New Report: Documents Shredded at Jail After Epstein's Death

0:00In Traverse City, you'll find it's your summer to let go. Just let the rhythm of the water set you free. Full sail and eyes open, inviting you to breathe and just be. Out here, time slows as the gentle waves bring us closer than ever before. Embrace it all, then let go. Season after season in Pure Michigan. Find your season at TraverseCity.com. This NBA playoffs with FanDuel. You're not just watching the playoffs. You're a part of them. Steve's got the phone, opens FanDuel, and he's going for threes. Be a part of the action on FanDuel. All customers get a profit boost every NBA playoff game day.

0:4621 plus and present in select states. Opt-in required. Bonus issued is non-withdrawable profit boost tokens. Restrictions apply, including any token expiration and max wager amount. See full terms at FanDuel.com slash sportsbook. Gambling problem? Call 1-800-GAMBLER. Or 1-800-MY-RESET. Welcome to The Beat. I'm Ari Melber. We have a big show, including Maya Wiley and Molly Jong-Fast, coming up. We begin with the Trump administration's mixed signals, formal public claims that they are in talks with Iran, which many people think could be a good thing if it leads to an off-ramp. But they're also today preparing to deploy thousands of paratroopers to the Middle East.

1:21And that's the news. You have basically conflicting signals at best. Some critics say potential contradiction on this war policy. 3 ,000 troops will have the ability to parachute behind enemy lines. Reporting that officials caution a decision to put boots on the ground in Iran has not been made, the journal reports, but deployment opens the door to Trump for what they are calling strategic options. Another 5 ,000 troops, a force that is comprised mostly of Marines, are also en route to the region. Iran fired on Israel today. We can show you that footage. This is some of the impact in Tel Aviv.

1:57Four injured there. There's also overnight footage, Israel intercepting Iranian missile strikes, a reminder that this is still very much a multi-country regional war. Trump is facing the kind of blowback in the country that suggests this remains an increasingly unpopular war. He's also facing blowback from the worst kind of critic, if you are a sitting president, and one that is rare and taken seriously. His own former defense secretary, Jim Mattis, telling the nation, apparently because he thinks it's important to publicize this, and that is itself a decision that most Pentagon veterans take very seriously, that, quote, we're in a tough spot.

2:39I can't identify a lot of good options. And he noted the lack of strategy. What we're seeing is a situation where targetry never makes up for a lack of strategy. Now, some of the strategic outcomes early on, unconditional surrender, regime change, we're going to dictate who the next Supreme Leader is. Those were clearly nonsense. Those were delusional. Delusional nonsense. sense. Those are the words of someone that Trump relied on to try to shape war policy. Mattis is, of course, referring to something that everyone has been discussing since the very first days of this announced war. Would regime change really work?

3:27And if not, are we ending up in the same or worse place when you look at a younger Khomeini, quite literally now running Iran? Now, Trump has suggested that maybe this regime is different enough to comprise regime change. Nobody takes that particular claim seriously. The president has made some claims that are just not factual amidst this war. The new supreme leader is the son of the former supreme leader. He is described by all parties in the region as a more hardline version of his father. Now, Trump says the war is, quote, already won. But that, again, is just war talk. Iran has now choked up 20 percent of the world's oil supply.

4:08Gulf countries are getting hit by missiles. And there is a real question about the president's credibility. Trump says there are productive talks. One diplomat tells us Iran is not ready at all to enter negotiations now. And the level of trust towards the U.S. is basically at a negative. Other Iranian officials see it as a kind of trap. The journal reporting on that aspect. And in the past hour, we saw a story cross the wires from the New York Times reporting the Trump administration has sent a 15-point peace plan to Iran. it was unclear how widely the plan, delivered by way of Pakistan, has been shared among Iranian officials and whether Iran was likely to accept it as a basis for negotiations, the Times reports.

