During an interview with Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-MD) on Thursday, MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” co-host Joe Scarborough asked why, if the saga involving the late Jeffrey Epstein was a “crisis,” the Biden administration did not release records when it was in power.
“Epstein was able to use all of his powerful connections, including who was then his best friend, Donald Trump, in order to suppress a real hearing into what had happened,” Raskin said. “And look, why is this important? Because the sexual abuse of young people and children is a crisis throughout our society. There is, of course, the church scandal, or many church scandals. There’s what happened at Michigan State. There’s what happened at Ohio State.”
Scarborough interjected, “But, Congressman, you could have gotten that from ’21 to ’25, when Democrats controlled DOJ. It was a crisis then. It’s a crisis now. Why didn’t Democrats call for it from ’21 to ’25?”
“So, I mean, you’d have to go back and look specifically at particular prosecutorial decisions and what was taking place in terms of the other cases,” Raskin replied. “So, I don’t know, we could try to reconstruct that record. But the point is, is that Donald Trump is the one who has led the crusade to say that Epstein, who was his very close friend, and there’s all kinds of pictures of them and so, that Epstein was at the center of this broad conspiracy. He is now in a position to do exactly what he had demanded, which was to release all of the files. And so, why is that not happening?”
“That’s the question,” he continued. “I can’t answer for Merrick Garland or anybody else in the Department of Justice. But I will tell you that there is a bipartisan consensus in the Judiciary Committee now that all of these records need to be released.”
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