Leigh McGowan — known online as “PoliticsGirl” — tore into conservative pundit Scott Jennings during Monday’s episode of CNN’s “Newsnight” after Jennings downplayed anger over the Justice Department’s ongoing failure to release the vast majority of its files related to the late convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, who was once a close friend of President Donald Trump.
Guest host John Berman noted that the DOJ is now more than a month past a legally mandated deadline to release the files.
Jennings pushed back by asking, “Yeah. What’s the punishment if they don’t?”
Berman acknowledged that the apparent lack of consequences was itself “a problem.”
Jennings then said the DOJ should follow the law but argued that people shouldn’t “get our knickers in a twist” over the delay, a remark that infuriated McGowan.
Mocking Jennings’ tone, she shot back: “Yeah, let’s not get our knickers in a twist over child rape, ha ha ha.”
She called Jennings’ attitude “insane” and “horrifying” and stressed the Epstein files concern “a multi-national, multi-generational child and woman sex trafficking ring” and questioned why Jennings appeared to be treating their non-release as trivial.
As Jennings tried to defend himself by reiterating that he had said the DOJ should follow the law, McGowan cut in, noting the department has also failed to explain earlier redactions of the small number of files it published, which it was also required to justify.
She then laid out why the release of the files is so important:
“Everything that is in these files, it could bring an entire house down. And if it has to, it has to. If it brings down Democrats, bring them down. If it brings down Republicans, bring them down. If it brings down princes, world leaders, Hollywood people, bring them down. But what it feels like right now is that there’s a giant cabal of people that do not have to listen to the law.”
The exchange quickly went viral on social media and came just a day after Jennings was torched by fellow CNN panelist Julie Roginsky in a separate viral post.
