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The Epstein Files · Question Everything

0:00
Speaker 1: A couple weeks ago, we did that thing we do
0:01
Speaker 1: now and again on our show. We closed up the
0:03
Speaker 1: Bibber & Bell wine store in Brooklyn, pulled some bottles
0:06
Speaker 1: off the shelves, and got together a group of reporters
0:08
Speaker 1: to talk shop. This time, it was reporters who have covered.
0:11
Speaker 2: The Jeffrey Epstein story for years. In one case, for
0:15
Speaker 2: two decades.
0:16
Speaker 1: A story that has been so inescapable this year that
0:19
Speaker 1: even as we were setting up to record, there was
0:21
Speaker 1: breaking news about Epstein.
0:21
Speaker 3: I can't believe this just dumped.
0:24
Speaker 1: A House committee had just released an indecorous drawing of
0:27
Speaker 1: a woman's body. I'm sure you heard about this. with
0:30
Speaker 1: Donald Trump's signature on it, from a book of notes
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Speaker 1: compiled by friends of Epstein's for his 50th birthday.
0:35
Speaker 2: Trump says it's fake.
0:41
Speaker 1: The conversation that ensued on this evening, sometimes heated, sometimes drunken,
0:46
Speaker 1: sometimes eye-opening, you will not want to miss this one.
0:49
Speaker 1: As one of our guests wrote me afterwards, it was
0:51
Speaker 1: an unusual evening. And another, I had a blast, and
0:55
Speaker 1: maybe a bit too much whiskey. From KCRW and Placement Theory,
0:58
Speaker 1: this is Question Everything. I'm Brian Reed.
1:01
Speaker 2: Stick around.
1:10
Speaker 1: Even though Epstein has been dead for six years, somehow
1:13
Speaker 1: he has managed to haunt our news cycle as one
1:15
Speaker 1: of the most consequential stories of Donald Trump's second term.
1:19
Speaker 1: Trump and other MAGA figures have spent years promising their
1:22
Speaker 1: base that if Trump got reelected, he would release the files.
1:26
Speaker 1: all the secret information the government holds from its investigations
1:30
Speaker 1: into Jeffrey Epstein's crimes. And now Trump got reelected, and
1:34
Speaker 1: he won't release the files. The Epstein story has unleashed
1:38
Speaker 1: a kind of upside-down world where Trump's own party and
1:41
Speaker 1: base are furious with him, which is quite a thing
1:44
Speaker 1: for a news story to be able to do these days.
1:46
Speaker 1: And it's meant that reporters and news outlets have trained
1:48
Speaker 1: their sights back on Epstein and specifically on Jeffrey Epstein's
1:52
Speaker 1: relationship with Donald Trump. It's well known the two were
1:54
Speaker 1: friends for years. and what Trump's motives might be for
1:58
Speaker 1: not wanting to release the files. The Epstein story, it's
2:02
Speaker 1: the decathlon of reporting challenges. There's corruption, pedophilia, sex abuse,
2:06
Speaker 1: human trafficking, money laundering, fraud, suicide, alleged espionage. The reporters
2:12
Speaker 1: we assembled have covered many of those tendrils of the story.
2:15
Speaker 1: They still are, and I wanted to get them together
2:17
Speaker 1: to compare notes and get some perspective on this behemoth
2:20
Speaker 1: of a story.
2:21
Speaker 2: What is known? What isn't?
2:23
Speaker 1: What are they looking into right now? What are the
2:24
Speaker 1: things they most want to find out? And even the
2:27
Speaker 1: things reporters can and can't say about this story to
2:30
Speaker 1: this day. Here's who joined us. We have Vicky Ward,
2:34
Speaker 1: British accent, who's been a guest at the wine shop before.
2:36
Speaker 3: Testing, testing, one, two, three.
2:39
Speaker 1: Vicky wrote what is pretty much the first profile of
2:42
Speaker 1: Jeffrey Epstein for Vanity Fair in 2003. She's the only
2:46
Speaker 1: one here who actually got to know and meet Jeffrey Epstein.
2:49
Speaker 1: This was before much about Epstein, let alone his sex crimes,
2:52
Speaker 1: was publicly known. Vicky was assigned to look into this eccentric,
2:56
Speaker 1: wealthy man and where his money came from. While she
2:59
Speaker 1: was reporting, two sisters came forward with allegations that Epstein
3:03
Speaker 1: had sexually abused them. Vicky reported it out, but ultimately
3:07
Speaker 1: Vanity Fair cut the sisters from the piece. These could
3:10
Speaker 1: have been the first sex abuse allegations against Epstein to
3:13
Speaker 1: come to light, a fact that has haunted Vicky since.
3:17
Speaker 1: We also have David Enrich.
3:18
Speaker 2: Are we drinking?
3:19
Speaker 4: If you choose to, yes.
3:20
Speaker 5: I choose to.
3:22
Speaker 1: David's an investigative reporter and editor at The New York Times.
3:25
Speaker 1: He covers big banks and law firms. And he's a
3:28
Speaker 1: reporter on Epstein's relationship with those institutions for years. And
3:32
Speaker 1: on the day we gathered, David and his team had
3:34
Speaker 1: just dropped a huge story that morning about Epstein's long
3:38
Speaker 1: ties to J.P. Morgan Bank, which explains his sitting in
3:41
Speaker 1: the backyard of the wine store doing a live hit
3:43
Speaker 1: on CNN right before we started.
3:45
Speaker 6: Cheers to the dark, dark story.
3:48
Speaker 7: Well, to your scoop.
3:49
Speaker 1: And then Tara Palmieri, who's worked for Politico, Puck, ABC,
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Speaker 1: and now is independent on YouTube and Substack. Tara's reported
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Speaker 1: two investigative podcasts on Jeffrey Epstein, focused on his survivors
4:01
Speaker 1: and their attempts to get transparency and justice, including Virginia
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Speaker 1: Roberts Giuffre, one of the most well-known survivors of Epstein's,
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Speaker 1: who died by suicide earlier this year. In this conversation,
4:12
Speaker 1: we do discuss sexual abuse and pedophilia, And suicide. We've
4:15
Speaker 1: only included survivors' names if they've identified themselves publicly. Tara,
4:20
Speaker 1: at our request, also brought along her producer from Texas.
4:23
Speaker 6: Someone called me and they're like, who's your production company?
4:25
Speaker 6: I'm like, you're talking to the production company.
4:28
Speaker 1: His name is Eric Abinante. Because as we were booking this,
4:31
Speaker 1: we realized Eric had an interesting and important perspective. He's
4:34
Speaker 1: a Trump voter himself who is part of the MAGA
4:37
Speaker 1: movement and has been tracking the effect the Epstein scandal
4:40
Speaker 1: has been having on Trump's support in that movement. We
4:44
Speaker 1: settled in and Tara answered my first question. I'm just curious,
4:47
Speaker 1: like from each of your perspectives, like what is this
4:49
Speaker 1: story about at its heart right now?
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Speaker 2: What's driving it?
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Speaker 3: I think it's a class story. I think it's a
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Speaker 3: story about the wealthy and what they're allowed to get
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Speaker 3: away with and this two-tier justice system and this idea
5:02
Speaker 3: that this person was invincible and that all of these victims,
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Speaker 3: a thousand according to the FBI, it's probably conservative estimate
5:09
Speaker 3: that They had zero justice over decades, like going back
5:13
Speaker 3: 30 years to the first complaint to the FBI. And
5:17
Speaker 3: yet he remained in the upper echelon of society as
5:20
Speaker 3: if he had done nothing at all. And so to me,
5:22
Speaker 3: I think this is a class story. And it's like
5:25
Speaker 3: cover up government secrecy, corruption, and maybe a little spycraft,
5:28
Speaker 3: tabloid fodder too.
5:30
Speaker 5: Money, power, sex.
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Speaker 2: That's David Enrich of The New York Times.
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Speaker 5: You know, there's this network.
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Speaker 8: Of really powerful men and really powerful institutions that are
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Speaker 8: just instrumental in allowing this to happen and allowing it
5:43
Speaker 8: to happen for so long. There's not been accountability and
5:48
Speaker 8: there has not been a reckoning about what these people
5:51
Speaker 8: and these places were doing and who profited from that,
5:55
Speaker 8: either financially or otherwise.
5:58
Speaker 9: Well, I also think there's an international component to it, right?
6:01
Speaker 9: I mean, in that Epstein's not just about the American people.
6:04
Speaker 9: plutocracy in the American upper class. I mean, this was
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Speaker 9: a thing that was all around the world. You had
6:10
Speaker 9: Prince Andrew, you had Ehud Barak, you had supposedly Mohammed
6:15
Speaker 9: bin Salman in his house, he had a.
6:16
Speaker 4: Picture of the Pope.
6:18
Speaker 9: He bragged about Putin being a client. I mean, the
6:22
Speaker 9: reason he had an apartment in Paris was because Paris
6:26
Speaker 9: is where the leaders of the Gulf states go on.
6:29
Speaker 4: Vacation. So it is international.
6:32
Speaker 9: And I think the other thing that obviously I'm as
6:34
Speaker 9: interested in as David is the money, because I have
6:40
Speaker 9: yet to come across evidence that Jeffrey Epstein ever committed
6:44
Speaker 9: sex crimes against minors until he amassed an extraordinary amount
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Speaker 9: of wealth, where he created homes and islands in which.
