August 3, 2025

Recently, I sat down with Congressman Robert Garcia — ranking member of the House Oversight Committee — for an interview. We talked about Rep. Garcia’s charge to release the Epstein Files, the debate over redistricting in blue states, the DOJ targeting political opponents and much more.

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Marc: Okay, here we go. Congressman Rep. Robert Garcia, welcome back to Defending Democracy.

Rep. Garcia: Yeah, happy to be here. Thanks.

Marc: Alright, man did I want to have you back on in a hurry. You are in the thick of it because Donald Trump is trying to hide the Epstein files. He does not want these coming out. We'll talk about maybe why that is. 

And the House Republicans are just a clown show. Having spent all of this time telling their constituents these files had to come out, now Mike Johnson and his conference are trying to figure out how to suck up to Donald Trump without looking like complete idiots, which they are. And you, my friend, are leading this fight as the ranking member on the House Oversight Committee. So tell us what's going on.

Rep. Garcia: It’s wild. To start, let's be really clear, Donald Trump, exactly like you said, is hiding something. There's no reason why you spend your entire campaign, your family advocating for this, the entire MAGA universe, all your supporters focused on releasing the Epstein files. It's central to what you're going to do. Then you become the president, and all of a sudden we know that you've been told by the DOJ what's in them and that you are in the files in some way. We know that's true, it's been reported. And then you do a complete reversal. So clearly he is covering something up. Clearly now Mike Johnson and the Republican conference is obsessed with trying to clean this up and provide cover for Donald Trump.

It's time to release the full files and make them available to the public. We shouldn't be concerned about who's in the files, who's going to be implicated, all this other stuff you hear out there. Two things are important. One is protecting the victims, which we obviously want to do in this process. It's very important. And two, I don't care who's in the files. I don't care how powerful you are, what position you held, what party you were in, how much money you have. You should be held accountable for the horrors that have happened to these young women and children — in some cases, teenagers — just horrific stuff.

And so we're going to take this on. We are very aggressive in our approach. We've obviously forced Republicans, as you know, to issue this subpoena, which we expect to happen here in the next few days by Comer and the Oversight Committee. And we're moving forward and we're going to do everything we can to talk to as many people, get as much testimony, and get our hands on not just the actual documents, but we know that there is video. We know there's other types of artifacts. And so there's a lot there to do, but we're ready for the work.

Marc: Explain to me and to the audience what the posture of the Republicans is. You forced this subpoena. They [Republicans] seem to want to say that they do think the files should be released, but they don't actually act like they want the files to be released. Recently, the word of the day or the word of the week has been credible. They want the credible information released. Give us some texture to what is the Republican position on this.

We know not everyone has time to sit through a 45-minute interview, which is why we added this written version — so you can go back and read the parts you want and skip others. Upgrade to always receive this format delivered to your inbox.

Rep. Garcia: That incredible word is really important. When we knew that this committee was moving forward and we planned for a week to force this vote, we knew which Republicans were on the subcommittee, we knew who was probably going to show up, who was going to be absent. We maximized our attendance, we kept it really quiet, we pulled all of the public comments that the Republicans had made about the Epstein files, and then we made the motion and forced a vote. As we know, Mike Johnson's trying to plan a recess and get everybody out of D.C. So we were able to convince those Republicans to force a vote. We got a couple of them to vote with us, and it became the five of us and three Republicans for a bipartisan vote.

What was really interesting is they were very uncomfortable with taking this vote. There was a lot of back and forth, a lot of phone calls were being made, a lot of text messages were being sent. The subcommittee chair voted against it. But you have folks like Nancy Mace who have been so out front on this, and she obviously didn't want to go back home and confront her constituents as to why she would vote against releasing the files. But she did something that was really both interesting and quite disturbing. During the process of these motions, she made a motion to try to insert the word credible in our motion of what files would be released. Our motion is to release all of them. And she wanted the word credible.

I pushed back and others pushed back and said, "Credible to who? To Donald Trump? Credible to Pam Bondi?" We know that word can be very powerful in getting information and what is given to us. We pushed back and because of their poor attendance, it was a tie vote, 5-5, but because they didn't have six members, it failed and she was not able to insert the word credible into the motion. Then the motion goes through and now we're going to get all the files and with the subpoena. So that part's really important that we won that fight.

