Where are the missing Epstein files that point to Trump?

0:01This is a Global Player Original Podcast.

0:30I have nothing to hide. I've been exonerated. I have nothing to do with Jeffrey Epstein.

0:39I've been totally exonerated on Epstein and it's really interesting. But I'm the one that can talk about it because I've been totally exonerated. I think we get the message. Donald Trump says he has been totally exonerated by the Epstein files. Really? Dozens of witness interviews are missing from that massive trove of files. Many of them relate to interviews given by a woman, a girl at the time, who accused Donald Trump. So has there been an Epstein cover-up? And should we now be looking more closely at Trump? Welcome to the News Agents USA. The News Agents USA with Emily Maitlis and John Sopel.

1:31It's John. It's Emily. And we've been understandably obsessed about what has been happening in Britain in relation to the Epstein files with Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor and the former ambassador Peter Mandelson, Lord Mandelson, both of whom in the past 10 days have been arrested in relation to things to do with what has come out of the Epstein files. No one has been arrested in the US. Some people have quit jobs and positions because of it. But there's been no sense that anyone is facing prosecution. And one person in particular, Donald J. Trump, is out and about wherever he can be saying I've been exonerated.

2:12And the thing you know about Donald Trump is often what he says is the exact opposite of what he fears. and so you just have to think when he keeps using that word exonerated, does he really believe he has been or does he think he's got away with it? Well, right now there has been some really key reporting, not least from NPR Public Radio, about these missing records. An evidence log that was provided to attorneys for Ghislaine Maxwell had the actual serial numbers. So NPR and others have been able to go through and see exactly what is there in these files and exactly what isn't. They were looking at 325 FBI witness interview records.

2:59In other words, these may have spanned two decades. Young women, girls, children at the time going and telling their stories to the FBI, to the police. Now, from these 225 interview records, we understand now that 90 of those, about a quarter, are not present on what we've been given. The DOJ website, which purports to contain all this massive drop, 3 million bits of individual pieces of information, has not included 90 of those records. And amongst those missing records, three interviews that relate to a woman, a girl at the time, who told agents that Epstein had repeatedly abused her, starting when she was 13 years old.

3:43And she also accused Trump of sexually assaulting her at the time. Now, it is not clear what happened to those interviews. It is not clear whether police followed up. It is not clear whether she then retracted some of her statements. But we can't even check because those interviews are not part of the cash. We do not know where they are. They are, to all intents and purposes, disappeared. And that raises a very, very big question that doesn't need underscoring by us, because if you are trying to show that you have been open and you have revealed everything there is to be revealed, which is what Pam Bondi, the attorney general, says she has done with the publication of all the files that she could release.

4:31If you've still got people saying, well, hang on, sorry, 13 year old raped repeatedly and is accusing the current president of having some role. Now, it may all be fantasy. It may be totally made up. It may be whatever. But by not publishing it, you are just raising suspicions. You're not getting rid of the suspicion. You are just intensifying it by what looks like a sleight of hand to keep these things under wraps. Well, let's hear from the representative Robert Garcia. He's the ranking Democrat on the House Oversight Committee, and he is talking specifically about these missing documents now.

5:08Not only do I believe they are engaged in a cover up, this would be the single largest government cover up in modern history in our country. There's been nothing like this. And if you look at the campaign promises, then the then the binders to the to the right wing influencers from Pam Bondi, then the files being on her desk, then the all out effort to stop the release of the files and the president then calling this whole thing a hoax and wanting to move on. And now with what they've released, which, by the way, as a reminder, is only about 50 percent of the files. We have caught them red handed that they have specifically removed certain files from the manifest list of documents.

5:53And what's more troubling is that we know that these files directly correlate with testimony from a survivor that directly accused both Jeffrey Epstein and Donald Trump of sexual abuse when she was a minor. Now, these, of course, are allegations. But the fact that they're not there in the files should concern every single American. So we are demanding that the DOJ release those files to the Congress under the law. They have to do so. Well, it doesn't seem to concern Trump, who, as we know, believes he is exonerated. And in a statement, the White House has called the allegations against Trump false and sensationalist.

6:37I mean, even that word, it's interesting, isn't it? Why would you use sensationalist about victim testimony now unless you were basically saying, oh, don't worry, it wasn't true. It didn't exist. She was making the whole thing up. But I can't help thinking that politically, if you want to neutralise this as an issue, you don't start hiding certain files. And, you know, this isn't just kind of Democrat America going after this. A lot of this has been driven by Republicans. And they, before the election of Donald Trump, were absolutely dead set on getting these files released because they believed it was going to entrap the Clintons and all sorts of powerful Democratic figures.

