[0:00]Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Behind me, I have three documents from the DOJ production that are emblematic of the massive failure of the DOJ to comply with the Epstein Files Transparency Act.
[0:11]To my right is an email that was sent by the victim's lawyers to the DOJ. It was a list of names not to release. What did the DOJ do with this email? They
[0:22]released this email in the document production. Literally the worst thing you could do to the survivors you did. >> Hi Thomas, thanks for fitting us into
[0:33]your very busy schedule. Talk about a heated day. >> Which days aren't for me. >> How would you categorize what happened today with Pam Bondi?
[0:43]>> Um, I do think it was heated. I don't think she was really well prepared. The title of this one is child sex trafficking co-conspirators
[0:53]fully redacted. And by the way, gonna unredact them here. Les Wexner is in this. So I have several
[1:05]questions for you. Who's responsible? Are you able to track who in your organization made this massive failure and released the victim's names? Are you
[1:15]able to track who it was that obscured Les Wexner's name as a co-conspirator in an FBI document? I believe Wexner's name
[1:25]was listed more than 4,000 times about I had >> Yeah, I already told you that. This is where he's listed as a coke. >> Let me finish my answer. Come on. Let me finish my answer.
[1:36]>> We corrected that within 40 minutes. He was already You're acting like everybody's trying to cover up Wexner's name. Reclaiming Reclaiming my time. >> I'm going to answer this question. >> Reclaiming my time.
[1:46]>> He was within 40 minutes. You asked me a question. Within 40 minutes, Wexner's name was added back >> within 40 minutes of me catching you red-handed.
[1:57]>> Red hand. There was one redaction where he's listed as a coke and we invited you in. This guy has Trump derangement syndrome. He needs to get You're a
[2:08]failed politician. >> She said, "I have Trump derangement syndrome." I think most of the administration has Massie derangement syndrome, including the president. But
[2:20]are are you out to get the president? Is that what this is about? >> No, absolutely not. I've never even put Donald Trump in the search engine for
[2:28]the Epstein files. And Roana has spent a lot of time trying to make this not political because his side wants to make it about Donald Trump and my side wants
[2:39]to make it about the Clintons. And we spent a lot of time trying to keep it from becoming that because it's about getting justice for the victims. Are you getting justice at this point?
[2:50]>> It's slow, but we're making progress. We're um exposing people who've never been exposed. We're showing lies. We've
[2:59]showed that our own commerce secretary is a blatant liar about his involvement with Jeffrey Epstein. But um we've also shown that there are co-conspirators or
[3:10]people that at least at one point in time the FBI consider to be co-conspirators that were redacted that we now have those names unredacted. Um
[3:21]and so that's a big step. We're getting there. We still got a ways to go. >> What is your beef with Pam Bondi and what she is saying? Well, I have no personal animosity
[3:32]toward her, but the problem is she's not that competent and she's failed on several regards in the production of files to responsive to the Epstein Files
[3:43]Transparency Act. She has um released victims pictures. She has released victims names, other information about
[3:53]victims when the law tells her not to. And then she has redacted the names of co-conspirators when the law tells her
[4:03]not to. She's chosen the wrong side now. She's not cooperative. And she's chosen the side of the pedophiles and the sex traffickers. >> Is she trying to hurt the victims? And
[4:15]is she trying to protect uh pedophiles and sex traffickers? Somebody at DOJ is trying to protect the pedophiles because
[4:25]there her rebuttal and her deputy's rebuttal to me about the new appearance of Leslie Wexner as a co-conspirator was that oh that's no big deal. His name
[4:36]appears thousands of times in these files. You didn't discover anything new. when in fact what I did discover is the one instance in the thousands of times
[4:46]where the FBI labeled him as a co-conspirator in a sex trafficking crime. That is the thing that they redacted.
[4:55]So I asked Pam Bondi today, can you tell me the individual at the DOJ who made that redaction? Because I think if we could find that out, then we could find
[5:06]out who is really driving the bus here. Is that where it stops or does it go higher than that? Are you making a charge that somebody like the president
[5:15]for instance is ordering that cover up? >> Well, the president certainly sets the tone. He's called it a hoax. If it's a hoax, why has the DOJ now assigned
[5:27]hundreds of lawyers to the document production? Obviously, it's not a hoax. It passed 427 to1 in the House, our bill, and 100 to nothing in the Senate. But the president is still setting a
[5:39]tone of non-ooperation. His press secretary yesterday said, "We're moving on." But the American public is not ready to move on. The survivors are not going to move on, and
[5:50]I'm not going to move on until we see some men perwalked to prison. >> But do you believe he is attempting to protect himself or protecting powerful
[6:00]friends? I think the nature of the disclosure and the admission of his commerce secretary of involvement with Jeffrey Epstein, as embarrassing as it
[6:11]is, is the kind of thing that Donald Trump was trying to prevent. And I suspect we'll find we'll see more of that as we dig deeper.
