Trump’s EPSTEIN EVIDENCE BOMB goes off: Ari on email about Trump’s “hours” with victim, DOJ Coverup?

Donald Trump is in the Epstein files. We have new emails released for the first time by the House Oversight Committee that show Donald Trump being discussed directly for his involvement with Jeffrey Epstein by Epstein and is now convicted conspirator Maxwell. I'm Ari Melber, lawyer, MSNBC anchor. I'm going to go through this right now. This is by far the worst written evidence we've had that ties Donald Trump to Epstein.

The two have known to be associates and have known to have apparently a falling out. This is really the worst stuff we've seen, and it shows why Donald Trump possibly broke his vow to release all the Epstein files in transparency. I'm going to read to you what we have here. This is a big breaking legal news story and then do some analysis. But first let's start with the evidence. This is really striking. You don't always get

direct evidence like this as a journalist or when lawyers and investigators look into things. But in April 2011 you have Epstein and Maxwell emailing. And you have to remember this is back in the day. People, many people thought emails then were much more secure and they thought they were talking privately and Donald Trump had not become a political figure yet. And Epstein, talking about his own legal problems, said, quote, and these are again released

emails, I want you to realize that the dog that hasn't barked is Trump. And then he refers to what the Congress has redacted as a victim and says, this victim spent hours at my house with him. He's never once been mentioned. And then in a bit of a cryptic reference, he says, police chief, etc. I'm 75% there. They were talking about his ongoing history and problems. Maxwell, who has since been convicted as a sex trafficker, replies,

I've been thinking about that. This is damning stuff. You have to remember a couple things. One, Jeffrey Epstein was later charged for this elaborate sex trafficking operation, including of underage girls and other young women, and Donald Trump has steadfastly denied being either involved and legally, we can say he's never been charged in these emails, don't specifically define a crime,

although they are bad for anyone in, well, anyone, I was gonna say, anyone in public life or politics, but really anyone, period. And yet, this goes farther than Donald Trump has ever acknowledged publicly.

So right there, you have a big problem for him and a question about what he knew. And then second, and I'm gonna get into this, whether these new accounts suggest that Donald Trump or his aides have abused power in the Justice Department to cover up some of this stuff. Trump famously ran on vowing transparency and releasing the Epstein files has held them back. Emails like

this, even if they don't prove a crime, show why Donald Trump didn't ultimately want the Epstein files released. I'm going to read from the, let me see because I've got a couple of the emails here and I want to go through the evidence. He has conversations with Michael Wolff, a writer who's profiled Trump. But before I get to that, on January 31st, 2019, you have an Epstein email that says,

"'Trump said he asked me to resign. "'Never a member ever.' This is regarding Mar-a-Lago, where there was a falling out, and Trump has publicly addressed that part of it. And then Epstein writes, quote, "'Of course he knew about the girls

"'as he asked Jelaine to stop." End quote. Now, this is Epstein in 2019, when there was a lot more heat on him, saying that Trump knew about the girls, meaning knew about the kind of sex trafficking that Epstein did, whatever you want to call it. Epstein might describe it differently,

and had asked Maxwell to stop. Now, this is important for a couple of reasons. Number one, in all fairness, if you were a lawyer for Donald Trump, you could argue that this kind of statement reflects a corroboration of something

that Trump has publicly claimed, that they had this falling out and that he had basically told Epstein or Maxwell that he didn't want that type of stuff at Mar-a-Lago. Now, whether that was for his own personal interest, reasons, business, getting caught, whether it ever reflected anything in his own history, we don't know to be fair. But that is a statement of that. Trump had

claimed publicly that he told Epstein to stop. Here it's Maxwell and again you could say that's different if he said it was one person it was another. You could also claim that Trump was referring to a history where he basically told Epstein's people and Maxwell was the main person involved in this later convicted for it to stop. The flip side though of that is that's still a lot more knowledge than Trump has admitted. His denials are that he ever did anything wrong with Epstein or these

women and girls and that he didn't really know what was going on at the time. Here, Epstein is saying, and it doesn't mean it's 100% true, but back in a private communication, he's saying that Trump did know, and he told Maxwell to stop. And a big question here is, why would Trump, if he didn't know anything, know so much about who to contact?

