The Daily Signal - #524: What's Next for Epstein Investigation

Episode Date: August 12, 2019

What's going to happen in the Justice Department investigation of the death of Jeffrey Epstein? Is there any hope for his victims to get justice yet? And what about the high-profile figures with ties to Epstein? Heritage Foundation's John Malcolm joins us to discuss. We also cover these stories:•The Trump administration is prioritizing immigrants who are less likely to use government welfare programs.•Attorney General William Barr speaks out on Epstein's death.•A California mayor is calling on gun owners to carry insurance, like car owners do. The Daily Signal podcast is available on Ricochet, iTunes, SoundCloud, Google Play, or Stitcher. All of our podcasts can be found at DailySignal.com/podcasts. If you like what you hear, please leave a review. You can also leave us a message at 202-608-6205 or write us at [e-mail]. Enjoy the show! Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This is the Daily Signal podcast for Tuesday, August 13th. I'm Kate Trinco. And I'm Daniel Davis. Jeffrey Epstein's apparent suicide in jail has crushed the hopes of his victims, who will now be unable to confront him in court. So what comes next? Today we'll unpack the unfolding situation with John Malcolm of the Heritage Foundation. Plus, a violent movie about liberals hunting conservatives has been pulled in the wake of mass shootings. We'll discuss. And if you're enjoying this podcast, please be sure to leave a read. review or a five-star rating in iTunes and please encourage others to give it a listen.

Now, on to our top news. Well, the Trump administration has announced a new policy that's likely to restrict the scope of people eligible to immigrate to the U.S. The new policy, known as the public charge rule, would make it easier for the government to reject green card and visa applications if the applicants are expected to need government assistance. Here's what Ken Coutinelli, the acting director of U.S. citizenship and immigration services set on Monday.

Generations of immigrants have strengthened the foundation of our country and making causative contributions today, and we expect that to continue in the future. Through faithful execution of our nation's longstanding laws, President Trump's public charge and admissibility rule better ensures that immigrants are able to successfully support themselves as they seek opportunity here in America. The policy could affect a wide range of potential immigrants. In 2014, 63% of immigrant households made use of at least one welfare program, according to the Center for Immigration Studies.

That's nearly double the rate of usage by native households. The Trump administration is making some changes to how endangered and threatened species are handled. First, if a species is deemed threatened, it won't automatically be given the same protections as a species deemed endangered. Secondly, there will be differences in how critical habitats are established, including that the government will first look at areas where the species currently lives, not where it could live later. Quote, the revisions finalized with this rulemaking fit squarely within the president's mandate

of easing the regulatory burden on the American public. Without sacrificing our species protection and recovery goals, said Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross in a statement. Well, conspiracy theories are about. in the wake of Jeffrey Epstein's apparent suicide. The wealthy financier was in prison pending a trial over claims that he sexually abused a number of minors. His case also implicated high-profile individuals like former Senate Majority Leader George Mitchell, former New Mexico Governor Bill Richardson, and Prince Andrew of the United Kingdom. Epstein was found dead in his cell early on Saturday morning. Attorney General William Barr said he was appalled by the news. Here's what he said on Monday.

I was appalled, and indeed the whole department was, and frankly, angry to learn of the MCC's failure to adequately secure this prisoner. We are now learning of serious irregularities at this facility that are deeply concerning and demand a thorough investigation. The FBI and the Office of Inspector General are doing just. that. We will get to the bottom of what happened, and there will be accountability. But let me assure you that this case will continue on against anyone who was complicit with Epstein. Any co-conspirators should not rest easy. The victims deserve justice, and they will get it. The mayor of San Jose, California, wants to tax gun owners. San Jose, which is the 10th largest city in the United States is near Gilroy, which recently had a mass shooting at the

garlic festival. Mayor Sam Licardo, according to a local ABC news station, KGO, wants to have gun owners carry insurance, just like car owners are required to. Quote, under current Supreme Court rulings, the Second Amendment to the U.S. Constitution protects the right to keep and bear arms. However, the Constitution does not require taxpayers to subsidize that individual. choice. The cost of city police and emergency services required to address gun violence should be paid by gun owners, not all taxpayers, said the mayor, in a statement. Well, protests in Hong Kong continue to escalate as participants have now shut down the city's main airport, resulting in over 100 outgoing flights being canceled and thousands of travelers

