On today's show, Alex Blumberg joins us to talk about the Epstein scandal, and why he thinks Florida AG Pam Bondi should have been the one to bring the charges against Jeffrey Epstein. Also, we discuss why we should have known that Jeffrey Epstein was a serial pedophile.
00:00:00.000Next question for you is with Epstein, okay, and I'm curious to know what position you're going to take with this, because on one end, we've been following the story closely, I know you have as well, Pam Bondi, Florida, you said vetting, a lot of people said they're not being vetted, I don't know if you were referring Pam Bondi as one of the people that wasn't vetted, I don't know how you feel about Cash, I don't know how you feel about Bongino, these are, you know, Bongino is a very trusted guy by many people, big podcast, big following, respected, trusted,
00:00:30.000even his enemies trust the guy, but when it comes on to the Epstein and the way it was announced, the way it was released, O'Keefe, you know, me, you know, was it O'Keefe Media Group came in, got Pam Bondi saying what she said, and then she came up and said, well, we found thousands of hours of footage and all this other stuff, and then all of a sudden it was kid porn.
00:00:48.120And I will say, you know, the first mention of those videotapes, as much as I love O'Keefe, it wasn't O'Keefe, the video caught Pam Bondi at a breakfast admitting that the tapes had child pornography on them, but the first mention of it was actually Roger Stone over a decade ago in his book, The Clinton's War on Women, when he was mentioning, you know, all the flights, Lolita Express, going to Epstein Island, all that stuff, right?
00:01:12.260And he said that the files have, like, it's in his book, he says the files have likely been destroyed, and a lot of it is child porn that will never be released to the public.
00:01:21.200You know, I've known that for a while, too, because I read Roger's book years ago.
00:01:24.900That being said, I think that it's been handled horribly.
00:01:28.060I am the reporter who broke this story about Dan Bongino skipping work two Fridays ago because he was contemplating resigning.
00:01:35.740And, look, I stand by all of my reporting.
00:01:38.540Pam, Pam Bondi, as I call her, dropped the ball as it relates to the Epstein investigation.
00:01:43.640I don't think that she was the appropriate person to even be controlling this investigation.
00:01:49.580When you speak of vetting, it's very important that you look at people's conflicts of interest, okay?
00:01:53.600It's very important that if you're going to have transparency and, you know, this is one of the things that happens a lot with these vetting crises in the admin, there's not a lot of focus on conflicts.
00:02:05.040Well, Pam Blondi was the attorney general of Florida when Epstein was getting away with raping kids and doing everything that he did.
00:02:12.920If they were aware, because as we saw, the Secretary of Labor, Alex Acosta, under the first Trump administration, submitted his resignation, if you recall, because they didn't vet him.
00:02:25.740Nobody bothered to ask him if he was involved in anything controversial.
00:02:29.980And he was involved in the, I guess they call it like a non-prosecution plea deal, right, with Jeffrey Epstein, with the various FBI agents who we still don't know about.
00:02:42.460So that came up during his Senate confirmation hearing, and he had to resign because he said that it created such a distraction for the admin.
00:02:50.900Now, I want to know, if that was enough to get Alex Acosta to resign from the administration, and that was in 2008 when that paperwork was signed,
00:02:59.200how come Pam Blondi, who only a year or so later became the attorney general of Florida, okay, same time period,
00:03:05.900how come she didn't have to resign as attorney general of the United States for not disclosing the fact that she was the attorney general when Jeffrey Epstein was getting away with all this?
00:03:14.500Surely, as the attorney general of Florida, she would have been aware of a plea deal or some kind of intelligence-gathering operation,
00:03:21.520which we already know from the files that have since been released, that Jeffrey Epstein, as part of his plea deal, right, where he was out on release, was able,
00:03:29.060and I posted these documents too, was supposed to be sharing information with the FBI.
00:03:34.420Those are in the documents that have Alex Acosta's name on them from 2008.
00:03:38.780So we know that Jeffrey Epstein was involved with collecting info and sharing info with the FBI.
