Is AI Creating a New Epstein Class of Untouchable Elites?

This week, we take you inside the National Press Club, where we spoke with Congressman Ro Khanna about the future of the Democratic Party, economic patriotism, and the growing divide between the powerful and everyone else.

From why Democrats struggle to win, to the unanswered questions surrounding the Epstein files, to whether Silicon Valley is creating a new class of untouchable elites, we break it all down.

Because this isn’t just about politics. It’s about power, and who it protects.

And the big question: can we protect ourselves from its excess and its consequences? Independent journalists Taya Graham and Stephen Janis head down to Capitol Hill to ask these questions. And if you have a question you want us to ask, please leave it in the comments!

Credits:

• Written by: Stephen Janis
• Produced by: Taya Graham, Stephen Janis
• Studio / Post-Production: Cameron Granadino

Transcript

TAYA GRAHAM: Hello, my name is Taya Graham, and welcome to our Inequality Watch React, the show where we discuss not just how this country is ruled by billionaires, but how and why, reporting that seeks to hold the American aristocracy accountable for the destructive effect unimaginable wealth has had on our politics and on our lives.

Now, unlike other YouTubers, we go right to the source to report back to you on America’s historic wealth imbalance, namely our nation’s capital, Washington, DC. That’s where my reporting partner and I — Hello, Stephen.

STEPHEN JANIS: Hey, how you doing, Taya?

TAYA GRAHAM: We often find ourselves on the Capitol steps or roaming the halls of Congress, bearing witness and asking tough questions to the people directly responsible for the wealth-centric world we live in. 

So Stephen, before I jump into this, how has Capitol Hill been treating you lately? Do you have any beefs about the way the Hill operates?

STEPHEN JANIS: I’m just having trouble finding Republicans in the wild, and that’s what I’m trying to do because I really feel like Republicans have a lot of questions to answer, but I can’t find, they’re not holding press conferences the way they did even a year and a half ago. So that’s my only beef right now, but we’ll fix that.

TAYA GRAHAM: I know. I haven’t seen a single free-range Republican in months.

STEPHEN JANIS: Yeah, it’s weird. But you can get them on the Capitol steps, but they’re not holding press conferences where they usually hold press conferences. And that’s been a little frustrating.

TAYA GRAHAM: And they haven’t been having any town halls for their constituents either.

STEPHEN JANIS: Not really.

TAYA GRAHAM: So they’ve really been quite quiet.

STEPHEN JANIS: Yeah. Interesting.

TAYA GRAHAM: OK. So let’s get right into this so we can discuss our first video. Now, this is a topic that seems to resurface fairly often on Capitol Hill, and it did again at the National Press Club this week. And it’s basically, why do Democrats keep losing? Now, we know the zeitgeist is slowly turning in the Democrat’s favor. Recent polls show a preference for blue candidates across the board. But a key progressive candidate, Congressman Ro Khanna, has a message for his party: basically, man up if you want to actually win in the future. Let’s take a listen to what he had to say. Let’s run clip one.

RO KHANNA [CLIP]: So where do we go from here? We cannot go back to the days before Trump. That led to a Democratic Party that had an approval rating of 27%. How and why should we go back to a party or a politics that got us two terms of Donald Trump? We cannot simply resort to incrementalism or these fashionable nudges of a broken system. There was a paper written about, let’s just nudge things in the government. It was heralded as some great academic insight. The era of nudges and incrementalism are over.

TAYA GRAHAM: So, Stephen, one of the reasons I wanted to lead with this clip is this analysis of the Democrats’ inability to win. Well, we’ve discussed this several times in both articles and a discussion we had almost a year ago. Actually, let’s run the next clip. It is pretty clear

STEPHEN JANIS [CLIP]: It is pretty clear that they need someone to jump the line to run that the Democratic establishment does not want to run. Someone with a vision that seems authentic, and someone who’s willing to take risks. You got to take risks. The risk-averse nature of the Democratic Party has turned them into losers.

TAYA GRAHAM [CLIP]: But hopefully the Democrat strategists out there who are spending millions of dollars, maybe they’ll take some time to listen to independent journalists as well as listen to the public and let them know that they have an authenticity issue, and they need to find a way to break the inertia.

TAYA GRAHAM: Okay, Stephen, I think we called this out several months ago. So, do you think Democrats are finally getting the message?

