Video: Rep. James Walkinshaw (D-VA11) Says He Doesn’t Know If Jeffrey Epstein Committed Suicide, But Wants to Know If Prison Guards Were Complicit in His Death

See below for video and highlights from Rep. James Walkinshaw (D-VA11)’s appearance this morning on MSNOW; some really interesting stuff in here – great job by Rep. Walkinshaw as always!

• Rep. Walkinshaw: “I don’t think the [Epstein] investigation can begin to end until we have all the files released. Chairman Comer’s talking about cans of worms. Half of the cans or half of the worms are still locked up. We don’t know. So we’ve got to get all the files out, we’ve got to get the illegal redactions unredacted. And then we got to follow every lead that comes from that. I don’t know how long that will take. Obviously, we want to move as quickly as we can, but we got to have all of the information before we can determine what the timeline is…I don’t think we’ve seen a lot of progress on that. However, I do think we’ll start to get somewhere when we depose the Attorney General, Pam Bondi, shortly. And Chairman Comer has said he wants to bring her in as quickly as possible. He didn’t want to bring her in. She’s coming in only because there was a vote to force a subpoena to bring her in. He didn’t try to bring her in. And look, she’s going to have to answer hard questions about why the files haven’t been released. They missed the deadline. I’m not going to say the cover up is worse than the crime, because these crimes are horrific. But the cover up itself is a crime in my view. She’s going to have to answer questions about that.”
• Rep. Walkinshaw: “I support subpoening Donald Trump to come and testify. I think especially given the Clinton depositions that we went through and the precedent that was established there, where not only did Chairman Comer say you’ve got to come in, but you’ve got to come in when I say you’ve got to come in under the circumstances I say. That set a strong precedent. There’s no reason President Trump shouldn’t be held to the same standard. And he had a much longer, more in-depth relationship with Epstein than either of the Clintons did. [Q: Is that something that your Democratic colleagues are in concurrence with?] I think so…I think Democrats on the committee have been saying for months now that President Trump should come in and answer questions. Do I expect that a President Trump will cooperate with a Democratic controlled committee or Congress? Probably not. He didn’t with the January 6 committee. So that will be a battle. But look, presidents of the United States have testified before Congress and answered questions before Congress before throughout our history a number of times. There’s no reason that it can’t happen here. And I think if I were President Trump, who claims to have been exonerated by the information that’s been released thus far  – couldn’t be further from the truth – but if you really are exonerated, if you really are innocent, come in and answer questions just as the Clintons did.”
• Rep. Walkinshaw: “The subpoenas will expire when the Congress ends. So, new subpoenas will need to be issued. I think certainly with respect to subpoenas that have been issued related to the Epstein investigation, I think Democrats will want to continue and perhaps expand those subpoenas; for example, the Department of Justice is under subpoena separate from the legislation to release the files. They’re out of compliance with that subpoena. I think we’re going to want to reissue that and ensure its compliance and use all the tools Congress has to do that.”
• Rep. Walkinshaw: “The first question I will have for the prison guard is did you or any other prison guards to your knowledge receive protection payments from Jeffrey Epstein? Another thing that’s been reported recently is that she had a  $5,000 bank deposit in the days before Epstein’s death. There’s been reporting by the Miami Herald that he was paying protection payments to prison guards. That’s unproven, but I think that’s an important line of questioning to understand what happened and what went wrong there. The 2023 DOJ OIG report outlined a series of procedural failings from the prison. It didn’t get into this issue of payments that prison guards like her might have received, why they received those payments, did those payments stop at some point, was there any connection between those payments or lack of them in Epstein’s death?”
• Rep. Walkinshaw: [Q: “Do you believe that Jeffrey Epstein committed suicide?”] “I don’t know. I don’t know.” [Q: “Are you going to ask her whether or not she’s complicit in his death in any way?”] “I think that absolutely that’ll be a question that will be asked of her…I think at this point there are a lot of questions that need to be answered. And the payments are are new. The IG did not have or did not report knowledge of those payments. We need to understand that.”