[0:02]But the Trump DOJ is doing something, but also not meeting the deadline. They have not released everything from the Epstein files, but we do have new material. And so what we're going to do here, and Nicole Wall has just walked us through why there's so much bipartisan pressure on this administration to comply, we're going to walk through what
[0:19]we're learning as we go together, because I got all the materials here. We got a whole team inside MSNOW doing this work, going through the batches of documents fresh from just a few hours. We've been combing through it. No Trump officials already admit that they are essentially
[0:33]not complying with the law. They are not releasing all the files. And the way they walked this out today was by first almost trying to lower expectations. The deputy attorney general blatantly saying they were not going to comply fully with the law, which fed some
[0:48]negative headlines. Then they released a bunch of stuff. And as I was mentioning to Nicole, we've got the four categories here I'm going to walk through. We have some new grand jury materials. We have some new photos. So it is important even amidst the skepticism
[1:03]that is well-earned for this government to deal in the facts of what we have. And that's what we're going to do tonight. Now, there are many redactions, which raises a question. This is a file that was over 90 pages that we pulled, and they've redacted everything as you see.
[1:19]That's going to feed more questions about the compliance with Democrats warning tonight, and we'll hear from one shortly, that they will use all tools available to get this law 100% complied with. We are also parsing through the various different
[1:32]materials we've got, and that includes court documents from cases where we didn't have all the information. That goes all the way back to 2008. There are hundreds of photos, some videos, and some audio tapes, messages around voicemails
[1:47]that continue to add to the information about this sprawling web. So if you are someone saying tonight, did we get nothing? The answer is no. We, the American public, journalists, lawyers, those interested in this story, got new information.
[2:01]And if you're asking, did we get everything? No. As Nicole and I discussed, we're a long way from that. The DOJ is not being transparent. And so I'm going to show you what I mentioned. How they started the day was not, hey, we're really trying, or the way they worded it in this letter, which I'll get
[2:16]into, which on paper sounds good, like, hey, we're doing as much as we can. But they did something quite different to start the day. The very controversial former defense lawyer for Donald Trump, now the number two official at DOJ, went out on Fox and said, they're not releasing all the files today.
[2:35]I expect that we're going to release several hundred thousand documents today. And those documents will come in all different forms, photographs and other materials. And so I expect that we're going to release more documents over the next couple of weeks.
[2:49]So today, several hundred thousand, and then over the next couple of weeks, I expect several hundred thousand more. The law says what it says. President Trump signed it. And of all the agencies in government, the
[3:03]Justice Department knows a lot about complying with the law. Remember, Mr. Blanche, Pam Bondi, and their deputies and prosecutors, they go after people all the time for not complying with the law. If you have an IRS deadline, you don't get to say, oh, I'm
[3:18]giving you some now and some later, maybe a couple hundred thousand later. This goes to the question of whether this Trump administration is honest, complies with the law, or is dishonest and has a different elite standard for itself than everyone else.
[3:31]Here's how Blanche put it to Congress. Because of the volume of the material and the requirements that every page of every doc be reviewed for potential redactions, final stages of review of some material continue, they talked about that ongoing review being completed over the next two weeks.
[3:46]And that's what I mean about the contrast. As a letter, the reason that's written that way and that carefully, and we have it right here, is they are prepared to be taken to court. And they want to be able to try to argue to judges that they are really doing this.
[4:02]So in writing and to Congress and in the legal documents, this DOJ is acting like the Epstein Transparency Act is good law. They're not defying it. And they are, I think, I'm telling you our reporting, trying to set themselves up to be able to defend this if they are taken to court.
[4:17]At the same time on Fox and elsewhere, they have a little more bluster sounding like they'll decide when and how material comes out. And I mentioned Congressman Ro Khanna, who led this fight on a bipartisan basis, a Democrat who recruited Republicans
[4:31]and then won that clash with the president himself. Here's how he's reacting. Some of the documents, I've just been scanning them, have very heavy redactions. This including documents which judges ordered released, like
[4:46]the grand jury testimony in New York. They owe the Congress and the American public an explanation for every redaction. That I didn't see published on the DOJ page. But the law is very clear that any redaction has to
[5:02]be justified in writing. Fact check, true. Now, in all fairness to the government, the way the law was written, it expedited first the documents. It said release everything by tonight. And then it gives them two more weeks to explain the redactions.
