Justice Department releases missing Epstein files related to Trump

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Hey there, it's the NPR Politics Podcast. I'm Tamer Keith. I cover the White House.

I'm Hemena Bustio and I cover Immigration. And I'm Dominican Montenores,

Senior Political Editor and Correspondent. And today on the show, an Epstein Files update.

But first, a shake-up. President Trump has fired his Secretary of Homeland Security,

Christie Nome. Hemena, she had been plagued by scandal and controversy for months.

So why now? Right. Secretary Nome, or as soon to be former,

Secretary Nome has had one PR challenge after another, particularly to kick off the year.

And Christie Nome testified twice this week before Congress, once for the House Judiciary,

a second time for Senate Judiciary. And we knew she was going to face a lot of tough questions,

obviously, from Democrats. But she also faced a lot of tough questions from some Republicans,

notably in the Senate, that raised questions about how she has handled disaster relief

in their states or how she has spent money for her agency. There was one key exchange with Senator

John Kennedy of Louisiana, who is a solid Trump ally. And he pressed her on expensive ad campaigns

that she ran last year that really profiled her and centered around immigration,

calling on people to self-deport or come here, quote, the right way.

The President approved ahead of time, you spending $220 million running TV ads across the country

and which you are featured prominently. Yes, sir. We went through the legal processes.

Did it correct? Did the President work with OMB? Yes. He did. Yes. Okay.

And one thing, Senator, I think, would be helpful to know is how effective that communications

has been. Well, I'm over-effective in your name, recognition. Yeah, effective in your name,

recognition is quite the cutting comment. These ads featured her on horseback and very

glammed up. And certainly they did get her name and face out there.

You know, and the accusation is that she was doing this to run for President in 2028, that it was

built to build her name identification as Kennedy again, a Republican is noting there.

And it's also notable, the scandal for where that money went and who received it during the House

hearing Colorado Democrat, Joe Nagus, highlighted that the ad group, according to ProPublica's reporting,

is a company that Noem used for ads when she ran for governor of South Dakota,

and that the company's CEO is married to former DHS spokesperson Trisha McLaughlin.

We should note that NPR has not independently verified this reporting. In fact, the ad with her

on horseback is very reminiscent of the similar ad that that that group ran where she was just

kind of galloping across the state in her reelection bid. Now, one thing that I'll know is

everything Noem said is not necessarily new. She has been talking about these ads and has been

saying that the president wants her to be the face, wants her to be the messenger,

create an ad campaign to tell people abroad to not come here illegally to tell everyone here

that's illegally to leave. She has attributed this to a goal and desire of the president.

You know, in the context, though, is what happened in Minnesota. Obviously, you know,

the harsh tactics that ICE and other federal agencies have undertaken where you had two

American citizens killed at the hands of federal agents. That became such a big scandal

that it was and became what the White House saw as a messaging problem. And a lot of Republicans

on Capitol Hill, what they've said, is that this was an issue that Republicans should have a 20-point

advantage on when it comes to immigration. They feel Trump won on that issue. They think that

immigration and border security is something that Trump should be able to tout and that the party

should be able to benefit from. But instead, they wind up on a negative from. But the issue wasn't

just that two Americans were killed by federal officers while exercising their first amendment rights.

It's also that the Homeland Security Secretary then called them domestic terrorists,

created a narrative that was completely and rapidly disproven by video evidence.

Right. And this is something we have just seen age poorly and worse and worse and worse.

Like, as each week went by, you know, I was at the press conference where Chris, you know,

made those statements about particularly 37-year-old Alex Prety, where she described his actions as

domestic terrorism, said that was the facts. That was the definition of domestic terrorism.

And then you saw this kind of bubbling Republican backlash to those claims over time.

