- Welcome to Forum.

I'm Mina Kim.

Speaker Mike Johnson says he'll shut down the house early for summer recess in an effort to head off Democrats efforts to force votes on documents related to Jeffrey Epstein.

The speaker had already been trying to avoid voting on a non-binding Republican-led resolution, demanding the release of more Epstein related files, the disruptions to Congress, the questions about the president's connections to Jeffrey Epstein and what information the government has on the convicted sex offender who worked with powerful people and trafficked teenage girls before his death have continued to dog the administration.

For more than two weeks since the Department of Justice released a memo that angered the president's own base, we take a closer look at this moment when conspiracy theories are colliding with our nation's highest office and get your thoughts and questions.

Joining me this hour, Anush Kori, senior writer at Political magazine and former federal prosecutor at the Department of Justice Ush.

So glad to have you with us.

- Thank you for having me.

- Also with us is Luke Broadwater White House reporter for the New York Times.

His recent articles include Trump talks about anything but Epstein on his social media account and inside the long friendship between Trump and Epstein.

Luke, really glad to have you as well.

- Well, thanks for having me.

- So, the Epstein Saga, it has disrupted the work of the federal government for the second week now, and House Speaker Johnson is announcing the house will shut down early for its August recess.

Luke, what is your reaction to all that?

- Right, well, this is the story line that President Trump most hates, right?

Since the beginning of his second term, he's been able to dominate the news cycle.

At any time a storyline comes up that he doesn't like, he's able to quickly shift on, shift the topic to something else, right?

There's a, there's a million things going on in the world.

The Trump administration uses this so-called Flood the zone approach, where they do so many things so quickly that it's hard for the public and the news media to keep up with them.

And so they're all often able to switch the topic.

But the Jeffrey Epstein files have dogged them now for more than two weeks.

And the reason that is, is because the anger on this issue is coming from Trump's own base.

It's not people who are upset about his hardline deportations or his hardline immigration policies.

It's not people upset about the tariffs.

This is Trump's own supporters, the people who helped put him into office, who badly want him to release more information about Jeffrey Epstein, and they feel insulted when the president says, move on.

There's nothing to see here, folks.

So they, they don't want to talk about it anymore.

Anytime you ask an Epstein question to the White House, they say, why are you still asking about this?

You can see Mike Johnson, the speaker doesn't wanna talk about it anymore.

He is, he's willing to shut down the house rather than take a vote on the Epstein matter.

So this is the last thing the Trump administration and his political supporters in Washington want to be talking about at the moment.

- So then do you think, given how lockstep the speaker and the president have been, that he played a role in Mike Johnson's call to essentially end housework early?

- I mean, he could have, you know, Mike Johnson's a smart guy.

He probably didn't need a, didn't need a call from the president to, to shut this down.

You know, there's a discharge petition that Thomas Massey, Republican from Kentucky has filed that needs a certain number of legislative days to become active.

And so if you cut off the legislative days, that shortens the time when that discharge petition can take effect.

And that would in effect, force a vote on releasing more information from the Epstein files, I should say the so-called Epstein files.

Because it, it really is a combination of different documents.

You know, some people talk about grand jury testimony, some, some people talk about witness statements.

Some, some people talk about the administrative files, the, in the possession of the FBI.

So there's all sorts of things that could be released about the Epstein case.

You know, at its core, this is a terrible crime.

And there was in fact a coverup, right?

There was, there was a coverup of, of Jeffrey Epstein's actions early on in the law enforcement investigation.

And so, you know, it, it, it makes sense why people are angry about it and hungering for more and more information just at the moment, it's the, it's the president who, who is sort of standing in their way.

And that's not a great storyline if you're a Republican.

- So then let's step back for a minute and, and remind us who Jeff, Jeff Epstein was Luke?

- Sure.

Yeah.

Jeffrey Epstein was a very wealthy financier from New York.

He, as best we can tell, he and Trump met when Epstein bought a property in pa, Palm Beach, not too far from Mar-a-Lago.

He and Trump were both sort of men about town in the nineties and two thousands.

They were seen together at lots of parties, often surrounded by women, and eventually they have a falling out in 2004.

Shortly after their falling out police start to investigate Jeffrey Epstein.

And what they find out is that over time, he has abused and will continue to abuse lots of young women and some underage girls, in fact, and, you know, according to the FBI, the victims number in the hundreds, perhaps even more than a thousand, and at the same time he's friends with and, you know, socializing with sort of the world's rich and powerful, you know, very, very famous people, very, very wealthy people, sort of, you know, royalty from different countries.

One of the victims of Epstein, you know, accuses British royalty of being involved in, in the crimes of Jeffrey Epstein.

So you, and none of these other people ever get charged, right?

So the only people that go to jail in the end are Jeffrey Epstein and his former girlfriend, Ghislaine Maxwell, who's still in prison now doing a 20 year sentence.

And so out of, and the early investigation to add to that, there is a coverup.

