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Johnson Calls Epstein Files Release Vote "a Political Show Vote"; House Expected to Vote to Release Epstein Files; Epstein Survivors Urge Lawmakers to Vote to Release Files. Aired 10:30-11a ET

Aired November 18, 2025 - 10:30   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

[10:30:00]

REP. MIKE JOHNSON (R-LA), HOUSE SPEAKER: -- of the Oversight Committee that is doing that in a professional, robust manner, using the full subpoena authority of the U.S. Congress. From the very beginning, our side has been insistent that this matter must be handled very carefully and with utmost caution and care for the victims.

We want maximum transparency. We have always been about that. We want every single person who had any scintilla, if there's any scintilla of evidence, that they were involved in the Epstein evils, they need to be brought to justice, and it should have been done a long time ago. We need to find out who those people are. But in the meantime, you have to remember there are real people's, innocent people's lives at stake here, and young victims who don't want to be dragged into this political game because it could hurt further what they've already endured. They would be made to suffer more harm if Congress is not careful in what we're doing.

And unlike our very important work that's underway in the House Oversight Committee, the Democrat-led discharge petition would carelessly dump thousands of documents without proper protections for the innocent. I brought a chart in here this morning. I want to illustrate for you what we are concerned with.

Now, I was a federal court litigator. The members of our House Judiciary Committee, Republicans in particular, have many of these concerns. You have Chairman Jim Jordan and attorneys like Chip Roy, who's running for Attorney General of Texas now. You have Brad Knott, who's a former federal prosecutor. Many members on the committee. Andy Biggs is running for Governor of Arizona. They're lawyers, and they understand that the way the discharge petition was drafted is haphazard and dangerous. This is why we have been opposed to this point, OK?

And I could be here for a long time going through all the details of it, but the big concern we've all had all along is that the House bill, if it's passed in its current form and it was signed into law, it is dangerously flawed. And our problem and our frustration is there is no way for us in the House to amend it or correct these problems because the authors of the discharge will not allow it. And that's one of our great frustrations. Let me just very quickly, we have a legal document that the lawyers, we have all drafted to explain all this, but let me give you quick, quick, five quick, maybe the top five concerns about it, and there are more. But as drafted, the discharge petition, it fails to fully protect victim privacy.

I'm going to read you an excerpt out of our legal document we put together to explain all this. Congress should give the attorney general broader authority to redact all the victim information. The discharge doesn't do that. This would prevent the release of information that could be used to unmask victims who have chosen to remain anonymous.

Now, you have some very brave women who have come forward and put their names and faces out there and done press conferences and explained that justice is overdue and our hearts go out to them and they are heroes. But you have as many as a thousand women by some of the accounts who may be caught up in this. And the vast majority of them have not come forward, probably for obvious reasons. They don't want to be unmasked. But the discharge petition doesn't have adequate protections. It risks re-victimizing those who were trafficked and exploited. And the courts have recognized this concern, by the way.

I'll read you a quick excerpt. On August 20th of this year, Judge Richard Berman, the Southern District of New York, issued an order denying the DOJ's request to release Epstein grand jury materials, noting, quote, "Names and identifying information of victims appear in the subject materials," unquote. Judge Berman then quoted a letter related to the victim's concerns, which stated the following, quote, "Transparency cannot come at the expense of the very people whom the justice system is sworn to protect," unquote.

And importantly, the judge quoted a letter from one of the victims. In the proceeding, she is named as Jane Doe, too. She said this. This is one of the victims, quote, "I beg the court to make sure it is of the utmost priority that in any sort of release, all and every detail that could possibly reveal our identities be redacted." The victims of Epstein's evils deserve that protection, and the discharge does not currently provide. OK.

Number two, the discharge petition could create new victims. OK, because it requires the DOJ to release information, even in cases where the DOJ or the FBI has already reviewed it and determined it is not credible. It is false information.

Doing this and requiring this to come out could ruin the reputations of completely innocent people, such as those who have made may just have known Epstein, but knew nothing of his crimes or whose names he exploited. Think of this innocent people whose names he exploited and used to try to get close to his intended victims. Their names may be in these files and they had nothing to do with this.

And so, by just haphazardly releasing it, you're going to destroy their reputations. Releasing information containing the names of innocent people would subject those innocent people to a guilt by association. It would create an entirely new group of victims who have no means to clear their names. That's a concern of Congress, and it should be. It should be.

