[0:00]There are two levels of justice in America. Once you reach a certain level of wealth and prominence, you get handled far more favorably than regular people. That's Senator Sheldon
[0:11]Whitehouse, a senior member of the Judiciary Committee, whose recent speech about the Epstein files and Jeffrey Epstein's connections to Donald Trump and Russia has been going viral. There is a cover-up afoot at the Department of
[0:22]Justice. A significant number of powerful men were very mixed up with Epstein. The MAGA Department of Justice is trying to shield Trump from something. That 48-minute monologue from
[0:34]the floor of the Senate got millions of views on YouTube and shows that even with the world focused on the Middle East and other events, people still want answers. Now, in previous episodes of Full Sight,
[0:45]we revealed the missing terabytes of data when it comes to the Epstein files. And in the last episode, we looked at why the Met Police has never investigated the former Prince Andrew. But we wanted to come here to Washington
[0:56]to talk to politicians about what it's been like dealing with the Department of Justice, which has been widely criticized for its handling of the Epstein files. Now, I know I said we were going to take
[1:06]a break from Full Sight for a few weeks while I was away. But when the Democratic Senator Sheldon Whitehouse said he would speak with me while I was in Washington, D.C., I knew we had to do another episode. And so this Full Sight is different to all the other ones. It's
[1:17]essentially an interview, but I thought it was important to sit down with the Senator while I had the chance. And I should say I did this interview a few days before Donald Trump fired Attorney General Pam Bondi, reportedly
[1:28]over her handling of the Epstein files. And the Senator has been very critical over how the DOJ has operated. Senator Whitehouse, obviously in the UK we've seen Peter Mandelson and Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor arrested for
[1:38]allegations of misconduct in public office. They both deny the allegations, but why do you think there's been movement in the UK but not here in the United States? There's a big stall happening at the United States
[1:47]Department of Justice. And the people who would be conducting those investigations are obviously completely compromised
[1:57]with respect to Trump and probably doesn't want to bring cases against anybody else who might try to cooperate in order to get out of
[2:08]harm's way. Because obviously the DOJ memo from last July before the release of the Epstein files says there was no client list no third parties uh could be brought to any sort of justice.
[2:19]You don't buy that. The inconsistencies out of the Department of Justice about this are now legion. Do you get any sense there's movement from the Department of Justice in terms of investigations or is it just the House
[2:31]Oversight Committee who seems to be doing the depositions and trying to dig into this? They don't seem to be doing anything. We've called them out on what are called suspicious activity reports
[2:42]that relate to enormous numbers of transactions with Jeffrey Epstein accounts in the billions of dollars many of which track back into Russia and despite the fact that these are
[2:54]called suspicious activity reports the Department of Justice under Trump doesn't seem to have found that there might be something suspicious there to investigate. What sort of interactions
[3:06]have you had with the Department of Justice with Pam Bondi or anyone else? Uh not much. They have a real stone wall up to uh barricade us where a law ends up being passed
[3:17]um then they will have to follow the law to some degree but as you know they held back a lot of the stuff that was uh a challenge politically for Donald Trump the
[3:27]accusations that he had sexually and physically assaulted a girl who's about 14 years old. So uh we haven't got much in the way of answers and a great deal of what we ask
[3:38]for just gets ignored. The senator is talking about the work of the independent journalist Roger Sollenberger who along with NPR discovered that there were missing documents in the Epstein files related to an allegation against Trump and
[3:50]Epstein by a woman who claimed she was assaulted by him when she was a young teenager in the 1980s. The FBI had interviewed her back in 2019, but some of these files were not included in the
[4:00]initial release. The Department of Justice did eventually publish them saying there was no cover-up and they'd been listed as duplicates. The allegations made by the woman never led to any charges brought by the FBI and
[4:11]President Trump has denied any wrongdoing. On the Donald Trump uh accusation, the the one from the 1980s, the White House has denied all that and describes the claims as completely baseless. I mean, Trump also told the police in
[4:23]2006 that everyone has known about Epstein's misconduct. I mean, what do you think that says about the president there? I mean, he's sort of saying everyone knew about this and he's glad that the police was looking into this. They're doing
[4:34]everything but look into that. And while the White House has challenged the credibility of this young witness,
[4:44]uh the FBI at the time went back to her over and over again. Four different interviews, which is not something that you do with somebody you don't find credible. And if you actually look at the last
[4:55]interview report, the request from the FBI is basically, don't be frightened, do come back, we want to talk to you more about this. The problem here is that this is a failure of successive
[5:07]presidents and successive Department of Justices, right? To actually investigate Epstein. Correct. Successive administrations have not done enough here. Have dropped the ball. I would say that not done enough is accurate, but
[5:18]there were occasions when effort was undertaken, Ghislaine Maxwell was prosecuted, uh Epstein himself was mildly
[5:28]prosecuted, but it never really got into the full scope of what took place. And to my knowledge, it never tried to make any connections
[5:38]um between Epstein and uh Trump and uh the Russia connection. But I guess, you know, as you mentioned Ghislaine Maxwell was successfully prosecuted. The
[5:49]question has to be that if she could be prosecuted, surely others can be. There is evidence out there. Correct. You gave this speech on the Epstein files also and Donald Trump and Russia.
