Nancy Guthrie’s 11-day disappearance remains unsolved despite FBI Nest footage revealing a masked suspect with a pistol, potential DNA evidence, and a $300 ransom demand. Meanwhile, Canada’s Tumblr Ridge school shooting—linked to a trans-identified perpetrator—ignites debates over gender medicine ethics, as experts like Lior Sapires cite liability concerns and scientific scrutiny behind deferred minor surgeries. Jeffrey Epstein’s unredacted files expose six previously hidden figures, including Victoria’s Secret founder Leslie Wexner (allegedly transferring millions) and Dubai Ports World CEO Sultan Ahmed bin Sulayem (linked to torture emails), while Commerce Secretary Howard Luttnick faces questions over Epstein ties despite no wrongdoing. Trump’s administration authorizes cartel drone takedowns, pushes voter ID reforms, and defends ICE’s record amid Democratic critiques, all while January 2025 economic data shows job growth and wage gains—though tariffs keep sentiment mixed. [Automatically generated summary]
Tape emerges of the presumed kidnappers and the Nancy Guthrie kidnapping.
We'll go through all the details with Lyndon Blake.
We also have breaking economic news, as well as a shooting in Canada that appears to be trans.
The shooter appears to be trans.
And airspace was closed in El Paso, supposedly for 10 days, and that was revised down.
Mexican drug cartels breaching American airspace.
A lot going on.
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Well, we do have some breaking news in the Nancy Guthrie kidnapping case.
Some of it is good news in the sense that we now have more information.
Some of it is a little bit squirrely in the sense that somebody was suspected and then picked up and then released over the course of the last 24 hours.
So, according to the New York Post, the FBI finally released the first images of Nancy Guthrie's suspected abductor.
It was 10 days after she vanished from her Arizona home.
The delay was caused by a couple of obstacles.
One, her security camera was missing.
And two, she did not actually subscribe to the camera's backup storage plan.
She was not paying for a Google Home subscription, which would have stored her nest feed, even if the physical camera was removed.
But Google apparently was capable of still drawing up that data.
So it took them 10 days to find that data.
Investigators apparently could have gotten the video from Google in a few different ways.
They could have gotten a search warrant to issue to Google, or the family could have authorized them to conduct a search, or Google could have voluntarily opted to track it down.
Bottom line is that they are retaining an enormous amount of data, obviously.
Here is what some of the video looks like.
It is very creepy stuff.
There's a nest camera footage.
You can see a person who is masked and who appears to be carrying a pistol in his waistband, but kind of in an awkward place.
There's been suspicion that this person was an amateur, specifically because of how he is carrying the pistol.
He is carrying it directly in front of his crotch, which is a very dumb place to carry a weapon.
That is not typically where you're going to holster a firearm.
The person walks up to the camera, appears to be messing with the camera, and then goes over to the front of the house and picks up an object.
And then we have another angle of the person attempting to obstruct the object with leaves, trying to obstruct the camera with leaves.
There is some suspicion that perhaps there's a hole in the glove, which may have led to the leaving of some DNA evidence.
Of course, that is just suspicion at this point.
Unclear at this point, the status of Nancy Guthrie.
There has been no proof of life that has actually been put out thus far.
At the same time, TMZ founder Harvey Levin told CNN that the Bitcoin account that was attached to the first ransom note for Nancy Guthrie actually saw some activity late on Tuesday.
Here was Harvey Levin reporting.
About 12 minutes ago, we saw activity in that account.
Activity like what?
That's what I can't talk about.
There are reasons I can't, but all I can say is there is now activity in that Bitcoin account.
Okay.
Now, let me just ask one more question and you'll share with me what you can.
But when you say activity, is that that you can see money is going into the account, or are you able to tell whether it's money going in or going out?
Well, it would only show, as I understand this, money going in.
And the only thing you would see is money.
And Aaron, that's all I can say.
So, not a lot more information, but obviously it suggests there's somebody on the other end of the Bitcoin account who's drawing down the money.
Late yesterday, there was some news that a person had been detained for questioning.
That person has apparently now been released, according to the New York Times.
In an interview early on Wednesday, the man said he had not heard about Nancy Guthrie, but hopes she's found safe.
He said, I hope they got the suspect because I'm not it.
The FBI and Pima County, Arizona Sheriff's Department on Tuesday had carried out a court-authorized search related to the investigation in a place called Rio Rico, Arizona, which is an hour's drive south of Tucson.
As of 1.20 a.m. local time on Wednesday, the department had not yet confirmed it had released the person it had detained for questioning, but apparently they had completed their search of a property in Rio Rico.
Joining us online to give us all the updates is the host of Finding Nancy Guthrie, our ongoing true crime podcast.
Again, if you want all the updates on this case, you should be a Daily Wire subscriber so you can hear Lyndon Blake report on this stuff as it happens.
Lyndon joins us online now.
Lyndon, thanks so much for the time.
Really appreciate it.
Of course, a lot has happened over the last several hours, 12 hours, I would say, Ben.
Yeah, so why don't you give us the brief update on what exactly is going on and whether the investigation is progressing or whether wheels are just sort of spinning?
Well, I would say a lot has picked up since that FBI footage or since the FBI released that footage of the armed masked person from Nancy Guthrie's front doorbell cam.
It took eight days.
They worked with Google, with the Nest cameras to try to recover that footage.
And since that went out, I would say about 18 hours ago, things have really just started to pick up.
There was a person detained for questioning south of Tucson last night in a town called Rio Rico.
I just want to say that was always just for questioning.
And that person was released.
His name was Carlos.
He said he was a delivery driver in the Tucson area.
And he said when he was detained by the authorities, they showed him the picture of the masked armed person.
And Carlos said that authorities thought they had similar eyes, but he said he didn't know who Nancy Guthrie was, doesn't know who Savannah Guthrie is, and all that.
So that was the lead last night that was unfolding in real time, pretty late into the night.
