Lawrence: Trump sounded like ‘spoiled child’ in trying to negotiate out of war he claims he’s won

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The last with Lawrence O'Donnell starts right now.

Hey, Lawrence.

Hey, Jen, how's it feel to be one of the many people who are braver than Pete himself,

willing to actually face, face reporters questions.

What does that feel like?

The bar is low there, Lawrence.

But it does feel like if you're so proud of this war,

why you knock and all the press corps out to the annex

in the parking lot of the Department of Defense, right?

And you're so proud of your war that you can only take easy questions

from friendly reporters, propagandists like yourself.

That's his official position, I guess.

Yes, and I thought it was kind of crazy today.

That he talked about how bombs, he's part of the negotiation by bombing.

The same day that they reportedly sent who knows it could be one page.

We don't know, a 15 point plan over to the Iranians.

He kind of is, he's got like one speed and one trick.

Well, he doesn't, the one thing he can't do, the one thing he cannot do

is what Jen Psaki used to do for living.

He has now proved that.

He's afraid to do that.

He'd never try to do that.

And it makes you one of many, many people actually way braver than Pete Hanksett.

Well, thank you for that, Lawrence.

Thanks, Jen.

Thanks, Lawrence. Have a good show.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Well, the man who started the most expensive war in history

without being able to explain why continued to sound like a spoiled child today

when he claimed he was trying to negotiate his way out of the war that he started.

Are you negotiating on who's going to control the straight from now on?

No, we can, we'll have control of anything we want.

We'll have control of anything we want.

He wants to control the straight of who moves now and he doesn't.

And he doesn't know how to get control of the straights.

Donald Trump finds himself now waging a war to try to gain control of the straight of her moves

that was free and open to shipping before Donald Trump started his war.

So the objective of his war is to achieve something that existed before his war.

Donald Trump started his war and Iran effectively shut down,

shipping on the straight of hormones and now Donald Trump is continuing to fight his war

to open the straight of her moves and claiming we'll have control of anything we want.

That has not been true in the aftermath of an American war since World War II.

And it took millions of American troops along with even larger numbers of troops

from American allies plus two atomic bombs for the United States to decisively win World War II

and almost get control of everything we wanted.

Even then, we did not get control of anything we want in Germany because the Soviet Union fighting

as our ally in that war with a much larger army than we ever had

and millions more casualties than we suffered blocked the United States from full control of Germany.

And so if Iran was going to give Donald Trump complete control of anything he wants,

they would have surrendered already.

That is not going to happen, but Donald Trump is going to continue to lie about what is happening

and what will happen with Donald Trump's war pulling the lowest of any American war in its first month

and now hitting new lows in the polls because of his war.

Donald Trump is looking desperately for a way out that will not look like a total surrender on his part.

And so he orders thousands of troops to start moving toward the Middle East, just toward the Middle East

with a report tonight of 2,082 airborne soldiers being deployed to the Middle East.

2,000 American soldiers heading in the same direction as a few thousand Marines are according to our own military history

capable of achieving nothing in a country of 90 million people.

Iran is a country of 90 million people that has more combat-ready soldiers in Iran than the entire United States Army.

There are 600,000 in active military service in Iran with another possibly 500,000 reserves.

And the entire United States Army has 450,000 soldiers, most of whom are not assigned to the infantry to serve in combat,

to actually be the boots on the ground that the reporters are all talking about.

And remember, at the peak, the absolute peak of our commitment in Vietnam, we had 545,000 soldiers on the ground in Vietnam.

And we lost that war. And Vietnam had a population of less than half the population of Iran.

And of course the military miracle could happen, 2,000 American soldiers could make a move on Carg Island, 20 miles off of the Iranian coast.

And then maybe the entire Iranian army could just surrender or flee the way the 165,000 members of the Afghanistan military did when the Taliban rose up against them.

But military history, American military history tells us that miracles aside a few thousand troops headed in the direction of a country of 90 million people at war with the United States

cannot accomplish very much and definitely cannot win that war.

So the boots on the ground question that the White House reporters keep asking is always phrased in the simplistic childish way,

will there be American boots on the ground in Iran?

The White House press corps assumes, I guess, that we have enough boots to send to Iran and we don't, not even close, in Iran knows that.

