me at all that someone like Marjorie Taylor Greene has decided that this is the hill that she's willing to die on. And that she doesn't mind actually crossing Donald Trump on this because it's something that matters to both her and her followers a lot.

9:19But the problem, I guess, with the politicisation is, and I would say that when I watched some clips from that press conference, it felt like the first time during this whole debate, argument, scandal, for want of a better word, that we'd heard from the people affected, properly heard from the people who were affected by it. It feels like they've been very absent from this political back and forth. And I wonder, Anthony, Sarah, what you think about, does it feel too politicised for their voices to be heard on this? Like, where does it go from here? I mean, what happens if one of them turns around and accuses a politician who it doesn't quite fit with the narrative in certain circles, in certain MAGA circles?

9:53Like, oh, hang on. No, we want it to be this person who's the baddie, not this person and so on. Well, that raises the question, doesn't it, of what on earth is going on in the White House? And I think you're right, Marianna, that the insertion of these women into the debate is very important because I think it makes it real for people who maybe haven't been buying into this as a conspiracy theory, but reminds people just how bad what Jeffrey Epstein did was. But it also it just continues to raise this question, doesn't it, of whether there is anything there. I wouldn't have said so at the beginning.

10:22I thought Donald Trump was making it up about there being a client list and people being blackmailed and that he could infer that Bill Clinton was on it because he took a couple of rides on Jeffrey Epstein's plane and that he was using it for political advantage. But now, I mean, all sorts of people, sensible, level headed people all over Washington are scratching their heads and saying, whose damn name is on this list that's being protected at such political cost by the administration? Right. I mean, while Donald Trump is sticking with the line he's had for the past few months, which is this is a hoax, an attempt by his political enemies to undermine him and being very dismissive and defensive about these accusations.

11:01I mean, this is him in the Oval Office just on Wednesday talking about the release of or the potential release of new files. So this is a Democrat hoax that never ends. You know, it reminds me a little of the Kennedy situation. We gave him everything over and over again, more and more and more. And nobody's ever satisfied. From what I understand, I could check. But from what I understand, thousands of pages of documents have been given. But it's really a Democrat hoax because they're trying to get people to talk about something that's totally irrelevant to the success that we've had as a nation since I've been president.

11:40I mean, Trump touched on something there, right, that it's hard to disprove a conspiracy theory. You can give them everything and their next question will be, well, what are you covering up? Whether it's this or whether it's Obama's birth certificate, which we've got the short form, the long form. Donald Trump said there still was a cover up. So, you know, it's kind of ironic now that he is on the flip side of this. I know we've said this a lot in America, but it's worth pointing out again. Donald Trump has frequently indulged conspiracy theories that have absolutely no evidence to support them, including about his political adversaries and people he doesn't like.

12:13And so he's now realizing that like those things stick like they're kind of like a bad smell. You can't get rid of them, particularly if there does feel like there's some element of truth or it's been twisted or distorted in some way. And on this kind of Democrat hoax point that he made, this was what Brad Edwards, who's a lawyer representing some of Epstein's accusers, said, pushing back and saying Trump wasn't calling it a hoax back in 2009. I can tell you that I talked to President Trump back in 2009. And several times after that, he didn't think that it was a hoax then. In fact, he helped me.

12:48He got on the phone. He told me things that were helping our investigation. Now, our investigation wasn't looking into him, but he was helping us then. He didn't treat this as a hoax. So at this point in time, I would hope that he would revert back to what he was saying to get elected, which is I want transparency. This about face that occurred, none of us understand it. In fact, I don't understand how this is an issue that's even up for debate. But if that were to be the case, then why would Donald Trump make such a big deal of this in his reelection campaign? Like, why would you, you know, it's like, why would you bring up something that you then later didn't want to be an issue?

13:20The only way you can make any sense of what's happened, I'm not saying this is what is happened, but it's the only commonsensical attitude is that they took a look at all of the names involved in these documents and realised that they were friends, not foes. or people that for some reason or other, it would be embarrassing if they were from heads of foreign states or something like that, that it would be terribly embarrassing for America, unhelpful for the administration to release these names. So they're trying to cover them up. I mean, the other explanation is there is nothing there. But if that's the case, why they're not just releasing absolutely everything to prove there's nothing there.

