[0:00]Hi, friend.
[0:01]Hello, my partner.
[0:02]I wore these glasses today to match you.
[0:04]I appreciate it.
[0:05]We're like twins.
[0:06]I mean, walking down the street.
[0:07]No, oftentimes, they can't tell the difference between us.
[0:11]All right, well, I love your show.
[0:12]Are you Velshi or Ruhl?
[0:13]Do you get that?
[0:16]I do.
[0:17]Last Friday night, you and I obviously
[0:19]did a special for the last word.
[0:22]And I got so many messages after,
[0:24]like, is this you and Allie every Friday night?
[0:26]Like, you go out to dinner together.
[0:27]This is how you spend your Fridays.
[0:29]I'm like, no, I wish it was.
[0:30]It was a lot of fun.
[0:30]We missed this show.
[0:31]I missed this show last week because I was traveling.
[0:34]But it was nice to be back with you on TV.
[0:35]You're visiting your mom and dad in Toronto.
[0:37]I was.
[0:38]I was, which is great.
[0:40]And I like to time these things
[0:42]so that I don't miss the show.
[0:43]And I will in the future better.
[0:44]I just happen to be going through airport security,
[0:46]which, as you know, are, you know,
[0:47]like boarding and all that kind of stuff.
[0:48]So I'm sorry.
[0:49]But we're back here today and, once again,
[0:51]have a million things to talk about.
[0:54]What do you want to start with?
[0:56]OK, and for anyone watching, there are some, right?
[0:59]There are so many subjects we could cover, right?
[1:03]We are dealing with the dump
[1:05]of the three million Epstein files.
[1:07]Today, Attorney General Pam Bondi
[1:09]is in somewhat of a battle royale
[1:11]testifying on the Hill about that.
[1:13]There are more questions mounting
[1:15]and more research out about the impact
[1:18]the tariffs have had.
[1:19]And Republicans are starting to crack,
[1:21]starting to separate with the president
[1:23]with regard to saying, hold on a second.
[1:25]If we've controlled these tariffs,
[1:26]maybe the answer is we need to stop them.
[1:31]There's a lot going on.
[1:32]We've got a jobs report today.
[1:34]There's a lot going on.
[1:34]Yeah, so let's just talk about Republicans
[1:37]starting to separate themselves.
[1:38]It's happened a couple of times now, right?
[1:40]It happened on the Epstein files.
[1:42]All Republicans, almost every last one in the House
[1:45]separated themselves from Donald Trump,
[1:47]although he changed positions on it, right?
[1:49]He decided he wanted to pass this bill.
[1:51]But bottom line is they parted ways with him on that.
[1:54]Then there was more stuff.
[1:56]Hey there.
[1:59]Don't wanna keep you up.
[2:00]Sorry, excuse me.
[2:01]Republicans parting ways with Trump on Epstein.
[2:05]So we saw that happen.
[2:06]Overwhelmingly, the law was passed
[2:10]to release these Epstein files,
[2:11]which is not something normally that happens.
[2:13]It obviously took them a month and a half to do it.
[2:16]And I had been complaining,
[2:17]saying, were these Republicans that fought for it?
[2:20]Why aren't they pushing the DOJ?
[2:21]And I spoke to Ro Khanna the other night
[2:23]because Politico had a quote from Lauren Boebert,
[2:27]who was one of those Republicans
[2:29]fighting to get them released.
[2:30]And in it, she had said,
[2:32]it's not up to me, it's out of my hands.
[2:34]My job is done.
[2:35]And I think many of us in the media took that.
[2:37]Oh my gosh, is she now backing off?
[2:39]She's not interested.
[2:40]I talked to Ro Khanna and he said,
[2:42]no, that's not the case.
[2:43]She's saying, I fought for it.
[2:45]I got it over the line.
[2:47]We made it a law.
[2:48]Now the DOJ has to do their thing.
[2:50]And I actually think, Ali,
[2:52]despite the president's efforts, best efforts,
[2:55]to get us to turn the page, right?
[2:56]To say, nobody cares, moving on.
[2:59]There's bigger fish to fry.
[3:01]There are other, I'm not gonna say bigger,
[3:03]there are other fish to fry.
[3:04]There are many, many things
[3:06]that we need our government doing
[3:07]that we need our media focusing on.
[3:09]The Epstein files are not going away.
[3:11]No, as we've learned.
[3:12]Sitting behind Pam Bondi,
[3:14]sitting behind Pam Bondi in that hearing today
[3:17]are a number of those victims.
[3:19]And I think, do we have the sound
[3:21]of Pramila Jayapal asking them to stand up?
[3:26]I don't think that we do.
[3:27]I think we do have this.
[3:28]I'm gonna ask Christina, do we have that?
[3:30]To the survivors in the room,
[3:33]if you are willing, please stand.
[3:40]And if you are willing, please raise your hands
[3:43]if you have still not been able to meet
[3:46]with this Department of Justice.
[3:52]Please know for the record
[3:53]that every single survivor has raised their hand.
[3:57]That blew my mind, that second part.
[3:58]First, she said,
[4:01]Attorney General Bondi,
[4:02]at the beginning of your remarks,
[4:03]you said to the survivor,
[4:05]you didn't turn around, but you said to the survivors,
[4:06]I'm sorry for what you had to endure.
[4:09]She said, and then Jayapal said,
[4:11]will you now turn around and face them
[4:13]and say, I'm sorry for how my Department of Justice
[4:15]has handled this?
[4:16]And Pam Bondi said, no, I'm not doing that.
[4:18]This is about theater.
[4:19]This is about real, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
[4:21]But those women, those victims
[4:23]are clearly not going away.
[4:27]And we know just, we don't even know the details, right?
[4:30]These emails had redaction after redaction,
[4:33]but a number of lawmakers were able to go
[4:36]to a specific reading room without technology,
[4:38]without their phones.
[4:39]They couldn't take anything with them.
[4:40]They could take some notes.
[4:41]And many of them saw a lot more of these emails
[4:45]in an unredacted format.
[4:46]And I haven't heard from any of them,
[4:48]with the exception of Mike Johnson,
[4:50]who his words, his mission, his actions
[4:52]are always at the pleasure and the demands of Donald Trump.
[4:55]Almost everybody else I can think of said,
[4:57]Ghislaine Maxwell is a monster.
[4:59]She's more of a monster than we ever thought.
[5:01]She should be in prison for longer
[5:03]than she's actually scheduled to be.
[5:04]And I just, Ali, I don't see this disappearing.
[5:07]No, and you're right.
[5:09]The government can do lots of things at the same time.
[5:12]Pam Bondi had, I mean, it was a range of stuff
[5:14]that she said.
[5:15]It was pretty aggressive and we should play some of it.
[5:17]But she referred to something that's in our domain,
[5:20]the Dow being over $50,000, I think she said.
[5:28]Let's play that sound bite.
[5:29]Let's play that sound bite.
[5:30]Yeah.
[5:31]The Dow has shattered 50,000 for the first time.
[5:35]This is crazy.
[5:36]They said it couldn't be done in four years,
[5:39]yet President Trump has done it in one year.
[5:43]National median rents have fallen to a four year low,
[5:48]thanks to Donald Trump.
[5:50]That's why they want to focus on Epstein
[5:53]and our most transparent president
[5:56]in the nation's history.
[6:00]Yeah, so I'm all about putting economic numbers
[6:03]out there, but we're actually talking
[6:05]about survivors of abuse in a massive,
[6:10]what seems to be a coverup in a scandal.
[6:12]That's not the time.
[6:13]You and I are always ready to bring up numbers
[6:15]on the Dow or unemployment numbers
[6:17]or median rental numbers.
[6:18]That wasn't the place for that.
[6:19]And the implication that, oh, he's doing so well
[6:22]on the economy, hence that's why everybody's talking
[6:24]about Epstein, that's an insult
[6:25]to those survivors in that room.
[6:28]Put the insult over here.
[6:30]That's not your job, Pam Bondi.
[6:33]You're the Attorney General
[6:34]of the United States of America.
[6:36]It's funny.
[6:36]When she said that, I tweeted out $50,000 makes no sense
[6:42]and there's no reason to be having this conversation.
[6:47]And a troll tweeted back at me and said,
[6:49]aren't you a journalist?
[6:50]I said, yeah, that's exactly what I am.
[6:52]So as a journalist who covers business,
[6:54]who also is covering this hearing
[6:56]that's about Epstein victims,
[6:57]yeah, what I'm going to do is be the critic to say,
[7:00]it's not $50,000.
[7:02]And why is the Attorney General even talking
[7:05]about the stock market?
[7:06]Correct.
[7:08]This is like getting arrested for murder
[7:10]and saying, why don't you catch the,
[7:11]or somebody who are getting arrested for speeding
[7:13]and saying, why'd you catch the murder?
[7:14]It's like, well, cause I'm a speeding cop.
[7:16]That's what I do.
[7:17]You're the Attorney General.
[7:17]This is what you're supposed to do.
[7:18]The Dow at $50,000, which is not true, is not,
[7:21]I don't even know who, by the way, the they is.
[7:22]She said they couldn't, they said it couldn't happen
[7:24]in four years and it happened in one year.
