Congress Spars with Bondi Over Epstein Files

16:33Bryan Lanza:Yeah, I mean, on her side, and yet the chart I'm showing is what we also learned from the files that we didn't have. The inner circle we have up here that shows you basically, as Nadler and others were asking today, whatever happened to these leads? The wider chart I want to show comes, as you rightly point out, despite the conduct of the DOJ and the attorney general. And I'm not here to tell everyone what the proper amount of accountability is, but I can report more accountability over time as more files have come out. Upper right, Larry Summers, who's been in a Democratic administration, paid some consequence.

17:17Bryan Lanza:The lower bar is a lot of financial elites and others. Lower left, Brad Karp, a top lawyer, ousted from one part of his position to Paul Weiss. And these are early days of the many millions of files. I guess that's the question tonight. How do you contrast that slow push the survivors have made for some accountability with the way the DOJ and Bondi continue to conduct themselves?

17:39Pam Bondi:Well, I mean, this is not the first time we've seen something like this. Ari, in the wake of January 6th, we saw state bar associations moving with greater alacrity to hold the individuals who were associated with the attack on the Capitol. For example, Rudy Giuliani was disbarred. That's where we got the majority of accountability. We saw a really slow effort to bring cases, whether they were civil cases or criminal cases, in the courts. Lots of reasons for that, obviously. In the case of the president and a criminal case, the Supreme Court was a real lag on that. But this is not unusual in a circumstance like this where you have a deeply politicized Department of Justice and a president that is controlling quite a lot of it to see the accountability coming from private institutions who are beholden to other interests, not just the president.

18:33Pam Bondi:Whether it's corporate interests or shareholders, they have other things they have to account for. And that makes them move perhaps more quickly than the wheels of justice.

18:43Bryan Lanza:Yeah, and you're making sort of a broader point that's not stitched into the rules, but is how this works, what you're calling their stakeholders. It's funny because in a better working system, you'd expect the formally democracy-related parts of our system to use democracy. And that seems to be failing in all sorts of ways, rule of law. And yet you're reminding us a type of democracy or at least outside pressure lands. And we're not talking about small issues. When you talk about an insurrection like Jan 6, those consequences or this level of sex trafficking, you're talking about the truly indefensible.

19:19Bryan Lanza:I want to play a moment where Pam Bondi said several things that were true. She talked about the history of this, which I've been careful to emphasize. The DOJ has problems across multiple administrations. And then she said the Dow is up. True, but as lawyers might say, relevance. Look at this exchange.

19:42Pam Bondi:None of them, none of them ask Merrick Garland over the last four years one word about Jeffrey Epstein. How ironic is that? You know why? Because Donald Trump, the Dow, the Dow right now is over, the Dow is over$50 ,000. I don't know why you're laughing.

20:08Bryan Lanza:now professor i just want to be clear we do have transcripts here in the newsroom she says none of them ask garland do you want to know why because donald trump the dow the dow right now is over that's that's the claim so i don't think we have to spend too long parsing it it's nonsensical but in her smattering of talking points she refers to the fact that under merrick Ireland, the DOJ did not have a plan for transparency for the survivors. They did not do better release or redactions, and they did have control of the files that. So I'm curious, again, asking you to do the hard work today. Some of us just watch Pam Bondi.

20:48Bryan Lanza:You have to explain her. How should we intelligently make sense of a bucket of points, some of which are true? If you say, is this a bipartisan failure? A lot of the evidence says yes. And some of which which are irrelevant, which is how do you fix it now?

21:05Pam Bondi:Yeah, I think that point was made a million times in the course of this hearing. Like, there's a lot of blame to go around here. There are a lot of people who look the other way in a number of different administrations. This scandal goes back years and years. So again, that's clear. That's true. Everyone knows it. But right now, Pam Bondi is the Attorney General of the United States, And the buck stops with her and this administration because of everything that has happened, because it is in the ball is in their court right now. And her answer is, I mean, not simply non-responsive, just absolutely unhinged.

21:44Pam Bondi:It seemed like the point was Donald Trump has a mandate to bring the economy to some kind of peak and he's doing that. Therefore, this accountability is unnecessary. The answers that people want over these questions don't matter. And that's simply not the case. And to the point about democracy failing here and democratic institutions failing here. Sure, that's true. This was Congress, the representative of the people, holding a bipartisan hearing where on both sides of the aisle, there were critics of Pamela Jo Bondi. And instead, what we saw was the attorney general of the United States, someone who is charged with upholding the law, the chief law enforcer of this nation.

