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Interview With Rep. Stephen Lynch (D-MA); Government Shutdown Imminent?; DOJ Opens Civil Rights Probe Into Alex Pretti Shooting; Justice Department Releases More Epstein Files. Aired 1-1:30p ET

Aired January 30, 2026 - 13:00   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

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Thank you for joining INSIDE POLITICS.

"CNN NEWS CENTRAL" starts right now.

BRIANNA KEILAR, CNN HOST: Three million pages, 180,000 photos and 2,000 videos. The Justice Department has begun releasing all of its remaining files on Jeffrey Epstein, and CNN is poring over them now.

Plus, the Justice Department says it's opened a civil rights investigation into the shooting death of Alex Pretti, but not Renee Good. We will discuss.

BORIS SANCHEZ, CNN HOST: And journalists under arrest. Former CNN anchor Don Lemon has been taken into custody, along with independent journalist Georgia Fort, for being at a church protest in Minneapolis.

We will walk through the charges as we follow these major developing stories and many more all coming in right here to CNN NEWS CENTRAL. KEILAR: We begin with the breaking news that the Justice Department

has begun releasing millions more documents related to the Jeffrey Epstein investigation.

Today's release caps an extensive review process triggered by a transparency law that passed with near-unanimous support in Congress back in November. It also follows years of public pressure demanding answers about Epstein's crimes and alleged associates.

Among the documents being released are more than 2,000 videos and more than 180,000 images.

SANCHEZ: Various lawmakers and survivors of Epstein have criticized the DOJ. They accuse the department of slow-walking the rollout to protect those who took part in his crimes.

Today, Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche insisted that no one, including the president himself, was being protected. We should point out there is no evidence of wrongdoing against President Trump related to Epstein.

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TODD BLANCHE, U.S. DEPUTY ATTORNEY GENERAL: There's this mantra out there that, oh, the Department of Justice is supposed to protect Donald J. Trump, and that's what we were telling him.

That's not true. That was never the case. We are always concerned about the victims. When we said that we were not legally allowed to release documents, that's a fact. That was true. It remains true today. And then with the act's passage, we are now able and directed to release documents, which is what we are doing.

But -- so, hopefully, some of those frustrations are now eased.

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SANCHEZ: Let's get the latest from CNN's M.J. Lee.

M.J., a trove of documents, videos, and photographs, survivors in particular are looking for information from 302 forms. What exactly are those?

M.J. LEE, CNN SENIOR WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT: Yes, this is a moment that the survivors have been waiting for a while, of course. It's been a number of weeks since the first batch of documents came out from the DOJ.

These 302 forms immediately jumped out at me. You can sort of think of them as intake forms. When the FBI sits down with a witness and they gather information and basically conduct an interview, they're going to write down exactly what this person told them.

So, in the Epstein context, it could be a witness, a victim, a survivor who is telling the FBI, here is what I know about Epstein's actions, potential crimes, and misconduct. And I have had so many survivors telling me in recent weeks and months, I wonder if the FBI ever did anything with the information that I gave them.

There's sort of been this question about whether the information that these survivors gave to the FBI, sometimes going back years or decades, did that actually go anywhere or did it actually disappear into a black hole?

I should note, though, of course, a lot of this information is heavily redacted. That makes sense because we're talking about individual victims and their stories. So it's not clear if individual people are going to be able to know that this is necessarily the report and the interview that I gave to the FBI, but they're still looking nonetheless.

KEILAR: And the DOJ Web site is now requiring users who go on to it to be 18 years or older?

LEE: Yes, you basically have to click a consent that says, I verify that I am 18 or older. And if you were listening to Todd Blanche before, you get a good sense of why this is necessary.

Just a reminder, 2,000 videos, 180,000 images, not all necessarily taken by Epstein, but certainly related to him. And he said this is going to include some commercial pornography, for example, that was taken from Epstein's devices.

But, importantly, the information that would have been withheld if the redactions were done properly by the DOJ include any personally identifying information about the victims, depiction of child pornography. That, of course, should not be made public, anything related to death or physical abuse or injury.

[13:05:12]

But if I could just quickly say about these redactions, I have heard from multiple survivors already today, as they have gone through these files, that they are seeing their names, including some who are Jane Does, throughout the files.

And we know to what lengths Blanche went to at this press conference to say, we really want to protect the victims' identities. This is why this process has taken so long. And with one Jane Doe, her lawyer had actually reached out to the DOJ previously to say her name is in the files. You need to correct this, and she never heard back.

