CNN host Kaitlan Collins, Rep. Ro Khanna

Rep. Thomas Massie (R-Ky.) — one of the two lawmakers behind legislation to compel the Department of Justice (DOJ) to release all remaining documents pertaining to convicted pedophile Jeffrey Epstein — is announcing an idea to both protect Epstein's victims and shed light on his associates.

During an interview with CNN host Kaitlan Collins, Massie stood alongside Rep. Ro Khanna (D-Calif.), who is his chief co-sponsor on the Epstein Files Transparency Act, and reiterated his call for President Donald Trump's administration to publish all of the DOJ's unreleased Epstein materials. When Collins asked Khanna and Massie why Trump seemed to be unmoved by the testimonies of Epstein's victims after their Wednesday press conference on Capitol Hill, the Kentucky Republican retorted that the testimonies resonated "with the public in my district and all across the country,"

"In fact, they were resonating in the White House nine months ago when the attorney general said they would release the files, when the vice president said they would release the files, when the FBI director said they would release the files, when Trump's own children said that these files needed to be released," Massie said.

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"Why the 180-degree turn here from the administration? I think there are rich and powerful people who've always been beyond the reach of the law — or thought that they were — who want to remain there," he continued. "... And we need to tell them, I'm sorry, you are going to be accountable to the law."

Collins pressed Massie on the latter point. She acknowledged that while some of the women who spoke at the press conference hinted that they had been assembling their own list of Epstein's co-conspirators should the Trump administration continue to quash efforts at transparency, they had so far refused to disclose that supposed list to the public. Massie then revealed his plan to both protect Epstein's survivors while providing the information the American public has been asking for.

"The reality is, if they try to release that list, they're going to be sued into homelessness. They will be attacked. They will have death threats," he said. "And so what my colleague Marjorie Taylor Greene volunteered to do, and I volunteered to do as well, is to read that list on the floor of the House of Representatives, because our founders put into the Constitution a speech or debate immunity [clause], which says that we can't be prosecuted for what we say on the floor of the House."

"We're willing to help those survivors get those names out there," he added.

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