Jake Tapper And Oklahoma Senator Get In Heated Back-And-Forth Over Epstein's 'Sweetheart Deal'
Sen. Markwayne Mullin (R-Okla.) lashed out Sunday at CNN’s Jake Tapper, who did not allow Mullin to freely spew erroneous claims about the case of sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.
The contentious discussion came as the handling of files related to the disgraced financier is under renewed scrutiny. It also arrived after a judge denied releasing federal grand jury transcripts from 2005 and 2007 in an Epstein investigation.
During the interview on “State of the Union,” Mullin had incorrectly claimed that former President Barack Obama was in office when Epstein was granted a controversial no-prosecution deal about a decade before his death. In that deal, Epstein agreed to plead guilty to state-level prostitution charges and serve prison time in exchange for federal prosecutors ending their investigation.
“Remember, there was a plea deal that was struck in 2009, way before I was in office, way before [President Donald] Trump was even considering to be in office, way before [Attorney General] Pam Bondi was in office, way before Kash Patel was [FBI] director — 2009, there was a sweetheart plea deal that was made underneath the Obama administration with Epstein,” Mullin said. “And that sweetheart has not been exposed.”
Obama was in office from January 2009 to January 2017. The deal, a 2008 nonprosecution agreement that shielded “any potential co-conspirators of Epstein,” actually occurred under George W. Bush’s administration.
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Tapper attempted to correct Mullin, who remained steadfast in his counterfactual claims for the remainder of the interview.
“It was 2008,” Tapper said. “The U.S. attorney at the time was a guy named Alex Acosta. He was a Bush appointee. He went on to become President Trump’s secretary of labor. It all took place in 2008.”
A 2020 Justice Department review found that former U.S. Attorney R. Alexander Acosta used “poor judgment” with the deal.
After cross-talk and a back-and-forth ensued, Tapper tried to shift the conversation to Ghislaine Maxwell, a known Epstein associate who authorities are looking to for additional information related to Epstein: “Will it be a mistake for President Trump to pardon Maxwell? And do you think that she’s credible?”
Mullin, however, was stuck on the previous question.
“I don’t know enough about Maxwell or the conversation to even weigh in on that,” Mullin said. “But I will go back to what you’re saying about it wasn’t true. The case was sealed in 2009. That’s absolutely true. It was heard in 2008. It was sealed in 2009.”
Tapper concluded the interview shortly after Mullin continued to double down.
“OK. People can look it up. The sweetheart deal was [made in] 2008 during the George W. Bush administration,” Tapper said. “But I always appreciate your coming on the show, Sen. Mullin. Thanks for joining us.”
Earlier in the interview, Mullin had claimed that Democrats are using the Epstein “hoax” to “distract from their awful record.”
“But let’s just take a step back here. The reason that we’re here where we are is because, for years, President Trump and the MAGA base and Trump’s allies have been calling for the release of the Epstein files,” Tapper responded.
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Mullin also claimed that the Trump administration is not able to release any additional information regarding Epstein because a judge declined to release transcripts from the grand jury investigation into Epstein and Maxwell last week. But Tapper pushed back on that notion, as well.
“There’s troves of information that the administration could release tomorrow if they wanted to, and they have been promising to, and they haven’t,” he said. “Grand jury hearings and transcripts, the judge has control over, absolutely. That doesn’t mean that everything that went into the grand jury is therefore locked from the public. It does not work that way.”
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