Bulwark Takes - Republicans Shield Trump from Epstein Investigation

Episode Date: August 5, 2025

Sam Stein and Will Sommer take on the GOP’s bizarre Epstein subpoenas targeting the Clintons, while leaving out Trump and Alex Acosta, the man who gave Epstein a sweetheart deal.

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Please play responsibly. If you have questions or concerns about your gambling or someone close to you, please contact Connix Ontario at 1866-531-2600 to speak to an advisor free of charge. But MGM operates pursuant to an operating agreement with Eye Gaming Ontario. Hey, guys, me, Sam Stein, managing editor at the Bullwork, joined by Will Summer, who I've been spending a lot of time with on camera doing YouTube's. Feel very close to you, Will. Hey, lots of...

Yeah, no, absolutely. Lots of content to put out and so much going on. I was thinking less about content and more about an emotional connection. But you're strictly business, so let's get into it, I guess. Before we do, subscribe to the feed. Okay, so the reason we're talking this morning is that James Comer, who is the chair of the House Oversight Committee, has issued subpoenas for key figures in the Epstein saga,

some very notable names that are on the list, and then one incredibly notable omission that we're going to get to. We call that a tease. I'm not going to give you this person's name quite right now. Anyways, the reason they did this is because House Democrats sort of forced their hand into doing this, and the House Oversight Committee right before they went on August recess said they would get on it. And so that's where we're at. Am I missing some context here, Will, or am I about right? No, I think that's right. I mean, clearly Democrats were, you know,

they thought they had enough Republicans. They could peel off to make this happen. And so it, yeah, I mean, Comer had to do this here. Okay. So here's the list of the people who he has subpoenaed. In addition, he subpoenaed, I should note, records from the Justice Department that he wants produced on August 19th with respect to the Epstein files. the names. Former U.S. Attorney General Bill Barr, former U.S. Attorney General Alberto Gonzalez, former U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions, former FBI Director Robert Mueller, former U.S. Attorney General Loretta Lynch, former U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder, former U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland, former FBI Director James Comey. And then the big ones, former Secretary of State Hillary

Clinton, and former President Bill Clinton. I listed those in the order of expected response to the subpoena. So at first blush, what do you make of the list? Yeah, well, I mean, I would say, you know, one, one long time Jeffrey Epstein friend is missing named Donald Trump. Oh, that wasn't even my admission. Okay, but go ahead. Yeah, I mean, look, I think this is the sense from Republicans that they need to make a show of investigating this to some extent. And maybe, you know, maybe they are legitimately interested in some of it. But, you know, it seems to me like a real attempt to deflect any heat from Trump and try to make this about

the Clintons. And there's kind of some random names on there. I mean, like Loretta Lynch? Yeah. Yeah, I mean, it's people who it's like, I guess like, tangentially these people like were in the Justice Department or the FBI. But, you know, when you talk about like weird Epstein stuff or unexplained

situations, those aren't the names that spring to mind. So the reason so that occurred to me too, like why are these people involved in this? And If you look at the actual subpoenas, you know, like the through line, I suppose, is that they were at senior levels of the Justice Department during prosecutions or investigations into Epstein and Maxwell and others. And so, like, if you look at the Mueller one, it's basically like, hey, you were at the FBI for, you know, I think it was like 2000 and I have the actual list here. He says, during your tenure as director of the Federal Bureau of Investigations from 2001 to 2013, the FBI investigated Jeffrey Epstein for sex crime.

pursuant to this direction, please see the attached subpoena for you to appear at a deposition on September 2nd, 2025. Look, I just feel like Robert Mueller, who seemed pretty, I would say, old and somewhat forgetful when he testified, and during the first run by Mr. Richard probably doesn't have, like, encyclopedic knowledge of what was going on during the Epstein investigations when he was FBI director. So I don't really know what the utility of that subpoena is. So I'm with you. Well, this is also, this is, we have to remember that, you know, obviously the Galane Maxwell stuff, I think, has thrown us off. But there was a time where you didn't have the FBI director or the deputy attorney general going to interview people like

Galane Maxwell. So, you know, you have to imagine this was going down like way below his pay grade. Right. And that brings me to the actual real admission here, the person who I would really want to hear from with respect to all this. And it's not Donald Trump, although I would love to see them try to subpoena Trump, he'd give him the middle finger so fast. It's Alex Acosta, who was the U.S. Attorney in the District of Florida, I believe, and he was the one who prosecuted Epstein in 2007. Can you remind viewers just the role that Acosta played in all this? Yeah, so Alex Acosta, as you said, was the U.S. attorney, so the sort of the chief federal prosecutor in Florida when Jeffrey Epstein had his sort of initial big brush with the law,

where it's these allegations of sort of like these weird underage sexual massages and paying young girls for them. And so basically the cops in Florida thought they had him dead to rights. We could put this guy away for decades. And then the government gave him, but sort of the federal and state and local authorities got together and gave him a sweetheart deal that ruled out a huge amount of prosecution and basically let him skate with a very minor charge. And so Alex Acosta, as the federal prosecutor, was involved in that.

