Maximillian Alvarez:  After refusing to release the Epstein files and claiming the entire massive scandal was a hoax crafted by Democrats, President Donald Trump has apparently changed course in the face of a full-on revolt from his MAGA base as well as intensifying pressure from Democrats and even members of his own party. 

On Wednesday, Trump signed a bill directing the Justice Department to release more files from the investigation into the infamous sex offender, sex trafficker, and international political power broker Jeffrey Epstein. So, will we finally see the full release of the Epstein files? Will the public get the full transparency that we’ve been promised, or the selective transparency? And what will the political fallout be? 

The Department of Justice has 30 days to release the documents, but it’s frankly unclear what the department will release and how much. “The bill calls for the attorney general to make unclassified Epstein-related documents publicly available ‘in a searchable and downloadable format,’” The Guardian reports, “including all investigations into Epstein, his associate Ghislaine Maxwell, flight logs and travel records, individuals referenced or named in connection with his crimes, entities that were tied to his trafficking or financial networks, immunity deals and other plea agreements, internal communications about charging decisions, documentation of his detention and death, and details about any file deletions.”

But here’s the rub: The bill Trump signed also says that Attorney General Pam Bondi “may withhold or redact any material that would jeopardize an active investigation or national security.”

Alright, so listen, this has been a wild week, and there is so much to unpack here and we know that you have a lot of questions. Fortunately for us, our reporters and inequality watchdogs Taya Graham and Stephen Janis have been on the ground in Washington, DC. They’ve been covering this battle intensely for months, and they are here with me in The Real News studio today to help answer your questions about all of this.

So, Stephen, Taya, thank you both so much for all the important reporting you’ve been doing, and thank you for joining me in the studio to help us unpack this tangled mess.

Stephen Janis:  We are glad to be here.

Taya Graham:  Absolutely.

Stephen Janis:  And it is a mess.

Taya Graham:  It really is.

Maximillian Alvarez:  So it’s a mess, and a whole lot has happened in just the past three days alone. So, I want to break our conversation up into three parts where we take it day by day and walk viewers and listeners through what actually has happened. So, let’s start with Tuesday because you guys were there on the ground in DC.

Taya Graham:  Absolutely.

Maximillian Alvarez:  You were reporting on the Epstein survivors press conference and you were also in the halls of Congress. So, tell us about what you went to DC to cover and what changed over the course of the day. It must’ve been like whiplash covering this.

Stephen Janis:  It was very much like whiplash. Do you want me to start?

Taya Graham:  Go ahead.

Stephen Janis:  Well, the thing is that when we were getting ready to go to DC on Tuesday morning — Very early because the press conference was at 9:00 — We were expecting a battle. The reason the survivors were there was to lobby Congress because there were still questions about whether the measure would pass or how many people would vote for it. There was still Republican resistance, and Speaker Mike Johnson had offered up five amendments that seemed like they wanted to dirty the waters. So there was all this pushback.

And then just before that, Trump announces, go ahead and support the bill. So, what we thought was going to be this epic showdown turns into this scramble because people are really trying to process why did Donald Trump all of a sudden, after months and months of pushing back or trying to make this go away, why did he suddenly change his mind? And I think, Taya, that’s how we were both talking about it.

Taya Graham:  Something was actually kind of funny, that Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene said is that she came to DC today, it was 32 degrees, and she thought hell had finally frozen over. And we were standing out there with a camera and I was like, I might actually have to agree with her on this one. 

And because we were so shocked, it was utterly whiplash that all of a sudden that President Trump, who had been doggedly against this, and even Marjorie Taylor Greene cited that she felt that there had been a target placed on her, that she had been accused of being a traitor. I believe it was Rep. Bobert who was actually brought into the situation room and had pressure directly applied on her to change her vote.

So, when those survivors were standing there, I believe, from what I could tell from what they said and from the emotion that they kept on expressing, was that they were feeling worried again, feeling vulnerable again, and feeling scared again, but not because of Epstein or Maxwell, but because they were once again worried that they were going to have justice denied.

Stephen Janis:  And let’s remember, Speaker Mike Johnson refused to swear in Adelita Grijalva, who had won her election like five weeks ago, simply to stop this moment from happening. He literally did something that was highly unprecedented in terms of swearing in a duly elected member of Congress only to prevent this. And then it seemed like what had been this glacier resistance suddenly melted in a 24-hour period. So, whiplash is a good description, Max.

Maximillian Alvarez:  Well, let’s bring it back to the survivors for a second, because we actually have a clip that y’all filmed from one of the Epstein survivors, Haley Robson. So let’s tee that up, and then we’ll talk about how Marjorie Taylor Greene and the other representatives came into the mix. So Dave, let’s tee up the clip from Haley Robson.

