NANCY CHEN:
00:01:11
Today's bipartisan news conference was organized by Republican Congressman Thomas Massie and Democratic Congressman Ro Khanna. They are working on a petition forcing a vote to compel the Justice Department into releasing all of the files in the Epstein case. CBS News Legal Reporter Katrina Kaufman joins us now with more on this. She's been following this story all day. And Katrina, this GOP-led panel subpoenaed the Justice Department for Epstein records. That was several weeks ago. And now we're learning that this latest batch is both heavily redacted and, most importantly, mostly already publicly available. So what are the political optics in play here? I mean, essentially, Nancy, this is not satisfying anyone. It's not satisfying Republicans who are asking for this to be released. It is not satisfying the Democrats. It is not satisfying the victims. As we just saw at that press conference earlier today, they want these files released. So optically, it just appears as though the Department of Justice is trying to give the appearance that they're complying with this request. This is supposed to be the first batch of files to be turned over. But as you said, these are all already mostly public. They are highly redacted. But it's also been said that 97% of the information in them was already out in the public. So it is not in any way satisfying this outcry that more information from these files be released.
NANCY CHEN:
00:02:37
Now, we played a few of the clips from earlier today. But Epstein accusers, they spoke publicly today, some for the very first time, about the abuse that they endured in this long, long wait for justice. What does justice look like for them at this point? Yeah, I mean, it was very powerful to hear them speaking today. They say that justice includes accountability. It includes all of these files being released. They do want their personal information to be redacted, but they want any names affiliated with Jeffrey Epstein and what he did out in the public. And what they say is that it should not be their responsibility to release these names. They know them. In fact, they announced today that they're planning to work with other survivors to compile their own list of people that they know were involved in all of this. But it's not yet clear if they will ever make that public. One of their lawyers did say that if someone wants to prosecute, they'll talk to them about it. But they feel it is the government's responsibility, Nancy. They say the government has these names. And in fact, they're scared. They could be sued. They could be attacked. And as someone put it at that press conference, who stood up for them the first time? One of the women also talked about listening to that recent interview between Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche and Ghislaine Maxwell. And she said that voice she heard, this polite voice, is the same coercive one that convinced her to go work for Jeffrey Epstein. In fact, she said, her voice that day was the same one that sent me off to a monster. And nothing can be believed from what she says. But she felt that there was no pushback from Todd Blanche that day. And so, yes, it was very powerful to hear them all speak. And what they want is justice and accountability, ultimately. Yeah, the trauma continues all these years later for so many of them. Katrina Kaufman, thank you very much.
