No Lie with Brian Tyler Cohen - Damning evidence implicates Trump and Epstein

Episode Date: February 19, 2026

More damning information comes out implicating Trump to Epstein. Brian interviews Congressman Ted Lieu, Kara Swisher, and Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison.Shop merch: https://briantylercohen.com/shopYouTube: https://www.youtube.com/user/briantylercohenTwitter: https://twitter.com/briantylercohenFacebook: https://www.facebook.com/briantylercohenInstagram: https://www.instagram.com/briantylercohenPatreon: https://www.patreon.com/briantylercohenNewsletter: https://www.briantylercohen.com/sign-upWritten by Brian Tyler CohenProduced by Sam GraberRecorded in Los Angeles, CASee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

More damning information comes out implicating Trump to Epstein, and I've got three interviews, Congressman Ted Liu, Kara Swisher, and Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison. I'm Brian Tyler Cohen, and you're listening to No Lie. Congressman Ted Liu, who I'll talk to shortly, made waves when he issued this statement further tying Trump to Epstein. In those files, there's highly disturbing allegations of Donald Trump raping children, of Donald Trump threatening to kill children. So I encourage the press to go look at these allegations, and I'm highly disturbed that Deputy Attorney General, Tom Blanche, just got the law wrong. Yesterday, he said, essentially, that it is not a crime to party with Jeffrey Epstein. Well, that's actually not correct.

If Jeffrey Epstein was human trafficking minors for these sex parties, and you show up and patronize the establishment at that party, yes, you're guilty because patronizing is part of the law, the federal sex trafficking law. So, Deputy General Taublan, just got that wrong, which maybe explains why they aren't investigating all these folks, including Donald Trump. He needs to read the law and investigate these people. Now, what Lou is referencing here is the now numerous pieces of evidence contained within the files that claim that Trump committed criminal acts, which raises the obvious question,

how can Pam Bondi have come out and said this? There is no evidence that Donald Trump has committed a crime. Everyone knows that. This has been the most transparent presidency. Quote, there is no evidence that Donald Trump has committed a crime. But we know right now that that's not true. There is evidence in the files. So not only did Bondi lie under oath,

which I mean like fork found in kitchen, but it yet again puts on full display the reality that these people are in place solely to protect the co-conspirator, not the victims. And you'll remember in the hearing last week, a whole group of Epstein survivors was asked, point blank, if they'd reached out to Pam Bondi's DOJ,

they all said yes. They were then asked at the DOJ responded. They all said no, all of them. And that's just what we've seen lately. This has been going on since the beginning of Trump's second term, since Bondi said that the files were on her desk and yet refused to release them,

since a bunch of right-wing influencers wave their fake binders around, since Galane Maxwell was moved to a low-security prison with no rationale, since they failed to release the files by the December 19th deadline, since the files they did release contained exposed victim information, and yet all the co-conspirators' names were redacted? I mean, how much more proof do we need?

At what point is the administration going to realize that they are performing for no one, that they are convincing no one? So look, did Trump commit these crimes that Ted Liu is referring to? I don't know. But here's what I do know. First off, if there are accusations, they should be investigated. You're going to hear in a moment, Ted Liu discussed the fact that these allegations weren't investigated.

That is a problem. And second, if you transpose a Democrat into Trump's shoes and there were allegations of a Democrat committing the crimes that Trump is accused of committing, in a file that that Democratic president refused to release to the public, what do you think Republicans would do? They would beat this drum 24 hours a day, demand hearings, demand investigations, demand impeachment, and they would be right. This should not be and is not partisan.

That's why Thomas Massey and Lauren Bobert and Nancy Mason, formerly Marjor Tiller Green, were in favor of this transparency. Because this is centered around the one thing that Trump and his allies themselves exploited when they were running for office. This idea that there's an elite echelon of people who commit crimes with impunity. And with humility, I'll admit that they were right. But what they didn't tell you was that they knew full well it was happening because they were the ones doing it. Next time are my interviews with Ted Lou, Kara Swisher, and Keith Ellison. No Lie is brought to you by Ridge. So I had the same wallet for what feels like 15 years, which is to say to actually change that was a big deal.

But when I saw the new carbon fiber Ridge wallet with RFID blocking technology and a magnet so that it's six to my iPhone, it was an absolute no-brainer. I love this thing. Like I mentioned, I've got black carbon fiber, but there are more than 50 colors and styles to choose from along with materials like aluminum and titanium. And all Ridge products have a lifetime warranty. So this is the last wallet that you'll ever need. And Ridge isn't just about wallets. They create premium everyday carry essentials like power banks, keycases, suitcases, and rings, all built with the same sleek, durable design.

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Honor to be on your show. So, Congressman, you've pointed out in a clip that's going viral across social media right now that Donald Trump himself is implicated in the Epstein files with accusations that are beyond heinous. Now, Todd Blanche, Pam Bondi, Cash Priselle have all come forward and basically said that there's no reason to look into the files and any co-conspirators because they don't exist. And so how do you square these two things where you have evidence? against Donald Trump himself in these files,

and yet all of these law enforcement officials who refuse to acknowledge objective reality. Absolutely. Pam Bondi and Cash Pat Pat Blanche also lied, but he wasn't under oath so lucky for him. If you look at the Epstein Files release that's come out so far, there are multiple documents

where there's evidence implicating Trump and not just crimes, but deeply serious crimes. And so I'll just give you one example. The FBI's own internal slideshow that they had is about 21 slides. Two of their allegations are about Donald Trump committing crimes. You also have a FBI document. It's an intake form of a witness who called the FBI's National Threat Operations Center. And the witness reports that he met a girl who directly told him that Trump and Epstein raped her.

