This is Bloomberg Law with June Grossel from Bloomberg Radio. Attorney General Pam Bondi used to say that the Jeffrey Epstein files would be released.
You know, tens of thousands of pages of documents and hundreds and hundreds of victims of Jeffrey Epstein. So the FBI they have been working round the clock at my directive, at Kashptel's directive. Now Dan Bongino's there.
Who is a great asset for all of us at the FBI as well. But yeah, we have to protect their identity, their personal information to make sure they're safe. But other than that, we are releasing all of these documents as soon as we can get them redacted.
That was Bondi on Fox in March. Now the question is whether even a congressional subpoena will make the Attorney General release the files, particularly in light of a Wall Street Journal report that Bondi toll President Trump. His name
appears multiple times in the finals. As pressure on the administration to release the Epstein files grows, the Justice Department is taking a detour, apparently casting itself as searching for more information on the Epstein case, with Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche meeting today with Glaine Maxwell, Jeffrey Epstein's former girlfriend who's serving a twenty year sentence in Florida. Joining me is Dave Ehrenberg, former Palm Beach County State Attorney.
Dave the number two person at the Justice Department, Todd Blanche, Trump's former criminal defense attorney, is meeting with a convicted sex trafficker, Gallaine Maxwell, that the Justice Department successfully prosecuted, and it comes as she's appealing her twenty twenty one conviction. How odd is this?
It's extremely odd because generally the number two person at the deparminative Justice doesn't conduct interviews with potential witnesses, especially those who have already been convicted by their department of such a serious crime. I mean, why would you ever believe anything this woman says. He's not only a convicted human trafficker, but she's also a liar. She was indicted for perjury back in twenty twenty and she is someone
who is untrustworthy. But both sides want something here. She meaning Glen Maxwell, wants a pardon from the President who's very transactional, and President Trump wants her to exonerate him to say that Trump had nothing to do with any of the crimes. Now, I personally believe that Trump had nothing to do with any of the crimes. But there's a lot of smoke here because of Trump's name being in the Epstein files. And you know what they say,
it's not the crime but the cover up. And the cover up here is to prevent the release of these files when you promised it over and over again to your supporters. So, yes, this whole thing is extraordinary. Not the lease of which is that the number two person of the Department of Justice doesn't get on a plane and get a briefcase in a notepad and start acting like a line prosecutor.
Bland said he wants to know if Glaine Maxwell has information about anyone who has committed crimes against victims. But the Attorney General, Pam Bondi, has said that nothing in the files warranted further investigation or prosecution. So what's going on?
This is about CYA. It's to protect Donald Trump. This is to protect him because his name is in the files. Now, his supporters were led to believe that anyone whose names in the files must have committed some crimes. They were led to believe that the number one name in the file would be Bill Clinton, filed by Bill Gates and then every other prominent Democrat. Of course, they were lied to,
they were made to look like fools. I mean, these folks thrive on conspiracy theories and now they're outraged and they're ready to revolt. So the administration is trying to placate them further by saying, see, we'll get more information from this disgraced, convicted human trafficker. Well, what makes you think she'll be telling the truth? She has every incentive to lie. She's lie before, she will lie again. Anything
that she says should be corroborated. And then if she says something to Todd blanche who was President of Trump's former defense lawyer, his personal defense lawyer, what makes you think will make its way to the public if it at all implicates Donald Trump. So this is not how
an investigation should be done. And if the administration wanted full transparency, they should just release the file subject to court orders and other privacy concerns involving the victims, and then I think people would start to move on from this story. But until that happens, this story ain't going away.
Did you think that she's talking to Blanche. If she is talking to Blanche, do you think that she's talking to him under some kind of agreement like queen for a day where nothing you say is going to be used against you.
Her lawyers would never allow her to talk to a prosecutor, even if it's the number two person at the Department of Justice and not aligned prosecutor. They would never let her talk to anyone without a guarantee that she has immunity for at least those comments on that day. So some call it a Queen for the day. But she's not going to jeopardize her appeal and her potential because she has an appeal pending if she is retried. She doesn't want this information to come back and haunt her.
So she wants something out of Donald Trump. She wants a pardon, and she's probably going to be willing to say anything to get it, but she doesn't want it to come back at her in a future trial. So yes, she will get some sort of immunity before she speaks to Todd Blash. Now she goes before Congress, that too will require immunity because her lawyers, I would think, would have the same issue They don't want her to implicate herself any more than she already has.
Her brother told The New York Post that she's compiling new evidence pretending to allege government misconduct stemming from her trial, to hand over to the Justice Department.
