| Speaker | Time | Text |
|---|---|---|
|
Victims Finally Heard
00:15:18
|
||
| Maximum transparency. | ||
| That's Chairman Comer. | ||
|
unidentified
|
That's what he does. | |
| Yes. | ||
| Mr. Speaker, when you say justice to blame, is that when you are seeking for action, the emphasis is passed on transparency or design and prosecutions and government? | ||
| I think we follow the truth where it leads. | ||
| I think that's the responsibility of Congress. | ||
| I think we owe that to the victims. | ||
| And if there are further prosecutions, then they need to be brought. | ||
| No stone unturned. | ||
| I mean, that's a commitment, and it's bipartisan. | ||
| And I'm heartened that members of Congress are willing to work together on that. | ||
| And look, I will say this again, I'm emphasized. | ||
| This is full participation of the administration and the White House. | ||
| The President has the same desire, so long as we're protecting the innocent victims. | ||
| So there'll be a lot more on this in the coming days. | ||
| So thank you all for the time. | ||
|
unidentified
|
We appreciate it. | |
| Thank you. | ||
| Mr. Comer, you're a better time. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Also on the Hill Ranking Member of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, Representative Robert Garcia of California, joined Democrats on the committee to discuss their meeting with several victims of convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein. | |
| The press conference is about 45 minutes. | ||
| We're going to go ahead and start. | ||
| I'm Robert Garcia, the ranking member on the Oversight Committee, and we're here with, of course, the other Democrats that, of course, are on this committee. | ||
| But most importantly, for the last couple of hours, we've been hearing directly from the victims who have suffered incredible, horrific abuse by Jeffrey Epstein, by Ghelaine Maxwell, and many others who have been involved in these horrific crimes. | ||
| I will say, and I know I speak on behalf of all of us, that the courage that these women show today has motivated us so much more to seek justice, accountability, and transparency. | ||
| And we do not care how powerful, how connected, or what political party those that have victimized and caused horrific pain and sexual abuse of these women are. | ||
| We will seek justice. | ||
| I want to just start. | ||
| We have a few folks who are going to say some remarks. | ||
| I want to start with Ayana Prefsey. | ||
| Our Congresswoman, of course, has been a great leader on this. | ||
| We'll share from a few folks, and I will wrap it up and answer any questions at that time. | ||
| I want to add before we start that much of the conversation that we had is also confidential, and it's our job to protect the privacy of the women and what they've said. | ||
| And there are numerous conversations that will be happening in the days ahead. | ||
| So, Congresswoman. | ||
| Thank you, Ranking Member Garcia. | ||
| What we heard here today was harrowing, and it is proof of what has been an institutional systemic betrayal for decades. | ||
| These women now who were preyed upon, groomed, exploited, violated from as young as 13 years old, their bodies violated, their minds manipulated, and their dreams denied. | ||
| Aspiring artists, lawyers, actors, people who had big dreams. | ||
| And those dreams have been dashed and denied because of the shame they carry, because of the trauma they carry. | ||
| It is a lifetime sentence. | ||
| Jeffrey Epstein is dead, but his hurt and his harm is alive and well in the daily experiences of these survivors. | ||
| Maxwell is incarcerated, but it is these survivors, these victims, who are still very much in jail. | ||
| And they are deserving of transparency, of accountability, and of healing. | ||
| We are where we are today because of the leadership of Ranking Member Garcia and our ranking member on the subcommittee for law enforcement, Summer Lee, enforcing that vote for a subpoena. | ||
| Because in order for us to hold powerful abusers to account who participated actively in a predator, pedophile, Ponzi scheme meant to feed on the daily perversions of a rich and powerful man and his enablers and those who were his co-conspirators, | ||
| we want to center the victims and the survivors, not shield the powerful, the wealthy, and the well-connected. | ||
| So we forced a vote for a subpoena in a hearing that was on child trafficking to point out the hypocrisy. | ||
| Then I led calls for a hearing in the Committee on Oversight centering the victims. | ||
| And my colleagues joined with me in that. | ||
| We do believe that that did lead to pressure that resulted in today's roundtable, where many of the victims said it was the first time that they had felt heard on the heels of the many years of abuse that they experienced to be re-victimized and traumatized by a government. | ||
| They had abusers that told them they were trash. | ||
| And because they've never gotten justice and been heard, it has contributed to the ways in which they have felt demoralized and invisible. | ||
| The role of this committee is to be an efficient and effective pursuit of the truth, and we will be until these survivors get the justice that they deserve. | ||
| Again, we will not shield powerful abusers. | ||
| They must be taken to account. | ||
| And that cannot happen if we are not centering and prioritizing the voices of survivors. | ||
| And now I'll turn it over to my colleague and dear friend, Congresswoman Simon from California, who has worked for many years with survivors of trafficking. | ||
| Good afternoon, everyone. | ||
