Full transcript of “FULL REMARKS: Reps. Ro Khanna & Thomas Massie Reveal Hidden Redacted Names in Epstein Files | AC1G”. Click a timestamp to open the video at that moment. Need another video? Use the YouTube transcript generator.
0:04 Welcome to the court. >> Yeah, sorry to keep you guys out here that long. >> Well, that was an interesting experience that the the user interface is a little clunky at first, but what I saw um that bothered me were the names of at least six men that have been redacted that are likely uh incriminated by their inclusion in these files. So, that's that's the first thing that I saw. took some digging to find them. Um, then I'll let you talk about what you saw. >> Well, and we discussed that. I mean, there are six men, some of them with their photographs that have been redacted, and there's no explanation why those people were redacted and Thomas uh discovered it through his MIT logic with some of the uh the searches. But, you
0:51 know, that's really concerning. I think there are two other points. one is some of the internet concern about some of the more sensational emails. I mean, I do think it's approp important to recognize that some of the senders on that were uh are are women and so some of the redactions may be appropriate, some may not be appropriate. We need to look at that. Uh but just because there's an email out that out there doesn't mean uh that there's necessarily an improper redaction. The uh bigger concern is these six individuals. I will say that and that the staff was very professional in allowing us to to to do the searches. Our bigger concern is that there's still a lot that's redacted even in what we're seeing. Uh we're seeing redacted versions. I thought we were
1:36 supposed to see the unredacted versions and that's because the documents produced to justice uh from the FBI uh from other from the uh grand jury was redacted when they got it. So we kept doing the searches for the unredacted information. the identical redactions uh that uh they have. Now, I don't think that's nefarious on the career attorneys that were reviewing it, but they obviously haven't gotten the production because our law says that the FBI uh and the original grand jury needs to be unredacted, >> right? The the US attorneys and the FBI are compelled as well as the DOJ. And the DOJ was responsible for this document production and they just produced documents that have been given to them from the FBI. the 302 forms for
2:22 instance which need to be unredacted. There was one other thing um that definitely needs to be addressed. Some of these files have been taken down like the DOJ produced them and for some reason they took them down. Maybe they decided that victim's names were in there and that they needed further redactions. But those documents not only haven't been put back up on the site with the appropriate redactions, they were not available to us to search. As far as I could tell, we couldn't search the documents that had been taken off the internet. >> Can you share with us the name of the six men that you identified? >> I um probably should do that from the floor or in a committee hearing >> and and look, they should be releasing these documents. We we have many avenues
3:08 where we can compel that legally. Uh maybe they've done it out of oversight. I don't know. I don't believe that. that you know they should be releasing those documents and uh our hope is to get them to to do that. Uh and then in some of the redactions they need to be very careful in whether that was a survivor uh or not. Just because for example someone uh is female doesn't necessarily mean they're survivors. And it seemed like they blanket uh uh redacted anyone who was uh a female from my review. >> Yeah. I would like to give the DOJ a chance to say they made a mistake and overredacted and let them unredact those men's names. Um that that would be probably be the best way to do it. >> So how much of the redactions you said that there are a lot of there the
3:54 documents some of what you saw in there had redactions. How much of what how much new information then did you see that was unredacted or did it look pretty similar to what we've seen publicly? I mean, what we're after is the uh the men who Jeffrey Epstein traffked women to. We want those names published. We're not out to embarrass people. Um and the problem is we went in there hoping to see that in 302 forms. What we found out is those 302 forms were redacted before they got to the DOJ. So, but our legislation directs the FBI who which is the agency that produced those 302 forms to also produce
4:40 these documents. The attorney general is ultimately responsible for that production. So, that's why we're here at the DOJ to view these files, but there needs to be more information given in those 302s. So, I was disappointed we didn't find that. But, it's also clear just sort of as a checking their homework that they need to do a little more homework. There are six men. We went in there for two hours. There's millions of files, right? And in a couple of hours, we found six men whose names have been redacted who are implicated in the way that the files are presented. >> Congressman activism, what's your message to Pam Bondi after what you saw today? >> Um, need to do a little more work and I would like I mean, we'll see her at the uh judiciary committee here in a couple
5:27 days. At the very least they these six men maybe she can make public. I mean we're happy to provide the information to them. Uh and they should do that. >> Look there's some of the effort because there were a lot of career attorneys on that. There's some redactions that were appropriate some for protect the survivors and uh some of the most sensational uh things out on the internet there may have been appropriate redaction. So, you know, for Thomas and me, it's always been about the facts, and our biggest concern is what was redacted before it even g came to the Justice Department. I mean, the reality is that the most important things, the 302 files and uh some of the uh information on the prosecution memos, it's unclear that those redactions happened here. They we we saw a lot of
6:15 files that already were redacted. Uh and then of course they're uh they have been protecting some of these these men. Maybe it was not intentionally, but the law is very clear. They need to comply with the law. >> And finally, the documents that they put up and decided for one reason or another they had to take back down and was hoping to see those here. They didn't appear to be in the database that we were able to search. Those ostensibly are wholly redacted files now. We know they exist. they published them for a brief period of time and pulled them back. They they need to answer to us as to do they intend to redact those files and put them back up and put them in the database so that we can search them and see if it was appropriate to take them back down from the website. >> Are these men are these men US citizens?
