Welcome to Raging Moderates. I'm Jessica Tarlev. My guest today is Senator Mark Warner, who's represented the state of Virginia in the Senate since 2009. He's currently the vice chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee and a former governor of Virginia. Senator Warner, thank you so much for joining me. Welcome to the show. Jessica, thank you so much for having me.

Looking forward to it. It's great. I was just talking to you. Scott is on a very long vacation,

but he was talking about how much he admires you and talking about visiting with you years ago,

that you invited him to come talk about big tech, and he was just totally bulled over by you. He also called you very tall and very handsome and said you should run for president. So I don't know if that means anything to you. I am not doing that. I am like, you know, maybe I got one more of these than me. I'm going to probably run for re-election next year, but I don't want to be one of those that stays too long in this job.

Okay. Well, we'll get to the staying too long problem, but I want to start with the Epstein files,

because who doesn't want to talk about the Epstein files?

Yeah.

You have been right out in front on the Democratic side and talking about this, making some very

effective social media videos,

and I've noticed a change in your approach to social media, which I would love to discuss

as well. But can you kind of take us through where things stand in terms of the release of

the files and what your read is on the Galane Maxwell element, which seems to have taken on

new prominence this week.

Yeah, a great question. I mean, on the Epstein files, remember, this all came about because

Epstein was clearly a bad guy, but the kind of politicization of this started because

President Trump and his campaign said, of course, he's going to get all this out. And then the MAGA movement obviously embraced this. And I think we all got teased by Attorney General Bondi when she said, hey, you know, I got the files right here in my desk. And then all of a sudden, voila, there's nothing there, the sea, they said. And it just kind of begs the question about transparency. If the president says this is important, it needs to get out, now the fact that he seems

to have flipped.

I think it undermines people's trust in the president.

It makes conspiracy folks say, well, gosh, there must be something here.

And then what's driven me crazy has been Tulsi Gabbard, the director of national intelligence,

who was clearly maybe on the way out a few weeks ago in terms of Trump was really displeased

with her and she's politicized intelligence. She is doing everything possible to try to throw up

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