Senator Chris Van Hollen on the Epstein Files, and the Leadership Crisis in Washington

0:05You're listening to The Political Scene. I'm David Remnick. Early each week, we bring you a conversation from our episode of The New Yorker Radio Hour. This is The New Yorker Radio Hour, a co-production of WNYC Studios and The New Yorker.

0:25Welcome to The New Yorker Radio Hour. I'm David Remnick. Right now in Washington, both parties are experiencing a crisis of leadership. Last week, when Donald Trump threw up his hands and told Republicans to vote on releasing the Epstein files, It was a humbling defeat for him, an admission that at least on this one issue, he had lost control of MAGA. He tried to sideline Marjorie Taylor Greene, and so far, that hasn't worked either. The movement is just deeply conflicted over everything from the Epstein affair to whether or not it's okay to be allies with the likes of Nick Fuentes, a white supremacist and an anti-Semite.

1:05At the same time, if the Democrats are going to mount any resistance at all to the Trump administration, they need unity. And that continues to escape them. Whatever you may have thought of the government shutdown as a political strategy, the end of that shutdown, the defection of eight Democrats who voted with Republicans, really deepened a sense that the leadership is flailing. Calls for Chuck Schumer to step down as minority leader are now a commonplace. I sat down recently to talk about all of that with Senator Chris Van Hollen of Maryland. Van Hollen began serving in the House in 2003, and he went to the Senate in 2017.

1:44He's trying to steer a path between the left of the party and the party's establishment. And he's used the word spineless to describe some of what he sees from his Democratic colleagues.

1:58Senator Van Hollen, we have to begin at the beginning here. The Epstein case keeps charging along, and now both houses of Congress have nearly unanimously passed legislation ordering the release of those files, the Epstein files. How can we trust that the Trump White House and the DOJ will, in the end, provide all the information? Well, I'm not sure we can trust them. In fact, I don't think we can, which is why we have to keep pressing to make sure that they turn over every document. After all, Donald Trump has had the power to release these documents on his own since he was sworn in and he didn't do it.

2:40It required an act of Congress to make him do it. So clearly, this is not something he wanted. After all, they essentially took some House Republicans into the situation room at the White House to try to convince them not to move forward. So we know they don't want them released. We are going to have to really keep the pressure on to make sure that we get every single document. Well, just to be clear, and we're speaking on Wednesday, November 19th, just to timestamp things. Who has these files in their hands? Is it just the DOJ or are there Democrats that have them? Is there any way to match up what gets released by the DOJ with the sum total of what exists?

3:24So there are some documents that have been released there, you know, in the custody of the House Judiciary Committee and others. But there's no doubt that the Department of Justice still retains lots of documents. And so that's what would be subject to this this passage of the legislation, which on its way to Trump's desk. Now, I should say, we are also seeking documents from the Department of Treasury related to the Epstein financial transactions. And those documents are not necessarily covered in the scope of this legislation. And, you know, I think that the House should consider a discharge petition potentially on those files because we really do need the complete picture here.

4:13So what prevents the DOJ, which has not proved to be independent in the traditional sense, what prevents the DOJ from either destroying or suppressing details that might be incriminating or embarrassing for Donald Trump? Well, the only impediment to that is whether or not they are worried about being sued or actually criminally prosecuted for failing to respond to congressional legislation. Of course, the big challenge that we have in this administration is it's supposed to be the Department of Justice itself that brings those kind of criminal actions. I will say, though, in this situation, it is possible that people who swear an allegiance to uphold the law and the Constitution, whistleblowers, would come forward if they know that there are documents that are not being handed over.

5:08And so they do have to worry about people of principle who want to follow the law. Now, how concerned are you that Trump and the DOJ might use the excuse that this is an ongoing investigation and they have to stall releasing the information? I worry a lot, David, about the scenario you just raised, which is, you know, Trump ordered the attorney general to begin to have the U.S. attorney's office in New York look into the connection of certain individuals to the Epstein files and Epstein's, you know, terrible actions. Um, they could try to use that as an excuse, um, not to release some of the documents.

5:48All, all hell will break loose, uh, if they do that. And I think, you know, the American people and especially the victims, uh, who have been traumatized by, you know, these really, really awful criminal acts of Epstein and his associate, um, you know, are, are, are going to make sure that these documents ultimately are released. I would posit this to you, and it's more a phenomenon of the second term than the first. Every day brings, as Dorothy Parker once said, some fresh hell. Something so extraordinary that it's either said or done, some norm is broken, that nothing sticks. How does the Democratic Party, and how do you as a member of its leadership, as in the Senate, how do you break that pattern that's now been going on day after day for a year?

