Rep. Subramanyam on GOP Trying to Cancel Ghislaine Deposition

18m
MeidasTouch host Ben Meiselas reports on Donald Trump working with the GOP to block the deposition of Ghislaine Maxwell as she now states she will invoke the Fifth Amendment and not answer any questions from Congress.

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Runtime: 18m

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Speaker 4 Donald Trump continues to panic over his dark past. And yes, even though he signed the bill into law to release the Epstein files, as predicted, he and the DOJ were prepared to cover this up.

Speaker 4 And we're already seeing that take the form that we expected.

Speaker 4 Also, working hand in glove with the MAGA Republicans in the House of Representatives like MAGA Mike Johnson, James Comer, Jim Jordan, and others.

Speaker 4 So, what we learned yesterday, we learned on Friday, is that Gheelane Maxwell will plead the fifth in the House Epstein probe, according to James Comer, who chairs the House Oversight Committee.

Speaker 4 So you may be saying, Ben, didn't she speak to Donald Trump's former criminal defense attorney, turn number two at the Department of Justice, Todd Blanche? And she said all of these things.

Speaker 4 Donald Trump was a perfect gentleman. I never saw him do anything wrong.

Speaker 4 And then we saw all of the emails, those 23,000 emails that the Democrats on the House Oversight Committee got from the Epstein estate and showed that she lied about everything and that Donald Trump was in like over half of those email threads.

Speaker 4 But didn't she speak to the DOJ?

Speaker 4 She did.

Speaker 4 And we predicted though that when it came to the House Oversight Committee, when she would be grilled by people like Democratic Congressmember Garcia and Sobramanian or other Democrats, that she would invoke the fifth and not respond because when people actually came with the emails and the evidence and actually put her on the spot, she would say, I invoke the fifth, I invoke the fifth.

Speaker 4 Now you may be saying, how'd she,

Speaker 4 isn't she found guilty of child sex trafficking? How is she invoking the fifth? Well, go back a few months ago. We predicted exactly what she was going to say.

Speaker 4 She was going to say, well, I filed a habeas corpus petition in federal court because there's all of this new evidence right now and I need the case to be overturned.

Speaker 4 Even though the Supreme Court rejected the appeal, she goes, there's new evidence. And what's the new evidence? Donald Trump.
Donald Trump's been saying this is a hoax. It's a Democratic hoax.

Speaker 4 And just think about it like this.

Speaker 4 Could you imagine in normal political times, normal times in American history, if the president of the United States was speaking about specific criminal cases and referred to a case as a hoax, that the FBI planted all of these things?

Speaker 4 And James Comey and his daughter, Maureen Comey, who was the lead federal prosecutor, were in cahoots. So she's going to make the argument to the federal judges.

Speaker 4 that her conviction should be overturned because it's all a hoax and there's all this new information that's taking place.

Speaker 4 In any event, while I think that's going to go nowhere in terms of her habeas corpus petition, she's using that to say, my proceedings are still taking place, so I've got to invoke the Fifth Amendment against self-incrimination.

Speaker 4 And James Comer, who continued, who extended the deadline of when her deposition was supposed to be taken by the House Oversight Committee, was supposed to take place.

Speaker 4 You'll recall back on like August 11th or 12th, and then her lawyer, this guy Oscar Marcus, was like, David Oscar Marcus, he's like, well, we can't do it now because the Supreme Court hasn't ruled yet.

Speaker 4 So James Comey

Speaker 4 or Comer rather, he extended the deadline and he said, okay, we'll push it back. We'll push it back to a later date.

Speaker 4 And now that it got pushed back, he's like, yeah, maybe we won't even show up to Texas. He's like, why would we waste taxpayer dollars to even show up in Texas?

Speaker 4 That's where Ghelane Maxwell was moved to. If she's just going to invoke the Fifth Amendment against self-incrimination, just take a look at this political article.

Speaker 4 Ghilaine Maxwell, the convicted co-conspirator of the late sex offender, Epstein, will refuse to answer questions in the House Oversight Committee's probe into Epstein and the Justice Department.

Speaker 4 James Comer stated, Maxwell's legal team said she would invoke her Fifth Amendment rights if she sat with congressional investigators.

Speaker 4 He also suggested, James Comer, that is, that his staff is unlikely to even sit down with Maxwell because he says it will be a waste of taxpayer dollars.

Speaker 4 Quote, her lawyers have replied that she's not going to answer any questions, Comer said. She's only going to plead the fifth.

Speaker 4 I mean, I could spend a bunch of taxpayer dollars to send staff and members down there to Texas. That's where she is in the minimum security facility.

Speaker 4 And if she's going to plead the fifth, I don't know if that's a good investment. So let me be very clear.

