Latest / The Vault: The Epstein Files / Post Mortem: The Jes Staley Congressional Farce (Part 2) (9/10/26)

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Post Mortem: The Jes Staley Congressional Farce (Part 2) (9/10/26) · 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 pick up
• 0:06
  Speaker 1: where we left off with the post-mortem of the Jess
• 0:10
  Speaker 1: Daly transcript from Congress. And Congress has not exactly covered
• 0:14
  Speaker 1: itself in glory here either. Too much of this investigation
• 0:18
  Speaker 1: has felt like people taking turns giving testimony that everybody
• 0:21
  Speaker 1: knows needs harder follow-up. A witness says he cannot remember
• 0:26
  Speaker 1: and everyone moves on. A witness gives an answer that
• 0:29
  Speaker 1: clashes with documents and somehow there's no explosion. A powerful
• 0:33
  Speaker 1: person gives a carefully crafted denial and that denial becomes
• 0:37
  Speaker 1: the headline. That's not how you get to the truth.
• 0:40
  Speaker 1: You get to the truth by making the documents do
• 0:42
  Speaker 1: the talking when the witness suddenly cannot. You get to
• 0:45
  Speaker 1: the truth by asking the same damn question five different
• 0:48
  Speaker 1: ways if that's what it takes. If Staley says he
• 0:52
  Speaker 1: never saw anything at Epstein's townhouse, then build a timeline
• 0:55
  Speaker 1: of every visit. Find out who else was there. Pull
• 0:58
  Speaker 1: travel records. Pull calendars. Pull phone records. Were legally available.
• 1:03
  Speaker 1: Compare the dates with survivor accounts and employee testimony. Do
• 1:07
  Speaker 1: not just write down I saw nothing and keep it moving.
• 1:11
  Speaker 1: If he says Epstein had nothing to do with the
• 1:13
  Speaker 1: woman who he slept with, then investigate that specific relationship.
• 1:17
  Speaker 1: Find out when they met, when they communicated, and what
• 1:19
  Speaker 1: Epstein knew. That's what an investigation is supposed to look like.
• 1:24
  Speaker 1: The same standard should apply to every other powerful person
• 1:28
  Speaker 1: who wandered through Epstein's life. Yo, your boy is sick
• 1:31
  Speaker 1: to death of hearing that we can't ask hard questions
• 1:34
  Speaker 1: because there's no smoking gun sitting on a silver platter.
• 1:38
  Speaker 1: Criminal networks don't leave you a color-coded binder explaining how
• 1:41
  Speaker 1: everything worked. You build the picture from travel, money, communication, witnesses, timing,
• 1:47
  Speaker 1: and patterns. That's how cases are built every single day
• 1:51
  Speaker 1: against ordinary people. Somehow, when billionaires and former bank chiefs
• 1:55
  Speaker 1: are involved, everybody suddenly acts like the evidence has to
• 1:58
  Speaker 1: be gift-wrapped. That's bullshit, and we all know better. Now,
• 2:02
  Speaker 1: people keep asking who Epstein trafficked girls to, as though
• 2:05
  Speaker 1: there must be one magical list hidden in a safe somewhere. Meanwhile,
• 2:09
  Speaker 1: right in front of us, a former top banker has admitted,
• 2:13
  Speaker 1: under questioning, that he had sex with a woman he
• 2:16
  Speaker 1: met through Jeffrey Epstein. Again, Staley says that it was consensual,
• 2:20
  Speaker 1: and says Epstein did not arrange it. Fine, put that
• 2:22
  Speaker 1: shit on the record. Now keep digging. Don't stop at
• 2:26
  Speaker 1: the word consensual as though the case has been solved.
