Ro Khanna on Stopping the Iran War, Taking on the ‘Epstein Class’ and Taxing Billionaires

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1:32The Cincinnati insurance companies. Let them make your bad day better. Find an agent at CINFIN.com. Bloomberg Audio Studios. Podcasts. Radio. News. It's been a botched operation. The president's a keen observer of the economy, and he understands that this is hurting the very working and middle-class Americans who he campaigned for. And I do believe he's looking for an off-ramp to end the war. Ro Khanna, a Democratic congressman from Silicon Valley. He's forced the release of the Epstein files. Now he's trying to stop the Iran war and talking about how his party can win over America. We are going to build a cohesive, multiracial democracy where everyone has an economic stake.

2:22That, in my view, is where the heart and soul of the American people are. From Bloomberg Weekend, this is The Michelle Hussain Show. I'm Michelle Hussain.

2:38The war with Iran has already been longer and more costly than it seems the US and Israel imagined when it began. And even when hostilities cease, it's likely to have a prolonged impact on energy, aviation, shipping, confidence of many kinds. In our last two episodes here, we have stepped beyond the headlines to add depth and context to what's playing out on the news. And this time, we've gone to Capitol Hill to a view from within the US Congress where lawmakers did not get a say on this use of force. Congressman Roe Canna has been in the House of Representatives since 2017. He's elected from an incredibly wealthy district in California, one that's home to tech giants and to some of Silicon Valley's most prominent individuals.

3:35If you recognize his name but aren't quite sure why, it's probably because of the Epstein files. He was one of the two congressmen who forced the U.S. Department of Justice to release those thousands of documents. In this conversation, he tells me how that experience has given him a new confidence to pursue his goals on other fronts, including taxing billionaires and ending this war. He's a Democrat from the progressive wing of the party, and as you'll hear, he might well run for president in 2028. So here it is, a political take on Iran, the future of the Democrats, and yes, those files. Congressman, many more people know who you are today than was the case a year ago, and that is because of your work on the Epstein files over so many months.

4:32Tell me first how and when you first heard of his name, Jeffrey Epstein. Well, I heard years ago, during the first Trump administration, there was reporting about survivors who had been raped, abused by this man, Jeffrey Epstein, and that there had been a cover-up and not appropriate prosecution. And at that time, Elijah Cummings was the chair of the Oversight Committee, and we put out a statement saying we should investigate it. But then I didn't think much of it. I had pushed for investigation, but it really resurfaced when there was a lot of press coverage by Julia Brown and others with the Donald Trump campaign.

5:18And I started to follow it closely about these survivors who had been abused and abandoned by our Justice Department. Did it feel nevertheless like a big move for you to get involved as you had? because, look, you represent Silicon Valley, one of the wealthiest and most powerful places in the country, if not the planet. And your own writing and work has been a lot about the future of the economy and the future of tech. And then here you were going out on a limb for the Epstein survivors. Well, I didn't realize quite how many powerful people would be implicated. The reason I did it initially is I understood how much of an issue this was to a lot of people, The sense that there are two tiers of justice in America, that the rich and powerful can get away with something that ordinary Americans can't.

6:05I had visited factory towns, Trump districts, podcasters, and I understood that this was a matter of fairness for a lot of Americans. As I got more deeply involved with the partnership with Massey, I met the survivors and it became a very personal and emotional issue for me. People in my office in tears reliving their trauma. and I would never have expected that this would become a cause that I would end up getting so involved in and championing. But it was an organic process of really getting to know these survivors and being horrified about how they were treated. Thomas Massey, of course, the Republican congressman you worked with on this.

6:41To date, what do you feel you have achieved in terms of the justice? Some of the names are out there. Clearly in the UK, where I am, there has been a process of accountability for some that appears to be underway. What do you feel you have achieved in concrete terms in the U.S.? Well, we forced the disclosure of over three million files, half the files, which people never thought would be disclosed. And it's been a moral reckoning for the United States and the world to see so many powerful financiers, politicians, technology leaders, Hollywood leaders caught up with Epstein, what I've called an Epstein class, rich and powerful people who thought that their wealth and their connections shielded them from any accountability, elite impunity.

7:25And now there is a reckoning with that in different countries. In some cases, it's led to resignations of powerful people from banks and from universities. In America, though, we need to do more. We need to have investigations of people who gave vast amounts of money to Epstein. We need to have investigations of those who have been credibly accused of raping and trafficking. And there need to be prosecutions. But what this has shown the nation is that there are people like Massey and me willing to stand up to the powerful, willing to say that you can't have elite impunity, willing to say that there needs to be one system of justice in this country.