Like I said, there's like a very shoddy police investigation.

They agree not to go after other people.

They shut down the FBI investigation at the time.

And only because of investigative reporting from the Miami Herald is the case then sort of reinvestigated and recharged in 2019.

And that's when Jeffrey Epstein hangs himself in jail.

And so all this swirling, you know, sex crimes and rich and powerful people and the coverup lead people to want more information.

And right now they're not getting that from the Trump administration.

- Why did the script MAGA in particular, though?

- Sure.

Well, one thing is that, you know, Donald Trump and his allies have often played in the pool of conspiracy theories.

And so Trump right away starts questioning whether in fact, Epstein actually did kill himself.

If you go online, there's all these, you know, I would say baseless, no evidence of these conspiracy theories that Epstein was, you know, a hit of Democrats that Democrats had ordered him killed to cover up.

There are terrible crimes.

But, you know, if you look into who associated with Epstein, it wasn't just Democrats, it was Democrats, Republicans, rich and powerful people from all different political stripes.

The one thing that's never no law enforcement investigation is ever proved is that beyond, is that there's credible evidence to charge anyone else beyond Epstein with abusing these girls and these women.

And that's what the Pam Bondy, the Attorney General said was that, you know, we reviewed the case files and we don't see any other actionable steps against other people that have been protected by the Justice Department.

So there's not, you know, some name in there of someone who was abusing girls and credible statements against them, and then that you could easily investigate and charge.

So it may be that the thing that people most want a client list more, more men to go to jail, there isn't the evidence to support that.

- Yeah.

And that assessment from the Department of Justice really set off MAGA world.

Talk about how President Trump handled that.

- Right.

You know, I think Trump kind of sensed where this was going before most people, because as Maga was so angry about this, Trump right away comes out and says, shut it down.

Essentially, like, what's happening with my guys and gals, I think is his post.

We, you know, this is a hoax from the Democrats.

He tries to shift the blame here about who's mad about these files saying it's not really maggots the Democrats and that the Democrats are coming from me essentially, and that all this is going to lead to like more questions about me and my relationship with Epstein.

And so there's nothing to see here.

It's the latest Democrats hoax, and the Democrats hadn't even really got in there yet.

But after he starts to put that out there, they, they hop on it and there are, are like, whoa, if he's so sensitive about this, he's, you know, we sort of smell, there's a wound here that we can sort of pick at.

And so they, you know, then they start agitating in Congress to release more and more files.

They're introducing amendments onto bills to release more files.

They're doing everything they can 'cause they sense a political weakness o on Donald Trump's behalf.

And frankly, the Democrats haven't had a lot to work with that's been sticking for them.

They've been kind of in the political wilderness for a while.

They lost the election very badly in terms of losing both, both chambers of Congress and the presidency.

They have no levers of power.

And finally they have something that Trump is on his heels about, he's very worried about they can attack him on.

And they're, and public polling shows, wide majority of Americans want every single piece of evidence out there about Jeffrey Epstein.

So they have the public on their side as well.

So it's kind of obvious political move here to, to hop on this and start snar, start demanding information.

That said, I will say anybody who's ever worked with like a complex investigation knows that in files, there's all sorts of like shoddy evidence, right?

There's hearsay, there's stuff that can't be substantiated.

There's a witness statement who half understood something.

And so you don't generally release all the files from everything because you can defame people, right?

So you can put, you know, you can cast aspersions on someone's name and reputation when the evidence against them is really crappy and like shouldn't be out there in the public.

So, you know, and Trump did say early on he was worried about, you know, sort of slandering innocent people in the process of releasing these files.

So there, there are legitimate reasons not to release certain things at the same time.

That's not what the MAGA base wants to hear, that, you know, this evidence isn't very good and therefore shouldn't be put out.

- We're talking about the Jeffrey Epstein story and why it will not go away despite the administration's best efforts.

And your listeners are invited to join the conversation.

What questions do you have about the resurgence of the Jeffrey Epstein story and the events of the past two weeks?

Stay with us for more after the break.

I'm Mina Kim, welcome back to forum.

I'm Mina Kim.

We're talking about the intensifying scrutiny on the Trump administration's handling of information about Jeffrey Epstein, the wealthy convicted sex offender found dead in his jail cell in 2019.

It has disrupted the work of the GO pled house, as it avoids, avoids calls for votes on releasing more so-called Epstein files.

We're talking about it with Luke Broadwater White House reporter for the New York Times, and also with you, our listeners.

What questions do you have about the resurgence of the Jeffrey Epstein story, the events of the past two weeks?

What do you think the longer term Epstein fallout will be?

Do you think there will be accountability beyond what's happened?

What do you think about how the Democrats are doing to use this moment?

Should they to their advantage or not?

Email your comments and questions to forum at KQE d.org.

Find us on Discord, blue sky, Facebook, Instagram, or threads at KQED forum or call us at eight six six seven three three six seven eight six eight six six seven three three six seven eight six.