STEPHEN JANIS: I’m going to make one argument that you’re probably not going to agree with. And it’s going to seem a little limited, but actually I think it comes down to this: If Democrats run on health care, and if they make health care the center of their campaign, then they’ve learned their lesson. And if they push for Medicare for All, and if they push for the ACA [Affordable Care Act] subsidies, and if they don’t back down on this topic and embrace it and run ads about it and talk about how Trump was like, we can’t afford to give health care to the American public. We can only afford to spend money on a war. If they do that, then I will say, yes, they’ve learned their lesson. Otherwise, no.

TAYA GRAHAM: You know what? This seems to me like you’re almost recommending a Mamdani strategy that obviously had success in New York. Pick something straightforward, simple, that actually addresses people’s needs, and then stick to it. But honestly, what he did was bold. Even [though] I’m not a New Yorker I know the five points of his plan, and it was a very bold one, and it was controversial, but it still worked. 

But it seems like President Trump is always bold, and Democrats are almost always critics or incrementalists, always just trying to nudge things forward with baby steps. And I think Ro Khanna was trying to make the point that incremental steps can’t beat boldness. You pointed that out in your piece. You can’t continually defend incremental change against a man who is constantly throwing executive orders against the wall to see which one sticks.

I think this idea really becomes relevant. When we look at what’s happening with Trump. He’s saying literally publicly that the federal government can’t help out with childcare while he explicitly mentioned, at the same time, the US is spending an estimated $1 billion a day dropping bombs on a foreign country. How much of an opening do the Democrats need? And yet, I don’t think they’re taking the win here. If any party can be handed a loaded gun and manage to shoot themselves in the foot with it, it’s the Democrats.

STEPHEN JANIS: The thing is that bold ideas, big ideas, are just easier to run on, easier to campaign on. They permeate. They get through the digital noise that we all have to deal with. If you’re like, well, let’s just increase the ACA tax credits by 2% and we’ll make them applicable to people who have income over 150,000, if you get into that in those weeds, it doesn’t work rhetorically. It doesn’t work politically. 

But if you have big ideas, you can break off a lot of things from it. Just like Mamdani’s, I’m going to open five free grocery stores. It drove the right-wing people crazy. But what it also did is it generated a lot of attention because people were debating ideas. It was bold, a city-owned grocery store. But I think what it did, more than the policy itself, was the fact that it made campaigning easier because the idea was bold and it created a lot of traction, a lot of discussion.

And if the Democrats come and say, this is just unacceptable. We cannot have a country where people do not have health care, if they can be bold like that, it’ll generate discussion. And I’m sure you hear a lot of that like, well, we have to be kind of in the middle. No, being in the middle and being incrementalist doesn’t get you attention and you won’t win. So unless Democrats are embracing health care all the way from top to bottom, they haven’t learned a thing.

TAYA GRAHAM: It’s interesting you mentioned attention because I think the war has really been a great distraction. Don’t you think so?

STEPHEN JANIS: Yeah, the war has been a huge distraction from almost everything. And it makes it hard for Democrats to make that argument. But a leader will see an opportunity and say, you know what? Trump is being engaged in this Strait of Hormuz business, but we’re going to talk about what Americans really care about, which is being able to go to the doctor and pay for it. But I just don’t think there’s a leader with that kind of vision. I would call it a Mamdani kind of vision, being able to see the opportunity for changing the dialogue. And they have got to do that. And Chuck Schumer’s not going to do it. We saw him.

TAYA GRAHAM: Well, yes, we did see him in person at that protest at the Federal Reserve, and I hate to say it, but his speech was not particularly inspiring to the crowd. 

But speaking of distractions, that’s going to lead us to our next video. And that’s because the just scant attention paid to the missing Epstein files came up when Ro Khanna was asked a question about the Epstein class. 

Now, it was a question about former Attorney General Pam Bondi’s refusal to appear before the House Oversight Committee despite the fact that she’d been subpoenaed. Now, Bondi says she doesn’t have to appear anymore because she’s no longer the attorney general, but this led to Ro Khanna accusing the Department of Justice of basically hiding evidence. Let’s take a listen. 

SPEAKER [CLIP]: What don’t you know yet about the Epstein files?

RO KHANNA [CLIP]: I don’t know a lot. I don’t know why the 3 million files that have been held have been so blacked out. Why the redactions took place in March where a lot of the names that were mentioned of people who were abusers, who raped young girls, why those are all blacked out, and even members of Congress can’t see them? They claim, oh, this is to protect survivors. But you don’t need to blank out 3 million pages of documents just to protect survivors’ names. That would be the first question. Why aren’t they releasing the actual documents where most of the people are named who raped and abused these girls?