22:27Pam Bondi:And she stonewalled. She stonewalled Congress. She stonewalled the people.

22:33Bryan Lanza:yeah no i think you put it clearly and you have a measured form of also making sure people understand this isn't normal this wasn't constructive she has an obligation right now if i may be so bold as to say she's a public servant and her salary that's not bold that's the truth ari she is a public servant that's the truth and as you say that didn't come across at all. And her problem is bigger than the political kind of circus she wanted to make it. She has a problem with the survivors. She has a problem, as you mentioned, with the legal experts and community there. She has a problem that her boss, Trump, has given a lot of this process over to Todd Blanche because she was caught in too many lies, even, quote unquote, for Trump.

23:19Bryan Lanza:So she's got a lot of problems. And as you point out, this effort to kind of go nuclear DEFCON bonkers, bananas 10 may not have done what she hopes, which is to make this look like a circus. There's a lot of people who've been following the receipts. Professor, as always, thanks for being here.

23:33Pam Bondi:She's got 99 problems, but accountability ain't one.

23:40Bryan Lanza:Boom. Couldn't have said it better. Thank you, Professor. We always love Professor Murray covering the ground on more than one level. I'm going to show folks by the end of the hour, Joe Rogan hitting Trump on gaslighting for Epstein. Epstein, I should say. Ice busting, a lot of different ice problems, but they've recently been busted for how they're defying judges' orders, and we're looking at accountability on that. But a story that is incredibly important, it shows how Trump wants to be Putin in ways that are illegal, that could get people around him indicted eventually, but that today involve a huge loss.

24:15Bryan Lanza:The guardrails hold, as we've been telling you about. That story's next.

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25:50Bryan Lanza:An autogat tries to indict the opposition party for things they say, for their actual political speech. We report on those stories from abroad all the time, in Putin's Russia. Tonight we're reporting on that story here, even though Trump's effort to be Putin is failing badly and in public. A federal grand jury taking the rare step in Washington of refusing to allow a case moving forward that the Trump DOJ wanted to indict not one or two, but six different Democrats all at once. This comes from a plot Trump admitted of selective prosecution where you try to target opponents. That's usually unlawful.

26:28Bryan Lanza:He wanted to indict lawmakers for their protected free speech in a video. This rebuke is a blow to Donald Trump's probably unconstitutional revenge agenda, abusing the DOJ to go after people that he doesn't like, not based on evidence, but just because he wants to. The Times notes how it was a group of ordinary citizens that just rejected this new bid by Trump to label dissent as a criminal act. Some of the targeted lawmakers speaking out today. Every American should be appalled that Donald Trump and his political goons in the Justice

27:07Pam Bondi:Department have weaponized our Justice Department. This is a victory for the Constitution of the United States.

27:14Bryan Lanza:They want to scare not just us. They want to scare the American people. I'm not going to be intimidated. No one up here is going to be intimidated. This now adds six more losses to the many failed efforts by Trump to go after his opponents. This one coming from a very controversial figure, Jeanine Pirro, who is Trump's sort of political prosecutor or operative in D.C. We don't know whether the DOJ will, having been dealt this rebuke, drop it or try another way. The pressure has been mounting on Bondi because Trump complains about her that he wants more illegal prosecutions. All of this, though, also reflects what you heard those lawmakers mention.

27:55Bryan Lanza:The embattled guardrails of American democracy are strained, but some are working. And what you see in green on the tabulation we've shown you, citizen juries, they are standing up even as CEOs or elites have failed and buckled. It was grand jurors, regular citizens, who stopped this effort to indict these six people again over free speech. Congress has largely failed under Republicans to deal with any of this. For example, if it were exposed that a president was abusing the DOJ to try to detain and imprison opponents, you could imagine the demands for a special counsel or defunding or a united front as this type of effort is going at Congress itself.

28:42Bryan Lanza:And yet most Republicans are standing by. Some are now making noise. While we've shown efforts to indict opposition members before, now on this one, Republican Tom Tillis says this is political lawfare. The attorney general in that hearing we've been covering was also grilled on it today. You replace real prosecutors with counterfeit stooges who robotically do the president's bidding.