[VIDEO CLIP ENDS]

Haley Robson [recording]:  This is a human issue. This is about children. There is no place in society for exploitation, sexual crimes, or exploitation of women in society. There’s no room for it, guys. We’re not having it.

And to the president of the United States of America, who is not here today, I want to send a clear message to you: While I do understand that your position has changed on the Epstein files and I’m grateful that you have pledged to sign this bill, I can’t help to be skeptical of what the agenda is. 

So, with that being said, I want to relay this message to you: I am traumatized, I am not stupid. I am traumatized, I am not stupid. You have put us through so much stress. The lockdowns, the halt of these procedures that were supposed to have happened 50 days ago, that Adelita Grijalva who waited to get sworn in, and then get upset when your own party goes against you because what is being done is wrong. It’s not right. For your own self-serving purposes. This is America.

[VIDEO CLIP BEGINS]

Stephen Janis:  Well, I think you can see there that she was defiant and she was saying to Trump, don’t mess around with me — Like we said, whiplash — Don’t change your mind. I think there was, as Taya described, apprehension among the victims and among the survivors that Trump’s quick turnabout could change at any moment. 

What did you think?

Taya Graham:  Oh, absolutely. And one of the incredible quotes that came from her was that I’m not stupid, I was just traumatized, and that she was really concerned that there was going to still be a political agenda that was going to prevent them from receiving any sort of justice. And that is for very good reason.

But what was interesting is that Haley Robson said that she would walk Marjorie Taylor Greene onto the House floor, that she would hold her hand, that she would hold her coat while she read the list of names. And she offered to do that because, she said she directly addressed President Trump and said, this is not a Dem hoax. I’m a Republican voter. I voted for you. I voted for you because you originally campaigned on releasing the Epstein files, and I expect you to fulfill this promise.

Maximillian Alvarez:  Well, and the voices of the survivors were really amplified this week, not just at the press conference that y’all were covering, but it seemed like in anticipation of continued resistance from President Trump, continued stalling and delay tactics from the MAGA-led Republicans. Survivors were preparing to take matters into their own hands. I remember watching Monday Night Football, and then I’m seeing this powerful commercial with multiple Epstein survivors, including some that you guys have interviewed on Capitol Hill, speaking out and demanding justice.

And so, that was playing a factor in the beginning of this week. And then you also had, as you guys mentioned, the X factor of dissenting MAGA Republicans, including Marjorie Taylor Greene herself.

Stephen Janis:  I think what you have to realize is that before Adelita Grijalva signed that discharge petition which forced this vote, there were a lot of Republicans who thought they could evade not voting for people who were survivors. I think a lot of them felt like they could, this would never happen and we don’t have to deal with it. But suddenly now everyone was poised or put in a position to have to vote against the women.

And as Taya and I noted when we covered it back in September when they first came to Capitol Hill, the survivors were so powerful. Watching them talk about their experiences, to be brave enough and courageous enough — And I know, Taya, you have a lot to say about this — But I think it was them that created this cascade of events.

Taya Graham:  Oh, absolutely. I was fortunate enough to get to speak with Lisa Phillips, who has a podcast called From Now On, and she had said during the last press conference we attended that she would ask women to come together with her and help gather the names of the predators and the predator protectors. And she said since she announced that, she said she has had women reach out to her with tips, women reach out to her with their stories, and that they are still moving forward to put together that list of names.

And something I wanted to add because just as shocked as we were that these women were actually going to have a chance at justice, they were still, I think, kind of reluctant to believe it. 

And if I can, I would just like to quote something that the Epstein survivor Annie Farmer said. She said, “Around the time I was 16 and my sister Maria Farmer was 25, that’s how old we were when we were abused by Epstein and Maxwell.” She said in 1996 her sister came forward and blew the whistle on this group and called the FBI. They hung the phone up on her. She said Bill Clinton was president then. 

“In 2006, the FBI finally came to us, interviewed us, and asked us both to be witnesses, but we didn’t hear back from them because of the sweetheart deal he received in Florida. Actually, that was when George W. Bush was president.” She goes through and talks about in 2015 when the DOJ sent a FOIA request for Maria’s FBI files, they were denied. Obama was president. In 2019 when Epstein died in prison — And she said either due to negligence or foul play — Trump was president. 

So, she just kept on listing all the presidential administrations they had gone through, all the times they tried to receive justice, and all the times they were denied. So, it’s understandable that these women were reluctant to believe that there was going to be any great change [crosstalk].

Stephen Janis:  Yeah, I think there was a lot of apprehension.

