| Speaker | Time | Text |
|---|---|---|
| Ms. Fox of North Carolina. | ||
| The chair lays before the House a communication. | ||
| The Honorable Speaker, House of Representatives, sir, pursuant to the Barry Goldwater Scholarship and Excellence in Education Foundation, authorizing statute 20 USC 4703, I am pleased to recommend the following appointment to the Board of Trustees, the Honorable Burgess Owens of Utah. | ||
| Signed sincerely, Steve Scalese, Republican leader. | ||
| Pursuant to clause 13 of Rule 1, the House stands adjourned until noon on Monday, November 17th, 2025, for morning hour debate and 2 p.m. for legislative business. | ||
| That's it from the floor of the House of Representatives for today until Monday, but we're still with you on The Washington Journal this morning. | ||
| And for the next 25 minutes, we'll be joined by Maryland Democratic Congressman Johnny Olszewski. | ||
| He joins us now via Zoom. | ||
| Congressman, you were in the chamber late last night for that vote to reopen the government. | ||
| You voted against that legislation. | ||
| Why? | ||
| Yeah, John, good morning. | ||
| I voted against that legislation because of what it does and doesn't do. | ||
| And while I'm really happy to see that our hardworking federal workers are going to be paid and that services are restored, this is a bill that does nothing to address the absolutely crushing cost of health care that Americans are now seeing as they go to enroll with their Affordable Care Act subsidies expiring. | ||
| We're talking about a $4,700 tax increase for the average family of four in Maryland. | ||
| That is devastating for a working family. | ||
| The legislation also does nothing to stop President Trump from taking money away from the funds that were just appropriated, as he's done time and time again, $9 billion in public broadcasting and foreign aid, $9 billion more through green energy projects in Democratic-led states and Democratic-led districts. | ||
| He's explicitly threatened the Key Bridge in Baltimore to take back that funding. | ||
| But what this legislation does do is it enables outright corruption. | ||
| It allows for million-dollar checks to go to U.S. senators who had phones legally subpoenaed, their phone records legally subpoenaed. | ||
| And all they have to do is file a claim. | ||
| It is outright corruption and it's disgusting. | ||
| It's why Americans hate politics. | ||
| It's what's wrong with this Congress. | ||
| And it made it a very easy no vote for all of those reasons. | ||
| We could have made this a bipartisan bill that addressed those concerns and reopened the government, but instead, extreme Republicans chose not to work with us to do just that. | ||
| If it does and doesn't do all those things that you just said, was this all worth it? | ||
| Would a longer shutdown have changed anything? | ||
| Well, it's hard to prove the counterfactual, right? | ||
| So what I can say is I think Democrats were absolutely right to point out the fact that Republicans were completely unwilling to do anything about extending the subsidies that are so critical to keep health care affordable. | ||
| Now we have to have a conversation about the underlying issues that are driving up health care costs in this country. | ||
| And I welcome that conversation. | ||
| But we can't allow families in America to take on thousands of dollars of debt, thousands of dollars of new tax increases, while we're spending a trillion dollars to bail out the most wealthy in this country, to give extended tax breaks permanently to billionaires in America. | ||
| We found $40 billion, or I should say the president found $40 billion to bail out his buddy in Argentina, but he couldn't be bothered to use that money to give a two-year extension, the same cost for those subsidies here. | ||
| So I think we were right to raise that issue. | ||
| I think we were right to raise the issue about the president unilaterally making these cuts to what were bipartisan budgets, let's remember. | ||
| So, you know, if we don't have those protections against the cuts, this deal isn't worth the paper it's written on. | ||
| And then to have the president sign off and to have members of Congress sign off on this corruption. | ||
| I mean, with corruption, usually you have at least some bribe or some quid pro quo. | ||
| This is Congress explicitly saying only U.S. senators can get a million dollar check for things that are happening thousands of times across this country, legal subpoenas that are signed off by a grand jury. | ||
| I mean, it is like the most disgusting thing we could possibly see. | ||
| So yes, I do think it was worth raising the issue. | ||
| Whether it would have changed things or not, I can't say because we're reopening. | ||
| But I think that the work of raising these issues were critically important. | ||
| What happens on January 30th of 2026? | ||
| Do we just get to do this all over again? | ||
| We should get back in the room now so that we're not doing this all over again. | ||
| And we should do it in a bipartisan way. | ||
| You know, I went to the rules committee to offer an amendment that would have stopped the president from these pocket rescissions and from unilaterally making cuts, restoring the 60-vote threshold in the Senate to make cuts. | ||
| If it's a bipartisan deal to fund the government, it should be a bipartisan deal to make cuts. | ||
| And on both my amendments in the rules committee and for amendments that would have gutted that corruption provision, for amendments that would have given a one-year or two-year extension to the subsidies, not only did Republicans not consider them, they couldn't be bothered to be in the room. | ||
| There was only Chair Fox was the only member of the Rules Committee of the Republican Party who even bothered to have the conversation, who bothered to listen. | ||
| So I'm trying to be a new member who comes in good faith to offer amendments to make legislation bipartisan. | ||
| And it's really disappointing that those who are leading this Congress can't even be bothered to have the conversation, can't have the decency to be present as we're having that discussion and that dialogue. | ||
| It's really corrosive. | ||
| It's not productive. | ||
| And I'm going to keep pushing. | ||
| I'm going to keep trying because I wanted to be supportive of legislation that would have reopened the government, protected our budget prerogatives, and taken care of the health care imperative. | ||
| I think that that would have passed with an overwhelmingly bipartisan margin. | ||
| I'm going to keep pushing for that, but it's going to take work based on my experience in the rules committee this week. | ||
| Congressman Johnny Olszewski with us, Democrat of Maryland. | ||
| Phone lines are open for you to call in. | ||
| Democrats, Republicans, and Independents, as usual. | ||
| We do have that line for federal workers in this segment as well. | ||
| Would also like to hear from you. | ||
| As folks are calling in, Congressman, I know you're in the House. | ||
| I know you're a newer member. | ||
| But do you think that Chuck Schumer's time as the leader of Democrats in the Senate is drawing to a close? | ||
| That's a decision that Democrats and the Senate are going to have to make. | ||
| What I can tell you is that the legislation that we were asked to support was extremely disappointing for all the reasons we just discussed, the lack of action on the ACA subsidies and Speaker Johnson wouldn't even promise a vote, which is all that the senators got on that deal for the lack of protections against cuts and rescissions on the funding we just provided and for the corruption provisions that were added for U.S. senators. | ||
| I'm proud of our House leadership and the way in which we stood strong and pushed back against this really partisan effort to fund the government. | ||
| And that will be a question that I think that senators will have to answer in the days ahead. | ||
| We'll let you answer some questions from viewers. | ||
| We'll start on the line for Republicans. | ||
| This is Joseph out of the Garden State. | ||