| Latifa Simon from California's 12th District. | ||
| Today we had the honor of listening to extremely brave women who talked about the ongoing rape and sexual exploitation that they endured by the rich and the powerful. | ||
| And for three decades, their voices have been ignored. | ||
| These are young women who have been on record telling their stories. | ||
| And yet justice has been denied. | ||
| Justice has been denied to the young woman who talked about being groomed to go over Jeffrey Epstein's home where she was raped. | ||
| Raped. | ||
| Children leaving high school to be raped and left to go home alone to then go to school the next day. | ||
| One of the things that I will tell you, the brave and courageous women today, what they did with both Republicans and Democrats, they sat before us at a roundtable and gave us their souls, believing that maybe this time they would get justice. | ||
| Maybe this time they would be seen as children, not adultified by men who ravished their bodies. | ||
| Maybe then they thought today, if they testified in front of this hearing, that we, as members of Congress, would not only lift up their stories and seek justice, that we would hear the truth in the life of girls and young people all over this country who are continuously bought and sold, who never seek justice. | ||
| Because they too, like these women, fear retribution. | ||
| If we are worth our names on our letterhead, we will not only seek justice and get answers, we will work to protect these women. | ||
| We will work to ensure that every individual, every adult that had anything to do with their trafficking, their rape, that they are held to account. | ||
| For over 30 years, I have worked with young women who have been moved through the trafficking channels of this country, and we rarely see them getting justice. | ||
| Today, hopefully, will be a new day. | ||
| Oversight Dims, we are working extremely hard with our colleagues, and we are so proud of our leadership. | ||
| Now we have to move on, get answers, provide protection and support for these women so that more folks come through, come forward, and that the United States is looked upon, hopefully, as a country that protects children, that protects young women, that ensures that if you hurt one of our children, you will absolutely be held to the maximum, maximum levels of accountability. | ||
| Thank you all. | ||
| And I would like to actually introduce my colleague, Summer Lee, who you heard before, is the ranking member of the subcommittee on the Oversight Dems, representing, of course, Oversight Dems in the Subcommittee for Law Enforcement. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Ms. Lee. | |
| Thank you all so much. | ||
| About a month ago, we were through the Oversight Committee on Subcommittee on Federal Law Enforcement. | ||
| We, me, alongside our colleagues on that committee, were able to force a vote to pass a motion to subpoena the Department of Justice to release all of the fouls associated with the Epstein case, of course, unredacted and complete. | ||
| We know that since then, we've seen a small trickle-in of papers and files that, of course, revealed very little new, but was, again, another attempt to obstruct justice, to distract from what we are here to do and to, of course, prolong this out. | ||
| But what we saw today in listening to these incredibly brave women who were once young girls, who were victimized repeatedly and have been repeatedly victimized since then, because of profound levels of just injustice, profound levels of failure, systemic failure at every single level. | ||
| They are here to remind us that the reason why we passed this motion, the reason why we had even, if it was just a little bipartisan port at the time, was because our reason for being here is to make sure that whether it is the government of the United States or princes or elected officials from other countries or wealthy billionaires, that no one should be above the law. | ||
| That if we are going to be a country of laws, that they must be equal, applied to every single person, but that also we have a responsibility to restore these victims. | ||
| It was the government itself that failed these women. | ||
| It is the government itself right now that is keeping them from the justice, from the healing, and from the peace that they need and that they deserve. | ||
| We are here not to add on to the sensationalism of a case that has received global news and global attention, but to recenter that at the heart of this are human beings. | ||
| At the heart of this are women, girls, now generations of girls beneath them. | ||
| Though we were able to hear from a number of women today, we know that there were hundreds, hundreds of women who were involved in this case, hundreds of women, some, many of whom are unnamed, but hundreds of women who were victimized, who were sexually abused, and then re-victimized by the obstruction from the government. | ||
| And behind them are millions of girls who have watched how our country, how society handles cases of sexual abuse. | ||
| They have watched the rich and the powerful get off. | ||
| They have watched even in death them be protected. | ||
| And we are here as oversight Democrats to say that the time to step up, the time to push to fight to ensure justice is now and today is why we are here to renew our calls, not just for an official hearing, as Representative Ayanna Presley has called for an official hearing on the books within our committee. | ||
| Though we are thankful for the roundtable that we had today, we affirm our calls for that. | ||