And you were thinking that, okay, this footage was released.
Someone recognized this person and maybe this could have been him.
And now we know that it wasn't, but it's normal to bring people in for questioning and then they're gone.
Like I wouldn't call this like, oh, we're back at square one.
I wouldn't say that at all.
I think the footage is very clear.
Even though there's a mask on, you can still tell a lot about the person's eyes, eyebrows.
You can see facial hair, a mustache.
You can see how tall they are.
You can see the way they walk.
And the big thing is he turns around.
You can see a backpack.
People have already started to identify the windbreaker in this footage.
I mean, these are how these things are solved.
You look at what type of shoes that was wearing.
And if you think about other crime cases, you don't always get such a clear footage or picture.
And here you have 30 seconds of video of this guy kind of messing around because for someone that walked up to Nancy Guthrie's house with a backpack full to the rim of things he obviously came prepared to do with, he was not ready to cover up a camera.
And then that's what you see in the video.
He tried to go off and get some grass bush, something, and then went back to the camera to try to cover it up.
So just a treasure chest of things to uncover there.
But yeah, the absolute latest.
Now no one is in any type of custody or is being detained.
The one person last night, his name was Carlos.
He lived in Rio Rico and he was released about 1 a.m. Arizona time.
So Lyndon, one of the other pieces of information that was put out by Harvey Levin over at TMZ is that there was action in the Bitcoin account to which the Guthrie family had sent a bunch of money.
He did not really reveal much about what was going on with that.
You would assume that just means somebody was drawing the money down.
Yeah, well, that was interesting because Harvey, and he did say Harvey Levin, TMZ founder, who has laid eyes on this ransom note, he said he did not feel comfortable revealing the amount that was in there.
He just didn't want to do that.
He was very cautious about the wording when even talking about the Bitcoin activity in the ransom note.
But KGUN, a local station in Tucson, that also got the note, they said it was less than $300.
And I think that's huge too, because the more we're learning about this new digital age that we're in and doing all this investigative work in this new era, like people, you know, at first, like, oh, how can you track this?
This physical Bitcoin address, like, it will be able to be tracked.
So we don't know if that payment came from the FBI or someone putting in a little amount to see if the person would react.
We don't know if it was the Guthrie family doing a test.
I mean, that's not revealed, but what is the facts is there was activity in that Bitcoin account that was related to the ransom note.
Again, we still don't know if that was authenticated, if the person that was doing the ransom notes or people is the person that is on that doorbell footage that we now have.
I mean, you could be working the same spider web of things.
You could be working two separate things: someone or some group that was completely just trying to take advantage of the situation with this ransom ordeal, and then someone who was clearly at the door to commit the crime.
And we don't know if those intersect yet.
But again, very interesting how both sectors kind of started developing after that footage was released.
And I will say that FBI Director Kash Patel did kind of hint, and he could have misspoke.
You know, you're doing these interviews, you're talking, and things come out, but he acted like they were continuing to look for persons of interest.
And we saw the one person on that doorbell camera, but it leads me to believe we know there were multiple cameras at the home.
Maybe we get more footage.
Maybe we do see more people.
But right now, with what authorities have given to the public and what authorities have gotten themselves, and I was also told that authorities got that video Tuesday as well.
There's this big debate.
Why did they keep it so long?
They saw it for the first time, then released it.
So there may be more that comes out, but bravo to them for working with Google and Google for working with the FBI to get this recovered footage because this is how these things get solved.
Lyndon, one of the things that still has not been provided, so far as I'm aware, is any proof of life whatsoever.
So we are now 11 days into this ordeal, and the Guthrie family has been waiting for proof of life this entire time.
We know that they didn't bring the medication because Savannah Guthrie mentioned that they had not brought the medication.
We know that she had a life-threatening situation if she did not obtain medication.
And you would imagine that her kidnappers are not exactly going to head on over to the CVS and pick up the medication because that would be the number one red flag for attempting to track these people down.
And so there's every possibility at this point that, God forbid, something has happened to Nancy Guthrie and she actually is no longer alive.
Yeah, I mean, that's like the human part of this all.
And it just makes you so sad is that there is this 80, there's all this stuff happening with at the end of the day.
There's this 84-year-old woman who is dependent on medication and help from people to survive right now.
And it's now 11 days without that.
But what gives me hope is that something, and it could just be Savannah again, leaning on her faith, but she is saying, even after that footage was released on Tuesday, that she believes her mother is still alive.
And that was a strong statement in response to the video that went out Saturday night, where everybody could read into the words where Savannah said, bring, you know, bring her back to us.
That's the only way we'll have peace so we can celebrate with her.
People looked at that video and they're like, okay, does the family now think that Nancy's no longer with us?
But then you get the two posts on Instagram from Savannah on Tuesday where clearly she is like, someone knows this person.
I believe my mother's still alive.
Let's bring her home.
Well, that is Lyndon Blake.
You can go check out all of her coverage of this issue.
It has been extraordinary throughout this entire process.
She's doing a series called Finding Nancy Guthrie that is available only at Daily Wire.
Plus, Lyndon, thanks so much for the time of the coverage, as usual.
Thanks, Ben.
We'll get to breaking news from a terrible story in Canada in just one moment.
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Major Medical Reversal00:15:28
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In other criminal justice news, up in Canada, one of the worst shootings in recent memory, according to the New York Times, Canada was reeling on Wednesday, a day after a shooter killed nine people and injured 25 others in a remote town in northeastern British Columbia, the third deadliest shooting in the country's entire history.
Seven people were found dead in Tumblr Ridge Secondary School, including a person believed to be the shooter who apparently committed suicide.
Two other people were found dead in a local residence people believed was connected to the shooting.
Another person died while being transported from the school to the hospital.
25 people suffered injuries that were not life-threatening.
This was the second deadly incident in British Columbia in less than a year because back in April, a man drove a car into a crowd.
