Kentucky congressman Thomas Massie appears on ABC This Week with Martha Raddatz to assert his position as our nation’s ultimate judge of morality and righteousness and pass judgement upon any individual that does not meet his expectation or standard.
Against the backdrop of billionaire leftist Reid Hoffman who has financed most of the claims promoted by Epstein victims for use by Representative Massie, the congressman pledges to remain on task. Hoffman never called as a witness. Video and Transcript below.
[TRANSCRIPT] – RADDATZ: I’m joined now by Republican Congressman Thomas Massie of Kentucky, who helped lead the efforts to release the Epstein files.
Good morning to you, Congressman.
I would like your overall reaction to the hearing this week and Pam Bondi’s performance, combativeness.
REP. THOMAS MASSIE, (R) KENTUCKY & JUDICIARY COMMITTEE MEMBER: I don’t think she did very well. She came with a book full of insults, one for each congressperson. She obviously had one for me.
And, you know, I’ve been there when Merrick Garland was there. Obviously, politically, I don’t agree with him, but he performed much better in terms of at least not looking bad. And, unfortunately, we didn’t get the answers we wanted about the Epstein Files Transparency Act from her.
RADDATZ: You — did you get any of the answers you wanted?
MASSIE: No, but she did come off her script and engage with me about this production of documents where she admitted that 40 minutes after I pointed out to the DOJ that they had over-redacted some of the documents, they did unredacted documents. So, it’s clear they’ve made mistakes in the document production. At least she acknowledges that tacitly. And it’s clear that their work is not done here yet.
RADDATZ: And I want to go to those — some of those unredacted files. Congressman Ro Khanna said names of some of the men who were redacted shouldn’t have been redacted. They then sent that back to you, and two of them were not redacted. But on Friday, Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche accused you and Congressman Khanna of unmasking those people, saying they had nothing to do with Epstein or Maxwell. They were from an FBI line-up years ago.
What’s your response to that?
MASSIE: Well, three hours before Todd Blanche himself unredacted those names, I told him in an X post, which I know he read because he reposted it, that those may be men in a line-up. And then I went on TV and said, those may be men in a line-up. And it was actually the DOJ who released those names, which is fine, but they omitted the context that I provided, which is these may be in a line-up.
Now, there were two men who needed to be named, one of whom has already resigned, the Emirate, a sultan, resigned for — as a CEO of a very large company because we released his name.
And there’s another man, Leslie Wexner, I’ll add him to the list with Jes Staley and Leon Black, who need to be investigated right now. They’ve appeared in these files.
Leslie Wexner is the one who — you know, Pam Bondi said, oh, he’s appeared thousands of times in these documents. We’re not covering up anything. But I pointed out to her, they redacted his name from the one document that says “child sex trafficking co-conspirator.”
And my question is, who is the person at DOJ who redacted Leslie Wexner’s name from a document titled “child sex trafficking” with “co-conspirator” next to this name?
(CROSSTALK)
RADDATZ: And I want to say right now that Wexner denies and they say he was not a co-conspirator. Wexner has a statement: The assistant U.S. attorney told Mr. Wexner’s legal counsel in 2019 that Mr. Wexner was neither co-conspirator nor target in any respect. Mr. Wexner cooperated full by providing background information on Epstein and was never contacted again.
But I’d like to move on, if we can.
MASSIE: Yeah.
RADDATZ: Yesterday, the DOJ sent Congress a letter explaining the reason for all these reactions. So, you are not satisfied with that?
MASSIE: No, they’re citing deliberative process privilege in order not to release some of the documents. The problem with that is the bill that Ro Khanna and I wrote says that they must release internal memos and notes and emails about their decisions on whether to prosecute or not prosecute, whether to investigate or not investigate.
It’s important they follow that because then we could find why they didn’t prosecute Leslie Wexner. What was the decision tree there? And also, why, in 2008 they gave Jeffrey Epstein such a light sentence?
And finally, I know the DOJ wants to say they’re done with this document production. The problem is they’ve taken down documents before we were able to go over to the DOJ and look at the unredacted versions. They took down some of the most significant documents. Two of them involving Virginia Giuffre’s case and other things, the picture of Epstein at — in a room where it’s — got CIA written on the boxes. That’s been taken down.
We want to be able to look at all these files. They can’t keep those documents down after they’ve already produced them.
RADDATZ: I want to talk to you about one of the moments in this hearing, and that is the attorney general would not look at the Epstein survivors behind her. Did that surprise you?
MASSIE: I think that was kind of cold on her part. I think she was afraid to.
And look, these survivors would love to have a meeting. It’s not about Bill Clinton, and it’s not about Donald Trump. This Epstein Files Transparency Act was about getting these survivors justice.
We’ve got some degree of transparency, but it’s called the Department of Justice, not the department of transparency.
And so, what these survivors need, they need to see some of their own 302 forms, which haven’t been released, and they also need to see some of the men that they’ve implicated prosecuted.
RADDATZ: Do you still have confidence in Pam Bondi as Attorney General?
MASSIE: I don’t think Pam Bondi has confidence in Pam Bondi. She wasn’t confident enough to engage in anything, but name calling in a hearing. And so, no, I don’t have confidence in her. She hasn’t got any sort of accountability there at the DOJ.
When I asked her specifically, who redacted Leslie Wexner’s name from the one document that mattered, she couldn’t give me an answer, she wouldn’t give me an answer. But ultimately, it’s her who is responsible for the document production according to our law, the attorney general.
It’s not Todd Blanche. It’s not the people below them. You can assign tasks to people but you can’t assign your responsibility.
RADDATZ: And just very quickly, if you will. You’ve supported most of what Donald Trump has done during his presidency. Because of your actions with these files, he is supporting your primary opponent and has waged very personal attacks on you.
I know we just have a few seconds here. But just your reaction to that.
MASSIE: Look, this is about the Epstein class, the people who are funding the attacks against me. They may or may not be implicated in these files, but they were certainly rubbing shoulders with the people who are in these files. They’re billionaires who are friends with these people. And that’s what I’m up against in Washington, D.C.
Donald Trump told us that even though, you know, he had dinner with these kinds of people in New York City and West Palm Beach, that he would be transparent. But he’s not. He’s still in with the Epstein class. This is the Epstein administration, and they’re attacking me for trying to get these files released.
RADDATZ: And again, I’m going to say, President Trump has not been accused of anything criminal here.
Thank you very much for joining us this morning, Congressman. We appreciate it.
MASSIE: Thank you. Thank you, Martha.
[End Transcript]
It is rather curious that congress has no interest in calling any of the state or federal officials, including the FBI, to give testimony as to the outcomes of their prior investigations. Show us what was actually done instead of theater. But no, theater seemingly has a greater value.
