Klobuchar rebuffs Trump's efforts to fault Dems in Epstein case
"The president blaming Democrats for this disaster, Jake, is like that CEO that got caught on camera blaming Coldplay," Klobuchar (D-Minn.) told CNN's Jake Tapper on Sunday on "State of the Union." "OK, like this is his making. He was president when Epstein got indicted for these charges and went to prison. He was president when Epstein committed suicide."
Epstein was arrested on federal sex trafficking charges in July 2019. He died by suicide in his New York jail cell just over a month later.
Backlash — largely from inside Trump's MAGA base — teed off when the White House announced in early July that a Department of Justice and FBI review had found no evidence of an incriminating client list connected to Epstein. Trump, whose return to the White House was keyed in part by a willingness to embrace conspiracy theories like the ones surrounding Epstein, has been keen to move on.
But the furor has seen some of Trump's biggest supporters calling for the ouster of his attorney general, Pam Bondi, and predicting dire consequences lest he begin to take it seriously.
The president, meanwhile, has raged. "Radical left Democrats," Trump said in a Truth Social post Wednesday, were responsible for the "Jeffrey Epstein Hoax." And they'd refrained from making any moves during Joe Biden's presidency, he said.
"If there was a 'smoking gun' on Epstein, why didn't the Dems, who controlled the 'files' for four years, and had Garland and Comey in charge, use it? BECAUSE THEY HAD NOTHING!!!," the president wrote on social media Friday.
Rep. Tim Burchett (R-Tenn.), one of several House Republicans who have called for the release of the government's Epstein files, echoed Trump's attacks against Democrats in a Sunday interview also on Tapper's show.
"Where the heck have they been the last four years? I'm ticked off at everybody," he said. "Look, this thing should have been handled. Now we're at the point they're going to start dumping files."
Klobuchar rejected claims that Democrats bore responsibility for the controversy. The White House, she said, had entered into a crisis of its own making.
"The people that have been fomenting this are right-wing influencers, members of Congress, people who have a reason that they want to know what's in there," Klobuchar told Tapper. "They believe the president when he said, there's stuff in there that people should see."
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