THE EPSTEIN FILES, EXPLAINED: Everything You Need to Know (Amanda’s You’re Not Gonna Believe This B.S.)

Welcome back to We Can Do Hard Things. This is Amanda. My You're Not Gonna Believe This Bullshit episode this month is a special series, including another special drop Thursday on everything you need to know about the Epstein files. I have spent the last three weeks immersed in everything Epstein. Today, I'm bringing you the facts that the survivors and their advocates and journalists fought for decades to bring to light against an overwhelmingly powerful force intent on burying it. There are plenty of conspiracy theories swirling about Epstein, and in the fullness of time, I have no doubt that a fair number of them will bear out as true. But we are not talking about that today. We don't need a conspiracy theory. We have a conspiracy confirmed by existing verified facts, which is that for more than a decade, our justice system colluded with an ultra-rich, deeply connected predator to ensure the system was deployed only to protect him and his associates, and that it still is. The story is very long and complicated, and when you pair that with the fact that it was intentionally, forcefully, and expensively squashed, it is hard to know what the hell is going on, how we got here, and why exactly we were all fighting about the Epstein files. My goal has been to organize and synthesize decades of information and to present everything you really need to know in a comprehensible, chronological way in one place. That's what we're doing here today, laying out what happened from 1953 when Epstein is born to the testimony Ghislaine Maxwell will give Congress this week. Our next show, a special drop this Thursday, February 12th, I speak to Brad Edwards, one of the heroes, who has represented over 200 of Jeffrey Epstein's survivors and has been vital in going to the mat against him to bring the truth to light and about what is happening and the fight still ahead. Two quick notes. This is commentary. I'm not a reporter and I'm no longer a practicing lawyer. What you're about to hear is based on court filings and the work of journalists, especially Julie K. Brown, David Enrich, Steve Eder, Jessica Silver Greenberg, Matthew Goldstein, Jeff Schechtman, Tara Palmieri, Jessica Yellen, Victoria Bekempis, and Vicki Ward. I'm not claiming firsthand knowledge of any of this. This is what has already been reported and why it matters. Also, Glenn and Abby are here. They're here for moral support and to learn with us. Second, this conversation does not focus on the salacious and predatory sexual abuse of the girls. We don't need to mind their pain to see clearly the outrageous injustices that have taken place over the last many decades. We will talk about those crimes just to the extent necessary to show the predatory pyramid scheme he built and relentlessly expanded. But that's not what the vast majority of today is about. Still, if any mention of Jeffrey Epstein's crimes is triggering to you, please take care of yourself most. We're going through this chronologically and we cover four areas. One, who the hell is Jeffrey Epstein? How did he get his money and how did he rise to this level of being utterly untouchable? Two, what is the criminal ring he established and how did he build it? Three, how were those heinous crimes unearthed and what happened after? This part details the state and federal cover-ups of those crimes for more than a decade, including his final arrest, death, and aftermath. Four, what about the files? How did we get them? Who wanted them released and who didn't? What was released and what wasn't? And the international implications of those revelations, as well as the Trump administration's declaration that the investigation case and discussion of this is over. On a personal note, I recently had the honor of seeing the monks who are walking across the country for peace. They walked from Texas to D.C. arriving today, walking every day for miles in freezing temperatures, snow and ice storms for months. Its power made me weep. Some people say, what is walking across the country going to do for peace? But those people haven't seen the monks walking. The walking is their meditation for peace. Having spent three sleepless weeks feeling physically, emotionally, and spiritually compelled to immerse myself in the weeds of Jeffrey Epstein's atrocities and its cover-up, it suddenly made sense to me. What I'm about to share is a speaking meditation for justice for every survivor, including Maria Farmer, Annie Farmer, Courtney Wild, Michelle Licata, Regina Roberts-Gouffre, Shauna Rivera, and hundreds more, including those who succumbed to suicide in the aftermath of Jeffrey Epstein and the justice system's violence against them. It's also for the heroes who never gave up. Palm Beach Detective Joe Burkari, Palm Beach Police Department Chief of Police Michael Reeder, journalist Julie K. Brown, photojournalist