| We also reaffirm our calls for the Department of Justice to hand over immediately all of the files within its custody. | ||
| Not just to ourselves, but also a reminder that as we learned today, some of the victims themselves have not been able to access their own files. | ||
| So we want to remind the press, we want to remind our country and the population that these women are still seeking justice for themselves, that they're still seeking healing for themselves. | ||
| And to the extent that we are able to continue to keep our eyes on what the ultimate prize is, that we will do that. | ||
| That we will continue to pursue justice in a way that does no more harm to these women and does no more harm to any of the victims, not just of Epstein, but of sexual assault across our country. | ||
| Thank you. | ||
| And with that, actually, I'll be handing it off to our colleague from Texas, Representative Jasmine Crockett. | ||
| Thank you so much. | ||
| And first of all, let me just say that we are standing before you. | ||
| We're having this conversation because of the oversight democratic leadership. | ||
| And so I want to reiterate that it's the Democratic leadership on oversight that has truly been able to move this forward. | ||
| I'm sure many of you don't recall, but we were sent home early to try to avoid being able to take a vote on something like getting these files. | ||
| We are about doing real transparency. | ||
| We don't care who's in the files. | ||
| We are going after you. | ||
| So if I had to sum up what happened today, we heard the stories of victims and honestly, we heard the story of at least one person that has never come forward before today. | ||
| This was the very first time that she was telling anyone in a semi-public way her story. | ||
| And if I had to summarize the theme, I would say that their theme was to do something. | ||
| It is probably the theme of the American people in general right now when it comes to government is that they want us to do something. | ||
| So yes, we have the roundtable, but they actually want to see some action. | ||
| The fact that this started off in the 90s and we had someone who could talk about what happened to them in the 90s. | ||
| But then you go down the line and you've got somebody that's telling us their story from 2008. | ||
|
Need Answers On Epstein
00:04:23
|
||
| These failures led to years and years of abuse that did not have to take place. | ||
| And so the reality is this. | ||
| Some think that this is all over and some think that nothing else is going on. | ||
| But if there was ever a RICO case, it would have been the Epstein case. | ||
| So how we went from something that should have been RICO because of how sophisticated of a system this was. | ||
| And this wasn't just one little sick old man that was doing stuff, but there were so many layers. | ||
| Whether we're talking about the banks that were involved, whether we're talking about those that worked for him, that helped him, whether we're talking about the monster known as Maxwell. | ||
| And that's exactly how y'all need to refer to her. | ||
| She is a monster. | ||
| She is not a victim. | ||
| So, let me tell you, I want some action items to come out of this because for once, we somewhat look like we're bipartisan in the oversight committee. | ||
| Number one, we need answers. | ||
| We need answers on why it is that Maxwell was transferred from her current station and/or her former station in Florida down to Texas. | ||
| We need to have an understanding because everything that I heard today leads me to know that for sure she was all up and in and through this entire process. | ||
| Not to mention that she was indicted by a jury of her peers and then she was tried and convicted and given 20 years. | ||
| So, why is it that we had somebody again? | ||
| It almost seems like we are doomed to repeat our failures because why is it we have high-level people that seemingly are running cover for a criminal, and that is what she is. | ||
| She is a monster and she is a criminal. | ||
| So, number one, we need answers on what happened with that transfer, why it took place, and honestly, we all need to stand together and say that Maxwell needs to go back to where the monsters go, which is to a higher level of security. | ||
| We also need to understand that Debbie Wasserman Schultz has legislation that she has been trying to push forward. | ||
| And so, in a bipartisan way, we all need to get behind Debbie because we found and what we learned is that there were loopholes as it relates to the Crime Victims Act. | ||
| And so, we've got to make sure that no other victims suffer in the way that they did when you have somebody like Alex Acosta that decides that he wants to play games and dismiss a case and never inform the victims of what's going on as is required by law. | ||
| So, we are going to have to fix those loopholes to make sure that that doesn't happen because it took them 10 years of fighting this. | ||
| And ultimately, by the time they got to the end of it, well, it also was Jeffrey Epstein's end, and so there was not a resolution for that. | ||
| And the final thing that I think we need to do is obviously we need to continue to push forward and make sure that we get all the files because we know that we have not received them all. | ||
| Because I am standing in front of the press, I'm also going to make a plea. | ||
| One of the things that I realized was that there's a lot of stuff that the DOJ may have, but honestly, if you don't have a thorough investigation, and I can't say if we had a thorough investigation or not, we have no idea. | ||
| But the reality is that when you have investigators that go out, they go out and they collect information. | ||
