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[AD BREAK]
Alex Wagner: Hi everyone. On Tuesday something pretty extraordinary happened. Every single Republican in Congress, with the exception of Congressman Clay Higgins of Louisiana, voted to release all of the files related to the investigation into the child sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein, who ran a sex ring that reached the highest of power before he died in prison. As of this recording, on Wednesday, President Trump has said he will sign the bill, and then it theoretically goes to the Justice Department, which has to answer the congressional demand and apparently the will of the American people. Let’s be clear, even last weekend, none of this could have been predicted. Up until late Sunday night, Trump had relentlessly lobbied for weeks against transparency on the Epstein files.
[clip of Donald Trump]: This is a Democrat hoax that never ends. We have nothing to do with Epstein, the Democrats do. All of his friends were Democrats.
[clip of reporter]: Mr. President, why wait for Congress to release the Epstein files? Why not just do it now?
[clip of Donald Trump]: It’s not the question that I mind, it’s your attitude. I think you are a terrible reporter.
Alex Wagner: But his repeated attempts to dismiss this whole thing had the opposite effect. The Epstein files stayed in the headlines and they became the subject of extraordinary bipartisan agreement. Which begs the question, why did this happen? And are we actually any closer to learning the full truth behind Jeffrey Epstein and his crimes? I’m Alex Wagner, and this is Runaway Country. Today we’re talking about the actual people in the middle of all this, the women who survived Jeffrey Epstein and who very much wanna know what the Justice Department knows about their own abuse.
Marina Lacerda: There are many pieces of my story that I can’t remember, no matter how hard I try. My therapist says that my brain is just trying to protect itself, but it’s so hard to begin to heal, knowing that there are people out there who know more about my abuse than I do.
Alex Wagner: That was Marina Lacerda She was abused by Jeffrey Epstein when she was 14 years old. And she’s one of our guests this week, along with lawyer George Conway. He’s going to explain what the scandal and the break between Trump and MAGA means for the Republican Party. But first, we’re going to talk to Marina about what it’s been like to be in one of the biggest cultural and political reckonings of recent memory. Marina, welcome to Runaway Country.
Marina Lacerda: Thank you.
Alex Wagner: First of all, just thank you for doing everything—
Marina Lacerda: Thank you.
Alex Wagner: —that you’ve done and being so brave and also talking to me. I know a lot of people wanna hear from you because your testimony has been so pivotal in all of this. I was in DC yesterday at the press conference where a lot the survivors spoke ahead of the vote in the house. And even then it was like, there was a sense of like people holding their breath like, okay. Maybe, I think that this is going to probably pass the House, but then who knows what happens. But then in short order, it sails through the House with only one Republican voting against it, and then goes right to the Senate where it’s passing unanimously. What did yesterday feel like? What did Tuesday feel like for you?
Marina Lacerda: Like, wow, so it was such a crazy day. When we found out the news, you know, we were like, oh my God, how do we feel about this? And we were all still a little bit confused. Like, wait, like, is this it? Like, we don’t have to worry about it anymore. And everyone was like explaining to us, like, wait no, no, like there’s other steps to this. And we’re like, okay, but it is a step forward into bringing justice and transparency to all of us. So. We were saying yesterday, all of the survivors, like we were like, high, you know, off of like everything that was happening. And you know it was such a rush. It was we felt anxiety, excitement, sad at one point, you, know, because we went back and we were talking about Virginia and all, you know the survivors that have been with us and are no longer with us. So we had all types of rush and you know, emotions.
Alex Wagner: As of this recording, it’s in President Trump’s hands. And everybody points to this Truth Social post he made on Sunday night that effectively gave Republicans in Congress the permission to vote for this, because they had been very resistant to it up until this point. But I just want to call your attention to some of the language in that post from the president. He wrote, House Republicans should vote to release the Epstein files because we have nothing to hide and it’s time to move on from this Democrat hoax perpetrated by radical left lunatics in order to deflect from the great success of the Republican party. The House Oversight Committee can have whatever they’re legally entitled to, I don’t care. Nobody cared about Jeffrey Epstein when he was alive. And if the Democrats had anything, they would have released it before our landslide election victory, presumably in 2024. Some members of the Republican Party are being used, and we can’t let that happen. First of all, he’s calling it a Democratic hoax. He’s saying that Republican members are being used, I guess, by victims? I don’t know who is using them. I wonder sort of what your level of optimism is about the truth actually coming out now that it sort of rests in his hands to sign this bill into law and then ensure that his Justice Department releases the files accordingly.
Marina Lacerda: I have so much to say in what you just said, because you said so much there.
Alex Wagner: Yeah. Take your time.
Marina Lacerda: Yeah. So first of all, we went to, you know, some of the Republican houses and we spoke to all of them and they were all on board and there’s nothing that we said or that somebody is saying that they are using them in any kind of way, right? There’s nothing we can say like, hey, do this, vote, and then we’ll give you this. Because there’s nothing—
Alex Wagner: You have no leverage on them.
Marina Lacerda: Right, we have nothing to offer them when we spoke to all of these different Republicans. They were all on board with us. They didn’t even think twice about oting a no to this, right? So that’s that’s number one. And my excitement is real. Okay about releasing the Epstein files, but I am very worried very worried. Survivors have been let down before right with you know when we came to the Capitol in September and we were so excited and we’re like, oh my god, this is it. And then the government shut down. It was like just another distraction. And sometimes we think like, is this a distraction for him to work on those files? And that’s why now he wants to let them out.
Alex Wagner: You mean mess around in the files?
Marina Lacerda: I think he did mess with the files, you know.
Alex Wagner: You do?
Marina Lacerda: And I think, oh, absolutely. I think Haley Robson yesterday said it on CNN. She’s so skeptical about it. And we all are, because it’s like, how do you go from one day to another, like release the files? Like, it’s just insane.
Alex Wagner: You’re talking about Trump’s U-turn on this basically, being so doing everything he can to stop them from coming out and then sort of waving the white flag.
Marina Lacerda: Like what did he wake up one day like that day was like, ah, you know what, I think like this fight has gone long enough And I also feel like he wanted to silence us because we were getting such a you know so much love from the public and from all these platforms and I think it got him so upset. He’s like, oh my god. Like all these women are having all this attention all this platform people are giving them their voice and I think he’s furious about that, right? And I can’t help but to worry about the entirety of those files.
Alex Wagner: You know, you bring up such an important point in all of this, and that is I do want to talk about the conversations you had with Republican elected officials. But the reality is the reason this issue stayed alive is because you guys told your stories and the American public felt them deeply. And I think that is an extraordinary thing. Like to the degree that both, I mean, Clay Higgins aside, the entire US Congress was basically held accountable by you guys.
Marina Lacerda: Yes, and you know, I got to say they gave us so much love yesterday. It was so crazy to see because we went to see the Democratic women of the caucus, right? And we were supposed to see Republican side, but we couldn’t do it at the same time, so they joined. All together in one room.
Alex Wagner: Wow. And what was that like?
Marina Lacerda: I just got chills. It was like, I said to them, because we were in the table, and I said, how wonderful all these women come together. And you guys have both different parties, you know, they both have different beliefs, but they came together and they worked together. They talked about things together about women’s right and human trafficking and sexual abuse. And also, you know, we talked a little bit about how women are sending out their narrative now and how they are in different platforms, right? We’re so thankful that all these women and men, when we went to the vigil yesterday, I seen two men, which I don’t wanna name, one was a Republican party, because it might hurt them. And he was like, listen, I’m a Republican Party. He’s like, this is not even a thought for me not to vote. It was never a thought to me to vote, no. I have three daughters. And it just comes to me and I’m like. President Trump has daughters.
Alex Wagner: Yeah, a couple of them.
Marina Lacerda: Yeah, yeah, he does. And I’m pretty sure if one of his daughters was involved in any sort of, you know, any type of scheme or anything like this, he would want, he would get to the bottom of it, right? He would not even think twice about it, right, there would be no, there will be no fight. And it’s what the Republican, this Republican Party said, you know, elective said, he said, you know, well, this is not even a thought for me. I have three daughters, you need to get to the bottom of this. So a lot of the men, women were on our side, except that one person. [laughs] Which is insane.
Alex Wagner: You know what? I feel like this isn’t even… Clay Higgins doesn’t deserve the time, right?
Marina Lacerda: I didn’t want to say it, you know, but I think it’s obvious.
Alex Wagner: I’ll say it. Whatever. Enjoy being that one person, Clay Higgins. Yesterday at the press conference, you didn’t name her, but you were referring to Megyn Kelly and some comments she made about the difference between preying upon and abusing younger children versus adolescents. And I want to play what she said. And ask you a little bit more about it. So let’s just like listen to what Megyn Kelly said on her podcast earlier.
[clip of Megyn Kelly]: As for Epstein, I’ve said this before, which is a reminder, I do know somebody very, very close to this case who is in a position to know virtually everything. Not everything, but virtually everything and this person has told me from the start years and years ago that Jeffrey Epstein in this person’s view was not a pedophile. This is this person view who was there for a lot of this, but that he was into the barely legal type. Like he liked 15-year-old girls. And I realize this is disgusting, I’m definitely not trying to make an excuse for this, I am just giving you facts. That he wasn’t into like eight year olds, but he liked the very young teen types that could pass for even younger than they were.
