The House of Representatives voted to release the Epstein files, but one guy voted no. What does that mean for the rest of us? And why should we care? Michael Krieger explains why he doesn t want the files released.
00:06:25.980Number five, national security concerns, okay?
00:06:28.740The discharge requires the attorney general to release within 30 days, quote, classified information to the maximum extent possible.
00:06:39.180This ignores the principle that declassification should always rest and always has rested with the agency that originated the intelligence.
00:06:48.140So that they can protect their critical sources and methods.
00:06:51.700It is incredibly dangerous to demand that officials or employees of the DOJ declassify materials that originated in other agencies, in intelligence agencies.
00:07:02.960Okay, so here we have effectively an admission that Epstein was involved in intelligence, which I think everybody at this point should know.
00:07:14.100Anyone who's paid two seconds of attention to the Epstein case should know.
00:07:17.020Saying it's irresponsible to just release all of the files because we should only be releasing intelligence, or rather the origination of releasing that intelligence should come from the agencies that were involved.
00:07:32.820In other words, the agencies were involved.
00:07:34.720Now, it doesn't mean that Epstein was Jason Bourne or James Bond.
00:07:40.320Or it could mean that he was operating, he was doing whatever he was doing, and then the intelligence agencies came in and squeezed him.
00:07:47.020And he informed for them, or he was some kind of asset for them, or in some way he worked with them.
00:07:52.720In any case, it is now certainly beyond a shadow of a doubt, Epstein was involved in some way with intelligence.
00:08:00.540Over the years, we've seen hints of this.
00:08:02.520Reportedly, Alex Acosta, U.S. attorney in the Epstein case, who then was up for labor secretary under Trump, won.
00:08:07.220He reportedly said, when he was explaining his role in the Epstein case, that he was told to lay off because Epstein belonged to intelligence.
00:08:15.800We know the connection of the madam of Jeffrey Epstein, Ghislaine Maxwell, whose father worked for Israeli intelligence and probably MI6 and probably the KGB.
00:08:28.380And it seemed like he was a double or triple agent, too.
00:08:41.000Because the way that the Epstein case is being presented now, today, is it's being presented by Democrats as a Trump scandal.
00:08:49.840The Epstein issue long predates Trump's entry into politics.
00:08:55.920And for most of the time, it was Republicans, including Trump, who were pushing for more transparency on Epstein because it was a Bill Clinton scandal, because it was a Democrat scandal.
00:09:05.680And now, each party says, well, it's a scandal for the other party.
00:09:12.100But at bottom, what everyone is pretending is that the reason to release the Epstein files, the reason to get to the bottom of the Epstein case, is justice for the prostitutes, including, in some cases, underage prostitutes.
00:09:26.440Girls are being trafficked by Epstein.
00:09:27.800But that's what it's supposedly about.
00:09:37.880That has almost nothing to do with why people care.
00:09:41.240The reason people care primarily about the Epstein case is because they want to know how corrupt our government is, how compromised our government is, who's pulling the strings, who's calling the shots.
00:09:56.540People don't really care for some perp, some rich guy who went to Epstein's Island, who slept with a girl, be she 21 or 17, worse, obviously, if she's underage.
00:10:07.540They don't want him to be brought to justice.
00:10:11.960But what this is about is, was American intelligence involved in an underage prostitution ring, potentially an underage blackmail prostitution ring?
00:10:24.440And even more so, was foreign intelligence involved?
00:10:28.460And the big accusation is that Epstein was mobbed up with the Mossad, with some kind of Israeli intelligence.
00:10:34.160Obviously, he was friends with Ehud Barak, former prime minister of Israel.
00:10:37.040In some ways, though, the Barak relationship almost undermines the Israeli intelligence angle because Epstein was funding Barak, and Barak is a left-wing Israeli politician.
00:10:48.460So he's out of favor with the current Israeli government.
00:11:45.500Now, a little bit more to say on Epstein and then much more to say on Zoran Mamdani in New York, the Pope in Rome, and a transvestite sort of right-winger converting to Christianity.
00:11:59.880First, I want to tell you about Lumen.
00:13:41.120Real quick, just to put a button on the Epstein thing, what are we finding out?
00:13:44.040Just so you're caught up on the latest schoolyard shenanigans.
00:13:47.380One thing we're finding out is that, as the Democrats are claiming, this is a big Trump scandal, and we're going to get to the bottom of it.
00:13:56.660And can you believe Trump had a relationship with Epstein?
00:13:58.400We're finding out that a Democrat congressman, Stacey Plaskett, was texting Jeffrey Epstein, trying to get good questions to grill Trump's associates on during a congressional hearing.
00:14:13.700Democrats colluding with Jeffrey Epstein himself to try to get Trump.
00:14:19.660This was first reported by the Washington Post.
00:14:22.520It was a 2019 House Oversight Committee hearing with Trump's former lawyer, Michael Cohen.
00:14:27.760So we're told it's a big scandal that Trump palled around with Jeffrey Epstein 25 years ago.
