No Lie with Brian Tyler Cohen - Trump and Bondi pull the ultimate Epstein con

Episode Date: July 20, 2025

Pam Bondi and Donald Trump pull a deceptive scheme to buy themselves some distance from the Epstein fallout. Brian interviews Senator Jon Ossoff about the Epstein files and his latest rallies in Georgia, Texas state Rep. James Talarico about the Republican gerrymander in Texas and his recent appearance on Rogan, and Congressman Jamie Raskin about the discharge petition to compel the release of the files. 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.

Pam Bondi and Donald Trump pull a deceptive scheme to buy themselves some distance on the Epstein fallout and I've got three interviews. I speak with Senator John Ossoff about the Epstein files and his latest rallies in Georgia. State Representative James Talerico about the Republican gerrymander in Texas and his recent appearance on Rogan. And Congressman Jamie Raskin about the discharge petition to compel the release of the files. I'm Brian Tyler Cohen and you're listening to No Lie. So I'm going to make this as simple as possible to understand.

Donald Trump and Pam Bondi just coordinated to straight up con their own base into thinking that they're seeking transparency with Epstein when in fact they are doing the polar opposite. We can all agree that the calls to release the Epstein files have hit a fever pitch. Trump can't escape it. He's dissembling. His always successful strategy of manipulating the media is falling flat for the first time ever. His excuses are all over the place from claiming that the files don't exist to claiming that they do exist but that they're fakes forced by Obama. And so clearly he needed something to take the heat off of himself. He needed to buy himself time. Enter Pam Bondi.

So Trump takes the truth social and says, based on the ridiculous amount of publicity given to Jeffrey Epstein, I have asked Attorney General Pam Bondi to produce any and all pertinent grand jury testimony subject to court approval. And Pam Bondi replies, President Trump, we are ready to move the court tomorrow to unseal the grand jury transcripts. All very official sounding. They are cosplaying as transparent.

But the only thing that's transparent here is the obfuscation efforts. Pam Bondi as attorney general already has access to the Epstein files, the thousands and thousands and thousands of materials. They're already there if she wants to release them. But she knows she can't because there is clearly something implicating Donald Trump. And so instead, she is pretending that the real treasure here are the grand jury testimonies. Now, first of all, the grand jury testimonies are only a small fraction of what's contained within the files, maybe 5 or 10 percent or something around there. We don't know the

exact number. Second of all, as part of the initial investigation, all of those testimonies already got summarized and are included in the broader file. So she already basically knows what those testimonies say. And third, those testimonies are only related to the crimes of the two people who were convicted in those trials, Epstein and Maxwell. Jeffrey Epstein, Ghislaine Maxwell. We don't need to know about their culpability. One of them is dead and the other is in prison.

We need the other stuff implicating the other people, which of course the grand jury testimonies won't tell us, but that's the point. Trump and Bondi don't actually want us to have insight into that stuff. They expressly don't want us to see it. And so instead they're sending us on a wild goose chase running after something that we never asked for. We don't want the grand jury testimonies that incriminate a dead guy and his incarcerated

partner. We didn't ask for that. We asked for the files. But that's what Trump and Bondi are making a big show of giving us because they need to knock everybody off the scent and buy themselves some time. And by the way, the judge might not even grant that request. There are strict rules regarding what grand jury testimonies can even be released and

why they can be released. And Trump and Bondi, again, they know that, but they also know that even if a judge rejects their request, Trump and Bondi can be like, oh man, we tried. If it wasn't for that communist leftist judge, we definitely totally would have been able to give you everything you wanted. And of course, again, Trump and Bondi know that, but that's the point. They need to manipulate the base into thinking that they're getting transparency when in fact all they're getting is obfuscation.

It's becoming increasingly clear that the only goal of this administration is to prevent the release of the files, which is why Trump has leaned on Republicans in Congress to block the release of the files. Not once, not twice, not three or four, but five times in the past week. Twice in the Rules Committee, twice on the House floor, once on the Senate floor. If Trump truly wanted transparency, like he says, he would just release the files. But he doesn't. And so instead, Pam Bondi blocks the release, Congress blocks the release, and they make up excuses to frame their actions as something helpful as opposed to the reality which is

that it's just a sleight of hand. So look, my question for Trump supporters is this, and I ask this in 100% good faith. What's the goal here? Is it tribalism and protecting the leader of the Republican Party at all costs, which by the way is your prerogative if that's what you want to do? Or is it full transparency about what happened with Epstein and accountability for everybody that was involved? Because you can have one or the other, but apparently not both.

Because if that was a possibility, Trump would have released the files already. The fact that he won't really does tell you everything you need to know. Trump came into office with a mandate to expose the people who commit crimes with impunity, this echelon of people who are above the law. Not only is he failing to do that, he is entrenching the very system that he vowed to dismantle. The president sold his supporters a bill of goods, and he's trying to convince you not to believe your lying eyes. Next up are my interviews with John Ossoff, James Tallarico, and Jamie Raskin.

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so much of their credibility, so much of their identity on releasing these Epstein files. There was just a vote in the House and all of the Republicans came together unanimously to vote against advancing this effort to release the Epstein files. Can I have your reaction, first and foremost, to hearing so much about this issue

that they purportedly cared so deeply about, and now when they have the opportunity to actually substantiate what they said and get these files into the daylight, they're the ones who served as the major impediment to it. Yeah, I mean, none of this adds up. And you play a super cut of all of these MAGA figures and officials promising to do this.

Even the attorney general, as recently as a couple months ago, what she was saying to the Congress about having all these files on her desk and getting ready to release them. The president's posts on Truth Social over the weekend, I think really revealed a deep insecurity and almost a panic about the 180 that they're doing on this issue.