But now it's about ensuring that James Comer gets a subpoena out and that he agrees with our request. We told Comer, "Look, if when you put that subpoena out, we want you to tell the DOJ that we want all of the documents and files, we want them within 30 days because we know that there's going to be a Glenn Maxwell deposition that we need to corroborate information with. We know that there's going to be other efforts to delay and stall. God knows that she wants some type of pardon or reduced sentence." All of this is going to be really important and why we need all the files immediately and why Republicans have twisted themselves into a complete knot on this, because I think they want to get these files released, but I think now they understand that Donald Trump doesn't, and that puts them in a really tough spot.

Marc: Speaker of the House Mike Johnson is tripling down on this word credible. After you were able to defeat Nancy Mace's effort to put this in, he is still hammering this. 

Do you think that even after you won this very smart strategic victory in the committee that they will continue to try to carve out this space for records that they would say are, quote, "intertwined in all the files?"

Rep. Garcia: We shouldn't trust Trump's Department of Justice. I also do know that there's a lot of career FBI public servants and others that have all been involved in this case. A lot of people know about what is in these files. So it's just not as easy to just kind of hide everything that is in them. There are folks out there that have this information.

I will also just say that Mike Johnson right now doesn't have a clear strategic out. He's trying to find a way out of this and he is not there because a lot of his membership want these released and their constituents are demanding it. And what's also really, I think, important is at this moment, we are also leading Democrats, our efforts to protect victims. When Mike Johnson kind of refers to, "We want to protect also the victims," and so do we, which is why we're not going to be putting out information or documents that's going to retraumatize anyone. We want to center justice for these victims and these people that have been abused in horrific ways. So we're going to protect them. Who we're not going to protect is anybody that is in these files, documents, and videos that committed harm. And also for the public interest at this point, all this information has got to be released. People want to know and it's in our duty to restore some of this trust.

Donald Trump has betrayed his base. He's betrayed the American public by not releasing the files. 

Marc: If Donald Trump is going to lie about this, if Mike Johnson will paralyze the House to protect Donald Trump from embarrassment here, what won't he do to help Donald Trump or their billionaire friends? What other lies won't they be prepared to expose if it helps Republicans achieve power at the expense of the American people?

Rep. Garcia: One, look, we can talk about all of these things. Yes, Donald Trump is ripping away health care from 17 million people. He's giving tax breaks to billionaires, and he's the most corrupt president in American history. And his corruption includes the lies he is telling about the Epstein files. This directly goes back to trust in government, Donald Trump's corruption, the lies he's telling his supporters and the American public, and people are interested. We've got to meet people also where they're at and what they're talking about. People are talking about the Epstein files. So for us to just ignore that fact is ridiculous. People who are talking to me about this are casual political observers. They're not people that are engaged in the ins and outs of Washington. And so we've got to be out there spreading this information and this message and being very clear, then focusing back on the fact that Donald Trump has betrayed the American public on this. He has lied and he's involved in some type of cover-up and he's hiding something that we know is out.

Marc: Tell me about the chair, James Comer. Is he someone who has spoken about this issue? How does he factor into this? Is he going to do the right thing? Is he going to try to wiggle out? What's his gambit in all this?

Rep. Garcia: He has been active in saying that the files should be released. Obviously, as the new ranking member and lead Democrat on the committee, I'm developing a relationship with him. I think we have very different political perspectives and are going to take on the issues that we believe matter to our constituents. For us, we're going to focus on truth and on justice and pushing back. And James Comer, unfortunately, has been more interested in protecting Donald Trump and his family. This is a family of grifters that have just profited off the American public. What I think it is important for us, and I've told all of our Oversight Committee members, this is a new era. We're going to go in hard.

When you think about the Oversight Committee, you're talking about folks like Ro Khanna, Max Frost, Jasmine Crockett, Greg Casar. These are people that are willing to go into a big fight. And that's what we're going to do. We're going to take every opportunity that we have to push back on them really hard and stand up for law and stand up for free and fair elections and stand up for all the things that we believe in. And in this case, stand up for these victims and not be scared about where the truth will take us. Wherever the truth is going, we're following and we're going to release it to the American public.

Marc: My next topic is redistricting and the absolute scandal that is what Mike Johnson and Donald Trump are doing in the state of Texas. This is a state that gained seats in the 2010 cycle almost entirely because of Latino population growth. And then they drew a map that did not reflect more Latino seats representing that growth in 2020. Same thing. They gerrymandered that map. When they talk about mid-cycle gerrymandering, when they talk about going back and gerrymandering, they are building off of literally decades of gerrymandering, decades of depriving Latino voters their voting rights and their voices, decades of discriminating against Black voters, against Democrats and a map that in 2021 they were quite proud was incredibly gerrymandered that my law firm and I are continuing to sue over and now they want to eke out another four to five seats. What the hell is going on?