| I am not necessarily convinced that they even have gone out and done their due diligence to fully investigate this case in the first place. | ||
| So, if there's anyone in the public that believes that you have information that would be valuable, you've never been able to get through to federal agencies, or no one would listen to you when you try to go forward and bring information forward. | ||
| I am asking that you trust Oversight DIMS and you bring that information to us. | ||
| Or if you know where some information is contained, let us know so that we can then send subpoenas out that way. | ||
| We want to do right not only by those that have already suffered under Epstein, but we want to prevent other trafficking rings that we know are out there. | ||
| We want to make sure that we are doing right for future generations. | ||
| So, with that, I now have the honor of presenting to you the firecracker out of New Mexico. | ||
|
Victims' Stories Revealed
00:03:42
|
||
| All right. | ||
| Well, I'm Melanie Stansbury, and I represent New Mexico's first congressional district. | ||
| And I want to say that I'm truly stunned by what I heard today. | ||
| The thing about being a victim of assault, of sexual violence, is that it not only steals your sense of self, it steals your dignity, it steals your ambition, it steals your hopes, it steals your dreams, and it steals your sense of personhood. | ||
| And what we heard today is from a half dozen victims, some of whom have already pursued both civil and criminal suits against both Jeffrey Epstein and Ghelane Maxwell, as well as from several who have never told their stories in public before. | ||
| But before I turn to the substance of the case itself, I want to say to anyone out there who is currently experiencing abuse of any kind, we see you. | ||
| We are here fighting for you, and we will fight for justice for every person who is experiencing sexual violence in this country, and that is what this case is actually about. | ||
| But I want to be clear that what we heard today is a cover-up, and it is a cover-up of epic proportions, a cover-up involving the United States government, the justice system, rich and powerful individuals, a cover-up potentially involving foreign countries and foreign actors. | ||
| And yes, here today in this House, as our colleagues are up in the House chamber and the Rules Committee, a cover-up by the Republicans in this chamber. | ||
| Because as you will find out in the coming days and weeks, this goes all the way to the top. | ||
| So let's be clear about that. | ||
| There has been a systemic failure of the justice system for decades. | ||
| A systemic failure to hold people who are powerful and have money to account, and that has allowed not just hundreds but potentially thousands of women not only in the United States but around the world to be bought, sold and trafficked for sex, not only by Jeffrey Epstein, but by his associates and his rich and powerful friends. | ||
| And as these stories come forward, whether they're stories that have already been told, they're stories in those FBI files that have not been released by the Department of Justice and which they must release because of the subpoena, or whether they are stories of victims that have not yet come forward, we will hold you all accountable for this miscarriage of justice, for the abuse of these women, | ||
| and the abuse of this institution to try to cover it up. | ||
| Because there happens to be a very powerful person at the top who doesn't want these stories out. | ||
| So that is why we subpoena these records. | ||
| That is why these victims were here today to bravely tell their stories. | ||
|
Demanding Accountability
00:15:37
|
||
| And whatever justice looks like in the coming days and weeks and years, we will follow every thread. | ||
| We will follow every piece of evidence. | ||
| We will follow every bank record. | ||
| We will follow every investigation. | ||
| We will follow every court order. | ||
| And we will make sure that those who were abused by these men are held accountable. | ||
| Thank you so much, Congresswoman Yassiman-Ansari. | ||
| I represent Phoenix, Arizona. | ||
| This is incredibly difficult to do. | ||
| We sat this afternoon listening to brave, courageous women in the face of threats to their lives and threats to their families' lives, in the face of retaliation from the highest ranking officials, from billionaires, from extremely powerful people that we haven't even begun to scratch the surface of. | ||
| We sat there today listening to these brave women speak and tell us the truth about what has happened for decades in this country without any accountability whatsoever. | ||
| Listening to them, I was in awe because I don't think I could have done what they did today. | ||
| I think I would have been too scared and too fearful of what might happen to me. | ||
| And the fact that some of these stories and the abuse that has been ongoing for so long, I was four years old when some of the witnesses, some of the folks in the room today began being abused by Jeffrey Epstein and Gheline Maxwell. | ||
| And as the youngest woman currently serving in this body, I feel an immense responsibility that we do not let this go on any longer, that we need justice and accountability, and we need to prove to young women in this country, to our daughters and to our granddaughters, that we will not let the government of the United States of America, what is supposed to be a free country, | ||
| a country that believes in law and order and justice and accountability, protect the most powerful people, not only in our country, but who knows from across the world. | ||