Germany had a population of 70 million people in 1942 in the middle of World War II, a population smaller than Iran's current population,

and for the United States of America to defeat Germany in World War II, the United States had to recruit and draft millions of soldiers to send to Europe and they weren't enough.

General Dwight Eisenhower, who became President Eisenhower, led not just an American military invasion of Europe to cross Germany, he led an Allied invasion, Allied invasion,

because the United States of America could not do it alone, and our biggest ally in defeating Germany was actually the Soviet Union,

which was fighting the German military on the other side of the country, on the eastern side of Germany, while Dwight Eisenhower was sending millions of troops toward Germany through France, millions to defeat and occupy a country with a smaller population than Iran.

And so if you're going to ask one of those cliche White House press corps boots in the ground, questions to Donald Trump, ask him if he has a way of getting 500,000 boots on the ground, now that he has no European allies in his war with him.

So far, the only way to interpret the movement of a couple of thousand troops in the direction of the Middle East is as a Trump stunt, a stunt by the person who says we'll have control of anything we want.

Donald Trump is now losing ground in the polls every day, 36% of Americans approve of how Donald Trump is handling his job, that is down four points since last week.

And it's easy for me to sit here confident that Donald Trump will not be putting boots on the ground in Iran, but imagine being the parents or the spouses or the children of those thousands of soldiers headed toward Donald Trump's war tonight with the man who's sending them there, sounding more childish about his war every day.

They did something yesterday that was amazing, actually, they gave us a present and the president arrived today.

There was a very big present worth a tremendous amount of money and I'm not going to tell you what that present is, but it was a very significant prize and they gave it to us and they said they were going to give it so that meant one thing to me would deal with the right people.

No, it wasn't nuclear, it was oil and gas related and it was a very nice thing they did, but what it showed me is that we're dealing with the right people.

There were things that happened during wartime that American presidents chose not to discuss publicly, but they did not publicly discuss, not discussing them publicly.

And for Donald Trump to say that the Iranian regime that has been so cruel to the Iranian people, the Iranian regime that murdered thousands of its own people before this war started, the Iranian regime that has tried to crush the spirit of Iranian women in every way that they possibly can.

Must be so deeply offensive to those people in Iran who are opponents of the regime to hear Donald Trump talking about the Iranian regime, presumably the Iatola giving him a present.

Politico has this report on what Donald Trump's present could be, the present that he's so excited about.

It's possible Trump was referring to a ship carrying two million barrels of Iraqi crude that passed safely through the Strait of Hormuz, the first tanker to export Iraqi crude since Iran tight control over the strait according to Bloomberg.

But the White House press office declined to answer any follow-up questions. Several people close to the White House said they were baffled by the president's remarks.

Baffled indeed, one ship, one ship getting through the strait and Donald Trump treats it like a wonderful present, a quote, very significant prize.

But there's new reporting tonight from Bloomberg indicating that maybe no ship got through.

Bloomberg says that the oil super tanker hauling Iraqi crude whose signal appeared to show it had exited the Strait of Hormuz has not transited the waterway its manager said.

And Donald Trump says that that present that may or may not have made it through the strait that very significant prize means quote we're dealing with the right people.

The only people who could authorize the movement of a ship in that situation is the current Iranian ruling regime, which is exactly the same ruling regime that was in place before Donald Trump started his war.

And so Donald Trump is now desperately saying publicly that he desperately wants to negotiate with the very same regime that was empowered before Donald Trump started his war, which means Donald Trump wants to negotiate to leave them in power.

The stock market and the price of oil are in control of Donald Trump's war.

And Donald Trump knows that the stock market wants him to end his war and he knows that American voters want him to end his war.

And so he has stopped issuing bombastic threats of him committing bombing war crimes in Iran.

And now says he doesn't need to do any of those things because he has already won his war.

I think we're going to end it. I can't tell you for sure.

I don't like to say this. We've won this war has been won.

And now the Trump voters who gave us this presidency finally know what it feels like when Donald Trump wins a war.

Here is Donald Trump's former defense secretary from his first term as president. General James Mattis describing Donald Trump's war.

I think that what we're seeing is a situation where target tree never makes up for a lack of strategy.

And by that I mean 15,000 targets have been hit. There have been significant military successes, but they are not matched by strategic outcomes.