00:03:45.480So what made the administration, as much as I love the administration, think that Pam would be the person to do this when that's such an egregious conflict?
00:04:03.160They should have known that this eventually was going to come up.
00:04:05.940So then why, so if the president, if the president Trump has seen one of his handlers, one of his leaders, Pam Bondi, doing what she did, the mishandling,
00:04:14.860and the supporters on the inside who, these are not the stupid losers.
00:04:19.980I'm talking about the people that are actually on the inside that are on Trump's side.
00:04:24.420They're saying, hey, this was a big screw up.
00:04:27.080How is he handling one of his people made a massive mistake, big blunder, that they keep having a rehash,
00:04:33.880and then other people are like, no, no, this was actually a bad mistake.
00:06:48.920That's the big question is why was this released in the way that it was released?
00:06:54.040And I feel like there probably would have been more of an understanding with Cash and Dan and the president had everybody been on the same page.
00:07:00.520And that's what caused so much conflict.
00:07:02.220But I think that people speaking out of line or...
00:07:05.900And I don't want to say over-exaggerating because I don't know if they over-exaggerated.
00:07:09.480I don't know if they actually believe these things or if they were over-exaggerating.
00:07:13.720When she says things like, the files are on my desk and she said that a lot of powerful people...
00:07:18.800I'm sure you could find the clip, but there's a clip of her saying a lot of powerful people are leaving the country right now
00:07:25.200and they're getting on their private jets to escape accountability.
00:07:46.080Even the statement that she just released today.
00:07:48.720Oh, you know, consulting with the FBI.
00:07:51.840My office and the FBI have determined that we'd be happy to interview Ghislaine Maxwell,
00:07:56.180who's currently in prison in Florida, serving a 20-year sentence to see if she has any information about anybody who's committed crimes against children.
00:08:03.520Well, why is this only being done now?
00:08:05.520How many years has Ghislaine Maxwell been in prison for?
00:08:07.980Are you saying that the DOJ and the FBI have never taken it upon themselves to interview her?
00:08:13.280Or were you, how could you say in the memo that the case was closed when you had already determined that you were closing the case before interviewing Ghislaine?
00:08:21.620So now everybody's kind of wondering, wait a second, why did this memo say you were closing the case,
00:08:26.820but now you're backtracking and saying that you're going to go interview her?
00:10:59.820And Tucker's been relevant for a long time.
00:11:02.940Of course, not at the levels he is now.
00:11:05.660His podcast is doing great, top five, top four.
00:11:08.200But that's what I'm trying to say is that I don't think that his independent career as an—not working for a major network, independent, Tucker Carlson Network.
00:11:16.520I'm a Trump guy, and a lot of people would say, like, I'm neutral with Tucker.
00:11:21.260I think Tucker—I think Tucker, for a guy to be his age, to have his kind of money, to be on the road traveling around the world interviewing people, most people don't want to do that, and they're not going to do this.
00:11:33.640I'm going to give him his credit there.
00:11:35.400Now, let me come back to the Trump side.
00:11:36.640I just personally think that when I say it's on Trump, I'm saying Trump was very gracious after those text messages came out.
00:11:42.920What I'm saying is that Tucker, yeah, he's created his own platform, and he deserves credit for that.
00:11:48.060But Trump could have easily nuked him, and I don't think he would have been as popular post his firing—post the firing at Fox News had Trump actually given him what he deserved, which was a lambasting after those text messages came out.
00:11:59.620I mean, he was very derogatory, saying, oh, you know, the election wasn't stolen.
00:12:03.140I can't wait until we don't have to talk about Trump anymore.
00:12:06.300His supporters are a bunch of cousin effers.
00:13:33.260And I think I actually applaud him for the approach he's taking, because the average person couldn't do what he's doing.
00:13:40.320I actually applaud him for what he's doing, and that's why he's showing more signs of being president of America instead of just a president of a party, instead of a president.
00:13:50.820I think he is more and more getting closer to, you know, becoming the—where history books are going to say,
00:13:59.220this guy went from 2016 to the way he went about it the first four years, and now the way he's doing it in 2024.
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