Hillary Clinton accuses Trump of Epstein 'cover-up' in new interview

[0:00] We begin this hour with developments surrounding the files related to Jeffrey Epstein. We're going to get to the latest reporting on that and then we'll go to the life and legacy of Reverend Jesse Jackson. But we reported yesterday on the letter sent to Congress on Saturday by Attorney General Pam Bondi announcing the Justice Department has released all of those files claiming it has fulfilled its obligations under the Epstein Files Transparency Act. The letter also outlined its justification for the [0:30] redactions made in the released files explaining they were limited to victim privacy, including personally identifiable information and medical details. And it included a list of more than 300, quote, politically exposed people whose names appear in the files in varying contexts, including Donald Trump, former President Bill Clinton, and other politicians. [1:00] organizations, business people, and artists. When asked about the Epstein Files aboard Air Force One last night, President Trump claimed the released materials proved he had been cleared of any wrongdoing. [1:14] I have nothing to hide. I've been exonerated. I have nothing to do with Jeffrey Epstein. They went in hoping that they'd find it and found just the opposite. I've been totally exonerated. In fact, Jeffrey Epstein was fighting that I don't get elected [1:29] with some author, a sleazebag, by the way, and I've been totally exonerated. No, no, they're getting pulled in, and that's their problem. I don't know. They're going to have to see what happens. But I watched her in Munich, and she seriously has Trump derangement syndrome. [1:45] You know, I've been totally exonerated on Epstein, and it's really interesting because they've been pulled in. Think of it. They've been pulled in. Clinton and many other Democrats have been pulled in. [1:56] As for the Clintons, Hillary Clinton is accusing the Trump administration of slow walking and covering up the release of the Epstein Files. In a new interview, Hillary Clinton told the BBC the White House must, quote, get the files out. She agreed that everyone asked to testify should do so, too. [2:14] I think everybody should testify who was asked to testify. I just want it to be fair. I want everybody treated the same way. That's not true for my husband and me because other witnesses were asked to testify. They gave written statements under oath. We offered that. They want to pull us. Why did they want to pull us into this? To divert attention from President Trump. [2:40] This interview comes as both Clinton and her husband, former President Bill Clinton, are set to appear before the House Oversight Committee at the end of this month after a planned contempt vote was shelved. [2:51] Bill Clinton, several times in the files, was acquainted with Epstein, but says he cut off contact two decades ago. [2:58] Neither Clinton has been accused of any wrongdoing, and both have denied knowledge of Epstein's offenses at the time. [3:05] So, Joe, again, here you have James Comer and other Republicans walking into this where this will be thrown wide open. [3:14] Obviously, Hillary Clinton and Bill Clinton want to testify in public, so it really can be out in the open, still working on that, but as of now behind closed doors. [3:22] But James Comer going back and picking at this scab, a thing you heard Bill Clinton, excuse me, you heard President Trump say, I want to move on. [3:29] I've been exonerated. I don't know that you would use that term. [3:31] He hasn't been accused of wrongdoing specifically here, but he wants to move on. [3:37] The president wants to move on. [3:38] James Comer and other Republicans seem intent for some reason on keeping this alive. [3:45] Well, I mean, they want to keep it alive and go after a president who hasn't been in the Oval Office in a quarter of a century. [3:56] Yeah. [3:57] And they want to ignore the person who's sitting in the White House right now, who I believe has far more mentions in the Epstein files than does Bill Clinton. [4:11] And this whole idea that, yeah, there are Democrats' names that are in here, no doubt about it, but the idea that somehow it's all Democrats and that the Trump administration has been exonerated, I mean, that's just a joke. [4:27] You've got, you know, the next Fed chair is in the files if he gets appointed, voted in, confirmed. [4:36] You have the Commerce Secretary lying time and time and time again about his relationship with Jeffrey Epstein and getting busted and still holding onto his job. [4:51] And you wonder, why are they protecting all these rich and powerful men that were hanging around Jeffrey Epstein? [5:00] Why are there so many connections with Jeffrey Epstein in this administration? [5:06] It really just doesn't really make any sense, does it? [5:11] It doesn't make good sense if there was the idea of getting as far away from Jeffrey Epstein as possible, then there would have been moves they would have made. [5:24] The Commerce Secretary wouldn't be there. [5:27] Other people wouldn't be there. [5:30] Elon Musk would have been called out. [5:32] You can go down the list. [5:35] The, the, the, the, the, the, the, and Ro Khanna is right. [5:40] You really do have this Epstein class that the Trump administration is trying to protect. [5:48] And I, and they're trying to protect them actively when you have Pam Bondi coming out lying, saying, oh, we've released everything. [5:54] That's just a lie. [5:55] And everybody knows that's a lie, but still no, Mike Barnicle, still no accountability for the rich and powerful that are ensnarled in these files. [6:08] Whether you're talking about a lot of people, it seems, in, in Donald Trump's orbit, or you're talking about, uh, a contributor at CBS News, which again, you just talk about a joke. [6:22] Keeping that guy connected with CBS News, oh my, it's, it's unbelievable. [6:30] And then you look out in Los Angeles, you have Casey Wasserman, uh, that for some reason, that Olympic committee didn't boot off, uh, after they read the, the, I mean, the, the, the, the, the level of toleration for these rich and powerful men who were, were, were close friends with Jeffrey Epstein or talked about how much they loved them or how much they missed them when they weren't talking to them or, or, uh, you know, [7:01] Ghislaine Maxwell, it's, it really, it really is extraordinary that here we are in 2026, I was saying this a decade ago. [7:10] I, I don't understand, I still don't understand this conspiracy theory to cover up, especially from the very political movement that said if they got elected, they were going to reveal the truth about the Epstein files. [7:23] And all we've gotten is cover up and redactions are people that say extraordinarily grotesque things about young girls, young women and women in