“We Need ANSWERS!” Thomas Crooks + Epstein Files - Can The White House Be Trusted?
ExpressVPN: Right now you can get an extra four months of ExpressVPN for free. Just scan the QR code on the screen, or go to https://ExpressVPN.com/PIERS and get four extra months for free. Can the White House be trusted? The Epstein files has been an ongoing saga - and now we’ve learned more about would-be Trump assassin Thomas Crooks in the past week than in the 18 months since he shot the President. Tucker Carlson worked with a private investigator to reveal many social media posts and accounts which paint a very detailed picture of the Crooks' changing views and influences. Miranda Devine and the New York Post have followed up with even more. But this is how conspiracy theories are forged. The remedy is very simple; answer questions honestly and tell us what you know. If you can’t, nobody will trust you. Piers Morgan is joined by author Buck Sexton, The Young Turks’ Ana Kaparian, senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute Christopher Rufo and ‘Democracy-ish’ host Wajahat Ali. Piers Morgan Uncensored is proudly independent and supported by: Superpower: flips the script on preventive health. Visit https://Superpower.com today! Cozy Earth: Luxury shouldn't be out of reach. Go to https://cozyearth.com/PIERS for up to 40% off Cozy Earth’s best-selling temperature-regulating sheets, apparel, and more. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
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The Would-Be Assassin's Footprint00:14:21
Thomas Crookes, this young would-be assassin, he had an unbelievable social media footprint.
He's posting things on YouTube comments.
His criticism of Trump gets increasingly violent.
And the comments were being flagged by other YouTube users.
Had he been successful, it would have dramatically changed the trajectory of this country, probably world history, and taken us into probably the worst abyss the country would have entered since the Civil War.
With the Epstein scandal, if there's nothing to hide, there's nothing to lose, there should be full transparency.
Release the files.
Ultimately, the responsibility is on the president.
He should become more engaged on this.
These are really important stories.
These are really important problems that we really need to get to the bottom of.
Trust is one of the big reasons why President Trump is in the White House.
Not trust in him, although many people did and still do, but the collapse in trust for governments, institutions, and the people who lead us.
The whole movement skillfully harnessed the idea of a deceitful deep state.
Popular conspiracies like a rogue FBI working in the shadows to cover its own tracks.
Kash Patel, Dan Bagino, and Pam Bondi were supposed to administer shock therapy, an end to the culture of deceit.
Answers to all of the questions posed by the people they work for.
Let me just look at the Epstein files to understand how that's currently going.
And then there's this.
Take a look at what happened.
Thomas Crookes shot Donald Trump and was millimeters away from becoming one of the most consequential villains in history.
But we've learned more about him in the past week from media than in the 18 months since it happened.
Tucker Carlson worked with a private investigator to reveal many social media posts and accounts, which paint a very detailed picture of Crookes' changing views and influences.
Crooks was on YouTube threatening to murder officials with sufficient intensity that another user said the FBI should investigate him.
Randall Devine and the New York Post have followed up with even more revelations.
We now know he researched homemade bombs that he advocated for terrorism-style attacks.
He may have been a furry.
Congressmen on the House Investigative Committee said they didn't know any of this, just as they still don't know why his body was cremated so quickly or why his blood was washed from the roof.
This is exactly how conspiracy theories are forged.
And as with the Epstein files, the remedy is very simple.
Answer questions honestly and tell us what you know.
If you can't, nobody will trust you.
Well, joining me to discuss this and more, author of the new book, Manufacturing Delusion: How the Left Uses Brainwashing, Indoctrination, and Propaganda Against You, Buck Sexton, executive producer and host at the Young Turks, Anna Kasperian, senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute, Christopher Ruffo, and host of the Democracy-ish podcast, Majahat Ali.
Well, welcome to all of you.
Buck, great to have you on Uncensored.
Let's start with you here.
It always struck me as utterly bizarre, this narrative that we kept being told that Thomas Crookes, this young would-be assassin, had no footprint on social media whatsoever.
And now it turns out that it wasn't bizarre, it was untrue.
He had an unbelievable social media footprint, but nobody was sharing that information with the public.
What do you make of this?
Well, certainly, if someone self-radicalizes in any way, any direction, they're going to be engaging with extremist content.
Well, you've seen this in all forms of terrorism that exist out there.
And certainly you'll see this with somebody who is a political assassin.
It's the same thing.
It's political violence.
And the FBI here, look, I know Kash Patel.
I saw what he put out.
He said the FBI has done a tremendous amount.
I mean, he put out all the numbers of interviews, of pulling everything.
Okay, well, if that's true, and then what came out now is also true, we need answers.
why there are additional revelations about a would-be assassin that I think everybody knows and agrees, had he been successful, would have dramatically changed the trajectory of this country, probably world history, and taken us into a really dangerous and dark place, probably the worst abyss the country would have entered since the Civil War.
So I think that there has to be some answer.
There have to be some answers here about how any of this could be missed.
And by the way, if for some reason what has come out from Miranda Devine, Tucker Carlson is, you know, if it's a false flag, if it's not accurate, whatever that may be, then they should also make that clear to us.
The FBI should come out and say, no, this isn't real.
By the way, I think they haven't done that because I do think it's real.
And I do think that additional information was found.
So there needs to be an explanation for this.
And there needs to be an understanding of how anybody is supposed to believe that a guy who was going to kill a president somehow, and who was 20-something years old, somehow wasn't engaging online with extreme content and leaving quite a digital footprint.
Yeah, I mean, Anna Kasparian, welcome back to you.
You know, it just begs so many questions, this.
If Tucker Carlson and Miranda Devine, the New York Post, are doing the FBI's job on a would-be presidential assassin, that raises enormous alarm bells to me about what the FBI are doing.
Now, we don't know yet what of all this information that's erupted in the last week is new or not new to the FBI.
But if any of it is new, frankly, I find that utterly inexplicable.
What do you make of this?
Well, I agree with you and Buck in that we have a real problem on our hands here in that the reporting that we've seen from Tucker Carlson in particular really does raise a ton of questions about the FBI's investigation and handling into this.
Now, there were a lot of things that he covered that really stood out to me, namely the fact that, you know, you have this would-be assassin who in late 2019, as, you know, late as September of 2019, he's posting things on YouTube comments where he's essentially getting increasingly violent on behalf of President Donald Trump.
Donald Trump was president at the time, and he's willing to use political violence in order to defend him.
But then in January of 2020, and remember, this is two months prior to the COVID lockdowns, all of a sudden, a switch flips and he starts criticizing Trump and his criticism of Trump gets increasingly violent.
And the comments were being flagged by other YouTube users.
And the real question here is, first of all, how did he go from one extreme to another in regard to his feelings about President Donald Trump?
At first, I thought maybe it was due to the COVID era, the COVID lockdowns.
But again, the critical comments toward Trump began in January of 2020.
One other question that Tucker Carlson's reporting raised that I really do think needs to be answered is who this Willy Tepis guy is.
Because as soon as the would-be assassin switched over to hating Donald Trump, you have this Willy Teppis guy in the comments urging him to use political violence.
And then after that, suddenly, you don't hear anything from this assassin.
You don't see any more online activity from this individual.
It's really strange.
Yeah, Chris Rufo, it is just really strange, all of this.
You know, I found it so weird that we were hearing nothing.
And then to suddenly hear an avalanche of information, which is incredibly incriminating and should have been flagged at the time and was being flagged by random people on YouTube, but not taken up by any authorities.
