"Well, millions and millions and millions and millions of pages have been released," said Zinke, who was Trump's secretary of the interior during his first term. "I think for a lot of people, they were hoping something in it was that would implicate Trump – there wasn't."
Another panelist, digital journalist V. Spehar, pointed out that the FBI reportedly tasked agents with redacting Trump's name from the files, and Cornish asked about new reporting about missing documentation of an interview with a woman who claimed the president had sexually assaulted her decades ago.
"I do want to at least flag some reporting, NPR, CNN finding that there were documents that they definitely, the FBI record says that they have, right, of an accuser who was putting allegations against Trump specifically and that the interview notes from that are missing from what they've made publicly available, and I'm asking this because each time there's a report like that, somebody says, are we really getting the whole deal from these people?" Cornish said.
Zinke insisted the public had gotten all the Epstein files in compliance with the law passed in November by Congress, following months of pressure on the administration to release them.
"Look, if there was anything on Trump at all, it would have been released under Merrick [Garland] and President Biden," Zinke said. "I mean, for a moment, for a moment, anyone who would think that would be different, I don't understand that logic."
CNN's Edward-Isaac Dovere reminded the congressman of the Epstein Files Transparency Act that he'd voted for himself.
"There was the law that you voted for in December, though, right along with almost all of your colleagues," Dovere said. "That said, a full release of the documents so we actually don't know what happened because that law is still, we're in violation of that law still."
Zinke insisted that Trump's DOJ was in compliance with the law.
"Well, all right, full release, should there should there be things redacted because it's lawful, not only lawful, it would violate the law if they weren't, you know, some of these victims were 13 years old at the time," Zinke said, "and so some of the victims do have rights, and so I think that that has to be looked at carefully, too, because I think we should hide anybody that was that was a perpetrator. No, absolutely, and I think we need to be absolutely transparent about who this evil guy hung around with."
Cornish asked whether he ever wished that Trump's FBI Director Kash Patel and former co-director Dan Bongino hadn't hyped the Epstein files as podcasters, and Zinke faulted both of them and the attorney general for their handling of the issue.
"Of course, I wish this topic was, you know, was resolved long ago, but you had, you know, Pam Bondi, who botched the release of it," Zinke said. "You had Bongino and all these guys talk about it for years. We're sort of now stuck dealing with the consequences of those things, and it's a distraction. Does it move voters? It's to be determined, but it's certainly a distraction that just keeps on popping up and never ends. It's a never-ending ice cream cone."
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