| You're on with Congressman Johnny Olszewski. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Hey, hey, how are you? | |
| I'm good. | ||
| How are you? | ||
|
unidentified
|
So, how you doing? | |
| I'm just listening to the Congressman. | ||
| I just got a couple things to say, and then I'll hang up. | ||
| I'll listen to you, all right? | ||
| Just don't cut me off, all right? | ||
| I just, the first thing is, you guys shut down the government because you wanted to give money or you wanted to have hospitals give money to help out illegal aliens. | ||
| I'm a grandson of an immigrant. | ||
| I have no problem with legal immigration. | ||
| But you're telling me if somebody has to go to an emergency room and there's a law that you can't tell them to make them leave, if some illegal alien has a heart attack or was in the hospital for 10 days and then they just tell him go home after that, no, they're going to have follow-ups and they're going to have visits. | ||
| That's healthcare. | ||
| And that's what you guys wanted to give instead of helping Americans and vets. | ||
| That's one thing. | ||
| And the other thing about bailing out Argentina, all these Democrats in the neighborhood that I live, they got Ukrainian flags and we've been giving them money every day for the last three years. | ||
| I know they're fighting the war. | ||
| But if Argentina goes and then the bailout, we made money on that. | ||
| There was a currency swap and I think we made money on that. | ||
| But if Argentina goes, if we didn't help them out, I don't know if Democrats know geography. | ||
| They're a lot closer than Ukraine is. | ||
| And Argentina could have gone the way Venezuela did. | ||
| Got your points, Joseph. | ||
| Those two points, Congressman. | ||
| Yeah, Joseph, thanks for the question. | ||
| I actually appreciate the opportunity to clarify the record here a little bit. | ||
| First of all, I think you reinforce the point. | ||
| If we can send money to foreign governments, and I do support helping Ukraine in its fight against Russia here, we can and should find the money to support Americans who are going to be faced with crushing increases to their health care costs. | ||
| And even Americans who are lucky enough to have private insurance are going to see increases as well, not just those on the ACA. | ||
| I would say that actually Argentina, unfortunately, the taxpayers are not going to get a windfall. | ||
| This is being financed by hedge funds, and we don't have a whole lot of transparency as to who's going to benefit. | ||
| But this is a lot of money that's going to go because of the backing of the United States to these private hedge funds, many of whom I believe have supported the president, but we don't know. | ||
| Again, let's get the clarity and the transparency on that. | ||
| To your question about health care, actually, you know, just reinforcing the point that normally under any circumstances, those who are undocumented are not eligible for Medicaid or for ACA subsidies. | ||
| They do not receive that at all. | ||
| If there are those who are receiving it, it is in violation of the law. | ||
| It's fraud. | ||
| And there and in any other circumstance, that fraud should be prosecuted. | ||
| However, there is a piece of legislation that says anyone who goes to the hospital may not be denied service. | ||
| You might be interested to know that it was President Ronald Reagan, a Republican, who championed and signed that legislation into law many decades ago. | ||
| And so even if we end these subsidies for American citizens, and that's who it would benefit only, we're going to still have that law be in place that was signed by President Reagan moving forward. | ||
| Antoinette out of Pennsylvania, Democrat. | ||
| Good morning. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yes, good morning. | |
| As a black American here, I see an underlying blessing that happened with this shutdown. | ||
| The shutdown, let's look at the weather. | ||
| I was admiring your backdrop this morning. | ||
| All of those hues, of colors, of leaves blend right in with your studio. | ||
| And that's why I had to call in because anyone who's really thinking, because of this shutdown and the planes and all that fuel in the air was not up there as usual. | ||
| I walked outside. | ||
| It's brisk. | ||
| I can breathe. | ||
| How about we try going that way and break the monotony of all the corruption and all that kind of stuff we're talking? | ||
| And maybe, just maybe, we can let our children see an actual clean winter. | ||
| We're getting what we used to have. | ||
| I'm in my 60s. | ||
| By this time, I see snowflakes. | ||
| How about we keep the shut down somewhat and let that fuel not be up in the air? | ||
| Got your point, Antoinette. | ||
| Congressman Olszewski on the environmental impacts of the government shutdown. | ||
| Well, I'll leave that to the scientists to measure that. | ||
| I will say to her point about tackling corruption, I mentioned the provision that was in the law that reopened the government about giving senators a million-dollar payout. | ||
| This is where we need to be tackled. | ||
| I mean, again, this is why Americans hate Congress. | ||
| This is why there's distrust in government. | ||
| We should be, and now that we're reopened, we should be tackling things like banning stock trades. | ||
| We should make sure that we're not becoming self-enriched, is why I don't trade individual stocks. | ||
| I don't have family members who are doing that. | ||
| We should not be using the privileges and benefits of our office to get money. | ||
| And we certainly shouldn't be legalizing corruption by writing into law, giving ourselves retroactively with no ability to oppose it by the government million-dollar checks. | ||
| I think this is why, again, Marylanders, for me, and Americans across this country are fed up with that kind of politics. | ||
| And I think we can, we should, we must tackle the corruption and the self-dealing that's far too prevalent in Congress. | ||
| And, Congressman, you've used million-dollar checks a couple of times now. | ||
| My understanding of the legislation that allows the members to sue the government for the investigations into their phone records. | ||
| I thought it was a $500,000 payout was the top. | ||
| I just wondered where you got the million-dollar number from. | ||
| $500,000 payout payable for $500,000 both when a federal grand jury issues a subpoena and then another $500,000 when a judge actually issues the order. | ||
| So it hits for both of those things. | ||
| And that is per phone line. | ||
| So if there were a campaign phone line and a private phone line, that's $2 million. | ||
| And that's the floor. | ||
| And senators have already said they're going to sue for more than that, and that they won't settle for that million-dollar payday, that self-enrichment. | ||
| So absolutely, the million dollars is the minimum that U.S. senators and a few represent many representatives now are complicit in that corruption. | ||
| Voted to give sitting members to enrich themselves while in office to give themselves without any ability for the government to protest that minimum. | ||
| I mean, again, we're still reading through it because it was tucked in and snuck in as a last-minute provision that I think a lot of senators didn't even know about. | ||
| But the fact that the House allowed that to stay in, that we didn't take that provision out and say to the Senate, we won't accept your self-dealing, is everything that's wrong with politics. | ||
| Are your six fellow Democrats who supported this legislation in the House complicit in that corruption as well? | ||
| Anyone who voted for this legislation has some complicity in the corruption that this legislation stands for. | ||
| Absolutely. | ||
| Have you had a chance to talk to any of those members, Henry Quayar, Don Davis, Tom Swasey, Adam Gray, Jari Golden, Marie Gluzenkamp, Perez? | ||
| Have you chatted with any of them since the vote? | ||
| Not since the vote. | ||
| We all left town afterwards. | ||