Why did he know Maxwell was involved or was a co-conspirator? I want to turn to the release of these files. One of the interesting things in the Trump denial in this new story is the White House is saying it's bad that these files are out or the Democrats cherry-picked them. Fact check, false. These are some of the emails that are potentially the most damaging and newsworthy, but they're

part of a larger file of about 20,000 plus emails. The Trump campaign in 24 claimed that he was going to release all the Epstein files. That would include this kind of stuff. People debate what that means. The files is their client list.

But this is exactly what Trump ran on. He failed to do it. He refused to do it. And people can speculate as to why, but it's quite striking when you look at this story and the stakes and the involvement of all

these important figures that Trump said he would release and then didn't. Now that 20,000 plus emails are released, including ones naming him, they're saying release is bad. Now remember, you might say, well, of course it's bad for him, but as recently as a few months back, Trump had claimed they wanted to get grand jury material or other material released.

So they have been on both sides of this. And we are getting a lot more facts about why Trump apparently doesn't want these smoking gun emails released as it affects him. Now the other piece of that is, remember, there may be other material in here that is good or bad for Trump. Lawyers would call that exculpatory if it helps you, and they can call that more damaging if it hurts you. But can call that more damaging if it hurts you

but this goes much broader than Trump. If there are other people in these emails prominent people people linked to either political party business whatnot being named alone legally doesn't mean much but if the government wants to have a full accounting and Trump ran on that then you would release all this and so it is really striking that we are learning in real time one of the obvious reasons Trump

didn't want this stuff released. He's in it. And he's in it in a bad way. And even if it's not to a criminal level, he would have to explain, is this true? And why did Epstein and Maxwell discuss,

as if it was just privately obviously true, true that he'd spent hours with at least one victim. What was that about? What happened? Why did he seem to know how to contact Maxwell and others if that was his goal? Because he knew that there was an underlying problem there, whether he knew exactly all the details or not. And Donald Trump didn't just refuse to release this material. In his first year of his second term, he has claimed that stories that link him to Epstein

are false or defamatory, unlawful. He's currently suing the Wall Street Journal for when it first reported that he'd signed this very sort of, you know, bawdy or illicit birthday card for Epstein. Then the card came out from the Epstein estate confirming the journal's story. And he has that open lawsuit. The White House, remember, has retaliated against reporters at the Wall Street Journal over Epstein coverage. This is a sister

publication of Fox News owned by Rupert Murdoch. This is generally considered a business or right-of-center publication in its editorials and yet Trump is going to war with them over this stuff. And so these new emails further corroborate his history, his links with Epstein, even if not criminal, while he goes and attacks those reports. That's really striking. Now there's another legal piece to this, it's a little more intricate, I'm gonna discuss that right now, which goes to how the DOJ under Donald Trump has both pushed secrecy for

all of the Epstein files, a lot of the victims and survivors have spoken out against the government, doesn't mean they want to be left, right, red or blue, but they've spoken out against the way the DOJ has operated under Trump. Against victims' rights, against transparency. Now remember, there was this very unusual interview with Maxwell, who is mentioned here, and we're just going to read this again.

Epstein says, Trump said he asked me to resign, never ever a member there. Tamar Lago quote, of course he knew about the girls as he asked Elaine to stop, asked Maxwell to stop. Maxwell is the only person ever convicted in this whole sordid case at the federal level. She is currently in prison. She got a more lenient shift when all this stuff was back in the news under the Trump DOJ.

Leniency for a sex trafficker or someone linked to pedophilia is quite striking. Most Americans obviously oppose that. And the suspicion was, and it's not to get into a total conspiracy theory, but the suspicion or question, and you have to look at the facts, is why did she get better treatment? And why did she have this unusual interview with the deputy attorney general? Not someone involved in the original case, but Trump's former defense lawyer who has this top DOJ position.

Well today we've learned that's even more suspicious because Todd Blanche is the individual I'm mentioning did this unusual interview then she got the prison transfer and in that interview Mr. Blanche asked her questions that seemed to be exculpatory positive for for Trump, because she said, oh, I'd never seen him there, yada yada.

OK.