Now some of the strategic outcomes early on unconditional surrender regime change. We're going to dictate who the next supreme leader is.

Those were clearly nonsense. Those were delusional.

Leading off our discussion title is Senator Gary Peters, a Democrat of Michigan. He's a member of the Senate Armed Services Committee. He's also the top-ranking Democrat in the Homeland Security Committee.

Senator Peters, so there's Donald Trump's Secretary of Defense from his first term saying that Donald Trump's notions of how this war was going to go were nonsense and delusional. Are we now living in that delusion?

Yeah, I'm afraid we are. We know going into this war there really wasn't a strategic plan that at least that we knew of. It certainly wasn't articulated by the president and normally before the United States goes to war.

We have a president of the United States that actually goes to the American people and talks about why this war is important for our strategic interest.

You're in a situation where you may be sending sons and daughters into harm's way. It is how a democracy works. We didn't get any of that. We basically had an attack without consulting Congress without getting approval as the Constitution dictates as well.

And there was never really what was the plan for victory? How would we define victory in this war? And now we are just basically seeing a lot of number of great military successes and there's no question the United States military is by far the best military in the world and probably the best military we've ever seen.

But you need to have a political objective. Why do you send men and women into harm's way? There needs to be an objective, a strategic objective that is achieved. We aren't getting regime change here. We see that the nuclear as far as we know the nuclear stockpiles are still there and they haven't been destroyed by aerial attacks and most military experts believe that that's not possible just by the air. You're going to need to take other kinds of actions.

And now we're dealing with the Straits of Homoos that are close that should have been immediately taken or we should have taken action against that immediately. Everybody knew that that is a choke point. It's been a choke point for decades and for the Iranians to now use asymmetric warfare tools to basically close the Straits of Homoos is adding to the world cost of this war not just to the taxpayers of the United States for spending which we think may be about a billion dollars a day on the war.

But that's small compared to the cost that American are paying at the gas pump right now is gas prices go up and across the the world. We've got fertilizer prices going up farmers who are seeing increased prices when they're going into their fields to plant their crops. We're going to see that in food prices.

The cost to Americans is extensive and yet we don't know exactly how we would define victory in this war. This is certainly an irresponsible action by the president and he needs to account for it.

When you hear Donald Trump talking with such childish enthusiasm about the possibility just the possibility of one oil tanker getting through the strait and maybe that oil tanker didn't get through according to Bloomberg.

But he's so excited about just one getting through Iran allowing one to get through. Does that indicate to you that opening the strait will be Donald Trump's way of declaring victory. In other words, victory is achieving exactly the condition that existed the day before the war.

Yeah, that sounds it's outrageous on its face. And as you say, even one tanker, you know, there's hundreds of tankers that go through there regularly in order to move 20% of the world's oil.

You know, I served in the Navy reserve. I served in the Navy. I've been in UAE and actually stood on the shores looking at the straits on promos when I was there on Navy duty and you would just see a line a long line of tankers.

This is many years ago. It's increased since that time going through the straits and it's such a it is such a choke point. It says very narrow. It's tough to protect those the tankers.

But if you don't have that steady, steady stream of tankers going through, you're going to see oil prices up. You're going to see a major impact to the economy and everybody's going to pay.

And there wasn't a plan to take take the initiative initially when those first bombs were dropped that the president should have had a plan to go in to make sure you secure the straits. That didn't occur.

That was clearly a miscalculation and every day that goes by that miscalculation just compounds exponentially in terms of cost to people all across the world.

What I'm concerned most about are the American people who already are facing high inflation rates and cost and are having difficulty making payments for cars for homes and now gas and you're seeing interest rates can't come down because of the threat of inflation as a result of these energy prices.

I mean, you're going to continue to pay more. That's not what this president should be doing. He needs to be focused on lowering costs for Americans, not increasing costs while also putting men and women in harm's way and paying the ultimate price.

So we've seen tragically already American soldiers who have had been killed and that's something we all certainly agree for and certainly our hearts go out to the families of those who've been lost in this conflict.

And we hope that we can limit future losses.

Senator Peters, we have to go to our first commercial break. I'd like you to stay because I want to ask you about something I've lost track of.