And I think that for the president's supporters, this issue of broken promises, whether it's the Epstiles or his promise to end the wars which are still raging or his promise to increase US oil drilling which is declining or his promise to lower prices which are still rising or his promise to be for working people when they're defunding nursing homes and hospitals and clinics to fund tax cuts for the rich, his promise to tackle the national debt, which is exploding. I mean, it's adding up, and I'm hearing it from Republicans in Georgia, that all of the

broken promises are really damaging the president's base and their confidence in this administration. And that's where I wanted to dig into a little bit because you have, the advantage of you being here is that you are a Democrat in a very purple state, but also we have the advantage of being able to see what arguments resonate with folks on the other side.

I mean, you're not in a big blue bastion like New York or California. And so on this issue in particular, is this breaking through? Because I think Democrats largely viewed, you know, the Epstein part is a small piece of what is a broader theme that you've just pointed out there. But is that kind of thing breaking through to his regular base? Are you hearing from people who you wouldn't otherwise have heard from or been able to be effective with as a result of kind of this breakdown of trust?

Well, it's not just the Epstein files. I mean, obviously the changing stories and the obvious lies and the 180 on Epstein is in the headlines right now. But there are a huge number of Republicans in Georgia who have even stated publicly their opposition, for example, to gutting all of the renewable energy and advanced energy manufacturing incentives that have supported Georgia's economic growth, their deep concern about what's going to happen to nursing homes and hospitals and health clinics that have been defunded. And on economic policy, right, where this was supposed to be some kind of new populist

pro-working class GOP, right, that was the whole Steve Bannon model, as they were building this legislation, you started to hear some of those voices within the MAGA movement actually sound the alarm that this was a betrayal of the principles that they had stated on the campaign trail. And there is just, there are not voters in Georgia who wanna defund hospitals and nursing homes to pay for tax cuts for ultra wealthy people. That's not popular anywhere.

Well, I think the most insidious part of this whole effort by Republicans is that a lot of these cuts were purposefully put in and timed so that they would have the least political impact for the political party that passed them. And so a lot of this stuff won't take full effect until after the midterms, for example. Some of it won't even take effect

until after Trump's out of office. Some of the good stuff goes away when Republicans will leave office. So they timed all of this stuff so they can extract the most political benefit or mitigate the most political harm for themselves. And is that something that folks in Georgia are recognizing that even though this stuff might've been timed

so that it wouldn't hurt them, that people are still paying attention to what's going on and then they know the full breadth of what's happening with the Medicaid cuts, with the food stamp cuts, with the rural hospital cuts, with the energy job cuts and so on? Yeah, that's not gonna work. I mean, hospitals, nursing homes, clinics in Georgia

and across the country are already now facing this financial cliff and it ain't that far away. A lot of the nutrition programs start going away pretty much straight away. The lapsing of the Affordable Care Act benefits that help middle-class families afford health insurance premiums will go away next year. So you've got all of this policy that's bad for working families, bad for seniors and kids and pregnant women in rural communities, and all for what?

For a tax cut that overwhelmingly goes to the wealthy. And it just exposes that the corruption in Washington is as deep as ever. I mean, if you go out and ask anybody on the street in Georgia, Democrat, Republican, Independent, you know, what do we really need to achieve to advance our national interests, to help families thrive and flourish and achieve prosperity and health and greater freedom? Like rich people needing more tax cuts is no one's priority, but it's what this Republican Congress and this administration produced because the corruption in Washington is so deep that they almost can't avoid just being

responsive to their donors. Is there a sense from the Republicans or independents who you've spoken with because because the GOP's platform was so focused on on populist promises, right? Lower grocery costs, lower egg costs, lower housing costs, lower rent costs. And they've done the polar opposite. And that's not withstanding all of the other things that they've lied about, whether it's the Ukraine-Russia war, whether it's releasing the Epstein files,

whatever it may be, whether it's ushering in some manufacturing renaissance and instead Donald Trump is engaged in a trade war that's left us isolated on the world stage, is the fact that there was such a blatant kind of bait and switch that took place, is that is that having some impact on the voters that you've spoken with? Because this is like the thing that that Trump and Republicans promised these voters, it is it is so far and away what they're

antithetical to what they're actually delivering on. And I'm wondering like in a media environment where everything is so bifurcated, where it often feels like politics is so, we're all so calcified in our polarization, is that stuff actually breaking through and having an impact? A hundred percent. I mean, look, I've got a lot of Republican supporters and friends in Georgia who express to me privately how upset they are about the way this agenda is being implemented, about the sense of broken promises. And also they recognize that it's a political disaster for the GOP in Georgia to have defunded

hospitals and clinics to pay for tax cuts for the rich. And the flip side of this is that for Democrats and for folks who oppose this administration, I've never seen a level of mobilization and enthusiasm and determination like I am right now. Here in Georgia, where I am the only Democratic senator up for reelection in a state that Donald Trump won, it is the most important Senate race of the midterm elections. The only path out of this spiral into authoritarianism and chaos and corruption means regaining power in Congress. We have to win this race. I am feeling that enthusiasm in Georgia.

We had more than a thousand people come out on short notice in Savannah to that rally last weekend, but I wanna ask your audience to help because they're gonna spend, I think, probably half a billion dollars to try to unseat me. I'm the number one target for destruction by the whole MAGA apparatus, and I need help. And I'm going to put your campaign link right here on the screen and also in the post description of this video.

