The following is a lightly edited transcript of the September 4 episode of the
Daily Blast podcast. Listen to it here.
Greg Sargent: This is The Daily Blast from The New Republic, produced and presented by the DSR network. I’m your host, Greg Sargent.
Pressure on President Trump and Republicans to release the Jeffrey Epstein files has gone nuclear. A discharge petition to force release of the files is close to having the support it needs to pass the House, and survivors of the Epstein sex trafficking ring spoke out on Wednesday, with one directly taking on Trump over this in an exceptionally powerful way. Meanwhile, there are clear signs that the White House is quietly starting to panic. Yet Trump himself is using the same tired old talking points about this fiasco that he’s been using all along. Does the White House have a strategy other than browbeating congressional Republicans into covering up the files? And could that actually work or not? Representative Jim McGovern of Massachusetts, a member of the House Rules Committee, has been in the middle of this whole debate, so we’re talking to him about all this today. Congressman, thanks so much for coming on.
Congressman Jim McGovern: I’m happy to be with you.
Sargent: So for years, Trump and MAGA demanded the release of materials related to the criminal investigation into Epstein’s sex trafficking. Then when Trump took over and his people saw the materials, they went right into cover-up mode. Now you’re part of this. There’s a discharge petition in the House to force release of the files, supported by Democrats and four Republicans—Marjorie Taylor Greene, Nancy Mace, Lauren Boebert, and Thomas Massie, who’s sponsoring it. As of this recording, it only requires two more Republicans to pass. Congressman, can you sum up where things stand on this?
McGovern: Well, I think you just summed it up pretty accurately. We’re waiting to see whether we can get two more Republicans and then force a debate and a vote on this on the House floor. Look, Trump said during the campaign he wanted to release the Epstein files. And all of his supporters said that they wanted the Epstein files release. All of the sudden, he becomes president and they do a review of the files and now he doesn’t want to release them. So the question is: What’s he hiding? And I don’t normally ever agree with people like Marjorie Taylor Greene and Lauren Boebert; we’re on opposite ends of the political spectrum. But I appreciate the fact that they are asking that not only the files be released but they’re asking their fellow Republicans to sign on to the discharge petition that the speaker of the House is preventing from coming to the floor. So if we get 218 signatures, then we can force a debate and a vote up or down on the resolution on the House floor to release the files.
Sargent: Well, in the House Rules Committee earlier this week, some pretty crazy shenanigans happened. You had a pretty explosive and powerful moment on the floor about it. Can you sum up what happened in the rules committee?
McGovern: Well, the rules committee Republicans are scared shitless of Donald Trump, to put it bluntly. They don’t want to do anything to offend him, and so they’re part of the cover-up. They bring a rule before the committee in which there is a provision that would deem as passed—that means no debate and no amendments—a provision that would basically saying that the Oversight Committee in the House could continue doing what it’s already doing. It adds no new authority. It doesn’t do anything. It’s like a press release to be able to give these Republicans something to point to. It doesn’t have the power of a law. What Congressman Massie and Congressman Khanna are pushing is an actual bill that the House would have to pass, the Senate would pass, and then it would go to the president’s desk. And if he vetoed it, we would have to override the veto. But it would have the force of law and require the administration to release the files. Now Trump could do it on his own already. That’s the thing here. He could just release everything and we can move on. But for some reason he’s not doing it, which makes us all wonder, What the hell is he hiding?
Sargent: Right. And just to clarify, the House Rules Committee Republicans moved this bogus thing forward, which would essentially say something like, The Department of Justice will release the files eventually on its own and the House Oversight Committee, which is controlled by Republicans, will just continue with its probe and everything will be just fine. And that would be a way for Republicans to pretend to be for transparency.
