Deputy AG Responds to Questions About Epstein File Release – Video and Transcript

President Bill Clinton appears in multiple documents throughout the Epstein files.  President Clinton’s former White House Chief of Staff, George Stephanopoulos, questions current Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche about the ongoing releases of Epstein information.

Specifically concerning to Stephanopoulos this week is the rushed nature of the 3.5 million-page document release by the DOJ, and victim information.   Last week Stephanopoulos was complaining about the lengthy delays in the release as DOJ officials worked to redact victim information.  WATCH:

[Transcript] – STEPHANOPOULOS: Thanks, Pierre Thomas, for that.  We’re joined now by the deputy attorney general, Todd Blanche. Mr. Blanche, thank you for joining us this morning.

As you know, your release on Friday has already received a response from the victims, from Jeffrey Epstein’s victims. I want to show the statement right now. It says, “survivors are having their names and identifying information exposed while the men who abused us remain hidden and protected. This is outrageous. The Justice Department cannot claim it is finishing releasing files until every legally required document is released and every abuser and enabler is fully exposed.”

Will there be more releases?

DEPUTY ATTORNEY GENERAL TODD BLANCHE: I mean, look, first of all, we took great pains, as I explained on Friday, to make sure that we protected victims. This was a — we are talking about a review of 3.5 million pieces of paper that were released on Friday.

Every time we hear from a victim or their lawyer that they believe that their name was not properly redacted, we immediately rectified that. And the numbers we’re talking about, just so the American people understand, we’re talking about .001 percent of all the materials. And so — and we knew this. I said this on Friday, that — that, of course, the nature of this type of review was — the volume of materials that were reviewed, that there would be times when this happened. And so we’re working hard to make sure that we fix that. And I expect that that will continue.

STEPHANOPOULOS: Will more documents be released?

BLANCHE: We have released — there are a small number of documents, as I said on Friday, that we’re waiting for a judge to say we can — we’re allowed to release because of a protective order. But there are — this review is over. I mean we reviewed over six million pieces of paper, thousands of videos, thousands — tens of thousands of images. And — which is what the statute required us to do.

You know, it’s interesting. Leadership on the — on the Hill, Congressman Massie, Senator Schumer are quick to complain. There is no way they have spent any time looking at the materials we produced, because I know the materials we produced. We produced them on Friday. By Saturday, they’re already complaining about what we did? And by the way, apparently Massie and others wrote a letter to come and review unredacted materials. I didn’t get that letter yet. They leaked it to the press before they actually sent it to me.

But, yes, that’s absolutely totally fine. We have nothing to hide. We have nothing to hide. We never did. And our doors are open if they want to come and review any of the materials that we produced.

STEPHANOPOULOS: That was going to be my next question. So, thank you for answering it.

I do want to move on right now.

We have some video right now showing Liam Ramos, that five-year-old boy who was detained by ICE in Minnesota, being released today. He’s on his way back home to Minnesota after a judge ordered him released. And it was a pretty blistering order from the judge, Fred Biery, down in — the U.S. district judge — district court judge down in Texas.

He showed a photo of Liam, included some biblical passages, saying “Jesus wept,” and then went on to say, “civics lesson to the government: administrative warrants issued by the executive branch to itself do not pass probable cause muster. This is called the fox guarding the henhouse. The Constitution requires an independent judicial officer.”

What’s your response?

BLANCHE: Well, look, that’s an active litigation, so I’m limited. But I will say this, the immigration law, the body of immigration law is much different than our typical criminal process because of the administrative nature of what we do every day. And so, to the extent that we need to appeal that judge’s decision, I promise we will.

But you see thousands and thousands of administrative actions happening every single day in this country. And you just highlighted a single one and not the thousands and thousands of others that happen. And so, this is — what we’re doing is tough. What we’re doing is difficult. I mean, we’re talking about a situation where millions and millions and millions of undocumented illegal aliens have flooded our country and we are trying to find them basically one by one.

And so, you know, I don’t have a comment specifically on what that judge said yesterday, but generally speaking, we are complying with the law every single day.

STEPHANOPOULOS: They are being released across the country as well by judges. And the president said he was going to prioritize those who had criminal records, but about 70 percent at least of those who have been detained don’t have criminal records.