Department of Justice never interviews this witness, doesn't do follow-up. Now, you had posted about this online and DOJ's rapid response account, and granted, I take everything that the administration, especially as it relates to the Epstein files with a grain of salt, but they said that she spoke with the FBI and her claims were deemed not credible, this was all unredacted as we said. So can I have your reaction to the DOJ's rapid response account? But that's just false. So the document I'm referring to is an intake form from the FBI's National Threat Operation Center. The person making their witness statement was a man relaying what a girl he met had told him.

This man was also a limousine driver for Donald Trump. And he also says the same witness report that he overheard Donald Trump talking to Jeffrey on his cell phone, talking about abusing a girl. and that what Donald Trump said was so disturbing, the man wanted to stop the limo and hurt Trump. So this seems like a very credible witness, and the Department of Justice never interviews him. I don't really know what their rep response

for the Department of Justice is talking about. They're clear talking about some other document that I'm not referring to. And again, there's the FBI's own internal slideshow. And then there's other documents that have been now sort of dissected by folks who are independent journalists and folks on social media that show there's two other allegations, essentially,

of women that have made allegations against Donald Trump that would have Trump basically having sex relations with a minor. So how does Todd Blanche get off then in saying that there's no reason to investigate any of the co-conspirators because there aren't even co-conspirators? This is just Jeffrey Epstein orchestrating a sex trafficking ring where he traffics a thousand girls to himself when evidence like this exists.

Well, just think how ludicrous it is just based on your recounting of it. The Department of Justice has confirmed there's over 1,000 victims of Epstein's global pedophilia sex trafficking ring and the Trump Department of Justice has held zero men accountable. It's just a ludicrous number.

And other countries are taking this far more seriously. France, for example, their main Paris prosecutor has opened an investigation, a criminal investigation. They have arrested a person. And then you've got the UAE that is also taking some serious action. Britain has taken Prince Andrew, strip him of his title and kicked him out of his home. And now they're looking at opening a criminal investigation. So everyone is taking it seriously except Pam Bondi, Cash Patel, and Todd Blanche.

Les Wexner, who is one of the accused co-conspirators within the Epstein files, was interviewed today at the House Oversight Committee. And I know that you sit on judiciary. But as far as the reporting goes, there wasn't a single Republican who showed up to that hearing. It was only Democrats. And so what is your reaction to the fact that the Republicans couldn't be bothered to show up for one of the few co-conspirators who we actually know about, despite the, the best efforts of the Trump administration to hide all of this? Other than a handful of Republicans like Thomas Massey and Lauren Bobbard and Nancy Mason, Anna Pauline and Luna, most of them are complicit.

They are complicit in the cover-up. They don't want to talk about this. And they know that Donald Trump is implicated in the Epstein files. He is in the files over 38,000 times, according to a New York Times. analysis. Other analysis have more than that. And you've got multiple documents of actual witnesses alleging firsthand of crimes that Donald Trump committed. And then you have the Department of Justice not following up. In terms of what the next steps are hopefully going to be in Congress, what are you looking to do? Because I know that this process is kind of slogging its way forward.

You're not going to get any assistance from Republicans. You're certainly not going to get any assistance from the DOJ or the Trump administration. So every victory here has to be, you know, hard fought and won. But what is the next priority in terms of the Epstein files? It is super helpful that you have many people in America looking at these documents. The sheer volume is overwhelming. Over 3 million documents have been released. So it's helpful when we get notice of folks that say, hey, look at this document. There's something really strange here or incriminatory or creepy. And you see that happen on social media and on the internet. So that is helpful. In addition, the administration is not immune to public pressure. So the more Americans

that speak up, that ask questions, I think every reporter should be asking Pam Bondi and Todd Blanche the question of, are you withholding any photo, video, or document that has Donald Trump in it in the Epstein files? And if so, why are you withholding it? Well, my concern here, and I'm sure this is a concern that you and other members of Congress share, is that if something is too damning as far as Trump is concerned, that the DOJ is just going to destroy it. And so how can you have confidence that if the DOJ does have some smoking gun or some

damaging evidence that points back to Donald Trump or any of his pals or donors, that it's actually going to be retained by the. this DOJ. So you would hope that the Americans serving in the Department of Justice who have looked at these documents and videos and photos will, number one, remember what they saw, and number two, not committed crime and destroy them. So that is the hope. Now, you know, if people are going to engage in crimes, then that is definitely a problem.

And hopefully that that won't happen. And I do note that for a number of crimes such as murder or rape under federal law, there is no statute of limitations. So the next administration can come in and look at all these files, choose to release them, choose to prosecute. And again, this is not just about Donald Trump. There are multiple perpetrators and co-conspirators. You have former Prince Andrew. I showed photos of Pam Bondi where she acknowledged former Prince Andrew. was with a sex traffic victim.