SANCHEZ: Wow, fascinating reporting there.

M.J. Lee, thank you so much.

The deputy A.G. also made some breaking news on the shooting death of Alex Pretti by federal agents in Minnesota. In that same press conference this morning, Todd Blanche confirmed the Justice Department has opened a civil rights investigation into his killing.

KEILAR: Just hours earlier, President Trump posted this reaction to a video of Pretti clashing with agents 11 days before his death.

Trump writing at 1.26 a.m. -- quote -- "Agitator and perhaps insurrectionist Alex Pretti's stock has gone way down."

CNN's Evan Perez is with us now.

Evan, this civil rights probe is happening as we're learning that the FBI is taking over the shooting investigation. Explain what that means for this case.

EVAN PEREZ, CNN SENIOR JUSTICE CORRESPONDENT: Right.

That is a big change, because, until now, what we have been told is that the Homeland Security Department was doing an investigation of the conduct of its own officers, which, of course, raises a number of problems, a number of issues, because, traditionally, what you have when you have a shooting like this is, you have -- to reassure the public that everything is being done correctly, that it's being handled by another agency, right, to give the public comfort and assurance that everything is being done aboveboard.

And so the idea, now that the FBI is in charge and that the deputy attorney general is saying that this is now a civil rights investigation. Listen to what he said at the press conference just a minute ago.

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BLANCHE: I'm not committing to anything with respect to that investigation. That would be completely unfair to the investigation itself for me to stand here and commit to something for any reason. It just -- it depends. It depends on what happens with the investigation and that's a decision that we have made by the folks that are working the investigation.

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PEREZ: And that was him referring to the -- he was asking -- answering a question about the body camera footage from the scene there.

We know that the Homeland Security Department is reviewing or processing more than -- as many as 30 body cameras. Not all of them will probably be relevant. Maybe a fraction of them will be relevant. But that's important, right?

And people in tradition -- in police shootings, often, we see these released publicly, and they're not committing to doing that. Obviously, the big difference now is whether they're going to do the Renee Good shooting, whether that investigation is also going to be handled in the same way.

SANCHEZ: Yes, that remains an open question.

And you reported last week that an FBI agent who had opened the civil rights investigation into Renee Good resigned after they were told to reclassify the probe into it being framed as an assault against an officer.

PEREZ: Right.

And Todd Blanche was very quick early on saying that there was no reason, there was no predicate for a civil rights investigation. Here's how he answered the question today.

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BLANCHE: As it relates to Ms. Good, I don't -- like I said before, there's investigations that happen all the time with respect to shootings like what happened last Saturday and cases are handled differently by this department, depending on the circumstances.

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PEREZ: Right. There was no commitment there that they're going to handle the Renee Good shooting in the same manner that they're handling the Pretti shooting investigation.

And so I think, again, we need some more information from the attorney -- the deputy attorney general as to what -- why there's such a big difference, right? What do you see in the Renee Good shooting? What do you see there that is different from what you see in the Alex Pretti shooting?

KEILAR: Evan Perez, excellent reporting. Thank you so much.

Still to come, we are going to have much more on what's inside the DOJ's final release of the Jeffrey Epstein files, the Web site where the documents are being uploaded for the first time requiring users to be 18 or older to gain access.

SANCHEZ: Plus, new details about the arrest of former CNN anchor Don Lemon, along with another independent journalist -- that and much more coming your way next.

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SANCHEZ: So, unless there's a deal in fewer than 11 hours, the nation is expected to go back into a partial government shutdown.

It wasn't that long ago that we had one of these, nearly three months since the longest government shutdown in U.N. history began and ended. Republicans and Democrats thought they had a deal last night. The proposal would have separated out the funding for Homeland Security and let the funding in five other bills move forward in order to give Democrats more time to demand reforms to ICE and border enforcement.

KEILAR: But after the deal stalled, senators are now scrambling to reach an agreement to avert a shutdown. And whatever the senators decide in the hours ahead, they must still get sign-off from the House.

So let's get the latest now from CNN's Lauren Fox, who is on Capitol Hill, becoming just so good at covering shutdowns, even though she doesn't want to become so good at covering them.

Any signs that we might dodge this at the last minute?

LAUREN FOX, CNN CONGRESSIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Yes, so a couple of positive signs this morning, Brianna, for everyone who wants to be avoiding a prolonged government shutdown.