BLANCHE: Well, just — hang on. The fact that they’re here illegally is a crime. And so when you say they don’t have criminal records, they are — by their presence being here without status, having come into this country illegally or overstayed illegally, that is a crime. And so, we have to be careful.

And you’re right, there is a schism in the law right now about whether an illegal alien can be held pending their proceeding or whether they need to be released on bail. We very strongly believe that they should be held and there’s a bunch of appellate cases.

So that’s another example of something where a number of district court judges have reached a conclusion that we very much believe is contrary to law and there will be an appellate court and ultimately, probably the Supreme Court that will be asked to interpret that. So — so, we should be — we should wait before we withhold judgment until the appellate courts have had their opportunity to weigh in.

STEPHANOPOULOS: I should say, to clarify, the lawyer for Liam Ramos and his father say they were following the legal process for asylum.

BLANCHE: I mean, I don’t know what that means. They were following legal process, and yet the judge disagreed with us —

(CROSSTALK)

STEPHANOPOULOS: They applied for asylum.

BLANCHE: Excuse me?

STEPHANOPOULOS: They applied for asylum, and they were going through the legal process.

BLANCHE: Well, there’s — so that’s not true. That is not true. There’s a very meaningful dispute about whether they had properly applied for asylum.

And again, I do — I cannot get into the — the specifics of this litigation, but you can read the same briefs I can. And what you just said is not true.

STEPHANOPOULOS: Okay. That’s what his lawyer says. So, they — I’m sure they’ll have a response to that as well.

I also want to ask you about the situation. Just this week, Don Lemon was arrested, the journalist Don Lemon was arrested, along with another independent journalist. And he was — this was despite the fact that a magistrate judge in an appeals court refused to approve the request. And the Chief Federal District Judge Patrick Schultz wrote that there was no evidence that Mr. Lemon engaged in any criminal behavior or conspired to do so.

So, when do you believe that Mr. Lemon crossed the line from reporting on what was going on to criminal activity?

BLANCHE: Conveniently missing from what you just showed, George, is the appellate court and a judge on the appellate court who said just a few days later there was clearly probable cause, and it wasn’t even a close question. So — and by the way, a grand jury, which is what our system has set up to determine whether probable cause exists, concluded that there was probable cause.

That indictment is now public. Everybody in this country can pull it up and read for themselves and see what the grand jury found that that Mr. Lemon did. I am not going to comment on the charges specifically because it’s not appropriate.

But it’s interesting that — that we talk about the First Amendment right. You have a right a freedom of religion which is just as important as any other right that we have. And, George, I don’t know if you’ve — if you’ve watched the videos or read the indictment about what it’s alleged that Mr. Lemon did, but if anybody in this country thinks that that is, quote, “independent journalism,” I would like to have a conversation with you.

Now, he obviously has a very good lawyer. He can raise defenses in court to the extent he wants to, but nobody in this country should feel comfortable storming into a church while it’s ongoing and disrupting that church service and thinking that we’re just going to stand by and let that happen because there is a statute that does not allow that to happen.

It doesn’t matter if you happen to be a former CNN journalist. It doesn’t matter if you’re a rioter. It doesn’t matter if you think you’re peacefully protesting. You are not allowed to do that.

STEPHANOPOULOS: So, you’re confident he’s going to be convicted and the case won’t be dismissed?

BLANCHE: I am not going to speak to conviction. That would be completely inappropriate. He was indicted by a grand jury in Minneapolis, and he’ll have — have his day in court like everybody else.

STEPHANOPOULOS: During your confirmation hearings, you made a strong statement against partisan political investigations and prosecutions. And I want to show it for our audience.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

BLANCHE: Partisan lawfare in our justice system wastes taxpayer money, makes communities less safe, and ruins lives. This should never happen in America.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I’ve got your commitment there — there will not even be a whiff of an investigation that appears to have a political motivation to it.