13:53That's what I don't understand. And the thing you have to remember is that Donald Trump really wasn't pushing this. I mean, yes, he talked about it, but this wasn't in the realm of conspiracy theories that are out there. This isn't one that Donald Trump was hammering on. Sometimes Trump understands where his base is. I think oftentimes he does and understands what's motivating his base. And he felt like he had to position himself to be on this side of it because it was clearly such an important issue to so many people in the magma movement. But it wasn't one of those ones that he was forcing onto the table the way he has plenty of other different conspiracy theories.

14:30Once again, the Obama birth certificate one being perhaps a prime example. But we have seen some documents now. There were 33 ,000 documents that the Government Oversight Committee released earlier this week. I haven't dug all the way through all 33 ,000 pages, but people have. And the kind of consensus is, However, that that was not anything particularly new, that it was pretty much, well, let's say a nothing burger. Although there was one little nugget in there that was kind of interesting. And that had to do with the missing minute on those surveillance tapes, the tapes in the hallway outside of Jeffrey Epstein's cell, which was not missing anymore.

15:14It was in this document dump, and that ended up being, while nice to see it, also not really revelatory, no big secrets in this missing minute. Well, no, so I'll tell you what I thought was really interesting about that was that, yes, OK, so we saw what happened in that minute. And this was just around midnight, wasn't it, where they showed us hours of the surveillance tapes several months ago. This one minute was missing where I guess somebody could have snuck into Jeffrey Epstein's cell, killed him and left again very, very quickly. Just about possible. But Pan Bondi, the attorney general, tells us, oh, well, that's just standard procedure when the recording system resets itself.

15:55at midnight every night there's this one minute missing there's nothing weird or unusual about it at all you'll find that happens every single day in this jail except that's not true because the missing minute was there so now why should we believe a single thing Pam Bondi has told us about all of the rest of the documents she's the one who says oh we can't show you the other stuff but trust me there's nothing salacious in there why should we trust her on anything now that the missing minute wasn't missing at all also to the tens of thousands of video they turned out to be child porn downloaded by that disgusting Jeffrey Epstein.

16:26Child porn is what they were. Never going to be released, never going to see the light of day. And the minute missing from the video, we released the video showing definitively the video was not conclusive, but the evidence prior to it was showing he committed suicide. In Congress as well, they might be able to force the release of the Epstein file. So we've got this bill that's been put together by Republican Thomas Massey, Democrat Ro Khanna, trying to compel the Justice Department to release them. The Republican House leadership don't want it to go to a vote, but they can force a vote, can't they, Anthony, if they get enough names to sign on to it?

17:09And they've got most Democrats now, a few Republicans. What are their chances, do you think, of reaching the magic? Is it 218? Yeah, they're getting pretty close. There are 212 Democrats, as you mentioned, if they all sign off on it. You only really need six Republicans. And Thomas Massey, he's one of them. Marjorie Taylor Greene said she was going to sign it, I believe. They just need to pluck away a few more people. So they've got two more already in Nancy Mace and Lauren Boebert. Again, usually absolute Trump loyalists. Right. So they're getting very, very close. This is a rarely used maneuver called the discharge petition.

17:44And basically what it does is it forces a vote, even when the leadership of the House of Representatives, that's Mike Johnson, the Speaker of the House and others, doesn't want it to come to a vote. Normally, speakers have incredible power on what does and doesn't get voted on. This is a way to move around that, to short circuit it and bring something to the floor, even over the objections of the leadership. You've seen it where there was a campaign finance bill in the early 2000s that got to the floor that way. Democrats have used it a few times on some other things in recent years. But it's hard.

18:18It's hard to get that many people to agree on anything and to sign their name on it. But now it looks like they might be able to pull it off, which then, OK, you get to a floor vote. It passes. Then the question is, will the Justice Department, even with Congress saying, you've got to release everything, everything, everything, will they do it? Will they find some way to redact things? Will they fight it in court? And so the hopes are among the people who want to see these documents that this will do it. But I think there's still, even if it comes to a vote, a long way to go before we see the full files, if we ever see the full files, whatever those full files might be.

18:55Yeah, because I was wondering about this. Faced with, so that they do get this vote passed, can the Justice Department then just suddenly decide a whole bunch of this stuff is classified? Can the Justice Department classify stuff and therefore not release it? Whether it's classified and they have exerted, you know, classification and national defense and all these sorts of prerogatives time and time again. The other thing that you hear from them is that you have to redact because of the sensitive information about victims of a crime that they cannot reveal under federal law. So there are ways that they could claim that some of their blackouts of the pages, some of their rescissions are legal.