[10:35:00]

Number three, the discharge in its current form fails to prohibit the release of child sexual abuse materials. That is a term of art. It's called CSAM, OK? It's defined in the U.S. Code. The discharge is so haphazardly written, because remember, it's just a political exercise for these guys. They don't seem to care about this, but they cited the wrong section of the U.S. Code.

So, when they try -- when they say that they're, oh, we don't want child pornography to come out, child sexual abuse materials, of course, we don't want that released. They wrote this thing so quickly that they, they cited the wrong section. So, you know what that means? It means that it doesn't really bestow any real legal authority on the attorney general to redact those materials. And that would compel the DOJ to release that stuff into the public. Every single person in this room knows that's wrong, and you should stand against it. But that's what the discharge says.

Number four, it jeopardizes the future federal investigations of the United States. Why? Because the discharge only allows the attorney general to redact limited portions of records that could publicly identify individuals who were promised confidentiality. In this scenario, you're talking about whistleblowers. You're talking about confidential informants who came forward and gave information and evidence in exchange for agreeing to have their identities not revealed.

Violating confidentiality, imagine the chilling effect that that would have on future investigations. Who's going to want to come forward if they think Congress can take a political exercise and reveal their identities? Who's going to come talk to prosecutors? It's very dangerous. It would deter future whistleblowers and informants. And, and the release of that could also publicly reveal the identity, by the way, of undercover law enforcement officers who are, are working in future operations. Dangerous stuff. And they seem not to care.

And by the way, I'm going to remind you again, we went to the authors, we asked the authors of discharge to change this, and they said, jump on the Potomac. All right.

Number five, national security concerns. OK, the discharge requires the Attorney General to release within 30 days, quote, "classified information to the maximum, maximum extent possible." This ignores the principle that declassification should always rest, and always has rested, with the agency that originated the intelligence. Why? So, that they can protect their critical sources and methods. It is incredibly dangerous to demand that officials or employees of the DOJ declassify materials that originated in other agencies, in intelligence agencies.

I could go on. I won't be here all morning, but there's a lot of problems. There's also a whole -- a lot of legal scholars, and I'm among them, who are concerned that you've got problems with, with grand jury secrecy. We know rule 6E of the Federal Rules of Criminal Procedure prohibits the release of grand jury materials, but the way the discharge is drafted, you can make an argument that it requires all that to come out, and that is a serious problem.

Grand juries are not adversarial. OK, there's no opportunity there for cross-examination. You can't disprove evidence. You can't challenge the evidence in any way, and if Congress goes in and breaks that seal, and just starts releasing sensitive grand jury materials and allegations like that, it raises a risk that the grand jury process will be politicized in the future, and that's a whole other danger that we could talk about all day.

I'm going to wrap this up and just say that Republicans support maximum transparency. We always have. The president of the United States supports maximum transparency. You've heard him say it in his own words, but he has had the same concerns that I've just articulated here, and we've talked about that. All of us have had these concerns, and we understand that we have a responsibility to innocent people and victims that is not properly guarded by the discharge petition, and that's why we're so incensed about that.

We've got to make sure that we disclose the names of anybody who aided or conspired in any way with Jeffrey Epstein, but at the same time, you've got to make sure that innocent people are protected. We, we have to do this in a way that doesn't violate victim privacy, that doesn't create new victims, that doesn't disclose the names of any whistleblower or informant, that causes the release of grand jury materials or child sexual abuse materials or undermines our national security. And I think everybody of good conscience and common sense would say, of course, of course you have to do that. But here we are.

So, the discharge petition got its 218th signature, and it is going to go forward. It is going to pass because it only takes 218. And we know that the Democrats have disregarded all these concerns and they're going to move it forward anyway. So, all the people of good conscience here say we've registered our concerns. We stated our opposition as long as possible, but we're also for maximum transparency.

So, what am I to do as a leader in a situation like this? I call my counterpart in the Senate, Leader Thune, and I talked him through this with him and shared our deep concerns. And of course, they share those concerns as well.

[10:40:00]

And so, I'm very confident that when this moves forward in the process, if and when it is processed in the Senate, which there's no certainty that that will be, that they will take the time methodically to do what we're very confident that when this moves forward in the process, if and when it is processed in the Senate, which there's no certainty that that will be, that they will take the time methodically to do what we have not been allowed to do in the House, to amend this discharge petition and to make sure that these protections are there. The authors of the discharge did not allow us to do that here. That's the rules here, but in the Senate, they can correct it.

