You had a piece which you just released saying in short, I'm paraphrasing, you'll tell us more specifically, that the Trump administration may be able to avoid the worst of the Epstein revelations. What do you mean by that? >> Well, there are two ways they can do this. My column was about one of them, that DC report. Um, federal law makes it contraband to even look at a picture of an adult having sex with a minor. And so, it's possible that the Justice Department may argue we have either destroyed or we cannot turn over uh various images, both video and stills, because of this law, which I quote in the piece with a link. You can go read it. Um, and the important issue here is they're going to try to find ways to minimize what gets released. Uh, the other option for this, and and it's not inconsistent with it, is to say, well, uh, we can't release this because the law says that so long as there's an active criminal investigation underway, we don't have to produce any of this evidence. That's why Trump has called for investigating Bill Clinton and Lawrence Summers. the former president of Harvard and former Treasury Secretary. Um, and there is reason to think that there's stuff there based on what Lawrence Larry Summers just did. Uh, Larry just withdrew basically from public life and said he's embarrassed. If Larry Summers laid a hand on any underage girl who's uh although the law is 18, let's grant a little slack, somebody can lie or appear to be older. uh 16 or younger, uh he should be absolutely ruined in public life forever and and uh uh have no forgiveness about this. Um especially because he could have, if that's the case, come forward a long time ago and said, "Do you realize what they're doing at the Epstein properties?" >> Now, we don't know that. I want to be very clear. It could be that he just knows there's other things that will be embarrassing that none of which are illegal or dubious. But the um the pressure is on for Trump. Uh and they're if if they release everything that the witnesses have said exists, the victims say exists, I don't see any way out for Trump. And if they think, well, we'll just say that there are no photographs or videotapes of grown men engaged in sex acts with the 12, 13, 14 year old girls. The problem with that is that the litigants lawyers have seen the evidence. >> Y >> they will know if they're lying. Um and so will so will young women, some of whom have testified under oath, that yes, I was photographed or videotaped while I was being raped. And and that's by the way the important word to use here. I was floored that the New York Times referred to Jeffrey Epstein either yesterday or the day before as a disgraced Finn and Seir. No, he is a convicted child rapist. Let's not sugarcoat this in any way. There's no indication he's any kind of expert on finance. The notion that he is an expert um I'm very confident will be shown by a complete disclosure of the records to be nonsense. Uh he was running an extortion rackup. uh he would get men in compromising positions and maybe some women for all we know. But he get men in compromising positions, have evidence of them, and then suddenly some of these people would be turning over to him tens of millions and in one case hundreds of millions of dollars plus that mo the most expensive house in Manhattan. Um and you know, think about that. If you had $20 billion and could go to jail for the rest of your life, how much would you pay Jeffrey Epstein to protect you? >> Mhm. Mhm. Professor Johnston, I always wonder, and you kind of touched upon this, we have what, and I referred to this earlier in the show before you came on, that we have kind of a backup or a backs stop to the lies or any type of changes by the Trump administration because of the lawyers and also the victims. Could you foresee a situation where independent of what the government releases, we would have then the lawyers coming forward with with with very graphic depictions of what is in their possession. >> Typically in a case as sprawling and massive as this, there will be documents in other places. There will be third parties and maybe fourth and fifth parties who have various pieces of the pie. And so I I won't be the least bit surprised uh if for example we find out that uh one of the young women snatched a CD ROM uh because this was back in the era of CD ROMs and has a copy of it and that there will be impeachment of people who claim oh no that's everything. Um the the Justice Department is going to have a very tough needle to thread if they aren't honest about what is there and what is not. And the estate has the right of the return of the evidence taken in the when the FBI executed executed search warrants at the five properties uh owned by Jeffrey Epstein where FBI agents went. uh when you conduct such a uh a raid or execution of a search warrant, you have to give the party a uh inventory of what you took. And it has to be a complete enough inventory that a reasonable person could figure out what it is. Now, they certainly could say, you know, one box containing 142 sleeved CDROMs, uh but if they want to withhold a particular picture and say this is contraband, we can't give it to you. Uh, I would argue that a I'm sorry, members of Congress are not the puran interest we're worried about protecting here from child pornography. They're no different than the detectives and prosecutors who in order to do their jobs would have to look at the images. You can't prosecute someone if you haven't looked at the image if you're going to accuse them of having contraband of adults and children in sex acts. Um secondly uh well for the moment Donald Trump has a personal law firm called the US Department of Justice. >> Yes >> if