But the fact it's been the media through Tucker Carlson, through the New York Post, Miranda Devine, who've been leading the revelation element of this seems to me so weird.
It does.
And look, I would assume that the FBI has had all of this information prior, as well as a host of other comments, social media posts, search histories, et cetera.
You know, if a private investigator can find it on the outside using only public tools, certainly the FBI, which has subpoena power, which has backdoor access to all of these digital platforms, should have this information.
And if that is the case, which it almost certainly is, the question is then, why didn't the FBI publish any of this?
Why didn't the FBI share any of this with Congress?
This is, I think, an even more serious problem.
And Kash Patel, of course, came into the job promising to be the most transparent FBI in history, promising to release files about Epstein, promising to release all the information related to the Charlie Kirk assassination.
And he hasn't done so.
And I think the pressure needs to be on Patel as the point person, as the man in charge, to release all of the information about all of these questions of urgent public concern.
You know, look, I support the president.
I support Trump, but we have to be honest when the administration is falling short.
And this is one of those cases.
Yeah, Wujah, welcome back to you.
I think everyone kind of agrees it's very odd.
It does go to the heart of the administration's claim before and after the election, they're going to be the most transparent ever, both with Epstein and now with this.
And, you know, I think we're beginning to see similar undertones with the Charlie Kirk investigation.
There seems to be a suppression of transparency.
That seems to be what's happening, which, as I said at the start in my monologue, it just fuels conspiracy theories of the very kind that this administration was pledging to end.
So I don't really understand why they think this is a successful strategy, given their view of transparency.
What do you make of this?
Well, I was on your show last year when the assassination attempt happened, and I'm glad a year later everyone seems to agree.
I have always been waiting for more information on this shooter because it doesn't make sense, to me at least, what we know, that this was a young man who apparently was obsessed with guns, radicalized in part, we don't know how, who voted for a Republican once in his life in 2022, as Anna said, was gung-ho for Trump.
Then all of a sudden, a switch flipped.
We don't know why that switch flipped.
And then all of a sudden, he was out.
He was out of the news, gone.
I also have said on your show that we need more transparency.
We still don't have the hospital records of Donald Trump being treated that day.
So to know the extent of the injuries that Donald Trump suffered with lack of transparency, more and more conspiracy theories are fueled.
Now, you look at Charlie Kirk's murder.
You look at the bungling, let's be honest, the utter bungling of that investigation by Kash Patel of the FBI.
Charlie Kirk had to, excuse me, Tyler Robinson self-reported, if you will, because a family member said, hey, you have to turn yourself in.
But before that, the FBI was floundering.
Furthermore, we know, especially on the right wing with Candace Owens and others, they have no faith in that investigation.
They believe in certain conspiracy theories.
And then now you see the Epstein scandal, right?
I've always said with the Epstein scandal, if there's nothing to hide, there's nothing to lose.
There should be full transparency.
Release the files.
And more and more now you see a strange alignment between the right and the left with a complete utter lack of faith in this FBI, in this Department of Justice.
And people just want the truth, Pierce.
Tell us the truth.
If you've got nothing to hide, you got nothing to lose.
Just tell us the truth.
Doesn't matter if it implicates Democrats or Republicans or progressives or conservatives.
We want to know the truth about these consequential events that have happened in the past year.
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Well, Jahat, we've reached an extraordinary moment in the history of Uncensored where not only have all four panelists pretty well agreed, but you and I have reached complete alignment on an issue, which I just never thought we'd see that day happen.
So we've reached alignment on Israel.
Near alignment on some of it, yeah.
But this is a complete alignment and I'm happy to see it.
I mean, Buck, in a way, that says everything.
The fact that everybody basically agrees here, I just don't really understand.
On the Epstein thing, for example, I don't see why nobody at the administration understands that if you're not fully transparent, it all becomes immeasurably worse and self-harming.
Because if you're the transparent administration and all you're doing is suppressing information which could incriminate paedophiles or whatever they are, obviously everyone's going to lose their mind about it.
You know, I hope now that now it's gone through the House and the Senate, you just hope that Donald Trump sees sense.
I don't know what's been stopping him, but he just puts everything out.
It worries me when I see now, for example, that they're going to take a good long look at it again and see whether any of it needs to be redacted for legal reasons.
In the moment all the people who want transparency hear a phrase like that, they will assume they're not getting transparency and the conspiracies will rage on.
And they may not even be conspiracies.
Well, how often do you see effectively a unanimous House vote and a unanimous Senate vote on an issue of any consequence whatsoever?
So to your point about the panel here agrees, I mean, we have Democrats and Republicans pretty opposed on a whole range of things.
And suddenly there's a willingness to do something that I dare say is bipartisan, which is this act to release more, or rather this bill to release more of Jeffrey Epstein-related information.
So clearly the message has been heard.
Donald Trump is going to sign this, by the way.
A Bipartisan Epstein Bill00:07:21
In terms of how we got to this point, I think it's a combination of things.
One is that the Epstein investigation and all things around Epstein predating Donald Trump was handled abysmally.
And there are a whole range of, I mean, I know we could do hours of show just on that, but that is going to feed into a sense of extreme distrust in the system, rightfully so.
And then now with Trump taking office, the promise of transparency, look, the folders with some of those influencers, that was a bad moment.
I know some of those people and they recognize that it was a bad moment.
It just didn't, it wasn't a good look for the administration.
What you saw here was one of the very rare times.
I mean, I speak to a lot of Trump voters all across the country every single day, millions of them.
And this was one of the rare times where Trump made a decision where they said, no, sorry, that's not going to fly.
And I think that Trump mostly finds this to be a distraction from his policies.
He said some of this, so I'm just repeating kind of his position.
But the Trump base said no.
And this time around, the Trump base is getting their way.
They want the files that were promised.
And I think we're going to get pretty much all of them.
If there are redactions that seem excessive, well, then we're going to go through another round of this.
We are.
We are.
And this is the point, Anna, I think, is that it will never end until everything's out there.
And, you know, there may well be legitimate, it's interesting, the one congressman, I think, who voted against the release, his argument was that if you just splurge everything out, it would be pretty unprecedented because normally there would be protection of individuals who may face criminal prosecutions.
And that this, if you just put it all out there, you might, you know, adversely influence their right to a fair trial and so on.
I understand that argument, but I think we're way beyond that stage.
And the sequence of events still is bemusing to me because you have the Trump administration, well, you had the Trump team before the election taking everybody up the hill to transparency on Epstein, wanting, gagging to do it, then winning power, then sending their people out onto shows like mine and saying we're going to reveal absolutely everything.
Then the Pan Bondi farce, which was a complete farce.
And then the real moment to me, and I was reminded of it by seeing him at the dinner for the Crown Prince of Saudi Arabia last night, Elon Musk was back in the fold, was, you know, we all remember when he fell out with Trump, he suddenly out of nowhere posts on X, you know, breaking news, Trump's in the Epstein files.
You know, that's why he doesn't want this out.
And have a good day, Donald, whatever it was.
And that led to the investigation being very quickly shut down.
And it was that moment for me when I went, whoa, what's happening here?
Well, look, I think you're absolutely right in that the American people aren't going to let this go.
And I think it's a beautiful thing that you have Americans both on the left and right who want justice, who want disclosure, who want transparency.
And they want this president to follow through on some of his campaign promises, including, you know, releasing all of the files related to both JFK's assassination and MLK's assassination as well.
And he's fallen short on that.
