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Unknown A
One of the highest profile and persistent mysteries of the modern political era has to do with Jeffrey Epstein, a very well connected deceased sex trafficker who died in the custody of Donald Trump and was a close friend of Donald Trump at one point. The so called Epstein files have been something that the right wing in particular has demanded be released. And now the Trump is back in office. Attorney General Pam Bondi has assured people that at least some of the Epstein files would indeed be disclosed today. And we're seeing reports that phase one of the Epstein files have been released to a group of right wing commentators like Libs of TikTok and not to the media as a whole. We have a lot of things to talk about, including whether Pam Bondia, at Donald Trump's discretion, can redact, selectively redact and eliminate things that are inconvenient for Trump and the MAGA movement while maximizing potentially embarrassing or disastrous things for Trump's political opponents.
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Unknown A
And to talk about this, I brought in my friend and yours, my lib and learn co host, attorney Peisco. Peisco. What's going on, buddy?
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Unknown B
Thanks so much for having me. Desai. Yeah, happy to discuss about what is happening with the quote unquote, Epstein files and essentially what Trump's role is here in the release of these files, which has been a target for a lot of frankly on both sides of the aisle. A lot of media personnel and politicians on both sides of the aisle.
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Unknown A
Yeah. So for context, I just want to play something. This's not. There's no audio here, but just this clip which shows this is cernovich Lives of TikTok, Liz Wheeler, right wing commentators who are emerging from the White House holding binders that say Epstein files phase one. Al right, that's enough out of that. These are some of the biggest trolls and losers on the face of the earth and they seem like degenerate liars.
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Unknown B
Members of the propaganda class for Trump. These are people who have consistently lied to the American people and who Donald Trump counts among his most stalwart allies. They will defend him on anything.
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Unknown A
No, 100%. And I guess, you know, we've got a lot to unpack but let's just dive into, I guess the big question that I have, which is the attorney general is Pam Bondi who was a Trump appointees. She's a close political ally. This woman is an election denier. She is far from Merrick Garland with respect to circumspection. She was the one reviewing the so called Epstein files and she said on Fox News recently some of the files would be released. So the big question that many people have is, can a Trump attorney general redact these files or alter them in some way so as to provide maximum cover for Trump, potentially, assuming he's in there at all, and maximize exposure for Trump's political opponents?
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Unknown B
Yeah. So I think we need to take a step back and the answer to the question probably is almost certainly yes from a legal perspective. But let's just step back and just kind of define the scope of our inquiry for a second. You know, Josiah keeps saying the quote, unquote Epstin files and that he's right to put that in scare quotes, because what is the Epstein files? One of the things that the Trump administration does really well from their perspective, I think, is in terms of branding and in terms of kind of labeling things. But, you know, there have been a number of court cases involving Jeffrey Epstein over the years, civil cases, a couple of criminal cases, and in the sort of course of investigations, civil cases, in criminal cases, there have been a number of files that are located in a number of different places.
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Unknown B
And so there's been discovery from civil trials that has been sealed. There's been the criminal docket. And obviously there're just files, information that relate to Epstein that exist on, like, hard drives in the FBI or that might exist on a U.S. attorney's systems or something like that. And so the notion of the Epstein files is kind of just a term, an advertising term to refer to generally information about Epstein and the possession of the government. But it's not sort of certain that there's like a tangible set of documents sort of put together, like a report that relates to Epstein or anything like that. And so just be aware of that. You're kind of worried about the potential political influence in what information is being released by the Trump administration and how. And you're also right to be fearful of that des design, because as you recall, during the whole Mueller investigation and the release of the Mueller report, then Attorney General Bill Barr had a very controversial moment when he decided on some choice redactions and summaries of the report prior to the release and then afterwards.
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Unknown A
That the special counsel was verytious. Special counsel Mueller, we should say, a lifelong Republican and a friend of Bill Barr, actually called Barr out for, with respect to his editorialization, the mischaracterization of the Mueller report. So Trump attorneys general seemed to have at least a. I don't wanna say a pattern because it was only Bar Bondi may be a step in that direction as well. But there is a predicate for a Trump Attorney General to do this sort of political influencing of a major, potentially, you know, damaging report about Trump to try to soften that blow.
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Unknown B
Yeah, no, 100%. So I think your fears are well founded. Be aware of the sort of playing field here. There have already been a number of FOIA requests related to Epste on some of the civil matters and documents have already been released to the public. So you're aware, Josiah, and including, by the way, like audio recordings where Epstein is saying that Trump was his best friend for 10 years. That was before the election, to not much fanfare, by the way, to a lot of the conservative pundits who are now parading around this kind of binder, purportedly of a lot of stuff we already know. And so there's already been some kind of inquiries using the FOIA process. You've just brought up a page that is showing you a Department of justice sort of webpage that lists out the nine exceptions under FOIA for why the government might withhold a document and be.