McGovern: Yeah, it’s a fake bill, in other words. And there’s no timeline. So it doesn’t say that this has to be done in 15 days or 30 days or 100 days. It doesn’t say it has to be done in six years. Again, it is just cover for Republicans. The House leadership here, again, is afraid to be at odds with Donald Trump. They think they work for him. They don’t think they work for the American people. It’s pathetic and it’s sad. And it’s frustrating because it’s not just on Epstein files, it’s on a thousand other things that they’re doing Trump’s bidding. It really was sad. Every single Republican on the House Rules Committee voted not to release the files. And we brought the rule to the floor today and there was a procedural motion that if I had prevailed, we could have then forced a vote on the Massie-Khanna bill. That went down as well. So the Republican leadership is doing everything they can to block the files from being released and, at the same time, trying to give the Republican members a little bit of cover.
Sargent: So a number of survivors of this Epstein sex ring spoke up on Wednesday at a press conference and it was very strong stuff. Now to back up, Trump has been calling this whole scandal a “hoax” invested by Democrats, which is funny because Trump and MAGA previously treated this as the biggest scandal in U.S. history back when they thought it would only implicate liberals and Democrats. Now one survivor in particular, Haley Robson, took direct aim at Trump’s ongoing hoax claim. Listen to this.
Haley Robson (audio voiceover): Mr. President Donald J. Trump, I am a registered Republican—not that that matters because this is not political. However, I cordially invite you to the Capitol to meet me in person so you can understand this is not a hoax. We are real human beings. This is real trauma. I would like Donald J. Trump and every person in America and around the world to humanize us, to see us for who we are, and to hear us for what we have to say. There is no hoax. The abuse was real.
Sargent: So Congressman, the whole hoax line is not sustainable simply because Trump only started calling it a hoax when it could start implicating him. Hearing this from a survivor underscores the absurdity of the Trump line in a new way. What did you take from what you saw there?
McGovern: Well, I watched the press conference and I brought up the powerful testimony of some of the survivors on the House floor. And previously Trump said this was a Democratic hoax supported by stupid Republicans. And then after the press conference, he repeated that line that this was a Democratic hoax designed to get people to focus on something that was irrelevant. Those are his words. It was “irrelevant.” You can’t listen to that press conference of these survivors and not be horrified and heartbroken and just disgusted by all that has happened. And to call what happened to them “irrelevant,” it’s disgusting and it’s pathetic. And again, what’s even more pathetic is that rank-and-file Republicans, during the debate on the rule on the floor today, never even raised concern about Trump’s language—just basically moved on. These survivors deserve better and we’re going to keep on fighting until they get the files released.
Sargent: Absolutely. Now I want to go back and talk a little bit more about what the White House is doing. CNN’s Sarah Ferris reported that Congressman Massie is saying that the White House is phoning House Republicans and telling them not to join the discharge petition. They’re in a panic. Congressman, what are you hearing on that front from Republicans or others in Congress? What’s the state of play among Republicans? Are they under intense pressure behind-the-scenes from the White House to vote against this thing? What are you hearing?
McGovern: Yeah, I’m hearing that they are, that the White House is making calls. I know the speaker’s office is weighed in with a lot of Republicans telling them to not sign the discharge petition. And again, the question is why? I heard the Republicans last night on the rules committee and on the House floor today say that they’re all for transparency, they all want the truth to get out. Well, what the hell’s the problem? Just release the files. Obviously, you can redact the names of individuals to protect the survivors and those who have been through hell, but that is in the Massie-Khanna legislation.
So what is the problem? If you really want to get to the truth, why not just force the administration to release all the files? And again, we shouldn’t even have to do this, right? The administration should do what they promised to do. Trump said he would release the files. Just release them. Now, I get it. The word is that his name is all over the files. But you know what? The longer this goes on, the worse it’s going to be for him. And again, people aren’t retreating. People aren’t giving up. And I think that the survivors coming to the Hill yesterday and today has only increased the intensity of many of us to just keep at it until these files get released, until the truth is out there.