Now, the gun laws in Canada are incredibly strict.
Gun ownership is allowed with a license in Canada, but they've had a number of gun buybacks.
In the aftermath of shootings a couple of years ago, Canada tightened its laws even more.
They essentially banned AR-15s.
And so Canada should be sort of case in point of how gun control works, except for obviously in this case, it did not work.
Now, just as importantly, there are reports that are filtering out.
The police know exactly who did this, and they say they know exactly who did this.
But as per our usual arrangement, if the suspect is not somebody who matches up with the profile of a straight white man of right-wing orientation, that means it's time for the police to obscure who the shooter allegedly was.
Staff Sergeant Chris Clark was asked about all of this, and he says that he's not going to name the shooter and then proceeds to call the person a gun person, which is a word I did not know existed.
That includes the deceased gun person.
Okay.
And then separately, do you know the gun person's relationship to?
Okay, apparently the gun person, the reason that this term is being used, he says because it would impede the investigation and for privacy reasons.
And I'm less than concerned about the privacy of people who go and shoot school children.
I don't really care very much about their privacy, to be honest with you.
I think that they should be blasted out over the news so long as it's not encouraging further shooters.
Here is the police saying that they're not going to say anything about who the shooter was.
Usually that's not about preventing future crime.
Usually that is more about politics.
We believe we've been able to identify the shooter, but for privacy reasons and obviously for the conducting investigation, we're not releasing that information at that time until we're assured that we've connected with the appropriate people.
Well, the internet quickly went to work and it appears that the person who did the shooting was trans.
That is at least the information that is filtering out.
There are questions about this person's recent move toward identifying as female.
The entire media have identified this person as female, which is malpractice.
It is journalistic malpractice.
If this person is a biological male who is masquerading as a female, a biological male with gender dysphoria, a biological male insisting that he be called a woman, that does not make him a female.
And it is a slander against women to artificially increase their homicide rate against children by calling a male a female.
If suddenly, statistically, there's just an uptick in women winning boxing matches against men and being able to dunk and also committing murder, it seems to me that that is a slander against women because if you're just calling men women now, then you've got a problem.
It is also a perverse incentive that the only way you earn respect from the mainstream media and in life is to do harm to other people, at which point the media will call you by your preferred pronoun.
And all this information is filtering out right now.
We'll bring you more as it develops.
But once again, societies that tend to mainstream delusion and treat them as though they are normal and then blame the gun, blame the instrument rather than the mainstreaming of mental illness, especially mental illness that has an extraordinarily high crossover with suicidality and depression.
Nobody is doing anybody any favors.
The people who identify as trans or in outlying cases, their victims.
And it is very difficult to deny that we are now seeing a trend with regard to mass shootings that is emerging from trans shooters.
This was not an issue 15 years ago.
It just wasn't.
Derangement took other forms.
That obviously has changed, and the media and governmental policy have a lot to do with it.
Joining us online is Lior Sapires, a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute, who covers topics related to pediatric gender medicine, education policy, and culture.
We, of course, at the Daily Wire have been covering this stuff extensively for years up to and including a bunch of breaking news about the AMA's treatment, absurd treatment of trans medicine.
That was a story that we broke last year.
It made a lot of the rounds, and I think it made a significant shift in the culture surrounding the cult of trans medicine.
He has a piece out recently talking about the lack of consensus among medical groups on what they are calling gender-affirming care for minors.
Leader, thanks so much for the time.
Really appreciate it.
Thanks for having me, Ben.
So why don't we begin with sort of the news of the day?
So it is now being reported that the shooter up in Tumblr Ridge in Canada is a person who identified as trans.
This has become an alarming pattern in which people who identify as trans have been engaged in acts of violence.
This, of course, is not totally surprising given the fact that people who identify as trans have a very, very high rate of suicidality, of depression.
And, you know, again, the media continue to treat this as though this is of no consequence.
They're referring to the prospective shooter up in Tumblr Ridge as a she, even though pretty clear this is a biological he.
And this goes to kind of our entire society's willingness to say things that are biologically false, supposedly in pursuit of sympathy for people who are suffering from a mental disorder.
And that, of course, is not backed by medicine, which is the thing that you're writing about.
That's right.
That's right.
And so these are very troubled, young, usually young adolescent boys, young men who have a wide range of mental health problems and usually very troubled histories.
And they're not getting the care that they need.
They're not getting the societal response that they deserve.
And instead, they're being led down a path where they believe that things like transition will be a cure for all their problems when we just know that that's not the case.
So it's unfortunate that we've gotten to this point, but hopefully there will be a wake-up moment in the near future.
So speaking of that, it's been pretty amazing how over the course of the last couple of weeks, major medical groups have now come out and completely reversed themselves on what they were saying on quote-unquote gender affirming care for years.
So for years, it was DeRegore in the medical community to proclaim that hormone treatment, that social transition, that actual surgery was the solution for people suffering from gender dysphoria, particularly minors, because the idea was that if you didn't arrest puberty when a kid was 11 years old, that that person will look more like their biological sex than they otherwise would.
And so you're doing them a grave harm.
Now, after a few lawsuits and after it turns out that the science doesn't reflect any of this, we're suddenly getting the slow and soft walk back of, oh, well, actually, we don't have any evidence to show this worked in the first place.
So we've had thousands, presumably, of children who've been surgically or hormonally mutilated.
And does anyone pay a price for this?
What was the actual driving factor in them suddenly changing their tune?
Well, I guess the first thing I would say is this was never a wide and deep consensus of the medical profession.
This was always a consensus brought about by a very small number of medical organizations and one activist organization that claims to be a medical group.
That's the World Professional Association for Transgender Health.
And once you start looking into how the consensus came about, you start to realize that it was the result of activists, usually in key committees within these organizations, capturing the decision-making mechanisms.
And then the rest of the medical community remaining silent or saying, look, we're just going to trust our colleagues because they're experts in this area.
