'What the hell is going on?' Senator bewildered by suspicious threads in Epstein saga

Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI) accused President Donald Trump of engaging in a "cover-up" of his involvement with convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.

A House Oversight subcommittee voted Wednesday to subpoena the Department of Justice for files on the accused sex trafficker despite Speaker Mike Johnson's efforts to avoid a vote on the issue, but Whitehouse told "CNN News Central" that he's not sure whether the Senate would agree to push for their release.

"It's not the least bit clear that the Republican majority in the Senate would give us floor time, and that we'd get 60 votes to break through a filibuster," Whitehouse said. "So it's more important for the House to proceed because they don't operate under the shadow of a filibuster."

Trump and Epstein were friends during the 1990s and early 2000s until they had a falling out, so it would not be surprising that the president's name was mentioned in the files, as the Department of Justice reportedly notified him it was in May. The department then issued a statement saying there was no client list, disputing years of conspiracy theories promoted within the MAGA movement.

"If they were just friends, if Trump was not involved in or aware of Epstein's misconduct, despite having pointed out to reporters that he seemed to like very young women, if that is all true, you still have this question of who knew what about Trump being in the files?" Whitehouse said.

"Who was untruthful to the public about what they knew and whether he was in the files? You potentially have a flat-out lie with Ghislaine Maxwell having the story about Trump's letter, which he denies even exists. So you get into a lot of credibility issues on this, even if – and that's an if – even if Trump neither participated in nor was aware of all of this, and when you throw in the [Sen. Ron Wyden (D-OR) information, the $1.5 billion in suspicious financial activity reports associated with Jeffrey Epstein, and you wonder why none of that was investigated by the [Pam] Bondi Department of Justice."

"That adds a whole new wrinkle to who's telling the truth, who's doing a cover-up?" Whitehouse added. "Where's the real investigation? What the hell is going on here?"

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