4:49Now, there are many people in the United States and the Middle East who would like to see this war wind down. Indeed, there is more interest in winding down the war and its current economic and energy consequences, which were sparked by the U.S., than any larger sort of deal In fact, we've seen reporting out of Israeli intelligence that they just don't think regime change or a public Iranian uprising is now at all likely in the offing. The politics at home are also a big counterweight. If Donald Trump is actually looking at the plans I just mentioned in the reporting, more boots on the ground and those kind of forces, which lengthens the war going into the midterms, he will be facing an even more skeptical public and a very scared Republican Party going into those midterms.

5:37I want to bring in former Governor Howard Dean, former DNC chair. He was a presidential candidate who ran on an anti-war platform, famously pushing the Democratic Party against the Iraq war on that issue back in 2003. Welcome back. Thanks very much. I try to be fair in covering what we're hearing. And if some of those reports are true and happened, you might find an off ramp that a lot of people would welcome. What do you think of what we're hearing out of the Trump administration and what would be best going forward? I think Mattis is the most sensible person. And unfortunately, Trump didn't see fit to hire him again, probably because he was sensible.

6:17Trump's got himself in a real jam. His characteristic, principal characteristics is he does things without thinking about what the consequences are. And now we found out. I personally don't believe we're going to send 3 ,000 paratroopers on the ground in Iran because we're going to get absolutely slaughtered. The Iranians are a serious power. And I agree. The one thing I agree with Trump on is they're a despicable group of people that are running Iran. and they have taken advantage of their own people and suppressed them and produced all kinds of horrible human rights violations, including sacrificing 7 ,000 of them as punishment for the recent uprisings.

6:57So it would be great to get rid of them. But when you're going to do something like that, you actually have a plan, have to have a plan. And Trump never had a plan, and now he's stuck. What a surprise. It's why he went bankrupt five times when he was in the real estate business. You get out over your skis, and now you're stuck. You mentioned Mattis. I have a little more of what he said in public. Take a look. I think it would be very unlikely that this regime would break right now. It is murky right now to understand what we in the military call the commander's intent. We've heard all sorts of things, frankly.

7:34It's going to be a darn difficult problem. Your view of that point and that sometimes the original problem remains the largest problem, which is we don't have a defined objective, which makes it harder to define when we leave. Yeah, we never, I mean, the president never made the objective clear. Maybe he did have a defined one, I doubt it. The problem without having a defined objective is he doesn't have a defined plan. And, you know, Iran, I would safely say, is what I would call a middle power. They have a lot of missiles. They have a pretty good army. It's run by a group of crooks called Basigi, who are basically terrorists.

8:16And everybody is terrified of them, including, I think, the army to a large extent. So, you know, you just don't go and start dropping missiles on them without a plan for what you're going to do when you need more than that. And Mr. Trump never had such a plan. And we're going to quickly find ourselves on the short end of this. And that's what he's looking at now. I would be shocked if he sent 3 ,000 troops in, not because our troops aren't great, but because it means the end of the Republican Party's grip on power for sure. Right. And then you get to the point that he wants to treat this like the famed real estate deal that we hear so much about or the tariff deals.

8:58and his allies, and we talk to people, as you know, have had a lot of Trump officials on this show. One of the things they say a lot, Howard, is, well, you've got to understand, none of it needs to be true, but he's unpredictable and he's speaking to the spread of options and people will react to that. And that works as far as it goes. It seems to fail if the Supreme Court takes most of the tariff options off the table because now you've just had a lot of mess for a year, but you don't have that option. And you're raising the point that while anyone might root for the U.S. to have the greatest leverage.

9:27We had an ambassador on, Dennis Ross, who talked about how having military in the background and not having to use it helps diplomats. But are we crossing teeteringly close to actually looking like the country that cried wolf if it doesn't want to send those people in and he's still seeking an off-ramp because we need a fifth more oil? Well, look, I mean, if this president had any vision other than whatever he happens to be feeling at the time, he would not have made this mistake. Because he would have looked at Iraq, the second Iraq war, which was based on full pretenses and nonsense and the damage that had caused this country.