| Look, I respect my colleagues and I respect my Republican colleagues. | ||
| This is not a personal issue for me. | ||
| This is about why Americans are disgusted with politics and politicians because we had an ability to take that provision out. | ||
| And the rules committee in particular should have done that. | ||
| But again, as I said earlier, they couldn't be bothered to be in the room. | ||
| And that forced members to either vote for or against the legislation. | ||
| I think that was enough of a reason for me. | ||
| And I would have hoped for other members to say no. | ||
| But there's also the provisions about the health care and the lack of preventing the president from taking back funds. | ||
| It's just wrong. | ||
| It's just wrong. | ||
| And other members can explain why they supported that or why they were willing to support that provision. | ||
| But for me, I just can't in good conscience say that it's worth supporting. | ||
| I think it's wrong. | ||
| And I think it makes this Congress complicit in corruption. | ||
| Just about 10 minutes left with Congressman Johnny Olszewski of Maryland. | ||
| Joyce is in Georgia. | ||
| Republican, good morning. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning. | |
| Yes. | ||
| President Trump's going to be your president for the next three years. | ||
| Are you going to fight him on everything? | ||
| The big, beautiful bill that had no tax on tips, no tax on overtime, do you really think the billionaires are the ones that are making tips and overtime? | ||
| I just can't believe that you fight him on every single issue. | ||
| And you don't, you're not caring about the American people. | ||
| If ACA is so wonderful, then why is the Congress on it? | ||
| ACA destroyed the insurance companies. | ||
| And it is not wonderful. | ||
| And no one who has an income can afford it. | ||
| But they were penalized for not having insurance. | ||
| My son paid $600, I think it was a year until President Trump's first term for not having the insurance because he couldn't afford it for him and his wife. | ||
| That's Joyce in Georgia. | ||
| Yeah, Joyce, I actually am glad you asked that question because I am not fighting the president at every turn. | ||
| And as I mentioned earlier, I was trying to find a way and literally showed up and offered amendments to try to make the reopening legislation bipartisan, overwhelmingly so, and it would have been. | ||
| But as relates to the big ugly bill, as I call it, I actually supported the provisions that would have ended tax on tips. | ||
| You'd be interested to know that Republicans in Congress, though, capped the amount that people are excluded from in terms of no tax on tips while not excluding the tax breaks that are going to billionaires and the most wealthy in this country. | ||
| I would have supported the provisions that provide relief on Social Security. | ||
| I mean, the Senate passed the no tax on tip legislation through unanimous consent, which means all 100 senators supported that. | ||
| So there are provisions that would have passed and we could have, again, showed the American people that there are ways to be bipartisan. | ||
| But that legislation also was the largest wealth transfer by taking away food benefits and health care from millions of Americans to fund that tax break for the ultra-wealthy. | ||
| It was one of the largest increases in the deficit in our country's history. | ||
| And so there are so many reasons that that legislation was problematic. | ||
| But I will say I support President Trump's efforts and I actually have applauded him as a member of the Foreign Affairs Committee, the peace deal in the Middle East. | ||
| So there are places where if the president is right or if there are parts of legislation that we agree on, I'm going to be there and be supportive. | ||
| But I also have an obligation to you and to all Americans to make sure that hardworking Americans are not being fleeced by this president, who are not being fleeced by this Republican majority. | ||
| We need to get back to that bipartisanship. | ||
| And, you know, if the president is self-enriching through his cryptocurrency scheme, if he is taking foreign jets and wasting taxpayer money, if he's choosing to bail out his buddy in Argentina versus taking care of health care for you and your family, yes, I'm going to stand up and push back against that. | ||
| But when there are those circumstances, I have, I can, and I will continue to be a partner in that work with the president. | ||
| Congressman, you're in Maryland. | ||
| How many federal workers are in your district? | ||
| Just a little bit more than 22,000. | ||
| For those 22,000 who were furloughed and not receiving a paycheck, when are they going to get paid? | ||
| Do you know how long this process is going to take? | ||
| I don't have that information immediately in front of me. | ||
| The answer is it can't happen soon enough. | ||
| I mean, these are individuals who have been used as political pawns in the same way that the president used hungry children and hungry Americans as political pawns. | ||
| There was $5 billion set aside to help continue the SNAP benefits across this country. | ||
| And rather than claim victory when a court says, yes, Mr. President, you can use those SNAP contingency funds to feed hungry Americans, his administration continued to appeal that. | ||
| So we can't pay our federal employees fast enough. | ||
| I want to thank them for their service to this country. | ||
| I'm sorry that so many of your colleagues have been fired by this administration. | ||
| They tried to fire more of them during the shutdown. | ||
| Fortunately, there was a provision that undid those firings in the legislation, and that prevents future firings moving forward under this CR. | ||
| But I'm really, we got to get back to, again, not just bipartisanship, but decency and caring for those people who are caring for our country. | ||
| And it was about a couple thousand firings or so that were impacted during the shutdown and then were the subject of this legislation. | ||
| And there's no more firings according to this legislation until just January 30th when this CR runs out, correct? | ||
| That's right. | ||
| But it does nothing for the 25,000 Marylanders who were fired already or let go or forced out. | ||
| And so while it's a step forward in this legislation through the end of the year, we've already seen our services and our agencies decimated across this country. | ||
| And that impact has been felt profoundly here in my home state. | ||
| Try to get you just a couple more calls in the five minutes we have left. | ||
| This is Willie Little Rock, Democrat. | ||
| Good morning. | ||
| Marylanders who were fired already or let go. | ||
| Willie, I'll tell you what, I got to let you go because you got to turn down your television while you listen on your phone. | ||
| It's just easier to talk that way. | ||
| This is Linda in Iowa, Republican. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Go ahead. | |
| Yes, good morning. | ||
| I was a Democrat for over 35 years. | ||
| And is your new catchword fleece? | ||
| I heard you say that. | ||
| Could you please stop with the hate? | ||
| Love will always trump hate. | ||
| You say you want to work with President Trump. | ||
| Well, maybe you need to quit that fleece word and do a little more working with the president. | ||
| He loves this country just like we do. | ||
| And we are overcrowded with illegal immigrants. | ||
| They have to go back. | ||
| You need to stop stopping him from getting this country saved. | ||
| Linda, got your point. | ||
| Congressman. | ||
| Yeah, Linda, we need more love. | ||
| I mean, I am proud to be a Christian, and Jesus taught us to love our neighbors as ourselves, that we should feed the hungry, help the homeless. | ||
| And, you know, I respect the president, the office of the presidency. | ||
| And if there's any opportunity to work with President Trump, I will do that. | ||
