WATCH: Jake Tapper Plays Clips Of AG Bondi Talking About The Epstein Files For Markwayne Mullin

Forbes Breaking News

On Sunday, Sen. Markwayne Mullin (R-OK) spoke to CNN's Jake Tapper about the Epstein Files.

Transcript

00:00It's interesting to me, though, Jake, that for the last four years underneath President Biden,

00:05not one Democrat asked for the files to be released. Now they're all about transparency.

00:09But yet President Trump is the most transparent president we've had. I mean, look,

00:13you wrote the book literally on the biggest cover-up from the Biden administration, the

00:18cover-up that the previous administration covered completely for President Biden the whole time he

00:23was in office. So transparency is what we're all about. But the Democrats are trying to distract

00:28from their awful record and from the questions they need to ask, like who was signing the

00:33executive orders as an auto-pin? Who was actually choosing or choosing to continue to run the Russian

00:40gate when we know it was a huge hoax? Who was making the decisions at the White House? And they can't

00:45answer that. So they're deciding to run a distraction by this Epstein file when it's a big hoax and the

00:50American people know it because they never said a word about it when Biden was in office.

00:54But let's just take a step back here. The reason that we're here where we are

00:58is because for years, President Trump and the MAGA base and Trump's allies have been calling for

01:04the release of the Epstein files. And then after taking office, take a listen to what Attorney General

01:11Pam Bondi has been saying over the course of the past few months. Take a listen.

01:17What you're going to see hopefully tomorrow is a lot of flight logs, a lot of names.

01:24Everything's going to come out to the public. The public has a right to know.

01:27Americans have a right to know. There are tens of thousands of videos of Epstein

01:34with children. Now the administration is saying they can't release this information. Now,

01:40I understand you're talking about a resolution you offered calling for the grand jury to release

01:45transcripts from the grand jury investigation into Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell. And a judge said no.

01:52But there's troves of information that the administration could release tomorrow if they

01:57wanted to, and they've been promising to, and they haven't.

02:02Well, Jake, that's not true. You know better than that, too, because you know every piece of file

02:07that they have, every video, every document, every flight log has all been heard by a grand jury.

02:14They've all been seen by a grand jury. And we want the judges to release it. Pam Bondi has called on the

02:20judges to release it. Trump has called on them to release it. And the Congress has called on them

02:25to release it. But we can't because there is a true co-equal branches of government. So we can't

02:31force a judicial branch to do anything. All we can do is ask them to do it. We assume that the judges

02:36would release it. Pam Bondi released it. I'm not talking about the grand jury stuff.

02:38No, there isn't, Jake, there isn't one piece of document that Cash would tell at the FBI or Pam

02:46Bondi in her office has that a grand jury hasn't seen. So everything that they have would have to be

02:53released by the judges. She was talking about releasing this information. She could release

02:57it tomorrow. She doesn't. She was, but she can't, no, she can't release it until the judges release it

03:02because if it's been heard by a grand jury, and Jake, you know this, if it's been heard by a grand jury

03:08regardless of Pam Bondi has it or the FBI has it, the judge that overseen the case that the grand

03:14jury listened to and saw the documentation and the evidence has to be released by the judge. And

03:19you know that. I don't think that that's correct. I think that the FBI and the Southern District of

03:24New York and the Southern District of Florida, and because just because something has been shown

03:29before a grand jury, that doesn't mean it is only going to be, it can only be released to the public

03:34by a judge. If the FBI has it, they can release it. Then why did the judge refuse to release the

03:42records in Florida? Because once it's been heard in the case, it is a sealed case. It is sealed by

03:48the grand jury. And you have been through this. I don't know why we're even debating this because

03:52if it is considered evidence in a case, then it is sealed. The information that has been released,

03:59yes, grand jury hearings and transcripts, the judge has control over. Absolutely. That doesn't mean

04:09that everything that went into the grand jury is therefore locked from the public. That's it just,

04:17it does not work that way. And that's why attorney general Bondi was saying for months, well, then

04:22tell me why for months she was saying that she's going to release the information tomorrow.

04:28We made the assumption that the judges would release the order and allow the evidence that

04:32they had that it could be heard if it, but it's all been sealed. And so if it's been a sealed case,

04:38we can't release it until the judges allow us to release it. And we, you would think common sense

04:43would play. That's why they asked for transparency. We want transparency. We want the judges to have

04:48transparency in this too.

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