| Speaker | Time | Text |
|---|---|---|
|
unidentified
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Or maybe a better question is, how far do you want to go? | |
| And how fast do you want to get there? | ||
| Now we're getting somewhere. | ||
| So let's go. | ||
| Let's go faster. | ||
|
unidentified
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Let's go further. | |
| Let's go beyond. | ||
| MIDCO supports C-SPAN as a public service, along with these other television providers, giving you a front-row seat to democracy. | ||
| Joining us from Capitol Hill this morning, Congresswoman Emily Randall, Democrat of Washington State, serves as a member of the Oversight and Government Reform Committee, as well as on the Natural Resources Committee. | ||
| Congresswoman, let's begin with that first committee assignment, oversight and government reform. | ||
| This is the committee that has been overseeing the investigation into the Epstein files. | ||
| You voted for the release of those files. | ||
| President Trump has signed it into law. | ||
| Calls on the Justice Department to release the files within 30 days. | ||
| What do you expect to happen next? | ||
| Well, the one thing that you didn't mention was that the President and the Justice Department have also opened a new investigation, which per the language in the Massey Cana bill that was just signed, allows some redaction and withholding of documents that are related and that are in the Epstein files. | ||
| Importantly, the subpoena that was issued by the Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, spearheaded by Summer Lee, doesn't include that same language. | ||
| So the Justice Department and the Trump administration are obligated to release the full set of files to the committee. | ||
| Now, they have been since we issued that subpoena and they have not released the full set of files. | ||
| So they are in violation of the subpoena, the subpoena that Chair Comer is not enforcing currently. | ||
| So I guess I'll say we're taking a few steps forward, but it doesn't yet feel like the Trump administration is participating and fulfilling the requirements of the subpoena and this bill in the way that they're meant to. | ||
| You referenced Republican James Comer, the chair of the oversight committee. | ||
| Walk our viewers through the investigation thus far by the panel. | ||
| What has been happening? | ||
| So Representative Summer Lee, a Democrat on the committee, introduced a subpoena in the subcommittee on law enforcement right before the government shut down. | ||
| After we had voted on the continuing resolution when Republicans had, many of them had gone home. | ||
| They had the votes in that subcommittee to pass her subpoena. | ||
| I think it came as a surprise to the Republicans on the committee. | ||
| And so we have begun to see a release of files. | ||
| The first release of files from the Justice Department were files that had already been disclosed to the public. | ||
| We've seen subsequent releases of files from the Epstein estate of previously unseen information. | ||
| But the Justice Department does owe the committee further files that they have not yet released. | ||
| Up until the Congresswoman's subpoena, what had the committee done and seen of the Epstein files? | ||
| During this Congress, you know, I was sworn in in January, it hadn't been a big subject of the committee, but in bipartisan committee investigation. | ||
| I will say the Democrats had been pushing and the Republican, the majority of the Republicans, were not interested in engaging. | ||
| What documents have you been able to see and how, as a member of Congress on this committee, do you go about reading? | ||
| I imagine it's thousands of pages. | ||
| Yes, yes. | ||
| It's a significant tranche of documents that we receive at a time. | ||
| The committee staff begins the review. | ||
| And I'll point out that Republican staff and Democratic staff are allowed access to it, as are members, but the Republicans have double the number of staff as Democrats do because they're in the majority. | ||
| So our staff is working diligently and overtime to ensure that they read through all the documents, each one piece by piece. | ||
| And because Democrats made this promise to the survivors, we are redacting information before we release to the public. | ||
| The Republicans haven't done the same thing. | ||
| They have been releasing completely unredacted documents. | ||
| But it was a promise that we made to the survivors at their request that we redact particular names before releasing files. | ||
| Now, because of a courier tool, most of these documents are also available to the public since the Republicans released from the committee, released them all to the public. | ||
| But they didn't do that until the Democrats released three emails at the beginning of the week. | ||
| And those emails were about the president? | ||
| Yes, those emails included references to President Trump, references to him being on the plane, references to him not yet disclosing information about Jeffrey Epstein's activities, emails between Epstein and Ghillen Maxwell. | ||
| You know, it opened the floodgates. | ||
| And at that point, President Trump had been bringing in Republican members who had signed the discharge petition to release all the documents to the public. | ||
| He had been bringing them into the White House, Lauren Boebert, other women, Nancy Mace, Marjorie Taylor Greene, to try and pressure them to remove their names from the discharge petition before Adelita Grajalva was sworn in and signed the discharge petition to allow this full release of the files. | ||