| But any effort to take away food from hungry children and veterans and seniors, efforts to take away health care or drive up costs, as I said earlier, by thousands of dollars on Americans or almost $5,000 for the average family in Maryland is just not acceptable to me. | ||
| That's not expressing that love. | ||
| And I think that we can get back to that. | ||
| I, again, welcome the chance to sit down with the president, any of my Republican colleagues to, in good faith, find a way forward. | ||
| And again, I think that there were good faith amendments offered even in this most recent shutdown conversation about taking out those corruption provisions that I don't think anyone would agree is right. | ||
| There were good faith efforts by me to take out or to add in protections against taking out funding and targeting a district specifically because it's led by a Democrat or a Republican. | ||
| And there were provisions that would have extended your health care and the health care of your neighbors. | ||
| So again, I think we can get back to loving our neighbors as ourselves. | ||
| We can do things for this country, but it's going to require all of us to sit down and find that way forward. | ||
| So I welcome that. | ||
| I truly welcome that conversation. | ||
| If ever extended an invitation from the president, Mr. President, if you're listening right now, would love to talk to you about the places we can work together to move this country ahead. | ||
| But I just think there are some fundamental differences in how we view that path forward. | ||
| But talking actually is the best way to try to find that common ground. | ||
| Last call from Amanda in Colorado, Independent. | ||
| You're on with Congressman and Congressman Olszewski. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Hi, Congressman. | |
| Good morning. | ||
| I'm glad that you brought up the merits of legislation because I would like to discuss the merits of the ACA legislation. | ||
| And the reality is, and the fact is, is that premiums were not this high before ACA ever existed. | ||
| And that's by design. | ||
| It's hindered competition in the insurance space. | ||
| And now this legislation, by design, has forced Americans to rely on the nanny state of government. | ||
| And I would like your response to that, please. | ||
| Give you the final two minutes, Congressman. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Sure. | |
| We have to get to work to making health care more affordable and accessible for Americans. | ||
| And the costs have spiraled far too much out of control. | ||
| And whether that is looking at PBM reforms, which I believe that Democrats and Republicans were working on until the majority recently pulled that back, looking at executive compensation, there are all sorts of places where we can and should make medicine more affordable, make healthcare more affordable, and just do more for the American people. | ||
| So I welcome that opportunity. | ||
| Obviously, we can't do that before January without some stopgap measure to keep health care affordable as it currently is. | ||
| But you're absolutely right. | ||
| We need to be reforming healthcare in a much more comprehensive way. | ||
| As a new member, I welcome that opportunity and that dialogue. | ||
| But again, I just can't in good conscience say we're going to place a nearly $5,000 tax increase on the average family of four in Maryland, similar increases we're seeing across this country. | ||
| While we're also then signing off on billions of dollars for foreign countries, a trillion dollars that goes towards the wealthiest. | ||
| I just think that this country is better than that. | ||
| And that if we actually put our heads down and did the work together, we could find those solutions, both in the short term and in the long term. | ||
| Congressman, we'll have to end it there. | ||
| But we hope you join us again down the road and appreciate your time after a late night on the floor of the House last night. | ||
| Congressman Johnny Olszewski of Maryland, Democrat from Maryland, 2nd District. | ||
| Thanks so much. | ||
| Thank you. | ||
| Coming up in our final 30 minutes here on the Washington Journal, we'll be joined by Politico's Ankush Khadori to talk about the House's efforts to release more from the Epstein files and President Trump's recent use of pardons. | ||
| Stick around for that discussion. | ||
| We'll be right back. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Have been watching C-SPAN Washington Journal for over 10 years now. | |
| This is a great format that C-SPAN offers. | ||
| You're doing a great job. | ||
| I enjoy hearing everybody's opinion. | ||
|
unidentified
|
I'm a huge C-SPAN fan. | |
| I listen every morning on the way to work. | ||
|
unidentified
|
I think C-SPAN should be required viewing for all three branches of government. | |
| First of all, if you say hello, C-SPAN, and how you'll cover the hearings. | ||
| Thank you, everyone at C-SPAN, for allowing this interaction with everyday citizens. | ||
| It's an amazing show to get real opinions from real people. | ||
| Appreciate you guys' non-biased coverage. | ||
| I love politics, and I love C-SPAN because I get to hear all the voices. | ||
| You and C-SPAN show the truth. | ||
| Back to the universe for C-SPAN. | ||
| It's the one essential news network. | ||
| Friday on C-SPAN Ceasefire. | ||
| At a moment of deep division in Washington, former Alabama Democratic Senator Doug Jones and former Ohio Republican Congressman Steve Stivers come together for a bipartisan dialogue on the shutdown in top issues facing the country. | ||
| They join host Dasha Burns. | ||
| Bridging the divide in American politics. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Watch Ceasefire Friday at 7 p.m. and 10 p.m. Eastern and Pacific only on C-SPAN. | |
| America marks 250 years, and C-SPAN is there to commemorate every moment, from the signing of the Declaration of Independence to the voices shaping our nation's future. | ||
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| America 250. | ||
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| Only on the C-SPAN Networks. | ||
| Watch America's Book Club, C-SPAN's bold, original series. | ||
| Sunday, best-selling biographer Walter Isaacson, who chronicles history's most remarkable lives. | ||
| His books include Benjamin Franklin, Steve Jobs, and Einstein. | ||
| He joins our host, renowned author and civic leader David Rubinstein. | ||
| What attracted you to these people? | ||
| Was it because they were geniuses or you just happened to like them? | ||
| Smart people are a dime a dozen. | ||
| In order to be a genius, you have to be creative. | ||
| You have to think out of the box. | ||
| And one of the things that struck me when I wrote about Benjamin Franklin early on was what a great scientist and technologist he was. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Watch America's Book Club with Walter Isaacson. | |
| Sundays at 6 p.m. and 9 p.m. Eastern and Pacific, only on C-SPAN. | ||
| Washington Journal continues. | ||
| Ankush Kadori is back at our desk. | ||
| He's a former federal prosecutor who now writes a legal affairs column titled Rules of Law for Politico magazine. | ||
| Thanks for coming back. | ||
| Plenty of legal affairs issues for a political writer today. | ||
| Start with the release of these emails from the Epstein files. | ||
| And how concerned legally should President Trump be today? | ||
| Legally, I don't think he should be concerned at all. | ||
| I mean, look, it's a practical matter. | ||
| The Epstein investigation, the criminal investigation, is over. | ||
| It has been over for years. | ||
| Now, we've had a political controversy and arguments over disclosures of more records from that investigation, but the reality is the Trump Justice Department is not going to somehow investigate Trump's involvement or to the extent he even had any or any awareness, right? | ||
| We can see no evidence that he was actually aware of any criminal misconduct. | ||