Highly recommend anybody who's watching right now. Georgia, as the Senator just mentioned, is going to be ground zero for their attacks. And so if you have an opportunity to give, or you know you're gonna give at some point in this campaign cycle, do it early. Because the earlier we have the opportunity to actually get on the airwaves and define Senator Ossoff

before the Republicans have to do it, the better off we'll be. And I wanna finish off with this because we did see so much of an affirmative message from Trump and Republicans as we were heading into 2024. And so often it's felt like Democrats were either pushing an anti-Trump, anti-Republican message or just kind of had some, you know, we'd have Democrats in red states who would just kind of do Republican light. And if

you're gonna do Republican light, you're not gonna energize the base. And if you have a Republican out there, they're probably just gonna vote for a regular Republican instead of a Republican light. And so what is your affirmative message to folks in Georgia as we head toward 2026? I think that there's an even deeper reform and anti-corruption message that we have to take to the nation that I'm taking across Georgia that resonates with Democrats and Republicans and independents, which is that our political system, even before Donald Trump came on the scene, was the most corrupt in the Western world. And the way that corporate money and secret money and billionaire money rule everything

and the way that members of Congress live in fear of these super PACs, that's what has distorted policymaking. So ordinary people can't get ahead. That's why insurance premiums are out of control. That's why drug costs are so high. That's why an ambulance costs $3,000. That's why the housing market's overrun with hedge funds and private equity funds. It's the corruption in our political system, especially post Citizens United. And for us to be able to deliver for working in middle class families across the country, we have to reform this broken, corrupt political

system. And I think that we can build a very broad coalition to get that done. Well, I appreciate the time today. And again, a reminder for everybody watching, Senator Ossoff is one of the most important voices that we have in the Senate and certainly represents generational change in a way that very few people in the Senate do.

So if we have the opportunity to contribute to his campaign, help him stay there, I'm gonna put the link right here on the screen and also in the post description of this video. If you're listening on the podcast, it'll be in the show notes. Senator Ossoff, thanks so much for taking the time. Thank you. Thanks for having me.

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Go to strawberry.me.b.t.c. to claim your $50 credit and get started. That's strawberry.me.b.t.c. Stop settling. Start building the career you actually want. I'm joined now by Texas state representative James Tallarico. Thanks so much for taking the time. Thanks for having me. So we know that there is this special legislative session that was called by Greg Abbott in Texas to basically to to gerrymander the state's maps even further. Gavin Newsom out here where I am in California, has responded and

basically said, if Texas goes ahead with this, then we're going to seek to retaliate here in our state. And so now this is going to basically spark off a new cycle where, you know, the maps are going to be gerrymandered even further in multiple states across the country. First and foremost, can I have your reaction to the fact that this might happen now in California to counteract what Greg Abbott is doing in Texas and to ask if that's having any impact on what the Texas Republicans are thinking? Well, I'm here at the state Capitol this weekend preparing for this special session that starts on Monday. And we should be coming together at the state Capitol to talk about flood relief for the victims in the Hill Country and across central Texas. We should be coming together at the state capital talk about flood relief for the victims

in the hill country and across central Texas. We should be talking about how to prevent catastrophes like that from ever happening again. But instead of focusing on the real problems, Greg Abbott is doing Trump's bidding by redrawing the Texas political maps and taking our districts into crazy shapes to guarantee the outcome they want. I mean, the president is attempting to rig the next election. And so I'm, I'm thankful that Texas Democrats, my colleagues here in the state legislature are having conversations about how we can stop this, how we can stand up to Greg Abbott and Donald Trump. But I'm also thankful that folks in other states

are also having those conversations. I mean, we as Democrats can't allow this type of power grab to go forward. We have to stand up, we have to match energy. And so I'm thankful that folks in California are promising to retaliate if Greg Abbott and Donald Trump decide to move forward with this. In terms of the tools that you have, the Texas Democrats have at your disposal, from the

minority, you know, minority parties are generally rendered pretty, pretty weak against the majority party. Is there, is there anything that you would be able to do? Are there any tools at your disposal that you think would actually be effective at blocking what they're looking to do? I do. You know, in the minority here in Texas, we have to use every tool in our toolbox. That's everything from the rules, using the rules to the

best of our ability, using our platforms to raise awareness and organize people. And then, of course, you know, they still need all of us to make quorum and be able to conduct business. And so there's a whole range of options at our disposal for how to confront this. And I think my colleagues and I are trying to figure out what that looks like. And honestly, we haven't even gaveled in, we haven't even seen what the maps would look like.

I think we wanna go through some of these steps before we decide what tool to use. But regardless of our strategy, I hope that everyone, whether you're a Democrat or an independent or Republican, realizes the danger of politicians silencing our voices and attempting to steal the next election. I mean, you know, Brian, you've done some great coverage on the big, beautiful bill, but I mean, this was the largest transfer of wealth in American history, kicking millions of people off their health care to fund tax cuts for billionaires. They know that's unpopular, but they think they can insulate themselves from the voters with this type of power grab. And if they succeed here in Texas, they're going to do it in red states

across the country. They're going to rig the 2026 election. And if that happens, they'll never have to fear the voters ever again. Right. They can enrich themselves and their donors with no consequences, with no accountability. And that really is going to the heart of our democracy. And I hope that's an alarm bell for all Americans and all Texans. James, are there any of your Republican colleagues

who recognize that? Are there any Republican colleagues who have enough of a basic respect for democracy that they're turned off by what's happening? Or is this just kind of the next step in the full polarization of our politics that when Donald Trump hands down the, you know, issues the clarion call from up high that Greg Abbott calls in the

special legislative session and every single Republican legislator just kind of walks the plank. Well, I think there are certainly a number of my colleagues who recognize that this is wrong, that it's dangerous. The question is are they gonna stand up and say so? Are they gonna do something about it? You know, I still have hope that that people on the other side of the aisle can have a moment of courage here and do the right thing. I'm not ready to give up on that possibility, but we as Democrats should be prepared for, you know, a scenario where they don't stand up.

And that means that we've got to fight back. So we can't wait on Republican courage. We can hope for it, we can pray for it, but we certainly can't wait for it. And so I'm hopeful that Democrats, both here in Texas and honestly across the country, are going to react to this and meet the moment and stand up to this power grab. Correct me if I'm wrong, but didn't the speaker of the Texas State House get elected with the help of Democrats? Is that correct? That's correct.

