Chapter 1: What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
Welcome to Pablo Torre Finds Out. I am Pablo Torre, and today we're gonna find out what this sound is.
And that's why I say this is one of the greatest scandals in American history. It's because the moral reckoning that we're gonna face that we allowed our elite to do this.
Right after this ad. We booked you over like the holidays.
Chapter 2: What scandal is highlighted in the episode?
And I want to get to the Epstein Files, obviously. I want to get to Silicon Valley, which you represent. That is in your district as well. But I need to ask you how you found out that the United States invaded Venezuela and captured President Nicolas Maduro.
The truth? Yeah. On X. I saw a tweet linking to the New York Times saying we had gone in and captured Maduro and are at war with Venezuela. President Trump says the US carried out large-scale strikes on Venezuela overnight.
The capture and apprehension of the president of Venezuela, as well as his wife.
The US, as you say, has carried out a series of airstrikes in Venezuela, capturing President Nicolas Maduro and his wife. As you say, President Trump did confirm that in a social media post. Now, it didn't come as a surprise to me because I am on the Armed Services Committee.
I had been through a number of classified briefings with the military, and I had sounded the alarm weeks ago on the House floor saying, we're building up all of these personnel and troops in Florida, in Puerto Rico. We're increasing our destroyers and our ships in the Caribbean. You don't do this if your goal is just to strike boats in the Caribbean. We are gearing up for a regime change war.
And the reality is that Marco Rubio lied to the country and Hegs had lied to the country. But anyone who was in those briefings and a senior person on the Armed Services Committee and who understands military strategy knew that we were preparing for a major operation.
Okay, so two things are true, though. One is that, in retrospect, of course, this is all how the weather vane was pointing. but on Twitter.
That's how we learned. People have this hyped up sense of what it means to be a member of Congress and a senior member of Congress on the Armed Services Committee. You would think, oh, someone from the White House is going to give you a call or the defense secretary is going to give you a call.
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Chapter 3: How did Ro Khanna learn about the U.S. invasion of Venezuela?
No, I got the news like any of my colleagues are being honest on Twitter or some may have read the New York Times.
But just the idea, so again, like... It's just remarkable and also unsurprising to me that an operation that involves, per the New York Times, more than 150 military drones, fighter planes, bombers, all that stuff. Of course, we know now, at this point in the week, Congress... generally gets notified of those things. Of course, in this case, I want to discuss that. You guys were not.
What's unsurprising, as remarkable as it is, though, is that this is the Congress that doesn't get told because this Congress, Ro Khanna, just happens to feel more generally impotent than any other Congress, certainly in my lifetime.
Well, I would say that's right. I mean, this Congress needs to wake up. We did wake up on the Epstein issue where Thomas Massey and I forced a vote in Donald Trump to sign the bill.
It was the single biggest Democratic bill, my bill, the Epstein Transparency Act, that was signed by Donald Trump in 2025 and where he is bowing to Congress, where they already are under pressure to release now five million files, where we've gotten documents of him being on the Epstein plane and having lied about that in 2024.
Yes.
Where we found out that there are co-conspirators who were not tried. But on war and peace, we've been absent. I mean, it is shameful to me that we don't have more people saying you can't just use our awesome military to go in and invade a weaker and poorer country. That's not how we do things in America. And Donald Trump is out there saying we want to take their oil. Like, we're not Britain.
We're not Rome. We don't march in with gunboat diplomacy in 21st century America and invade other countries. It's offensive to me.
As someone whose grandfather, Amarnath Dhillonkar, was in jail for four years alongside Gandhi fighting against colonialism, to have an American president invoking McKinley when we conquered Puerto Rico, when we conquered Guam, saying that that's 21st century America, it is morally offensive to me. And then you see all these weak statements from...
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Chapter 4: How does Ro Khanna view the role of Congress in military actions?
And yet they read in the papers these elite making all this money and the rules don't apply to them. And they resent them. They do resent them. And they want people to hold them accountable.
Well, one of the things that I find very interesting is that you're also seeing, I think, the timeline clearly, which is that at some point, again, it's currently up for grabs, I suppose, Trump will be out of office. And the issues that I mentioned to you, whether it's Silicon Valley and prediction markets and also AI, which I want to touch on,
War and Peace, certainly the Epstein Files, this is about stuff that's bigger definitively, definitionally, than just Donald Trump.
Absolutely.
And so, by the way, I should note that Thomas Massey is a Republican. And you are a Democrat. Yeah. And so the reconfiguring here of what are the aisles and what cooperation exists, what is the Venn diagram that speaks to a post-Trump version of American politics? You've been as loud, louder, I think, than anybody else in terms of saying we should be running on these things.