[5:19]So the congressman is correct, although technically under the law, they can, the DOJ, take two more weeks to explain these redactions. And as I told you, some of them require explanations. As to the reference to grand jury material, that's important because that is usually secret. If you remember, say, the Bob Mueller grand jury notes, we
[5:36]never got them, even though they were of public interest. Here the law requires them, and DOJ says, and I'm just sharing with you our notes as we go, that they are releasing the grand jury materials. I'll just make one more point on this.
[5:50]I'm reading from the letter here. And it says, "They will release the materials from Epstein's criminal case in '18, the Maxwell case in '19, the Epstein death probe, and the grand jury materials from the Southern District of New York." So tonight and in the days ahead, we are going to be
[6:04]combing through all of this. You can't instantly do hundreds of thousands of documents, and the DOJ hasn't made it easily searchable. I'll get to that in a moment. So one big question here is, are they complying with those judicial orders to release all the secret grand jury material?
[6:21]And if so, that will yield a lot of important information. And if not, well, there's court cases there and judges there to make them do it. Now I'm going to put back up the statement we started showing you. Chuck Schumer says, "Releasing a mountain of blacked out pages violates the spirit of transparency.
[6:35]Dems will address and assess how the documents have been, quote, "released" to determine what actions must be taken." So that is the state of play. The Democrats are not playing dead. They're not acting like, "Oh, thank you so much for a couple redacted pages." But there is a process aspect to this.
[6:51]Anyone trying to tell you tonight what's in all these documents? Well, you can't believe them because no one, not even an artificial intelligence, can scan all of this instantly. We're going to be going through this with you tonight, so get comfortable, buckle up. I've got great guests.
[7:06]I'm starting with John Flannery, a former federal prosecutor who's been a special counsel to congressional committees. John, welcome. Before we get into all of it, my first question for you tonight, based on what we know, which is fluid, how would you
[7:19]grade the compliance? It's clearly not an F in that they haven't blown off the entire project. And as I showed viewers, it doesn't look like an A. But how do you view the compliance based on what we know? Well, let's start with the simply.
[7:38]They have already defined the order that said that this would happen no later than today. I'm waiting till midnight. Maybe there's more. But I would give them an F because it strikes me that that doesn't occur unless you are having a document dump to
[7:53]withhold, as litigators sometimes do, to withhold the information that is called for by the statute that set this whole thing in motion. The second thing, and you've referred to it already, and so I want to underscore it, that the documents be searchable.
[8:09]My undergraduate degrees are physics and engineering, and I have a master's in information science. I just sort of watch this stuff pass me by because I don't think I could code anything by any language they use today. But one thing I do know, and that is if you take a picture
[8:26]of a document, they call it a TIFF, T-I-F-F, then you can't read that document. And there's jokes about occasional character recognition, which is that you can change that picture into words and letters, and then
[8:40]you can search them. And when you can search them, then you can do Boolean searches, for example, Trump and Epstein. I want all those references. Now they have, in the DOJ dump, produced a page that
[8:58]says, "Type in what you want to search and we will give it to you." So I did what some people would do on their home computers, a Control-F. I took their little form and I typed in T-R-U-M-P and I hit the button and said, "Your search reveals nothing."
[9:13]So I thought, "Well, how about Epstein?" I'm going to slow you down to keep everyone with us. You're talking about something that is legally required. I just want to remind viewers, the Congress didn't say,
[9:26]"Hey, send this over to us. We'll review it first." Sometimes they do that. They didn't say, "Have the inspector general review it and give us a summary." Because of the secrecy and the failure by parties, both parties' administrations over the history,
[9:41]as we know it, of justice, the victims, the elites, this was a different approach. It was put all the information in a searchable, downloadable format so the public can deal with an area where there's been so much skepticism and scrutiny.
[9:56]And so the search bar, as we've checked, it has some functionality. The New York Times reported that when it was first released, it wasn't working. At 5.30 p.m., I want to show people, to your point, you put in Trump, who we know has been in there many times, and
[10:12]it had two hits total. A search for Maxwell, which should generate many hundreds of hits, there's a whole case file for her, wasn't working well. It showed only 31. And to give viewers, I'm showing this so people
[10:26]can see with their own eyes, the most egregious example is if you search Epstein, you get about 224 hits out of a production that the deputy attorney general described as hundreds of thousands. And I could tell viewers that would be like getting
[10:40]1 percent accuracy. So John, the fact that they had the month to prepare and as of the release, it's not working tells you what? It tells me, it's hard for me to believe it's an accident
[10:55]given the context in which anything is produced. We have the former counsel, criminal defense counsel to Mr. Trump, and he is directing this. And he is the one who is already violating as he's telling
[11:09]us, this is what you're going to get. We're going to get some now and you'll get some later. And it's supposed to be searchable. And those words are exactly, it says searchable and downloadable format. And the other thing you'll notice is they put everything in stovepipes.