Speaker 4 James Comer and the MAGA Republicans don't want a video or audio tape of her invoking the fifth as Democrats say. So tell me about Trump.
Tell me about Trump. Tell me about this.
Tell me about that.

Speaker 4 What about this email? Where you and Epstein mentioned that Trump was with the victim at the house? Or

Speaker 4 were you and Epstein mentioned that the feds probably spoke to Donald Trump about the WPB, the West Palm Beach documents? Invoke the fifth, invoke the fifth.

Speaker 4 And didn't Donald Trump say that only the mob pleads the fifth or people who are guilty plead the fifth? So they want to avoid that. I want to bring in a Democrat from the House Oversight Committee,

Speaker 4 Congressmember Sue Bramani. And it's so great to see you, Congressmember.

Speaker 4 So in addition to that, I know the Democrats on the House Oversight committee believe that there could be tampering taking place by the doj spoliation destruction of evidence that over this period of time while they shut the government down they could have been manipulating and tampering with this documents i know people have said there's like an office space somewhere in virginia where this may be going down out as well let's start with the tampering first then let's go back with what i started so you and the democrats on the house oversight committee have deep concerns that Trump's DOJ is tampering and manipulating with the Epstein files.

Speaker 4 Explain.

Speaker 5 Well, the reality is, you know, this administration works for Donald Trump, right?

Speaker 5 Even the independent agencies and even prosecutors who are supposed to put law and justice above all, above politics, have been told only investigate Democrats and only do what makes the president look good, right, throughout this entire investigation.

Speaker 5 So if they are in possession of the files, we have deep concerns that they would certainly manipulate those files in some way.

Speaker 5 The other thing that we are concerned they are going to do is only release files that either make the president look good or only release files that the president chooses to agree to a release and not tell the whole story and protect the president and his friends and certainly anyone else that the president deems is worth protecting.

Speaker 5 And so, this is a concern. He's signed the bill, but this is only the beginning of the fight to try to make sure we get the full unredacted release of the files, which is what we really need.

Speaker 4 Right. I mean, I think the way that

Speaker 4 I was a lawyer and thinking about how I would make, how I would understand what the full corpus of the files are.

Speaker 4 I used to do this all the time back in the day when I was a litigator. I mean, not on this scale or scope or related to this types of issue, but handling cases that had terabytes of information.

Speaker 4 I would call in custodians of records and people at the FBI or whatever, and you would ask them questions in an oversight.

Speaker 4 You know, it wouldn't necessarily be the most like compelling hearing with the smoking guns yet, but you would ask. So, tell us how many terabytes are there? Where are they stored?

Speaker 4 What type of files are there? Are there video? Is there audio? Witness statements? Where do they reside? How many databases? Have you optical character recognition them? Who else is involved?

Speaker 4 Like, so to me, there'd be a lot of work done before I bring in my key witnesses to make sure I understand the corpus of info out there.

Speaker 4 How do we even know, like, I would know in a litigation, how do we know here what it is? We've heard reporting. Oh, it's this amount of terabytes.
How do we know what's in there?

Speaker 5 Well, that's exactly what I'm asking them. I'm asking them, what information do you have?

Speaker 5 Where is it? Is it being stored securely? And, you know, we obviously want to know what's in it too, right? But we want to make sure none of it's being manipulated, certainly in any sort of way.

Speaker 5 There's no documents being shredded or deleted. That when we do get the release of the files, there are the full, complete files, and they're everything that this Justice Department has.

Speaker 5 You know, one thing we know is that

Speaker 5 there were many, many people who worked on this case. And so, you know, the files could be across the country, maybe even across the world, right?

Speaker 5 And so we want to make sure that whatever they have, that they know what they have, that they release everything, and that we have an understanding that there was no manipulation of these files before they are released.

Speaker 5 That is what the bill that the president signed into law says. That is what our subpoena of the administration says.
And we want to make sure of that.

Speaker 4 So let's go. to where I started, though, with this deposition now of Ghylaine Maxwell.
We know it was supposed to take place in mid to early August.

Speaker 4 The deadline was then extended by the House Oversight Committee Chairman, MAGA Republican James Comer, because Gheelane's lawyer requested that based on the Supreme Court appeal that they had pending, that that was their reason to say they can't do the deposition in August.

Speaker 4 Well, she lost that appeal. I was predicting that this was going to happen, that she was just going to say, there's something else right around the corner.

Speaker 4 I'm doing a habeas petition, or I'm still going to invoke the fifth. So, what seems to have happened is

Speaker 4 the House Republicans derailed the deposition of Gheelane.

