Bulwark Takes - Oversight DELIVERS! Trump’s Lies EXPOSED! (w/ Rep. Robert Garcia, Cam Kasky, Jack Cocchiarella)

Episode Date: September 19, 2025

Trump swore he’d release the Epstein files—now he’s covering them up. Congressman Robert Garcia joins Cam Kasky and Jack Cocchiarella to explain why GOP leaders are hiding the truth, and why aggressive congressional oversight matters more than ever.

Hey, everybody, Tim Mell from the Bullwark here. We've got a very great, important interview here from the FYPod team. By the way, if you haven't checked out the FYPod spin-off page, my co-host, Cam, is just doing the Lord's Work over there. We're doing our best create another page that, you know, is more aimed at issues that Gen Z cares about. But people of any age, people who are young at heart are welcome to go subscribe to that page as well. So our weekly show is over there on that page on Saturday. So for nothing else, you want to subscribe to it to make sure to get the full Kim and Tim show. But he's doing some other interviews over there and other hot takes and a bunch of cool stuff.

And I was supposed to join for this one with Robert Garcia, who has just a new congressman, relatively new. He's a new chair of the House Oversight Committee. And he's just doing a remarkable job over there. You can already see the impact of what he's been doing at the House Oversight Committee in this Epstein case being brought. back to the fore and some of the leaked information that we've seen. Not saying that he leaked it, but just the work, the oversight work from the committee and the gathering of documents, I think was essentially the impetus for why we actually get to see Trump's creepy letter to Epstein, creepy birthday letter, actually see what it looked

like. That led to today. Actually, let's play this clip. That led to today, this clip from Joe Rogan. There must be more to life than having everything. Donald, yes, there is. So he wrote this? supposedly the voice it says voice over like he's like a movie star like he's in a script

donald yes there is but i won't tell you what it is geoffrey nor rely since i also know what it is who fucking talks like this donald we have certain things in common geoffrey geoffrey yes we do come to think of it donald enigma's never age have you noticed that geoffrey as a matter of fact it's clear to me the last time i saw you oh yeah a pal is a wonderful thing Happy Birthday, May Every Day Be another wonderful secret. Ooh. And then I like how he's got the

signature right where the bush is. Yeah. Okay, that's a dude with womanly hips. Yeah. Look at the boobs. They're weird. It could be a back. Yeah, it could be anything. It could be a snail smile.

I don't get why he's writing a script. Yeah, it's very odd stuff. It's quite strange. But it's also like the way like enigmas never age. Have you noticed that? And Jeffrey, as a matter of fact, it was clear to me the last time I saw you.

Like, if one of my friends sent me that, I'd be like, I'm getting a new number. Yeah, yeah, you need a number. Why didn't you say happy birthday? Yeah, what the fuck is wrong with you, Enigma? Happy birthday, Jeff. That's all I want. Happy birthday, Jeff. May we hang out soon.

So there you go. This is why oversight matters. This is why Democrats on the Hill actually doing politics, playing hardball, being online, being aggressive. This is how it can pay dividends in ways you don't even. expect like they're just going for documents next thing you know joe rogan's making fun of trump's creepy enigma letter to geoffrey upstein who knows who that could impact but um it's kind of stuff democrats haven't been doing and i'm so pumped robert grisies out there doing it um i'm

staying in touch with him uh but i'm happy to pass the baton to cam on this one uh since he was there in person in dc no reason to have me zooming in so stick around uh cam caskey uh little mini me uh look at him look he's so cute dressed up in his suit with Congressman Robert Garcia. Enjoy. Hey, everybody. It's Cam from Bullwark. I'm joined today by my friend, one of the top experts, Jack Cottirella, and someone who, by congressional standards, is like younger than we are, Mr. Robert Garcia. How are we? You're like, what, like 34? Oh, yeah, 22. Oh, yeah. Well, you must walk in to the Capitol, and people look at you, and they're like,

