Jamie Raskin Flails After Host Corners Him on Why Dems Didn't Care About the Epstein Files Until Now
MSNBC “Morning Joe” host Joe Scarborough, in a moment of honest journalism, pressed Democratic Rep. Jamie Raskin of Maryland on his party’s sudden push to release the Jeffrey Epstein files, when his coalition had the power to do so as recently as January.
Raskin, who sits on the House Judiciary Committee, and his Democrat colleagues want members of President Donald Trump’s Justice Department to testify about the matter, Politico reported Tuesday.
Further, Democratic Rep. Ro Khanna of California offered an amendment to GOP-backed legislation that received a vote on Monday night which would have required the Justice Department to release the files within 30 days. The amendment was voted down.
Scarborough asked Raskin on Thursday morning, “But, congressman, you could’ve gotten that from [2021] to [2025] when Democrats controlled the DOJ. It was a crisis then. It’s a crisis now. Why didn’t Democrats call for it from ’21 to ’25?”
When asked why Democrats didn’t show any interest in Epstein when they controlled the DOJ from 2021-2025 Jamie Raskin gets exposed as a complete fraud.
REP. JAMIE RASKIN: “So, uh…the, I mean… you have to go back, uh… and look specifically at uh… particular prosecutorial… pic.twitter.com/lyxOFTBOtM
— Charlie Kirk (@charliekirk11) July 17, 2025
Raskin hemmed and hawed a bit and then responded, “You have to go back and look specifically at particular prosecutorial decisions and what was taking place in terms of the other cases.”
“So, I don’t know,” he then admitted. “We could try to reconstruct that record, but the point is that Donald Trump is the one who has led the crusade to say that Epstein, who was his very close friend, and there’s all kinds of pictures of them and so on, that Epstein was at the center of this broad conspiracy.”
Raskin continued, “He’s now in a position to do exactly what he demanded which is to release all of the files. And so, why is that not happening? That’s the question. I can’t answer for Merrick Garland or anybody else in the Department of Justice.”
So basically, he engaged in a bunch of blame-shifting, pointing to Trump and Garland for failing to get it done.
White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt addressed the controversy on Thursday when asked which part of the Epstein files the president was referring to when he said it was a “hoax.”
“The president is referring to the fact that Democrats have now seized on this, as if they ever wanted transparency when it comes to Jeffrey Epstein,” Leavitt said.
“The Democrats had control of this building, the White House, for four years, and they didn’t do a dang thing when it came to transparency in regards to Jeffrey Epstein and his heinous crimes,” she continued.
Leavitt said that Trump had directed the review of the files in the first place, which was conducted by Attorney General Pam Bondi, FBI Director Kash Patel, and Deputy FBI Director Dan Bongino.
She recounted that they put their findings in a memo, which claimed in part that there is no Epstein client list.
Jacqui Heinrich: “Which part of the [Jeffrey] Epstein hoax is the hoax part?”
Karoline Leavitt: “The Democrats had control of this building, the White House, for four years, and they didn’t do a dang thing when it came to transparency in regards to Jeffrey Epstein and his… pic.twitter.com/3V8shqlmg0
— RedWave Press (@RedWave_Press) July 17, 2025
In a since-deleted tweet, billionaire Elon Musk alleged in June after he came out strongly against the “Big Beautiful Bill” that Trump was in the Epstein files.
However, CNBC reported in 2020 that Trump revoked Epstein’s Mar-a-Lago membership in the 2000s after he harassed a member’s 14-year-old daughter. Trump then ended his friendship with him.
Epstein’s banishment from Mar-a-Lago came months before he pleaded guilty in 2008 to Florida state charges of soliciting prostitution and soliciting prostitution of a minor.
Further, Epstein’s former attorney, David Schoen, responded to Musk’s allegation against Trump by saying, “I was hired to lead Jeffrey Epstein’s defense as his criminal lawyer 9 days before he died. He sought my advice for months before that.”
I was hired to lead Jeffrey Epstein’s defense as his criminal lawyer 9 days before he died. He sought my advice for months before that. I can say authoritatively, unequivocally, and definitively that he had no information to hurt President Trump. I specifically asked him!
— David Schoen (@SchoenDavid) June 6, 2025
“I can say authoritatively, unequivocally, and definitively that he had no information to hurt President Trump. I specifically asked him!”
Others, including Tucker Carlson, have pointed out that if there were evidence that Trump was in the Epstein files, surely the Biden Justice Department would have used it to undermine the Republican candidate’s chances of returning to the White House.
Trump himself asked in a Truth Social post last week, “Why didn’t these Radical Left Lunatics release the Epstein Files? If there was ANYTHING in there that could have hurt the MAGA Movement, why didn’t they use it?”
Scarborough is to be commended for putting the key question to Raskin: Why the sudden interest in the Epstein files’ release?
It’s clearly all political.
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