| So today served, I think, as a reaffirming of our commitment, our profound commitment to making sure that we get justice and we get accountability. | ||
| There were many themes that we heard today from the brave women who spoke to us. | ||
| First and foremost, it is an absolute atrocity that the Trump administration allowed and sent over the president's former defense attorney to speak with a monster and to then publicize that interview and provide this monster with a platform to perpetuate her lies. | ||
| The Trump administration needs to be held accountable for that. | ||
| We need to demand that Ghelene Maxwell never get a pardon from the United States government and actually serve out the time that she was given and that she deserves for the crimes that she committed. | ||
| House Oversight Democrats, and I'm so grateful to our leadership. | ||
| We are incredibly lucky to have the leadership of Representative Garcia and of course Congresswoman Lee who initiated the subpoena. | ||
| But this is just the beginning. | ||
| I think today made very clear that even those of us here who've been working on this and fighting for this, there is so much to this story that nobody knows. | ||
| There are decades worth of stories and information and a cover-up of this capacity to have allowed for the abuse of over a thousand women over the course of decades and then stories that demonstrate that Epstein and others were able to perpetuate the abuse beyond even after the public knew. | ||
| We know there's a lot more to this. | ||
| And I think that this is the most corrupt administration in American history and this story shows it more than anything. | ||
| So we will keep fighting in honor of the survivors who are brave enough to put themselves out there for truth and justice. | ||
| And we will not back down until there is full accountability and prevention from this ever happening again. | ||
| And with that, I will hand it over to my colleague, Congressman Lynch. | ||
| Thank you so much. | ||
| Thank you. | ||
| Thank you, Yasmin. | ||
| Today we had the opportunity to hear from six courageous women who were all victims of Jeffrey Epstein and Ghelane Maxwell. | ||
| Even though there were only six of them in the room today, they spoke on behalf of over a thousand other victims of Jeffrey Epstein and Delaney Maxwell. | ||
| And you could see that they were crushed in a way at the news that Ghelane Maxwell had received favorable treatment from President Trump and his personal attorney, being relocated to a less secure facility. | ||
| But we cautioned them. | ||
| We cautioned the witnesses today to tell them that even though there was bipartisan support in that room for them, it was far from unanimous. | ||
| And there are people at the very highest levels of this government today that are not happy that on the first day of our return, Congress is taking up this issue and defending the women, all the women, who were victims of Jeffrey Epstein and Ghelane Maxwell. | ||
| And it's only through the leadership of Ms. Summer and Mr. Garcia in spearheading this effort and making sure that this issue is treated fully and fairly on behalf of the victims that we're here today. | ||
| But today, the work really begins. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Thank you. | |
| And I want to introduce my friend, the gentleman from Virginia, Mr. Subarmyanyan. | ||
| Thank you. | ||
| I want to thank my colleagues, and most of all, I want to thank the brave women who came today to speak up, as well as their lawyers, many of whom are working for free for many years now. | ||
| The one thing that holds them back sometimes is how much they've been disappointed over the years by our government and by people at the top and the people in charge of protecting them and serving them justice. | ||
| And the reality is the system has failed them over and over again. | ||
| And so our commitment is that we will not fail them, that we will not let this go, that we will continue to ask the right questions. | ||
| We will continue to pursue justice and pursue transparency because those women, those brave women, deserve it. | ||
| And so we will not let this go. | ||
| And the President and this administration has a choice. | ||
| They can either join the many people who covered up this person's crimes or they can join the people who are going to seek justice and seek what the victims want, which is real, real justice. | ||
| And so we are going to continue to pursue this and we will not stop. | ||
| Thank you. | ||
| I'm going to hand it over to Mr. Min, California. | ||
| Thank you all. | ||
| It was a sobering few hours just now, and I want to thank the survivors who came forward sharing their stories at great cost, great personal sacrifice. | ||
| We talked to some women who had been followed in recent weeks, who'd received threats, and this compounds on decades worth of threats. | ||
| But their story deserves being told. | ||
| And one of the things that kept coming up was that there was the initial victimization, the assaults, the grooming, the abuse, but there was also a sense of re-victimization every time this story came up again, every time it became clear that justice would be deferred again. | ||
| And I just want to remind you all that we're here because Pam Bondi and Kash Patel, the Attorney General and Director of the FBI, said that there were no Epstein files just a few months back, a few weeks back. | ||
| And that has led to all this controversy. | ||
| It's what led to this moment today. | ||
| And I just want to repeat something. | ||