But I just want to kind of caution everyone who's been kind of celebrating the vote in Congress yesterday.
Yes, it was a near unanimous vote.
Clay Higgins was the only Republican lawmaker in the House who voted against it because he shares the concerns that it would lead to injustice for people who are named in the files but were cleared of any wrongdoing.
But I would just venture to say that our justice system has failed Epstein's survivors.
It has failed the American people.
And to put that system on a pedestal when it really needs to be gutted and reformed at this point, I think is a weak argument to say the least.
But one thing that I would caution about is the fact that immediately after the House held its vote to release the Epstein files yesterday, the House Oversight Committee started putting out subpoenas to various banks that had alleged ties to Epstein.
Now, these investigations could lead to an argument that we're not going to release the files because it's part of an active investigation.
So I'm worried that there might have been someone else's deal.
Yeah, but on that, I think, as Buck said, as Buck said, I just don't think that's going to fly.
If they try and do that, I think.
I don't think it's going to fly with the American people.
I agree.
But I do think that that might be the possible plot here.
The American people aren't going to let it go.
I don't think it's going to work.
Yeah, but I don't want to step on my colleague's time here, but just really quickly, we don't know how he got the money.
And this is one thing that I'm astonished still.
You can just do a quick Google search or Grok or whatever.
Epstein was worth over $600 million.
And people want to say that it was tax advice.
I've got a tax advisor, guys.
He's not worth $600 million.
I mean, this is crazy.
There's no way.
No, I agree.
I think the money trail on Epstein is a bit like the trail on Thomas Crookes until now, is that it's been wrapped in complete mystery.
Chris Ruffo, I mean, you know, like I say, I'm going to make a point again.
It's very unusual to get such unanimous kind of shared opinion about this, which I think, as Anna said, it goes to the heart of this, which is it's become a kind of bipartisan thing where people on the left and right are united in wanting this stuff out there.
So I don't think any attempt to hold stuff back going forward is going to work.
I think it's going to cause a lot more problems.
What is your best theory about why Trump hasn't moved faster to reveal all this, given that he was indicating he wanted to?
You know, for what it's worth, I interviewed David Boyce, who was one of the top criminal lawyers in American history.
He was Virginia Duffray's attorney.
He represented a number of other of the victims with his firm.
And a few weeks ago, he came on and said he's seen the files and there is nothing that incriminates Donald Trump criminally, but that there was stuff in there, which in his opinion would lead to prosecutions of between six and 12 high-profile men.
Now, could it be, I just simply posit this as a theory, that it's not Trump who's worried about Trump, but Trump may be worried about some of the other people who maybe he knows, friends, who knows, right?
I don't know.
Are there other people who may be fearing criminal prosecution who are putting heat on him not to reveal this?
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Yeah, I mean, that's certainly possible.
Powerful Associates and Lobbying00:09:41
It's also plausible given the network of associates around Jeffrey Epstein.
We know that these were some of the most powerful and influential people all over the world, certainly people that have the capacity to do lobbying, to do high pressure, to dangle donations where need be.
And so your theory, of course, we'll have to get the facts, but it's certainly one possibility that should be explored.
But there's a broader question here because it's not just Epstein or Crooks or Charlie Kirk or JFK or MLK.
It's all of these.
And so the question we need to be asking and really digging into is what is the common denominator for the reason that all of these bits and pieces of information are not making it through to the public?
Is it the political decision at the top?
Is it a middle management decision, people in cabinet positions or oversight positions?
Or is it part of the permanent bureaucracy that for whatever reason is loath to release information to the public?
Or is it simple incompetence?
You know, for example, with the JFK files, it's maybe not as easy as it seems.
There's not just a bucket of files in the corner somewhere labeled hidden, you know, secret JFK files.
And so we really need to get to the bottom of this.
But I think ultimately the responsibility is on the president who selects his cabinet deputies, who is the chief executive.
He should become more engaged on this.
Obviously, he has many things around the world he's thinking about on a daily basis.
But these are really important stories.
These are really important problems that we really need to get to the bottom of in American life.
And so I just find it so frustrating.
And if you're a chief executive of a corporation, you're not getting the information that you need from your subordinates.
You put the squeeze on those subordinates.
say you have 30 days to get everything gone.
I think Trump needs to channel a little bit more of that apprentice spirit and start holding some of his subordinates to task.
Well, speaking as somebody that competed on Celebrity Apprentice, but never got fired because I won.
Wajah, yeah, I mean, that is what a chief executive does, right?
You either get the information if you say you want it, and if you feel your team are hiding it, you fire the team and get people that will give it to you.
So none of this really makes any sense.
What do you think is going on here?
What's your gut feeling about why there's been such a concerted attempt to deprive the public from seeing the full story on Epstein?
My take, based on the evidence of my eyes and ears, is that we're witnessing one of the biggest political cover-ups in modern history.
And if I may, let me just give you an example of why I say that.
First and foremost, we know that Kash Patel, Dan Bongino, Pam Bondi, openly told the American public, we're going to come in and we're going to release the Epstein files.
It's going to show this cabal of corrupt pedophiles and sex traffickers.
And then they got in power.
They saw the files.
What did they do?
They closed the Epstein co-conspirator investigation.
Done.
Wall Street Journal, you know, that flaming leftist socialist rat, Wall Street Journal, reported that Pam Bondi told Donald Trump back in April that his name in some capacity was in these files.
Donald Trump, when he was asked by an ABC News reporter, he lied about it.
Then we know that at least a thousand plus FBI agents were tasked by the DOJ to find Donald Trump's name and scrub it.
They were all sharing the same Excel sheet, which means those FBI agents actually have the information.
And we might actually have some whistleblowers from those FBI agents who were tasked from scrubbing the names.
What we've also seen so far is Ghelene Maxwell.
Glenn Maxwell was serving a 20-year sentence.
She was complicit.
She's a sex trafficker.
No other person with her actual felony has ever been transferred to a minimum security camp in Texas where, Piers, I know you've been covering this.
She is being pampered, receiving special treatment.
And no one knows to this day why or why Glenn Maxwell got transferred.
Finally, I will also say with Glenn Maxwell, she has the goods on this book, this 50-year-old, you know, this 50th birthday party book of Epstein.
Wall Street Journal reported it.
Donald Trump got furious, threatened to sue them.
Wall Street Journal said, go ahead and sue us.
We stand by our reporting.
And then you have seen that book with that drawing.
And not just with Donald Trump, but all these other lewd, disgusting drawings.
Then we saw Donald Trump threaten Marjorie Taylor Greene and Thomas Massey, mock them, ridicule them, right?
He did a post saying Republicans hold the line.
It's an Epstein hoax.
Once he saw that the votes were cracking, then he said, okay, okay, I'll release it.
So to me, this is the biggest political cover-up I've seen.
And I'll say it again.
If there's nothing to hide, he has nothing to lose.
He can, just right now, Pierce, as we're talking, Donald Trump can ask the Department of Justice to release the Epstein files.
Thomas Massey said it yesterday.
He was absolutely on point.
He don't need any votes.
He's negative 35 on the Epstein files.
So you alluded to this.
The best way for him to help his presidency, the best way for him to win over over 80% of Americans.
This is the only thing that Americans agree on, Pierce.
Release the Epstein files.
Democrats, progressives, Independents, MAGA, all say release the Epstein files.
He's sinking on this issue.
MAGA's cracking over this issue.
And I can only think that not only are other powerful men involved, but Donald Trump, his name is there, folks.
