Trump Panic Over Epstein Boils Over

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0:53Good evening. Welcome to The Beat. I'm Ari Melber. We have a lot to cover tonight. There is that showdown in Texas where Republicans say they will try to arrest Democrats who left the state to protest what they call a kind of MAGA power grab that distorts democracy at that state level. Also tonight, Andrew Weissman coming up on something that is deeply disturbing. It's what Donald Trump admitted he wanted to do what many prosecutors and investigators would refuse to do, which is apparently investigate the former special counsel, Jack Smith, who, of course, famously indicted and prosecuted then former president Donald Trump.

1:29That is a huge development, but it's not our top story yet. We're going to get to Weissman with that. We begin with new letters coming out from the victims of sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein, who are concerned in a different way than so many people who view this case as a political controversy or online content or many of the other ways that it is mushroomed. These are the people who live through it, the victims and their families. And they say the Trump Justice Department is putting convicted pedophiles and sex traffickers above the victims. We're going to start right here, and I'm just going to read to you what they're saying.

2:03Quote, I feel like a DOJ and FBI priority is protecting the third party, the wealthy men, focusing on scrubbing their names off the files. That's a reference to reporting about the benefits Donald Trump himself and others may have gotten, of which the victims know who they are. They continue, quote, to learn that our own president has utilized thousands of agents to protect his identity. And these high profile individuals is monumentally mind blowing. That's their focus. Wow. Reports are how Donald Trump famously put Epstein conspiracy theorists and other sort of podcasters in charge of the FBI.

2:40And remember, the reporting is they spent a lot of time and energy going through the material. And while some of them may have said or claimed they wanted to do that to then release it, remember, nothing's been released. That's why he's accused of a cover-up. But we do have reporting that they also used that time to shield various names. So remember, if you're keeping track of what has been a sordid political story, a lot of the people who claim to care about this story for justice, to go after bad guys like Epstein and his conspirator Maxwell, are now aligned with a government that's doing the opposite, shielding people, giving more secrecy to Maxwell and, of course, the deceased Epstein, because while he's gone, the information could still come out and matter to people.

3:22And on top of all that, the administration, going into the weekend, gave leniency to the only incarcerated conspirator. Now the issue is snowballing, and I want to show you a way that it has affected Donald Trump, who is, if nothing else, very conscious and sometimes skilled at PR. He understands the difference between noise and language, wherever it may be in our world, and things that go to the heart of his political base, which he has always kept an eye on. So imagine his concern when someone who's been outspoken in many venues, Charlemagne Tha God, he's a popular radio host, he interviewed Harris, he's taken on more of a political role over the years, although he's known first and foremost as a New York music radio host, but he also has the show on Comedy Central.

4:06He's been on MSNBC. He is someone who goes and talks to all kinds of people, and that may be because a lot of people have seen his voice as important. Clearly, Fox News and Donald Trump do, which is the story I'm telling you tonight, because he went on Fox talking to none other than Laura Trump, and so he is speaking with his reach, his credibility, but to the MAGA audience, making headlines, calling out what he sees as a Republican coup in the making over the Epstein issue, which led to a Trump backlash. I think there's a political coup going on right now in the Republican Party that people aren't paying attention to.

4:43Oh, interesting. Yeah, I think that the I think that this this Epstein thing is going to be a way for traditional conservatives to take their party back. This is the issue that has gotten the base riled up. The MAGA base isn't letting this issue go. And for the first time, they know they can probably take their party back and not piss off the MAGA base. I think they're going to do that. that's charlemagne's take as for who's getting pissed off well the president certainly was he wrote a lengthy diatribe with plenty of personal attacks going after charlemagne calling him names saying he doesn't know anything about trump but the problem goes deeper than just a messenger so to speak referring to real evidence out there in a venue that clearly bothered trump the trump hour of Fox there.

5:34The wider swath of voters are also concerned. There's new polling out today. 70 % of Americans think that there is a client list, and while there may not be, the DOJ claims there isn't. That comes after a long time where Bondi and others literally told everyone there was. More than 60 % see Trump as hiding information. That's true. That's the secrecy we've been reporting on. And a whopping 81 % blame Trump for the way that the administration or others are hiding the info. In other words, the dance that we hear politicians sometimes do apparently isn't working on most of the public. 81 % includes a heck of a lot of Trump voters.

