I should have just waited, lol. It’s in the Congressional Record now, complete with appended source list. I’ve added the direct link to the pdf (see pages 18 - 23) to my post.

Oh yeah. It takes the meaning of “wall of text” to new heights, lol.

But I had copied the transcript anyway, just because I’m a better reader than listener, and as I got further in I realized what a prize this is. So what I was doing for myself anyway just to get it straight, separating it out into paragraphs and then reading for comprehension, I posted. Well that, plus a lot more formatting, spelling, and namechecking work.

Thanks for the correction, I’ll add it to the list. I posted it quite late, and of course immediately afterward I spotted over a half dozen more errors. And then later even more, lol. I’m going to go back through it line by line later this evening.

The quote placements were usually taken directly from the YT transcript, unless they were missing or I knew for a fact they belonged elsewhere, like the quote you mentioned above. My eyes were swimming by the end and I just missed it. Sen. Whitehouse quotes Vicky Ward’s Vanity Fair piece extensively and I’m familiar with it, so I was going to check those directly anyway.

I can also add Wikipedia links for all the names (except Douglas Leese, who is mentioned in Epstein’s entry but has no entry of his own) and not even have to look farther than my history for them, but again I just haven’t had the chance.

I looked high and low for an official transcript via Sen. Whitehouse’s campaign and Senate sites, but found none, at least not so far.

Yeah but it slaps

What a fantastic idea.

I don’t think Republican congresscritters are suddenly growing a spine or developing a conscience – I think they’re concerned about the midterms.

Absolutely. I hope I didn’t convey that I think they’re doing it out of conscience. I think they’re doing it because they know they are fucking LOATHED, and some of them may even be starting to understand the changing proximity of pitchforks.

There is no doubt whatsoever they’d be shoving this back in the congressional closets if they could.

She’ll stand trial.

I think you lost me there. No charges have been brought, or even suggested. Nor will they be, because Pam Bondi heads the very organization that would bring them: she’d have to be kicked out of the AG role first.

The subpoena is simply for Bondi to be forced to testify under oath for the House Oversight Committee, as opposed to just showing up. Whether that makes any difference or not is up to whatever personal respect she may still have for the law, and I’m not holding my breath.

But what it does do is create a path of personal legal responsibility for whatever filth tumbles out of her mouth under oath. That’s not important today, but could be in whatever future moment in time Congress feels like resuming its own co-equal Article I powers and duties in regard to rogue officials. Not a promise, and definitely not charges. Just a caution with potential future bite.

Eh, maybe. The lockstep of the majority party seems to be breaking up in the manner of a dam breaking. For Bondi to be subpoenaed – even after Chairman James Comer reminded them she didn’t have to be under oath, and they could invite her to do “briefings” at any time instead – five Republicans joined all the Democrats in subpoenaing Bondi anyway.

Feel free to disagree of course, because what follows is simply my opinion, but often Oversight Committees are formed for the express purpose of suppressing oversight, and that’s exactly what this one was created to do: contain congressional curiosity and also restrict the congressional powers that might otherwise be used to actually investigate. “It died in committee” is a saying for a reason.

But that’s literally collapsing before our eyes. After I posted that, I read this. Rep. Anna Paulina Luna is a Republican from Florida. Watch it on C-SPAN or on her own social media, but this is her three hours ago supporting Rep. Mace’s motion today for a subpoena for information on a congressional “sexual harassment slush fund” that’s been reported on since at least 2017. Here are her words at the mic in support:

I support Representative Mace’s subpoena here, as well as the amendment to it. And I just think it’s really disgusting how this institution protects itself because y’all just, half of them, voted to send this stuff to House Ethics, where you know it’s gonna die. We know that members of Congress are using taxpayer dollars to pay off sexual harassment. We just had a member of Congress literally sexual harass a woman that then lit herself on fire, and you guys all protected him! You guys all protected him — my own side, your side.