7:19And it's worth underlining that by the time you listen to this, Hillary Clinton might well have given evidence because she is due to speak to the Oversight Committee today, having been subpoenaed by Republicans. And Bill Clinton is due to speak tomorrow. Bill Clinton's questioning will be very uncomfortable indeed, because we have seen photographs that have been produced. But just going back to the central point that if Donald Trump thinks this is just an issue that we need to get everything out the way, then you would publish these things and you wouldn't dismiss it all as sensationalist and stuff of fantasy.

7:54When complainants have, you know, we know terrible, awful, egregious things happened on that island. and so just to say oh this is sensationalist well you know maybe but you need to examine it well let's bring in jeffrey goldberg now the editor-in-chief of the atlantic the man who bought you signal gate about a year ago when he found himself in the middle of a whatsapp group that was about to bomb hooties we might come on to that jeffrey but it's very nice to have you here with us in the studio we've news agents usa go news agents usa usa usa we're going to come on to hockey later perhaps but yeah isn't that shame that all everything gets polarized and politicized can we just enjoy ourselves a little bit to be discussed or not let's start with the epstein stuff because that's where we've been talking i like that transition missing hockey yeah no but epstein yes but hockey is hockey is number three on our agenda right so we'll get to it we're very What would you like to know?

8:52I guess we want to try and understand where the DOJ sits now in sort of the American mind. I mean, do you think that there is... I don't know why. That was involuntary. Right. So we're asking them for more transparency. We're asking to know where the missing files are. We're asking why they keep on saying that anything to do with Trump is false and sensationalist. Do you think people still have confidence that the Department of Justice is an independent department? Which people, I mean, the 30 to 40 percent hardcore Donald Trump supporters think that it's now it's dependable. They think now it's doing what it should be.

9:35You know, the rest of us believed we were all raised in the post Watergate reality, which was the Department of Justice was to be as apolitical as possible and as autonomous as possible from White House interference. That was one of the lessons of Watergate. And in a matter of months, they have destroyed what took 40 plus years to build, meaning a reputation for independence, probity, transparency, stringency. contingency, they're literally, I mean, because everything in Washington is sort of too much on the nose right now. They're literally putting posters up outside the Department of Justice with that, you know, that, that Trump, that Hawk face Trump portrait.

10:16I mean, it's, it's actually, you know, this expression, it's from William Gibson, I think that, you know, the science fiction writer, I just been thinking about this constantly, the unthinkable present. That's what we're in right now. We're in the unthinkable present. You could not have told anyone 5, 10 years ago. 11 years ago. Someone told me about this and I thought, I don't know what you're talking about outside the DOJ. And I looked at the picture and there's a banner. No, it's crazy! There is a banner hanging down 20, 30 feet long of a picture of Donald Trump out as, like the Justice Department.

10:50No, no, it's like we're a Central Asian you know... It's like the Ayatollah. Yeah, or Turkmenbashi over here, you know, the Kazakh chief, you know, chief executive it's not normal i talked to somebody who is let's just say an ambassador in a faraway country who when trump first got elected they didn't have the photograph of trump they were sort of waiting for it to arrive the actual photograph trump that you put in the embassy yeah and they were terrified they were terrified of what would happen if an american you know cabinet came through and there wasn't a photo and they were like do we put up a different photo do Do we wait for the right photo?

11:28And I was just thinking, this is the kind of conversations that they were having when I worked in China, in Hong Kong, 20 years ago. This is like Ceausescu stuff. We haven't got the right photo. Yeah, no, no. It's the exact opposite of the way any other president, including like the bad presidents, whatever, they would find it amusing if the photo wasn't there. They would just, it's fine. You know, I mean, it's the opposite of democratic behavior. They're right to be scared. Yeah. They're right. They are right to be scared. So just tell me about Donald Trump and the use of language, which I know we could spend hours talking about.

12:04But when Donald Trump keeps saying, I've been exonerated, it's all fine. I've been exonerated. I've been exonerated, which is how we started today's episode with clips of him saying he's been exonerated. Is that because he believes... Exonerated on what? On the Epstein files. Well, we can't find the Epstein. We can't. Now they're saying that there's missing documents. The funniest thing about Trump, and by the way, there is a parallel here to Signal, which I can get to if you want, before we return to hockey. When you claim exoneration, I mean, he is, compared to most of the people who are being brought low right now by their affiliations, sometimes quite tenuous or ancient, to Epstein, Donald Trump is neck deep in Epstein.