6:09Top Republicans are also concerned about that story going into the weekend, where this administration, which rode a wave of outrage over Epstein, is now giving leniency to his only incarcerated conspirator, Maxwell. So she was moved to that minimum security prison. Epstein victims were outraged. Why, of anyone in the entire prison system, in their view, should this convicted sex trafficker who worked with Epstein get leniency right now, get a nicer prison environment, which, by the way, if you're a prisoner, that's one of the biggest major changes in your life you can get other than getting sprung out, is getting to a better, sometimes safer prison.

6:47She got to a minimum security facility that, under DOJ rules, people convicted of her crimes shouldn't even be allowed to be it, which makes it very suspicious. Now, Republican senators who famously go along with just about everything Trump does, including things that they had previously opposed, say this whole Maxwell thing has gone far enough. They are publicly urging Trump not to pardon her. To even have that conversation is a type of indictment. Think about the ethics of pardoning a convicted sex trafficker if there's no new evidence or substantive reason. Trump is not ruling it out, which is why they are warning in public.

7:22And so the Epstein panic from the substance, what I read to you from the victims and their families, to the politics, Charlemagne, and the polling, to the ethics, again, of a world where the people who claim justice for Epstein are now aligned with a president who's helping an Epstein conspirator and sex trafficker. We turn to Michelle Goldberg, who has been reporting and writing about this for some time from the New York Times, MSNBC analyst. Your view about this story and how it continues with the substantive help to Maxwell, she's been upgraded. It's so astonishing. And I mean, I feel like so many astonishing things happen in this rolling catastrophe of an administration that we lose track of it.

8:08But how quickly we have moved from Trump is going to blow the lid off on the Epstein conspiracy to Trump is going to both, you know, sort of do favors for Epstein's chief conspirator. And now the idea of a pardon is out there in the ether. It's really astonishing. And I think the question then becomes, first of all, why this transfer, which is, you know, which nobody has even given the ghost of an explanation for. And then what is Trump hiding? Right. Because all of this is happening when Jelaine Maxwell, there was a possibility, there still is a possibility that she could be subpoenaed to testify before Congress.

8:50So first you have Trump sending his former private attorney, now a Justice Department official, to speak to her for hours on end. Then she gets this inexplicable transfer. And again, I'm somebody who didn't necessarily think that there was something terribly incriminating about Donald Trump in these files. But he is doing his best. I mean, on the one hand, he says he wants this story to go away. He wants people to stop talking about it. But he obviously doesn't want that enough not to make or for his administration not to make these moves that at least on the surface look extraordinarily incriminating.

9:31Yeah, these are huge risks. These are very guilty looking risks, to your point. And in politics, looking guilty is bad. In law, we have a different standard. And as you were careful to note, yeah, the fact that somebody's referenced or caught up in a scene is not at all probative of the higher criminal standard. And he hasn't, even when he was out of power, been accused of that kind of wrongdoing. And he's famously been accused and faced prosecution for other wrongdoing. As for the so-called transparency, that's the other whole bit of it, Michelle. They have twisted themselves in knots. The victims, as I reported, are upset about it.

10:05But the government officials have twisted themselves in knots in a way that they can't hide. There were enough FBI personnel involved that people discussed it with reporters and reporters very carefully sourced and fact-checked. Bongino famously talked about, well, if they don't release it, he might quit. Well, he hasn't quit and they haven't released it. And it goes on and on in that manner where then one of the floated things, as you know, and I'll remind viewers because there's been so many twists and turns, was, oh, maybe they need a special counsel. You don't need a special counsel. You have all the stuff.

10:36You don't need a new way to punt it out for a year if anyone was serious about transparency. Here's what Obama's AG said about that debate right now. So finally, you would release the files if you were Attorney General right now? Yeah, I mean, take into account, you know, the privacy interests of various people, certainly the victims uppermost. But there is investigative material that can certainly be released that should be released. The focus shouldn't be on grand jury material because there are a whole bunch of problems with respect to the release of grand jury materials. But with regard to investigative files that are in the possession of the Justice Department and the FBI, those materials should be released.

11:20So what does the secrecy tell us? Well, I mean, it's certainly not about the victims, right? And that has been their fig leaf so far. You've heard that from Kash Patel and from others that they can't release this material because it would re-victimize these women. Now, these women are out there saying, or at least some of them, that they feel victimized by the way the administration is handling this material. And yet it's not changing the administration's approach. So I think we can rule out any concern about that from their motives. And again, we don't know why what they're hiding. We only know that, you know, the indications are overwhelming that they're hiding, that they're hiding something and that they're willing to take significant political hits.