Sargent: Well, I should clarify that we don’t know what’s in the files about Trump. There’s been some stuff out there about how that has really confirmed that he had a real relationship with Epstein and so forth.
McGovern: Well, Epstein has called him one of his dearest friends, and Trump referred to Epstein as a terrific guy. But we don’t know what’s in the files. You have to wonder, What changed? Why did Trump go from release the files to now we don’t need to know what’s in the files? And I think the only way we’re going to find out what the answer to that question is is by getting to the truth and getting these files out there, and we’re going to continue to push for that.
Sargent: Well, we should mention that House Oversight Chair James Comer, also a Republican, keeps saying that Republicans are investigating the Epstein mess and they’re supposedly going to release details. As far as I can tell, though, this is just a mechanism for the Justice Department to manage release of little dribs and drabs of the materials to Republicans in a way that doesn’t hurt Trump and gives Republicans a way to pretend to be for transparency. What’s your sense of what the Oversight Committee is doing and what’s the game there?
McGovern: So they made this big deal about releasing all these thousands of pages of documents. Come to find out 97 percent of what they released was already been out there in the public, so we learned nothing new by and large from what they released. And to be honest with you, for me now this is an issue of trust. I don’t trust Jim Comer. I don’t trust the Republicans to do what is right. I just don’t. For weeks and weeks and weeks, they’ve been frustrating all efforts to try to move any legislation to compel that these files be released. And now all of sudden, Jim Comer, who every day gets up and genuflects in front of a picture of Donald Trump, says, Oh, I want to get to bottom of all this. I don’t care where it leads. I just don’t believe it. I really don’t believe it. And there is nothing that the Republicans proposed in this fake resolution that they brought up that has no power of law that would have you believe that they have to release the information.
Republicans don’t keep their word. That’s been the M.O. of this Republican leadership since they took power. So I think the only way to guarantee that there is a full accounting here is again to compel the administration to release all the files that they have and let the chips fall where they may. The American people want to know. The longer they let this drag out, the more intense the phone calls we’re getting from not only in my district but from all around the country saying, Release the files. So they should just release the damn files. Let’s move on. Comer last night said that he wants transparency, and he said all Republicans want transparency. But he couldn’t answer a simple question about whether or not he supports the Massie-Khanna resolution, which would require there to be transparency. I asked him about five or six times, and he just couldn’t give me a straight answer. So he’s playing all kinds of games. He’s trying to look like he’s doing something—responding to all the public pressure—but at the same time, not offending Donald Trump. And I don’t think that that’s sustainable. I think we’re at the point now where this is not going to go away. And sooner or later, we will get those extra two Republicans that would force a vote on the Massie-Khanna bill.
Sargent: I want to ask you about that, Congressman. So you do think you get the two Republicans. Tell us what happens then. It would go through some procedural stuff that it would definitely get a vote.
McGovern: It technically should definitely get a vote. Now in all honesty here, the Republicans could play games and try to shut the clock off or to replace it with something else. It’s not that they can’t screw around with this—but if they do, I think it would be very difficult to explain to people. This is a simple bill that requires the Justice Department to release all the files, redact the names of those survivors and those people who were victims in this terrible, terrible crime. It’s very straightforward, but they can still fool around with it. Now, having said that, I had some Republicans on the rules committee saying, If you get the necessary signatures, then we can vote on this. So we’ll see how all this plays out.
The other thing here, the other question that we need to ask and focus on is the way this administration has brought Ghislaine Maxwell into this debate again, having Trump’s lawyer interview her. It wasn’t a cross-examination; it was softball questions. She exonerates Trump. And then the next thing we know, she’s transferred to this cushy country-club correctional facility that could only happen if the powers that be in this administration allowed it to happen.
Sargent: I just want to point out, Congressman, a funny thing about this. Well, if Ghislaine Maxwell actually exonerated Trump, then all the more reason to release the files and just confirm his exoneration, right?
