S2 Ep142: The Epstein Files Are Being Buried by DOJ (w/ Asha Rangappa)

The Illegal News with Sarah Longwell

The Bulwark

Politics, News, Society & Culture

4.9 • 3.4K Ratings

🗓️ 21 January 2026

⏱️ 72 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Asha Rangappa joins Sarah to discuss the ICE raids in Minnesota, a federal court injunction limiting certain actions against protesters, DOJ retaliation, the stalled Epstein files release, and the growing use of law enforcement as a political weapon.

Read the Ruling Restricting Federal Agents’ Actions in Minnesota: https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.mnd.229758/gov.uscourts.mnd.229758.85.0_1.pdf

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Transcript

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0:00.0	The DOJ is also investigating the protesters who interrupted a church service in Minnesota over the weekend,
0:05.9	which, by the way, don't do this, people.
0:08.9	It is, it's totally counterproductive and also wrong.
0:13.2	But anyway, and probably illegal, actually.
0:16.5	Hello, everyone, and welcome to the illegal news.
0:19.6	I'm Sarah Longwell, publisher of the bulwark,
0:22.5	and it's Tuesday, January 20th, and I'm joined for the second week in a row by Asha Rangappa.
0:27.3	Glad to have you on the pot again, Asha. Thanks for having me back. I'm excited.
0:32.4	Yeah, you were great and you know the drill, so let's dive right in.
0:36.6	Let's dive in.
0:42.4	Today we're going to focus primarily on the events that have occurred in Minnesota since we last spoke.
0:48.9	Then we're going to talk about what the heck is going on with the Epstein files, which, you know, spoiler alert, DOJ still has not released them.
0:58.8	And finally, to wrap up, I want to discuss the DOJ's raid on a Washington Post reporter's house and what it means for, you know, the free press.
1:10.9	So let's start with kind of Minnesota part one because I want to do the good news first because there's a lot of awful, like really bad illegal news coming out of Minnesota.
1:17.0	But there was this past Friday a federal court in Minnesota issued a preliminary injunction that prevents ICE from employing certain tactics, including the use of pepper spray against
1:22.4	protesters. Can just give us an overview of the court's ruling? Yeah.
1:27.7	So this was a lawsuit that was filed by six individual plaintiffs.
1:33.6	And just so people know this is separate from the lawsuit that was filed by the state of Minnesota.
1:40.6	That lawsuit also asked for a temporary restraining order. It was not granted, which means that, you know, the court's going to still wait and have hearings to determine how to move forward.
1:54.0	Basically, these are six individual plaintiffs who are claiming that or who claim that their First and Fourth Amendment rights have been violated.
2:02.6	And it basically describes all of these crazy tactics that ICE was doing basically on kind of
2:10.0	bystanders who were around, you know, trying to film, things like that. And I'm reading from it
	...

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