[11:24]So you have a collection, I went through them as little as best I could in the time allowed. They have like a series of pictures and then they'll have a document in there that is an FBI document. And there's no way to find that because of what
[11:39]I've just been describing. Let me just start by saying that the Trump administration and the DOJ right now are defying Congress and breaking the law. Clearly. They had till today. They have till midnight still to do the right thing
[11:54]and release all the files. They have not done that. And they presented them in a way, by the way, where they're not very searchable to the American public. There's huge redactions, which are not explained. And we know that many of the documents, and we think it
[12:10]could be as close to half of the documents have already been released to the public. So what you have in there is you have former court documents. You have 33,000 pages that were already sent to the oversight committee as part of our subpoena You have video footage from the prison and you have testimony
[12:25]from Ghislaine Maxwell. All of that paper and documents, the public has already seen there in the public record. And then of the new materials that are in there, there are certainly many photographs and on top of the photographs,
[12:42]you have these new documents that are highly redacted. And so we have right now little new information. Now we're still reviewing. We have our entire oversight team reviewing everything. But I've been on the phone today with ranking member Jamie Raskin and certainly one of the best constitutional
[12:57]lawyers in the country. And our teams are working right now to put together a strategy to ensure that there is a legal strategy here. We have to push back. They are in right now. They are defying the Congress and the law.
[13:12]And we've got to ensure one, that all the documents get released and two, that these redactions are actually following the law and what actually, and what we're actually looking for, which is not eliminating our ability to get transparency and justice for the survivors.
[13:27]Congressman, let me sort of dig a little bit on Simone's point because I think it's an important one. And that hinges on the, okay, you knew this, not you personally, but the Congress, we here at this table, Americans across the country knew what's playing
[13:44]out right now was actually going to play out. We knew this a week ago. We knew this the day this was signed into law, that this administration was going to find every way possible not to comply. So there has been a run up to this moment and over the
[14:01]next five hours, what may or may not still come from this administration, that some response has to be planned, has to be thought through by the Congress, Congressman Massey, yourself and others, Congressman Conner,
[14:17]all those pieces that had their fingers in this and trying to move this thing to the public, there has to be a response other than what? We're going to wait and see if they comply because we know they're not.
[14:33]There will definitely be a response. And look, besides obviously, Jamie Raskin, I've also talked to Ro Khanna as well, who's doing a fantastic job. Look, all of us are talking. We have been planning and waiting for this moment for a long time.
[14:47]And I think we have, of course, midnight will be approaching here in a few hours. Our teams are reviewing the documents, are going to be reviewing documents all throughout the days ahead. And so we are absolutely actively working on a response. And it's not just the Congress.
[15:01]I can guarantee you that right now there are outside organizations and groups that are doing the same thing in reviewing these documents and preparing a response. So there is no scenario where we're going to allow Pam Bondi, the DOJ and Donald Trump to continue this cover up.
[15:18]They are defying the Congress right now. And I would hope that Mike Johnson, who is supposed to be leading the entire body, would actually say something and back us up for once and demand transparency and justice for the survivors.
[15:32]Imagine that. Congressman, I want to read to you what Todd Blanch wrote in his letter to Congress, give you an opportunity to respond. He writes, "Because of the volume of the material
[15:46]and the requirement that every page of every document be reviewed for potential redactions under the act, final stages of review of some material continue. I anticipate this ongoing review being completed over the next two weeks. The volume of materials to be reviewed means that the
[16:02]department must publicly produce responsive documents on a rolling basis. The department will continue to follow the review protocol and add to the public website materials that are responsive under the act. And the department will inform Congress when that review and production are complete by the end of this year."
[16:18]I want sort of your general response to this, but I also want you to talk to me about him putting sort of the next two weeks on there as a timeline. Look, let me just begin by saying that the DOJ has had months and months to actually put all these
[16:32]documents together. They've been working on it supposedly since the start of the Trump administration. They were on Pam Bondi's desk. They've been reviewed by Suzy Wiles, who has said multiple times that Donald Trump is in them. Pam Bondi herself has been reported that she has told the
[16:46]president how much she's in the Epstein files. They have reviewed, they've had hundreds and hundreds of agents put these documents together. And now what we get is not transparency. And I think maybe Todd Blanch thinks that we're just going
[17:00]to move on to the next day or two and wait for the next batch, yet he sent us stuff today that is completely redacted. And if he doesn't think that we're going to focus like a hawk and on these documents and analyze what they're actually
[17:15]not telling us, he's crazy. We want to make sure that we protect the survivors and the victims, that he's the most important thing. But what else is being redacted? Why are entire transcripts being redacted from the first word to the last?
