Lemon LIVE at 5 | Bombshell Epstein Revelations & a Voting Rights Battle!

Yeah, so I spent about 10 months looking into all of the files. Obviously, we got more files when they released the Epstein — the full, well, not the full, but some of the Epstein files. And what you can see is, you know, a relationship between Jeffrey Epstein and John Kerry. I remember back in 2019 when I was working with Virginia Giuffre trying to find witnesses to corroborate her story. We traveled all around the country. She told me that she encountered John Kerry. And I was frankly shocked because the years in which she would have encountered him were the height of Epstein's sex trafficking operation. And just a few years before he ran for president in 2004, if you all remember, he was the Democratic presidential nominee. He went on to be the secretary of state, a climate envoy, and as part of that job, he was a member of Biden's National Security Council. So, he has had critical roles over the last three decades of administrations, and he was a senator and senior leadership during the Clinton administration. So, Jeffrey Epstein seems to have put a bet on John Kerry a long time ago that he would have risen to power and even kind of had this fixation and obsession with him. You can see in the emails dreaming up a scenario where all the way until 2016 Hillary Clinton gets indicted and then John Kerry jumps in and runs for president. But the thing that was really shocking to me was how often he offered access to John Kerry to people. He offered to connect Steve Bannon to John Kerry as late as 2018. This is when Steve Bannon was an adviser to Donald Trump. He offered to connect the disgraced Norwegian diplomat Terje Rød-Larsen to John Kerry. This man is now being investigated by Norway's economic crimes unit for his connections to Jeffrey Epstein. He also offered to connect — he was asked by the disgraced Emirati billionaire Ahmed, Sultan Ahmed bin Sulayem, to meet with John Kerry when he was Secretary of State. And you know, I lay out all of the reporting, all of the emails, the staff members who in sworn testimony remember seeing John Kerry around Epstein, including on his plane. His chef said that he remembered him being there on the plane. Pictures, all of it, it's all in The Red Letter. I laid it out. This story has never been reported, which is shocking to me, Don, frankly, that, you know, so many of the top officials that have been connected to Jeffrey Epstein have received so much scrutiny and somehow John Kerry has not.

Yeah, and it's actually really quite — to me the response lacked any depth. It was tone-deaf. It was mocking, frankly. They seem to not understand the gravity of the Epstein story and all the people that were impacted by it. Like, it's in the story, Don, but I mean they suggest that I was using a Ouija board when I was referring to actual files and they wouldn't use their name. The spokespeople would not use their names. They did not want to be attributed to these statements. I could understand why. But yeah, they did not take it seriously at all, Don. And I think that's kind of concerning, frankly. And back in 2019, they said that he did not personally know Epstein. And now, as we've seen since the Epstein Files Transparency Act was passed, and we've only seen a small percentage of the files, but what we have seen shows that John Kerry did in fact have a closer relationship than they would like to admit with Jeffrey Epstein and that he would actually be a very useful person to call before the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee. I spoke to Congressman Ro Khanna, who is a Democrat from California, and he said that he should be called in to testify, like others have before, like the Clintons have and others.

I did, and he said that he should, so I'm guessing that they will. I mean, I'm asking if he will, but I asked him if he will, and he said he should. So, I assumed that's a confirmed yes. Of course, I think he would probably need some consensus among his, you know, committee members. We're reaching out to them right now. We're waiting to hear back from the chairman, James Comer, who ultimately decides who's subpoenaed and who's not. But, as we can see, there's pressure, there is, you know, if there's political will and there's political pressure, then I could see this happening. I reached out to Kerry's team and let me check my email, but so far they have not responded to say whether he would speak to the committee.

Yeah, that's what he said in 2019, but that was not what they said in the follow-up, you know, in this latest statement. I don't think they could deny that quite anymore.

That he was the man who wrote the message to Epstein saying, 'I love the torture video.'

Well, this is the thing.