And so, if you guys wanna talk about victims, if you wanna go out and virtue signal, and then you guys are gonna kill her stuff on the floor and then try to pass– yeah, of course we should subpoena all this stuff. But just, I’m not gonna sit here and play games. I think it’s a complete fraud. I think that’s why the American people hate us! I think the midterms are coming up and everyone should go on record for this, and I hope that members are exposed for this. I hope — it goes back, I think, to the ’70s — because it’s wrong that it’s happening. It’s wrong that we cover up for it. It’s wrong that we can’t censure our own side because people are busy making deals, because you guys don’t wanna censure your side. It’s a deal that’s been cut and people hate us for it. So yeah, I support it.

According to what has happened so far, Rep. Luna is supposed to be BOTH speaking and voting as told. That’s very apparently no longer the case. Last fall, four broke rank to force EFTA to a vote via discharge petition. Today, five broke rank to subpoena Bondi against Comer’s express insistence that they not. And Luna just stood up to speak of that which we do not mention publicly, and just to be absolutely sure it got heard, posted it to her own socials.

It takes a well-controlled majority in the majority party to ensure nothing happens in committee. And that is very clearly gone. Do you think Chairman Comer and the majority can count on Rep. Luna in committee now? I don’t.

So while I wouldn’t bet on anything happening, I also wouldn’t bet against. The machine is breaking up before our eyes, in a drawn out process that is gathering speed. These things are always incredibly slow, until they’re not. That’s where we are now. Can they patch it in time? Maybe. Maybe not.

I feel forced to add that the DOW is under 50,000, lol.

Someone snatch that woman’s derision/distraction binder on her way into the hearing, please.

The benefits of just listening to music I think gets overlooked.

Hard agree. And it’s a shame because we have more music at our fingertips now than ever before, from every possible time and place in history. I’m from an era (70s) when just putting a record on and listening to it all the way through was a thing, but I’m not sure how many folks realize today that music can be an event in itself: not as background, but as foreground. Putting it on, sitting in a chair, and just listening while doing little to nothing else.

It’s hard to get time to do it, but when I do it’s heaven. And it absolutely resets my brain in positive ways: afterward, I just feel good. I actually think it might qualify as an ersatz form of meditation, in that a person is not mentally attending anything else while doing this, just listening and letting the auditory experience wash over them. It’s difficult to quantify, but the benefits are very real.

I’ve watched both now, or I should say as much of both as I am willing to, and I’ve come away with a handful of observations.

No factual bombshells were launched or landed, which I expected: while Bill had a quid pro quo with Epstein for use of his planes in return for an hour of discussion on any flights of more than four hours, Epstein had contributed to various mutual causes, and Maxwell had attended their daughter’s wedding, the Clintons were simply not in Epstein’s orbit and did not have any factual information to offer.

However, and this was especially evident in Hilary’s testimony, the Clintons did have extensive knowledge and understanding of the Oversight Committee in general as well as the wide discrepancy in what the committee claims to be doing (finding truth) and are actually doing (political scapegoating and distraction). The committee was clearly trying to have another Bengazi hearing, and instead she kept taking them to the woodshed, pointing out repeatedly that she’d read all the witness depositions of the committee so far, and in none of them had a single majority member asked any witness a question directly in regard to Jeffrey Epstein.

As someone deeply disturbed by the present administration’s disregard of the Constitution, it was refreshing to hear Hilary remind the committee that they (Congress) are co-equal to both the judicial and executive branches of government, that they “are not beholden to the Justice Department” in any way, and have a clear Article I responsibility to finding the truth, including getting whatever is being falsely withheld (the remainder of the unredacted files, the records of Epstein’s financial transactions from the Department of the Treasury that are being withheld from Sen. Ron Wyden, etc).