man, this fucking kid is walking in here. I think anyone that's newer to Congress, I think a lot of folks are, you know, wondering who we are still, but we're, I think we're making a lot of, a lot of good way of a lot of good finding out and learning a little bit about you in these recent, what's been going on in these recent weeks that they would, like, are you doing anything right now? Is anything happening? Oh, I mean, yeah. Everything is pretty boring in Congress now. No, look, man, I think right now we're in, I mean, honestly, we're in a very serious moment. Like, we are, this Epstein Files issue is huge. I think it's dominating D.C. in the country. Anytime I go back home, and I'm, you know, talking to folks about health care or about taxes to billionaires, the first thing they want to talk to me about is what the hell's going on with the Epstein Files. And I think it goes to the heart of kind of betrayal that people feel around Donald Trump. And the kind of the kind of betrayal that people feel around Donald Trump. And the kind of just disgusting nature of this massive cover-up. And so that's what everyone is asking me about when I'm at the Capitol, honestly. I mean, members on the floor, staff, people back home, it's what people are focused on. What's the element of, for me, what's flying under the radar the most is that this isn't just a cover-up on behalf of Donald Trump, but also all of the other associates of Epstein

are being defended, protected, hidden by Donald Trump, because they know once you start to pull it that thread a little bit, everything unravels. Of course, the DOJ can block whatever they can try, cash retail, and withhold information, but, you know, you see Pam Bondi trying to stop the two Epstein associates who were wired what. It was $100,000 and $250,000, respectively, from their names becoming public. Because, you know, outreach to these people subpoenaing these people, they do have to pass over this information. There's no executive privilege or Donald Trump stepping in the way. What more are we learning about Epstein associates around him and maybe connected to Donald Trump

that can start to shed a little bit more light? Because certainly that was the case with the birthday book, going through the estate, but how was that process playing out with the associates right now? So I think, look, let me take one step back. I think people like kind of forget like what actually started this whole chain of events

and where we're headed. So one of the people need to understand, and I remind people, it's really important, let's be crystal clear that per Jeffrey Epstein in his own comments, he said that Donald Trump was his best friend.

For 15 years, they were best friends. Per Jeffrey Epstein. Which is a long relationship by Donald Trump standards? Well, and when you, I mean, if you have a someone that is a convicted sexual trafficker, someone that abused and raped women and girls, and he is claiming to have this close friendship with Donald Trump, that should first cause us all, like, alarm

and really be kind of disgusted about what Jeffrey Epstein was building. He ran maybe the largest and most complex trafficking system, at an enterprise in the modern era. He was essentially providing women and girls to the most powerful, wealthiest people on the planet. There's evidence that there could have been foreign governments involved. There's evidence that this trafficking was going

through some of these kind of talent shows that were happening across the country, often involving children. And so you have all of this that is also centered in Palm Beach. So Palm Beach seems to be like the center of where this was happening. It's where Epstein was. It's where Mar-a-Lago is.

It's where a lot of the folks that were involved, where a lot of the crimes have happened. Of course, Jeffrey Epstein was being Alex Acosta at the time. He was obviously the U.S. attorney there. So everything's happening in Florida in New York. So now we take one step back. And we fast forward to where we are. We know they were friends. We know that Jeffrey Epstein was a trafficker.

somehow Jeffrey Epstein, in the process of trying to convict him years ago, he ends up with this sweetheart deal. FBI, different agents, folks were looking at prosecuting, not just Epstein, but blowing the lid on this whole trafficking, right? Interviewing women, getting testimony, essentially being big part of the creation of the Epstein files. I mean, they were creating a case. They were collecting testimony. They were taking information from the Epstein estate. So there's all of these documents and interviews and flight logs and the case against Jeffrey Epstein. And then here comes Alex Acosta, who later becomes Trump's Labor Secretary, and is a U.S. attorney out in Florida, and he has this sweeping sweetheart deal,

which no one can understand why. Why did Jeffrey Epstein get this deal from Acosta? This is a serial trafficker. And so he gets his sweetheart deal. Jeffrey Epstein basically gets a slap on the wrist, goes to kind of a minimum facility, you know, security facility, has time, has release time, where he again begins to victimize women during his release time. And I don't know if this ever comes up, at least in regards to releasing the Epstein files, but from what I understand, he also spent a lot of this time looking into security and surveillance technology.