[7:25]I don't know who the they was.
[7:27]She just means like the universal haters.
[7:29]Like this is Trump, like you said I couldn't do it,
[7:31]but I'm doing it.
[7:32]Yes, but he says that about lowering prices,
[7:35]which aren't even true.
[7:36]He just sort of says that.
[7:37]That's his thing.
[7:38]And she was really good.
[7:39]I don't encourage anybody to give up time
[7:41]if you didn't watch it, to watch it again,
[7:43]because that's time you'll never get back.
[7:45]But she's really good at that, right?
[7:46]You can tell when these folks,
[7:48]these Trump administration people testify
[7:50]who the audience is.
[7:51]It's an audience of one and it's Donald Trump.
[7:53]It's the super aggressive, yelling back and forth,
[7:56]not stopping.
[7:57]I don't know if we have that exchange
[7:58]that Pam Bondi had with Jerry Nadler.
[8:02]That was a perfect example of the tenor
[8:05]that was set today.
[8:06]Let's just play this for a second.
[8:07]But wait, before we do, can I just make this one point?
[8:09]Here's the thing.
[8:11]I understand that in her mind,
[8:13]the assignment is to perform for a party of one,
[8:16]Donald Trump, and he's sitting somewhere
[8:17]and he may be nodding,
[8:19]but you have to do two things at once
[8:21]if you're in her job.
[8:23]Perform for the party of one
[8:24]and not repel the majority of the American people.
[8:28]Correct, in your own party too.
[8:29]And it's unclear to me, within her own party,
[8:32]like we've seen MAGA fracture.
[8:34]Yes, over SD.
[8:36]And other things like healthcare and cuts,
[8:38]but largely over SD and tariffs
[8:40]as we're gonna discuss in a few moments.
[8:42]Let's just set the tone
[8:43]for how that conversation went
[8:44]with Congressman Jerry Nadler of New York.
[8:47]First, you showed it, I find it.
[8:51]How many have you indicted?
[8:52]Excuse me, I'm gonna answer the question.
[8:54]Answer my question.
[8:55]No, I'm gonna answer the question
[8:57]the way I wanna answer the question.
[8:58]No, you're gonna answer the question
[8:59]the way I asked it.
[9:00]Chairman Jordan, I'm not gonna get in the gutter
[9:02]with these people, but I'm gonna answer the question.
[9:04]How many have you indicted?
[9:07]Reclaiming my time.
[9:08]I think it's very interesting.
[9:10]I think it's very interesting
[9:12]that he talks about they indicted,
[9:15]the president said they indicted him twice.
[9:17]Mr. Chairman, please stop the clock
[9:18]and restore his time.
[9:20]Okay, here we go with these theatrics.
[9:22]Reclaiming my time.
[9:23]The gentleman from New York.
[9:26]I don't think that's what Americans
[9:27]are looking for right now.
[9:28]I get it, there are different parties.
[9:30]I actually like the fact
[9:32]that there's adversarial relationships
[9:34]between different parties
[9:35]because that in the end will keep us all honest.
[9:37]But that's a whole different level of adversarial.
[9:40]Congress is meant to be a check on the administration
[9:43]and this administration doesn't want checks.
[9:46]Doesn't matter whether you agree with them
[9:47]or you don't agree with them.
[9:48]It's a separate issue.
[9:49]They do not want to face accountability by Congress.
[9:52]And I get it, that accountability
[9:54]by members of Congress probably comes
[9:55]in the way of you doing whatever it is
[9:57]you were going to do.
[9:58]But I don't know that Americans look at that
[10:00]and think that's functional.
[10:02]But that's why Democrats need to actually fight them, right?
[10:06]Sarah Longwell from the Bulwark had this amazing quote.
[10:10]I have it here.
[10:15]I want to share it.
[10:16]Yeah.
[10:18]Where she said,
[10:20]Republicans are over here being straight up mercenaries,
[10:23]Longwell said.
[10:24]Democrats give everybody Fridays off
[10:26]and talk about work-life balance.
[10:28]She apologized for yelling on the phone.
[10:30]Democrats, she says, are not built
[10:35]for when fascists come, she concluded.
[10:37]And so she's just trying to make the point.
[10:40]Look what we have happening.
[10:42]We've got the attorney general
[10:43]of the United States of America straight up
[10:46]doing the president's bidding.
[10:48]We have the commerce secretary repeatedly lying
[10:51]about how the economy works, about how tariffs work.
[10:53]You can say the same thing about the treasury secretary.
[10:56]And in many instances, Democrats are just saying like,
[10:59]guys, don't do that.
[11:01]At least don't do it on Monday to Thursday
[11:03]because we're working from home on Friday.
[11:05]And she's basically saying we're facing the most,
[11:08]and that's an exaggeration.
[11:09]We're facing the most draconian opponent
[11:12]that hears Pam Bondi with the victims
[11:16]who her department of justice hasn't even interfaced
[11:19]with not once sitting behind her
[11:21]and just talking about stock market prices
[11:23]and rent to please the president.
[11:25]You got a question coming at us, you want to do it?
[11:27]Yeah, Lalas48 sends a question on email.
[11:30]By the way, please, if you want to send emails,
[11:31]it's VelshiRule at ms.now, VelshiRule at ms.now.
[11:34]How do we know that the DOJ has actually released
[11:36]all the files and has not destroyed or hidden some?
[11:39]Can there be true accountability?
[11:40]This is, thank you for asking this question
[11:42]because I think we skipped over it
[11:44]in the there are 3 million files
[11:45]and there might be 3 million more.
[11:46]We don't know till we know, right?
[11:49]We don't know what we don't know.
[11:50]We've had, there's some speculation out there
[11:52]that we've got half the files roughly
[11:55]that have a lot of redactions in them.
[11:56]But we don't actually know how many files are in there
[11:59]because the Department of Justice
[12:00]has custody of these files.
[12:03]Now, in theory, members of Congress,
[12:05]starting on this past Monday,
[12:06]we're able to go into a secure facility
[12:08]and look at them without reading device,
[12:10]without recording device and things like that.
[12:12]But I don't know if they went and counted
[12:14]how many pages.
[12:15]Remember documents are photos and they're videos
[12:17]and they're pages.
[12:18]So it's hard to know what the number is.
[12:20]Ali, there are so many questions, right?
[12:23]The questions go back to 2008.
[12:27]Is that his name?
[12:28]Alex Acosta.
[12:29]Alex Acosta, yeah.
[12:30]Was the state's attorney down in Florida
[12:33]that gave Jeffrey Epstein
[12:35]this extraordinary sweetheart deal.
[12:37]And no one ever understood that.
[12:38]No one has ever been able to say,
[12:39]no one ever understood it.
[12:41]And not that she's honest, she's not.
[12:43]But Ghislaine Maxwell had even intimated
[12:45]that there were four,
[12:47]at least four of their co-conspirators
[12:49]that got protected, hidden,
[12:51]very, very powerful people.
[12:53]And so are we getting all the emails?
[12:57]I certainly don't know.
[12:58]Where's Alex Acosta now?
[12:59]He's sitting on the board of Newsmax.
[13:01]You can't tell until you're-
[13:02]It's so funny because I just saw a clip
[13:04]of Joe Rogan basically saying,
[13:06]we just found out X, Y, and Z.
[13:09]Meanwhile, Julie K. Brown name checks him
[13:11]and says, yeah, I've been reporting this
[13:13]for the last 12 years.
[13:15]Yes, yes.
[13:16]And kudos to Julie K. Brown
[13:18]and the other reporters.
[13:19]I mean, she was really the OG.
[13:20]But the other reporters who've been on the story
[13:22]for years, right?
[13:24]And they're trying.
[13:24]And we talked to them on Friday night
[13:27]when we did that special.
[13:28]They know more than you and I know
[13:30]about what's missing
[13:31]because they can intuit what's missing.
[13:34]We can't.
[13:35]But why don't we start from the beginning
[13:37]and try and understand
[13:38]why did he get this deal in the first place?
[13:40]And the answer might be, Stephanie,
[13:42]that you and I are perhaps arriving at
[13:44]and that rich and famous people are immune to things.
[13:47]They don't pay the same prices.
[13:49]But everybody in America has known that
[13:50]for a long time.
[13:51]Not just why did he get this sweetheart deal.
[13:53]Remember, once he even went to prison,
[13:56]all he had to do was sleep there.
[13:57]Yes.
[13:58]A car came and picked him up.
[14:00]He went to his office where he worked
[14:02]and did his thing all day,
[14:03]got food and just came back
[14:05]and went to sleep there.
[14:06]The sweetheart deal, like piles on top,
[14:08]on top, on top.
[14:09]And it's like in the last week,
[14:13]the spheres of influence, right?
[14:15]He was tangled with some of the most powerful people
[14:19]in technology, in finance, in academia,
[14:22]in medicine, in politics, here and around the world.
[14:26]And so the ironic thing is Jeffrey Epstein,
[14:31]one of the worst people of our lifetime,
[14:34]is in some perverse way,
[14:38]politically pulling people together
[14:40]who are simply saying red or blue, it's wrong.
[14:43]It's wrong.