| At that point, the president changed his tune. | ||
| He said, oh, he told the Republicans to vote for it. | ||
| He told the Republicans to release it. | ||
| I think the writing was on the wall that the public would no longer be behind him in withholding this information from the public. | ||
| So now it's our job to make sure, to make sure that the DOJ complies with our subpoena and the committee and complies with the language in this bill, a bipartisan, unanimous bill to release all the files to the public. | ||
| When did Democrats discover those three emails that reference President Trump? | ||
| So we had gotten the release of a huge document dump like three or four days before those three emails were released. | ||
| I don't know if it was that morning or the day before that those documents were uncovered, but within those four days. | ||
| And what was the strategy behind releasing those three specific emails and not emails about Democrats, Larry Summers, for example, or others? | ||
| Yeah, I think the strategy was to inspire the Republicans to release all of the documents and to change their tune and to ensure that we were able to get the support of, you know, the entire chamber but one member to fully release these files. | ||
| You know, the Republicans didn't release information before that. | ||
| They were withholding the information. | ||
| You know, I'd say the subpoena language only required the documents to be released to the committee. | ||
| And without Democrats taking the first step, I don't know that we would have seen the same release and the same change of tune from the White House. | ||
| We are talking with Congresswoman Emily Randall, Democrat of Washington State. | ||
| She is here to take your comments and your questions about the latest from Capitol Hill. | ||
| Democrats dial in at 202-748-8000. | ||
| Republicans, 202-748-8001. | ||
| And Independents, 202-748-8002. | ||
| Congresswoman, we'll go to Mason first, who's in Dayton, Ohio. | ||
| Democratic caller. | ||
| Good morning, Mason. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Thank you so much for taking my call. | |
| Let me applaud you and your efforts in getting these released, supporting the women who have gone through such horrific things. | ||
| My concern is this. | ||
| I saw a video yesterday and it was of a DOJ official who didn't know he was being recorded. | ||
| And he was saying that in the effort to keep Republicans out of harm's way, they were going to ensure that anybody's name that was a Republican or Republican donor would be redacted and they would leave only the Democrats' names available. | ||
| I don't care who you are, whether it's Democrat or Republican. | ||
| We need to know who these folks are. | ||
| And we need to take accountability, have them take accountability, meaning through the law, through getting them in prison, because that's where they belong for sex trafficking these little girls. | ||
| It's disappointing that the one person that's been named and held accountable is in England. | ||
| And the only thing that happened to him is he's no longer called Prince. | ||
| That's ridiculous. | ||
| Like women deserve better than that. | ||
| And they deserve better than Trump because Trump could have released these on day one like he did with the JFK and MLK records. | ||
| And he chose not to. | ||
| So in my mind, they've got something going on in the background that's going to ensure that they cover, let me say, CYA, if I don't put it any other way. | ||
| All right, Mason. | ||
| Congresswoman. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| Thank you. | ||
| I mean, this is, I hadn't seen that video yet, but this is exactly what I was mentioning the committee was fearing. | ||
| I feared that they would use tools to redact and withhold information from the public, whether it's an investigation, whether it's choosing whose names to blackout. | ||
| And in our case, being survivors, in their case, being Democrats. | ||
| I think Larry Summers deserved to have accountability. | ||
| I think the former Prince Andrews deserve to have accountability. | ||
| I think anyone who participated in these horrific crimes, anyone who participated in the trafficking and abuse of girls and women deserves to be held accountable. | ||
| I don't care what your partisan ideology is. | ||
| And the people deserve to know what happened. | ||
| I hear this from the survivors of the Epstein trafficking ring, but I also hear it from survivors of trafficking and sexual assault across the country from other means. | ||
| All survivors are watching and all survivors are taking a message from how Congress deal, Congress and the president deals with this particular case of trafficking and assault. | ||
| Are they hiding behind their power or are they taking accountability? | ||
| And that will be a message that America learns from how we deal with this situation. | ||
| Congresswoman, you've read these documents, so how would you characterize the people, the names that folks might recognize that you've seen in these documents? | ||
| How would you characterize them? | ||
| Yeah, I think there are a lot of people in power or close to power involved in these crimes who are in relationship with Jeffrey Epstein. | ||
| And what I see is that powerful people have continued to act with impunity. | ||
| They have considered themselves above the law. | ||
| They have done whatever they wanted and used girls and women as collateral. | ||