There is sworn testimony. There's sworn testimony of people witnessing. There's a picture, you know, there's other people who have seen the picture. There's various circumstantial things. There is the fact that I have this from Virginia and other sources that she told. And the other thing is that these are documents in the Epstein files where Epstein is offering access to Kerry and people are asking Epstein for access to Kerry, and that is like the crux of the reporting is the emails around the access to Kerry. And this is happening, like I said, as late as 2018. He's text messaging with Steve Bannon saying Kerry's going to be in Washington next weekend. I can try to connect you with him. And then he says, 'Sorry, Kerry's not coming to town, but I can introduce you to Bill Burns,' who is the former CIA director, by the way, to Biden. And he was Kerry's deputy secretary of state. And if you know anything about the Secretary of State, that State Department, it is kind of an arm of the CIA. A lot of diplomats run intelligence from there. And so that would probably fall into his purview. We do know that Bill Burns, who was his deputy, was invited on Epstein's island. He said he couldn't go. He was invited to go with his wife. He said he couldn't go because he was called by Kerry to go deal with something in the Iran deal. But we do know that he met with Epstein twice and he may have been introduced to Peter Thiel through email by Epstein, but he did meet with him twice about opportunities while he was in government in the private sector. So Epstein clearly had these connections to people in very senior levels. And yeah, he was dangling this access to both of these men who have had — I mean, Bill Burns has been in public service for 32 years of his life and for a long time, you know, we did not know about this. And, you know, of course, his statement — and oh, this is the best — Kerry's spokesperson said that Kerry was never in Washington in 2018, like a blanket statement that he had never been to Washington in 2018. I think that's a pretty remarkable thing for someone to say. You can say that definitively that you're never in Washington, D.C. So yeah, there was a lot of definitive statements like that. And Ambassador Burns, he admitted that he met with Epstein twice, regretted it when he found out later. But, you know, with all due respect, you are a senior-level cabinet official, deputy cabinet official. You went on to be a CIA director. You would think that he would be more informed when he's going to someone like Jeffrey Epstein to ask for help. By the way, this all happened after he was arrested for being a pedophile.

You think this is funny? You think this is funny? You think this is funny?

Fuck you.

Fuck you.

Yeah, Don. Well, you know, I walked into this capitol today in 2026, and when I left the building, it was pre-1965. Today we have less black voter representation than we did prior to 1965. For the first time in our state's history, we have diluted all of the black electoral power since 1965 to appease the whims of one man, Donald Trump, who called our governor, who's calling southern governors and saying, 'Break up these black districts.' And it's not about political tit for tat because that's what they want to make it about — partisanship — but it's really about white power and white control. So, what we saw today was a capitol Klan rally by our Speaker of the House, Cameron Sexton, and Governor Bill Lee, and all of my Republican colleagues who voted for this immoral, reprehensible, unconstitutional attack on black voting power that we haven't seen in a generation.

I burned it because they are trying to take us backwards in history. They're turning back the clock of history. They're trying to lean into the Southern Strategy. This, you know, we are back in the Confederacy where black folks don't have political representation, where we're not treated as equal citizens in our democracy, where the voices of black representatives will be diminished and eliminated. We may lose the largest number of black elected officials in the South since the end of Reconstruction. And so we are facing the sons of the Confederacy here in states like Tennessee, Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama. We're facing what I call the white sheets caucus, you know, these Republicans who traffic in the politics of racism and white supremacy. And so I burned the flag because I wanted them to know that we're fighting back, that we beat them before and we're going to beat them again, and that we must rise up and represent a new South that is multiracial, multigenerational. We must not bow down. We must not be afraid. And that we must look them dead in their eyes and say that we know who you are. You know, these are the same folks who ran my grandparents out of Tennessee to Chicago. They were from Tennessee. They left during Jim Crow because of this terrorism and violence and the Jim Crow system, and we were not going back without a fight. And so I told the Speaker of the House that he is the grand wizard-in-chief and that we know what they represent. They represent an old vision of the South that they think is going to rise again, but we represent a vision of the South that's going to rise anew — a new South — and that's what we stand for. And so I burned it because we need to turn up the heat for justice. There's two ways that change comes about. You know, either they see the light or they feel the fire. They haven't seen the light. So now is the time for them to feel the fire.

What is wrong with you?

What is wrong with you?

You stupid motherfucker.