The introduction to Bill’s testimony also gave insight as to what the photo business during Hilary’s testimony was about: their lawyer reiterated the Clintons’ desire to have the press present because, as they had suspected would be the case and had now become fact, select unauthorized bits from the deposition were used to create deepfakes that are now circulating. As the lawyer explained, when everyone watches the same thing at the same time, that kind of real-time public knowledge leaves no room for deepfakes. But for myself, and the reason I mention it, it seems quite clear from listening to the hours of testimony that that was the purpose from the start, for at least some of the majority members: they were not asking questions, they were putting out soundbites.

The difference in how the witnesses were treated was also incredibly different. For whatever reason, a number of majority members routinely interrupted, spoke over, contradicted, and even fought with Hilary. Bill had to suffer through very little of that by comparison: in fact I’d say that for the most part everyone on both sides was at least polite toward him, though he too got his share.

Which brings me to my last point. The behavior of Nancy Mace, specifically, toward both witnesses was an absolute disgrace and a dishonor to the office she holds. It was thoroughly disgusting toward both witnesses and brought forward no truth at all, it just wasted time as an exercise in personal harassment of witnesses. With Hilary she was trying to catfight about who was doing what during 9/11; with Bill she was trying to catch him in a non-existent lie by using a Daily Beast article that very questionably quoted a statement he made in 2019 but without ever referring to the actual statement, demanding that he answer to the article as opposed to asking him about what he actually, provably said himself. That last bit was such a confusion that no one ever did figure out what the question was supposed to be (probably the point) and in the end one of Bill’s staffers produced the literal statement, which his attorney then read into the record.

Overall Mace’s behavior was just obscene, and reminiscent of so many of the Epstein deposition transcripts I’ve read where the victims were just battered for hours with pointless hostile confusion, and for that reason alone it was sickening. Several majority members did this to Hilary, but none so openly as Mace, and she did it to both of them. While they both held their ground, they’re also both almost eighty years old, and Bill especially is obviously not in great shape. Since when do we scream at and badger our elders in an open attempt to confuse them and beat them down? It was such a deliberate shitshow and abuse of power that it made me ashamed to watch it. I ended up skipping large portions of the majority questioning for Hilary for this reason: it was literally sickening, and I’ve seen enough evil in my life already.

TL;DR: if you’re looking for the truth of the files and the breadth of the trafficking allegations, as I am, then it’s pretty goddamn clear many of the majority members are openly batting for Team Coverup.

EDITED a word

I’ve been watching Hilary’s deposition, and at about halfway in, she directly accuses the attorney general and the justice department of either “gross incompetence” or an active coverup. It starts with a question from Ranking Member Robert Garcia (D-CA) at 1:50:56 and Sec. Clinton’s answer, and lasts about eight minutes.

It is incredibly powerful, and if this is all anybody watches it’s well worth the time, IMO.

Direct link with timestamp: https://youtu.be/siiAk6WXc0M?t=6659

Transcript (lightly edited for clarity, emphases mine)

Question by Ranking Member Garcia: Madam Secretary, just lastly, I want to also thank you for your testimony and broadly speaking, you’ve probably been following just recently. This week we’ve seen and there’s been reports that numerous files are missing from the group of files released. For the record, only about approximately 50% of the total files have likely been released; the other percentage have been withheld for whatever reasons we’re not really sure of and don’t really understand. It’s also been reported by numerous outlets this week that the FBI has removed files that are supposed to be being made available to the Congress that include serious allegations of alleged abuse by President Trump, sexual abuse to a minor. Now these are allegations that we know have been corroborated in other ways, and the media have have reported on these, but these files themselves have been removed. Now this we view this is a very serious matter. I’ve personally looked for these files in the archive manifest that lists which files should be placed there. Those files are no are no longer there. and we have been calling on the DOJ and the Attorney General to release all of the files.

I’m wondering if, in your experience obviously in the US Senate or as Secretary of State, if you have any response to the behavior of the DOJ in their withholding of critical information and the apparent removal of files that could suggest serious crimes by folks in this administration.

Answer by Secretary Clinton: Congressman, I appreciate you’re raising this issue and I appreciated the statement that you put out when this became public knowledge, thanks to investigative reporting which revealed it. And I think that this behavior by the Justice Department deserves the most thorough investigation that the Congress could carry out.

