Lawmakers Say New DOJ Filing Suggests Epstein “Cover-Up”

20:24Ari Melber:OK, we this is not an American thing for a policing agency to to be running around the streets with masks, with no ID, with no warrants, just grabbing people. You know, I remember that elderly man who was taken out of his house in his shorts and bathrobe with no warrant by masked men. That's not supposed to be America. And I think you have to simply take a stand. If you don't take a stand here, where do you take a stand? Yeah.

21:06Andrew Weissmann:Nancy Pelosi was speaking out. She is widely seen as one of the Democrats' tough, more effective leaders during her tenure. And she was drawing this line on the concern about Trump's effort to undercut or steal elections in the future. Take a look.

21:23Ari Melber:I hear that all over the United States, not just in Europe, that there is concern about the election. Let me just say that surveillance by the intelligence operation of our country, surveillance in our own country is something that is absolutely not to be allowed. I know if there's some particular reason, there's one thing. But for them, for Tassie Gobert to be looking into elections is really not right. It's not lawful. Gene? No, I would agree. And look, add to that what Kristi Noem had to say about elections. And Kristi Noem said, essentially, we're going to make sure, referring to the midterm, we're going to make sure that the right people get to the polls to elect the right people, right?

22:18Ari Melber:The right voters get to elect the right people. Well, that's pretty ominous sounding because it sounds as if she's saying we're going to decide who the right people are and act accordingly. And so it's not paranoia to be really concerned about the coming election and to guard against any sort of shenanigans that this administration might pull. Yeah.

22:51Andrew Weissmann:Yeah, it is President's Day. So we will end with a little more historical view. These are two historians talking about their Mount Rushmore. This is on Ari Emanuel's podcast who stopped by here recently. Take a listen to their picks.

23:08Ari Melber:I'm going to keep Washington. I'm going to keep Lincoln. I'm going to keep Teddy. But I'm going to replace Jefferson with FDR. Each one of those other four were at presidents at a moment when democracy was in peril. And I think that's a topic that's so critical right now. I don't think an evening with George Washington would be a lot of fun. So I'm taking Washington, Jefferson, Lincoln, FDR and Reagan.

23:37Andrew Weissmann:That's their Rushmore picks. Do you have anyone you would put on Mount Rushmore or or a favorite president to share with us this holiday?

23:46Ari Melber:You know, I'm going classic on this. I think I'm keeping the form we got there, right? I'm not getting rid of Jefferson. Jefferson was a problematic character, but he wrote the Declaration of Independence. I mean, and the Declaration of Independence, even though the nation has taken a long time to really live up to its stirring words, it is an amazing, stirring document. So I'm leaving him up there. I'm certainly Washington. Read about the Revolutionary War. We don't have a country. We don't have Washington. Lincoln, obviously, in my opinion, our greatest president. And then, you know, the one I guess you could argue whether or not we have the right Roosevelt on Mount Rushmore.

24:44Ari Melber:You know, Teddy was, you know, was it was it was an important figure. I guess I might argue that that FDR, Teddy's Teddy's district cousin, was was a more consequential president because of the Depression and World War Two.

25:02Andrew Weissmann:Yeah, and he got the extra terms. Very consequential. Teddy was an iconoclast, and he wasn't afraid of the powerful and the powers that be, which is also good quality to president. We thought this would be fun here to mark the holiday for a second with Eugene. Thank you so much.

25:21Ari Melber:Okay, thank you.

25:22Andrew Weissmann:Happy President. Happy President's Day. Yes, sir. Now, speaking of presidents, Barack Obama was the popular president at the All-Star Game, even catching the ball. Look at that. Extraordinary. We're going to show you what he's saying about Trump, politics, ice and racism. He paired that that special fun visit with a serious new interview on politics. We're going to show you that with the podcaster who who got the big exclusive next.

