Senator Schumer Discusses Senate Vote to Release Epstein Files

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2:34The Senate has now passed the Epstein bill as soon as it comes over from the House.

2:43Ben Meiselas:Wow, Senate Democrats just outmaneuvered the MAGA Republicans and they just passed the Epstein bill by unanimous consent in the Senate. Let me repeat that. The Epstein bill has now passed in the Senate. And as you know, it passed in the House of Representatives earlier. So now the next move is it will go to the president's desk essentially immediately. What we have to wait for now is MAGA Mike Johnson, the Republican Speaker of the House, to transmit the House bill to the Senate. The Senate already passed it. You saw it just there by a procedure called unanimous consent. So it automatically is deemed approved when it arrives in the Senate and then it goes right to Donald Trump's desk.

3:29Ben Meiselas:The question is, will MAGA Mike try to hold this up? But the pressure is going to grow and grow and grow now. The Democrats outmaneuver the MAGA Republicans here. We heard earlier in the day that MAGA Mike Johnson was speaking with the Senate Majority Leader John Thune about making amendments and making changes to the Epstein bill that was passed in the House of Representatives. That was MAGA, Mike and Donald Trump's plan. But the Democrats outmaneuvered them. And you saw there Senator Chuck Schumer, the Democratic leader in the Senate, he gave the MAGA Republicans in the Senate an ultimatum. He said, I am going to put this on the floor for unanimous consent for everybody in the world to watch who's going to object to this.

4:17Ben Meiselas:So at 5 p.m., he said, I'm going going to go put this up. I'm giving you a deadline. It will go up. And then we saw Senator Schumer do what he said he was going to do. Then there was not a single MAGA Republican or Republican in the Senate who was willing to go up there and object to the unanimous consent. So thereby, after the procedure happened where the bill was read a few times and then there was a request for objections, when that procedure was completed, the unanimous consent passed and it was deemed passed in the Senate. So now we have the House vote earlier that passed. It's now passed in the Senate.

4:55Ben Meiselas:As soon as it's transmitted from MAGA Mike to the Senate, it goes to Donald Trump's desk for his signature. Let's take a look at what Donald Trump is saying right now. He goes, he just posted this moments ago. I don't care when the Senate passes the House bill, whether tonight or at some other time in the near future. I just don't want Republicans to take their eyes off all of the victories that we've had, including the great big beautiful bill, closed borders, no men and women's sports or transgender for everyone, ending DEI, stopping Biden's record-setting inflation, biggest tax and regulation cuts in history, stopping eight wars, rebuilding our military, being respected by every country, the hottest country in the world, having trillions of dollars invested, all lies after lies after lies by him.

5:38Ben Meiselas:Well, Donald, the Senate has passed the Epstein bill by unanimous consent. MAGA Mike was trying to do everything to limit debate, but then the Democrats in the House outmaneuvered them there and actually allowed Republicans like Thomas Massey and Marjorie Taylor Greene to speak on the Democratic side and use the Democrats' time in order to get out their messages as well. Here's what MAGA Mike said earlier about what his plan was, where he was going to call MAGA Republican Senator Thune, the Senate majority leader, to try to make alterations and kill the Epstein bill by making these amendments.

6:17Ben Meiselas:Remember when Mag and Mike said this? Here, play this clip right here. I call my counterpart in the Senate, Leader Thune, and I talked through this with him and shared our deep concerns. And of course, they share those concerns as well. And so I'm very confident that when this moves forward in the process, if and when it is processed in the Senate, which there's no certainty that that will be, that they will take the time methodically to do what we have not been allowed to do in the House, to amend this discharge petition and to make sure that these protections are there. The authors of the discharge do not allow us to do that here.

6:51That's the rules here. But in the Senate, they can correct it. So under that circumstance, because of that, we know there's serious deficiencies. We know that the work of our colleagues in the Senate can address that and will. They're very conscientious and concerned, as we are about all this. As we've insisted from the very beginning, Republicans are the only party trying to make a material difference in ensuring maximum transparency. Oh, by the way, I'll

7:13Ben Meiselas:just tell you. Then Thomas Massey, a Republican Congress member from Kentucky, he says, you better not muck with this bill. You better not muck with this bill. We had the survivors here. Don't muck with it. Here, play this clip. Cades, that is wrong. Do not let the Senate muck this bill up. And if you are, if you're party to that in the Senate, you are part of this cover-up that we are trying to expose. I am sorry if one of your billionaire donors is going to get embarrassed because he went to Rape Island. That is what they have coming. In fact, they need to be on the other side of bars, a lot of them.