Now we have these files. The first thing you do in a federal probe or any big investigation like this is you go pull emails and texts. You don't have to get them only from the subjects. You can get them directly from telecommunications providers. That's first step standard. So while I can't tell you for a fact what's in the DOJ's possession of the Epstein files,

because they're hiding them, because they haven't released them, I can tell you that almost any competent investigation does that first. So we would expect a competent DOJ to have those files, to have the emails I just read you, and then some. And yet when Blanche interviewed Maxwell, and she said she'd never seen Trump do anything on TOR, she said she'd never seen him do anything untoward, she said she'd never seen him around, and any of this stuff, any competent investigator, if they were seeking the truth,

would then present her with this email and say, well, why did you and Mr. Epstein email the opposite and say he spent hours with this person? Let me refresh your memory. And if there is an innocent explanation, then an honest investigator would want to hear that.

You could speculate one. You could say, oh, she forgot. Yes, that was a day where it was true what she wrote at the time. Her and Epstein remembered Trump with someone. But there was no crime occurred. Or there was only a social interaction.

Or there was a massage, which might be a scandal for a politician to some degree, depending on who's providing it. In this case, if it's at Epstein's estate, you can bet it's controversial. But not a crime, legally.

And remember, the investigators are supposed to be focused on the law and crime, not whether something is good or bad in politics. But Blanche didn't do that. And so what we see here, and this is the layers of the story, is the famous cliche, the cover up is worse than the crime.

Well, we don't know what the underlying crimes were regarding anybody here that hasn't been convicted so I say that quite responsibly and carefully. But the cover up looks pretty bad if you're covering up for a sex trafficker or for a pedophilia ring. And then you go in nowadays and do this interview and you don't use the available evidence that the Epstein estate has that's in the email which the DOJ should have in a normal probe and actually look for the truth. So this raises big big heat on Mr. Blanch and

anyone else at the DOJ who might be involved in a cover-up or lenient treatment for Maxwell if that is designed to reward or extort her help or potentially false misleading perjurious help to anyone be it the President United States or anyone else. So that's a whole chapter to this that's actually quite detailed. This could come up in news coverage could come up in how Trump answers for this. You have to know a little bit about how investigations

work to appreciate what looks like a cover-up but I could just tell you straight up an honest normal prosecutor would not conduct the interview the way Mr. Blanch did, not with this type of evidence, if it's available. And remember, they fired the prosecutor who actually won the case, who got justice for some victims, Maureen Comey, she happens to be related to FBI Director Comey, who's now under indictment under the Trump DOJ, a whole other story. She would be the natural person or someone on her team

to do that Maxwell interview if it were for fact finding. The increasing evidence is it was not. And right now, we live in a world where people say maybe there'll be no consequences. Maybe they get away with everything. But the DOJ has rules.

United States government is bound by federal law, constitutional rules. And sooner or later Mr. Blanche and others may have to answer for what they were really doing and why they did it this way. And we do a lot of interviews.

I've had various Trump lawyers on my program. Happy to hear Mr. Blanche's side of the story. If he's willing to come on with me or anyone in public, he has been less than forthcoming about this. I have a couple other notes I want to get into here. And the Wolf email that I haven't read, the third one. So since we have a lot of new evidence and information,

I will read you this one. Again, this is Ari Melber, my YouTube breakdowns. You can always subscribe to get these reports and breakdowns on my YouTube channel. This next email is really striking. It is less substantively about the underlying actions and whether people were abused because

it's more about the later political spin, which is why I'm coming to it last, but it is one of the interesting ones released. And it's from Epstein to Michael Wolff, who, as I mentioned, is an author. He's written about the Trump administration repeatedly. He had a background in history. And he says something unusual.

Most journalists would not do this. You're not supposed to do this. He seems to think he knows what an outlet is gonna ask then candidate Trump. And he's talking to a source about it and then seemingly trying to help brainstorm or even plan how this would be

dealt with. Now, to be fair, we don't know whether any of this was actually going to get very far. A quick check doesn't look like Epstein came up in the debate that night. We'd have to look deeper and you could check everywhere to see whether anyone anywhere that day or next couple days asked Trump about it, which is hard to kind of confirm in real time.