[14:44]And if they wanna make divisions,
[14:46]it's the rich and fabulous versus the rest of us.
[14:49]And that's part of it.
[14:50]We've got a question here from Bobcoff227 on YouTube.
[14:54]If the Democrats win control in the midterms,
[14:56]can they impeach Bondi?
[14:58]Okay, I'm gonna have you answer this Stephanie,
[15:00]but I wanna tell you
[15:01]because there's talk about impeaching Bondi.
[15:04]There's talk about impeaching the DHS secretary,
[15:07]Kristi Noem.
[15:08]There's talk about impeaching the DNI,
[15:11]Tulsi Gabbard.
[15:13]Lutnik seems to be making things worse for him
[15:15]every day that he's around there.
[15:16]So I don't know, like do you impeach a bunch of them?
[15:19]Do you impeach one?
[15:20]I don't know, how do you think about this
[15:22]and can it happen?
[15:25]I don't know.
[15:26]I mean, can they be impeached?
[15:28]I don't know the answer,
[15:29]but I do know that there is growing pressure
[15:32]and it's starting to be from both sides of the aisle
[15:35]and even, I mean, we saw Alex Jones
[15:37]and I can't believe I saw this
[15:38]demanding that Howard Lutnik step down, right?
[15:42]You are seeing, it was John Thune today
[15:44]who did not ask Howard Lutnik to step down,
[15:46]but who said,
[15:47]I have always demanded full transparency from the beginning.
[15:51]And he said, in the end,
[15:52]it's the American people who are gonna decide,
[15:55]which I feel like Thune is sort of saying,
[15:58]Americans, voters, do your thing.
[16:00]And I actually think we have some of the sound
[16:03]of Howard Lutnik testifying yesterday.
[16:06]And I think it's hugely important.
[16:08]Let's share a bit of it.
[16:11]I'm glad to be here to make it clear
[16:15]that I met Jeffrey Epstein when he moved,
[16:18]when I moved to a house next door to him in New York.
[16:22]And I met him then.
[16:25]Over the next 14 years,
[16:26]I met him two other times that I can recall,
[16:30]two times, and that is none for six years.
[16:34]So six years later, I met him.
[16:37]And then a year and a half after that,
[16:39]I met him and never again.
[16:42]I have to say my one takeaway from this
[16:44]is I have to get to know my neighbors better.
[16:47]Okay, I do know my neighbors.
[16:49]Okay.
[16:50]Here's the problem.
[16:51]So Howard Lutnik went so far out of his way
[16:54]within the last six months to tell this tall tale
[16:59]that he only saw Jeffrey Epstein in 2005.
[17:02]He was disgusted.
[17:03]He thought he was just gross in every possible way,
[17:06]never wanted to make eye contact, never, ever, ever.
[17:09]Certainly wouldn't wanna have his wife
[17:10]in his presence again.
[17:11]Lo and behold, he then gets grilled
[17:14]by Chris Van Hollen yesterday
[17:16]because he's not all over the emails.
[17:18]And I'm not saying he did anything nefarious,
[17:20]but in 2012, he very clearly sends an email
[17:23]and says, hey, I'm in the Virgin Islands.
[17:26]My wife, my kids, we've got a couple nannies with us.
[17:28]We have another family's with us.
[17:30]How about we come?
[17:32]And he goes to the island.
[17:35]Now in that testimony, he still doesn't say,
[17:37]he said, we just went for lunch.
[17:38]He still doesn't say whether or not he saw Epstein,
[17:41]but based on the emails,
[17:41]Epstein the next day makes it clear that they did.
[17:44]And so the issue isn't,
[17:46]did you do something nefarious when you're there?
[17:49]The issue is you're a cabinet secretary.
[17:51]You are the commerce secretary
[17:53]that is in charge of interfacing
[17:55]with all of these other countries
[17:56]as we figure out these tariffs and so many other things.
[17:59]And within the last six months,
[18:00]you went out of your way to publicly lie
[18:02]to the American people.
[18:04]A lot of folks are not okay with it.
[18:06]That's all right.
[18:07]Right, that's it.
[18:07]We don't accuse you.
[18:08]Let's listen to this interchange
[18:10]that you had yesterday in Congress, a little more of it.
[18:13]Did you in fact make the visit
[18:14]to Jeffrey Epstein's private island?
[18:18]I did have lunch with him
[18:20]as I was on a boat going across on a family vacation.
[18:24]My wife was with me as were my four children and nannies.
[18:29]I had another couple with,
[18:32]they were there as well with their children
[18:35]and we had lunch on the island.
[18:38]That is true for an hour.
[18:40]And we left with all of my children,
[18:42]with my nannies and my wife.
[18:44]You realize that this visit took place
[18:49]after he'd been convicted, right?
[18:51]I mean, you made a very big point of saying
[18:55]that you sensed that this was a bad person in 2005.
[19:00]And then of course, in 2008,
[19:01]he was convicted of soliciting prostitution of a minor.
[19:08]And yet you went and had this trip
[19:11]and other interactions.
[19:13]That's, and therein lies the rub,
[19:16]as you were saying, Stephanie.
[19:17]It's not that anybody's accusing him
[19:18]of doing something nefarious.
[19:19]It's just judgment, right?
[19:21]And that's what a lot of the Epstein files are.
[19:23]It's a lot of people who just did not exercise
[19:25]good judgment.
[19:27]And that's, but as you said,
[19:29]a lot of them, and some of them
[19:30]have been removed from their jobs.
[19:31]Some of them have resigned.
[19:32]Some of them have apologized.
[19:33]Some of them have not.
[19:34]But this is a cabinet secretary of the United States.
[19:37]So back to the question that someone was asking,
[19:39]there are probably some Democrats
[19:41]who want to impeach some Republican cabinet secretaries,
[19:44]but there seems to be a lineup of people they want to get.
[19:47]And on whatever day you're thinking about it,
[19:49]the DHS secretary, Kristi Noem, might be a bigger target,
[19:53]or Pam Bondi might be a bigger target,
[19:55]or Howard Ludwig might be a bigger target.
[19:56]It's hard to keep track.
[19:57]I also don't know, Stephanie,
[19:59]that the American public has the appetite for this.
[20:03]It may be the way you uphold the law,
[20:05]but I'm just not sure, right?
[20:06]We see these elections that were won in November.
[20:09]What were they won on?
[20:09]What was the topic most people cared about?
[20:12]It's not actually-
[20:12]I would say affordability.
[20:13]Right, it's not actually,
[20:15]as much as I like to,
[20:16]you like to talk about the Constitution
[20:18]and democracy and all that,
[20:20]most people would just like to live in safety
[20:22]and not be, you know,
[20:23]have federal agents shooting around them.
[20:26]But that's why I actually think John Thune's smoke signal
[20:29]of the American people will decide.
[20:31]What I think he's saying is you're gonna vote us out.
[20:34]Yes, that's what it sounded like he was saying.
[20:36]Right, because the American people don't decide,
[20:39]like maybe they put pressure
[20:40]and they give the green light
[20:41]for there to be an impeachment.
[20:42]Or they throw the bums out.
[20:44]Yes, but that's really convoluted.
[20:46]Or it's, they say, you did not serve us.
[20:49]You did the opposite of what you said you were gonna do
[20:50]when I elected you.
[20:52]You will not stay in that job.
[20:53]So prognosticators feel
[20:55]that the House will go to the Democrats.
[20:57]The Republicans only have a four seat lead anyway
[21:01]right now.
[21:01]And at least 17 to 20 Republicans already know
[21:05]that they were endangered.
[21:06]So, you know, that's not rocket science.
[21:09]The Senate, that is a much tougher road to hoe
[21:12]for Democrats.
[21:13]But they've got some interesting things going on, right?
[21:15]They've got a pretty competitive primary going on
[21:17]in Maine, in Michigan.
[21:20]They've got Alexander Vindman running
[21:22]for the Senate in Florida.
[21:24]They got Roy Cooper.
[21:25]In fact, the primaries I think open today or tomorrow
[21:28]in North Carolina, the early voting for the primaries.
[21:31]So they've got a few ways
[21:34]that they could have a path to victory in the Senate
[21:37]which is interesting.
[21:38]They've also got John Ossoff being challenged in Georgia
[21:41]and that's tough.
[21:42]That might actually be, that might be a net loss.
[21:45]Yes, but I saw John Ossoff give a speech
[21:48]last Friday night and it was pretty,
[21:51]I mean, he's a phenomenal speaker
[21:53]but he really dug into who MAGA is,
[21:57]what they originally were looking for
[22:00]and how Donald Trump is hurting them dramatically
[22:04]with what his policies are
[22:06]and who he's surrounding himself and who he's serving.
[22:08]And that goes right to the heart of affordability.
[22:11]So when you talk to Alexander Vindman,
[22:13]former military guy, right?
[22:14]He's gonna appeal to some conservatives because of that.
[22:16]You look at Roy Cooper in North Carolina.
[22:18]He's had broad-based bipartisan support for a long time
[22:22]and while he's aghast
[22:24]at what this administration is doing,
[22:26]he still talks about affordability.
[22:27]He still talks about the things
[22:29]that make your life more affordable.