| With respect to like the sort of the release of the emails, and this is something I think we've talked about before on this show, I don't think it is a particularly good idea for people to pluck emails from large tranches of documents and then to offer up interpretations as if they're the definitive fact. | ||
| As someone who spent probably too much of his life reading emails from other people as a lawyer and a former federal prosecutor, I can tell you that's a very perilous way. | ||
| And for context, these are just a handful of emails, two of them eight years apart from a trove of about 23,000 documents that were handed over. | ||
| Yeah, and of course, Epstein is not a reputable figure or a trustworthy figure, so it is a little foolish to just assume that everything he is saying in emails is true. | ||
| So, you know, this is one of the reasons why I did not think it was a good idea for us to be, you know, the government to quote unquote release the Epstein files, because what is going to happen is a lot more of this. | ||
| You're going to get just a bunch of emails decontextualized without any court corroborating correspondence, the witness statements about what those emails were or not accurately describing, and this could just go on endlessly. | ||
| How concerned should we be about victim privacy here now that this is being done by a congressional committee and not the judicial process to release documents to the public? | ||
| Yeah, I mean, look, we should, of course, be very concerned about the victim confidentiality. | ||
| I mean, I think sadly their interests have not been at the top of the mind of the Trump White House or House Republicans as they've been sort of running around on this. | ||
| I think it's been a pretty unfortunate situation that the victims have been put through this year, really unnecessary and unwarranted. | ||
| But of course, you know, just as the members of the judiciary have a responsibility to try to protect those victims' rights and identities, so too do the members of Congress. | ||
| And I would hope that they would ensure that that obligation is satisfied. | ||
| Come back to what the Justice Department has and hasn't done when it comes to Epstein and the Epstein files. | ||
| And what did you think about Todd Blanche visiting Ghelene Maxwell in prison and what's happened with where she's been placed since? | ||
| Yeah, I mean, look, the way the Trump Justice Department responded to the political controversy that emerged earlier this year was, I think, through sort of quote-unquote investigative moves that were pretty much designed to accomplish nothing, right? | ||
| We saw them go to try to get the release of grand jury transcripts from courts that said no and also said, by the way, there's nothing here. | ||
| Why are you misleading the public? | ||
| The judges actually put these things in opinions and rejecting that effort. | ||
| Then there was the effort to go for Todd Blanche, the Deputy Attorney General, to go down and spend a couple of days with G. Lane Maxwell. | ||
| A truly terrible idea, considering that she is the only person who has been convicted and is in prison on these charges, has an incredible incentive to lie, and is herself a pretty disgusting human being all around, given the conduct that she engaged in. | ||
| I cannot imagine any credible prosecutor going there hat in hand and expecting her to tell them the truth and treating her as some credible witness. | ||
| One thing I will say about what we can perhaps glean from the emails is that given the references to Trump and the fact that Maxwell is on some of these emails, there is reason to believe that she lied to Todd Blanche during that proper session, in which case she could be exposed for federal prosecution for lying. | ||
| I do not see this Justice Department doing that because they had the misguided idea of going to talk to her in the first place, as if that would accomplish anything. | ||
| So the Justice Department has done a whole lot of nothing, and I think that's not been an accident. | ||
| We've had reporting since earlier this year that Trump was apprised in May, according to the Wall Street Journal's reporting, that he was in these materials, and perhaps some of these documents are the ones that that report was referencing. | ||
| And it appears to be the case that ever since then they've tried to move along, say nothing to see here. | ||
| The Democrats are spinning this up. | ||
| It's a hoax. | ||
| That is false. | ||
| Because of course, the people who really kept this in the news and kept it going for the last few years was the Republican Party, Trump himself, his vice president, his FBI director, Kash Patel, and his deputy director, Dan Bongino. | ||
| These people made careers out of fanning the flames around this conspiracy. | ||
| And now we find ourselves this year in a frankly bizarre situation where the FBI director is debunking himself. | ||
| He had to debunk himself earlier this year with the memo saying Epstein killed himself and there's nothing else here. | ||
| And of course he won't talk about that. | ||
| He just goes and runs around and has a good time on the FBI jet, upsetting everybody in the FBI and DOJ. | ||
| So I think the Jump Justice Department has just been sort of flailing around kind of deliberately. | ||
| So what are you watching for next, especially as we approach a discharge petition vote? | ||
| We're expecting next week on the floor of the House for the entire Epstein files, whatever that officially means, to be released. | ||
| Well, look, I mean, we'll see how things progress. | ||
| It seems to me that the odds that this actually reaches a point where it's signed into law and then sort of obligates the president or the Trump Justice Department to do anything. | ||
| I think it's remote, right? | ||
| It has to pass the House. | ||
| It's not clear that the Senate will take it up. | ||
| That has to pass there. | ||
| Trump would have to sign it into law. | ||
| He can veto it. | ||
| And I don't think we're in the realm of veto-proof majorities here. | ||
| On Koch Kadori is our guest, Politico Magazine senior writer. | ||
| It's time for you to call in with questions or comments. | ||
| 202-748-8000 for Democrats. | ||
| 202-748-8001 for Republicans. | ||
| Independents, 202-748-8002. | ||
| As folks are calling in, let me stay on Epstein for one more second and show you the remarks of Caroline Levitt yesterday from the White House press stand in the Brady briefing room. | ||
| This is what she had to say. | ||
|
unidentified
|
In the interest of transparency, why not just go ahead, release the full files on Epstein, get this all over with? | |
| We have, this administration has done more with respect to transparency when it comes to Jeffrey Epstein than any administration ever. | ||
| In fact, this administration, the Department of Justice, has turned over tens of thousands of documents to the American people. | ||
| We are cooperating and showing support for the House Oversight Committee. | ||
| That's part of the reason you are seeing these documents that were released today because of the House Oversight Committees and Republicans' efforts to get these out to the public. | ||
| This administration also moved, the Department of Justice also moved to unseal grand jury testimony, which we know unfortunately a judge declined those requests. | ||
| So this administration has done more than any. | ||
| And it just shows how this is truly a manufactured hoax by the Democrat Party. | ||
| For now they're talking about it all of a sudden because President Trump is in the Oval Office. | ||
| But when Joe Biden was sitting in there, the Democrats never brought this up. | ||
| This wasn't an issue that they cared about because they actually don't care about the victims in these cases. | ||
| They care about trying to score political points against President Trump, as we, of course, seen with this government shutdown. | ||
| And this entire thing, again, it's not a coincidence to the American people at home. | ||
| There are no coincidences in Washington, D.C. | ||
| And it is not a coincidence that the Democrats leaked these emails to the fake news this morning ahead of Republicans reopening the government. | ||
