Rep. Raskin Discusses Smoking Gun Findings in Epstein Files

0:00Ben Meiselas:Kayak gets my flight, hotel, and rental car right, so I can tune out travel advice that's just plain wrong. Bro, Skycoin. Way better than points. Never fly during a Scorpio full moon.

0:13Jamie Raskin:Just tell the manager you'll sue. Instant room upgrade.

0:17Ben Meiselas:Stop taking bad travel advice. Start comparing hundreds of sites with Kayak and get your trip right. Kayak. Got that right. I want to talk about the types of documents that Donald Trump fears the most in the Epstein files. And it's documents like these where Democratic Congress member Jamie Raskin, who got access to that special DOJ facility where they're showing the unredacted files. But as I'll talk about in a little bit, those are the unredacted files from the redacted files that were produced. but the unredacted are still redacted. And then there's another group of files that just millions of documents, which either have been destroyed or are being hidden.

1:01Ben Meiselas:So I want you to follow that. But in any event, when Jamie Raskin and other Congress members were able to go to this DOJ facility, they found documents like this. Here's how Congress member Raskin describes it.

1:13Jamie Raskin:The Department of Justice has not sent forth its so-called privilege log. So it's not explained yet why there might be certain redactions that have been made. I saw one document, which was an email that was sent by Jeffrey Epstein to Ghislaine Maxwell, which was the foreword of an email that he had received from some of his lawyers, giving an account of a conversation between Epstein lawyers and Trump lawyers, and others about what had taken place during that 2009 period. It was during the period of the 2009 investigation. And Epstein's lawyers synopsized and quoted Trump as saying that Jeffrey Epstein was not a member of his club at Mar-a-Lago, but he was a guest at Mar-a-Lago, and he had never been asked to leave.

2:17Jamie Raskin:And that was redacted for some indeterminate, inscrutable reason. I know it seems to be at odds with some things that President Trump has been saying recently about how he had kicked Jeffrey Epstein out of his club or asked him to leave. And this was at least one report that appears to contradict it.

2:37Ben Meiselas:Contradicts it also in a huge way. Why would that document be redacted? What's the privilege between Ghislaine Maxwell and Jeffrey Epstein emailing each other? There's no privilege there. But let's ask Pam Bondi what her thoughts are. Not about the stock market going over 50 ,000, but about the cover up of a child sex trafficking ring. Dan Goldman, Congress member from New York, cross-examined Bondi about that exact document and watch her response. I also found an email that I have right here. from Jeffrey Epstein to Ghislaine Maxwell that was unredacted. And it included notes of statements that Donald Trump made about his prior relationship with Jeffrey Epstein.

3:20Ben Meiselas:Now, there is no reason for this to be hidden from the American people. There is no privilege. There is no attorney-client privilege. And I see you're checking with your staff. And I can assure you, staff, this is not under attorney-client privilege because it was sent from Jeffrey Epstein to Ghislaine Maxwell will you commit to publicly providing the unredacted version of this so that the American people can understand the extent of Donald Trump's lies about his relationship with Jeffrey Epstein? You're about as good of a lawyer today as you were when you tried to impeach President Trump in 2016.

3:57Ben Meiselas:Have you apologized for that in 2019? So will you unredact this? You were lead counsel on that privilege. I'm asking you, will you unredact this? Privileged. Privileged, of course. I look forward to discussing this more. Privileged. Objection. Sustained. It's ridiculous stuff, but it's deeply serious. Well, I want to call in Congress member Jamie Raskin, ranking member of the House Judiciary Committee, who you all saw at that committee hearing that Pam Bondi train wreck. Congressman, I want to talk about that hearing, but let's talk about this document, because I've been laser focused on this specific document, because it seems to contradict, surprise, surprise, everything that Donald Trump's been saying.

4:38Ben Meiselas:And it was redacted from the public, but you were able to see it. Can you talk to us about that document?

4:44Jamie Raskin:Well, I think it was the first substantive document that I got to. And I think I was the first member to show up for the big opportunity to go after the unredacted materials. And, you know, there are thousands and thousands of such documents in there. And it struck me immediately that it was at odds with what Donald Trump has been saying, because he's been saying, you know, the minute I learned something went wrong, or the minute he stole one of my employees, So, you know, the story changes, of course, but I sent him off, you know, I cut him off and so on. And this would seem to contradict that.