So, so isn't there some leverage that Democrats have here in terms of helping this Republican stay atop his position? Wasn't there, is there some basic agreement or understanding that was struck between the Democrats and the speaker to be able, you know, to determine the extent of the abuse or the limits to the abuses of his power that he'll usher in? Well, you know, I think that all remains to be seen. Unfortunately, I don't think a lot of us saw this coming. Maybe we should have. But I honestly didn't anticipate a mid-decade gerrymandering attempt. I didn't have that on my bingo card, unfortunately. But, you know, as you mentioned, here in the Texas House, we still have some shreds of bipartisanship.

And Democrats are a very large minority. A lot of people have this conception of Texas as this deep red state when actually it's a lot more purple than it is red. And Democrats control about 42 percent of the seats in the Texas House of Representatives. So we're a substantial minority. And with those numbers, you can you can cause a lot of chaos. And I would prefer not to do that. I would hope that our Republican colleagues, I would hope the speaker would work with us to prevent this power grab from moving forward.

And we should say, Brian, that if they're going to do this in Texas, because we are increasingly a purple state, by getting greedy, they may draw these districts so thin that we can end up flipping a lot of these districts if 2026 is a good year. So I do know that some of my Republican colleagues recognize that political danger, that by getting greedy, they actually may be handing Democrats an opportunity to win. It doesn't mean this power grab is acceptable. It's incredibly dangerous.

It's an incredibly bad precedent to set and we should stop it. But there may be some unintended consequences if they move forward. Yeah, I mean, look, it's not just it's not just the unintended consequences within Texas, but we spoke about California looking to gerrymander this state that I'm in right now. There are other states that Democrats have that could potentially be weapons on the left. We have New York, we have New Jersey. And so, you know, the greed of Donald Trump and Greg Abbott in this scenario may very well usher in a situation where not only would those maps, those lines be drawn so thin that

Democrats themselves would flip them in a good year, which 2026, at least the polling would suggest, may very well turn out to be. But it could end up leading to a situation where maps in California, in New York, in New Jersey and other states across the country also go much more blue by virtue of these gerrymanders that were done in a retaliatory fashion. And I just want us to pause and recognize that this is not how the system should work. Right. You know, yeah, voters should be picking their politicians, not the other way around. And right now, politicians are attempting to pick their voters by crafting the districts they want

to guarantee the outcome they want. And that's just a fundamental disruption to the democratic process. And again, it insulates politicians in both political parties from accountability, from consequences for their actions. And that again is incredibly harmful to this American experiment. So although we need to match energy and we need to fight back and we need to stand up to these bullies, we should all recognize

that this is not how things should work. This broken redistricting system is the rot at the core of our broken political system and it's why I filed a bill in the last two legislative sessions to create a independent citizen-led redistricting commission in Texas so that we can take the power to draw political districts out of the hands of politicians and put it into the hands of the Texans we seek to represent. So that should be the ultimate goal. We can't unilaterally disarm, unfortunately,

but that should be what we're working toward in the long term. And actually, the unilateral disarmament part is kind of what I want to dig into for just a moment. I believe there is a California assembly member named Alex Lee, he's a member of the Progressive Caucus, came out in defiance of Gavin Newsom's proposal to usher in our own special session so that we would be able to do mid-decade redistricting here as well. And he was against it and basically suggested that if we do this, this will just descend politics into a worse state than we were in before. And I pushed back against this online, suggesting that this isn't us kicking off

a cycle of gerrymandering because we're in it. And Republicans have gerrymandered Ohio and North Carolina and West Virginia and Utah and Florida, and looking to do the same thing in Texas right now. They've done it in Wisconsin. So there are so many states across the country where this has happened, and yet I feel like there's this mentality among Democrats that, that like we have to, so long as we sit atop our moral mountain, even if we're thrusting

ourselves into political obscurity, that somehow, that somehow derives some benefit for us, that we're gonna, you know, I don't know, maybe that that if we act in a certain way that it will be reciprocated by a Republican Party that has thus far shown no desire to reciprocate that if we confer goodwill onto them that they'll reciprocate that goodwill even though they've not done it. And so I'm just curious for your reaction because you know look you're you're a progressive Democrat as well and and I get get the moral stance that somebody could take against this issue. But practically speaking, I'm just curious

how you would respond to legislators here in my state who would be against this. Well, this is a balance we have to strike. Dr. King and the civil rights movement told his movement to have a tough mind and a tender heart and to hold both of those things together. And for me, you know, having a tender heart means knowing why we're doing this, having that moral clarity, knowing what the vision is ultimately that we're trying to get to and not getting lost in the back and forth that we're seeing today. But then having a tough mind means being smart and strategic

and realizing when our politics is already descending in this direction, we have to stand up to those folks who are destroying this American experiment. So we have to do both. We have to remember why we're doing this. We have to remember what we're ultimately trying to get to. We're not just trying to win for the blue team. That is not our goal.