And the Epstein issue, I just find it to be so persuasive and also indefensible in terms of how this administration has been trying to bury it.
Well, you're absolutely right to see that there's a big realignment in American politics. And what is that realignment? That there are many Americans who feel abandoned, shafted, let down, betrayed by the governing elite. So the Epstein issue is not just standing up for young girls in America. It's not just standing up for girls who came from working class families or immigrant families.
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Chapter 5: What is the Epstein Transparency Act and why is it significant?
It's about saying we're going to hold the elite accountable. We're not afraid of the fact that there are billionaires that are attacking Massey and me. We're not afraid of the fact that we're going to get attacked by the President of the United States or by the Justice Department. And in doing that, we are starting the process of re-earning the trust of the American public.
And then we can have an agenda of how we make sure that people actually have good jobs and low costs and we're ending these dumb overseas wars. But we first got to restore trust.
The word elite, I want to clarify this in terms of your origin story, because we both went to fancy schools, right? Like you went to Chicago and Yale Law School.
I'm proud of it. I studied very hard. I was a son of immigrants. I was born in Philadelphia. In 1976, Indian American parents, when I got 90% on my exams, my dad said, where's the other 10%? So I worked really, really hard. And I am proud that I got such an incredible education. I had to go into a lot of debt to do it. But I've been fortunate in life. I've been able to succeed.
But what elite to me means is not aspiration. Of course, people want to work hard. Of course, they want to get a good education or go to a good trade school. Of course, they want to be able to build wealth. I have no problem with that. What elite means is you don't get to play by a different set of rules.
Yes.
You don't get to ignore the community you grew up in. And you don't get to say that it's okay for me to have my success, but to hell with the rest of the country.
Well, the thing about the Epstein Files that is so mind-blowing to just, I think, the average person is that it turns out that something that felt like a crazy conspiracy actually was true. And I mean that in the broadest sense that you're outlining, which is that there is, in fact, a social network of people who are, by any reasonable standard, elite. And they have been hiding...
an apparently criminal conspiracy involving caricatures of crimes and real victims, hundreds upon hundreds of victims. And they have been operating in the shadows and successfully operating in the shadows until basically you come along and set a deadline.
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Chapter 6: What moral issues are raised regarding the elite and accountability?
And this goes before Donald Trump. None of us cared enough. There was maybe one journalist at the Miami Herald. At Julie K. Brown. Yeah, Julie K. Brown. It was incredible. But other than her and a few journalists, no one was paying attention. And what was taking place is over a thousand young girls were being sent to either this rape island or trafficked to rich and powerful men.
And these are powerful finance figures, powerful politicians. And they're showing up and socializing with Epstein, even though they know that Epstein is doing incredibly disgusting things. In some cases, these powerful men didn't actually rape or abuse the underage girls, but they were part of the parties where 14 or 15 year olds were being paraded naked and they didn't think to say anything.
And these are people at the highest levels of finance, highest levels of politics, highest levels of universities. And they basically thought this is normal. And that's totally acceptable in American society. And they did this for decades. And that's why I say this is one of the greatest scandals in American history.
It's because the moral reckoning that we're going to face that we allowed our elite to do this. So how did we, what was the turning point? When Trump made this an issue, we didn't say anything. And it was actually, we thought to his credit that he was gonna finally do something on it.
And then when his, Pam Bonney comes out with that ridiculous statement, there's nothing to see, Massey and I initially think maybe Trump will support our effort. We want these files released. We're surprised that he basically stonewalls. He doesn't want these files to be released.
But the turning point was that when we called the survivors to the Capitol, and when they first got to tell their story for the first time in years, And the American people heard them and they said, this is disgusting. There needs to be justice and accountability. And now the story is not going away because we need to figure out who these people were and they need to be held accountable.
So I ask all of this to also ask when something like the operation in Venezuela happens, of course, the collective attention of the country, of the media, of everybody turns towards that because it's war. Right. How long does it take you to think about the clock and the deadline that had been set for more files to be released, which, spoiler alert, also was not met?
Yeah, well, coincidentally, and I'm not saying this as a conspiratory statement, but just it was perhaps coincidence that the day of the Venezuela invasion was also the day that the Justice Department owed Congress an explanation for what they had redacted. Right. And you have now publicly information that there are five million files that they have to still release.
They have thought that they can just get away with the minimal release and the American people will forget, that they'll go on to Venezuela or healthcare. But the reality is this is not going away because it gets to who we are as a people. Do we believe in protecting young girls? Do we believe in standing up for survivors?
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