We saw heads of the immigration agencies a few weeks ago get questioned and say,

did you guys give information for Secretary Nome to, you know, make these claims? And they

said on the record, no, that they did not, that no one under their command did not. And

ICE Director, ICE Acting Director Todd Lyons went as far as to concede that any messaging from,

you know, the Secretary or on social media or texts or posts could bias an investigation,

which, you know, the investigation into these shootings is already facing a lot of scrutiny and

confusion. And again, this just got worse and worse for the Secretary. She was asked about these

claims again in the House, in the Senate, who gave you this information? Why did you make those

claims? Can you just admit that it was incorrect? And, you know, she kind of just doubled down and

tried as hard as possible to walk it back. But, you know, the damage had been done at that point.

The thing here is we have to remember, Nome has been the face of this. Like, Nome was seen posing

in front of the notorious prison sick caught that's in El Salvador wearing, you know, luxury

items like fancy watches. She has been, you know, wearing tactical ice gear going into people

on houses, going on raids and, you know, really trying to paint herself as on the front lines of,

you know, this broad, mass deportation, mass detention policy.

I think an important thing to note here, though, is that her ouster isn't necessarily an indication

of change in policy by the Trump administration. You know, it's really about the message that

Trump doesn't like the optics of how his immigration policy has been played out in public and feels

at this, at least moving her off the scene as a public face of this, maybe we'll change the

perception and maybe refocus on border policy. Correct. I mean, again, I agree with Domenico,

the policies are not going anywhere. A lot of the people who are writing, signing the documents,

doing all those things, they're still in place. And so what we're just seeing is maybe a change in

how that message is publicly delivered. Now that, you know, there were instances that really

soured the base on, you know, how far immigration enforcement is going. Well, the base and the broader

public, the administration is just completely underwater when it comes to its handling of immigration,

which, as Domenico said, should be one of their strong areas. I just want to note as a long-time

White House correspondent that it is pretty wild that Kristi Nome, at this point, more than a year

into the second Trump administration, is the first cabinet secretary to get the boot. Because in

the first term, we were like, doing a emergency podcast all the time. But, Tam, you could probably tell

us why that is. I mean, the fact is it's not because Trump is suddenly, you know, more loyal to

his cabinet members. It's maybe partially because he understands the job of the presidency and the

type of people he was brought in, right? Uh, yes. So the people who he has surrounded himself with

are not people who see themselves as guardrails on his impulses. They're people who are there

to say yes, to help him execute on what he wants to execute on. And, you know, gone are the people

who would ring their hands and see themselves as containing him. And as a result, he hasn't fired

them. Even though someone like Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth certainly had a lot of controversy

early on, Trump stood by him. Trump is standing by these people in part because they're standing by him.

President Trump now says that Chrissy Nome is going to be the special envoy for the shield of

the Americas. That keeps her close, but doesn't allow her to kind of be a former who's out there

speaking to anybody. Giving people brand new jobs or ambassadorships or, you know, um, the first

example the president's former national security advisor, uh, Mike Waltz, uh, he then became the US

ambassador to the United Nations. Uh, what's happening with Chrissy Nome is definitely, uh, not as much

of a real thing until the president announced it. And there is a summit of the shield of the Americas

for about an hour and a half or two hours this weekend, uh, in Florida. Very quickly, he meant a

President Trump announced that Senator Mark Wayne Mullin from Oklahoma is going to be his

pick. Uh, he, he's planning to nominate Senator Mullin. What do we need to know about him?

You know, Senator Mullin has been a strong ally of the president. He was out there campaigning

for him in 2024, mostly among the Native American and tribal communities. Uh, you know,

Mullin is an interesting switch because he's not someone that I think you would have seen as an

obvious pick for DHS particularly. But at the same time, I'm not surprised that he ended up on

the cabinet. Now, Mullin does not sit on the Judiciary Committee. He also does not sit on

Senate homeland. Uh, and so it will be interesting to see kind of how his confirmation goes through.

