Latest / The Vault: The Epstein Files / James Goldsmith, Jeffrey Epstein and the Warning Nobody Followed Up On (Part 2) (10/12/26)
Transcript
- 0:00Speaker 1: What's up everyone and welcome to another episode of the
- 0:03Speaker 1: Epstein Chronicles. In this episode we're going to pick up
- 0:06Speaker 1: where he left off with the Guardian article talking about
- 0:09Speaker 1: Jeffrey Epstein and Mr. Goldsmith. And once again this article
- 0:13Speaker 1: was authored by Marilyn W. Thompson. Understanding how Epstein won
- 0:18Speaker 1: and retained access to power and privilege throughout his life
- 0:22Speaker 1: is important as criminal investigations of his sexual abuse and
- 0:26Speaker 1: financial crimes continue around the globe. Federal prosecutors in New
- 0:30Speaker 1: York have opened an investigation into the two overseers, Darren
- 0:34Speaker 1: Indyke and Richard Kahn, of Epstein's $ 577 million estate, according
- 0:40Speaker 1: to the Wall Street Journal. Both have denied that they
- 0:43Speaker 1: knew of Epstein's criminal behavior. The Department of Justice has
- 0:47Speaker 1: said that Epstein harmed over 1,000 people, including minors, who
- 0:52Speaker 1: were sexually abused. The Justice Department has released about 3.5
- 0:56Speaker 1: million documents under the Epstein Disclosure Act, including reams of emails, letters,
- 1:02Speaker 1: and bank transactions. But the trove includes almost no records
- 1:06Speaker 1: from the 80s, leaving a large gap in the public's understanding.
- 1:10Speaker 1: Epstein's alleged victims continue to accuse the Justice Department of
- 1:14Speaker 1: a cover-up for holding back documents that might implicate Trump
- 1:18Speaker 1: and other powerful men in Epstein's exclusive circle. Trump has
- 1:22Speaker 1: said that he ended their friendship in 2004, after a
- 1:25Speaker 1: real estate dispute and kicked Epstein out of his Mar-a-Lago
- 1:28Speaker 1: club in 2007 for poaching employees. And it's amazing how
- 1:32Speaker 1: many different stories we hear from Donald Trump about why
- 1:35Speaker 1: his and Epstein's relationship ended. One day it's, he was
- 1:38Speaker 1: poaching employees, another day it's a business deal, and the
- 1:42Speaker 1: next day, who the fuck knows. It's unclear whether Goldsmith's
- 1:47Speaker 1: concerns about Epstein stem from specific encounters, and there's no
- 1:51Speaker 1: indication that Goldsmith's ever reported his concerns to local or
- 1:55Speaker 1: federal law enforcement. Unfortunately, in that world, that's not what
- 1:58Speaker 1: people do. Well, you think Mr. Goldsmith's going to pick
- 2:01Speaker 1: up the phone and call the FBI and say, hey, look,
- 2:04Speaker 1: I think Epstein's diddling people? If you don't have any
- 2:08Speaker 1: evidence of that, first of all, it's not really going
- 2:10Speaker 1: to work out for you. And if you don't have
- 2:13Speaker 1: any direct evidence, right, like somebody has come to you
- 2:16Speaker 1: and said, hey, I need some help, you're going to
- 2:18Speaker 1: be fighting an uphill battle. And I hate to say it,
- 2:21Speaker 1: but no victim, no crime. That's the way the law
- 2:24Speaker 1: looks at it. And we can look at it differently, right?
- 2:27Speaker 1: Because we're human beings, we're citizens, and we have our
- 2:30Speaker 1: own moral compass. But sometimes morality doesn't even come into
- 2:35Speaker 1: the picture. Unfortunately, when we're talking about the law, somebody
- 2:39Speaker 1: can be a completely immoral piece of shit, but it
- 2:42Speaker 1: doesn't make them a criminal. When it comes to Epstein,
- 2:47Speaker 1: he was the whole entire Monty. an immoral piece of shit,
- 2:52Speaker 1: a criminal, and everything else you can add to the equation.