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27:15Andrew Weissmann:It is President's Day and all eyes have been on a particular former president, Barack Obama. He's been in the news for a couple reasons. One, he sat down for a lengthy interview with a hit liberal podcaster, Brian Tyler Cohen. You may have seen his face or have heard of him. This is what we're seeing different politicians do more and more of. Obviously, anyone on any channel would kill for an Obama interview right now. Well, Cohen got it. And this is a rarity because the former president doesn't do a lot of long interviews these days, doesn't get pulled into every Trump debate. And so he was asked about and made his first public comments about Donald Trump's viciously racist online post about the Obamas, which was later taken down.

28:00Andrew Weissmann:Here was the response.

28:04Michelle Goldberg:as i'm traveling around the country as as you're traveling around the country you meet people they still believe in decency courtesy kindness and there's this sort of clown show that's happening in social media and on television uh and what is true is that there doesn't seem to be any shame about this among people who used to feel like you had to have some sort of decorum and a sense of propriety and respect for the office, right? So that's been lost. But the reason I point out that I don't think the majority of the American people approve of this is because ultimately the answer going to come from the American people.

29:01Andrew Weissmann:Classic Obama, a classy response to an ugly kind of gutter ball attack, and Obama quick to position this as a compliment to the public. Of course, the majority of the public in America doesn't want Trump's racism. And he went on to try to discuss in depth what maybe America would want. He wasn't sparing, though, the fact that he disagrees with many of the things Trump's administration is doing, including the ICE power grab and the rule of law.

29:36It is important for us to recognize the unprecedented nature of what ICE was doing in Minneapolis, the way that federal agents, ICE agents, were being deployed without any clear guidelines, training,

30:03Michelle Goldberg:pulling people out of their homes, using five-year-olds to try to... Bait their parents. Bait their parents. All the stuff that we saw, tear gassing crowds simply who were standing there not breaking any laws. So the rogue behavior of agents of the federal government is deeply concerning and dangerous.

30:36Andrew Weissmann:When he first came into office, Obama was one of the younger modern presidents on par with Clinton or Kennedy rather than Trump or Biden. And he discussed how elder Democrats need to be open to the younger generation.

30:53Michelle Goldberg:I'm pretty healthy, 64. Feel great. Yeah. But the truth is half of the references that my daughters make about social media, TikTok, et cetera, I don't know who they're talking about. Yeah. There is a element of at some point you age out. You're not connected directly to the immediate struggles that folks are going through. I'm not making a hard and fast rule here, but I do think that Democrats do well when we have candidates who are plugged into the moment, to the zeitgeist, to the times, and the particular struggles that folks are thinking about as they look towards the future rather than look backward toward the past.

31:47Michelle Goldberg:That spirit, that energy, it's out there. And you can feel it, but it's bottled up. We haven't given enough outlets for young people to figure out how do I become a part of that. And that's this enormous untapped power that we have to get back to.

32:07Andrew Weissmann:ever respectful obama saying the party's got to look to the younger candidates who are plugged in and he wasn't just saying that in some new york times op-ed respect or some 60 minutes conversation like politicians have been doing for 50 years respect depending on the sunday or the episode he was saying it walking the walk in a new format that he and his team had clearly picked over television. They went to a hit liberal podcaster, Brian Tyler Cohen, who got the big interview and is our guest about the Obama interview next.

32:47Andrew Weissmann:No, actually, I think exactly what he said was, that's what I do. I got it.

32:51Ari Melber:That's what I do.

32:52Andrew Weissmann:Would have been better. He would have stood up and went right to the three and drained. Or he could do a mellow and puffing. get right. No, actually, I think Barack Obama's everywhere. Courtside can catch the ball. Little memories of that's what I do. And he just sat down for a lengthy, substantive interview. The podcaster, Brian Tyler Cohen, who hosts No Lie and just sat down with the former president. Congrats on the big get.

33:17Brian Tyler Cohen:Thanks, Ari. I appreciate it.

33:20Andrew Weissmann:Yeah, really interesting. I would encourage all viewers to go check out the full 40 plus minutes on YouTube. But we've got the highlights, So don't do it yet. If people are watching right now, let's start with what he said about how he thinks Trump's conduct will help Dems in the midterms.