being stranded. The Wall Street Journal reports that pro-democracy demonstrators were protesting what they said was police brutality at protests over the weekend. Some of those weekend protests erupted in rioting that was subsequently put down by police. Beijing warned of emerging signs of terrorism in the protests, which have now been going for over two months. The protests began in backlash to a Beijing-backed bill that would allow arrested individuals in Hong Kong to be extradited to mainland China for trial. That bill has been tabled by the Hong Kong government, but not withdrawn. Next up, we'll talk to John Malcolm of the Heritage Foundation about Epstein's death and the investigation into it. Tired of high taxes, fewer health care choices, and bigger government, become a part of the Heritage Foundation.

We're fighting the rising tide of homegrown socialism while developing conservative solutions that make families more free and more prosperous. Find out more at heritage.org. Well, we are joined now in studio by John Malcolm. He is the Vice President of the Institute for Constitutional Government here at the Heritage Foundation. John, thanks for being back on. Happy to be here. So many folks are outraged that Jeffrey Epstein was able to commit suicide, as it appears he did in prison. What do we know at this point about what happened in that prison cell?

Well, we don't know much other than the fact that Jeffrey Epstein died. and although there are a lot of theories that he didn't do so voluntarily. Most people believe that he, in fact, committed suicide. He was in the cell by himself. I gather his cellmate had been removed several hours before he was found dead. The other thing that is known is that this is a guy who was in isolation at the MCC. That's a Metropolitan Correctional Center. He had been on a suicide.

He had a court appearance not terribly long ago in which there were ligature marks found on his neck. And he was on a suicide watch. So he was seeing a psychiatrist daily and there was supposed to be people who were supposed to come by every 30 minutes to check on him. Obviously there would be objects with which he could harm himself that would be removed from his cell. And for reasons that have yet to be explained, he was taken off of a suicide watch. rather shocking, considering the fact that, one, there were indications he'd already tried to kill himself, two, that just a couple of days beforehand, there was a tranche of documents that were released that proved quite embarrassing to the people named in those documents.

It was suggestive that they had had, through Jeffrey Epstein, had sexual encounters with underage, I assume only girls, among the people named. were Prince Andrew and former Maine Senator George Mitchell and, you know, former UN ambassador and New Mexico Governor Bill Richardson. I mean, these were very, very prominent people. So you would think that Jeffrey Epstein would be very depressed about these revelations. And there were all the more reason to keep them under a suicide watch. And to quote Attorney General Bill Barr, it's appalling that he was not. And I'm glad that someone will conduct a thorough investigation to find out what happened.

But, of course, Jeffrey Epstein is now dead and there's nothing that's going to bring him back. So as you alluded to the Attorney General, Bill Barr, has said there's going to be a thorough investigation. He says he's very upset about this. What does a thorough investigation look like? What needs to be investigated here? Well, for one, I assume there'll be several investigations, but he said he's spoken to Michael Horowitz, who's the Department of Justice as an Inspector General. I happen to know Michael Harwitz.

We work together at the Department of Justice. I consider him a friend. And as I've said before, I think that Michael Horowitz is the consummate professional and an incredibly thorough guy. So, look, they will review the protocols. They will review who made decision to take him off of suicide watch. They will review whether anything irregular happened, whether, for instance, he was supposed to get 30-minute bed checks, whether that happened or didn't happen. I assume that they will talk to the guards.

Any inmates that were in contact with Jeffrey Epstein in the days and hours before he killed himself to find out whether he was depressed, whether he told anything to anybody, and they will find out how this could possibly have happened. Of course, the criminal case against Jeffrey Epstein is now over. We don't have posthumous trials or trials in absentia. There's still going to be civil suits that are ongoing by the victims. of Jeffrey Epstein, and now those lawsuits will carry on against the estate of Jeffrey Epstein. And so I suppose it's some of the information that would have otherwise been disclosed that will prove embarrassing to some public officials and private individuals who are rather prominent may still come out, but all of that remains to be seen.