Anush Cordia, senior Writer Political magazine, and former federal prosecutor of the Department of Justice and Anush.

I know we've been trying to sort out your connection, wondering if you could share with us essentially what you think are three possible explanations for why the Department of Justice has handled the Jeffrey Epstein case in the way that it has and the uproar that has happened as a result of it.

- Yeah, I mean, the way I've sort of thought about this sort of schematically, I think there are, as you said, sort of three broad scenarios we're dealing with.

One is, you know, that Trump and JD Vans and Cash Tel and all, you know, the folks around them in recent years really believe that they, things that they were saying about how there might be more to investigate how there might have been a coverup, how there might be questions around Epstein's death.

And now they've come into office and they've learned those things are not actually true.

They're concerns with misplaced, and then now they're sort of scrambling to, to, to explain things that I think is the most innocuous scenario we're dealing with.

The second one is that, you know, over the course of all these years, they were lying and sort of manipulating the public, sort of indulging their supporters' conspiracy theories to try to help advance their political interests and to facilitate Trump's return to office.

And then the third, which is not exactly mutually exclusive at this point, is that, you know, these folks may have believed this as they were coming in, believed in these things and, and that there might be more information to release.

And lo and behold, they may have come across some reason to believe that Trump or allies of Trump may actually be represented more in the documents and that, that they, than they had believed, and we're seeing something akin to a coverup.

Now, I don't know that we are there yet.

We haven't seen any direct evidence of a coverup, but I would just say that, you know, the way that Trump himself has approached this is very out of step with how he's approached investigations in the past that are of interest to him.

You know, the, the idea that he only wants to release credible information, the idea that he only wants to release pertinent information from the grand jury testimony rather than dipping into the much larger universe of information that they do not need to go to a court to seek approval for the release of.

And, you know, it's, these are qualifiers, you tend not to hear from him.

The notion that this stuff might be phony as he put it in unprompted in a Fox interview last week.

And that he's concerned about harm to third parties.

He typically does not care about harm to third parties when he, when a, when a sort of fact pattern attracts his interest.

And you know, the thing I'll say is Luke said, you know, this has now become part of their sort of argument for why they're constrained.

And we don't, we wanna be safe about, you know, implicating third parties.

I just have to say the whole point of this exercise was for them to implicate third parties.

That was the theory.

Okay?

So now to have them come in, right, the idea was that, okay, we haven't aired all this out.

The government is covering stuff up, there's more people involved.

Like, so now the idea is, oh no, no, no, no, we don't want to to, you know, point the finger at other people.

It makes no sense.

I mean, it's actually incoherent.

So, you know, I look at a situation like that and I, you know, like I was, yeah, I'm a lawyer.

I'm, I'm temperamentally skeptical.

Some of the things you could describe, including, for instance, Trump's effort to put pin the blame onto Democrats, which is absurd.

We would call in the criminal justice system a false exculpatory statement.

And what happens when people give false ex exculpatory statements in the criminal justice system is that we assume that they're lying to cover up for themselves.

So that's, those are sort of the tools that I bring to here.

Yeah, yeah.

And as we sketch out those, I don't wanna put a thumb on the scale, but that's sort of how I think about it, - Right?

I mean, as you say, let's be very clear, there is no direct evidence of an intentional coverup on the part of Trump or the White House or the Department of Justice, but you as a former federal prosecutor who specialize in financial fraud and white collar crime and so on, are bringing that experience to bear in terms of what kinds of things and the way that Trump has responded that has raced some flags for you.

It sounds like, and Luke, you touched on this, but you also reported more deeply on it.

Can you just also mention the reason why it's hard for people not to give up the idea that there is some coverup of Trump's involvement in this in some way because of their long history.

What are some sort of key moments in their relationship that are, you know, people are really focusing on, and also the reporting by your colleagues that has been put out by Maria Farmer as well, that are just causing people to continue to think this could be one of the reasons that the DOJ is acting this way.

- Right.

Well, I mean, if you look at what we do know from the Epstein files that Donald, Donald Trump's name is in there, right?

He's on the flight logs between Palm Beach and New York at least seven times.

So he flew on Epstein's private jet.

He, he's been accused by multiple women that based on, I would say sometimes there, there's a groping accusation where Epstein has brought a woman to Trump and Trump groups her, there's another time Epstein brings a woman to Trump, and he sort of eyes her up in her telling, and Epstein says, no, no, she's not for you.

So there, there's this, there are evidence and, and some of these people did talk to investigators, so I assume their statements are in file somewhere that would be released that would have more, you know, testimony and things against, against Trump.

But look, these guys were friends for 15 years.

They ran in the same circles.

They would go to sort of Victoria's Secret parties together, cheerleader parties together.

You know, there's one gentleman who, who says he was asked to organize this party and he, he, he, he had all these women come to it and the only for Trump, and Trump and Epstein are the only two guys that show up to it.