[17:31]So they're clearly trying to hide something, divert our attention and ensure that they continue this cover up. We've had it. The American public deserve transparency. There's an active subpoena. There's a law in place. And Donald Trump and Pam Bondi continue to, in
[17:49]my opinion, cover and leading massive coverup on the Epstein files. And people are tired of this corruption. You know, Congressman, as these new files were being made public today, some again, just pages and pages of
[18:05]black boxes, frankly, as Alicia noted in the open and as your colleague Rokana said, 119 pages just fully blacked out. All I could think about was how this was about power. And there are photos of there are lots of photos
[18:18]that we're seeing today. There's photos of a book, Massage for Dummies. We have no context about why this was included in the government files, but that book was there. There are pictures of former President Bill Clinton with Epstein.
[18:35]We have no context around the picture or when it was taken. This looks to be the one of the trip to Africa that the former president has talked about. There's a statement from Clinton's spokesperson, but we don't have this. The part from Clinton's spokesperson that I want to read
[18:50]is the White House hasn't been hiding these files for months only to dump them late on a Friday to protect Bill Clinton. That was the first part of the statement. The White House has not been hiding these files for months only to dump them late on a Friday to protect Bill Clinton. That's from Angel Angel, the former president's spokesperson.
[19:08]What do they not want us to know is a question I and so many other people have. Well, anybody that was a part of covering up for Jeffrey Epstein, I think needs to be held accountable. I think the American people deserve the context around all of the documents in the files,
[19:25]and I think they deserve to know why 119 pages just completely blacked out of something that seems to be very important. That's exactly right. I'll add to that. Look, I think what's really important right now is the
[19:39]public deserves transparency and the truth. They're clearly continuing to hide and protect the powerful men that harmed, raped, and trafficked women. The Epstein files released and why we're fighting so hard, because at the end of the day, this is about justice
[19:52]for the survivors. There are right now powerful, wealthy men, of which, by the way, we could care less what political party they're in or how much power they have. There are men that are walking free that did
[20:07]these horrific crimes and caused horrific trauma and damage to these women. At the time, many of them children. If they think they're going to just produce files and documents, and at the end of this, those men are not going to be held accountable, then they are
[20:22]involved in a massive coverup. Anyone in the government that is involved in this will be held accountable by the US Congress. Congressman, yesterday, the Oversight Committee released 68 new photos from the Epstein estate.
[20:42]Do you expect those to be a part of this document dump that we're seeing? Or how do you track what you already have to see that that's part of what's coming out? Is there some understanding of the finite nature of this?
[21:00]How many documents are we ultimately talking about that should be released? When we say all the files, help the public understand exactly what that means. You've already noted some 30,000 have been released in other forms and venues through court proceedings, et cetera.
[21:18]What are we talking about here, particularly given that there's been such a long runway by this administration, DOJ, to prepare for this moment? It's not like they didn't know it was coming. Whether you're talking about an additional 50,000 documents
[21:35]or an additional 200,000, 300,000 documents, there was a plan in place at least to get there. What does this all look like that the public should be expecting? I think two things are important for the public to know is
[21:50]one is the Oversight Committee will continue to get documents from subpoenas that we put in place at the Epstein estate, the US Virgin Islands. There are a bunch of other organizations that we've requested information from, testimony from survivors. That information will continue to come out and the committee
[22:07]will continue to put out documents, photos, emails, financial information that we're currently going through with our partners at Senate Finance. All of that piece will continue to come out. The DOJ tranche is different.
[22:22]What's been surprising is that we expected that the DOJ would have requested the Epstein estate documents and have those in their possession. It appears from Todd Blanch and some of his comments that they haven't even requested documents from other organizations that they know have critical
[22:39]documents and photos and videos that could be helpful in getting justice. We would encourage the DOJ to go everywhere and get information. They're not even doing that. We're going to continue to put out information as
[22:53]to relates to the size. We know and the DOJ said earlier this year, and I have the exact number here. They actually said that there was about 300 gigabytes of data as it related to the files.
