Bulwark Takes - Todd Blanche Faceplants During Epstein Files Release Interview

Episode Date: December 21, 2025

Sam Stein and Jack Cocchiarella take on US Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche’ struggling through his appearance on Meet the Press as he stumbles through excuses for the heavily redacted Epstein files.

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And today he decided why not double down on announcing that Donald Trump has broken the law in the past and continues. I'm joined with Sam Stein to break down, which was one of like the worst appearances that I've seen from Donald Trump Stooges on the subject. You say that every week. No, but they continue to outdo themselves. These people are stupid. And I guess you bring in stupid people when you want them to do exactly as you say. But it just hasn't worked. Okay.

How about at the end of this, you tell me if I've actually fulfilled my promise that this is one of the worst interviews that you've seen? Okay. Because just to be clear, I've read the transcripts. I haven't seen the clip. So I'm coming in a little cold. I'm going to say they're not stupid. I think they're more corrupt. But we can debate that after we see the clips.

And I have a fuller understanding of how it went. It can be a bit of both. It certainly was for the first clip of Todd Blanche in which he made, It would seem like an admission about Donald Trump and some photos that were released and then, of course, unreleased because that's what we're doing at this point. But it starts right here with Christian Walker. Mr. Blanche, I want to follow up with you on what you just said. You were referencing the 15 files released Friday. They disappeared from DOJ's website yesterday, including this photo of what looks like a desk with a drawer open containing photos of Donald Trump.

Just to be very clear to put a fine point on it. Why were these files taken down? You're saying it was at the direction of a judge? Well, you can see in that photo. There's photographs of women. And so we learned after releasing that photograph that there were concerns about those women and the fact that we had put that photo up. So we pulled that photo down. It is nothing to do with President Trump.

There are dozens of photos of President Trump already released to the public seeing him with Mr. Epstein. He has said that in the 90s, in early 2000s, he socialized with him. So the absurdity of us pulling down a photo, a single photo, because President Trump was in it, is laughable. And the fact that everybody's trying to act like that's the case is a reflection of their true motivation. But the reality is anybody, any victim, any victim's lawyers, any victim rights group can reach out to us and say, hey, Department of Justice, there's a document, there's a photo,

there's something within the Epstein files that identifies me. And we will then, of course, pull that off and investigate. Are you saying that one or more of the women in one of the photos or several of the photos is a victim or a survivor of Jeffrey Epstein? And that's why you took those files down. And will they be put back up? No, that's not what I'm saying. We, of course, if we knew that, if we had, if we believed that that photograph contained a survivor, we wouldn't have put it up in the first place without redacting the faces. But notwithstanding what we believe.

we don't have perfect information. And so when we hear from victims' rights groups about this type of photograph, we pull it down and investigate. We're still investigating that photo. The photo will go back up, and the only question is whether there will be redactions on the photo. And of course, if there are survivors in any of the photos, we will redact them as Congress expects us to do, as President Trump expects us to do, and as the Attorney General and Director Patel directed the department to do.

So that didn't really seem like a full answer to me. It seems like Blanche is suggesting that one of the women in the photos was a victim, which runs a little counter to the they were just hanging out and socializing narrative. What did you take away from his response? It just seemed incoherent. Yeah, well, the most generous interpretation of the response is we were so bad at our job that we put up this photo unredacted and had to take it down. Even though we had weeks to go through this stuff, we were so bad at our job that we failed to do it properly. And it will come back up, but we're going to redact it. It doesn't really pass the smell test, honestly, because there are plenty of documents out there with redactions.

They made redactions in photos and in text documents. And so they clearly could have done the same for this, but it must have made through the filter. He doesn't actually say, as far as I can tell that someone in that photograph, a woman in that photograph or a kid in that photograph, reached out and said, hey, pull it down. He kind of skirts around it. He says there's victims in there. And when people reach out to us, we will obviously protect their identity. But he didn't say someone in that photo reached out to them. And frankly, you just don't get the benefit of the doubt if you're the DOJ in this case

because precisely you've been of an administration that's been fighting the release of this materials for months. And so you can't then turn around and say, look, we're doing the best we can. We're pro-transparency. we're going to put everything out there. No, you've been fighting the release of that stuff. So, you know, again, it doesn't really make a lot of sense and I don't think anyone's going to buy it. Well, especially it doesn't make sense in the context of another clip that we're going to check out with Todd Blanche responding to questions about Galane Maxwell.

