Emails show Epstein's links to two MAGA lawyers

0:00We are rounding up quite the week. Welcome to The Beat. I'm Ari Melber. Tonight we have a new special breakdown, another in our series or volumes of the Epstein emails, newly surfaced emails that goes deep into the legal games, the PR games, the high-powered Republican lawyers that Epstein relied on, some of whom went on to represent Trump. Also, as Trump DOJ faces this deadline, we have an exclusive tonight with a DOJ vet. But we begin with what is clearly the worst week of Donald Trump's second term. Some see a tipping point. The polls are cratering, the economic confidence plunging, and more Republicans doing something that if you follow the news, and you're hearing my voice, so you do, or if you've just been around American politics in the second or first Trump term, you've heard over and over Republicans, they won't stand up to them.

0:52They're afraid. They certainly won't do it in public on big matters. Well, that's change. That talking point died a loud and kind of dramatic death this week, with Republicans going from a lot of that to openly defying him. Not a single Republican friend in the Senate would do what he wanted to even slow down that Epstein train this week. others going further, meaning they could have done that and stopped. But here we are ending the week Friday with more reports of Republicans saying, let's build on the pressure. Let's stake out our power. Let's make sure DOJ understands they will comply with the files, although that could be a court fight.

1:30And others saying something you usually hear from the opposition party, that a second term president is quickly becoming a lame duck as they pass the Epstein files bill that Trump desperately failed to try to block. Just seconds ago, a landslide vote in the House of Representatives. The release of the Epstein files has passed the House. A reckoning over the Epstein files on Capitol Hill. The Trump presidency, as we have known it, is over. We're just hearing that Trump has signed the Epstein Act. Donald Trump put his surrender and humiliation in writing in capital letters. Troubling signs for President Trump, even within his own party.

2:11That puts his approval really about where his predecessor, Democrat Joe Biden's, was for most of the second half of his term. This is an albatross hanging around the neck of the president. An albatross that is haunting the approval ratings. These are second term lows in multiple surveys. So you can check AP, Reuters or Fox. We're looking at these high 30s, which means he has lost the approval, the support about how he's doing his job from a ton of people who voted for him. That's kind of the difference there when you win around 49-50 and you find yourself stuck, according to the AP, at 36 percent.

2:51New York Times reports congressional Republicans already beginning to look beyond Trump. That's a headline to end the week that shows how bad a week it was. And these are the first signs of Trump's lame duck status. The report says Trump's previously ironclad grip on the Republican Congress might be weakening earlier than usual, before the more typical loss of power by a sitting president that follows the midterm elections. If what the Times is writing here sounds familiar, it is something we reported on this program about two to three weeks ago, because this is a story of evidence, not just narrative, as they like to say.

3:28And the signs have been building over the past few weeks in the polling and in the Republicans that were countable on the Epstein and other issues. Remember, we only got here because several Republicans joined the Democrats on that petition, that rare special tool to override a sitting speaker, and in this case, also override a sitting president. So we said, when you look ahead at how the president is polling and how many unfibled things he's done, at the wobbling at parts of the MAGA-based podcast sphere, the influencers that we've covered, we show you those clips. We said that what often is a later lame duck precedent, what you see in political science, has hit Trump earlier.

4:09And so, yes, Trump has defied certain political laws of gravity to his benefit at times. He is different. His supporters and his opponents all agree he's different. But now we're seeing he's breaking precedent in the other way, where other presidents have benefited from some leeway in the second term. The things he's done this year, and it's a Friday, I'm not going to run through them all, combined with the way that he has lied to and disrespected his base on an issue where he promised them transparency but gave them lies, has blown up and made him an earlier lame duck. For those who felt that Biden had lost a step in year three and four, didn't have the same power, Trump is now at those Biden-level year four numbers in year one.

4:51And the country wants the files. The FBI deploying police to guard the facility where many of the Epstein files are believed to be located. Of course, they could be in more than one place with how vast the federal government is and the different issues here. But that's part of the security. House Democrats warning Bondi she can't use that ongoing investigations cover-up to hide information. and the best evidence that the Democrats and Republicans have since they voted together against Bondi is that she said on DOJ letterhead as a matter of a government assertion there was no more cases to be tried.