And then this flared up again because he, in the first Trump administration, was the labor secretary. And so people started saying, why did this guy who gave Epstein such a sweet deal? Why is he like now getting elevated to, by the way, a role that has a lot of oversight over trafficking? And I believe, and I correct me if wrong, but I believe in 2020, the DOJ affirmed that he got, that Acosta allowed him off too easily. And then Acosta was kind of driven from the administration over this. Yeah, I mean, Acosta had to resign. I mean, this was really sort of the resurgence of Epstein news around 2019. So he had to resign.

And the other kind of key Alex Acosta thing is it was reported in The Daily Beast. And so this is sort of a second or thirdhand report. But basically, when asked why he gave Epstein such a sweet deal, he said, well, he was reportedly said, I was told he was intelligence or somehow connected to an intelligence agency. And that's pretty much like 90, 95 percent of the idea that that Epstein was an intelligence asset comes just from that quote. So that would be a great thing to ask him about. Yeah. And now he's currently on the board at Newsmax. So he's involved in a media company, which means he's, you know, in spirit, I suppose, should be willing to testify, although I doubt he would be enjoying that.

Well, and the other thing I would say is that Newsmax now has become sort of the point of the spear for the free Galane movement. They've become, they become very outspoken on like maybe Greg Kelly, very like, well, maybe Galane is innocent and who's to say and this kind of stuff. All right. Now, the Clintons. This one seemed somewhat gratuitous, although I guess, you know, actually not gratuitous. That's the wrong word because obviously they have a bill had a relationship with Epstein.

I mean, it's like pretty obvious, pretty well known. But there are a lot of other famous people who have relationships with Epstein who I feel like they could have thrown subpoenas in. Trump, of course, is one of them. But there's like Alan Dershowitz, right? Like they could have added some namesless. This is the language of the subpoena. I'm just going to read it to, um, to,

give you sense of how they got around to saying you should appear before us. This is to Bill Clinton. Hillary's is even more interesting, but Bill Clinton, by your own admission, you flew on Jeffrey Epstein's private plane four separate times in 2002 and 2003. During one of the trips, you were even pictured receiving a massage from one of Mr. Epstein's victims, that would be Virginia Jew Free. It has also been claimed that you pressured Vanity Fair not to publish sex trafficking allegations against your, quote, good friend, Mr. Epstein, and there are conflicting

reports about whether you ever visited Mr. Epstein's Island. You are also allegedly close to Ms. Jelaine Maxwell, an Epstein co-conspirator, and attended an intimate dinner with her in 2014, three years after public reports about her involvement in Mr. Epstein's abuse and minors. So this is Hillary Clinton's, and then I'll get your reaction to this. Hillary Clinton's subpoena reads this. Your family appears to have had a close relationship with both Jeffrey Epstein and his co-conspirator, Jelaine Maxwell. For example, your husband, President William, Bill Jefferson Clinton, by his own admission, flew on Jeffrey. for your absence private plane four times.

This repeats the old subpoena during one of those trips. He was even picture again massage. And here it gets interesting. Moreover, your husband was allegedly the coast to Ms. Maxwell. While Mrs. Maxwell's nephew worked on your 2008 presidential campaign and was hired by the State Department shortly after you became Secretary of State. So, Jolene Maxwell's nephew is the basis for this subpoena for Hillary Clinton. That seemed a little gratuitous to me.

A bit of a stretch, yeah. And, you know, I don't think Galane's nephew has been, he has a. been portrayed as this, like, real, like, important figure in the conspiracy. I am kind of curious whether they expand beyond this, under pressure to do Acosta, maybe even to, like, try to bring in a cash Patel or Pam Bondi in for testimony. I don't know if they will. Probably not. We'll see.

But it seems like this is going to scratch the hitch, but not totally, you know, make it go away. Yeah. I mean, this strikes me as, you know, a limited hangout, right? Like, they're going to try to, they're trying to divert things over to, to the Clinton. or, you know, I'm curious what's going to happen with these files. I sort of feel like if the White House doesn't want these files to come out, that somehow Comer has been spoken to about, you know, maybe they'll claim, well, you know, there's this hot investigation going on.

Galane is giving us so much info. We can't give it to you. That's definitely what's going to happen. There's going to be total conflicts between DOJ and the Congress where they say, no, this is ongoing where you have, you know, we're in talks. We can't possibly complicate the trial here or the investigation. Yeah, so they'll say, oh, well, you know, actually the only people we can bring in front of us or Bill and Hillary Clinton

or Mueller or whatever. Robert Mueller. No, we'll see what happens. I don't think this is going to solve things, but it is a move in a certain direction. Well, thanks for doing this. Really appreciate, buddy. And I'm sure we have many more conversations

about the Epstein files, including in and around what happens with these subpoenas. For those of you who endured this, we appreciate that as well. Subscribe to the feed so you can get more conversations like this, and we will talk to you soon.