And we always trust, we always defer to our expert colleagues in medicine.
So I think that's really important just to start there, that this was never a wide and deep consensus.
But you're right.
We've had last week, we saw the first major medical group come out and say at least surgeries should be deferred until minimum age 19.
And I should point out that the American Society of Plastic Surgeons, that's the organization that published this statement, is the largest organization of its kind.
It represents 11,000 plastic surgeons in the United States and Canada, which is over 90% of the field.
So this is a major, major medical group.
And the American Medical Association, the following day, issued its own statement to the New York Times and National Review, basically saying, agreeing with their colleagues, their surgeon colleagues, but they added the word generally.
They said surgeries should generally be deferred until age 19 or above.
And so if you know anything about the field and how it operates, that is a massive loophole.
So it remains to be seen what exactly the AMA's position on this is.
But the fact that the ASPS issued this statement, and it's an extremely good statement, and we can talk about it, but it's a very, very important moment.
Now, do you think that was driven by medical liability claims?
Because obviously there had been a major lawsuit that was won by a quote-unquote detransitioner, a person who had surgeries who then realized that that was a huge mistake.
And she sued her plastic surgeon and won a couple million dollars.
And so this is a real liability issue now for surgeons.
Certainly the science didn't change between now and then.
Well, I can say one thing with confidence, and that is that this statement was not issued in response to that particular lawsuit.
And we can know that because it's a very carefully written statement, and it came out within, I think, 48 hours after the lawsuit was announced.
And the lawsuit was not being reported until the jury actually reached the verdict.
So there's virtually zero chance that the ASPS managed to draft this very careful statement and get it through all of its approval process within 48 hours.
So I think that's important because if you read the statement, you see that they are taking very seriously all of the knowledge that has emerged in the last five or six years as scientific scrutiny of the field began in earnest, I think, in Scandinavia in 2019.
And so the ASPS cites all of the systematic reviews.
It cites the CAS review.
It cites the HHS review, of which I was a co-author.
And these are, you know, these are massive systematic reviews of the literature, which is the most reliable method in evidence-based medicine to evaluate medical evidence.
I think it's important also that the ASPS includes some considerations about ethics, decision-making for minors, because one of the arguments, as I'm sure you know, Ben, as somebody who's followed this debate, one of the key arguments now being made by Democrats, by LGBT organizations, by gender clinicians in particular, they have conceded over the last few years that the evidence is very weak.
What they argue is that in the face of weak evidence, decisions about whether to treat and how to treat should be between parents who consent on behalf of their kids and doctors, meaning what should matter is the autonomy of the patient and the, let's call it the proxy autonomy of the parents to decide.
Well, ASPS comes out and basically says, you know, autonomy is the right to refuse treatments that are appropriately offered to patients.
It is not a right to obtain any intervention you want from a doctor.
And that distinction between those two understandings of autonomy is the distinction between medicine and consumerism.
And it's very important, I think, that ASPS, of all organizations, the plastic surgeons came out and said, you know, we cannot allow medicine to devolve into consumerism.
We have to protect the sacred principle of autonomy.
And it's been misunderstood and misapplied in this area.
And this is, I think, why the statement is really fascinating is because of where they set the age limit, right?
They said that it's about whether somebody is a minor or whether somebody is a major, which is a legal issue.
That is not a medical issue.
It is not as though, you know, your medical issue changes between the time you're 18 and 19 or 17 and 19.
The real issue here is that if you don't want to get sued, and if you want to be able to quote unquote consent to a surgery, you have to be of a particular age.
And so what that really suggests is that these surgeries are not, they have no evidence they're therapeutic.
And it totally undercuts the argument of the sort of trans grift medicine industry, which is that the reason that people are getting these things is not because it's a nose job, but because it's going to save your life and prevent somebody from committing suicide.
And so that has always been the argument in the gender-based trans community.
And the evidence for that is so scanty that they're now basically reducing this to the question of whether somebody should be able to get a nose job once they're above age or not.
Right.
I would say that when gender clinicians and their allies are speaking to the public, in particular to the skeptical public, so lawmakers and legislative hearings, to news reporters and mainstream media outlets, and even to parents who kind of have concerns about their kids and want to know what to do, then yes, they frame these interventions as a mental health intervention.
They make claims about reduction in depression, anxiety, suicidal ideation, and so forth.
When they talk amongst themselves, and you can see this when you look at their videos from conferences, When you see how you watch video calls which were somehow leaked to the public, you see that they actually offer different rationales.
They say that this is about helping kids who are or helping people in general who are otherwise healthy achieve their embodiment goals, achieve their cosmetic goals for how they want their body to look in light of their internal sense of gender.
So these are two rationales that have been offered for these interventions, and they kind of hop back and forth between them depending on who they're talking to and what it is that they're trying to persuade.
New Details On Epstein00:15:10
Well, that's Lior Sapiri.
Go check out all of his work over at Manhattan Institute.
Lior, thanks so much for the time and the insight.
Thanks, Ben.
In other bizarre news, the FAA had announced there would be a 10-day closure over the El Paso airport.
Apparently, the reason why the airspace had been closed, not sure why there was a 10-day period that was attached, but apparently, according to Jennifer Jacobs reporting for CBS News, the decision to close the El Paso International Airport to all flights for 10 days was triggered by Mexican cartel drones breaching U.S. airspace.
And apparently the Defense Department took action to disable the drones, which we assume it means that they are shooting down the drones.
Now, I've seen those drones personally.
If you go check out Behind the Paywall, our series about the divided states of Biden, one of the things we did is went down to the Arizona border.
And there was a point where we literally saw cartel drones overflying American territory along the Arizona border.
This is what the cartels do.
They fly these drones so as to monitor American law enforcement so they can smuggle drugs across the border.
And so it is not a surprise at all that Mexican cartel drones were breaching U.S. airspace.
