Latest / The Vault: The Epstein Files / The Long-Delayed Federal Investigation Into Darren Indyke and Richard Kahn (Part 1) (9/24/26)

Transcript

The Long-Delayed Federal Investigation Into Darren Indyke and Richard Kahn (Part 1) (9/24/26) · 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. For years, we've been told to believe that
• 0:07
  Speaker 1: the Jeffrey Epstein investigation was exhaustive, that the FBI turned
• 0:12
  Speaker 1: over every rock, that prosecutors followed the evidence wherever it led,
• 0:16
  Speaker 1: that there was no sprawling network left to uncover, no
• 0:19
  Speaker 1: deeper infrastructure worth examining, no meaningful investigative road that somehow
• 0:24
  Speaker 1: went unexplored. And yet every time another batch of records surfaced,
• 0:29
  Speaker 1: Every time another lawsuit cracks open a door, every time
• 0:32
  Speaker 1: another name appears attached to the financial machinery surrounding Epstein,
• 0:37
  Speaker 1: that story becomes harder to swallow. Because Jeffrey Epstein was
• 0:41
  Speaker 1: not operating out of a back room with a burner
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  Speaker 1: phone and a duffel bag full of cash. Bro had lawyers, accountants, banks, trusts, corporations, properties, foundations, employees,
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  Speaker 1: financial vehicles, people signing documents, moving money, administering entities, and
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  Speaker 1: keeping their entire machine functioning year after year. So, when
• 1:02
  Speaker 1: the federal government arrested Epstein in 2019, that should have
• 1:06
  Speaker 1: been the beginning of something enormous. Not simply a prosecution
• 1:09
  Speaker 1: of one man, but a forensic demolition of the entire
• 1:13
  Speaker 1: structure around him. Instead, seven years later, we're still discovering
• 1:18
  Speaker 1: investigative roads that apparently were never traveled. And now, one
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  Speaker 1: of those roads may finally be opening. Ever since Jeffrey
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  Speaker 1: Epstein's death, One of the most glaring questions hanging over
• 1:29
  Speaker 1: the case has been hiding in plain sight. Who ran
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  Speaker 1: the machinery? Jeffrey Epstein didn't personally draft every trust document,
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  Speaker 1: move every dollar, administer every corporation, pay every employee, maintain
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  Speaker 1: every account, deal with every bank, or construct a labyrinth
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  Speaker 1: of entities surrounding his fortune. Other people did those things.
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  Speaker 1: And two of the most important people in that financial
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  Speaker 1: and legal universe were Darren Indyke and Richard Kahn. Indyk
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  Speaker 1: was Epstein's longtime lawyer, Kahn his longtime accountant, and together
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  Speaker 1: they occupied positions that placed them directly beside the machinery
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  Speaker 1: of Epstein's empire. We're not talking about a couple of
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  Speaker 1: dudes that popped in every now and then. These were
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  Speaker 1: professional operators entrusted with Epstein's money, entities, legal affairs trusts,
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  Speaker 1: and ultimately his estate. Yet when federal investigators arrested Epstein
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  Speaker 1: in July of 2019 and proclaimed that justice had finally arrived,
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  Speaker 1: The government never publicly demonstrated anything resembling a comprehensive assault
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  Speaker 1: on that infrastructure. There was no sprawling federal racketeering case
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  Speaker 1: tearing through Epstein's organizations from top to bottom. There was
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  Speaker 1: no public parade of accountants, lawyers, financial managers, corporate officers,
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  Speaker 1: and facilitators being forced to explain exactly how the machine worked. Now,
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  Speaker 1: seven years later, prosecutors are reportedly investigating in Dyke and Kahn.
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  Speaker 1: And the most obvious question is, in the entire Epstein
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  Speaker 1: saga has returned with a vengeance. What the hell took
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  Speaker 1: so long? Yo, that question isn't some exercise in hindsight
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  Speaker 1: invented after millions of documents became public. The roadmap was
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  Speaker 1: sitting on the table in 2019. Epstein had just been
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  Speaker 1: arrested on federal sex trafficking charges after decades of accusations, litigation,
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  Speaker 1: police work, reporting, and an earlier criminal conviction in Florida.
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  Speaker 1: The investigators knew they were not dealing with a transient
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  Speaker 1: criminal operating out of a motel room with a roll
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  Speaker 1: of cash stuffed beneath the mattress. They were dealing with
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  Speaker 1: a multimillionaire whose financial world included trusts, foundations, corporations, investment vehicles, aircraft, mansions, islands, employees,
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  Speaker 1: and relationships with some of the largest financial institutions on earth.
