Will shutting down Congress kill the Trump-Epstein story?

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0:32Will Sommer:This is a Global Player original podcast. Republican House Speaker Mike Johnson just announced the House will start its summer recess a day early in an effort to stave off Democratic lawmakers' plans to force a vote on releasing the Epstein files. This is quite the moment. Before the election, the MAGA elite, those around Trump, were promising that they would expose everything about the Epstein scandal. Six months into Donald Trump's presidency, with the scandal growing, the Speaker of the House, ally of Donald Trump, says, no, you're going home early. We don't want to vote on any of this. We don't want to reveal anything.

1:14Imagine literally shutting down Congress to avoid having a vote that could embarrass your president. That's what the House Speaker, Mike Johnson, has just done. He sent everyone home so they don't vote to open up the Epstein files. Welcome to the News Agents USA.

1:40It's John. It's Emily. And as of yesterday, Congress is firmly shut. The Speaker, Mike Johnson, has basically ended all legislative business and sent the House home early to start their summer holidays. Nice. Nice. What a kind man. What a curious creature he is. he's basically trying to stop House Republicans voting with Democrats to pass legislation that would demand the release of the Epstein files. It is so unusual to find any bit of cross-party legislation in America right now. It pretty much doesn't happen. Democrats vote for Democrat things, Republicans vote for Republican things. And suddenly you've got this extraordinary group of Democrats and Republicans all willing to get together to vote to release the Epstein files.

2:41Mike Johnson doesn't like it one little bit because he thinks it's going to embarrass the president. And so what's he done? He's stopped the vote and sent everyone home so they can't do it for at least a month. And it turns one of the foundational beliefs of MAGA on its head. The whole idea of MAGA was that it was going to drain the swamp, that there was this all powerful Washington elite that protected itself, that defied accountability, that was above the law and that was working against ordinary people. And here we have a widespread belief fuelled, fuelled by the key people in the Trump circle, that there was this terrible conspiracy involving Jeffrey Epstein and very powerful people.

3:24And now it is those very people who are saying you can't know anything about it. Yeah. And that is causing such unbelievable dissonance, cognitive dissonance for the Republican base. They're saying, what the hell is going on? Yeah, what's going on here? And just to give you some of the names that are involved in the signing of this bill. There is a Democrat called Ro Khanna from California. He's a House congressman who's bringing forward this bill with a Republican. And it is being signed by the likes of Marjorie Taylor Greene. She of, you know, the space lasers, etc. In other words, people that are so MAGA are now willing to sign a Californian Democrats bill because they believe it's important to get to the bottom of this question.

4:13And Mike Johnson, who was the speaker, who was at one point saying, yeah, we do need to know more, has now said we're done being lectured on transparency. I mean, to your point, stop telling us to be open about these things. Really? I thought that was the whole point of draining the swamp. I thought the whole point of draining the swamp was that you get the secrets out and you get rid of the corruption and you tell people what's really going on. And he's now said that actually all these questions surrounding Epstein are endless efforts to politicise the Epstein investigation. Funny that because he wasn't saying that a week ago.

4:51He wasn't saying that until Trump, clearly embarrassed by all this stuff, made motions, we assume, to try and shut it all down. Well, just across from the White House is the commerce offices, trade and commerce offices, which is where we've broadcast from. When you saw us in Washington and there's that kind of view over the White House, that's where we were. On that building yesterday was projected President Trump release all the Epstein files. Now, OK, maybe a stunt, but it's close to Donald Trump's front door and it's getting closer to his front door. and the more he proclaims that people need to move on, that they're weaklings for believing it.

5:33He's called his own supporters weaklings and that they are past supporters if they still believe this stuff because he doesn't want them. I mean, he's offending his own base now with the way he's trying to cover it up. And it's not just that. The lengths he is going to to try and get people to look in an opposite direction, coming out with some of those batshit stuff about people losing their citizenship and football teams should change their names from the Washington commanders back to the Washington Redskins. Otherwise, they're going to lose their funding. Please look elsewhere. Don't please look at this Epstein stuff anymore.