That photo by itself is evidence of a crime. Right. And there's all this other evidence and books and other documents about former Prince Andrew. She could indict him right now and a grand jury would indict. I don't know why she doesn't do that. Well, if we know that there is evidence of crimes contained within these files, people who should be held to account and you have DOJ officials whose job is to hold criminals to account who instead are deferring to protecting these.

these people, aren't, aren't these DOJ officials like Pam Bondi and Todd Blanche and Cash Patel basically presenting themselves as accessories after the fact? Isn't this evidence of them committing the crime because they were supposed to, A, release these files in accordance with the Epstein Files Transparency Act, and B, prosecute them in accordance with their own oath to the U.S. Constitution as law enforcement officials at the DOJ? Pam Bonnie and Cash Patel committed perjury. That is a crime. And obviously, Tan Bani is not going to prosecute herself. Right.

But another administration could. And then you have just unbelievable screw-ups where they put victims' names out, unredacted, and they ruin a number of lives. And so you're looking at this, and you just wonder, would they careless or were they malicious? It is just very disappointing, depressing to see. And I don't know how Pambani, Cash Patelow and Tom Blanche look at themselves in the mirror. What responsibility does a subsequent Democratic administration have to fearlessly and relentlessly pursuing justice? And I ask that as someone who watched the Merrick Garland Department of Justice drag its feet on holding Trump accountable for two years because they wanted to avoid the optics of politicization.

but in effect, all you do by trying to avoid a politicized DOJ is basically give a free pass to a political figure and kind of swing the pendulum in the opposite direction. And so what responsibility does the next attorney general who has some commitment to the rule of law have to relentlessly, fearlessly pursuing this stuff as opposed to what we saw in past administrations? The reason you see a number of MAGA influencers now turning against Trump on the Epstein files is because people understand this isn't just about Donald Trump. This is about a global pedophilia sex operation that had over a thousand victims. We're talking about girls who were raped and sexually assaulted. And you can't just sort of make that go away or not deal with it or say, you know, it's just on Epstein. And people have this innate sense of justice and accountability, and people want that to happen. And whether it falls on a perpetrator who happens to be a Republican or a Democrat or

independent, it doesn't really matter. People who are engaged in this despicable, horrendous behavior need to be held accountable. And I think the American public, whether you're right or left, just can't understand why the Trump Department of Justice looks like it's doing a cover up of this horrific sex operation that Epstein was engaged in. You know, you had mentioned at the top, there are only a few Republicans who are actually participating in trying to uncover

what's happening here. You had mentioned Thomas Massey, Anna Paulina Luna, Nancy Mace, Marjorie Taylor Green before she had left Congress, Lauren Bobert. So, you know, the list is small. Have you heard from any Republican colleagues behind the scenes?

And granted, I know that, you know, we've heard this song before where you have Republicans kind of murmur things, behind the scenes, but they're too afraid to say it publicly. But does that exist in this scenario? Or are they really all in, you know, even on the issue of protecting a notorious pedophile? You have to be in a cult to think that Donald Trump is completely innocent with regard to Epstein files. Remember that, you know, Trump fought very hard to not have these files released. So some of them are in a cult.

I think they believe that, but I think the majority understand that he is implicated in these files. And I just want to note that during the House Judiciary Committee hearing with Pam Bondi, only two Republicans asked about the Epstein files, Thomas Massey and Chip Rory. Every single other Republican avoided that issue, and that tells you all you need to know about the state of the Republican Party. Yeah, I think that's perfectly put. We'll leave it there. Congressman, I appreciate your time on this. Thank you so much. Thank you.

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So we have some big news today as it looks like the Streisand effect is back in full force with, you know, James Talerico having appeared on the late show with Stephen Colbert, only to find out that it wasn't able to be aired on the broadcast, on the linear broadcast, had to be relegated to YouTube because of some concerns about the federal government investigating Stephen Colbert as he's doing with the view. So can I have your reaction to that news that sprouted up today? Oh, so many. One is, hey, Trump administration, there's a thing called YouTube and you cannot shut it up, right?

There's a thing called, there's all ways of getting information out these days and it's changed rather drastically. And if you wanted people to watch less broadcast news, you're doing a good, you're making good faith effort here to get people to stop watching broadcast news. One of the things are broadcast, the broadcast itself. And so one of the things that really kind of, it's not a surprise because the Ellisons are desperately trying to buy Warner Brothers and they're doing anything they can to suck up to President Trump and Brandon, Brandon Carr, who is probably the most incompetent FCC had, I've ever seen and I've covered it for 30, 35 years, essentially. And so he threatened them. He threatened the view because they didn't have equal, they're trying to use these equal time provisions for entertainment shows, essentially, pretending their news shows. shows, which has also been brought under question for many years. And so they're trying to do that.