Alex Wagner: You said at the press conference yesterday, this is a dangerous and incorrect notion, the sort of distinction between really young kids and what Megyn Kelly calls the barely legal type. You were 14 when Jeffrey Epstein started abusing you. Can you talk a little bit more about Megyn Kelly sort of, I think, subtly asserting that it’s not as bad or it’s a different thing to abuse a 14-year-old versus a six-year old?
Marina Lacerda: I want to laugh. And I’m so sad that she even said that. It’s like she almost wanted to make it okay. Like, it’s not like they’re eight-year-olds, you know? There’s so much to say on this. You know, the reason why we fight so much about the Epstein files, because I don’t even think I was 14. I think I 13. And once I get those files, I will come back and send a different narrative because when we talk as survivors, when I talk to Danielle Bensky who was with me, and she got recruited by one of my friends. We talk about age and we talk about how I was hanging out with her at 14, and when I talked to her, I was like, wait a minute, I’ve seen Jeffrey Epstein from before then.
Alex Wagner: This is so you can’t even, you can’t recall precisely when it began.
Marina Lacerda: No, when I talk to the survivors, we are all lost. We need this for clarity for our healing process. It is very important. And that’s something that we talked about yesterday. Yes, it will re-traumatize us probably watching us on those cameras that Jeffrey Epstein had in the house, because he had the whole house set up full of cameras.
Alex Wagner: Are you going to watch that footage? If you have access to it?
Marina Lacerda: Absolutely. Absolutely. I need to. My brain is so foggy. I can only remember bits and pieces. People kept telling me, oh my god, you are in the black book. No, you’re not in the black book. You’re victim number one. I’m like, why am I victim number one? Nobody has answers to these things, right? But the government does. The FBI does. They have our files. They have, you know, footage. And they can share that with us. We need those files. More than anything.
Alex Wagner: I mean, I think one of the things that will surprise people is it sounds like the victims need this, not just because it’s about transparency and holding the people in the files accountable, but it’s for their own story.
Marina Lacerda: Yeah, it’s healing. It’s healing.
Alex Wagner: Right? Like, you need to watch the videotapes of your abuse. In order to move past it and to understand exactly what happened to you. And that is really tough work and really brave work. I can’t even imagine the bravery that you guys have shown us far is so extraordinary. And honestly, it’s probably not the extent of it, right? Like if the files do come out, there’s that personal voyage you need to take to look into the darkness and see what’s there, which is like, man. You guys are a tough group. I am so impressed. I’m so grateful for, you know, I think we all are. And hopefully we can keep centering your stories in all of this. It’s so helpful to hear your perspective on, you know, your fears and your hopes and your optimism. And it should give all of us some optimism. I mean, thank you for taking the time and being brave.
Marina Lacerda: Thank you so much for having me and, you know, Megyn Kelly, please, I just like to say one thing, lady, woman, you have such a big platform, please don’t do that. Don’t say that a 14 year old is not like an eight year old. Um the capacity of a woman and even a man’s brain is not even fully developed at that age. Please.
Alex Wagner: Yeah.
Marina Lacerda: Please don’t don’t do that. Don’t try to make it don’t don’t normalize the fact that we weren’t eight years old I can tell you from the age of eight and fourteen my mind only changed a little bit Because I already had been in a sexual abuse you know with my stepfather. I already went through that and it was physical and sexual and that sucked. So when I got to Jeffrey Epstein, it didn’t seem so bad. But if I was and some of these survivors who were 14 15 years old, they’re emotionally broken and they’re trying to heal. So please Megyn Kelly before you go out there and speak and say these things try to do a little research. Try try try to see what it’s like when you get abused at 14 and raped at 14 at 15 before you got there and say stuff like that know, but thank you so much for giving me.
Alex Wagner: Thank you, Marina.
Marina Lacerda: For allowing me to use my voice and just to be me and just to real. I really appreciate it.
Alex Wagner: We appreciate you. Thank you for your time.
Marina Lacerda: Thank you so much.
Alex Wagner: When we come back, we’re going to put all of this into context with George Conway and Ponder whether this was crisis averted for President Trump or maybe just maybe the beginning of the end.
[AD BREAK]
Alex Wagner: George Conway, it’s a thrill to see you here on this week of weeks.
George Conway: Really great to see you again, Alex.
Alex Wagner: What the hell is happening? [laughs] Like, I don’t want to overstate Donald Trump’s interest in truth and transparency, but what swift action we have seen on the Hill and in a way that I honestly did not expect. I mean, how do you look at the landscape as it pertains to these Epstein files?
George Conway: I feel exactly the way that you just expressed it. I mean, Donald Trump in a lot of ways is the most transparent person alive, okay? I mean you can just see his lies as they come out. He has no, there is no filter between the Hannibal Lectors and Arnold Palmer’s, we’re dancing around in his brain and his mouth. So I don’t, you know, I don’t know that there’s a real plan to what he’s doing but I think he was forced to do what he did because… He was gonna get his ass kicked in the house. I mean, he was going to lose. I mean by all report, I mean I defer to the Capitol Hill reporter types. I mean have the pulse of Capitol Hill. I think he just realized that he was gonna lose this vote by a big margin. And it’s sort of like what he does when he finds out that people are going to resign in protest because he’s so stupid. Like remember John Bolton, he fires them first. So this was his way of getting in front of the you know, the situation so he could claim that he didn’t lose because it’s all about him. It’s like he can’t be perceived as losing, even though this was basically tantamount to the Japanese surrender at Pearl Harbor on September 2, 1945. It was already a done deal.
Alex Wagner: Is it though? Cause I feel like he still has weapons in his arsenal. Do you know what I mean? Like I feel by virtue of the fact, if I’m being like my most cynical version of myself, which is I guess the time’s demand, he could release, he could have really tried to be a hero and said, you know, what? I understand what the people want. I’m going to order Pam Bondi to release these files tomorrow. But he didn’t do that. Instead, he said—
George Conway: Of course not, and I totally—
Alex Wagner: Do what you’re gonna do. And I guess I would love to get your thoughts on this sort of legal loopholes that I imagine he is relying on to save his ass. Let me just, from the Washington Post, read everybody a summary because I think a lot of people don’t understand the substance of the bill that was just passed, right? So on Friday, Trump orders Pam Bondi to launch a new investigation, a federal investigation into Epstein with a focus on Democrats, okay? And that investigation could end up being Pam Bondi and the Justice Department’s excuse as to why they can’t release a lot of files related to Epstein because, you know, it’s an active investigation and we can’t released material that’s relevant to an active investigation. The other piece are grand jury secrecy rules. The bill that Congress passed does not explicitly waive those. So grand jury testimony would be kept under wraps. And then Pam Bondi has also said that many of the files cannot be released because they contain sensitive victim information and pornographic material. Finally, the legislation contains another exception, allowing the Justice Department to withhold material that would constitute a clearly unwarranted invasion of personal privacy or depicts or contains child sexual abuse. And like if the DOJ says you can’t have it, it doesn’t sound like there’s much recourse for Congress. What do you think of those realities as a lawyer and scholar?
George Conway: As a lawyer and scholar, I mean, I was having this same discussion last night with Mark Elias on a podcast. I agree with you. I mean I actually have on my screen now covering your face HR 4405 and you’re absolutely right. There are things that they’re going to try to drive trucks through. I mean here you have, this was the ultimate irony that Trump is going to have to sign this bill. He’s got to sign the bill, obviously, because if it goes back to the Hill. He’s going to get his ass kicked on an override. But he’s going sign this bill and I think the next play for them is exactly what you’ve described. The Justice Department is going to say, oh, we have to carefully review the documents to make sure we are only producing the things that we are required to produce under the law, blah, blah. So they’re going to take a few months. They’re going take a while with that. And, I mean, as far as the legal… Loopholes are concerned. I mean, there’s a limit to what he can do, because I’ll read some of the text of the statute, not to bore everybody, but you know, it’s always helpful to go to the text.
Alex Wagner: I mean, I just feel like this is the story of the rest of the week.
George Conway: Well, it’s going to be the story for the next couple of months, at least. This is not going away, and that’s going be the ultimate conclusion that we’re going to reach here, you and I, I’m pretty sure. But it says, no record shall be withheld, delayed, or redacted on the basis of embarrassment, reputational harm, or political sensitivity, including to any government official, public figure or foreign dignity, that’s what it says. So you cannot just do it because it’s embarrassing to a public figure. Now, what is permitted for them to withhold? I’m gonna set aside the grand jury material issue because that’s a separate legal issue and I actually thinking about that right now in the 30 seconds that you’ve given me, I don’t have an answer to that. But it says the attorney general can withhold stuff that’s victims, a victim, identifiable things relating to victims like names and personal information and medical files and so on. Then the attorney general can depict things that actually constitute child pornography or would constitute child-pornography under statute. In other words, stuff that if you actually sent it to somebody else, you would go to jail for or possess. Then there’s the active federal investigation.
Alex Wagner: Right.
George Conway: Or ongoing prosecution prong. Okay. So that one’s interesting because there’s a proviso onto that little bit of language in the statute that says, well, it’s not a statute yet, but the bill that will become a statute, provided that such holding is narrowly tailored and temporary. If they say, we have an ongoing investigation of Bill Clinton and lord knows who, that ain’t gonna cut it, at least as a technical legal matter, putting aside the question of how you enforce that.
Alex Wagner: That’s really interesting.
George Conway: Narrowly tailored. Okay, fine. So redact. If you’re following this statute, then you want to redact everything for every Democrat you’re investigating and produce all the shit relating to Trump.