The second thing I don’t know is why she refused to meet with survivors. Why not meet with survivors’ lawyers? Just from protecting yourself. If I were attorney general, I would say, well, let me get the survivor’s groups in. Let’s have a process that the survivors’ lawyers agree to so that if We find any honest mistakes, we could have had the survivors’ buy-in and I wouldn’t get blamed. But they refused to meet any of the survivors’ lawyers. They refused to sit down with the survivors. Why?

Third, why are they not starting investigations in a criminal matter with people with serious allegations like Les Wexner, like Leon Black? I was asked recently about the very disturbing allegations against Congressman Swalwell, and how do I square that with the Epstein class? And I said, there needs to be accountability, whether you’re a member of Congress or whether you raped or abused, allegedly, girls on Epstein’s Island. 

But the Manhattan DA, within days, opened up an investigation into Congressman Swalwell, and yet for years we don’t have a single investigation into Leon Black and into Les Wexner. Why? Why is there no investigation? How powerful are these people that you’ve not opened up a single investigation for prosecution of the people mentioned in the Epstein files?

TAYA GRAHAM: Now, Stephen, we’ve both been going through the Epstein emails, and in fact, we’re going to have a large story coming out about what we’ve learned. But what’s the deal with Ro Khanna? Do you think his concerns here add up?

STEPHEN JANIS: I’m going to make a public announcement right now commenting on that. And I’m going to say something that is absolutely patently false, and this question and this answer proves it: No one is above the law. That’s just utter BS in the United States of America. And the fact that that discussion happened at the National Press Club shows it. I’ve heard it so many times repeated ad nauseum, and every day the Epstein scandal continues without investigations, without accountability, with the poor victims coming to Capitol Hill just to be recognized who were not recognized, without an interview with the attorney general. The idea that no one is above the law is absolutely false. 

And it speaks to the rampant inequality that we’re dealing with that people, there’s a different form of justice system for them and really what you would call blanket immunity. We talked about on the Police Accountability Report blanket criminality. Where in a poor community, everyone is suspect. Well, in the rich community, there is blanket immunity for the 1%, and that’s what we’re talking about. “No one is above law” is absolutely untrue, and this proves it.

TAYA GRAHAM: Well said. And Congressman Ro Khanna does make a point here. He does essentially illustrate that we have a two-tier justice system. And to me personally, as a woman who has covered this story extensively, I have interviewed survivors one-on-one. It’s the acknowledgement part that I have a really big problem with. The DOJ literally won’t even talk to these women. How is that even possible? How can that possibly be justified? It’s like you said, a blanket of immunity for the rich and powerful. And while the Trump administration is trying to send people to jail for throwing a sandwich while protesting, rich, powerful men who preyed on young women and children don’t even warrant a review by the DOJ. 

And I think this goes to the heart of inequality in this country. I’ve covered so many cases on the Police Accountability Report, like you said, of people driving to work or walking on a sidewalk or doing something completely innocent, and they end up in the crosshairs of the police and their lives are upended.

Meanwhile, the Epstein class seems untouchable, at least based on what has not happened at the DOJ. And the Epstein class leads to a question that I asked that was directed to Ro Khanna, and namely, how could we prevent a new Epstein class from forming in the wake of the concentrated wealth and power that will be the result of this AI boom? So let’s listen to this answer. Let’s run the next clip.

SPEAKER [CLIP]: Follow an AI question from Taya Graham of The Real News Network here in the audience. Do you support breaking up or regulating major tech firms to prevent AI from creating another Epstein class?

RO KHANNA [CLIP]: Yes. I mean, we’re going to need to do more than that to prevent an Epstein class. We’re going to need to have a tax on billionaires, but absolutely we need to have AI regulation. I mean, I don’t even understand how this is a question. We have electricity and electricity is regulated. We have nuclear energy, nuclear energy is regulated. We fly on planes, great thing, and I’m glad there’s an FAA. Has anyone ever been on a plane when they’re like, wow, there are too many regulations. Oh, you’re like, thank you. There are seat belts. Thank you that you have all the… They say the same thing over and over again every time you board. 

So AI, which by the founder’s own belief is a technology with that kind of power. Why wouldn’t you want safety regulations on it? Why wouldn’t you want to make sure there was certification and appropriate checks?