Emmy McCoh, and journalist Vicki Ward, attorneys Brad Edwards, Brittany Henderson, David Boyce, Spencer Coven, Sigrid McCauley, and PI Mike Viston. Here we go. who the fuck is this guy Jeffrey Epstein is born in 1953 in Brooklyn New York he's raised in Coney Island in a working-class family his father Seymour Epstein worked for New York City's parks department his mom Pauline Epstein was a school aide he attended a public school called Lafayette High School in Brooklyn. He skipped a grade there and he was remembered as being very good at math and told a classmate in ninth grade he was going to be very rich one day. He spent a couple of years at college and left without graduating. Even though he had no degree, he landed a job teaching math and physics at Dalton School, a prestigious private school on Manhattan's Upper East Side. It is not understood how he got hired without a degree. He was hired by the headmaster of that school at the time, whose name was Donald Barr. Donald Barr was a former member of the OSS, which is the precursor to the CIA. He's a person one would think would have had the resources to verify that Epstein had not, in fact, graduated from college, a requirement before becoming a teacher-adulted. The intelligence officer turned headmaster was the father of William Barr, who would go on to become Trump's U.S. Attorney General, head of the Department of justice at the time Epstein died in DOJ Bureau of Prisons custody. Dalton gets a new headmaster and tells Epstein he needs to find a new job before the next school year. A parent of a Dalton student who is wealthy and well-connected connects Epstein to Alan Ace Greenberg, an executive at Bear Stearns. Greenberg got him an interview at Bear Stearns with another exec who had a son at Dalton. He landed a job there to develop and market quantitative analysis for options. Now, here's an aside. Bear Stearn, if you don't know what it is, it was a huge Wall Street bank, which famously collapsed during the 2008 financial crisis after its, to say it generously, aggressive bets on mortgage securities, all of which led to the fall of Lehman Brothers and then taxpayers bailing out Wall Street for their folly. So we're back to 1976. Epstein is working at Bear Stearns. Greenberg treats him as a protege and Epstein starts dating Greenberg's daughter. Two months into his Bear Stearns job, they found out he had lied and never been to the two California colleges listed on his resume, but he talked himself out of it and they didn't fire him. Three years later, they named him a limited partner. Through his Bear Stearns connections, including the super shady Jim Kane, he is introduced to some of the bank's most ultra wealthy investment clients, whom he woos through schemes to save them money on taxes. He keeps breaking rules, being found out, and getting away with it, including spending $10,000 in 1980 on his corporate card for gifts for his girlfriend. When he was being fined for yet another shady deal at the bank, he decided to resign instead. He starts dating another rich woman, Paula Heal, who introduces him in England to an ultra-rich family, the Leases. They treat him like a son, give him a taste of luxurious living, etc. Douglas Lease is an aristocratic British arms dealer. He made a fortune, brokering the UK's then largest ever arms deal, the sale of British fighter jets to the Saudi Arabian Air Force. He mentors Epstein, takes him to meetings, hires him as a consultant. It has been reported that Lee's played a key role in introducing Epstein to Robert Maxwell. Remember Robert. We'll come back to him. But Epstein was caught charging personal flights on the Concorde to the lease's business account and the relationship is over. Epstein comes back to New York, and now he's a client of Bear Stearns. He gets one of his clients to give him $450,000 for an oil deal, and then the money vanishes. He joins forces as a consultant with Stephen Hoffenberg, who was the CEO of a debt collection company called Town Financial Corporation. They joined forces, and although Epstein claims he has no knowledge that it was a fraud, together they orchestrate the biggest to-date Ponzi scheme in American history, defrauding investors out of almost $500 million. Hoffenberg later claimed that Epstein was the mastermind behind the scheme, but he didn't implicate him at the time because he said that Epstein told him he was a cooperating witness for the DOJ in the past and had traction with them. Epstein denied knowing it was a fraud. Hoffenberg served 18 years in prison. Epstein faced no consequences. Meanwhile, Epstein was soliciting millions of dollars from other investors. He used their money to generate big profits by saying he was going to buy a company with no intention of buying it, thereby increasing the value of the shares and then refused to return their funds altogether. There is no record of Epstein facing any consequences or repaying the money. And at this