No, this is the first I'm seeing that. I was on the House floor. So, I think that was not on the House floor. So, I think at that time we were filing amendments and so I missed that altercation, but I know that there was — there were a lot of, you know, the state capitol looked like Selma 1965. We had, you know, hundreds of troopers surrounding the capitol rotunda, the galleries. You know, the speaker continually removed people from the balcony, including mothers and clergy and folks who will be disenfranchised. And so, so many folks had been removed from the gallery today because they wanted what they did to be done in darkness without public accountability or transparency. Yesterday, they ordered the room cleared in the committee room. So, you know, again, all this happened in just less than three days, Don. And so, all of it has happened with people being removed, being taken out, dragged out by troopers. That's kind of been the norm that we've seen these past three days of special session — of this Jim Crow special session — where folks have been taken out simply for trying to have their voices heard. And it's shameful. And it represents, you know, again, that vision that they want to bring us back to where we can't even speak up and have our voices heard without being brutalized or targeted at the direction again of the Speaker of the House, Cameron Sexton, who is somebody who has been one of the most racist members of this legislature. You'll remember just a couple years ago I was expelled by him as the youngest black lawmaker in our state and now he's trying to silence the voices of black communities. I represent the most diverse district and he's trying to silence the voices of black Tennesseans. And I think, you know, what people must continue to do is to disrupt — our democracy requires disruption, yet in good trouble. Be unbowed, be unafraid. And we must continue to do things out of the ordinary because this is what this moment requires of us. And you've been leading on that with your courage in Minneapolis. And I think we have to continue to show up and let them know that we will not be intimidated. We saw what they did to Senator Lucas yesterday in Virginia, going after a black woman who led the charge on redistricting. They're weaponizing the legal system and police system against black folks and we must fight back.

You know, I think that what's happening in Tennessee, what's happening in Alabama, ringleader-in-charge Jeff Landry, the governor of Louisiana, and our attorney general — I think one of the things that we continue to overlook is the power of attorney generals. How they are weaponizing the office of the AG's office to go after black politicians, to go after black policy, to go after black seats of power. And we should have known when both representatives were expelled in Tennessee that there was a need for urgent investment in the Deep South, that there was a need for us to get serious about the Deep South and to focus on states' rights. We've ignored states' rights and the states' issues of this country for so long, specifically where black people live in the Deep South, where 55% of black folks live. You've spent hundreds of millions of dollars in states like Wisconsin and Pennsylvania and areas in the Midwest. But then when you look at what is impacting the country, what is impacting our ability to be competitive in 2028, it is the Deep South. And the lack of investment that has come there turned into what we see today. And so now people are having to go to the extremes of protesting and demonstrating. But the reality is the only way we are going to claw this back is — Tennessee's got a governor's race this year. And it needs to be a serious quest to ensure that Marsha Blackburn does not become the governor of Tennessee and that — what's his name in Alabama? Tuberville does not become the governor of Alabama.

Press Robinson.

You know, I think that people are upset. There's a recall effort that's been kicked off by two black women from Baton Rouge who just decided, you know what, we're sick of Jeff Landry's bullshit. It's a tall order to accomplish that recall, but it shows that people are upset. People are beginning to activate. Tomorrow at 9:00 a.m. there is a Senate hearing in Senate Governmental Affairs where there's going to be a presentation of multiple maps to be considered. One of those maps eliminates all black representation at the congressional level in Louisiana. Another one of those maps gives us one black member of Congress. Again, the thing to put into context is since Reconstruction, there have only been four black people from the state of Louisiana to serve in Congress: William Jefferson, Cleo Fields, Cedric Richmond, and Troy Carter. Outside of that, the only other person to serve in Congress was in Reconstruction. Every year, every two years, Louisiana elects four to five white members of Congress, every two years, every legislative session. And so when you process that — that you have black people who are a third of the state of Louisiana that are paying into a tax system every day that are now being told that we can't send somebody who looks like us to D.C. and we only got this second congressional district in 2022.

Matter of fact, Cleo Fields — this is his first reelection quest for this congressional district that we just got after suing after redistricting happened in 2020. So when you process that, this is not a new tactic. People say, 'What has happened to America?' This has always been America. There's never been a time where we've had a quest to get a second black congressional district where we were not being sued all the way up to the Supreme Court. They kicked our seat out in the '90s. They're attempting to kick our seat out today. The question I have for the rest of the country is: if you see what is happening here when it is going to impact you, what are you going to do to help the South today?