They've been doing this on a routine basis, good for the Trump administration for finally shooting them down.
Actually, I remember when I was at the border, I asked Border Patrol, we were doing a ride-along, I asked Border Patrol why they weren't just shooting the drones down.
They're on American territory.
And they said they would have had to have sign-off from Alejandro Mayorcas, then the head of the Department of Homeland Security.
So presumably the Trump administration has now decided to activate with regard to these drones and shoot them down routinely.
Still not sure why that meant a 10-day announcement as opposed to a temporary announcement.
Maybe they're expecting that more drones were coming and now they're not.
Whatever the case may be, that is the right decision by the Trump administration.
We should not have foreign overflights of American territory.
Well, speaking of stories, upon which we are still finding out the whole story, as more Epstein files drip into view, as more pages drip out, as redactions are undone, new questions emerge.
Jon Thune, the Senate Majority Leader, he says that obviously, if your name is in the Epstein files, you're going to end up answering some questions.
This applies presumably to Howard Luttnick, the commerce secretary, whose name was brought into public view yesterday.
Well, look, I think it's going to be ultimately what happens there is probably going to be up to the American people.
And what I've been for, and I've been very clear about this from the outset, is full disclosure, get the information out there.
Let's have transparency.
And I think that's being done.
And so, you know, for people whose names appear or in some context might be in the Epstein files, they're going to have to answer the questions around that.
And I think the American people are going to have to make judgments about whether or not they think those answers are sufficient.
Now, there are conflicting stories coming out about President Trump.
Obviously, President Trump's enemies want to claim that he was deeply embedded with Jeffrey Epstein.
So far, we actually know the names of the people who are very much in bed with Jeffrey Epstein, as we talked about at length on yesterday's show.
Steve Bannon was one of those people, but obviously Peter Mandelson, who is a member of the UK government, was another one of those people and their various business people, including, of course, Les Wexner, who were deeply in bed with Jeffrey Epstein.
Some new details are coming out about that.
There was apparently an FBI file that listed him, Lex Wexner, the Victoria's secret founder, as a secondary co-conspirator with Epstein.
He was never charged as such, but a lot of money passing from Wexner to Epstein and vice versa, mostly from Wexner to Epstein and not the other way around.
Yesterday, I suggested that if Rocana and Thomas Massey wanted to actually forward the case, what they should do is just use their congressional immunity to read the names of people who had been redacted into the congressional record, which you can do without fear of liability.
Rocana actually did do that.
So, you know, props to him.
I think that's not a bad thing.
I think now he should actually show evidence that the people he's mentioning did something nefarious.
Just naming names without kind of explaining what they did seems like not amazing practice.
Some of these people have already been mentioned publicly.
Here's Rokana doing this, California congressperson yesterday.
Congressman Massey and I went to the Department of Justice to read the unredacted Epstein files.
We spent about two hours there, and we learned that 70 to 80 percent of the files are still redacted.
In fact, there were six wealthy, powerful men that the DOJ hid for no apparent reason.
When Congressman Massey and I pointed this out to the Department of Justice, they acknowledged their mistake, and now they have revealed the identity of these six powerful men.
These men are Salvatore Navora, Zorab Micheladz, Leopig Leonor, Nikola Caputa, Sultan Ahmed bin Sulyam, CEO of Dubai Ports World, and billionaire businessman Leslie Wexner.
Okay, so again, some of those names we already know.
We already knew about Leslie Wexner, obviously.
Literally tens of millions of dollars passing hands from Wexner to Epstein.
And what the files show is that, again, an FBI document apparently listed him at one point as a secondary co-conspirator, but he was never charged as such.
Sultan Ahmed bin Sulayim is the chairman and CEO of Dubai-based logistics giant, and he was linked to a 2009 email that read, quote, I loved the torture video.
And apparently he was discussing sexual incidents with Epstein in 2015.
Nicola Caputo, it is unconfirmed exactly who that is, but there is an Italian politician who served as a member of European Parliament whose name was redacted and then unredacted, which is how obviously Rokana saw it.
It is unclear what the allegations against him are.
And this is sort of one of the problems with the entire release of the Epstein files.
It was not done methodically.
When you just sort of dump millions of pages into the public view without any sort of contextual explanation of what people are looking at, it becomes very, very easy to make allegations that are unevident.
So I don't know even what the allegations are against Nikola Caputo.
I just know that his name got mentioned yesterday by Rokana.
Same thing with Salvatore Noara.
Unclear who this person is.
Doesn't seem to be a famous person.
Or Zurab Micheladze, unclear who he is or what the allegations are.
Or Leonik Leonov, unclear who he is or what the allegations are.
So they sort of found some names.
They brought those names out in public.
And again, I think that that is good for transparency if there's no reason for those names to be redacted.
I will say that if people's lives are ruined on the basis of no evidence whatsoever, that doesn't seem to be a wonderful, wonderful thing.
As far as President Trump, apparently, according to the New York Times, one of the first calls the Palm Beach police received was from Donald Trump, according to a local police chief at the time.
He told the FBI that more than a decade later.
That was after it became known that Epstein was under investigation in the 2000s.
Trump reportedly told the chief, one Michael Ryder, thank goodness you're stopping him.
Everyone has known he's been doing this.
Trump apparently said it was known in New York circles Epstein was disgusting.
And he also suggested the police focus their investigation on Epstein's associate, Glene Maxwell.
So that is precisely the reverse of what some people are trying to claim about Trump, which is that he was deeply in bed with all of this.
That, at the very least, does not seem to be the case.
It seems to be that Trump was one of the people who called the cops on Epstein as soon as the investigation was initiated.
Now, one person who has been caught up in this scandal inside the administration is Commerce Secretary Howard Luttnick.
Luttnick had said that he had cut off ties with Jeffrey Epstein years before he visited Epstein's private island in 2012 with his wife and his kids.