• 2:29
  Speaker 1: Find out what that woman says. And in a case
• 2:32
  Speaker 1: where I stay perpetually pissed off, I think this pisses
• 2:35
  Speaker 1: me off as much as anything. The powerful men get
• 2:38
  Speaker 1: to narrate the story first. They tell us what the
• 2:41
  Speaker 1: relationship meant. They tell us how close they were. They
• 2:44
  Speaker 1: tell us what they knew. They tell us when they
• 2:46
  Speaker 1: knew it. They tell us the sex was consensual. They
• 2:50
  Speaker 1: tell us nothing seems strange. And somehow the women who
• 2:53
  Speaker 1: actually lived inside Epstein's world are treated like supporting characters
• 2:57
  Speaker 1: in the rich man's version of the events. Yo, imagine
• 3:00
  Speaker 1: being one of those women and watching this shit. Imagine
• 3:03
  Speaker 1: watching men who walk through Epstein's homes explain that they
• 3:06
  Speaker 1: never noticed anything. Imagine watching bankers explain that red flags
• 3:11
  Speaker 1: were just risk management issues. Imagine watching former executives say
• 3:15
  Speaker 1: they can't remember messages that have been printed out in
• 3:17
  Speaker 1: front of them. Imagine watching people describe encounters involving women
• 3:22
  Speaker 1: in Epstein's orbit without anybody bothering to center what those
• 3:26
  Speaker 1: women experienced. Then imagine being told the system is finally
• 3:30
  Speaker 1: taking this seriously. I'd be furious too. I am furious
• 3:34
  Speaker 1: just watching it. The whole Epstein story is full of
• 3:38
  Speaker 1: people who were incredibly curious when Epstein could do something
• 3:41
  Speaker 1: for them and suddenly incurious when the subject turned to
• 3:45
  Speaker 1: what he was doing to girls. They wanted the introductions.
• 3:48
  Speaker 1: They wanted the money. They wanted the parties. They wanted
• 3:51
  Speaker 1: the access. They wanted the social circle. They wanted the business.
• 3:56
  Speaker 1: But when the questions came, nobody wanted the responsibility. And
• 4:01
  Speaker 1: I think that Jeff Staley is one of the clearest
• 4:02
  Speaker 1: examples of that rotten arrangement. His relationship with Epstein was extensive, personal,
• 4:08
  Speaker 1: and well-documented. He stayed connected after Epstein's conviction. He visited
• 4:13
  Speaker 1: Epstein's properties. He exchanged an enormous number of emails with him.
• 4:17
  Speaker 1: He later admitted to having sex with a woman he
• 4:20
  Speaker 1: met through Epstein. Regulators have already found that this relationship
• 4:24
  Speaker 1: with Epstein was previously minimized. And now we're supposed to
• 4:28
  Speaker 1: sit here and swallow another helping of I did not
• 4:30
  Speaker 1: know without choking on it? Let me speak for just
• 4:35
  Speaker 1: about everybody. We don't buy it. Maybe Staley didn't know
• 4:38
  Speaker 1: every detail. Maybe Epstein did not sit him down and
• 4:41
  Speaker 1: explain his entire operation. Maybe there were things Staley never saw.
• 4:46
  Speaker 1: All of that's possible. But the idea that a man
• 4:49
  Speaker 1: this close to Epstein moved through his world for years
• 4:52
  Speaker 1: and understood virtually nothing about the darkness surrounding it requires
• 4:56
  Speaker 1: a level of stupidity that Staley's career tells us he
• 4:59
  Speaker 1: didn't possess. You don't rise to the top of J.P.
• 5:02
  Speaker 1: Morgan and Barclays by being unable to read a room,
• 5:06
  Speaker 1: yet somehow Jeffrey Epstein's room was the one room nobody
• 5:10
  Speaker 1: could read. And I think that's one of the biggest
• 5:14
  Speaker 1: insults buried inside all this testimony. were being asked to
• 5:18
  Speaker 1: believe that the smartest, richest, best connected people on earth
• 5:21
  Speaker 1: became complete morons whenever Epstein walked through the door. Bankers
• 5:26
  Speaker 1: stopped noticing risk. Lawyers stopped noticing danger. Politicians stopped noticing reputation.