6:41Some people argue that we should just, no matter what Donald Trump does or says, just always come back to the economy and prices. And of course, we should be very focused on the economy and prices and rising health care costs as we have been. But to suggest that we should look the other way in the face of all these other outrages is, I think, a mistake. Because I think the American people are tiring of Donald Trump. I mean, I think the polls indicate that. hopefully the chaos will be clear to the American people. But you have been witness to this kind of thing working, the persuasive capacities of the Trump administration.

7:22You voted yes, for example, to push forward Marco Rubio, Secretary of State. And I assume the reasoning was, this is probably the best you're going to get. And then you encountered him not long ago in a hearing room where you, with great fury, I must say, read out a bill of particulars of how he had gone wrong, how he had gone, I guess you could call it MAGA in the most extreme way. We deported gang members, gang members, including the one you had a margarita with. And that guy is a human trafficker. And that guy is a gangbanger. And the evidence is going to be clear. Mr. Chairman, I'm sorry, Mr.

8:05Chairman. Secretary Rubio has the floor. Mr. Chairman, he can't make unsubstantiated comments like that. Secretary Rubio has the floor. Secretary Rubio should take that testimony to the federal court of the United States because he hasn't done it under oath. What has happened? It seems like no one, as opposed to the first term, has any capacity or inclination to stand up to the president of the United States in the Republican leadership, including the Senate majority. the you're absolutely right about my vote on marco rubio i voted for him based on his record of statements in the united states senate i mean he used to take to the senate floor and talk about the importance of human rights and rule of law and democracy we agreed on a sort of values-based foreign policy imperfect as it's been implemented and then he had a total total trump lobotomy and And so I will say, David, that's the last Republican nominee I have voted for because my lesson was learned, which is no matter what they say at the confirmation hearing, they will ultimately do what Donald Trump orders them to do.

9:11Let's talk about matters closer to home in the party sense. At least 11 Democrats in Congress have called for Chuck Schumer to resign as party leader. They are beyond frustrated that he couldn't keep a group of Democrats from voting with the Republicans to reopen the government after the government shutdown had been went on for weeks. What's the mood in the Democratic caucus right now? What's your mood when it comes to your own leadership in the Senate? I think, David, that there will be a discussion in the Senate Democratic caucus. I'm confident that there will be about how we maintain our unity.

9:49But what do you do How about it? Do you replace Chuck Schumer? Are you for that? I have not been calling for the replacement of Chuck Schumer. Why not? I think it goes beyond one person on our caucus. I see him as having been effective during the Biden years in terms of helping push through a very important agenda. I see that after the March debacle, when he got a lot of pushback for not joining many of us to resist the Trump budget plan at that point, I do think that our caucus of what I say is the no business as usual caucus in the Senate has grown considerably. The separate question, of course, is how do you make sure that all the Democratic caucus members stay on the same page even when things get bumpy?

10:43Well, I think it's fair to say that party discipline is not what it was in the era of Mike Mansfield and Sam Raber. Those are bygone days. Nevertheless, is there a potentially more effective leader for this moment in time, not the Biden administration, but the second Trump administration? Is there anyone in the Democratic caucus who might fulfill that role with greater strength, cohesion, and purpose? I voiced my frustration very clearly with Senator Schumer, Chuck Schumer, in another situation with respect to the mayor's race in New York City. Meaning his refusal to endorse the new mayor, Mamdani.

11:24Right, because Mamdani won the primary. He became the Democratic nominee. And, you know, my view was that was a moment where Democrats should unite. All I can tell you is I'm going to continue talking to him. What's the holdup? I got to continue talking to him and that's what I'm going to do. Is part of the calculus that if you endorse a Democratic socialist, you're worried it will be damaging to your party? Maybe they've been your chances of winning back the Senate. I'm going to continue talking to him. Dana, you can ask me again. All right. The Democratic Party should make room for lots of different opinions.

12:08And those opinions may be different in, you know, a state out west than in New York City. But when we have a Democratic nominee, we need to back them. Understood. But I think in Senator Schumer's case, that was a very parochial issue. In other words, it was a New York issue. um he is the elder statesman of jewish politicians in this country there's a lot of pushback from um many jewish voters in new york city against mom donnie and things he has said uh either recently in the more or the more distant past and i think he couldn't bring himself to make that endorsement principally on that basis.

12:50There were a lot of people in New York City who have been longtime supporters of Chuck Schumer, who I know were against Mamdani. But if we are going to call for a big tent party, which I agree with, that means we have to accept the diversity of views. You know, we had members like Joe Manchin who were part of our caucus. It cannot just be a big tent when it seems to be politically convenient or personally convenient. It used to be said in the first term of Donald Trump's that your Republican colleagues would confide in you in the so-called cloakrooms, and they would let on that they knew how crazy things were.