general, whose names are redacted from the file. [7:38] Why is the Trump administration protecting these rich and powerful men and the grotesque things that they're sending to Jeffrey Epstein? [7:48] What, what, what, what purpose does that serve, Pam Bondi? [7:52] What purpose? [7:53] Why do you keep protecting rich, powerful men? [7:57] Why are their names redacted? [7:59] Mike, it makes no good sense. [8:01] And if what Donald Trump is saying was true, well, then all those names would be redacted and all the files would come out, but they keep doing this. [8:11] They could have gotten this over with six to nine months ago. [8:15] They keep dragging it out. [8:17] They keep covering up and they keep thinking people are going to just walk away from it. [8:22] They're not until they're all released. [8:25] And they, they, they stop trying to protect rich, powerful men. [8:31] You know, Joe, this story, the string on this story, when you start to pull it, is endless and it's important. [8:38] And it's all going to come out eventually. [8:40] And to use the president's phrase, as Willie just pointed out last night on the plane, he said he's been exonerated by these files being released. [8:49] But he also has a law firm called the Department of Justice, which has control over all of these files. [8:55] And if he wants to be completely exonerated, he would order today that all of the files be dumped out right now. [9:02] It would take months to go through them, obviously, the redactions and the non-redactions. [9:07] But at the core of the story is something that is never going to go away until it's fully explained. [9:14] And at the core of this story is how one man, one man, who is now dead, committed suicide, in jail, controlled and had access to so many powerful people across a couple of different continents. [9:29] Right. [9:29] Europe, the United States. [9:31] What happened? [9:32] How did it happen? [9:34] How did he connect himself to all of these powerful, wealthy people who then relied on him for maybe sexual favors, maybe financial advice or whatever? [9:44] How does that happen? [9:46] So many rich, powerful men are protected right now in this. [9:50] But, Frank, for you know who's not protected? [9:52] The victims, many of whom were exposed again in these files. [9:57] These victims who have been fighting for justice every day for years. [10:03] And again, they get re-traumatized with the release of 3 million documents, which again, protects men, but doesn't protect many of them. [10:14] Right. [10:15] It's morally despicable that victims are the ones who end up suffering when there is this lack, as everybody's been saying, of moral accountability or uneven moral accountability. [10:26] And in the end, you know, part of the lack of moral accountability connects to kind of the broader issues that we're talking about in the Trump era, which is that what's exposed in these files isn't just the kind of the trafficking of young women, the criminal trafficking of young women. [10:47] It's the self-dealing of an elite class that's trading favors in a corrupt way. [10:52] And, of course, corruption is not just the master narrative of our times. [10:57] It's the master narrative of the Trump administration. [11:00] And I believe that our inability to hold people morally to account, really, for the corruption that's exposed here is very much connected to our lack of outrage and our inability to effectively deal with the kind of the world's historic levels of corruption that are transpiring on a daily basis in this administration. [11:24] David Drucker, the perversion of justice in this case was perhaps best captured in that image we saw a few seconds ago of Pam Bondi refusing to acknowledge or apologize to the victims standing behind her, wouldn't even turn around, looked down at her notes, even smirked at one point. [11:41] There's the story. [11:42] There's the story. [11:43] Her job literally is to protect the victims. [11:45] Instead, she appears to be anyway protecting the president of the United States. [11:50] So the question to you, David, is how is this playing in the MAGA universe? [11:55] Many prominent members of whom were behind pushing this for years and years and years and saying this is a foundational story for us. [12:04] We want to know about this cabal, this global cabal of elites who protect each other and some of them perhaps committing pedophilia with these young girls on Jeffrey Epstein's island. [12:16] And now to have a Justice Department and an administration desperately trying to turn the page and walk away from it without a full reckoning, how is that playing among Donald Trump's supporters? [12:27] Well, look, I think the main fissure at the very beginning was the fact that the president didn't want to release the files and you had a battle among some Republicans on Capitol Hill over whether or not to do this. [12:41] I think recall, I mean, one of the reasons we're even where we are now is because Democrats in the House of Representatives realized for all sorts of reasons that it was a good idea for them to join forces with the few Republicans that sort of hail from Trump's MAGA base, like Marjorie Taylor Greene and a few others, and join forces to push to get these files out. [13:08] The administration desperately tried to keep them from being released. Speaker Mike Johnson tried to keep them from being released. When they realized the dam was about to break, everybody gets on board. [13:18] And of course, they're acting like this was the plan all along. So I think, you know, I think the real question is with the files released, I think a lot of the air has been let out of the balloon in terms of the pressure from the president's base to deal with this. [13:33] I think the question now is, and we don't know, Willie, is what I'm getting at, is, you know, over time, are, is that corner of the right, the populist right, going to now be as sort of pushy, if you will, for people to go through these files with a fine-tuned tooth comb and to redact and to unredact a lot of the information that has been hidden? [13:59] Because an issue like this just doesn't die, right? It just doesn't go away. [14:03] And with the Clintons about to testify, particularly a former president, if this happens, it's going to set the precedent for other former presidents to testify. [14:13] And three years from now, Donald Trump is going to be a former president, constitutionally barred from running for re-election, and cannot sort of hide behind the, I'm a candidate, they're trying to derail my campaign. [14:24] And if House Democrats have anything to say about it, or Senate Democrats for that matter, they're going to ask him to come to Capitol Hill and testify. [14:33] So I just think this, this is going to be an ongoing story, and it's hard to know, you know, all the twists and turns.