| This is another distraction campaign by the Democrat in the liberal media, and it's why I'm being asked questions about Epstein instead of the government reopening because of Republicans and President Trump. | ||
|
unidentified
|
But given your break in transparency, Caroline, why are White House officials then meeting with Representative Boebert in an effort to try and get her to not sign this petition calling for the release of the files? | |
| Doesn't it show transparency that members of the Trump administration are willing to brief members of Congress whenever they please? | ||
| Doesn't that show our level of transparency? | ||
| Doesn't that show the level of transparency when we are willing to sit down with members of Congress and address their concerns? | ||
| That is a defining factor of transparency. | ||
| Having discussions, having discussions with members of Congress about various issues. | ||
| And I'm not going to detail conversations that took place in the Situation Room in the press briefing room. | ||
| Caroline Levitt, there, her description of the Trump administration's efforts when it comes to the Epstein files, a bit more productive than how you described it earlier. | ||
| Yeah, I had never heard anyone describe a meeting in the Situation Room as transparent. | ||
| That was a new one. | ||
| I thought we heard a whole bunch of nonsense there. | ||
| First of all, the effort to unseal grand jury transcripts was a transparent waste of time. | ||
| The judges told us this. | ||
| The judges actually, in rather unusual language, chastised the Justice Department for providing language to the public that the judges said was misleading and said that there's nothing in these grand jury transcripts that's not already public. | ||
| With respect to the relevance of the investigation by House Republicans, let's set aside whether or not that investigation is good, bad, productive. | ||
| It's going well. | ||
| They don't need an investigation by the House Republicans or anyone in Congress to disclose the vast majority of material in their possession. | ||
| For instance, the emails that we saw yesterday, I would not be surprised if the government is already in possession of those emails, perhaps because they were voluntarily disclosed by the Absena State where they were obtained through a search warrant. | ||
| That material could be voluntarily released by the Justice Department. | ||
| In fact, the vast majority of the information that they gathered in the course of their investigation, I believe, could be released by them voluntarily if they wanted. | ||
| Whether they should is a separate idea, all right? | ||
| It's a separate question. | ||
| But the notion that she just offered, like, oh, we're cooperating this event, I mean, this has just been, I think, a fairly elaborate partisan effort coordinated by the White House and House Republicans to try to run out the clock and say there's really no there there. | ||
| Plenty of folks for you to chat with. | ||
| Start first with Jane out of Washington, Line for Republicans. | ||
| Jane, you're on with Ankush Kedori of Politico Magazine. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yes, I'm just reading in a commentary that the Democrats released the emails that were redacted, but the person whose name that was reacted was Ms. Guthrie, who had exonerated Trump verbally many times in the press. | |
| So I think it's a specious, specious kind of a chase. | ||
| And I also think that one of the reasons the Justice Department doesn't want it released is that there are so many powerful people that have been blackmailed that it may really, really be damaging to our government overall for both sides. | ||
| Ankush Kadori. | ||
| You know, I think that your caller makes a good point about really a broader point about like, don't just assume that what you have seen in an email, even particularly with the redaction, means that you can definitively interpret what it means. | ||
| I think that that is a really important lesson. | ||
| I have to say this is a lesson in life, too, right? | ||
| I've seen this not just in my own professional capacity, but I see this like internally at organizations I've worked with. | ||
| Someone gets their hands on an email or a message and they say, oh my gosh, they think they figured it all out. | ||
| And it's like, no, no, no, no, you have to, you've got to ask roughly 1,000 questions before you jump to your conclusions. | ||
| With respect to the concern that people have that your caller referenced about implicating sort of other third parties or whether or not you think that's a concern or simply a fact that would happen as a result of the disclosure, I will say one thing, | ||
| one compromise position you could take is that the Trump administration should at least produce the references to Trump in the material that they have gathered since he is the sitting president and he committed last year in an interview with Fox News to declassify and release the Epstein files. | ||
| So I think he ought to be held to a slightly different standard. | ||
| He is the sitting president. | ||
| To Tommy in Tennessee Independent, good morning. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning. | |
| I was just wanting to sweep my viewpoint there. | ||
| If there was anything incriminating against Donald Trump in the Epstein files, it would have been brought out by the Biden administration for the 2024 election because it seems like now that's what they're trying to do, try to find something that would throw the president of the United States in a bad light. | ||
| Now, these reporters and mainstream media, you can tell that they are also trying to do their best to put the president to a bad light. | ||
| Now, I think you should hold respect for the office, no matter who's in office. | ||
| But they should do their investigating to see why there's so much influence against the president instead of trying to find out how they can actually help the people. | ||
| There's no platform. | ||
| Got your point, Tommy. | ||
| Ankush Kadori. | ||
| Yeah, I mean, look, I just returned to the idea that this is a controversy that the White House created it for itself, right? | ||
| Nobody forced Trump to answer the question from Fox the way he did last summer. | ||
| Nobody last summer, nobody forced JD Vance to laugh about the Epstein client list when he was on a podcast with Dio Vaughan. | ||
| Nobody forced Kash Patel to spend years ginning up this controversy. | ||
| So now they're all in office. | ||
| They all hold immense positions of power, and people want some answers and want to hold them accountable for the things that they said and did for the last few years. | ||
| Instead of doing that, what we saw instead was the DOJ and FBI release a terse unsigned joint memo. | ||
| And we've seen Attorney General Pambondi and Kash Patel ever since the reported meeting in May basically say nothing and hope that they can run out the clock and not have to answer any more questions. | ||
| Let me come to another controversy. | ||
| We can leave Epstein aside for just a second here. | ||
| Pardons. | ||
| Remind people what happened with presidential pardons this week and the process that pardons go through before they are actually granted. | ||
| So this week we learned that Trump pardoned a bunch of folks who were involved in his effort to change the outcome of the 2020 election and some people who were unindicted alleged co-conspirators in that effort, including people like Rudy Giuliani, John Eastman, Sidney Powell, and the like. | ||
| And, you know, the pardons themselves are sort of, as a legal matter, somewhat academic, I would say, because that January 6th or 2020 election subversion case, I think, is over as a practical matter. | ||
| But it is reflect, I think, an effort by Trump, or a continuation of an effort by Trump to sort of reframe the facts around that effort on January 6th. | ||
| With respect to the normal process that pardons typically go through, there is a process within the Justice Department. | ||
| There's typically an office of a pardon attorney. | ||