Alex Wagner: That’s so crazy. So do they realize that?
George Conway: It’s crazy.
Alex Wagner: They’ve created a carve out to reject all damaging information or relevant information that’s relevant—
George Conway: —Bill Clinton. There are so many ironies that are bound in this. I mean, look at this. The guy needs a statute to do, as you pointed out, what he could do any way any day of the week at any hour, just order the shit released, okay? He doesn’t need a statute. He could have just done it and saved us the time, but he obviously does not want to release them.
Alex Wagner: Right. And that tells you everything about his motivations.
George Conway: Of course, that and the fact that he’s been screwing around with this and can’t stop talking about it for the last five months and got him into this, got him, idiot, got himself into this deep shit in the first place. But beyond that. This guy basically does whatever he wants to do regardless of what the law says. He doesn’t give a shit if there’s a statute of Congress. He doesn’ have a statute of Congress to authorize the tearing down of the East Wing. He doesn’t obey statutes of Congress that say you should, thou shalt have an education department. Statutes are not going to matter to him. They’re going to gaslight and they’re going to try to drive a truck through each of these provisions, even if it doesn’t make any sense. But let’s go on with this. Depict or contain images of death, physical abuse, or injury of any person. That’s fine. That and the child porn piece that they got. So all you got to do is black out the sex stuff. Okay. And that should not prevent the release of evidence, like if you see Donald Trump’s face, you can black everything out, you can black the girl out, and you can block his private parts out, but you can show his face, all right? That’s the way I would read the statute. I mean, assuming that’s the case. I’m not saying that’s the case.
Alex Wagner: Right, of course. But if we’re looking at it from…
George Conway: Yeah, I mean, we’re looking at it in a hypothetical look at what would be the worst case example. And then it says, they can redact stuff that is specifically authorized under criteria established by an executive order to be kept secret in the interest of national defense or foreign policy. And are in fact properly classified pursuant to such executive order. So here’s one you could see it is not in the national interest of the United National Security of the United States for me the most important person on the planet on whom the security of America and the world and the universe depends to have this material released. He could actually technically do try to do that under that provision. I mean I dare him—
Alex Wagner: He could do that maybe legally, but politically, that’s a non-starter, right?
George Conway: I mean, he’s. Yes, yes. Ding, ding, ding. And then there’s some other provisions here that are designed to make it hard for them to screw around. All redactions must be accompanied by a written justification published.
Alex Wagner: Right.
George Conway: In the federal register and submitted to Congress. And to the extent that any covered information is withheld, the attorney general shall declassify classified information as much as possible and so on and so forth. And then, there’s a required- 15 days after completion of the release required under Section 2, the attorney general shall submit a full report to the House and the Senate. So here’s how I see this plan. They’re going to use the Christmas holiday to pretend that they’re figuring out how exactly to comply. And then sometime after that, they’re going drag their feet some more and people are going to start screaming and then they’re gonna produce some subset of documents. And the problem is going to be, they’re going to get nitpicked on each one of these stuff. You know, for exactly the reason that you said nobody trusts them, all right? And everything they do is going to be looked at skeptically if there’s not some bombshell that’s produced in the material that they’re producing. And the fact of the matter is they have so stonewalled over the last several months that nobody trusts him anymore, which should be true. Nobody should have ever trusted Donald Trump, but they really don’t trust him now. And you’ve got Republican members of Congress saying you can’t trust them like Massie and MTG. This is never going to go away, even if they actually produce everything they have.
Alex Wagner: Well, I think it’s also, it’s not gonna go away because this wasn’t an issue that was fabricated in Washington. It’s not a partisan issue. It is an issue that the American public understands deeply and emotionally. And I will say, MAGA really understands victimization, victimhood. The notion of victims versus predators is a, an animating dichotomy in MAGA world.
George Conway: Right, yep.
Alex Wagner: This is they, this is at the center of a feeling in American life that the system is rigged. I mean, and to say nothing of how Democrats will further could and should further that narrative because it extends to policy as well as political scandals. You know, this is something that doesn’t go away because it’s not coming. It’s not an inside the beltway thing. It’s about sort of American life. And I think that’s Donald Trump’s, that’s a huge problem for him. And I wonder if you think it’s lame duck hunting season. Like, sorry for the corny metaphor, but like, is this [both speaking] is this beginning, he’s quacking up. Donald Trump is quacking up more of my conversation with George Conway right after this quick break.
[AD BREAK]
Alex Wagner: Do you think the Epstein thing is the beginning of a serious fracture between Trump and his party slash MAGA? Or is it just that Epstein has specific and special resonance? And it’s not the sort of the divide isn’t, you’re not gonna see Republicans depart him on something like, I don’t know, war in Venezuela or other things that should reasonably split the party. It’s just this thing that it…
George Conway: All of the above. I think basically all the points that are subsumed in your question are true. I think first of all, the lame duck aspect is important because people are starting to say, wait a minute, is this guy going to be around to punish me? Will he even finish his term? Is he going to in a condition to really come after me? And they’re looking at the approval ratings and those are going down because of this very issue and other things. And you’re absolutely right about the victimology, or if you will, of the MAGA mindset. They feel put upon, people have been, they’re discriminated against because they’re white and they’re not, they don’t live in Cambridge, Massachusetts and whatever, and they feel persecuted. And for some reason they took Donald Trump as their savior, which absolutely makes no sense. And it’s starting to dawn on a lot of these people. And you can see it that, wait a minute, if the system is rigged, he seems like the rigger and not the riggee. And they’re starting to catch onto that. And every little bit creates this momentum going that other way. You have that, you have the fight over all these internal internecine battles of tensions within Trumpism, that we get tax cuts for the rich, but with the people who vote for us rely on federal aid. The fact that we’ve got an aircraft carrier off the coast of Venezuela and the people who voted for MAGA were basically like, we’re no more for wars. Our kids were the ones who got sent to Iraq and Afghanistan, and what did we get for that? And so all of this internal strife followed by the fact that he is technically a lame duck, and he completely doesn’t give a shit about public opinion now, he just denies that it exists and nobody tells him otherwise, I think. All of these things plus the MAGA victimology aspect and plus this is very easy to understand and again, as you said, this is organic, okay, and it’s organic on the right, okay?
Alex Wagner: Yeah.
George Conway: So you can’t just say, you know, this a democratic hoax, it’s just too ludicrous for words. So he’s got big problems. That being said… You know, I’m feeling more hopeful about the state of the country now, in part because of this, in part, because of the midterms, in parts because of No King’s events. But it’s only going to get worse before it gets better because you become more and more desperate.
Alex Wagner: Right.
George Conway: That’s my take.
Alex Wagner: And he’s the president of the United States and still has a federal, he has agencies populated by stooges and allies. So he’s going to use every lever he can.
George Conway: And 5,000 nuclear weapons at his disposal.
Alex Wagner: Well let’s not get ahead of ourselves. I wonder if you could talk a little bit because I know you’ve been going back and forth with the Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche about his interview of Ghislaine Maxwell and there’s news on that front, right? Jamie Raskin, Democratic congressperson, came out last week with a letter saying, I have a whistleblower who was situated in the prison camp where Ghislaine Maxwell had been transferred to. She’s getting white glove treatment. She’s getting, um, resourcing that nobody else gets. And also she’s going to be filing petition to—
George Conway: She has a puppy.
Alex Wagner: She has a puppy. I can’t even, uh, she’s gonna be trying to get her sentence commuted by president Trump. First of all, I would imagine that the turn of events this week makes commuting, Ghislaine Maxwell’s sentence harder, but this, this White House operates with such impunity. I don’t know. I, where do you think that stands? In terms of the clear quid pro quo that exists between the president and Jeffrey Epstein’s co-conspirator in a notorious child sex trafficking ring.
George Conway: Look, it would be absolutely an act of political, moral, legal insanity for the President of the United States to pardon Ghislaine Maxwell, just as it was an act of political moral and legal insanity, for them to interview Ghislaine Maxwell and then transfer her to a cushier prison where she can have a puppy. All of that is true. And these people, they are not very good at this. Have to say. I mean, Trump has his own instincts that are self-destructive, but these people are not fucking good at this at all. Case in point was Todd Blanche. The story with him going back and forth with me is really just illustrative of that. I just tweeted out that, in a Bluesky said it just basically it’s like his questioning was incompetent. His question, he didn’t ask the right questions, essentially, and I said, which means he’s either incompetent or he was intentionally not trying to get the right answers. Which is true. I mean, anybody reading the transcript is going to say, okay, well, what about the next following six questions? Okay. It’s not enough to say for example, you ask, Ghislaine did you ever see Donald Trump at the mansion or on the island or something like that, at the house, right, on East whatever street. And if she says, no, I did not see that. You still have other questions like, well, did you ever hear he was there? Did you ever here he spent time there? Did you have, did anybody ever tell you that? You ask the question six different ways. It’s like, journalists do that too, except they have a little less time than say a lawyer who’s interviewing a federal prisoner who is the, and is the deputy attorney general. They can take as long a time that they want and be as thorough as they want. More thorough than you could even be in a civil deposition in federal court these days. And he just didn’t ask the follow-up questions. And the other question, other testimony or other statement she made in her unsworn, actually it wasn’t sworn, but in her statement, I never saw the president do anything inappropriate. Okay, well, what exactly does, what is exactly inappropriate to a woman who’s been convicted of sex trafficking? [laughter] Okay, let’s. Ms. Maxwell, let’s unpack that.
