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The Epstein Investigation: Why an Independent Special Counsel Is Long Overdue (Part 2) (10/29/26) · The Vault: The Epstein Files

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: What's up everyone and welcome to another episode of the
• 0:03
  Speaker 1: Epstein Chronicles. In this episode, we're going to dive right
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  Speaker 1: back in to talking about why it's time for a
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  Speaker 1: special counsel. On October 26, 2026, House Judiciary Committee Democrats
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  Speaker 1: led by Representative Jamie Raskin released a report calling for
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  Speaker 1: an independent special counsel to investigate potential Epstein accomplices and
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  Speaker 1: the conduct of the federal government. Their demands arrived amid
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  Speaker 1: increasingly serious questions about how the Trump administration and the
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  Speaker 1: Department of Justice have handled evidence relating to Epstein and
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  Speaker 1: his associates. The Democratic report includes disturbing allegations involving Donald Trump,
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  Speaker 1: allegations that deserve independent examination rather than political declarations of
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  Speaker 1: innocence or guilt. But the appointment of a special counsel
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  Speaker 1: cannot be limited to Donald Trump, simply because Democrats think
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  Speaker 1: they've discovered the political advantages of demanding accountability. The scandal
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  Speaker 1: did not begin with Donald Trump, and the decision that
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  Speaker 1: allowed Jeffrey Epstein to escape meaningful accountability for years were
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  Speaker 1: made across different administrations and different levels of government. Democrats
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  Speaker 1: held power during substantial portions of this history, and they
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  Speaker 1: were hardly leading a sustained crusade to dismantle the protections
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  Speaker 1: surrounding Epstein during those years. Republicans have also had numerous
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  Speaker 1: opportunities to demand genuine accountability, only to produce their own
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  Speaker 1: collection of excuses, evasions, and political performances. Neither party possesses
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  Speaker 1: the moral authority to dictate where this investigation begins or ends,
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  Speaker 1: because neither party can claim an unblemished history when it
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  Speaker 1: comes to confronting the Epstein scandal. The fact that Democrats
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  Speaker 1: are finally demanding a special counsel is welcome, but the
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  Speaker 1: investigation must be broader than the political interests of the
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  Speaker 1: people demanding it. If the purpose is to uncover the truth,
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  Speaker 1: then every administration, every prosecutorial office, and every politically connected
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  Speaker 1: individual who may have played a role must face the
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  Speaker 1: same scrutiny. The necessity of such an investigation becomes obvious
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  Speaker 1: when we return to Palm Beach, Florida, where the local
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  Speaker 1: police began investigating Jeffrey Epstein in 2005 after a complaint
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  Speaker 1: involving a 14-year-old girl. What investigators uncovered? wasn't some isolated
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  Speaker 1: misunderstanding between a wealthy man and a young woman, but
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  Speaker 1: evidence of a disturbing pattern of sexual exploitation involving underage girls.
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  Speaker 1: Local investigators pursued the allegations, gathered evidence, interviewed victims, and
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  Speaker 1: developed a case that should have placed Epstein in an
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  Speaker 1: extraordinary legal jeopardy. Federal authorities eventually became involved, and by
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  Speaker 1: May 2007, a federal prosecutor had prepared proposed indictment containing
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  Speaker 1: 60 counts. 60 counts represent a substantial prosecutorial undertaking, and
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  Speaker 1: the existence of that draft indictment is particularly important when
• 3:02
  Speaker 1: evaluating what happened next. The government was not dealing with
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  Speaker 1: a case that had never been properly investigated, nor was
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  Speaker 1: it operating without evidence sufficient to justify serious consideration of
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  Speaker 1: federal charges. Prosecutors possessed the results of an extensive investigation
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  Speaker 1: and had already developed a potential federal prosecution before the
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  Speaker 1: case was redirected toward a negotiated resolution. Yet instead of
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  Speaker 1: proceeding with the prosecution, the United States Attorney's Office for
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  Speaker 1: the Southern District of Florida entered negotiations that ultimately produced
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  Speaker 1: one of the most notorious non-prosecution agreements in American history.