[22:30]As Marjorie Taylor Greene said,
[22:32]phones ringing off the hook
[22:33]about people whose healthcare costs were gonna go up.
[22:36]All these farmers who vote for Donald Trump,
[22:38]if you're a small farmer, you're a business person.
[22:41]You may be on the ACA
[22:42]because that's the only way
[22:43]you can get affordable insurance.
[22:45]So they're all trying to stick to message.
[22:47]The message seems to be about your life
[22:50]and affordability centrally
[22:51]and healthcare and things like that.
[22:52]And then peripherally,
[22:55]this chaos, a pig pen of an administration
[22:58]that hurts democracy.
[23:00]I like to live with,
[23:01]I'm sort of democracy forward on this topic,
[23:03]but that's a privilege, right?
[23:04]You can be democracy forward when the bills can be paid.
[23:08]And so I think for most Americans-
[23:09]Yes, but I would argue, yes.
[23:13]But I would argue without a functioning democracy,
[23:17]our economy doesn't have a chance.
[23:18]I'm with you.
[23:20]We could probably look at some examples
[23:21]around the world though
[23:22]of places that don't have functioning democracies,
[23:24]where people are well-off,
[23:25]so they put up with it a little bit,
[23:27]but that's not the DNA of America.
[23:28]We're not here to put up with our government.
[23:30]We're specifically not here
[23:32]to put up with our government.
[23:33]The country was founded from people
[23:35]who did not wanna put up with the government
[23:37]that they felt didn't respect them.
[23:38]So maybe in Qatar or Abu Dhabi or something,
[23:42]you don't get to vote,
[23:44]but life's good, so you put up with it.
[23:46]But the DNA is not there to say,
[23:48]wait, we threw the bums out 250 years ago
[23:51]because we wanted it this way.
[23:52]This is our DNA.
[23:53]You govern at our pleasure.
[23:57]Pleasure, but there is one enormously powerful lawmaker
[24:01]that absolutely does not want to talk about affordability.
[24:05]Do you know what his name is?
[24:07]Donald Trump.
[24:08]Correct.
[24:09]And in fact, last week, you know what?
[24:10]We actually have sound- Every three or four weeks,
[24:12]he decides he wants to talk about it,
[24:13]but most of the time- No, we actually have a clip
[24:15]from when he interviewed with our former colleague,
[24:17]Tom Yamas at NBC News.
[24:19]Let's play that.
[24:21]You said you inherited a mess from President Biden
[24:24]when it comes to the economy,
[24:24]but at what point is it on you?
[24:26]At what point are we in the Trump economy?
[24:28]Oh, I'd say we're there now.
[24:30]I'm very proud of it, 5.6%.
[24:32]We have a GDP of 5.6 despite a shutdown.
[24:35]We had a 42-day shutdown,
[24:37]and they called it the Democrat shutdown,
[24:39]and because of that, I lost a point and a half.
[24:42]I would have been in a seven GDP,
[24:43]which hasn't been seen, I don't know, ever, maybe.
[24:47]Maybe ever.
[24:49]A seven GDP.
[24:53]Okay, Donald Trump went on to say
[24:55]there's $17 trillion in foreign investments
[24:58]coming into the United States.
[25:00]That's not the case.
[25:01]That number grows every time he says it.
[25:03]The White House's website
[25:05]says a number that's less than half of that.
[25:07]Bloomberg did the numbers, and they said,
[25:09]maybe it's around seven trillion,
[25:11]but even that, they think, is pushing it.
[25:13]And remember, for all of this, we're gonna build,
[25:16]we're gonna have a manufacturing boom here.
[25:19]All the input costs have gone up.
[25:21]If you want to build a factory today,
[25:22]it costs more to do it here today
[25:24]than it did a year ago.
[25:28]Not just the input costs, because that's real.
[25:31]If I'm gonna build a factory,
[25:32]I want it to be there for 30, 40 years, maybe more.
[25:35]Why would I do it in a place
[25:35]where the laws seem to change at the whim of the
[25:38]president?
[25:39]I wouldn't build a factory in Turkey
[25:41]for the same reason, right?
[25:41]Because I don't want the laws governing my business
[25:44]and my employment and my taxes
[25:47]stipulated by Erdogan,
[25:48]because it's unstable and it's unpredictable, right?
[25:51]You might even not like the person,
[25:52]but you want predictability.
[25:53]What America has given up is predictability.
[25:56]Yesterday, Trump got mad at someone
[25:57]and said he's gonna impose crazy tariffs on them,
[26:01]and then the Canada tariffs every day.
[26:03]Businesses don't go for that sort of thing.
[26:04]That's number one.
[26:05]Number two, Stephanie, is this whole idea
[26:07]that we fetishize manufacturing,
[26:10]because we did it for a long time.
[26:12]So we think that that must be the answer to all things.
[26:15]We fetishize the idea that,
[26:16]oh, imagine if we were making socks and bicycles
[26:18]and things like that.
[26:19]We don't want to be doing that.
[26:21]But he's appealing to some crowd
[26:23]that seems to think that's the answer.
[26:24]We want to be the sock capital of the world,
[26:26]and we want to be the, whatever,
[26:28]widget capital of the world.
[26:29]It's not true.
[26:30]But Ali, almost, I was going to say more importantly,
[26:33]but I'm not going to say that.
[26:35]When the president says affordability
[26:37]is an old-fashioned term,
[26:39]and it doesn't matter anymore,
[26:40]and when he talks about housing,
[26:42]he says, I care so much about housing,
[26:45]I want the value of everybody's house to go up.
[26:47]Well, that's great for people who own houses.
[26:49]Who have houses.
[26:49]Chances are people who own houses
[26:52]are also long the stock market.
[26:54]So stocks going up, what Pambani references,
[26:56]that's good for those people.
[26:58]However, millions of Americans
[27:01]are locked out of the home buying market.
[27:04]They don't own a home.
[27:05]So Donald Trump's saying,
[27:06]good news, I'm going to make sure home prices go up.
[27:08]That is not good for people who want to buy a house.
[27:11]What we're seeing with mass deportation,
[27:13]we're seeing a slowdown in building, right?
[27:17]One of the biggest problems
[27:18]is we have a shortage of housing in this country.
[27:20]What we need did was red tape cut through,
[27:24]not all regulation, but some regulation,
[27:26]so we could kind of supercharge
[27:31]building, renovation, expansion,
[27:33]and things like that, yeah.
[27:33]And then Trump hits us with the tariff,
[27:35]so now it's significantly more expensive
[27:38]to get your products and build.
[27:39]Wood, lumber, shingles.
[27:40]And now we've got communities in area,
[27:43]in some states like Texas,
[27:45]where developments are now basically just on ice.
[27:47]They're just frozen because the workers
[27:50]who may or may not be undocumented.
[27:54]They just don't want to come to work.
[27:55]They don't want to get arrested.
[27:56]They don't want to come to work
[27:57]out of risk that they're going to get deported.
[28:00]Because they sweep you up
[28:01]and you could be out of the country on some plane
[28:03]before anybody even figures out
[28:04]that you're a citizen or you've got a visa.
[28:07]I think this is really important.
[28:07]Or in one of these detention centers
[28:09]that we have now spent $1 billion
[28:13]buying up real estate
[28:14]so we can open these detention facilities
[28:16]around the country.
[28:17]Billions.
[28:17]So we have less immigration coming in.
[28:19]We're deporting people.
[28:21]So this becomes really hard to answer the questions.
[28:24]If you want an affordability,
[28:24]home affordability is going to be a big problem.
[28:26]We have it in the city, right?
[28:28]All these people who voted for Mamdani,
[28:30]they're not worried about the value of the property
[28:32]because they don't own a property.
[28:33]They would like to be in a property.
[28:35]You've done the math on this, right?
[28:37]Is it the average age or the median age
[28:39]of a homebuyer around 40, 40, 40, 41 years old?
[28:42]Donald Trump was talking about a 50-year mortgage,
[28:44]so you'd be 91 when you finish your mortgage,
[28:46]even if they're not on a 50-year mortgage.
[28:49]You're still gonna be 71, right?
[28:50]So this is a big problem to solve,
[28:53]but it's just supply and demand.
[28:54]So once you put more supply into the market,
[28:57]you will bring home prices down for some people,
[29:00]which means some people will suffer for a few years
[29:02]while their home prices don't go up meteorically,
[29:06]but we'll have more houses
[29:07]and more people will have houses.
[29:09]It's a long-term fix.
[29:10]You can't do it with these little things
[29:11]that Donald Trump's doing
[29:12]because you can't do it by deporting people
[29:14]and putting a crunch on actual homebuilding.
[29:16]But this is one of the reasons this week
[29:19]you're starting to see Republicans in Congress
[29:21]peel off from the president and say, hold your horses.
[29:24]We may finally take back our power, maybe,
[29:30]and start to say, these tariffs don't work.
[29:32]We don't need them.
[29:33]They don't make sense, right?
[29:35]Especially for some lawmakers in states
[29:37]where the tariffs are hitting the hardest.
[29:40]I believe it's Don Bacon
[29:41]who just said in the last few days,
[29:43]like Canada's our partner.