One, Senator Lindsey Graham, who had been the main hold in expediting this process on the Senate floor, he went down and gave a speech on the Senate floor this morning essentially laying out his list of demands. Neither one of them are so difficult to achieve that leadership couldn't find a way to potentially accommodate him.

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It's not clear exactly what leadership is going to do with his list of demands, but going into the lunch just a few minutes ago, Majority Leader John Thune saying that things were moving in the right direction.

Now, whether or not they are going to be able to avert this in the next couple of hours, whether it's going to take additional time to get their ducks in the row, that still remains to be seen. It's just important to note that, even if the Senate is able to move forward with its bill today before this midnight deadline, the House of Representatives is not in town.

They are expected to return Monday at the earliest at this point. That means that there may be sort of a few days where government funding lapses. Now, OMB has a lot of jurisdiction over how they move forward with that, but it just gives you a sense that lawmakers are likely going to back into some kind of partial, short-term shutdown over the weekend.

The impacts could be blunted, but, again, it just depends how quickly the Senate can move today, whether the House is going to come back on Monday and move this quickly, and all of those questions still have to be answered. Republicans are meeting right now for their lunch, so we may get a lot more guidance coming out of that in just a few minutes.

SANCHEZ: And, Lauren, in a lot of ways this is the fight before the fight, because, even if they get a deal on government funding for most of these agencies, funding for DHS still has to be negotiated.

FOX: Yes, Boris, this is a really important point to underscore. The reason that Democrats wanted to split out the DHS bill is, they have a bunch of demands in the wake of the Alex Pretti shooting that they want to now bring into this negotiation.

This was a bipartisan bill already, but now they are saying that DHS needs to be reformed in terms of how warrants are used. They want to deal with the fact that they want all ICE officers, CBP officers to be identified, to wear body cameras. Those are the kinds of reforms they're looking for.

Now, it's a limited list, but we have heard from Republicans in the last couple of hours making clear that they may not be willing to change this bill in the fundamental ways that Democrats are asking for.

Here was Senator Lindsey Graham just a short time ago.

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SEN. LINDSEY GRAHAM (R-SC): These people are patriotic. They're away from home. These crowds follow them to their hotel. They intimidate their families. The people pushing this are nuts. You created chaos. And a lot of Americans have been destroyed by your illegal immigration policy. And all you want to talk about over there are the cops.

Senator Schumer, you blame me. I blame you. Has anybody mentioned Laken Riley lately?

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FOX: And I think that just gives you a little bit of a preview of what Democrats may be up against, what Republican leaders may be up against when it comes to getting their conference on board for these kinds of reforms.

Speaker Mike Johnson has a really narrow majority in the House of Representatives, and it's not clear that House Democrats are going to be with them on the reforms that Senate Democrats may be moving forward with. So there's so many moving pieces right now, and it's just important to underscore that, even if they get a deal on this underlying government funding bill today and into Monday, there's still a lot of work to do on the DHS bill.

KEILAR: Yes.

Well, let's hope they're having a wonderful lunch, that no one is feeling hangry, and they're all feeling quite conciliatory and able to move forward on this.

Lauren Fox, thank you so much. We know that you will be digging up the news today.

The shutdown threat happening as the DOJ releases all of its remaining Jeffrey Epstein documents, millions in all, and as we learn a civil rights investigation has been opened by the DOJ into the shooting death of Alex Pretti.

A lawmaker is going to join us to discuss that ahead.

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SANCHEZ: Back now to the breaking news.

The Justice Department is in the process of releasing its remaining tranche of files related to the Jeffrey Epstein sex trafficking investigation. Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche says more than three million documents will be up for public view, including thousands of videos and images.

Let's discuss with a member of the House Oversight Committee, Democratic Congressman Stephen Lynch of Massachusetts.

Congressman, thank you so much for sharing part of your afternoon with us.

First, I want to ask how confident you are that this is everything DOJ has on Epstein. Is this the full files?

REP. STEPHEN LYNCH (D-MA): No, no.

Look, it's interesting how Todd Blanche described that today. This did not start two months ago. We asked seven months ago in July for -- we issued a subpoena for those documents. We shouldn't have had to do that. Then, when we got very little from Department of Justice, we passed an act of Congress. We shouldn't have had to do that just to get this information.