Our goal is to get political power to make people's lives better. That's the ultimate goal. Right. But to do that, you've got to be smart and strategic and tough. You can't lay down. You can't, we've seen that appeasement doesn't work,

especially when you're facing fascism. So you have to be tough. You have to be strong. You can't lay down, you can't, you know, we've seen that appeasement doesn't work, especially when you're facing fascism. So you have to be tough, you have to be strong, but also protect that, that, that moral clarity, that moral compass at the center of our work. That's not easy to do, but we do have to hold both together if we're going to get through this. Literally could not have have said that better. That is exactly right. And I think that has been a problem for Democrats for so long that once we get into power, it feels like we lose our way and

begin defending the processes of government as opposed to remembering why we're there. It is not to defend the filibuster. It's not to defend the status quo. It's not to defend the maps or to defend a system with least change. It's to help people have health care and for women to have reproductive rights and for us to combat climate change and make sure that kids aren't getting gunned down in schools. And so often, you know, far from protecting the institutions of government, those are the impediments. So break those down if it means that you can get closer to what you want to do. But, you know, look, people get into government, you think that, like, I'm here to defend good government. And look, I my whole thing in the lead up to the 2024 election,

perhaps naively and certainly not strategically in retrospect, was to appeal to people's sense of wanting to protect democracy. But really it's not just this nebulous idea of democracy or our institutions that are moving people, it's the things. It's going after, you know, again, healthcare and reproductive rights and climate change and unions and jobs and the pay that they take home

at the end of the day and making sure prescription drugs are affordable, all the things that you actually run for, the things that impact real people. And we have to remember to, you know, not lose sight of that, especially with folks who, you know, get stuck in these political processes and are surrounded by all of it and just kind of, I don't know if it's like beltway brain or whatever you would call that at the state level, but that seems to be what it is. Yeah, too many Democrats are defending the status quo and I understand the desire, especially in this Trump

era, to protect our institutions and our norms. I get all that, but the reason that I'm a progressive, the reason I'm a Democrat is because I want to change things. These systems, these institutions don't work for a lot of people. And if we're not out there articulating a vision of how they should be different, how they should be better, then we end up just defending the status quo. And I'm not interested in doing that because the status quo doesn't work. And you know, Brian, that I was a public school teacher before I ran for office,

and it's the issue I'm most passionate about. And sometimes people in my party end up defending public education as is, but I'm not satisfied with the way our public schools are performing. I'm not gonna be satisfied until our Texas public schools are the best in the country. I'm not gonna be satisfied until every single child

has the ability to fulfill their God given potential. That doesn't mean I want to privatize public education or tear it all down, but I do want to improve it. I want to change it. I want to make it better and make it work for people. So we just got to, we can't fall under the trap of defending broken institutions, broken systems, or defending the status quo. We've got to be the party of change, which is our historical heritage. Right. James, you were on Joe Rogan's show this past week, and that obviously is a space that Democrats have,

there was a lot of coverage, a lot of focus on the fact that Democrats haven't gone into those spaces, haven't been on the same podcast that these Republicans went on, haven't been able to reach the breadth of audience that these Republicans were able to reach by virtue of going on these shows. So first and foremost, I'm curious and I listened to your whole episode and it was great. And not only was it a great conversation, but it seems like Joe Rogan himself, I mean, you

got a ringing endorsement from Rogan and I wrote it down. He said, you're the kind of person I want in politics. And so I feel like, you know, there has been this sense of like fear among Democrats to go into these spaces because they're somehow hostile or dangerous. But I'm curious, in the aftermath of your interview with him, did you have that mentality going in? And what is your mentality now about going into these spaces? I think it's absolutely necessary that Democrats meet people where they're at. You know, before I went on Joe Rogan's podcast, I went on Fox News and I've been on the Christian Broadcasting Network, been on the 700 Club. You know,

I'm trying to go into places where Democrats don't typically go because politics is about addition, not subtraction. So if you just wanna maintain a small, pure, insular group, then you don't want a political party, you want a social club and that's fine. But if you want a political party that can win and gain political power to make people's

lives better, you have to create a winning majority, a winning coalition. And that should include a lot of Joe Rogan's listeners. I mean, I sat down with Joe for two and a half hours and there was so much common ground, so much that we agreed on. We both agreed that the political system is broken. We both agree there's way too much influence from big money and billionaire mega donors. We both think that there should be more freedom and more opportunity for more people. I mean, that is a lot of common ground.

I'm not saying we agree on every single thing, but I do think we agree on the big stuff. And so if Democrats aren't going on to these shows and speaking to these listeners directly, then we run the risk of folks not hearing about our values and hearing about our vision. And that's a real danger, as we saw in the last election. So I'm going to keep going into these places. I'm going to keep sharing why I do this work and why I'm a Democrat and why I think we need change in this country. And hopefully we will see the fruits of that in 2026.

Did you hear from anybody in the aftermath of your appearance that maybe somebody who is in the center or on the right or just somebody who didn't vote for you, somebody who doesn't vote for Democrats, who is more willing to be open to Democrats or who just straight up said, this is, you know, this has changed my perspective on politics altogether. I can't tell you, Brian, just in the last minutes, this episode came out not even, you know, 24 hours ago, and I've already been inundated both on social media, but also here in our Capitol office with calls and emails and messages from Republicans and independents who listened to the episode

and said that they found a lot they could agree with and were very thankful that they heard from this different perspective. It's a little strange to have folks on Twitter with MAGA stuff in their profile picture saying nice things about you. But I do just fundamentally believe that that our politics is, is, is not really left versus right, but top versus bottom. You know, I just think that we are all getting played here by these,

these billionaires and special interests that are dividing us on purpose. I mean, the culture wars in a lot of ways, are a smoke screen. These divisions are manufactured, they divide us by race, by culture, by gender, by religion, to keep us from seeing all that we have in common, to keep us from realizing that there is far more

that unites us than divides us. Because once we do realize that, then we're gonna come together across party lines, across racial lines, across cultural lines, to take power back from the billionaires who are pitting us against each other. And that's the real threat to the people in power. You know, the one small irony,

and I know that you just pushed back against the culture wars, and you're right to do that. The irony of the Epstein stuff is that a lot of Trump's base decided to vote him in his own warts notwithstanding because they believe that he would be the person to expose this systemic corruption that would allow somebody like Jeffrey Epstein and all of his clients who, you know, are thus far unnamed to get away with heinous crimes. And yes, it's his heinous crimes, but also it's what he represented. It's an entire echelon of people who are unaccountable, who are bound by a different system of justice, a different tier of justice. And so they wanted him to come in because they

thought he would be the person to expose that systemic corruption, to break it down. And the irony now is that, in fact, he's the one entrenching it by by, of course, refusing to release the Epstein files. But when you when you talk about like this, this top versus bottom, it's not left versus right, it's top versus bottom. That is the ultimate irony. And what we're seeing very much be the I don't want to say downfall because, you know, I think that would just be too convenient.