10:07And then he might have looked at Afghanistan, which bogged us down for years and years. I think, and I have always said this, that the invasion of Afghanistan by the United States was justified. They had trained terrorists who murdered 3 ,000 Americans and brought down the World Trade Centers. But you can't do this without a long-term plan. And if the really good minds in the military who were in charge of Afghanistan couldn't come up with a long-term plan, I don't see how the people who Pete Hegseth has fired can possibly come up with a long-term plan for this, especially now that they've— You think Trump has buyer's remorse?

10:42They don't know what to do. What's that? You think he has buyer's remorse now, knowing how the last four weeks has gone? I doubt Trump ever has remorse for anything. He's not that kind of a person. His problem is he just doesn't think about what might happen if he does A, B, C, or D. And so he just picks that something out of hand. Now, Howard, that's sweeping. That's a sweep. You think he never goes back to the store and says, I tried it on. I want to return it. I've never heard him publicly admit that. Look at all the times he's been convicted for fraud and rape and everything else. And he's still not remorseful about that.

11:16He's been convicted by a jury. Civilly liable in New York, not criminally convicted. Civilly liable for a hell of a lot of money in New York and some vast amount of millions that none of us will ever his victim will probably never see either. But this guy, look, this guy's been convicted. He doesn't he has no shame and remorse is not in his vocabulary. And he does this stuff without thinking about it. And that is a mistake, especially if you're talking about committing American troops to the middle of a fairly good sized nation with a well-trained army. Well, and the larger question you're getting at is whether we have a defined foreign policy or a series of emotions.

11:58Because emotions, if you think that he cannot use facts, reason, logic, and the extraordinary intelligence capabilities of our government and the Pentagon to figure out what's best for the American people in the military. If you can't do that, if it's an emotional thing about I can't go backwards, I can't back it down, I can't look a quote unquote a certain way, then yeah, there's going to be a lot of heat on this next couple of weeks because the oil situation, according to many, is untenable. Howard, our leadoff guest, thanks for being here tonight, sir. Appreciate it. Coming up, we look at the use of ice at the airports.

12:32One Trump ally saying this is a, quote, test run for the midterms. We also have a report on the bags of shredded documents that were found and that were apparently secretly attempted to cover up coming out of the Epstein jail just days after his death. A big Miami Herald bombshell. And I have that for you tonight. It's really interesting. It draws in the files. Maya and Molly are here. We're back in 90 seconds.

13:09We'll be right back.

13:30Visit weathertech.com for your dad today. This NBA playoffs with FanDuel. You're not just watching the playoffs. You're a part of them. Steve's got the phone, opens FanDuel, and he's going for threes. Be a part of the action on FanDuel. All customers get a profit boost every NBA playoff game day. 21 plus and present in select states. Opt-in required. Bonus issued is non-withdrawable profit boost tokens. Restrictions apply, including any token expiration and max wager amount. See full terms at fanduel.com slash sportsbook. Gambling problem? Call 1-800-GAMBLER or 1-800-MY-RESET. With the Vivgard Hytrulo, Evgard Tigamod Alpha, and Hyaluronidase QVFC pre-filled syringe, self-injection is in your hands.

14:12It's your treatment routine. Use at the time and same day each week. Take the pre-filled syringe with you on vacation. Or have it handy for cozy staycations. For more information, visit livevividly.com. That's L-I-V-E-V-Y-V-I-D-L-Y dot com. Brought to you by Argenics. We're seeing lines, delays, confusion, and some say at times chaos in America's airports. We have Donald Trump now deploying ICE agents to some of the hub airports. Now, the assertion from the administration is that this is supposed to, quote, assist CSA agents who are overburdened during this partial shutdown. That may be. There are also reports that ICE's presence is not speeding up security screenings.

14:59They are not exactly part of TSA, so there's a limited amount of actual operational support they can give. Some ICE agents have been seen sort of just roaming the halls of the airport. Here's a photo that shows one aspect of the story. Let's take this in full. You have the lines. That's in Atlanta's airport there, stretching all the way outside. You don't want to be in the line out there. You might not make your flight. And then you have an agent. And again, this is more of a criticism or a question about U.S. policy than this particular agent because he's there under orders. But he doesn't seem to have much to do.