point, he's getting super embedded in high society in New York, including becoming a board member of the prestigious New York Academy of Art in 1987. But his real money doesn't show up until he meets Les Wexner that same year. Wexner until recently was his only known public client. Jeffrey Epstein is on a flight to Florida and meets a friend of Wexner who suggests to Wexner that he reach out to Epstein for financial advice. Wexner is a billionaire owner of The Limited, Victoria's Secret, Abercrombie & Fitch. It's speculated that he did to Wexner what he did to billionaire Leon Black, more on Black soon, suggesting that his advisors were a mess and maybe even exploiting Wexner. But very soon, Wexner gives Epstein near total control over his finances, including a power of attorney. Between 1991 and 2006, Epstein oversaw the sale of more than $3.1 billion of stock from Wexner's company, personally making untold amounts. He's flying around in his plane. He's staying in Wexner's estate. He has seemingly radical access. He uses Wexner's connection to lure other billionaires to do business with him, including Ken Lipper. It is revealed later that he also uses his connection to Wexner's Victoria's Secret empire to lure and manipulate girls by saying he scouts talent for Victoria's Secret. Interesting fact. Remember the lease arms dealer and remember the Iran-Contra affair when the CIA was shipping weapons to Iran, using Israel as a middleman and deploying the profits to arm Contras against Nicaraguan government? This is a whole very big scandal in our past. Well, in the Iran-Contra affair, they were using planes from a company called Southern Air Transport. Under Epstein's stewardship of the Wexner Empire, Southern Air Transport relocates from their headquarters in Florida to Ohio, where Wexner's companies are based. And the planes that previously carried arms to Iran and Nicaragua were repurposed to deliver clothes to the Wexner's network of retail chains. Anywho, in 2007, Wexner's wife discovers what she says were misappropriation of significant amounts of family funds, including that Epstein frequently bought property on behalf of the Wexners, sold it to himself at a fraction of the costs, and pocketed the money. Instead of reporting it to the authorities, they opted for a private settlement of $100 million from Epstein. Another billionaire with speculated ties to Epstein during this period is Robert Maxwell. Maxwell was born in Czechoslovakia, a Holocaust survivor who moved to England and reinvented himself as a British publishing baron, a member of the parliament and an alleged intelligence asset who changed his name four times by the time he was 23. Toward the end of his life, Maxwell's empire is crumbling. He stole $590 million from his employees' pensions funds to cover his mounting business debts, and it is all starting to crash in on him as banks demand repayment of debts. He was last seen alive at 425 a.m. aboard his 50-foot yacht. His crew notices that he is missing. By late afternoon, Robert Maxwell's body was found naked and floating off the Canary Islands. The original autopsy stated he died of natural causes, heart and lung failure, but the family did not believe it. His sons, also part of his business, were charged with theft and conspiring to defraud in connection with their role in their father's companies. At the time of his death, he is in the middle of lawsuits with New York Times reporter Seymour Hirsch, who implicates him as an asset in a plot of Mossad. Mossad is one of the three major Israeli intelligence organizations. Maxwell is buried at Judaism's most prestigious resting place, the cemetery on Jerusalem's Mount of Olives. In attendance at his funeral were six current and former heads of Israeli intelligence, as well as Israel's president and its prime minister, Yitzhak Shamir. who eulogizes him. Shamir, whom official sources say Maxwell spoke to at least once a week, described Maxwell in the eulogy as a person who, quote, offered to put his wide context on the international arena at Israel's service. In the most recent Epstein file release, Epstein wrote an email with the subject line, he was passed away. And the body of the email said that toward the end of his life, quote, Robert Maxwell threatened Mossad. He told them that unless they gave him 400 million euro to save his crumbling empire, he would expose all he had done for them, end quote. Regardless of what actually happened, Maxwell was dead, floating off his yacht, a yacht named for his favorite child. The boat was called Lady Ghislaine. Yes, that Ghislaine, Ghislaine Maxwell, the one currently imprisoned for the Epstein conspiracy. Facing incredible public outreach toward her family and alleged financial ruin due to her father's fraud, Ghislaine, the very well-connected British socialite, immediately relocates to New York City. Two weeks after Robert's death, the Evo Institute for Jewish Leadership held a tribute