[29:45]You know this better than I do.
[29:47]We cannot be having this nonsensical trade war.
[29:50]We need them, they need us.
[29:51]It's a partnership.
[29:52]It hurts agricultural states a lot.
[29:55]This business in Michigan about not opening that bridge.
[29:58]Michigan, the border between Michigan and Windsor,
[30:01]Ontario, my little piece of trivia, as you know,
[30:03]Stephanie, is that when you're standing in Detroit
[30:05]and you're looking at Windsor, you're facing south.
[30:08]Canada is south of America in Detroit.
[30:10]Anyway, I just like to say that a lot.
[30:12]Wait, what?
[30:13]Yeah, Detroit, the way it goes on the Windsor River
[30:15]is Detroit is north of Windsor.
[30:18]So when you're in Detroit, just the river
[30:20]across is Canada, but you're looking south.
[30:22]Little piece of trivia. Who knew?
[30:25]Border, Windsor to Detroit.
[30:28]There are more goods that go across that border
[30:30]than anywhere in the world.
[30:33]There is no border that sees that much trade
[30:36]as that border.
[30:37]They need that new bridge desperately.
[30:39]And Donald Trump, on a whim, because he wants to offend
[30:43]or shame a Democratic governor, says no.
[30:46]And please a donor.
[30:47]Yeah, but it's the same as the gateway tunnel stuff.
[30:50]Everybody will use the gateway tunnels
[30:52]between New Jersey and New York.
[30:54]Everybody will use that bridge from Michigan to Detroit
[30:58]is used by car makers.
[31:00]And everybody uses it.
[31:01]You can't punish everybody
[31:03]because you don't like Democrats.
[31:04]Ali, excuse me.
[31:06]Sorry, the president blocking funding
[31:09]or blocking construction of the gateway project here
[31:13]is one of the things that thrust Mikey Sherrill
[31:16]into the governorship in New Jersey.
[31:19]Yeah.
[31:20]So by the way, for our viewers who don't know,
[31:23]these are the gateway tunnels.
[31:24]These are tunnels that go between New York
[31:25]and New Jersey that were damaged
[31:27]during Superstorm Sandy.
[31:29]So this is an old fashioned infrastructure project
[31:33]as you get.
[31:34]Those tunnels reopen, trains can go through.
[31:37]And I don't know if you know the number,
[31:39]but it's some crazy amount of American GDP
[31:42]that relies on the traffic between New York and New Jersey.
[31:44]It's kind of like Michigan and Ontario.
[31:47]This is not a thing to play with, right?
[31:49]When you look at, if you're in China,
[31:51]you can take a train from Beijing to Shanghai
[31:54]in under five hours, high-speed train.
[31:57]That's the distance from New York to Chicago,
[31:58]which would take you 20 plus hours on the train,
[32:00]or New York to Atlanta,
[32:01]which would take you 20 plus hours on the train.
[32:03]To be a competitive economy in 2026,
[32:06]you've got to have great infrastructure.
[32:09]You can't play these games.
[32:11]Well, we got a question from Molly.
[32:13]Oh, well here, it's about-
[32:14]Hi, Molly, nice to have you back.
[32:15]Team 119 via YouTube.
[32:16]You can ask it, Allie.
[32:17]Do you see funding being released for the gateway tunnel
[32:20]and the project resuming anytime soon?
[32:21]So here's the thing.
[32:22]Donald Trump said something, was it last Friday?
[32:24]He said to Schumer,
[32:26]if Schumer agrees to Donald Trump naming,
[32:29]I knew about the Dulles Airport thing.
[32:31]He wants Dulles Airport named after him.
[32:32]Dulles Airport and Penn Station.
[32:34]Penn Station, in New York,
[32:35]he wants Penn Station named after him too.
[32:37]Schumer agrees to those two things.
[32:38]Donald Trump said he'd lift the funding.
[32:40]He'd release the funding for the gateway tunnel.
[32:43]It's really bad politically for Donald Trump
[32:45]when he does things like this.
[32:47]I agree.
[32:48]It's definitely the people that I cover
[32:49]in the business community,
[32:50]even those who are supportive of Donald Trump.
[32:53]When I ask him about things like Donald Trump
[32:56]holding up funding and construction
[32:59]for the gateway tunnels,
[33:00]because he wants his name on Penn Station,
[33:02]they cringe, they run from me, they hide from me.
[33:06]Just like on Friday, Donald Trump in his office
[33:09]posting the video of President Barack
[33:12]and First Lady Michelle Obama
[33:14]depicted as gorillas, as monkeys.
[33:17]When Donald Trump does things like that,
[33:20]does it make the darkest corner of his base
[33:23]laugh or chuckle or give him a high five?
[33:25]Maybe, but then you have a whole universe
[33:27]of other people who are humiliated,
[33:30]angered, and mortified by it.
[33:32]And many of those people are people who voted for him.
[33:34]But there's one other issue with the gateway tunnel.
[33:37]We're losing money.
[33:39]When you put a giant project on ice like that,
[33:42]like I just want people to understand
[33:44]people who don't live in New York and New Jersey,
[33:47]it's already underway.
[33:48]There's already a huge amount of construction.
[33:51]It's not theoretical, yeah, it's happening.
[33:52]Theoretically, teams working on this.
[33:55]And so now, if you simply press pause,
[33:58]they need to still be spending huge amounts of money
[34:01]to protect the space.
[34:03]Yep, and they need other work,
[34:05]so they take on other projects.
[34:07]I think we got another question here.
[34:08]Broadway Scott D on YouTube says,
[34:11]what will be the direct effect
[34:12]if tariffs are struck down?
[34:14]Now, I think, Broadway Scott D,
[34:15]what you're referring to, there are two things.
[34:17]There's a Supreme Court case
[34:19]that's to determine whether Donald Trump,
[34:21]whether these tariffs are legal.
[34:23]And most legal people and other courts
[34:26]have said that's not the way you do it.
[34:28]You can have tariffs,
[34:29]but you actually have to do it
[34:30]the proper way through Congress.
[34:31]The other thing is today, I think at 5 p.m.,
[34:34]Congress is going to vote on the Canada tariffs.
[34:39]It's not entirely clear to me what it means.
[34:42]The legislation that they're voting on today
[34:44]would terminate the national emergency
[34:46]declared by the president in the executive order
[34:48]imposing tariffs on Canada.
[34:50]So the issue before the Supreme Court is,
[34:53]are these emergency tariffs?
[34:54]Because remember, it was all about fentanyl.
[34:56]And Canadians were like, what are you talking about?
[34:58]We don't actually send you fentanyl.
[34:59]Like, what's this about?
[35:01]And so that's what the issue is.
[35:03]As Donald Trump imposed emergency tariffs,
[35:04]he said there was a national emergency.
[35:06]And the courts are expected to rule on the fact that,
[35:09]well, no, you might want tariffs,
[35:11]and maybe that's a good policy goal,
[35:12]but you can't use your power to declare an emergency
[35:16]to impose tariffs.
[35:17]So I don't know, what is the effect, Stephanie,
[35:20]if they strike down the tariffs?
[35:22]If the Supreme Court-
[35:22]So if they strike down the tariffs, right,
[35:24]in theory, all of this money
[35:26]is supposed to go back to the businesses,
[35:28]but how it's going to get there,
[35:30]like we've heard Scott Fesson say,
[35:31]this would be too messy, we can't do it.
[35:34]But like, just because it's messy
[35:36]doesn't mean that they shouldn't do it,
[35:38]especially if that's what the Supreme Court says.
[35:40]And what it seems like the Supreme Court is doing
[35:42]is like kicking the can down the road
[35:44]and kicking the can down the road,
[35:46]and they just don't want to deal with this,
[35:48]because if the Supreme Court does shoot it down,
[35:53]we've heard from the administration,
[35:55]they're just gonna find other ways to do it, right?
[35:57]They're just gonna,
[35:58]they're gonna impose these tariffs one way or another,
[35:59]but the bigger issue is,
[36:01]I'm sure the biggest companies out there
[36:03]will get their money back,
[36:04]and it's just not gonna make its way
[36:06]to the smaller ones, and that's just a huge problem.
[36:08]And it's never gonna get to the consumers,
[36:11]it's just not.
[36:13]No, and Costco's suing the government,
[36:15]but yeah, it's kind of tricky
[36:16]because some companies ate the tariffs,
[36:17]some companies passed it on,
[36:19]so I might have bought a car, I didn't,
[36:21]but let's say I bought a car four months ago
[36:23]and the price was up 3,000 bucks because of tariffs,
[36:25]and I paid it, do I get a piece of that action now?
[36:28]Do I get to tell the car dealer,
[36:29]can I have my 3,000 bucks back because of tariffs?
[36:31]Because somebody's gotta pay somebody back,
[36:32]although Donald Trump says the money's not there.
[36:34]Ali, I did a home renovation last year,
[36:36]and in lots of the raw materials that we bought,
[36:40]we would get, on our receipt there'd be a total,
[36:43]and then there'd be like a plus X amount of dollars
[36:45]for the tariff.