And we should have that done in a federal regulatory AI agency. And we shouldn’t have a race to the bottom with China. We should say America will provide the safest, most excellent AI where you know that the AI isn’t going to take your data, where you know that the AI isn’t going to do crazy things. And if China wants to have a race to the bottom, let’s see who the Europeans and Asians and Africans want to buy the AI from. We should say we will have the highest level. And then I think we also need open source so that you don’t concentrate all the power in these companies.

TAYA GRAHAM: OK, Stephen, what’s your take? Is Silicon Valley basically creating a new Epstein class?

STEPHEN JANIS: I love the metaphor that you use in your question, because you are actually Taya Graham, just so people know. Epstein class. What does an Epstein class connote? Well, it says that they’re all in kind of a class together. They’re learning. They’re watching and learning. Look, the nontech billionaires who got caught up in, like Leon Black got caught up in this scandal of Epstein, are not being prosecuted. What are we going to learn from that? They’re not being investigated. Hm, that’s really interesting. Their names are being redacted while victims are being exposed. Hm, what are they learning? The Epstein class is getting smarter and they’re saying, well, you know what? I mean, maybe we’re not going to be pedophiles, but we can sure break the law and abuse our power because look what happened to these guys. Absolutely nothing. 

So the Epstein class is really kind of, to me, it’s not funny, but it’s kind of ironic because it’s like we’re all going to learn together from the past scandals that when we have these AI companies and this massive amount of concentrated power, we certainly don’t have to follow law because they didn’t have to. And we’re actually more powerful.

TAYA GRAHAM: What concerns me is that this level of power and therefore this level of immunity will be godlike. If AI ends up rewiring the economy and throwing millions of Americans out of work, the power will continue to accrue to these people with capital. And that balance is already fraught in this country with, as we mentioned, historic wealth inequality, but it will only increase if AI evolves as predicted.

For example, how will our justice system be able to corral an executive or major stakeholder in a technology that could literally replace humanity? Their absolute power will dwarf what was afforded to the owners of the social media platforms. A democracy cannot accommodate gods, and that’s what we will be trying to do. 

OK, let me settle down [laughs].

STEPHEN JANIS: Yeah, but you make a good point. I mean, it really is getting close to godlike power. These people are actually espousing and saying, we’re going to kill 2 million, 4 million, 5 million jobs. They’re saying this without missing a beat. They’re not like, we have to account for humanity and somehow help people. They’re like, yeah, it’s just a fact of life. We’re going to do this. And in the process, we’re going to become unfathomably rich. Let’s remember AI, OpenAI was started as a nonprofit, and look what happened to that.

TAYA GRAHAM: That changed.

STEPHEN JANIS: These people are feeling it, and I think they’re looking at the Epstein class and saying, yeah, well, boy, they got away with this. Just imagine what we can get. We have no obligation. 

Ro Khanna said in a press conference we covered then that the second Gilded Age which we’re currently in is worse than the first, and that the people at the top are doing less in terms of social largess than they did in the past. There’s no Carnegie Library. There’s no Sam Altman libraries right now. So imagine the power they’re going to have and the past statement I made about no one is above the law. They’re not even going to think of the law. It’s not even going to matter. They’re going to probably be making laws about us.

TAYA GRAHAM: Oh, absolutely.

STEPHEN JANIS: Identifying us and putting us in jail.

TAYA GRAHAM: Absolutely. Especially with Citizens United, the amount of political power they’re going to be able to accrue is just going to be nearly impossible for the rest of us to be able to overcome. And then when you keep in mind the fact that none of them have proposed any sort of worker transition programs for people who lose their jobs to AI or any sort of fund for people who lose their jobs. Nothing like that. As well as there are people who are fighting town by town to just protect their fresh water because the AI data centers are just stealing it from underneath them. I mean, if there is no regulation, I truly fear for the fate of our country.

STEPHEN JANIS: Well, you talked about the Epstein class and now we have the AI class. We’ll see what the AI class does because I think they’re going to be quite difficult to deal with.

TAYA GRAHAM: I think you’re absolutely right. OK. So now let’s get to our segment called I Told You So, or, better yet, our accountability moment that highlights when politicians equivocate and we catch them. 