BLANCHE: I commit to that.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

STEPHANOPOULOS: Since then, as you know, a number of targets of President Trump, have been publicly targeted by President Trump, have been prosecuted or investigated. I want to show that right now. It includes the former FBI Director James Comey, New York Attorney General Letitia James, the Fed Chair Jerome Powell, Senators Adam Schiff, Mark Kelly, and Elissa Slotkin, Governor Tim Walz, and Mayor Jacob Frey.

So, how do you respond to those who say you’ve broken your commitment?

BLANCHE: You just showed a handful of investigations or grand jury indictments that have been brought. We are — we are investigating tens of thousands of individuals and cases every single day. They are not political in base. The fact that you cherry-picked a handful that some people in the media have said, “Oh, those must be political,” is absurd and not fair.

I mean, don’t forget, George, when I walk into the Oval Office right now, I look around. And oftentimes every single person in that room was heavily attacked and gone after by the last Biden administration. And so, when I said to Congress and when I say to you right now that what we’re — there’s not a whiff of political partisanship in what we’re doing, I mean that. The mere fact that some Democrats, or some individuals who have spoken out against President Trump are being investigated is because there — that’s what the Department of Justice does. It doesn’t make it political because we’re investigating. And that — and that’s something important we’re doing. We have — we have brought down crime. We’re making America safe again. We’re working hard every day. And those handful of investigations or cases you just show don’t change that.

STEPHANOPOULOS: Those indictments of James Comey and Letitia James came after the president explicitly said they’re guilty as hell and justice must be served right now. They came after career attorneys refused to bring the indictments, and both cases have been dismissed.

BLANCHE: I mean, when you — I don’t know what it means to say they’ve come after people. I mean, listen, if you’re a prosecutor in the Department of Justice, you are expected to effectuate this administration’s priorities, like every single prosecutor in every administration. There are some prosecutors within the department who have chosen to leave. They don’t want to do that. That is their right. That is fine. But if you’re going to work in this department, you are going to execute on the president’s priorities, and that’s what we do.

And yes, there are cases that have been dismissed by judges. They’re under appeal. That’s what happens in our system. And that doesn’t make the cases wrong or right, it just means that they’ve been dismissed and they’re under appeal.

STEPHANOPOULOS: Well, you just — you just actually made my point right there. You said it’s the president’s priorities. The president calls for them publicly to be prosecuted, says they’re guilty as hell, and then they’re prosecuted.

BLANCHE: Now that’s not the president’s priorities. That’s a truth that he sent out. The president’s priorities are executing on making America safe again. And that’s what we’re doing.

And so, when we go to prosecutors and we say, you are going to do violent crime. You are going to do fraud cases out of Minnesota because that’s a horrible thing that’s happening there. If individual prosecutors say, no, I don’t want to do that, they need to leave. And they do leave. And that’s what I meant when I said that.

I’m not — I’m not saying that we — under no circumstances do we turn to a prosecutor and say you need to go after somebody because they are politically one way or another. We have never done that, and we won’t do that.

STEPHANOPOULOS: But the president said it. The president is the one who said they’re guilty as hell and justice must be served.

BLANCHE: You’re reading a small part of a — of a truth. The truth said a lot of other things to, and many other truths have said the thing. What the president has said publicly, and what he says to me, and what he says to the attorney general, and what he says to the American people is, he expects investigations to be fair. He expects investigations to be done right. But he also doesn’t expect that we investigate. He expects that we — that we do the right thing and that we root out the corruption.

I mean, we had a — an incredibly corrupt Department of Justice when we came into power last year. There can be no dispute about that. There can be no dispute that the Garland Department of Justice did not do the right thing in many cases.

And so to now be judged a year later because of a truth the president said is not appropriate, we can look at our body of work and the work that we’re doing as a department every day. And I know that we’re making this country safer again. We are bringing integrity back to the department, notwithstanding what those in the media say differently, and we’re going to continue to do that.

STEPHANOPOULOS: I want to ask you about a report breaking in “The Wall Street Journal” overnight. I want to show the headline right now. It’s — the headline saying the “Spy Sheikh Bought Secret Stake in Trump Company.” “A $500 million investment for 49 percent of World Liberty came months before UAE won access to tightly guarded American A.I. chips.” It’s referring to the national security adviser at the UAE, Sheikh Tahnoon. And he made this investment just before President Trump was inaugurated.