| What we learned in there makes it very clear that not only are there Epstein files, that there are a vast quantity of very pertinent and salient Epstein files that show a roadmap to who was responsible, what was going on here. | ||
| There are bank records. | ||
| There are thousands of hours of witness interviews, some of which the witnesses themselves have never had access to. | ||
| We deserve answers at this point. | ||
| And just building on what was said earlier, I want to conclude with this because one of the survivors in there says something that really stuck with me. | ||
| Right now, young women and girls throughout this country are watching very closely to see if the United States government is going to step up and protect them, if we're going to protect them from sexual assault and abuse and human trafficking. | ||
| And this is our moment to affirmatively answer the question: no. | ||
| Hell no. | ||
| That in the United States, we're going to step up with this oversight committee, with the leadership of Ranking Member Garcia. | ||
| We're going to step up and demand those answers. | ||
| We're going to demand accountability. | ||
| So thank you all. | ||
| And with that, I have the pleasure of introducing my colleague from St. Louis, Leslie Bell. | ||
|
unidentified
|
And I'll make this brief. | |
| I had a couple quick takeaways. | ||
| One, as a prosecutor, I've sat in meetings with victims on cases like these, and you never get used to it. | ||
| Looking these folks in the eye, the courage that it takes for them to speak their truth and to talk about how they were harmed, it resolves us and makes us laser focused on the fact that we have to get to the bottom of this. | ||
| We have to get to the bottom of this. | ||
| What we've seen, these crimes, this cover-up, the scale of it, and I've been involved in prosecutions of a lot of folks, but the scale of these crimes that we're seeing to the highest levels of governments is of biblical proportions. | ||
| And so, and I'll say this to the media as I close: anyone who tells you that this downplays this, that says that there's nothing to see here, there's nothing to look at, look at them. | ||
| Because this, we have to get to the bottom of it. | ||
| And what we saw in there, these survivors, is courage. | ||
| We stand with them, and we're going to work with them and find justice, though the heavens fall. | ||
| Scarcely, thank you. | ||
| Just to close two things. | ||
| One is Donald Trump has the power right now to release all the Epstein files and documents right now. | ||
| The DOJ is refusing to release the documents that have been subpoenaed. | ||
| So there is a White House cover-up at the very highest level and getting the American public the information to bring justice to these victims. | ||
| And I think it's very important for everyone to understand that. | ||
| The second thing that's important is in the days ahead, we already know we're going to hear from some of the victims tomorrow. | ||
| We're going to be hearing from other victims in other ways in the days and weeks ahead. | ||
| It is very important that we believe these women, that we believe these survivors, we honor that, and that we work to bring them justice. | ||
| And that is going to be very important in the days ahead. | ||
| If there's time for one or two questions, and then we've got the rules committee. | ||
| I just wanted to add today's roundtable, again, it was necessary, it was long overdue, and it was very powerful. | ||
| It is why I continue to call for a congressional hearing because their stories need to be a part of a congressional record and the entire public needs to understand just how systemic and how far how far and wide and how deep this institutional betrayal goes. | ||
| So that congressional hearing still needs to happen and this discharge petition still needs to go to the floor. | ||
| So this roundtable, you know, oversight dims, the subpoena, we forced them to vote for the subpoena to the DOJ, important step. | ||
| Today's roundtable, important step. | ||
| A congressional hearing centering the voices of Epstein survivors is essential. | ||
| We cannot hold powerful abusers to account without censoring those survivors and doing it on the congressional record to give that transparency to the public as well. | ||
| And then finally, this discharge petition does need to come to a floor so we can get all of the files. | ||
| One of the things that was said over and over again today is that the investigation is not complete. | ||
|
unidentified
|
That's right. | |
| The investigation is not even done. | ||
|
unidentified
|
That's right. | |
| So we need all of this. | ||
|
unidentified
|
That's right. | |
| Is there a question or two? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah, how confident are you that the discourse petition will get enough people signing on to make people Florida if it doesn't? | |
| What can we do? | ||
| Well, there's been enough Republicans that have said that they're going to sign it. | ||
| It's in their court. | ||
| If Republicans really are going to be focused on transparency and openness, they're going to need to sign that petition. | ||
| And it's an important part. | ||
| So we're calling on Speaker Johnson, who is here hearing these victims, to encourage his members to sign that petition. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Speaker Johnson said earlier that he thinks that this discharge petition is moot because of the work that the oversight committee is doing. | |
| Obviously, the subpoenas went out in large part because of your efforts. | ||