5:23Jamie Raskin:At least what he said in that telephone interview was quite the reverse, which is he was not a member of his club, but he was a guest at the club and he was never sent away. It sounds like he was always welcome there. And remember, they were best friends for more than a decade. So this whole process, Ben, has been set up as a massive cover up. It's not designed to get at the truth. It's designed with just multiple layers of obfuscation and trap doors so that it's going to be very difficult for us to arrive at any coherent sense of what actually took place, even in terms of the crimes being committed against girls and women, much less the big picture money relationships and power relationships that structured this conspiracy or these overlapping conspiracies.

6:12Ben Meiselas:As a former litigator, first off, the idea that there would be any type of attorney-client privilege when no attorneys are even copied on there or deliberative process privilege when Epstein sending an email to Ghislaine. what we what who's the is is does they work at the FBI I mean what are they each other's attorneys like what the hell are we even talking about there but then you go you know another step you know as as a litigator I look at this message as it being forwarded between Ghislaine and and Epstein to basically imply and the fact that there's really nothing else written in it just the message seems to be Trump's playing ball.

6:52Ben Meiselas:He's in 20 minutes. He said what we wanted him to say. And nothing else had to even be said other than look what look what our lawyers are saying that Trump did to avoid having his deposition taken because he's not giving them what they want. And I read it that way. How do you read it?

7:10Jamie Raskin:I read it exactly the same way on the privilege question, though, I would just take your point, which is right one step further, which is that federal law trumps any state privilege in any event. So the whole idea that somebody says, oh, well, there was an attorney-client privilege, even though the attorneys weren't involved, even though this was being released to a third party who was not part of any potential privilege, thereby destroying the whole thing. Leaving all of that aside, there's a federal law that compels them to turn everything over. And the only thing that must be redacted is the names of the victims.

7:46Jamie Raskin:And of course, in more than 100 cases that we know of on tens of thousands of pages, there were releases of the names, the addresses, the phone numbers, in some cases, even the nude images of people who should have been redacted and who were covered by what Congress passed.

8:10Ben Meiselas:When we talk about a privilege log for our audience out there that, you know, may not know what that word means. It's basically like a spreadsheet that includes the document number, and then it gives a description why it was that this document's not being produced. And because if it is a privileged document, you're not going to specifically write out all the specifics about what's said in the document, but you give a little description. This is privileged because of attorney-client privilege between this person and that person. And you give a description. And we do that all the time in litigation.

8:41Ben Meiselas:That's just part of what you do if you're withholding documents. The Epstein Transparency Act requires a report to be prepared precisely on these redactions. And part of the cover up here is that that report hasn't been produced and they don't even care that it hasn't been produced. Like it's literally built into the law. Give us a report why you're withholding. And they're like, yeah, we're just not going to do that. Yeah.

9:04Jamie Raskin:So look, it came out at the end of the hearing because of a photographer's capture of some of the papers in Attorney General Bundy's burn book, that they basically had been tracking our use of their four computers to look into the unredacted version of the 3 million out of 6 million documents that were released. OK, and this was in the case of Pramila Jayapal, where they had given to Attorney General Bondi a document that said Pramila Jayapal's search history. And presumably they had the same thing on each one of us. In other words, they were looking at what we were looking at before she came in to testify so they'd be prepared to answer anything that we posed to the Attorney General.

10:00Jamie Raskin:Well, that's obviously a massive attack on the separation of powers, on our ability to conduct oversight within our legislative responsibilities and an insult to the speech and debate clause and the whole thing. So we would like to use this as an opportunity for a reset where we go back to basics and say, look, this isn't working the way this is happening right now. This is not a game of hide and go seek. you've got to turn all these materials over and we're going to need a completely new methodology for working this so we can get our staffs involved. We're not allowed to have our staff involved.