7:52Ben Meiselas:Some of them will be embarrassed, but some of them need to go to prison, and the survivors know that. So how will we know if this bill has been successful? We will know when there are men, rich men in handcuffs being perp walked to the jail. And until then, this is still a cover up. Then after Massey spoke, we heard from Senator Leader Thune, who says that they'll move quickly on the House passed Epstein bill. Well, my assumption is that the president sounds like he's prepared to sign it. So I assume it'll move fairly quickly over here. Thune also says that he's aware Speaker Johnson wants some changes to the bill, but says that with 427 to one margin, changes are not likely to happen.

8:36Ben Meiselas:And then Democratic Senate leader Schumer, he made that move, put him on the spot, called out the MAGA Republican bluff in the Senate and said, who's going to object to this? Nobody objected. It's passed in the Senate. Without further ado, I want to bring in Democratic Senate leader Chuck Schumer to talk to him about that maneuver. Senator Schumer, it seems like you moved at lightning speed after the House passed the resolution to release the Epstein files to bring this unanimous consent before the United States Senate and no one objected to it. It seems like you called their bluff in the Senate and now it's passed in the Senate.

9:14Ben Meiselas:Can you tell us about that maneuver? Yes. What it means is the Senate has virtually approved it once the house sends it over to us it goes right to the president no amendments no delays no anything it's called deemed passing and it means that it's passed it's deemed to have passed even before it was sent to us so this is very good news look we told the republicans we were going to make them block it and uh they were afraid of that they knew the power they saw the vote in the House. They had a bunch of discussions and I said, look, five o 'clock is the deadline here. I'm going to the floor and asking unanimous consent to pass this, to Dean passing it.

9:53You can block it if you want and do that at your peril. And they relented. So the great news is now the House has passed it. The Senate has virtually passed it. It goes to the president's desk. I was going to say we have a lot more work to do. First, who knows how long the House will try to hold it we should put pressure on johnson to send it right over to us second the president has said he'll sign it but who the hell knows with him he can change his mind on a whim but third and maybe most important and i just had a meeting of 10 senators to discuss this we got to make sure we get all of the epstein funds all they can't fuck around with this they can't say oh we'll give you this but there are legal reasons we can't give you that and we are going to be pursuing them relentlessly to get everything because I don't trust this administration.

10:40I don't trust Bondi. I don't trust Kash Patel. I don't trust the president. And they could screw around with this. It'll be all of our jobs to be on them and make sure that we get everything. Right.

10:52Ben Meiselas:Because you had Mike Johnson saying earlier in the day he was speaking to Senate Leader Thune and they were going to make changes. But there was strategy going on behind the scenes of what you were doing, saying, absolutely not. We're going to make you put it on the record. talk a little bit about that because you put them on the spot in a big way. Yeah, the original plan was to do amendments. But if they did amendments, if they were allowed to do amendments, it would go back to the House and who knows what the hell would happen. That could have been, you know, putting it into file 13, the garbage can.

11:21And so we said, we're not allowed. If you want to do that, we're going to force you, force you to publicly say you're delaying and screwing up the bill. And they backed off.

11:32Ben Meiselas:Now, the transmittal process, us. That's where we're in now. So Mag and Mike has to send it over to the Senate. Is there any timeframe with that? What happens? No, he can try to delay, but if he doesn't send it over by tonight, you'll see the heat on him tomorrow starting, not starting, full blast. I don't think he can't afford to vote where only one person voted against it. He can hold it. And he has no excuse to now because the amendment thing is out the window because of what we did. We stop them from doing any amendments. And then just lastly, you touched on this before, but now this has to be signed by Trump.

12:11Ben Meiselas:Is there? Yes, Ben, that has to be signed by Trump. You know, he said he would. He also, you know, told the Republicans to vote for it. But who knows where he's at? Obviously, let's conclude this way. He has something to hide. Everyone knows it. every American, just about every American who follows any of this knows that if he didn't have anything to hide, why wouldn't he release them long ago? Why wouldn't he? If he didn't have anything to hide, then why is he lying about them? Why is he telling his people, Bondi and others, to lie about it? So obviously there's something there that he doesn't.

12:47Ben Meiselas:Senator Schumer, thanks for your time. We appreciate it.

12:58Ben Meiselas:YouTube channel today. You can also gift memberships to others. Let's keep growing together.

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