Rep. Jamie Raskin, D-Md., ranking member of the House Judiciary Committee, urged every American to read what he called an “extraordinary” new report on Donald Trump’s ties to Jeffrey Epstein. Raskin told MS NOW’s Nicolle Wallace that he and his fellow Democrats were demanding an independent special counsel to investigate the pair’s decadeslong relationship.
The 50-page report, released Monday by House Judiciary Committee Democrats, drew on interviews with the committee, survivor accounts, FBI records and documents released under the Epstein Files Transparency Act. Democrats allege in the report that a “growing body of evidence demonstrates that Donald Trump was an active participant in Jeffrey Epstein’s abuse of young women,” and they accuse the Justice Department and the FBI of “doing everything they can to keep the American people in the dark about it.”
In response to the report, a White House spokesperson said, “None of these allegations are true,” and said Trump had been “fully exonerated of anything related to Epstein.” And in a statement to MS NOW, a DOJ spokesperson called the report “nothing more than a last-ditch effort by House Judiciary Democrats to mislead the public.”
Trump and Epstein’s relationship, spanning from the 1980s to the early 2000s, is well-documented. Trump has said their friendship ended around 2004 and that he knew nothing about Epstein’s crimes. He has denied that he engaged in any sexual misconduct with any woman connected to Epstein.
Raskin said the Justice Department’s refusal to thoroughly investigate Epstein’s “enablers” and possible co-conspirators “forced Democrats’” hand. “The idea that you run a billion-dollar global human trafficking ring, and only two people are guilty of crimes, and one of them happens to be deceased,” was hard to believe, he said.
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Allison Detzel is an editor/producer for MS NOW. She was previously a segment producer for “AYMAN” and “The Mehdi Hasan Show.”