And so you would hear testimony like that in, in these files.

So there is stuff about Trump in there, I'm sure, right?

We know that to be true.

And so I think that when people hear he doesn't wanna release certain things, he is worried about people's reputations being smeared, they think he's protecting himself.

At the same time, Trump during his campaigns said, raised all these questions about Bill Clinton and said, well, why is Bill Clinton going to the private Eyes Island with, with Epstein and you?

So he was happy to weaponize these files when it was in his political advantage during a campaign.

And now that he actually has the power to order them to be released, he says he doesn't want to release anymore.

So obviously that's gonna raise questions for people.

- Yeah.

And now he's also suing the Wall Street Journal on Kush, and I'd love to get your thoughts on that.

Basically for publishing lewd birthday note that they claimed was from the president to Epstein in 2003.

You know, what do you think of this incident and also about the way the president has responded by, by suing the Wall Street Journal and then more recently also barring them from the pool, the press pool for his trip to Scotland?

- Yeah, I mean, look, the, the complaint itself is pretty weak on its face.

The journal stories appears to be very carefully reported and lawyered, you can tell the language is carefully constructed in certain places.

And you know, Trump has secured some settlements that have gotten a lot of attention from media outlets and litigation from A, B, C and CBS.

Those tend to be exceptions.

Those when Trump files a case against media outlets and he's filed quite a few of them at this point and they reach an actual judicial resolution, meaning a judge actually considers at some point maybe a motion dis dismissed stage or whatever, he tends to lose because his cases tend to be quite weak.

And I think if you look at this case, it does not appear to particularly strong on its face.

And you know, assuming Trump doesn't, they don't settle it or Trump doesn't sort of voluntarily dismiss it at some point, which has happened in the past with other cases he's filed to avoid discovery, he will himself be exposed to answering questions from the WA Wall Street Journal's lawyers, not just about the letter, but his broader relationship with Epstein going all the way back to whenever it first began.

Because if you are the journal's lawyers, you among other things would wanna ask questions, not just about Trump's involvement in the letter of lack thereof, but his potential motive to lie about having written the letter.

If that is true, now he has vehemently denied it.

But these are the sorts of questions you can expect him to face if this case actually proceeds discovery.

And you can also expect the journal to ask for as many documents as possible from Trump himself.

Now, as to the broader sort of implications of the lawsuit, I mean, it is a very unusual situation.

We're used to Trump suing media outlets, but this is the first time it seems a sitting US president has sued a media outlet and it is about reporting that concerns his time in office and an issue that has been elevated to intense public interest by the president and by the president's allies.

So the notion that like he can go out now and try to sue the Wall Street journalism, you know, he's asking for $20 billion.

That's kind of absurd number on its face, but you know, it does have a potential deterrent effect on other outlets.

Not that there are outlets like the Journal, the Times Political on and on and on that have good lawyers, they're in positions to defend themselves from lawsuits like this.

But if you are like, sort of, you know, one level beneath that, you're now have to be thinking, well, if I file something un unflattering about Trump, is he going to file some lawsuit that could decimate the company in the, in the worst case scenario?

- Hmm.

Let me go to some audience questions.

Let's go to Frank in Mill Valley.

Hi Frank, you're on.

- Thank you.

I I was gonna ask about don't the passenger manifest constitute the client list that everybody's yapping about and how much discovery has been done on it?

But you, your comment makes it sound like that's been, those, those lists are out there.

And as a prosecutor, wouldn't you expect to see in the follow-up investigation questions about the, the trips and what happened?

- Luke, you wanna take that?

That's not gonna, - Sorry, go ahead.

Not in the in, that's not gonna come out in the grand jury stuff, - Right?

The grand jury stuff.

So Luke, you wanna take Frank and also just remind us what the Trump administration has done to try to respond and maybe try to satisfy its base with regard to more information.

- Sure.

So obviously there were a couple criminal prosecutions about this matter.

And so a lot of information came out during those prosecutions.

And what, what the Trump administration did to try to satisfy the base was they released something they called the Epstein files part one.

And so in that cache of documents, the is is the, are the flight logs, but those had already been introduced in court already.

So that wasn't anything new and I think they thought that would satisfy people, but they really just put out information that was already in the public domain that reporters had already seen and written about mu much of which was already online.

And so it didn't satisfy people at all.

Now you asked about the client list, Pam Bondy, the Attorney General says there is no client list.

They in the FBI's position, they couldn't find one, they don't possess one.

What we do have is sort of a, his contact book, which is names a bunch of names of people and phone numbers and you know, does that mean that that person was involved in criminality?

Of course not, right?

Just 'cause you have somebody's phone number or, or have their name written down doesn't mean that they were, you know, abusing underage girls, right?

So you can't just, just being on the plane with e with Epstein or just being in his book is not evidence of a crime.

And so from there, I mean, I guess you could go down and question every single person on those lists and, and so forth.

And maybe the FBI has done that.