• 5:32
  Speaker 1: Billionaires stopped asking questions. Executives stopped seeing what was right
• 5:36
  Speaker 1: in front of them. Everybody suddenly became innocent, confused, and forgetful. Meanwhile,
• 5:42
  Speaker 1: the girls, well, they noticed everything. They noticed who came
• 5:46
  Speaker 1: through the houses. They noticed who had power. They noticed
• 5:49
  Speaker 1: who was protected. They noticed who got believed. They noticed
• 5:53
  Speaker 1: who got paid. They noticed who can make problems disappear.
• 5:57
  Speaker 1: And they noticed because they had no choice. Their lives
• 6:01
  Speaker 1: depended on understanding the room that all these powerful men
• 6:05
  Speaker 1: now claim they somehow failed to see. So please, spare
• 6:08
  Speaker 1: me the polished answers. Spare me the selective memory. Spare
• 6:12
  Speaker 1: me the careful distinction between acquaintance, friend, client, employee, assistant.
• 6:16
  Speaker 1: and whatever other words somebody's lawyer cooked up before testimony.
• 6:21
  Speaker 1: Jeffrey Epstein built a world where money, sex, access, power,
• 6:24
  Speaker 1: and influence were tangled together so tightly that pretending they
• 6:28
  Speaker 1: were all separate is straight up ridiculous. Jeff Staley was
• 6:32
  Speaker 1: inside that world. His bank was inside that world. His
• 6:35
  Speaker 1: personal life crossed into that world. His professional life crossed
• 6:40
  Speaker 1: into that world. And Congress should stop treating those facts
• 6:43
  Speaker 1: like awkward coincidences. I can assure you that the public
• 6:47
  Speaker 1: is tired of coincidences. We're tired of powerful people remembering
• 6:52
  Speaker 1: just enough to clear themselves and forgetting everything that might
• 6:55
  Speaker 1: make them look bad. We're tired of institutions paying huge
• 6:58
  Speaker 1: settlements while everybody who ran those institutions acts like nobody
• 7:02
  Speaker 1: did anything wrong. We're tired of being told Epstein was
• 7:05
  Speaker 1: uniquely evil while the network around them somehow consisted, almost entirely,
• 7:10
  Speaker 1: of innocent bystanders. We're tired of the idea that responsibility
• 7:14
  Speaker 1: stops wherever wealth begins. We're tired of watching survivor testimony
• 7:19
  Speaker 1: get torn apart while executives get handled with silk gloves.
• 7:23
  Speaker 1: We are tired of the bullshit. Jess Staley may never
• 7:27
  Speaker 1: admit to knowing more than he has already admitted. Maybe
• 7:30
  Speaker 1: he genuinely believes the story he is telling. That's not
• 7:33
  Speaker 1: the point. The point is that nobody investigating this mess
• 7:37
  Speaker 1: should give a damn what story makes Staley comfortable. Follow
• 7:40
  Speaker 1: those records, the money, the travel, the women, the dates.
• 7:44
  Speaker 1: Then put his answers next to all of it see
• 7:47
  Speaker 1: what still stands because that's what would happen to the
• 7:50
  Speaker 1: rest of us nobody would take our word for it
• 7:53
  Speaker 1: because we used to run a bank nobody would excuse
• 7:55
  Speaker 1: 1200 emails because we said the friendship was misunderstood you
• 7:59
  Speaker 1: think people would shrug after repeated visits to a sex
• 8:04
  Speaker 1: offender's home or that we had slept with one of
• 8:07
  Speaker 1: his employees and say well that sounds simple enough they
• 8:10
  Speaker 1: would investigate every inch of it they would turn our
• 8:13
  Speaker 1: lives inside out looking for the truth And that same
• 8:16
  Speaker 1: standard needs to apply here. Not the rich guy standard.
• 8:20
  Speaker 1: Not the former CEO standard. Not the politically connected standard.