So Luttnick described his contact with Jeffrey Epstein.
He was being questioned by Senator Chris Van Hollen yesterday in the Senate.
I think you understand the root of concern here.
It's the way you described very emphatically your first encounter with him in his apartment, said you were disgusted, would never have any contact with him again.
Did you, in fact, make the visit to Jeffrey Epstein's private island?
I did have lunch with him as I was on a boat going across on a family vacation.
My wife was with me, as were my four children and nannies.
I had another couple with they were there as well with their children, and we had lunch on the island.
That is true for an hour, and we left with all of my children, with my nannies, and my wife all together.
We were on family vacation.
We were not apart to suggest there was anything untoward about that in 2012.
I don't recall why we did it.
So obviously, this has driven a lot of ire.
Records released by the Justice Department appear to show Luttnick emailing with Epstein, arranging calls and being scheduled for a drink in 2011, and that yacht trip that he just mentioned.
In subsequent emails, Lutnick confirmed lunch plans with Epstein on the island.
That is about all there is.
In 2017, apparently Epstein contributed some $50,000 to a dinner honoring Lutnick and another investor, which was put on by the Jewish philanthropic organization UJA Federation of New York.
Epstein was offered a table and 10 seats to attend the event, but declined, writing in an email to tell Luttnick he can film them.
Were those associations criminal in nature?
Doesn't appear to be evidence of that.
Were they sexual in nature?
Doesn't really appear to be evidence of that.
But again, association with people who have been convicted or pled guilty to child sex trafficking or sex trafficking of a minor, that is a stain for sure.
Caroline Levitt over at the White House defended Lutnick.
So does the White House stand behind Secretary Luttnick right now?
Or given what he has said today, has there been any shift in how the White House is viewing Secretary Lutnick's performance?
No, Secretary Luttnick remains a very important member of President Trump's team, and the president fully supports the Secretary.
Now, again, I think that it's important not to conflate all issues together.
The evidence in the emails and in the text and everything else shows that Luttnick knew Epstein and was friendly with Epstein.
That is not quite the same thing as, for example, Peter Mandelson actually passing government secrets to Jeffrey Epstein or Steve Bannon planning a PR comeback with Jeffrey Epstein.
And that is not quite the same thing.
It's not great.
It's not wonderful.
It is not criminal.
And so I think it's important to keep those two strains apart for the sake of accuracy, if nothing else.
On the congressional side, the Democrats, once again, look to be staring down the barrel of another partial shutdown.
There's an immigration shutdown that they're going to attempt to pursue.
According to Axios, Senate Democrats are drawing a preemptive red line on ICE reforms, telling Axios any sanctuary city crackdown is now dead on arrival.
Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer's rank and file are in no mood to let Republicans turn a debate about ICE's use of force into a conversation over sanctuary cities.
Senator Chris Van Holland told the Axios, I know they're trying to change the conversation.
The issue is ICE's conduct.
That's the issue before us.
Of course, these issues are absolutely linked.
ICE is being forced to take measures they never would have to take in a non-sanctuary city.
The Democrats, of course, have been threatening a partial government shutdown, meaning not funding of DHS for the long term.
Senator Thun moved Tuesday evening to set up a Thursday vote on a House-passed DHS bill.
He might instead do another short-term CR.
Chuck Schumer might go for that because, again, they feel like the longer they push this issue, the better it is for them politically.
President Trump, for his part, continues to maintain nobody's coming through our borders.
It's interesting that the Trump administration is, in fact, making the case, and it's the best possible PR case, that they have shut the border, which is true.
This is a case that Trump is making.
And also that they are, in fact, targeting criminal illegal immigrants, which we'll get to in a moment.
Here's President Trump.
We have the strongest border in the history of our country.
We have Democrat people giving us the statistics that no people have come into our country illegally in the last eight months.
Even I can't believe that totally, but I'll take it.
But essentially, no people have come in.
Nobody's coming through our border.
They only come in legally.
Now, he's right about that.
The administration has been trying to shift its focus from this idea that they're going to deport all illegal immigrants to that they are focusing at least primarily on criminal illegal immigrants.
There's a story that came out from CBS News yesterday that said that less than 14% of nearly 400,000 immigrants arrested by ICE had charges or convictions for violent criminal offenses, according to an internal DHS document obtained by CBS News.
So that appears to conflict with the argument being made by the Trump administration that they're not focusing on Abuela, who's been here for 20 years, that they're really focusing in on people who have committed crimes other than illegal immigration.
Caroline Lovitt, however, pushed back on the statistic from the White House yesterday.
Nearly 60% of ICE arrestees over the past year had criminal charges or convictions.
And among that population, the majority of the criminal charges or convictions are for nonviolent crimes.
Oh, well, what are nonviolent crimes, you ask?
This has coincided with what DHS has been saying all along, that approximately 70% of illegal aliens arrested under President Trump have pending criminal charges and or prior convictions.
And these so-called nonviolent crimes, drug trafficking, distribution of child burglary, fraud, DUI, embezzlement, solicitation of a minor, and human smuggling, just to name a few.
So just because a crime is not violent in nature doesn't mean that crime is victimless.
Okay, and this, of course, is exactly right.
The Trump administration has not claimed they are going to arrest only violent criminal illegal immigrants.
They said criminal illegal immigrants, a huge amount of crime is nonviolent.
And so she is right about that.
Democrats, by the way, continue to be as radical as they want to be.
Yesterday, Todd Lyons, who's the acting immigration and customs enforcement director, was in front of the House Homeland Security Committee.
And Democrats went at him and he said, listen, I'm not going to unmask my agents.
I'm not going to not enforce the law.
This is silliness.
Will you commit, yes or no, to immediately unmasking every agent conducting immigration enforcement and requiring them to wear standard uniforms with identifiable badges?
No.
Well, it's a sad response.
Your answer is completely unacceptable.
People who are proud of what they do aren't hiding their identity.