I don't know the extent of their investigation, but you know, just knowing somebody is not a crime, of course.

- So with regard to the grand jury testimony that the DOJ has ordered a court to unseal, would that provide information you think on Kush that would satisfy what it seems is particularly the maga base is clamoring for - No, it will not even come close.

I don't wanna like bore your listeners with the mechanics of grand grand jury, but I, I'll just say this, the criminal investigative process to the point of charging works like a funnel, right?

So you are gathering extraordinary amount of information.

Luke is exactly right.

There's lots of names of people.

Those people, those might be leads, right?

You might go and interview those people or ask questions about those people.

And honestly, that seems to be the thing that Trump supporters are interested of.

The raw investigative material at the point in which you get to charging a criminal case and are putting in grand jury testimony, two things.

One, it will be targeted to the charges that you are actually bringing.

You are not going to be putting in a relevant information that you do not intend to introduce at trial, right?

So if something didn't come at trial, you could fairly assume that it's not gonna be the subject of intense grand jury testimony.

And two, the, the number of witnesses that a, the government might even put in to testify in a grand jury can vary widely.

And again, I don't wanna bore you with the details, but it can be one or two people depending on how you construct the case.

Sometimes if you have a recalcitrant witness, you might put them into the grand jury and then ask them sort of a wide ranging que questions.

But for the most part, particularly in large complex investigations where the, the, the people who are of interest to the government are well resourced and have money, they try to avoid going to grand juries and they, they prefer what are known as government proffers, which are interviews with the government and those that are not going to be in the grand jury testimony, those are gonna be memo memorialized in FBI 3 0 2 reports of those interviews.

And here too, I think that is what Trump's base really is looking for, not this very narrowly targeted segment of information that may or may not shake loose out of this process.

- And the White House has also the said it's gonna subpoena Ghislaine Maxwell who of course is serving a 20 year sentence for sort of aiding Jeffrey Epstein.

What, what do you think that's all about on Kush?

- I mean, I, you know, honestly, it doesn't make much sense except that they want to be do taking public steps that they can appoint to, to sort of demonstrate that they're, that they're actually trying to do something.

I mean, the notion that they would go to now Maxwell and at this late date, you know, as, as Luke said, Epstein died in 2019 and try to effectively redo the investigation or to redo elements of the investigation, it's highly strange and highly unlikely to generate any credible information that the government would actually be able to act upon.

I think this is frankly a bit of a waste of time on the merits, and I don't quite get it.

I mean, they seem to be deliberately going, you know, using these channels or talking about these mechanisms, the grand jury or talking to Ghislaine Maxwell where they do not have control over the outcome and that seems to be intentional so they can kind of point to, oh, Maxwell didn't have anything to say, the court wouldn't give us the grand jury testimony.

Well, 99% of the information, I'm just roughly speaking that is in the government's files, is not with Maxwell or in the grand jury testimony.

- Hmm.

Lemme go to call her Noreen in Oakland.

Hi, Noreen, you're on.

- Good morning.

- Good morning.

Go right ahead.

- It's adorable, Mina to watch your articulate, intelligent, beautiful self say.

So what do you think of this?

I, I'm watching Trump now wanting to re rebrand football teams to possibly take our mind off of this for a minute, but I don't think maga I think they're enjoying this like a fraternity brother saying, I think they're enjoying hearing that he's associated with this and they're almost vicariously living through his ability to go backstage in a beauty pageant and, and in and investigate naked women.

- Lemme get Luke's, I dunno why.

Lemme get Luke's thoughts on what you're saying Noreen there too, because also, anyway, go ahead Luke.

But there's been some reporting that, you know, this Wall Street Journal event as well has sort of rallied maga back behind Trump as well anyway.

Do you think that ultimately Maga just likes the chaos as Nina's suggesting?

And also some of the more lewd aspects of this, - You know, obviously Trump's political move here is to give maga an enemy and redirect their anger towards someone else, right?

And so with with the Wall Street Journal story, this gave him a familiar foe, which is the mainstream media.

And so he filed a suit, he can sort of redirect them.

Those are the bad guys.

Don't be mad at me and my administration leave poor Pam Bondi alone and, and go after those, those liars.

And the fake news, I think the same thing he's doing with, with a motion in New York as well, where he's trying to release the, or ask a judge to release the grand jury testimony or - Luke.

We'll continue this right after the break.

This is forum, I'm Mina Kim, welcome back to forum.

I'm Mina Kim.

We're talking about how the Jeffrey Epstein story has disrupted the federal government.

It has disrupted the work of the GO pled house as it avoid call, as it avoids calls for votes on releasing more so-called Epstein files.

We're taking a closer look at what happens when conspiracy theories collide with our nation's highest office and what it all means, how we got here, and what the impacts are on all of us.

And we're taking your specific questions on this story and its resurgence your thoughts on how our government is handling it, how Republicans are handling it, how Democrats are handling it, and what you make of this moment.