Yeah, one of the most regrettable aspects of this is that those victims won't get the chance to confront him in a court publicly. Do they have any recourse at this point? I mean, what does the road look like for them going forward? Well, two things, I suppose. One is their civil suit will proceed. So, you know, I mean, they were never going to get the satisfaction of getting their lives backed. But, you know, in terms of potentially getting money out of the estate, that might survive.

And, you know, I would note that Jeffrey Epstein did not carry out his extensive pedophile activities by himself. It was alleged that he had co-conspirators, one of the unusual things about the plea deal that Alex Acosta worked out with Jeffrey Epstein over a decade ago or whatever it was when he was U.S. attorney in Miami. And it struck me as being very strange is that the agreement to not prosecute Jeffrey Epstein federally and to allow his state prosecution or guilty plea in state court to be all that was going to happen is it was an agreement not to look at any of his alleged co-conscine. conspirators. Well, if you think that that deal was not binding on Jeffrey Epstein, as the New York U.S. Attorney's Office clearly did, it is certainly not binding in terms of protecting any co-conspirators. So I suppose it is possible that if there are people who are within the orbit of Jeffrey Epstein's world who facilitated sex trafficking with minors in New York, then they may face legal jeopardy, as they should.

So you're saying that you mentioned some of the high profile figures who came out in the names on Friday, those documents that were unsealed from an alleged victim of Epstein's. We know, of course, also that, you know, President Trump and former President Bill Clinton have ties to Epstein. Should we expect then that the investigation into others who might be guilty of these things keeps going? Yeah, probably. I don't know what the statute of limitations on those sorts of things are. It would be very difficult, I think, to prove. I mean, you might be able to prove somebody who procured women, or maybe there were boys, I don't know, on an ongoing basis that there might be records of that or a lot of witnesses to come forward. It's going to be very, very difficult, I think, to prove, you know, if, I'll just pick a name.

Senator George Mitchell denies that he slept with an underage person. And I would be very surprised that there were videotapes or audio tapes that would prove whether that was true or not. I think it will be difficult to go after people like that. But, you know, we'll see. And some of these victims may decide to add some of those names in terms of their civil lawsuits. You know, look, there were a lot of very prominent people. And this was a multimillionaire, if not a billionaire, you know, people who own their own private islands tend to have a lot of money. and he traveled in mighty high circles, including with the current president and a former president.

So the internet has been rife with theories about that, you know, one of the high-profile people that you mentioned could have perhaps arranged for him to be murdered, although it sounds, you know, difficult to achieve that. I mean, given that this was a maximum security prison, what do you think of those claims and do you think there's any chance that this was not, in fact, a suicide? Well, I don't know what I don't know. I am not by nature a conspiracy theorist. here because of the prominent people that had contact with Jeffrey Epstein and are named in some of these documents, it's inevitable the conspiracy theories are going to be rampant. I mean, here you end up having one conspiracy theory going out with the hashtag Trump body count and another going out with a hashtag Clinton body count. Fadily, bipartisanship.

Bipartisan conspiracy theories going out all over the place. I mean, unless there is some videotape that was monitoring Jeffrey Epstein. cell the entire time, I suppose it will be difficult to discern whether somebody sneaked into his cell in the middle of the night and murdered him. There's been an autopsy performed now. I'm assuming that a thorough and professional autopsy would probably be able to give a pretty good indication as to whether somebody committed suicide or whether there was a struggle. I don't know what other physical evidence was found in the cell.

I'm assuming that these are conspiracy theories that are unfounded that they will be debunked, but, you know, I don't want to prejudge any facts. So Senator Ben Sasse, Republican of Nebraska, said in a letter to Barr over the weekend that, quote, that heads must roll, referring to the government's role and being in charge of this prison, etc. What do you think? Do you think we're going to see firings? I don't know. We're first to find out what the facts are. I mean, it's certainly horrific that something like this happened. I cannot imagine why a decision was made to take this guy off of a suicide watch.

