Congress Votes to Release Epstein Files

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0:32Nice. Now I can instantly spend it whether I'm checking out online with Venmo or using a Venmo debit card. Say more. More exactly. Because the more you do with Venmo, the more you get. Like earning up to 5 % cash back with Venmo Stash on a bundle of brands. So, order more pizza. The math demands it. Get the Venmo debit card. Venmo Stash bundle terms and exclusions apply. See terms at Venmo.me slash dash terms. Venmo checkout not available at all merchants. Venmo MasterCard is issued by the Bancorp Bank N.A. Welcome to The Beat. I'm Ari Melber, and we're reporting on what is a major and now swift loss for Donald Trump today.

1:07The House and Senate agreeing on a bill to force the Trump administration to release the full Epstein files. Here's how that action played out in the House. The bill is passed and without objection, the motion to reconsider is laid on the table. That's how it went down. Congress united against President Trump, forcing him and his administration to release the files that they have been withholding. The push began earlier this year with Democrats using a rare method to override the Republican speaker. They picked off some Republicans against Trump. Tonight, we can see how that strategy worked. Republicans retreated, going from opposing any Epstein vote to virtually all of them joining Democrats to back this within one vote of unanimously.

1:53That was in the House. And now, unanimously in the Senate. More on how that vote count will weaken Trump's legislative strategy. I'll get into that in a moment. Now, this is moving fast. Trump losing all control of the process. This news breaking within the last hour, rocking the Trump White House. It looked unthinkable to Trump just a week ago. His Republican defense is cracking in the Senate, too, where Republicans buckled and just allowed Senator Schumer to bring the Epstein bill to the floor. And that's through a unanimous agreement. That means not a single Republican senator was left to back the strategy Trump has been using all year through this week, blocking or delaying a vote.

2:31And that bought him about 302 days in the House, thanks to Mike Johnson trying everything, even avoiding holding House sessions rather than facing this today. Now, here's what the House voted for. Using its power to force the Trump administration to release all the files. Okay, that means files related to Epstein and his travel and Maxwell, his convicted co-conspirator. It means that they will try to get the information about others linked to Epstein's crime from people to companies. That's a lot. And there may be many witnesses inside government who know where those records are, meaning that if somebody in the government were to try to hide or destroy them to duck Congress, they can be reminded that itself would be a crime.

3:17Now, this new bill, which I'm telling you just passed now, both House of Congress agreeing to it, also demands more. They want records on any deals to grant immunity or prosecution avoidance, which is called a non-prosecution agreement. They want any secret communications that occurred inside both Trump's DOJ and past administrations. This is not a party thing on paper. If somebody was giving a sweetheart deal to Epstein or anyone around him in any past administration, in any party, they want to know that too. And then there's a second category that could haunt Trump's first term. Communications related to Epstein's associates, his detention, and subsequent death.

3:56and documents on Epstein jail, the jailing of Epstein and the death. And that would include the examiner files or autopsy reports and records. And if you say, gosh, I guess people think maybe there was some reason to review that or something suspicious about Epstein's death in the custody of the Trump administration's Bureau of Prisons, overseen by then Attorney General Bill Barr. Well, this is not now some random party chatter or Internet talk or mean jokes. This is the combined authority of both houses of Congress, almost unanimous both parties, saying we also want to know what happened in that jail cell.

4:33And asking questions, as journalists can tell you, doesn't mean you're assuming the answer. It just means let's get all the documents and why are you hiding them? Trump's party controls the White House and both houses of Congress. You're watching the news, you probably know that. So think about what today means. Nicole Wallace and others were discussing this in our coverage late today. He controls them, but not today. He lost on this issue of his own personal and political vulnerability. There's an old political saying that says, there can be a thin line between impossible and inevitable. That's true in life sometimes.

5:09If you think about how I would never do that, and then you end up doing it. It can be true in politics too. When Trump came out guns a-blazin' politically, I don't mean that literally, in January with his re-election and his Elon Musk and his Doge, it would have been hard to imagine not only Republicans rejecting him on this, but rejecting him this unanimously, all but one vote. And that goes to how he is now written out of this story because it was such a big vote, he can't stop it anymore. I'll explain that in a moment. But remember, this story has dominated now and upended Trump's second term.

5:44The hiding is over. To paraphrase the singer SZA, No more hiding, even if it burns or blinds. No more hiding. The nation has watched Trump go from hiding the Epstein files to being forced to release them. And lately, this past two days, he's been pretending he backs them without releasing them. As SZA might say, crashing for real, trying for real. No more fake fighting. Don't gotta say it, because I already know, gotta break it. If you want to grow, no more hiding. I will say on a personal note, Alex Wagner is our guest coming up, and we will get her views on whether this was a forced lyrical reference.