10:37Jamie Raskin:And there are all kinds of Supreme Court cases that say that members of Congress depend on their staffs. Some describe them as our alter egos because we have so many competing responsibilities. We need staff to help on stuff like this. And we need staff to be involved and we need much greater access than we have now. But fundamentally, as you were saying, we need an explanation for why something like 200 ,000 pages have been redacted of the 3 million they turned over. And then what the hell happened to the other 3 million documents? The DOJ is saying, well, it's duplicative. Well, if it's duplicative, just turn it over.

11:16Jamie Raskin:But we know there's stuff in there that's not duplicative, including the memos relating to victim interviews. where people would call up and say, I've been the victim of human trafficking. I've been the victim of rape. And there's a memo made about it. A lot of those are in there. And the reason we know those are in the 3 million withheld documents is because there are women who are survivors who are saying they cannot find them in the 3 million documents that have been turned over. There's also in there various prosecutor memoranda that were created for the original 60-count federal indictment that was traded away unbelievably for one sweetheart plea of a state count of solicitation to prostitution.

12:02Jamie Raskin:So they had a huge, gigantic federal prosecution ready to go, blowing the cover on the whole thing. And somehow it all got swept under the rug back with Alex Acosta and Alan Dershowitz and that team working with, you know, people in the DOJ. And I mean, We really need to try to reconstruct what happened there. Right.

12:25Ben Meiselas:I mean, normally in a litigation, we would take the deposition of a PMK or a PMQ, a person most qualified or person most knowledgeable to get the universe of documents and then direct our document request once we know the full universe. And then we would issue subpoenas to various other sources, see if things are being, you know, and there's a whole process there. So we're trying to now reconstruct a universe of documents where the DOJ is also serving as their own discovery referee and making these wild privilege claims that aren't real. But here's what I think we gather. And let's let the audience know.

13:04Ben Meiselas:Three million documents have been produced thus far, and those can be referred to as the redacted three million, partially redacted these three million that we've seen. You have access to technically those three million now in this silo, which is very difficult to search, which we refer to as now the unredacted. But there are still redactions within that because the FBI back in March made redactions. So they took away one layer of it. But the FBI layer of redactions, there's still stuff that you can't see there. But that's those three million corresponding. responding. However, there still may be three to five million more additional documents that you don't even have access to that the DOJ is just saying, we're not turning these over because we either don't think they're relevant or non-responsive, or they've made the determination that these don't qualify for the Epstein Transparency Act.

14:02Ben Meiselas:And those aren't even stuff that you've reviewed in the silo. Those are somewhere else. And who knows if documents are being destroyed, if there's a literal burn book where they're being burned. And that could be 25, 50 million pages because a document can be multiple pages. Do I kind of accurately describe the universe there?

14:23Jamie Raskin:That is the accurate universe of all the different levels of deletion and redaction in this, the most transparent presidency in American history as it relates to Epstein files.

14:34Ben Meiselas:So what do we do? I mean, I saw when Massey and Kana went to federal judges and said, can you appoint a discovery referee, which I think is a great idea. But the judges said, you know, we can't do it in the criminal case. But, you know, we're not taking any position about if a lawsuit is filed. The DOJ claims you can't file any because the Epstein Transparency Act doesn't have a private cause of action built in. They say there's no enforcement mechanism, No judges can touch this. No one yet, as I've seen, has tried to kind of bring that lawsuit. And then you have FOIA requests that are out there in FOIA law.

15:12Ben Meiselas:So what do we actually do?

15:14Jamie Raskin:Well, you're correct that the original language of the statute does not include a private right of action. So it also doesn't necessarily give Congress standing to go to court to vindicate our rights or the public's rights under the Epstein Transparency Act. So either we're going to have to legislate again or we're going to have to give it a try and see how a court responds. Because we saw from Attorney General Bondi's just dumbfounding obstructionist appearance before the Judiciary Committee. She has no interest in doing anything to move the ball forward in terms of our understanding of the crimes.

15:56Jamie Raskin:And she's demonstrating absolutely no sympathy or interest in the plight of the victims and survivors at all.

16:04Ben Meiselas:So what we could be seeing potentially is another discharge petition that would probably have to be instituted that basically says we're making an amendment to the Epstein Transparency Act. We've now created a cause of action. Members of Congress can bring the case. Something like that is possible.