[36:47]Do you really think I can go back
[36:50]to a lumber yard this spring and say,
[36:54]remember me, Stephanie Ruhl,
[36:56]remember that surcharge I paid for the tariffs?
[36:58]No, that's just not gonna happen.
[36:59]And to your point,
[37:02]Donald Trump has told Jesus, Mary, and Joseph
[37:05]that he's giving them the money from the tariffs.
[37:07]Yes.
[37:07]Like he has spent it 10 times over.
[37:10]Yeah.
[37:10]Hey, I wanna bring Lisa Rubin in.
[37:13]She's been, as you and I talked to her on Friday night,
[37:15]she is following the Epstein stuff really, really closely.
[37:19]But Stephanie, I mean, I can talk to Lisa on my own now
[37:22]because I didn't get any time on last week's show.
[37:25]You guys can talk for a minute, that'd be great.
[37:27]All right, thanks.
[37:29]And even you guys fight over me, that's nice.
[37:31]Lisa, let's talk a little bit about,
[37:34]some stuff came out in the discussions.
[37:36]I mean, there's testimony to Congress,
[37:37]but in the discussions from the members of Congress
[37:41]who have looked at the Epstein files,
[37:43]or at least looked at some of them,
[37:44]as of Monday, they were able to go in.
[37:46]And I'm told, you tell me if this is true.
[37:48]I'm told that it's in a secure location,
[37:51]they can look through things, they can't record,
[37:52]they can't take anything out.
[37:54]But in theory, they have access to everything.
[37:57]Is that true?
[37:58]They have access to everything that's been produced
[38:01]is my understanding.
[38:02]Okay.
[38:03]Meaning unredacted, but not stuff that if,
[38:05]some people say that half the files or whatever,
[38:07]half the stuff hasn't been produced,
[38:09]that's not, they don't have access to that.
[38:11]My understanding is they don't have access to that, Ali.
[38:13]And to go back to something you just said,
[38:15]some people say, those people include Todd Blanch.
[38:17]When he held his press conference announcing the production
[38:20]of this roughly three million pages
[38:23]in this most recent tranche
[38:24]of the Epstein files production,
[38:25]he said, we are holding back
[38:27]another roughly three million pages
[38:30]for reasons including attorney-client privilege,
[38:33]deliberate process privilege,
[38:35]the fact that certain things couldn't be redacted
[38:38]in a way that protected victim privacy,
[38:40]so they had to be withheld altogether.
[38:42]Some of those reasons also include the fact
[38:43]that they were what's called
[38:45]or what prosecutors would call CSAM,
[38:46]child sex abuse material.
[38:48]They were very clear from the outset
[38:50]that they were never going to produce
[38:51]any of that for public consumption.
[38:53]And that is true for members as well.
[38:55]However, Thomas Massey,
[38:57]I think has said in the past
[38:58]that there might be 20 plus men
[39:02]who are implicated in the files.
[39:04]I think somebody else,
[39:05]Ghislaine Maxwell suggested the number was 25.
[39:08]And then did Thomas Massey and Ro Khanna
[39:11]suggest that there are some specific number
[39:14]of people who are in those files
[39:16]who have not been,
[39:18]whose names have not been made public?
[39:19]Six people, I think they said,
[39:21]but I'm having just trouble keeping track of the numbers.
[39:23]No, I think based on their early review,
[39:26]Khanna and Massey are among the people
[39:28]who've gone to the Department of Justice
[39:29]and sat at one of those secure terminals
[39:31]that are only available between nine and five,
[39:33]and you can only take handwritten notes, all of that.
[39:36]They have said that they identified
[39:38]the names of six particular individuals in the files
[39:41]who were participants in communications
[39:44]or other conduct that they found troubling.
[39:46]And you're right, Ghislaine Maxwell has also separately
[39:48]as part of her petition to be released from prison
[39:52]said that there are 25 men who reached
[39:55]what she describes as secret settlements
[39:57]with some of the Epstein survivors.
[39:59]She believes obviously that their complicity
[40:03]is one reason why she should be released
[40:05]and not sort of singled out for prosecution.
[40:08]But hearing that information,
[40:09]people like Khanna said,
[40:11]I wanna hear about that
[40:12]when Attorney General Bonny comes in to testify.
[40:15]That's one thing I definitely wanna know about,
[40:17]and that's something I wanna ask Ghislaine Maxwell about
[40:19]when she testifies to us as well.
[40:21]You and I both know that ended earlier this week
[40:23]with Ghislaine Maxwell taking the fifth.
[40:24]So what happens there?
[40:26]If they have names of people,
[40:28]they have certain privileges as members of Congress,
[40:30]then how does, what's the process here?
[40:33]How does anything come of that?
[40:35]Well, I think, I'm so glad you asked that question
[40:38]because somebody was asking me sort of a broader one today.
[40:40]Like how do the victims get justice now
[40:43]that this process has been so deeply problematic
[40:46]and they can't necessarily entrust future prosecution
[40:51]by the Department of Justice
[40:52]as a way of obtaining accountability.
[40:54]And so one of those ways is what you just mentioned.
[40:56]Members of Congress have protection under the constitution
[40:59]under a particular provision
[41:00]known as the Speech and Debate Clause
[41:02]where they are immunized from criminal prosecution
[41:05]and civil liability for things that they say and do
[41:08]in the conduct of their jobs.
[41:10]Now, it's not that cut and dry.
[41:12]There's been lots of litigation
[41:13]about how far that privilege goes.
[41:16]But one option available to members
[41:18]and Ro Khanna has already exercised this privilege
[41:21]is to name names
[41:22]under the guise of the Speech and Debate Clause.
[41:24]And indeed, some of the survivor groups
[41:26]have said to the Congress people, please do this.
[41:29]Because if we do this,
[41:31]we might be defendants in defamation lawsuits
[41:34]that we can not afford to defend ourselves again,
[41:37]let alone pay a judgment.
[41:39]But if you do this, you have constitutional immunity.
[41:44]And so please do this
[41:45]because it will exert pressure on the department
[41:47]to take action that they might otherwise
[41:50]not feel any pressure to take.
[41:52]And so I think that's their hope
[41:53]that the vehicle for further accountability here
[41:56]is that members of Congress will name names,
[41:58]that they will do further investigation
[42:00]on the basis of naming names.
[42:01]And that conversely, that will put some pressure
[42:03]on the Department of Justice
[42:04]to open new investigations
[42:06]or tailor ongoing investigations
[42:09]into some of those people that they believe
[42:10]to be complicit in the abuse
[42:13]that they suffered at the hands
[42:14]of Jeffrey Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell.
[42:17]Talk to me about the women,
[42:19]Pramila Jayapal asked the survivors to stand
[42:22]and asked them if they've been able
[42:25]to talk to the Department of Justice.
[42:27]Why would that, tell me about
[42:29]why they would or wouldn't have been talking
[42:31]to the Department of Justice.
[42:32]The Department of Justice knows these survivors
[42:34]who are prepared to be out in public have information.
[42:38]Tell me what the issue is here.
[42:40]Well, there are two issues, right?
[42:42]One is how they've been treated
[42:44]in the process of producing these Epstein files.
[42:46]A lot of the survivors are angry and rightfully so
[42:50]that information that the department
[42:51]not only had permission to redact
[42:54]but was obligated under court orders to redact
[42:57]didn't happen that way, right?
[42:58]You can see in the files still to this day
[43:01]individual first names, last names, credit card numbers
[43:04]phone numbers, email addresses
[43:06]and the like of various survivors of Jeffrey Epstein.
[43:10]And many of them want to talk to a person
[43:13]a real person at the Department of Justice
[43:15]doesn't have to be Pam Bondi or Todd Blanch
[43:17]but they want to have a human conversation
[43:19]with someone who takes some accountability
[43:21]for that and explains to them
[43:23]how that could conceivably have happened
[43:25]given all the public representations
[43:27]that the department made.
[43:28]But the second reason and I think the more interesting one
[43:31]that many of the survivors want to talk to people
[43:34]at the Department of Justice
[43:35]is many of these women never talked to the department
[43:39]or haven't talked to the department in many years.
[43:41]So for example, many of the women who were survivors
[43:45]whose experiences were part of the initial 2006
[43:48]through eight investigation in Florida
[43:51]they haven't talked to the Department of Justice
[43:53]since then and many of them will say to me privately
[43:57]when I talked to the department originally
[43:59]I didn't say all the things that I really had to say.
[44:01]I was deeply afraid of Jeffrey and his influence.
[44:05]I was extremely young or at least some of them will say
[44:07]I was so traumatized that I buried and repressed
[44:11]memories of abuse that as an adult
[44:13]I've come to terms with and I'm ready to talk about.
[44:15]And it's for those reasons as well
[44:18]that some of them now say I want to have a hearing
[44:22]not like a formal hearing, but I want to have a vehicle
[44:25]to share what I have to say privately
[44:28]with the FBI or the Department of Justice.
[44:30]Some of them have tried to be in contact
[44:32]with the department through their lawyers.
[44:34]I can tell you many of them have
[44:36]when they have discovered their information
[44:38]in the files have had their lawyers
[44:40]go to the department and say
[44:41]particular numbers of documents.