29:09Ari Melber:You have turned the People's Department of Justice into Trump's instrument of revenge.

29:14Pam Bondi:The new presidential directive was a politically motivated attack on civil society designed to silence those who disagree with the administration. Trump orders up prosecutions like pizza, and you deliver every time. What I will say is no one is above the law. Weaponization has ended.

29:35Bryan Lanza:Fact check, false. The Trump administration has pursued more political opponents, people of the opposite party, than any administration in American history in this amount of time. DOJ vet Leslie Caldwell is here next.

29:53Bryan Lanza:We're joined by Leslie Caldwell, who ran the Justice Department's criminal division. welcome your view of these rather astounding reports that the sitting president orchestrated an attempt to get six lawmakers in the opposition party indicted and a grand jury rejected it

30:11Pam Bondi:yeah i don't even know what to say about it ari it's it's really something that i never thought i would see in the united states of america but here we go and it's not the first time so it's quite shocking um the department of justice clearly has decided that it's going to be at the beck and call of the president, regardless whether there's any evidence against people they're going to try to present indictments, as they did in this case and also in the Comey and Letitia James cases. It's really quite extraordinary and it's really quite devastating for our country, quite frankly.

30:46Bryan Lanza:Based on your knowledge of the system, the grand jury is often a fait accompli, which is why we have the ham sandwich reference. But the reason for that is supposed to be that prosecutors are very careful that they amass evidence far above the minimal standard required at that step. What is your view of how this goes from here? If they are hell-bent on pursuing this, can they try to look at other grand juries in that or other districts?

31:20Pam Bondi:They can. And this is so I can't even begin to say how different this is than what the way the grand jury normally works. Normally, if you're doing an investigation that's of any complexity or high profile individuals, such as six members of Congress or the former FBI director, you want to make sure that you dot your I's and cross your T's when you're presenting your evidence. You want to make sure you have the evidence. You want to make sure that it's going to support your case. It's going to stand up scrutiny in court. Very seldom, I don't know what the exact process used in this particular case was, but very seldom in a case of any significance do you just make one presentation to the grand jury.

31:54Pam Bondi:Generally, it'll go on for weeks, if not months, and sometimes even years while cases are presented to the grand jury. if this was just presented in a single day in an effort to indict six members of Congress in a single day of presentation, that would be really extraordinary. Normally, an indictment of, for example, a member of Congress requires significant approvals within DOJ, and maybe the attorney general can just approve it saying this is what the president wants, but that's not how the process is supposed to work. Because you're supposed to make sure that everyone is being treated fairly and equally regardless of their political party or where they are on the spectrum or whether somebody despises them or hates them or not.

32:36Pam Bondi:And I think part of the point here, honestly, is I don't think the DOJ cares whether it wins these cases. They just want to do the president's bidding. And they're not going to win these cases because they have no evidence. And juries are not going to just be bowled over into convicting somebody or even indicting somebody in the case of this matter.

32:59Bryan Lanza:Well, part of this is intimidation. We showed on our chart the evidence that some business leaders and others seem very cowed. They seem to be caving about things that they five or 10 years ago had said the opposite on. We showed some of the members of Congress here, many of whom are veterans, who said they're not afraid, they won't be intimidated. They recognize that's the effort. And they've shown courage on behalf of our country, on behalf of all of us. So I don't think there's much room to doubt that they will press on. Congressman Crowe, and this is the comparison we made here, and you citizen juries are holding up their end in green.

33:34Bryan Lanza:My last question to you, Leslie, is Congressman Crowe is demanding that the DOJ maintain all the records and materials. Do they then have that legal obligation? And how could that be used in a fair or just process in the future to review whether lines were crossed?

33:50Pam Bondi:So I don't know if there's an obligation to maintain the grand jury materials indefinitely when there's no indictment in a case, but should they ever want to bring another matter against any of these people, they really should maintain these records because they could be exculpatory, for example. my guess is that whoever the assistant u.s attorney or whoever was the presenter to the to the grand jurors may well have misinstructed them regarding the law the applicable law or there may be other omissions uh it appears that in the for example the james comey indictment there was misinstruction from the then u.s attorney about the law and about the fifth amendment and james comey's ability i think she's something like he can explain that at the appropriate time, not realizing or acknowledging that he has a right to not explain that under the Fifth Amendment.