You do hear of this sort of thing happening from time to time in state prisons. It rarely happens in federal prison. Clearly something wrong happened and some horrific judgment was exercised. Whether that's going to result in – I assume it will result in some form of disciplinary action against somebody, whether it results of somebody being fired or their head otherwise rolling. I couldn't tell you. But this is a very serious matter. This was a high-profile case, a very important case, and clearly some horrific judgment was exercised,

and it's important that we find out why. And this goes to the public's trust in our justice system, right? I mean, if it's seen that people who are powerful enough and wealthy enough can, you know, escape justice, you know, that's not a good perception for a justice system. Well, I'm not so sure that somebody being one, held pretrial against their wishes. Jeffrey Epstein was arguing that it should have been released on Bond. And two, somebody who kills himself has escaped justice. I would agree, though, that he should have faced justice in the sense of being rightfully convicted in a court of law and confronted by

his accusers. It's not very satisfying conclusion that he committed suicide rather than being convicted in a court of law. And certainly in terms of the competence or judgment that was exercised by the prison officials here, that wouldn't exactly inspire confidence. I wouldn't read too much in terms of the lack of faith in our criminal justice system as a result of this horrific mishap. But a mishap it was. All right. Well, John Muckin, appreciate you being on today. Great to be with you. Americans have almost entirely forgotten their history.

That's right. And if we want to keep our republic, this needs to change. I'm Jared Stepman and I'm Fred Lucas. We host The Right Side of History, a podcast dedicated to restoring informed patriotism and busting the negative narratives about America's past. Hollywood, the media, and academia have failed a generation. We're here to set the record straight on the ideas and people who've made this country great. Subscribe to the Right Side of History on Apple Podcasts, SoundCloud, and Stitcher today. After fierce criticism, including from President Trump, the release of the movie The Hunt has

been postponed. In a statement, Universal says, quote, we stand by our filmmakers and will continue to distribute films in partnership with bold and visionary creators, like those associated with the satirical social thriller, but we understand that now is not the right time to release this film, end quote. Hollywood reporter wrote earlier this month that, quote, the violent R-rated film from producer Jason Bloom's Bloom House follows a dozen, agotypes who wake up in a clearing and realize they are being stalked for sport by elite liberals, end quote, and said that a character, at least in the screenplay, had said, nothing better than going out to the manor and slaughtering a dozen deplorables. So the movie is not being released at least any time soon. It does sound like Universal is planning to eventually release it.

Daniel, what do you think? So, you know, I've watched the trailer and, you know, I've read competing takes. Some people think this is actually a pro-Trump movie because it shows, you know, deplorables as victims being slaughtered kind of helplessly. But I just have trouble with that because, I mean, these elites are, you know, depicted as going after deplorables. And they're like the trailer itself does not really give you a full sense of, are these the protagonists?

Like, are the elites supposed to be the good guys going after the people we don't like? Like, I don't know. I do think it was a good call. call for them to pull this because it was totally insensitive right now and the wake of the mass shootings. But I feel like in general, like this doesn't seem, it seems like a movie in bad taste. Like, no matter when you release it, if you make a movie about killing deplorables, it's in bad taste. Like you don't make a movie about genocide, you know, for comedic effect. It's kind of like the chainsaw, you know, Texas Chainsaw Massacre if it was, you know, applied to a whole group of people.

Well, I mean, I think the studio described it as a satirical social thriller, and I think in general, movies that fall under that term are probably not, shall we say, in good taste. I'm thinking of 30 rocks, weird Kim Jong-un parts, but where they sort of turned into a joke that someone was kidnapped by the North Korean dictator, which was arguably bad taste, but also weirdly funny. But if it's satirical, what's the joke? Yeah, I'm not sure the joke is. I think one of the hard things is, as you said, there's a trailer, which I found very very funny. very confusing. The Hollywood Reporter is the one that it looks like the writer of that, at least read part of the screenplay and got into the political ramifications. I don't know if there's a twist. I don't know. As you mentioned, not everyone thinks it's anti-Trump. National Reviews

Kyle Smith, a film critic, wrote that he thinks it's arguably a pro-Trump movie, that no one is going to say essentially that the elite liberals shooting deplorables are the good people. I thought that was a compelling point, but I don't, I mean, this movie, we know so little about it, that it's hard to weigh in. It does seem, though, that it's unlikely this movie would have been made if it were conservative shooting liberals. But I do want to turn it over to our resident movie expert and podcast producer, at least today, Thalia Rampersad.

