Welcome to The Beat. I'm Ari Melbert. We are starting the week. I smiled at Nicole. We will be smiling again by the end of the hour based on some special stuff that we have cooking, including the delegate from Puerto Rico on what we all lived through last night. So that could be pretty interesting when you think about the Super Bowl and the cultural moment we're in. That's by the end of the hour. We begin, though, with a serious and important story about accountability and updates in the Epstein scandal.

The Miami Herald, which broke this story wide open. We've shown you that before.

We credit the Miami Herald with reopening that case on our timeline.

There's top journalist on this story, Julie K. Brown, reporting that Trump may have had a lot more knowledge about Epstein than what was known at the time. You can see the headline here with

serious sourcing, and we'll update that as we get into this story. While the top update out of

Washington is that Jeline Maxwell, of course, the convicted associate of Epstein, has now formally pled the fifth during her deposition before Congress, and lawmakers spoke out about that.

As expected, Galane Maxwell took the fifth and refused to answer any questions. This obviously is very disappointing.

She was not at all remorseful about pleading the fifth today.

What we did not get were any substantive answers to the questions that were asked

that would advance our investigation.

I don't think she had the legal right to plead the Fifth Amendment.

I'll just say that, but she did. The fact that this woman is continuing to invoke the Fifth Amendment

tells us exactly what my colleagues have already said. She is she is a monster. She does not care.

You can hear it there. And that includes, of course, members of both parties agreeing that this was

wrong. Of course, only one party currently, the Republicans, have a DOJ that granted her leniency in her prison upgrade and a very unusual setting where she did talk.

The Times reporting that she refused to answer these questions.

Her lawyer said she would, quote, speak fully and honestly if she got clemency.

Now, Maxwell spoke to Trump's former criminal defense lawyer, who's now the number two at DOJ last

summer, and at that period, she answered questions, not for half an hour, an hour, or clarifying.

It was actually nine hours. And I want to remind

everyone that our attorney said she answered every question. This went over two days. And best as we

understand it, although the DOJ has not exactly been fully transparent along the way, but best as

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