Now, what does that mean?
I don't know.
But the best way to clear his name, say, I got nothing to hide.
Here it is, unredacted.
Look, I didn't do anything wrong.
And then I also hope this entire panel agrees with me.
I don't care if there's Democrats, philanthropists, celebrities, progressives, conservatives.
If it is shown that these powerful men, regardless of their nationality, Ehud Brock, God forbid, rape girls were complicit in the cover-up of raping of girls.
I want all of these men to burn in hell.
And I'm so happy that Larry Summers is being dragged.
I don't care.
I hope the whole panel agrees with me.
If it is shown that men, regardless of their political affiliation, were raping girls or covering up the rape of girls, you burn in hell.
And I hope the panel agrees with me.
Yeah, listen, I think, I mean, ironically, we will probably have to redact one of those two names you just said because of how you linked it.
Because actually, fair justice does require that, right?
You know, people, there are people being accused of extremely serious things here.
And they are entitled to a fair trial.
So it's an interesting thing where you can't, even in our free democratic society, whether here in London, where you guys are in the United States, you can't just blurt out stuff about people like that and not give them a chance to defend themselves.
I agree with that principle.
But Pierce, may I jump in?
May I jump in?
Which name are you referring to, if you don't mind?
Are you talking about Ehud Barak?
You mean a former prime minister of Israel who it's confirmed had a very close relationship with Epstein?
Yeah, I'm saying the juxtaposition.
Let me be clear.
I'm saying the juxtaposition of his name with what Majahat said next, God forbid he did, blah, blah, blah.
Allegedly.
Okay, but then if I said that about you, allegedly, you wouldn't want your name just floated out there.
So in other words.
But wait, wait, Pierce, real quick, about Ehud Barak, the reason why I mentioned Ehud Barak, and this is all alleged, folks, is because Ehud Barak was photographed multiple times, multiple times at Jeffrey Epstein's apartment.
I agree.
Dropsight released emails of Ehud Barak's aide staying at Epstein's apartment.
I'm not disputing.
No, no, no.
Let me be clear.
I'm not disputing for a moment.
He clearly was a good friend of Jeffrey Epstein and clearly spent a lot of time with him.
I'm just saying the juxtaposition of putting a name like that out there next to what you then said, you can see.
We can all see, right?
That's where...
You need evidence and certainly...
You're right.
You are correct that there's no evidence yet or anything tying Ehud Barak to any type of sexual impropriety.
I agree with you on that.
However, there is some reporting from Dropsite News as a result of those releases from the House Oversight Committee that seems to be completely ignored by the corporate media and legacy media.
And those emails and those correspondences indicate that Ehud Barak was working with Epstein to make all sorts of deals on behalf of the government of Israel.
For instance, he helped to facilitate the sale of cyber, Israeli cyber weapons.
And so he found financing for that effort through a particular bank, I believe in Sweden, if I'm not mistaken.
Please check out Dropsight News for their incredible reporting on this.
They show the receipts and they base it on what has been released, both through Ehud Barak's emails and also throughout this by the House of Lords.
I actually think that the smart, I mean, I'll come to you, Buck, on this, but it seems to me the smart thing is just to let all this come out, right?
For the reason we're saying.
But it's going to be interesting.
If there is a direct allegation, for example, of a very high-profile former prime minister committing an act of rape, for example, that's an interesting case about whether that should be redacted pending a criminal investigation.
So I don't pretend this is just as easy as going blur, right?
But I do know if you do too much redacting, then the conspiracies rage.
So there's a conundrum there.
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So just to what wajahat said a moment ago, yeah, of course.
And that's actually why in the U.S. code for some of the crimes that could be contained in this theoretically or some of the things we're talking about, trafficking of minors, there's no statute of limitations and 25 to life is very standard.
And of course, anybody involved in that should pay that federal penalty regardless of political party.
I'm sure the panel all agrees with that.
But there's this other component of this as well, which we're also getting to now, which is Epstein had contact with a lot of people.
Epstein somehow, and this is where I think the money thing is fascinating, was able to impress and ingratiate himself to some of the most powerful and connected people in the world, which is a pretty remarkable feat when you think about it.
And was able to stay in their orbit even after he was a convicted sexist.
Well, that's the bit.
That's the bit.
I mean, there's a really, one really interesting thing that's been put in these files that's come out, which Semaphore, actually, Ben Smith's setup put out there as a link to read, is a 4,000-word profile that Michael Wolf was planning on Jeffrey Epstein a number of years ago.
And it never appeared.
But in it, Wolf details all these rich, famous, powerful people coming and going all the time after the conviction.
So they're going to a convicted pedophile's home to either ingratiate themselves, to socialize with him, to do business.
And I always took a view, for example, with the former Prince Andrew, now just common old Andrew, was that there was nothing which proved beyond any doubt that he had carried on past what he'd said publicly was the cutoff point of them being seen in Central Park.
I went to say goodbye because of the conviction we had to end.
I think his ex-wife, Sarah Ferguson, said the same thing, publicly disowned him because of the conviction and so on.
And then what these emails have shown is that actually both of them continued to have contact with him way past their supposed public cutoff point.
Yeah, I mean, look, this is pretty straightforward.
If you sit down with somebody, if you've got a friend and, you know, it comes out that he cheated on his taxes a little bit, maybe did a little time.
Okay, you know, he paid his debt to society.
We're talking about the trafficking of underage girls here.
We're talking about being a sex criminal.
You would think that any person would want to have the just the common ethics, decency, and good sense to be like, I'm not going to be flying on this guy's jet, going to his island, just spending a lot of time with him.
So that's a big part of it.
But now we also get to, there may be, can I just make a prediction about this?
I don't think there'll be the smoking gun, which would mean someone can actually get prosecuted if they can.
Oh, I think they will.
I think they're absolutely.
I think a number of high-profile men are going to be criminally prosecuted.
I really do.
I think you're going to see, as David Boyce said, I think you're going to see between six and 12 at least actually face potential prosecutions.
I would be surprised, Piers, but if it's there, they absolutely should be prosecuted.
So we're just, you know, we're surmising what's going to be in the files.
But beyond that, there's going to be a lot of, oh, not all the answers are there.
And now I'm going to attack whomever I want to attack politically with this.
And it's specifically Donald Trump.
It's not like after the files come out, people are going to stop talking about this.
No, but it is a bit.
You know, it's interesting what Majah had said about the cover-up, right?
So I was literally last week at the Richard Nixon Presidential Library and Museum in California, in Orange County.
Really interesting just going around it as his old home, the old helicopter where he did the famous jubilant wave goodbye to the American people and so on.
But, you know, if you remember Watergate, Watergate was widely ignored for, you know, over well over a year as Woodward and Bernstein were unraveling this stuff in the Washington Post.
And then it finally, the drip, drip, drip finally erupted into an inferno.
And it was the inferno of the cover-up rather than the initial incident.
And that was what did for Nixon.
And if I was advising Donald Trump, I'd be like, if you look at the number of people, MAGA supporters, real die-hard Trumpers who are really genuinely angry about this, it will, in the end, for Donald Trump, he's got to be careful that the drip, drip, drip doesn't become the unstoppable, inferno is the wrong analogy, I would say like a tidal wave, right?
Which sinks you because of the cover-up or perceived cover-up.
And I think Watergate is a good example.
If you just had the initial incident, then Nixon could have survived that if he'd been completely upfront at the time.