| And it's appalling. | ||
| It's disgusting. | ||
| It's horrifying. | ||
| I don't know, fill in the blank. | ||
| I, as a woman who listens to the stories of survivors, who listens to the stories of my friends who have been mistreated, you know, at the very low end of the spectrum by powerful men in their lives, by powerful people in their lives. | ||
| We need to see accountability. | ||
| We need to hold these people to account. | ||
| Otherwise, we will continue to see power corrupt and we will continue to see the exploitation of girls and women. | ||
| Do you think the investigation by the committee or the release by the Justice Department will unveil all the names that you are alluding to? | ||
| I mean, that is the committee's charge. | ||
| We are continuing to strategize as Democratic members of the committee. | ||
| We are continuing to work across the aisle wherever possible. | ||
| You know, unlikely partners have arisen. | ||
| Just a few days ago, the Democratic Women's Caucus met with many of their survivors. | ||
| And while a change in schedule didn't allow the Republican Women's Caucus to meet with the survivors as they had planned, many of the Republican women joined our meeting. | ||
| We are standing together to bring these perpetrators, these crimes to light. | ||
| Tom in El Paso, Texas, a Republican. | ||
| Tom, good morning to you. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Hi. | |
| I have a question. | ||
| I have three points. | ||
| It's the parents. | ||
| What parent would let their daughter get on an airplane to go to an island with a 50-year-old man? | ||
| Tom, in your next comment? | ||
|
unidentified
|
What about LULAC? | |
| There's a thing called LULAC. | ||
| It's the League of Latin American Citizens. | ||
| Why in the world did they pass a law here in El Paso where it's illegal for the administrators of the school to ask the kids if they're citizens? | ||
| All our schools, all they want is the free lunch. | ||
| All right, Tom, I'll jump in because we've got more calls waiting. | ||
| Congresswoman? | ||
| Thank you. | ||
| You know, certainly in some cases, parents may have known what was happening. | ||
| But I want to underscore the fact that not every young girl or woman has parents involved in their life. | ||
| Not every young girl or woman has a healthy and stable family. | ||
| Not every young girl, and it's, I will say also, there were also boys involved in this. | ||
| It's not just girls and women, though we often are talking about them. | ||
| Not every child has a supportive family to go to to tell about what is happening in their life. | ||
|
unidentified
|
And that is sad. | |
| It's very, very sad that these girls were put in the position to be taken advantage of in this way, to be assaulted in this way, to be trafficked in this way. | ||
| Absolutely. | ||
| And I don't know what to say except for I agree with you that that is heartbreaking and not every parent knew. | ||
| We'll go to Chris next. | ||
| Baltimore, Democratic caller. | ||
| Chris in Baltimore. | ||
| Good morning to you. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Hi, good morning, guys. | |
| Thank you so much for taking my call. | ||
| Bunny thing is, did the Republicans need Democrats to pass the big ugly bill? | ||
| I don't recall that because the government was shut down. | ||
| They're on vacation on our diamond time taxpayers because they needed five Democrats in order to open up the government again. | ||
| I don't know how they're able to get away with this. | ||
| So my question is, did they need the Democrats to pass the big ugly bill or did they just pass it? | ||
| In the House, we didn't need to have Democratic votes for H.R. 1. | ||
| In the Senate, it was the reconciliation process. | ||
| So they did not need the same threshold. | ||
|
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. | |
| Coming up Saturday morning, Alliance to End Hunger President Eric Mitchell will talk about food insecurity in the U.S. and the future of federal nutrition programs. | ||
| And then American Enterprise Institute senior fellow Naomi Schaefer-Riley talks about the state of the American foster care system and recent Trump administration actions to support youth transitioning out of foster care. | ||
| C-SPAN's Washington Journal. | ||
| Join the conversation live at 7 Eastern Saturday morning on C-SPAN, C-SPAN Now, our free mobile app, or online at c-SPAN.org. | ||
| Today, on C-SPAN's ceasefire, at a time when finding common ground matters most in Washington, Florida Democratic Congressman Jared Moskowitz and Tennessee Republican Congressman Tim Burchett come together for a bipartisan dialogue on the Epstein files, health care, and top issues facing the country. | ||
| They join host Dasha Burns. | ||
| Bridging the Divide in American Politics. | ||
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| Watch America's Book Club, C-SPAN's bold, original series. | ||
| Sunday with our guest-famed chef and global relief entrepreneur Jose Andres. | ||
| His books on reimagining food include Feeding Dangerously, Change the Recipe, and We Fed an Island. | ||
| He joins our host, renowned author and civic leader David Rubenstein. | ||
| Are people afraid of inviting you over to their house for dinner because they'd be afraid that the food wouldn't be good enough for you? | ||
|
unidentified
|
When people cook with love for you, it is great, but you know, you know, the dry turkey in Thanksgiving is unnegotiable. | |
| Always dry, but but yeah, turkeys are so dry. | ||
| That's why gravy exists. |