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Unknown A
Freedom of Information act citizens to request documents and information from the federal government.
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Unknown B
Right. So I bring this up to know that that's one process by which a lot of documents are released to the public. And those exceptions, you know, relate to statutory exceptions. And they're summarized there for you. But broadly speaking, know classified information, information about internal deliberations, things that could affect personal privacy, you know, things that could jeopardize that ongoing investigation. So there are a number of legitimate reasons why the government might want to withhold information. And you can see some of those policy reasons are kind of laid out in the FOIA statute. And that, of course, brings us to the point of what's going on here, which is the government might have some good reasons for redacting some information, just like they did for the Mueller Report. Right. ###acting some information contained with the information related to Jeffre Epstein, information that's prejudicial to victims, information that's maybe prejudicial to ongoing investigations that we don't even know about.
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Unknown B
And so the problem here is we have a very untrustworthy administration, potentially legitimate reasons to cover to redact some information. And unfortunately. Right. No confidence that the redactions are going to be apolitical. But you asked your question was what can be done if, you know, what's the process here? Is she going to be allowed to release whatever she wants and whatever form she wants? And the answer to that is basically yes. I mean, this is not a FOIA request type process. This is the Department of Justice reaching into its own files and just choosing out their own discretion to release information. And that seems like an inherently executive power. And even if it wereject subject to some kind of judicial scrutiny, you can sort of see in like the FOIA broad categories, what would be, there could be some legitimate arguments that a court might pay deference to the Trump administration in terms of prejudice to ongoing investigations where they could hide.
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Unknown B
And so even if there were some kind of judicially manageable standard for what information gets released, which by the way, I don't think any court was going to step in and say your redactions are too limited on the information that you chose to present, which isn't subject to a FOIA process. So, yeah, I don't really think there's much that litigants can do that people can do to get this information beyond what Trump and the Department justice choose.
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Unknown A
To release before we move on. Cause we have limited time. My simple question to you is, as an attorney and also a critic of this administration, do you trust Attorney General Bondi to not do anything politically expedient for Trump? Do you expect her to behave like we both know Merrick Garland would, which is if there was anything, you know, if the situation was reversed and there was anything politically damaging about President Biden that would not cross Merrick Garland's mind one damn bit. As a matter of fact, he would probably be more inclined to release it as a show of good faith. Do you trust Attorney General Bond?
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Unknown B
Of course not. This Attorney General is a degenerate. She is a political machine tool for the Trump regime. She is completely corrupt. And at the whim of the President of the United States, she shows up to CPAC and is playing to the crowd. She's friends now and close confidence of Cash Patel, the director of the FBI, who is also a political tool. The Department justice has been completely weaponized and politicized by Trump. And so yes, there's zero confidence whatsoever that this disgraceful shame of a lawyer who was pushing debunked fake election fraud claims is going to come to Jesus and be honest and truthful about the redactions that she chooses or not or doesn't choose to have with respect to these documents to the extent of their prejudicial to Trump. And just to be clear, I don't know that there's anything in there more damning for Trump, but are we going to believe Pam Bondi when she says it like clears him or when she chooses to do large scale redactions?
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Unknown A
Yeah. So some things to consider as well, because we again, we got a lot to get through is this is an ongoing story. We don't know yet, at least at the time of recording what are in those binders. Laura Loomer, who is a close Trump ally, a close Trump advisor, one of the more un ##hinged and bigoted and conspiracy addled MAGA constituents, MAGA influencers, she doesn't buy this at all. She says, I hate to say this, but the American people can't trust the validity of the Epstein files released today. It was released in an unprofessional manner with paid partisan social media influencers to curate their binders for us. I can't trust anything in the binder. She then goes on to say there are no Epstein files. The binders are props. Every single one of those right wing paid influencers lie to all of you today.
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Unknown A
They engage in deception to run cover for a particularly bad type of person.
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Unknown B
And just think about how remarkable that is. I Laura Loomer is, and rightly is calling out the Department of Justice for work in tandem with DC Drano and Libs of TikTok to essentially have a marketing and sort of a propaganda campaign in conjunction. So the DOJ is being corrupted to work in hawkw with and in tandem with a bunch of completely discredited, discgraceful conservative influencers.
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Unknown A
And I should also say mean again, that it is a staggering admission there when you lose Laura Loomer. Right. You know, it's also that meme of the world's worst person says something you agree with, you know, or makes a valid point. I should also say it's not just lib of TikTok. Excuse me, Laura Loomer. Annapolina Luna, Republican congresswoman from Florida, is furious, publicly furious about how this has been managed by Attorney General Bondi and the Trump administration because she doesn't like the secrecy, the quote unquote phasing the review. She says IY nor the task force were given or review the Epstein documents being released today. A New York Post story just revealed the documents will simply be Epstein's phone book. That's not what we are the American people asked for in a complete disappointment. Excuse me. Get us the information we asked for. So Attorney General Bond and by extension Donald Trump are facing pushback and we'll see how long it lasts from even elected members of Congress who are MAGA Republicans.