Fulia, what are your thoughts? Well, so there's a lot of mystery going on here, Kate, just to start off. That's accurate. So we look at the films Jason Bloom has had a producer title on. Films like Get Out and The Purge and one of my favorites, Whiplash. And all of those films are, in terms of storyline, very interesting, very different things that they're filling holes in Hollywood filmmaking that you haven't really seen before. So like with Get Out, we were seeing a need for African American horror that Jordan Peel wanted to produce and did a really successful job doing so. With The Purge, we saw a storyline where for a 12-hour period crime was legal.

also a really interesting concept. And with Whiplash, just a really cool indie film about the struggles of drumming and making music. And so with this film, we don't really know what's going on. There's things that we see in the trailer that are, I don't want to say interesting, but what is the storyline even about after watching the trailer? I don't know particularly.

I don't know essentially who's good, who's bad, what the gist of it is. And so we see this Hollywood Reporter article saying, this is what's going on, this is why it's being pulled. And to me, there's still a lot of confusion there. And I agree with the idea of them pulling it because of the actual content of the film and pairing that up against what our current backdrop is in terms of what's going on in the news right now. I think that's appropriate.

But at the same time, too, we don't know what this film's about. And we will find out because they are going to release it presumably at some later point. Which a lot of people don't realize either. They're just assuming it's been canceled when really it's just been postponed. Yeah, and I mean, I think, I almost wish they could just release a screenplay or something. I mean, it's sort of, you know, it's such an interesting question, though, and I think one of the things that we're really struggling with as a society is 99.9% of people can see a work of art or a film and not be affected and do anything terrible. But as we're seeing in these mass shootings, you know, people who have mental illness or otherwise disturbed might be pushed over the edge. And that's sort of the reason that I wasn't upset to find it had been postponed indefinitely

because I do think, you know, we're coming on the heels of several more tragic shootings. It's been, what, two years since Steve Sucleese and a bunch of Republican lawmakers were shot out in a baseball field and it's a miracle there wasn't a massacre. Even I'm willing to grant that this movie, let's say it was satire and it was certainly not endorsing this behavior. even if that's the case, you don't want one unhinged person watching it. I mean, it just feels like we're at a sort of fragile state right now in our country. And even if this does make an important point and even if that important point ends up being pro-conservatives, I just don't know if it's wise. Yeah.

I don't want to say that you can blame movie makers for the actions of people who watch it. Right. Absolutely not. But at the same time, there is an influence in a responsibility there that, I mean, it's a judgment call. And we are at a really, you know, concerningly fragile moment right now. So I definitely appreciate that postponement. Yeah. And I think it's also one of the interesting questions is, is it something that could be written?

But, well, I mean, you think about it, the New York Times, I think last year ran like a short story. It was something very bizarre, like an assassination fantasy about Trump. Yeah, there's just certain places in fiction. Which would never have happened if this was under the Obama administration. Right. And I think that's a really important point because I think part of what's really frustrating about this is whatever the intentions are, there are certain things that are, you know, cultural elites have decided we don't touch because it's inappropriate and they're not applying that same standard or they're not applying, yeah, that standard in the same way to the left and right.

All right. Well, we will leave it there. Thanks for listening to the Daily Signal podcast. Brought to you from the Robert H. Bruce Radio Studio at the Heritage Foundation. Please be sure to subscribe on iTunes, Google Play, or SoundCloud, and please do us a review or rating on iTunes to give us feedback. We'll see you again tomorrow. The Daily Signal podcast is executive produced by Kate Trinko and Daniel Davis.

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