I've lost track of how many times you and the Democrats have voted to fund TSA fully fund TSA just in the last two weeks and how many times Republicans have voted against it, which I know is every time.

I just don't know exactly how many, but I want to get to that in the current situation with TSA right after this break.

Senator Peters, I'll be right back.

Senate Democrats have voted over 10 times to fully fund the TSA while Republicans have voted against that funding every single time.

Republicans have said they are willing to fund the TSA only if Democrats will fully fund Donald Trump's ICE agents who spend their days in America ruining people's lives.

My name is Fernando Hernandez Garcia, except it's not. That's my name that I have to use to protect mine and my family safety.

Over one year ago, my life has completely changed. One morning, my little sister woke up until my parents let her hit her.

My parents took this very seriously because the year before she had an emergency surgery to remove a tumor.

My parents and my five siblings got in the car and drove from South Texas to Houston.

She could see a specialist at Texas Children's Hospital. On the way, government officials stopped them at the checkpoint and deported everyone.

Even though my parents told them about my sister's condition, even though my siblings are U.S. citizens.

I was visiting relatives out of state when I received a call from my parents that they had been detained and would soon be deported.

I remember this day like it was yesterday because it was the last day I remember feeling like a kid.

When I heard the news, I couldn't breathe. I didn't know what I was going to do.

My mom worried about me returning to our home in South Texas alone.

But I had to finish high school and I wanted to make sure I could do everything in my power to stay on top of the bills and keep the home my mom and dad had sacrificed so much for.

When I come to my mom, she tells me how my sister can't get the treatment she needs in the rural part of Mexico they are in because she is in a Mexican citizen.

How she is getting worse by the day, having a lot of the same medical issues she had when the brain tumor was diagnosed.

She has a novel medical condition that needs specialized care.

You can say all you want about these awful immigration policies don't impact U.S. citizens, but that's a lie.

My family was ripped apart from me and my future along with them.

Back with us is Senator Gary Peters, the top Democrat of the Senate Homeland Security Committee.

Senator Peters, that sets up what has been the standoff in the United States Senate.

Democrats willing to fully fund TSA, trying to pass bills repeatedly to fully fund TSA, Republicans opposing voting against it every single time.

Everyone standing on a line and in their port has to know, Republicans voted against funding TSA every single time you brought it up.

And they are doing it because they want more money for the people who did that to his family.

That's absolutely right.

And that's what we're pushing against or pushing against what we just heard.

We're pushing against the actions that we've seen by ICE, brutal actions against U.S. citizens.

Certainly the horrendous attacks in Minnesota with citizens, the killing of two citizens.

And we want to make sure that their guardrails put in place that federal agents can't engage in these types of activities.

And so we have this appropriations bill.

And let's be clear, ICE has already fully funded because of the big bill that passed last year.

They have more money than they need.

Republicans want to give them even more money so that they can continue these types of activities.

And they're basically holding TSA, FEMA, the Coast Guard, as well as CISA, our Cyber Security Agency, hostage.

We're saying no.

We aren't going to fund those agencies unless you give us more money for ICE, which already has plenty of money to do what they're doing.

And we're saying no more money unless we can get some guidelines in place.

And our guidelines are basically saying that when federal agents are on the roads, they can't engage in activities outside of what we expect of our local police, the same kind of rules and guidelines.

And Republicans are saying no to that.

But to your point, they say we want to open TSA.

Well, we've put bills forward.

unanimous consent saying we'll fully fund TSA Republicans object.

We've done that.

I believe that's over 10 times just for TSA.

But we've also done that for FEMA at a time where we're looking at natural disasters.

We did it for CISA.

And this is one very close to me.

CISA is our Cyber Security Protection Agency.

We're at war with Iran.

If you think about what our number one threat is to the homeland is Iranian cyber attacks.

They're very good at that.

We need to be protected from that.

And we've tried to fund CISA.

And Republicans have said no.

We're not going to fund CISA unless we have no restrictions at all on what ICE is engaged in.

But I also want to make a point because I think it's really important.

Before even the funding cuts that we've had to CISA are the unwillingness for Republicans to let us fund it.

They actually cut one-third of all of the cyber professionals have been cut, basically fired, downsized.

At a time where we're facing outsized threats from Iran for cyber threats.

So making the country less safe and they're unwilling to fund these agencies.