You can email forum@kqe.org, find us on discord, blue sky, Facebook, Instagram, or threads at KQED forum or call us at eight six six seven three three six seven eight six eight six six seven three three six seven eight six.

And a little bit related to Noreen before the break, Luke Joanne asks, or Joan asks, is the MAGA base outrage over Jeffrey Epstein a blip or the beginning of the end for Trump?

It seems to me this outrage over Epstein is just a blip and why is it taking place?

And I think that is one of the questions like this president who has famously been able to weather controversy, storms, redirect his base or explain things to his base in a way that satisfies them or brings them back on board, has been the way that he's operated.

Is this, do you think a moment when, you know, given everything that we've just seen that may not happen?

- Yeah, I, so, you know, this is a projection, but I I tend to agree that Maga never really blames Trump personally for anything.

Trump famously said he could shoot somebody on Fifth Avenue and wouldn't lose any supporters, and that's been pretty much true.

He there, that doesn't mean they're not pissed off about the Epstein files.

That doesn't mean they're not pissed off about being told that there's nothing to see here and to, to look elsewhere.

I think a lot of, like if you talk to any Trump supporters that you know in your family or in your life, they're, they're mad about this and they don't like being told there's nothing to see here.

They think there's disgusting crimes that are being covered up and why are you telling us to look away?

That said, I think it's much more likely they'll end up at the end of the day ultimately blaming Pam Bonde or a judge or Democrats in Congress or anyone else.

But Trump, most Trump supporters you talk to will con contort the facts to fit a worldview in which Trump is right.

And so they will do whatever they can to to, to get that outcome.

And I do think on balance, Trump supporters, even if they hate the way this is going with the Epstein files, generally like the things he's doing.

And so they will say, well, you know, nine outta 10 isn't bad.

- Hmm.

Well, this listener Abby writes, is anyone considering that all this Epstein stuff is a distraction from people starving and being killed in Gaza from people dying in Ukraine, from the destruction of our government, from the fact that Americans and immigrants kidnapped, which we just talked about yesterday, of course, Anush.

I wanna get your thoughts on what Abby is saying here, and what if you don't think that they're deliberately trying to create a distraction from bigger issues and they're finding themselves embroiled in something they didn't want?

What this tells you about the competency of our senior officials, our most senior officials in our country, - There's absolutely no question that there are many, many more important things and consequential and substantive things, including all the things that your listener just identified.

I wholly agree this is a very strange situation that has been thrust upon us by Trump himself and by his political allies.

And it is in capturing people's attention because it is a very strange set of facts and, and you know, there's been such a push on the political right to move this forward.

So in that sense, I I don't think it's a distraction.

I mean, it, I I don't think they intentionally did this to distract from the other things.

They may be fine with that, I don't know.

But I don't think they wanted to be embroiled in this.

It looks like they wanted to get out from under it as quickly as possible.

That's why we saw a very joint, excuse me, a very TSE joint D-O-J-F-B-I memo that they thought would put this to bed and it didn't.

And that's why we're still here in terms of what it says about the Justice Department leadership.

It says nothing good, it says nothing good.

You know, as I said, you know, there are a few different scenarios, but even the most innocuous scenario, if we assume that they were honestly mistaken in their views about what they, what, what would, what the government did, and I'm not prepared to assume that, but let's just stipulate to assume that they were honestly mistaken.

They have been engulfed by their own mistakes for weeks now.

I mean, the idea that the Deputy Attorney General might fly to go interview Ghislaine Maxwell about someone who died six years ago in an criminal investigation that's been closed for years.

It is an extraordinary waste of his time and is extraordinary waste of the justice department's time and resources.

And yet it is clearly occupying the highest echelons of the DOJ and FBI on a near daily basis for weeks.

So it, it's a mess.

It does not say anything good about the leadership of DOJ.

And of course, the worst case scenarios, the or the worst, the, the, the, the worst scenarios that they lied or that they're covering something up are even worse.

- You've been raising concerns also about what this means if they had to handle a real incredible national crisis or law enforcement crisis.

What, what did you have in mind when you were thinking that?

- Hate to even think about these things, but of course we have to, the, the country has been, we've been the target of a major terrorist attack before, right?

Nine 11.

We have huge threats on the cyber front that could, you know, from all sorts of countries that could do all sorts of damage.

And those are things that need to be occupying the attention of the FBI on a near daily basis.

That is what we expect them to do to protect us.

And so the idea that like, you know, they're now focused on these other things is like really striking to me and I, it, it, it, again, it's just like, it's a real misallocation of resources, but it, they created it themselves.

And now they've created this expectation as Luke was talking about among a certain class of people that they will do something more.

But it's been really striking the way that they've been fumbling around.

They can't, you know, Pam Bondi can't just get in front of a micho microphone and give a coherent explanation of what's going on.

They look evasive, they look distracted, they look embarrassed, and you know, if a this is a crisis of their own making, this is a crisis of their own making, and they selected the time at which it would begin because they got to choose when they would release that memo.