12:07I mean, right. The floating a pardon for Ghislaine Maxwell is crazy. It's you know, and it's also guaranteed to keep this story alive now, long after this administration has tried to put it to bed. And yet they're willing to do it. Why? Yeah, why? Exactly. Michelle Goldberg breaking this down and we've invited you and you've agreed to stay and return later in the hour when we get to the Texas case. So thank you. We'll come back to Michelle. We have the rock band that's been taunting Trump at those live shows with the X-Bian story that just hits home. That's coming up. And from the new protest to Republican voices, warnings about the abuse of power here.

12:46This is the action of a petulant child. Like you give me bad news, I fire the messenger. That's on the data and the censorship. But next, Andrew Weissman is here on something Trump admitted he wanted that now is partially happening, a probe of his former special counsel foe, Jack Smith.

13:14If you think back to Donald Trump's many problems with federal probes, there was the Mueller probe, which got a lot of his people in trouble, but ultimately, quite carefully and fairly, issued a report that did not seek his indictment in office under the sitting rules and didn't necessarily give a path to indicting him after office. Indeed, as you may recall, nothing from the Mueller report ever led to a Trump indictment. What did lead to it was conduct by Donald Trump, including the attempted stealing and overthrowing of the 2020 election and the January 6th insurrection, which Trump, of course, later tied himself even closer to by pardoning all the people convicted.

13:54That is the context for what's happening now. Trump said that he might want revenge. He might want, if he won, to use the powers of the government to go after the prosecutors who investigated him. That alone is a confession. That's an admission of an illicit goal. Sometimes that's called selective prosecution. It's what happens in other non-democracies, of course, all the time. The leader controls the Justice Department or their version of it, calls up like Putin would and says, I want this or that enemy prosecuted. It's all rigged. So it is suspicious at a minimum and disturbing, according to many critics, that tonight we can report, the federal officials are launching a type of probe into Jack Smith, the special counsel who indicted Donald Trump twice and then followed the law when the Supreme Court slowed the process down.

14:42And Smith ultimately dissolved those cases because of those rules I mentioned, that Trump was returning to office so you couldn't go on with the prosecution of the head of state. Now, a different office, which is an independent agency, it's a watchdog that's unrelated to Smith in the DOJ, is now responding to politicians in the Republican Party, including Senator Cotton, who basically said maybe Smith's entire special counsel probe was a campaign effort, a political effort, and thus maybe it violates some workplace rule. Now, putting aside the irony of a sitting politician trying to be the one accusing other people of politics, this non-criminal probe is now proceeding.

15:26So it is a way to sort of add smoke and interference with Jack Smith. And if it follows Trump's goals, and we haven't had a direct connection, but we're also not going to close our eyes to the obvious, it is one more effort in this time of autocratic crackdowns of business shakedowns and censorship to send a message to other people in the government, hey, be careful going too hard at the president or his friends, or you might end up in a range of problems. Expensive problems. Could be private lawsuits. Could be this Hatch Act review. Could be a criminal probe, as some Democratic officials are facing.

16:02Now, it's a civil offense, even if you're found to violate the Hatch Act. In Washington, it's happened before. The investigation, though, could also be used as a kind of a step, or what lawyers call a pretext, to then get more intel or info on Smith and other people who worked with him to cook up other problems for them. The Post reports the investigation into Smith is out of the norm for an office responsible that looks into federal employees' violations of prohibited personnel practices. But this is a different type of era, and Trump himself has admitted to the illicit goals of punishing and investigating anyone he views as critical.

16:37Could be sitting office holders, could be former officials like Comey and Smith, John Brennan. Now remember, this all started with the person in the federal government who, unlike many before him, said that when he found criminal evidence of wrongdoing, didn't matter if it was a powerful person like Trump, he was going forward. Today, an indictment was unsealed, charging Donald J. Trump with felony violations of our national security laws, as well as participating in a conspiracy to obstruct justice. Today, an indictment was unsealed, charging Donald J. Trump with conspiring to defraud the United States, conspiring to disenfranchise voters and conspiring and attempting to obstruct an official proceeding.

17:28That was the case. There was strong evidence. And remember, one of the key defenses, and defendants are allowed, of course, to make defenses, was that Donald Trump, his lawyer said, did not want a violent insurrection or sedition, did not operationally plan it, and certainly didn't look at the worst of the worst. The people attacking cops and going into those hallowed halls of Congress didn't look at them as his allies. They were people who got, as we heard, out of control in a day of riot. You probably remember many of the defenses. But what's happened from then to now has only gone in favor of the case that Mr.