involved with people from all sorts of different countries and he had a relationship with Peter Teal. Does this ever come up? So these are all pieces that right now we're actually investigating. It is true that there are some very interesting and familiar names that we know that seem to have been tied to a lot of work happening in the broader kind of Epstein scandal. And we're going to be kind of rolling out some of this information. And especially now that, you know, of course, when Epstein dies, commit suicide, you know, what happened then, I think still deserves some scrutiny. And then we know that survivors are going to come forward. Survivors begin to say, you know, what happened? What came forward? Acosta, of course, is nominated by Trump

to be Labor Secretary. He has to leave that position because they had a relationship. And now we have all these survivors finally coming forward in a big way publicly saying, we demand justice. We, I mean, hearing women, adult women through their own tears and trauma, talk about being raped, talk about, talking about Galane Maxwell, walking them from their home to Jeffrey Epstein's home in New York, is disgusting and troubling. And yet Trump is calling this a big hoax, which we now know it's not a hoax. Yeah. It's been very interesting to me, the degree to which the survivors have been left out. I mean, it can't be too surprising because survivors of sexual violence, abuse, and assaults are very often left out, if not targeted and attacked. But I feel as though the rights politicization of this and their efforts to paint it as some sort of partisan smear job have effectively kind of put those survivors in a position where sharing their stories is now. operating as some sort of democratic operative as opposed to just talking about what is, again,

one of the largest conspiracies we've seen of this kind. But I'm curious. We've seen videos of a Republican noticeably shook walking out of a meeting with survivors. Do you ever have any conversations with Republicans in Congress? Like, hey, you know there's actual people involved with this, right? And I think we can say Nancy Mays, considering she decided to backtrack after. I wasn't trying to be nice to her by not saying. her name. I forgot who it was. Okay. I was about saying, I think, like, I want to just, like,

make it clear, completely backtracked and says the president has my support. What are you hearing behind closed doors with Republicans who, some are saying, I don't feel comfortable about this, but I'm going to continue to back the president. And then those who perform outrage and then just support the president. I don't see how anyone, any Republican that was at that roundtable with these survivors could want to hide the truth from coming out. And yet they are. I mean, Mike Johnson was there, and, you know, he called President Trump an informant. I mean, there is just so many lies that are going on. Republicans are falling over themselves to cover up for Donald Trump.

And when you have someone that ran on, I'm going to release the Epsen files as part of their campaign. It was central to the campaign. Cash Patel was talking about it. J.D. Vance was talking about it. The whole maggotsphere was talking about releasing the Epscine files. And then you do a complete flip. after Pam Bondi says it on her desk

and any reasonable person should be asking themselves why the flip why the going from let's release these files, somebody was one of my best friends to it's a hoax

his words, it's a hoax and then the birthday book which we caught him flat-footed on which he said didn't exist it exists our attorneys not only do we have the image we saw it in person That is his signature.

Forensic science is clear for the forensic experts that have obviously been talking about we've seen on the media and other places. And so now we're at a point where we've subpoenaed Democrats for subpoenaed. We have subpoenaed the files and the DOJ is stalling. They've sent us documents that we've already seen and were already public. They're compelled to send us the rest of the files. And when we get those, we're going to work to get those and make those and get them out and get the information out to the American public. I have two other behind the scenes question. The first is Marjorie Taylor Green said that she did speak to Trump

about talking to the survivors, he then, like, later that day, or was the next day he said, well, no one's ever brought this up. I haven't thought about it. Do you know anything about the nature of that call that she had? Did she talk to you about that? No. Well, first, look, I appreciate any Republican who at any moment wants to do the right thing, that Marjorie Taylor Green is no friend of women or survivors or people that are going through sexual abuse.