- 2:57Speaker 1: But if there was no evidence of what he was doing,
- 2:59Speaker 1: like direct evidence, somebody like Mr. Goldsmith isn't going to,
- 3:03Speaker 1: you know, interject himself. And I think that's a mistake, right?
- 3:08Speaker 1: Because you have to, you know, self-regulate the people that
- 3:11Speaker 1: are around you. And I know for a fact, in
- 3:14Speaker 1: my friend circle, if somebody showed up with this kind
- 3:16Speaker 1: of bullshit, they wouldn't be in the friend circle for
- 3:19Speaker 1: much longer. probably wouldn't have their teeth either, but that's
- 3:23Speaker 1: a different story. It took decades for the FBI to
- 3:27Speaker 1: catch up with Epstein's crimes. Federal investigators in Florida charged
- 3:31Speaker 1: him in 2008 with soliciting sex from minors after a
- 3:35Speaker 1: two-year investigation in which they interviewed young women, including some minors,
- 3:40Speaker 1: who he paid for sexual encounters in his Palm Beach mansion.
- 3:43Speaker 1: He served 13 months in jail under a lenient deal
- 3:46Speaker 1: cut with federal prosecutors. Some of the women were underage.
- 3:51Speaker 1: Over 40. That's what people forget to talk about. Over
- 3:56Speaker 1: 40 girls from these high schools down in Florida. And
- 3:59Speaker 1: that's not even talking about girls from other schools. Interlochen.
- 4:04Speaker 1: In New York. Elsewhere. Who the fuck knows what he
- 4:07Speaker 1: was up to down in, you know, New Mexico. Don't
- 4:10Speaker 1: even get me started on the indigenous girls that are
- 4:12Speaker 1: missing down there. But we know for a fact that
- 4:18Speaker 1: The girls in high school were as young as 14.
- 4:19Speaker 1: And that's why it's laughable when people are like, well,
- 4:23Speaker 1: he got nailed for a girl who was 17 and
- 4:26Speaker 1: she was going to be 18 in two weeks. Yeah,
- 4:29Speaker 1: that was by design, stupid. They use that one girl's
- 4:33Speaker 1: account so that it made Jeffrey Epstein not look as bad.
- 4:37Speaker 1: And of course, that's all part of the cover up
- 4:38Speaker 1: as well. They tried to sanitize what Epstein was doing
- 4:41Speaker 1: so it didn't look that bad. And later on down
- 4:44Speaker 1: the road, if there was any questions, they could point
- 4:46Speaker 1: back and say, look, it was a girl who was 17.
- 4:48Speaker 1: It was disgusting, it was gross, but come on, let's
- 4:51Speaker 1: not get too carried away. Well, bad news, we're carried
- 4:55Speaker 1: the fuck away, and there's no coming back from it.
- 4:58Speaker 1: Full transparency, justice, arrests, and until that happens, nobody's shutting up,
- 5:04Speaker 1: and nobody's moving on. Until now, the earliest warning about
- 5:08Speaker 1: Epstein's criminal behavior... is believed to have come in 1996,
- 5:12Speaker 1: when one victim, I'm not calling her alleged because she's
- 5:15Speaker 1: a victim, an artist named Maria Farmer, claimed she alerted
- 5:18Speaker 1: authorities that she was sexually assaulted by Epstein, according to
- 5:23Speaker 1: a lawsuit she brought against the FBI. Farmer has also
- 5:26Speaker 1: claimed that Epstein stole nude images she had of her
- 5:29Speaker 1: two minor siblings, which she kept for her personal use
- 5:32Speaker 1: in her artwork. The FBI has said in response to
- 5:36Speaker 1: the ongoing litigation that which now includes 34 alleged victims,
- 5:40Speaker 1: that agents do not have a duty to investigate every
- 5:43Speaker 1: single tip that comes across their desk. Yeah, well, I
- 5:48Speaker 1: guess that's what happened on 9-11 too, huh? Two fucking
- 5:52Speaker 1: hijackers working with the FBI, living with an informant, but
- 5:56Speaker 1: nobody's the wiser. I guess nobody investigated that either. Since
- 6:02Speaker 1: Epstein's death, Goldsmith has been portrayed as an important influence