7:00 What fields do they work in? Is it finance? Is it political? >> Um, at least one is a US citizen, at least one is a foreigner, and the other three or four have names. I'm not sure if they're foreign or US. >> And which field do they work in? Is it is it finance, banking, uh political? >> One is pretty high up in the foreign government. >> And and and and some are they're [clears throat] one of the others is a pretty prominent uh individual. But I I think that the the point is that these six are just what we found in two hours of a review of the files that aren't redacted. The broader issue is why so many of the files they're getting are redacted in the first place. And uh until that becomes unredacted, the main
7:46 things that they're sending to the career attorneys to review, I don't think we're going to have full compliance with the law, get to the question that most Americans want to know. Who were the rich and powerful people who went to this island? Did they rape underage girls? Did they know that underage girls were being paraded around? And after seeing this, I don't blame the US attorneys, the assistant US attorneys reviewing it. If they're reviewing redacted material, what are they supposed to do, but they're getting it seems like material that's already been redacted? >> Congressman Raskin also view these materials earlier and he said that he saw President Trump's name redacted. He saw Lee Wexner's name redacted. Did you see President Trump's name redacted? Lee Wexter's name redacted. Can you share anything about that? >> I didn't put Donald Trump in the search engine, so I couldn't tell you.
8:32 Did you wrote the email about the little girl [cough] who was a little naughty? >> I I did and that was a woman that wrote that and and so it may be proper to redact it and it may not be. I don't know. It seems like part of their algorithm for redaction was just to redact every woman in there pretty much. No. >> So it's we can't parse if the person who sent that was was a victim or not. >> Well, none of this is designed to be a witch hunt. Just because someone may be in the files doesn't mean that they're guilty. But there are very powerful people who raped these underage girls. It wasn't just Epstein uh and Maxwell or showed up to the island or showed up to the ranch or showed up to the home knowing underage girls were
9:19 being paraded around and and some of the sickening stuff in there about the violence. And what we want to do is have the investigation to get to those people to answer those questions. uh not to say that every internet rumor about some email uh is is going to uh to to be true and and like I said in some of the cases the redactions may have been appropriate but for Thomas and me it's never been about getting Donald Trump or getting Bill Clinton or uh scoring political points or trying to destroy people's reputations. It's about actually getting justice for these survivors. >> Do either of you plan to read the six names on the House floor? I think we need to give the DOJ a chance to go back through and correct their mistakes.