So what happens when something that they didn't create and didn't expect arrives?

- This listener writes on discord, if the full Epstein F are released and no new or incriminating information emerges, how do Democrats plan to respond to potential criticism that they push for transparency only to fuel a political spectacle?

Well, the right claim, it was all a distraction or a stunt.

Luke, what do you think?

Do you think the Democrats are taking risks here and would take that blame if that is what came to pass?

- Yeah, I think so.

I mean, it's Congress, they, it's, you know, politics is, is is at least half sport in Congress and that's probably a low estimation.

There's a bunch of people in Congress who, who operate on, on principle and set of guiding values, but for the most part it's a lot about getting wins and losses.

And right now they see the Republicans losing badly on this issue.

I, I doubt any Democrat started this year thinking we're gonna make a big deal about Jeffrey Epstein.

They see weakness here, they, and so they're, they're going to continue to hammer them and you know, if it, to the extent they can paint Trump as covering up for a, a sex offender, they probably think that they can, they can green some political, some political gain there at the same time, right?

You only have certain hours in the day, right?

And so every minute you're talking about Jeffrey Epstein, you're not talking about cuts to Medicaid or you know, veterans healthcare or any other very important issue in the country.

So they are making a decision and frankly it's because they see weakness.

You know, they see weakness on this issue in, in ways that they haven't on many, many other issues.

- Again, we're talking with Luke Broadwater White House reporter for the New York Times co-author of the book with the Times Annie Carney Madhouse, how Donald Trump Mag Mean Girls, a former used car salesman, a Florida Nepo baby and a man with Rancid, his walls broke Congress.

We're also talking with un Cordo senior writer for Political magazine, a former federal prosecutor at the Department of Justice.

His recent articles include Political Playbook, Trump's Epstein Evolution, and three scenarios that explain the Epstein debacle.

And you, our listeners are joining the conversation at 8 6 6 7 3 3 6 7 8 6 at the email address forum@kqeed.org on Discord, blue Sky, Facebook, Instagram, or threads at KQ EED Forum glowing on Discord writes, the Mag Bay shouted from the rooftops about Epstein as alleged ties with Bill Clinton.

Cash Patel was one of the loudest voices asking to release the files.

And of course now Ash Patel is the head of the FBI and probably played a big role in the DOJ memo.

Stephen writes, Trump is definitely acting guilty, but if there were incriminating evidence in the Epstein files, why would the Biden administration not have taken action?

There are two possibilities.

There was not enough evidence or there was other people that were, or there were other people they were protecting.

At this point, I think the public has the right to know everything.

Ush, what do you think about what Steven is saying here?

- Look, there is that that is possible, right?

That is possible.

There is a third possibility though, which is that the Biden Justice Department did the appropriate thing with a closed criminal case and did not go rooting around and releasing information from it that would hurt Biden's political opponent.

That is not something we should want them to have done or to, to expect our leaders to do.

Now maybe it's something that Trump might do, maybe it's something that even abide by, I don't know.

But the idea that like, oh, shouldn't we have expected the last president to leak derogatory information that might link him to a child sex offender?

I mean, no, we should not just expect that.

- What about the chances that were involved in all of this?

And that's why Biden didn't do it.

- That's very possible.

I mean, you know, Clinton's in, in the documents, I mean that that's, all of these things are possible Clinton's on documents, I'm sure Trump is in, in a bunch of the material for the reasons that Luke identified.

So yes, there certainly could be, this is a bipartisan issue, but I will say, based on what we know, and particularly the times he's reporting and the journal's reporting in recent weeks, Trump's relationship connections to Epstein go deeper, significantly deeper than those other people's, - This listener on discord rights.

I'm a bit worried that if this does blow over, it moves the norm for everyone, including his base on whether institutions can hold the president accountable for his actions.

The worst case is everyone gets disillusioned instead of galvanized, empowering him to take more, even more bold actions.

Luke, what do you, what do you think about that?

- Yeah, I mean, look, has the public been desensitized to Donald Trump's behavior?

Yes.

I mean, you know, the, it's, it's not a new idea that the type of things that the president does would have sunk any other politician's career, right?

He routinely acts in ways that almost anyone else, they would've been run out of politics years ago.

And in some ways he's, you know, he's changed a lot of the norms in the country because of that.

We, we, we now see a president that acts a certain way and he's the leader of the country and kids watch him on TV and people listen to him talk every day.

And so he has this sort of, you know, this, this omnipresent power in many people's lives, in many Americans' lives.

And I do think he's changed sort of the, the culture and the standards and the norms that we've come to expect from a president as Americans.

- Let me remind listeners, you're listening to Forum, I'm Mina Kim Anush.

I'm curious if you think there have been things that have shifted or what the impacts will be of this now collision of conspiracy theories and the executive branch.

- Look, nothing good can come out of it.

That's what I have to say.

I mean, really there's not gonna be a satisfying resolution to this.

