Rep. Ted Lieu didn’t mince words Tuesday, calling out Republicans for turning a blind eye to explosive allegations against Donald Trump while obsessively chasing Bill and Hillary Clinton.
The Clintons have finally agreed to testify before the House Oversight Committee regarding Bill Clinton’s ties to Jeffrey Epstein, dropping the contempt charges that had been hanging over them. But for Lieu, that’s barely a blip on the radar compared to what the newly released Epstein files show about Trump.
“So why are Republicans so interested in Bill and Hillary Clinton?” Lieu asked at a press conference. “It’s because they’re trying to distract from the fact that Donald Trump is in the Epstein files thousands and thousands of times. In those files, there are highly disturbing allegations of Donald Trump raping children, of Donald Trump threatening to kill children. So I encourage the press to go look at these allegations.”
Lieu didn’t stop there. He took aim at Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanch, blasting him for misrepresenting federal law. “Yesterday he said, essentially, that it is not a crime to party with Jeffrey Epstein. Well, that’s actually not correct. If Jeffrey Epstein was human-trafficking minors for these sex parties, and you show up and patronize the establishment at that party, yes, you’re guilty because patronizing is part of the law, the federal sex trafficking law.”
Blanch’s alleged misstep, Lieu said, explains why Trump and other powerful figures in the Epstein network haven’t been investigated. “He needs to read the law and investigate these people. He also needs to resign, not only for not knowing the law, but for a massive—actually the biggest privacy violation in history. They released a lot of pictures of minors unredacted, just violated the privacy of these girls. It is uncalled for what they did.”
The California Democrat also slammed Blanch for his handling of Ghislaine Maxwell. “He met with Maxwell, moved her to a minimum-security prison, and then got a puppy for her. So for all those reasons, he’s just got to leave the Department of Justice.”
“It is astonishing that there isn’t more discussion in the media about the horrifying allegations against Donald Trump or any sense of urgency at all from Republicans who spent the past four years endlessly bleating about the Epstein files. Now that Trump is implicated, all their interest is out the window…except when it comes to Bill Clinton, who should face the music for whatever he might have done,” he added.
Lieu’s message to journalists: stop chasing shiny distractions and focus on the real monsters in the files. He urged the press to review the documents and report on what they show.
Watch the clip below:
