Rep. James Walkinshaw (D-VA11) really nails it here, about Donald Trump and Jeffrey Epstein. In general, Walkinshaw has very much been following in his former boss Gerry Connolly’s footsteps – smart, a fighter, etc. Good job, VA11 voters, in electing Walkinshaw overwhelmingly!
“I’ll give you two words that we don’t talk about that much anymore – QAnon and Pizzagate. And it’s easy to underestimate how much those two conspiracy theories fueled the rise of MAGA. And those are conspiracy theories that said a cabal of elites and Washington and financial elites were sexually abusing children. And the only way to stop it because it was so pervasive and so depraved was to have a strong man like Trump. Trump is the hero in QAnon and Pizzagate. And the reason that MAGA is crashing out right now is that what we’ve learned this week that at a minimum, Trump knew that Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell were trafficking young girls. We know Virginia was trafficked from Mar-a-Lago. Trump says he kicked Epstein out of Mar-a-Lago for being a creep. You don’t get kicked out of Mar-a-Lago for being a creep. You might get kicked out of Mar-a-Lago for trafficking underage girls. But if Trump knew, as I think the emails suggest, then why didn’t he go to the FBI at the time?”
“This story here is a story of rich and powerful men raping and abusing young girls and women. And the story coming up this week is how many of the rich and powerful men, the Republicans in Congress, are going to continue to aid and abet Donald Trump’s cover up of that story. And we learned some significant new information last week with the emails that were released that show that Trump’s relationship to Epstein and Epstein’s crimes are much closer than Trump wants us to know. His frantic, even by Donald Trump standards, frantic reaction last week, I think, is very telling, but we have to continue the investigation to learn more. The Department of Justice is under subpoena. The oversight committee has subpoenaed the department of justice and in my view they are not in compliance with that subpoena because they are not releasing the information they should release. The Epstein estate is the department of justice isn’t. That’s why Congress needs to pass the legislation to release the files next week…
…The bill will pass on Tuesday in the House to release the files. 50 plus Republicans I think will end up having to vote for it.”
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“I think [Republicans are] struggling with being between where Donald Trump is today and where the MAGA base is because Donald Trump led them there. The MAGA base agrees that these files should be released. They a lot of them made their careers on it. Kash Patel is a good example.”
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“We now have the president of the United States using the White House situation room to cover up for a pedophile, Jeffrey Epstein. That is an astounding thing. I give Marjorie Taylor Greene and Lauren Boebert and the others on the discharge petition enormous credit for standing up to that pressure. I think we got to give credit where credit is due, whatever their motivations might be.”
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“I think the cover up is doing damage to the stability of our democracy right now. And so we need to get beyond it.”