6:53
Speaker 4: He could basically hide.
6:56
Speaker 9: And we still don't know the answer to the very
6:59
Speaker 9: basic question, which is how did.
7:01
Speaker 4: He make His money.
7:03
Speaker 9: And we all get a little bit closer, but we
7:06
Speaker 9: have not got the answer. We cannot explain why Leon Black,
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Speaker 9: one of the richest men in this country.
7:13
Speaker 2: Very wealthy hedge fund manager, Leon Black.
7:15
Speaker 4: Private equity.
7:16
Speaker 2: Private equity.
7:16
Speaker 5: Yeah.
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Speaker 9: Paid him nearly $ 160 million for quote unquote tax advice.
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Speaker 9: We cannot explain why Leslie Wexner gave Jeffrey Epstein, who
7:27
Speaker 9: didn't graduate college.
7:28
Speaker 1: Leslie Wexner is the founder of Victoria's Secret.
7:30
Speaker 3: Exactly.
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Speaker 1: Exactly.
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Speaker 9: Leslie Wexner, extraordinarily, for reasons no one can explain, gave
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Speaker 9: Jeffrey Epstein very early on in the late 1980s, early 1990s,
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Speaker 9: power of attorney over all his estate, all his many, many,
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Speaker 9: many millions. And, you know, when I wrote my Vanity
7:52
Speaker 9: Fair piece back in 2002, Leslie Wexner was, you know,
7:56
Speaker 9: heavily involved, sending me emails about how great Jeffrey Epstein was,
8:00
Speaker 9: what a genius it was. Suddenly in 2019, after Jeffrey
8:03
Speaker 9: Epstein's dead, Leslie Wexner sticks his hand up and says,
8:07
Speaker 9: Jeffrey Epstein, we fell out, you know, over 10 years ago.
8:11
Speaker 9: Jeffrey Epstein stole $ 60 million from me. That is not
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Speaker 9: the first time in my reporting that I have come
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Speaker 9: across very wealthy people who don't talk about Jeffrey Epstein
8:23
Speaker 9: for the simple reason he robbed them. And Jeffrey Epstein
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Speaker 9: said to me back in the fall of 2002, one
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Speaker 9: of the things he said that might have been true
8:31
Speaker 9: was that when wealthy people have money taken from them,
8:35
Speaker 9: they do not go to the authorities. The power of
8:38
Speaker 9: social embarrassment is huge. And oftentimes, very wealthy people might
8:42
Speaker 9: have been doing things with their money they didn't want
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Speaker 9: other people to know about. For instance, they might be
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Speaker 9: putting it offshore. And if you use Jeffrey Epstein, now
8:51
Speaker 9: I'm going into a hypothetical situation, but if you use
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Speaker 9: Jeffrey Epstein to put your money offshore and some of
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Speaker 9: it doesn't come back, who are you going to go
9:00
Speaker 9: crying to?
9:01
Speaker 1: Vicky was here about six months ago with some other reporters.
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Speaker 1: We were talking about billionaires and covering billionaires kind of
9:06
Speaker 1: at the beginning of this administration. And you talked a
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Speaker 1: bit about Epstein. And yeah, I certainly didn't expect that
9:13
Speaker 1: we'd be having you back like six months later or
9:14
Speaker 1: so on a day when like the top story on
9:17
Speaker 1: the New York Times is a lewd drawing from Donald
9:20
Speaker 1: Trump in a birthday book to Jeffrey Epstein. I'm just curious, like,
9:24
Speaker 1: what's most on your mind today, September 8th, 2025?
9:27
Speaker 9: Well, if you had said to me, In the fall
9:30
Speaker 9: of 2002, when Jeffrey Epstein was certainly not a household name.
9:35
Speaker 9: And if you had said to me 20 years from now,
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Speaker 9: this man is going to be more talked about possibly
9:42
Speaker 9: than anybody else, even dead.
9:45
Speaker 2: That is crazy.
9:48
Speaker 9: On one level, I'm sort of sick of it. On
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Speaker 9: another level, I really want to know the answers to
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Speaker 9: these questions. I want to know how he made his money.
10:00
Speaker 9: And I want to know what the leverage was.
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Speaker 3: And it's the girls. See, I don't think that. You
10:07
Speaker 3: don't think it's the girls?
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Speaker 9: I think it's a complicated answer. I think the girls
10:12
Speaker 9: were part of it. But I... have yet to come
10:15
Speaker 9: across underage women who've got concrete examples of guys that
10:20
Speaker 9: they were farmed out to.
10:22
Speaker 4: I mean, I know this is talked about.
10:24
Speaker 3: I mean, I have.
10:25
Speaker 6: You have.
10:26
Speaker 3: I know from Survivors, yeah.
10:28
Speaker 4: Tara, how many people are you talking to, just so
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Speaker 4: we have some idea?
10:30
Speaker 1: This is Robin Simeon, Question Everything's executive producer. She's with
10:34
Speaker 1: me behind the bar.
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Speaker 4: How many Survivors?
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Speaker 3: On a regular basis, four to five every day. But
10:39
Speaker 3: like tomorrow.
10:40
Speaker 5: Are you serious?
10:41
Speaker 6: Yeah.
10:41
Speaker 7: That is heavy.
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Speaker 3: I talk to them all the time. I talked to
10:44
Speaker 3: one on the way over here.
10:45
Speaker 4: And in total, how many are you in contact with?
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Speaker 3: I mean, probably like. I've met with at least over
10:51
Speaker 3: a dozen, 15, I mean, maybe more than that, probably 20.
10:54
Speaker 3: I've been working on this, like, we did much more
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Speaker 3: of like a survivor-based podcast for Broken Jeffrey Epstein, and
11:01
Speaker 3: it was much more about like them putting the pieces together.
11:03
Speaker 3: So I sat down with a lot of them, many
11:05
Speaker 3: of whom did not want to ultimately participate in the podcast,
11:09
Speaker 3: which I respect. I mean, mostly what I found was
11:11
Speaker 3: that the younger the girls were when they were abused,
11:14
Speaker 3: the less likely they were to speak. And I know
11:16
Speaker 3: a lot of people say, oh, those girls, you know,
11:18
Speaker 3: those women... they must have been older when they were trafficked,
11:21
Speaker 3: the ones that speak out often. I mean, you hear
11:23
Speaker 3: from Courtney Wilde, who had braces and was 14, and
11:26
Speaker 3: then you see.
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Speaker 5: Others 12, 13, 14.
11:27
Speaker 3: But when you're that young, I think it's just so
11:31
Speaker 3: emotionally scarring that they just don't have any interest in
11:34
Speaker 3: talking about it, being out there, being advocates. So some
11:38
Speaker 3: of the older women, they tend to be, you know,
11:40
Speaker 3: the louder voices for the younger ones. Um, The huge
11:43
Speaker 3: component in this story is the recruiting. They were recruiting
11:47
Speaker 3: their own friends. One of the girls recruited her best friend.
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Speaker 3: And so that complicates the guilt. He made them all
11:54
Speaker 3: feel like they were prostitutes that brought in their best
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Speaker 3: friends and all of their girlfriends. They created a scheme
12:00
Speaker 3: of guilt. A pyramid scheme. Yeah. None of these girls
12:02
Speaker 3: could report it because they were all a part of it. 16-year-old,
12:06
Speaker 3: 17-year-old girls, 14-year-old, 15-year-old girls. It was a pyramid scheme
12:09
Speaker 3: in a local high school. But I feel like we
12:11
Speaker 3: need to step back from all of this, by the way.
12:14
Speaker 3: And remember, these girls were under 18, under 17. These
12:19
Speaker 3: were somebody else's kids. I don't care. I think it's
12:22
Speaker 3: terrible that they recruited each other. But some of them
12:25
Speaker 3: you would see in those original police reports. They were
12:28
Speaker 3: making more money from giving Epstein a $ 200, $ 300 massage
12:32
Speaker 3: than their father would make in a full week. But yeah, no,
12:34
Speaker 3: it's ruined their lives. I mean, the number of suicides.
12:38
Speaker 3: Virginia Dufresne, I mean... It's almost five, I mean, that
12:41
Speaker 3: we know of. I think it's more than that. I mean,
12:44
Speaker 3: Virginia Giuffre, I spent a lot of time with her.
12:47
Speaker 3: We were driving around together and knocking on doors. I
12:50
Speaker 3: was close with her. I spoke to her before she died,
12:52
Speaker 3: and she was not well.
12:53
Speaker 2: Can you just explain who she is?
12:55
Speaker 3: Virginia Giuffre is probably one of the most prominent survivors
12:59
Speaker 3: of Jeffrey Epstein. She has accused Prince Andrew of molesting her. And,
13:05
Speaker 3: you know, the crown settled with her. And she's accusing
13:09
Speaker 3: a number of other prominent men. And, you know, she
13:12
Speaker 3: lived with that. She dealt with defamation cases because of it,
13:15
Speaker 3: because she came out and spoke in 2010. She was
13:18
Speaker 3: probably one of the first. women to openly tell her story.
13:21
Speaker 3: And she's a big part of the reason why so
13:24
Speaker 3: many of them are so vocal right now because of
13:26
Speaker 3: her courage. But it came at a real personal toll
13:29
Speaker 3: to her. She lived a lifetime of abuse even before
13:34
Speaker 3: Jeffrey Epstein, unfortunately. But it's kind of a cycle you
13:38
Speaker 3: see with sex trafficking, with victims of sexual abuse. They
13:41
Speaker 3: often go from one abusive situation to the next.
