Rep. Melanie Stansbury (D-NM), who sits on the House committee actively investigating Jeffrey Epstein and potential co-conspirators, spelled doom for President Donald Trump Saturday when she predicted that the fallout from an impending vote would be as “explosive as Watergate.”
“This does not sit well for the American people; our gut is telling us something is wrong here,” Stansbury said Saturday, speaking with CNN’s Fredricka Whitfield.
“We know that the White House is engaged in a cover-up, and I believe that this will be as explosive as what we saw in Watergate; not just because of the crimes that are being covered up, but because of the cover-up itself.”
The House is slated to vote next week on a bill that would force the Justice Department to release all of its files on Epstein, a notable share of it collected when law enforcement raided his New York home and private island shortly after his death in 2019 while awaiting trial on sex-trafficking charges. House leadership was forced to hold the vote after a discharge petition – a tool to circumvent legislative leadership – collected enough signatures this week to move forward.
And, according to Stansbury, Trump’s efforts to block the impending vote may end up being just as incriminating as any potential findings in the files themselves.
“Part of why this discharge petition vote is so important is [that] we know that the president is involved in a pressure campaign of members of Congress, and we think that he believes that if he can get enough Republicans to basically back him, that he can continue to bury these files,” Stansbury said.
“But I think we can see the cracks in that strategy. Late last night, the president went full-bore attack after Marjorie Taylor Greene, and she revealed that she had been texting with the White House and the president himself, and that the reason why she is going after her and trying to make an example out of her, is because of the Epstein files.”
Stansbury went on to say that the Trump administration had already failed to comply with lawful requests of her committee – which holds the power to subpoena entities and individuals and compel them to fork over documents or to appear to testify – had forwarded related to Epstein.
“I want to emphasize that we have already subpoenaed these files, and the White House and the Department of Justice have failed to comply with the existing subpoena, which has asked for the full, unredacted files,” she said. “And I have to say that this latest ploy by the president appears to be another stalling tactic.”