- 6:05Speaker 1: in his early career. The New York Times last year
- 6:08Speaker 1: described Sir James as a connection Epstein shrewdly calculated was
- 6:12Speaker 1: worth nurturing for the long haul. It recounted a party
- 6:16Speaker 1: scene at Goldsmith's Upper East Side Mansion where Epstein trained
- 6:19Speaker 1: in classical piano, serenaded guests with a piano solo from
- 6:24Speaker 1: the Grand Entry Hall. Aw, isn't Jeffrey Epstein just a
- 6:27Speaker 1: charismatic guy? Hell of a fellow, that Jeffrey Epstein. I mean,
- 6:31Speaker 1: he plays piano. How can he be guilty of anything
- 6:34Speaker 1: that he's being accused of? Goldsmith's warning about Epstein came
- 6:39Speaker 1: just after Epstein signed one of his biggest clients, the
- 6:42Speaker 1: Ohio retail magnate Les Wexner, the founder of Victoria's Secret,
- 6:46Speaker 1: who was then ranked by Forbes as the 10th richest
- 6:49Speaker 1: person in the U.S. Wexner says he severed the relationship
- 6:54Speaker 1: with Epstein in 2007 after discovering he had stolen funds
- 6:58Speaker 1: from Wexner. Some questions about Epstein and Goldsmith may never
- 7:02Speaker 1: be answered, given the secrecy surrounding these events and the
- 7:06Speaker 1: refusal of key sources to answer questions. And that's been
- 7:09Speaker 1: a big problem I've run into as well. There's a
- 7:12Speaker 1: lot of people out there that have a lot of information,
- 7:15Speaker 1: but they don't want to pony it up. People are scared.
- 7:18Speaker 1: They don't want to deal with the blowback and they
- 7:20Speaker 1: don't want to deal with these powerful people. And that's
- 7:23Speaker 1: because these powerful people can ruin your life. So unless
- 7:26Speaker 1: you're built for confrontation, not conversation, these aren't the kind
- 7:30Speaker 1: of people you want to deal with, especially if you
- 7:33Speaker 1: have something to lose, right? Professionally, financially, whatever. But when
- 7:38Speaker 1: you don't have anything to lose and you're not scared
- 7:41Speaker 1: of them coming after your finances or whatever, it gives
- 7:44Speaker 1: you a lot more room to say and do whatever
- 7:45Speaker 1: you want. And you know when you can really go
- 7:48Speaker 1: after them? When you're saying the truth. If you're not
- 7:51Speaker 1: bullshitting around, making up stories, then it's free game. What
- 7:55Speaker 1: are they going to do? Sue you for defamation? Well,
- 7:58Speaker 1: that's only true if you're telling lies. But at the
- 8:01Speaker 1: level of society that Mr. Goldsmith was at, you really
- 8:05Speaker 1: don't want to rock the boat, right? You don't want
- 8:07Speaker 1: to cause any issues and have people start looking into
- 8:10Speaker 1: your life, your finances, because I'll tell you right now,
- 8:15Speaker 1: not one of these billionaires is clean. Every single one
- 8:18Speaker 1: of them has been up to no good at some point,
- 8:20Speaker 1: financially or otherwise, on their way to the top. Meanwhile,
- 8:25Speaker 1: the debate over the government's release of the Epstein files
- 8:27Speaker 1: rages on. Attorney General Todd Blanche has declined to release
- 8:32Speaker 1: about 2.5 million Epstein documents he deemed duplicative. And independent
- 8:37Speaker 1: journalist Katie Fang is suing Blanche to try to force
- 8:40Speaker 1: their release. And Blanche recently quietly turned over some of
- 8:43Speaker 1: the documents related to Jane Doe to a federal judge
- 8:47Speaker 1: who was reviewing the documents in his chamber. So it's
- 8:50Speaker 1: going to be real interesting to see what Judge Sullivan
- 8:53Speaker 1: comes up with. Because I think that there's a lot there. Now,
- 8:57Speaker 1: does that mean that it's going to prove what some
- 8:59Speaker 1: people think? I don't know. Honestly, I don't know. But
- 9:05Speaker 1: I think that We need to see all of it.