Alex Wagner: Your bar might sit a little lower in the rest of our bars.
George Conway: Right, yes!
Alex Wagner: You made these points on social media, and then Todd Blanche responds to you.
George Conway: A complete moron. Okay. I mean, I don’t think he’s that great a lawyer because I did see him question witnesses in federal, no, state court during the criminal trial where his client was convicted of 34 counts. And I didn’t think that he was a particularly good questioner. I didn t think Bove was either. But so I don’t think he could ask. I think his cross examination skills are probably not up to snuff. I mean, he’s an okay lawyer. And then he, but he comes back at me and says, well, nobody ever knew you to be a trial lawyer, George Conway, and you, you know, you should just be quiet. And it’s like, huh? You just admitted, and he also said, oh, and we didn’t have all this stuff. It’s like excuse me, you didn’t have all that stuff? That basically started a media firestorm where the deputy attorney general’s admitted he didn’t all the stuff to question Maxwell with. Even though they had all these files. Of course, the point is then which allowed me to go on television with a rejoinder and saying, hey, listen, I practiced law for 30 years in a big New York City law firm in New York 12th, but they’ll leave that aside. If an associate had come to me with that transcript, I would have sat the associate down and said, here’s how you ask follow-up questions. If that person couldn’t get it right, they would get a shitty performance review. That’s how bad it was.
Alex Wagner: Like, I mean, I would argue just going back and forth with you on social media about interview tactics in like an insanely high profile case is a bad idea to begin with.
George Conway: Dumb, dumb, dumb.
Alex Wagner: Dumb, dumb, dumb. And in like shocker, spoiler alert, Donald Trump doesn’t have the best lawyers in America working for him in a personal capacity or in a presidential capacity. Which then tells you, right, whether it’s Lindsey Halligan or Todd Blanche or Emil Bove or Kash Patel or Pam Bondi. These are the, this is the sort of like all the president’s people who are going to be charged with now helping him evade accountability, right? Like the political, the legislative branch has spoken, the American people have spoken, and now he can only try and weaponize the parts of the federal government that he really controls. And which are populated by dumb-dumbs to help them get out of this, which makes me think the Epstein files are gonna come out somehow, somehow, right? I mean, what’s your level of optimism on the sort of overall quest here?
George Conway: Look, I don’t have that much optimism that we’re going to see all the Epstein files in the not-too-distant future, because I do think they’re going to drag their feet. But on the other hand, The bleeding, the political bleeding is not going to stop precisely because they’re not going to release everything. And they never, even if they did release everything, as I said, they are never going to be able to, after all the things that they have done and after all their bad faith and after all the lying that they’ve done on this issue and everything else under the sun, they are never gonna be able to stop the political pleading because nobody’s ever gonna be convinced that they produced everything they had, okay? They’re never gonna able to establish that. And they’re probably gonna not be able establish that because they gonna jerk around for while. Some more.
Alex Wagner: We’ll be back with more of my conversation with George Conway after this break.
[AD BREAK]
Alex Wagner: The other thing we’re seeing this week in particular is Donald Trump triggered by the questioning relating to his treatment of women, or just being triggered by women generally, I feel like this is clearly really, all the Epstein stuff is really bothering him. And he’s lashed out at female reporters. He called one, he said, hush piggy, be quiet piggy. I believe on Air Force One, he insulted another White House reporter while he was doing a bilateral pool spray with Mohammed bin Salman of all people. And like, Trump always demeans and degrades women. It’s kind of like his natural state, but this feels particularly pointed and particularly exasperated. And it is, I think, a vision of a man kind of coming apart because he’s lost control of, well, he’s lost control. I mean, he just saw a stunning rebuke in Congress. And it’s on a topic that he’s clearly—
George Conway: He’s lost whatever control he ever had, which wasn’t much.
Alex Wagner: And it’s, and it’s about something he cares about, which is sex and power and his dominance of women and himself and that it was really, I mean, credit goes to, of course, the people who voted for the passage of the bill, but it’s really the group of survivors, one of whom we just spoke to the first part of this podcast, who kept talking about this, who put their stories out and who won the trust and the interest and the support of the American public and because they did that. This issue stayed alive. Like it lives in the imagination of American voters who then called their elected representatives. And during that shutdown, those elected representatives were hearing from people. Marjorie Taylor Greene would go home to Georgia and her people were like, stay strong, stand tough. And so when Trump tried to, again, pressure four, three women, Lauren Boebert, Nancy Mace, Marjorie Taylor Greene, to capitulate and not sign a discharge petition and drag Lauren Boebert into the sit room. They said, fuck you.
George Conway: In the sit room, oh my God.
Alex Wagner: I mean, it really is like a battle of the sexes where the women, at least in this round, have won. And I think that drives Trump crazy.
George Conway: It absolutely drives him crazy. And, you know, I mean, I think of two concepts. I mean the first is that it’s what Dr. Martin Luther King said is like the, I thing he said something like the arc of justice—
Alex Wagner: The moral arc of the justice, the moral arc of the universe is [both speaking]
George Conway: The moral arc of the universal is long but it bends toward justice.
Alex Wagner: Very good.
George Conway: And the other thing is, you know, what goes around comes around, okay? And, you know, this is, this this is sort of, I don’t know, there’s some kind of rough justice here that notwithstanding how his specific abusers, the adult abused women didn’t really get the time of day both in 2016 and in 2024, even though I personally tried—
Alex Wagner: Yeah.
George Conway: —to gin that back up with some, with a pack. It’s just sort of, there is kind of an odd and ironic rough justice that these women who were just kids when these things happened to them have been able to achieve so much. And my hat’s off to them for their courage.
Alex Wagner: It’s amazing.
George Conway: And I, you know, it’s kind of moving actually.
Alex Wagner: I’m very moved by their stories. And I think it’s, I would be remiss if I did not ask, because I do think the point of this podcast is to tell stories about the people who are at the center of all of this, which is why, you know, we started this podcast was with stories of one of the survivors, but I know that is an interest of yours as well, right? Like there’s so much abstraction happening in American politics and actually getting to the heart of the matter to the souls behind the headlines. And the.
George Conway: Yeah.
Alex Wagner: Whatever policy arguments is like essential in, you know, I think re-energizing debate and engagement, which is the only way you get people to participate in the political process. You’re doing something called Home of the Brave. You want to tell me about that?
George Conway: Yeah, Home of the Brave is this great organization that we have that, you know, is basically has been, it was founded to highlight the ways in which Donald Trump’s corruption, lunacy, and perfidy have harmed individuals. That it’s not just, as you say, an abstraction. That it is not just the rule of law. I mean, I’m a lawyer and I’m obsessed with what damage he’s done with the rule of law, but the rule of law is an abstract thing right and it’s not something that people it’s something that people take for granted but they couldn’t they might not be able to define it because it’s not something they talk about it’s, not concrete in their lives until you know somebody in your family gets picked up by ICE or something or somebody you know and so one of the things that we did is we formed this group early on with a bunch of great people Susan Rice, Sarah Matthews, Sarah Longwell and we formed this group to basically highlight the stories of individuals who are harmed by Trump. It may be because of the immigration enforcement, it could be because they work for the government, it could because they receive assistance for the Government and something that’s vital to their health and their children’s health and all of these things. We’ve been running videos and we’ve gone off on, we really, one of the things we’ve done is we went off on and really pushed the No Kings rally. The No Kings events because you know that really brings together every possible grievance that everybody has against this one guy and it’s like all of our all of our ships are tied together now because he is the common denominator his corruption his evil and then we’ve, you know, we’ve really gone into Epstein and we took out, we got these trucks driving around with Epstein anti-Trump ads, and we, we took the big billboard in Times Square saying, yeah, of course he knew the girl, there were girls or something like that. And it’s been very effective and it’s very gratifying to say, of, course he did. Yeah, and he did.
Alex Wagner: It’s, you know, it is an all hands on deck moment for democracy. So it’s fascinating to hear about how everybody’s doing their part. Um, George, thank you for, first of all, walking me through the text of this bill because it’s really actually quite important and offering your brilliant insight on these strange times in which we live, this runaway country with, with no breaks that we all seem to be traveling.
George Conway: What are you going to call your podcast when we get the country back?
Alex Wagner: Um, I look forward to that day. [laughs] I will not preemptively, I will not pre-emptively float those names. Cause I think we got a while, but, uh, we’re workshopping.
George Conway: I’ll see you soon. Okay, great.
Alex Wagner: Thanks, George.
George Conway: Thank you, Alex. [music plays]
Alex Wagner: Before we go, I wanna hear from you. Have you been impacted directly by the Trump administration and its policies? Maybe you’ve experienced changes to your job or to your healthcare or at your kid’s school? If so, I want to hear it all, whether these policies have impacted you for better or for worse. Send us an email or a one minute voice note at runawaycountry@crooked.com and we may be in touch to feature your story. And thank you to all of you who have written in already. Last but not least, don’t forget to check out the show and our rapid response videos on our YouTube channel Runaway Country with Alex Wagner.