to Robert hosted at Trump's Plaza Hotel. Seated next to Maxwell's widow and Ghislaine was Jeffrey Epstein. In Ghislaine's mother's autobiography, she says that when she was penniless following her husband's death, an unnamed financier from New York City, whom her husband had previously introduced her to, bought her a London apartment because he was, quote, grateful for her husband's service to Israel. A photo from that event is the first known photo of Jeffrey Epstein and Ghislaine together. They become inseparable for many years, first as romantic partners, then Ghislaine as his employee and criminal co-conspirator. During this time, Epstein owns five sprawling properties, one of the largest homes in Manhattan, a 21,000 square foot mansion that spans the entire block of 71st Street between Fifth Avenue and Madison Avenues, a mansion on Palm Beach Island, a 1,000 acre ranch called Zorro in New Mexico, a luxurious apartment in Paris, the infamous 75 acre private island in the Virgin Islands called Little St. James, and later neighboring Great St. James Island, as well as a Gulfstream jet and at one point a Boeing 727. Now we're in part two, his predatory pyramid scheme. The discovery of Epstein's massive pyramid scheme of sexual violence, manipulation, and intimidation arose from his conduct on Palm Beach Island. But 11 years before that, at least three women filed police reports of sexual assault against him, including one who was a minor. The first ever police report of sexual misconduct against Epstein was filed in the summer of 1996, a staggering 11 years and countless victims before he is ever arrested. Maria Farmer, a painter, was at her 1995 graduation from New York Academy of Art Art Show and had already sold her paintings of her little sisters, one of which sold for $12,000 when she says that Eileen Guggenheim, dean of students at the school and who denied this happened, approached her, introducing her to her dear friends, Ghislaine Maxwell and Jeffrey Epstein, and said that they were benefactors of the Institute and that they were the ones who were going to buy her painting. When Maria said it was already sold, she said Guggenheim said that's too bad and she would be selling it to the couple for a discount. Epstein said they would make it worth it for her and later offered her a job at Epstein's mansion. Maria says she was later fondled by both of them. She was particularly alarmed because before the abuse, she had introduced the couple to her younger sister, a 16-year-old, when they offered to help her get the experience she needed to build her resume to get into college, including going on an international trip to Thailand and Vietnam. After the incident happened to Maria, she called Annie, who disclosed that she had also been molested by both of them. The family reported what had happened to both the NYPD and the FBI in 1996. They never heard anything back. But after reporting it, someone from one of these places must have communicated the report to Epstein because Maria says that Galene called her and told her that she was going to burn all of her art and burn her career, that she knew that she liked to run on the West Side Highway, and that's not going to be a safe place for her anymore because there's a lot of ways to die on the West Side Highway. Maria says that for years when she had moved to a new place, Ghislaine would call her just to let her know that she knew where she lived and that she was not safe there either, telling her to keep checking over her shoulder. Maria eventually moved to the mountains of North Carolina and changed her name using an alias. Maria heard nothing from the NYPD or the FBI for a decade. The next year in 1997, Alicia Arden, an actress and model, filed a police report with the Santa Monica Police Department the same day she said she was assaulted by Epstein after an appointment with him, to which he lured her by saying he was a Victoria's Secret scout. In 2002, Graydon Carter, editor-in-chief of Vanity Fair, assigned to reporter Vicki Ward to find out who exactly is this mysterious Epstein who pals around with the wealthiest, most powerful people in the world. Ward had known the rumors about Epstein and had seen Trump's quote in the New York magazine the same year in which Trump said that Epstein was a, quote, terrific guy. It is even said that he likes beautiful women as much as I do, and many of them are on the younger side, end quote. In her reporting, Ward interviewed on the record for the first time Maria and Annie Farmer and their mother. The reporting shows that when Epstein found out that Vanity Fair would be covering the farmers in their piece, he showed up at Carter's office and threatened him, pressuring him not to include the farmer's story. During that period and after publication, Carter found a bullet right outside of his front door in his Manhattan home and a severed head of a dead cat in the front yard of his Connecticut home. Ward, who