19:38And then it becomes a court battle. And then it becomes a matter of just having it possibly be delayed for months, years even. Mariana, I believe you've got to disappear into conspiracy land or some kind of online realm in which you dwell. I do. I do. Social media algorithms this time, my other topic of choice. But I will chat to you both very soon on another episode.

20:05Now let's chat to our longtime friend of the podcast and the important former chief of staff of the Department of Homeland Security, Myles Taylor, whom you've heard from before, is on the line now. Thank you so much for joining us again today, Myles. It's great to talk to you. Hey, friends. Great to be with you. Before you joined us, we were just talking about Jeffrey Epstein and the ongoing saga with that. Obviously, we want to talk to you about whether there is a vengeance agenda coming out of the White House. But as somebody who has worked closely with Donald Trump, how do you think he will be reacting to the fact that he just cannot seem to control this story about Jeffrey Epstein and whether there are any missing files?

20:47Well, he's going to shoot himself in the foot. And we already saw that with his response in the Oval Office, this completely dismissive response and labeling anything related to Epstein as a hoax, which, you know, may be something that infuriates Donald Trump's critics, but it also infuriates his supporters who he convinced in the lead up to the 2024 election to reelect him in part because he was allegedly going to go expose the deep state conspiracy theories and deep deep staters who were hiding things like the Epstein files. And now he seems to be almost mocking his own supporters. And, you know, so comments like that aren't going to help him.

21:33I mean, they're just going to increase the pressure to actually come forward with real information, real revelations from the investigations and to live up to what he said he was going to do when he came into office. And I don't think they're going to get out of this one. I mean, as much as Donald Trump tries to change the subject and create these extraordinary distractions. As long as his own people, as long as his own members of Congress and his party are demanding that the files be released, he's not going to be able to escape this. No, it seems like a story that's going to linger around. Now, another thing that Donald Trump promised on the campaign trail, as I'm sure you remember, is that he would, for lack of a better word, exact revenge on his enemies and the enemies of his movement.

22:19Here he is speaking on the campaign trail. In 2016, I declared, I am your voice. Today I add, I am your warrior. I am your justice. And for those who have been wronged and betrayed, I am your retribution. I am your retribution. That kind of seems like a campaign promise that's been kept. Miles, I mean, you can certainly vouch for that at this point, can't you? Yeah, well, I mean, three months into the Trump administration, he issued an executive order directing a federal investigation into me and accusing me of treason, which happens to be essentially the highest crime envisioned by the U.S. Constitution.

23:06It's a crime punishable by death. I don't take the allegation seriously. It's very obvious that the president is doing this in retaliation for the fact that I've published books critical of him, that I've been speaking out against him for a number of years. But that revenge campaign has gone far beyond individual critics of the president. And some folks did suspect he would get reelected. And yes, he would go after some of his enemies. But that revenge campaign has turned into something vastly greater than what a lot of people envisioned and much more so than individual critics. America says I'll be very familiar with some of the most obvious things that have happened.

23:48Recently withdrawing Secret Service protection from Kamala Harris. He did the same with his former National Security Advisor John Bolton, who is under death threats from Iran, as well as sending the FBI to raid his home, looking for any documents he was keeping there that he ought not to have. But it goes beyond that as well. But I've been the most surprised by really blatantly firing people who have produced factual reports that Donald Trump and his administration don't like. And we can think of the head of the Bureau of Labor Statistics coming up job numbers, monthly job numbers that the administration didn't like and she lost her job.

24:25And then just last month, Lieutenant General Jeffrey Cruz at the Defense Intelligence Agency at the Pentagon. They produced that report saying that the bunker buster bombs that were dropped on Iran may not have done as much damage to the nuclear facilities as the administration were claiming. And suddenly the agency chief is fired. I mean, it sounds terrifying. But Anthony, is this the worst that we have seen? It's difficult when you're here right in the midst of it to know how to put it into historical context. I mean, in terms of bad presidencies, Richard Nixon's name always seems to be at the top of the list in terms of doing this kind of thing.

24:58Right. I mean, you say these are glaring examples. I mean, there's nothing kind of hidden here. I mean, he very clearly is getting rid of people who disagree with him. And he'll say it's because it's the deep state and these people undermined his attempts to enact policies during this first term. And so he had to essentially clean house. But you're right. He's not the only president who has tried to do this. Richard Nixon, as you mentioned, a big example of that. He had his enemies list and he did order FBI to investigate some of the people on that list. We know this because there were audio tapes in the Oval Office of him talking about his enemies list and the people who were out to get him.