But a major splintering of Trump's own base is that that's what he ran on. And yet now he's entrenching the very system that he promised to break down. Well, and you can't blame him because, I mean, that's what Donald Trump and JD Vance and all these people told these folks that- Of course, yeah. That folks that they were going to do.

And so, you know, I know that the appeal of Donald Trump is that he's not a typical politician. I get that. You know, I do find it, even as a Democrat, I find some of the ways that Donald Trump speaks, you know, to be a little refreshing because he doesn't sound like the typical poll tested, consultant driven politician. And so I get why that was appealing. But now that he's in office, you see that, you know, he's cutting taxes for himself and his rich friends. He's kicking his own voters off their healthcare and off food assistance.

And he's not even releasing, you know, the Epstein files that can shed some light on this issue. And so I think that ultimately actions speak louder than words and I hope that people are realizing that Donald Trump is a con man, always has been, always will be. He says the right things, he pushes the right buttons, but ultimately when it comes down to it, he's going to protect himself and his powerful friends. And I hope that's a realization for folks. But we as Democrats have to provide an alternative. And what we're providing right now, what we're offering to voters is not going to cut it. So our party has to have some deep introspection about what

went wrong, how we need to be different, how we need to get back to our roots of fighting for regular people. And only when that happens are we going to be able to turn this country into a better and more healthy direction. Perfectly put. As always, James, I'm grateful for the work you're doing reaching other audiences, getting out of the usual liberal bubble in our bifurcated media ecosystem. So grateful for the work you're doing to reach other people right now, and as always, for your voice. James Telerico, I appreciate your time. Thanks for having me.

I'm joined now by Congressman Jamie Raskin. Thanks for joining me. I'm psyched to be with you, Brian. So we have just found out that Donald Trump and Pam Bondi are asking a judge to release the grand jury testimony. This is not the Epstein files. This is something completely different, really, that no one is asking for. You have you have thousands upon thousands upon thousands of files. They opted not to have those, even though they're already in their possession

and are instead saying, we're gonna go through this lengthy process that may or may not work out, where we're gonna get some testimony that we can then choose what to release from within that testimony, if a judge even opts to grant it. So for those Trump supporters,

and honestly, left, right and center, people who want this information, are they being conned by virtue of what Trump and Bondi are offering them right now? Well, no, because I don't think anybody's buying it. I mean, I think you just did a great job debunking it. The only thing I would add is that the the grand jury files relate only to the prosecution of Epstein himself for what he did and of Maxwell for what she did, but it doesn't include the whole universe of other people and criminal organizations and business organizations

that we're interested in. But isn't that the whole point? Isn't that what we're looking for here? It's a complete distraction. It's a red herring. It's a oh, don't look over here. Look over there kind of thing. And even for that tiny subset of the materials we might be interested in and they're pretty much peripheral, but even within those rule 6E will provide

that much of it will have to be redacted to protect victims and other people. So look at all of that is just a decoy. They've got the materials within their possession and they can release everything just redacting the information that would be identifying information for the victims, which is the only thing that should be redacted. And that's what the Democrats have been asking for. All we're saying to Donald Trump is be true to what you've been asking for for years. Release the information in the possession of the government.

And so can you talk about what efforts, knowing full well that all he wants to put forward is this decoy. What can Democrats do? What are Democrats doing right now to compel this information? And I ask this because we've seen multiple efforts where Democrats have sought votes in the House, both in the Rules Committee, on the House floor,

even the Senate floor, to compel the release of these files. And two times in the Rules Committee, Republicans voted it down. Two times in the House, Republicans voted it down. One time in the Senate, at the hands of Ruben Gallego, Republicans voted it down. And so, what are our options here moving forward? Well, we've also in the Judiciary Committee, the Democrats have demanded a full bipartisan hearing where we subpoena all of this information and we subpoena witness testimony from Attorney General Bondi, from FBI Director Cash Patel,

from the Deputy Director Dan Bongino. So they come forward and everybody tells us everything they know about this whole nightmarish scenario. So that's one thing we can continue to press that. Now Chairman Jordan's answer was, well, yes, we're going to have her in to talk about everything, implying therefore we can ask about those questions. All right. He said before the end of the year. And then when we were saying, this is ridiculous, we're

not waiting till December, people started saying September, we could do. So who knows? We'll keep pressing on that. But here's the other thing. I got to salute my counterpart over in the Senate who's the ranking Democrat on the Senate Judiciary Committee, Senator Durbin, who has discovered apparently from a whistleblower, I'm not quite sure how, but that you remember they had actually conscripted a thousand FBI agents

to be working around the clock 24 hours, going through more than a hundred thousand of these Epstein documents in the files, and apparently told them to flag any mentions or appearances or pictures of Donald Trump, anything that appears there of Donald Trump. They're appears there of Donald Trump, they're supposed to flag it. Well, what were they supposed to do after they flag it? And we also heard separately, this was a couple of weeks ago,

that the FBI Director, Cash Patel, was using lie detector tests against the FBI agents. And I wonder whether these two things are related to each other. In other words, somebody finds something relating to Donald Trump, they turn it over. Are they then asked, are you loyal to Donald Trump? Will you do what we ask you to do? Are you going to turn this over to anybody else? This might be one of the most massive coverups in the history