Taya Graham: — But they were going to continue to fight.

Maximillian Alvarez:  Like we said in the beginning, whiplash seems to be the ideal term here because I think all of our heads are spinning after years of expecting that nothing would actually change on this front, and now it feels like it’s changing so quickly. That was embodied in the figure, the very polarizing figure of Marjorie Taylor Greene, a very, up until recently, staunch advocate for President Trump in his first and second administration.

So, I know that you guys got a clip of Marjorie Taylor Greene speaking at this conference that we’re going to tee up in a second, but I was hoping that you could set that scene for folks watching and listening. Talk a bit about Marjorie Taylor Greene’s entrance into this growing coalition of people demanding the release of the Epstein files.

Stephen Janis:  It’s important to remember that in the initial press conference in September when Marjorie Taylor Greene showed up, she was not on the list of people that were supposed to speak, and she surprised everybody with her support, everyone. And it definitely set the table for some more surprises to come later.

When she showed up on Tuesday morning, she immediately started talking about Trump’s labeling her a traitor. She didn’t even wait five seconds to say anything more but “I have been called a traitor.” She basically threw down the gauntlet and was confronting Trump right there. It was seismic to me, and something that I think none of us anticipated. I mean, we knew that she had supported it and Trump had pushed back, but the way she came out swinging Tuesday morning was shocking to me.

Taya Graham:  One of the things that was interesting, she did not hem and haw, she did not beat around the bush. She directly said a patriot is someone who does not allow foreign policy to influence internal American decisions. I mean [crosstalk] she took the gloves off, completely.

Stephen Janis:  Let’s watch the clip, because she goes further, and we can talk about that when we get back.

Maximillian Alvarez:  So Dave, let’s tee up that clip of Marjorie Taylor Greene at the press conference on Tuesday.

[VIDEO CLIP BEGINS]

Marjorie Taylor Greene [recording]:  I’ll tell you because I wasn’t a Johnny-come-lately to the MAGA train. I was day one 2015. And there’s a big difference in those Americans and those that decided to support President Trump later on. 

And I’ll tell you right now, this has been one of the most destructive things to MAGA, is watching the man that we supported early on, three elections, for people that stood hours, slept in their cars to go to rallies, have fought for truth and transparency, and to hold what we consider a corrupt government accountable, watching this actually turn into a fight has ripped MAGA apart. And the only thing that will speak to the powerful, courageous women behind me is when action is actually taken to release these files. And the American people won’t tolerate any other bullshit.

[VIDEO CLIP ENDS]

Taya Graham:  Well, I think it’s clear that Marjorie Taylor Greene wanted to defend her bonafides as a conservative and as a MAGA person, a Make America Great Again person. And there was a question that we had in the back of our minds, which is initially it was just Massie and the three women: Mace, Bobert and Greene. And they were all under incredible pressure — And as a matter of fact, Rep. Ro Khanna and Thomas Massie as well as some of the survivors went out of their way to publicly thank Marjorie Taylor Greene for standing by them and not giving up.

And so to see her willing to, in a sense, nuke her political career — Because there are a lot of people who, once they have been targeted by President Trump within their party, he lets ’em know you’re going to get primaried, you’re never going to be elected again. Essentially, you’re never going to work in this town again — And she still came forward, which makes me wonder whether or not some of these folks are thinking about their political futures, not just the political now.

Stephen Janis:  I think once they saw Trump cave, I think they, like any person who is a politician measuring who’s got the real power dynamics there, I think they said, oh, he actually caved on this one, we have an opening here. And it was interesting because she also, though, remember, said that this is tearing MAGA apart, which was interesting to me because of all the things that had happened under the Trump presidency, this particular scandal was the one that tore them apart.

And I think part of that is something that we’ve reported on, which is, in many ways, Epstein is representative of the underlying economic inequality that fuels our unequal justice system. And I think it’s very important to recognize that. And I think it’s interesting that this is where MAGA has reached a crisis point.

Taya Graham:  Absolutely. Let me just add, if any other president during a period of time where federal workers are being fired and furloughed, where SNAP benefits are about to disappear, if they were working on building a golden ballroom and having a Great Gatsby party — Which, by the way, the point of the book was that being rich causes you to lose your morals, and the narrator at the center goes back home to the Midwest after seeing the rich on the East Coast behave badly. That’s actually what the book’s about — But anyway, any other president would’ve been sunk by doing that, by doing something so tone deaf while so many people are struggling just to buy groceries. But this seems to be the line: Epstein.