[23:09]We do know if you take that number aside and you think about what we've received so far, we might have about 10% total. Again, this is an estimate. We might have about 10% right now of the total amount of
[23:25]files that the DOJ likely has in their possession. So we're watching this very carefully and they're not going to get away with just dumping and redactions and not getting us the truth. Good evening from New York. I'm Chris Hayes.
[23:38]Well, today was the day, as you may know, December 19th, that of course the deadline mandated by law for Donald Trump's Department of Justice to release the Epstein files, all of them basically unredacted. And we got a release with an enormous asterisk, which is that
[23:55]they are very clearly violating that law, which is not surprising. It is a law that they fought at every single opportunity from shutting the entire House of Representatives down for months to not swearing in a duly elected member so she couldn't sign the discharge petition to at the last minute, browbeating
[24:10]their own allies like Congresswoman Lauren Boeber, who was brought into the situation room. And ultimately none of that worked. The law passed both houses. Donald Trump was forced into signing it clearly against his will. And so today, on the day of the deadline, they
[24:26]have released some and only some of the documents that they were required by that law to release. Thousands of documents, including scores of photographs of Epstein's properties, including massage rooms, along with photos of young women and vacation locales, and notably former President Bill Clinton.
[24:42]Now we should note here, these are all just photos. We don't know the context in which any of them are taken, but President Clinton appears in several photos alongside Epstein, Ghislaine Maxwell, and redacted persons. In one image, Clinton appears with a redacted
[24:56]woman sitting on his lap. You just saw that. In another, he is with a redacted person in a jacuzzi. In response, President Clinton's spokesperson released a statement, reading in part, "The White House hasn't been hiding these files for months only to dump them later on a Friday
[25:09]to protect Bill Clinton. This is about shielding themselves from what comes next or from what they'll try and hide forever." It certainly does appear that photos of many other men have been blacked out. There are a ton of redactions, entire documents, like the one
[25:25]you see here, completely blacked out. And not just documents. Faces are blacked out, but not always consistently. DOJ said they blacked out the faces of victims and minors, which I think everyone agrees, and the law requires them to do. They also appear to be some grown men whose
[25:40]identities are obscured. Get this. Sources tell Fox News that more than a dozen politically exposed people and government officials' names appear in the hundreds of thousands of pages of Jeffrey Epstein files made public Friday. And in addition to protecting the victims' identities, Fox
[25:56]reported that the same redaction standards were applied to politically exposed individuals and government officials. If that is true, it is illegal, flatly. The federal law at issue, the one that has brought us to this point, is clear that a Department of Justice
[26:13]cannot redact information solely because its release might harm an individual's reputation. And if they did redact politically exposed individuals, why did they release more than a dozen photos and documents relating to Bill Clinton? I think we know, right?
[26:27]We're not idiots. In fact, he seems to appear more than any other public figure, including in this social media post by a White House spokeswoman suggesting the media investigate Clinton's well-documented encounters with Epstein. Now, Donald Trump's relationship with Epstein
[26:40]is well-documented. We have all seen the pictures of the two men together. We all remember the quote that he gave the reporter who wrote a profile, Epstein, about how much he loves women and how they're on the younger side. And we all know about the birthday card.
[26:55]Donald Trump denies writing it and sued about it, but the one where he talks about them having secrets and age being nothing but a number. Why does Donald Trump hardly appear in the Strowva documents, except in one photo we've all seen in a desk of Epstein's?
[27:10]Do you think that's an accident when it was his Justice Department who was going through them? I mean, we don't know. We do know this isn't all the Epstein files. In fact, today the DOJ admitted that they are, again, flatly violating the law, violating tonight's deadline,
[27:26]releasing files willy-nilly in the coming weeks. But is it willy-nilly? How did they select these files for today's release? Remember, earlier this year, the DOJ ordered an internal review that had FBI workers working around the clock flagging Donald Trump's name, telling Donald Trump he's
[27:41]in the files, according to the Wall Street Journal, and then deciding back in July after they had worked around the clock, after they had flagged Donald Trump in the files, after they had told Donald Trump he's in the files, issuing a memo saying we're not going to release any of them, case closed.
[27:57]That's the same DOJ and those same very people who have now selectively dribbled out redacted files in what appears to be an obvious attempt to protect Donald Trump and cast aspersions on his political enemies. Harry Lipman served as deputy assistant attorney general
[28:11]with the Department of Justice. Lisa Rubin is MSNOW's senior legal reporter, and they joined me now. One thing I want to say here is the law also requires the files to be searchable. That's in the law, for obvious reasons.