15:32So he's on his phone while people wait outside. Now, the White House posted a video of an agent passing out water and saying, look, they can help do things for people. Here's what passengers are saying.

15:46I think it's it's very, very I don't know what to say. What should I say? I think it's scary. Why should I be there? Are they helping? You saw people bracing themselves like, what the hell is going on here? And there were a lot of people who were taking pictures and sort of watching them. They were just milling around. They weren't even doing anything. I don't know, just sort of chatting. I don't know what their function was. One reason they are milling around is while they have broad enforcement authority and they're armed and they can work to do certain things relating to immigration customs enforcement, which, of course, you can say broadly relates to what happens at any airport or border crossing, they are not part of the TSA screening system, so they don't actually deal with travelers' identification.

16:28They can't help speed up the screening. Now, the orders from Trump has left some ICE offices scrambling to figure out what to do. And there are critics who say, given the recent history of how AHIS has operated, there are questions here about intimidation. And then you have the wider discourse, if you will. Donald Trump saying this. We put ICE, who are a very high level. I mean, they really are a high level group of people. And they love it because they're able to now arrest illegals as they come into the country. That's very fertile territory. If that's not enough, I'll bring in the national guard.

17:10The president is sort of musing, is the nicest way you can put it. We don't know whether ICE loves it, and it doesn't matter how federal employees feel emotionally about this type of assignment anyway. But what he's getting at, what he's sort of musing and pretending is as if they are doing ICE enforcement of immigration customs apprehensions at the airports. And we can just tell you in the early days of this, we haven't seen a lot of that. So even Trump's defense isn't really borne out by what's happening. Then there is the cratering approval for this range of policies. I've told you I will always tell you how things really are.

17:46And I can remind you that in the past years, we have seen approval for two things that Donald Trump has done domestically. Immigration enforcement and his sort of big claims to deal with high prices. During the campaign, people liked both of those things. I can update you tonight that the polling now has crashed on both of them. on the prices. People don't think he's delivered. And on the ice tactics, people oppose what they see as extreme violent efforts. So keep that in mind when a Trump White House veteran, Steve Bannon, says they're not deterred, they're going further. And he outlines a plan that could be unconstitutional for how to use ice at the midterms.

18:31We can use what's happening with these ICE helping out at the airports. We can use this as a test run, as a test case to really perfect ICE's involvement in the 2026 midterm election, sir? Yeah, I think we should have ICE agents at the polling places. That's Mr. Bannon's question. No word from the White House over whether that's actually something they want to explore. We're joined by New York Times writer Molly John Fass, host of the Fass Politics podcast, and Maya Wiley, former SDNY civil prosecutor, CEO of the Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights. Welcome to both of you. Thank you.

19:06Molly, what do you think? ICE helping or hurting at the airports? And to ask the serious question, why not just reopen the government fully so we wouldn't have these lines? Yeah, and a stark contrast is that ICE has lots and lots of money. They have billions of dollars because of the BBB. TSA not getting paid. So I think it's really important to realize, like, this is not popular and people don't like it. The optics of it are very bad. But it's also reminding people that there is this paramilitary force that a lot of them know about because of the killing of Renee Good and Alex Preddy, who are now in airports wearing bulletproof vests.

19:50A lot of them carrying some, you know, things that are weapon like, if not guns, and are there just milling around. And I think that already this is not popular. And I think that seeing more of it in airports when you when they're not actually speeding things up is going to be worse. Yeah. Maya, in your government roles, you've done oversight of police and law enforcement. And when law enforcement works great, they're closer to firefighters. And people say, great, they're here. We need your help. And when law enforcement under policy or direction are not doing their job or become the danger, people get scared of them.