And Thomas Massie said something that’s been ringing through my ears, which is [that] the Epstein class keeps being protected. And what was really interesting — And I think you can confirm this, you’ve been covering government for longer than I have, but I’ve been doing it for over a decade — And there’s a certain level of wealth that you get to where it’s not about Republican or Democrat; you donate to whoever is in power because you’re just trying to buy power and influence. It is way beyond political party. It is just about money and how much power and favor that money can buy you.

Maximillian Alvarez:  Absolutely. And let’s not forget that the bar has been set really low here when it comes to MAGA and the Trump takeover of the Republican Party. The public has become so conditioned to expect that Republicans will fall lockstep in with Trump because that’s what we’ve seen over the course of the past eight years to the point that it’s just become a gross sycophantic, mewling circus of Republicans falling over themselves to fawn at Trump’s feet and do whatever the hell he says. And so when you have Republicans like Massie and Marjorie Taylor Greene actually breaking ranks and speaking quite forcefully against the president’s wishes, that is significant.

And I do want to talk about, at the end of this conversation, I want to bring it back to that point that you were making about the Epstein class and the role that extreme wealth and inequality and immunity from public accountability, how that’s all wrapped up in this mess.

But before we get there, we’re still only on Tuesday of this week [Graham laughs].

Stephen Janis:  Well, to your point, Max, when we were writing our script for the short at about 12:00, I put in there, “But its fate remains unclear in the Senate.” And then by the time we got back to our room to start producing, they’re like, the Senate is going to approve it with unanimous consent.

Taya Graham:  OK, scrap that script.

Stephen Janis:  And Max, all of Mike Johnson’s amendments that he had requested to be in the bill that would, I think, have waylaid it, Rep. Thune was like, no, thank you. Unanimous consent. That never happens. It just never happens.

And so I’m like, what are we going to do with this? We were kind of just, I couldn’t believe how quickly… It almost makes it feel like there was this tension boiling within MAGA, which I think was the inequality aspect of it. And finally, just when one thing dropped, everything [crosstalk] —

Taya Graham:  All the dominos fell.

Stephen Janis:  …An avalanche poured in behind it. Because it was shocking. I was expecting a couple weeks’ wait in the Senate.

Maximillian Alvarez:  And you have this sort of emerging division which is being named as a division between MAGA, which is very much identified with Trump and America first, which is now emerging as people who believed in that message but have now moved away from Trump but still believe in the policies that he supposedly embodied. I guess that will happen when a candidate like Trump makes a lot of promises on the campaign trail then gets an office and breaks all those promises and serves himself and his donor class. But that’s a topic for another conversation.

But let’s keep that ball rolling into Wednesday. So, you guys finished recording, reporting on the ground on Tuesday, the House bill passed, and then within 12 hours we’ve got Trump flip-flopping, we’ve got this Senate bill passing. So, tug on that thread a little more, lay that out for folks watching. What exactly changed in that time, and what happened on Wednesday?

Stephen Janis:  Well, I think for reporters you ask a great question because really the only question that was coursing through us at that point was why. Why did this happen? Why did something that we thought was going to be this huge battle suddenly… And then even Trump said he would sign it, so we didn’t know when he was going to sign it. But all these things went down like dominos.

And we were thinking about it. And like I said, I think the tension within MAGA is the unresolvable tension, which is Trump based a lot of his politics on the resentments that boiled over from horrible inequality, the stuff you’ve reported on, horrible treatment of unions, all these things Trump was able to harness — Ironically because he was part of that — But he harnessed it and he directed it for his own political advantage. And Epstein just blew that all up because Epstein was an exemplar of how inequality works.

The greatest privilege you can have in America is to be exempt from the legal system, which we all know how destructive it is, and we all know how racist and other things it is. And so I think those tensions just once, like I said, one shoe dropped, everything fell apart because Trump’s ability to harness those resentments were actually embodied in Epstein and came back on all of them. And I think also the people who had been around him, it was like a bomb, and they’re like, we got to get out of the blast radius. I have never seen anything like it on Capitol Hill, something switching so quickly.

And the Senate’s unanimous consent. The Senate is a bog, it’s a swamp, and nothing ever gets through it. And suddenly Taya and I are looking at each other. I’m like, they just said the Senate’s going to pass unanimous consent. We’re just like, what? Because you go in with this idea as a reporter, OK, this conflict, we’re going to cover these massive titans fighting each other, and then all of a sudden it was like, nope, we’re done. 

And I think it’s because those tensions boiled over of how inequality drove Trump, ironically, and then he couldn’t contain them with Epstein because it was just too much of an example of how the rich get a pass. And there were victims, there were people that were speaking, flesh and blood, not just like, OK, $73 trillion of wealth has been stolen. That’s a big number, but you could see the victims directly of inequality, and I think that’s what did it.