13:37You get that in the second term much? I mean, you still get members of the Republican caucus who will confide in the total nuttiness of this administration. So why don't they act otherwise? Because of their political fear of Trump's retribution. But the worst thing that can happen is they lose a re-election bid. Is the job so good? I'm with you on this. My view is this job's not worth it if you can't look yourself in the mirror in the morning and tell yourself that you're doing the right thing. I mean, you know, obviously people need to make choices and there are sort of political compromises that people have to make along the way.

14:19But surrendering your entire vote and soul to Donald Trump is something that it seems to me is simply not worth the job. Incredibly, we're facing another potential shutdown fight in January. worry. So how should we expect things to play out under this administration two months from now? Less than that. You know, by then we'll have learned whether or not Donald Trump and Republicans will do anything to turn off the ticking time bomb on healthcare costs, right? So we'll have that in the rearview mirror by then. We'll fight to try to achieve our objectives. But I think it's, Things are in too much flux right now to be able to decide at this moment what the plan will be for January 30th.

15:05Other than to say whatever it is, we need to come up with it together and stick with it. I assume the question of the filibuster is not part of this discussion. Although during the shutdown, Donald Trump was openly asking to eliminate the filibuster, which some Democrats have wanted to do for years. Do you think it should be removed? It is the one thing, maybe with the exception of the Epstein files now, it's the one thing that Senate Republicans have resisted in terms of Trump's demands. And it's because they know that the filibuster serves the purposes of Republicans and their agenda much more than Democrats.

15:47That there are many more things I think Democrats would like to do that are obstructed by the 60-vote requirement than Republicans. Things like the John Lewis Voting Rights Act. And Republicans have been able to enact their agenda through reconciliation. I mean, they're mostly interested in big tax cuts for rich people and cutting things like Medicare and Medicaid. And they can do that through the rule in the Senate that allows you to end run the 60 vote requirement. So I'm for extended debate. I want to make it clear. I served in the House. I enjoyed serving there. But I don't want to turn the Senate into the House.

16:29Like, as soon as you have a majority, you can shut things down. But I do believe at the end of extended debate, it should be a 51 vote. There are important policy changes we need to make to our country that they don't want. The supermajority requirement has been an obstacle to getting some of those important things done.

16:48I'm speaking with Senator Chris Van Hollen of Maryland. This is the New Yorker Radio Hour and will continue in just a moment.

17:10Right now we are living through some of the most tumultuous political times our country has ever known. I'm David Remnick, and each week on the New Yorker Radio Hour, I'll try to make sense of what's happening, alongside politicians and thinkers like Cory Booker, Nancy Pelosi, Liz Cheney, Tim Waltz, Ketanji Brown-Jackson, Newt Gingrich, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., Charlemagne Tha God, and so many more. That's all on the New Yorker Radio Hour, wherever you listen to podcasts.

17:44This is the New Yorker Radio Hour. I'm David Remnick, and I'm speaking today with Senator Chris Van Hollen of Maryland. Earlier this year, Van Hollen traveled to El Salvador to try to secure the release of Kilmar Abrego Garcia, a Maryland man who had been sent to the notorious Seacod prison by American authorities. Van Hollen himself comes from a government family. His parents worked in the State Department and in the CIA. And he was born while they were stationed in Pakistan. Chris Van Hollen was in his 20s when he began working as an aide in the Senate. Senator Van Hollen, you made a lot of headlines when you met with Kilmar Abreu Garcia, a man who was sent to a high-security prison in El Salvador, who was never charged with a crime.

18:32And he's since been returned to the U.S., but now the administration wants to deport him, this time to Liberia most probably. Do you check in on him? And what was your initial goal in meeting him? What's the relationship as it continues? It was one of the early signs that the Trump administration was prepared to trample over people's constitutional rights. And when Bukele, President Bukele met with Donald Trump at the White House, so you probably - Of El Salvador. Yeah, this is the guy who calls himself the coolest dictator in the world, right? So he comes to the White House, and I wrote a letter to the El Salvadorian ambassador saying I wanted to talk to President Bukele when he was here about Gilmar Braco Garcia, and they blew me off.

19:19And I put in that letter that if I didn't have a chance to do it, I was going to go down and try to meet him because we didn't even know if he was alive. I mean, he hadn't talked to his wife. He hadn't talked to his family. Nobody. I mean, these are gross violations of international law in themselves. So I went after I did a press conference in Salvador, the capital. I got a call and I got to see him. And he had no idea that he was the subject of a nine to zero Supreme Court ruling ordering the Trump administration to facilitate his return. So I was able to call his wife, Jennifer, that evening and say he was alive.