5:28That statement, if it proves inoperable or a lie, raises other questions of her cover-up and misconduct on the issue that is now kneecapping Donald Trump's first term, lame-ducking him early on. I want to bring in semaphore editor at large Margaret Carlson and longtime Democratic pollster Cornell Belcher. Welcome to both of you. Cornell, the numbers tell the story. The narrative, as I mentioned, the way that people look at stories through highlights, was enunciated with that exclamation point in losing the vote this week. No, it really was. And I think what you see moving now and with the Republicans is they're coming to consciousness with this.

6:13And I think if you look at that PBS Marist poll this week, it is devastating when you get underneath the surface of that and you look at independents where, you know, generically Republicans are losing independent voters by 33 points. Right. They're losing the suburbs by 10 points. If you're sitting in a congressional, you know, a swing Republican congressional seat and you're a Republican, you've got to be really upset about this. You've got to understand that this has become now about you. It's no longer even about the president. I mean, they're looking at perhaps a tidal wave, and we've seen that in every special election and the off-year elections happening right now.

6:54And look, the president's not going to help them. I mean, he's underwater on all of his job performance numbers, Ari, and you've done them before. I mean, even around what was once his strong point of even immigration and crime, you know, the American people, particularly independent voters, are turning against him. And in Fox's own polling, you saw that more Americans believe that he is hurting, his policies are hurting the economy than helping. So at some point, Republicans are going to have to cut from him in order to try to save themselves. Margaret? Well, there's a little bit of cutting going on in that he really wanted the Senate to get rid of the filibuster, and they didn't.

7:35He, of course, gave in because he was going to lose on, you know, he's going to lose the vote on whether those records were going to come out. Now, I don't know if this is right, but when Pam Bondi said all the investigations were over and so the files would come out, I think Trump set it up when he said that he wanted Democrats investigated and her investigating those Democrats. They're going to use that as an excuse to redact more and more things in the files because, you know, those they're guarding them in Winchester, Virginia. But there's there's no way that Pam Bondi doesn't have the final say on what's going to be seen in those files.

8:20And I think that's a loophole that they're going to exploit. Well, I'll let you continue. I would just quibble with the word final. She will have a say. Right. You could run a hypothetical where she says, no, we're giving you zero. And the vote we just saw that was bipartisan will then be attesting. They'll be angry. They'll feel the need to do something. They go to court. A judge may have the final say. The DOJ's lawyers and the FBI still respond to judicial orders. That would take longer. But but if we go down that road, it's not even clear, Margaret, that that helps Trump and Bondi. I mean, they may be so worried about what's in there that, like many a Greek or Shakespearean tragedy or the famous Watergate cover up, they're so worried that the response kind of bludgeons the rest of the year until the midterms.

9:10Right. Well, and even though the courts move slowly, justice, the wheels grind slowly, the case would probably be heard. on that question. You know, at some point, the amount of energy and the amount of denial just says to the ordinary person, we're not ordinary, Cornell, in case you didn't know it. I feel very ordinary, but go ahead. How, you know, the Trump thing where the cover up is worse than the crime. This is an extraordinary amount of effort to cover up something if it doesn't need to be covered up. I mean, my imagination runs wild, but it doesn't really have to because there's stuff in there that Trump is risking his popularity, according to these polls that Cornell has, to keep them from coming out.

10:05That's part of what's hurting him. And so, how long do they do this? Yeah, and Cornell, please, sorry, yeah. I'm done. How long? Yeah. How long, you know, how long must I sing this song is where I was going with that, Margaret. Of course you were. A little U2 on a Friday. It's Friday. You'll do a rap song about it. Okay. I mean, shout out to Bono, but we could get to rap at some point. Cornell, you know, Margaret is a great writer and storyteller. I've read her most of my adult life here and there. and the story is so bad. And that's different than the evidence. I always say we will follow the evidence where it goes.

10:49There were times in the middle of the Mueller report where a lot of bad stuff came out about Trump's team and a bunch of people got convicted. But Mueller, to be very clear, never found what he thought met a criminal standard regarding crimes to work with Russia. There were things that were unseemly. Some people would call it unpatriotic, but you have to wait for the evidence. The congressional story, though, is not about the evidence. It is about a rebuke. And I want to read to you a great description of it. We saw here from The Hill, Cornell, and you can fill in how it happened. But they write, when HBO inevitably makes a definitive miniseries about the Trump presidency, the events of this past week are without a doubt going to be one of the season finales.