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Speaker 5: Which would make it easier to discount them.
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Speaker 8: And also it just like, made them more predisposed to,
13:52
Speaker 8: they're just troubled.
13:53
Speaker 7: In a lot of ways.
13:54
Speaker 5: And then he, in his abuse, obviously.
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Speaker 3: Her father dropped her off at his house many times.
13:59
Speaker 3: There was a lot of dysfunction in the family. I
14:01
Speaker 3: also think the brutality in which she was assaulted is
14:04
Speaker 3: like not really understood, specifically on that plane, you know,
14:10
Speaker 3: on that Lolita Express private jet that Jeffrey Epstein had.
14:15
Speaker 3: I mean, we passed by the airport and I remember
14:18
Speaker 3: her body like almost like moving in a way that
14:22
Speaker 3: suggested like an actual physical reaction to it. I mean,
14:26
Speaker 3: she suffered, like she suffered greatly. I mean, her first
14:31
Speaker 3: encounter with sexual assault goes all the way back to childhood.
14:34
Speaker 3: And the thing with Virginia, if you knew her, she
14:37
Speaker 3: was so open. She was unbelievably open. Like she had
14:40
Speaker 3: no boundaries, which is another thing you see with a
14:42
Speaker 3: lot of people that are victims of sexual assault. They
14:45
Speaker 3: don't understand boundaries. And it's very easy to sort of
14:49
Speaker 3: take advantage of that person. I mean, even for me
14:51
Speaker 3: as a journalist, I was like, no, we should stop.
14:53
Speaker 3: Like we need to take a breather. She's like, no, no, no,
14:56
Speaker 3: let's keep going. Let's keep going.
14:57
Speaker 2: When did you last speak to her?
14:59
Speaker 3: In February 2025, right before— right when Pam Bondi dropped those
15:05
Speaker 3: classified documents, which were really just Virginia's depositions, right? And
15:09
Speaker 3: so I asked her, like, what do you think about this?
15:11
Speaker 3: She said it was a circus. She said she hoped
15:13
Speaker 3: that Trump would have been the one to release the files. Like,
15:16
Speaker 3: that's the other thing we keep forgetting. And I'm sure
15:18
Speaker 3: you've seen this. So many of these women believe Trump
15:21
Speaker 3: and his promises of— that I will release the files.
15:25
Speaker 3: Elon Musk sent her a DM saying he'll release the files.
15:29
Speaker 3: And I don't- Wait, hang on, what? Yeah, Elon Musk
15:32
Speaker 3: sent Virginia a direct message saying he would release the files.
15:35
Speaker 3: And so they really.
15:36
Speaker 5: Believe- Is that, that's interesting.
15:38
Speaker 4: I didn't know that.
15:39
Speaker 3: Yeah, I reported it.
15:40
Speaker 2: I'm sorry, sorry.
15:42
Speaker 3: Sorry, sorry.
15:42
Speaker 5: I know you might not always be.
15:43
Speaker 3: I need to add a new podcast to my list. Yeah,
15:46
Speaker 3: that's okay. But no, the point is that many of
15:47
Speaker 3: these women believe that they could maybe get justice through
15:51
Speaker 3: President Trump.
15:57
Speaker 2: This is one of the things I learned from this conversation.
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Speaker 1: I didn't know that survivors of Jeffrey Epstein's abuse, some
16:03
Speaker 1: of them at least, including Virginia Giuffre, had pinned their
16:07
Speaker 1: hopes on Donald Trump to release the files and to
16:09
Speaker 1: help them get accountability. A few days before we all
16:15
Speaker 1: got together, a group of survivors had convened in front
16:17
Speaker 1: of the Capitol in D.C. to demand the release of
16:20
Speaker 1: the Epstein documents. Tara was there with them. And Vicky
16:25
Speaker 1: had been watching... interested particularly in one survivor who spoke,
16:29
Speaker 1: Anoushka DiGiorgio.
16:31
Speaker 3: Good morning.
16:32
Speaker 10: My name is Anoushka DiGiorgio, and I stand before you
16:35
Speaker 10: today as a survivor of both Jeffrey Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell.
16:39
Speaker 10: I speak today not only in service of my own
16:41
Speaker 10: recovery from trauma inflicted by Maxwell and Epstein, but to
16:46
Speaker 10: honor the lives, the courage, and sacrifices of Virginia Dufresne,
16:50
Speaker 10: Caroline Andriano, and others who could not continue.
16:54
Speaker 3: Their voices mattered.
16:55
Speaker 10: Their stories must not be forgotten.
16:59
Speaker 9: Anoushka DiGiorgio is an old girlfriend of Trump's. Many years ago,
17:04
Speaker 9: when he was splitting up from Marla Maples, he met
17:07
Speaker 9: Anoushka with Ghislaine Maxwell in New York and flew them
17:10
Speaker 9: all off to Mar-a-Lago. And then they had some whirlwind romance.
17:14
Speaker 9: And he then invited her to his wedding to Melania.
17:17
Speaker 9: And she's always said he was incredibly kind.
17:20
Speaker 1: This is a woman who is a victim of Jeffrey Epstein.
17:22
Speaker 1: She's standing on the Capitol lawn calling for Donald Trump
17:25
Speaker 1: to release the Epstein files.
17:27
Speaker 9: She also was one of the four who testified in
17:29
Speaker 9: Ghislaine Maxwell's criminal trial.
17:31
Speaker 2: OK.
17:31
Speaker 9: And she also outed herself. She had testified in Ghislaine
17:34
Speaker 9: Maxwell's trial under a pseudonym. And that morning on the steps,
17:39
Speaker 9: she made a direct plea to Trump at the end
17:41
Speaker 9: of her remarks. And I'm going to paraphrase because I
17:43
Speaker 9: don't have it here. But she said, you know, President Trump,
17:46
Speaker 9: you have the power. to do something here please use
17:51
Speaker 9: that power and.
17:52
Speaker 2: It was she said release the file specifically.
17:54
Speaker 9: Yes and she was not remotely hostile and nobody would
17:59
Speaker 9: have known she didn't stand there and say i know
18:01
Speaker 9: president trump i mean it was all very graceful and
18:03
Speaker 9: subtle and classy and i mean i was watching it
18:06
Speaker 9: thinking oh well this this will work and i think
18:08
Speaker 9: they thought it would work.
18:26
Speaker 2: I read David's piece from today. It was great.
18:29
Speaker 1: And am I right in kind of distilling like one
18:32
Speaker 1: of the main findings of it that's new is like
18:35
Speaker 1: before there have been you know, powerful institutions that have
18:39
Speaker 1: come into disrepute, even had to pay money because of
18:41
Speaker 1: their association with Jeffrey Epstein at a time when they
18:44
Speaker 1: should have known better, probably. But is this the first
18:47
Speaker 1: time you've actually shown with reporting that money was flowing
18:50
Speaker 1: through in these institutions to support sex trafficking?
18:53
Speaker 8: Yeah, I think that is something that has not previously
18:55
Speaker 8: been reported with any authority or substance. I mean, to me,
19:00
Speaker 8: the bigger takeaway is just the degree to which J.P.
19:04
Speaker 8: Morgan knew what Epstein was doing.
19:06
Speaker 5: Right.
19:06
Speaker 3: J.P.
19:06
Speaker 8: Morgan, which is the country's largest and arguably most prestigious bank.
19:11
Speaker 5: I've heard of it. Yeah, I've heard of it. You
19:13
Speaker 5: might have seen one of their chase branches around.
19:15
Speaker 8: They were warned not by people outside the bank, although
19:19
Speaker 8: they were, but by people inside the bank.
19:21
Speaker 5: And people who are not like.
19:22
Speaker 8: Little low-level gnomes in a back office somewhere.
19:27
Speaker 5: They were people literally on the same floor as Jamie Donovan.
19:31
Speaker 5: He had spent time in jail.
19:32
Speaker 2: He was a sex offender.
19:33
Speaker 1: Yeah.
19:34
Speaker 8: He was the worst sex offender, a level three sex offender.
19:37
Speaker 8: So someone who is likely to continue to pose a
19:40
Speaker 8: risk to society.
19:41
Speaker 4: Epstein was?
19:41
Speaker 5: Yeah, and be a recidivist.
19:43
Speaker 4: Before he was receiving money from J.P.
19:45
Speaker 8: Morgan?
19:45
Speaker 2: Well, so he became a J.P.
19:47
Speaker 8: Morgan client in the late 90s, and in 2006 was
19:51
Speaker 8: indicted and arrested for sex crimes. In 2008, he pleaded guilty,
19:55
Speaker 8: went to jail, and became a sex offender.
19:59
Speaker 5: And J.P.
20:00
Speaker 8: Morgan started banking, and it banked him throughout, and there
20:03
Speaker 8: were real concerted campaigns within the bank to kick him
20:06
Speaker 8: out for those exact reasons. And subsequent ones as well
20:09
Speaker 8: because he was under federal investigation for sex trafficking.
20:13
Speaker 4: Unsuccessful campaigns.
20:14
Speaker 5: Unsuccessful campaigns.
20:15
Speaker 3: They paid the victims a lot of money as well, J.P. Morgan,
20:18
Speaker 3: while he was in a jail. Like keeping it going, essentially.