| I'm curious what your response is to that, given that the DOJ has told Chairman Cohen that they're going to be doing it. | ||
| Speaker Johnson tried to end the last session. | ||
| In fact, he ended early to avoid any more discussion about the Epstein files. | ||
| It's thanks to the work of our subcommittee, Congresswoman Lee and her leadership, that actually forced that release. | ||
| And now, every step of the way, as far as what Republicans have disclosed, we have forced them or pushed them to do. | ||
| We've been asking for Alex Acosta to be subpoenaed. | ||
| They refused. | ||
| It wasn't until we began talking to other Republicans, Congresswoman Luna and others, that said they would vote with us to get that information. | ||
| Now Alex Acosta is being subpoenaed. | ||
| We demanded, Congresswoman Ayana Press has been demanding to hear from the victims from day one. | ||
| The survivors, they haven't taken any action until enough pressure has been put and you see what's happening today. | ||
| So we continue to bring the pressure. | ||
| We're not going to stop till we get justice for all of the survivors and the victims in this case. | ||
| And every step of the way, we're going to force every single vote. | ||
| We're going to bring it up, every single subcommittee, until we get justice for every single victim. | ||
| Yeah, I'm going to let other folks. | ||
| I'm going to head to rules committees. | ||
| I just want to add one more note that it's noteworthy that in the room with six victims of sexual violence by Jeffrey Epstein, it was suggested by Democrats that this be investigated using the full force of every committee here in Congress. | ||
| And the Speaker ended by saying he didn't think that was necessary. | ||
| He'd like to just keep it in the oversight committee. | ||
| I would like to point out to you all this is the same oversight committee that tried to impeach Biden, the same oversight committee that's been shielding Donald Trump. | ||
|
Victims' Voices Echo
00:07:28
|
||
| And it's the same oversight committee that we know is working collaboratively with leadership in the White House to shield them from accountability. | ||
| So I think you can draw your own conclusions about those comments, but that is where the Speaker actually chose to end this conversation. | ||
|
unidentified
|
It's in a conversation with you all or a conversation with you. | |
| It was in the room with the victims. | ||
| Even with the victims in the room. | ||
| No, I was just going to add about that alleged mootness. | ||
| After hearing their stories and talking about the fact that they have been trying to go to all levels of government since the 90s, what we should do is make sure that we do everything that we can to make sure that we finally get some semblance of justice for them. | ||
| So, if that means that there's an extra vote that doesn't really take us very much time, even if he believes that it's moved, it's worth it so that those victims feel like we are actually serious. | ||
| We need to pull every single lever that we have. | ||
| And right now, I, you know, I could hear and see within them, they kept saying, We're believing and we're trusting you, right? | ||
| They were saying the words, but I can tell you that their body language was not giving off trust. | ||
| Their body language, in fact, one of them said something to the effect of either you all are all very serious and honest about this, or you're very good actors. | ||
| We're gonna find out who's real, and we're gonna find out who the real actors are. | ||
| And so, that is why anyone who believes that this matters, they should sign the discharge, and they also, they being the Republicans, should go to their leadership and demand a vote be had on the floor. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Well, the argument to solve under question that you asked was that one of the arguments that's being made both by the Speaker and by Republicans before you all left for recess was that there's not enough language in the discharge position that would protect the victims if it handles some of the redactions that I know you all are doing in oversight. | |
| Can I just say, to your question, to your question, you're asking us. | ||
| You're asking the oversight Dems, where our leadership pushed a vote to crack this thing open. | ||
| You're asking us to do the right thing. | ||
| We're here. | ||
| We're the ones who step to those survivors after and thank them and ask them if they were safe tonight. | ||
| We are going to do behind you. | ||
| Are folks who probably have close to 80 years of working with victims of sex trafficking, of ensuring that girls and young women have a space in the justice system to tell their stories. | ||
| The oversight Dems, we're here. | ||
| We're here. | ||
| When you don't have the House and you don't have the Senate, we're pushing and using every tool that we have. | ||
| And why this is important? | ||
| It is about Epstein and it's about these survivors, but moreover, it is about an administration that refuses to tell the truth, that refuses to protect young girls. | ||
| It is about an administration that wants you to look away. | ||
| Well, we heard girls today who are in their 30s who talked about being raped when they were 14. | ||
| We heard a young girl talk about being told that she would be able to pay for her mother's cancer treatment if she just cooperated. | ||
| And we're talking about folks in this building and at the highest levels of government potentially being implicated. | ||
| You asked the Republicans the same question. | ||
| You asked them what they're going to do to step up and protect young women all over this country who were trafficked from state to state to be raped and their bodies literally ravaged. | ||
