Rep. Ro Khanna

The reality is, though, they couldn't have released these files under the garland.

Bondi couldn't have until we passed the law, right?

It's only when we passed the law that they could then override the privacy concerns of Justice Department policies and get these out.

So if you're saying that we should have as a political matter, as a moral matter, called for the release of these files and accountabilities years before Donald Trump became president, you're absolutely right.

Right.

In fact, initially, Massey and I gave Trump credit when we started this, saying, you know, Donald Trump brought this up.

He was right to bring it up.

We're passing the Release Act because we want to do what he said he would do in the campaign.

We didn't think it was going to be as oppositional.

And then he just, you know, said, no, no, no, I'm not doing that.

And that's where it became a fight.

I believe the fact that there's so many rich and powerful people coming out, some of them who are Democratic donors, certainly disincentivize the political class from speaking up.

And it's one of the reasons Trump and Vance ran on this, saying they're protecting rich and powerful friends.

Trump says this to this day.

They're Democrats.

Yeah.

And there are a lot of Democrats in the files.

Let's be honest.

There are a lot of those friends who were Democratic donors.

So I do think that the political class, I don't think that there was some kind of conspiracy, but they weren't, let's just say they weren't rushing to come to the aid of these survivors.