20:23
Speaker 1: Yeah. And everything you're saying, you're saying like it's known,
20:25
Speaker 1: but this is, we only know this as of today
20:27
Speaker 1: because of your story.
20:27
Speaker 8: Yeah.
20:28
Speaker 5: Or a lot of it.
20:29
Speaker 9: David did an amazing putting it together, but a lot
20:32
Speaker 9: of that discovery was out there. And because there was
20:35
Speaker 9: a lot of litigation between Jess Staley, the Virgin Islands,
20:39
Speaker 9: JP Morgan, and separately Deutsche Bank.
20:42
Speaker 2: Who is Jess Staley? Just walk us through.
20:43
Speaker 8: So Jess Staley was the number two executive at JP
20:48
Speaker 8: Morgan and was the single most important person there responsible
20:52
Speaker 8: for the maintenance of the Epstein relationship.
20:56
Speaker 3: And J.P.
20:56
Speaker 8: Morgan was the bank that banked Jeffrey Epstein for 15 years,
21:00
Speaker 8: the 15 years in which he was committing the most
21:04
Speaker 8: kind of egregious and heinous of his crimes and built
21:07
Speaker 8: a sex trafficking network.
21:09
Speaker 5: And J.P.
21:10
Speaker 8: Morgan was there by his side supporting him and financing
21:13
Speaker 8: him And.
21:13
Speaker 3: Setting up bank accounts for girls under 18.
21:16
Speaker 7: Yeah, it's crazy.
21:17
Speaker 3: Setting up bank accounts for girls under 18 through J.P.
21:20
Speaker 3: Morgan and now giving identifying information about them.
21:23
Speaker 4: That's insane.
21:24
Speaker 5: Yeah, I second that.
21:27
Speaker 9: But the real hold that Jeffrey Epstein had over Jess Staley,
21:33
Speaker 9: which meant that ultimately he had a hold over J.P. Morgan,
21:35
Speaker 9: his real leverage over Jess Staley was.
21:38
Speaker 4: Not a woman. Sure, there was one instance of sex.
21:42
Speaker 9: It was that he made Jess Daly's career, when JP
21:46
Speaker 9: Morgan acquired Highbridge Capital, hugely important to their business, but
21:52
Speaker 9: hugely important to Jess Daly. I actually, for the first
21:55
Speaker 9: time reading your piece, David, I suddenly understood why Jess
21:59
Speaker 9: Daly stuck by him all this. It was because he
22:02
Speaker 9: owed his entire professional success to Jeffrey Epstein.
22:06
Speaker 5: There was also sex.
22:09
Speaker 9: But it wasn't underage sex.
22:11
Speaker 8: We do not have indications that Staley, at least, was
22:17
Speaker 8: raping girls. It's more likely, based on our reporting, that
22:21
Speaker 8: he was... having sex that Epstein was paying for and arranging.
22:25
Speaker 8: But either way, to your point, that is a source
22:27
Speaker 8: of great leverage potentially that Jeffrey Epstein has.
22:29
Speaker 3: Social embarrassment.
22:30
Speaker 5: Social embarrassment.
22:31
Speaker 2: He's married.
22:32
Speaker 7: He has kids.
22:33
Speaker 5: And look, I've been following this stuff really closely, but I.
22:35
Speaker 8: Haven't been in the kind of daily grind writing about
22:38
Speaker 8: this that much up until very recently. And so we
22:40
Speaker 8: started kind of digging through some of these depositions and
22:43
Speaker 8: other court records. We got a bunch that were sealed
22:45
Speaker 8: and had not been publicly disclosed.
22:47
Speaker 2: This is in some lawsuit?
22:48
Speaker 8: Yeah, it was a deposition in the lawsuit that the U.S.
22:50
Speaker 8: Virgin Islands had brought against J.P. Morgan. And Staley was deposed.
22:55
Speaker 8: And Staley responds in what, for all Staley's sins, it
22:59
Speaker 8: was a very astute, nuanced read of what made Epstein work.
23:04
Speaker 8: And he said that Epstein relied on his network for legitimacy.
23:08
Speaker 8: And I, Jess Staley, as the head of the country's
23:11
Speaker 8: biggest investment bank, am a huge part of that network
23:14
Speaker 8: and therefore a huge part of his legitimacy. And so
23:17
Speaker 8: it pays for Epstein to curry favor with someone like
23:20
Speaker 8: Jess Staley so he can say, look at me, I've
23:22
Speaker 8: got access not only to a bunch of money, but
23:25
Speaker 8: also to the top executives at one of the world's
23:27
Speaker 8: leading banks.
23:28
Speaker 9: So one of the questions I had, David, was about
23:30
Speaker 9: exactly that. You said that Jeffrey Epstein was still valued
23:36
Speaker 9: by JP Morgan when most of the senior bankers really
23:39
Speaker 9: want him out. And yet He's indispensable to the bank
23:43
Speaker 9: because he's a middleman. You had this sentence in there
23:46
Speaker 9: about Leon Black, one of the country's richest men. Why
23:52
Speaker 9: does one of the richest men in the country need
23:54
Speaker 9: a middleman to J.P.
23:55
Speaker 5: Morgan? I don't know.
23:57
Speaker 9: I mean, that to me was a hold the phone.
24:01
Speaker 5: These are all the right questions.
24:02
Speaker 8: And I completely this is there are so many unanswered
24:06
Speaker 8: questions and so many of those unanswered questions. involve some
24:10
Speaker 8: of the most powerful people in the world, whether it's
24:12
Speaker 8: Leon Black or Benjamin Netanyahu or.
24:15
Speaker 4: Or our sitting president.
24:17
Speaker 2: Or our sitting president.
24:18
Speaker 3: David, what I found.
24:19
Speaker 9: So fascinating, though, about your story, it has everything to
24:22
Speaker 9: do with how power works, how power really works. And
24:26
Speaker 9: that's what I think the Epstein story is, because it's
24:28
Speaker 9: about how power works in the shadows.
24:31
Speaker 2: What stayed with me was.
24:33
Speaker 2: Jess Staley, the executive at J.P.
24:35
Speaker 1: Morgan, like emailing Jeffrey Epstein while in a hot tub
24:39
Speaker 1: at Epstein's ranch.
24:41
Speaker 2: In New Mexico.
24:42
Speaker 3: While sipping white wine.
24:43
Speaker 2: While sipping white wine, just saying like.
24:45
Speaker 5: I love that piece.
24:46
Speaker 3: Was it I owe you one.
24:47
Speaker 2: Or something close to that?
24:49
Speaker 5: I owe you much.
24:50
Speaker 2: I owe you much. That image to me is just like, oh,
24:53
Speaker 2: this is how this happened. There was so much. Jeffrey
24:55
Speaker 2: wasn't there. He was, you know. He was given the ranch.
24:58
Speaker 2: He was under house arrest at the time.
24:59
Speaker 5: At the time.
25:00
Speaker 2: For sex offenses.
25:02
Speaker 8: And here is one of the highest-ranking executives at one
25:05
Speaker 8: of the most powerful banks in the world, like, marinating
25:10
Speaker 8: in Epstein's hot tub.
25:20
Speaker 1: After a quick break, what have these reporters heard about
25:23
Speaker 1: and seen that hasn't been made public yet? Oh, and
25:28
Speaker 1: we get into a little tussle at the bar. Earlier
25:36
Speaker 1: this year, Attorney General Pam Bondi leaked, I'm doing air
25:40
Speaker 1: quotes here, some fat binders that were labeled the Epstein files,
25:45
Speaker 1: phase one, to a bunch of right-wing influencer types. And
25:49
Speaker 1: they were excited until they paged through the binders and
25:54
Speaker 1: saw that there was basically nothing new. It was almost
25:56
Speaker 1: all documents that had been released already. They started complaining
26:00
Speaker 1: about it. So did some Republican lawmakers. Get us the
26:03
Speaker 1: information we asked for, one Republican congresswoman from Florida shouted
26:07
Speaker 1: in all caps on X. Pam Bondi and FBI Director
26:10
Speaker 1: Kash Patel, they kept teasing that they would, they would
26:13
Speaker 1: get the information, but it wasn't happening. And this turned
26:16
Speaker 1: into a furor on the right among media personalities, elected officials,
26:20
Speaker 1: and just diehard Trump voters. Why were Trump's people protecting
26:25
Speaker 1: these files about a sex criminal who used to be
26:28
Speaker 1: Trump's friend? Files that Trump had vowed to release. The
26:33
Speaker 1: story jumped from MAGA media into mainstream media. Trump was
26:36
Speaker 1: desperately trying to change the subject but getting pelted with
26:39
Speaker 1: questions about Epstein from reporters. And all this journalistic pressure
26:43
Speaker 1: generated from Trump's own movement ended up forcing some big
26:47
Speaker 1: revelations about this story. The birthday book and Trump's alleged
26:52
Speaker 1: artistic contribution to it, for one. But also, when he
26:55
Speaker 1: was coming back from a trip to Scotland in July,
26:58
Speaker 1: Trump was facing questions from reporters on Air Force One.
27:01
Speaker 1: And he ended up acknowledging that Virginia Roberts Giuffre, who
27:05
Speaker 1: you heard Tara talking about earlier, one of Epstein's most
27:07
Speaker 1: well-known survivors, the whole reason Giuffre ever came into Epstein's
27:12
Speaker 1: orbit was because she was working at the spa at
27:16
Speaker 1: Trump's private club, Mar-a-Lago. Trump said Epstein, quote, stole Giuffre
27:21
Speaker 1: from him as an employee. The president also told reporters
27:25
Speaker 1: there were other young women Epstein recruited from his spa.