And they look like chumps and idiots. And of course, the Ellisons look like the world's most enormous suckups. But they're already, we're looking like that already. Well, I mean, isn't there a world where, okay, Stephen Colbert. And I'm not super familiar with this because in my lifetime I haven't seen this deployed. But is there a world where Ken Paxton, where the Colbert show invites on Ken Paxton, for example? Yeah, I told, when the view happened, I texted one of those and they said, just invite on that idiot Brandon Carr and run right over him because he's not very smart. And you'll be able to do that, ladies. You know, yeah, they could invite whoever they want. We try really hard, by the way, even though we're not bound by these rules to put on all kinds of people we disagree with. They certainly could bring on anybody that had of the FCC. They could ask Trump to come on. And I think in making the good faith effort to do so would be just as well. It's a question of whether that another person, is going to accept, right? Ken Paxton might not accept. John Corwin might not accept. It doesn't have to be

equal to James. It has to just be that you're having, you made the good faith effort to do so. Well, isn't there any acknowledgement from the Ellison's, for example, that in doing this, like, look, CBS's audience is not, is not these, like, right-wingerers who Ellison is, is pandering to? It's just not. And so isn't this, isn't this eliminating his own audience for the product that he's buying right now? Well, look, I guess they don't care because Colbert's going off the air in May. And by the way, I think he's going to be bigger than ever. Look at Don Lemon, like bigger than ever, right?

And doing rather well. Yeah. Fight the arrest. I think it's really kind of short-sighted to be doing what they're doing. Although the only thing I can think of now is they're trying to wreck to drive the, in all their selections, their editorial direction selection, their treatment of CBS News employees. They want it to be wrecked. They want to clean it out.

They can rebuild it and whatever they want to do. And so far, it seems like they're trying to do a low-rent version of Fox News. And I hate to pay Robert Mark a compliment, but that's a pretty good product for his audience. And I think they want the OG, screaming misinformation from the Fox News people. I mean, what about the Streisand effect being in play here? Because we've already seen this backfire once when it came to Jimmy Kimmel, where Brendan Carr, to your point, tried to pull Kimmel off the air. And his next episode was like the most viewed episode.

that he ever had. And so is there some sense that the administration's not learning their lesson here? I don't have to the administration. These are private companies. Like the administration's going to do what it does. It always does this. It's trying to pressure press. It's trying to pressure the media. It's trying to pressure corporate owners. It's the Ellison's that are at fault here. Let's just be clear. The Trump administration does that has done this forever, right? They always try to put pressure on. And however means necessary, it just happens to be their, you know, their incompetent tool at this moment. emphasis on Tool is Brandon Carr, that's what he's going to do. You know, it doesn't, like anything intelligent from this person, it would be a shocker

and a surprise. So I think it's really the Ellison's response, which would be, you know, Stephen, will you also ask to Ken Paxton? That's a perfectly legitimate question. And maybe he should. That would be, I would watch the hell out of that, right, if Paxton would agree, or whoever, whoever's running. There's probably a whole spate of people running, or at least make the attempts to have

them on there. So I think you put this squarely in the Ellison's department. I just, look, it's sort of the Trump administration has been doing this and they continue to do this kind of pressure on these companies. And the question at this point is not the Trump administration, which is heinous enough, but the companies that are cooperating. And this group, this ownership group is particularly craven in the way they're doing. Kara, can we just like zoom out a little bit? Sure. What is your reaction to like an administration? that swept into power amid these promises of reversing the censorship being being done at the hands of these communist, Marxist, Democrats, only for the actions that we're seeing right now to supersede anything that we could

have possibly imagined under a Democratic administration. They're liars. I don't know what else to say. They never had a commitment. Neither did a lot of these groups that said they did, like Elon or everybody else. They didn't have a commitment to the, they had a commitment to their First Amendment right. and able to mouth off. But anyone else who disagree with them,

look, they're trying to get tech companies to hand over anti-ice stuff, people who are doing anti-ice stuff so they can investigate them? What, for just not liking ice? I mean, come on. This is an administration that is committed to the suppression of information,

committed beyond belief, what they're doing, and using the levers of power they have for now. And let me just tell you, someone like Brandon Carr's going to have, he's going to have a proctology exam if the elections go the way most people think it will. I don't know what he's hoping for

to get on the board of what. Like, what's his next move after this? Besides being investigated, and I'll be right in the front row for that. But, you know, that's the problem, is that this only works for so long. But in the attempt to do this, they look stupid because Stephen Colbert

could give a shit. Anderson Cooper could give a shit, right? Like, it doesn't matter. They don't want to be part of whatever's happening here. And so they're just going to, Anderson didn't speak out, but it's obvious what happened there to me from my perspective. And what Colbert has run out of fucks, I don't know, seven, seven, three years ago or something like something like that. And that's his job to do that, too, by the way, to be a tweaker of power. So, you know, the way that I'm, the way that I'm looking at

all of this is like, I'm remembering who decided to capitulate to the Trump administration or worse, be a collaborator with the Trump administration and who decided to stand up? You know, we know the law firms, we know the universities, we know the TV networks, the media conglomerates, and the tech CEOs. How do we treat the collaborators with this administration? Like, there will come a point where there are so few outlets left that have opted not to collaborate with the Trump administration that do you just write off every single outlet? No, they're resisting. It's just corporate media, right? There are lots of people are resisting. And people within those media organizations, are resisting. You see it over and over again. And what's going to have to happen is,

listen, I don't expect my courage to come from businesses. I never did with the tech industry. All they're interested in is making money. Let's be clear. And I've said that. And oftentimes when people come to me, they're like, what are they doing? I'm like, they don't care. And they're like, yeah, but what are they doing? I go, they don't care. They don't care. They care about shareholder value. And until I was actually stopped by one of the big owners of one of these companies, who is not in control of the company, but is a big shareholder. And they said, this is actually bad for shareholders, actually, what they're doing, ultimately, and made a very cogent argument to me about how it's bad.