And so I don't, you know, I don't, I don't, I think. it's nice when when folks end up doing the right thing every once in a while but the amount of of terror and violence that she has inflicted upon so many others i think has to be brought up in this broader scope of her trying to seek some level of justice in this moment i am glad that she is engaged i hope that she stays consistent and i hope she can convince other republicans to also demand because then that was going to be my my other question was you don't have to say names I know, like, if you say, well, it's, it's ex-individual that we think we can kind of move off the fence to supporting this second from now. They're going to be getting a call from Trump and Pambani.

But, like, what does that process look like of trying to move Republicans to work with you in this process? I mean, look, I think it hasn't been easy. I think, like, Tom Massey has been the one really kind of leading the charge on the Republican side. And Roecona has been doing a lot of work to try to move some Republicans over that he has relationships with. We have tried, we're, you know, where, but on the oversight side of kind of, you know, in where we have jurisdiction, we've had a really fight to get any disclosure. Like, we had a fight to get the subpoena. We're the ones that fought to get Acosta deposed, which were finally going to do that later at the end of this week. We're the ones that forced essentially the estate to turn over the book and got the subpoena going.

Like, there would be nothing. We would know dramatically less information if you didn't have a bunch of fighters on the oversight committee. And I think that we are pushing, we're being strategic, and we're at a point now where we're doing a lot of interviews with a lot of survivors, we're getting information. And people need to understand. People say, oh, well, these women should go and just tell all their stories.

It's not the way it work. I mean, people need to have compassion. The on the survivors is just. Right. These women have gone through trauma. They've gone through trauma. And many are scared. in many cases these women have have you know in have children are families now or or are scared and want to just be left alone and they don't want to be retramatized every day being reminded and certainly they don't want powerful men um uh to target them and so i think that's where we're at right now but we're not going to give this up we're going i tell i tell people all the time like i ain't we ain't going to push every day i talk about this

with gun violence as well. Like, it's so easy to forget the real human toll of things like this and that there are real human beings involved with this, especially when it's such a spectacle. And then I was at a Love Island reunion watch party where there was already kind of a little bit of zoomer drama going on.

I'm an Alandra fan, by the way. Okay, well, we have that on camera. That is the Congressman on record. I actually watched the whole season of this last whole season of Love Island also. And that is important for you. Did you watch it live every time? No, I, I, I,

caught it up. Like, this would be like, I'm at home at midnight, uh, super. Let it be known, let it be known that if you, um, if you see Congressman Grosse on his phone, there's a chance he's watching Love Island to catch up. And that's okay, because I hold space for that truth. But I was at a Love Island reunion watch party and I was talking to this girl who was like my age and we follow each other on Instagram. She seems so nice. We have mutual friends. And the next day she DMs me, you do a podcast with Tim Miller. And I'm like, you're under 35. How do you know who Tim Miller is? And she says, uh, he just, uh, he just, had my mom on his show. And I went, oh, is your mom some former labor secretary or, you know,

former Republican talking shit about Trump? And she said, no, she's a prominent, outspoken Epstein survivor. And I was like, oh my God, these are real fucking human beings. And you forget about that. But my last question about this is just, like, I have this pervasive fear that I'm sure plenty of people do that's like, if a president is, uh, riling, people up enough and flooding the media enough and saying enough inflammatory remarks that gets people talking like ultimately the MAGA base is not going to care about the giant child sex trafficking ring that the president either was directly involved with as we have reason to believe or was best friends with the guy and was so stupid that he did not figure that out

over 15 years. Do you think we will be able to keep people engaged and make sure people don't give up and just assume that this is something that can't be a winning issue? Yeah, I mean, two things. I think one is the worry that you have, I think, is real. Because just take the Galeen Maxwell piece. She is a known monster who abused women herself and is a trafficker of children. And yet she gets a reduced prison location.

She gets to tell her story and have lionized by some on the right. because it's in their best interest of the narrative they want to give. And yet that the entire country should have rebelled against that, to say you're giving this woman a reduced facility, a facility that's basically if she can roam freely and have access, open access, where she has been convicted of these horrific crimes. And so I worry that as we uncover and as we hopefully call and demand justice on behalf of these women,

but against these very powerful men. And I've told people, I don't care. I mean, honestly, you don't give a fuck what political party these people are in, how powerful they were, what position they were in? Like, people say, oh, do you are, I remember early on, some folks were like, oh, you know, these other folks could be implicator.