11:32watching the bill go from a stalled discharge petition with 270 signatures to passing Congress by a combined vote of 527 to 1 has got to be one of the most dramatic events in American political history. Continuing to say Trump spent months lying to keep the files locked away. He fired supporters for wanting them released. When it became clear 100 or more Republicans would vote to release, he then, quote, on the theory that the important thing is to be obeyed, which Margaret alluded to, Trump publicly insisted he was in favor of the House bill. The White House didn't anticipate how enthusiastically Republicans would accept his offer.

12:11Cornell, as the writer argues, we haven't seen anything like this in a long time. No, we have not. And we certainly haven't seen it from this recent crop of Republicans who've been lockstep with Trump. But look, and the American people have turned on this and they don't think that if you look at the the polling data, they don't trust the administration on this, right, to the earlier point. You know, this will probably end up in courts, but the American people don't trust that the Trump administration will do the right thing here. And in the end, they're really, you know, trying to hide and cover up crimes against young women.

12:46And that's, too, a lot of Americans are deplorable. And I think maybe this is the final piece here that sort of breaks it. But also, you know, I've got to quote one of my favorite movies, right, is from the line from No Country for Old Men with the El Paso sheriff, right? Ari, it's probably not the one thing. It is a dismal tide, right? If you line this up with the economy, you line this up with National Guard, you line this up with ICE snatching people off the street, you line this up with them blowing up boats in the Caribbean and talking about invading Venezuela and African countries. It's a dismal tide.

13:26And clearly the American people are turning hard on Trump. I would say it's a failed presidency at this time. I think over the next couple of weeks, if not month, you'll see Republicans having to cut away and try to save their majority in the House and Senate. You know, I'm reminded you say no country of when the Javier Bardem character goes into the the gas station and asked the guy to bet on the coin flip. And the guy says, I got to know what I'm betting on. And he says, just choose. I got to know what I'm betting on. Just choose. In that dark tale, he's betting on everything, everything. But the, you know, what is what is Trump betting on that is Margaret outlined?

14:06You have to flip the coin, as it were, and fight this hard to hide this pile of documents. What could be in there that is worth this much pain? If you are a rational actor and you're about, you know, self-preservation, which Trump has preserved himself through many problems, it would suggest that whatever is in there is worse than this. And the number of people who are reading it that way now includes a significant number of Republicans. So we are in a week to change things. Briefly, Margaret, because I'm going to I got another guest, but go ahead to finish this. It's so horrendous that, you know, Trump doesn't have to be an active participant.

14:48He just has to have known about it and still hung out with this guy. And what's been out there, that awful happy birthday and other things, it just suggests that he was in on it. And, you know, that sort of thing with the guys, you know, that kind of thing went on. And that's enough in this. This is not like the Watergate break-in. This is young girls that we saw pictures of this week. So anyway, I'll let you get on to, I forget what you're getting on to. As you say, well, we've got a great DOJ vet on our Epstein Files emails breakdown. But as you say, journalistically, we can report Donald Trump denies knowledge of the sex crimes and the underage individuals.

15:34That's what he denies. What's new is that secret emails between Epstein and Maxwell, who was convicted for those crimes, say that he did know. So we'll report both sides of that, whether more evidence will reinforce the president's denial or the sex traffickers secret conspiratorial emails that say he knew. That's the question that faces the country. It's actually a significant one. Margaret and Cornell, thanks to both of you. Thanks, Ari. Absolutely. When we come back, our special report, new Epstein emails, volume three. See you then.

16:14New tonight, we turn to our next volume in these Epstein files. The emails that have come out are, best we can tell, the kind of thing that will also be in the Epstein files, but with a lot more. This is our original reporting on those newly released emails from the deceased sex trafficker. So we turn to how Epstein tonight, who had used money and politically connected lawyers to duck the worst charges in his original sex crime case, how he continued that playbook. And that was clear. even as the legal walls closed in. In those final couple years before he was arrested, things looked tough. His legal team did change over time, but he continued to keep up with the two lawyers you see here, Ken Starr and Alan Dershowitz.