Wagner_5.mp3
[AD BREAK]
Alex Wagner: Hi everyone. On Tuesday something pretty extraordinary happened. Every single Republican in Congress, with the exception of Congressman Clay Higgins of Louisiana, voted to release all of the files related to the investigation into the child sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein, who ran a sex ring that reached the highest of power before he died in prison. As of this recording, on Wednesday, President Trump has said he will sign the bill, and then it theoretically goes to the Justice Department, which has to answer the congressional demand and apparently the will of the American people. Let’s be clear, even last weekend, none of this could have been predicted. Up until late Sunday night, Trump had relentlessly lobbied for weeks against transparency on the Epstein files.
[clip of Donald Trump]: This is a Democrat hoax that never ends. We have nothing to do with Epstein, the Democrats do. All of his friends were Democrats.
[clip of reporter]: Mr. President, why wait for Congress to release the Epstein files? Why not just do it now?
[clip of Donald Trump]: It’s not the question that I mind, it’s your attitude. I think you are a terrible reporter.
Alex Wagner: But his repeated attempts to dismiss this whole thing had the opposite effect. The Epstein files stayed in the headlines and they became the subject of extraordinary bipartisan agreement. Which begs the question, why did this happen? And are we actually any closer to learning the full truth behind Jeffrey Epstein and his crimes? I’m Alex Wagner, and this is Runaway Country. Today we’re talking about the actual people in the middle of all this, the women who survived Jeffrey Epstein and who very much wanna know what the Justice Department knows about their own abuse.
Marina Lacerda: There are many pieces of my story that I can’t remember, no matter how hard I try. My therapist says that my brain is just trying to protect itself, but it’s so hard to begin to heal, knowing that there are people out there who know more about my abuse than I do.
Alex Wagner: That was Marina Lacerda She was abused by Jeffrey Epstein when she was 14 years old. And she’s one of our guests this week, along with lawyer George Conway. He’s going to explain what the scandal and the break between Trump and MAGA means for the Republican Party. But first, we’re going to talk to Marina about what it’s been like to be in one of the biggest cultural and political reckonings of recent memory. Marina, welcome to Runaway Country.
Marina Lacerda: Thank you.
Alex Wagner: First of all, just thank you for doing everything—
Marina Lacerda: Thank you.
Alex Wagner: —that you’ve done and being so brave and also talking to me. I know a lot of people wanna hear from you because your testimony has been so pivotal in all of this. I was in DC yesterday at the press conference where a lot the survivors spoke ahead of the vote in the house. And even then it was like, there was a sense of like people holding their breath like, okay. Maybe, I think that this is going to probably pass the House, but then who knows what happens. But then in short order, it sails through the House with only one Republican voting against it, and then goes right to the Senate where it’s passing unanimously. What did yesterday feel like? What did Tuesday feel like for you?
Marina Lacerda: Like, wow, so it was such a crazy day. When we found out the news, you know, we were like, oh my God, how do we feel about this? And we were all still a little bit confused. Like, wait, like, is this it? Like, we don’t have to worry about it anymore. And everyone was like explaining to us, like, wait no, no, like there’s other steps to this. And we’re like, okay, but it is a step forward into bringing justice and transparency to all of us. So. We were saying yesterday, all of the survivors, like we were like, high, you know, off of like everything that was happening. And you know it was such a rush. It was we felt anxiety, excitement, sad at one point, you, know, because we went back and we were talking about Virginia and all, you know the survivors that have been with us and are no longer with us. So we had all types of rush and you know, emotions.
Alex Wagner: As of this recording, it’s in President Trump’s hands. And everybody points to this Truth Social post he made on Sunday night that effectively gave Republicans in Congress the permission to vote for this, because they had been very resistant to it up until this point. But I just want to call your attention to some of the language in that post from the president. He wrote, House Republicans should vote to release the Epstein files because we have nothing to hide and it’s time to move on from this Democrat hoax perpetrated by radical left lunatics in order to deflect from the great success of the Republican party. The House Oversight Committee can have whatever they’re legally entitled to, I don’t care. Nobody cared about Jeffrey Epstein when he was alive. And if the Democrats had anything, they would have released it before our landslide election victory, presumably in 2024. Some members of the Republican Party are being used, and we can’t let that happen. First of all, he’s calling it a Democratic hoax. He’s saying that Republican members are being used, I guess, by victims? I don’t know who is using them. I wonder sort of what your level of optimism is about the truth actually coming out now that it sort of rests in his hands to sign this bill into law and then ensure that his Justice Department releases the files accordingly.
Marina Lacerda: I have so much to say in what you just said, because you said so much there.
Alex Wagner: Yeah. Take your time.
Marina Lacerda: Yeah. So first of all, we went to, you know, some of the Republican houses and we spoke to all of them and they were all on board and there’s nothing that we said or that somebody is saying that they are using them in any kind of way, right? There’s nothing we can say like, hey, do this, vote, and then we’ll give you this. Because there’s nothing—
Alex Wagner: You have no leverage on them.
Marina Lacerda: Right, we have nothing to offer them when we spoke to all of these different Republicans. They were all on board with us. They didn’t even think twice about oting a no to this, right? So that’s that’s number one. And my excitement is real. Okay about releasing the Epstein files, but I am very worried very worried. Survivors have been let down before right with you know when we came to the Capitol in September and we were so excited and we’re like, oh my god, this is it. And then the government shut down. It was like just another distraction. And sometimes we think like, is this a distraction for him to work on those files? And that’s why now he wants to let them out.
Alex Wagner: You mean mess around in the files?
Marina Lacerda: I think he did mess with the files, you know.
Alex Wagner: You do?
Marina Lacerda: And I think, oh, absolutely. I think Haley Robson yesterday said it on CNN. She’s so skeptical about it. And we all are, because it’s like, how do you go from one day to another, like release the files? Like, it’s just insane.
Alex Wagner: You’re talking about Trump’s U-turn on this basically, being so doing everything he can to stop them from coming out and then sort of waving the white flag.
Marina Lacerda: Like what did he wake up one day like that day was like, ah, you know what, I think like this fight has gone long enough And I also feel like he wanted to silence us because we were getting such a you know so much love from the public and from all these platforms and I think it got him so upset. He’s like, oh my god. Like all these women are having all this attention all this platform people are giving them their voice and I think he’s furious about that, right? And I can’t help but to worry about the entirety of those files.
Alex Wagner: You know, you bring up such an important point in all of this, and that is I do want to talk about the conversations you had with Republican elected officials. But the reality is the reason this issue stayed alive is because you guys told your stories and the American public felt them deeply. And I think that is an extraordinary thing. Like to the degree that both, I mean, Clay Higgins aside, the entire US Congress was basically held accountable by you guys.
Marina Lacerda: Yes, and you know, I got to say they gave us so much love yesterday. It was so crazy to see because we went to see the Democratic women of the caucus, right? And we were supposed to see Republican side, but we couldn’t do it at the same time, so they joined. All together in one room.
Alex Wagner: Wow. And what was that like?
Marina Lacerda: I just got chills. It was like, I said to them, because we were in the table, and I said, how wonderful all these women come together. And you guys have both different parties, you know, they both have different beliefs, but they came together and they worked together. They talked about things together about women’s right and human trafficking and sexual abuse. And also, you know, we talked a little bit about how women are sending out their narrative now and how they are in different platforms, right? We’re so thankful that all these women and men, when we went to the vigil yesterday, I seen two men, which I don’t wanna name, one was a Republican party, because it might hurt them. And he was like, listen, I’m a Republican Party. He’s like, this is not even a thought for me not to vote. It was never a thought to me to vote, no. I have three daughters. And it just comes to me and I’m like. President Trump has daughters.
Alex Wagner: Yeah, a couple of them.
Marina Lacerda: Yeah, yeah, he does. And I’m pretty sure if one of his daughters was involved in any sort of, you know, any type of scheme or anything like this, he would want, he would get to the bottom of it, right? He would not even think twice about it, right, there would be no, there will be no fight. And it’s what the Republican, this Republican Party said, you know, elective said, he said, you know, well, this is not even a thought for me. I have three daughters, you need to get to the bottom of this. So a lot of the men, women were on our side, except that one person. [laughs] Which is insane.
Alex Wagner: You know what? I feel like this isn’t even… Clay Higgins doesn’t deserve the time, right?
Marina Lacerda: I didn’t want to say it, you know, but I think it’s obvious.
Alex Wagner: I’ll say it. Whatever. Enjoy being that one person, Clay Higgins. Yesterday at the press conference, you didn’t name her, but you were referring to Megyn Kelly and some comments she made about the difference between preying upon and abusing younger children versus adolescents. And I want to play what she said. And ask you a little bit more about it. So let’s just like listen to what Megyn Kelly said on her podcast earlier.
[clip of Megyn Kelly]: As for Epstein, I’ve said this before, which is a reminder, I do know somebody very, very close to this case who is in a position to know virtually everything. Not everything, but virtually everything and this person has told me from the start years and years ago that Jeffrey Epstein in this person’s view was not a pedophile. This is this person view who was there for a lot of this, but that he was into the barely legal type. Like he liked 15-year-old girls. And I realize this is disgusting, I’m definitely not trying to make an excuse for this, I am just giving you facts. That he wasn’t into like eight year olds, but he liked the very young teen types that could pass for even younger than they were.
Alex Wagner: You said at the press conference yesterday, this is a dangerous and incorrect notion, the sort of distinction between really young kids and what Megyn Kelly calls the barely legal type. You were 14 when Jeffrey Epstein started abusing you. Can you talk a little bit more about Megyn Kelly sort of, I think, subtly asserting that it’s not as bad or it’s a different thing to abuse a 14-year-old versus a six-year old?