We're a nation of laws, and you, your boss, Secretary Noam, and Donald Trump are not above the law.
So, again, this sort of stuff from Democrats, that the big issue here is the masking of ICE agents.
Save America Act Controversy00:09:07
Good luck with all of this.
Representative Lamonica R. MacIver of the New Jersey 10th, she's one of the people who was briefly arrested for protesting outside an ICE facility and obstructing law enforcement in the process.
She asked Todd Lyons if he's going to hell.
And good luck for Democrats.
Again, if their claim is that non-enforcement of the law is superior to enforcement of the law, that is a radical proposal Americans do not like.
Well, let me ask you some questions that you may be able to answer.
Mr. Lyons, do you consider yourself a religious man?
Yes, ma'am.
Oh, yes.
Okay.
Well, how do you think Judgment Day will work for you with so much blood on your hands?
I'm not going to entertain that question.
Oh, okay.
Of course not.
Do you think you're going to hell, Mr. Lyons?
I'm not going to enter.
Of course.
How many governments?
Gentlelady will suspend.
Ridiculous, ridiculous stuff.
Truly ridiculous stuff from Democrats.
I guess they can take this angle if they wish to.
I don't think it's going to work out for them.
They might win a temporary battle.
They will lose the immigration war.
At the same time, Congress is taking up the Save Act.
Whether or not Democrats are forced to vote on it is the question in the Senate.
President Trump outlined what is in the Save America Act on Fox News with Larry Kudlow yesterday.
You have a thing called Save America Act.
Save America Act.
And Schumer's going to say, I oppose it.
How do you oppose Save America?
So this is simply unvoting.
Voter ID.
We want a statement that you are a citizen of America.
I think that's a reasonable thing to ask.
And no mail-in ballots, which are very corrupt.
No country in the world is doing mail-in ballots, or especially the way we do them.
I mean, they send them all over the place.
Nobody knows.
It's totally corrupt.
No country in the world does what we do.
And so, again, he is not wrong about this.
Joining us online to discuss Democrats' activities in the Senate, obstructing the Save Act, obstructing DHS funding, is Senator Rick Scott of Florida.
Obviously, he is sitting senator.
He has also served two terms as governor of Florida.
Senator Scott, thanks so much for the time.
I appreciate it.
The governor's job was easier.
And just so you know, it's easier to get things done.
This is hard.
Yeah, it certainly feels like that.
That is unsurprising.
Speaking of which, it seems like the Democrats are now looking at yet another partial government shutdown, this time over the Department of Homeland Security.
Can you give us the latest on what exactly they are demanding?
Because we've heard sort of vague reports about what it is that they want, but some of the things that they seem to be asking for essentially look like they would end law enforcement with regard to illegal immigration in the country.
Well, that's what they want to do.
I mean, they don't want ICE to be able to do their job.
They want to defund it and they want to defang it.
So things that you don't ever have, you don't require local law enforcement to do or our sheriff's departments to do.
They want to make ICE do.
I mean, you have to look at where the Democrats are.
They want open borders.
They don't care the criminals are murdering our kids or raping our daughters and granddaughters.
I mean, they, I mean, you look at what would they look at Lick and Riley's family in the face and say, hey, we don't care.
Or Jocelyn Angari, because that's what they're saying.
So, I mean, there's some common sense things.
I think in Florida, when I was governor, we added, but we'd let the sheriff's department decide police departments.
We added body cameras.
But, I mean, there's times for all these other things.
There's times for masks.
And by the way, you realize that we don't have any of these problems in Florida because our sheriff's department, police departments, they work with ICE.
So we don't have these problems that they're having in these sanctuary cities where there's a criminal in jail and they know that he's illegal and they turn they'll turn him over to ICE and then ICE has to go into the neighborhood with protesters and try to arrest him.
So we don't have any of those problems in Florida.
It's all driven by local mayors and governors.
So, Senator Scott, one of the things that we've been hearing is the possibility the Democrats are going to try to push for the use of judicial rather than administrative warrants by ICE when they're performing arrests.
Have you heard that from Democrats?
They've talked about changes around warrants, but again, it's kind of vague what exactly they're demanding.
Absolutely.
And what that does would mean that you would never be able to arrest anybody.
It would set up a system to where none of these people get arrested.
I don't get it.
When I was governor, you know what people care about?
They care about jobs, their kids' education, public safety.
So all these mayors and governors have forgotten the basic thing of government, keep people safe.
So, yeah, we should be able to do administrative warrants and deport people.
And you don't have to go per person for a judicial warrant, which would mean that ICE couldn't do their job.
Might as well shut down ICE.
So, Senator Scott, what do you think are the possibilities that Democrats actually do shut down the government here?
Or do you think there are enough crossover votes from Democrats to prevent them from being able to use the filibuster, for example?
No, we'll shut down government.
I think there's only two options.
Either government will get shut down Friday night or we'll do another continuing resolution for a couple of weeks to see if there's some deal.
But look, the Democrats, they don't care about the public safety.
I mean, they want open borders.
And I think the only thing they must be is they think it's the only way they can win elections.
Well, meanwhile, the Republicans in the House have already passed the Save America Act, and that has moved on to the Senate as well.
Democrats are treating this as anathema.
Why don't you first of all tell us what exactly is in the Save Act?
Because what we have been told by Chuck Schumer is that this is Jim Crow 2.0, which again, that line is getting a little old since I've heard it applied to probably a dozen bills over the course of the last 10 years or so.
But this is their latest bugaboo is voter ID in the States.
Well, it's pretty common sense.
You have to show an ID when you go to vote, right?
You have to show an ID on an airplane.
I think you have to show an ID to get a lottery ticket, things like that.
You just have to show an ID.
That's number one.
Number two is to register to vote, you have to prove citizenship.
You know, I don't like Macron.
I don't actually get to vote against Macron in France.
I don't like Starmer in the UK.