Every criminal defendant believes that there's government misconduct for their case, especially if you're convicted. So yeah, she's going to compile her evidence. Meanwhile, she had any real evidence that could be of use to the government to release the victims and to the public, she would have done so already because now she's facing twenty years in prison. She's not getting out until she's seventy five years old at the earliest. And so if she didn't have the goods back then,
why would we believe she has the goods now. I think there's a desperate woman who was willing to say anything. She'll do anything for a pardon. She does not want to spend her next decade or so behind bars. She's not used to this lifestyle. She's used to the high life, life of privilege, life of prestige, and now she's the only one being locked up for the whole Jeffrey Epstein saga because Jeffrey Epstein killed himself.
Dave about the congressional subpoena. The House Overside Chair Republican James Comer has subpoenaed Maxwell for a deposition. In what circumstances would her lawyer allow her to testify? How would that kind of testimony help her at all?
It will help her if she publicly exonerates President Trump. It will help her get a pardon. That's what she's aiming for. She wants either a pardon a commutation. She wants the Department of Justice to not retry the case if she wins on her appeal, which is going before the Supreme Court. So there are things that Trump can offer her, and that's why she'll be doing this. Otherwise, there's no reason for her to be doing this. I mean, she's a convicted human trafficker, she's a proven liar. She's
a criminal. And for the Magabase, which thinks that Jeffrey Epstein is Satan himself, to me how they're willing to roll out the red carpet for Satan's accomplice.
The House Oversight sub Committee voted Wednesday to subpoena the DOJ for the Epstein files. And they're not only looking for the files, but also communications between former Biden officials and the Justice Department related to the Epstein matter. Well, the Justice Department hand them over, especially now that the Wall Street Journal has reported that Bondie and Blanche informed the President in May that his name appears multiple times in the Epstein files.
Oh, the Department of Justice is not giving Congress anything with Donald Trump's name in it. So if they give up the Epstein file, maybe will be a redacted version of it. But they're not going to do anything to harm the Boss. I mean, that's why the folks are there to begin with. That's why Donald Trump put his two defense lawyers at top positions at the Department of Justice. That's why I picked the loyalists like Pam Bondi to
be Attorney General. He doesn't want this thing to get out of hand and get a mind of its own. That's why he's not going to appoint a special counsel. People said, we should have a special counsel. Yeah, well, I remember Bill Clinton had a special counsel. You remember Janerino stepped aside and had Kenneth Starr investigate Whitewater. Well, the investigation in Whitewater became an investigation into Monica Lewinsky and led to Bill Clinton's impeachment. Donald Trump doesn't want
to go down that road. He wants to button this thing up. But the irony is in his attempt to cut this off at its knees, he has prolonged the agony. It's not the crime, it's the cover up. And it looks like there's been a cover up here, at least the many in the public, which is why people are still talking about this.
Does Congress have any levers to pull to force the Justice Department on this?
They can subpoena the documents and then go to court, but you really think the Republicans in Congress are going to go to court to fight the Republicans and the executive branch. One thing we've learned from this is that when the going gets tough, they roll over, They turn tail and run away. This Congress has a masculated itself to the executive branch. And I know they're starting to sense penisn't ask questions about this because their base demands it.
Both They'll only go so far. Donald Trump is the leader of their party, and when Donald Trump wants something badly enough, he gets it.
Coming up next, why a Florida judge decided not to release the transcripts. This is Bloomberg. I've been talking to Dave Ehrenberg, former Palm Beach County state attorney, about the pressure on the Trump administration to release the Jeffrey Epstein files. Let's talk about the grand jury transcripts first. You can explain why the transcripts will not reveal client lists or any of the other things that the conspiracy theorists are looking for.
The grand jury transcripts are just a portion of the portion of what people are looking for. See what they wanted the Epstein files. They want the names of these third parts parties who allegedly were involved with human trafficking. Who were these girls trafficked too, That's what people are seeking. That's not going to be in the grand jury transcripts, especially redacted once. It's not going to be in there.
So it's pretty much a distraction that the administration is just seeking these grand jury transcripts and we come on. First of all, they're not going to get him. The judges will reject it, and then they can blame the judiciary, which is part of the strategy because if there's one group that the MAGA world hates more than the media, it's the judiciary. It's judges. So that was actually a smart move I thought by Trump to put the focus on the judges. But it's still not going to work.