When this is not a guy who really likes to dive into the nitty gritty of details that actually matter. So were these victims of Epstein, were they victims of Trump? Did they report broad abuse within the circles of these powerful men. He didn't really say anything. He kind of wanted to allege that that's kind of what they are. There were too many photos to see if there were photos with Trump with children, if these were women of age. But it reminds me of the moment in the kind of deposition,

the interview that Galane Maxwell gave with Todd Blanche in which she said, just straight up, yeah, there's tons of people in your cabinet who just love to hang out with me in Epstein. And he goes, yeah. Okay, so pivoting to anything else in the world that we could possibly talk about, Yeah, like it just wasn't a full answer. And like, you're right. It leads you to just ask all of the questions that it seems like this entire time.

I don't know. Has there been a prediction that anyone who's like a good faith actor has made over the past six months that kind of hasn't come true about what we've expected out of these files? So here's the thing about the files that's now obviously the problem of the administration faces is that when you spend so much time fighting the release, if you don't do full disclosure on day one, you become. part of the conspiracy to cover up, right? And it's, now the perception is like, okay, well, they're the ones who are controlling the release of this information. They clearly didn't want it out there in the public. Otherwise, they would have embraced the release early on. And conspicuously, there's only like a handful of mentions of Trump at all. And then there was this Fox News story where they're like, yeah, we're screening for politicians. And now suddenly

everyone who's been committed to the idea that these documents should be made public is going to automatically say, well, what are you doing? Why are you not being forth? coming. What are you hiding? And look, they may for, I don't know, I mean, I'm open to the possibility as ridiculous as it sounds, that maybe there's not a lot in there that we didn't already know. And maybe there's not many mentions of Trump that would not make sense at all considering how much contemporaneous correspondence they have and what we know already in the public record. But even if you give them that, the idea that they would just release partial documents, they'd have all these redactions.

They'd take documents off the web, even after they released it, that an administration official would say to Fox, yeah, we're going to be screening this stuff. And, you know, we need to protect politicians, names and things like that. Like, it just, it's going to wreak like you're part of a conspiracy. And that's on them. They, you know, no one else is to blame for them having to deal with this stuff other than them. They made their bed, now they're sleeping in it. And it makes me think of two things. The first, like, what have you?

been doing this whole time, especially the past month. That doesn't make any sense. But the second is if just the information that we've seen has come out, Trump pictured with victims that's already been something like, I guess technically Todd Blanche is admitting there, but the descriptions that the alleged accounts of assault that we saw then redacted after they were put up describing Trump, if that was all that was in these files, like that alone would be disqualified. The time Trump spent with him, the check, you know, buying a woman who's now like, like, aged out of the Epstein demographic, like that would be disqualifying of just like being a public person, like, let alone being fucking president of the United States. So my thing is like, well, then where does

your head go if there's more than this that's already disqualifying? I start to think back about the first term. And that's why the conversation, the question about Galane Maxwell was so interesting to me and kind of what the subtext of what Todd Blanche said right here was. I do want to ask you about Galane Maxwell, who was, of course, convicted in 2021 for her role in helping Jeffrey Epstein traffic his victims. In July, you interviewed her in Florida, where she was serving a 20-year sentence in federal prison. Just a week later, Maxwell was moved to a more permissive prison camp in Texas. Why was she moved just days after you interviewed her, Mr. Blanche? So that's a Bureau of Prison security issue that I will not talk about.

Did you have anything to do with it? Did you have anything to do with it? Let me finish. First of all, I am responsible for the Bureau of Prisons. So every decision that they make lands on my desk to the extent it needs to. But just let me talk about the security issue. At the time that I met Ms. Maxwell, there was a tremendous amount of, of scrutiny and publicity towards her.