6:08It's driving me mad. Yeah, on Sunday night, Trump posted 33 times on True Social. He sent 20 posts between 6.46 and 8.53 p.m. In other words, he was trying to flood the zone, the truth social zone with 100 different things to look at. And normally when Trump does that, it works. If he shouts about something, whether it's changing the name of Gulf of America, Gulf of Mexico, whether it's changing the name of the Redskins to the commanders and back again, whether it's talking about immigration on the border, people tend to follow where his gaze goes. This time, they will not take their eyes off the Epstein case.

6:57And I think it speaks to something really big, actually, which is Trump's inability for the first time to control a story he doesn't like. He's very good at directing people towards a story that he knows will garner him attention. But this time he's trying to shut something down. And the more desperate he is getting, the more various news agencies are doing on the story. Yeah. Because it's almost they found the weakness here. You know, whether it's the Wall Street Journal. And we should talk a little bit about the Wall Street Journal's release over the weekend, which showed just before the weekend, which showed what they claimed was a kind of doodle drawing birthday card that Trump sent Jeffrey Epstein for his 50th birthday.

7:48Not only of a naked woman, not only of a sort of pubic hair scrawled Donald, but also these lines about the secrets that they keep. And Trump was so inflamed by this revelation, this story, that he has now sued the Wall Street Journal on two separate counts of$10 billion each. He's not a happy man. And of course, the Wall Street Journal sticking by its story. Rupert Murdoch owns the Wall Street Journal and has been in these kind of litigations with Trump before. But it's a pretty reputable paper. And the fact that they are not backing down from their journalism suggests, at least, that they feel pretty confident of what they're doing.

8:39and the fact that Trump has gone nuclear on this one and$20 billion is not a small sum, is it, for a lawsuit? It's loose change for you and me, Emily, but for Donald Trump, that's real money. But it is the first time a sitting president has ever sued a newspaper, you know, from the White House, which suggests that he is really uncomfortable with the whole way this narrative is going, which is bringing him closer and closer to Jeffrey Epstein. And so we kind of had a laugh about some of the, you know, changing the name of a football team so it goes back to its unwoke past of being the Washington Redskins.

9:14There's more serious stuff out there. And one of them we should talk about is Barack Obama. So last week, Tulsi Gabbard, former Democrat congresswoman who moved over to Maga Land and is now Trump's director of national intelligence. She's one with the sort of raccoon-y fringe. Yeah, she used to be the congresswoman for Hawaii and once ran for the Democratic nomination to be president. She is now fully signed up as a Trump loyalist acolyte and gets the job of director of national intelligence as a result of it. Releases a report saying that Barack Obama was part of some treasonous conspiracy to suggest that Russia had influenced the result of the 2016 election and that he should be arrested and charged as follows.

10:00And normally Obama just kind of goes, oh, this is just batshit stuff. I'm not even going to talk about this. Do not dignify it with a response. This time, though, he has. He said, out of respect for the office of the presidency, our office doesn't normally dignify the constant nonsense and misinformation flowing out of this White House with a response. But these claims are outrageous enough to merit one. These bizarre allegations are ridiculous and a weak attempt at distraction. It then goes on. Nothing in the document issued last week undercuts the widely accepted conclusion that Russia worked to influence the 2016 presidential election but didn't successfully manipulate any votes.

10:40And then the killer line. These findings were affirmed in a 2020 report by the bipartisan Senate Intelligence Committee led by the then chairman, Marco Rubio. Now Donald Trump's Secretary of State. I mean, look, Gabbard won't be put off by that one. She's already been on Fox News accusing Obama of orchestrating a years-long coup to keep Trump from the White House. I mean, this stuff is kind of verifiably batshit. But Trump has now created and shared this AI-generated video of Obama being arrested and thrown in jail, all to the music of YMCA. I mean, you cannot get the beauty of this if you're just listening to the audio.