16:21Jamie Raskin:Something like that is possible. I mean, and we'll see at that point. Of course, the Republicans were drag kicking and screaming to vote for the Epstein Files Transparency Act. They did everything they could to kill it. And then when we brought over enough Republicans, including Marjorie Taylor Greene and Nancy Mason, Lauren Boebert, as well as Tom Massey, at that point, they could see they could read the writing on the wall. They could see where it was going. And then they all decided they would vote for it so that they would not get challenged back home or over it. And then Trump ran out in front of the parade and said, oh, yes, I've been leading this all along.

16:59Jamie Raskin:Well, that's a joke. And then, you know, every the whole world could see that Bondi is actively sabotaging and sandbagging our ability to get any information out. So I think we're going to need to keep all the pressure we can on this at the same time, understanding that there are other ways that information can come out and will come out. And that is because of this growing and growingly fierce survivors community.

17:26Ben Meiselas:A final question. When I, during the, during whatever I even want to call that, I was called testimony of Pan Bondi, but I truly don't even know what I was observing. You know, a lot of ad hominem attacks directed at you. She goes, you know what, Raskin, you're not a real lawyer, Raskin. You're not a real lawyer. You know, at first I'm thinking to myself, is anybody who's a real lawyer up there? It's Raskin. I mean, Harvard Law, Constitutional Law Scholar. And then I'm thinking to myself, you don't have to say whatever you want to say. But the guy next to you never passed the bar exam who leads the OUS Judiciary Committee in Jim Jordan.

18:00Ben Meiselas:I'm like, so literally the non-real licensed lawyer is the person the Republicans have chairing that committee, which is a whole other thing. But how do you deal with that? I mean, how do you respond to that in that moment, not to take the bait, to stay focused on the mission? Yes. Also, knowing that you're speaking to someone who's be clowning herself. Yes.

18:21Jamie Raskin:Oh, man. Well, that's going to take another hour to get through all that. Just to be fair to Jim Jordan, he certainly never passed the bar. I'm not certain he ever took the bar. It's not clear to me whether or not he did. And I say that because my dad, who was a dazzlingly brilliant man and a concert pianist, decided he wanted to go to law school and he went to the University of Chicago Law School. He went for a very specific purpose. He wanted to figure out whether law could end war. And this was in the wake of the Holocaust and Nazism and fascism. And he skipped every class that wasn't related to that to the point where the professors would call on him first and everybody would laugh and then they would start the business of the day.

19:03Jamie Raskin:Anyway, my dad graduated from law school and he never took the bar because he wasn't interested in being a practicing lawyer. So I don't hold that against anybody. I don't have Pam Bondi's snob reaction about people who are not lawyers, whether or not they went to law school in the first place. And, you know, a lot of people have risen to my defense by citing where I went to law school and where she went to law school. Look, I've been very proud of Harvard these days for standing up against Trump. That's great. I was ashamed of Harvard for their complicity with apartheid South Africa. And when we were students there, we were fighting to get Harvard to divest.

19:47Jamie Raskin:And there are lots of professors there whom I loved and whom I love, like Larry Tribe, who was my constitutional law professor, like Randy Kennedy, like Duncan Kennedy, like Martha Minow. There are people who I look up very highly to, but then there are people like Alan Dershowitz who are there. and Dershowitz I think is just a walking scandal in the legal profession in terms of the things that he's done and the things that he said and I think that the the whole Epstein debacle shows that only further so look all of which is to say when she says you're not a real lawyer or you know you're a washed up lawyer or whatever I mean again all that stuff we have to try to disregard the ad hominem attacks, which we understand are a logical and rhetorical fallacy, and instead look at the underlying meaning.

20:39Jamie Raskin:And what makes somebody a real lawyer? What makes somebody a good lawyer or a great lawyer? Well, I tried to gesture at that in my opening remarks, in my opening statement, where I said, you have to identify with the people who are the victims of injustice and criminal violence and not with their perpetrators. And if all you do is serve the people in power, which is what Pam Bondi does, then you are not a good lawyer, much less a great lawyer. You're just, you know, a hired gun and you're willing to do anything for people who will implicate you in shameful actions. And unfortunately, that's where she is with Donald Trump and with Kristi Noem and the things she's defending, you know, American citizens being, you know, gunned down by their own government.