16:59And they brought more than courtroom experience. They had links to the very top of the government and business elites who run large parts of this country. The new emails shed more light on how Epstein and Starr seemed very close. They met regularly. Starr was at times a professional where Epstein had been his client, a paid lawyer, but he also was noticeably warm. We see in these emails he signed them hugs and love. A cuddly rhetorical side of Starr that was not his public persona. He was, politicos will remember, the special counsel who went after President Clinton and later represented Trump in his impeachment defense, as you see here.

17:35So did Dershowitz. So think about just that before I read you more emails. Epstein managed to tap two lawyers who would later represent the very president who oversaw the DOJ that indicted Epstein. And we have a lot of contemporaneous evidence from that time that Epstein viewed part of his planned defense as having these type of elites who might prevent or corruptly intercede in the legal justice and accountability that he might otherwise face. That's, by the way, one of the reasons so many people in the public domain who haven't read every email get the gist of this and are skeptical of government elites continuing secrecy when they know the rules are not enforced equally.

18:19Now, the activities in these emails stretch beyond court and into Epstein's fixation on redeeming his public reputation. That was a theme we reported for you earlier in the week in those Bannon emails, where the Trump vet was openly saying he wanted to help Epstein's media rehab tour. Well, here in the new emails I'm reading to you, Epstein links with star Trump author Michael Wolff, who had that big hit book. He was writing about the Trump presidency. Star writes with thanks to Jeffrey, I'm delighted to come into your orbit. Now, then there was a public push where Epstein, who began his relationship with Starr and Dershowitz in that first Florida case, which was the first legal crack in the Epstein facade in 2006.

19:03Now, this is relevant to the later emails. They were key to securing a sweetheart plea deal back then. It was resolved a couple of years after the filing around 08. and Starr was using connections to be Epstein's quote fixer according to that acclaimed reporting by Miami Herald journalist Julie K. Brown remember it was her expose with her team that actually sparked the new probes of Epstein so here's a 2018 email from Starr where they are discussing trying to rebut the criticism of that quote sweetheart deal they were preparing an op-ed that defends Epstein and argues critiquing the resolution of a long-ago case involving our former client and now friend Jeffrey Epstein.

19:46They go on to say the critique is profoundly misplaced and the draft article goes on from there. Now, Starr says former client there. We don't have all the information on when Starr, now deceased, stopped formally representing Epstein or taking his money. It is notable that he said they had become friends. That is certainly not the case of every lawyer who is involved in defending people from heinous accusations or charges. And we can all recognize people have a right to legal defense. But as I will show you tonight, some of this went beyond that courtroom defense. And these are individuals who were clearly attractive to Epstein, not just because they were accredited lawyers, but because of their long political history, the kind of people who could call the top of the DOJ or even higher, maybe pick up a call to the donors and the White House officials and even a president who runs everything.

20:42The history of power is what Epstein wanted to exploit. He ever socialized with Donald Trump in the presence of females under the age of 18. I'm going to have to assert my fifth, sixth book is amendment rights. Were there young women in another part of the house giving massages when I wasn't around? I have no idea of that. If a president does something which he believes will help him get elected in the public interest, that cannot be the kind of quid pro quo. the president, in the course of those efforts, misused his authority and his power as president. Presidential impeachment was truly a measure of last resort.

21:37When it comes to Trump, all the president's men there were also all the sex traffickers' men. That's who they represented. That's what they did. Now I want to again emphasize that impeachment was later. Both of those lawyers were retained by President Trump after the Epstein history. But again, their representation of Epstein was public. So make of that choice what you will. And there is still judgment when you're talking about who a president hires. I'd be the first and the last to remind everyone legal counsel is a right in America, not a choice, not something to be bartered away when someone faces a big enough accusation.

22:21Everyone is entitled to that right, Mr. Epstein and Mr. Trump both. But the president's choice there may speak volumes, and we will see if we get the rest of the evidence to understand who he chose. Another 2017 email from a journalist who had worked for the New York Times prior suggests Epstein hired Starr, saying he was fielding questions about why Epstein hired Starr, meaning we, again, are following whether that so-called friendship also still involved being paid. A New York Times 2019 op-ed notes Jeffrey Epstein's current and former lawyer is assigned by Starr, but he doesn't appear to be on his official defense team in that July 2019 case.