Speaker 4 Trump brought his criminal defense lawyer, a number two at the DOJ, Todd Blanche, to do the interview to get out that information, which, by the way, seems like it backfired in their face since these emails came out and showed that she was totally lying.

Speaker 4 So, I don't think that was an effective move. But yet again, you see Trump blundering through this cover-up.

Speaker 4 But now she's saying she's not going to testify and then comer saying that's it i guess we're not going to do it we're not even going to show up taxpayers don't want us to be there even so what do you say to that where comer's like because she says she's going to invoke the fifth we're not even going to show up to texas to even try to take elaine maxwell's deposition

Speaker 5 yeah you know i'm a lawyer too i've been in situations where people witnesses went into the room thinking they were going to plead the fifth and then they ended up not maybe they had some moral clarity at a certain point.

Speaker 5 Maybe they just wanted to share their side of the story. But in any case, it is worth the time and effort to have this discussion with her.

Speaker 5 I will say she is someone who has perjured herself in the past, not only been charged with perjury, and certainly someone who has lied many, many times to people.

Speaker 5 But what I like to do is question them anyway, right? And, you know, we did the same.

Speaker 5 We talked to Alex Acosta, and but then what we did was we went through and and found documents and found documents in his case that contradicted some of the stuff that he said to us.

Speaker 5 He said that

Speaker 5 they looked into financial crimes prosecution and there wasn't really much there. And then we found later on that there was very much

Speaker 5 evidence to be able to prosecute for financial crimes, and that investigation stopped. So there are many, many ways you can do things you can do to make this worthwhile at Glenn Maxwell.

Speaker 5 So I don't know why James Comer doesn't think all of a sudden

Speaker 5 this isn't worthy of his time or his efforts.

Speaker 4 Just such an odd statement for him to make. I don't think the American public wants us to spend taxpayer dollars to go there.

Speaker 4 Well, the taxpayers apparently spend dollars for Todd Blanche, Donald Trump's criminal defense attorney, to basically make a pro-Donald Trump mixtape, including Ghylaine Maxwell, where she said, I've never seen him do anything.

Speaker 4 He's a perfect gentleman. I never even saw him at the house.
But now we see all of the emails from the estate that the House Oversight Committee has said she literally lied about everything there.

Speaker 4 I mean, just like the federal judge said, she's a serial liar and she's a convicted child sex trafficker.

Speaker 4 Before we go, though, I just want to acknowledge the great work by you and others on the House Oversight Committee, Democratic Congressmember Garcia, the new ranking member.

Speaker 4 Y'all have just been kind of crushing it.

Speaker 4 And I think that we've seen a new energy injected into the oversight that Americans, I think, across the political spectrum should say, this is what the point of oversight is.

Speaker 4 There's so much massive corruption going on in the Trump regime.

Speaker 4 I mean, just this past week, chilling with the Saudis while he's getting all this money from the Saudis on his personal family businesses.

Speaker 4 I mean, you have Howard Luttnick's personal company buying the

Speaker 4 potential refund rights for if the tariffs are overturned so that then his company can then go to the United States government and then buy it at 100%

Speaker 4 by giving companies that are struggling right now 50% on the dollar. I mean, what a crazy concept.
The regime puts forward disastrous tariffs that are crushing businesses. Businesses start to suffer.

Speaker 4 They need cash flow. Luttnick's company says, let me buy out your rights to the refund.

Speaker 4 The policy, if it gets overturned by the Supreme Court, gets overturned, and then they buy it back for 100% and then make huge profits. It's a crazy scam.

Speaker 4 How do you figure out what you're focused on with all this corruption out there?

Speaker 5 You can't let any of it go. I mean, we have to keep the receipts.
We have to be ready, especially when we're back in the majority.

Speaker 5 We have to be ready to make sure that everyone is held accountable for their crimes. And here's the thing: people have asked me, oh, you know, costs are high and affordability is an issue.

Speaker 5 Why are you talking about Epstein?

Speaker 5 And I say that it's related because the Epstein case is all about Donald Trump, the supposed populist who's going to go after the elite and the rich and powerful for the common man.

Speaker 5 This is him covering up for those very billionaires and sticking it to the common people, these victims who

Speaker 5 went through these heinous crimes. And same thing on affordability.
I mean, he gave tax cuts to the very wealthiest, to his billionaire friends, and screwed the average person. I mean,

Speaker 5 that's why we're seeing Republicans show up to Democratic committee meetings now. That's why we're seeing

Speaker 5 landslide elections for Democrats is because people are fed up and they're noticing this corruption and Donald Trump going back on his promises to stand up for the average person against the rich and powerful and elite.

Speaker 4 Congressman Suburmanian, appreciate the work that you're doing and keep it up in the oversight committee.

Speaker 5 Thank you.

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