34:39So I think there are probably errors in there.

34:42Pam Bondi:It's probably insufficient evidence, as the grand jurors apparently concluded. So I think it would be foolish not to keep it. And I think that it could surface at some future point if they ever try to do anything with this case again.

34:57Bryan Lanza:Understood. Leslie Caldwell, thank you. Always appreciate it. When we come back, we're going to show you how Donald Trump's Epstein problem is spreading on the right. Joe Rogan, mad about the lies.

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36:41Bryan Lanza:We are in serious times in America, including intense national clashes about the role and activities of our federal government under President Trump. On this program, we've invited and heard from many members of the government, Borders are Tom Homan, Stephen Miller. We currently have requests out to many members of the administration. We are in dialogue with them so they know the door is open. And right now, continuing with that effort, we are going to hear from two different perspectives. New York Times columnist, longtime journalist Michelle Goldberg, who's an MSNOW analyst, and Brian Lanza, who worked on Donald Trump campaigns in 2016 and 2024 and is now a partner at Muir Republic Affairs.

37:19Bryan Lanza:Excuse me, Brian, hello. How are you? Hello. Great. How are you doing? Good. I just have you. I mentioned Michelle, but I have you. I wanted to start with the concern on the right about the gaslighting. As Joe Rogan puts it, misstatements by Bondi have been established. What some people call, of course, some in some cases lies. Here's Joe Rogan's concerns.

37:44Pam Bondi:Oh, FBI concluded Jeffrey Epstein wasn't running a sex trafficking ring for powerful men file show. So there you go. Oh, there you go. That's the gaslightiest gaslighting I've ever heard in my life. Well, what do they think is going on? Just a bunch of fun, a bunch of guys hanging out.

38:04Bryan Lanza:That's Rogan, who has been very supportive of many things, Donald Trump, which is relevant to his concern about about accuracy now. and we have Michelle's camera good, so I wanted to update, but she's now here and can hear you, Brian. Why does Donald Trump and Pam Bondi and the DOJ have such a problem releasing the full Epstein files, telling the truth about them? That was on display again today. And why keep someone in the cabinet who lied about going to Epstein Island and now only admits it when the files are out?

38:34Ari Melber:Well, first of all, thank you for having me. Listen, I'd say the first thing regarding Epstein, what started off as a small brush fire has turned into an inferno. You've seen these FCs files in the process of potentially taking down a government in Europe. There's certainly a test of leadership for the prime minister in the UK as a result of these things. And then the brush fire has spread transnational. Here in the US, this is more than just a drip, drip, drip. These allegations, this evidence that exists is jarring and it's shocking. It hurts the nerves. You know, I'm, you know, I'm confused myself at how sloppy this process has been.

39:13Ari Melber:I think we've heard, you know, Chief of Staff Susie Wiles talk about how this has been bundled by the Justice Department. And the result is that bundling, you know, we have been stumbling along, you know, for nearly a year. And in my view, you know, and the perspective I have, there's really no winning in this situation. There's not going to be enough information that will ever be released that will satisfy everybody. and the way this is, they've sort of self-weaponized the issue against themselves that almost at every turn, there's even more and more suspicion. And so, you know, in my view, you know, when it comes to media strategy, when it comes to times of crisis, you try to resolve these things as fast as possible and stop the drip, drip, drip.

39:54Ari Melber:I think in Trump's view, it's just in his administration view, I think they think they benefit from the opposite of just drip, drip, drip for every day. And, you know, more information becomes more jarring. Now, I will say this, There are a lot of, you know, you know, bad actors in this. The vast majority of them have actually been from the Democratic Party. You've had Larry Summers, who's had a resign from Harvard.

40:16Bryan Lanza:We showed that we had Larry, we had Larry Summers on a chart up earlier tonight. Happy to get into that. But I did want to get an answer from you. You say they bungled it. If you don't think it's good to go to Epstein Island and you don't think that's a good idea and you work for Trump, why keep someone around who went to Epstein Island and lied about it?