- 9:07Speaker 1: And the fact that they're not being transparent about it
- 9:10Speaker 1: certainly has the alarm bells ringing. But I would caution
- 9:14Speaker 1: people not to expect there to be some smoking gun. Unfortunately,
- 9:19Speaker 1: these people know how to cover their tracks. And when
- 9:23Speaker 1: they burn an asset like Jeffrey Epstein, they burn the
- 9:26Speaker 1: ties that bind. And any real evidence that, you know,
- 9:30Speaker 1: leads back to the government or whatever is either gone
- 9:33Speaker 1: or that shit's at Langley. And we're never going to
- 9:36Speaker 1: see it. And that's something I've cautioned from the very beginning.
- 9:39Speaker 1: Don't get too caught up thinking we're getting everything because
- 9:42Speaker 1: we're not. And it says very explicitly in the bill
- 9:47Speaker 1: that national security interests must be recognized. Well, when we're
- 9:52Speaker 1: talking about the CIA and people that they're running as assets,
- 9:56Speaker 1: I'll let you figure out the rest. Prominent figures caught
- 10:01Speaker 1: up in the Epstein controversy include former U.S. President Bill Clinton,
- 10:05Speaker 1: former Prince Andrew, former Harvard President Larry Summers, and billionaire
- 10:09Speaker 1: investor Leon Black. Black was recently held in contempt of
- 10:13Speaker 1: Congress for his refusal to comply with subpoenas issued to
- 10:16Speaker 1: him by the House Oversight Committee in in connection to
- 10:19Speaker 1: his Epstein investigation. And that's just crazy, right? You would
- 10:24Speaker 1: think that somebody like Leon Black would be playing ball.
- 10:27Speaker 1: I have nothing to hide. Here's everything I have that
- 10:29Speaker 1: has to do with Epstein. Let's get this underway. By
- 10:32Speaker 1: the way, here are my lawyers. They cost five grand
- 10:35Speaker 1: an hour. Even with that, this dude couldn't come correct.
- 10:39Speaker 1: Even with that, he ends up getting held in contempt.
- 10:41Speaker 1: What does that tell you? Tells me he's not working
- 10:45Speaker 1: from a truthful vantage point, okay? And now he's doing
- 10:50Speaker 1: everything he can to avoid that accountability that should have
- 10:53Speaker 1: been coming his way a long time ago. And if
- 10:56Speaker 1: that means fighting against Congress, fighting against the Senate, telling
- 10:59Speaker 1: the American people to get fucked, that's what he'll do.
- 11:02Speaker 1: And this dirty, rotten Scrooge McDuck fuck doesn't give a shit.
- 11:06Speaker 1: He's going to go home and swim in that money.
- 11:12Speaker 1: Epstein's emails about the Goldsmiths sometimes suggested bruised feelings and
- 11:16Speaker 1: revealed he was watching the family from afar. He was
- 11:19Speaker 1: not among the dozens of invited guests in 1997 to
- 11:23Speaker 1: Jemima Goldsmith's grand wedding party to the cricket-turned-politician Imran Khan,
- 11:28Speaker 1: who served as Pakistani Prime Minister, according to the guest list. Well,
- 11:33Speaker 1: that's quite the union, huh? Imran Khan? Not a bad
- 11:38Speaker 1: get for this dude's daughter, and certainly not a bad
- 11:40Speaker 1: get for Mr. Khan. Talk about having access to some funds.