But I think the challenge here is he's inheriting, you know, a little bit of a mess, you know, his agency

that he's going to take on is currently not being funded. Uh, you know, DHS is still in a single

agency government shutdown. Um, going, we're in the third week of that. Hundreds of thousands of

employees are furloughed or working without pay, including a third of cybersecurity staff. Um,

many people that deal with disaster relief, not to mention administrative people and, and folks

across all the other agencies, um, he is looking at a lot of legal challenges to his agency,

particularly, um, he is looking at a lot of internal fractures and fissures, um, you know,

varying struggling power dynamics. The Inspector General of DHS sent a letter to lawmakers also this

week saying that DHS was obstructing his investigations, his internal investigations into the

agency. So he's taking on, you know, kind of a lot of muddied waters inside, uh, when it comes to

dealings with Congress, when it comes to dealings with the judiciary branch, and he's going to have

to try and turn the public sentiment around. That's a lie. But one thing that he has going for him is

that he is actually very skilled at going on television. Yes. And defending the president and his

policies, which is probably what got him on the president's radar as much as he was. Well, I was

going to say as a senator, you know, he's, he's inherently disciplined when it comes to messaging,

because his politicians had to win statewide. Uh, he's a former businessman at owned a plumbing

company, uh, where he became pretty wealthy through that. But he's also seen as a tough guy by the

president because he has a black belt in Jiu Jitsu. He's a former MMA fighter and we know this

president loves UFC and WWE and all the rest of those, uh, acronyms for, for, for wrestling and

fighting and all that tough stuff. All right. Amen. Uh, thank you so much for bringing your

reporting and enjoy your weekend. Thank you. When we come back, the latest on the Epstein files.

Washington can affect your portfolio every day. Washington Wise from Charles Schwab is an

original podcast that unpacks the story's making news and how they may affect your finances and

portfolio. Host Mike Townsend and his guests explore policy initiatives for retirement savings,

taxes, trade and more. Download the latest episode and follow at Schwab.com slash Washington

Wise or wherever you listen. And we're back and in Pierre political reporter Stephen Fowler is

here with us. Hey, Stephen. Hello. There were a number of developments in the long running Epstein

file story this week. And Stephen, I want to start with your latest reporting on files that were

missing or redacted from the original public release. Some of those files have now been posted by

the Justice Department. Um, what do they have in them? Just to recap, we found that there were 53

pages that appeared to be missing from that public Epstein files database. They all related to

an allegation that President Trump sexually abused a minor in the early 1980s. There was a

mention of this explicit allegation found in a Justice Department PowerPoint from last year that

was in the files and also an FBI email kind of recapping all of the claims made about Trump.

But we couldn't find it anywhere else in these files. Looking at some of the other documents,

we were able to find that the FBI interviewed this woman as an adult in 2019 for separate times.

Only one of those interviews was initially published in the Epstein files and it did mention

Trump at all. Now we do have some of those files. 16 pages covering three other interviews plus a

two page sheet detailing the initial tip that was called in. These interviews do go into more

explicit detail about what Trump was alleged to have done to her when she was a teenager,

forcing her head down onto his penis. She allegedly bit it. You've said foul words and hit her head.

There's also an interview which was the final one in 2019 and this woman was asked whether she

quote felt comfortable detailing her contacts with Trump and she reportedly asked quote,

what the point would be of providing this information at this point in her life when there was a

strong possibility nothing could be done about it. And remember, these interviews took place

during Trump's first-term in office. Steven, how is the White House responding to this?

We should also note here that Trump denies any wrongdoing related to Epstein and has not

been charged with the crime. The White House has repeatedly said that Trump is quote,

totally exonerated by the Epstein files. The latest statement from White House Press Secretary

Caroline Levitt says that these are completely baseless accusations backed by zero credible evidence.