So, under that circumstance, because of that, we know there's serious deficiencies. We know that the work of our colleagues in the Senate can address that and will. They're very conscientious and concerned as we are about all this. As we've insisted from the very beginning, Republicans are the only party trying to make a material difference in ensuring maximum transparency.

Oh, by the way, I'll just tell you, I put the bill on the floor for unanimous consent last Wednesday night. And guess who objected to it? The Democrats, OK? If they were so -- if this is so urgent and they were so concerned about getting this done and seeing justice be done and all that, they would not have blocked the request, OK? This is about politics. They blocked our unanimous consent motion to expedite their bill and, and made us waste all this additional time so they could have a show vote today.

Republicans are ready to get the job done, to move forward so we can continue to get on to these important issues of dealing with what the American people demand and deserve for us to deal with. And so, I want to leave you with this thought, everybody should think long and hard about who here is acting truthfully, honestly, and in good faith. It is not the Democrat Party that has obfuscated and blatantly lied for the last four years about all these things. It is not the Democrats who shut down the government for their own selfish political purposes. It is not the Democrats who blocked the passage of this discharge a week ago because they wanted to have a political moment. It is the Republicans who are acting in good faith, and I believe the American people are going to see that and understand it.

I'm going to vote to move this forward. I think it could be close to a unanimous vote because everybody here, all the Republicans, want to go on record to show there's a maximum transparency, but they also want to note that we're demanding that this stuff get corrected before it is ever moves through the process and is completed.

I sincerely hope my Democrat colleagues will show the same level of urgency and enthusiasm when it comes to tackling the real issues facing the country that we got to get to, and that's what we really wanted to talk about this morning. Affordability issues are real and the Democrats themselves created the crisis.

Remember over the last four years of the Biden administration, they spent like drunken sailors, and when you throw a bunch of new money into the system, it makes inflation rise, right? Republicans are ready and eager to continue our work to clean up the mess that the Democrats made. We've been doing that already and we're going to continue to do it. Joining the leadership team this morning to discuss our record- setting success and our continued efforts to bring back affordability to lower the cost of living --

PAMELA BROWN, CNN ANCHOR: All right. You've been listening to Speaker Johnson. He just pivoted to affordability, but before that you heard him talk about the upcoming vote to release the Epstein files. He called that a political show vote. He said that Democrats have been sitting on these files for the last four years during the Biden administration and that this is all political.

We should note that that this is a bipartisan effort. We just saw there on Capitol Hill, Republican Congressman Massie, Congresswoman Greene as well. You heard there though, Speaker Johnson saying that he does not believe this legislation goes far enough to protect people who are innocent and protect the survivors. We heard Congressman Massie say that that is a red herring.

I want to bring in Arlette Saenz. Just to put this into context, how unusual this is hearing the Speaker of the House rail against legislation that he is likely going to vote for according to our reporting and that the President himself has said he will sign.

ARLETTE SAENZ, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Yes, Pam, House Speaker Mike Johnson said that he would vote in favor of releasing the Jeffrey Epstein file, saying that he sees some flaws in this measure, but also that the Republican Party stands for transparency, but it is a remarkable reversal.

When you think about the fact that House Speaker Mike Johnson had worked to delay and even prevent this vote from happening for months, you'll remember back over the summer, the House went into recess early to avoid a vote on such a discharge petition. He then delayed the swearing-in of Arizona Congresswoman Adelita Grijalva, who was the 218th signature needed to get this discharge petition to force a vote on the House floor on releasing the Epstein files. But now Johnson says he is on board with this measure. It comes just a few days after President Donald Trump also reversed his position saying that he supports this measure, even though he had hoped that it never would not come up for a vote on the House floor.

Now, in his remarks, Johnson said that he does expect or predicts that the vote on this could be unanimous, all Democrats and Republicans coming together to push this through the House floor. But he also railed against Democrats saying that they could have released the Jeffrey Epstein investigation files back when they were in control of the White House and in control of Congress. That is one of the reasons that he points to this as being a point of political theater in the House.

[10:45:00]

But there's big questions about what happens next once it passes the House. Johnson has said that he spoke with Senate Majority Leader John Thune about wanting to see some changes, for instance, trying to ensure that the victim's names and identities are fully protected. But it's still unclear if and when Thune will bring this up for a vote in the Senate.

What supporters of this bill in the House are hoping is that having an overwhelming majority support for this measure will pressure the Senate to act and pass the bill and send it to President Donald Trump's desk.

BROWN: All right. Arlette Signs, live for us from Capitol Hill. A lot going on there today, Arlette. Thanks so much. Wolf.

