STEVE INSKEEP, HOST:
All this week, members of Congress have been looking at unredacted versions of the Epstein files. The Justice Department set up a room where they can access documents about the financier who was convicted on sex charges before his death. Wednesday was the turn of Representative Nancy Mace of South Carolina, who is one of four Republicans who defied President Trump and her party to force the disclosures. Mace came on the phone after spending two hours in the room.
NANCY MACE: Inside the Justice Department, they have a very small room, kind of like an oversized closet, basically, and there are four desks in the room with four computers. There is someone or two people from the DOJ monitoring you as you sit on those computers. There is a tech person who logs you into the computer. They log you into the computer because they're giving you your own identification. They are tracking all of the documents that members of Congress open. And they're tracking everything that you do in that room. You're not even allowed to use your own paper. You have to use their paper and their pens to write notes down. You can't take photos of anything. No devices in there. No phones or computers, etc. But it's very small, it's very desolate. You figure 535 members of Congress and only four desks. I mean, this could take years to get through.
INSKEEP: Yeah. We're talking about millions of pages, and those of us on the outside have gone to this public website where the documents are redacted. And there's a search engine, and it's hard to know where to begin because there's so many things you could search for. What was your method of searching?
MACE: Well, I crowdsourced the documents that I wanted to search. I was looking at what people were posting online, documents that were being posted online. I was doing keyword searches of my own. I also had every single employee of mine. We had - on Monday, we put a spreadsheet together, and I printed off the file names and what the subject matter was. My primary focus was to get my hands on documents naming co-conspirators.
INSKEEP: Some of your colleagues have gone to the House floor and named names and other information, which they can do with legal protection under the speech and debate clause of the Constitution on the floor of the House. Did you encounter anything that you think you would want to treat in that manner?
MACE: Yes, I have. And I am compiling a list of individuals that I want to see named, and they're not necessarily ones that were participating in this sex trafficking, but they are people that likely have a lot of information, whether they're friends, business associates, business partners, people that Jeffrey Epstein lunched with a lot. I'm vetting the list of names I've put together 'cause I want to make sure I'm not accidentally including any victims, but I'm going to request that the oversight committee bring many of these people in to testify because I don't have confidence or faith in the justice system that anybody else will be charged with a crime here. And it's going to be up to us in a bipartisan manner in Congress to have the courage and the bravery to bring these people before America and let them answer for what actually happened.
INSKEEP: You have any idea, though, why those names would be redacted by the Justice Department?
MACE: I think you're talking about rich and powerful people, famous people. And there are even some memos and emails going back-and-forth with the FBI and DOJ with what do we do? This is a famous person in the files. Well, so what? Who cares?
INSKEEP: What have you been thinking about in recent days as some names that were not redacted have come out into public, and we've learned more about, for example, Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick and the time he spent with Epstein, or Bill Gates, for that matter. What have you thought about as you've heard that?
MACE: Well, you've seen people not tell the truth because they're embarrassed or ashamed. But I can just say as a mom, I don't know how anyone would bring their kids to a known pedophile island to have lunch with a convicted pedophile. And I don't really care what side of the aisle you're on, right or left, what's wrong is wrong, you know? That doesn't also mean that someone should be fired for not telling the truth. I certainly wouldn't hire that person. But, you know, where's the moral clarity in this? The other thing that really frustrates me in the Epstein files is that this is really being politicized. You know, I see Trump as being exonerated in the files, and then some on the left want to use it as, well, this is a target, and we're going to use this politically. All I want is justice for the Epstein victims. And if we don't do that in the Epstein files, it's never going to happen for anybody else.
INSKEEP: What do you do next?
MACE: Well, you're going to see a series of requests from me through the oversight committee because that is my jurisdiction. You're going to see a letter from me to the CIA asking for Epstein documents. You're going to see me request more information from the Southern District of New York because the information at the DOJ is redacted, and we're unable to see a lot of information about co-conspirators, and I want the American people to know the truth and I'm going to bring them the truth.
INSKEEP: Do you have reason to believe the CIA has some trove of Epstein documents?
MACE: Yes, I do.
INSKEEP: What do you know?
MACE: Well, I would like to know more. The information I have is, again, redacted, but there is an email within the documents where Jeffrey Epstein is talking about a CIA dump. And I have some other emails that are not in the trove of documents at the DOJ that do reference CIA documents, and I have document numbers and file names.
INSKEEP: Representative Nancy Mace, thanks for your time.
MACE: Thank you so much and God bless. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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