You know, they're never gonna release the information that's been asked of them to release under ordinary circumstances.

It would be crazy for them to do so because we do not the Justice Department, the FBI do not go around releasing raw investigative material from closed criminal cases.

That's just not the norm.

But of course this is an expectation that Trump and the folks around him created.

So the, in terms of the, the downstream effects, I mean, look, there's already some polling and we don't want to read too much into it, but some polling indicating that Pam Bondy's approval rating has fallen in the weeks that this has been going on.

So it, that remains to be seen in long term.

I'd be surprised if she, she were removed.

That doesn't really make much sense because the next Attorney general would have the exact same constraints and the act exact same conundrums and, and problems on their hands and conflicts on their hands.

So I don't really see a good way that this ends, even if Trump and the administration claim that they're putting out some wide swath of information that quote unquote, you know, com comprises the quote unquote Epstein files.

First of all, I highly highly doubt that given the volume of material that they that day will ever come.

It's an extraordinary volume of material.

But second, you know, the problem is I think Trump has burned his public credibility on this point.

So I do, I think there will be a subset of people who will say, well, we don't trust him.

Of course, he wouldn't have released the worst stuff if it concerned him.

And, and again, that is a whole rhetorical hold that they've dug for themselves in the way that they've approached this issue publicly for the last couple of weeks with all of the hemming and hawing and the finger pointing and, you know, the efforts to, to, to push the blame off to other people who had little to nothing to do with any of this.

- Lemme go to caller Sophie in Castro Valley.

Hi Sophie, you're on.

- Hi.

Thanks for having me on.

I'm curious what, what you think about the idea that Elon Musk is driving this in the news cycle, particularly in the right wing conspiracy theory sphere.

It seems as though the Epstein files issue just came up after Trump and Musk had their falling out.

So I'm curious what you think.

- Yeah, Luke, do you wanna take that?

Thanks Sophie.

- He's certainly stoked at all and I don't think he's the only reason, but you know, right after they had, they're falling out, remember they got in that sort of flame war on Twitter and he said the real reason Donald Trump won't release the Epstein files is because he's in it.

And so, and all along he's been tweeting and replying to tweets or exes or whatever they're called now.

And so yeah, he's reveling in this, you know, he's, he's definitely encouraging it and playing it up.

And Elon Musk loves a conspiracy theory and so does much of Twitter.

And so the idea that there's this, these shadowy forces covering up for, for pedophiles in the federal government is, is, you know, quite a conspiracy theory.

Yes.

Well, I'll also say that there is, this is a theory that sort of, everyone can get it on because there's democrats like Clinton who's associated with, with Epstein because there's Trump like Democrats, Republicans, everybody in the country can have someone they hate associated with, with Epstein.

And so it, it, it really kind of, it, I think that contributes to, to why this has so much staying power, right?

Anybody can project this sort of enemy.

They wish going to jail in connection with Jeffrey Epstein.

And, and so I don't think it's going anywhere anytime soon.

- And Kush, what are you watching for, you know, what are the core things that have come out of the many events of these last couple of weeks that you in particular really wanna keep an eye on?

- Well, look, I think the, you know, the lawsuit against the journal is something folks are gonna be following very closely to see if it, how far it proceeds and if it potentially proceeds discovery and if so, what that produces obviously the litigation on the grand jury, on the grand jury testimony, folks will be watching that to see what shakes loose.

That could take a couple of weeks.

I don't, I'm not sure how long it will take the judge to reach a resolution on that.

And then sort of on the political side, I'm gonna be curious to see whether they can actually withstand pressure to release more.

I mean, I think a lot of people here are grand jury testimony initially.

They think, oh, that's, that's the good stuff.

And it, and it really, in this context, it's gonna be tiny, tiny fraction and, and possibly not even relevant to, to most people's concerns about other parties and to, you know, if they can hold the line on this like that they're only pursuing these very narrow avenues, then, you know, that's a political boon to Trump.

But if they continue to get more pressure, that's the thing I'm sort of looking for to see if his supporters sort of really take this on and integrate the idea that he is not giving them anything close to what they asked for or if sort of as Luke indicated, they sort of start to retrofit the facts to Trump's view of events.

I would just wanna say if, if in the last couple of seconds here that what we're talking about and the whole mess that has being been created is exactly why these people, the Tru Trump, the vice president, the FBI director, the attorney general, on and on and on, should never have been trafficking in these conspiracy theories in the first place.

This is now consuming the whole country.

They pr it's almost as though like they didn't even understand that there were real victims here who might have been traumatized by all this over the years, who now have to relive this yet again for the foreseeable future.

It was wildly irresponsible and I'm ashamed it.

Yeah.

- K Kori of Politico, former federal prosecutor, Luke Broadwater, right house, white House reporter for the New York Times.

Thank you both so much.

Thank you Caroline Smith for producing this and thanks always.

To our listeners, this is forum, I'm Mina Kim.