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Unknown A
It's also worth noting peaceco that we had ample reason to believe that Donald Trump was never going to enthusiastically release the quote unquote Epstein files in their entirety, I am recalled of an exchange on Fox and Friends weekend with the current defense secretary, Pet Hegseeth, as a matter of fact, here in the yellow tie. But Trump was asked about this during the campaign, about the various files he would release, the 911 files, JFK files and the Epstein files. So I want to play this clip to remind the audience that Trump was always reluctant to publicize what happened with Jeffrey Epstein.
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Unknown B
Would you declassify the 911 files? Yeah. Would you declassify JFK files?
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Unknown A
Yeah, I did.
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Unknown C
I did a lot of it.
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Unknown B
Would you declassify the Epstein files?
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Unknown C
Yeah, yeah, I would. I guess I would. I think that less so because, you know, you don't know, you don't want to affect people's lives if it's phony stuff in there because there's a lot of phony stuff with that whole world.
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Unknown A
So Peisco, he seemed very hesitant to commit to that. And I should point out too, while we're on the topic of clips, Democratic Congressman Jared Moskowitz went viral, I believe it was in 2023. Perhaps he went viral by pointing out the unsavory and well established connections between Musk, excuse me, between Jeffrey Epstein and Donald Trump in this exchange here on the floor of the Senate or the floor of the House, excuse me again.
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Unknown D
Because the gentle lady from, the gentle lady from Georgia, I know it's such an advocate for women's rights, as she mentioned, and it is so concerned about grooming and apparently we don't have any standards here anymore. Again, I just want toind remind my colleagues because, you know, I don't want them to forget about hypocrisy, okay? I don't want them to forget about hypocrisy. But you know, Donald Trump was asked about Jeffrey Epstein and when he was asked, he said, you know, Jeffrey likes him young.
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Unknown B
Well, how did the president know that?
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Unknown D
How did he know that Jeffrey Epstein likes him young? Perhaps some people are saying he was there since you're so concerned.
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Unknown A
Right. But again, I should say that Mokowitz is uniquely good at this with the wit and the dunking. And I will also say that there is a really good Intelligencer article in New York magazine that breaks down. It was published today anticipating the release of the Epstein files, the long relationship between Donald Trump and Jeffrey Epstein. So the last thing I'll say on this piececoate, I'm curious to toss it back to you. Do you think that the connection between Trump and Epstein has been appropriately scrutinized by the public and by the right wing, because my impression is they tend to skip over that shit in the hopes that instead it will implicate Hollywood liberals.
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Unknown B
Yeah, I think that, like a lot of these sort of allegations, there's needs to be. There's no, like, definitive proof that Donald Trump did anything sort of incorrect or illegal with respect to Jeffrey Epstein or what happened. There's no definitive proof of that. But the problem is the double standard, and as you mentioned, the level of scrutiny that we have reports of him saying potentially pretty damning things about Epstein while he was still friends with Epstein and before he was alleged to have banned him from. From his club. So, yeah, I think that there has not been sufficient scrutiny, certainly not from the right. And there's been a double standard. But of course, with Trump, there's always double standards. Even supposedly with, you know, allegations of sex trafficking and sex crimes, where Trump just a few days ago, maybe even just yesterday, is now sort of pressuring Romania and has invited Andrew Tate into the United States along with his brother, who is credibly accused of rape and sex trafficking in Romania.
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Unknown B
And so these people have no standards. They are degenerates. They are trying to destroy this country. And we should not ever be catering to their standards, and we should always, I think, be reminding them of who they are.
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Unknown A
Last question for you, Peisco. When Jeffrey Epstein died in 2019, who ultimately was responsible for his safety? I can't remember. Who was Attorney General and president at.
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Unknown B
The time That I believe would be Bill Barr, and it would be the Department of Corrections under the Justice Department.
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Unknown A
And Donald Trump, ultimately. Right, is the head of the Executive.
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Unknown B
President of the United States.
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Unknown A
Yeah.
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Unknown B
Yeah.
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Unknown A
Okay. So again, just very interesting stuff. Every which way, Peisco. Where can people find you?
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Unknown B
You can find me on Peiscoes Hour on YouTube, Pisco on Twitch and PeaceCo, Lidd on Twitter.
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Unknown A
All right, man. I'm sure that we will be learning more about this situation as it goes on, and we'll probably be talking about it again soon. I appreciate you.
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Unknown B
Thank you, buddy.