It was the lying that went on about the incident that did for him.
Well, Piers, I want to say there's four leaks, if you will, when it comes to this drip, drip, drip that I don't think the Trump administration, Kash Patel and Pambondi can truly leak.
Plug, excuse me.
These are the four leaks that they have to be worried about.
First and foremost, the Epstein estate.
We know that the Epstein estate has actually given Democrats a tranche of documents.
They haven't released all of it.
And we still don't know what the Epstein estate has, number one.
Number two, the FBI agents tasked by the DOJ to look at these files and scrub Donald Trump's name.
Some of the whistleblowers are alarmed and horrified by the evidence, the photos that they've seen.
And they all, in a very reckless, foolish, and stupid manner, were sharing an open Excel sheet.
So we don't know what these FBI agents, if there are any whistleblowers there, what information they have, number two.
Number three, Glenn Maxwell, again, who is in a minimum security camp being pampered right now.
We know, folks, we can trust our brain here, our logic, our intelligence, that that birthday book, that 50th birthday book of Jeffrey Epstein that contains the names of all these powerful people who sent him some lewd messages, including Donald Trump, she's probably sitting on some more information.
And Pierce, if she's seeing George Santos and CZ get pardoned, you better believe she ain't spending 20 years of her life in prison.
And then the fourth leak is the most powerful.
The thousands of survivors, the girls who were raped, the women now who are emboldened, that powerful ad, I'm sure we all saw it over the weekend where they're holding photos of themselves.
You know, I thought it was extremely powerful and sobering.
I was 16, I was 15.
These girls who are now women finally realized, oh, people are listening to us and our story.
Virginia Duffrey from the dead, her story, if there was no there, Pierce, Andrew would be Prince Andrew.
I agree.
Before Virginia Duffrey's memoir came out.
And also, on that, once you know that Andrew is lying about the timeline of how long he stayed in contact with Epstein, which we now do, then you look at all the other things he's denied with a new, very skeptical eye.
Not least, for example, the picture of him with his arm around Virginia Duffray that he's trying to muddy the waters about his veracity.
He said he doesn't remember it happening, trying to get some advisors to come on, friends of his to say it's a fake and so on.
You know, it's now pretty well agreed that was a genuine picture.
Epstein admits it in one of the emails that have been leaked.
So that sort of series of denials that Andrew made is unraveling.
And that is what's done for him.
And it'd be interesting how this plays out.
The only way Andrew makes any comeback whatsoever in the rest of his life into public life is if he goes and does a full interview under oath with the FBI.
He's ever going to do it, but that's the only way.
So he's gone.
Lord Mandelson, who was our ambassador to the US, gone.
Because again, the timeline revealed from that he had put forward revealed he was very cozy with Epstein going forward.
I just want to pivot.
It's fascinating.
I could talk about this for days.
It's really interesting.
But I want to pivot, and I'll start with you, Buck, on this.
What we saw at the White House yesterday with the Crown Prince of Saudi Arabia, really quite an extraordinary historic moment, really, of somebody who'd been treated as a bit of a pariah by Joe Biden, albeit he eventually gave him a fist bump and so on.
Donald Trump really welcoming the Crown Prince of Saudi Arabia, making it very clear that Saudi Arabia is now a very important strategic ally for the United States.
Let's take a listen to what he said.
Your Royal Highness, the U.S. intelligence concluded that you orchestrated the brutal murder of a journalist.
9-11 families are furious that you are here in the Oval Office.
Why should Americans know?
Who are you with?
And the same to you, Mr. Russell.
So who are you with?
I'm with ABC News, sir.
You're with who?
ABC News, sir.
Fake news.
ABC fake news.
One of the worst.
One of the worst in the business.
But I'll answer your question.
As far as this gentleman is concerned, he's done a phenomenal job.
You're mentioning somebody that was extremely controversial.
A lot of people didn't like that gentleman that you're talking about.
Whether you like him or didn't like him, things happen, but he knew nothing about it.
And we can leave it at that.
You don't have to embarrass our guests by asking a question like that.
But what was interesting was the Crown Prince then did answer the question himself, which I don't think was expected.
We all know that it made Saudi Arabia pretty well a pariah country for a long time.
But we also know that now Saudi Arabia is a very important strategic player in the region.
When you take it in totality, are you supportive of what you saw at the White House yesterday?
Well, there's no way to ignore Saudi Arabia.
That would be foolish for this administration and honestly, I think for any administration.
And there are certainly rumors from within the administration itself that I think there's a hope of further normalization between Israel and the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia in terms of diplomatic relations, things like that in the future.
So if you're talking about this from a realpolitik or just a strategic point of view, of course he's going to have the Crown Prince there and they're going to be discussing a whole range of issues.
You know, Trump is out there negotiating these deals.
He's trying to get things done for American workers and putting American interests first, as he constantly says.
So this is a bit of a reminder, I think, to people of what the truth is of our, first of all, our energy needs and the global energy markets and the reality that we're going to be dealing sometimes with less than perfect regimes and less than savory characters on the world stage.
But there's been a lot that's been done by the Saudis that is moving in the right direction in recent years.
And I think that Trump wants to try to be as constructive as he can.
Now, there's a lot that could be said about this and a lot of criticism that I'm sure people can and will throw at the regime as we're discussing this.
But I think that obviously Trump has to have a lot of money.
All right, Anna, I can see you raising your eyes.
I mean, I would preface it by saying this.
I was editor of the Daily Mirror in the UK when I opposed vociferously what I've viewed as the illegal war on Iraq in 2003.
You know, to me, Tony Blair has a lot of blood on his hands from that decision to take us into war alongside George Bush, obviously.
It was an illegal war.
A million people died.
I mean, on the scale of outrages, the Khashoggi thing was awful and it's terrible that a journalist was murdered, obviously.
But so is an illegal war that killed a million people.
I don't see any call for Tony Blair, for example, to be either brought to a criminal court over it or turned into a kind of global pariah.
So is there a double standard here being applied or not?
Well, double standard or not, I mean, at the end of the day, our relationship with Saudi Arabia, I agree with Buck, it does have a lot to do with normalizing a genocidal, disgusting state run by a group of terrorists in the Middle East, and that's the nation state of Israel.
I don't care about what's good for them and how to normalize them and what kind of business deals our president of the United States can negotiate on behalf of Israel.
Got no interest in that.
The other thing I have absolutely no interest in is what Trump was advertising to the American people yesterday in regard to our relationship with Saudi Arabia, which is that Saudi Arabia is allegedly going to invest a trillion dollars in businesses here in the U.S.
I would like foreigners in foreign countries to stop buying up land, including farmland, buying up residential real estate, buying up apartment buildings.
I would like Americans to run American businesses and hire American workers.
I see our relationship with Saudi Arabia as something that does need to be dealt with to some degree.
Obviously, it's an oil-producing country, part of the OPEC plus cartel.
And if you can remember, during the Biden administration, Saudi Arabia was intentionally withholding the production of oil in order to inflate the price that we all pay at the pump.
And that also led to inflation, by the way.
So Saudi Arabia is a country with an innocent angel running it.
No, no, no one's claiming it.
It's a dictatorship and it's disgusting.
Okay, but let me throw it back at you.
Your argument then.
By your argument, would you not want America to be investing in any other countries around the world or having any of their own people being employers employed in foreign countries?
Does it work both ways?
Or do you simply want to put the shutters down on any investment and people working in the United States coming from other countries?
If there are mutually beneficial deals to be made, fine.