They also point on background to two different articles that claim to discredit the woman's

accusations, but we haven't verified those things. In fact, Tam, looking at the release of these

documents, it doesn't actually shine any more light on how credible federal investigators viewed

these claims or how they were resolved or why these allegations were included in the Justice

Department's slide presentations, summarizing the cases against Epstein and his accomplice

Elaine Maxwell. But there are still records that haven't been released. What does the government

said about the delays in the release? It's been a shifting story. I mean, back when the Epstein

files were released on January 30th, the Justice Department said they were all done in accordance

with the Epstein files Transparency Act Law Congress passed. When we ask specifically about these

documents, the Justice Department would not comment on them directly and said anything that

might have been withheld was because of privilege or they were duplicates or they were part of an

ongoing federal investigation. After more people reported on the documents and there was more of a

public backlash, the story changed again. The Justice Department said they were reviewing to see

if anything was accidentally mistakenly tagged as duplicate and if they found something, of course,

they would publish it. So fast forward to Thursday night, where there were a thousand new pages

uploaded, including some documents that it discovered were, quote, incorrectly coded as duplicative,

and a few more documents related to prosecution memos that the Southern District of Florida

determined could be published while protecting privileged materials. That said, we still know,

based on looking at the serial numbers stamped onto these documents and the logs of files

turned over to Galein Maxwell's attorney in her case, that there are still 37 pages at least

that still haven't been published. Dominiko, this is a story that is just not going away for the

administration and it comes when they have all kinds of other issues related to their base and

and possible disillusionment with respect to the war with Iran. You know, it's one thing to be

fighting a messaging battle on one front, but this is now two fronts that they're on. Where do

you see this going? Well, certainly this isn't going to go away anytime soon. It's going to continue

to be a thorn in the Trump administration side. I mean, Trump would very much like this to go away,

but there are a lot of people on both sides of the aisle who don't want that to be the case,

and it's not necessarily because they're targeting Trump. You know, there are lots of men with

power and influence who are named in these files, many of whom have not faced any consequences,

whatsoever. You have lots of victims who are continuing to speak out and are trying to make sure

this story doesn't go away. And we're seeing the investigative committee in Congress that's looking

into this now subpoenaing more people in the Trump administration. So they're clearly going to be

more hearings. We're going to hear more about this. And you know, we heard more from, for example,

the Bill and Hillary Clinton last week. And then in video that was released this week about that

because of Bill Clinton being in pictures and things in the Epstein files as well. So this is

something that spans a lot of people, a lot of pages, and a lot of different potential scandals.

Yeah, Steven, let's talk just a little bit about these depositions that Bill and Hillary Clinton

did with the House Oversight Committee last week related to their links to Jeffrey Epstein.

And in Hillary Clinton's case, the links are pretty tenuous. The videos were released this week.

Did you learn anything? There wasn't necessarily much new in there. I mean, Hillary Clinton said before

during and after the deposition that she didn't know Epstein never really met with him and that

they should be talking to people that did, like President Trump. Former President Bill Clinton

seemed to have a lot more to say. He told the committee he was glad that they asked him to be there

and acknowledged that he met and traveled with Epstein some. But he told the committee that

initially he thought Epstein was a quote interesting man, but he said there's nothing that I saw

when I was around him that made me realize he was trafficking women. Clinton said he never witnessed

Epstein abuse young women or girls, nor did he discuss any sexual acts with him. Neither one of

them have been charged with any sort of crime related to Epstein, like many of the other people

that we've mentioned. Dominico, what do you make of the fact that the Clintons were asked to testify?

Well, look, I mean, Republicans have had a long time, some would say obsession with the Clintons

and anytime they have an opportunity to bring them in front of an investigative body to be able to

ask them questions related to this or anything else, it seemed that they take the opportunity to go

and do that. And I think that there's a lot of people who are questioning why they would go and do

that, but not be talking to people who are close to, for example, the President of the United States,

who is a Republican and also named in these files multiple times as well, if they're looking for

purely non-biased information that they can use to take their investigation in any direction

that that leads. Yeah, and Stephen, this makes me think of Howard Lutnik, the Commerce Secretary,

who does appear in the files and has said a lot of things over time about Jeffrey Epstein,

and now has agreed to appear before the House Oversight Committee. So, remind us how does Lutnik

show up in the files? Well, he is also not accused of any wrongdoing related to Epstein and his

crimes, but the release of these files show that Lutnik had a deeper and longer relationship with

Epstein than he previously disclosed to Congress. I mean, we knew that they were next-door neighbors,

and Lutnik had previously said they cut ties in 2005 after one visit to Epstein's House,

but looking at the files, you saw that he visited Jeffrey Epstein's private island in 2012 with

his family, and this was after Epstein had registered sex offender. There are other communications in

the files over the years, so members of Congress have questions about Lutnik's credibility and truthfulness.