And that they're blaming Democrats when it's clearly on them.

We will put those builds up again tomorrow.

If we can, we can fund TSA tomorrow as long as Republicans don't object.

We can fund FEMA tomorrow if Republicans don't object.

We can fund the Coast Guard tomorrow if they don't object CISA.

And yet they're going to object because they want to hold it hostage.

So they can get even more money for ICE to engage in the activities that we're seeing across this country.

The vast majority of the American people think that is unacceptable.

Senator Gary Peters, thank you very much for joining us tonight.

Thank you.

Coming up, the county attorney in Minneapolis, Mary Moriarty, announced today that she is suing Donald Trump's attorney general to force her to hand over evidence in the killings of Renee Good and Alex Pretty.

Mary Moriarty joins us next.

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Why have I asked my electrician I found on Angie.com to bury my pet hamster?

I was so moved by how carefully he buried my electrical wires.

I knew I could trust him to bury my sweet nibbles after his untimely end.

This is very strange.

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And now it's Mary Moriarty Plaintiff versus panel of Bondi Defendant.

Today the State of Minnesota and Mary Moriarty in her official capacity

as the Hennepin County attorney with jurisdiction over homicide investigations in Minneapolis

filed a federal lawsuit in Washington, D.C. to force Donald Trump's Justice Department to hand over evidence needed

for Mary Moriarty's criminal investigations of Donald Trump's invasion forces in Minneapolis.

The 43-page lawsuit describes the Trump forces interference with state and county investigators saying,

at the scene of the third shooting, the killing of Alex Prety,

federal immigration officers physically blocked investigators of the Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension from accessing the scene.

That physical obstruction persisted even after state officials obtained a judicial warrant authorizing access to the scene.

As with the previous two shootings, federal authorities took exclusive control of evidence and refused state and local authorities access

to even the most basic information related to the incident, such as the identities of the involved officers.

Mary Moriarty, who will join us in a minute, in her lawsuit, says, quote,

the fact that federal officers intentionally concealed their identities underscores the need for plaintiffs access

to investigative material relating to the three shootings by federal agents.

The lawsuit describes how some of the evidence has been handled.

Quote, on information and belief, Ms. Good's car is located in an FBI storage facility in Brooklyn Center, Minnesota,

to the BCI's knowledge, the car is shrink wrapped and has never been examined or processed.

Only hours after the shooting of Alex Prety, President Trump posted a photograph of a firearm on the social media website, Truth Social,

that the president claimed was Mr. Prety's firearm, the photograph shows the gun on the seat of a car surrounded by charging cords,

which indicates it was not protected or handled according to normal law enforcement processes meant to properly preserve evidence.

In announcing her case against the Treaty General Bondi today, Mary Moriarty said this about Renee Good's car.

We have received an email, a final decision from the federal government that not only would the BCI not have access to that car,

I believe they're shipping it elsewhere.

So, you know, I suppose in the normal course of action once the case or the car had been processed,

and all of the proceedings had ended, I imagine at some point that car would be returned.

But obviously they haven't even processed it, and we don't know whether they will.

The state of Minnesota and Mary Moriarty are already in possession of what might be the most important evidence in these cases.

The video evidence that shows Renee Good and Alex Prety were shot and killed when they posed absolutely no threat to anyone.

I feel somewhat confident that we will have enough evidence in these three cases to make a decision.

I've been clear that I don't know what that decision is going to be.

We're not going to make it until we feel prepared to address whatever issues may come up.

Joining us now is Hanupen County Attorney Mary Moriarty.

Thank you very much for joining us tonight.

You know, when I was reading your 43-page complaint today, I was saying that the normal way this kind of work is done

is you pull down the cases that are just like this, and you look at what was written there,

even though some other states, some other situation, but it's a model of how to do this.

Has a lawsuit like this ever existed before?

No, actually not in the history of America.

And you're absolutely right.

We had to pull from different resources, but there's no factually similar case.

In fact, my understanding is that this, well, so this lawsuit came after our two-week requests, both DHS and the DOJ.

They did not, first of all, the DOJ never even responded to our demands for evidence.

And so this lawsuit is to ask a judge to force them to give the evidence to us.

And so we are not aware of any lawsuit like this ever filed in the history of this country.