11:27But this idea that you would basically deep fake Obama in the White House and then have him arrested to your favourite tune is kind of, I mean, I would say it's kind of a low point. But it is something that is so obviously a diversion, a diversionary tactic for a man who is now desperate to change the story that there is sort of no bottom to it. But it's like Midas suddenly realising that he can't turn base metal into gold. Because every other time, Donald Trump has managed to distract, has managed to deflect, has managed to get people to look the other way. Look, there's a shiny object. And like a dog, we go running after it, you know, like a dog being thrown a ball.

12:09On this, we have not. And the media has not. And the politicians have not. And the American public have not. And so you've got a White House. And I think this bit speaks to the most desperate part of it of all. White House statements at the weekend were saying this is all just a beltway story. No one in the rest of America is interested in this. It's just you, the Washington elite. And if the White House is so out of touch with the fact that actually there is widespread belief that something they just think that you can't just be the people who tell us you're going to open up all the doors and then you slam them all shut, which is what they're doing.

12:46I think something else has happened as well, which is that Trump has now been in the White House six months. Right. He has been in office. In other words, I think we just marked his sort of, you know, six month kind of moment. And a lot of the polling, which is sort of, you know, generically done around these sort of approval ratings. A lot of the polling is not going his way on issues that he has traditionally been very strong on. Immigration, economy. There are more people now disagreeing with his handling of immigration. There are more people handling with his dealing with the economy. Those are the two areas that he campaigned on, that he has always felt strong on.

13:30And I think it slightly ties into the same picture, which is if people like the substance of what you're doing, they forgive you a lot else. If they're starting to question the very substance of what you're doing, if their lives aren't noticeably getting cheaper or easier, or they think that their country is moving in a really odd direction, then they are more likely to look at the things that you're telling them shouldn't be looked at. I think this is a really interesting thing. I'm not sure I quite agree with you because I think there is a central paradox in what we're seeing at the moment. And the paradox is this.

14:08Actually, I think on Trump's own terms, he's been astonishingly successful in what he promised the American people that he would do. No, he's doing what he said he would do. That doesn't mean that the American people like what he's doing. OK, the number of illegal immigrant crossings coming across the southern border into the United States has dropped to a trickle compared to the massive numbers there were. That is what Donald Trump promised. Stock market is back booming again. So people who've got their 401ks are looking at it and saying, well, that's pretty good. That's very nice. We're doing very well there.

14:42there is revenue coming in from tariffs. Donald Trump has got the tax cuts passed. And yeah, the tax cuts are going to help the rich more than they're going to help middle class Americans. But middle class Americans are being helped. So in all sorts of ways, they should be feeling great about Donald Trump. I mean, it's only one poll and I don't know what the numbers are telling us. I don't doubt the polls. I think there's a really interesting disjunction that there is a success story that Donald Trump has got to tell. And yet the polls, people are pissed off with him. OK, so this is the point.

15:1355 percent, and this is a CNN poll, so you can make of that what you will. But 55 percent say the president's gone too far when it comes to deporting immigrants living in the U.S. illegally. That's up 10 points since February. So it is entirely consistent that Trump came in saying mass deportations now. Everyone held up the sign at his convention that he is doing mass deportations now and that people are feeling much more uncomfortable about it than they thought. and yes they thought that he was going to deport illegal criminals. They didn't think that he was going to deport the kindergarten teachers and the landscape gardeners and the people that have been running the corner stores and the people that have been living in their communities for years.

16:01They didn't think he'd be turning up at the equivalent of home base and rounding up anyone who was kind of looking for odd joinery jobs on a daily basis. And so it is entirely possible that people have come face to face with Trump's policies up close and gone, oh, I don't know about this. You know, a 10 point jump from February to July. That's pretty big. It is. It is. It is. I do think that there is something that is interesting about what is happening in American politics right now, which is that Donald Trump, on his own terms, I think he expected he would be taking a massive victory lap right now.