40:35Ari Melber:Yeah, I think the line is, the candor is the issue that ultimately Ludnik has to have with his constituency, which is the U.S. Senate. But as for, you know, him going to the island, I mean, you make it sound as if he went down with a bunch of other men. He went with his family. He went with his wife. He went with his kids. So his association with the island isn't tainted as others' association with the island is where they have these grand parties.

40:58Bryan Lanza:And then I want to get Michelle a turn, but just to drill this in the attorney general was asked about it today. You think Donald Trump is fine. It's you worked for him twice. It's fine to keep someone who went to the island under the conditions you mentioned, but lied about it up until the files busted him. You think that's fine?

41:14Ari Melber:No, listen, I think with Donald Trump, you know, I think what this administration does in these situations is they always, you know, you know, rally around the team. And because primarily because they're never going to let the media get this win of a Republican scalp of an administration scalp. So I think this administration will tolerate a lot more than previous administrations just to prove that the media is not driving the narrative, that they're driving the narrative. And I think they've proven that time after time. Let me give Michelle a turn.

41:42Bryan Lanza:Michelle, go ahead.

41:44Pam Bondi:Well, I don't think it's about the media driving the narrative. It's about the public driving the narrative. And they kind of are showing over and over again that they will not respond to public outrage. It's why we see in democracies that are still functioning. I mean, I think Great Britain is a great example. You look at the fact that the prime minister of England might have to resign. He's not in the files. He might have to resign because he appointed an ambassador who is entangled with Jeffrey Epstein. I mean, that's the kind of accountability you have in a country that still has feedback mechanisms between public outrage and government power.

42:27Pam Bondi:And what Donald Trump has done, I think, by capturing the Republican Party so effectively is severed those mechanisms. It doesn't matter what the public thinks on many of these issues. It doesn't matter. You know, I mean, the media is part of that, but the media is obviously not alone in driving this story. What Donald Trump stands for is impunity, and that's why he will protect people, you know, who kind of clearly in any other sort of an administration would be rendered unfit by, you know, put aside whatever the files show or don't show about their relationship by just the forthright lying about it.

43:07Bryan Lanza:and brian while i have you here the immigration clashes are huge uh several trump officials made false statements in trying to defend uh these tactics we have a fact check i want to show that to you you won't see ice agents rolling through the parking lots and just snatching someone up

43:34Pam Bondi:An American citizen shouldn't carry or shouldn't feel the need to carry.

43:37Bryan Lanza:Let me tell you what.

43:41Ari Melber:You have a little database of Americans? No, sir, we don't.

43:45Bryan Lanza:I can assure you there is no database that's tracking genocide citizens.

43:48Pam Bondi:Yeah. Why are you taking my information down? Because we have a nice little database.

43:54Bryan Lanza:You worked at a Trump campaign that vowed going after immigrant criminals, but not this. Have they gone too far? Should the president apologize to the Americans killed in this overreach?

44:07Ari Melber:I come from California, so I know the works of anti-immigrant rhetoric that has hurt the Republican Party. I think the policy of mass deportation of illegal aliens makes sense. I think the voters want that. I think the process of it has been sloppy. The process has been jarring when you've seen some of these videos. And it is a warning to Republicans. You don't have to look far to see the example of all Latinos. Look at California. I mean, the Republican Party was a thriving party in California prior to 187. 187, by the way, had majority support of Latinos in it when it initially passed. And then the tactics afterwards turned off people.

44:49Ari Melber:So, you know, I've certainly expressed concern to my Republican brethren that we have to be careful in this process. It's good to target illegal aliens. It's good to start with criminals. But when you get through this process of now U.S. citizens are being involved, now people are having to carry additional paperwork. I think that does have a negative effect on the policies that at some point the Latino community has supported.

45:13Bryan Lanza:Yeah, we ran over on time, so I'd love to have you both back together, frankly. and we had a little tech difficulty with Brian and Michelle. Thank you.

45:20Ari Melber:Subscribe to MSNOW Premium on Apple Podcasts for early access, ad-free listening, and bonus content to all of MSNOW's original podcasts, including the chart-topping series The Best People with Nicole Wallace, Why Is This Happening, Main Justice, and more. Plus, new episodes of all your favorite MSNOW shows ad-free and ad-free listening to all of Rachel Maddow's original series, including Rachel Maddow Presents Burn Order. Subscribe to MS Now Premium on Apple Podcasts.