The breakthrough evidence in cases like René Good and Alex Pretty in other situations has always been the video evidence.

Yes, there's ballistic evidence, there's other forms of evidence that are always available in these kinds of cases

that have not been made available to you yet.

But the video evidence has always been the crucial deciding evidence.

Is that likely to be the case in these situations?

I think the video evidence as well as the autopsy report.

I've said this a number of times that we know from the video evidence that René Good was shot multiple times.

There is a bullet hole in her windshield.

But I continue to maintain that the autopsy report and the medical examiner's findings are going to be very critical.

Much more critical than some of the evidence we probably will never get our hands on.

And it's out of today like at some point you're prepared to go forward, even without the evidence that the federal government now possesses.

Well, obviously we filed this lawsuit because we are hoping that just by filing the lawsuit we are hoping that the federal government would change its mind.

If they do not, we are planning to litigate this.

We got a judge assignment today already, so we're hoping that this case goes more quickly than civil litigation usually does.

So we're going to see how this pans out in the next couple of weeks.

How we continue to collect evidence on all three of the cases that would be pretty good and the shooting of Julio Sosa-Salise.

And as we continue to collect evidence and as we see how this litigation is going, there may come a point where we decide that we may have enough to go forward.

So probably to be clear, this is a civil lawsuit demanding the evidence that the federal government refuses to give us.

That is entirely separate from potential criminal charges.

So we can go forward on criminal charges if we feel that we are ready and can prove that case beyond a reasonable doubt, even if this civil lawsuit still goes ahead.

If Donald Trump continues to refuse to allow his justice department to supply any evidence to you.

Could you find yourself in a situation possibly in a trial of one of these cases where the defense suddenly has access to evidence that the federal government possesses and the prosecution doesn't have access to that evidence?

Absolutely. So these are cases that are very different than the cases we normally get.

Normally, we know what we're dealing with. We may not know exactly what the defendant or the accused might say.

But at least in Minnesota, we have rules here that provide for the information to be given to us and we give information to the defense.

One of the things that we are trying to work on in these three cases is to anticipate, well, what could the agents possibly say?

Because remember, we don't have any statements in the pretty case, for instance.

We do not know what those other agents would say about what they were hearing, what they were seeing at the time Mr. Pretty was shot.

And so a lot of the information that we don't have, we don't know what we don't have.

We don't know what they may say.

And so it is trying to anticipate what do we have and what could they possibly say and can we refute that?

So it's a little different than the normal cases we get, but certainly we are up to that challenge.

Mary Moriarty, thank you very much for joining us tonight on this important story.

Thank you.

And we will show you what Jeffrey Epstein's estate executor and accountant had to say when asked about Jeffrey Epstein's closest friend for 10 years, Donald Trump,

and Donald Trump's third wife, Melania Trump, Carson Rokana, who was in those depositions, asked some of those questions.

We'll join us next.

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In an under oath deposition, our next guest Congressman Rokana asked Jeffrey Epstein's accountant Richard com these questions.

Is it true that she received a financial settlement directly from the estate her attorney said that she has I believe that Jane don't for.

Received a settlement via mediation.

With the estate I believe in 2000 from 25.

And her attorney saying she received that settlement because she was a victim of Epstein and present from is that accurate.

I don't recall the.

Mediation statement or the lawsuit in particular, but I don't have recollection of President Trump.

I know that she alleges that Epstein abused her, but I don't recall President Trump.

I don't know if she made a mediation statement, so I don't have any recollection of her making allegations against President Trump.

Richard con was asked about Jeffrey Epstein's relationship with Donald Trump and Belania Trump.

And then another topic during your employment by Mr. Epstein, did you ever become aware of the relationship between him and Donald Trump?

Did I ever become aware of the relationship?

Donald Trump is someone that Epstein like to talk about a lot.

Did I become aware of a relationship?

I assumed at one point they were friends and they had a falling out, but I don't know what is true and what is not true.

He never spoke to me about his relationship with Donald Trump.

And I've just seen a lot of stories in the news that I don't know whether they're true or not.

You mentioned that he spoke about Donald Trump a lot.

Did he ever do that in your presence?

Yes.

What did he say?

Most of, I don't recall specific conversations.

But most of the conversations relating to Donald Trump or relating to, sorry, respectfully.

