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Floor Speech
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Mr. BLUMENTHAL. Mr. President, the American people have been treated to an extraordinary spectacle. It is the spectacle of a President of the United States trying to stonewall and stall the disclosure of a file from the U.S. Department of Justice that directly implicates him and others in places of power after boasting to the American people that he would reveal everything. He promised again and again and again that he would disclose all the files--not only of this investigation, but the JFK investigation and others--because the American people deserve transparency. They deserve disclosure. They deserve to know what is in the files of the Department of Justice when there are credible allegations that an investigation is incomplete and potential evidence concealed.
And the American people are rightly asking now: What do they have to hide? Why are they concealing this information in the files of the Department of Justice?
We are talking about documents, interviews, testimony that may mention the survivors and innocent people, and their names should be redacted and removed from any public disclosure so they are not victimized again by the public ignominy of having been victims. And if there is any ongoing investigation here that requires confidentiality, it can be held.
I know from my days in the Department of Justice--I was the U.S. attorney for Connecticut--that this kind of disclosure is done not routinely, not commonly but in exactly this kind of instance when the credibility of the Department of Justice may be at stake, and people deserve to know the truth.
And here, let's be very blunt. There are questions about whether this investigation and prosecution of Jeffrey Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell was full and complete. There are names; some of them rich and powerful people. There are stories; some of them believable. There are places and locations. There is testimony that describes a situation that may be much broader than just these two individuals who have been prosecuted.
And at the end of the day, we are talking here not about just legalities and about politics. We are talking about girls, the youngest victim--and some of them survivors. The President referred to them as beautiful women on the younger side, some of them.
Well, some of them were actually not women; they were girls. This crime is about the most heinous kind of exploitation of women, predatory victimization of girls, in effect, trafficking them--which was Maxwell's specialty. And the President has said that they may have stolen some of them from his spa, as if they were chattel to be bought and sold. But that was the attitude that Epstein and Maxwell had toward them, and, sadly, that was the attitude that, perhaps, some of their aiders and abettors or coconspirators or simply enablers had as well.
This action about disclosure is necessary now because the administration continues to stonewall and stall, concealing information and betraying its promise to the American people.
And what is at stake here is not just the President's promises-- although they are absolutely clear when he said:
President Trump says he will declassify the 9/11 Files, JFK Files, and Epstein Files. That is President Trump.
What is at stake here is the credibility of our justice system. That is why an act of Congress is not only appropriate but necessary. And what is at stake here is also the victims.
This crime involved money laundering. It involved financial illegality. It involved fraud against the government. It involved a range of crimes that may sound abstract, even technical. But at the end of the day, it was not a victimless crime. It was about exploiting girls, young women, girls--girls who were mercilessly and repeatedly subject to abuse and trafficking.
Donald Trump has broken these promises, but he has also remained actively engaged in a coverup. That is why he sent his Deputy Attorney General to interview Maxwell for 2 days. Unprecedented, absolutely mind-boggling to send the Deputy Attorney General, who may then be a witness and potentially implicated in a coverup, to interview a vital witness.
We don't know who was with him, but we have to believe there were notes or recordings. They ought to be disclosed as well. And we should require that the disclosure be immediate, as this legislation would require.
That Deputy Attorney General also happens to be the President's personal lawyer, or he was in all his criminal prosecutions. That is unprecedented as well.
The American people deserve an end to this stonewalling and stalling. 2557; further, that the bill be considered read a third time and passed; and that the motion to reconsider be considered made and laid upon the table.
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Mr. BLUMENTHAL. Mr. President, I yield to my colleague Senator Wyden.
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