Rep. Garcia: And as you know, Marc, it's not just Texas. We know that they're going back to the drawing board, possibly in Florida. They're looking at Missouri. They're looking at a bunch of other places where they can even squeeze out one or two seats out of some other states. This is a fire alarm moment for the country. And people need to understand what's happening. They've realized that now they're going to have to do everything they can. They're not going to only lie, cheat, steal. They're going to flex their power in these conservative states to do this mid-decade redistricting so that they can continue and stay in power and keep Donald Trump in power. And my response to our governor and others has been, we have to do the same thing.
you look at the four biggest states, as you know, California, Texas, Florida, New York. The two democratic states, California and New York, have very controlled redistricting laws. Constitutional power has been limited. We know that we've essentially provided commissions to do the redistricting for us because we believe that we shouldn't gerrymander. We believe that lines should be fair. We want independent citizens to do it. And of course, Florida and Texas don't have any of that. We've basically put both hands tied behind our backs because we want to do the right thing. And Republicans will steamroll us every time and maximize seats because they don't really care about rules or doing the right thing. We can no longer do that.

I would love to continue to support our independent commission in California, which I did when we created it. Everyone did. It was the right thing to do. Those days are done. And if Republicans are going to do this, I've encouraged our governor, I've supported our governor in our efforts to redistrict the state. And we should be looking at every state where Democrats are able to do so and go all in because Republicans are going to. So these ideas that we, you know, we can't play the like respectability politics game anymore, that's over. We have to be aggressive and not just match their fight, we've got to be more aggressive. We've got to fight harder than they fight. And that's I think I hope that's a lesson that Democrats are learning across the country. And I get it's a hard one because we want to do the right thing. We're ethical. We believe in truth. We want, you know, we're more, we're more academic and we're a studious. We want to, we want to be good examples.

I think if we continue to stay on our track, we're going to lose everything we cared about, everything that we built over the last 50 years. And so this is the only choice we have.

Marc: When they talk about doing a further gerrymander, can you imagine what they're planning on doing in states like Florida and Texas? It's absolutely obscene. So thank you for your courage on this because I know it's not easy. I know it's not easy in a state like California.

Rep. Garcia: My predecessor in Congress was one of the lead members of Congress that advocated for redistricting. He wrote the bill in the legislature that started this whole process. It's hard to go back on something that we believed in. We don't have a choice. We really do not have a choice. And if you're a California Democrat watching this and are feeling a certain way, which I know a lot of folks are, hey guys, we've got to go all in. If you care about rights, reproductive rights for women, LGBTQ rights, that there aren't kidnappings off the street, that billionaires don't get all your money, that you have still opportunity to organize a union, that we actually have elections in the future for president, then we've got to get on board. We've got to get on board.

Marc: The situation with immigrants and others being disappeared, literally snatched off the street by masked agents, thrown into vehicles, family not able to find them for days or weeks. This was dominating the headlines a few weeks ago and months ago. And there was no place where this was more of a crisis than the state of California where Donald Trump sent in the National Guard, the Marines. And I feel like it has disappeared a little bit from the headlines. Can you just give people a sense of what the state of things are on that front?

Rep. Garcia: The state of things are horrific. Donald Trump has these quotas that he's essentially asking ICE to meet. They are sweeping and picking up everyone from U.S. citizens to non-citizens with no criminal records and everyone in between. And we're hearing horror stories of people that can't find family members, folks that get arrested for no reason. They have no idea why. Taking them days to get out of jail or detention centers. Members of Congress have lost our ability to visit detention centers unannounced, which is literally the law and Secretary Noem is choosing to ignore it. And so that's been a huge issue. I just got rejected at a detention center here in Los Angeles. They're continuing this work and people forget. I know that the health care piece and the tax breaks for billionaires got a lot of attention in this last horrific bill that Trump got through the Congress.