And then after we passed the Transparency Act on Epstein, they still weren't giving to us, so we had to go to Judge Engelmayer and Judge Berman to compel them to give these documents. So they have obstructed and delayed and dragged their feet every step of the way.

So there's no confidence and no trust here in what the Department of Justice is doing. And we want -- look, they said there were six million documents. We would like to see all six million documents. Todd Blanche did indicate that if we -- if any member of Congress questions the reasons for the redactions, then we are welcome to review the unredacted versions.

And so we will take full opportunity to do that.

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SANCHEZ: I guess then it's given that you don't trust him when he says that the White House has nothing to do with this process and oversight of this review.

It doesn't sound like you believe him. Do you have evidence to doubt his claim?

LYNCH: What -- yes, how about Todd Blanche goes and meets with Ghislaine Maxwell, takes her out of that prison, takes her to a nicer, more comfortable prison, gives her extra privileges and extra freedoms?

And she's the one that has all the evidence. She is a convicted pedophile who was trafficking these young girls. And because of his actions, she is -- she is definitely not going to testify against the president, because he has said publicly he has the power to pardon her.

So all of that have -- that's witness tampering, in my opinion, when you take the only witness or certainly the only one convicted along with Jeffrey Epstein, take them out of their situation and put them in a more comfortable detention center with all kinds of privileges. That's obviously influencing that person's willingness to cooperate with Congress or with any prosecution.

SANCHEZ: I also want to get your reaction, Congressman, to CNN's M.J. Lee reporting that she had spoken to some survivors, some Jane Does, who said that they found their names in these files.

LYNCH: Yes.

Yes, they have done a very sloppy job in terms of putting things together. They just do dumps. We have had more cooperation in a more professional manner from the Epstein estate when they give their documents. They stack them up. They say, these were the ones that we think are most helpful.

That's not the way -- that's not the way the redactions are being done, all the information is being provided by the Department of Justice. They just do a dump. And this is another -- this is a three million document dump.

So, unfortunately, because of the sloppy way that they're doing this -- and, look, there are over 1,000 people -- I'm sorry. There's 100,000 people at DOJ. But there are 1,000 people who were doing these redactions and putting this information together.

You think it wouldn't have taken them seven months to do it. And you would think that they would have done a better job at this.

SANCHEZ: Congressman, you recently voted to hold former President Clinton in contempt. And Speaker Emerita Nancy Pelosi suggested that any proceedings against the Clintons should wait until the full release of those files.

Now that they're out there, what should happen next regarding the former president?

LYNCH: That's a fair request that we get all the evidence and delay that.

But -- so President Clinton had an opportunity. So I voted against contempt on Hillary Clinton...

SANCHEZ: Right.

LYNCH: ... because there was not a shred of evidence in all of our files that she had anything to do with this.

However, there were several instances where President Clinton may have had an opportunity to observe. He was on a flight with Maxwell. He was -- also spent some time with Epstein. So the committee felt that he may have some information that might be helpful in our investigation. There's no allegation that he's done anything wrong, but he did have an opportunity to observe on several occasions.

So that's why I think most of the members on the committee voted to hear from him and to have him come in and answer questions. SANCHEZ: So what comes next on the Oversight Committee?

LYNCH: Well, we have got three million documents to go through. We have got a small staff. We're going to have to expand that. It's maybe a half-dozen people that have been vetting these documents, at least at the first level, and then passing them on to members of Congress so that we can review.

So -- but a three million document dump is going to keep us busy for a while. We will try to get through it as quickly as possible.

SANCHEZ: Before we go, Congressman, I did want to ask you about the current funding fight and the way that it might impact ICE policies down the road.

Minority Leader Jeffries has not said whether he supports the Senate's funding package to avert a shutdown. Do you support the current plan, five full-year bills, and then this two-week stopgap to brawl over DHS funding?

LYNCH: Yes, so we agree -- we have agreed with the Republicans on 95 percent of the matters before us, those appropriations bills.

We have gone through it all. It has received the support, heavily bipartisan. The one area where we're fighting about is the DHS funding. So it is typical in the legislative process that -- is that, OK, we agree on a bunch of things. Let's get them passed, and then let's fight it out on DHS and on ICE protocols and things like that, given the terrible, terrible tragedies that occurred in Minnesota over the past few weeks.

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SANCHEZ: Congressman Stephen Lynch, we have to leave the conversation there. Thanks so much for the time and sharing your perspective.

LYNCH: Thank you, Boris.

SANCHEZ: Of course.