Taya Graham:  Absolutely. I know this may sound like a funny way to put it, but getting transparency for these Epstein files was like a stress test for our democracy. Because if these representatives would not listen to their constituents who by and by they all wanted the Epstein files released — This had been something that people campaigned on, and so there were a lot of people, a lot of other constituents that really want these files released, that are really worried about predators and human trafficking and young girls being abused, and to see that these folks in the Republican Party, in the House, who would not go on the record to say, yes, I’m going to sign that discharge petition, they had to wait from the signal from the big guy — And I mean Trump, not God — They had to wait for the signal to say, OK, I’m actually going to stand by what my constituents want. I’m going to actually stand my own personal morals, and I’m going to do the right thing.

And so when that idea of protecting this wealthy donor class, all these folks who are basically in the background manipulating our government, this is a real test right now. Because if we as a country can’t get on board with protecting children from adult predators, we’re never going to be able to agree on anything.

Stephen Janis:  But Max didn’t — Oh, I’m sorry, go ahead.

Taya Graham:  It’s just the only problem is that this still was the decision of one man. I truly believe if President Trump had not changed his tune and said, go ahead and vote for this, this would still be stuck in the House of Representatives —

Stephen Janis:  That would have been really interesting, because I think some people, I think —

Taya Graham:  There might’ve been some defections, but I don’t think it would’ve been enough to get it out of the House.

Stephen Janis:  There were people before Trump capitulated — And I’m going to call it capitulation, because that’s what it was.

Taya Graham:  Fair enough.

Stephen Janis:  There were a lot of rumors going around Capitol Hill that dozens if not a hundred or so Republicans were going to vote anyway, no matter what Trump said.

Taya Graham:  Yeah, but only four were willing to actually go public.

Stephen Janis:  No, I know that. But now that the vote was inevitable, I don’t think Trump said, OK, do it. I think Trump capitulated because he knew he was on the wrong side of this, and that’s a big difference.

Maximillian Alvarez:  Well, and we may never know the full story —

Stephen Janis:  No, we won’t.

Taya Graham:  True.

Maximillian Alvarez:  — But I think from that moment where Trump flip-flops and changes his tune and then the dam breaks, and as we’re saying, the bill swiftly made it through the Senate and then onto Trump’s desk, then that started to prompt a bunch of other questions in people’s heads, which is like, well, this seems shady now. If you’re resisting it for this long and now you’re OK with it, I think any logical person would be like, well, does this mean that we’re going to get selective releases that are implicating Trump’s political enemies and redacting the stuff that may implicate Trump? I think that was the natural question that came up in people’s minds.

But we shouldn’t lose sight of the fact that, like you’re saying, Taya, this should be an issue upon which any sane person can agree. And the fact that from the documents that have been made public already what we can see is that this implicates people across the political spectrum. That should be a wake up call for the American public to stop putting these gross injustices in solely bipartisan terms and to start looking at it more in the vein of decent people who reject villainy and injustice regardless of which party is implicated in it. That seems to be the crossroads that America’s at right now.

But right now, a lot of questions linger about whether or not we’re actually going to get the full transparency to make that case. And you guys even brought a question of this nature up to Adelita Grijalva herself who was, as you mentioned, the last signatory on the discharge petition. 

So, set this clip up really quick because it brings us nicely into the discussion about how much transparency should we reasonably expect here.

Taya Graham:  Well, I basically asked Rep. Grijalva in a quite straightforward way, was she concerned about Speaker Johnson interfering and did she think that these files were actually going to be as transparent as they needed to be for these women to receive justice? And I think she was quite frank about her answer.

Maximillian Alvarez:  Alright Dave, let’s tee up that clip from Adelita Grijalva.

[VIDEO CLIP BEGINS]

Taya Graham [recording]:  Sure. I have this. So first let me ask you, Speaker Johnson has essentially been disparaging this bill for months now. Do you have any concern about his pushback?

Adelita Grijalva [recording]:  Well, we just heard that there is a request to add five additional amendments, if you will, to the current Transparency Act. And so, I do believe that he’s taking his direction from the White House, who literally have done everything they can to prevent this information from coming out. So, I am concerned, obviously.

Taya Graham [recording]:  So, you essentially see this as a delay tactic?

Adelita Grijalva [recording]:  Oh, everything that the White House is doing right now I see as a delay tactic. Even encouraging people to vote for it, it sounds like, oh, isn’t that great? He had a change of heart — But in the same breath is targeting Democrats — Just Democrats — For an investigation which could then hold up all of the information from coming out, because once there’s an active investigation, you have to hold onto information.