[6:21]>> Do you believe that Donald Trump should testify before Congress? I haven't gone that far. And I think if we want to keep this from being political, we need to go
[6:32]after the most plausible claims that are in the Epstein files with survivors who can attest to them now. And I want to keep it from being
[6:43]about Donald Trump and I want to keep it from being about Bill Clinton because the shest way to kill the exercise that Roana and I have kept together and it's
[6:53]it's been a very precarious balance of bipartisanship, the shest way to kill it is to turn it into a red team versus blue team exercise. And the universe
[7:05]keeps trying to devolve it into that every day. I'm I'm not concerned about Donald Trump's relation with Epstein. I believe our
[7:15]president is beyond embarrassment because he's been associated with Jeffrey Epstein. So, what I'm most disappointed in our president about is
[7:25]his refusal to acknowledge the survivors as humans, as human beings. He when he calls it a hoax, he's denying that they
[7:35]were ever victims. He's basically treating them as if they aren't worthy of justice. And that's what I'm most disappointed in Donald Trump about. So
[7:46]I'm not undertaking this exercise to incriminate him or exonerate him. And I don't think the files are conclusive and the history of that is conclusive in
[7:56]that regard. All I know is right now he and his administration are preventing the complete release of these files that
[8:06]would get the survivors justice. >> So when he calls you a >> Well, he called me a at the National Prayer Breakfast and I said I'm
[8:15]glad to know I'm in his prayers. I mean his insults don't do anything to me and neither do Pam Bondi's so I don't worry about that.
[8:26]What do you think the greatest fallout has been of the release of the Epstein files so far? >> Well, you know, there have been 17 individuals who've resigned their
[8:38]positions, high senior individuals that we're tracking. Unfortunately, a lot of those that deal with government are in
[8:47]Great Britain or Norway or elsewhere in the United States. The fallout has yet to happen. I have called for the
[8:56]resignation of our commerce secretary. It's not that it was a crime to go to Epstein's island. It's that he blatantly lied to us just weeks ago when he said
[9:06]that after 2005 he found Epstein so disgusting that it would never have anything to do with him since then. But
[9:14]in fact, Epstein became a known sexual predator uh a convicted sex offender in 2008. And these files show us that our
[9:26]commerce secretary took his entire family to Epstein Island. The files show us that our commerce secretary was in business with Jeffrey Epstein. The files show us that they had phone calls
[9:36]between them after he was Jeffrey Epstein was a known sexual predator. And so just yesterday in the Senate, our commerce secretary admitted to his lies.
[9:48]And I think honestly it would improve Trump's appearance if he would get rid of the commerce secretary, if he would
[9:57]sack them. But he's going to ride this plane to the ground, I think. >> Who are the co-conspirators on your hit list? Who who should the authorities be
[10:08]going after? >> From what I can see right now, it looks like Leslie Waxner. The FBI owes us an explanation for how they decided to no
[10:18]longer pursue him. Our Epstein Files Transparency Act requires them to publish internal communications about their own decisions on whether to
[10:28]prosecute or not. And so we know they had somebody they considered a co-conspirator and they didn't prosecute him. Where are the documents that explain that decision? And there are um
[10:39]a few others that you know are in the files that we could go after. >> And you don't do you want to name them or or not?
[10:51]>> I'll leave it to you. They're in the files. >> You got the privilege, I guess, of seeing these files without redactions for those that that had no redactions in
[11:01]them. um what did you think of that opportunity when you were presented uh with stuff that was meant to be completely redacted and what what you found within the two hours that you were
[11:12]seeing those documents. >> So the first day the files were available to me unredacted ostensibly Roana and I went we spent two hours and
[11:22]we targeted 40 documents and we found a variety of things. Number one, some of these documents have redactions underneath of the redactions,
[11:33]and that's very frustrating. Um, so they're not completely unredacted. But in three of the documents, we did find revelations. For instance, we found
[11:43]that they had covered up Leslie Wexner's name as a co-conspirator. In another document, there were 18 names. Two were
[11:53]victims. Two were Epstein and Maxwell. And then there were 14 other names and there was no real reason to redact them.