But Wolf says, quote, to Epstein, "'I hear CNN's planning to ask Trump tonight about his relationship with you, either on the air or in the scrum afterwards,' where they all talk in the so-called spin room. And Epstein says,

"'If we're able to craft an answer for him, what do you think it should be?' We don't know then why Epstein would ask that or if he actually, in fairness to Trump and everyone, thought he could get close enough to brainstorm an answer. We do know that they had a social history back in the day, but by this time they didn't have any public links. We didn't see them at parties and such. So in fairness, we don't know whether Epstein was just talking. You can't assume that that means he's going to execute it.

But then Wolf gives this reply. I'm going to read, quote, I think you should let him, Trump, hang himself. If he says he hasn't been on the plane or to the house, that's Epstein, Epstein's plane, quote, then that gives you a valuable PR and political currency. You can hang him in a way that potentially generates a positive benefit for you. And then Wolf suggests something that is basically a type of blackmail. And that's interesting because as I've reported and other people have discussed, Epstein has

been described as a blackmailer. He received funds from various individuals, unrelated to Trump as well, that seemed completely out of whack with anything that you would get paid for in a business job. And so the question was, was that the evidence of his blackmail? I've got other videos reporting on that. But interesting that Wolf goes right to that mode and says, so you can hang him in that

way, quote, or if it looks like he could win, you could save him generating a debt. And he goes on to say some other stuff. But that's someone who's a writer seemingly getting on the inside, not writing or reporting independently on the outside, but getting on the inside as if he's a partner with them. And he may argue that he plays both sides or this is how he talks to people, but I can just tell you under journalistic rules, you don't advise people to conduct blackmail or

how they can benefit. You try to honestly deal with them and And sometimes you have tough or intense conversation. But if they ask for direct advice, political, financial, or whatever, you're not usually going to give it. You certainly aren't going to be brainstorming.

Blackmail, I should mention, depending on how it's conducted, blackmail and extortion can be illegal. Although this level of conversation wouldn't rise to a chargeable offense. But I'm just telling you like how serious it is to go down that road. And the idea of quote generating a debt based on triaging or misusing

information on Trump or having knowledge of something that Trump might be minimizing or lying about at a level of his ties to Epstein is really striking. So look I've just run through a lot of that off top as we say. It's an evolving story. I want to reiterate, these are smoking gun emails. For anyone covering this, these are some of the most damning emails, written evidence, receipts from Epstein to his convicted co-conspirator discussing these issues and Trump.

Also, they do not in and of themselves prove any crime. And when you report these kind of stories stories you always look at the denials. The Trump denial here was basically reiterating what he said in the past and he has every right to publicly debate and deny anything here but he's also left a lot of holes and that is not just saying oh pick sides in a debate if you're gonna do fair journalism and really try to make sense of the facts here you have to look at the evidence and take into account what the possibilities are. But the reason why

these are really bad and smoking gun style emails is not that they necessarily prove a whole crime, although they could and you have to investigate or look at that seriously, but that they give a lot more credence to the suspicions facing the Trump administration about the secrecy on the Epstein files. They also cut against Trump's attacks on the Wall Street Journal and other outlets for reporting what they said they had

documents, receipts, sources that he was in the Epstein files. There's reporting that he was warned by the Attorney General that he was. And they then explained potentially why Donald Trump, who ran a campaign vowing to release the Epstein files and vowing transparency, and Pam Bondi, who claimed she had key files and material on her desk and ready to go, why that all reversed. You know, it's become a real commonplace thing these days to be more cynical and say, well, why does this

matter more than that or people get away with things? I'll close with this point. People have always gotten away with things. A lot of crimes remain unsolved. The public interest in this sordid tale of Jeffrey Epstein matters because the victims matter. It matters if the federal government is being misused to further give leniency to one of the sex traffickers. And then there's also the political intrigue. You can say Democrats have had more interest in this when they thought it would hurt Trump, that they haven't always shown the right vigor and

excitement or a sort of alacrity to deal with this, and you can say Trump's been very selective. But if you put the politics to the side and you try to look at the evidence, sometimes the political heat, or even we know in cases sometimes the media's interest in something increases the intensity. But the intensity is still to what? If it's for the truth, if it's for justice, then even knowing all that stuff is going

on this can be a step forward. And if the government under Donald Trump is providing secrecy, leniency or worse cover-up for people involved in this, that's a story that matters. So I'm Ari Melber signing off. So I'm Ari Melber signing off. You can subscribe to keep up with me.