19:59And the Trump administration did relent in the sense that they had said they would never bring him back on U.S. soil. He's now back in the U.S. court system. He is now being vindictively prosecuted. And he has a claim, actually, in front of the federal courts for vindictive prosecution. And what's he being prosecuted for? And if I recall correctly, Marco Rubio, in that confrontation you had with him, referred to him as a gangbanger and much worse. Yeah. What I've said is they need to put up or shut up in court because every federal judge that has heard these claims has, in their written opinions, said that they have provided no basis evidence for this claim of MS-13, right?

20:38But what happened was when they brought him back, they decided to bring a charge that had never been leveled against him for taking people who were here illegally across state lines, driving them across state lines. And he has argued that this case has been brought against him to punish him for exercising his due process rights. And the federal judge says there's lots of evidence to support his claim of vindictive prosecution. This is where the Trump administration is trying to use the threat of sending him to Liberia or somebody somewhere far away, as opposed to Costa Rica, where he said he would be willing to go.

21:24How many such people are there that have been deported this way that you either know or presume to be deported unjustly? Oh, I think there are now thousands of people. In Maryland, I mean, there are people who've been deported overseas, and then there are others that are just locked up in detention centers all over America. I mean, we had a guy who was a pastor on the eastern shore of Maryland, snatched up. We had a small businesswoman. She was a Vietnamese-American woman, been here for like 25 years, had a nail salon in Hagerstown, Maryland, western Maryland, scooped up. Now, we have gotten them at least temporarily released, but their cases are still pending.

22:08But there's so many more that are still locked up. One of the things that continues to prop up Donald Trump's popularity in a generalized way is the difference between him and Joe Biden on immigration. I watched the president being interviewed the other night. Maybe it was Laura Ingraham. I can't remember. he said look you know anytime you have a big operation like this and you're trying to achieve something ambitious wait for it mistakes will be made there will be there will be extremes and mistakes in in the process and we'll correct them but overall the great overall is this is very effective and the indication was as well popular the cruelty is the point here of his policy in in my view.

22:55And I don't think that that's popular. I know for sure that violating people's due process is not popular because when I went down to El Salvador, I got backlash, including among a lot of Democratic pundits who said, don't do that. But as it turned out, people across the political spectrum, including Joe Rogan, did care about being deprived of your liberty without due process. I mean, what is more American than having your constitutional right to due process protected? And so I have to distinguish between the American people rejecting the extremes of the Trump policy, certainly rejecting the violations of due process, which is very different than a point where I agree, which is I do think that the Biden administration did not do enough when it comes to border security.

23:53And certainly the way they talked about it. You know, I've always taken the position that we need immigration reform and border security. I talk about those together, but there's a big difference between that and what Donald Trump is doing, just rounding people up and violating their due process. Senator, I want to ask just a couple more questions and return to the state of the Democratic Party. You're starting to see potential candidates emerge. You're starting You can see Governor Newsom in California emerging. You're hearing all kinds of names. How do you assess the field and what kind of candidate do you want to see the Democrats put forward?

24:36Oh, David, I think it's way, way too early, at least for me, to sort of begin to decide who is the best or strongest candidate. I think our focus does need to be on 2026 and winning the midterms. But what clearly the Democrats failed to do in the last presidential election was to indicate to people that we were the party of change and breaking the status quo. And it is extraordinary that a guy like Donald Trump, right, this billionaire from New York became the guy who was going to take on the status quo. And I do believe the biggest issue we have in our country is this huge gap in wealth and income.

25:19And as you know, the last election was on the whole issue of affordability. I mean, Americans, you know, they're sort of going paycheck to paycheck. And Democrats did not answer that question last election. And we better have a damn good answer for it in the next one. I have some ideas that I'm going to be, you know, I want to be very much part of the debate as to where the Democratic Party goes. Part of the debate to the extent of maybe running for president? My focus really is, you know, I got invited to go out to the Iowa steak fry and, you know, people began to ask me that question. All I can say is that my goal at this moment, my goal at this moment really is to stiffen the spine of the Democratic Party.

26:05But that means not just resistance to Trump. It also means taking on very powerful special interests that I think have had too much sway in both the Republican Party for sure, but also in the Democratic Party. I've heard firmer no's in my time. Look, I just want to say that is not my thought process. It really is not my thought process. Doesn't every hundred members of the Senate go to bed at night thinking they can be a good president? Well, that may be a different question. But again, speaking of looking in the mirror, I think, again, my view, and I think Democrats need to uphold this as well, this job really is not worth it if you can't be true to your values.

26:50And that's true on domestic politics. It's true when it comes to foreign policy. It's true across the board. So let people know where you stand, and they'll let you know where they stand. Senator Van Hollen, thank you so much. Thank you. Chris Van Hollen is in his second term as Senator from Maryland. I'm David Remnick. That's the New Yorker Radio Hour for today. Thanks so much for joining us. See you next time.

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