WOLF BLITZER, CNN ANCHOR: And it's interesting. Yesterday, President Trump said he supports this legislation, this discharge position, and he would sign it into law if it passes the House, then the Senate, and comes to the White House, he would sign it. We didn't hear him express any of these concerns that the House Speaker just expressed in great detail just a few minutes ago.

BROWN: Right. But he had -- it was a sort of incredible pivot from the President, Wolf, because previously he had said, any Republicans who do vote for it, that they are weak. It is foolish. And then --

BLITZER: But he flipped yesterday.

BROWN: Then he flipped and it was an extraordinary flip because it is a dynamic where you have Republicans in Congress basically pressuring the president rather than the other way around, which is highly unusual.

BLITZER: Yes, I want to speak to James Marsh right now.

BROWN: I think James Marsh actually -- oh, OK, go ahead.

BLITZER: James Marsh is an attorney representing some of the Epstein survivors. James, thanks very much for being patient, listening to what's going on. I want to get your reaction, first of all, to what we just heard from the House Speaker, Mike Johnson.

JAMES MARSH, ATTORNEY REPRESENTING SURVIVORS OF JEFFREY EPSTEIN: Yes, you know, it's really disingenuous at this last moment in this whole process for the speaker to, you know, come to Jesus. It's sort of -- I grew up as evangelical. He's an evangelical, sort of like finding the Lord after the rapture. You know, it's too late. It's happening. It's been taken out of his hands and justice is moving forward.

So, these are all disingenuous concerns. I mean, my clients, the victims in this, have been demanding accountability for decades through every administration, Democrat and Republican. This is not about the last four years, it's about the last 40 years.

And to now show this concern for the victims and all of these technicalities after all this time has passed and after the obstructionism that has come from the leadership of the House, that is falling on deaf ears. And I think the American people are smart enough to realize that it's a little bit too much, too little, too late in this process for him to now be, you know, protecting the victims.

BROWN: So, you do represent some of the survivors. What do you see to his argument, though, that the vast majority of survivors have not come out publicly and that releasing these files could harm people who don't want to be part of this, who don't want to be publicly acknowledged, and it could harm innocent people? What do you say to that?

MARSH: Absolutely. I mean, nobody has stood up for victims more than me and my law firm over the last 20 years. You know, filing under pseudonyms, redacting documents. That's a lot of what we do here. So, that is not a process that should, you know, stop the release of the files. Absolutely. We want victims' names redacted. We want a process whereby the victims in the files could be notified and elect to have their names released or remain sealed.

Here's the bigger concern. My client, Maria Farmer, who reported Jeffrey Epstein in 1996, we have her FBI file. It is 80 percent redacted. 80 percent of it is blacked out, her FBI file. So, let's start there. Let's start with her file. 80 percent of that file is not the names of victims, right? 80 percent of that file contains other things in the government records. And now, that we've begun to see all of the information about all of the, quote/unquote, "Democrats that are in the files and being investigated in the emails," we want to know who in the government was facilitating and enabling and ignoring Jeffrey Epstein. That's what the victims want to know.

What did the people in charge of the FBI, the NSA, the CIA, whoever was involved here, what did they know and when did they know it and why didn't the government take official action? And that's what's in Maria Farmer's file, 80 percent redacted. Not --

BROWN: Let me just follow up with you on that. I'm just wondering because you heard Speaker Johnson say that this is a political show vote and he said, look, Democrats were in power for four years, they never released these files. I'm wondering if you put the same onus on Democrats as you are on Speaker Johnson and other Republicans.

MARSH: Oh, absolutely. There's onus on everyone going back to the Clinton administration. I mean through five administrations this has not been taken seriously. There have been no meaningful investigations of all of the other people that facilitated Jeffrey Epstein.

[10:50:00]

And as early as 1996 when Maria Farmer made her call, I don't even know who was in charge back then, Clinton, she made a call to the FBI to report Jeffrey Epstein. At the time he was under investigation, by the federal government, Southern District of New York, DOJ and SEC for facilitating one of the largest financial crimes in American history with Tower Financial. He was known to law enforcement 30, 40 years ago. He was also prosecuted by the Southern District of New York for a lease that he had on a State Department townhouse. There's extensive litigation on that.

