Former State Department official and investigative journalist Mike Benz warned time is running out for the Trump administration to expose government corruption before November’s midterm elections possibly hand Democrats congressional majorities.
Benz, who served in President Donald Trump’s first administration and is now the executive director of the Foundation of Freedom Online, told the Daily Caller News Foundation (DCNF) there needs to be “a much heavier transparency drive” in order for much of Trump’s MAGA base to turn out to back Republicans in the midterms.
“I think that there have been a lot of amazing things this admin has done, certainly the first five months when Elon [Musk] was here,” Benz told the DCNF in a recent interview. “Things were moving at lighting pace. I think there’s been some frustration in the base when it comes to handling things like the Epstein files and the like.”
“I don’t think that the base would even flirt with voting for Democrats. The question is, ‘Is their disenchantment enough to sit home?’” he continued. “And that’s the thing the admin really has to solve. And I think the only way forward is by doubling down on the energy it had in the first four months of the admin rather than the last four months.”
Benz also specified Trump’s base is “looking for something transformative in these four years, rather than something that’s pure economic.”
“Those would include everything from major transparency drives around USAID, the State Department, the CIA and the FBI, things like continued Russiagate disclosures … things like Fast and Furious, things like the malfeasance of the John Brennan CIA, the Bill Burns CIA,” he continued, referring to the intelligence agency’s directors under former Presidents Barack Obama and Joe Biden, respectively.
Benz highlighted the importance of the Epstein files, the release of which authorized by a bipartisan bill Trump signed uncovered several stunning revelations. He also told the DCNF, however, the “collective fixation” with the files “is because there are not other disclosures of considerable consequence.”
“We should be having five million CIA files. We should be having five million State Department files. We should be having five million USAID files,” Benz emphasized. “The fact that it’s only the Epstein files — and even that at the barrel of a gun by congressional bill — is not as much as we could do.”
“I think those things— something that shows that … it’s okay to trust these institutions again,” he continued. “I think right now, a lot of people feel they’re being asked to trust without the reforms and accountability that a lot of people expected to be the antecedent.”
Benz named the CIA, FBI, State Department, Justice Department, Department of Homeland Security, and the now-effectively-dismantled USAID as agencies that should be investigated.
“I think we need a full historiography complete for the record. The admin has these records to disclose, and I think being able to show that would make people chew on those files. In the absence of that, fixations on things like the Epstein files, which are important, though they don’t change people’s day to day life as much as something like a major reveal of things that ended up in mass arrests, imprisonments, persecution of millions of people under the Biden admin,” Benz said.
When asked specifically to list what he would like to see exposed, Benz named former Special Counsel Jack Smith’s Arctic Frost investigation — during which the FBI obtained phone records of Republican members of Congress — as well as “the censorship-industrial complex, issues around Russiagate, I would argue issues around Ukraine as well.”
“I think that issues around the attempt to overthrow governments like in Poland, Brazil, Hungary, what happened in Romania, what happened in France, what’s happening right now in Spain,” he added. “I think all of this needs to be made public. You have a once-in-a-generation opportunity to do so.”
“And I think the time is now or else the mother will be lost,” Benz concluded.
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