12:47You know, people see these photos of people, random people with Epstein and say, well, they have to be escorted from public life. I mean, Donald Trump is everywhere in this. I mean, but of course, we're coming up on the 10th anniversary of the Access Hollywood tape. You remember, I don't know if I'm allowed to say nasty words. They grab him by the pussy tape. And he became president after that twice. so obviously the rules don't apply to Donald Trump that would apply to most other people so let me let's just dig into that a bit further you think that if there was famous they'll let you stay president or something you think that if something came out of the Epstein files of abuse of underage girls by the president it wouldn't touch the sides it wouldn't tarnish him it depends on what that proof is, you know, there's a famous, famously crooked Louisiana governor who basically the line was that the only way he would actually get bounced from office is if you found a dead girl or a live boy in his trunk, you know, in the boot of his car.

14:01I'm translating that for the English audience. The boot. The boot. so no i i i wouldn't agree with your statement on a blanket level there are some things that if they were irrefutably true visual evidence of something i think that might be it but there is none nothing like that i one assumes but if there's anyone in america anyone in the world who would get away with the unspeakable. It's him. Remember, he has already been civilly adjudicated of committing sexual assault, the E.G. Carroll case. There's, I don't know how many cases of people. You know, it's just written off. It's accepted. It's just we have a different standard for him.

14:51Impunity. Which is why, presumably, the Democrats are, I mean, two-pronged, but mainly focusing now on this question of affordability. And I wonder if we can play this little clip from CNN, which compares Biden talking up the economy and Trump talking up the economy, both in the state of the union. And they sound remarkably similar. My inherited economy is on the brink. Now our economy is literally the envy of the world. A short time ago, we were a dead country. Now we are the hottest country anywhere in the world. The hottest. 15 million new jobs in just three years. A record. a record.

15:33Unemployment at 50-year lows. More Americans are working today than at any time in the history of our country. Think about that. Any time in the history of our country. I want to cap prescription drug costs of$2 ,000 a year for everyone. I'm also ending the wildly inflated cost of prescription drugs like has never happened before. For millions of renters, We're cracking down on big landlords who use antitrust law, who break antitrust laws by price fixing and driving up rents. We want homes for people, not for corporations. Corporations are doing just fine. I mean, the big critic of Biden's economic policy was always Trump.

16:16And now he's sounding exactly the same. And from the polling, at least, it looks like American people don't trust Trump on the economy any more than they trust Biden. nobody trusts anybody anymore yeah it's kind of a problem in a democracy yeah um it's funny to watch their communication style it's so interesting i you know people who mock the way trump speaks are often wrong he's just i find him very effective it's interesting just listening to that listening to biden by the way i haven't heard him in a while so did you think that was what you took away you took away that trump was actually a much stronger communicator oh trump is a more charming better communicated.

16:57I mean, I think Biden hewed closer to the truth there than Trump, but that's not abnormal. But is it what counts? I guess that's the that's what I'm trying to get to the bottom of here. Are people just kind of like they're all the same? Nobody's going to fix the economy? Or are they starting to shift in terms of how they perceive one administration? The Democrats are right about affordability. It's everything. If they can, if the Democrats can make the message stick that everything costs more and Donald Trump doesn't care whether things cost more i mean donald trump has said let me be careful about this he's a very effective communicator he's also a wild communicator and he also gets away with saying things that remember once he said you know uh i'm paraphrasing but he said maybe you know you don't have to buy your kids 30 presents for christmas you can buy them six we call it the two barbies yeah yeah yeah and if a democrat had said that they'd be out on their feaster and they'd be sent to cuba isn't the isn't where you can only get two presents yeah but isn't the interesting political part of this which is that don't tell the voters they're wrong in what they feel which is the mistake biden made by saying the economy is great i don't know what you're talking about when you say that you can't afford goods and donald trump has just done exactly the same thing by saying you know look the economy's never been better when people are worried about affordability and the cost of groceries and this is this is trump is a salesman trump is frequently a lying salesman his impulse is to distort reality to make it conform to his desire.