McGovern: Yeah. You heard her say that Trump didn’t, to her knowledge, do anything that was inappropriate. That’s what she said. So if that’s the case, then release the files. But again, why does this child sex trafficker, this sexual predator—why did why does she get this special treatment after she does this interview with the Trump team? It seems a little strange at the timing and more than coincidental. So is this a payoff? Quite frankly, if Jim Comer wanted to do something that was worthwhile, he ought to be exploring that question.
Sargent: Well, you mentioned earlier that you think this is unsustainable and that you’ll get the two Republicans for the discharge petition. Are there a number of House Republicans who are in play? I assume you talked to Ro Khanna about this. Are there a number who are in play who haven’t come out yet? And what’s that number?
McGovern: Yeah, I think that there are a handful of Republicans that are still in play. I try and weigh the pros and cons of going against the administration and going against the Republican leadership. But at the end of the day, I think the public pressure is building. Again, I watched that press conference today with the survivors, and I thought it was incredibly powerful. And to the Trump people who, again, keep on pointing to Ghislaine Maxwell as she didn’t implicate Trump, I guess my question would be, Why are you giving credibility to this criminal, this monster who worked with Jeffrey Epstein to exploit all these young women and to put them through hell? Why are you giving her credibility, but you’re not listening to the survivors? Something doesn’t smell right here. This is getting more and more suspicious with each and every day. And the only way to put this to rest is to release the damn files.
The administration could do it without Congress doing anything. I thought they were going to do that. Pam Bondi said the files were on her desk and she was going to release them. Then all of a sudden she did an about switch. And look, I get it that there may be names of people in there who are well-connected and well-off and powerful and rich and have connections all over the place. So what? What happened here was so horrific, there ought to be a full accounting. And so we’re going to continue to push for that.
Sargent: Well, you’ve been around a long time, Congressman. Can you take us inside what you think the calculus is of these undecided Republicans? What’s going through their heads? What’s your sense of it?
McGovern: I think that they’re scared shitless of Trump—period. Every Republican is. One of the most disappointing realities that we’re dealing with here is that Republicans who we used to be able to work with in a bipartisan way, who always seem reasonable on stuff and could be dependent on to do the right thing occasionally, they’re no longer there. They’re all afraid of a primary challenge. They’re all afraid of being on the wrong side of this president’s favor. And so they’re terrified.
I’ll tell you a story. When we were debating the big ugly bill that Trump was pushing, I was handling the debate on the rule side. I had a number of Republicans come up to me and tell me that I was right. This is a terrible bill. This is going to screw their constituents over. This is an awful thing to do to the American people. And I responded to them by saying, Look, I’m not wearing a collar. I’m not a priest. I don’t do confessions. And I certainly don’t do absolution. But I’d respect you more if you told me you actually believe in this crap and that’s why you were supporting the bill. But to tell me you don’t believe in this stuff, you think it’s going to hurt your own constituents, and vote for it anyway, that’s cowardice. That’s moral cowardice.
And I think the same thing here with the Epstein files. The crimes that were committed horrific, beyond description. They’re terrible, terrible, awful. And if you believe that—and I think there are a number of Republicans that do—but you’re afraid to demand accountability, you’re afraid to vote for accountability because you’re afraid that it won’t be politically expedient, that Trump might not like you, that he might end up supporting a primary opponent, then what the hell’s the point of being here? It’s not worth being here. I think and I believe that eventually we will get those extra Republicans. I give Thomas Massie enormous credit. I know he’s getting the shit kicked out of him by the Trump people. They’re investing millions and millions of dollars to try to defeat him in his primary. I don’t agree with him on 80 percent of the stuff he does, but I admire his guts and his conviction here to stand by what he believes and to do the right thing.
Sargent: Congressman Jim McGovern, all very well said. Thanks so much for coming on and talking to us today.
McGovern: All the best. Thanks.