As I understand the sequence of events, this committee subpoenaed the Justice Department, as well as the Epstein estate, as well as law enforcement officials from prior administrations, as well as my husband and me. The Justice Department refused to comply, which is what led to the passage by the Congress of the Transparency Act which then was signed into law.

And I think from the very beginning, the behavior of the Attorney General and her staff has demonstrated either a gross incompetence, which is bothersome because they are the keepers of information that should be evaluated for law enforcement purposes, or a clear cover up because they are protecting the president and others.

Either one of those should be the focus of this committee to try to get to the bottom.

If they are incompetent and they are incapable of complying with the law that the Congress passed, we need to know that because they are falling down on the job. They have an FBI director who’s more interested in drinking beer in a hockey dressing room after our team won the Olympics rather than being responsive and complying with the law as it has been promulgated.

So, I don’t think it’s unfair to say that, given the sequencing of the events – starting with the way that President Trump made the release of the files a key element of his 2024 campaign, the promise that he and then his attorney general made that the files would be released, then a walking back of that as they began began to look at the files, and [then] ignoring what they had promised, including that they had a client list on the desk of the attorney general – reasonable people would have to assume they are engaged in a massive coverup which is infuriating.

As an American, as a citizen, all of us should be, regardless of party, wondering what are they hiding.

And that’s why I said in my opening statement, the president of the United States is not above the law, and should be in a setting like this answering questions under oath, as should others who are prominently featured in the files. Especially the group that is featured after 2008, because prior to 2008 when Jeffrey Epstein plead guilty to the watered down charges that Alex Acosta negotiated (and then was rewarded for in the first Trump administration with a cabinet position) there are so many unanswered questions. I looked at the transcript of the Alex Acosta testimony that was taken before this committee and I don’t think that any Republican members asked him a question.

So you have to conclude that there is something rotten in the state of Denmark, or clearly the Justice Department, starting in the White House and at the top with the Attorney General, and this latest example of the missing files about the allegations. And they are absolutely nothing more than allegations, but the FBI interviewed that witness four times. You don’t interview a non-credible witness four times. You don’t put into the FBI reporting “protect this source” if you think there is nothing to it.

So, of course, I would like to know, like every other American deserves to know, what is in those files and who is going to hold people accountable, because the Justice Department seems to be either unwilling or incapable of doing so.

Yeah, I wouldn’t worry about the safety of the extension, though. I have a lot of extensions going already, and this is not the first one to go bonkers as a later addition. So chances are excellent it will work for others just fine.

Huh, I was just writing that I wished Firefox would do this, so thanks! I’ll check it out. Much appreciated.

EDITED to add: unfortunately it’s not for me. I tried it out in automatic mode (recommended) and while it worked perfectly, as soon as I enabled it my browser started to get unstable, pages would lock, mouse pointer would disappear, etc. And then as soon as I disabled the extension all went back to normal. So it’s a no-go for now. But thanks for letting us know it’s there.

Floorp, a Firefox fork, containerizes also. Floorp does it in the same manner, meaning you create the containers and assign sites, and only after that does that site automatically get containerized. I do something similar to what you’re doing, but it’s between Firefox and Floorp. I wish they’d start containerizing sites by default, but for now this is what I do.

In short, Microsoft is now doing for ICE what they were doing for Israel in 2024-2025 to support the genocide:

‘The machine did it coldly’: Israel used AI to identify 37,000 Hamas targets – The Guardian

‘A million calls an hour’: Israel relying on Microsoft cloud for expansive surveillance of Palestinians – The Guardian

Revealed: Microsoft deepened ties with Israeli military to provide tech support during Gaza war – The Guardian

Note: these are all Graun links because they are what I had in my browser history and because they specifically made a point of looking into it, as opposed to other major news outlets. I’m sure there are other sources as well, I just didn’t look for any.