we get out of this and that's still an if but if we get out of this and restore democracy that will not always be true. And so people like Pam Bondi who are feeling full of themselves right now and Cash Patel, they should be thinking about the future if things don't work out just the way they want. Uh because they'll be very vulnerable. Um, you know, we've seen one uh Navy admiral uh resign and resign early for what's pretty clearly from other officers who know this person and what they have put out uh because he felt the orders to um murder people on the boats were illegal and uh officers of course have no defense by saying I was following orders. Uh, I'm sure the Justice Department and lawyers for the military have um legal documents saying, "Oh, no, no, we can kill these people. Here's why we can kill them, and here's our legal theory." Uh, if you think that's a flimsy theory, you think it's about as uh substantial as wet toilet paper, then don't follow the order and let them fire you or choose to resign as a matter of principle. But don't follow illegal orders. Never follow an illegal order, especially if you're an officer. Since you've only taken an oath to the Constitution, not to follow the orders of the president. You haven't taken Let me clean that up. I'm sorry. Your oath is only to defend the Constitution. You do not take the oath that grunts and sailors take to also always follow the order of the president. Uh the only thing I would disagree with you with is although there may be some legal exposure for folks like Pam Bondi and Cash Patel, if the past is prologue, then we know that President Trump will take care of those people on some level. If he's going to pardon 1500 January 6th people, he's going to pardon Cash Patel and Pam Bondi. I would have to imagine. >> Yeah, I I I agree with you about that. I think that's one of the reasons that people like Cash Patel and Pam Bondi are are are feeling their oats. Greg Bavino. >> Yes. >> Um and Trump almost certainly will issue large pardons as he's done already. He's done pardons now for sexual predators, for major money launderers, for drug traffickers. You know, we have to kill people in boats a thousand miles away from the United States because we think they have drugs on them. But, oh, I'm going to pardon these major drug dealers. Uh, because this is not doesn't have anything to do with protecting Americans from fentanyl and other drugs. This is about demonstrating that you are invincible. That's what dictators have to do. I can do anything. Trump says, I have a article two that says I can do anything I want. Says nothing of the kind. But for him to dictate, he has to take that position. he has to take actions that are absolutely illegal and go, "Yeah, try and do something about it." Well, that can happen. But even if he's impeached and there's going to be a conviction, he'll have a window to pardon people. >> Yeah. What did you make of the recent Epstein vote in the House? Uh 427 yes, one nay, five ex abstensions. Does is there any political jeopardy for any of these votes one way or the other? >> Yeah, Mo Kelly, I think this is a very good indication that people should pay close attention to. Donald Trump is not strong. He is weak. He is only strong to the extent that we say, "Yeah, I don't care. Uh, I'm not going to take the trouble to vote. I'm not going to go demonstrate. Uh, whatever. It's not part of my life. It's irrelevant." That's where he gets his strength. Um, you're seeing the MAGA movement split now. And basically the issue that's splitting them is pedophiles, protecting pedophiles. >> Um, and after all, it was Donald Trump who said, "I'm going to release all the Epstein files," which makes his current position pretty hard for even someone with a limited education and critical thinking skills to square. Uh, his argument, it's all a hoax. That doesn't ring, I think, with anybody with half a brain. and his efforts to say, "Well, let's look at Bill Clinton and Larry Summers." Well, hey, let's go look at Bill Clinton and Larry Summers. I mean, if you're in the Epstein materials and you are an adult and you raped a child, we may not be able to prosecute you, but there's absolutely no reason for you to continue to have a respectable position in American society. Absolutely none. And uh when Thomas Massie uh Republican from Kentucky who is MAGA but not a Trumper, if that makes sense. It may seem a little hard, but he believes in the the arguments of MAGA uh on economics and immigration but not Trump. >> He and Roana have put together quite a formidable number. And if you're a Republican, the least bit worried in the House of Representatives that you might face a tough election in 26 and particularly a tough election over the Epstein files. Yeah. Once you know that there are 218 votes, a majority by vote of one to uh push the discharge petition to make the files public, uh would the smart move would be to vote to release them. It's not going to hurt you at that point. Whereas staying the other side that could hurt you. >> I know you can't and I can't predict what is going to happen. But if we were to try to look at the extremes of what could happen, what could this Epstein revelation lead to? Are we talking about a time where this president could actually be impeached or removed or no? Well, he certainly I I would be absolutely floored if he were impeached by the current Congress given that the Democrats are the minority. I wouldn't exclude the possibility of it though. We don't know how bad this will get >> and what will be out there. Um but if we get a a significant Democratic majority in the House and you know we've had elections in the last 25 years with a 40 vote swing in the House from