16:41that on the key things of the economy, taxation, you know, that he's doing the stock market, everything's swimmingly, the number of people crossing into America illegally. He's dropped that to an absolute trickle by the tough measures. And yet the American people and particularly independents are holding their nose. Yeah. I mean, I think you can turn around. I think you can say he didn't stop the war in Ukraine on day one or even, you know, in the first six months. Gaza is absolutely a hundredfold worse than it was before he came in. I know, I'm just saying that if you're actually writing the ledger of how Trump's doing.

17:14The other thing I'd say is, I think we slightly, I mean, we took the James Carvel, the Democratic strategist, with a pinch of salt where he said, oh, Democrats don't need to do anything. Just, you know, play dead and let Trump make his own mistakes. That strategy, I think you could argue, is sort of at the moment paying dividends for the Democrats. You know, if they are doing that, I don't know if they're shouting all day into the void, but they don't need to do very much because right now Trump is having the worst time he's had, I think, in office so far. The only caveat I would add to that is Hunter Biden's three hours of rage of swearing about the Democratic Party and how shit everybody is and how mean they are and how Joe Biden was wrong.

17:57I mean, honestly, if you've got Trump doing badly and having a tough week over all that's to do with Epstein, Hunter Biden's contribution was not really that helpful. In a moment, we'll be hearing from an Epstein expert, somebody who has looked into the Epstein conspiracy for many years and is now trying to work out what is really going on. We'll be talking to Will Sommer in a moment.

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19:20Will Sommer:California resident loans made or arranged pursuant to a California finance law license and MLS number 1353190. Clown a balanced account required to be eligible for cashback points. Limitations, terms and conditions apply. The News Agents USA with Emily Maitlis and John Sopel. Well, we're joined now by Will Sommer from The Bulwark. Will has charted kind of the conspiracy theories in America for all the years of the Trump presidency, QAnon and on. but we're going to talk about Epstein QAnon and on, do you see what I did there? Anyway, sorry and we're going to talk about Jeffrey Epstein because this is one that just won't go away even though Donald Trump would dearly love it to and keep saying I can't understand why any of you are talking about this is this beginning to hurt?

20:06I think it is I think it is particularly beginning to hurt him among independent voters but even some Republicans are starting to think hmm, you know for six, seven years now this has been a real thing for the Republican Party. They've really focused on. They've said, once you put us back in power, we're going to get the truth here. And then suddenly, you know, perhaps because of something they found in the files, they decide, oh, no, case closed. We're not going to talk about it anymore. And that kind of abrupt pivot has been even jarring for some Republicans. Is it clear to you, Will, who's followed this story for so long, how much is conspiracy and how much actually does need to be opened and investigated?

20:44Yeah, I mean, I think there are a lot of strange things that happened here. I mean, Jeffrey Epstein, someone who really seemed to have very few visible skills, suddenly becomes massively wealthy, is hanging out with some of the world's richest men, many of whom are paying him huge amounts, ostensibly to manage their money, but who knows? You know, the idea that, I mean, even before he was arrested on these pedophile charges back in 2006, he had, people were writing like, why is this guy so rich? What's going on here? Why is he hanging out with all these tycoons and these politicians? And so I think there are a lot of questions that remain.

21:19I mean, the U.S. attorney, the prosecutor who gave him this kind of sweetheart plea deal, he said he was told that Jeffrey Epstein was an intelligence asset, and that's why they had to let him go so easily. So I think there are a lot of unanswered questions here. And the only person in prison over it is Ghislaine Maxwell. So you wonder, I mean, are there other culpable people here? Just rewind a second. an intelligence asset, because I've heard that from other MAGA people, and I was assuming that was conspiracy, and I was ready to dismiss it. That means he knew too much about people. I mean, what are you telling us?