I don't get to vote against him.
So if you're illegal, you don't get to vote in our elections either.
So it's pretty basic.
I'm glad the House has passed it.
The president's come out in favor of it.
So now we've got to get it done in the Senate any way we can.
We might have to do it through the talking filibuster, which is probably the only way we'll get it done because the Democrats are all opposed to it.
What have you heard about that?
Because we've heard some conflicting reports about whether Senator Thune is going to use the talking filibuster, meaning for those who don't follow Senate procedure, there has been a basic deal between both sides that if you don't have 60 votes to shut down debate, that you don't actually have to get up and talk.
Everybody tends to think of Mr. Smith goes to Washington.
You actually stand up there and you talk for a really long time.
That's what a filibuster is, but that's almost never done.
And so forcing people to actually do a talking filibuster means that somebody gets up there and rans for 25 hours or however long their catheter holds out.
What is the possibility that Senator Thune is actually going to force a talking filibuster on this?
Well, the positive is Thune has committed that we're going to have a vote on the SAVE Act.
So he said that.
So that's positive.
Now, I think the only way we're going to get passed is we've got to go.
We've got to work through to see if we can do it through a talking filibuster because we don't have enough Democrats who are going to support us.
So if you remember, the filibuster was simply you didn't have to have 60 votes to pass something.
You had to have six, you know, you have to say, we're going to stop debate at some point.
Okay.
Okay.
So what we need to do is make people talk.
So hopefully that's what we'll do.
We yesterday at our Republican Senate lunch, we had a conversation about it.
So I think we're going to continue to have these conversations, but hopefully we'll be able to do the talking filibuster.
But the first step is we've got to make sure 51 of us are on board for the Save America Act.
So I tell everybody call their senators and make sure they're on board of the Save America Act.
That's number one, because we're not going to get anywhere if we don't have 51 of us supporting it.
That's number one.
Number two is then we've got to say, can we get it done through a talking filibuster?
I mean, the problem we've got is the Democrats are blocking everything.
So ultimately, what they're going to force us to do is actually, I think, get rid of the filibuster.
I think the right way of doing it is, okay, let's have a talking filibuster.
If you want to talk about something, talk about it, but let's vote at the end.
So meanwhile, bipartisanship is not totally dead.
One of the bills that you are promoting, along with some Democrats, is something called the Clear Labels Act, which is designed to make sure that everybody knows where their medicines are coming from, which presumably would help reshore a lot of the manufacturing process because a lot of people don't trust medications that are going to be produced in China, for example.
Why don't you explain where that is and what's the possibility of that being brought to a floor vote?
Well, I've got the support of the ranking member on the agent committee.
I'm the chairman of that committee, Christine Gillibrand.
And so she and I have this bill.
It's the Clear Labels Act.
Economic Sentiments Unveiled00:03:22
It says that basically you should know what you're putting in your body.
So when you get a prescription, you'll know where the ingredients came from and where it's manufactured.
It's pretty common sense.
So I'm optimistic that we'll get that bill to get that done, whether it's a standalone vote or whether we get it through another package like the National Defense Authorization Act.
But we should not be dependent on communist China in India for our medicines.
And by the way, it's not safe.
The FDA is not doing inspections like they do in the United States of medicines, the manufacturing medicines.
On top of that, there's been studies that say that you have a much higher chance of death and hospitalization if you take a generic drug made in China or in India.
Well, that is Senator Rick Scott.
Senator, thanks so much for the time and for the updates.
And good luck.
And what is a much harder job than being governor of Florida?
That's going to get done.
We're going to get there.
Be optimistic.
Meanwhile, for the Trump administration, excellent economic news.
A good jobs report came out in January.
There's some upside, there's some downside.
The upside is a very good jobs report in January.
Apparently, 170,000 private sector jobs, 130,000 jobs added overall because some government jobs were done away with.
That is much stronger than economists expected.
They were expecting 70,000 jobs in January.
The unemployment rate has ticked down to 4.3%, which is historically quite good.
The downside is that the BLS in revisions shaved down 400,000 jobs from the 2025 employment gain, meaning that for all of 2025, there are about 181,000 new jobs created, which is presumably one of the reasons why people are still feeling dyspeptic about the economy.
The reality is the Trump economy right now is quite strong.
There's a very good piece by Ramesh Panuru over at the Washington Post talking about the status of the economy.
And as he points out, right now, even though economic confidence is low, like 21%, the unemployment rate is only 4.3%.
There's a relatively low misery index, which is unemployment plus inflation.
And the inflation-adjusted wages have been rising pretty precipitously over the course of the last year or so.
The biggest problem in Panuru's estimation as to why there's a disconnect between what Americans are feeling about the economy and how the economy is actually performing is because they expected that inflation going down meant actual deflation.
This is something I've talked about on the show a lot.
The way politicians talk about bringing down inflation, they don't explain that the prices are basically going to remain the same.
You're not going to see a real deflation in prices.
And so even if you've seen wage increases, those still have to eat away and chip away at a time when inflation far outpaced inflation-adjusted wages.
This is a point that Ramesh Penuro is making.
He says, even though real wages have risen since 2022, their decline during the previous two years has not been undone.
People can remember when they were making more.
The current wage trend may have to continue for a while for Americans to be satisfied.
Also, it doesn't really help that the president is constantly talking about tariffs.
Most Americans don't feel that is a big win for them.
It's one of his more unpopular economic views.
But overall, what this does suggest is that as the Trump economy continues to churn, maybe the sentiment with regard to the economy starts to rise along with the economic strength of the country.
Finally Decided00:00:50
All righty, coming up, the New York Times has finally, finally decided that, hey, wait, you know, pot, not great for you.
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Okay, no not even close Two, three.
Whatever.
You know what?
Two, three, four.
I cannot believe we're back here again, Ben.
If the Ben Shapiro shows a mom, then Ben After Dark is a cool mom.