[44:44]This is like on their very right-hand corner
[44:46]lower right-hand corner of the document
[44:47]there's an identifier.
[44:49]They have called the department and said
[44:51]my client's name appears in EFTA string of numbers.
[44:54]Please make sure that gets redacted or taken down.
[44:57]Sometimes that's been affected.
[44:59]Sometimes that's not.
[45:00]But part of that entreaty by the lawyers is also
[45:04]my clients have something to say.
[45:05]They want to meet with you.
[45:06]And from what I understand from some of the survivors
[45:08]I speak to that's fallen on deaf ears.
[45:11]So last Friday night, you and Stephanie and I
[45:13]talked to Haley Robson, a survivor.
[45:15]And when Stephanie asked Haley,
[45:18]who would you like to see held accountable?
[45:20]She said one name, Alex Acosta.
[45:23]Tell me about this from a legal perspective.
[45:25]Look, Acosta was not a federal, was he a federal?
[45:27]Yeah, he was.
[45:29]He was the Florida?
[45:32]US attorney.
[45:33]He was a US attorney for what's called
[45:34]the Southern District of Florida
[45:35]which is the area of Miami and around it.
[45:38]And he was principally responsible
[45:40]for that federal investigation into Jeffrey Epstein
[45:42]that led to what we commonly refer to
[45:45]as that sweetheart deal.
[45:46]When she says she wants Alex Acosta to be responsible
[45:49]it's because Alex Acosta was the person
[45:52]who not only signed off on
[45:54]but is viewed by many of the survivors
[45:56]as being the brain behind the non-prosecution deal.
[45:59]And the way that that worked is that Jeffrey Epstein
[46:02]agreed that he would plead guilty in state court
[46:04]to two smallish crimes, solicitation of a prostitute
[46:08]and enticing a minor to participate in sex acts.
[46:12]In exchange, what he got was a promise
[46:14]from the Southern District of Florida
[46:15]not to prosecute him on multiple counts
[46:18]of sex trafficking and other much more serious
[46:21]federal crimes, he also then committed
[46:25]that he would agree to not contest liability
[46:28]under a civil statute that victims could sue him under.
[46:31]But he got from them a list of victims
[46:35]which means he basically got insight
[46:37]into the Department of Justice's investigation
[46:39]because they handed him a list,
[46:40]these are the people for whom you're gonna agree
[46:42]you will owe damages.
[46:44]Well, that told Jeffrey Epstein
[46:45]everything he needed to know.
[46:47]These are the people who have told on you essentially.
[46:49]So the victims were very, very upset
[46:52]with that deal for a variety of reasons.
[46:54]They tried to contest it in court
[46:55]after they learned about it.
[46:57]They ultimately did not succeed.
[46:59]Alex Acosta and several others were investigated
[47:02]by the Department of Justice in 2020
[47:04]for professional misconduct
[47:06]but not for any criminal liability.
[47:10]And I think when Haley is talking about
[47:11]seeing Alex Acosta held accountable,
[47:14]she's talking about something more than she
[47:17]is about him and approbation.
[47:18]You and I both know he lost his job as Labor Secretary
[47:20]in large part because his role
[47:23]in this whole episode was revealed.
[47:25]So as our viewers know, you cannot stump Lisa Rubin.
[47:29]So this is your chance,
[47:30]you got about 10 minutes more to ask her a question.
[47:32]You can send us the questions in the chat.
[47:34]We'll also check the email, VelshiRuleatMS.now.
[47:39]Lisa, is there anything that you think,
[47:43]so I wanna go back to the Galen Maxwell
[47:44]talking about 25 men,
[47:45]Thomas Massey talking about 20 men
[47:48]and now there's these six men who have been named.
[47:51]What's Galen Maxwell's argument
[47:52]that these men made some kind of a deal.
[47:56]They, outside of the legal framework,
[47:59]outside of the prosecutorial framework,
[48:01]they made a deal.
[48:02]And they should be prosecuted?
[48:03]Well, it's not just that.
[48:04]Okay, so first of all,
[48:06]Galen Maxwell wrote her own habeas corpus petition.
[48:09]She is serving as her own lawyer in that
[48:12]in part because when somebody
[48:13]who's already in federal custody
[48:15]is challenging their conviction,
[48:16]usually you have to use a different lawyer
[48:18]than the people that you've already used previously
[48:20]because one of the common accusations is
[48:22]I wasn't given effective assistance by my counsel
[48:25]at all previous stages of the litigation.
[48:27]Galen Maxwell was tried and convicted.
[48:28]She then appealed her conviction
[48:30]to a federal court of appeals.
[48:32]She lost there.
[48:33]She then tried to go to the Supreme Court
[48:34]on a very narrow issue
[48:36]and they didn't agree to take their case.
[48:38]So now she is representing herself
[48:40]and her argument as best I can understand it
[48:43]because it is not written
[48:44]as a lawyer would have written it
[48:46]is that the government was,
[48:48]to use colloquial term,
[48:50]the government was in bed
[48:52]with some of the victims' lawyers
[48:54]and they gave those lawyers
[48:56]too much carte blanche
[48:58]to the products of their investigation.
[49:01]And as a result,
[49:02]some of the men who she views as complicit
[49:07]entered into settlements with survivors
[49:09]that are still secret.
[49:11]And she says two things happened.
[49:13]One, the government unlawfully collaborated
[49:16]with private lawyers for victims
[49:18]in a way that violated her rights.
[49:21]And two, it proves that she was selectively prosecuted
[49:25]because look at all these other people
[49:27]who had settlements.
[49:28]I will tell you that the basis
[49:29]for Galen Maxwell's accusation
[49:32]is a podcast interview
[49:33]that a particular victim's lawyer did about a year ago.
[49:37]And what he says is not consistent
[49:39]with how Galen Maxwell has portrayed it.
[49:42]What he said on the podcast
[49:43]was that on behalf of some of his clients,
[49:46]he reached confidential settlements,
[49:48]that part is true,
[49:49]with about 10 to 15 men
[49:51]who he said occupied what I'll call
[49:54]sort of a middle territory.
[49:55]He said,
[49:56]there were men who entered into
[49:59]legitimate consensual dating relationships
[50:02]with girls who had quote unquote
[50:04]aged out of Jeffrey's preference.
[50:06]So like when Jeffrey was quote unquote
[50:08]done with someone,
[50:10]maybe they still remained in his social orbit
[50:12]and maybe they met rich and powerful friends of his
[50:15]that were 20 plus years their senior.
[50:17]But he says some of these girls actually had
[50:19]legitimate, totally non-sus relationships with these guys.
[50:25]Those aren't the guys he reached settlements with.
[50:27]He said the guys that he reached settlements with
[50:29]are people who occupied a middle ground.
[50:32]Maybe they didn't sexually assault his clients,
[50:35]but they understood full well
[50:38]how they knew Jeffrey Epstein
[50:40]that they had been victims of Epstein's predation
[50:44]and therefore engaged in a relationship
[50:47]with some of these women
[50:48]that was something less than fully consensual,
[50:51]even if it weren't something for which
[50:53]they could have been criminally liable.
[50:55]And so he was very clear in sort of separating them out
[50:58]from somebody who had raped or trafficked
[51:01]or sexually abused women routinely.
[51:04]They said these were bad guys.
[51:06]We don't know who those 10 to 15 men are.
[51:09]One of the things that the victims got
[51:11]and it's their legal right to get
[51:13]is a confidential settlement
[51:14]where they agreed to stay silent
[51:16]in exchange for some sum of money.
[51:18]Barring their desire to break that agreement
[51:22]and owe the money back
[51:23]to the person with whom they reached the settlement.
[51:25]I don't know that we'll ever know
[51:26]the identities of those people
[51:29]unless they are subpoenaed for information
[51:31]or they are asked by the FBI
[51:34]and Department of Justice to come in
[51:36]and under some form of process,
[51:38]they are forced to share that information.
[51:40]Most confidential settlements have an exception
[51:42]for that reason.
[51:43]You can share information
[51:44]where you're forced to do so by a government
[51:46]but they can't voluntarily walk into the FBI
[51:49]and share that.
[51:51]HBMike47 on YouTube asks,
[51:53]Acosta, AUSA Florida,
[51:55]would he have had to get approval
[51:56]for the Epstein deal?
[51:57]Who was the attorney general?
[51:58]I think the attorney general
[51:59]was Alberto Gonzalez at the time.
[52:02]So yes and no.
[52:05]When he reached the non-prosecution agreement,
[52:08]my recollection is that he had involvement
[52:10]from people in the child exploitation unit.
[52:13]I don't remember whether anybody
[52:15]at the Department of Justice,
[52:17]at like the criminal division
[52:18]or the attorney general had to sign off on it.
[52:20]However, because this is Jeffrey Epstein,
[52:23]he was incapable of accepting a deal
[52:25]he himself had struck
[52:26]and he had buyer's remorse.
[52:28]So after he entered into non-prosecution agreement,
[52:30]he then hired a second series of lawyers
[52:33]to try and basically contest the deal
[52:36]and try to argue that the deal
[52:37]should be undone and was unfair.
[52:39]And in that telling of the story,
[52:41]they did try to appeal, right?