of the United States unfolding before our very eyes because Donald Trump is obviously freaked out about some stuff that's in there. Right. And then the idea that you create this army with an FBI to scrape through everything, just looking for mentions of Donald Trump is quite unusual and fascinating. Yeah. I mean, what does it say? Look, I'm no political genius here, but what does it say when you have to conscript a thousand people to scrub through these documents, all who answer to Donald Trump to search for Donald Trump's names, to search for Donald Trump's name within

these documents? It probably doesn't send the message that you think it's sending. It's worth asking too here. A lot of the pushback to all of this stuff is, and Trump has said this too in so many ways, granted he's kind of muddled his own message because he's also claiming that all of this is a hoax written by Biden, Comey, and Brennan, and Obama. So kind of his message is whatever errant synapse fires in his brain at any given moment in time. But if there was a mention of Donald Trump in these files, why the Biden administration wouldn't have released it previously. So I'm curious what your response is on that

because it's a talking point that we I mean, it's a pretty unconvincing talking point because Trump is the president right now. He ran on this, but I'm still curious what your thought is on this. In other words, okay, well, let's start with this. Up until Donald Trump, everybody tried to respect the independence and the integrity of the Department of Justice. Up until Donald Trump, nobody was telling

the Department of Justice what to do. And the Department of Justice under Biden brought the prosecution against Maxwell. So obviously Biden wasn't trying to suppress anything. The GOP stories today make no sense. They're totally conflicting. They're saying on the one hand, Biden and Obama made all of this stuff up

about Donald Trump, but then they never released it. Why did they make it up if they never released it? And then they say to us, after Donald Trump campaigns on this, that there's all this stuff in there that he knows about, and he should know, considering he was Epstein's best friend for more than a decade, that it all should be released. After they're campaigning on it, we say, fine, let's go ahead and release it. You seem to know there's all this

stuff in there. And then all they say, no, why didn't you release it? I mean, it just, it makes no sense what they're saying. They're just pointing fingers in a hundred different directions. The bottom line is here's what we do know. Epstein was a convicted sex offender. There was a 60 count federal indictment waiting for him. And then Donald Trump's later labor secretary, Alex Acosta, who was then the US attorney for the Southern District of Florida, reduced that 60 count federal indictment on conspiracy,

sex trafficking, prostitution, pimping, all of this stuff, reduced it to one state count of solicitation. That was the sweetest sweetheart deal perhaps in the history of federal criminal prosecution. He gets this tiny gentle, I don't even want to say slap on the wrist, a massage on the wrist where he spends half of the day free, half of the day spending the night in a slumber party at the jailhouse. Okay. And then he also gets a get out of jail free card for four of his unnamed associates who were named and theoretically would have been either indicted or unindicted co-conspirators. Somebody put the fix in for the guy. We want to get to the bottom of that. Then later a federal prosecution starts over again. That's when he's

in jail and that's when he takes his own life. And at that point, a lot of people were asking questions about whether this was truly suicide or not, including Donald Trump. Then it's Attorney General William Barr, Trump's Attorney General, who goes over and says, this is a perfect storm of mistakes and mishaps, but he declares that it was a suicide, even though there was the momentary lapse in the

videotape, which turns out not to have been one minute, but I think three and a half minutes it's since been discovered. There were two people who were assigned to watch his cell who disappeared. So who knows? I mean, at this point, we're in the fog of their conspiracy theory and a very strange sequence of events indeed. So Maxwell gets prosecuted, she's sentenced to 20 years, and then the third co-conspirator in that particular case also takes his own life.

This is the French guy who takes his life. All right, then Trump runs around the country saying, "'We've got to release the complete Epstein file. JD Vance says that, Pam Bondi says that, Cash Patel says that. In fact, it's curious that all of the people who were talking about it, suddenly get put into key positions

in the Department of Justice and the administration. And now they do perform a complete U-turn and they want to sweep the entire thing under the rug. Right. Just as a quick aside, what is the point of the sweetest of sweetheart deals for Jeffrey Epstein when normally these deals are given so that prosecutors can work their way up the ladder so that they can get as close to the big fish as they can?

Epstein was the big fish in this scenario. And so what do you get by, is the whole point to try to get people like him? And so what do you, what benefit do you derive as a prosecutor from Alex Acosta's perspective by giving him such a good deal when he's the person that all the ire should be aimed at?

Well, it suggests the possibility that there was in fact a bigger fish involved who wanted to put the whole thing to bed as quickly as possible. Uh-huh. Because if there were other people that Epstein could be pointing the finger at and looping in as part of turning states evidence in order to get a better deal for himself, those people would have every interest in keeping Epstein on their good side, right? And so, I mean, what's odd about this is that, you know, like many criminals, Donald Trump kept returning to the scene of this crime.

So many of the key actors in this event were put into his administration. So many of the lawyers involved like Alan Dershowitz, who all brokered the sweetheart deal later became a lawyer for Donald Trump. And then Trump campaigned on it. And we've seen how he loves to project onto other people his own anxieties and insecurities. So if he is nervous about what Epstein might say, then he would say, oh, well, the Democrats

are really nervous about Epstein, and we're gonna blow the cover on this when we get in. Right. I gotta ask this because I think we're starting to recognize that it's beyond clear Trump doesn't want these files released, that he is doing whatever he can to make sure that we're not looking at this stuff, offering up whatever decoys he can find, sending us over to the grand jury testimony

while he secretes 95% of the files that already do exist, that already are at Pam Bondi's disposal. Will we ever gain full access to the Epstein files or will it always be that Pam Bondi's disposal, will we ever gain full access to the Epstein files or will it always be that Pam Bondi and by association, by extension Donald Trump will be the final arbiters of exactly what information comes out? Like, are those two people are really the only people

that have the full range of all of the files that exist. And so even if the discharge petition come August or September, when it finally ripens and the House can vote on this thing and it passes, will Pam Bondi ultimately have the final say into what information exactly comes out? Or is there a way to circumvent her

as somebody who could kind of meddle in what comes out so that we can get the full range of the files? The wheel is still in spin, Brian. We don't know the answer to your question. If you look at the Democratic resolution or rather the resolution, the bipartisan resolution, which has been put in by Massey and by Kana. There's a paragraph in there which says we want a complete accounting also of any of the destruction or altering or mutilation or effacement or impairment of different documents.