27:29
Speaker 1: It's pretty interesting that it was rage from fervent MAGA
27:32
Speaker 1: Trump supporters that shook loose these new discoveries about his
27:35
Speaker 1: relationship with Jeffrey Epstein. That's why we wanted Tara Palmieri's
27:39
Speaker 1: producer on her independent YouTube show, Eric Abinanti, to come
27:43
Speaker 1: in from Texas for our conversation. He's a Trump supporter,
27:46
Speaker 1: self-proclaimed MAGA, who rolls in MAGA circles where people are fuming.
27:51
Speaker 1: And we wanted him to tell us, what's he hearing?
27:53
Speaker 1: What are he and other Trump supporters the most furious about?
27:57
Speaker 1: What's their most burning question?
28:01
Speaker 6: Is Trump in control or is there a domestic or
28:04
Speaker 6: foreign intelligence agency that actually controls him? That has been
28:09
Speaker 6: the big question, more so than the sexual assault and
28:14
Speaker 6: like any trouble he's in. People on the right are concerned.
28:17
Speaker 7: Is he in control?
28:18
Speaker 6: An actual character, a puppet of the deep state, and
28:22
Speaker 6: who is the deep state that's controlling him?
28:23
Speaker 7: That's the burning question.
28:24
Speaker 3: Well, I've heard this from people. It's just kind of
28:27
Speaker 3: circulating in the online world, right? That there's some sort
28:31
Speaker 3: of blackmail that they have on Trump. That's why he's
28:35
Speaker 3: acting like this.
28:36
Speaker 2: Who's they?
28:36
Speaker 1: They.
28:37
Speaker 3: Like that there could be, I don't know.
28:38
Speaker 6: Three-letter intelligence agencies domestically or foreign intelligence agencies.
28:43
Speaker 5: Masada is like five letters.
28:44
Speaker 2: Yeah, I was going to say, which one?
28:47
Speaker 7: MI6, KGB are also accused of this.
28:50
Speaker 8: I just, I've got to push back a little bit here.
28:53
Speaker 8: There is not any evidence at all that Donald Trump
28:57
Speaker 8: is part of some like right-wing conspiracy or the much
29:00
Speaker 8: more plausible explanation is is that his name is in
29:03
Speaker 8: these files in one way or another.
29:04
Speaker 4: We know that.
29:05
Speaker 8: Yeah, we know that it's been redacted. And so I just,
29:09
Speaker 8: what's the basis for what you're saying? Like, for the
29:11
Speaker 8: question you're raising, Eric, I don't have any idea.
29:12
Speaker 6: No, no, for a political optics standpoint, we can go
29:15
Speaker 6: to the least salacious explanation here, which is he merely
29:20
Speaker 6: looked the other way by being on the plane that
29:23
Speaker 6: you saw a 14-year-old girl who potentially was topless or
29:26
Speaker 6: something else like that. And just by that alone, you
29:30
Speaker 6: looked the other way, and that is politically damaging enough.
29:33
Speaker 5: But then we can go— Wait, that's the benign explanation.
29:36
Speaker 3: Yeah, like, that's what we know right now. We know
29:37
Speaker 3: he looked the other way. He was best friends with him.
29:40
Speaker 3: in the height of the sex trafficking operations.
29:41
Speaker 7: That wasn't how it was sold to the MAGA base, though.
29:43
Speaker 6: For the context, it's not like the MAGA base actually
29:46
Speaker 6: cares about this issue in non-election years.
29:49
Speaker 3: Okay.
29:50
Speaker 7: Look at the statements.
29:51
Speaker 3: You can't find Trump talking. He said Clinton is in
29:53
Speaker 3: the Epstein tape.
29:54
Speaker 10: Remember?
29:54
Speaker 3: He first used it. He said Hillary's going to have
29:58
Speaker 3: some problems because of the Epstein tape. He mentioned it
30:00
Speaker 3: in passing.
30:01
Speaker 6: It was meant as a political cudgel. It was meant
30:03
Speaker 6: as like, we're going to lock up all the Democrats
30:06
Speaker 6: with this. And anyone else in the media that you
30:09
Speaker 6: don't like, like Bill Gates, Clinton, and every other person
30:13
Speaker 6: that you don't like. The elites, the globalists. Oprah, like
30:16
Speaker 6: throw any name you can think of, throw them in there.
30:19
Speaker 6: They were somehow on the island. Roger Stone in 2015
30:23
Speaker 6: explicitly said it's a Democrat orgy island.
30:27
Speaker 7: OK. And then 10 years later, it's a Democrat hoax.
30:30
Speaker 5: Huh. Interesting.
30:32
Speaker 8: The thing that can I just shift gears like 15 degrees. Like,
30:37
Speaker 8: I don't understand why the MAGA base is like finding
30:41
Speaker 8: this so hard to comprehend. I mean, this is someone,
30:43
Speaker 8: Donald Trump, who before he won his first election was
30:47
Speaker 8: on tape bragging about sexually assaulting women.
30:50
Speaker 3: Why wasn't grabbing by the pussy a problem?
30:53
Speaker 7: You guys tried to make that a problem. We didn't
30:55
Speaker 7: care about that.
30:55
Speaker 2: Locker room talk.
30:56
Speaker 7: Yeah, no, it was locker room talk.
30:58
Speaker 6: I had heard worse locker room talk in middle school
31:01
Speaker 6: than that. That was a wild, that was a fake story.
31:06
Speaker 6: This is a real story. We care about this. We
31:08
Speaker 6: don't listen to you journalists when you tell us that
31:12
Speaker 6: Trump is in a bad situation on this.
31:14
Speaker 7: No offense to you.
31:15
Speaker 5: But when you tell us.
31:17
Speaker 2: But wait, what is the difference? What makes this a
31:19
Speaker 2: real story?
31:19
Speaker 3: Yeah, what makes it different?
31:21
Speaker 2: Is it pedophilia? Is that the difference?
31:23
Speaker 3: It is.
31:23
Speaker 6: Unfortunately, it's the psychological concept of he's telling us to
31:26
Speaker 6: look the other way.
31:28
Speaker 7: And he's the man behind the curtain now.
31:29
Speaker 3: He's acting suspicious.
31:29
Speaker 6: He really thumbed the nose at the base and said,
31:32
Speaker 6: if you don't support me on this, leave.
31:35
Speaker 4: Yeah. On this Epstein thing?
31:37
Speaker 6: It was on Truth Social, so I understand why you
31:40
Speaker 6: don't see it.
31:41
Speaker 4: And what Trump is saying to his base.
31:43
Speaker 7: None of us need to do anything about it.
31:45
Speaker 4: He has literally said, move on.
31:46
Speaker 6: It's a Democrat hoax. And you're a Democrat for thinking
31:48
Speaker 6: it's not a hoax. And there's a lot of people
31:50
Speaker 6: who are like, oh, yeah? I lost my job. I
31:53
Speaker 6: lost friends. I lost family supporting you. And now you're
31:57
Speaker 6: going to tell me that because I have my own
32:00
Speaker 6: opinion that's divergent from you, that I'm a Democrat.
32:03
Speaker 7: It's pissing people off.
32:05
Speaker 6: These are people who enthusiastically voted for Trump over Kamala,
32:09
Speaker 6: who are now.
32:09
Speaker 7: Saying I'm black billed. I'm never voting again. F Trump.
32:13
Speaker 7: Trump sucks.
32:14
Speaker 2: You're having conversations with friends who are saying this.
32:17
Speaker 5: Yes.
32:17
Speaker 7: These are new MAGA.
32:19
Speaker 6: So new MAGA or the recently politically homeless who from
32:24
Speaker 6: the Democrat Party.
32:25
Speaker 10: Right.
32:25
Speaker 7: Your libertarians, your Bernie bros, etc.
32:30
Speaker 6: And again, I'm sorry, I have three luminaries next to
32:32
Speaker 6: me and we're talking about MAGA.
32:33
Speaker 2: I get it. But now that they're not being released,
32:36
Speaker 2: what are they saying?
32:36
Speaker 3: We actually cannot speak to this the way that you can.
32:39
Speaker 3: That's why you're here. Yeah, you know this better than
32:41
Speaker 3: any of us.
32:41
Speaker 6: It all goes back to, hey, release and unredact the
32:45
Speaker 6: files because we have so much unanswered questions that come
32:50
Speaker 6: of this. If you don't put sunlight on it, of
32:53
Speaker 6: course there's going.
32:54
Speaker 7: To be some mold that grows.
32:56
Speaker 9: Exactly.
33:03
Speaker 1: I want to ask you a genuine question I have,
33:06
Speaker 1: which is all the questions I've asked, actually. But a
33:10
Speaker 1: story like David's, that he co-reported to other people at
33:14
Speaker 1: the Times, which is not about Trump. It's not about Democrats,
33:17
Speaker 1: at least overtly.
33:18
Speaker 5: It's about elites.
33:19
Speaker 2: It's about elites. It's about J.P.
33:20
Speaker 3: Morgan.
33:21
Speaker 2: It's kind of separate from, it's like apolitical in a
33:23
Speaker 2: certain sense, you know, like it's really just about power.
33:26
Speaker 2: But it comes out in the New York Times. Is
33:27
Speaker 2: that something that, Breaks through to your world? No.
