Name: Bash presses Deputy AG on Trump in Epstein files, Don Lemon arrest
Uploaded: 2026-02-02T16:59:06.000Z
Duration: 11 min
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Here with me now is Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche.

Thank you so much for joining me this morning.

I want, I want to start with the Epstein files.

Elon Musk, who is mentioned in some of these files, wrote, quote, what matters is not the release of some subset of Epstein files, but

rather the prosecution of those who committed heinous crimes.

When there is at least one arrest, some justice will have been done.

If not, this is all performative, nothing but a distracted distraction.

Is the Department of Justice considering bringing any additional charges here?

Well, look, I can't talk about any investigations, but

I will say the following, which is that in July, the Department of justice said that we had reviewed the files, the, quote, Epstein files, and

there was nothing in there that allowed us to prosecute anybody.

We then released over three and a half million pieces of paper, which the entire world can look at now and see if we got it wrong.

And I respectfully disagree with that statement.

We were ordered to do so by Congress and then by the President of the United States, and

And, and let me, you know, I said it on Friday.

This, this Justice Department, the FBI, dhs, we have gone after more sex traffickers, more child pornographers, more men who have done harm to children and young women than any administration in history.

And so we need to separate those two ideas.

The fact that there's the Epstein files and whether there's anybody we can go after, and

the work that we are doing every day, which is extraordinary, and we will continue to do that.

Among these new files is a list compiled by the FBI just in August of numerous salacious, and, to be really clear, unverified allegations about President Trump.

Why did the FBI create this list last year and have all of these claims been investigated by the doj?

So, look, it's not about President Trump.

It's about a ton of people, multiple, multiple, multiple people that, that were, quote, in the Epstein files.

And what I think folks will see when they review the materials we released is that there have been hundreds of calls made to the FBI where allegations are made by either anonymous individuals or people who are very quickly determined to not be credible, whether it's the nature of what they're saying or the fact they won't provide any information or corroboration.

Former CNN anchor Don Lemon and another journalist, Georgia Fort, were arrested on Friday on charges they violated federal law during a tense protest At a Minnesota church, a conservative federal judge, somebody who clerked for Antonin Scalia, already had rejected those warrants and wrote that there is no evidence that those two engaged in any criminal behavior or conspired to do so.

Then an appeals court held up that decision.

Why did you then bring this case to a grand jury after it already had been rejected by multiple judges?

So, first of all, that appeals court, that's you're not right.

The appeals court, a judge on the appeals court said that there was clearly probable cause.

There was absolutely probable cause that a crime had been committed.

And so, yes, you're right, a judge in that court had said there wasn't probable cause.

But guess what system doesn't allow judges to make that decision.

They can make that decision to get an arrest warrant on a complaint, but

We went to a grand jury, which, as you know, are 25 citizens from Minneapolis and around that decide whether there's probable cause.

Actually, I went through the entire indictment, all 29 alleged overt acts of conspiracy.

And there's a lot of to ask you about, but

Starting with overt act number 20, which says, quote, defendant Lemon told his livestream audience about congregants leaving the church and about a young man who Lemon could see was frightened, scared and crying.

And Lemon observed that the congregants reactions were understandable because the experience was traumatic and uncomfortable, which he said was the purpose.

Overt Act 21 says, quote, as the operation continued, defendant Lemon acknowledged the nature of it by expressing surprise that the police hadn't yet arrived at the church and admitted knowing that the whole point of the operation was to disrupt.

Why wouldn't a jury at trial see this as a journalist observing what is happening, which is protected by the first Amendment?

Well, you conveniently left out multiple allegations in that indictment about what else Mr.

Lemon did, including surreptitiously avoiding saying where they were going, being part of the planning, being part of the decisions to make sure the police didn't know this was happening and federal law enforcement didn't know this is happening.

He gets to have a lawyer and he gets to have a defense.

And so if he wants to go forward with the defense at shucks.

But obviously, as the indictment lays out and which you didn't read on the air, there's a lot of things that Mr.

Lemon did that you would never do as a journalist.

This is about what happened, and this is about kind of the rules of the road.

There are countless examples of when reporters are embedded with people with, you know, dod, where we are told not to tell anybody where we're going.

There are numerous examples of when we get embargoed information that we can't report from your agency, for example, and

that has happened on with presidents in both parties, and

we withhold reporting it until you say it's time to report it.

That's not unusual, and it's not unlike what happened with Don Lemon and Georgia Ford.

You are totally correct that that happens every day, and it's happened for decades.

And I do not want to have a trial right here, it's not fair to him.

If you watch the publicly available live streaming that he engaged in, the comments that he made, I mean, that's what it matters, right?

It matters like how do we balance the Face Act?

How do we balance freedom of religion and the right of people to worship on a Sunday morning, okay?

And the freedom of the press, and it's a balance that we have to engage in.

my point to you is that I promise you that neither you nor your colleagues can honestly, with a straight face, if you watch everything that he did the day before with the planning and the day of with what happened, the comments he made while the kids were crying and screaming and racing away while the parents were looking for their children upstairs, but

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Bash presses Deputy AG on Trump in Epstein files, Don Lemon arrest

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