OK. So let me set the scene. Last year when we wandered into a press conference on DOGE, now remember back then, the Department of Government Efficiency was led by Elon Musk, and he led a group of tech bros that tried to dismantle the federal government basically in like three weeks. Well, that didn’t actually work out too well, and Elon was briskly escorted off the premises, and the DOGE swag was stuffed into a trash bag left in the former West Wing just prior to its demolition. Also, I did not receive my $5,000 DOGE check. Let me know if you did. 

But the reason this is I Told You So is a question that we asked Republicans touting DOGE last year.

OK, let’s see how they answer it. Let’s watch.

STEPHEN JANIS [CLIP]: Congressman, a third of the digital service resigned over concerns about access to sensitive information. What guarantees can you give to the American people that their sensitive information won’t be accessed by someone who’s not elected or otherwise appointed or otherwise?

PETE SESSIONS [CLIP]: Let me say this, the IRS failed that test and has failed it for many, many, many years. We need to make sure that we give the tools and the correct tools in technology. And I talked to government technologists just two days ago within the Zoom call where we talked about their needs to make sure that they are brought in and that technology that is efficient and that works properly is a part of the future.

TAYA GRAHAM: Now, Stephen, just recently there was a development specifically related to your question, which turned out to be so prescient, as a whistleblower reported to an inspector general that a former DOGE software engineer told colleagues he had two thumb drives of highly sensitive social security information for over 500 million people, both living and dead. Stephen, what on earth is going on here?

STEPHEN JANIS: Well, first thing I want to say is it’s been a year and a half since I asked that question, can you guarantee the safety of your data? and I still really don’t understand Pete Sessions’ answer. That’s Congressman Pete Sessions, and he started talking something about the IRS and how they failed, or the treasury department. And I still don’t understand what he was saying, but it shows that he couldn’t answer the question because he knew something was afoot. 

And what was afoot was that these DOGE bros were like downloading social security data, which is the most sensitive data that we have. It includes our social security numbers, address, date of birth, just a way to open up a phantom credit card on everyone in the United States of America. 

So this also shows, I think, makes a very important point that the policy, like the way you implement and execute policies in the Trump administration is totally freaking off the rails. I mean, they have kids with thumb drives going around in the social security office downloading data. Think about that. Think about all the horrible things that could happen. 

But also think about the difference between the conceptualization of DOGE and the implementation of DOGE. The conceptualization is we’re all going to go in there and literally, like you said, dismantle the government and save $2 trillion. And what was the execution? Well, almost no money was saved of any material amount. Yet we keep having these repercussions like we all saw the famous TikTok videos of the DOGE staffers talking about how they dismantled grants for people, I think from the National Endowment of the Arts, on really using AI without even thinking about it. 

So the point is that this is a perfect example, but it’s also showing how the Republicans are not doing their job in holding the Trump administration accountable.

TAYA GRAHAM: Stephen, I remember thinking when you asked the congressman that his answer just didn’t make any sense. And now we’ve got a kid walking around with social security data, which of course is about as sensitive and potentially harmful information as it gets. 

Now, it’s worth noting this press conference happened on what’s known as the House Triangle. It’s a space adjacent to the House Chambers where members can hold press conferences. But oddly enough, or maybe even intentionally, that was the last time we saw a Republican holding court in that spot. 

Now, Stephen, you’ve managed to corral a random Republican on the Capitol steps after the House convenes, but they’ve pretty much been absent from the Triangle, at least for us. Why do you think that is?

STEPHEN JANIS: Well, I think after they passed the Big Beautiful Bill, they didn’t want to talk to the press in some of the unscripted ways. I monitor the electronic bulletin board which tells you every day who’s going to be there, and I rarely… it’s not like I have not seen one, but I rarely see one. 

I think after the Big Beautiful Bill, they just kind of vanished. They really just cut and run. I haven’t seen them, and I think they just don’t really want to have to answer questions about the particulars of that bill, especially when people are panicking over health care costs, the ACA credits, the Obamacore subsidies which they let lapse. They just don’t want to answer questions about these very important issues. And now that gas is over $4 a gallon, I think they want to be also discreetly out of the spotlight. 

So that’s why, and it’s pretty frustrating because I really have a lot of questions I want to ask them, but I’m going to keep pushing.

TAYA GRAHAM: Well, I’m going to keep pushing with you, OK? 

Well, that basically wraps up our Inequality Watch React show. We appreciate you watching. And of course, if you have any ideas about how to hold the ultrarich accountable, we’d love to hear them. Just drop them down in the comments below. My name is Taya Graham, along with my reporting partner, Stephen Janis, and we are your inequality watchdogs reporting for you.