18:29The pandemic was the perfect example, right? Nobody's going to die. A few people are going to die. If we don't remember the most, one of the most important insights I had into Donald Trump was during the outside of the pandemic when he told people not to collect data on how many people are dying, right? And how many people are infected because if you don't know then it's not real yeah so maybe maybe maybe you know voters will catch up catch on to look he's more unpopular than he's ever been 60 disapproval more unpopular more unpopular 60 disapproval right it's not as if the entire country has been grifted by this the issue is that congress has abdicated its responsibility the judiciary hasn't the third branch of government has it but congress has abdicated its responsibility and that might change in November.

19:19Is the overarching question you're getting at when will people catch on? Or when is it too much? Or have people caught on? Well, 60 % seem to have caught on. I don't know what particular thing they've caught on to. So then does the State of the Union shift the dial at all on anything? You haven't even watched it, right? Well, to be fair, it was on 2 in the morning where I was. I read it. I read most of it. But what I'm saying is this isn't a criticism about you. It's like it is not must-see TV. Actually, you know what? I have to tell you the truth. The truth is the way the State of the Union has devolved, I find it dispiriting.

20:03From a journalistic perspective, everything is interesting. From an American citizen's perspective, the State of the Union is mandated by law, constitution. The president has to give a report to Congress every year about the State of the Union. This has become a circus, a circus of manipulation, a circus of emotion, a circus of one-upsmanship, a circus of lying. It would be better not to have it at this point. You literally, a president is allowed to write a written report and send it to Congress. That's the State of the Union. But it's a TV show now. You just started off talking about hockey players.

20:41This is the point. Well, no. And it's like having them march in and doing the Medal of Honor ceremonies at the State of the Union. And it's literally, I mean, if he could have trapeze artists there in the dome of the Capitol, he would. You know, are you not entertained as the, you know, kind of the gladiator? There's a, I always hate when aspects of American politics or American life remind me of late stage Roman decline. But if there's, if there's a, there's no night that better exemplifies that than, than this. This should be a stately, decorous, substance-filled affair in which the president, sorry, I'm going to be all like West Wing-y now.

21:21Sorry, you know, like this is what it could be. A president should go in front of Congress and provide, yes, an overview. Maybe it's going to be a self-interested overview of where America is. But let me illuminate some of the challenges that we face. And let me remind you of who we are and what we stand for. That would be quite a wonderful thing. But we're so far away from it. I'm not saying I did avoid it because I was asleep. Yes, it's true. But it is something to be avoided now. I don't think it... Look, nobody's moved. If you're Trump, you're Trump all the way. And if you don't like Trump, you really don't like Trump.

21:57I don't know. Who are these people in America who don't yet have not formed a hardened opinion of Donald Trump? We know who they are because they voted for Biden four years ago and they voted for Trump in 2024. So, I mean, we know that they exist and they are the key to this. I haven't done this as a reporter, but I would love to spend time with people who are legitimately toggling back and forth on the subject of Donald Trump and his nature and his character and his policies. What don't you know? Yeah. Yeah. And by the way, I mean, like the people who believe in him, believe in him. And I understand that I don't respect the belief, but I respect the sincerity of the belief.

22:40So let me ask you, you said Congress isn't doing its job. The judiciary is. Well, I want to go back to the Supreme Court, because that was pretty final and pretty brutal in terms of where they came down on the Trump tariff, the backbone of his economic policy. Yeah. I mean, it's I would not have guessed that Neil Gorsuch, the very, very conservative justice, was going to be the man to save American norms and values. But here we are. I mean, if you read his opinion, he says, look, you don't want an executive. Nobody should want an executive branch that just willy nilly usurps the power of Congress to make laws, levy tariffs, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.