was pregnant at the time the piece was about to go to press, says that she received calls from Epstein asking where she planned to have the baby and saying this is going to be bad for you and your family. Ward, who continued to push relentlessly for the farmer's story to be part of the piece, hired private security at the hospital while giving birth to protect herself and her twins. In March 2003, the article, The Talented Mr. Epstein, was published, covering his lavish lifestyle and the origins of his fortune with zero mentions of the farmer's claims. The first report from one of Jeffrey Epstein's victims comes into the Palm Beach County Police exactly two years later, in March 2005. The stepmother of a 14-year-old girl called with a concern. There were some rumors going around about her stepdaughter at school, and someone called her a slut because of them. Her stepdaughter and the girl got in a fight over it. They were sent to the principal's office, and they found $300 cash in her stepdaughter's purse. This is an important time to mention that, of course, that kind of cash on any 14-year-old child would be remarkable, but it is extraordinarily remarkable in the parts of Palm Beach where most of Epstein's victims were targeted. Palm Beach Island is home to some of the wealthiest people on the planet. Areas of West Palm Beach where these girls lived were working class neighborhoods including trailer parks where folks were just doing their best they could to get by When her parents asked their 14 daughter where she got the she said a classmate from school had taken her to a rich man house who would pay them to give him a massage. The child and parent came to the police station, and the case was assigned to the Special Victims Unit and miraculously to Detective Joe Rekeri, one of the heroes of this saga. Detective Rekeri immediately dug into the case and found more and more victims. He uncovered a giant pyramid scheme of sexual predation dating back at least to 2001 that would eventually prove to have entrapped and abused at least several hundred young vulnerable girls. A clear MO emerged. Epstein would find a way to lure a young girl to his house, promising between $200 and $300 for a massage. The girls would be met at the side door of his massive mansion, which had photos of him and some of the most powerful people in the world on the walls, as well as photos of nude children and women. They would be greeted by Ghislaine or another member of the house staff or another girl and led up to his bedroom where he would be laying face down on a massage table as planned. He would then ask some questions about the girl, apparently trying to figure out how susceptible she was to grooming. He would then do any number of things based on his assessment of this ability to manipulate her. He would turn over and expose himself. He would tell her to take off her clothes during the massage, masturbate during the massage, or rape her. In some cases, if the girl got visibly freaked out, he would say, that's okay. You don't have to do it, but you do have to bring more girls to me. Or he would promise to pay for their school or meet some other kind of needs that they had. For example, one victim's mom needed cancer treatment that she couldn't afford. And Epstein said he would pay for it as long as she kept coming over. But if she stopped, he would stop paying. Each time he would pay the girls $200 to $300, whether the girls were the ones being sexually assaulted or whether they were the girls who lured others to be sexually assaulted. His house was a revolving door of young girls throughout the day and night. It was later shown that in addition to the girls being manipulated to lure in other girls, Ghislaine Maxwell was using her access and motherly presence to find girls at local Palm Beach spas, including Trump's Mar-a-Lago, convincing them that she knew a man who could help get them their massage certifications. Ghislaine was so convincing in her approach that at least in one case, a father of a girl dropped her off himself. For example, Virginia Roberts-Guffray, who wanted to be a massage therapist, was 16 or 17, working a summer job as a locker room attendant at the Mar-a-Lago spa, reading a book about massage therapy when Ghislaine approached her and asked about her interest in massage therapy. She told her that she knew a wonderful rich man who was actually looking for a traveling masseuse and would be willing to help her get her official massage training. When she came by the house that day, they asked her personal questions about her past, exposing her significant vulnerability, assaulted her, and that began a nightmare of entrapment with Epstein that lasted for many years. It should also be noted that several of the victims say Ghislaine did not just bring the girls, but also actively participated in the sexual abuse. The victims Epstein targeted were often runaways, unhoused, people in shelter