| That's a quote. | ||
| Young women in there who are talking about they need to step forward because they too have little girls. | ||
| They too want to make sure that their girls can look up to them. | ||
| They want nothing but to be heard. | ||
| They want nothing but to literally be listened to because the epic proportion of folks in this administration turning their heads, sending folks home early, sweeping it under the rug, it is the oversight Dems who are saying, do what you will, but tell the truth on behalf of the souls of these young women and the millions in this country. | ||
| If these women who have the international, international attention right now are begging for justice, can you imagine a little girl downtown in any American city by herself being trafficked? | ||
| That's why this is important. | ||
| If you have people at the highest levels of government potentially implicated in the rape and the trafficking of these young women, we would do the right thing. | ||
| You ask the Republicans what they're going to do because we're here. | ||
| We could. | ||
| We're saying we got you. | ||
| We want to protect you, whether it's your county courthouse or literally in the oversight committee and the supreme, wherever it takes. | ||
| You deserve justice, and that's every girl. | ||
| And I would just, I would ask my Republican colleagues to prove that they will break their legacy of treating trauma with more trauma and shielding predators from Jim Jordan to Matt Gates to Donald Trump and now to Jeffrey Epstein. | ||
| They've got a hell of a track record. | ||
| They might want to try to break that up. | ||
| In the words of Veteran Black, the only thing necessary for evil to triumph is for good men and women to do nothing. | ||
| Are we going to set up and be good men and women so that evil does not triumph? | ||
| And I'm going to close on the final thing, which is the most important for people that would wonder how high are the stakes here. | ||
| This is a matter of life and death because Virginia Jeffrey took her life after decades of failure and there are victims that can no longer come up, come forward because they're in a fetal position so broken by the weight of what they've been carrying, shame that they've been carrying when it is not their shame to carry. | ||
| So Virginia Jeffrey took her life because of the institutional consecutive failures and betrayals of our government. | ||
| So this is a matter of life and death. | ||
| To get to this thing about this excuse, because that's what it is. | ||
| All it is is that the speaker is giving an excuse saying that this is about protecting the victims and that's the reason. | ||
| I'm sorry, but we have tools. | ||
| Now, granted, I'm not sitting in rules right now, but we have things known as amendments. | ||
| You can fix anything that is broken. | ||
| So if you feel as if the problem is that the legislation isn't perfect, and Lord knows we are good about pushing out imperfect legislation in this body, we do have tools that can fix it. | ||
| This is nothing more than an excuse for him not to push forward and try to say that it's on behalf of the victims. | ||
| But if the speaker knows his job, then he knows how to fix legislation that has problems. | ||
|
unidentified
|
C-SPAN's Washington Journal, our live forum, inviting you to discuss the latest issues in government, politics, and public policy from Washington, D.C. to across the country. | |
|
John Malone On C-SPAN Q&A
00:02:38
|
||
|
unidentified
|
Coming up Sunday morning, Ari Berman, national voting rights correspondent for Mother Jones, will talk about his new cover story on President Trump's plans for the midterm elections. | |
| And author and journalist Catherine Brodsky discusses free speech and censorship in the U.S. and how advances in technology impact speech, politics, and culture. | ||
| C-SPAN's Washington Journal. | ||
| Join the conversation live at 7 Eastern Sunday morning on C-SPAN, C-SPAN now, our free mobile app, or online at c-SPAN.org. | ||
| C-SPAN, Democracy Unfiltered. | ||
| We're funded by these television companies and more, including Cox. | ||
| When connection is needed most, Cox is there to help. | ||
| Bringing affordable internet to families in need, new tech to boys and girls clubs, and support to veterans. | ||
| Whenever and wherever it matters most, we'll be there. | ||
| Fox supports C-SPAN as a public service, along with these other television providers, giving you a front row seat to democracy. | ||
| Sunday on C-SPAN's Q&A, Liberty Media Chairman and cable TV pioneer John Malone, author of Born to be Wired, discusses his life and entrepreneurship. | ||
| He also talks about his many successful business ventures, competing with Ted Turner and Rupert Murdoch, the value of philanthropy, and living life as a high-functioning autistic. | ||
| I still, to this day, don't like to be in crowds or in groups of any size. | ||
| I really enjoy people one-on-one. | ||
| I enjoy talking, you know, but I really am uncomfortable in any kind of situation. | ||
| Like I said, I would pay a fortune to avoid a cocktail party. | ||
|
unidentified
|
John Malone, with his book, Born to Be Wired, Sunday night at 8 p.m. Eastern on C-SPAN's QA. | |
| You can listen to QA and all our podcasts on our free C-SPAN Now app or wherever you get your podcasts. | ||
| Representatives Roe Conna, Thomas Massey, and Marjorie Taylor Green held a press conference calling on lawmakers to sign a discharge petition that would compel the release of all files related to the Jeffrey Epstein investigation. | ||