Mar. 19, 2026, 3:23 PM EDT

The top Democrat on the House Oversight Committee joined MS NOW on Wednesday, just hours after lawmakers walked out of a closed-door briefing with top Justice Department officials about the Epstein files.

Appearing on “The Weeknight,” Rep. Robert Garcia, D-Calif, called the meeting with Attorney General Pam Bondi and Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche a “complete travesty” and accused his Republican colleagues of putting politics above obtaining justice for Jeffrey Epstein’s victims.

The House Oversight Committee recently bucked Chairman James Comer, R-Ky., voting to subpoena the attorney general over her department’s Epstein investigation. However, Garcia said Bondi has yet to commit to complying with the subpoena and testifying under oath.

“The American public should be very clear that Pam Bondi is leading a White House cover-up, and right now the Republican majority is assisting them,” Garcia said.

The California Democrat said committee members were informed about Bondi’s appearance only 24 hours prior and that he asked her at the start of the meeting if she planned to return.

“The attorney general would not commit to following the subpoena and coming in under oath,” he said. “Yet she wants to come in and set up some type of fake hearing where we ask questions, but it’s not transcribed, it’s not under oath, and it’s not shown to the American people.”

The congressman also spoke about a heated exchange between Comer and Rep. Summer Lee, during which the committee’s chairman accused the Pennsylvania Democrat of “b—-ing” and wasting the committee’s time.

“I’m obviously not going to repeat what chairman Comer said, but it was disgusting and not a way to talk to a colleague,” Garcia said, adding that Democrats were “not going to allow our members to be disrespected that way.”

“And we’re certainly not going to allow the attorney general to play games and not sit for an under-oath deposition with a subpoena that was bipartisan,” he continued.

Garcia said despite Wednesday’s setback, he and his fellow Democrats would do everything in their power to ensure Bondi returns to Capitol Hill and delivers testimony under oath.

“I want to be very clear that Attorney General Bondi will be in front of our committee,” he said.

“They’re dealing with the wrong people,” Garcia said, pledging that Democrats would “not rest and stop until we get justice for the survivors.”

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

Allison Detzel is an editor/producer for MS NOW. She was previously a segment producer for “AYMAN” and “The Mehdi Hasan Show.”

Mar. 19, 2026, 2:27 PM EDT

The second of Jeffrey Epstein’s two estate executors is set to appear before the House Oversight Committee on Wednesday. And after the other executor’s testimony last week raised serious questions about who knew what about Epstein’s abuse and when, the committee’s transcribed interview of Darren Indyke could be explosive.

Indyke served as the de facto in-house counsel to Epstein for decades and will appear in Washington, D.C., on March 19, just a week after Richard Kahn was deposed before the same group of lawmakers.

Kahn worked for Epstein for more than a decade as one of his New York-based accountants before becoming one of two co-executors of his estate upon his 2019 death.

In his opening statement, Kahn insisted that he never witnessed any sexual abuse or trafficking of women and additionally “never received a complaint — either by one of Epstein’s victims or anyone else — of such abuse or trafficking.” He also said that he never saw any minors in Epstein’s presence.

By the end of the deposition, however, at least some members of the committee, including ranking Democrat Robert Garcia, questioned Kahn’s blanket assertion that he never knew about or suspected Epstein of sexual misconduct with girls or women.

“Jeffrey Epstein’s massive sex trafficking ring would not have been possible without the consistent payments and services of his long-time accountant Richard Kahn,” Garcia said in a statement. “It’s not credible that he had no knowledge of Epstein’s activities, and his testimony today only raises more questions.”

MS NOW is unaware of any allegations that Kahn or Indyke participated in or witnessed any sexual abuse committed by Epstein.

And a lawyer for the estate, Daniel Weiner, told MS NOW in a statement, “Both Mr. Indyke and Mr. Kahn reject as categorically false the suggestion that they knowingly facilitated or assisted Mr. Epstein in his sexual abuse or trafficking of women, or that they were aware of that abuse while they provided professional services for him.”

But given the statements provided by certain alleged victims of Epstein and other witnesses to federal law enforcement, Indyke could have an even tougher time convincing Congress that he was ignorant of Epstein’s abuse and trafficking of minor girls and women.

Those statements, which were made during FBI interviews and are included in memos known as “302s” and are found on the Justice Department’s website, have not been verified by MS NOW and are largely uncorroborated.

According to prepared remarks obtained by MS NOW, Indyke told the committee in his opening statement that he “had no knowledge whatsoever of Jeffrey Epstein’s wrongdoings.

“Had I known that he was abusing or trafficking women,” Indyke said, “I would have quit working for him at once and severed all ties to him.”

He added that both he and Kahn have made “extensive efforts … to address the wrongs committed by Mr. Epstein during his lifetime,” including distributing millions of dollars from Epstein’s estate to victims.