8:02And that's the first step to restoring trust in a democratic project. Do you think that prosecutions will come in the U.S.? I know that after the release of the files, you were one of the people allowed to see unredacted files. Give us a sense of what that experience was like. How many names were there that really jumped out at you, especially in relation to the body of what was written underneath those names? Well, the unredacted files were heavily redacted because there were already redactions done by the FBI in March. And there still needs to be these 302 forms that are released, the statements of survivors to the FBI about who abused them, who raped them.

8:45We recently saw the cover up where the woman who accused Donald Trump, and these are just allegations, one of her interviews was released, but the three of them that mentioned Trump were not released. And then it was only because Nancy Mace and myself and Massey and journalists pushed that the DOJ relented and now have released those three other interview memorandum. Like that, there are many other witness interview memorandum that still need to be released. I'm not saying that all of the allegations are true or not. That's for the investigation and prosecution and American people to decide. But what there shouldn't be is a cover-up, which is a violation of the law.

9:22But it shouldn't be members of Congress having to expose this. There needs to be the release of the rest of the files. And some of the people whose names are in there say that while they were associated with Jeffrey Epstein, some of them say that they had no knowledge of his crimes. I wonder if you have reflected at all on the way that you phrased it in the act, which I read through in preparation for the interview. This is the act that you spearheaded and which in the end Donald Trump said Republicans in Congress could vote for. You made it impossible for him to withstand. But the fact that you put this very tight timeframe in there, that not later than 30 days after the date of the act, the Justice Department had to release the files.

10:05On reflection, do you think some of that led to the very messy nature of what ensued, that some of the names of the victims and really difficult details for them did end up becoming public? No, because the Oversight Committee had a subpoena for these files back in August. So the Department of Justice had months to be preparing this. And the fact that they weren't preparing this is a total violation of the law. Our law kicked in in November, but they should have already been preparing all of this back in August. And they could have petitioned for more time to confer with the survivors' lawyers, but they refused to meet with the survivors' lawyers.

10:44They refused to meet with Massey and me. They refused to meet with any people to take help. And then the first round, they basically released nothing. And then they waited another month to release more information. So they delayed as is. So the only thing that explains this is both a cover-up and incompetence at the DOJ. So where do things stand now? Do you think that you are going to get further along the road towards more accountability, towards prosecutions? Because now this has moved away from the news agenda, not least because of this war. Well, it's moved away from the front pages, but there's still many Americans who are outraged by what happened.

11:20And they're outraged on behalf of the survivors, hundreds of survivors who were raped or abused, who haven't had justice. But they're outraged at the larger thought that you can't have a group of people who are rich and powerful and because of their connections, because of their wealth, believe they're above the law. That undermines the very trust in the nature of the democratic project, that it undermines the sense that the government isn't corrupt and beholden to a few. And if you are like me, a progressive Democrat who believes we need to tackle wealth inequality, that we need national health insurance, that we need universal child care, that we need a living wage, that we need a free public college and a thousand new trade schools, a new economic patriotism, then you need to restore trust in the democratic project.

12:01And that means holding this Epstein class accountable. And so we will continue to fight for it. This is not about being in the news cycle or being on the headlines. This is about a commitment to restoring our democracy with one system of justice. I do want to explore that, the link between the work on the Epstein files and other causes and issues which you're passionate about. In these last six, eight months that you've worked on this, what has it done to you? Has it given you a new resolve, a new courage, a new determination that if you needle at something and you get the administration into a corner that you can achieve something?

12:42Well, it's given me a new confidence that we can build a new governing coalition in America. This is the first time since Donald Trump came down the escalator that a Democrat has actually worked with Trump voters, that we've actually found common cause with many people who voted for Donald Trump. And they voted for Donald Trump partly because they thought we have a corrupt system and rich and powerful people were getting away with things and corrupting our government. And what I said is let's work together to hold people accountable who affiliated with a pedophile and perhaps either covered up for him or themselves engaged in sex trafficking and abuse.