[28:26]So we should just start by saying for much of today, the search function has either been entirely not functional or barely functional. I think that's a good way of putting it. I will also say in fairness that there is a big caveat, almost in bold letters, on the Department of Justice's
[28:41]website saying that there may be technical problems with the searchability function. Nonetheless, you're absolutely right that the plain text of the Epstein Files Transparency Act says the files have to be publicly accessible and searchable for the same reasons that we are all discussing, because
[28:56]there are certain things that people want to know, right? And you want to be able to know them without looking through each and every image. That's also probably for the protection of the survivors themselves who shouldn't have to look through each and every image or document in order to see the things they're looking
[29:12]for, including notes of interviews, for example, that they may have given to the FBI or the Department of Justice. So on the redactions, I mean, the law is very clear about this reputational harm. I think it's very clear that you don't want the names of
[29:27]victims in there, or their faces obviously, and certainly you don't want anything like images of them in compromised positions, right? But what are the other legal grounds that one would redact here, Harry? Well, first, the law is the law.
[29:42]It's not grand jury anymore. Right, it's the law. It's not a repudiation. It's the Epstein Transparency Act. So the victims' names, confidentiality, not reputational harm. And I just want to go to your upfront point about this
[29:57]could not be willy nilly. It must be a cover-up. Just my 12-year-old could do just the stats. You have one or two pictures or searches of Trump, over 100 of Clinton.
[30:14]So it's in theory, everything they say is to try to excuse the violation of law, no doubt about it, but it makes it seem like, oh, we did our best, et cetera. What they plainly did was try to control the narrative. I'm reminded a little bit of the Mueller report.
[30:29]They think the first, the fronting of stuff involving Clinton and other people may obscure the stuff about Trump. But it's very, very far from what they're required to do. And on the redactions in particular, Chris,
[30:42]you must explain why. And in a typical court process, that really is telling. You go through it, a court will determine here, is there the wherewithal to actually push back?
[30:54]Probably not. So one really difficult thing to ascertain here is just like what scope are we dealing with? Are we looking at-- or I saw Robert Garcia, of course, the House Oversight Committee, saying his estimate was 10% of the files. I mean, I don't know what-- it's very hard for us to get
[31:09]the denominator here, but what is your sense of what the scope of what we have compared to what there is? Or there are things you looked for that aren't there? I mean, there's tons of things that I look for that aren't there. So for example, I was looking for the FBI 302s, which as Harry knows well, are the memorialization
[31:26]of interviews with witnesses or people who may themselves have been participants in crimes, but nonetheless would be useful as cooperators to the Department of Justice. I saw very, very few of those things. I saw some handwritten notes of interviews with witnesses,
[31:40]but I didn't see any of those 302s. And in particular, I didn't see 302s where survivors would have mentioned other adults who may have understood that Jeffrey Epstein was trafficking or abusing them.
[31:54]That was something that Thomas Massey said that he fully expected to see. We don't see anything approximating that. And to Harry's point about sort of strategic redactions, there was one document that I looked at today, which is a message pad. And it shows that Sandy Berger, for example, who was Clinton's
[32:08]national security advisor, called for Epstein. Also shows the name of a man named John Brockman who used to host these billionaire conferences at which Jeffrey Epstein attended dinners. That may have been the context, for example, in which he attended a dinner alongside David Brooks of the New York Times who has since denied that
[32:24]he had any other contact with Epstein whatsoever. But in that same document, there is a redaction of another man's name. Why is it kosher for Sandy Berger's name to be out there and John Brockman's name to be out there? But what is clearly a man's name, because it refers to a
[32:41]him, you may call him back at X time, for example, but that person's name is redacted. Is that for national security reasons? Is that because there's an ongoing investigation that would be jeopardized? I don't know and I won't speculate, but I would like to know the reason why it's OK to name some and not others.