The committee is not done. They also voted to subpoena attorney general Pam Bondi. It was a bipartisan

vote. What are they hoping to learn from her? Well, after the reporting on these documents that were

withheld and others that we found that were removed and put back up, the Democrats on the House Oversight

Committee sent a letter to Bondi demanding answers about these documents. Also ahead of the Clinton

deposition, Chairman Comer said he was looking into the reporting and hadn't really got an answer

from the administration what was going on. So you had the Oversight Committee where it was the Democrats

and a few Republicans vote to subpoena Bondi to bring her in front of the committee to get their

questions answered about these specific documents, but also just in general the way the Epstein files

have been handled. In a statement sent to me today a spokesperson for the Oversight Committee

Democrats say that quote this White House cover up is ongoing and they say that they will get answers

when Pam Bondi appears before the committee under oaths. So I just want to reiterate this is not

specifically about these documents and these allegations against Trump. There have been other

issues basically the entire time the Epstein files have been a thing before the Justice Department.

You've got the files that were removed and put back up. You have redaction issues that were

exposing victims personal information. You had redaction issues where there were things that

shouldn't be covered up or covered up and you had the Epstein files transparency act law give a

deadline for the files to be released. The Justice Department missed that. So overall Congress is

not very happy with the Attorney General and the Justice Department with all things Epstein.

And does this stop with the Clintons and Bondi and Lutnik or is this committee going to keep

issuing subpoenas? There are several other names that Chairman Comer mentioned they are seeking

interviews. These are people that have been in Epstein's orbit that the files have kind of exposed

how wide their communications were. People like Bill Gates and Kathy Rummler the former Obama White House

Council she resigned from her job as Goldman Sachs top lawyer recently after the files showed

she had a much deeper and wider communication and relationship with Epstein than she previously

admitted. So we are getting there there are more and more names more and more people and more and

more questions that are coming forth and the oversight committee is chugging along although one of

the people that the Republican majority on the committee does not seem to want to hear from on this

is Donald Trump. And I think a lot of people are wondering if there's going to be consequences

for anyone stateside we've seen that there were consequences for people in the UK for example

we've seen people in the United States have to step down from certain positions but we haven't

seen anybody prosecuted or gone after by the Justice Department to have a case brought against them

and I think there's a lot of people wondering if there's going to be any kind of movement toward doing

that yeah um all right we are going to take one more quick break and then it's time for

can't let it go and we're back and it's time for can't let it go the part of the pod where we talk

about the things from the week that we just cannot stop thinking about politics or otherwise

and I'm just always on politics I guess because I'm going first because I can't let go of this

Senator Steve Daines of Montana waited until just mere moments before the filing deadline

to withdraw his name from contention and then after the deadline posted a video announcing it to

the world serving the people of Montana in the US House and the US Senate the past 13 years

has been the greatest honor of my professional career I'm grateful to God for allowing me to serve

but after much careful thought I've decided not to seek reelection after much careful thought he

actually orchestrated a carefully timed event that made it so that his chosen replacement was

the only Republican to jump into the race and he did that just minutes before the announcement

just before the deadline it was really fascinating I mean I have to say as somebody who worked at

a newspaper that was on the Jersey Shore and as someone with Italian ancestry it always irritated

me how the show Jersey Shore depicted Italian Americans and what people thought of the Jersey Shore

or that the show the sopranos the way that it depicted Italian Americans and where I'm going with

this is that people in Montana very much do not like the show Yellowstone but then stop acting like