33:31
Speaker 3: What the hell, man? Come on.
33:33
Speaker 5: Well, why aren't you helping spread the gospel?
33:35
Speaker 3: Well, here's the thing. That's actually a legitimate.
33:37
Speaker 5: This has nothing to do with.
33:39
Speaker 7: Here's the thing.
33:39
Speaker 6: The fact that it's from the New York Times is
33:41
Speaker 6: a negative, not a positive, right? So we're already looking
33:45
Speaker 6: at it like this is from an untrusted source. And
33:50
Speaker 6: I'm not, look, don't shoot the messenger on this. I
33:53
Speaker 6: actually like what you're doing.
33:54
Speaker 7: But trust me, because it comes from you.
33:58
Speaker 6: Already negative, and then you're putting it out in this
34:01
Speaker 6: traditional form, even more negative.
34:04
Speaker 5: Wait, a traditional form meaning we wrote words?
34:07
Speaker 7: It wasn't like a podcast with Theo Vaughn.
34:09
Speaker 5: That's true.
34:10
Speaker 7: You know, that's like what you really want is like,
34:12
Speaker 7: you know.
34:13
Speaker 2: Are they trying to book you with Theo?
34:14
Speaker 3: No.
34:15
Speaker 2: Maybe they should.
34:16
Speaker 5: I personally think we should engage as.
34:17
Speaker 8: Much as possible because we do our best and we
34:21
Speaker 8: can engage with people like that. I think there's a
34:24
Speaker 8: lot of hesitance, though, because there's a lot of gotcha.
34:29
Speaker 6: It is hard to find people who are actually willing
34:32
Speaker 6: to listen. And I get that a lot on the right, too.
34:36
Speaker 6: And I try to articulate that to my audience like we–
34:40
Speaker 6: You're not going to escape this cycle, this vicious cycle
34:43
Speaker 6: of not trusting anybody in the media without actually giving
34:47
Speaker 6: some honest reporters a good chance. This is why I
34:50
Speaker 6: worked with Tara is because, no, if I'm actually going
34:52
Speaker 6: to critique bad media, I have to support good media, right?
34:57
Speaker 6: And so in the end, it's like I can't just
34:59
Speaker 6: be always attacking media when there's actually a really good
35:02
Speaker 6: example here doing it correctly.
35:04
Speaker 2: And there could be good reporting from a place you
35:06
Speaker 2: don't like.
35:07
Speaker 3: I believe in like institutional media. I believe in independent media.
35:10
Speaker 5: Yeah.
35:10
Speaker 3: Today was a great day, I think, for the state
35:13
Speaker 3: in general because of the fact that the book came out.
35:17
Speaker 3: Trump tried to claim it wasn't true. Sue them. MAGA
35:21
Speaker 3: may continue to say it's not real, but it's right there.
35:24
Speaker 3: I think it sucks that we are so siloed. Go on,
35:27
Speaker 3: Joe Rogan. Go on, Theo Vaughn. And fight them with facts.
35:31
Speaker 2: Yeah, and we provide valuable information.
35:33
Speaker 8: You might not always agree with what we're saying, but
35:36
Speaker 8: we do our best to ascertain the truth on a
35:38
Speaker 8: daily basis. We're not perfect in that. We miss things,
35:41
Speaker 8: get things wrong, but we try. And we try in
35:47
Speaker 8: a good faith effort. And that should be valuable not
35:51
Speaker 8: only to people on the left, but also people on
35:52
Speaker 8: the right who have an open mind about what the
35:55
Speaker 8: facts are and want to know the truth.
35:57
Speaker 7: The biggest flaw was what you just said. I'm not perfect.
36:01
Speaker 7: That never happens in an article.
36:03
Speaker 6: That never happens within a New York Times thing of, like,
36:05
Speaker 6: admitting there's a potential flaw and actually opening yourself up
36:09
Speaker 6: to the process.
36:10
Speaker 7: We would love that as.
36:11
Speaker 5: I just think that's such disingenuous bullshit, though.
36:13
Speaker 3: But I also feel like the right also does not
36:14
Speaker 3: admit that they're not.
36:15
Speaker 5: Wait, Eric, hang on. Yes, hang on. Yeah, that's bullshit.
36:17
Speaker 2: On our David Morgan story.
36:19
Speaker 5: Today, we got a fact wrong, we corrected it. We
36:21
Speaker 5: have a correction at the bottom of the story.
36:23
Speaker 8: We're very good at correcting individual facts when we get
36:27
Speaker 8: them wrong.
36:27
Speaker 2: We're not the best at correcting facts— when our.
36:31
Speaker 8: Our biases blind us to a particular storyline or lead
36:34
Speaker 8: us to come down too hard or too tough your.
36:36
Speaker 7: Standards are higher than like fox news.
36:38
Speaker 5: I don't understand how we can do better we're.
36:40
Speaker 6: Trying to get at the exact heart of this question
36:43
Speaker 6: how do we break.
36:44
Speaker 4: Out of these silos so then we invite you here
36:46
Speaker 4: and get your shit face.
36:47
Speaker 3: Just to see if we can get something a little
36:48
Speaker 3: more real we try I don't know that this is
37:01
Speaker 3: necessarily in the files, but we know there is at
37:02
Speaker 3: least one Jane Doe that came forward right before the election,
37:05
Speaker 3: around the same time as the Stormy Daniels, Karen McDougal.
37:10
Speaker 3: Which election?
37:10
Speaker 4: 2016.
37:11
Speaker 3: And she claimed that Donald Trump raped her in Epstein's
37:15
Speaker 3: Upper East Side townhouse when she was, I believe, 13
37:18
Speaker 3: years old. And it was Katie Johnson. And that is
37:22
Speaker 3: a Jane Doe name. It's kind of like, yeah, pseudonym.
37:25
Speaker 3: And it was pretty graphic. There was another witness to it,
37:29
Speaker 3: a Tiffany Doe. And she filed three different times. And
37:33
Speaker 3: she dropped the suit and she withdrew right before the
37:36
Speaker 3: election citing intimidation.
37:38
Speaker 4: Have you spoken to her?
37:39
Speaker 3: No, I haven't. I reached out to the lawyers, but
37:41
Speaker 3: they said we're not working with her anymore.
37:42
Speaker 2: Has anyone spoken to her?
37:44
Speaker 3: Has anyone?
37:45
Speaker 6: Yeah.
37:46
Speaker 3: I mean, my sources tell me that yes, but like
37:49
Speaker 3: I don't.
37:49
Speaker 5: I'm pretty sure journalists have spoken to her.
37:51
Speaker 3: Yeah, a lot of people. I do know journalists who
37:53
Speaker 3: have spoken to her.
37:53
Speaker 2: And she hasn't given an interview like we haven't heard from?
37:55
Speaker 8: I think there's been a lot of reporting around her
37:57
Speaker 8: that probably hasn't come to light would be my guess.
37:59
Speaker 8: Do not read anything into this because I can tell
38:01
Speaker 8: you explicitly I've not been involved in any of this.
38:03
Speaker 8: But my understanding just through the ether is that there
38:08
Speaker 8: have been a lot of efforts to try and suss
38:10
Speaker 8: out the credibility of that story and.
38:11
Speaker 5: See how it would stand up.
38:14
Speaker 2: Because this is the one allegation against Donald Trump. The
38:18
Speaker 2: one that we know of. No, that's not true.
38:20
Speaker 8: We reported on a story, my colleagues reported on this,
38:23
Speaker 8: that there was Epstein's girlfriend at the time. They stopped
38:27
Speaker 8: by Trump Tower. And it went up the elevator to
38:30
Speaker 8: Trump's offices and Trump groped the woman.
38:34
Speaker 4: Yeah.
38:35
Speaker 8: And then they went down the elevator and Epstein excoriated
38:39
Speaker 8: her for letting Trump do that to her.
38:41
Speaker 9: That's right.
38:41
Speaker 8: I remember that. Again, that was not my story. So
38:45
Speaker 8: I'm probably getting a little bit of my colleagues who
38:47
Speaker 8: wrote that. But, you know, can I just like shift
38:50
Speaker 8: gears a tiny bit? But one of the things that
38:52
Speaker 8: has fascinated me about the coverage of Jeffrey Epstein, including
38:55
Speaker 8: in The New York Times, but elsewhere as well, And
38:57
Speaker 8: I'm not professing to know the answer to this, but
39:00
Speaker 8: I think one of the tricky things, the New York Times,
39:03
Speaker 8: among other places, kind of led the way in coverage
39:07
Speaker 8: of how do we hold powerful people to account for
39:09
Speaker 8: sexual crimes. And the Harvey Weinstein coverage and the Roger
39:13
Speaker 8: Ailes and Bill O'Reilly coverage back in, I think, 2016
39:17
Speaker 8: or 2017 was really groundbreaking. And part of the thing
39:21
Speaker 8: that they did, my colleagues and other at other publications
39:25
Speaker 8: as well, did really well I think was that they
39:27
Speaker 8: presented beyond any reasonable doubt that these things were true.
39:32
Speaker 8: And it was not just one woman saying something that
39:35
Speaker 8: Roger Ailes or Harvey Weinstein or Bill O'Reilly is refuting.
39:38
Speaker 2: They came up with new reporting methods.
39:40
Speaker 5: Yeah.
39:41
Speaker 8: And it was finding settlement documents and having, like.