[32:58]And similarly with faces, there are some men whose faces we clearly see. They include Michael Jackson and Mick Jagger and Bill Clinton. And then there are other places where there are men we can't see and we know that they are men. Why? I also feel the need just before I go back to you, Harry, with all of this, right, just to say, like, for instance, in the case of Bill Clinton,
[33:13]that he denies any wrongdoing having to do with he also denies having known anything about Epstein. And also when we're talking about these these these sort of time context, I just think it's important, you know, people that are meeting with every Epstein in twenty eleven, twenty twelve, twenty thirteen. At that point, he had already pleaded guilty
[33:27]to the crime he had. There had been stories about it. Maybe they knew and maybe they didn't, but it was entered into public evidence, you know, in nineteen ninety five, nineteen ninety seven. It's just very unclear if anyone knows what's happening. Right. So I think we should put put
[33:43]that forward just to like you end up in the situation where there's a certain guilt by association that's inevitable. Yes. But no one knows like timestamps or context or any of that. So that's why I think the emails with Larry Summers were as damaging to him as they were because well into twenty
[33:58]nineteen, they are having those conversations when everybody understands who Jeffrey Epstein was alleged to have been. Tonight as we continue to cover the Justice Department's limited release of the Epstein files, I think it's important to reflect on the fact that we, the public,
[34:13]would know absolutely nothing about the extent of Epstein's crimes and the crimes of his associates if it weren't for the sheer bravery of those who survived them. For years, scores of survivors have fought valiantly for justice and for accountability for years, for decades,
[34:28]including one of the first survivors to come forward, Virginia Roberts Dufray, who was rightfully credited back in September for her role in bringing all of this to light. Virginia Roberts Dufray is an American hero.
[34:44]She is somebody, she is somebody without whom we would not be able to have this voice. She was the one who had courage to name names, speak out against people, and she was standing up against everybody at one time with an enormous amount of pressure.
[34:58]And most of these women are here because of Virginia Roberts Dufray. So as Trump's Justice Department refuses still to release the full Epstein files, the question remains, will the survivors ever get the justice they deserve?
[35:11]I think we all certainly hope so. Joining me now are Skye and Amanda Roberts, the brother and sister-in-law of Virginia Roberts Dufray, who have been fighting tirelessly for justice in her memory. It's great to see you both. I wish it was under different circumstances.
[35:28]I remember talking to you right around when this passed and there was a feeling of elation after so much hard work. And now here we are and it's the deadline and Congressman Garcia is estimating it's about 10%.
[35:43]There's massive redactions in these documents. I know you both have become kind of part of the glue that is holding a lot of the survivor community together. And I just wanted to start, let me start with you, Skye. How are you feeling today about everything?
[35:58]Oh, God. I think Amanda is already crying over here because it's a really, it's a mixed bag of emotions today. There is a sense of like pride and joy and being proud
[36:13]because the survivors deserve that. I mean, you look at some of the survivors that like fought this initially, like Virginia and like Maria Farmer and so many other brave people that came, survivors that came forward and just fought valiantly
[36:29]to get these files released. And it's taken decades. It's taken decades to do that. And you're reading them now, you know, with a naked eye and looking at them and saying, oh my God, like these women fought so hard for this. And so we're feeling really proud of our survivor sisters,
[36:46]of our own sister, of Maria and so many others that fought so hard. But we're also not feeling this like joy either. It's kind of disappointing to see that our own Department of Justice is trying to continue to gaslight us and to say,
[37:01]you know, I didn't even know, Jen, until you just said it now that it was 10%. I mean, that's, that's disappointing. You know, if it's 10%, then like that's a far stretch to the 100% that we asked for with with the bill. And so to feel like you're continuing to be gaslighted is,
[37:16]it's kind of a disappointing feeling and it's not shocking. Unfortunately, though, I think we hoped that they would do the right thing, but we expected for them to not, which is, you know, under I guess, I guess it's kind of, I don't know, it's mixed feelings right now.
[37:29]Let me put it that way. I hate that the two of you have been almost hardened to the expectations of what's possible sometimes under this administration and in Washington. And yeah, that was an estimate by Congressman Robert Garcia,
[37:43]who was, of course, the ranking member on the Oversight Committee. So it felt like an interesting one to cite, but it's certainly not the totality of what is supposed to be released under the law of what you fought so hard for. I heard, I was talking with Chris Hayes about this earlier,
[37:59]Amanda, how I heard one of your, one of the one of the survivors was on with him earlier and said that she just felt exhausted, you know, and I know you both have said that before. There's so much fight in you. There's so much hope of what's possible. But today on a day felt exhausted.
[38:15]I know you've probably been in touch with members of the survivor community. What are you hearing from others today about how they're feeling with such a small, tiny percentage of what the law was supposed to prompt the release of? Yeah.
[38:30]Mainly frustration. You know, the frustration that they're still trying to kind of pull the rug from underneath us and, you know, disappointment, disappointment.
[38:47]Like this should have been the moment. You know, it's certainly exhausting. I think the last 30 days we've been holding our breath and we've given them the time and the grace to kind of like do what the bill has asked for.