one party to the other. Um, I would expect the Democrats would go to work on impeaching Trump and Bondi and others. Um, then the question is the Senate and what would happen in the Senate. And the Senate's a much more stable body, six-year terms, only a third are up every two years. Uh, so the volume of outcome and the volume of what are interpreted to be anti-Trump votes in 2026 would have a major impact on how the Senate would act. Uh right now there are uh 54 or 53 Republican senators out of a hundred. So they have a clear majority and you need 67 to convict upon impeachment. And by the way, I I'm surprised how many people don't know this, but from some other appearances I've made, um there is no appeal to the Supreme Court if you're convicted upon impeachment. There is no appeal from impeachment. Just read your constitution, folks. It says sole power. S O L E. sole power means no one can question what's been done and if you are impeached you are still subject to criminal prosecution. So, a lot of things are are going to happen, but I I think the next big thing to look for is do they release all of the files? And I'll be floored if they do that. I'll be very surprised if they're candid about that. Uh and and then if they do, it's going to take some time. there. You're looking at hundreds of thousands of pages of documents. Several journalists, mostly at rather minor places, have been going through the 23,000 pages from the Epstein estate, what we call the Epstein files are Department of Justice records. >> Mhm. >> But the Epstein estate records that were released. And even there, they found some really interesting things suggesting uh serious money laundering, corruption, uh serious other criminal activity. Now, all of it's passed what's called the statute of limitations. You can't prosecute for it anymore. Uh the only major crime for which there's no statute of limitations is murder. >> Yeah. >> So, if if you know, grown men are are shown in this to have been raping children, they can't be prosecuted today for that. But that doesn't mean we shouldn't know about what's going on. And we also should wake up the public once we get these records to Jeffrey Epstein may be the biggest, the most aggressive man like this, but he is not unique. He is not an anomaly. He's not a unicorn. Uh we know that there's a fair amount of this that goes on in in Europe. Uh you may remember if a few maybe 10 years ago now that the uh former French foreign minister big world banking figure was arrested on a rape charge of a a maid in a Manhattan hotel when he was in the US and his defense was well hey in France you know like my friends would pay somebody to pretend they're a maid or they'd pay the maid to have sex with me. So, I just thought this was sort of a routine uh French elite sex game. And that that should tell you a lot about that Jeffrey Epstein is not some unusual character. He's unusual, but he's not unique. >> That actually leads me into my next question because I wonder whether there would be any type of international repercussions. We had MBS who was in the White House today. Is there anything which would make President Trump toxic toxic enough where it could um um I'll say uh impact relationships in at least in the Western world? >> Well, if clear evidence is established that some of the boats that we hit with um weapons of war and killed everyone were in fact murders, then Trump would be subject to prosecution by the International Court of Justice. Now, we don't recognize that court in the Netherlands, >> but that's the court that's issued arrest warrants for BB Netanyahu for war crimes and for um Vladimir Putin. And you won't see Putin go to any country where he's at risk of being arrested. General Pinocha, who led the overthrow of the Yende government in Chile more than 50 years ago, uh he was subject to arrest and he was held for a bit um uh because of this. And so I think yeah, there's a distinct possibility Trump could become an international pariah who cannot leave the United States. Gee, what a horrible thing a fate to have. You can't leave the United States. >> Professor Johnston, uh, there are so many >> Oh, just David. Just David. >> Okay, David. There are so many aspects to this and I'm not sure how desperate this president is and I don't know what that level of desperation may mean for you and me. You mentioned like for example Venezuela. I don't know if it's only Venezuela. It could be any number of uh issues going on in and around the world that Trump may use to deflect or distract from what's going on in the Epstein files. How concerned should we be as citizens, as lay people about the level of desperation of Donald Trump? >> Oh, Donald, whom I've known and covered for 37 years and I've spent many, many, many hours with, uh, he is in a panic mode. That's, I think, eminently clear. Um, and combine that with the clear cognitive decline that we're seeing going on as you can evidence from not just his word salad, which has been around a while, but his inability to walk a straight line. >> Mh. >> Um, uh, which is a a significant sign, and we're not talking about minor variations about zigzag patterns when he walks. All of those say that Donald's in a in an absolute panic. He's been posting things on Truth Social that actually hurt him. Uh where he claims, for example, um he just claimed the other day that something was rigged and it was during his administration that that rigging would have occurred. He's he's not thinking clearly enough to separate his four years from the rest of the time. We now have um an enormous flotillaa of navy and marine uh combatants off the coast of Venezuela. They're in international waters to be sure. >> Uh the Gerald