But I don't see the way that we have worked with foreign countries as beneficial to American workers and the American people.
We have had far too many foreign interests come in and buy up our assets, essentially pricing the American people out of things that used to be part of the American dream.
Being able to own a home, for instance.
Just last week, there was an explosive report about how there is a corporation essentially based in Israel that's buying up apartment buildings in the United States, raising the rent as much as 24% in a single year.
It's part of their business model.
The CEO literally admitted people out.
Okay, but look, Apple's an amazing American company, fantastic company.
I'm a big consumer myself.
Would you simply say, right, Apple, you cannot now have any factories or any employees outside the United States?
Because the answer is you can't say that.
I mean, well, isn't that something that President Donald Trump pretended like he wanted to do?
Well, he'd like to see them opening more factories than the U.S., but he hasn't said you've got to shut everything around the world.
Billionaires on the Red Carpet00:15:15
I mean, I just think that we live in a small...
The globe is a small place now, right?
Globalization at its best is a good thing.
Globalization at its worst is a bad thing.
There's a happy medium.
It hasn't benefited the American worker, that's for sure.
But you look at China.
By the way, I agree that the American elites have sold us out to China in a whole range of ways, but you can't change that overnight.
I mean, the same way that you can't offshore the semiconductor manufacturing, particularly the high-end, that Taiwan does to the U.S., they're trying to do some of it.
But at the end of the day, it's going to take time for us to have some of these industries brought back.
I mean, what Anne is saying, I think, in principle, that more of it should be done in America, absolutely.
And I think Trump is trying to do that.
But you actually cannot do some of these things tomorrow, even if you wanted to.
It is going to take time.
And China has a million Uyghurs in concentration camps, and yet we're still doing business with them.
Doesn't mean it's okay.
It doesn't mean we shouldn't call out the human rights abuses.
But again, this is where the world is what it is.
I wish that there were a whole lot of people.
And by the way, Buck, you know, if you take the UK, hang on, make.
Hold on, real quick.
Let me just respond to that.
No, no, no.
The reason why, look, I agree with you, Buck, okay?
But rather than wean this country off the teat of foreign corporations and foreign oligarchs, Trump is doubling down with more foreign investment in the United States.
And then this is on the heels of him saying, oh, we don't have talent in the American workforce.
We're going to have to bring in foreign workers with H-1B visas.
How does this benefit the American worker?
I don't understand.
Just to be clear, I actually disagree with some of the tone of this administration on the H-1B issues.
I think that H-1B is 90% abuse and that those jobs should go to Americans.
And that this is something where I actually am a little bit of a cross or see differently than the administration.
And I'm very public about that.
And on the investment, yeah, I mean, there is a line to be drawn.
I mean, I think that the Chinese, for example, we're talking about Saudi Arabia, a lot of investment in America, but the Chinese have done a better job buying off the American elites and steering foreign policy.
I'm talking about the CCP, not like the everyday Chinese people, but they've done a better job buying off our elites than any country in history.
I mean, what they've been able to do is quite honestly astonishing, such that now we really can't decouple from China quickly.
But in terms of foreign investment in the United States, I mean, you look at whether it's BMW having a huge plant in, I think it's one of the Carolinas, these are jobs that go to Americans and that create American prosperity.
And there's an upside to it here as well.
The point I was going to make was, I want to bring Chris because you've been waiting patiently.
The point, Chris, I would say about this is that, you know, the UK at the moment feels like it's really in the doldrums.
And one of the reasons is there's been a real drain, actually, of foreign investment wanting to invest in the UK.
And we see that as a big problem, right?
It has a direct impact on our economy.
And people who don't want to come and invest in this country, it's a lack of faith in the success of Britain PLC.
So I don't intrinsically have any problem with other countries wanting to invest somewhere.
It's a show of that country's strength where they want to invest.
And as long as it's handled properly, as long as it's done hand in hand with encouraging Americans in this case to get proper employment at the same time, then it's fine.
It's when the whole system gets abused that there are problems.
What do you make?
I mean, the whole kind of, I thought what was really striking to me was Donald Trump really rolled out the red carpet for Saudi Arabia.
It wasn't an official state visit.
But Chris, you know, are you happy about that?
Do you think that, and I was struck by, I went to a fight in a boxing match in LA last summer, part of the Riyadh season.
And obviously they're getting very dominant now in sport, boxing in particular.
And they played the Saudi national anthem along with the American national anthem.
And there was no booing at all.
It's really interesting.
I just remember taking the audience going, wow, okay, that's a sea change from post-9-11.
There would have been mayhem if they tried to play the Saudi national anthem.
Things have changed dramatically.
Geopolitics changes dramatically.
Saudi Arabia is a big player now on the global stage.
Trump wants to do business with him.
Do you have a problem with that?
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And yes, bring the popcorn.
No, I think it's good.
And there are two ways to look at this question.
The first is political.
The second is economic.
On the political question, we've learned a lot since 9-11.
We had a disastrous war in Iraq.
We had a disastrous occupation of Afghanistan.
We had a disastrous posture towards the Assad regime in Syria.
We created chaos, death, destruction, and outflow of migrants, particularly into Europe.
And we learned that even those unsavory regimes are often much preferable to what comes after them.
And so we're looking at Saudi Arabia as a pillar of stability, people we can work with.
And yes, of course, they're not perfect.
It's a tough neighborhood.
It's a tough culture.
It's a tough part of the world.
But they have shown to be at least someone we can do business with, someone we can do politics and geopolitics with.
They need our help and stability.
I think we need their stability for economic and geopolitical reasons.
And so I think that is a good partnership.
On the economic question, you have to balance your trade and investment between friends and adversaries.
And so certain investment opportunities, like for example, buying our ports, should be denied to the Chinese.
But if the Saudis want to invest in high-tech companies, if they want to invest in automobile manufacturing, that's a great way to balance our trade deficit.
That's a great way to create jobs in the United States.
And, you know, they're not going around buying apartments and denying the American dream.
That is such a small percentage of what's going on that I don't think we should be worried about that.
If that's a particular concern, some policy remedies are available.
But what the Saudis are really doing is investing in high-growth, high-technology companies in the United States that need capital.
And in the AI boom, we need capital coming into the United States.
That's smart politics, it's smart economics, and it's smart geostrategy.
Yeah, well, John, you're shaking your head.
Why?
Yeah, I've been waiting for a while.
So I hope all of us can agree that Mohammed bin Salaman is a brutal dictator who engaged in a red wedding takeover of Saudi Arabia a week after Jared Kushner in Donald Trump's first administration left.
A report showed that Jared Kushner gave it a green light.
The first country that Donald Trump visited was Saudi Arabia, where he did a curtsy and Steve Bannon danced with swords.
And it was great for business.
He turned on Saudi Arabia even though he said there were terrorists.
Fine.
Then you have Mohmed bin Salaman, who also has engineered this crisis in Yemen, this famine of children, the death of so many Yemenis.
You also have him cracking down on women, specifically women activists.
So we say, you know what?
We've supported dictators in the past.
It's fine.
But you know what we don't do is literally, like you said, Pierce, lay out the red carpet.
They laid out the red carpet.
They had people on horses.
They had a flyover of jets.
I mean, it was pomp for like a king.
And then what's even worse with the clip that you played, Donald Trump served as his personal, if you will, like conciliary and his advisor and his PR rehab man.
And he mocked and ridiculed yet another female journalist who asked a very legitimate question about Jamal Khashoggi.