39:44
Speaker 2: Contemporaneous people they'd spoken to.
39:46
Speaker 8: And let me just say something that is going to
39:48
Speaker 8: get me killed by my colleagues. And I don't even
39:51
Speaker 8: know if I believe what I'm about to say, but
39:52
Speaker 8: let me throw it out here. That those extremely high
39:56
Speaker 8: standards we've set for ourselves, which were extremely important and
40:00
Speaker 8: valuable in changing the era in which we lived and
40:03
Speaker 8: ushering in the Me Too era, are actually an impediment
40:07
Speaker 8: to some of the reporting we're trying to do now.
40:09
Speaker 8: Our job is to reveal the truth. It is not
40:12
Speaker 8: to win in a courtroom. It is to reveal the truth.
40:15
Speaker 8: And I do feel like sometimes And I'm not talking
40:19
Speaker 8: about the New York Times in particular.
40:21
Speaker 5: I'm talking about mainstream media in general. But I feel like.
40:24
Speaker 8: Sometimes we end up pulling punches because we have set
40:29
Speaker 8: this extremely high bar for ourselves.
40:31
Speaker 7: Which is.
40:34
Speaker 8: We know the journalists in this room, at least three
40:37
Speaker 8: of us, we know that there are real allegations out
40:40
Speaker 8: there against Donald Trump that people in the journalism community
40:46
Speaker 8: know about. And it's not saying that Trump was part
40:49
Speaker 8: of the Epstein's network.
40:50
Speaker 7: It's that Trump was rolling.
40:52
Speaker 8: In these same circles and is an admitted advocate of
40:56
Speaker 8: sexual assault, right?
40:58
Speaker 7: Dude, is that fair?
41:00
Speaker 8: And I just think that we have constructed such a
41:04
Speaker 8: high threshold for ourselves in proving these things, which is
41:06
Speaker 8: that we need contemporaneous documentation.
41:09
Speaker 3: We need like a picture.
41:11
Speaker 2: You guys can disagree with me. In fact, please do
41:13
Speaker 2: disagree with me. No, no, no.
41:16
Speaker 4: I totally disagree with you.
41:17
Speaker 2: It's helpful.
41:17
Speaker 3: I don't think we've created some new high standard for
41:19
Speaker 3: being able to discuss.
41:28
Speaker 4: Like, report, incredibly report sex assault. There's not a lot
41:33
Speaker 4: of air between reporting on rape that hasn't been, you
41:38
Speaker 4: can say allegations.
41:39
Speaker 3: I mean, I just think, I don't think you could
41:42
Speaker 3: be more wrong, actually.
41:44
Speaker 4: That's not post-MeToo.
41:46
Speaker 3: That's like all of history leading up to and including
41:49
Speaker 3: Me Too.
41:49
Speaker 8: What I'm saying is that we've created in journalism right
41:52
Speaker 8: now a standard for reporting on stories that is equivalent
41:57
Speaker 8: to the standard that you would need in court to
42:00
Speaker 8: prove something beyond a reasonable doubt.
42:02
Speaker 4: And you think we should have looser standards?
42:05
Speaker 8: I'm throwing this out there for debate. And again, I'm
42:08
Speaker 8: not someone who reports on this stuff in general. I'm
42:10
Speaker 8: someone who reports on following the money.
42:12
Speaker 4: That's me.
42:13
Speaker 5: My specialty.
42:14
Speaker 8: And so I'm out over my skis here almost by definition.
42:17
Speaker 8: But I think that one of the things I've seen
42:18
Speaker 8: in reporting on Epstein is that to me, when there
42:23
Speaker 8: is a preponderance of not just evidence, but of women
42:27
Speaker 8: who used to be girls who are saying the same
42:30
Speaker 8: thing over and over and over again, do we need
42:34
Speaker 8: to have contemporaneous evidence, written evidence? witness accounts from back
42:39
Speaker 8: in the 1990s.
42:40
Speaker 3: Yeah, I think we do. I think we do. I
42:44
Speaker 3: think we do.
42:45
Speaker 9: And let me be very clear. I think Vanity Fair
42:49
Speaker 9: back in 2002 were right to ask me to go
42:55
Speaker 9: to the mattresses to get all the things. My beef
43:01
Speaker 9: is that I got it. And that then, after Jeffrey
43:04
Speaker 9: Epstein had been in the offices... after Jeffrey Epstein had
43:08
Speaker 9: voiced his concerns about the girls, that the girls were
43:12
Speaker 9: then cut from the piece. But I have no problem
43:15
Speaker 9: with the standard.
43:15
Speaker 3: The standard was right.
43:16
Speaker 9: My up and down with the Epstein story was because
43:20
Speaker 9: I worked for a place that wasn't fundamentally supportive of
43:24
Speaker 9: me and of my reporting. And it's very hard then
43:28
Speaker 9: to hold true to.
43:30
Speaker 3: A North Star.
43:32
Speaker 9: And this is why what I think is more important
43:34
Speaker 9: is the environment that you work in. I think we
43:37
Speaker 9: should have the standards that are the same standards as
43:40
Speaker 9: in a court of law, because ultimately, if the journalism
43:43
Speaker 9: is queried, that's where you're going to have to be accountable.
43:46
Speaker 9: So it makes sense to me that that's the right standard.
43:48
Speaker 9: Like putting out unbuttoned up allegations of sex assault, it
43:52
Speaker 9: comes at actual physical danger to the people and the
43:56
Speaker 9: sources that we love and want to protect.
43:58
Speaker 5: I actually really deeply respect your critique of that. But
44:02
Speaker 5: I think that there is a risk. That when we set.
44:05
Speaker 8: Ourselves as journalists to that extremely high bar, that we
44:09
Speaker 8: risk obscuring rather than revealing the truth of a situation.
44:14
Speaker 9: So, David, so my pushback on that, the worry is
44:18
Speaker 9: if you go to press with a story that hasn't
44:22
Speaker 9: gone through the sort of legal standard, do you not
44:26
Speaker 9: run the risk of harming the victims?
44:29
Speaker 3: We do.
44:29
Speaker 9: By basically outing them into a situation that then they
44:33
Speaker 9: could get shredded.
44:34
Speaker 5: I agree with you. That's a very valid argument. But
44:38
Speaker 5: I also think that there.
44:40
Speaker 8: Is a risk journalistically in our efforts to bulletproof our stories. Like,
44:47
Speaker 8: I challenge anyone right now to make a bulletproof case
44:50
Speaker 8: that Jeffrey Epstein was engaged in sex trafficking.
44:54
Speaker 5: Prove it. Be my guest. Prove it. It was not
44:57
Speaker 5: proven in court. He was accused but not found guilty
44:59
Speaker 5: of it. And you're not going to be able to
45:01
Speaker 5: prove it because it's not a provable case. And yet
45:03
Speaker 5: it's true.
45:04
Speaker 2: Yeah, he's been.
45:05
Speaker 1: Found guilty of one count of— To me, that's an
45:06
Speaker 1: argument in favor of journalism.
45:08
Speaker 2: I don't have that question.
45:09
Speaker 5: We stipulate that he is guilty of these things.
45:12
Speaker 8: And we stipulate that based on the preponderance of our
45:14
Speaker 8: reporting that is grounded in deep reporting.
45:18
Speaker 1: I have that understanding that I've seen despite of what
45:20
Speaker 1: happened in the court of law.
45:21
Speaker 2: So that's an argument that— But.
45:22
Speaker 5: That's the point. Jeffrey Epstein was a bad fucking guy.
45:26
Speaker 3: Who was engaged.
45:27
Speaker 2: In vast crimes.
45:28
Speaker 3: So many girls have the exact same experience.
45:32
Speaker 8: He destroyed hundreds, dozens if not hundreds of girls' and
45:36
Speaker 8: women's lives.
45:37
Speaker 3: Suicides and deaths.
45:38
Speaker 8: And the fact that we can't prove that on an
45:41
Speaker 8: individualized basis does not in any way invalidate the truth.
45:45
Speaker 3: I think, first of all, I'm so happy that you
45:48
Speaker 3: said that because I actually think the brutality of his
45:51
Speaker 3: crimes has still yet to be unveiled based on what
45:54
Speaker 3: I know, based on my conversations with the victims. But again,
46:00
Speaker 3: they live in fear. And I think that's like another
46:03
Speaker 3: big part of it that people don't really understand. I mean,
46:06
Speaker 3: even right now, powerful people coming forward to them, trying
46:09
Speaker 3: to strike deals with them. NDAs. And even journalists being threatened.
46:14
Speaker 3: It doesn't change the truth. It doesn't change the truth.
46:17
Speaker 3: And people do not understand they have the fear of
46:21
Speaker 3: knowing the crime. Just knowing the crime. There is a fear.
46:27
Speaker 3: Every person that Jeffrey Epstein was around, every person that
46:32
Speaker 3: I have heard of that engaged in this ring, they
46:37
Speaker 3: have enough money to cause destruction to a life of
46:41
Speaker 3: a journalist, of a whistleblower, of a victim. And so
46:46
Speaker 3: I wish, like, as a journalist who is independent now,
46:52
Speaker 3: there's a big part of me that wishes I was
46:54
Speaker 3: with a big institution like the New York Times to
46:56
Speaker 3: continue reporting because I fear for myself that, like, if
47:01
Speaker 3: I tried to report, they'd be like, we're going to
47:02
Speaker 3: squash you like an ant because that's what we can do.