I mean, you know, we are, Don, and that's the thing. Like I think I told my colleagues here in the Democratic caucus that we will be more ashamed by what we don't do than what we do do in this moment. We must not lean into caution. We must lean into boldness and moral clarity. What is happening is not about partisanship. It's about racist control of black and brown bodies in the South. It's about making sure that we maintain a white power structure as we're seeing across this nation. And we, the people across America, must pay attention to the South because what's happening in the South is a preview of what will spread across this nation. That they're not going to stop here. They're not going to be content with here. And we know that this Confederate system that we're up against is something that is all too familiar in America. This is not the exception to the rule. It is the rule. You know, to say that we may lose black representation is not anything new in the South. There's a time between the end of the 1800s and the beginning of the 1960s where there were no black representatives in Tennessee and most of the South because they were run out by racial terror and voter suppression. And so, we know this is not anything that is alarmist, but it's something that we're all too familiar with here. And so, you know, burning that flag was something ancestral for me. You know, I come as the youngest black lawmaker, I come here as the grandson of Harriet whose family came from Tennessee and had to move to Chicago because of that terror of Jim Crow. And I thought about my ancestors. I thought about how disrespectful these white lawmakers were, spitting on the graves of our martyrs when they denigrated the Voting Rights Act, spitting on the graves of our martyrs when they turned back the clock of history and said with a straight face that this is not about racism when we know what it is and we know what the result's going to be. And so I think, you know, what we're seeing right now is something that should make us rise up and defeat these neo-Confederates, these neo-Nazis and white supremacists who wear suits. You know, they've taken off the white sheets here in the South and they wear suits and they sit in governors' offices and speakers of the house offices and legislative offices and they do it in a way now that, you know, is under the veneer of decorum and respectability. But that decorum is a facade for the policy violence that's going to be enacted against black people across the South that we're seeing right now. In my state, one in five black people cannot vote because of felony disenfranchisement. We know what Jim Crow looks like. In my state, you know, we're resegregating our schools with the defunding of public education, you know, because they've had a war against that ever since Brown v. Board of Education. These racists have been strategic and organized and now they have an ally in the White House. And I think it's more dangerous than the 1960s because in the '60s you had the Supreme Court at least to be a check on power, to be a forum for minority rights. We don't even have that anymore. The Supreme Court is corrupt. It is a blank stamp for the president and his racist agenda. And so we have to be more creative and it's going to take a grassroots, on-the-ground strategy of good trouble and disruption and escalation nonviolently to disrupt business as usual here. And I think we must be organized. We must have solidarity. So, Brother Gary, I'm so grateful — he is a freedom fighter and I'm glad to be in this fight with you. And we have to link up across the South because we need Southern solidarity right now to say that if they come for one of us, they're coming for all of us and we need to link up and have a Southern defense strategy of how we're going to fight back as black folks against these racial terrorists known as the GOP and MAGA extremists.

40.

So the methodical manner in which they have done this. Several years ago they changed a policy to give the secretary of state the ability to call an emergency in an election which would allow her to suspend an election. She activated that which gave the governor the ability to sign an executive order declaring an emergency and suspending our congressional races immediately after the Supreme Court did this. And then rather than the Supreme Court saying, 'Wait a minute, normal standard is it's 35 days before you can put this into effect,' Alito gives a signature and says you can do this right now. So Jeff and the legislature immediately suspend our congressional map. They're putting us into a state of chaos. But that is also, I believe, because Jeff Landry has an election on the ballot right now. While he suspended the congressional map, the Senate race where his candidate, Julia Letlow, who's a member of Congress backed by Trump, is not doing as well as he would like her to. So, if I create chaos in this election, it may help her. He has five constitutional amendments on the ballot right now. All four of his constitutional amendments failed last year. But if we can get fewer people to pay attention to the election, if we make people think that you can't still vote because we took the congressional race off the ballot, then fewer people will show up and we can then change the way that teachers get their pay raises in Louisiana. We can split up the St. George and East Baton Rouge Parish School District. One of the things that Jeff is attempting to do through the legislature right now is break up the Baton Rouge school district, which is an 80% black school district, but it would still give the white-majority St. George residents the ability to send their kids to our magnet schools in the school district that they say they don't want to be a part of. So when you look at the things that these people are doing, they are methodically creating chaos in order to effectuate the change that they want at a local level. And we are being bombarded because we're not resourced and because it's not being taken seriously. And the South has been cast off as if it is just a place that Republicans can do whatever they want. There are 925,000 registered black voters in Louisiana.

Jeff Landry won with 500,000 votes. His ass can be beat.

You know, when I ran for the Senate four years ago here in Louisiana against John Kennedy, I understood that this is the direction that our country was going in. And we used our ads to tell stories. So when I saw Representative Jones burn that flag, I knew he was a kindred spirit because there is something that is taking place within this country and it is very visible. It is very clear and there are many people who want us to be more palatable. They want us to be more docile about the approach, but you need to be as glaringly clear about what we are dealing with so that people can rise to the moment.

Thank you, brother.

Thank you, D.

Hey, Don. How are you?