In this case, it was for Apple. It was like bad for Apple to do this. It's bad for their brand. They look bad. And then, of course, it culminated in Tim Cook's appearance at the Melania documentary. Not good for his brand. Maybe he's taking it for the team. I don't know what's happening with him.

But it's not good all the time. The question is, what do you do about it? I think ultimately these businesses know there is no. They will shift their tone when they need to appropriately. They'll say they're sorry and we'll have to move on. I just think their audiences are dwindling. Look at the numbers at CBS News. Look at the numbers.

You know, look at the numbers very clearly and what's growing and what's not you're growing. You know, my audience is growing like crazy. I think we went up 40% less. It was crazy. Yeah. And so we're small, but we're might. right like that kind of thing and so you're seeing those the other audiences like the Washington Post fall off the cliff right by the decisions Jeff faces made and they can try

they should make a product people want to listen to that's my feeling is like that's how you do well so I don't I don't know if we need to do anything like you know unless it's sort of egregious collaboration like in the case of Carr I'd like to see all his emails I'd like to see like hopefully I'd like to see some discovery he's abusing his his public service job, which is really quite, it's pretty egregious. He was wearing that pin once, but Trump, the whole thing is just kind of silly what's happening with him. But just the fact that CBS is going along and not telling him to go pound sand, go ahead and sue us, investigate us. Let's go. Let's have it. They want to buy that company, so that's why they're doing it. I know that your co-host, Scott,

is going on an unsubscribe spree. What is the-subscribe? I mean, what Scott is saying is, which I have said is this is a coin operated presidency, so let's start to fuck with the coins, right? Let's start to have fewer coins for them to shove in this incredibly corrupt administration. So what is our responsibility as consumers right now if we see a CBS, for example, engage in the behavior that they're engaging in? Well, look, we went on our tour and someone always asked the CBS question. I said to these crowds of thousands of people, I said,

a show of hands of who just watched CBS News. It was almost zero. So I was like, so what are we worried about here, right? Really? The current editorial director is making a bad product worse. That's pretty much what's happening, it seems to me. So I'm not so concerned with that. I'm more concerned with, you know, how we react to reporting it and things like that.

So, you know, for Resist and Unsubscribe, it gives you another tool. You can protest. you can vote. The most important of all of them is voting, of course, in getting to the polls and not letting them take your vote away. I just did a podcast on voter rights and election suppression. You protest with your feet by showing up places. You talk to your representatives. You pressure them. But one of the ways, and Scott has, I think, correctly and quite elegantly pointed out, just stop using their shit. And everyone doesn't have to do the same thing. I think one of the problems, with some of these protests, is either they're too short, which is a day, it doesn't have an effect, or it's,

people don't want to go all the way. So don't. Just do a little bit. Like, I got rid of a bunch of Apple stuff. I had Apple games, I had Apple One, a bunch of stuff. I didn't get up my iPhone.

I mean, and you don't have to judge people. Just do whatever part, but you can do significant damage by just getting rid of, I don't know, pick a streamer, what is Paramount Plus? Get rid of Paramount Plus.

Just get rid of it. You don't like what they're doing to Stephen Colbert? Get rid of Paramount Plus. Watch Stephen on YouTube, right? If you don't like what Google's doing, no, that's free, so you're not giving them money. You know, that happens to be free. Or don't buy anything from their advertisers.

You can actually pull hundreds of dollars off you. And that iterates, as Scott noted, if AT&T was down just 30,000 subscribers, six billion dollars came off their market cap. So tiny little things matter again, and especially with this coin operator president, it only responds to money. That's a very clear signal with Trump. You give money, he does what you want. That's pretty much how it goes.

And so we'll see if it has an effect, but it has to have a sustained effect. And you can go back to them later. By the way, you don't have to do like, I'm not using Amazon ever again. I'm just not using it this month. And in fact, I won't use it next month. and I'll buy it from blank, but local retailers or Walmart, if you like them, you know, nobody's perfect. And if you, you know, perfect, don't make perfect the enemy of the good, right?

You can't be perfect. You need to, you need to just do a small thing. And again, $100 here, $100 there matters a great deal. It's just one tool. Let me just say it's just one tool. I want to switch gears here to Epstein a little bit while we're talking about destroying the reputation. of people. Your reaction to the fact that Donald Trump has engaged in this systematic cover-up that has even drawn the ire of not just his former allies like Marjorie Taylor Green,

obviously Lauren Bobert resisted pressure when he hauled her into the situation room. But now even all these Manosphere podcasters, Sean Ryan, Andrew Schultz, Joe Rogan, are all turning on him based on this issue. Do you think that this thing has staying power? I do. Many, many, many, many months ago. I think it was last year. Scott and I had a really interesting debate, and I said, I think this Epstein thing has legs. And he's like, it'll be one of the next thing and then the next thing. I go, no, no, if you pay attention to the magosphere, essentially, Epstein was a, I called it, I think of time, I called it a load-bearing wall for the whole group.