It's not going to satisfy the MAGA base who've been led to believe there's this client list and that you have this democratic conspiracy to have a child sex trafficking green. Well, it's a different role when you go from being a blogger to being in government. When you're in government, you got to produce. When you're a blogger, you can say whatever you want and never be held accountable for it. And that's a lesson that Caspitel and Dan Begino and others are learning.
The Florida said judge has already declined to release the transcripts on what grounds.
There are grand jury secrecy rules and you can't get the grand jury transcripts unless you have an exception under the federal law, and there's no exception here just because the public wants to see it. Also, you need to go to victims and get their permission and approvals, but the administration didn't do that. They just went right to the judge because it was about the show. It wasn't
about to go. It was about the show. They wanted the public to think that they were doing something about transparency. But the judge rule, as we all expected, the judge the rule. But even if the judge did produce these grand jury transcripts, I mean, it's really, as I said, just a portion of what the public wants. The public wants names. Grand jury transcripts wouldn't produce those names of
third parties. It would just be the testimony that was written down and the exhibits that were provided inside the secret grand jury that led to Epstein's indictment. It's not going to be what implicates uncharged third parties. And so if you are waiting for the grand jury transcripts to answer your at Jeffrey Epstein questions, you'll be waiting a long time.
There are still two judges in New York considering the government's requests to release the grand jury transcripts in the Epstein and Maxwell cases. They're taking more time and requesting more information. What do you think they're just not, you know, denying them out of hand and saying grand jury secrecy.
The rules up there in that circuit in New York are a little better for the public to get access to grand jury transcripts. There's there's a slight opening. It's not impossible. It's hard, but it's not impossible. So there's an outside chance that could happen up there. But as I said, even if you get them, they're going to be disappointing. They're going to be largely a nothing burger of people, and it probably suits Trump more if the judges just reject the request, then Trump can say, see,
I tried, I try to be transparent. Blame those unelected liberal judges, even though he may have appointed some of them. But you can just blame the people wearing the black ropes who get lifetime appointments and carry the gabble. Much easier to do than to turn and shine the flashlight on yourself.
And I want to get your reaction to the Trump administration falsely claiming that President Obama deliberately manufactured and politicized intelligence reports about Russian interference in the twenty sixteen election. I don't know how we got back to this point. Do you know what this is about?
Yeah, it's about distraction. It's to take your mind off of the Jeffrey Epstein situation. So he has Pulsey Gabbert, who has no business being in government. Quite frankly, she's a hack. She's not qualified to be the director of D and I, and she's doing Pulsy Gabbert things by creating a story out of nothing. Even what she produced doesn't show what she says it shows. All shows is that Russia did not manipulate votes. They did not change
the outcome of the election by the voting. But they did, and it's been proven over and over again, even by the report by Senator Marco Rubio's Senate Intelligence Committee that Russia did interfere with the election. They had a favorite in the election, Donald Trump, and they had a strategy that they implemented to get involved through spreading disinformation. But
they didn't hack into voting machines. So I don't know what this thing is about that Tulsa Gabbert is trying to show, except it's nothing except for a distraction on the Jeffrey Epstein matter and approves why Tulsa Gabbard is unfit for office.
Obama spokesman said these bizarre allegations are ridiculous and a weak attempt at distraction. I mean, this is not the first time that Trump has attacked Obama.
Well, that's how he built his political career by claiming that Obama born in Kenya. This is why the magabase is so upset about this latest conspiracy theory, because they were led to believe that there are conspiracies under every mattress in DC, whether it's Obama being from Kenya, or the election of twenty twenty being stolen, or Jeffrey Epstein
being part of a Democrat at cabal. But as the conspiracy theories get destroyed, the magabases is starting to wonder if they've been misled, if they've been made to look like fools, And they're understandably point their finger at their own team because their own team is the one who has led them astray.
Turning to other legal news, one of the world's most vulnerable countries to the fallout from climate change has won a landmark legal battle, giving countries new ammunition to pursue some of the planet's biggest emitters. Joining me is environmental law expert Michael Girard, director of Columbia Law schools Saban Center for Climate Change Law, tell us about this decision by the International Court of Justice.
So the International Court of Justice just issued a unanimous opinion by all fourteen of its judges on climate change. The decision said that climate change is a grave threat to humankind and many elements of international law require every country to act very strongly to try to fight climate change.
And tell us about the case that was brought to years ago by.
Vanuatu vano Watu, which is one of the small island nations in the Pacific that is really endangered by subl rise, who was able to organize an international effort and persuade the UN General Assembly to send to the International Court of Justice in the Hague questions about what are the obligations of countries to reduce their greenhouse assmentions and among other things, to save small island states and everybody else from the ravages of climate change.
