One of those two lawmakers joins us
right now. Democratic Congressman Roana.
He's a member of the House Oversight
Committee. He was pivotal in forcing the
Department of Justice to release the
Epstein files. Thank you for joining us.
Thank you, Nicole. Thank you for your
Who are the six men um whose names you
We are going to push the Justice
Department to release those. They uh had
Uh some of them are uh Americans, some
of them are powerful people overseas.
And there's no reason that they should
be covering up those names.
Of the ones who are Americans, are they
No. Uh the but look that the six people
that Thomas and I were talking about are
just what we discovered in two hours of
searches. There are probably many more
that have been hidden. But this was so
blatant that there were six people who
were named as co-conspirators. By the
way, there were others named as
co-conspirators who were women. And our
assumption is some of those women may be
survivors, but it's not clear that all
of the women uh were survivors. Some of
the redactions even on the sensational
emails are appropriate. Some of them
were potentially survivors, but uh they
clearly have redacted in a way that is
excessive. The most important thing is
though that these career attorneys did
got documents that were already
redacted. Most of the survivor
statements to the FBI where they named
other men and particularly men in this
country, the F302 forms, they were
already redacted by the time the
attorneys reviewed it. and our law, the
Epstein transparency act, required the
FBI and the grand jury testimony
testimony to be unredacted. That
obviously has not happened.
Danny Bensky, one of the survivors who I
know you and the committee have met with
um was here at the beginning of the last
hour. Her personal information was not
redacted, including her address. Um, did
you have any sense in viewing the
unredacted material about the motive
behind the redactions? And I guess what
I'm asking is, do you understand why
co-conspirators names were redacted and
Danny Benky's personal information was
The Justice Department obviously did not
take enough care to protect the
survivors. They refused to meet with
some of the survivors lawyers like
Bradley Edwards. They should have
consulted those uh attorneys to make
sure that they did not uh release the
survivors information and they just did
not take it seriously enough and as a
result they have caused so much harm to
survivors by exposing them uh in a way
they should never have uh done.
In the UK, the release of the files has
been met with a very different
reception. Um, where laws of political
gravity and decency seem to still be
holding. Um, did you see anything
in in the unredacted version that that
their investigation will will pursue and
lead to criminal charges?
Yes, absolutely. I mean, and like I
said, what we've witnessed, probably 70%
was still redacted, but 30% we had a
glimpse more than the general public.
And there are absolutely people who
should be pursued based on that in terms
of an investigation and criminal
charges. And I appreciate you're
bringing bringing up Britain because
they are actually dealing with the
consequences of these disclosures. You
have the king making a statement. You
have the prime minister in trouble. and
not clear whether his government is
going to survive. And we have people
like the commerce secretary who are all
over the files who are uh who have lied
about the relationship with Epstein uh
and there there no consequences. It's
the president saying move on. And the
question for this country is, are we
going to just say, okay, if you uh had
business dealings with a known pedophile
and if you went to his island knowing
that he was raping underage girls uh and
if you were still soliciting his
funding, uh fine, we're going to move
on. Or are we going to have a moral
reckoning in America about an elite
class that engaged in heinous behavior
and have us finally elite
Danny Bensky also made the point that
Donald Trump is in the Epstein Files,
even the wildly redacted version that
the public has seen more times than
Harry Potter is named in the entire
Harry Potter Potter series. What does it
say to you that that hasn't broken the
trance of Republicans in their um,
sicopantic adherence to Trumpism?
This is one thing that is breaking MAGA.
I was on Shawn Ryan's podcast a couple
days ago. He has the number two podcast
in the country. He was a huge supporter
of Donald Trump and JD Vance. And he
basically said that uh Donald Trump has
lost him because uh he uh has covered up
for this Epstein class. And when I go
and talk to a lot of men, particularly
young men, people who uh have a sense of
honor, uh they are dismayed by Donald
Trump and what he has done. But he needs
far more accountability. You know,
there's been all this push to get
President Clinton to testify and
Secretary Clinton to testify. We need to
hear from Donald Trump to answer the
questions of the American public about
what he knew and what he did.
Congressman Roana, um thank you for your
work on this issue. It is the rare issue
that unites the American people. Um,
even if the Republicans want to ignore
that reality. Um, thank you for joining
Thank you. Well, you've been covering
this for a long time. I appreciate it.