Taya Graham [recording]:  I was wondering if you’ve seen anything behind the scenes. President Trump has been very public about calling Marjorie Taylor Greene a traitor. He’s also been quite forceful against Rep. Thomas Massie. What do you think is going to happen to these Republicans who were brave enough to come out in support of the release of the Epstein Files?

Adelita Grijalva [recording]:  Well, my hope is that the communities that elected them to be here are supportive of their positions, that they’re continuing to communicate with the people who elected them to be here. And Trump is doing everything he can to try to have people pledge allegiance to him and not to our Constitution or this nation.

Taya Graham [recording]:  Thank you so much for your time.

[VIDEO CLIP ENDS]

Maximillian Alvarez:  OK. So again, just to reframe this for people watching and listening, Trump signed the bill on Wednesday, but that bill, as we mentioned in the introduction, has exceptions baked into it. There are exceptions including redactions of identifying information about Epstein victims or any depictions of child sexual abuse, but there are also exceptions like that the attorney general can withhold information that may jeopardize active investigations or prosecutions or things that may compromise national security.

So, already that feels like a poison pill, which, again, it feels that way because this administration has so blatantly demonstrated how willing it is to weaponize information, whether that’s telling outright lies or selectively releasing information that damages their political enemies and makes Trump look great, yada, yada, yada.

So, people have a lot of reason to be suspicious. But right now, as all of this is happening this week, I think people are also cautiously hopeful that they may finally get the transparency that they’ve been promised. But it seems like Rep. Grijalva is also very concerned about that as well.

Taya Graham:  And she’s quite right to be that skeptical. Originally, AG Pam Bondi said that there was nothing more to investigate. Then FBI director Kash Patel comes out and he actually says on the record — And I actually asked Rep. Ro Khanna directly about this — Patel says on the record that although there are thousands of victims listed in these documents, there is no credible information that Jeffrey Epstein trafficked these women and girls to anyone but himself. There’s nearly a thousand victims named, but he only trafficked them to himself, which is just an insane thing. And now AG Pam Bondi has gone ahead and launched some investigations for some Democrats who were found to be exposed in those emails.

Stephen Janis:  And that was at Trump’s behest —

Taya Graham:  Exactly.

Stephen Janis:  Which is very suspicious. That happened a week or two before this happened. And as reporters, one of the worst things is when something is under investigation, because it gives the agency almost unfettered ability to say, well, we can’t release this document, and there’s no real way to check them.

This is what I think is going to be one of the hardest things to answer if these documents are released, is how to know how they made a decision about, well, we can’t release this and this. And as Taya points out, they launched this very broad, very undefined investigation into a couple very famous Democrats like Bill Clinton, which will give them this incredible amount of latitude.

And I think that’s why people like Adelita Grijalva and others expressed concern, and the victims too, that this could just all be whitewashed behind closed doors. And there’s no process for anyone in the public to go — I mean, you can sue, but that takes a long time, and that could be tied up forever. And we know the Supreme Court is pretty much Donald Trump’s backstop at this point on anything he wants to do.

So, I think those concerns are very credible, and I’m concerned because I just don’t know… I mean, they have no credibility, and now they’re going to be behind closed doors saying, yeah, this document we can release, this one we can’t. They have this huge ability, carte blanche to basically block everything.

Taya Graham:  Absolutely. Rep. Grijalva has every reason to be skeptical. Absolutely. And there’s a question I’ve seen pop up, which is, well, why didn’t Biden release the Epstein files? Well, during Biden’s presidency, Ghislaine Maxwell was still on trial, being convicted, having the appeals process.

Stephen Janis:  That’s true.

Taya Graham:  And just like when there’s an open investigation, when there’s a trial going on, and even in some cases when there’s appeal processes still going on, you can’t release the documents. It’s something I’ve dealt with here in Baltimore City trying to get documents on police officers who are on trial for police misconduct. I say, I want his body cam. They’re like, hm, still an open investigation. I’m like, he’s been convicted. Oh, he still might have an appeal so we can’t give you the body cam yet. And I have fought tooth and nail for that. So, if a little city government can do that to me, imagine what the federal can do when it comes to that.

Maximillian Alvarez:  Well, that brings us up to where we are right now on Thursday. There are still a lot more questions than there are answers, but I wanted to ask you guys, because we got to start wrapping this conversation up and we can’t cover everything in one conversation, but where does that all leave us now? What could come next?

Stephen Janis:  So, the Justice Department has 30 days to release the documents, so there is that date [for] certain when I think we will see the survivors back on Capitol Hill. And I think that will be highly anticipated. That will be a date.

But I also noticed during some of the press conferences and some of the subsequent discussions that there’s going to be some interest in Epstein’s financial transactions, where his money was going. What was the congressman from the oversight committee?