Marina Lacerda: I want to laugh. And I’m so sad that she even said that. It’s like she almost wanted to make it okay. Like, it’s not like they’re eight-year-olds, you know? There’s so much to say on this. You know, the reason why we fight so much about the Epstein files, because I don’t even think I was 14. I think I 13. And once I get those files, I will come back and send a different narrative because when we talk as survivors, when I talk to Danielle Bensky who was with me, and she got recruited by one of my friends. We talk about age and we talk about how I was hanging out with her at 14, and when I talked to her, I was like, wait a minute, I’ve seen Jeffrey Epstein from before then.
Alex Wagner: This is so you can’t even, you can’t recall precisely when it began.
Marina Lacerda: No, when I talk to the survivors, we are all lost. We need this for clarity for our healing process. It is very important. And that’s something that we talked about yesterday. Yes, it will re-traumatize us probably watching us on those cameras that Jeffrey Epstein had in the house, because he had the whole house set up full of cameras.
Alex Wagner: Are you going to watch that footage? If you have access to it?
Marina Lacerda: Absolutely. Absolutely. I need to. My brain is so foggy. I can only remember bits and pieces. People kept telling me, oh my god, you are in the black book. No, you’re not in the black book. You’re victim number one. I’m like, why am I victim number one? Nobody has answers to these things, right? But the government does. The FBI does. They have our files. They have, you know, footage. And they can share that with us. We need those files. More than anything.
Alex Wagner: I mean, I think one of the things that will surprise people is it sounds like the victims need this, not just because it’s about transparency and holding the people in the files accountable, but it’s for their own story.
Marina Lacerda: Yeah, it’s healing. It’s healing.
Alex Wagner: Right? Like, you need to watch the videotapes of your abuse. In order to move past it and to understand exactly what happened to you. And that is really tough work and really brave work. I can’t even imagine the bravery that you guys have shown us far is so extraordinary. And honestly, it’s probably not the extent of it, right? Like if the files do come out, there’s that personal voyage you need to take to look into the darkness and see what’s there, which is like, man. You guys are a tough group. I am so impressed. I’m so grateful for, you know, I think we all are. And hopefully we can keep centering your stories in all of this. It’s so helpful to hear your perspective on, you know, your fears and your hopes and your optimism. And it should give all of us some optimism. I mean, thank you for taking the time and being brave.
Marina Lacerda: Thank you so much for having me and, you know, Megyn Kelly, please, I just like to say one thing, lady, woman, you have such a big platform, please don’t do that. Don’t say that a 14 year old is not like an eight year old. Um the capacity of a woman and even a man’s brain is not even fully developed at that age. Please.
Alex Wagner: Yeah.
Marina Lacerda: Please don’t don’t do that. Don’t try to make it don’t don’t normalize the fact that we weren’t eight years old I can tell you from the age of eight and fourteen my mind only changed a little bit Because I already had been in a sexual abuse you know with my stepfather. I already went through that and it was physical and sexual and that sucked. So when I got to Jeffrey Epstein, it didn’t seem so bad. But if I was and some of these survivors who were 14 15 years old, they’re emotionally broken and they’re trying to heal. So please Megyn Kelly before you go out there and speak and say these things try to do a little research. Try try try to see what it’s like when you get abused at 14 and raped at 14 at 15 before you got there and say stuff like that know, but thank you so much for giving me.
Alex Wagner: Thank you, Marina.
Marina Lacerda: For allowing me to use my voice and just to be me and just to real. I really appreciate it.
Alex Wagner: We appreciate you. Thank you for your time.
Marina Lacerda: Thank you so much.
Alex Wagner: When we come back, we’re going to put all of this into context with George Conway and Ponder whether this was crisis averted for President Trump or maybe just maybe the beginning of the end.
[AD BREAK]
Alex Wagner: George Conway, it’s a thrill to see you here on this week of weeks.
George Conway: Really great to see you again, Alex.
Alex Wagner: What the hell is happening? [laughs] Like, I don’t want to overstate Donald Trump’s interest in truth and transparency, but what swift action we have seen on the Hill and in a way that I honestly did not expect. I mean, how do you look at the landscape as it pertains to these Epstein files?
George Conway: I feel exactly the way that you just expressed it. I mean, Donald Trump in a lot of ways is the most transparent person alive, okay? I mean you can just see his lies as they come out. He has no, there is no filter between the Hannibal Lectors and Arnold Palmer’s, we’re dancing around in his brain and his mouth. So I don’t, you know, I don’t know that there’s a real plan to what he’s doing but I think he was forced to do what he did because… He was gonna get his ass kicked in the house. I mean, he was going to lose. I mean by all report, I mean I defer to the Capitol Hill reporter types. I mean have the pulse of Capitol Hill. I think he just realized that he was gonna lose this vote by a big margin. And it’s sort of like what he does when he finds out that people are going to resign in protest because he’s so stupid. Like remember John Bolton, he fires them first. So this was his way of getting in front of the you know, the situation so he could claim that he didn’t lose because it’s all about him. It’s like he can’t be perceived as losing, even though this was basically tantamount to the Japanese surrender at Pearl Harbor on September 2, 1945. It was already a done deal.
Alex Wagner: Is it though? Cause I feel like he still has weapons in his arsenal. Do you know what I mean? Like I feel by virtue of the fact, if I’m being like my most cynical version of myself, which is I guess the time’s demand, he could release, he could have really tried to be a hero and said, you know, what? I understand what the people want. I’m going to order Pam Bondi to release these files tomorrow. But he didn’t do that. Instead, he said—
George Conway: Of course not, and I totally—
Alex Wagner: Do what you’re gonna do. And I guess I would love to get your thoughts on this sort of legal loopholes that I imagine he is relying on to save his ass. Let me just, from the Washington Post, read everybody a summary because I think a lot of people don’t understand the substance of the bill that was just passed, right? So on Friday, Trump orders Pam Bondi to launch a new investigation, a federal investigation into Epstein with a focus on Democrats, okay? And that investigation could end up being Pam Bondi and the Justice Department’s excuse as to why they can’t release a lot of files related to Epstein because, you know, it’s an active investigation and we can’t released material that’s relevant to an active investigation. The other piece are grand jury secrecy rules. The bill that Congress passed does not explicitly waive those. So grand jury testimony would be kept under wraps. And then Pam Bondi has also said that many of the files cannot be released because they contain sensitive victim information and pornographic material. Finally, the legislation contains another exception, allowing the Justice Department to withhold material that would constitute a clearly unwarranted invasion of personal privacy or depicts or contains child sexual abuse. And like if the DOJ says you can’t have it, it doesn’t sound like there’s much recourse for Congress. What do you think of those realities as a lawyer and scholar?
George Conway: As a lawyer and scholar, I mean, I was having this same discussion last night with Mark Elias on a podcast. I agree with you. I mean I actually have on my screen now covering your face HR 4405 and you’re absolutely right. There are things that they’re going to try to drive trucks through. I mean here you have, this was the ultimate irony that Trump is going to have to sign this bill. He’s got to sign the bill, obviously, because if it goes back to the Hill. He’s going to get his ass kicked on an override. But he’s going sign this bill and I think the next play for them is exactly what you’ve described. The Justice Department is going to say, oh, we have to carefully review the documents to make sure we are only producing the things that we are required to produce under the law, blah, blah. So they’re going to take a few months. They’re going take a while with that. And, I mean, as far as the legal… Loopholes are concerned. I mean, there’s a limit to what he can do, because I’ll read some of the text of the statute, not to bore everybody, but you know, it’s always helpful to go to the text.
Alex Wagner: I mean, I just feel like this is the story of the rest of the week.
George Conway: Well, it’s going to be the story for the next couple of months, at least. This is not going away, and that’s going be the ultimate conclusion that we’re going to reach here, you and I, I’m pretty sure. But it says, no record shall be withheld, delayed, or redacted on the basis of embarrassment, reputational harm, or political sensitivity, including to any government official, public figure or foreign dignity, that’s what it says. So you cannot just do it because it’s embarrassing to a public figure. Now, what is permitted for them to withhold? I’m gonna set aside the grand jury material issue because that’s a separate legal issue and I actually thinking about that right now in the 30 seconds that you’ve given me, I don’t have an answer to that. But it says the attorney general can withhold stuff that’s victims, a victim, identifiable things relating to victims like names and personal information and medical files and so on. Then the attorney general can depict things that actually constitute child pornography or would constitute child-pornography under statute. In other words, stuff that if you actually sent it to somebody else, you would go to jail for or possess. Then there’s the active federal investigation.
Alex Wagner: Right.
George Conway: Or ongoing prosecution prong. Okay. So that one’s interesting because there’s a proviso onto that little bit of language in the statute that says, well, it’s not a statute yet, but the bill that will become a statute, provided that such holding is narrowly tailored and temporary. If they say, we have an ongoing investigation of Bill Clinton and lord knows who, that ain’t gonna cut it, at least as a technical legal matter, putting aside the question of how you enforce that.
Alex Wagner: That’s really interesting.
George Conway: Narrowly tailored. Okay, fine. So redact. If you’re following this statute, then you want to redact everything for every Democrat you’re investigating and produce all the shit relating to Trump.
Alex Wagner: That’s so crazy. So do they realize that?
George Conway: It’s crazy.