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  Speaker 1: The decision to abandon the proposed federal prosecution deserves considerably
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  Speaker 1: more scrutiny than it received. particularly regarding the people who
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  Speaker 1: participated in the negotiations and the institutional pressures surrounding them.
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  Speaker 1: Any special counsel worthy of the assignment must begin by
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  Speaker 1: reconstructing those decisions from the original records rather than accepting
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  Speaker 1: the explanations that federal officials have spent years offering in
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  Speaker 1: their defense. The September 2007 non-prosecution agreement is a place
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  Speaker 1: where the machinery of American justice appears to have bent
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  Speaker 1: itself into an extraordinary shape to accommodate a wealthy and
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  Speaker 1: politically connected offender. Under the agreement, Epstein avoided federal prosecution
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  Speaker 1: for the covered conduct in exchange for a state-based resolution
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  Speaker 1: that ultimately resulted in a remarkably limited period of incarceration.
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  Speaker 1: Even more astonishing was the agreement's protection for certain potential co-conspirators,
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  Speaker 1: language that raises serious questions about the government's willingness to
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  Speaker 1: pursue the broader criminal operation. The victims were not meaningfully
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  Speaker 1: included in the negotiations despite having far more at stake
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  Speaker 1: than the lawyers and prosecutors discussing Epstein's future behind closed doors.
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  Speaker 1: Epstein received the benefit of an enormously expensive legal defense,
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  Speaker 1: while the girls he victimized were left trying to understand
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  Speaker 1: how the federal government could reach such an extraordinary arrangement
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  Speaker 1: without properly informing them. The eventual public exposure of the
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  Speaker 1: agreement demonstrated just how dramatically the outcome departed from what
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  Speaker 1: ordinary Americans might reasonably expect from a serious federal investigation
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  Speaker 1: involving the sexual exploitation of minors. What remains insufficiently answered
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  Speaker 1: is how the agreement took its final form, who participated
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  Speaker 1: in approving its most consequential provisions, and whether improper influences
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  Speaker 1: affected any of those decisions. Alex Acosta has become the
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  Speaker 1: public face of the catastrophe, but no serious investigation should
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  Speaker 1: assume that every consequential decision began and ended in his office.
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  Speaker 1: Communications involving senior Justice Department officials, Epstein's defense attorneys, and
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  Speaker 1: anyone else who attempted to influence the outcome deserve a
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  Speaker 1: careful and comprehensive examination. It's time to establish the complete
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  Speaker 1: chain of responsibility rather than allowing a single disgraced agreement
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  Speaker 1: to serve as the final explanation for an institutional failure
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  Speaker 1: of this magnitude. The Department of Justice has already investigated
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  Speaker 1: aspects of the agreement and the results demonstrate precisely why
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  Speaker 1: an outsider is necessary. In 2020, the Office of Professional
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  Speaker 1: Responsibility concluded that Acosta exercised poor judgment in resolving the
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  Speaker 1: federal investigation through the non-prosecution agreement. The review also criticized
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  Speaker 1: the treatment of Epstein's victims while declining to find professional
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  Speaker 1: misconduct by the department lawyers it examined. Consider the remarkable
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  Speaker 1: contrast between those conclusions and the practical consequences of the
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  Speaker 1: agreement itself. A federal investigation that had generated a proposed
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  Speaker 1: 60-count indictment ended without federal charges against Epstein. Yet the
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  Speaker 1: department's internal disciplinary review found no professional misconduct by the
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  Speaker 1: prosecutors that were involved. That doesn't automatically establish that a
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  Speaker 1: crime occurred, but it certainly does not answer every legitimate
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  Speaker 1: question about the circumstances that produce the agreement. An internal
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  Speaker 1: review of professional standards is not the same thing as
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  Speaker 1: an independent criminal investigation into possible obstruction, corruption, improper influence,
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  Speaker 1: or other potentially unlawful conduct. The questions that matter extend
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  Speaker 1: beyond whether individual prosecutors violated the department's particular disciplinary rules.
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  Speaker 1: They include whether every relevant communication was examined and whether
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  Speaker 1: anyone outside the prosecutorial team exerted improper pressure, and whether
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  Speaker 1: the public received a complete accounting of the decision-making process.