13:15And that was a very powerful coalition that got unanimous votes in the Senate and 427 votes in the House and that forced Donald Trump to sign my bill. It showed that you can build a new coalition. I believe we will build a new coalition in America with a commitment against elite impunity, with a commitment against new wars in the Middle East. That means essentially a coalition with disaffected MAGA voters. Is that what you mean, that you're hoping for a split in MAGA and you'll take advantage of that? Well, it means having progressives who have been calling for holding the elite accountable. It means having progressives who've been calling for tackling wealth inequality and against these endless wars.

14:00It means independent voters who recognize that there needs to be a reform in a country where too few have power and that there isn't a sense of equal justice for all. And it means some of the voters for Donald Trump who were upset by the corruption in our government, who had lost faith in the Democratic project, who have been upset that we've been going to these foreign wars, that they can come along in a true coalition that's going to put working and middle class Americans first and take on a society that has been tilted to the very powerful. That is the modern FDR coalition. It is a coalition that's going to win, in my view, in the future of American politics.

14:39Was standing alongside Marjorie Taylor Greene with Epstein Survivors an example of that? When she was in Congress, you were one of those trying to get her off committees and you were clearly no fan of her. Does it mean that you then, you make new friends in the interest of something bigger? Well, I think we have to look for common ground. And with Marjorie Taylor Greene, she showed a lot of courage in standing up for survivors, risked her political career for it. And we were talking before she left Congress of expanding Medicare. We were talking about possibly dealing with the housing crisis. So what we need to do in this country is not to shame voters who voted for Donald Trump, but to approach them and to engage in dialogue, not to compromise our values on abortion rights or LGBT rights or immigrant rights, but to approach people who may have voted for Trump and say, why did they have such anger at the system?

15:32What is it about the country that's not in the right direction? And where can we find common ground to offer a new national purpose for America that heals the divides and offers a pathway for economic independence for every family in the 21st century? So where does your effort to stop this war fit into all of that? Because you haven't had any luck yet in getting, for example, your War Powers Resolution through Congress. Are you essentially hoping that the mood of the country turns against the president on this? Well, we've made a tremendous progress. When I used to introduce these war powers resolutions to try to stop the war in Yemen or stop other unilateral actions, sometimes I was seen as fringe.

16:13Now I had the entire Democratic leadership supporting my efforts from Hakeem Jeffries on down. We had almost every Democrat but four unified, and we got two Republicans. But most Americans realize that spending$2 billion a day in Iran is an extraordinary waste of resources. We've already lost, unfortunately, 13 service members. So we need to find a way of ending this war. And I believe that that's where American public sentiment is. What is that way? That's what I'm wondering. What are the levers that you can pull? Well, first, to stop the bombings, stop the actions that we're undertaking with our military.

16:52And then to be very clear to the Iranian regime, which, by the way, now we have Khamenei Jr. instead of Khamenei. I don't understand what we've accomplished. We have a 56-year-old hardliner instead of an 86-year-old. But to be very clear that they cannot develop nuclear weapons and that they cannot continue to enrich uranium, to engage with Oman in those negotiations, and that they should not be and cannot be hitting ships in the Strait of Hormuz. But that requires diplomacy and statesmanship, and I believe we can do that. and we can look at what a negotiated settlement with Iran is that denies them nuclear capability.

17:32Do you think the president is looking for some kind of off-ramp now? Do you think this has not gone according to what he was promised or what he was expecting? I do believe he is concerned in particular because of the price of gas in America, the price of oil has gone through the roofs. I mean, it was incompetence. He was told apparently by some advisors that the Strait of Hormuz would be fine, that Iran wouldn't shoot ships. So it's been a botched operation. It's led most tragically to the loss of life. The president's a keen observer of the economy and the stock market and the price of gas. He understands that this is hurting the very working and middle class Americans who he campaigned for.

18:10And I do believe he's looking for an off ramp to end the war. Ultimately, we need the kind of diplomacy, tough diplomacy that President Obama showed. and that kind of statesmanship on the world stage. Yeah, I mean, obviously you're convinced of what you're saying, and you seem to think that President Trump has come to something of the same conclusion. There's nothing in his public statements that's suggesting that at the time of us speaking. Are you picking up on something behind the scenes, or are you hearing from Republicans in the House or elsewhere on Capitol Hill that they feel the same way as you, they just don't feel able to do it publicly as yet?

18:46Well, Trump's statements are all over the place. One day he says, we're going to end the war. We won the war. The other day he says, no, the war is going to continue. So it's very hard to see where his head's at. But what I am hearing from House colleagues, Republican colleagues, and from MAGA influencers is that they're concerned about the price of gas going up. They're concerned about more American lives being lost. They're concerned that we were not able to change the regime. As many of us were warning that regime change wars are just not achievable unless there's huge cost of ground troops.