Taya Graham:  Oh, Robert Garcia.

Stephen Janis:  Robert Garcia, who was saying there is a lot going on here in Epstein’s accounts. And we know that JP Morgan did not file suspicious activity reports on much of Epstein’s financial dealings. And what I’m hoping will happen [is] it will expand the range of the information. Because we don’t know what’s in those files. There’s been a lot of talk about names. But I’m more fascinated [by] how a man who’d never had a job ended up with $560 million. And I think tracing that money will bring us to a lot of maybe answering questions that haven’t even been asked.

Taya Graham:  Yeah, absolutely. I know for me, just thinking about everything that these victims have gone through, all the years that they had justice denied, I think it was Epstein survivor Liz Stein saying that justice delayed is justice denied.

And one thing I have to emphasize, when people — I hope a lot of people got to see that video of them showing the pictures of how young they were, how innocent they were when Epstein preyed upon them. Once again, a lot of these girls had been in foster homes or they had parents with some issues. He purposefully targeted young girls without a strong support system who maybe had a dream of a better life, and he purposefully targeted those girls. And somehow that made him into a multi-millionaire who somehow only trafficked these thousands of victims to himself. Which, I’m sorry, I just can’t believe the FBI director would have the audacity to say something like that in public and on the record.

But one good thing — let me just add one thing.

Stephen Janis:  Yeah, sure.

Taya Graham:  The fact that Rep. Massie and Ro Khanna ran this through both Houses, the House and the Senate, that means that if people inside the DOJ don’t actually do what they’re supposed to, if they get caught fiddling with it —

Stephen Janis:  That’s a good point. That’s a really good point.

Taya Graham:  — If they get caught not being transparent, there’s criminal consequences for that. The only thing is we need a whistleblower to let us know who’s interfering with the transparency.

Stephen Janis:  I think there will be.

Maximillian Alvarez:  Well, and again, right now with the public push to release the full Epstein files, we’re inherently focusing on the stuff that we don’t know, the stuff that hasn’t been publicly released yet. And of course, the biggest question on everyone’s minds is, is the current sitting president directly implicated in these horrific crimes that Epstein facilitated on an international scale for the world’s most rich and powerful people?

So, that remains the biggest question on people’s minds, but I don’t want to lose sight of the fact that there is a lot that we do know now. Democrats and Republicans have released tranches of emails that people have been going through for weeks that implicate tons of people, and in embarrassing ways that should be exposed. But this is nuts. Because we live in wild times we can lose the forest [for] the trees, but we’re sitting here talking about the fact that for what was long considered a bonkers conspiracy has been proven true. And the conspiracy of, like I said, a cabal of rich, powerful people operating completely outside the law on an international scale involving the richest people, political leaders, governments —

Taya Graham:  Celebrities.

Stephen Janis:  Monarchs.

Maximillian Alvarez:  — There’s so much here that it almost makes your head spin.

Stephen Janis:  The emails were very revealing about how intertwined Epstein was in many powerful people’s lives. Like Lawrence Summers, former treasury secretary, who now has said he’s stepping back after asking Epstein dating advice.

Taya Graham:  How to date a mentee.

Stephen Janis:  Mentee, a younger woman. The stuff is just amazing because he knew at that point that Epstein had pled guilty to sex crimes, and many of these people didn’t seem to care. Prince Andrew, all these people, there are dozens, their emails between very, very powerful people.

And I think, again, what it shows is that there are two systems of justice in this country: one for the privileged and the wealthy, and the one for the rest of us that is quite harsh.

So, I think that’s why this story keeps having legs besides not just the victims, who are extremely compelling and powerful, but the fact that it demonstrates what you’re talking about, Max: We know inherently this system is rotten, and here’s one way to really tell it in a very simple way. And I think that’s why what you said was so interesting about that.

Taya Graham:  I was just thinking, I was so glad that you mentioned Larry Summers and, of course, Prince Andrew Mountbatten — Former prince —

Maximillian Alvarez:  Andrew, formerly known as Prince [laughs].

Taya Graham:  — Mountbatten-Windsor. And by the way, those British reporters were at that DC press conference and they were on it. It was really impressive, they were quite dogged. One of the things they actually mentioned was that, are you going to subpoena Prince Andrew? That’s what they want to know: Is he going to be dragged in kicking and screaming? And they said, you know what? We hope that he will come in and volunteer his information. So they weren’t ready to commit to international extradition of people yet.

Stephen Janis:  That would be kind of tricky.

Taya Graham:  We’ll see.