- 11:45Speaker 1: Just before he finished his lenient 2008 sentence for sex
- 11:48Speaker 1: crimes in Palm Beach, Epstein scolded a young Romanian admirer
- 11:52Speaker 1: for turning down her exclusive invite to a swanky dinner
- 11:55Speaker 1: at Jemima's Oxfordshire estate. That was a big mistake, he
- 12:00Speaker 1: wrote in an angry 2010 email. Well, yeah, he wanted
- 12:03Speaker 1: to make inroads. Epstein wanted to have that girl go there,
- 12:08Speaker 1: get some contacts, learn about some people, maybe, maybe, you know,
- 12:12Speaker 1: do some other things. and keep that compromise rolling. Especially
- 12:17Speaker 1: if it's somebody like the Goldsmiths, who he's trying to
- 12:19Speaker 1: get close to. Epstein criticized daughter Jemima's choice of husband,
- 12:22Speaker 1: calling Khan, who is now divorced from Goldsmith, and in jail,
- 12:26Speaker 1: on corruption charges, a wacko. Imagine Jeffrey Epstein calling you
- 12:31Speaker 1: a wacko. That'd be like the devil calling you a scumbag.
- 12:34Speaker 1: In a 2018 text Epstein wrote of Imran Khan, makes
- 12:38Speaker 1: Donald look like Einstein. Incapable of truth, devout Islamist, many
- 12:42Speaker 1: nuclear weapons. Not Erdogan or Khomeini. He was married to
- 12:47Speaker 1: two friends of mine, one daughter of Jimmy Goldsmith. And
- 12:51Speaker 1: people out there who think that Jeffrey Epstein was some
- 12:54Speaker 1: kind of like Zionist Israeli agent are so fucking off
- 12:59Speaker 1: track that it's not funny. This dude had loyalty to
- 13:03Speaker 1: no one but himself. And if that meant hanging out
- 13:06Speaker 1: with Erdogan or Khomeini or any other Islamist, he would.
- 13:10Speaker 1: He didn't give a shit. Cuz just wanted to get paid,
- 13:13Speaker 1: no matter what. After the family distanced itself from him,
- 13:19Speaker 1: Epstein gathered gossip about James' daughter Isabel's haughty behavior and
- 13:24Speaker 1: joked when Hurricane seemed destined to damage Los Alamandes, her
- 13:28Speaker 1: posh Mexican resort. Hurricane will hit Isabel Goldsmith's resort and bye-bye,
- 13:33Speaker 1: he wrote to a friend in 2015. Epstein elevated his
- 13:38Speaker 1: access to British elite when in 1990, he started dating
- 13:41Speaker 1: Ghislaine Maxwell, the daughter of a British media baron who
- 13:45Speaker 1: hobnobbed with British royals and enhanced Epstein's standing among upper-crust
- 13:49Speaker 1: families like the Goldsmiths. And that was Ghislaine Maxwell's initial role,
- 13:54Speaker 1: to help him climb the ladder in the social circles.
- 13:57Speaker 1: Epstein was kind of a brute, right? And Ghislaine Maxwell
- 14:00Speaker 1: was posh, refined, from England, had the Oxford kind of step.
- 14:05Speaker 1: You know what I mean. The kind of people that
- 14:08Speaker 1: look down on people like me and you. So she
- 14:11Speaker 1: was his entry. She made all of those introductions, And
- 14:15Speaker 1: then Jeffrey Epstein would swoop in and use his charisma
- 14:18Speaker 1: and bullshit to get people falling in line. And they
- 14:22Speaker 1: did that time and time again. Maxwell became Epstein's closest
- 14:29Speaker 1: partner in recruiting young women, according to her federal indictment.
- 14:33Speaker 1: She's serving a 20-year sentence. Three Goldsmith heiress told The
- 14:36Speaker 1: Guardian in emails they never met Epstein and doubted their
- 14:39Speaker 1: father had any business dealings with him. Isabel Goldsmith did
- 14:43Speaker 1: not respond to messages. I'm not sure I've ever heard
- 14:47Speaker 1: of Jeffrey Epstein before he hit the news for the
- 14:49Speaker 1: first time, so I'm presuming my father did not know him,
- 14:53Speaker 1: said Ben Goldsmith, an environmentalist and investor who was 16
- 14:57Speaker 1: when his father died. Well, that's a little bit crazy.