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  Speaker 1: Every one of those structures generated records. Every one of
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  Speaker 1: those structures required people to administer it. Every payment had
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  Speaker 1: a sender, a recipient, a purpose, a bank account, and
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  Speaker 1: usually some form of documentary trail. Every corporation had paperwork,
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  Speaker 1: every trust had administrators, every account had authorized representatives, and
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  Speaker 1: every property had expenses that somebody had to pay. If
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  Speaker 1: federal investigators wanted to understand Epstein rather than merely prosecute Epstein,
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  Speaker 1: the money was where they should have started digging. And yet,
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  Speaker 1: one of the richest evidentiary minds in the entire case
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  Speaker 1: somehow remained largely outside public view until civil litigants, journalists,
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  Speaker 1: congressional investigators, and document releases began excavating it themselves. And look,
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  Speaker 1: that failure becomes even more remarkable when you look at
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  Speaker 1: Indyk's position. Darren Indyk didn't wander into Jeffrey Epstein's life
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  Speaker 1: during the final months before Epstein's arrest. He served as
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  Speaker 1: Epstein's lawyer for years. and became one of the men
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  Speaker 1: entrusted with handling the legal structure surrounding Epstein's wealth. After
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  Speaker 1: Epstein died, Indyk became co-executor of an estate initially valued
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  Speaker 1: at hundreds of millions of dollars. He also became an
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  Speaker 1: administrator of the 1953 Trust, the vehicle into which Epstein
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  Speaker 1: directed his property shortly before his death. That alone should
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  Speaker 1: have made every document bearing Indyk's name a flashing neon
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  Speaker 1: sign for investigators attempting to reconstruct Epstein's financial history. A
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  Speaker 1: lawyer functioning inside Epstein's world for that length of time
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  Speaker 1: would potentially possess knowledge about corporate formation, contracts, properties, trusts, settlements,
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  Speaker 1: banking relationships, and the identity of people doing business with Epstein. Now,
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  Speaker 1: none of that proves criminal conduct by Indyk, and Indyk
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  Speaker 1: has repeatedly denied knowing about Epstein's abuse. But criminal investigators
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  Speaker 1: do not restrict themselves to people already proving guilty before
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  Speaker 1: asking them questions. They identify the people closest to the operation,
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  Speaker 1: seize the documentary trail, test their explanations against the record,
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  Speaker 1: and follow every contradiction until they understand what happened. And
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  Speaker 1: of course, Richard Kahn presented the same obvious investigative opportunity
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  Speaker 1: for the financial side. Kahn wasn't Epstein's golf buddy or
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  Speaker 1: some social acquaintance who happened to know him through Manhattan Society.
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  Speaker 1: He was Epstein's accountant, a position that by definition placed
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  Speaker 1: him near the flow of money that sustained Epstein's lifestyle
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  Speaker 1: and business operation. Banking documents released years later showed Kahn
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  Speaker 1: communicating with financial institutions concerning Epstein-related accounts and trusts. That's
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  Speaker 1: precisely the kind of relationship forensic investigators normally dissect when
• 6:38
  Speaker 1: trying to understand a wealthy target whose activities were spread
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  Speaker 1: across numerous entities. Accountants see things that casual associates never
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  Speaker 1: see because numbers reveal the actual structure beneath the public façade.
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  Speaker 1: They see expenses, transfers, payroll, reimbursements, corporate payments, tax consequences,
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  Speaker 1: and relationships between entities that outsiders might never realize are connected. Again,
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  Speaker 1: none of that automatically makes an accountant criminally responsible for
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  Speaker 1: the conduct of a client. It does, however, make the
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  Speaker 1: accountant an indispensable witness when the client's accused of operating
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  Speaker 1: a long-running criminal enterprise. The astounding part of the Epstein
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  Speaker 1: story is not that prosecutors are reportedly interested in Kahn now,
• 7:24
  Speaker 1: but that the country spent seven years wondering why that
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  Speaker 1: interest had not produced a visible federal reckoning sooner. Now,
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  Speaker 1: the deeper problem is that the federal case against Epstein
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  Speaker 1: was constructed far too narrowly from the beginning. Prosecutors charged
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  Speaker 1: the man, described a trafficking scheme, and asked other victims
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  Speaker 1: to come forward. But the public never saw the sort
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  Speaker 1: of institutional offensive that the circumstances demanded. Epstein's world should
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  Speaker 1: have been approached like an organization, because that's what it
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  Speaker 1: functionally was. There were properties where the conduct occurred, employees
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  Speaker 1: who kept those properties running, recruiters who'd been accused of
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  Speaker 1: supplying girls, financial professionals who handled the dough, attorneys who
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  Speaker 1: handled the legal affairs, and banks that processed transactions. There
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  Speaker 1: were corporate entities layered across jurisdictions and financial arrangements that
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  Speaker 1: took years of civil litigation to begin exposing. A serious
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  Speaker 1: enterprise investigation should have treated every layer as a potential
• 8:24
  Speaker 1: source of evidence. Instead, the government allowed the story to
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  Speaker 1: be compressed into Epstein and later Maxwell, as though two
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  Speaker 1: people somehow constructed and maintained the entire ecosystem by themselves.