You can't take it out, and especially with green and others. And I was like, no, no, no, no, this animates them in a way you don't understand. And also, there's a real, real here, away from the Q&on lunacy, there's a real problem. here with men abusing young women, right? Powerful men. And it's a narrative that's got throughout time that's important. And like it's happened over and over again. But this is really significant. And by the way, it cuts across Democrat and Republican. It's, it's, it's, you know, Epstein was really connected. And I, I had experienced him during, in tech. He was always a TED. He was throwing dinner parties. He tried to get me to go to his house. He was trying to, like, he was with the tech people. And I thought, oh, wow, this is, you know,

the time was interesting, especially since he'd been convicted the first time. This was before the 2019 arrest. And so I just felt it had, and if you pay any attention to the Magistphere, you know how important the Epstein issues were. And so I never thought it was going to go. I still don't think it's going away. It's not going away until all their files are released. And there'll be various different effects on different people, like Casey Wasserman is getting real pressure. He's thinking of selling the agency. There's more pressure for him to resign from the Olympics. In his case, look, he was there in 2003, which is before any of the arrests. So is that fair? I don't know. It's up to anyone to decide what the Chapel Rhone doesn't want to affiliate with him. Fantastic. It's whatever that artist wants to do. In the case of others, like Kathy Rundler from Goldman, it was just too much. She was too familiar with him. It was bad timing. Goldman didn't want to deal with it. You could argue that she was just doing trying to get business. Well, it doesn't matter. This is whatever Goldman wants to do. they should decide what they're going to do.

And so it's going to have repercussions all over the place, especially in the business sector. And as Scott has argued, we both argued, whoever deserves to be criminally indicted needs to be fucking criminally indicted. Like that should be the top thing. And they have the Justice Department and has dropped the ball here, this current Justice Department particularly because they have more opportunity to do something now. So criminally indictments, then there's a stack ranking of everybody else, right? Like how bad was it? Was it here? And then it's up to the various groups to decide, like private groups to decide what they think was too much, which was too much affiliation, which was just, I was at a party he was at, or else like you have the Howard Lutnik test who lied about it, like went out of his way to talk, to give him to drape himself in virtue. We talk about virtue signaling. And then it turns out he had lunch with him. Like that's just mendacious liars. And that's true.

should note he didn't do anything wrong, but he's a mendacious fucking liar. That's what. And by the way, like this, the administration is in a position where, where they could do something about it. They released this list of a bunch of people that were contained within the files the other day, but purposefully included all of the people who had passing mentions with co-conspirators because they were trying to muddy the waters and people are smart enough to see what's going on. It doesn't work.

And I think one of the things that actually, someone pointed out to me quite correctly with Donald Trump was that he wasn't just trying to muddy was if he's in a group of people and he can slip out with everybody else, that works for him. This is actually good for him because he's still the focus. Doesn't matter. He's the president. He's still the focus. He was obviously friends with this guy for a very long time and he's lying about when and where he broke up with him, whatever. He may have clocked him. That's fine. Who knows? But let's let the files come out and find out, right, instead of covering them up. But what he's doing is he's, you know, when you're, go with the crowd, you'll get in, right? That kind of thing. Like go walk behind the

crowd. And so people are trying to escape if you're focusing on like a Howard Lutnik or someone else, you're not, or Larry Summers or et cetera, et cetera, you're not focusing on him. And so every minute that you're not focusing on him and these files are full of stuff to focus on and worthwhile to be focused on, you don't focus on him. So that's the chaos. Chaos is his favorite agency here. And so that's what I see. see what he's doing. And he uses online to do that, you know, getting to something I actually know about what he does is he's a fantastic propagandist. And so what he's doing is creating, not just don't use the term of distraction. He's creating chaos in order for you to go like this,

because it's all worth looking at by the way, not as if it's not. I mean, the putting Sharon, I guess, like, it's just, I think just pamper on me stupid. That's, that's, that's, I'm coming, you know, I know everyone's like, oh, she's mend, she's not just mendacious. She's evil. all this and that. I think she's just bad at which she's a bunch. She's just a tool for Trump. That's it. And that's why she's there. Not because she's strong, but expressly because she's a loyalist. She's obviously in a cult. I mean, I think, I think Marjorie Chalachian pretty much clocks it. They're incompetent cultists. And it's not going to, I have other fights to fight. And believe me, I don't agree with her on almost anything. But she's absolutely correct is that they're like,

they're just like trip. It's like watching a group of people trip downstairs, except you're in the way and you get pulled down with them, right? The rest of our country does. Highly recommend for anybody who's listening or watching right now to check out Pivot Podcast or on with Kara Swisher. If you subscribe for Scott, he'll make him happy. That's it. That's it.

Kara, thanks as always for the time. I'm joined now by the Attorney General of Minnesota, Keith Ellison. Thanks so much for joining me. Hey, good to see you, Brad. Good to see you. Good seeing you too. So there is a new announcement from the FBI that they've formally notified the BCA, so state investigators in Minnesota, that they're not going to provide the BCA with any access to information or evidence that was collected in relation to the death, the shooting of Alex Preti.