So, to pretend that Jeffrey Epstein appeared on the scene 10, 15 years ago, no, he appeared on the scene in the 1990s. He was very well known to federal law enforcement then and throughout the next 30 or 40 years. So, that is what we need to get to in the release of these files. We need to go back to the '90s, the 2000s, through every administration, Democrat and Republican, to find out who was enabling Jeffrey Epstein and why one of the most notorious financial criminals in American history was allowed to launder billions of dollars through the banking system. Those questions need to be asked. That's within Speaker Johnson's purview. That's within congressional purview and the federal government. What did the government know and why were they covering up so long?

So, I have very serious concerns about these -- you know, these exceptions for national security and foreign affairs. That may be what's in the files and we need to see that. BLITZER: So, bottom line right now, very briefly, James Marsh, you represent these Epstein survivors, what do they want to see happen today and tomorrow in the House and then the Senate and then when it goes to the White House?

MARSH: They want to move this process along expeditiously without further delays, without further excuses, without further technicalities. To have this bill, you know, trapped in the Senate now for, you know, 30, 60, 90 days past Christmas into the next year, into the next crisis, to have Trump sit on it for another 60 days before he signs it. Maybe he'll veto it. Maybe it'll go back. We're talking about a year-long process and then using the excuse of redactions and national security, you know, we're going to have another six months of delays, possible prosecutions. We need this bill moved, passed and signed before the end of the year.

BLITZER: All right. James Marsh, thanks very much for joining us. And we'll be right back with more news.

MARSH: Thanks for your coverage.

BLITZER: Thank you.

MARSH: Thank you for covering this.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[10:55:00]

BROWN: Well, new this morning, the popular online gaming platform Roblox announced an age verification tool aimed at better protecting its 150 million users, one-third of whom are under the age of 13. Children will soon have to verify their ages if they want to chat on Roblox by providing a government ID or by letting an artificial intelligence age estimation feature photograph their face.

Now, this move comes as the platform faces several lawsuits alleging Roblox enables sexual predators to connect with and abuse children. Roblox is also launching a new safety website for parents.

Joining us now to discuss this in the Situation Room is the founder and CEO of Roblox, David Baszucki. Thank you so much for coming on, David. So, you're a founder. This was founded in 2004. Since then, as you well know, there have been numerous cases of people convicted after using Roblox to harm kids. Now, your company faces lawsuits alleging negligence and wrongful death. What do you say to the parents who argue this safety effort is too little too late?

DAVID BASZUCKI, FOUNDER AND CEO, ROBLOX: Hey, thank you for having me on and I do want to share ever since we started, we've had safety and civility as our top priority and we've been innovating constantly. What we're here sharing today is we're really introducing what we believe will be the new gold standard for safety and civility on the internet.

We're the first major gaming platform and really major social platform to lean into knowing the estimated age of everyone on our platform. We're going to use A.I. to do a facial age check for everyone on Roblox who uses communication. And I want to highlight that this goes hand in hand with a lot of other things we do on Roblox. We filter all the text, we don't allow image sharing, we monitor everything for critical harms. So, we continue really to believe we want to innovate and lead into the future of safety on the internet.

BROWN: And you say safety is priority. I want to just get your response to what the National Center on Sexual Exploitation has said. It has said Roblox is a, quote, "mainstream contributor to sexual exploitation." So, I want to get your response to that and also what you would say to those who might be concerned about workarounds of this age verification feature.

BASZUCKI: Yes, we would reject that description. You know, every day over 150 million people come to or users come to people on Roblox and they have amazing experiences. They learn, they communicate with their friends, they get interested in STEM and it's an enormous responsibility for us at Roblox. It's why we built safety into the platform. It's why we know a lot of parents don't have the time to work with their kids. So, we have to build safety in by default. And it's why we have a history really of innovating almost every few weeks with new safety innovations.

So, we're really optimistic what we're going to do today and what we're introducing over the next few months will become the standard really knowing the age of everyone and complementing that with some of the things we do like no image sharing.

BROWN: I want to play what one mom suing Roblox after her teenage son's death by suicide told me last month.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

BECCA DALLAS, SUING ROBLOX AFTER SON'S DEATH: Ethan loved gaming. That was his favorite thing to do. We put the parental controls. We talked to my son about the dangers. Don't click any links. Don't trust basically anybody. If you have any questions, please feel, you know, safe enough to come tell us. Just we wanted to be -- we were up front with him because of the dangers of anything out there, viruses and let alone little did we think this would happen to our child, a predator, somebody would reach out to my son.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BROWN: Obviously, these new rules can't bring back kids like Ethan. But what is your message to her and other parents who blame Roblox as a vehicle for their child being harmed? And do you think at a certain point a parent just has to accept there could be --

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