19:17They understand that young men in this country don't want to be drafted or sent out to die to Iran or the Middle East. And so there's increasing pressure on the president. Now, he has a strong base of support still among Republican elected officials, and they're going to give him some time. But I believe the pressure is going to continue to mount. And there are other war powers resolutions, including by moderate Democrats like Josh Godheimer, that will come up for a vote. But in the meantime, you said something the other day, which really stuck in my mind, where you spoke about militarism. You said what is happening now is a militarism that is going to erode the soul of America.

20:01I mean, that is a very stark prospect, and perhaps a more real prospect than the glossier version of what you're telling us that this is going to come to an end soon. So tell me about your fears of what the really dark side of all of this could be. It's more about the president's approach to world affairs, where he felt impunity to go in and topple Modero. He is threatening the Cuban regime with regime change. He's threatening to conquer Greenland. He's threatening other nations where there may be unsavory characters who are leading. This has remnants of kind of gunboat diplomacy, where might makes right, where Prime Minister Carney quoted Thrasymachus in Greek philosophy, that somehow the world should be where power goes.

20:52That is pre-Enlightenment thinking. The entire democratic project, the American project, was this view that we have respect for human rights. We have a respect for self-determination of people. We have a respect for sovereignty. And then America will lead a world committed to human rights and peace. And so Trump is in a tradition that is not for that vision. But I believe a younger generation of Americans do believe in a multiracial democracy that will work towards that end. And we're going to prevail in 2026 and 2028. Well, President Trump's got Maduro, got Khamenei. Do you think that Cuba could well be next?

21:33Is that now a more realistic prospect after Iran? Well, there's a concern. And that's why I've spoken out that what we need is a negotiated deal in Cuba, the likes of what Ben Rhodes negotiated under Obama, that you could have Cuban nationals in Florida and around the country investing in Cuba, helping create economic redevelopment in Cuba. The Cuban government could be for that and lifting some of the travel and restrictions and sanctions. That would be in the interest of a lot of the Cuban expats who are in the United States, and it'd be in Cuba's interest. But what we can't do is try to topple regimes.

22:10And Trump has an infatuation with that, obviously, but he also has another wing of his party that has been opposed to these overseas wars. And my sense is that it's a continual tug of war with him. And I am pushing for the side that'll get him to stop this kind of military threat.

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24:43Let's talk about you because you were talking about having a new confidence after your achievements through the Epstein files. And I was thinking about your background, your parents having come to the U.S. from India, and about the fact that in some ways your work is part of your family life in that your grandfather was a member of parliament in India. Well, he was jailed by the British monarchy as part of Gandhi's independence movement in the early 1930s. He was working for Lala Ajpat Rai, and then in the 1940s, I chuckled when I saw one of the British papers have a headline, British monarchy jailed grandfather, grandson in United States Congress may topple the British monarchy.

25:27Not that that's my goal, but after former Prince Andrew was arrested, there were several headlines like that. I do think that my commitment to justice, my commitment to self determination for nations, my commitment to moving beyond a colonial model of the world stem from the values of my faith of Gandhi and Hinduism and from the example of my grandfather. Yeah. In those days, of course, America was very much pushing Britain, you know, telling Britain that the age of the colonies is over and that it was essential at the Second World War to allow nations to become independent. Roosevelt basically told Churchill, stop it.

26:06Churchill had no choice but to relent. And of course, I give the credit, of course, to people in the Indian independence movement as well. Yeah. But I just wonder whether now what you're describing about America's actions on the world stage, would you call it neocolonialism, the desire to have a pliant government in Venezuela under America's control and the President Trump intervening in other parts of the world in a way that he never suggested he would in his campaign? Well, the interventions are wrong, and it pales in comparison to the evils of British colonialism. That was generations of exploitation of people in India and Africa that are unconscionable.

26:46But do I think that President Trump has taken actions in violation with American ideals? I do. But I believe that that is actions that aren't reflective of the emerging majority in the United States of America. Are you running for president in 2028? Well, we'll see. I'm focused on having Hakeem Jeffries become speaker. And, you know, politics is like tennis. If you start thinking about who's going to win the set, you'll lose the point in hand. So I'm focused right now on building a majority. But I have a new moral vision for the country, a vision that respects the rights and sovereignty and territorial integrity of other nations.