[39:02]I will say on the other end and what I've encouraged every single survivor that I have spoken to today is this is a law now and now we get to hold them accountable. Now we know what should be in there and we're going to comb
[39:18]over every single document and every single page. We're going to partner with every single lawyer that is privy to this information and we're going to hold them accountable. And that is the truth. And so it almost gives us a little bit of empowerment as well.
[39:32]You know, we get to control this story moving forward. And I think that we've proven as a collective group, the strength that we carry and the influence. I think that they're going to be put in a position once
[39:47]again to have no choice but to do the right thing. That is an incredibly powerful and courageous response to today. And I think so encouraging for other survivors and their families to hear out there. You know, you mentioned, Sky, you mentioned Maria, Maria
[40:03]Farmer earlier and I've had the honor of speaking with her and her sister, Annie, as well. And one thing that was in the files today was Maria Farmer's complaint to the FBI about Epstein all the way back in 1996. And she had been, as you all know, talking about this
[40:18]complaint for years, but the FBI never publicly acknowledged her original report. And in the statement tonight, she said, this is amazing. Thank you for believing me. I feel redeemed. This is one of the best days of my life. Of course, it's mixed with the fact that I'm devastated about all the other little girls like Virginia who
[40:35]were harmed because the FBI didn't do their job. She said she was crying for two reasons. It was a really incredibly powerful statement. I think a lot about the conversation I had with her. I don't know if you've seen that statement, but what
[40:48]is your reaction to that? Maria is, she's a gem. She's gold. And I just, we love her dearly.
[41:05]I think we found our sister in her and her strength and her resilience. Being the original survivor who came forward in 1996, who first reported her, I think we get this understanding of the, not just the names, you know, people just are attached
[41:23]to the names, but the institutional failure that has been going on for decades across administrations, not just this one. And so we really get to dissect and see that. Maria Farmer is another hero and she's just absolutely amazing.
[41:40]And I'm so glad that she got this day of vindication. It's just in a day that I think was very disappointing, it's felt like an element of justice for Maria Farmer, which is so powerful. One of the things that I've learned so much from talking to
[41:56]you both over the last several months and many other survivors that has often struck me is that there is this kind of talking point or use of the, we're going to protect the survivor's answer that's often offered by people who are trying to prevent the release of these documents.
[42:12]And you saw when we looked at the documents, we don't know all the redactions, there'll be lots of exploration of what was redacted in here. What struck me is that survivors know, and Julie K. Brown just made this point, what is in these, they know the experiences, right?
[42:26]They know what happened in these moments. Have you heard anything from the Department of Justice to help provide clarity on what would be acceptable to not redact? Have any survivors you know heard anything from them asking that question?
[42:41]Because that is a very easy way to clear that up. I mean, the reality with the Department of Justice right now is that it's very clear that they have a different motive behind them. And it's not to, in a lot of ways we want to
[42:54]work with them, right? We want to work with them, we want to help in every way, shape and form possible. But you know, I think it's another way of creating smoke and mirrors. It's another way to try to create this facade that they're actually doing something when in reality they're actually
[43:09]not doing anything at all. And you know what, I will give credit, you know, they are releasing documents right now, but it just, you know, there's this little birdie in the back of your head that kind of says, are you just releasing these because it's what you want us to see?
[43:23]Or are you releasing what needs to be seen by not just the public, but even just for vindication for these survivors? And to get real justice, I mean, justice can come in very many forms. The first part is acknowledgement. I feel like we've gotten to the point of acknowledgement.
[43:39]Everybody can know this happened, something happened. Then it's in a form of social justice. These people should not be in places of power, political power, educational power, judicial power. They should not be in these places of power. And then it comes in real form of justice of the actual
[43:55]judicial system changing and redirecting their attention around what this looks like, because this is why the people are passionate about it, Jen. I'm telling you, they're passionate because they can feel it. They can feel that these people, the people of power took precedent over young women and children that they felt like
[44:12]they were bigger than everybody else, that our system still feels like they're bigger than everybody else. And it's not. And I'm here to tell you that Virginia, Virginia would continue to scream for a mountain. She did it because it was from a pure sense of just being a normal person like me and you, like anybody out there.
[44:28]And we will keep fighting until we actually get justice for this. And the justice needs to come in a form of real change, judicial change, systematic change. Like this is a global issue at this point and we won't stop. We won't stop. I think people care a lot about it because of you guys too.
[44:46]And Virginia and all the survivors out there, it makes people keep their eyes open and listen. Thank you for being out there, for being here with me. Sky and Amanda Roberts, thank you again. Thank you so much. Thank you.