If you listen to that quote, he kind of said, eh, Khashoggi, a U.S. journalist who was killed and dismembered at the behest of MBS.
According to the CIA, that was the assessment of law enforcement during Trump's first administration.
He kind of said, well, he had it coming.
So it seems to me that Donald Trump is willing to sell out freedoms, sell out human rights, sell out journalists.
And I think for all of us here on this panel, we should take a moment about Jamal Khashoggi.
For the right deal, are you comfortable with your president saying, eh, he had it coming?
Sure, Anna went missing in Saudi Arabia.
Buck went missing in Turkey.
Chris went missing in Qatar.
But guess what?
I got an investment in my company, right?
And finally, when it comes to Saudi Arabia investing, who has benefited?
Not the average American.
I'm here in Virginia.
There are literally people at food banks.
You know who has benefited?
The broligarchy, billionaires.
Jared Kushner got $2 billion from Saudi Arabia.
The Witcoffs got $1.5 billion.
And guess who David Ellison is teaming up with to buy Warner Brothers Discovery?
Saudi Arabia.
David Ellison was there with them last night.
So do you want Americans, Saudi Arabia, to gobble up Warner Brothers, DC movies, HBO, Discovery?
They already have golf.
But do you want to make sure that you haven't made money?
Okay, Wajah.
Buck hasn't made money.
Buck hasn't made money.
But a lot of billionaires are...
Let me throw back a question at you.
Given what we heard just a little earlier about America's disastrous interventions in Iraq, in Afghanistan in the last 25 years, if you're in the Middle East, and I've traveled there a lot in the last few years.
It'd be fascinating watching the evolution of a lot of these countries, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Dubai, obviously well ahead of everyone.
But you look at it, and I look at what America and the UK did together in Iraq and Afghanistan.
You will hear a lot of people in the Middle East say, well, why should we do business with those people?
They came and bombed the hell out of us and killed a lot of people on spurious claims like weapons of mass destruction that never turned up and so on.
In other words, the morality argument can work both ways.
Yes, the murder of Khashoggi was despicable, of course.
But so was the illegal invasion of Iraq, which killed a million people.
And yet I don't see the argument being put forward by you that because of that, because of Iraq and Afghanistan, America and the UK, my country, should be prohibited from doing any business or getting any red carpet treatment when they go to the Middle East.
But they do, and they don't get treated with the same treatment that you're dishing out now the other way.
Why?
So I'll say two things.
Number one, billionaires are helping billionaires, just like the Epstein files.
This is not helping Saudi Arabia.
So on the morality point.
On the morality point, you know what?
I'm going to take it a step further.
I agree with you.
And you and me were right.
I was marching as a UC Berkeley college student against the war and terror.
I believe there are individuals still alive who should be tried for war crimes.
One of them just died, Dick Cheney.
I'm perfectly fine with Tony Blair being shunned forever.
I'm perfectly fine with some trials to actually investigate why the UK and the people who were in charge, the neocons, went to war, killed, like you said, a million people, dragged us for decades in the war.
U.S. soldiers were killed without any evidence.
And the evidence that was given was fabricated.
But I will also say, I hope at the very least, people watching, especially people in the UK, realize, you know what?
I don't think the UK is the same as Saudi Arabia.
I don't think the UK is the same as MBS.
We have a long-lasting relationship with the UK.
I'm not saying it's perfect, but I, for one, would love it if Tony Blair got the same type of treatment that I want to give that Donald Trump or Joe Biden, whoever's elected, gives to MBS.
And I think, Buck, the one point, Buck, I actually agree with you.
Sure, sure.
We have to engage in these, if you will, unsavory alliances, right?
U.S. presidents, whether Democrats or Republicans, have engaged with dictators in the past.
You give them a fist bump.
I didn't even like the fist bump that Joe Biden gave.
I was critical of that.
What you don't have to do, Pierce, is literally lay out the red carpet, have jets fly over, have mounted policemen, and then literally modernize the business.
Let me listen.
I got the man.
Donald Talker Wands are running out of time.
They got literally like two minutes.
Buck.
Yeah, just there's a level of respect that countries, when they're engaging in high-level diplomacy, are going to have.
I mean, they're not going to have MBS like come in to come in the back door of the White House with like people that work in the kitchen or something and act like he's not the head of a country that we can like it, we cannot like it.
I think a lot of people, it bothers them.
I joined the CIA because of 9-11 and what happened to friends of mine in New York City.
We're all very aware that 15 of the 19 hijackers were Saudi.
Like there's this history that I don't think is forgotten as we're talking about this, but there's also what's the best way forward.
And yes, I understand there was a journalist who was brutally murdered and it's a horrible thing.
Donald Trump is trying to represent the interests of 340 or so million Americans and also work with an ally in the Middle East who can prevent another war, perhaps, from in the next five years, in the next 20 years, blowing up, killing a million people, terrible things happening.
So I get that maybe the pomp and circumstance seems unsavory to some, but there's really no alternative and there's also no alternative to working with the Saudis.
So we can complain about it.
It's America, free to do that, sure.
But this is the reality that we face when you're talking about bringing a foreign head of state of a very important country.
And unless we all want to wake up tomorrow and start living with candlelight, the Saudis are going to continue to be important for the foreseeable future.
Maybe Elon can get Cold Fusion to work or something.
Well, you mentioned Elon.
I just want to end by- What about the Al-Qaeda terrorist that was in the White House as well?
Does that matter at all?
The Al-Qaeda, former terrorist who's now the leader of Syria.
Syria?
I think it was insulting to the American people and American troops to have Al-Shara, Al-Jalani, was his previous name, again, the leader of an al-Qaeda offshoot in the White House getting complimented by the United States.
Were you insulting?
Okay, but Anna, Hannah, this is the question.
Hang on, Anna, were you insulted when Nelson Mandela was given the red carpet treatment, given that he was previously categorized as a terrorist?
Nelson Mandela was categorized as a terrorist because he was fighting apartheid and the treatment of African-American Africa.
I'm just saying he was brought up.
What exactly has Al-Shara done in Syria to fight on behalf of human rights?
Alawites are getting slaughtered.
Christians are getting slaughtered.
Absolutely unacceptable to launder his reputation as someone who literally fought our soldiers, our soldiers in Iraq.
Okay.
I hate your point.
I want to end.
Listen, I don't want to.
Finally, it took 24 years for the right wing to embrace Muslims as long as they're billionaires and dictators investing in American billionaires.
Took 24 years.
You may indeed see the irony of that.
Ronaldo Meets a Dictator00:02:39
I do want to end on a happy note.
We started on a happy note of agreement.
And I think we can probably end with one here because I recently interviewed Cristiano Ronaldo in Riyadh, actually.
And he said this about Donald Trump.
One of the guys that I want to meet.
I wish one day if you have make that happen or tell him that one of the guys that I want to sit to have a nice talk was one of the guys.
Donald Trump, Donald Trump.
Well, his son, Baron, is a big fan of yours.
He told me that.
Yeah?
He loves you.
Good.
His son is kind of coming as well.
Oh, yeah?
Okay, will we get Baron?
Donald, obviously I'll have to be there.
If you want to be, say, Christiana, I'll come as your assistant.
Perfect.
That would be an amazing.
I think we can make that happen.
I think he'd love to meet you.
Perfect.
Well, I'm not saying that uncensored has a rare power now in this world, but three weeks later, for the first time ever, Christiana last night met Donald Trump at the White House, and Donald Trump said this about him.