21:53Sure. So let's dig in on that. So the federal prosecutor who gave him this deal, basically, he claimed later, and he may have his own motivations because it ended up being a problem for him. But he claimed that he had been told, you have to go lightly on Jeffrey Epstein because he's intelligent. And so that's reported, that's sort of a secondhand quote. A lot of people have really keyed in on that. But on one hand, perhaps we should take that with a grain of salt. But that has led to this broader sort of growth of conspiracy theories. Some may be true, maybe, I think they're at this point unfounded, where people say, well, maybe this guy was blackmailing prominent figures with his sex trafficking, or maybe he was somehow otherwise being used as like a cutout by intelligence agencies or an agent.

22:38And again, I mean, I don't think we really have any proof of it at the moment, but there is at least a little bit of smoke. And Will, just while we're colouring in that little bit of the picture, let's just kind of also add that the federal prosecutor you're talking about, I think you're talking about Alex Acosta, who also went on to become Trump's first Labour secretary. Yes. And so here in 2008 or so, Jeffrey Epstein signs this plea deal that was extraordinarily lenient regarding his treatment of underage girls in Florida. Not only was the penalty he got for that really lenient, but the federal and local authorities also agreed that they wouldn't pursue him for any other charges.

23:18Some of the investigators involved in the case thought, well, you know, we could throw the book of this guy. We could put him away for decades. And suddenly they're watching this guy just walk away with the really sweet deal. And then you might say, well, presumably the prosecutor, or Alex Acosta, who was involved in that, would be blacklisted from politics forever. But instead, in the first Trump administration, he's appointed to be Labour secretary, a role that has a huge position overseeing trafficking. And so ultimately, he had to resign because people started asking so many questions about this deal.

23:47But you might say, if Donald Trump was this huge crusader against Jeffrey Epstein, why would he appoint someone who had given Epstein such a sweetheart plea deal to his cabinet? So do you think that Epstein was blackmailing powerful figures? I really, I would say I don't have the evidence to know. I think there are a lot of unanswered questions here. And one wonders, again, why all these powerful people were hanging out with him? What service was he providing? I mean, was he really just managing their money? Maybe. I mean, some of these people have claimed he was just such a sparkling intellect and a fun guy to hang out with.

24:23I'm a little suspicious of that idea. But, you know, this is why I mean, ultimately, this is why I think people want these files opened up. They want to know if intelligence agencies had connections to Epstein or maybe it was just someone else powerful who intervened to protect him. What was going on here? And so that is why there is such a fervor in the United States for this information. CNN was reporting today sort of new photos, new video evidence of Epstein and Trump together, Epstein attending Trump's second wedding, Epstein and Trump and Ivanka, sort of 12 years old. I mean, where is that taking us?

25:01Because obviously, we know there was a friendship between the men. So on one hand, it's not new. But does any of this tie Trump to Epstein's crimes? Well, you know, I think the most interesting reporting we've had in the past few weeks came from the Wall Street Journal, which was reported and alleged that Donald Trump, as part of this sort of birthday gift for Epstein in, I believe, 2002, it was before his initial arrest is the important part, that he wrote this letter that, you know, featured a drawing of a nude woman and suggested that they had secrets and sort of said, like, enigmas always stay young and may every day be a secret.

25:38And so I think that is something people have keyed in on because it suggests that they, I mean, who knows what it means, but I think if you think that Donald Trump's ties with Epstein went beyond just the social, it suggests that they had some kind of secret between them. And, you know, famously in 2002, Trump gave a quote about Epstein to a journalist where he said, paraphrasing here, you know, Jeffrey really likes women, you know, as much as I do. And in Jeffrey's case, some of them very young. And so that suggests as well that Trump was almost like hinting at an open secret. And nobody is doubting the Wall Street Journal reporting, right?