Alex Wagner: They’ve created a carve out to reject all damaging information or relevant information that’s relevant—
George Conway: —Bill Clinton. There are so many ironies that are bound in this. I mean, look at this. The guy needs a statute to do, as you pointed out, what he could do any way any day of the week at any hour, just order the shit released, okay? He doesn’t need a statute. He could have just done it and saved us the time, but he obviously does not want to release them.
Alex Wagner: Right. And that tells you everything about his motivations.
George Conway: Of course, that and the fact that he’s been screwing around with this and can’t stop talking about it for the last five months and got him into this, got him, idiot, got himself into this deep shit in the first place. But beyond that. This guy basically does whatever he wants to do regardless of what the law says. He doesn’t give a shit if there’s a statute of Congress. He doesn’ have a statute of Congress to authorize the tearing down of the East Wing. He doesn’t obey statutes of Congress that say you should, thou shalt have an education department. Statutes are not going to matter to him. They’re going to gaslight and they’re going to try to drive a truck through each of these provisions, even if it doesn’t make any sense. But let’s go on with this. Depict or contain images of death, physical abuse, or injury of any person. That’s fine. That and the child porn piece that they got. So all you got to do is black out the sex stuff. Okay. And that should not prevent the release of evidence, like if you see Donald Trump’s face, you can black everything out, you can black the girl out, and you can block his private parts out, but you can show his face, all right? That’s the way I would read the statute. I mean, assuming that’s the case. I’m not saying that’s the case.
Alex Wagner: Right, of course. But if we’re looking at it from…
George Conway: Yeah, I mean, we’re looking at it in a hypothetical look at what would be the worst case example. And then it says, they can redact stuff that is specifically authorized under criteria established by an executive order to be kept secret in the interest of national defense or foreign policy. And are in fact properly classified pursuant to such executive order. So here’s one you could see it is not in the national interest of the United National Security of the United States for me the most important person on the planet on whom the security of America and the world and the universe depends to have this material released. He could actually technically do try to do that under that provision. I mean I dare him—
Alex Wagner: He could do that maybe legally, but politically, that’s a non-starter, right?
George Conway: I mean, he’s. Yes, yes. Ding, ding, ding. And then there’s some other provisions here that are designed to make it hard for them to screw around. All redactions must be accompanied by a written justification published.
Alex Wagner: Right.
George Conway: In the federal register and submitted to Congress. And to the extent that any covered information is withheld, the attorney general shall declassify classified information as much as possible and so on and so forth. And then, there’s a required- 15 days after completion of the release required under Section 2, the attorney general shall submit a full report to the House and the Senate. So here’s how I see this plan. They’re going to use the Christmas holiday to pretend that they’re figuring out how exactly to comply. And then sometime after that, they’re going drag their feet some more and people are going to start screaming and then they’re gonna produce some subset of documents. And the problem is going to be, they’re going to get nitpicked on each one of these stuff. You know, for exactly the reason that you said nobody trusts them, all right? And everything they do is going to be looked at skeptically if there’s not some bombshell that’s produced in the material that they’re producing. And the fact of the matter is they have so stonewalled over the last several months that nobody trusts him anymore, which should be true. Nobody should have ever trusted Donald Trump, but they really don’t trust him now. And you’ve got Republican members of Congress saying you can’t trust them like Massie and MTG. This is never going to go away, even if they actually produce everything they have.
Alex Wagner: Well, I think it’s also, it’s not gonna go away because this wasn’t an issue that was fabricated in Washington. It’s not a partisan issue. It is an issue that the American public understands deeply and emotionally. And I will say, MAGA really understands victimization, victimhood. The notion of victims versus predators is a, an animating dichotomy in MAGA world.
George Conway: Right, yep.
Alex Wagner: This is they, this is at the center of a feeling in American life that the system is rigged. I mean, and to say nothing of how Democrats will further could and should further that narrative because it extends to policy as well as political scandals. You know, this is something that doesn’t go away because it’s not coming. It’s not an inside the beltway thing. It’s about sort of American life. And I think that’s Donald Trump’s, that’s a huge problem for him. And I wonder if you think it’s lame duck hunting season. Like, sorry for the corny metaphor, but like, is this [both speaking] is this beginning, he’s quacking up. Donald Trump is quacking up more of my conversation with George Conway right after this quick break.
[AD BREAK]
Alex Wagner: Do you think the Epstein thing is the beginning of a serious fracture between Trump and his party slash MAGA? Or is it just that Epstein has specific and special resonance? And it’s not the sort of the divide isn’t, you’re not gonna see Republicans depart him on something like, I don’t know, war in Venezuela or other things that should reasonably split the party. It’s just this thing that it…
George Conway: All of the above. I think basically all the points that are subsumed in your question are true. I think first of all, the lame duck aspect is important because people are starting to say, wait a minute, is this guy going to be around to punish me? Will he even finish his term? Is he going to in a condition to really come after me? And they’re looking at the approval ratings and those are going down because of this very issue and other things. And you’re absolutely right about the victimology, or if you will, of the MAGA mindset. They feel put upon, people have been, they’re discriminated against because they’re white and they’re not, they don’t live in Cambridge, Massachusetts and whatever, and they feel persecuted. And for some reason they took Donald Trump as their savior, which absolutely makes no sense. And it’s starting to dawn on a lot of these people. And you can see it that, wait a minute, if the system is rigged, he seems like the rigger and not the riggee. And they’re starting to catch onto that. And every little bit creates this momentum going that other way. You have that, you have the fight over all these internal internecine battles of tensions within Trumpism, that we get tax cuts for the rich, but with the people who vote for us rely on federal aid. The fact that we’ve got an aircraft carrier off the coast of Venezuela and the people who voted for MAGA were basically like, we’re no more for wars. Our kids were the ones who got sent to Iraq and Afghanistan, and what did we get for that? And so all of this internal strife followed by the fact that he is technically a lame duck, and he completely doesn’t give a shit about public opinion now, he just denies that it exists and nobody tells him otherwise, I think. All of these things plus the MAGA victimology aspect and plus this is very easy to understand and again, as you said, this is organic, okay, and it’s organic on the right, okay?
Alex Wagner: Yeah.
George Conway: So you can’t just say, you know, this a democratic hoax, it’s just too ludicrous for words. So he’s got big problems. That being said… You know, I’m feeling more hopeful about the state of the country now, in part because of this, in part, because of the midterms, in parts because of No King’s events. But it’s only going to get worse before it gets better because you become more and more desperate.
Alex Wagner: Right.
George Conway: That’s my take.
Alex Wagner: And he’s the president of the United States and still has a federal, he has agencies populated by stooges and allies. So he’s going to use every lever he can.
George Conway: And 5,000 nuclear weapons at his disposal.
Alex Wagner: Well let’s not get ahead of ourselves. I wonder if you could talk a little bit because I know you’ve been going back and forth with the Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche about his interview of Ghislaine Maxwell and there’s news on that front, right? Jamie Raskin, Democratic congressperson, came out last week with a letter saying, I have a whistleblower who was situated in the prison camp where Ghislaine Maxwell had been transferred to. She’s getting white glove treatment. She’s getting, um, resourcing that nobody else gets. And also she’s going to be filing petition to—
George Conway: She has a puppy.
Alex Wagner: She has a puppy. I can’t even, uh, she’s gonna be trying to get her sentence commuted by president Trump. First of all, I would imagine that the turn of events this week makes commuting, Ghislaine Maxwell’s sentence harder, but this, this White House operates with such impunity. I don’t know. I, where do you think that stands? In terms of the clear quid pro quo that exists between the president and Jeffrey Epstein’s co-conspirator in a notorious child sex trafficking ring.
George Conway: Look, it would be absolutely an act of political, moral, legal insanity for the President of the United States to pardon Ghislaine Maxwell, just as it was an act of political moral and legal insanity, for them to interview Ghislaine Maxwell and then transfer her to a cushier prison where she can have a puppy. All of that is true. And these people, they are not very good at this. Have to say. I mean, Trump has his own instincts that are self-destructive, but these people are not fucking good at this at all. Case in point was Todd Blanche. The story with him going back and forth with me is really just illustrative of that. I just tweeted out that, in a Bluesky said it just basically it’s like his questioning was incompetent. His question, he didn’t ask the right questions, essentially, and I said, which means he’s either incompetent or he was intentionally not trying to get the right answers. Which is true. I mean, anybody reading the transcript is going to say, okay, well, what about the next following six questions? Okay. It’s not enough to say for example, you ask, Ghislaine did you ever see Donald Trump at the mansion or on the island or something like that, at the house, right, on East whatever street. And if she says, no, I did not see that. You still have other questions like, well, did you ever hear he was there? Did you ever here he spent time there? Did you have, did anybody ever tell you that? You ask the question six different ways. It’s like, journalists do that too, except they have a little less time than say a lawyer who’s interviewing a federal prisoner who is the, and is the deputy attorney general. They can take as long a time that they want and be as thorough as they want. More thorough than you could even be in a civil deposition in federal court these days. And he just didn’t ask the follow-up questions. And the other question, other testimony or other statement she made in her unsworn, actually it wasn’t sworn, but in her statement, I never saw the president do anything inappropriate. Okay, well, what exactly does, what is exactly inappropriate to a woman who’s been convicted of sex trafficking? [laughter] Okay, let’s. Ms. Maxwell, let’s unpack that.
Alex Wagner: Your bar might sit a little lower in the rest of our bars.
George Conway: Right, yes!