| Again, goes through sort of a multi-level veteran process, but that process does not seem to be the one that this White House is operating. | ||
| Ed Martin, who was briefly the U.S. attorney in D.C. before he had to step down because he couldn't get confirmed by the Senate, is evidently the pardon attorney, and this is someone who's incredibly partisan. | ||
| And this is what Ed Martin had to say about these latest pardons. | ||
| When I began as U.S. pardon attorney, the president encouraged us to look at two categories of Americans especially. | ||
| First, those who needed and deserved clemency, especially long-serving inmates who are ready to be released. | ||
| And second, he wanted us to look at those people who had been targeted by the Biden administration. | ||
| The targeted is a huge group of Americans. | ||
| Is that an unusual statement from a pardoned attorney? | ||
| Yes, yes. | ||
| I mean, Ed Martin should not be the pardon attorney. | ||
| And yes, it's unusual. | ||
| All of this is unusual. | ||
| It was unusual beginning on Trump's first day in office, right, when he pardoned all of the people who had been charged, including many people who had been convicted of assaulting law enforcement officers on January 6th. | ||
| 1,500 people, if I remember the number roughly correctly. | ||
| And ever since then, right, we've seen a series of pardons that have been designed, it seems, in part to sort of dismiss cases involving political corruption when the defendant is of any party, right, like Eric Adams or Rod Lagojevich in Illinois to try to wipe that away. | ||
| But also a separate process in which pardons seem to be given to people who are well connected to the Trump administration, potential donors, things like that. | ||
| We saw also very recently Trump pardoned a crypto sort of prominent crypto figure who has now ties to the Trump family's own crypto business. | ||
| And Trump then said on 60 Minutes he doesn't even know who the guy is. | ||
| So I mean, this has just become highly, highly unusual. | ||
| About 10 minutes left with Ankush Kadoria, Politico Magazine, rights and legal affairs column there. | ||
| Good guy to ask questions of the legal variety to former federal prosecutor and is taking your phone calls on lines for Democrats, Republicans, and Independents. | ||
| Michael's in New York. | ||
| Democrat, good morning. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yes, hi, good morning. | |
| I want to know the media keeps on talking about the tens of thousands of emails with two emails from Donald Trump, linguist. | ||
| I want to know which other prominent figures are also in there, but what we don't hear in the media so much a lot. | ||
| A question that others have asked on Capitol Hill. | ||
| Yeah, you know, I mean, this is something I really hate to speculate about, right? | ||
| I mean, for instance, yesterday there were emails involving Larry Summers, right? | ||
| Who was a former government official himself? | ||
| There are plenty of people from people from both parties, from worlds of politics, in media, even who had connections with Jeffrey Epstein over the course of the course of his life. | ||
| Mrs. Willard in Wyoming, Republican. | ||
| Good morning. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning, gentlemen. | |
| I was going to ask Mr. Ankush a question, and the question is: sir, do you believe that Mr. Epstein killed himself or did someone else? | ||
| And who was president at the time, if you don't mind me asking? | ||
| Well, Trump was president when Jeffrey Epstein died. | ||
| I do believe that Jeffrey Epstein killed himself. | ||
| I think the odds that there was some sort of murder that has been covered up internally in this long across this many years, I think is practically zero. | ||
| And I will say, if you've had any experience dealing with the Bureau of Prisons, as I have had in a professional capacity, I think the idea that they could pull off a conspiracy like this is, frankly, a bit laughable. | ||
| Mrs. George in Illinois, Independent. | ||
| Good morning. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning. | |
| How are you? | ||
| A couple things. | ||
| Regarding the issue of the release of the emails and the timing yesterday by the Democrats, disgusting. | ||
| And I'm an independent. | ||
| On the other side, the Republicans and the administration has botched this whole thing and just, you know, it seems like they fumble every day on it. | ||
| But let me understand something legally. | ||
| So you have these victims. | ||
| They're the main ones. | ||
| And actually, I was extremely disgusted by one of their attorneys yesterday when they had questions on CNN. | ||
| It didn't seem like she cared a bit about getting to the truth and the harm of the victims, only about being vindictive to Trump. | ||
| And those were her comments that these emails somehow prove something with big media. | ||
| Again, disgusting play. | ||
| But what are the victims seeking to get if they know of somebody else other than Epstein and Jazzwald Maxwell did something? | ||
| Why isn't it obvious? | ||
| Why isn't it out there? | ||
| I know there's confidentiality agreements with settlements of lawsuits, but they're victims. | ||
| They were victims of disgusting things. | ||
| How can it be that nobody knows anything else about other people? | ||
| Ankush Kadori. | ||
| So your caller raised a couple of very good points. | ||
| First of all, the emails are not proof of anything, right? | ||
| They're emails. | ||
| They could be the start of an inquiry. | ||
| They were not a definitive resolution of anything. | ||
| And, you know, it is a good observation as well, right? | ||
| We have to be very cognizant of the victims' interests and respectful of their privacy. | ||
| I think it's fair to say that it's a large group and there's a diversity of opinion across that group in terms of what they want. | ||
| However, and I do think this is a point in favor of Trump and his allies, for lack of a better phrase, you would expect the victims to be the first, most authoritative source of information about other people who were involved, right? | ||
| not just people who may have been involved with harming them personally, but people they may have seen and might be able to provide evidence connecting people in a more definitive way. | ||
| And the fact that we haven't heard anything like that, tying Trump specifically to any of this from an actual victim, like actual criminal misconduct is notable. | ||
| About five minutes left. | ||
| I did want to get your take on another legal matter that has happened since the last time that you were on with us. | ||
| The case, the U.S. District Attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia, Lindsay Halligan, her case against former FBI Director James Comey, Letitia James. | ||
| What are you watching for as that case unfolds? | ||
| Well, evidently they have a hearing today about whether or not Lindsey Halligan was validly serving as a U.S. attorney. | ||
| I think that is probably the most significant issue that I sort of keeping my eye on because I do think it's a very live issue. | ||
| I think the arguments that the lawyers for Jim Comey and Letitia James have made are fairly persuasive in terms of how to read the relevant statute concerning vacancies for U.S. attorneys when there has not been a Senate confirmed U.S. attorney. | ||
| So if the judge eventually agrees with them, the cases could be dismissed on that basis. | ||
| And in the case of James Comey, I don't think it could be refiled, even with a new Senate-confirmed U.S. attorney, because I believe the Statute of Limitations has run on that case. | ||
| So that's something I think folks should be closely watching. | ||
| And maybe today, during that hearing, we'll get some indication of which way the judge is leaning. | ||
| There are also, you know, beyond that, there are, you know, these pending motions about selective or vindictive prosecution. | ||
| We'll see how that goes. | ||
| These are hard motions for defendants to win. | ||