Yellowstone I mean this came out of a like right off of a Yellowstone script where it was an

orchestrated political coup essentially and you know really fascinating stuff for a state that

I think most people don't see as that kind of politically cutthroat we know this isn't actually the

first time this cycle that you have had somebody conveniently decide that they were no longer running

right at the filing deadline in Illinois you had representative Chubi Garcia a Democrat do the same thing

but in that case it was just orchestrated with the person that Chubi Garcia wanted to run in his

place another Democrat was so angered and outraged by that that they're launching an independent

campaign to give voters a choice Dominican what can you like I have mine is also politically related

and it's the fact that I just can't let go of who Donald Trump is going to endorse in the Texas

Republican Senate primary that has now gone to a runoff and they're facing 12 weeks of a potential

primary that could cost a hundred million dollars and maybe even a Texas Senate seat which

is one that I think Republicans think should be fairly safe for them to win but now Democrats have

their candidate and James Tallerico he's already running to the middle for his you know general

election campaign and Trump the day after the primary put on true social that he's going to

endorse and that the other person should drop out and all we've seen for the past few days

is Ken Paxton the state attorney general saying he's not going to drop out of the race Trump

hasn't endorsed anyone John Cornyn is the incumbent senator we'll see and we'll see if

maybe there's a landing spot for Paxton if that's the direction he decides to go could there be

an ambassador ship to somewhere a special envoy to anywhere other than Texas or maybe Texas yeah

well you know Oklahoma's gonna have a Senate seat open that pretty soon too so you know

it's Ken Paxton from Oklahoma he hasn't got any trust the line oh he does have a property there

well there you go Steven what can't you let go of so this is a video the CEO of McDonald's

he filmed a direct-to-camera kind of influencer video trying the new big arch burger

and the bite that he takes out of it is like somebody who has never eaten a McDonald's burger before

did he try to use a fork and a knife no it was just a tiny bite and it was not somebody that

expressed a lot of joy from this burger and it's actually kind of an older video but it's been

gaining a lot of traction online from people remixing it sort of clowning it and things and in

the last week it led to the CEO of Burger King film of video taking a big ol bite out of a

wopper and being like yeah this is great and then you had a Wendy's burger and then you have all

of these everybody with a burger and a CEO is now doing these videos making fun of the McDonald's

CEO trying to eat this burger and I'm sure there's a story in there about the downfall of a CEO

influencer I'm sure there's also a video of maybe you want to practice eating burgers if you're

going to be eating one on camera but I can't let go we now have a burger war with CEOs like

tick-tocking each other into who can have the biggest most enthusiastic bite of their

several dollar concoction. There was a lot of talking and it's hard to talk with your mouthful

yeah right I mean that could be part of the reason but he did look like oh he was like yeah

he's like look at this thing like it was a piece of art like only McDonald's could do this.

Well they probably also staged it they used like the people that they used to dress up the burgers

for like print ads or for commercials where they like brush it and what they paint but they

use a tweezer with the sesame seeds on the bun just to get it just right okay but I haven't

actually seen this video because I prefer not to be very online how big was this burger like

would a normal person have trouble fitting it in their mouth. There's nothing that big about it

I mean it's called the big arch you have the big arch the wafer it's very obnoxious. How many

how many pieces of meat how many buns like most two there's a bun and there's toppings you know

it just I think he wanted to talk a lot and explain the burger and act like this is so great but

it's really really hard to eat your food and talk about but he did look like ooh look at how

interesting it is that I'm holding a burger. All right let's leave it there for today our executive

producer is Muthani Materie our producers are Casey Morale and Brias Suggs our editor is Rachel

Bay special thanks to Cristina Dev Callimer and Dana Farrington I'm Tamer Keith I cover the

White House. I'm Stephen Fowler I cover politics and I'm Dominican Montenegro Senior Political Editor

and thank you for listening to the NPR Politics podcast.

Support for NPR and the following message come from the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation

investing in creative thinkers and problem solvers who help people communities and the

planet flourish more information is available at hewlett.org