[0:00]In other news, Donald Trump says he has asked the Justice Department to investigate convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein's ties to many other
[0:09]high-profile figures. In a post on Truth Social, the US President said he would ask Attorney General Pam Bondi to and
[0:18]the FBI to look into EP Epstein's links to top Democrats, including former President Bill Clinton. His request follows the release by Congress of
[0:29]emails raising new questions about President Trump's ties to the convicted sex offender. Bondi has confirmed she will launch the investigation on Trump's orders.
[0:40]I'd like to welcome Michael A. Genovese now, professor of political science at Lyola Marryand University in Los Angeles. Welcome to you. Donald Trump has repeatedly accused Democrats of
[0:52]pushing what he's described as the Epstein hoax. Now he's pushing for the Justice Department to investigate people like Bill Clinton and others. Is that a
[1:01]legitimate thing to do or is it deflecting from what are growing questions about Trump's ties to Jeffrey Epstein? >> It is highly unusual. It is historically
[1:13]not quite unprecedented but almost unprecedented. And it may very well be an act of desperation as much as it is an act of hope. But it's probably too late. I mean, the president has ordered the attorney general to investigate
[1:25]Democrats. He named Democrats that he wants investigated. That's just not done. Um, but the momentum is already built up. The public desperately is clamoring for the release of these
[1:36]documents. Is Donald Trump being too clever by half? Because if the Justice Department is investigating someone for criminal potential criminal activity, they can refuse to release the
[1:47]documents. And so just as Congress is about to pass a resolution saying release the documents, which will be bipartisan in the vote, Donald Trump is now trying to put up a roadblock saying, "Well, sorry, we can't release them.
[1:59]You're not going to get anything." But he's trying to have it both ways to say that there's nothing here, but the Democrats did it. You can't have it both ways. I want to talk to you about what you've described as momentum in a
[2:11]moment, but firstly, the White House has defended Trump since around 23 pages uh 23,000 pages of documents from the so-called Epstein files were released.
[2:21]Now, at least two emails suggest that him and Epstein may have been in contact long after Trump said they weren't
[2:30]anymore. Trump, as we know, denies any wrongdoing. But what could or should we take away from this? >> I' I'd be careful and cautious about how
[2:41]far I take this. Just have to remember this is the beginning of the process. It's like the tip of the iceberg. There's a ton of material that is yet to be released. May never be released. Donald Trump is trying to prevent that
[2:52]from happening. But there's so many more emails, so much more that's there that we haven't seen. And that's that will be the problem for Donald Trump. It could
[3:02]be a drip drip drip day after day of damaging information. Guilt by implication, guilt by association perhaps, but there's just so much there that um in in a way it would be wise to
[3:13]simply hold off judgment until we know more. >> Okay. So So you're advocating caution. Now Trump has gone from saying he'd release the files if elected to now
[3:23]resisting doing so as you've said. that even some of Trump's Republican supporters, I'm thinking of people like Marjorie Taylor Green, they've been calling for the files to be released. Do
[3:34]you think that's going to happen? Well, there were a few Republicans who wanted release, but there weren't enough. Now, there are enough to to to
[3:44]have the Congress ordered release of all the documents. The good thing I suppose for the House and who who was voting on this is that once they reached the
[3:55]number required to release the documents, bunch of other Republicans jumped on board. They don't want to be part of the obstruction. And so there's an incredible momentum. There's an
[4:05]incredibly high expectation built into this. The public is clamoring, demanding to know more. There's very serious accusations and there are a lot of big names, Democrats and Republicans, who
[4:17]are being implicated. Some because they their names appear in early released documents, some because they suspect they might be in there. So there's a big
[4:26]story yet to be uncovered. >> As you say, there there seem to be many people or there could be many people implicated uh in this given that
[4:36]Epstein's had connection to politicians of various different leanings. Do you think both Republicans and Democrats have to worry about what could be
[4:46]revealed? There's there's a ample blame to go around. It looks like that both parties have uh uh members who will be named. Uh but let's remember the juiciest target
[4:57]is always the president no matter who the president is. And there's no escaping the question uh of what level of damage will this do Donald Trump.