| I am intrigued by a sort of an ancillary dispute that has been going on in the James Comey case concerning their review of material that may have been obtained from a lawyer and whether or not they properly segregated that material and prevented it from creating what we refer to as a spillover or a taint in prosecutorial settings where there may have been agents or lawyers on the case who had access to material that they should not have had access to. | ||
| That's a live, ongoing dispute right now. | ||
| It's a very, it's sort of an intricate one, one people aren't able to follow that closely, but let me assure you, it's actually quite interesting and could be quite consequential. | ||
| All topics that Ankush Kadori writes about for Politico magazine, Politico.com is where you go for his work. | ||
| In the time we have left, we will take a few more calls. | ||
| I do want to let viewers know that in just a few minutes, about two or three when they get started here, we're going to be heading to the National Press Club. | ||
| They're going to be hosting recently fired immigration judges and their union representatives to discuss the dismissal of judges and what that means for due process. | ||
| Is this a topic that you've covered or written about? | ||
| Yeah, I mean, it's definitely something I've been following closely. | ||
| The Trump administration has made a lot of changes to the immigration courts and have done quite a bit to change the composition of the immigration judges who are themselves already just employees of the Justice Department. | ||
| We refer to these things as immigration courts and them as immigration judges, but it's somewhat misleading because there's not what we typically think of as courts and judges. | ||
| We don't have a disinterested fact finder, right? | ||
| It's actually the executive branch itself. | ||
| So the executive branch exerts a lot of control over how immigration, which immigration judges get selected, what standards they apply, and how they conduct their work. | ||
| So there has been a lot of change within the immigration judge framework to allow them, encourage them really to deport people more quickly. | ||
| As we wait for that event to get started, let me get Eric out of Washington Independent on the line. | ||
| Eric, good morning. | ||
| You're on with Ankush Kadori. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Hi, yeah. | |
| I wanted to kind of go back to Epstein and obviously in the events of yesterday. | ||
| There's a lot to unpack, but I feel like maybe potentially there was something missed in Carolyn Levitt's commentary. | ||
| Obviously, this administration is great at flooding the zone and changing narratives over time that seems subtle, but I felt like her comment about Trump firing Epstein or kicking Epstein out of Mar-a-Lago because he was a pedophile and a creep is a different narrative than previously, which she seemed to say before that he was kicked out for poaching employees and being a creep. | ||
| And I'm wondering if that change is significant in terms of the timeline of what Trump has and this administration has said all along that he knew and when he knew about Epstein's pedophilia and not necessarily that he's somehow necessarily even involved, but certainly complicit in that timeline. | ||
| Ankush Kadori. | ||
| Well, first of all, I want to commend your caller on really following closely the words that are coming from the Trump administration. | ||
| I've been trying to do the same thing, and there are subtle variations over time that are significant. | ||
| I think he actually identified one. | ||
| Now, I will say the timeline around when Trump had his sort of rupture or break with Epstein and why has been muddled and unclear, right? | ||
| We have not gotten a consistent story from the White House, and it does not align with the most in-depth reporting, right, from like the New York Times and the like concerning what they have found about their relationship. | ||
| So what can we infer from that? | ||
| I mean, look, take it away from Trump and take it away from Trump and Epstein. | ||
| What do we infer in our ordinary day-to-day lives when somebody keeps changing their story? | ||
| We infer that they may have something to hide. | ||
| To Jerry out of Maine, Republican. | ||
| Go ahead, Jerry. | ||
| About the relationship. | ||
|
unidentified
|
So what can we infer from that? | |
| And Jerry, you got to turn your television down if you're listening through your phone. | ||
| Otherwise, it just doesn't work. | ||
| This is Evelyn in Baltimore, Democrat. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Go ahead. | |
| Good morning, gentlemen. | ||
| I'll make this quick. | ||
| I was calling because everybody keep talking about why didn't they investigate all this while Biden was president. | ||
| I think is that it was so many people involved, Democrats, Republicans, billionaires, millionaires. | ||
| And we'll see, Donald Trump, he stepped his own foot in it when he started campaigning on opening Epstein file. | ||
| If this thing actually really opens up, it's going to blow people's mind. | ||
| And I think it's not going to open. | ||
| I think they're going to open it up maybe 50 years from now. | ||
| Y'all have a nice day. | ||
| Ankush Kadori. | ||
| I agree. | ||
| We are not likely to get a full accounting. | ||
| Definitely not an independent accounting of what actually went on here. | ||
| And it is possible, right? | ||
| I think probable that the Biden administration and the Trump administration, when they were conducting this investigation and doing this work, were actually following up on some of these leads. | ||
| I will say there's been a lot of, you know, we're talking about releasing the Epstein files, the discharge petition, and the like. | ||
| If you wanted to answer the sorts of questions that your caller asked, which I think were good, what did they really look at? | ||
| Did they look into this person, that person, that person? | ||
| What the Trump administration could do is allow the prosecutors and the investigators who worked on the Epstein investigation to testify in front of Congress about their work. | ||
| The Justice Department itself can authorize that sort of testimony. | ||
| From a previous administration and the current administration? | ||
| Yeah, yeah. | ||
| I mean, right? | ||
| I mean, someone like Maureen Comey, right, or, you know, people who they've fired who were on the Epstein case or who are maybe who have left the department voluntarily, they can testify in front of Congress about what they really looked at, how far they looked, what sorts of investigative techniques they undertook, and what they didn't look at. | ||
| I don't think that is going to happen for a variety of reasons, but it's just to introduce that notion to say, like, these are not unanswerable questions. | ||
| the government is just not answering them. | ||
| How long does a gag order like that last? | ||
| On the prosecutors? | ||
| For the prosecutors, yes. | ||
| There is no gag order. | ||
| There is no gag order on the prosecutors, right? | ||
| They cannot disclose information that they obtained through the grand jury process, but they can talk about other things. | ||
| And it's up to the Justice Department to determine what they will allow them to testify on. | ||
| You were a former federal prosecutor. | ||
| When can you talk about the cases, if ever, that you worked on? | ||
| Well, look, you're supposed to adhere to, first of all, there's a prohibition on disclosing grand jury information, and then there are privileges that apply that, even to government lawyers, attorney client privileges, work product privileges, and the like. | ||
| But you can talk about the work that you did at a high level. | ||
| If you want to go anywhere further beneath that, you need to get the Justice Department's approval to do that because they are actually the, they're effectively our client in that context, right? | ||
| Or at least that they relate to the client, and they can authorize that sort of disclosure if they want. |