And the institution she was in, she was suffering numerous and numerous threats against her life. So the BOP is not only responsible for putting people in jail and making sure they stay in jail, but also for their safety. And so she was moved. She is in federal prison.

She was in federal prison before. She's in. Okay, I got to stop it there, because she has DoorDash, so I'm not sure it's federal prison. She's got a fucking puppy. But I just like, your first gut check to that because I was just astounded.

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and then the other thing though is like there's plenty of people in federal prison who have threats against their life while in prison if that's the standard for moving someone to a lower security prison then you're basically shuffling half half the jail into lower security and why is that todd blanche's job right like is he handle all of those cases oh it's nutty it doesn't again it's like they're intervening in very conspicuous ways they're like well we don't really want to talk about it, but, you know, we're sympathetic. I mean, basically saying they were sympathetic to her case. Why was he sympathetic to her case? Like, what, even if she felt threatened, like, is that, is that a point where you have to intervene as the deputy

attorney general? I mean, come on now. The larger point I was going to make, though, and it hasn't really to do with this, although I guess it, I suppose it does. And hopefully I can make it articulately, but let's, let me try. I bet. I got you. And we'll see. We'll see. It's been a long guy. They have been saying for a while now, and this is prior to all this stuff being released, that if there was something in these documents about Donald Trump, the Democrats would have released it a long time ago. This has been their talking point forever. And it's always sort of struck me as a very telling talking point about their own motivations. What they were saying is we feel like, you know, the DOJ under any president, would in a political manner, release

materials to benefit their president, the president they serve, or to hurt their president's opponent. They say, of course, any Democratic DOJ would release stuff to hurt Donald Trump. That's just what a DOJ does. So they've conceded at the jump that they are not above taking political motivations when it comes to the release of this material. Now it's their job to release this material. And so we should, of course, expect that they are going to act with political motivations. They've admitted that that's what they would do.

They're surprised that Democrats didn't do it. And so when they are putting out selective material, we have to take them by their word, that they are not going to put out stuff that would hurt the president they serve, but that they would put out stuff to hurt the president's opponents. In this case, we have a trove of photos of Bill Clinton and hot tubs and pools and stuff like that. And you're like, well, that's, you know, telling that those are the only photos that they're releasing. but it's not because of course they've already admitted that they would do politically motivated selective releases. Does that make sense?

Yeah. And it kind of reminds me of just like, I don't know, I had this thought on Friday. And I've really been thinking it this whole time, which is in like in many ways why it's been weird. I've felt weird a lot of the times discussing like the kind of conspiracy nature of the Epstein files because I saw, I don't know if you follow. What is it like autism central is what it's called? It's some like MAGA. Yeah, I know the channel. Yeah, yeah.

Yeah, I'm so glad. Probably based in Malaysia or something like that. Certainly. I'm glad that we both have to know what that is. That's really great for our lives. It's fantastic. But it was a response to a photo of Epstein with what looked like a toddler. Like it was a girl like within like pajama pants.

It was like cookie monster or something like that. The response is like, oh my God, this is getting bad. It's not fun anymore. It's like, what the fuck did you think was going to be fun about this? And that's the thing with the Epstein conspiracy is that it's never been a conspirator. He was a real guy. And I think that's another thing that the administration is waking up to is that they thought that this whole thing with the Clinton and Bill Gates would still be viewed as kind of funny. They thought that it was going to be a big meme. There were a lot of responses

where it was like Clinton with a victim with her face blacked out as like, oh, Bill, you dog. There were some of that. But also, why aren't these men getting locked up? And when you have even the MAGA people who never took this seriously, who thought, it was a Netflix documentary and a conspiracy theory waking up to that, then it gets really difficult to not bring full transparency or to try to deny this truth of Trump being in the files and him calling it a hoax. When you finally see that they're waking up, that this is not like a gambit or a game or fun, or look at Bill Clinton and let's make some jokes about it, then it gets really difficult. And I think that's what they're struggling with most. And it does sort of

pulls back the veil that a lot of this for a lot of people really was. about, you know, a sex predator and the victims. It was about when they thought that it would hurt Democrats and rich people who supported Democrats. They thought it was a good cudgel. And now it's, you know, it's not as good a cudgel for them anymore. And so it makes, it makes it very clear that for a good many of them, it really wasn't about the victims. It was about the political scores. Yeah. And that same feeling of the, this is a, this is a joke, this is a hoax, this is all fun. It's actually something that Todd Blanche was confronted with towards the end of this interview. And again, I think that his response was quite telling.