[5:07]Even if there's smoke but no fire, even if there's no what we used to call in the Watergate crisis, no smoking gun, by implication, he's still going to be suffering. So there going to be a lot of
[5:17]worried Democrats and Republicans in Washington DC because this is a career ender for many of them. >> Thank you so much for your time today. That's Michael A. Genevese, professor of
[5:28]political science at Lyola Mry Mount University. It's great to welcome Timothy Hegel back now. He's associate professor of
[5:38]political science at the University of Iowa. Welcome back to you. Now, a political scientist, Michael Genevese, I spoke to earlier on this program, he
[5:47]described this move by Trump as possibly quote, "An act of desperation as much as it is an act of hope." His reasoning was because having a Justice Department
[5:58]investigation into certain individuals may mean that the department can refuse to release these documents. I'm interested, what's your take?
[6:09]I think that there's certainly some validity to that because we've seen in the past where you have some particular ongoing investigation that that for
[6:19]security reasons it to make sure that the investigation is going to go forward appropriately that they'll refuse they being the the government will refuse to release the information. And so maybe there's something along these lines. I'm
[6:30]not sure that I would go so far as to say that this is necessarily an act of desperation on the part of Trump because that may or may not be his his uh reason for pushing the investigation. I think
[6:41]it may also be partly because he's getting tired of the Democrats trying to connect him to Jeffrey Epstein despite some evidence to the contrary, including the emails that the Democrats put out
[6:52]recently, which almost seem to suggest the opposite of what the Democrats intended. And so now it's perhaps Trump's turn to say, "All right, let's turn the tables on the Democrats and and we'll actually have an investigation and
[7:04]see because there had been rumors, long had been rumors that maybe President Clinton had involved involved with Epstein, maybe some other high-profile people. Although having said that, one of the reasons that has often been given
[7:16]for not releasing a lot of these emails and information is to protect the victims. uh some of the victims have come forward and so forth, so maybe they don't need to be protected, but perhaps there are others that do.
[7:27]>> Okay. Now, a vote in the House of Representatives on releasing these files, as I understand, is planned for next week. What do you think the kind of
[7:38]political damage could result for Trump if the Republican controlled House votes in favor, as it seems to be looking like it will do?
[7:49]>> Yeah. One of the things that's interesting about this is that we're starting to see some Republicans that also want to have that information released. And again, that's not entirely surprising. Some Republicans have
[8:00]believed that whether it's former President Clinton or other highprofile Democrats were also involved with Epstein. And so they wanted to have Epstein uh the information on Epstein released as well and were suspicious of
[8:12]his suicide and so forth. And so it wouldn't be entirely surprising for them to do so. But then it does, as you suggest, put up perhaps a bit of a conflict between the executive and
[8:22]legislative branches in terms of what they're going to do going forward. One thing I'd also say too is one argument that always seems pretty convincing to me is that if there was really anything that was particularly damaging to Trump,
[8:34]it probably would have been leaked by now, particularly before the 2024 election or even earlier than that. But still, that doesn't mean that that maybe that's has to do with anything directly
[8:44]linking Trump to Epstein, but maybe there's still other things that might be embarrassing or cause political fallout. So, the bottom line is we just have to wait and see if in fact we do get to see
[8:54]what the what's in those emails. And and what's the public ex public's expectation of this because there does seem to be a momentum pushing for more
[9:05]transparency around these files among the public. There certainly is among some legislators and certainly among the pundit class that a number of people on
[9:16]the left and the right want to see this for their own reasons either to get Trump or to get Democrats, whatever it happens to be. I'm not so sure that the average voter really cares that much about it. Yeah, they'd probably like to
[9:27]know what's going on and they hear the the the back and forth about it, but again, it's it's even though we're still a ways away from the midterm elections here, it's still a matter of the
[9:37]economy, affordability. We had a big drop in the stock market in the last couple of days, uh other things that are going on, what's happening with tariffs. I think those economic issues are still
[9:47]paramount for most voters, especially as we come up to the Thanksgiving holiday here in the United States and people are talking about how much it costs for a traditional Thanksgiving dinner and so
[9:57]forth. And so, yeah, the economic issues are still going to be uh first in the minds of most voters rather than the Epstein files. >> Thanks so much for that, Timothy Hegel.
[10:07]He he is associate professor of political science at the University of Iowa. Thank you.