James Marsh, an attorney representing multiple survivors, said in a statement that Indyke’s “claimed ignorance … is deeply troubling.”

“His testimony only underscores how much still remains hidden about the vast network of enablers that allowed these crimes to persist for decades,” Marsh added. “Survivors — and the American people — deserve the full undistorted truth about who knew what.”

Several witnesses told federal investigators that Indyke either told them not to talk to law enforcement if questioned about their relationships with Epstein, or was someone Epstein had them directly deal with when it came to personal situations like their schooling or their immigration status.

In July 2019, just days after Epstein’s arrest, federal law enforcement interviewed a Polish ex-model who worked for Epstein as a traveling assistant between 2005 and 2006. She told the FBI and federal prosecutors that in fall 2005, Epstein shared with her that there was an ongoing investigation, that it had “something to do with visas” and that investigators were asking about her parents. According to the documents, she added that Indyke then called her into his office and “told her not to talk to law enforcement.”

That same woman spoke again to the FBI and prosecutors roughly two months later. She mentioned that Epstein encouraged her to seek Indyke’s assistance with her immigration status but that Indyke was unable to help. She reiterated that Indyke had directed her to contact him if she ever needed help and “never talk to the police.” According to the documents, she told investigators this interaction made her think something was “off.”

A second woman who talked to federal law enforcement about Indyke is known only as “Jane,” the pseudonym she used when she testified at Ghislaine Maxwell’s trial.

According to a memo of her September 2019 interview with the FBI, Jane met Epstein and Maxwell in 1994, when she attended a summer program at the Interlochen Arts Academy. Jane told the FBI that when she returned to her hometown of Palm Beach, Florida, Epstein offered her mentorship and scholarship opportunities, only for him and Maxwell to begin sexually abusing her soon after. In her senior year of high school and with Epstein’s urging, she moved to New York City to attend a private performing arts-focused school and lived in an apartment that Epstein paid for.

Jane said she stopped communicating with Epstein and Maxwell in 2001, which angered him. He called her in anger, screaming about how ungrateful she was — and she said she also received a call from Indyke, who told her she owed Epstein $10,000 because Epstein had cosigned for her apartment.

According to documents, Jane also remembered that she would meet with Indyke to discuss paperwork that had to do with her schooling.

In the case of another woman, a foreign-born aspiring model interviewed by federal law enforcement had alleged sexual abuse by Epstein between roughly 2004 and 2007. During a February 2020 interview, she told the FBI that when Epstein told her in 2006 that he had been arrested, he didn’t share any of the details but gave her two instructions: Do not introduce him to anyone new for massages, and to call Indyke if she was contacted by law enforcement.

According to the documents, there were additional witnesses whose statements strongly suggested that Indyke could have — or should have — known that Epstein was involved in unlawful activity.

Lance Calloway served as Epstein’s personal chef between 2006 and 2009, the period when Epstein was under investigation by Florida federal prosecutors. It was also during this time that Epstein negotiated a nonprosecution agreement to serve just 13 months in jail, including home release, after pleading guilty to two state prostitution-related crimes.

When interviewed by the FBI and federal prosecutors in September 2020Calloway told them that in approximately 2008, he learned that Epstein was under investigation while he was living on Little St. James, the Caribbean island Epstein owned. At about that time, Indyke instructed Calloway that if he was approached with something, he should “not accept it because he could be getting served.”

Nearly a year earlier, in October 2019, the FBI interviewed an employee of Deutsche Bank’s asset and wealth management division who led its transaction monitoring team. She told the FBI that through a review of Epstein’s bank accounts, she observed that he was distributing payments directly to “women, who appeared to be models of legal age,” though she did not specify how she knew that. She also noticed that Indyke himself withdrew $7,500 in cash each week.

A now-settled lawsuit filed by the government of the U.S. Virgin Islands against Indyke and Kahn, as executors of Epstein’s estate, among others, similarly alleged that between 2014 and 2016, Indyke cashed almost 45 separate checks, each in the amount of $7,500 and at a pace of two or three each month, from a single account belonging to Epstein. Although the lawsuit does not name the bank, it specifies that $7,500 was that bank’s limit for third-party withdrawals from any account.

The FBI interview documents from the Deutsche Bank’s employee show that she had filed a suspicious-activity information form on Indyke himself after witnessing the withdrawals.

That lawsuit also alleged that between June 2018 and February 2019, almost 100 individual withdrawals of $1,000 were made from one of Epstein’s bank accounts from an ATM that is a short walk from Indyke’s law office. The lawsuit did not specifically allege that Indyke personally made those withdrawals.

Julianne McShane contributed to this report.