Ronaldo.
And Baron got to meet him, and I think he respects his father a little bit more now.
Just the fact that I introduced you.
So I just want to thank you both for being here.
Thank you very much.
And later, the White House today, in fact, posted a picture of the two of them saying the two goats.
Now, it might be an arguable point for Vajah and Anna in particular.
I'm a messy guy.
I live in Miami.
Well, I'm going to come to that.
I know this.
So I was going to say that Vajara, I suspect the theory that Donald Trump is the goat of presidents is a contestable point.
We can have another time.
But on the football point, I've said for a while, Ronaldo is the greatest ever player of the game.
Buck, I know you're a messy guy.
You're just going to have to suck it up, mate.
The mood music is moving to my boy, Ronaldo.
He's the best.
Hopefully, Ronaldo can ask Trump to release the Epstein files.
That may be what he was saying when they were walking together.
Anyway, I want to end on a light note.
Fascinating panel.
Love that we started with total agreement.
I love that, as always, it descended into total disagreement.
That is what makes these panels so engaging.
Thank you all very much.
I appreciate it.
Thank you.
Thanks all.
Well, returning now to the Epstein files, the House voted almost unanimously to compel the DOJ to release all of its files on Jeffrey Epstein.
I'm joined now by Epstein victim, Lysia Arden, and her attorney, Gloria Ulrid.
Well, welcome to both of you.
Alicia, it was very, very moving to see you and many of the other victims yesterday.
Hotel Room Confessions00:02:13
I watched it for a long time, actually, and was really, really moved by it.
But particularly struck by your story, because you could have stopped all this.
If people had taken you seriously, you could have stopped all this stone dead.
Because, well, I want you to tell the story for people who didn't watch yesterday, who don't know your story.
Just explain briefly what happened to you with Epstein and what you tried to do.
Well, that's a good question, Pierce.
I mean, I was a young model who wanted to desperately be in Victoria's secret.
And I got a call that Jeffrey Epstein could make that happen.
He wanted me to go to the hotel room to meet him.
And it wasn't going well.
I went in there with my portfolio, as all mottos do, with prepared to be in lingerie and do some modeling turns for him.
And then he was liking that, but then it was turning bad.
He was wanting me to come near him, looking at my pictures, doing a turn.
And then he said he wanted to mandlehandle me.
I've never heard of anyone say that.
He said, let me manhandle you.
And I was turning and then he started touching my breasts and my hips and my butt.
And I wanted to get out of there.
I was being attacked.
And I just felt I needed to leave.
It wasn't going well to be in Victoria's secret.
So I ran out of the hotel room.
He started to follow me.
And I said, I have to get out of here.
I was so embarrassed and ashamed.
I did start to cry in front of him.
And he got a phone call.
And to this day, I think it could have been Glenn Maxwell calling him.
And he said, I have this beautiful girl in front of me and she's very upset.
And I said, Jeffrey, I want my portfolio and I'm leaving.
And then he wanted to give me $100.
And I said, I'm not a prostitute.
I just want to be in Victoria's secret.
So I left.
He followed me, but I completely left.
And I drove to the police station.
I wanted to file a police report.
And that was going bad.
I was so discouraged, humiliated, and I was very scared and traumatized, but I wanted to do it anyway.
But that, Gloria, that welcome.
Yeah, Gloria, lovely to see you again.
Failed Prosecution in New York00:05:52
Really fascinating this, because had the police taken this more seriously, had Epstein had a criminal case built against him and been prosecuted, then he could have ended up in the late 90s becoming a convicted sex attacker.
And who knows how that might have framed then what happened over the next 20 years or so.
So a significant part of the story, I think.
I agree with you.
And Piers, thank you very much for inviting me today.
It's good to see you again.
I am very concerned about what happened because there have been so many failures of the justice system, not only beginning as far as we know with that one,
and there may have been more that we didn't know even prior to that, but not to prosecute him, even though there is a victim there who then does file a police report and does indicate she alleges that she would testify if there were a prosecution.
And then there's no prosecution.
And apparently, it's just the beginning.
We know that, for example, in 2008 that there was a sweetheart deal for Jeffrey Epstein in Florida, that the U.S. attorney at that time, Alex Acosta, could have filed numerous federal charges based on the information and the evidence that he was given at that time.
But instead, he basically decided not to and then punted it to the state.
They filed charges against Jeffrey Epstein.
He ended up getting a sweetheart deal where he could spend his time in jail at night, but during the day he could leave and go to his office.
And there are allegations that he sexually abused women when he was in his office during the day.
Then, of course, we go to New York, where Jeffrey Epstein had been placed into custody, was going to be prosecuted.
All the hopes of the survivors were up, that they would be a trial.
They could confront him in a court of law as witnesses in the federal prosecution, but then he mysteriously died, suicide or homicide.
I'll leave it to everyone to decide while he was in federal custody.
So no trial at that time.
Now we come forward, fast forward, to the issue of the Epstein files, and there has to have been a battle by the brave survivors, like Alicia, to get these files released.
Of course, President Trump could have just told the Department of Justice, release the files.
And they would have had to release him immediately.
Instead, because he took a position in opposition to that, that's why there was a bill.
And the Democrats, along with Thomas Massey, who's a representative and a Republican, decided to move forward with a bill.
Ultimately, passed the House of Representatives.
Last night it passed the Senate.
Now we're waiting for the President to do what he said he would do just a few days ago, which is sign the bill if it's placed on his desk.
And then, of course, that's not the end of the battle, Piers, because he will have 30 days, or rather, the Department of Justice will have 30 days after he signs the bill to start producing the files that they have, with some exceptions.
And a big, glaring exception is that because the president has said he wants Democrats investigated, some high-profile Democrats like former President Clinton and the Department of Justice through Attorney General Pam Bondi has said yes, the Southern District of New York will open an investigation.
There are going to be exceptions because they're going to say, look, we have an ongoing investigation.
We can't release certain parts of this file.
So again, can the survivors have confidence in the Department of Justice?
I think they're going to have to show through their actions that they're complying with this bill, which will become law if the president signs it.
And by the way, there was a subpoena previously by the House Oversight Committee.
They should have complied at that time.
They released some files, but not all.
Many of the files they released were already public.
So I'm cautiously approaching this next stage to see if the survivors can have confidence in the Department of Justice, or is it just going to be another failure and denial of justice, such as they have had in the past?
But the good news is the Department, the House Oversight Committee will be monitoring what is released.
to see if everything is released that complies with the new law should it become law today.
Alicia, why is it so important to you and the other survivors to see full transparency on these files?
It's just always so, been so important, Pierce.
We're always looking for the truth.
And I have said for years that after I finally did get my police report filed, if the police department in Santa Monica, California would have looked after him, followed him, because he was essentially living at Shutter's Hotel in Santa Monica, California, if they would have followed him and looked to see where he was going and who is this person that this girl, Alicia, filed the police report on, I might have been able to save the girls.
Demand Justice Now00:01:10
And now I'm still trying to save myself and them because it does need to go forward and to stop piecemailing it and talking about it.
I will be, I will feel like I'm slapped in the face if it doesn't.
What is your personal message to Donald Trump?
Please do the right thing.
Sign the bill.
We're all suffering.
Myself and the other victims.
Don't wait around.
Get it done like you had said that you were going to do when people allegedly voted you in office.
Alicia and Gloria, thank you both very much.
I really appreciate you coming on Uncensored.
Thank you.
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