Most of the conversations relating to President Trump were at the time where President Trump was in the news quite frankly from 2016 to 2019.

And if President Trump was doing something that day and it made news, and I was in a meeting at his office, he might say, could you believe that President Trump did XY or Z?

And it might be a 30-second conversation.

That was the context of how Epstein spoke in my presence about President Trump.

And were any of his comments about having had a relationship with Trump?

Just trying to be a little clearer.

What you described was observations that you're telling sounded political in nature.

Like I'm asking whether he made comments that were more social in nature.

Not that I recall.

Specifically, during your employment by Mr. Epstein, did you ever become aware of a relationship between Jeffrey Epstein and Melania Trump?

No.

Did you ever provide payments to Melania Trump?

No.

In another under oath deposition last week, one of Jeffrey Epstein's lawyers, Darren Indike, was also asked about Donald Trump.

My first question.

During your employment by Jeffrey Epstein, did you ever become aware of a relationship between Epstein and Donald Trump?

The answer to that question is yes, aware of a relationship that existed before my time.

Have you ever discussed Donald Trump's connection to that?

Do you remember anyone?

Other than the triplets conversations that I had?

Lawyers, not.

Is that correct?

Correct.

Joining us now is Democratic Congressman Rokhan of California, a member of the House Oversight Committee.

Congressman, what did you take from those depositions?

First of all, they said that they have not been interviewed or investigated by the Department of Justice.

Just for the record, that means Lawrence, your team has officially done more for the Epstein investigation than the Department of Justice in terms of actually putting people in touch with folks who have knowledge.

The second thing is, Con, as you played the clip, has been all over the place about the woman who has accused Donald Trump of raping her when she was 13.

First, he said that there was a settlement, then he walks it back a few hours later.

Then when Robert Garcia and I write to him, he's now saying we can either confirm nor deny.

So they just have not been forthcoming about either the settlements or the exact relationship with Donald Trump or Melania Trump.

What more do you think the committee needs to do as a result of these depositions? What leads do you take out of these depositions?

First, I just want to emphasize how this should be the Department of Justice.

I mean, you have two people administrating the estate and they're not doing anything.

I mean, at the very least, they need to investigate these people.

But I believe that we need to actually try to confirm the settlement, whether it took place or not.

It's not enough for him to say I'm going to deny knowledge about that.

We need to also look at the financial transactions that were enumerous financial transactions to Epstein who paid him, why they paid him.

We need to explore drill ground further on the testimony that $750 was taken out at a time or $7,500 was taken out at a time and paid and who this money was going to.

And what about the credibility of these two witnesses?

Candidly, I was very disappointed. I do not find them credible.

I mean, they testified saying that they were not aware of the abuse.

Some of my colleagues in fact have said that they came very close to line of perjury.

They walked back anything that implicated Donald Trump.

It's very clear they were afraid of Donald Trump in this testimony.

Afraid of saying anything that could offend him or offend people around him.

And I do think they put themselves in legal jeopardy.

I expected them to come in before coming because they have been producing some of the documents to the committee.

But that was very disappointed that they were not forthcoming.

So I was struck by the way, Khan adjusted his testimony when he suddenly realized he was referring to him as Donald Trump.

And he really should, in his mind, I guess, call him President Trump.

He looked scared making that transition into calling him President Trump.

As you say, giving off a sense of he was afraid.

Scared is exactly right.

I mean, he was so careful when asked about Trump at every point.

He first gave in what my view was an honest answer saying yes, the accuser of Trump was paid a settlement.

Then hours later he walks it back.

Then when we write a letter, he's all over the place saying, I can't confirm it.

I can't deny it.

And basically I think what both of these individuals were trying to do is avoid as carefully as they could perjury

while not giving anything that would make Donald Trump or the Department of Justice a mad.

Why? Because they have not been investigated or prosecuted and they don't want to be prosecuted.

And this is Lawrence, why I call it an Epstein class.

People have been above the rule of law.

And it's what makes people mad.

It's not just that survivors have been abandoned and haven't had justice.

It's that there are these group of people who are above the law and feel like the rules don't apply to them.

Congressman Rocana, thank you very much for joining us tonight.

Thank you.

We'll be right back.

Congressman Rocana gets tonight's last word.

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