6:29But it is literally true there will be no more hiding now that the bill has passed. Congress is showing some spine Republicans following the lead that, remember, began with Democrats. They were the ones that whatever criticisms you have, and boy, there are all kinds of criticism of the Democratic Party, left, right, and center. But they're the ones that led this and then recruited the Republican defections to rebuff Trump. After Republicans spent most of this year with Trump trying to avoid what happened, they were cornered into voting for this today. You know what America first means to me? How about meeting with the survivors?

7:07How about making sure that America's girls are not being raped? Truth will triumph over deception and obfuscation. Transparency will triumph over dark money. The question will remain. Will the Department of Justice release all the information? Will a judge in New York release the information? I am sorry if one of your billionaire donors is going to get embarrassed because he went to Rape Island. That is what they have coming. Nothing less than justice and the complete truth about who is responsible for their vicious abuse, including those responsible for enabling it, ignoring it, bankrolling it and covering it up.

7:53It is time to end this White House cover up now. Now, we know that Donald Trump has tried everything to kill our Jeffrey Epstein investigation and he's failed. And let's be crystal clear. Trump has the power to release the files today. He does not even need a vote. To be clear, there is no protection for pedophiles. The survivors deserve justice. The American people deserve the truth. That's how it sounded today. A complete and often really united message, although we can't give 100 percent credit to everyone pretending to be united on this issue. when they had fought, like Speaker Johnson had fought, 302 days to prevent this vote.

8:35It was only that he was overridden, that we get the vote, and then we get those speeches. But again, this is the kind of revolt, united and bipartisan in spirit, if not in all reality and history, that you rarely see in Washington, really in the last several years, and that we have not seen all year in this tumultuous Trump second term. The Senate is joining the House. Remember, Trump tried to prevent this day from coming. Couple examples. Back in February, they released these files that weren't the Epstein files because, and MAGA leaders have been mad about this, Trump was. If you follow the news, just bear with me here, but Trump was lying.

9:13Except instead of lying about liberals or Democrats or some other issue, he was lying to his base and these MAGA leaders about the thing that he said he would release a year ago when he was running for the campaign. And what you see there are, well, what he would call maybe a hoax or fake news, fake binders that didn't really have the Epstein files in them, as the AP summarized. By summer, he got the attorney general, Pam Bondi, to commit to something on paper, which rejects and undercuts the current effort to say they want to open new probes because she admitted there's no client list. She walked back her own theory.

9:51She wrote a memo saying there is nothing left to investigate. So if Pam Bondi's Justice Department shows up in a courtroom in a week or two saying, well, actually, we can't release any of this because we have new open probes, you can bet the other lawyers and the judge will say, but you committed to DOJ letterhead on paper the opposite. And it was just last week when the Trump White House summoned a congresswoman into a unusual situation room berating a pressure campaign against affections. longtime Republican, but Trump critic Bill Kristol talked about this on our program this week. He said credit to the true believers who on the other side of the Trump onslaught held their ground.

10:31Now, I'm going to show you something tonight that is as important to this news as the news, and yet it is archival. Our MSNOW and Beat producers have pulled this together so you can remember that while Trump now tonight has said he's not even going to resist this, he's going to sign it, and I'll explain why he basically can't veto this in a minute. But he says that now and he's trying to get different headlines. But we have the receipts for you, the president and Republican Speaker Johnson. Their approach for 302 days was to prevent this vote that was then forced on them. So this is a Democrat hoax that never ends.

11:09They're forcing a political show vote on the Epstein files. This is a political exercise. It's all been a big hoax. It's perpetrated by the Democrats. And some stupid Republicans and foolish Republicans fall into the net. He had nothing to do with it. President Trump has clean hands. He's not worried about it. Well, I don't want to talk about it because fake news. The discharge petition is not only reckless, it is also a totally moot point. They can do whatever they want. So we'll give them everything. Sure, I would. Let the Senate look at it. Let anybody look at it. But don't talk about it too much.

11:43That's where Trump landed yesterday Having been dealt this defeat I quote Mike Johnson tonight The GOP speaker back to Mike Johnson Quote, reckless But then why did he vote for it today? The answer is obvious It's why people get cynical And basically disaffected about politics in general He can't square the circle If it was reckless, he shouldn't vote for it If it wasn't reckless and he supports it today They should have supported it to begin with If you cared about the truth, the facts, the DOJ, or the victims, well, then you'd have a consistent position, not all of this. But within that negativity and cynicism, there is also a little sliver of hope in the American experience of democracy.