23:01That's the case brought by the Trump DOJ, where, of course, Epstein ultimately died in prison before trial. Now, Dershowitz said in late 2018 he was still advising Epstein. Now, Epstein was cultivating these relationships with people, not just, again, for legal skills, but with their proximity to power and specifically Trump. Starr is not accused of wrongdoing here. He has died. Alan Dershowitz has denied any wrongdoing. And we played a clip of him discussing that if there was something going on over there, he says he did not know about it. Epstein also wrote during a text exchange that CIA Director Brennan's description of Trump as drunk with power seems apt.

23:48And then he adds, any thought on who he might at least listen to seriously? Ken Starr, Kissinger, Hannity. A reply to Epstein said, Hannity, maybe. That sender is unknown. own. So Epstein has a lot of money to throw around, and he figured out who the top political people are in the era that mattered. What's hanging over all of this is what was also hanging over the Bannon exchanges, that he had good reason to believe the feds were back closing in. The SDNY was doing an investigation. It was led by Maureen Comey. Trump did not have operational control of the whole DOJ then the way he does now, but Epstein might have hoped that by asking for help, who does Trump listen to or threatening not only Trump, but others.

24:38Remember, Trump's own cabinet member accuses Epstein of blackmail, that that might create a chorus of people who would get Trump to do something that he might perceive as in his self-interest to back down. I say that as part of our reporting. It's also possible that Epstein hoped for that, just like other people hoped to get out from a bad situation, and that the government wouldn't do that. And I say that because, of course, whatever Epstein secretly tried, we'll see what else we learn in the files. The Trump DOJ, under Barr and the SDNY, did indict him. Now here's another email where you see Epstein wants advice on responding to news that the DOJ would be reviewing the old plea deal.

25:17Quote, continue to ignore? Ann Coulter, handy attack op-ed, not my skill set, he's asking. What about the penning something? It's a word there that we don't know who he might mean. Something that suggests indignation and lays out some of the facts. and then you have Bannon, who we've been seeing advise him on the media side, says, well, that drives it a week. Epstein bemoaned how Senator Sasse, I should say Ben Sasse, pardon me, called him a, quote, child rapist. What about Ken talking directly to him? We believe, by inference, that would be this Ken Starr. Bannon says, won't help, but yes. Epstein was worried about how MAGA and prominent people were identifying him this way, which would, of course, not help his argument that somehow the DOJ should back down under Trump.

26:09He was scrambling for rehab. And when Bannon was advising him, we have a Trump official there, or ex-Trump official, who clearly was trying to help. There's also some evidence that consultants, as we reported, wanted to distort what would be the actual results from reality and Google. Of course, Google's debatable, but it's a place people look. They were trying to strengthen other friendly websites they call assets and push down the reports of his factual sex crime conviction. Starr was involved in a 2018 Epstein exchange where there was a text to an associate considering op-ed by Starr and Dershowitz.

26:50Law review article will hire PR, have to think with the group on the way forward. that is context for Starr sending the draft op-ed I mentioned at the top. It defends Epstein at his request. Indeed, the question about the friend reference is, was Starr having benefited in the past or recently from payment by Epstein? Was he trying to somehow use more credibility to claim this was a, you know, view of a friend rather than paid work? And there is a PR expert named Matthew Hildzik in these emails, who says, think there should be a line in there somewhere, which clearly confirms that J.E., presumably Epstein, his initials, understands and recognizes that he did something wrong.

27:33Imagine that. And I don't mean to laugh like it's funny, more like it's sad that it took the PR person to tell all these other guys, hey, do we ever want to mention he knows it was wrong. Epstein and Starr discuss Trump's involvement in the Mueller probe, Russian interference. Epstein telling a associate who's not named here that he spent the morning with Starr. The person asked how bad a shape does he think DJT is in. Epstein recounts Starr told him Mueller's case isn't strong enough. That's an interesting view from someone who, of course, had been a special counsel himself, a rarefied group.

28:05He argues no evidence of corruption. Person replies, is epic Trump clear on Mueller if that's the case? Again, we're seeing deep inside the way these people communicate in ways we never normally would. If any three of these emails leaked out of the blue, it'd be front page New York Times. When 20 ,000 leak, it's hard to keep track of them all. Epstein replies, the issues will be the related financial ones. Trump, of course, has faced questions and legal cases about how he's handled finances the better part of his career. Some involved allegations of civil fraud, that case on appeal. Communication continued even when the feds closed in.