00:14:36.000Give me some good stuff that I can slam Trump's lawyer with.
00:14:38.380Here is how Jamie Raskin, Democrat member of the House, defended his colleague for, you know, I don't know, sitting up late at night, kicking her feet up on the bed saying, hey, Jeffrey, you up?
00:14:49.860Now, they want to take a former United States prosecutor, the representative of the people of the Virgin Islands, and without even going to the ethics committee, much less a court, they want to arraign her on some charges based on a newspaper article that she did something lawful.
00:15:08.540However ill-advised it may have been, she took a phone call from one of her constituents.
00:15:32.680They ask Hakeem Jeffries, Democrat leader in the House, hey, is it weird that one of your members, you know, you're all talking about how this guy's like the devil incarnate, and he was mobbed up with Trump, and yet you guys are on a texting basis during congressional hearings?
00:15:48.380Why should Americans trust you and House Democrats on the Jeffrey Epstein files when one of your own, Congresswoman Plaskett, was found to be texting with Jeffrey Epstein during a hearing, getting information from him, using that in her questioning during a congressional hearing, and at one point he tells her, good job.
00:16:07.060This is a bipartisan effort to make sure that consistent with what the survivors have requested, that this full and complete transparency and every single predator who may be in those Justice Department files doesn't escape accountability.
00:16:26.040Hey, what do you make about the major Epstein scandal within your party with a member of your own party during a congressional hearing?
00:16:32.080Beep, boop, beep, boop, beep, boop, we're gonna bring justice, beep, beep, beep, it's so cynical, it's so tedious.
00:16:38.840This is, this is, then we get, this is a Jasmine Crockett, the new leader of the Democrats, the cultural, spiritual, zeitgeist leader of the Democrats.
00:16:48.220She comes out, she's got a real hit on Lee Zeldin, who was a former Republican congressman, ran for governor of New York, now he's the EPA administrator under Trump.
00:16:56.500She says, Lee Zeldin took money from Jeffrey Epstein.
00:17:02.460Folks who also took money from somebody named Jeffrey Epstein, as I had my team dig in very quickly, Mitt Romney, the NRCC, Lee Zeldin, George Bush, Wynn Redd, McCain-Palin, Rick Lazio.
00:17:21.760So, I just wanna be clear, if this is the standard that we gonna make, just know we gonna expose it all, and just know that the FEC filings, they are available for everybody to review.
00:17:32.060This is absolutely ridiculous, you just.
00:17:34.840Okay, so you're all those names, and I don't know if he donated to Rick Lazio or whatever, all these other people, they haven't come out.
00:17:40.360But at least Lee Zeldin has come out, and he said, yes, Jasmine Crockett, a physician named Dr. Jeffrey Epstein, who's a totally different person than the other Jeffrey Epstein, donated to a prior campaign of mine.
00:17:52.360And he did the little clap back emojis.
00:17:54.200So now we're in this phase, where it's just anybody, he got a donation from somebody named Jeffrey, hmm, coincidence?
00:18:03.160Yes, but then there's a further irony, because the Democrat leader in the House of Representatives has just been revealed to have solicited a donation from the actual Jeffrey Epstein.
00:18:17.160Colleagues' coordination with Epstein.
00:18:19.660Another email shows Democrat fundraisers invited Epstein to an event or to meet privately with Hakeem Jeffries as part of their 2013 effort to win a majority.
00:18:30.660So Hakeem Jeffries' campaign solicited money from Jeffrey Epstein.
00:18:36.600That's what we found in the last document batch.
00:18:43.360You know, they probably should look into their own campaign finances before they lob an attack on Republicans and say you raised money from Jeffrey Epstein,
00:18:50.460especially when the Republicans raised it from a different Jeffrey Epstein, they raised it from the right one.
00:19:00.660I know if in any way you oppose the mob and you say the Epstein story is a little bit of a distraction, they say you were on Epstein Island.
00:19:11.400I can tell you I've never been on Jeffrey Epstein's Island, never flew on the airplane, never took a campaign donation from him.
00:19:20.360I just am looking at the story and I say, okay, it's all hackery.
00:19:31.500It's been a Democrat scandal, then a Republican scandal, then a Democrat scandal.
00:19:34.960It's all the way they're talking now about the victims is completely disingenuous.
00:19:39.760The way that they're talking about revealing anyone who's been accused of any crime is legitimately contrary to standards of justice and persecution.
00:19:52.760Tell me who Jeffrey Epstein was working for, if anyone.
00:19:57.920Tell me the extent to which he was working with those people, be it the CIA, be it Mossad, be it Blofeld's criminal organization, Spectre.
00:20:09.280I don't know, tell me who he was working for, to what extent he was working with those people, when their relationship began, and what it was for, or shut up, or shut up about it.
00:20:19.980Because that's, as a matter of geopolitics, that's the only thing that matters, and that's really the only reason people care about it.
00:20:26.680They want to know the degree of corruption in the U.S. government, who, if anyone, is pushing pressure valves in the U.S. government, controlling the U.S. government.