12:26You go to a class and someone tells you about they got this thing with the discharge petition, yada, yada. Okay, who cares? But then you find out people can actually use that even against very powerful people. The speaker and the president are very powerful in our government. That's two branches of government right there. And this system worked today. We will find out in the future how that must continue to be forced and pressed. Journalists, activists, lawyers, people interested in getting the truth out can go through the court process. But today, that petition that started mostly with Democrats and a couple Republicans has now unearthed all of this.

13:01And Mike Johnson and Donald Trump are pretending to support the thing the Democrats pushed that they fought for 302 days. Trump says he'll sign this. That's late breaking. That he's now OK with the release while he's also playing games at the DOJ. Sixty percent of Americans are concerned that Trump knew about the abuse. Republicans back Trump as long as they could. They didn't want this vote. They went hard and failed. Trump is also tasting a political mortality tonight, Axios writes. The first time this term a GOP-led congressional chamber so openly defied him. Rupert Murdoch's Wall Street Journal writes, the Epstein vote is one of the signs Trump's ability to bend the Republican Party to his will is weakening.

13:51You can say that again. people have different opinions about Donald Trump. That's fine. I think it's a fair observation that there are things you can tell he cares about and a lot of other stuff in governing. This is not like they vetoed him on some tax plan or the price of tea in China, as they say, or the price of coffee when the tariffs go up. This is the big one. They say a hit dog will holler. I said Alex Wagner's here. We'll find out if she prefers that tired cliche to the scissor lyrics. But the bottom line is Donald Trump made it very clear that this day was what he feared most. Maybe only he knows the reasons for that.

14:35That's the most responsible way I can say it. And Mike Johnson, the Speaker of the House, did something that in other times we hear all about how everything's different in any other time period, refusing to let the Congress meet because Because Donald Trump would rather buy a couple weeks than face the Epstein files transparency was really something to then do that during a shutdown. While we saw people in line for food and people concerned about airport safety, that was bananas. And they did that just to buy time. And they lost and they failed. And here we are tonight, a country watching the last thing I'll mention.

15:09I save this to the end because honestly, it's a little more technical. But we all know how Bill becomes a law and you send it down to the White House and then you find out whether the president signs it. But the president can veto a bill. The vast majority of bills throughout history cannot survive a veto. And that's why you have that whole system. I'm sure you remember you see the signing, you see him veto. What just happened tonight was unthinkable to so many a week ago. The Senate, controlled by Republicans, could have done all kinds of things, delayed or passed it by 55 votes. No, they are now joining with a unanimous agreement of veto-proof majority, which means Trump has no power to stop this.

15:45We've got two special guests here to get into it when we return.

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17:34She also writes the substack, How the Hell with Alex Wagner? Fair question. Molly Jong-Fast from the New York Times is also an MSNOW analyst. First two questions to Alex. The second will be the one as promised, gerating. But first, you've been covering this. You've been in Washington. Molly and I were there this morning. And it really did change fast. Yeah. I mean, it feels like five years ago that we were standing there with Epstein survivors who still thought it was an open question about whether this would get to the Senate. I mean, I think that there was confidence that the House was going to pass this maybe unanimously.

18:04Marjorie Taylor Greene spoke and she seemed very confident. But the winds of change have blown quickly on this story. I mean, I think I don't want to lose sight of the fact that this is a major victory for these victims who have stood, you know, bravely in the public eye. They have faced threats. They have, I mean, to say nothing of the abuse and the trauma that they withstood in their tenderest years. You know, these women took to the podium and each one of them showed a photograph of themselves at the age when the predation or the abuse by Jeffrey Epstein began. And what gutted me, I don't know how you felt about this, Molly, was just how young they looked, you know.

18:41And I think we do need to keep that at the center of this because there are going to be a lot of political machinations about whether we actually see the truth here. But it is resoundingly and unquestionably a victory for those women who have, against all odds, kept this story alive and held the most powerful people in the country to account. Right. I mean, literally, the government was shut down, arguably, so that this discharge petition would never be signed. So you didn't convene them. Yeah. I mean, like hats off to them and their tenacity and bravery. So let me bring Molly on. Since you were there, tell us about that, then we'll come back to you.

19:15OK, I agree with what Alex is saying. And it was it was very moving. And you saw these survivors really, you know, I think it was, you know, these people, this abuse has gone on. And one of them, Annie Farmer, talked about how they have been betrayed by, like, the governments of Democrats and Republicans. Bill Clinton. This has happened. Right. Five administrations have refused, you know, and she talked about calling the FBI and how they hung up on her and then they called back and said she was going to be a witness. And then they didn't even know about a plea deal. Like this was just handled so badly.