[6:01]It's gone, you know, viral online. I mean, why did you want to give that speech and why do you think it sort of found an audience? >> I felt that the narrative
[6:10]about this whole episode had been lost. That there was this Trump Russia story which Trump says is a hoax and that's all kind of over, you know, Bob Mueller
[6:21]not nothing there. And then there's this Trump Epstein thing and that's being looked into through the Epstein files. And that's the story. And what was missing in all of that was
[6:32]all of Epstein's connections with Russia. And what that adds to a proper investigation and a proper understanding of what looks more like a triangle. Are
[6:43]you saying that there is a conspiracy effort or you're just saying, "Look, here's all the evidence." I'm not alleging any kind of conspiracy. I think it's frequent that the press get into a conventional wisdom rut
[6:55]and don't pay attention to aspects of an issue, whatever that issue is. I think I had the chance with this speech to try to break the press and the
[7:06]political class out of their ruts because I thought that the ruts were missing the real thrust of the story here and I wanted to encourage a second look cuz there's more there to find out,
[7:17]I believe. For Senator Whitehouse, Russia is crucial here. He's a huge supporter of defense for Ukraine in its war against Moscow. Whitehouse is critical of Trump's approach to Ukraine and his cozy relationship with the
[7:28]Russians and Vladimir Putin. For the senator, that goes back all the way to the 2016 election. Robert Mueller's inquiry found that Russia interfered in the 2016 election to benefit team Trump. The president himself called the whole
[7:40]thing a hoax and a witch hunt falsely spread by his political opponents to damage him. But the new Epstein files show connections between Epstein and key Russian figures. And White House questions whether Epstein had given the
[7:51]Russians so-called kompromat on Trump, something the president calls fake news and Putin has also denied. The senator wonders whether that is why the president is allegedly so submissive in
[8:01]his dealings with Vladimir Putin. The White House has consistently said that President Trump has been totally exonerated by the release of the Epstein files. And the Democrats have been criticized for being obsessed with a so-called Russian hoax. Critics would
[8:13]say that, you know, the Russian involvement in US politics is overblown. It's simply a conspiracy. And that if it you look at Epstein if there are allegations potentially of Russia ties, there's also allegations of Israeli ties and other intelligence
[8:24]ties. The Russian ties are far much more common, frequent, and deep than any other country.
[8:32]And the allegations that the Russia ties to American elections aren't real or substantial is just plain plain false. Because when it comes to his you know,
[8:43]potential Russia intelligence links, Pam Bondi was asked last year whether Epstein was a foreign agent and she said, "I have no knowledge of that." Does that surprise you, her response? I don't know how much she looked into it,
[8:54]but I don't think you can default to the proposition that there's nothing there to see. Is the scandal not necessarily about a Russia conspiracy or Russia connections? It's about America, the UK, and others not protecting vulnerable
[9:05]young women from this man and his network. And that a lot of those spared any formal investigation and that should be our focus. It's partly about that.