So what are next steps for the BCA now, given the fact that clearly the FBI's goal in all of this is just to shut the BCA out so that they can, you know, call this thing a wrap and make sure that there are no consequences for this ICE agent? Well, there are clearly next steps to be had. Before I mention those next steps, let me just mention this is unprecedented. We are quite, quite prepared and have been working with federal law enforcement for literally decades. There is absolutely nothing new. It is routine for us to work together on a file together at the same time. And so for them to take this position is novel, it's new, and it raises serious questions around what do you plan on doing? And so I'll talk about the next steps because certainly there are several, but I don't want people to slide past a moment.

You know, anyone watching your show might think, well, is it normal for the FBI just to exclude state investigators? No, it isn't. It's unusual. It's weird. And it feels like they're trying to cover something up. that's what it feels like to be. Now, to your question, look, we can take them to court. That's lawfully, that's a, that's something we can do. And I, I don't want to be announcing what we're going to do because then people say, well, when and this, you know, the, once you can say exactly what you're going to do, then you kind of telegraph what you're going to do. And I'm not prepared to do that today. But I can tell you that we've been meeting, working, working, on it. We're not going to stand for it. And I want you to know, and anybody listening to

show, there's no way that the Minnesota Attorney General's office of the Hennepin County Attorney's Office is going to let this go. We're going to get to the truth and get justice. Flat out, that's what there is to it. Now, you know, they can try to delay things, but they can't ultimately stop things. The only question is, why would they even want? to. And so I'll leave it right there. Yeah, I mean, in terms of why they would want to, I think that that's abundantly clear. Every member of this administration has been trying to pre-clear every ICE agent for everything they've done because they want these people to feel like they can act with impunity. And so, which I guess raises this next question, what if there's evidence, for example,

that was destroyed or tainted by the federal government before state investigators got the opportunity to get their hands on it. Well, that would, of course, be bad, but it's not fatal to the case, right? There's a lot of existing evidence. I mean, at the end of the day, at the end of the day, when you're a prosecutor, you want all of the evidence, all meaning all, so that you can make a decision about charging. If you decide to charge, and again, at this point, it would be irresponsible for us to make that announcement. But if that were to happen, theoretically, we want to make sure that there's probable cause to either charge a matter out via complaint or charge it out via grand jury.

And so that might exist now with evidence that's already out there. Right. Now, here's what I want to say, though. So somebody watching the show, I said, well, why did you just charge it now? Because charging the case and actually getting a conviction to two different things. and if you charge a case out based on the probable causes you have now, you may find out later on that there are things that you wish you would have known. Now, that doesn't mean you wouldn't charge.

It just means you have the whole file and you can see it all the way through to what you believe the just outcome is. So I want everybody to know because everybody wants to know, when are these people getting charged? And I know that you want to know, but we cannot operate on the urgency of the moment. We've got to be looking at the conviction, if that's where we end up.

And so not having the file leaves the door open for defense counsel to be like, well, they didn't have this. They didn't have that. And kind of just poke holes in the case where what we want to do is have a case that doesn't have no holes to poke. in terms of the the the dhs shutdown right now dhs has not been funded that's the one agency that hasn't been funded democrats are holding out to to um funds that agency until certain conditions are being met from your vantage on the state side what would be most helpful in terms of in terms of

conditions that need to be met um you know obviously having dealt with with the these these fatal shootings of rene good and Alex prety no Number one, a rule in place that where there is a state interest, the state will be involved in a joint prosecution and an independent investigation. Yeah. Where there's a state interest, the state has to be involved. And guess what? The states get to watch the feds. The feds get to watch the state keeping everybody honest and up board and on the table.

And so that would be one. Number two, eliminate the Kavanaugh exception to. to racial profiling. This has done tremendous damage to America. I believe Kavanaugh's little quip there was unconstitutional. He tried to fix it in a later decision, but even then he's about internal as opposed to on the border. It was bad ruling from the beginning.

It was the shadow docket statement that he made. And I believe green lit a lot of harm that has happened to people across our country. That's two. Number three, there must be normal police protocols on people who say their police. So ICE runs around with police on, written all over. Well, that means no mass. That means body cams. That means identification, name plates, numbers. That means that you have not 47 days of training, but real training, including de-escalation, racial profiling, and all the rest. And so those are just three. I can keep on going.

But let's just start there. And there, of course, are more. But I think that ICE is absolutely, ice and border are totally out of control. They are totally out of control. They are not dealing with the worst of the worst. they are, they're abusing people who have, who actually have legal status within the United States, but may not have permanent status. So I was at an interesting back and forth with some U.S. senators who didn't want to have the United States continue to deal with its treaty obligations for assailees,

which I found shocking. But if you were having a asylum petition and a work permit, you have every right to be. of the United States. Are you on thinner ice than somebody with another kind of status? Of course you are. But you are not an undocumented person. But, you know, ice can pick you up and say, that's over out. And these are the things we've got to come to agreement on. They cannot mess with people who have a status. We're going to have to have everybody gets their due process rights. And so that's going to have to be locked in as well. And, you know, the use of guns. These people, they know how to shoot them, but they don't know how to not shoot them.

And we need folks who understand de-escalation, proper handling of firearms. Can you talk for a moment about qualified immunity? Can you give a brief explanation of what it is and how that needs to be reformed in light of what we've seen? So there's a lot of kind of immunities, right? There's two that I think are relevant right here. when you sue and are seeking compensation, there is a form of qualified immunity that says, and it's, by the way, no legislature passed this. Congress did not do this.