• 8:24
  Speaker 1: The regular person standard. The one where your words get
• 8:27
  Speaker 1: checked against the evidence. The one where forgetting does not
• 8:30
  Speaker 1: erase the document sitting on the table. The one where
• 8:33
  Speaker 1: saying consensual does not end the conversation when the other
• 8:36
  Speaker 1: person's experience has not even been fully heard. And for years,
• 8:41
  Speaker 1: Epstein survived because too many people with power found it
• 8:44
  Speaker 1: easier to look away, make excuses, or convince themselves that
• 8:48
  Speaker 1: whatever was happening was somebody else's problem. Then he died.
• 8:52
  Speaker 1: And suddenly, everyone who knew him became an expert in
• 8:55
  Speaker 1: distancing themselves from him. And Jeff Staley fits right into
• 8:58
  Speaker 1: that mess. The emails are real. The visits are real.
• 9:02
  Speaker 1: The friendship was real. The sexual encounter that he admitted to,
• 9:06
  Speaker 1: that was real. The regulatory findings about how that relationship
• 9:09
  Speaker 1: was described are real. What remains unanswered is how much
• 9:14
  Speaker 1: he actually understood about the world he was walking through.
• 9:18
  Speaker 1: That answer should not come from Staley alone. It should
• 9:21
  Speaker 1: come from everybody around him, especially the women who lived
• 9:25
  Speaker 1: on the opposite side of Epstein's power. Congress should keep
• 9:28
  Speaker 1: digging until the neat little stories start matching the evidence
• 9:32
  Speaker 1: or fall apart under it. No more protecting reputations. No
• 9:35
  Speaker 1: more pretending obvious questions are somehow unfair. No more acting
• 9:39
  Speaker 1: like the rest of us are stupid. Because we are
• 9:41
  Speaker 1: not stupid. We know what it looks like when rich
• 9:44
  Speaker 1: people get a different set of rules. We know what
• 9:46
  Speaker 1: it looks like when institutions protect themselves or when somebody
• 9:51
  Speaker 1: is choosing every word carefully because the full truth is dangerous.
• 9:55
  Speaker 1: After years of watching this Epstein story unfold, we damn
• 9:58
  Speaker 1: sure know what it looks like when... powerful people expect
• 10:01
  Speaker 1: everyone else to swallow an explanation that would never be
• 10:05
  Speaker 1: accepted from an ordinary person. And Jess Staley's testimony deserves
• 10:09
  Speaker 1: to be ripped apart against every record available. If it
• 10:12
  Speaker 1: holds up, fine. If it does not, then somebody in
• 10:15
  Speaker 1: Congress needs to finally have the guts to say exactly
• 10:18
  Speaker 1: what the rest of us have been thinking. And if
• 10:22
  Speaker 1: Congress cannot do that here, with this much paper, this
• 10:25
  Speaker 1: many emails, this many years of documented contact, this many warnings,
• 10:29
  Speaker 1: and this many survivors screaming into the void, then what
• 10:32
  Speaker 1: the hell are we doing? How much evidence do powerful
• 10:35
  Speaker 1: people need piled around them before somebody finally stops pretending
• 10:39
  Speaker 1: the smoke might be coming from somewhere else? Because Jeff
• 10:43
  Speaker 1: Staley wasn't standing on a sidewalk outside of Epstein's world.
• 10:46
  Speaker 1: He was in the damn house. He was in the emails,
• 10:48
  Speaker 1: on the island, close enough to Epstein to maintain the
• 10:51
  Speaker 1: relationship after the conviction, and close enough to one of
• 10:54
  Speaker 1: the women in Epstein's orbit to sleep with her. So
• 10:58
  Speaker 1: spare me the fairy tale that nobody knew anything, nobody
• 11:01
  Speaker 1: saw anything, and nobody understood what kind of man Epstein was.
• 11:05
  Speaker 1: At some point, ignorance stops being an explanation and starts
• 11:09
  Speaker 1: looking a whole hell of a lot like cover. And
• 11:12
  Speaker 1: if Congress has any backbone left at all, it'll stop
• 11:15
  Speaker 1: asking these people to explain themselves and start forcing them
• 11:18
  Speaker 1: to answer what the evidence already shows. All the information
• 11:24
  Speaker 1: that goes with this episode can be found in the
• 11:26
  Speaker 1: description box.