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Floor Speech

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The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Curtis). The Senator from Maryland.

Mr. VAN HOLLEN. Mr. President, I think we can and certainly should all agree that the case of Jeffrey Epstein is deeply disturbing, with horrifying abuse of young women and girls.

From the lenient plea deal he received in Florida in 2008 to the end of his case with the death in prison, survivors of his abuse have been denied a full accounting of his crimes and the justice they deserve.

It is also clear that a lack of transparency and accountability and contradictory statements by the Trump administration and its officials have led to even deeper public distrust of our justice system and especially the handling of this case. After all, Trump administration officials, including Attorney General Bondi, promised transparency in this case but instead gave the American people a binder of largely already-public documents. It was a sham.

Last month, the Department of Justice released a two-page memo informing the American public that the Department had completed its exhaustive review of the Epstein files and concluded that ``no further disclosure would be appropriate or warranted.'' We shouldn't be taking the word of any official in any administration on face value. The public should see these documents for themselves. People ranging from the victims to the American public believe transparency is warranted, and it is.

Just 3 days after the Department of Justice memo was published, the Senate Appropriations Committee unanimously agreed to an amendment I proposed to the Commerce, Justice, Science, and Related Agencies appropriations bill that would require two things. It would require the Department to retain, preserve, and compile the Epstein files and submit a report with the files to the respective subcommittee of the Appropriations Committee.

We also know that appropriations bills take a very long time to wind through the U.S. congressional process. It has to go through the House. It could be months before that provision--if it continues to be in there--sees the light of day. It shouldn't take months. We should do it now, which is why, the day after the Senate Appropriations Committee unanimously--Republicans and Democrats together--supported that provision to require the report and preserve the documents, Senator Durbin and I wrote to the Attorney General to say: Why wait?

And that is the question, Mr. President--why wait? The victims, the American people--they deserve to see the files and know the full truth, and they deserve it right now.

Just this morning, there was a new report in Bloomberg. The headline says ``The FBI Redacted Trump's Name in the Epstein Files.'' We have always understood that Donald Trump's name was in the files. What we are learning today, at least according to these reports, is that the FBI redacted Donald Trump's name from those files. The question is, Why? Nobody's name should be redacted from the files with respect to the perpetrators of these crimes. Clearly, in releasing files, we need to protect the names of any victims, but the perpetrators--we should know their names. They should not be redacted.

What we have seen, of course, from the President is an effort to change the subject entirely, say that it was the Obama Administration that somehow invented this whole dispute and debate. But we know that is not true. We know that is not true because of what President Trump has previously said and, of course, what his Attorney General has said.

It is also deeply concerning that the Deputy Attorney General of the United States of America, who previously was Donald Trump's personal lawyer, skirted all the Department of Justice protocols and went down to secretly interview Ghislaine Maxwell for hours over a couple of days. I think we should have the transcript of that interview as well.

We have also heard President Trump say that he has the power to pardon Ghislaine Maxwell. Well, it is one thing to have the power; it is another thing to speculate publicly about using that power to pardon somebody who could testify in an incriminating way against all of the perpetrators. That reeks of a hint of the obstruction of justice, to signal to Ghislaine Maxwell that if she says the right things, the President of the United States could pardon her. That would be a corruption of the judicial process--a gross corruption of the judicial process.

So I hope President Trump will immediately announce that he won't pardon this person, Ghislaine Maxwell, who was the associate of Jeffrey Epstein in perpetrating these crimes against young women and girls. The President of the United States should announce today that he will not do that. That is the way the President can put an end to the understandable concern that he is signaling that if she says the right thing regarding him, she will get a ``get out of jail free'' card. That would be a gross corruption of the process and of the justice system.

This is why we should do now what the victims deserve and what the American public demands, which is to support the proposal put forward by the Senator from Oregon Senator Merkley.

As if in legislative session and notwithstanding rule XXII, I ask unanimous consent that the Committee on the Judiciary be discharged and the Senate proceed to the immediate consideration of S. 2557; further, that the bill be considered read a third time and passed and the motion to reconsider be considered made and laid upon the table.

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