20:30What does it tell you that just they might not be the most partisan civilians in the world? People just trying to make their plane look up and they're scared. They should be. Why do we know about ICE? We have seen them gleefully violate people's rights, use excessive forces. We've seen them use literally rubber bullets and other projectiles against ministers who are peacefully protesting in a public space. We have seen them actually go after elected officials because they just want to do an inspection, which is lawful, of a detention facility where people are reportedly having their human rights violated.

21:12I'm saying this because people are rightly fearful of abuse of power and excessive force. And the reason we're even in this situation, back to Molly's point, TSA workers are paid roughly$41 ,000 a year. I go to a church, the church I attend, I see one of my fellow parishioners. When I go through TSA, guess who's on that saying, hey, Maya, someone who goes to my church. These are people. But you know what we've done? We've actually said we're going to gut the federal government, create and literally 300 ,000 unemployed people who are black women, by the way. And then we're going to say we will create the single largest law enforcement agency in the country, bigger than every other federal law enforcement agency combined.

22:05And there are a lot. And then we're going to say, but we don't want them to be accountable. So we will let TSA, these neighbors, these parents, these workers not get paid so that we don't have to say that ICE has to show you a warrant so that we don't say that ICE can't racially profile you. And by the way, none of that money is going to pay for judges or hearings. So we don't want them to have to be able to be responsible for due process or responsible for excessive force. And no other law enforcement agency gets zero accountability. Yeah, you lay it out. You say it very clearly. I think people can make up their own minds, but it speaks to the problem.

22:50The Democrats wanted to use this funding, use their powers. People say, are they fighting or not? Well, they're fighting on this. even if it becomes controversial because people who are less informed just go, I don't like what's happening at the airport, to say that they want these basic pieces of oversight. And they have gotten progress because you had a drawdown in Minnesota and you had a change of DHS leadership. Molly, I want to go to the politics of it, as they say, because on late night, Trump's idea of, oh, I'm going to throw ICE in there and it'll, quote, troll you and upset you. I mean, there's a certain level of sophistication to this lacking.

23:23But it doesn't necessarily be working the way they planned. Here was Late Night. Somehow Trump has found a way to make the airport even worse than it was. An elite squad of civil servants who've been through rigorous training with impeccable qualifications. I'm just kidding. He's sending ICE. One DHS official told CBS, I have no idea what we're doing. And neither does he. So welcome to the club. ICE isn't trained on X-rays. No surprise. They don't really seem to be trained on anything, actually. You know, and Molly, as I mentioned, there's a lot of folks who are just following their rules and this is where they're told to deploy.

23:59But this wider idea that the White House clearly had of, oh, you don't like ICE, you're holding up the funding, now we'll put him where the lines are, doesn't seem to be helping them. Yeah. And I want to point something else out here, which is that Donald Trump and Kristi Noem were very, Kristi Noem, who's no longer in her post, were very insistent that these ICE officers needed to wear masks because otherwise they would be doxxed. Now they are in airports not wearing masks. Not identifying themselves. Not identifying themselves. San Francisco not wearing uniforms. Right. But not wearing masks.

24:35And I think it's a really good point here because they are the whole you know, all of these excuses ultimately were not real. They cannot wear masks. They should be identified. They should be held accountable. They should go under the same scrutiny as every other part of the federal government. Well, we have you here both as a lawyer and a former candidate. There's been a lot of Republican attacks on vote by mail. And then you say, OK, well, is it secure? Can you do it? That's what some people ask and people want to learn. They're wondering why they're hearing so much hype about this. I have a New York Times headline here.

25:11Trump calls mail-in voting cheating and just voted by mail. His mail vote comes as he torpedoed negotiations on the shutdown and demands, of course, this new legislation that would make it harder to vote the way he just voted. I'm curious, Maya, if you think that matters. Yeah, of course it matters. It matters because it shows the utter hypocrisy. hypocrisy. But it also, like so many things that we have sometimes heard from this president or from his camp, it's more about what they think benefits them in politics, not in politics in terms of earning voters, but in terms of the process and creating more difficulty for voters to vote who they think may not vote for them.