Rep. Jamie Raskin, D-Md., ranking member of the House Judiciary Committee, urged every American to read what he called an “extraordinary” new report on Donald Trump’s ties to Jeffrey Epstein. Raskin told MS NOW’s Nicolle Wallace that he and his fellow Democrats were demanding an independent special counsel to investigate the pair’s decadeslong relationship.

The 50-page report, released Monday by House Judiciary Committee Democrats, drew on interviews with the committee, survivor accounts, FBI records and documents released under the Epstein Files Transparency Act. Democrats allege in the report that a “growing body of evidence demonstrates that Donald Trump was an active participant in Jeffrey Epstein’s abuse of young women,” and they accuse the Justice Department and the FBI of “doing everything they can to keep the American people in the dark about it.”

In response to the report, a White House spokesperson said, “None of these allegations are true,” and said Trump had been “fully exonerated of anything related to Epstein.” And in a statement to MS NOW, a DOJ spokesperson called the report “nothing more than a last-ditch effort by House Judiciary Democrats to mislead the public.”

Trump and Epstein’s relationship, spanning from the 1980s to the early 2000s, is well-documented. Trump has said their friendship ended around 2004 and that he knew nothing about Epstein’s crimes. He has denied that he engaged in any sexual misconduct with any woman connected to Epstein.

Raskin said the Justice Department’s refusal to thoroughly investigate Epstein’s “enablers” and possible co-conspirators “forced Democrats’” hand. “The idea that you run a billion-dollar global human trafficking ring, and only two people are guilty of crimes, and one of them happens to be deceased,” was hard to believe, he said.

The Maryland Democrat also accused the Justice Department and Attorney General Todd Blanche of failing to cooperate with other investigations into Epstein and his associates. “With foreign governments that are asking for information from the DOJ, Todd Blanche is not helping,” Raskin said. “Same with states that are engaged in doing state-level investigations and prosecutions related to potential crimes that were committed in their states.”

“We’re demanding an independent special counsel to take this over from the Department of Justice, with the hopes that the truth will come out and justice will be done for hundreds and hundreds of victims,” Raskin said.

He urged viewers to “read the report,” saying, “The detail is extraordinary. But we’re not even trying to make the case here. We’re not prosecutors. But we’re saying the Department of Justice has completely abdicated their responsibility.”

“And why?” Raskin asked. “We cannot understand any reason other than they’re trying to protect Donald Trump.”

You can watch Raskin’s full interview in the clip at the top of the page.

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The parents of Alex Pretti, an intensive care nurse fatally shot by federal immigration officers in Minneapolis in January, accused the Trump administration of withholding information about the investigation into their son’s killing. On Wednesday’s “Morning Joe,” Joe Scarborough slammed the government’s inaction and said America “is not going to forget” Pretti.

At a news conference on Tuesday, Michael and Susan Pretti said that in the nine months since their son’s death, neither the U.S. attorney’s office in Minnesota nor the Justice Department had provided their family with the “basic information the law affords,” including the identities of the officers involved.

Alex Pretti, 37, was filming federal agents during an immigration enforcement operation in Minneapolis when he intervened after an officer pushed a woman to the ground. Video of the encounter shows agents tackling him, removing his gun and shooting him multiple times. In the aftermath of the shooting, then-Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem said Pretti posed a threat to federal agents and accused him of domestic terrorism.

The shooting prompted federal and state investigations. However, state and local officials have said federal authorities stopped sharing evidence after initially turning some over. Hennepin County has sued the federal government for access to evidence.

In a statement, the Justice Department said investigators were following “standard practice,” adding: “Communications with family members, if any, come at a later stage of a case, such as indictment, initial appearance, plea, trial, or sentencing. Those communications do not typically occur during an investigation.”

But Scarborough wasn’t buying it. He accused the federal government of stonewalling and said officials should “stop trying to subvert justice and stop trying to protect the killer.”

“Everybody should know the killer’s name in America,” he continued. “The person who killed Alex Pretti, execution style, everybody should know his name, and everybody should know all the evidence.”

Scarborough said that despite its best efforts, the Justice Department would not be able to “wipe it all away” and “make everybody forget this.”

“The parents aren’t going to forget it,” he said, “and America is not going to forget it either.”

The MS NOW host compared the situation to the 1988 film “Mississippi Burning,” which is loosely based on the abduction and murder of three civil rights workers during Freedom Summer in 1964. “Except we are substituting bigoted Mississippi sheriffs who are trying to cover up evidence of slain civil rights workers” with “DOJ officials,” he said.

“Now it’s the Trump administration that’s literally trying to sweep a killer — a killer’s execution-style killing in the streets of America — under the carpet,” Scarborough continued. “It’s not going to happen.”

You can watch Scarborough’s full commentary in the clip at the top of the page.

The post ‘Stop trying to protect the killer’: Scarborough blasts DOJ’s handling of Pretti case appeared first on MS NOW.