Maximillian Alvarez:  It’s funny, I just have to say, coming from a government that, again, under Republican and Democratic administrations, was throwing all of its resources to dragging journalists like Julian Assange to the United States kicking and screaming for the crime of journalism. But now we’re just like, oh, yeah, but if Prince Andrew wants to come of his own accord, sure, we’ll welcome him. We’ll have Earl Gray tea ready for him.

Taya Graham:  That’s a good point.

Stephen Janis:  Yeah, no, that’s a great point. That’s a great point.

Maximillian Alvarez:  Well, again, my head’s spinning. There’s so many unanswered questions, so many storylines that need further investigation. And I wanted to bring us around the final turn to focus on that point and ask you guys, coming out of this wild week, what are the key storylines that you’re going to be focusing on or you think that folks watching should really have their attention on right now?

Stephen Janis:  Well, I think the MAGA break is a big one, and the fact that Trump was not able to make this go away is a bigger one. And the question is, as Taya brought up, is Trump now a lame duck, basically? Or is MAGA going to continue to unravel because he has had the horrible election losses in New Jersey and Virginia? He has had the inability to really address costs and people’s sense that things are too expensive, and now he’s taken this hit. And the question is, is this something that’s going to gather momentum or is he going to be able to bounce back from it as he always does?

Taya Graham:  Well, one thing — And I’m hoping you’re going to help me with this investigation — I would definitely like to follow the money with Epstein to know exactly how JP Morgan was involved. There are other banks and other… It seems like, to some extent, that he was a funnel for money, and I’d like to try to —

Stephen Janis:  Maybe money laundering or something.

Taya Graham:  Yeah. So, there may be some other issues there that — Bear Stearns. I would really like to take an in-depth look at the financials. But another thing I want to take a look at is his connections to Israel.

And now, just as an example, now, this was after 2008, after he was arrested and charged with solicitation of prostitution from a minor — And by the way, just as a note, you cannot solicit prostitution from a minor. If you put your hands on a minor, they cannot consent. That is rape, that is not solicitation of prostitution — However, that’s what he was convicted for when he went to his sweetheart deal in that state prison instead of being federally charged, which was the initial investigation.

But anyhow, former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak, he went and visited Epstein up to 36 times from, I think it was like 2013 to 2017. So, for the former Israeli prime minister to spend that much time with Jeffrey Epstein, it begs the question whether or not he was some form of asset for Israeli intelligence. And it was also known that he helped broker a deal for Israeli intelligence to receive a certain type of surveillance system.

Now, technically there are not any documents that have been declassified either by the US or by Israel that specifically say that yes, he was an asset or that he was a member of the intelligence or that he was Mossad. There is not a declassified document that does that. However, I don’t know. I’ve never been on a private plane 36 times with the prime minister. It would suggest that we had some kind of relationship, and it’s one that I would like to investigate a bit more.

Maximillian Alvarez:  These are really important storylines, and I know you guys are going to be pounding the pavement as always and covering it with the same rigor that you cover everything. And for folks watching and listening, Stephen and Taya are posting those updates on their Instagrams, on TikTok, on our YouTube channels, so follow them everywhere if you want to be getting these regular updates, and we’ll do our best to provide more extended updates like this one more regularly for you. But send us in your questions, please. We’ll do our best to answer them.

And before we close, I wanted to just pose one question that’s really been on my mind, especially after talking to you both here, because again, I’ve said that there’s a lot we don’t know, and our focus is naturally on the unknown, but we shouldn’t lose sight of what we do know, and we shouldn’t lose sight of the horrors that have already been exposed. 

I would be remiss if we didn’t end this segment by bringing it back to the victims. There are reportedly over a thousand named in these investigatory documents. So, when you spoke to these victims, did they say what real justice for them would look like after they faced so much injustice for so long?

Taya Graham:  Yes, actually, I spoke with Danielle Bensky about that very specifically. And I asked her directly — And by the way, she was the Epstein victim that had been sexually assaulted by him when she was 17 years old. She was a dancer. At the time, her mother was sick with brain cancer, and Jeffrey Epstein promised her to help her get the best specialist to help treat her mother — A promise that he did not fulfill, by the way. And that is one of the ways he manipulated her.

She didn’t try to stop the abuse because she kept on hanging on hoping that she could get help for her mother until he said, I want you to bring me another girl. Bring one of your young friends around. I’d like to meet them. And that’s when she said she was finally able to break free from him.

When I asked her what justice looked like, she said there was a person who let me into the house. There was a butler who escorted me to the room. There were all these people who opened doors for me, who took me places to meet him. All these people knew what was going on. And she says, I want them exposed. I want the predators, the people who facilitated the predation and the other predators to be exposed. She said that’s what justice looks like to her, and I have to agree.