This is based on a case I think it's called Fitzgerald versus Harlow. And in this case, the judge just said, a public servant, a federal employee, won't be liable unless there's a case signaling to them that what they just did is not that you would be held liable for it. So if it's sort of something that there's no case on, the courts have said that they get a pass because they weren't duly notified. Now, this is complete garbage.

Why? Because you have laws, you have statutes, you have all kind of reasons. for people to be on notice certain things they cannot do. But this qualified immunity stands as something of a bar for civil liability if there's not a case on point now. That doesn't mean that people aren't going to be held accountable. People are held accountable every single day. You cannot shoot people when you don't have any reasonable basis to do so. There are a lot of reasons that you can get through, but there is a lot of bad conduct that gets shielded by,

qualified immunity. Now, there's another kind of qualified immunity. And this is under the Supremacy Clause, and this has to do with a state criminally prosecutes a federal agent. There is a qualified immunity premised on the Supremacy Clause that says this. Look, if you are a federal agent doing your job and doing what is necessary and proper in the performance of your job, you have an immunity from state criminal prosecution. So if you're driving it, if your job is to drive a truck and you're a federal worker and you run and you get into an accident, it's, you know, it wasn't necessarily your fault. It wasn't intentional. You could say it was necessary and proper for me to drive the truck and I did what was necessary and proper, meaning I tried to obey the laws

of the road. So that's your defense. You have a defense there. Now, what if you, you, see somebody who you don't like because of their race, and you decide to use that state vehicle, that federal vehicle, to run them down. That's not necessary improper to do your job. Or let's say that somebody, theoretically speaking, is at a protest.

You knock them to the ground, pull their legally and lawfully possessed firearm off their body, so now you know they're not armed, and you shoot them 10 times. Maybe that's not necessary and proper for the performance of your duty. So my point is, and I'm speaking theoretically now, but what I'm saying is,

just because these immunities are in place does not mean that these folks are going to escape responsibility and legal liability. One of them is in the civil context, one of them is in the criminal, but they both just give a public employee some protection in terms of

when they do their job, the way it's supposed to be done. But when they deviate from that, They have to stay, they have to face the music. Have you dealt with any other state AGs in terms of figuring out what the best way to collaborate is so that you're not just reinventing the wheel every single time? I mean, ICE is going to, you know, not just Minnesota. ICE has gone to my state of California. They've gone to Chicago.

They've gone to Portland, gone to Washington, D.C. And so it doesn't, we don't need to reinvent the wheel every single time if there's abuses at the hands of ICE. And so what kind of collaboration has taken place among attorneys. general. Well, let me tell you, we meet on the phone at least two, three times a week. Our staffs are talking constantly based on their subject matter areas. And I mean multiple times a week. We have quarterly meetings that we go to where we get together and talk about things. We don't really tell people when we're at those quarterly meetings for security reasons. Yeah. But we do meet face-to-face in a regular basis, and we all know each other and get on the phone on a regular basis.

So the thing is we're talking three or four times a week on Zoom, and we're meeting face-to-face at least quarterly. So we have a high degree of coordination, and it's not just on federal accountability. It could be on antitrust. I mean, a lot of people are concerned about this, you know, the CBS, Netflix, Warner Brothers, Paramount, all that. People are concerned about that. And so we talk about these things amongst ourselves. We also talk about everything from wage stuff to, you know, like how some of the online platforms that, you know, like Uber Lyft, all the rest shipped, all the rest of them. We talked about how those interface with the law as it exists.

We talked about nearly everything under the sun. Consumer protection, women's rights, labor rights. civil rights. We talk about all this stuff all the time. And then we talk to people like you, Brian. We get a lot of incoming advice from folks who care, you know, and we interact with the groups like Norm Eisen's group, you know, Joanna Luggate's group, Mark Elias's group, NWACP, Urban League, Lawyers Committee, the American Civil Liberties Union, And so we try to stay in touch. And then we all go to community meetings constantly.

You know, your average AG, your average elected AG, well, there is a lawyer. But much of the work we do is engage the public and administer the office and give direction to staff lawyers who actually write the briefs and go to court and make the arguments. Well, I appreciate the work you're doing and especially in conjunction with some of these groups like, you know, ELG. and Democracy Defenders Fund and ACLU and all those other groups. So thank you for doing that work and for staying on top of this stuff, especially as it relates to the abuses at the hands of ICE. And I appreciate you taking the time today. Well, may I just say, man, free independent media podcasters like yourself,

you guys are helping the people know what's going on. They trust you. They're listening to show. I listen to the show. And if you want to know what's up, you got to listen to this show. I appreciate that. Thanks so much. Thanks again to Ted Liu, Kara Swisher, and Keith Ellison.

That's it for this episode. Talk to you on Sunday. You've been listening to No Lie with Brian Tyler Cohen. Produced by Sam Graber, music by Wellesie, and interviews edited for YouTube by Nicholas Nicotera. If you want to support the show, please subscribe on your preferred podcast app and leave a five-star rating in a review. And as always, you can find me at Brian Tyler Cohen on all of my other channels, or you can go to Brian Tyler Cohen.com to learn more.