We're talking about President Trump in relation to this for months. He urged Republicans to stop pushing for the files to be released. He dismissed the Epstein files as a hoax. I want to play a little bit of what he has said about the Epstein files before he signed the law. Take a lot. It's all been a big hoax. It's perpetrated by the Democrats and some stupid Republicans. I don't understand it. Why they would be. so interested. He's dead for a long time. It's shorted, but it's boring. This is a Democrat hoax that never ends. Are the Epstein Files a hoax, Mr. Blanche? What President Trump is saying is not that the Epstein Files are a hoax. It's his game that Democrats have been playing

for the past nine months around the Epstein Files. It is a complete and total hoax. Well, and some Republicans pushing for the release, too. Some of the Republicans pushing for the release, too, just to be clear. Well, that's different. That's different. To be clear, releasing the files. I got to stop it there. That's different.

Why is that different? One, why is it different? And two, what is the game that Democrats are playing around the release? Like, that's the question that I don't understand. That's like the theory of the case of the political pawn that they view this to be. And then, again, like, it is so telling. If they're saying, okay, well, when we didn't have the power to release, said we were talking about Epstein and now that Democrats don't have the power to release the

files. Well, of course, we've been able to move the discharge petition, whatever. But like, now they don't, so they're using it as a political pawn. They're openly admitting that it is just a fun thing to bounce back and forth when you don't have the power. Like, that is his view of it fundamentally. It doesn't take a genius to go back three, four years ago and pull up any clip of J.D. Vance or Cash Patel or Dan Bongino or any of these people, being like this is the most existentially important issue of our time. We have to expose the Kabbalah goes deep, much deeper than people think. So, you know, you got to live by your own words.

And it's not a hoax, obviously. And one more time, it would have all been settled. We would have been in the same exact place if back in the spring, when this thing first started gaining steam, Pambondi and Cash Patel didn't come out and say, oh, there's nothing there. We looked at the files, nothing there. I mean, that's it. Like, they, they were the ones who engaged in what is ostensibly a cover-up,

even after having pushed for the files released. They acted shady throughout. And so you're just being held to your own words. There's no hoax, but I agree with you. It's like, you know, if you look at it as simply a political football, and then if you're in one camp or the other and you're in the minority at this point and you want to, you know, make the president squirm. Like, if that's what you think it is, then you're going to act this way.

You're going to call it a hoax. But it's not. And I'm coming around to your interpretation, I suppose, about that Blanche's appearance. It wasn't the most adroit Sunday show appearance. Wasn't an A-plus-plus-plus-plus? It's not where you landed on the top Blanche rating. I wouldn't give it that. I wouldn't give it that.

No, I would go a little lower than the plus-plus, plus, plus, plus. Not even in the A's, to be honest. Well, good on Kristen Walker. There was only other one bad clip. There was one bad clip from her today. She, instead of asking Lindsey Graham about the Epstein Files, asked about Erica Kirk. Erica Kirk, the widow of conservative activist Charlie Kirk, who was assassinated in September. This week endorsed Vice President J.D. Vance for president in 2028.

What do you make of that? Would you endorse Vice President J.D. Vance for president at this point? I'm worried about tomorrow, but that's a big day for J.D. We don't need a rag on Kristen too much. She's okay. She did a good job. And I think we did as well. I think we get an A plus plus plus plus. Thank you, Jack. Let us know in the comments. Did we do better than Todd Blanche? Because if that's the rating system,

then I feel fucking swell about this episode. I feel good about that one, yeah. For the Bullwark. I'm Jack Hottrell. Sam, always good to see you, man. Take care, buddy. Have a happy holiday, okay? You as well.

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