R. Ford, the world's biggest warship uh the new class of aircraft carriers has been brought back from the Mediterranean and it's I believe now arrived in in that area. Uh we have uh military aircraft that can launch fighter planes, uh helicopters, and landing craft if they want to invade Venezuela. And what a good way to deflect American attention to pull out old American let's go invade somebody in Latin America as a a trick to do this. Mhm. >> Um without any authorization by the way only uh under our constitution Congress has the sole power to declare war. Presidents can respond to threats. I don't see a shred of evidence, not a cintilla of evidence that uh there is a military threat to us from Venezuela. Uh but that doesn't mean Trump won't claim there is. And then we would have we would find out very quickly if Congress has become an irrelevancy. Is it the Duma of America? The Duma is the you know make it appear you have a a parliament in Russia that just does what the dictator says to do. Uh with minor exceptions to prove that they don't always do what the dictator wants. Mhm. >> Uh but I'd be very very concerned that we're going to have American boys uh and with Pete Hexf all boys, not any women uh being sent into combat in Venezuela, which don't forget Venezuela has the world's largest proven oil reserves. Um OPEC is a part Venezuela is part of OPEC. Uh Venezuela should be a wealthy country. It's not, which tells you how corrupt it is. But there's no there's no grounds to invade. And there's no significant evidence, by the way, of drug trafficking from Venezuela. That's not where the drugs are coming from, according to the government's own data during the first and second Trump administration, as well as every other administration. Venezuela is just not a major player here. >> I know your time with us is limited, David. I want to make sure that we respect that. I want to end our conversation with this question. We know that there have been names like Elon Musk and also I think Peter Teal, correct me if I'm wrong, others who have been connected and Congresswoman Stacy Plask have been connected on some level as far as communication with Jeffrey Epstein. Are we getting ready to have our minds blown with the number of sitting members of Congress who might have been connected to him on some level? >> M Kelly, that's a really good question that has not been asked very much. Uh so I'm glad you brought that up. First important thing to recognize is that extortionists don't compromise everybody. uh they want to show that they are invincible like dictators. They want to show they're very closely connected. You mess with me, you might have to mess with the president of the United States. Ah >> so there are a lot of people who Epstein has uh inserted himself into their lives in some ways or drawn them into him in some way who haven't done anything wrong at all. And we have to be very careful to draw that distinction. And that distinction you're not going to see drawn very well by Fox and the New York Post and Breitbart and uh other quote unquote news organizations that are really propaganda outlets uh and professional liars. Um that said, there's every reason to think that a number of people are going to be really damaged, including potentially some members of Congress, by what's in the Justice Department's Epstein files. And um there's going to be so many threads to this. People are going to have a hard time following them. Journalists are going to have a hard time following them because there are so many threads. Uh this is like a flood. You know, you can look at the river and suddenly the river breaks the banks and it's 5 miles wide and it's very hard to see all of that in context. Uh and that's exactly what we should expect here. and it will take a little bit of time to sus things out even if they were to make an unbridled and full release. And by the way, I wouldn't discount one other possibility. Somebody who's in the government may have surreptitiously copied some documents out of concern about the security of those records and so they could pop up. So withholding records by claiming they don't exist or destroying records among other things on the grounds that it's contraband could be a very risky strategy for the Trump administration. Not legally because they're in control >> but politically. I mean just imagine the headlines if it comes out that they said that uh oh we we those images were all destroyed during the Joe Biden administration. That's why we don't have uh uh we we think there are some images of of improprieties but um they were destroyed during the Biden administration and then somebody puts out no they they were not. Uh that would be politically pretty devastating. Perhaps not with the most severe MAGA people, not with people like Megan Kelly, the mother of a 14-year-old girl who thinks it's okay for grown men to have sex with 15year-old girls. She thinks they're legal, as she put it. you call them barely legal. Um, not in any state in the country is a 15year-old uh legal for a grown adult to have sex. So there a lot of things are going to explode very soon and it's going to be difficult for people to follow them. Pay close attention to what hasn't been released. be careful to distinguish between people who were simply around Jeffrey Epstein or photographed with him and people who were seriously involved with him like Donald who was on his plane the Lolita Express at least seven times and who there is sworn testimony from young women who say I was raped by Donald Trump. One of them, in fact, has testified under oath uh that um she was didn't want to be raped and Trump said to her, she claims, "Hey, you know, stop complaining. You should be proud