But in that bill was also essentially a supercharging of ICE. ICE is going to have dramatically more resources. They'll be able to essentially double in size. They're going to be able to supersize and increase their detention centers. They will now be the single largest federal law enforcement agency in America, larger than the FBI, larger than all of our other law enforcement agencies combined at the federal level. ICE will be larger than most militaries across the world. Donald Trump is trying to create his own personal police force. He's trying to create his own personal force because he knows that a lot of kind of these big city sheriffs and police chiefs won't listen to him. They won't just turn over police departments. It's not the way it works. And so it frustrates him. So he's creating his own personal police force that Stephen Miller is organizing for him. And it's horrible to see.

I'm an immigrant. I, a lot of these folks are folks like how I grew up, how my family and I came here is when we were just starting out and trying to reach that American dream. And it's been shattered for so many people and we've lost, in my opinion, our humanity in all this. I think we've lost who we are as a country. I think that, you know, right now we've lost our way. What is our moral framework in the United States anymore? It's sad to think that in so many ways we're the bad guys now. We're doing horrible things to people and it's important for us to believe in doing good and that our country can be a good country to push back on.

Marc: Congress has put in the law for years now, under Democrats and Republicans, the right of members of Congress to make unannounced visits to ICE detention centers. The only eyes and ears that we have are the ability of members of Congress to visit these facilities on an unannounced basis to be able to see what is happening. They are not allowed to use any appropriated funds, which is just another way of saying that the people can't in their official capacity keep you from visiting these facilities. What is going on there? And what does it mean for these migrant communities and for your constituents and the American people's ability to know what's going on?

Rep. Garcia: We don't know fully what's going on, which is a huge problem. We know when we, before essentially the ability for members of Congress to do oversight at the facilities, essentially revoked, against the law and an illegal and obviously clearly defying of the law. We knew that when we had members going in the Trump administration early on that we, there were reports of malnutrition, not having access to water, facilities that weren't humane. All of these things were bubbling. People not having access to legal representation.Then imagine this new kind of rule that's been put in place now by Secretary Noem, where we have to basically give a week's notice and then get approval to actually do oversight at one of these detention facilities. What are they doing in that week to prepare for our visit? Why are they turning members of Congress away? Because they're hiding something. And clearly there is mistreatment happening at these facilities. And now they're denying members of Congress the ability to do oversight work.

I've been to one of these facilities myself and I was denied entry by those there at the ICE facility. I showed my congressional card. I explained who I was. They denied that entrance. This is an incredibly serious moment. People need to understand that Donald Trump essentially will do whatever he wants. He's flouting the law. His march to authoritarianism continues. He is not being held back or stopped by members of his own party. And Democrats need to be in the fight, continue to be aggressive, do our oversight work, and do everything we can to win the majority in the midterms. It goes back to the redistricting debate. It goes back to so much. If we're going to slow down Donald Trump and these Republicans, we've got to start winning elections.

Marc: As someone who was so strong and just so absolutely defiant around this, what is your sense of where that weaponization is and are enough people doing what you did, which is like just saying, "you know, screw you."

Rep. Garcia: I think that the weaponization of government is ongoing and an active project of Donald Trump's. He's doing it every single day through intimidation, through prosecution, harassment, putting his supporters out to go after members of Congress or judges. It's happening consistently. We shouldn't, I know that we are so used to him doing this now, but we shouldn't normalize it. It’s serious, it's dangerous, it puts people in harm's way. People say, "Oh, you know, it's not that serious." No, our democracy is literally on the line. We are losing it day to day. At this moment, we have to be willing to put ourselves in front of this problem. We have to be willing to be aggressive and to know that there are serious consequences to fighting back. But I think that has to be the posture that House and Senate Democrats and that Democratic governors and others take. That's what this requires. And I think we've got to be aggressive. We've got to be fearless and let the chips fall where they may.

But if we're not, then we need to allow folks to come in and who are willing to do that work. This is not a moment to do things as they've always been done and I think you're hearing that from a lot of Democrats. When I go to town halls and when I'm talking to folks here back home, people are like, "Thank you for fighting and keep fighting hard, like do whatever it takes." That's the posture that I think all of us should be taking. If we don't do that, if we don't do like what Alex Padilla was willing to do, or what LaMonica was willing to do in New Jersey, if that's not the posture, then Donald Trump will continue to escalate these attacks, escalate the weaponization of government, and he will have amassed so much power over all of our political institutions, over his own law enforcement agency, and the destruction of the courts, that we won't know how to at that point then be able to respond or have the will or power to. And so this is the moment to really fight back. It's really dangerous, but it's really important.

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