23:24because, you know, the shoe's going to be on the other foot and you're going to be the one who's subject to the abuse of power. I mean, by the way, it is in one sense brave. In the other sense, it's the most obvious thing in the world that Neil Gorsuch is saying. He's not, this is not a novel interpretation of the constitution. It is literally just reading the constitution. Article one gives Congress, the legislative branch, the power to levy tariffs, to make laws. And it's the executive branch to carry out those laws and he literally gives you the the civics lesson right there we want the representatives of the people to think about this and debate among themselves and there's a large number of them and so they represent different parts of the country and you it's just it's just basic elemental civics but you know in this current climate it's the it's defining deviancy down when when a supreme court justice basically repeats word for word what the constitution says we're all like oh my god what an amazing moment so in this current climate should we feel confident about the midterms in November being free and fair or no no no because in part for something that we haven't talked about yet which is technology's ability new newer technology's ability to fracture for good common understanding of reality by that I mean we have a system of local elections you can't control as one person you can't control elections across the country what you can do in a close congressional race what you can do is create enough doubt in 10 or 15 or 20 congressional districts let's say a couple of senate races in individual states you can create so much doubt and so many legal challenges and and and either to borrow from steve bannon and steve bannon and probably lenin and stalin before him it's not that you have to convince people that that what you're saying is true you have to convince them that nothing is true yeah and so you can come to a we could come to a situation after in the november midterms in which a number of congressional districts aren't able to actually seat members of congress come january right and so you have a situation where you know sort of like going back to like the age of rival popes you know you might have a situation in which the republicans say no these are the members of Congress and the Democrats say no these are the members of Congress and obviously the Democrats would have the majority in that case and the Republicans have the majority then we're on uncharted territory again so you just create so much doubt that then you have a crisis and obviously I don't know that Donald Trump thinks quite this way I suspect that Stephen Miller and the true believers think this way.

26:09But if you can create enough of a crisis, then you could start imposing executive power in ways that we don't generally want executive power to be imposed. Then you have a full scale crisis. In other words, create enough. I do believe that Miller overplayed his hand in Minneapolis. You were out there. I do believe they overplayed their hand. In terms of the hardening of the ice moves against the American people? Well, the unforced errors are when you start shooting demonstrators. I mean, they created a climate in which that was going to happen, obviously, for any number of reasons you're aware of.

26:50But my point is that I think that there are people in the system, Steve Bannon as the outside ideologues, Stephen Miller as inside ideologue, who would like to create Minneapolis-like conditions around various local elections come November, put it this way, it's plausible. They would want to create those kind of conditions. So you create so much anxiety and so much violence and so much uncertainty that then it's like, well, we do need the army to come in and lock this whole thing down.

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28:16The News Agents USA. I want to ask you a media question. Washington Post. You want to talk about the Washington Post? Or do we care anymore? I think we do care. But is it is it the situation now? Terrible. That you cannot have an independent media unless you've got a billionaire owner who doesn't give a shit what Donald Trump thinks, which is maybe, you know, the Salzburgers at the New York Times and your boss, Steve Jobs' widow at The Atlantic. Laureen Powell Jobs is a great publisher for many reasons, precisely because she's independent and fearless and understands the importance of an independent, robust press.

28:58The Salzburgers are the same thing. We thought Jeff Bezos was the same thing. To answer your larger question, it has never been poor people who've owned newspapers. I mean, this is not let us not make believe that we're in a new age of oligarchic control of newspapers and magazines, television networks. You have to be rich or you're a publicly traded company that's that that is susceptible to market pressure. They used to be prepared to stand up to power. Well, they were also people who got rich owning newspapers. They had long history. they didn't come in later in their lives and and and say you know what i'd like to do now is own the washington post or own the los angeles times they were brought up in the culture that's the so that's the that's one of the many advantages of the salzberger family they have newspaper in their blood you know they make mistakes they do things that are wrong they do things that are right but but they have it in their blood and they understand that it's not a company ultimately it's a mission and that they're not owners but stewards right jeff bezos we thought was that but it turns out he wasn't.

29:59And so, yeah, it's actually quite frightening how weak people are. Do you think it survives? I mean, he must have friends at the Washington Post. The Washington Post. It's kind of too big not to survive. I mean, look, The Atlantic right now is the largest magazine in America, something that I never would have imagined in terms of just literally subscriptions. We're the fourth largest publication after the New York Times, The Wall Street Journal and The Washington Post. The way things are going at the Washington Post, we could wind up being the third largest. So survival is an interesting question because 10 or let's say 20 years ago, who were the biggest magazines?

30:36Time, Newsweek, National Geographic, Sports Illustrated, Fortune, Forbes, and so on, U.S. News and World Report. They're all, most of those brand names still exist, but they're sort of ghost ships, you know, just sort of floating aimlessly. They don't really have journalism anymore. They don't have staves they don't have rigorous independent reporting that's mostly self-inflicted you know they they thought they can make money by cutting you can't make money in journalism by cutting you make money in journalism by growing so time magazine exists as a as a name but it's not really there the washington post i always assume there'll be a brand name called the washington post but i don't um you know maybe i'm speaking out of school here but you know in the last couple of weeks since all this happened.