The ICJ doesn't have the power to enforce the decision on its own. US is among the countries that doesn't automatically recognize its legal authority. So what weight does this opinion have.
That's right, the ICJ opinions in this kind of case our advisory. They don't have enforcement power. Many countries of the world do take the ICJ's decisions seriously, and we've already seen in quite a few countries around the world decisions by their own courts saying that their governments aren't doing enough. I think we'll see a lot more of
those kinds of lawsuits all around the world. We'll see more lawsuits brought by environmental groups and others in their national courts saying that under the ICJ opinion and other legal doctrines, those countries are not doing enough to produce their green ask gas missions, and that could lead to enforcement by those national courts against those national governments.
Last year, at least two hundred and twenty six new climate cases were brought. Are those mostly against countries? Are they against you know, corporations? You know? Where are they bringing these suits?
They're mostly against countries, but very few of them are what we call strategic litigation, that is trying to get the country to act more broadly, Most of those lawsuits are concerning particular projects or our particular small actions. But we have seen strategic cases that are ordering countries to do more. We saw them in successful cases the Netherlands, Germany, France, Mexico, Nepal, Brazil, South Africa. Most recently Hungary, several other countries all around
the world. We're seeing these kinds of cases, these kinds of decisions from the courts, and I think now we'll see more of them.
And our countries complain vying with the results of these cases when they're decided.
Not necessarily that's a very good question. We've seen that the countries are doing something but not necessarily enough, and frequently the plaintives go back to court to try to seek more specific enforcement. So the decisions do have a positive effect, but they're not completely solving the problem.
Are there other international courts that are taking a stand on climate Yes.
In the last year and a half or so, we've seen decisions from the European Court of Human Rights, the Inter American Court of Human Rights, and the International Tribunal on the Law of the Sea, and all three of those international tribunals also said that the countries have an obligation to reduce their green ass gas emissions and otherwise address climate change.
Is litigation the best way forward for climate activists or negotiations ongoing anywhere?
I wouldn't say that litigation is necessarily the best way. I think the best way is to try to get politicians to pass and implement strong laws, but in few countries as that actually happens. So litigation is one important part of the toolkit. It's not the biggest part, but it's one important part, and it just became a lot stronger with yesterday's decision.
As far as the United States and the Trump administration, how has the Trump administration impacted the environment and environmental protections?
Well, the Trump administration is basically a denying climate change, or at least that they have to do anything about it. They're working very hard to stop all of the actions that had been taken under previous administrations to control climate change. They again withdrew from the Paris Climate Agreement. So the Trump administration is very much moving backwards on all of this.
Let's say that after Trump's term ends, there as a president who is more concerned about the environment. Can the Trump administration's actions be easily reversed.
They can be reversed, but it will take time. Of course. In the first Trump administration they moved backwards, although not as faster as quickly, and then when Biden came in, they did reverse of that and secured passage of the Inflation Reduction Act, which Congress has now partly revoked. One of the big problems is loss of staff, loss of expertise, loss of scientific capability. That'll take some time to rebuild.
So the legal issues most of us can be restored, but actually regaining the momentum is going to take time. We will have lost a lot of time that we don't have.
What can environmental activists do is it file suits to try to slow down the Trump administration.
Yes, and there's already a lot of that, and quite a few of those lossits have had early successes in the district court, serve in quite a few preliminary injunctions granted against what the Trump administration is doing. And those states that still care about climate change are doing a lot in New York, California, Massachusetts, Washington, Illinois, several other states are acting on their own to reduce their emissions.
But I think the most important thing that needs to be done is is that nepolling place is to elect officials at every level, federal, state, and local, who really are going to act on climate change.
I mean, how do climate deniers even support their position?
Yeah, I mean there's a small handful of climate deniers or climate not so batters, as I call them, are out there, several of whom have just been hired by the federal government to advise them. They're complete outliers in the scientific community, but there are a few of those out there, and there are some news media outlets that put that out. Nobody has the nerve. No lawyer goes
to court denying climate change. They know that that would be a real loser, but we still see that in the political arena and in some media outlets.
Thanks so much. That's Michael Gerard, director of Columbia Law school Saban Center for Climate Change Law. And that's it for this edition of The Bloomberg Law Show. Remember you can always get the latest legal news on our Bloomberg Law podcasts. You can find them on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and at www dot Bloomberg dot com, slash podcast, Slash Law, and remember to tune into The Bloomberg Law Show every weeknight at ten pm Wall Street Time. I'm June Grosso and you're listening to Bloomberg