America's Talking - Congress passes bill to release Epstein files

Starting point is 00:00:00 Welcome to America's Talking, powered by the Center Square. I'm Dan McCaleb, executive editor of the Center Square Newswire Service. In a matter of hours this week, the Jeffrey Epstein saga took a major turn when the U House voted nearly unanimously to require the U.S. Attorney General to release most files related to the late convicted sexual child trafficker. That was followed shortly after by a unanimous vote in the Senate. The next day, President Donald Trump signed it into law. The Justice Department now has less than 30 days to release the files with some redactions. Joining me to discuss this is the Center Square reporter Andrew Rice. Andrew, you covered Tuesday's days-long developments. How did it come about?

Starting point is 00:00:43 Right. Well, the vote and eventual signing of the bill to release the Epstein files came after months of political infighting and fighting between parties. The intense fighting really began once Congress came back from its August. recess, Representative Thomas Massey, a Republican from Kentucky, and Representative Roe-Connor, a Democrat from California, introduced a discharge petition to force the Epstein Files Transparency Act out of committee and onto the House floor. Discharge positions require 218 signatures from members of Congress, and they can force their vote out of working out in committee and make it

Starting point is 00:01:25 so that it's required to be voted on the House floor. It was unclear at first how much support this would get, but once represent Republicans, Nancy Mace, the Republican from South Carolina, Marjorie Taylor Green from Georgia, and Lauren Bobert from Colorado began to join the petition, it brought a great deal of pressure to House Republicans on the issue, and many Democrats were joining in that as well.

Starting point is 00:01:48 One big holdout in this whole thing, because Kana and Massey had one vote that they were missing, toward the end of September, they were hoping to bring on Democrat rep-elect Adelito Grijalva, a representative from Arizona, to be that final 218th signature. However, due to the government shutdown, House Speaker Mike Johnson decided not to swear Rihalva in while the shutdown was going on. So while Rihalva was elected back in September, she wasn't sworn in until November. However, once she was sworn in, she quickly joined her. her name to this discharge petition, and the House moved forward with a vote 427 to 1 on releasing the Epstein files.

Starting point is 00:02:35 And there was, in the House, there was one representative holdout who did not vote to release the files, Republican Representative Clay Higgins of Louisiana. What was his reasoning for holding out? Right. Higgins was the one vote, like you said, was the one vote against this in the House. he cited a reason that a lot of House Republicans, including Speaker of the House Mike Johnson, have cited for being against this bill. Hegan said that the act did not provide enough privacy protections for victims of the crimes against Jeffrey Epstein. He said that a lot of victims that have yet to come out and publicly support the release of this bill due to fear of retribution would have their identities compromised because of the release of these documents.

Starting point is 00:03:31 He also said that some innocent bystanders that might be mentioned in some of these documents could be included and faced some sort of guilt by association due to their inclusion in and their names being included in these documents related to Jeffrey Epstein. Now, the measure does allow for some redactions. right and exactly what what can be redacted from these documents yes so the attorney general has the ability to redact several things in the documents including evidence in the documents of child sexual abuse material or child pornography the attorney general is able to redact that additionally the attorney general has somewhat of a sway a pan bondi has somewhat of a sway in redacting things

Starting point is 00:04:22 related to current investigations, current and ongoing investigations that the Justice Department is conducting, as well as documents related to identifiable material associated with victims that also have yet to come out, have yet to come forward or be released, or even victims that have come forward. So the bill's expectation for active investigations, the exceptions for those Act of Investigations could include investigations that Trump has ordered the Department of Justice to conduct. Just recently, he ordered Pam Bondi to conduct an investigation into top Democrats, including Bill Clinton. So some of the redactions that the Attorney General could make related to these documents could include some of those investigations. So it's unclear, but it will be

Starting point is 00:05:13 really interesting to see as the documents get released, what will be redacted and what will continue to be included in these documents. The names of potential associates of Epstein or those who traveled to his island, they are not supposed to be redacted. But is there speculation that some of those names might be protected? Yes, there's certainly some speculation that those names might be protected. And that has been a big topic of conversation about this with, with some of these things going on.

Starting point is 00:05:50 Like I mentioned, with active investigations, those could redact a serious amount of names and identifiable information, but also a lot of representatives, including Higgins, who voted against this, a lot of House Republicans, were concerned about people who were innocent. Some people that might have just been average service members

Starting point is 00:06:13 or people that were hospitality and service members that might be mentioned. in some of these documents who had no idea of the crimes that were going on, that they might be mentioned and brought into this and, again, included in that guilt by association. So it's unclear exactly, but there is some speculation that those people might be protected from having their identities released through the redactions that the Attorney General is able to include in the release of these documents. You mentioned Bill Clinton and his association with Jeffrey. Epstein. There's plenty of speculation on it, what other names might be in there. Of course,

Starting point is 00:06:53 there's already been, and President Trump has talked about it, that, you know, he, he was, he was at one time close to Jeffrey Epstein, denies any wrongdoing. Are there other names being floated out there? I don't want to necessarily throw anybody under the bus, because we just, we don't know. But is there a potential for some bar, it's like some barmer names to be, to be released when these documents are? There's certainly a potential for that. Again, it's unclear with these redactions, but there is certainly a potential. Like I said, President Trump has asked for an investigation into some top Democrats, including Bill Clinton, and also Larry Summers, who is the former president of Harvard and former Transportation Secretary. He has publicly stated that he is embarrassed because of some. documents that have shown his ties to Jeffrey Epstein. So there's potential for many more barn burners names to be released in moving forward with the release of these documents. But it

Starting point is 00:08:04 really is yet to see. We're looking at right now a December 19th release date for these documents given that 30-day timeline. And so we really are, we'll be counting down the days until until that date to hear more about the important revelations that these documents might bring. Andrew, thank you for joining us today. Listeners can keep up with this story and more at thecentersquare.com.

America's Talking - Congress passes bill to release Epstein files

There aren't comments yet for this episode. Click on any sentence in the transcript to leave a comment.