19:54And and in fact, they talked about this idea that, you know, there was a lot more abuse than needed to happen. Right. Had they heard during the Clinton administration or the Obama administration, obviously Clinton and Obama didn't know about this. But had the FBI taken this more seriously, had they gone in there and stopped it or had that plea deal? Right, the corruption at the top, which is the connection to their experience. Right. And then what Republican Massey says today, I'm going to play, is he's concerned that there's still other important people being protected. Oh, yeah. Their alleged abusers.

20:28I just want to let's listen to that. I prefer actually it goes straight to the president. He can release these files without the Senate acting. Sometimes they take a long time to get things done. The House figured out for a way to take four months. I believe he's trying to protect friends and donors. And by the way, these aren't necessarily Republicans. Once you get to a billion dollars, you transcend parties. You just assume you can pay off whatever party is in charge of the White House. Massey's talking about this and there's evidence. This is not just rhetoric. We finally got some of the emails.

21:05We expect that the emails would also be in the files. And if they start playing games, we have 20 ,000 emails to see what they pull. One of them, of course, shows that a very top Obama lawyer was very close with Epstein. They've described it as professional. Kathy Rumler was literally in dialogue with him when she was considering whether to potentially get the job of attorney general. The Clinton reference was made. Other individuals. And then you have the Trump of it all. So the no more hiding point. I want you to respond to that. And then you're a referee. You know, we call it straight. No more hiding.

21:38SZA, go ahead. If you're the person in America that can tie SZA together with Jeffrey Epstein in like not not not impugning SZA's reputation. SZA seeking transparency. This is why you are on television. Thank you, Alex. And I was worried you would say it too far. I salute you. It's never too far, Ari. It's never too far. I I am worried. I am old enough to know how Donald Trump has manipulated and continues to manipulate the Justice Department. He has thus far pulled every lever of the federal government that he can from the office of the director of national intelligence to the House Republican Congress to the Department of Justice to prevent the truth from coming out.

22:18It is hard for me to believe that he's had a come to Jesus moment on a Sunday night and been like, you know what, let's go. A, because he could have just released this today on his own, taken the win and said, I'm a hero for the truth. He has not done that. No, he's maintaining his options, which includes trying to have the DOJ stonewall. But you're now redact or do know what you're facing. But you are facing a very united Congress. Yes. Although I will say and again, I don't want to lose sight of the fact that this is a victory for the victims. I am very skeptical of Republicans truly standing up to Donald Trump.

22:51I think this is an issue that animates the base. It is a scandal unlike any other in America. But I'll go back and forth with you. It is part of the Rosetta Stone of MAGA. And whether it is. And she's welcome. That's not even. It's the beginning. Well, let me I'm going to let's debate this out. This is a big night. People are interested. They lost today. Yes. Yes. Three hundred and two days. They fought. They lost. I hear you on the spectrum and you're making a very fair point about skepticism. But on that spectrum. Absolutely. This is more of a loss and moving towards holding them accountable.

23:23It is possible that people say, oh, I saw the vote. I let it go. But but the other point, I'll let you both respond is you got a lot of people who are waiting on the deliverables. I showed the photos when they when they tried to fake it. It didn't work on their people. Even if people say, oh, the MAGA folks, whatever. I'm just going to put on the screen and Molly can respond. These are the things that the Congress says they're going to get. If they don't get them, Epstein docs, Maxwell docs, travel records, individuals named in connection with the activities. I'm just going to put this up. This is what is in this is what Congress voted for tonight.

23:56If we have this six entities with alleged ties to trafficking. OK, because more can be done not only on transparency, that means learning the facts, but doing what prosecutors are supposed to do, which is act on it. Also, immunity deals, the agreements which spared Epstein the first time, the plea bargains, internal DOJ, multiple administrations, I emphasize. So, Molly, either they get a lot of it. I'm not saying you get 100 percent. There's a legal process and you've got to protect victims. I mean, I'd be the first to acknowledge there's some complexity. But either they get a lot of it. They were involved in the drafting of this.

24:26So the victims are engaged in this process. Exactly. And so either they get a lot of this or it consumes another 300 days of Trump's presidency. Well, and I think he sort of fenced himself in here. And when we were at this press conference, we heard these these victims talk about reading the lists on the floor. So remember, these victims have not been all together since this process started. And now they all know each other. They talk to each other. They have a relationship with each other and they have lists. And so both MTG and Representative Jaipal have said they will read the lists on the floor.