Have you thought about? I was like, I don't care. I really could care less about that. I think we have to just be centered in doing the right thing. and I think that you know what's scary is that this Glenn Maxwell thing hasn't moves people

and so it's our job and I think that's where Congress comes into it like it is it is our job to keep this front and center and to talk about it and to fight for it and I think that that all members of Congress that care about the safety of women and knowing that a lot of women are watching our actions right now that's been clear to me

by some of the male that I get now that there are women and there are people that have gone through had sexual violence thrust upon them that are watching, saying, is the government actually going to do anything about this? And if not, what does that say to? Everyone else across this country that is going through something horrific.

And so that's where I wanted to end, not to make this like a democratic messaging criticism at the end, but I see a lot of, you know, we're talking about the Epstein files, this is a betrayal by Donald Trump, so is Medicaid, so is plug-in issue, so is this, which I think detracts from, The seriousness of this situation, one, but it's also so stand alone.

Like, you don't need to tell a story about how this is a betrayal. It becomes pretty obvious. Obviously, no one is focusing on this, working on this, trying to bring justice to this any more than yourself right now. What do you communicate to your colleagues talking about this who may be using it as a pivot or a jumping off point? And do you think that that doesn't keep it front of mind correctly or addresses the seriousness? How do you think that other Democrats need to be talking about this in a way that communicates the moment properly? So what I've told folks is, you know, is to always first center the victims. And always, this is about justice for survivors and the victims of Jeffrey Epstein.

That's first and foremost, it's important. And then it's, you know, we should be able to talk about multiple things at once. And we should be able to say Donald Trump is ripping away health care from 17 million people that have built. billionaires are getting massive tax breaks, and that Donald Trump is the most corrupt president in history, and he's betrayed his base by not releasing the Epstein files. This is about betrayal to the American people. He's lying to them. And by doubling down on this being betrayal and this being corruption, I think it speaks to the broader person of who Donald Trump is. And if he's going to betray you on the Epstein files, he's going to betray to you and lie to you on health care.

He's going to betray and lie to you on everything else. He's telling you about lowering your cost of living. And I think that's what I hear from people that are casual political observers is this is broken through. Like when I'm at home and like I'm talking to folks that are not super engaged, they're talking about this. Yeah. And so we have their attention.

Like let's, you know, we have to use it. Congressman Garcia, thanks so much for joining us. I listen, it's been a long week everybody. People are tired. People are stressed and frustrated. I need to have a conversation that's important to me. You can click out right now. I don't care.

This is for me. And that is the end of it. So Superman has come out, Superman 2025, starring David Kornswett, Rachel Brosnahan and many other great performers. Amazing movie. You swore into Congress on a copy of Action Comics number one that was authentic, right? From the Library of Congress. That is unbelievable. Listen, sometimes in politics you have to take a position.

You might not be able to make everybody happy, but you have to take a stance if you're going to be an honest broker. Who is the best Superman? Of all time. Yes. The best Superman of all time is Christopher Reeve. Okay. And I think that, I think that Corn Sweat is up there probably in that second slot. Yeah.

I think that, I think that that is fair. I put Corn Sweat first, but I also think it's just a different experience because you got to see Corn Sweat doing stuff that the tech just didn't allow Christopher Reeve to do. But for me, like the first Superman I saw on screen was Christopher Reeve. And that was like, that was like, like, I'm. Life-changing for a fan of the comics and so. But modern Superman, this is the best Superman take we've had as modern Superman. Well, I'll tell you this, everybody.

As a 2000 baby, the first Superman I saw on screen was Tom Welling. And that made me say, wait a second. Do I also think the boys are cute? Congressman, thanks so much for joining us. This has been great, and I appreciate your work. Absolutely, thank you. Everybody at Bullwark, stay tuned. Many more crazy things to come.

Thank you.