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  Speaker 1: That narrow framing protected the architecture from the kind of
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  Speaker 1: public scrutiny placed on the central defendants. It also left
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  Speaker 1: the country with an absurd spectacle of private lawyers and
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  Speaker 1: territorial prosecutors digging deeper into portions of Epstein's financial network
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  Speaker 1: than the federal government appeared willing to do publicly. And
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  Speaker 1: that's why the absence of a RICO-style investigation has always
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  Speaker 1: been so difficult to justify. RICO was created precisely because
• 9:03
  Speaker 1: sophisticated criminal enterprises do not always resemble street gangs standing
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  Speaker 1: on the same corner. Enterprises can involve legitimate business, financial structure,
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  Speaker 1: and professional services that become intertwined with unlawful activity. The
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  Speaker 1: point of that framework is to attack the organization rather
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  Speaker 1: than pretending each act occurred inside its own hermetically sealed box.
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  Speaker 1: And Epstein's world screamed for that kind of examination. Investigators
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  Speaker 1: had decades of conduct, multiple jurisdictions, numerous properties, alleged recruiters,
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  Speaker 1: financial transactions, and an enormous supporting infrastructure. They had a
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  Speaker 1: convicted sex offender who had somehow emerged from his Florida
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  Speaker 1: prosecution with his wealth, contacts, and operating structure largely intact.
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  Speaker 1: They had allegations stretching across New York, Florida, New Mexico,
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  Speaker 1: the Virgin Islands, and fucking overseas. They had money moving
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  Speaker 1: through major banks and entities created for the purpose that
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  Speaker 1: deserved to be understood. Yet the federal government never produced
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  Speaker 1: the comprehensive enterprise case that could have compelled everyone inside
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  Speaker 1: the machine to account for what they knew and what
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  Speaker 1: they did. Yo, imagine what a genuine enterprise investigation launched
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  Speaker 1: in July of 2019 might have looked like. Federal grand
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  Speaker 1: juries could have demanded banking records across Epstein's entire financial network,
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  Speaker 1: rather than waiting for civil litigation to pry portions of
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  Speaker 1: those records loose years later. Investigators could have mapped every
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  Speaker 1: Epstein-controlled company and trust, identifying its officers, directors, administrators, authorized signers,
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  Speaker 1: and beneficiaries. Every employee responsible for payroll, travel, properties, scheduling,
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  Speaker 1: or financial administration could have been interviewed by under circumstances
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  Speaker 1: carrying serious consequences, for lying. Every unexplained transfer connected to
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  Speaker 1: a recruiter, associate, employee, or young woman could have been
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  Speaker 1: traced from origin to destination. Every professional who created or
• 11:04
  Speaker 1: administered Epstein entities could have been required to explain their purpose.
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  Speaker 1: Every bank that continued doing business with him after his
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  Speaker 1: 2008 conviction could have been forced to explain what its
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  Speaker 1: compliance department knew. Every document could have been cross-referenced against
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  Speaker 1: victim accounts and travel records. Every suspicious payment could have
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  Speaker 1: been followed instead of dismissed as simply another rich man
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  Speaker 1: moving money. That is what investigators do when they're trying
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  Speaker 1: to dismantle an organization instead of closing a case. Instead,
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  Speaker 1: Epstein died 35 days after his arrest and the investigation
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  Speaker 1: seemed to lose its gravitational center almost immediately. His death
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  Speaker 1: should have expanded the investigation, not strangled it. The principal
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  Speaker 1: defendant was gone, which meant prosecutors could no longer obtain
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  Speaker 1: justice by simply convicting the man at the center. The
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  Speaker 1: only remaining path to meaningful accountability was to determine how
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  Speaker 1: his operation had survived for so long and whether anyone
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  Speaker 1: else had committed crimes in helping it survive. That should
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  Speaker 1: have produced an investigative explosion outward from Epstein. His finances
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  Speaker 1: should have been torn apart transaction by transaction. His corporation
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  Speaker 1: should have been mapped like nodes in an organized crime chart.
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  Speaker 1: His closest professional advisors should have become central witnesses in
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  Speaker 1: understanding what he built. Instead, federal accountability narrowed. The institutional
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  Speaker 1: questions multiplied in the public was eventually told versions of
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  Speaker 1: a story suggesting that there was not much more to see.
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  Speaker 1: Seven years later, prosecutors reportedly asking questions about Epstein's lawyer
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  Speaker 1: and accountant makes that earlier complacency look even more indefensible.
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  Speaker 1: Alright folks, we're going to wrap up episode one right here,
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  Speaker 1: and in the next episode, we're going to pick up
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  Speaker 1: where we left off. All the information that goes with
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  Speaker 1: this episode can be found in the description box.