In other words, we want we want to know we want to see all the documents. And if any of the documents have been altered or changed or removed in Any way we want a record of that too, but but on that point I mean the cop on that beat is Pam Bondi and and and bias by extension Donald Trump who may very well be Implicated in this and so he has every interest in if there is some alteration if there is some destruction of documents He's not gonna say anything because he's the person that that destruction would presumably benefit. And so who's there to be the, like there is,

all of these people are in the pocket of Donald Trump and so who's the cop on that beat? Well, if you look at the history of corruption scandals in the nation's capital, there are always people who are junior people, who are interns, who are staff associates, who are basically invisible and considered menial by the key actors, but they oftentimes come forward

and tell what they know, but I'm with you. I mean, if there's a full blown effort to cover up and certainly mobilizing the army of a thousand FBI agents to go and find anything mentioning Donald Trump's name and then come and bring it to us. And at the same time, we hear that Cash Patel is administering lie detector tests against people in order to determine who's trustworthy and who's not. We have every reason to be afraid that there will be a cover up. But I just have to believe that there's so much information that has come from Florida that's come from New York That's come from other sources

It's come from journalists that some people are going to be able to check them if their plan is just to obliterate the evidence Right and presumably if they had intended on on Altering some information doctoring some information, they would have already put it out there. So there's something that must be blocking them from doing this because I think they probably rightly recognize that if they do try to mess with things and put it out there,

then it becomes an even more obvious cover up. It becomes an even bigger scandal than what it likely already is. And so they're probably just trying to do that calculation now with like, can we get away with this? How much could we get away with? Is it going to be an even bigger scandal? Shine an even hotter spotlight on us if we even try it?

Yeah, because the cover-up imports a whole new set of charges of obstruction of justice and conspiracy. And that takes it to a completely different level. There are just some things that are probably in there that are very hard to permanently erase, including emails, which are going to be very important, I believe, in this case, correspondence and photographs. I mean, you've got Michael Wolf, who's a Trump biographer, who's written four books, I believe, about Donald Trump, who went on a podcast last week and said openly that Epstein had shown him lots of photographs of them together, Epstein and Trump,

and that some of the photos included Trump with topless girls sitting on his lap and laughing and so on. Well, it's hard to make evidence like that go away. And if there are lots of people who've seen it or there might be other copies of it out there, it's hard to make it go away. So you start destroying evidence like that.

You start destroying emails and texts and those things reappear. Then it's become clear that not only were you involved in some way in the original events, but you're trying to cover it up. And you might be better off just making arguments about how, you know, well, yeah, the president may have been in compromising positions.

It might not look good, but he didn't really do anything bad. Meantime, we don't wanna lose sight of what's really going on here, which is this was a human trafficking child sex abuse ring. And the Trump administration as an administration has been doing everything in their power to dismantle the anti-human trafficking,

anti-child abuse programs and funding that we've got at the Department of Justice, at the Department of State, at HHS, in agencies and departments throughout the government. They've been dismantling the funding to combat human trafficking and the people who work on that have been screaming from the rooftops that this is going to be a nightmare. Yeah. If you take America off the field. Yeah, that's, that's an excellent often overlooked point in all of this. Let's finish off with this.

Among your Republican colleagues in the GOP conference, what are these people saying behind the scenes? Because these are people who've staked their reputations and built their brands and spoken openly and proudly about their efforts to take down, you know, this deep state pedophile ring that encompassed the highest echelons of government. Don Jr. spoke about it. JD Vance spoke about it.

They've been talking about it on podcasts with Tucker Carlson and all of their influencers. The president spoke about it from the highest levels of office. And now they find themselves taking vote after vote after vote, secreting this very information, preventing the release of the very information that they themselves put put themselves out there saying that they were going to deliver to their constituents. And so what are these people saying behind the scenes if you have the opportunity to speak to any of them? Well, a couple of them have taken the position with me that, look, this doesn't look good, but

it was all conspiracy theory. And given that it was conspiracy theory, all they can really do is to just let it all hang out and show that there's nothing there. And if indeed it was all conspiracy theory and there are no names of the rich and powerful involved in this exploitative sex ring. They would let it all hang out, but I think others understand what a dangerous territory Donald Trump has entered here,

because he brought all of the attention on this, and the spotlight is now on him. And I don't think they know where it's going to go, but they don't think that he's going to, uh, it's within his character to try to really release anything and disclose stuff. He's just going to try to fight it till the end of his presidency. And you know, he's going to go from talking about, you know, Russia, Russia, Russia, or insurrection, insurrection, insurrection to just talking about Epstein, Epstein, Epstein. Yeah. I mean, I don't know how much. We're about to get a quick lesson

in how potent the use of Biden's auto pen is as a distraction technique. So with that said, Congressman, I appreciate your time today. I appreciate you keeping this in the spotlight and we'll talk to you soon. Thank you, Brian. Hang tough, man. All best. Thanks again to John Ossoff, James Tallarico and Jamie Raskin. That's it for this episode.

Talk to you next week. You've been listening to No Lie with Brian Tyler Cohen, produced by Sam Graber, music by Wellesley 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 5-star rating and a review. And as always, you can find me at Brian Tyler Cohen on all of my other channels, or you can go to bryantylercohen.com to learn more.