Alex Wagner: You made these points on social media, and then Todd Blanche responds to you.
George Conway: A complete moron. Okay. I mean, I don’t think he’s that great a lawyer because I did see him question witnesses in federal, no, state court during the criminal trial where his client was convicted of 34 counts. And I didn’t think that he was a particularly good questioner. I didn t think Bove was either. But so I don’t think he could ask. I think his cross examination skills are probably not up to snuff. I mean, he’s an okay lawyer. And then he, but he comes back at me and says, well, nobody ever knew you to be a trial lawyer, George Conway, and you, you know, you should just be quiet. And it’s like, huh? You just admitted, and he also said, oh, and we didn’t have all this stuff. It’s like excuse me, you didn’t have all that stuff? That basically started a media firestorm where the deputy attorney general’s admitted he didn’t all the stuff to question Maxwell with. Even though they had all these files. Of course, the point is then which allowed me to go on television with a rejoinder and saying, hey, listen, I practiced law for 30 years in a big New York City law firm in New York 12th, but they’ll leave that aside. If an associate had come to me with that transcript, I would have sat the associate down and said, here’s how you ask follow-up questions. If that person couldn’t get it right, they would get a shitty performance review. That’s how bad it was.
Alex Wagner: Like, I mean, I would argue just going back and forth with you on social media about interview tactics in like an insanely high profile case is a bad idea to begin with.
George Conway: Dumb, dumb, dumb.
Alex Wagner: Dumb, dumb, dumb. And in like shocker, spoiler alert, Donald Trump doesn’t have the best lawyers in America working for him in a personal capacity or in a presidential capacity. Which then tells you, right, whether it’s Lindsey Halligan or Todd Blanche or Emil Bove or Kash Patel or Pam Bondi. These are the, this is the sort of like all the president’s people who are going to be charged with now helping him evade accountability, right? Like the political, the legislative branch has spoken, the American people have spoken, and now he can only try and weaponize the parts of the federal government that he really controls. And which are populated by dumb-dumbs to help them get out of this, which makes me think the Epstein files are gonna come out somehow, somehow, right? I mean, what’s your level of optimism on the sort of overall quest here?
George Conway: Look, I don’t have that much optimism that we’re going to see all the Epstein files in the not-too-distant future, because I do think they’re going to drag their feet. But on the other hand, The bleeding, the political bleeding is not going to stop precisely because they’re not going to release everything. And they never, even if they did release everything, as I said, they are never going to be able to, after all the things that they have done and after all their bad faith and after all the lying that they’ve done on this issue and everything else under the sun, they are never gonna be able to stop the political pleading because nobody’s ever gonna be convinced that they produced everything they had, okay? They’re never gonna able to establish that. And they’re probably gonna not be able establish that because they gonna jerk around for while. Some more.
Alex Wagner: We’ll be back with more of my conversation with George Conway after this break.
[AD BREAK]
Alex Wagner: The other thing we’re seeing this week in particular is Donald Trump triggered by the questioning relating to his treatment of women, or just being triggered by women generally, I feel like this is clearly really, all the Epstein stuff is really bothering him. And he’s lashed out at female reporters. He called one, he said, hush piggy, be quiet piggy. I believe on Air Force One, he insulted another White House reporter while he was doing a bilateral pool spray with Mohammed bin Salman of all people. And like, Trump always demeans and degrades women. It’s kind of like his natural state, but this feels particularly pointed and particularly exasperated. And it is, I think, a vision of a man kind of coming apart because he’s lost control of, well, he’s lost control. I mean, he just saw a stunning rebuke in Congress. And it’s on a topic that he’s clearly—
George Conway: He’s lost whatever control he ever had, which wasn’t much.
Alex Wagner: And it’s, and it’s about something he cares about, which is sex and power and his dominance of women and himself and that it was really, I mean, credit goes to, of course, the people who voted for the passage of the bill, but it’s really the group of survivors, one of whom we just spoke to the first part of this podcast, who kept talking about this, who put their stories out and who won the trust and the interest and the support of the American public and because they did that. This issue stayed alive. Like it lives in the imagination of American voters who then called their elected representatives. And during that shutdown, those elected representatives were hearing from people. Marjorie Taylor Greene would go home to Georgia and her people were like, stay strong, stand tough. And so when Trump tried to, again, pressure four, three women, Lauren Boebert, Nancy Mace, Marjorie Taylor Greene, to capitulate and not sign a discharge petition and drag Lauren Boebert into the sit room. They said, fuck you.
George Conway: In the sit room, oh my God.
Alex Wagner: I mean, it really is like a battle of the sexes where the women, at least in this round, have won. And I think that drives Trump crazy.
George Conway: It absolutely drives him crazy. And, you know, I mean, I think of two concepts. I mean the first is that it’s what Dr. Martin Luther King said is like the, I thing he said something like the arc of justice—
Alex Wagner: The moral arc of the justice, the moral arc of the universe is [both speaking]
George Conway: The moral arc of the universal is long but it bends toward justice.
Alex Wagner: Very good.
George Conway: And the other thing is, you know, what goes around comes around, okay? And, you know, this is, this this is sort of, I don’t know, there’s some kind of rough justice here that notwithstanding how his specific abusers, the adult abused women didn’t really get the time of day both in 2016 and in 2024, even though I personally tried—
Alex Wagner: Yeah.
George Conway: —to gin that back up with some, with a pack. It’s just sort of, there is kind of an odd and ironic rough justice that these women who were just kids when these things happened to them have been able to achieve so much. And my hat’s off to them for their courage.
Alex Wagner: It’s amazing.
George Conway: And I, you know, it’s kind of moving actually.
Alex Wagner: I’m very moved by their stories. And I think it’s, I would be remiss if I did not ask, because I do think the point of this podcast is to tell stories about the people who are at the center of all of this, which is why, you know, we started this podcast was with stories of one of the survivors, but I know that is an interest of yours as well, right? Like there’s so much abstraction happening in American politics and actually getting to the heart of the matter to the souls behind the headlines. And the.
George Conway: Yeah.
Alex Wagner: Whatever policy arguments is like essential in, you know, I think re-energizing debate and engagement, which is the only way you get people to participate in the political process. You’re doing something called Home of the Brave. You want to tell me about that?
George Conway: Yeah, Home of the Brave is this great organization that we have that, you know, is basically has been, it was founded to highlight the ways in which Donald Trump’s corruption, lunacy, and perfidy have harmed individuals. That it’s not just, as you say, an abstraction. That it is not just the rule of law. I mean, I’m a lawyer and I’m obsessed with what damage he’s done with the rule of law, but the rule of law is an abstract thing right and it’s not something that people it’s something that people take for granted but they couldn’t they might not be able to define it because it’s not something they talk about it’s, not concrete in their lives until you know somebody in your family gets picked up by ICE or something or somebody you know and so one of the things that we did is we formed this group early on with a bunch of great people Susan Rice, Sarah Matthews, Sarah Longwell and we formed this group to basically highlight the stories of individuals who are harmed by Trump. It may be because of the immigration enforcement, it could be because they work for the government, it could because they receive assistance for the Government and something that’s vital to their health and their children’s health and all of these things. We’ve been running videos and we’ve gone off on, we really, one of the things we’ve done is we went off on and really pushed the No Kings rally. The No Kings events because you know that really brings together every possible grievance that everybody has against this one guy and it’s like all of our all of our ships are tied together now because he is the common denominator his corruption his evil and then we’ve, you know, we’ve really gone into Epstein and we took out, we got these trucks driving around with Epstein anti-Trump ads, and we, we took the big billboard in Times Square saying, yeah, of course he knew the girl, there were girls or something like that. And it’s been very effective and it’s very gratifying to say, of, course he did. Yeah, and he did.
Alex Wagner: It’s, you know, it is an all hands on deck moment for democracy. So it’s fascinating to hear about how everybody’s doing their part. Um, George, thank you for, first of all, walking me through the text of this bill because it’s really actually quite important and offering your brilliant insight on these strange times in which we live, this runaway country with, with no breaks that we all seem to be traveling.
George Conway: What are you going to call your podcast when we get the country back?
Alex Wagner: Um, I look forward to that day. [laughs] I will not preemptively, I will not pre-emptively float those names. Cause I think we got a while, but, uh, we’re workshopping.
George Conway: I’ll see you soon. Okay, great.
Alex Wagner: Thanks, George.
George Conway: Thank you, Alex. [music plays]
Alex Wagner: Before we go, I wanna hear from you. Have you been impacted directly by the Trump administration and its policies? Maybe you’ve experienced changes to your job or to your healthcare or at your kid’s school? If so, I want to hear it all, whether these policies have impacted you for better or for worse. Send us an email or a one minute voice note at runawaycountry@crooked.com and we may be in touch to feature your story. And thank you to all of you who have written in already. Last but not least, don’t forget to check out the show and our rapid response videos on our YouTube channel Runaway Country with Alex Wagner. Runaway Country is a Crooked Media production. Our senior producer is Alyona Minkovski. Our producer is Emma Illick-Frank. Production support from Megan Larson and Lacy Roberts. The show is mixed and edited by Charlotte Landes. Ben Hethcoat is our video producer and Matt DeGroot is our head of production. Audio support comes from Kyle Seglin. Our theme music is by Breakmaster Cylinder. Adriene Hill is our Head of News and Politics. Katie Long is our Executive Producer of Development. Our production staff is proudly unionized with the Writer’s Guild of America East.