18:09Smith was bringing, even though under the rules he wasn't going to bring it once Donald Trump became president-elect. because as president in round two, second term, Trump pardoned all those people, which makes him look very supportive and completely endorsing of the convicted sedition, of the battery against police, of the effort to end American democracy when he found that it ran against him because he was the loser of the election. And now in this season where, yes, people are exhausted and some would rather look away, we have another step. It's not a criminal probe, I want to be clear with you.

18:43It is not as if they've fired up a new special counsel to go after the old special counsel. Nothing in these first pieces of news suggests that there would be any jail time on the table for anyone, no matter what they find. And yet, on the other hand, it is a step, which all experts say is suspicious, to go investigate the investigators. Andrew Weissman, who served on the Mueller probe as FBI general counsel, knows all about all of this and joins us next. Most ice cream is good, but not Jenny's. Jenny's ice cream is more like an obsession. What you get from over two decades of tasting and tweaking and throwing it out and starting over, chasing flavors until they feel alive.

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20:32we're back with andrew eisman former fbi general counsel and a muller probe deputy head of that probe and prosecutor uh your your view of what it means to have what i explained is a workplace civil and minor uh review the hatch act of jack smith but still looks a lot like the revenge that Trump ordered. You know, if this was the very first time that there was a review, I would say, you know what, you should have it. We were aware when I worked on the Mueller investigation that there would be a time that the investigators would be investigated. And if that's what's necessary, so that the public understands that we did our job, so be it.

21:21But here, Donald Trump and his conspirators actually had their day in court. They filed motions about something called selective prosecution. And every judge who reached the merits of those motions, including Eileen Cannon, who Donald Trump himself is very laudatory of, rejected the claim that these were selectively prosecuted cases. And so I think there's really nothing to it. And this seems very duplicative. It also is incredibly ironic for this administration of all administrations to be undertaking an investigation of involving the Hatch Act, which is, as you noted, is a civil statute. And Mark Meadows, the former chief of staff to Donald Trump, famously said in light of a report that said there were numerous Trump administration violations of the Hatch Act, he said no one cares about the Hatch Act outside the Beltway.

22:25And so he was basically saying we ignore it with impunity. And so all of that suggests that this is very much retaliatory. But I really think it's a distraction and nothing will come of it. Right. So you think, you know, they're not going to find much through it, but it adds to the list of people that they say, oh, see, we can pull this on anyone and we're going after these perceived enemies. Of course, it is notable that in In confirmation, the Trump appointees were quick and furious to argue they don't have an enemies list. Take a look. An enemies list within the Department of Justice. It's been referred to as an enemies list.

23:08You've called them deep state. It's not an enemies list. That is a total mischaracterization. Here we are more than halfway through year one of the term. And I showed the chart earlier. some of these seem like ticky-tack things, you know, James Comey's beach walks and whether staplers were taken home from the special counsel's office. But together, do you see what looks like selective prosecution and probes? Do you see a type of enemies list?

23:47We may have lost, yep, we lost Andrew Weissman there from his location. That happens in this era. I'll put the list back up one more point to finish the thought we were having, because Andrew, you'll hear what he said. He was quite fair in saying you're not above a review just because you were in a government office. And if there was any one of the people on your screen subject to review, okay, here you have, however, A whole bunch, all of them have one thing in common, which is the perception by Donald Trump that they have made his life hard or somehow disagreed. Comey was, of course, a registered Republican back in the day, but he ended up on the other side of Trump, as did these other figures.

24:26That fits in with the Jack Smith news we were covering. I want to thank Andrew Weissman, even though he lost his camera, for joining us. We have a lot more coming up. Michelle Goldberg is here. We also have a special guest from this rock band that's been taunting Trump over the Epstein vulnerability, going so far as to play the footage at concerts where it seems everybody knows who Epstein is and that he was friendly with Trump and that Texas clash. All of that coming up.

25:00Donald Trump's Jeffrey Epstein scandal has taken on a whole life of its own. We've covered it from many different angles, but it's also out in the culture, which is a reminder of why it might have gotten so big in politics. It can't really be beaten back. It's in late night jokes. It's online and the memes. The podcasters who love Trump have said, well, they don't love him so much that they're going to put aside Epstein and everything involving Epstein. And then you have the examples that kind of remind you this is something people really talk about. the punk band Dropkick Murphys, using Epstein to Trump and showing what are now iconic videos that so many people recognize as suspicious and as true.

25:41Trump and Epstein in full meme mode on the giant screen. This was during a recent live show, and they dedicated a certain song to Trump called First Class Loser. This next song is dedicated to a guy who wears orange makeup, his pants and his diapers breaks women first class loser