47:06
Speaker 2: This is what I want to ask you before I
47:08
Speaker 2: release all of you.
47:09
Speaker 1: And this is a question that I didn't get to
47:10
Speaker 1: ask like directly that I had coming into this, which
47:12
Speaker 1: is like, is what's driving the Epstein story right now?
47:15
Speaker 1: Just the idea that, oh, is our president, Donald Trump,
47:19
Speaker 1: the pedophile, has he raped children? Like, is that actually
47:23
Speaker 1: at the heart of what's driving the reason we're even
47:26
Speaker 1: talking about this story at this moment right now, years after.
47:28
Speaker 2: Epstein has died? What can you guys tell me about that?
47:31
Speaker 2: And what can we watch from the future?
47:34
Speaker 3: Let's just start with that. That's a tough one, right?
47:37
Speaker 6: On the show, we've talked about how the victims, the
47:41
Speaker 6: Epstein survivors, have their own list that they could potentially
47:44
Speaker 6: come out with. That's probably the closest thing related to
47:47
Speaker 6: what you're talking about.
47:48
Speaker 2: What does that mean, the Epstein survivors have their own list?
47:51
Speaker 6: Instead of there being an Epstein list, right? Like a
47:55
Speaker 6: client list that Epstein has? Yeah, a master list. No,
47:58
Speaker 6: they're the ones who have a list, and they could
47:59
Speaker 6: drive the story forward. And Tara has mentioned a couple
48:02
Speaker 6: times about how Virginia Jeffrey's memoir is going to come
48:05
Speaker 6: up in October and that'll extend the story.
48:08
Speaker 3: I do think that based on a lot of the
48:13
Speaker 3: reporting that I have, that there's a lot more that
48:16
Speaker 3: is not known about this case yet. And a lot
48:20
Speaker 3: of the files are, you know, they're redacted, right? So
48:25
Speaker 3: they're unredacted. You'll see a lot more names than what
48:28
Speaker 3: we have right now, right? So if they truly release
48:31
Speaker 3: the files, you'll see the unredacted names of very prominent people,
48:35
Speaker 3: which would cause, I think, chaos, frankly.
48:37
Speaker 2: Because the files will say what?
48:39
Speaker 3: Because the files will have all their depositions. The files
48:42
Speaker 3: will have all the names of the men they were
48:43
Speaker 3: trafficked to. The files will protect them legally from any
48:47
Speaker 3: sort of defamation. And that is why they want it
48:49
Speaker 3: out there.
48:50
Speaker 2: On the converse, that's why people might be fighting to
48:51
Speaker 2: keep it from getting out there.
48:52
Speaker 3: Exactly. I have seen some of these files that are unredacted.
48:55
Speaker 3: And they would be quite illuminating to the American public.
49:00
Speaker 3: The files will reveal the men that these girls were
49:04
Speaker 3: trafficked to.
49:04
Speaker 2: These are people we haven't heard about?
49:07
Speaker 3: Yes. They're titans of industry. They are foreign dignitaries. They
49:10
Speaker 3: are leaders. They're leaders of financial institutions like the ones
49:13
Speaker 3: you have been following. They are politicians. They are heads
49:18
Speaker 3: of major institutions. universities.
49:21
Speaker 2: You've seen this stuff, but you can't say why?
49:23
Speaker 3: I haven't done all of the reporting that I would
49:27
Speaker 3: like to do to feel comfortable reporting it. I'm an
49:29
Speaker 3: independent journalist. I'm not with an institution anymore. I'm not with.
49:35
Speaker 7: Politico.
49:36
Speaker 5: You have insurance?
49:36
Speaker 3: Yeah. No, no one will insure you for an Epstein
49:39
Speaker 3: story every show. No one will insure you.
49:41
Speaker 2: I don't want to push you guys to say something
49:43
Speaker 2: that you don't know.
49:44
Speaker 3: I don't have anything that I would.
49:45
Speaker 1: I guess what I would wonder is what can we
49:47
Speaker 1: say to an audience that doesn't trust reporters maybe or
49:49
Speaker 1: that doesn't understand.
49:50
Speaker 2: What we do? What can we say?
49:53
Speaker 5: A lot of the reporters who have been following this closely.
49:57
Speaker 8: No, there's a lot more to this than has been
50:00
Speaker 8: introduced in the public.
50:01
Speaker 5: Domain right now.
50:02
Speaker 8: And I'm not going to do that right now because
50:04
Speaker 8: I do not want to get sued or fired. But
50:07
Speaker 8: I'm telling you that there are a lot of theories
50:11
Speaker 8: that a lot of people have been chasing based on
50:14
Speaker 8: pretty good sourcing, but not sourcing that could hold up
50:17
Speaker 8: in a court of law.
50:19
Speaker 4: But at the heart of it to me is how
50:20
Speaker 4: do you protect the victims?
50:22
Speaker 3: The victims now at this point, they want it out,
50:25
Speaker 3: a lot of them. Well, that's the key. That's the
50:29
Speaker 3: key to me. Some of them, I mean, they want
50:31
Speaker 3: to be protected, but they want it out.
50:32
Speaker 4: So they want to be unnamed, but the story out.
50:35
Speaker 3: Yeah, they want it out at this point.
50:37
Speaker 9: Well, I think that it's time for this standard to change.
50:39
Speaker 9: If you've got enough of them saying the same thing.
50:42
Speaker 3: Well, that's why they want these files out there. This
50:44
Speaker 3: is exactly why the victims say, release the files. If
50:48
Speaker 3: the DOJ releases our files, we are safe.
50:51
Speaker 5: Yep.
50:52
Speaker 3: Yep.
51:05
Speaker 1: That was Vicki Ward, Tara Palmieri, David Enrich, and Eric Abinante,
51:09
Speaker 1: along with our executive producer, Robin Simeon. Vicki Ward has
51:13
Speaker 1: a substack called Vicki Ward Investigates. Tara's substack is The
51:16
Speaker 1: Red Letter, and she hosts The Tara Palmieri.
51:18
Speaker 2: Show on YouTube.
51:20
Speaker 1: David Enrich's most recent book, which we've covered on this show,
51:23
Speaker 1: is Murder the Truth, Fear the First Amendment, and A
51:26
Speaker 1: Secret Campaign to Protect the Powerful. Thank you for listening.
51:30
Speaker 1: We're really glad to be back after a break this summer.
51:33
Speaker 1: If you've enjoyed Question Everything, please rate and review us
51:35
Speaker 1: on Apple or Spotify and send the show to your friends.
51:38
Speaker 1: It really helps get the word out. And before we go,
51:41
Speaker 1: apropos of our discussion at the end there, I want
51:43
Speaker 1: to share some responses to the allegations and reporting we
51:46
Speaker 1: talked about at the wine shop. In response to the
51:49
Speaker 1: investigation that David Enrich and his colleagues did into J.P.
51:53
Speaker 1: Morgan's relationship with Epstein, a bank spokesperson told the New
51:56
Speaker 1: York Times in a statement that the bank's relationship with Epstein, quote,
52:00
Speaker 1: was a mistake and in hindsight we regret it. but
52:03
Speaker 1: we did not help him commit his heinous crimes. Jess Staley,
52:07
Speaker 1: the former JP Morgan exec who was Epstein's close contact there,
52:11
Speaker 1: we reached out to his attorneys but got no reply.
52:13
Speaker 1: And Epstein's longtime collaborator, Ghislaine Maxwell, despite being in prison,
52:17
Speaker 1: still maintains her innocence of any crimes. And as for Trump,
52:21
Speaker 1: the allegations that the woman using the pseudonym Katie Johnson
52:25
Speaker 1: made against him in 2016 court filings, at the time,
52:29
Speaker 1: Donald Trump's lawyer said her claim, quote, is categorically untrue.
52:32
Speaker 1: It is completely frivolous. It is baseless. It is irresponsible.
52:36
Speaker 1: Trump's campaign has also said that the account from Jeffrey
52:39
Speaker 1: Epstein's ex-girlfriend of him groping her is unequivocally false.
52:45
Speaker 6: I don't understand why the Jeffrey Epstein case would be
52:48
Speaker 6: of interest to anybody.
52:50
Speaker 2: It's pretty boring stuff. It's sordid, but it's boring.
52:53
Speaker 3: I think, well, really only.
52:56
Speaker 8: Pretty bad people, including fake news, want to keep something
52:59
Speaker 8: like that going.
53:01
Speaker 1: Our show today was produced by Sophie Kazis and Brendan Baker,
53:04
Speaker 1: who also did the mixing and sound design. Executive producer
53:07
Speaker 1: Robin Simeon edited the program. Kevin Sullivan is Question Everything's
53:10
Speaker 1: managing editor. Our team includes producer Zach St. Louis, contributing
53:14
Speaker 1: editor Jen Kinney, and associate coordinating producer Emily Maltare. Matt
53:18
Speaker 1: McGinley composed our music. Annika Robbins and Maggie Duffy fact-checked
53:22
Speaker 1: the episode. Gabe Kroga is our audio engineer. Our partners
53:25
Speaker 1: at KCRW include Arnie Seifel, Tejal Ajmera, Natalie Hill, and
53:29
Speaker 1: Jennifer Farrow.
53:30
Speaker 2: Special thanks, as always, to Bibber & Bell Wine Shop.
53:33
Speaker 2: We'll see you next time.