[12:03]In one of the examples, they redacted an email address and it didn't have a name. So I took the email address. I didn't know whose email address it was and I
[12:15]put it back into the DOJ's computers and searched the files for more instances of that email address. And what I found is
[12:23]it belonged to a sultan in the United Arab Emirates. And so within a few hours, I got the DOJ to admit that. And
[12:33]I felt comfortable releasing that name. So we had three revelations in 40 files. Do you think that the that the uh spirit of what you were trying to do when
[12:44]co-authoring your bill has been met or or do you think that this na this the nature of this dump where unverified material is mixed in with verified
[12:54]material where there's some redactions and and others that don't seem to make sense. You know, has that actually been of benefit or has that made the
[13:04]situation even worse in some way? Well, obviously when they have exposed survivors who never wanted to be exposed, that made their situations
[13:16]worse. But in my conversations with the attorney for these survivors, they don't blame me. They blame the DOJ. And they are still
[13:26]um adamant that the documents that contain the perpetrators in them need to be released. They're still fully on board, as we witnessed today, with their
[13:36]appearance at the hearing with Pam Bondi. Um, I think there's some collateral damage to people's reputations. And frankly, I'm not sorry
[13:47]about it. If you went to the island where women were raped, to have a vacation with a known sex offender and nobody knew about it except your
[13:58]billionaire friends until now. And now you're embarrassed. I'm sorry. I'm not I don't care about your embarrassment. >> You talk about the embarrassing stuff.
[14:09]There's lots of embarrassing stuff, but is there actually criminal stuff in these files in your opinion? >> Oh, absolutely. The question is, are the allegations true or not? And the way you
[14:20]determine that is you have an investigation and you have a trial and that's how you get to the truth in this country. And all of those steps have
[14:31]been truncated because these are rich and powerful men. >> What hope do you have that there will be investigations that the evidence that you're seeking about a sex trafficking ring actually will be exposed?
[14:43]>> You know what happens in America a lot is we have elections and a different party takes over. And so the last scandal goes away because the
[14:54]congressional subpoenas expire at the end of a Congress. But what we did is we undertook the very hard work of passing a law which is permanent law. Do you realize 10 years
[15:05]from now in if an attorney general whose name we don't even know yet comes into possession of files about Jeffrey Epstein and possible co-conspirators, they are also obligated to release the
[15:17]any files they have in their possession. They can also prosecute the former attorney generals who didn't comply with the Epste files transparency act. The
[15:27]beauty of this is it's it's permanent. There are a lot of easy I'll call them cotton candy solutions in Congress where you write a strongly worded letter or
[15:37]you issue a subpoena. We did something permanent. It's permanent law passed by both chambers signed by the president. So it it's not necessary to give up. we've put our stake in the ground and
[15:49]we're never going back from this position regardless of who's in the White House and regardless of who's the speaker of the house. And you know, just this week, I'm encouraged. I'm actually
[16:00]kind of surprised that I forced the DOJ to unredact two files. Like they had to
[16:09]admit that they weren't done yet. Like at at Todd Blanch's press conference, he said, "This is it. It's over. Don't expect anymore. It's all you're going to
[16:20]get. We're finished. And the press secretary. Levit said, "We're done. We're moving on." And I went and looked in the computers and said, "No, you're
[16:30]not done. You haven't finished your work. Here's a few examples." And they had to concede that I was right. And I
[16:38]think because we released these files not to a congressional committee, we released them to the public, not to the
[16:47]American public, to but to the world. The world can now sift through this, crowdsource it. There's already AI working on these files and they will
[16:56]find the holes in the Swiss cheese. They will find what's missing and then we'll know what's being withheld. You've said that this is about the victims and
[17:08]seeking justice for them. When you saw something like a file that revealed that Ghislaine Maxwell had confirmed that the
[17:17]photograph of Virginia Gupy and the former Prince Andrew was genuine. What was your response? >> Um, I think the victims have received a
[17:28]lot of verification already with these files. Like at least if there was a portion of the American public who agreed with the president that this was
[17:38]a hoax and it was a political partisan witch hunt. I think there I think America now no longer believes that you have to live under a rock or be part of
[17:47]a cult to believe that this was a hoax. Now, don't get me wrong, we haven't done enough, but we had the two biggest press conferences in decades here in Washington DC where they had a platform
[17:59]to tell their stories. And we also we've got real documents. You know, at any point I could have gone to the floor and
[18:08]read the names of co-conspirators that through the victim's lawyers I found out about, but that would not be as consequential as making the government
[18:20]produced the documents to show that they knew this all along. >> As somebody who stood with survivors, to see that revealed in the Epstein files,
[18:29]did you find that emotional? Uh, did it make you happy, relieved, angry? Did you have a response to that? You know, I've I began approaching this
[18:45]dispassionately. Um, I didn't know who was right and who is wrong, but I thought it was a reasonable thing to ask for the
[18:57]government to produce these files to see who's right or wrong. But at some point in this quest, I couldn't keep my emotions out of it any
[19:06]longer. And that was at the first press conference we held. When I heard the victims talk, I
[19:17]realized what they had been living with, the shame that they had been living with for so many years, and why this was another level of evil. That's when it
[19:29]became emotional for me and that's when I redoubled my effort. >> How big a scandal do you believe this is? >> You know, I've said this is bigger than
[19:39]Watergate. This is bigger than I ran Contra because those were constrained to one administration. This spans four presidents and even more attorneys
[19:49]general in the United States are either through acts of omission or acts of commission have been part of a two decadel long cover up. You know, we've
[20:00]seen that some of the richest people on the planet have the lowest moral standards on the
[20:09]planet. Are you confident that the men that these women and girls were trafficked to will all be exposed and
[20:19]brought to justice? >> Some of them are going to die before we can get to them. I mean, these crimes
[20:27]are so old, unfortunately. has gone on so long that some of them are no longer around and probably some of them if even if we started the trial today might not
[20:39]live to the end of the trial. So some will get out that way but they won't escape God's wrath. Um and I do believe we're going to bring
[20:48]some of them to trial. I'm under no illusion that we'll catch all of them and that they'll all be brought to justice.