10:05 >> How long do they have? >> They're they're already breaking the law. Look, they're way past the deadline. And the reason they gave for taking so much time is so they wouldn't release victim's information. But in fact, they've they've released all kinds of victims information. So the the problem here is not the deadline. The problem is they need to go back. They need to themselves check their own homework or have somebody else check it. And as Rose said, they need to go to the US attorneys and the FBI who are compelled by the legislation directly to produce that material to them unredacted. >> And I think look, we we could have brought contempt or impeachment uh weeks ago, but our interest is in actually getting the information out. And as a
10:51 result of the strategy we've been pursuing, this is the largest release of the Epstein files in history. Now, it's not enough, but it has exposed uh people in the highest levels in technology, in finance, in real estate. Uh it has exposed uh the establishment and monarchies in other countries. So, our push is how do we expose this and have accountability, not how do we score political points or have retribution. And what what questions are you going to ask Pan Bon this? >> Well, he's on the committee. >> We'll see Wednesday. >> You said a lot of the reductions were already made before the files were in the hands of career attorney. [clears throat] Who do you suspect made? >> It seems that they were made by the FBI or they were made by attorneys in the
11:39 grand jury, but they they uh the Justice Department, it seems, got some of these documents uh already redacted. Our law was very clear. Unless something was classified, it required it to be uh to be unredacted. And there's they have not complied with that law. And that that law needs to be complied with because that's where a lot of the information is, especially about the powerful people in this country and what their involvement was. And you know, their involvement could have been that they were showing up at this island knowing that there was benefilia taking place. their involvement could have been that they were actually engaged in uh raping underage girls or knowing uh that underage girls were being raped. We
12:24 won't know until we see those files. >> What information did you see that led you to believe that those six men were implicated in Epstein's crimes? >> Um it's a list of uh 20. You can go you can actually I'll direct you to the unredacted or the redacted file. It's a list of 20 individuals. Um, three or four. Maxwell and Epstein are on the list and and maybe one or two other people and everybody else is redacted and their names are redacted, but it also includes 20 pictures, 20 photographs, and they're sort of mug shots. They're not the best pictures. I'm not sure if they were mug shots or not, but there are um at least three or four males in the photographs.
13:11 I couldn't verify by looking at their names because they have foreign names. I couldn't verify by looking at their names that they were male until I went and looked at the photographs. By the way, in the document I'm directing you to, the photographs are redacted and their names are redacted. There is no u reason in our legislation that allows them to redact the names of those men as far as I can tell unless unless there are any male survivors which seems uh you know hard to believe given this issue but and all the women that are redacted it's unclear if they were just actual survivors in which case they did the appropriate thing or whether they just as Thomas said had an algorithm to take out any any woman's
13:56 name. Can you also Trump is not hold there? There's also um an FBI >> form that lists uh people who are conspirators and one of those is a male. It's like on an FBI form they've uh redacted his picture and his name on that form where they were I guess considering an indictment or indicting or something. I could also I don't have the number in front of me but I could direct you. It's a three-page uh EFTA file. >> The Justice Department has said it's letting you >> was this >> I'm not sure if they're mugsh authorities investigating these individuals or >> in one instance it was and in the other instance it seemed to be.
14:43 >> Congressman, >> I've got to go. I'll let Tom go too. >> One question, one last question for you, Congressman Connor. Carson Massie has called for Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnik to face potentially some accountability for the connection that he has in these files. Do you support that call? >> Absolutely. Look at what's happening in Britain. You have a left government. Actually, I knew no caremer. I I was uh excited when he won and yet I believe he needs to be held accountable with what's happened with Mendelson. You have the British monarchy having to answer questions. I mean the king of England is putting out statements and yet in our country we have not had that reckoning. People in power whether they're in government, whether they're in uh finance, whether they're in technology, if they have been implicated in the files in morally embarrassing ways and
15:30 in ways that uh shock the conscience should be held accountable and it should be regardless of party. >> So you're calling for Howard Lutnik to resign. >> I believe that Lutnik at the very least needs to be brought before Congress. I think based on the evidence he should be out of out of the cabinet, but you know, I mean, it's people say, "Oh, you're just a Democrat saying that." No, I mean, he look at what what he is how much uh influence he had with Epstein and he wasn't transparent about it. But again, it's not about Lutnik and it's not about any particular person in this country. We have to make a decision. Are we going to allow rich and powerful people who were uh friends and uh had no problem doing business and showing up with a pedophile who was raping underage girls? Are we just going to allow them
16:15 to skate or like other countries? Are we going to have elite accountability and have accountability for the people who did that? Most Americans believe we need accountability. >> Can you confirm that President Trump wasn't on this list? >> No, I didn't see him on that. last week on President Trump. >> I got three shots. >> Wait, sorry. free. Oh yeah.