33:39Michelle Goldberg:The current White House, this administration and their enablers, they're behaving so badly. They're doing such crazy stuff that it shouldn't be hard for our side to coalesce around the areas where we agree on and focus on that. And I think that, you know, that is going to happen if we are effective in winning the midterms.

34:12Andrew Weissmann:What did you see him emphasizing there?

34:16Brian Tyler Cohen:Look, I think he's saying what a lot of people already recognize, which is in terms of the midterms, that's going to be largely a referendum off of Trump. But we have a long path forward. You know, Democrats do have a poor approval rating. We have brand problems that need to be fixed. Those aren't just going to fix themselves in a vacuum. I hope that people don't see success in the midterms as some indication that, you know, we've solved everything because we haven't. But, you know, he talked about that a little bit. And I'm not sure if you're going to show a subsequent clip where he does discuss a little bit of the infighting.

34:47Brian Tyler Cohen:But, you know, I think that's going to be it. He has a very particular focus on coalition building as opposed to purity politics. And I think, you know, in an era where everybody has a voice, everybody has a platform online, making sure that we can still remember that the goal of politics is actually to build a coalition, to cobble together a big enough coalition to win, to be able to do something is first and foremost.

35:13Andrew Weissmann:Well, let's turn to that because he discussed it with you at length. He referenced things that people are familiar with, the kind of mood of certain people being a scold, trying to dictate to others what their political morality should be, or this term virtue signaling. And this, I thought, was an interesting exchange. So we cut it at some length. Let's take a look.

35:40Michelle Goldberg:I think there was a certain way of talking about issues for Democrats where we sounded like scolds. There was a virtue signaling that made it seem as if ordinary folks, if they did not say things in exactly the right way or meet this litmus test, that they were being chastised, pushed away. And the truth is, most of us, all of us are complicated and we have blind spots and sometimes we say dumb stuff. And if you want to create an environment that is welcoming and makes people feel, okay, there's room for me here. then the message and the story we tell has to be all right none of us are perfect all of us count we all have good in us that we can tap into we can all learn from each other and and i think that is something we need to recover

36:57Andrew Weissmann:What did you see him hitting there?

37:00Brian Tyler Cohen:I mean, you know, similar to what I was saying before, I think that, you know, at its core, again, politics is about getting enough votes to actually win. And this stuff really does. It's personal for a lot of people. They hold it really, you know, they wear it on their shirt sleeve. And so it's not a surprise that when it comes to these political matters that people will take it personally and they will want to impose litmus tests. and they'll do what they do online these days. But I think it's important to get these reminders from somebody who doesn't have any skin in the game, but he has a lot of cachet.

37:34Brian Tyler Cohen:And so he has the freedom to be able to come out and say this kind of stuff to reroute the party, I think, into a smarter direction as we head toward 2028. Even if it's just planting a little bug in our heads to say like, we are, you know, I'm sure you've heard people say politics is a bus. You're not necessarily going right to your front door. You are taking the bus to the closest destination to where you live. And that's how we have to think of it. We can't let perfect be the enemy of good. And you're going to have people within the coalition who disagree with each other. But it's going to be important to make sure to remember that it is a coalition at the end of the day.

38:13Andrew Weissmann:It's interesting coming from him as well because he's won these campaigns, doesn't have more to run. So even for people who are skeptical and don't like the message, it's different than some other old school Democrat saying, hey, I don't like this. He's speaking about it from the kind of good faith position within his party of how to win. You guys also touched on the Mondani energy. Take a look.

38:37Michelle Goldberg:What happened in our campaign and what you recently saw in Mondani's campaign in New York. Yeah. When there's that sense of joy and engagement and involvement, then people feel like, all right, this is not just some transactional grind. This is me becoming part of a community.

39:07Andrew Weissmann:isn't it funny because i don't know about you but like we use this word culture in different ways but there is a there is a culture of politics and the idea that what was once the liberal street protests counterculture energy say of the 70s um lost sight of that that how did liberals even sometimes young liberals get perhaps unfairly caricatured as as no fun or hall monitors. And then Mamdani came along and reminded everyone or you could be like this.