- 15:01Speaker 1: We don't know the extent of our parents' relationships if
- 15:03Speaker 1: they don't tell us, right? I have no idea who
- 15:06Speaker 1: my dad was palling around with in the 80s, except
- 15:08Speaker 1: for the few people that, you know, are still in
- 15:10Speaker 1: my life, a couple of his buddies and stuff. But
- 15:13Speaker 1: short of that, how would we know? Jemima Goldsmith-Khan, who
- 15:19Speaker 1: owns a London-based film production company, said she never met Epstein.
- 15:23Speaker 1: I heard that my father despised him. He was certainly
- 15:25Speaker 1: not a friend of his, she said. Sir James was
- 15:28Speaker 1: the king of U.S. corporate takeovers in a frenetic era
- 15:32Speaker 1: of Wall Street dealmaking, earning hundreds of millions by seizing
- 15:36Speaker 1: control of vulnerable companies and cutting thousands of American jobs.
- 15:41Speaker 1: Sounds like Jeffrey Epstein's kind of guy. And that's what
- 15:44Speaker 1: they do. Make no mistake, that's what these people do.
- 15:47Speaker 1: They don't give a shit about you. They'll acquire a company,
- 15:50Speaker 1: and then they'll look at the bottom line, and they'll
- 15:52Speaker 1: see what they need and what they don't need, and
- 15:54Speaker 1: they'll start cutting people. Goldsmith sold his New York investments
- 15:58Speaker 1: in 87 and made a hasty exit back to London
- 16:01Speaker 1: after correctly predicting the Black Monday stock market crash. Yeah,
- 16:04Speaker 1: predicting or knowing. My guess is he probably had an
- 16:08Speaker 1: idea that it was coming. Forget predicting. He knew. Epstein
- 16:13Speaker 1: was a takeover amateur who concocted his own deals while
- 16:16Speaker 1: working as a consultant to a shady Manhattan debt collection company,
- 16:20Speaker 1: Towers Financial, whose chief executive, Stephen Hoffenberg, was later convicted
- 16:25Speaker 1: of running a $ 450 million Ponzi scheme. Before his death,
- 16:29Speaker 1: Hoffenberg accused Epstein of masterminding the scheme. Epstein was never charged.
- 16:35Speaker 1: And I talked to Steve Hoffenberg personally about this, and
- 16:37Speaker 1: he says that Epstein was given a deal by the FBI.
- 16:41Speaker 1: And the FBI turned him into an informant. And from there,
- 16:45Speaker 1: he was flipped out to the CIA, etc. One thing
- 16:48Speaker 1: about the FBI or the CIA, whatever, they're not going
- 16:51Speaker 1: to let an asset go to waste. If they feel
- 16:53Speaker 1: like they have an asset they can run, they're going
- 16:55Speaker 1: to run it. I mean, look at what they did
- 16:57Speaker 1: with Whitey Bulger. And look at how long they did that.
- 17:01Speaker 1: They let that dude kill people, sell drugs, rape, maim, kill,
- 17:05Speaker 1: you name it. All in the name of the greater good.
- 17:09Speaker 1: So make no mistake, they have no problem getting into
- 17:11Speaker 1: bed with somebody like Jeffrey Epstein. Hoffenberg's most ambitious effort
- 17:16Speaker 1: was an attempted takeover of troubled Pan Am Airlines, the
- 17:19Speaker 1: prestigious international carrier Epstein had fantasized as a boy about
- 17:24Speaker 1: one day owning, according to an email from one of
- 17:26Speaker 1: his friends. Working from its Hilton head office, Goldsmith's takeover
- 17:30Speaker 1: team had already analyzed Pan Am's books and backed off
- 17:34Speaker 1: from making an offer. Developer Donald Trump also flirted with
- 17:38Speaker 1: a takeover bid but never made it, media report show.
- 17:42Speaker 1: All right, so we're going to wrap up this second
- 17:44Speaker 1: episode right here. And in the next episode, we're going
- 17:46Speaker 1: to pick up where we left off. All the information
- 17:49Speaker 1: that goes with this episode can be found in the
- 17:52Speaker 1: description box.