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  Speaker 1: The Department of Justice has already demonstrated the limitations of
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  Speaker 1: investigating its own handling of Epstein, and another internal examination
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  Speaker 1: would merely repeat a process that's failed to restore public confidence.
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  Speaker 1: By 2019, the extraordinary deficiencies of the original prosecution had
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  Speaker 1: become impossible to ignore, largely because Epstein was finally arrested
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  Speaker 1: again and charged in federal court in New York. Prosecutors
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  Speaker 1: in the Southern District of New York alleged that Epstein
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  Speaker 1: had operated a sex trafficking scheme involving numerous underage girls
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  Speaker 1: between 2002 and 2005. The indictment described a recruitment system
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  Speaker 1: in which victims were allegedly paid to bring additional girls
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  Speaker 1: to into Epstein's orbit. That prosecution established something extremely important
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  Speaker 1: about the government's earlier failure, because federal authorities were once
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  Speaker 1: again pursuing allegations rooted in conduct that had already attracted
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  Speaker 1: investigative attention years before. Epstein's arrest should have triggered an
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  Speaker 1: exhaustive examination of why the earlier federal prosecution had been
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  Speaker 1: abandoned and whether additional participants remained criminally exposed. Instead, His
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  Speaker 1: death in federal custody in 2019 deprived the public of
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  Speaker 1: the criminal trial that might have placed substantial evidence into
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  Speaker 1: the public record. The official determination that Epstein died by
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  Speaker 1: suicide did not resolve the outstanding questions about the people
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  Speaker 1: who assisted him or the officials who had previously handled
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  Speaker 1: the case. Those questions became even more urgent once the
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  Speaker 1: public began examining how many opportunities the federal government had
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  Speaker 1: possessed to intervene before the alleged trafficking operation continued. Epstein's
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  Speaker 1: death eliminated the possibility of prosecuting him, but it didn't
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  Speaker 1: eliminate the potential criminal liability of living associates or officials
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  Speaker 1: who may have committed independent offenses. Treating his death as
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  Speaker 1: the practical endpoint of a broader investigation is amount to
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  Speaker 1: allowing the disappearance of the principal defendant to extinguish questions
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  Speaker 1: that were never exclusively about him. Now, the subsequent prosecution
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  Speaker 1: of Glenn Maxwell provided another powerful reason to reject the
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  Speaker 1: idea that the Epstein scandal was merely the story of
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  Speaker 1: one depraved billionaire acting alone. Maxwell was convicted in December
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  Speaker 1: of 2021 of offenses arising from her participation in the
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  Speaker 1: sexual abuse and exploitation of underage girls alongside Epstein. Her
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  Speaker 1: conviction established that another person played a criminal role in
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  Speaker 1: the operation, and the trial placed substantial evidence of recruitment
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  Speaker 1: and grooming before a federal jury. And, of course, that
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  Speaker 1: confirmed the existence of a criminal conspiracy involving more than
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  Speaker 1: one participant. Yet years later, the public is still expected
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  Speaker 1: to accept sweeping government assurances that no additional prosecution is warranted.
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  Speaker 1: Such assurances demand a detailed evidentiary explanation, especially if when
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  Speaker 1: investigators have possessed enormous quantities of records concerning Epstein's employees, finances, residences, travel,
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  Speaker 1: and associations. Every person named in those records is not
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  Speaker 1: necessarily a criminal, and a photograph or social relationship doesn't
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  Speaker 1: establish participation in trafficking, but the existence of innocent associations
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  Speaker 1: does not excuse investigators from examining evidence of conduct that
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  Speaker 1: might establish criminal participation. The government cannot substitute a generalized
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  Speaker 1: declaration that no additional charges are justified for a meaningful
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  Speaker 1: accounting of which leads were investigated and why particular charging
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  Speaker 1: decisions were reached. Maxwell's conviction should have intensified the determination
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  Speaker 1: to understand the wider operation rather than becoming another convenient
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  Speaker 1: stopping point in the government's explanation of what happened. All right, folks,
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  Speaker 1: we're going to wrap up episode two right here. And
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  Speaker 1: in the next episode dealing with the topic we're going
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  Speaker 1: to pick up where we left off. All the information
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  Speaker 1: that goes with this episode can be found in the
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  Speaker 1: description box.