Mar. 19, 2026, 3:46 PM EDT

Dolores Huerta and I shared the stage in November at a Chicago event honoring Latino leaders and journalists from the United States. What I remember most about that day was seeing the ballroom of mostly Latina women lining up to thank the co-founder of United Farm Workers and get her thoughts on how to respond to the way our communities have been targeted.

I remember the servers, too, some of whom stopped after the event to take photos with Huerta and share that their local union uses the same labor-organizing tactics she did with the UFW. Immigration and Customs Enforcement was continuing its raids in Chicago, but here was Huerta, 95 years old, buoying us all. Here was our elder, imploring us to never give up, to keep organizing and fighting. If possible. Not as a slogan, but as something living and breathing in that room.

The New York Times on Wednesday published a multiyear investigation into allegations of sexual abuse of minors and rape against the other co-founder of the UFW: César Chávez. In part because I grew up with such a deep admiration of Chávez, reading Ana Murguia and Debra Rojas, both 66 years old, describe the pain they said Chávez inflicted upon them stopped me cold.

Then Huerta revealed that she had two unwelcome encounters with Chávez, one of which she described as rape. The two encounters, she said, resulted in two babies, whom she gave away to others to raise.

“I carried this secret for as long as I did,” she wrote, “because building the movement and securing farmworker rights was my life’s work.”

I sat with that for a long time.

In the 1970s, when I was a young boy who had just moved from Puerto Rico to the Bronx, Chávez was one of the first brown faces I saw on television. Few Latino men seemed to be fighting for something on television, but he was. I will forever argue that U.S. Latinos are not a monolith, but at a time when this country painted us as one, Chávez felt like our sole political leader.

“He represented the best of us — and by us, I mean Latino America,” said Manny Fernandez, the Times’ California editor and co-writer of Wednesday’s bombshell of a story. “And to discover that Chavez had this dark side is disturbing. But we do need to know who our heroes are.”

Chávez eventually reached the pinnacle of being the most famous Latino in the U.S. He passed away in 1993 and was posthumously awarded the Medal of Honor by former President Bill Clinton in 1994, and his bust graced the Biden Oval Office. His quotes about community and the fight for social justice were part of the U.S. Latino lexicon. And the Times story about him being a predator and Huerta’s confirmation of it have sent shockwaves throughout the community.

Those of us who have studied his life in detail already know he was incredibly complicated. Biographers have documented his extramarital affairs, his authoritarian leadership and purges of his staff. Chávez once thought of undocumented workers as union scabs, a fact that right-wingers love to cite. But nothing prepared me for what Murguia, Rojas and Huerta revealed. They did not describe a complicated man. They described a rapist — a rapist of minors.

Ace Gustavo Arellano”https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2026-03-18/cesar-chavez-myth-abuse-allegations”>wrote in his column for the Los Angeles Times: “Much of the Latino civil rights, political and educational ecosystem will have to grapple with why they held up Chávez as a paragon of virtue for too long above others just as deserving and, as it turns out, nowhere near as compromised. In any event, the myth has been punctured.”

Chávez’s complexity was something I explored in the past and at times, defended. Regarding his immigration views, in 2021, I finally found a 1974 letter proving that he shifted his position and was not the anti-immigrant hard-liner the right tried to make him. I spent years making sure that history was accurate. And even though I was defending his views on immigration, and not defending him against allegations of rape, reading the three women’s accounts Wednesday still left me feeling like a fool.

The Chávez family released a statement that said, in part: “Our family is shocked and saddened to learn of news that our father, Cesar Chavez, engaged in sexual impropriety with women and minors nearly 50 years ago. As a family steeped in the values of equity and justice, we honor the voices of those who feel unheard and who report sexual abuse. This is deeply painful to our family.”

After an acknowledgement that his family has its own good memories of him, the statement said, “We hope these matters are approached thoughtfully and fairly.”

Chávez’s name adorns an untold number of streets, schools and parks in this country. His name should be removed from all of those places: every one.

“Everything should be named for the martyrs of the farm workers movement,” Huerta told Latino USA. “Every name should be named after them.”

By Thursday, California had already begun the process of changing César Chávez Day, March 31, to Farmworkers Day.

In that same Latino USA interview, Huerta said it was the courage of women such as Murguia and Rojas who gave her the courage to speak out now.

I used to see Chávez as a hero, but now I realize that our greatest heroes are the ones who speak out even if it means revealing their own pain. What Huerta did was brave, and it is no surprise that she has received an outpouring of love and support. She did not have to say a word. She could have kept her silence, and she would still be loved and admired. Instead, at 95 years old, she chose truth over mythology. That’s the most radical act of love for a community there is.

Julio Ricardo Varela is the founder of “The Latino Newsletter” and co-editor of “Pressing Issues from Free Press.”