that Donald Trump is taking your virginity, not some incompetent 14-year-old boy." Um that knowing Donald, that sounds like Donald to me. Uh it it fits. But you also have to be very careful about what sounds right and what actually is right. But a lot's a lot's about to come out and we're going to be drenched in this stuff. >> Um, assuming there is some substantial amount of release and maybe there won't be. Maybe they'll say we can't do it because of it's contraband and we're investigating Bill Clinton. >> As I let you go, David K. Johnson, I enjoy my conversation with you. I didn't expect to be able to have the opportunity to speak with you today. I wonder I'm almost 56 so I don't have the firsthand memories of Watergate. Watergate is always that you know that point of comparison as far as the biggest scandal in presidential history and I know Mag is going to say no matter what is released it's a nothing burger but you as a student of history could we be on the verge of the greatest political scandal and I know I'm on the verge of hyperbole ever. >> I don't think you're on the verge of hyperbole at all. I mean, I was around during Watergate. I'd um already when Watergate happened, I was on the verge of winning my first national investigative reporting award. And I actually, despite being in Lancing, Michigan for most of it, uh managed to get a piece of the two pieces of that story >> uh that made national headlines. Um this is a much bigger scandal than Watergate. This is much more important than Watergate. Richard Nixon was a man who was corrupted by his own ego, as is Donald Trump. But Richard Nixon at the end of the day was a patriot in that he resigned rather than put the country through the impeachment. U he um had served honorably as a military officer in the Navy in World War II. He was an intellectual. You can hate Richard Nixon or love Richard Nixon, but it's undeniable the man was an actual intellectual. He wrote serious books on serious topics and he wrote his own books. Um and he you know basically he sought to undermine subvert the constitution so he could retain his power. Donald Trump is something entirely different here. He does not believe in the balance of power in the constitution between the congress, the courts and the president. He is completely and utterly corrupt. Not just corrupt about doing things to maintain his position in the White House. He's been entirely corrupt his entire life. He lies. He steals. He cheats. He revels in doing so. And he has no regard for anyone. He just called yet another woman, in this case a reporter for Bloomberg flying with him on Air Force One, a piggy. Quiet piggy. Quiet piggy. He has no respect for anyone. And then he literally physically embraces the murderous dictator from Saudi Arabia who our government says uh ordered the uh murder and cutting up into pieces of the Washington Post journalist Jamal Kosoji at the uh uh Turkish uh not embassy but consulate of the Saudi government. Um, and the denial by MBS. I don't know. I don't know anything about this. Just like Donald. Well, gee, it was your closest security people who did this. You mean your own security people who you trust your life to go off and kill people you don't know about? I mean, it's just not credible in any level. >> So, this is a vastly bigger scandal. The difference we have, however, is during Watergate, we had a lot of people who had lived through the depression and World War II. They had a much more under much deeper understanding of government, the limits of government, how government can be abusive and the importance of government to your economic welfare and your liberties. Uh also we had institutions that are gone now. We had unions. We had social justice movements which they've just shriveled down to virtual insignificance. And Watergate played out over a period of two years. took a long time for things to get attention. And it wasn't just, by the way, the Washington Post. The the LA Times uh uh was often ahead of the Washington Post. Some of the stories people remember the Post more for actually appeared in the LA Times hours earlier and were essentially matched and rewritten by the Post. The New York Times covered itself in a lot of glory during this and the uh but it took two years for Nixon to finally fall apart and that included when his vice president confessed to being a felon and had to be replaced. >> Yeah. >> So this has taken this has moved actually a little quicker in the second Trump term. um um how how quickly it's going to move going forward, I don't know. But if if they don't release substantial documents and there's a lot of withholding it, that'll be the big story. Why are you not doing that? If they do release them, it's going to be a flood of trying to go through this and it's going to require a lot of different people to look at this in different places and to draw those important distinctions between Jeffrey Epstein wanted to appear to be powerful because he stood next to somebody in a photograph and these are the people that I compromised and got involved in child rape and then extorted. Um but but that Larry Summers has withdrawn. That King Charles has thrown his brother out of the royal family. Those scream this is not a hoax. This is a very serious matter. >> David K. Johnston Pulit surprise winning investigative journalist. You can check out his latest piece at DC Report. What may be held back from the Epstein files. It is always an honor and privilege to speak to you. David K. Johnston. I hope to do it again. >> Thank you. Hi, it's Mark and I thought that was great. Hit the notification bell, you'll know whenever there's a new video being dropped. 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