[9:17]But when the subject of the investigation is the president of the United States and when he is behaving in remarkable ways around
[9:29]Vladimir Putin compared to his character with other leaders and in his other public relationships, it adds an entirely new dimension
[9:39]whether this Trump-Russia-Epstein connection bears on why he is throwing Ukraine under the bus,
[9:48]deferring in everything to Vladimir Putin, and why a man whose instant response in any public relationship is to assert himself as the dominant one in that
[10:00]relationship goes all submissive around one person, and that one person is Vladimir Putin. The Department of Justice has, of course, uh released millions of documents. Have
[10:11]you, as a member of Congress, been able to go and and access uh the unredacted files? Sort of. Okay. Some members did. Uh they found out that their searches
[10:23]were being searched Really? by the Department of Justice, so there's been some hesitancy. And, of course, documents that weren't there that have been held back couldn't be searched. But, it does concern me that
[10:35]the Department of Justice was tracking the search requests of the members who went over. And, you know, we at Channel 4 News have also been looking into these files, and,
[10:46]you know, the the files show something that we've been arguing for a long time, that there are terabytes of data out there. And that if we go by the files that have been released, you know, we approximate that 98% of the
[10:57]files have not been released. Do you think that could be accurate, the fact that we haven't got everything? I know it's accurate that we haven't got everything cuz I know specifically about these FBI interview notes of the woman
[11:09]who accused President Trump. And also, as you said in your speech as well, we know this man, Jeffrey Epstein, um was obsessed with surveillance and hidden
[11:19]cameras, and storage devices and everything. >> And we know that Russian intelligence services are obsessed with kompromat and trying to get information and dirt on
[11:31]American leaders. So, the prospect that some of what Epstein recorded uh got into the hands of a Russian
[11:42]intelligence service is not an unreasonable thing to pursue. So much new information continues to emerge around the Epstein files. The Bank of America has paid more than 50 million pounds to settle a lawsuit
[11:53]brought on behalf of victims of Epstein, who accused the bank of facilitating Epstein's sex trafficking operation. Bank of America said the settlement made no admission of liability. The House Oversight Committee continues
[12:05]to hold depositions, having interviewed former President Bill Clinton and his wife Hillary, and more recently Epstein's accountant and lawyer. Both men said they never witnessed or were involved in any wrongdoing, and they also revealed that federal government
[12:17]investigators never interviewed either of them about Epstein's activities. The committee has also requested testimony from one of the prison guards who was on duty the night when Epstein died in his cell in New York. When it
[12:28]comes to individuals who say they had no idea what was going on. And recently we've seen Epstein's accountant and attorney were deposed by the House Oversight Committee and also said they saw nothing wrong. And then you put that against the fact that people like
[12:40]Virginia Roberts Giuffre in their book will say, "You could not have hung out with this man and his friends and not known what was going on." How can those two things exist together? It's very hard to see.
[12:50]And that, I think, is one of the reasons why continued investigation into this matter is justified. Because it simply isn't
[13:01]credible to compare the allegations by Jeffrey Epstein's victims existing right next to important men who usually showed
[13:13]discernment and sophistication in their lives and didn't manage to figure out that something that really stank was going on here. And it's also about transparency and
[13:24]faith in our institutions. Yeah, you'd like to think that they did a good job and got to the bottom of something this messy in good order. It's very difficult to understand where
[13:35]we go next with this to try and get to the bottom of it, which feels like some truth, but also some justice. Whatever hesitancy Republicans might have about going forward further into
[13:47]what for them are perhaps difficult political areas, may very well get resolved in November when gavels might change hands in the
[13:56]Senate and the House, so that new investigative avenues could open up. And I think we've got plenty to look at between now and November. So I think
[14:08]letting the existing investigative process continue, continue to do our work, and then a second round of review once we've digested that, and there's no
[14:19]longer as much hesitancy in the chairs of the committees because they're not politically bound to Trump, and therefore it's not so difficult to
[14:29]investigate what might be going on with him. But I do think that this needs continued work by Congress as the politics of it move forward. And just finally, Senator, what would your message be to the victims right
[14:41]now? I'm very sorry about what a mess this has all turned into. Anybody who has been the victim of the kind of abuse that these women suffered
[14:53]deserved a better, more efficient, and more effective investigation. And we're going to do our best to try to put things right. Looking at what we have with these
[15:04]files, what does it tell you about the way power operates in this country and elsewhere, that someone like Jeffrey Epstein was moving in these circles for decades? What this indicates is that
[15:15]there are two levels of justice in America. And once you reach a certain level of wealth and prominence, you get handled far more favorably than
[15:26]regular people. And that's a problem of its own that we need to cure. Senator Whitehouse, thank you very much for your time. Thank you very much. Now, we did put Senator Whitehouse's
[15:38]claims to the Department of Justice, but they did not get back to us. So, there you go. What did you make of what Senator Whitehouse said? He certainly comes to the Epstein files from a different angle, particularly focusing on Russia, but he's got some of the same
[15:50]questions, hasn't he? About a lack of prosecutions, a lack of justice, uh questions about missing files, and an alleged cover-up. And then that point about the Democrats and how if they win the House and the Senate in November,
[16:00]they're really going to push on the Epstein files and try and release as many of them as possible. What do you make of the interview? And do you believe him when he says that the Democrats will lead on this issue, given that they didn't really focus on it
[16:12]until Donald Trump came back into power? And let us know what episode you want from us next on Foresight. Do you want us to carry on down the Epstein files route? What about maybe something on the Middle East or something else entirely?
[16:23]As always, a big thank you for watching Foresight, and a big thank you to Senator Whitehouse for sitting down with me and giving me so much of his time, and a big thank you to his team, in particular Megan, for making it all
[16:33]happen. Make sure you subscribe, and as always, I'll see you next time on Foresight.