The article goes on to say, “the deal marks something unprecedented in American politics: a foreign government official taking a major ownership stake in an incoming U.S. president’s company.” This is the company of President Trump’s family. Eric Trump is the — is the president of the company. Trump — President Trump is listed as the founder emeritus, though he’s not running it directly right now.

How do you respond to those who say this is a serious conflict of interest?

BLANCHE: I love it when these papers talk about something being unprecedented or never happening before, as if the Biden family and the Biden administration didn’t do exactly the same thing, and they were just in office.

So, I — look, I saw that article. I don’t have a comment on it beyond President Trump has been completely transparent when his family travels for business reasons. They don’t do so in secret. We don’t learn about it when we find a laptop a few years later. We learn about it when it’s happening.

And so, there — there’s nothing unprecedented about a — about the Trump Organization going out and trying to make investments that basically all will come back to the American people and jobs in this country. And so this idea that there’s something untoward or unprecedented is just a repeated story that that isn’t true. And that’s — and I think that that — the American people know that. And the fact that we’ve talked about unprecedented, and this is something that doesn’t happen is just not true. And it’s — it shouldn’t be said by these so-called newspapers that are saying it.

STEPHANOPOULOS: Well, the president doesn’t run the company, but he does profit from it. His financial disclosure show he’s received funds from that. And law professor Kathleen Clark is quoted in the article saying this sure looks like a violation of the Foreign Emoluments Clause. Ty Cobb, who served as President Trump’s lawyer in — during the first administration, said, quote, “My advice as an ethics lawyer would have been clear. You don’t do business deals with the families of the leaders of foreign countries. It taints American foreign policy.”

How do you respond to Mr. Cobb?

BLANCHE: I don’t have a response to that guy. I mean, that guy hasn’t said a nonpartisan thing in the past four years. I mean, I could have predicted what you just said he would say. That’s what he says every time anything comes out about the president. I don’t have a — the president is ethical. He talks more to the press. He says what’s happening more than any president in history. You have a question about it, you can ask him. He gaggled on the plane last night at midnight for like 20 minutes. OK?

So, like the fact that Ty Cobb claims that he would have counseled something different to the president, OK. I mean that guy. I mean, I don’t have response to that.

STEPHANOPOULOS: One of the questions the president also took last night when he was on Air Force One was questions about his suing the Treasury Department, the IRS for $10 billion for leaking his tax returns. And he’s — he suggested that there could be some questions about the conflict. He says it’s an interesting question.

How do you respond to those who say that’s a conflict of interest for the president to be seeking funds from those who he’s administering?

BLANCHE: Look, we’re looking at how to handle that. I mean, he’s not wrong, and I don’t think even you think he’s wrong, that what happened there is horrible. The fact that his tax returns were leaked. No American should have that. And you do have Americans, whether you’re the president or just a — anybody in this country, has a right when something like that happens. And so I very much sympathize with what the president talked about and we’re looking into as a department how to address and make sure that type of thing never happens again to anybody, much less a former president or a current president. And we’ll go from there.

STEPHANOPOULOS: It is wrong for a president to have his tax returns leaked, for anyone to have their tax returns leaked. I agree with that. The president is also seeking $232 million from the Justice Department, saying his rights were violated during the 2016 campaign.

And I just wonder how you think you’re going to handle that. Both you as the deputy attorney general and the attorney general, Pam Bondi, have served as President Trump’s personal lawyers in the past. Doesn’t that pose at least the appearance of a conflict? And should you be involved in dealing with that in any way?

BLANCHE: I mean, I haven’t talked whether I’m involved with that at all anyway. I mean, it’s — that’s a fair question, George. And we all — we obviously talk about conflicts and what I’m allowed to do, what the attorney general is allowed to do because of what we’ve done in our past. But there are limits to those — to those conflicts. And I do have a job to the American people and President Trump as a deputy attorney general. And so, I — you know, we will — we will navigate that appropriately and consistent with the ethical rules and get to a just result.

STEPHANOPOULOS: Mr. Blanche, thanks for your time this morning.

BLANCHE: Thank you, George.

[END Transcript]