[20:56]But I'm confident that we will get a high degree of justice for these women. >> Do the files tell you whether Jeffrey
[21:07]Epstein was the head of the snake, whether he was the conspirator and all these others are co-conspirators, or was there someone else pulling the strings?
[21:17]I never really thought that most of the people in Jeffrey Epstein's consolation were caught in that orbit because of blackmail.
[21:27]A drug dealer doesn't blackmail the people who buy drugs from him. A pimp doesn't blackmail the people who come back for prostitutes.
[21:37]Jeffrey Epstein was a fixer. He was providing a service and he he did things for people that he they appreciated and
[21:47]they came into his orbit. Now eventually their guilt might have kept them in his orbit. Maybe he never had to say, you
[21:58]know, if you ever try to step out of this circle of society that I've created that you'll be exposed. Maybe he never had to say that. I don't know that there
[22:08]was any higher power pulling on Jeffrey Epstein, but he was certainly at the hub of a lot of things. And I do believe one thing that we haven't fully verified
[22:19]yet, and the files don't help a lot to expose, which I was hoping they would, is that I believe he was directly
[22:28]um connected to our CIA and to Israel's MSAD. >> But you haven't found that in the files yet. Well, we've got a couple times where Jeffrey Epstein asked for his own
[22:40]CIA files, like letters to the CIA, which come back sort of inconclusive. I'm not even sure what the request was about or what he was trying to prove at the time.
[22:52]>> What do you think the Epstein files show about us, about humanity or lack of it?
[23:01]>> I think the Epstein files are a mirror. If you've learned all of this about what we know now from the Epstein Files and
[23:11]you're still dispassionate or want to move on or don't care, it means you're not willing to take up for the weakest people in our society.
[23:22]If you won't take up for a 14-year-old girl who's being sexually abused, if you won't take up for that person when we're showing you this happened, what what are you made of
[23:34]>> for you to see the full extent of of how far this reached and and the levels of society that have been contaminated in this way? What was that like for you?
[23:44]You know, as a congressman, a I'm approached by dozens of people every year who all have their particular grievances
[23:55]or conspiracies and they're hopeful that I can help them. And you have to pick what you're going to fight on. You can't fight all
[24:06]the battles. Um, and I'm I'm very glad I picked this one to spend my time on. When I'm no longer a
[24:17]congressman and I'm sitting back on my porch on my farm in Kentucky, I may be most proud of this in terms of the things that I've done in politics.
[24:28]>> Even if it might mean you have sacrificed a political future. >> Well, it might get me back to the farm quicker. You know, I've I've pissed off so many billionaires who have
[24:39]compromised morality that anything could happen at this point. You know, people, I think, have uh jokingly asked me if I'm worried about my health, my safety,
[24:50]you know, in the course of 12 years of being a congressman. This is the first time I think they might have a point. >> Do you think something might happen to
[25:00]you or you won't get voted back in? I'm not worried about not getting voted back in for the first time in my life. It's not that I'm worried about my political
[25:12]viability. This has never really been a concern of mine. I am worried about my own health and well-being. >> You're under threat of some sort risk of it.
[25:21]>> If I weren't competent, I wouldn't be worried. But we have actually just released three million documents that that do sorely embarrass some people
[25:31]even if they haven't been convicted yet. And so I do think it creates a new threat profile for myself.