[52:45]It's not a formal appeals process.
[52:46]Like try to get somebody high up
[52:48]in the Department of Justice
[52:50]to say that the deal should be undone.
[52:52]And at the time they went all the way up
[52:56]to the deputy attorney general
[52:58]or the deputy assistant attorney general
[52:59]in charge of the criminal division
[53:01]to get a extra hearing.
[53:03]They wrote extensive long,
[53:06]what lawyers would call like a letter brief,
[53:09]explaining why the deal wasn't fair to Epstein.
[53:12]And ultimately Alex Acosta and his team
[53:14]got really sick of their trying to relitigate
[53:17]the terms of the deal.
[53:18]And in June of 2008,
[53:20]months after Jeffrey Epstein had made the deal,
[53:22]he basically said to him,
[53:24]look, nobody in Washington is gonna undo this for you.
[53:27]They've told us that they're backing us up.
[53:29]So either you walk into a state court next week
[53:31]and you plead guilty to these two crimes
[53:33]or we're very prepared to walk into the grand jury
[53:36]with an indictment that charges you
[53:37]with a hell of a lot more than this.
[53:39]Stephanie's back with us.
[53:43]Stephanie, I have been grilling Lisa literally.
[53:46]I'm listening to it.
[53:47]I mean, she- Here's my question.
[53:48]Yeah.
[53:49]Why should we believe anything
[53:51]Ghislaine Maxwell says, okay?
[53:54]We shouldn't.
[53:55]It was two days ago that Lauren Boebert,
[53:57]of all people,
[53:59]walked out of the reading room
[54:00]after reading the unredacted emails.
[54:02]And her words were,
[54:03]Ghislaine Maxwell is a monster
[54:06]who should serve more time in prison.
[54:08]And where is she?
[54:10]She's at a country club style prison
[54:14]after she worked out some mysterious questionable deal
[54:18]with the deputy attorney general, Todd Blanch,
[54:21]who had no business being the person,
[54:23]to be the person to go down to Florida
[54:25]and negotiate with her.
[54:26]So on what planet?
[54:28]And not to mention,
[54:29]she's basically said to the government,
[54:32]you let me out and I'll tell you everything,
[54:34]or you don't let me out and I'll tell you nothing.
[54:36]This is not a good faith participant.
[54:39]No, it's not.
[54:39]And Stephanie, I don't have enough time
[54:42]to tell you how many ways from Sunday
[54:44]we should not trust anything
[54:46]that comes out of Ghislaine Maxwell's mouth.
[54:48]But let's start with the fact
[54:49]that Ghislaine Maxwell was charged
[54:51]with two counts of perjury
[54:52]and her Southern District prosecution.
[54:55]Those didn't ultimately get tried against her
[54:58]because they secured a conviction
[54:59]on a number of other charges
[55:00]that was enough to put her behind bars for 20 years.
[55:03]But this is a person who had already been charged
[55:07]with lying to the FBI
[55:10]and lying in sworn deposition testimony.
[55:14]But putting that aside even for a reason,
[55:17]she had no incentive to tell Todd Blanch the truth.
[55:20]And the reason I say that is because Todd Blanch
[55:22]gave her what's called use immunity
[55:24]for those two days of interviews
[55:26]that he conducted with her
[55:27]in a federal courthouse in Florida.
[55:29]Use immunity is like the concept
[55:31]that anything you say
[55:33]during the course of a law enforcement interview
[55:35]cannot be used against you
[55:37]unless they can prove that you lied.
[55:40]But as you know, Ghislaine Maxwell gave them
[55:42]all the testimony they could ever want
[55:44]when she exculpated President Trump.
[55:47]After that, everything else was just gravy.
[55:49]And so there is no universe
[55:51]in which Ghislaine Maxwell is a reliable narrator
[55:54]of her own story, much less those of the women
[55:59]and girls who survived her predation.
[56:01]And I want to get to this question
[56:03]from one of our viewers, Broadway Scott.
[56:05]I don't think you got to this, Sally.
[56:06]No.
[56:08]Can the survivors sue the Department of Justice
[56:10]and Pam Bondi in civil court for damages
[56:14]because of the non-redacted failures
[56:15]in the documents released?
[56:16]And I want to remind our audience,
[56:18]when we first got that release
[56:20]in the beginning of last week,
[56:21]it wasn't just names,
[56:22]it wasn't just some driver's licenses.
[56:25]There was nude photographs of some of these women.
[56:28]Nude photographs.
[56:29]It wasn't until the New York Times contacted the DOJ
[56:31]and said, yo, take this down.
[56:33]And that was after it was public.
[56:36]So the answer is probably not,
[56:39]but I'll explain what the loophole is.
[56:42]So first of all,
[56:43]it's really difficult to sue the federal government
[56:45]because as the sovereign,
[56:46]they're generally immune from damages suits
[56:49]from ordinary citizens.
[56:51]There's this law called the Federal Tort Claims Act
[56:53]that holds that if the government has damaged you
[56:56]in certain ways,
[56:57]they will waive that sovereign immunity
[56:59]and allow you to file suit.
[57:01]But there are a bunch of exceptions to it.
[57:03]The first and most important of which is
[57:05]it begins with an administrative claim
[57:07]and you basically have to sort of follow
[57:11]a very extensive paper trail
[57:15]for a period of six months to a year
[57:18]to exhaust what they call exhaust
[57:20]the administrative remedy first.
[57:22]After that, if you can't reach a resolution
[57:25]with the federal agency that you've sued,
[57:26]then you can go to court.
[57:28]But certain types of claims
[57:29]are removed from that entirely.
[57:31]So one of the claims, for example,
[57:33]that you can't sue for under this act is defamation.
[57:36]You also can't sue
[57:37]for what's called an intentional tort.
[57:38]So if they were to say DOJ did this to us purposefully,
[57:42]they intentionally inflicted emotional distress on us,
[57:45]that's not a claim
[57:47]that the government waives immunity for.
[57:48]They'd have to say that the government was negligent
[57:52]in its treatment of them,
[57:53]that the government negligently inflicted harm on them.
[57:56]From what I understand,
[57:58]lawyers who have looked at the possibility
[58:00]of suing the department
[58:01]aren't particularly sanguine about this.
[58:04]That doesn't mean that we won't see
[58:06]some constellation of survivors.
[58:08]Try to sue the Department of Justice
[58:09]for exactly the reasons that our viewer asked.
[58:12]But remember, the first six to 12 months
[58:15]of this process is gonna be something that happens
[58:17]underground in complicated paperwork
[58:20]between the survivors and the department alone
[58:22]outside of a court.
[58:23]We won't see it.
[58:24]It'll take a while for it to sort of materialize
[58:27]into the public domain
[58:28]and for us to be viewers of it.
[58:30]I really appreciate it.
[58:31]Well, Lisa, the promise that we make
[58:31]to our viewers every week
[58:33]is that we are going to bring on the foremost experts
[58:36]to answer whatever questions they have
[58:38]with the news at hand.
[58:39]And I'm gonna say,
[58:40]we knocked the cover off the ball today.
[58:41]We definitely did.
[58:42]Thank you, guys.
[58:43]I'm gonna thank you for that.
[58:44]I'm gonna say, little turning, pulling back the curtain,
[58:46]I never know how to use the word sanguine.
[58:48]Like I never know-
[58:49]Me too!
[58:50]I was thinking that too!
[58:51]I was on the wrong side of it.
[58:51]I was thinking that too!
[58:52]I'm not very sanguine about that.
[58:54]And what I say is entirely the opposite of what I mean.
[58:57]Like it's just one of those words.
[58:59]I also can't tell the difference between,
[59:00]I mean, I know that they're different
[59:02]because one's green and one's white,
[59:03]but I can't really instantly identify
[59:05]cauliflower or broccoli.
[59:06]I get it wrong.
[59:07]Okay, I've got broccoli covered,
[59:09]cauliflower covered,
[59:12]broccolini covered, sanguine.
[59:15]That's another story.
[59:16]No, I got it.
[59:16]Well, Lisa, thanks a million.
[59:18]Great to see you.
[59:19]Thank you, guys.
[59:19]If you could get me on Folsom,
[59:20]we'll talk about that later.
[59:21]Thanks, bye.
[59:22]See ya!
[59:23]Thank you!
[59:24]Thank you to you out there.
[59:25]Please, when you're not watching us,
[59:26]you can still put questions in
[59:27]or send them to VelshiRule at ms.now.
[59:30]VelshiRule at ms.now.
[59:30]And you don't have to wait until next Wednesday.
[59:32]As the week goes on and you're getting angrier
[59:34]and angrier or more confused,
[59:36]Send us a question.
[59:37]Send it our way.
[59:38]We're here.
[59:39]Forcing us to answer a question
[59:41]in a more Folsom fashion is better for both of us.
[59:44]It makes us better at what we do.
[59:45]So we're so grateful.
[59:46]Stephanie, great to be back with you.
[59:48]Great to be back.
[59:48]Thank you, partner.
[59:49]I'll see you in the studio
[59:50]and we'll see you next week.
[59:51]Bye, everybody.
[59:52]I'll see you around the way.
[59:53]Bye, thank you!