39:41Brian Tyler Cohen:And look, you know, between Mamdani now in 2026 and Obama in 2008, those are parallel campaigns. Those are people whose campaigns actually did inspire hope as opposed to feeling like, you know, So, I mean, you know, as opposed to feeling like it's the lesser of two evils or whatever it may be, but politics needs to be hopeful. I mean, it is, you are building a culture. I mean, to your exact point, you're building a culture and a community and people don't want to join a community that, you know, is overwhelmingly negative, especially on this side. And so we have like winning formulas right in front of us.

40:13Brian Tyler Cohen:I don't know how many times we need to be hit over the head with this idea that if you can have a hopeful, inclusive campaign a la Barack Obama in 2008 or Zoran Mamdani in 2026, that the formula is there. We just need people who are willing to pick up that mantle and not fall into the D.C. trap of protecting institutions and processes and norms, that those institutions are not the end. They are a means to an end, but the end has to be people. It has to be people-focused. And that's what Barack Obama's campaign was. 20 years ago almost, and it's what Zoramamdani's campaign was just this past year.

40:53Andrew Weissmann:And real quick, here were some of the quick light moments you guys had.

41:00Michelle Goldberg:Wasn't political. Bad Bunny's halftime show. It was demonstrating and displaying. This is what a community is. Are aliens real? They're real, but I haven't seen them. Is Tupac alive? he's alive on my playlist if you're going to pull off a prank it's got to be on somebody who can prank you back and wasn't nobody going to prank me

41:25Andrew Weissmann:did you find him to be the same old fun Obama or now he's in his elder statesman role

41:31Brian Tyler Cohen:no look this dude knows how to hang and I think that is such an under understated value like if you can get a guy who can just you know without cursing, who can just like hang on a podcast, who can go the next day to the NBA all-star game and throw down about sports and who can talk politics better than anybody else. I think like that there is, there is so much power in something like that because we've, you know, look, we're in the TikTok era. There is so much focus on authenticity and relatability. And this dude is the ultimate, like he is the ultimate guy and, uh, and he can, he can do everything.

42:10Brian Tyler Cohen:He doesn't just fit neatly into like one bucket where the only thing you can talk about is politics. And there's a lot of virtue in that. And that's why Barack Obama is Barack Obama. And it's so difficult for other people to replicate that.

42:22Andrew Weissmann:That's fair. And as you say, hanging on a pod where it's no more free form can be a bit back like retail politics, like when you go to Iowa and some people could get along with folks. And that matters in ways that we're seeing in any era. Brian, again, congrats on the interview. Thanks for coming. We will be right back.

42:50Andrew Weissmann:Americans continue to find ways to push back against Trump's ICE tactics. In California, Michigan, and New York, local officials are pushing what they call ICE-free zones, restricting the way agents may be able to get near government-owned spaces. some communities successfully blocking ICE attempts to convert warehouses into new additional detention facilities. There's also evidence of ICE raids that expose agents sometimes making false claims. In Chicago, a Border Patrol agent who shot an American citizen five times is under investigation. Prosecutors had charged the woman with using her car to assault agents.

43:25Andrew Weissmann:And yet body cam video shows an agent at the wheel swerving over into her car, then exiting and firing what appear to be five shots.

43:35Ari Melber:The mental scars will always be there as a reminder of the time my own government attempted to execute me. And when they fell, they chose to vilify me. I am Renee Good. I am Alex Preddy. I am Silberio Villega Gonzalez. I am Keith Porter. They should all be here today.

44:03Andrew Weissmann:Barack Obama making news on President's Day, as we mentioned. And here's a little bit more from that interview we hadn't aired yet about activism. We should take a moment to appreciate the extraordinary outpouring of organizing, community building, decency, citizens saying

44:27Michelle Goldberg:this is not the America we believe in. And we're going to fight back and we're going to push back with the truth and with cameras and with peaceful protests and shining a light on the sort of behavior that in the past we've seen in authoritarian countries and we've seen in dictatorships, but we have not seen in America.

44:56Andrew Weissmann:A practical call to do what you can, when you can, how you can, peacefully and lawfully by a former president on this holiday. We close with that tonight.

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