homes, people with unstable support systems, those who had experienced sexual exploitation in the past, those who were in financial precarious situations without the means to advance their lives. Many thought that this was their ticket out of very difficult lives. Back at Detective Rekeri's investigation, he and another absolute hero of the case, Chief of Palm Beach Police Department Michael Reeder, are deploying the full resources of the department on the investigation. Rekeri has identified 35 possible underage victims and is tracking down at least a dozen more. They surveil Epstein's house. They pull trash from Epstein's home, finding a log of phone messages with girls' names on them that match the time they told the police they were at the house, as well as tons of girls' names and phone numbers on other message slips. They found a school report card of one of the victims. They found a messenger report showing that Epstein had flowers delivered to a girl at school when she had a performance there. They speak with one of Epstein's employees who confirms there are regular visits to Epstein's room from young girls. They were confident they had more than sufficient evidence to arrest Epstein on sex charges. Chief Reader goes to meet with Palm Beach State Attorney Barry Krischer. How it works at the state level is that once local police gather enough evidence to be assured that a crime is committed, they bring it to the state attorney. And the state attorney decides whether there's sufficient proof to issue a search warrant and to bring charges. Reeder had had a great relationship with Krischer. They have worked very closely together for years. He tells them about the evidence in the case. And he says that Krischer says will put him away for the rest of his life. This will be an easy case. Epstein learns that some of the girls have been questioned by the police. He hires famed Harvard Law School professor Alan Dershowitz, who represented O.J. Simpson and later Donald Trump in his first impeachment trial as his attorney. Rekeri said that Dershowitz flew down and met privately with Krischer. Epstein hires private investigators to do around-the-clock surveillance of her carry and reader. They pick through their trash in search of dirt to discredit them, and they even reach out to reader's elementary school teachers. Epstein's private investigators also attempt to conduct interviews of survivors while posing as cops. They follow the girls and their families. According to police and court reports, the father of one girl claimed that he'd been run off the road by a private investigator. Epstein associates warn the girls not to talk to the police. As the case proceeds, reporters state that they would get threatening weekly calls to make the case go away. Dershowitz and the rest of the defense team compiled dossiers on the victims, attempting to show that they had troubled pasts and were not credible. Krischer and his lead prosecutor in the case start dodging Reeder and Recari's calls and dragging their feet on approving subpoenas to continue the investigation. It also became evident to Reeder that the evidence they had gathered from their investigation was being leaked to the Epstein legal team. And as a result, they stopped putting their records in the computer system and instead kept them on paper. When Reeder and McCary were finally able to search Epstein's home on October 20, 2005, it seemed that Epstein had advance notice. They found loose hanging wires throughout the house and Epstein's computer hard drives, surveillance camera and videos were missing. In the house, they found phone message pads noting calls from David Copperfield and Donald Trump, as well as messages that read, quote, wondering if 2.30 is okay to come. She needs to stay in school and quote, Tanya can't come at 7 p.m. tomorrow because she has soccer practice. They also found naked photos of underage girls in his closet. Two of Epstein's employees also gave sworn interviews confirming that girls had been coming and going in the house. One, Alfredo Rodriguez said that when he was tasked with cleaning up Epstein's bath after the sessions with the girls, he often discovered sex toys and once accidentally stumbled on a high school girl sleeping naked there. He said he was a quote, human ATM machine because Epstein ordered him to always keep $2,000 on him to pay the girls. Astonishingly, neither the state nor the federal investigation following that ever subpoenaed or got the computers that Epstein had removed from his house prior to Reader and Reckeri's search of his mansion, where the entire conspiracy took place, which means that those computers are either destroyed or in someone else's hands right now. This evidence, all the emails, videos, and other incriminating evidence is not even among the 6 million files in the Epstein files we are fighting over right now. So we're really hard on our bodies, right? We ask a lot between constant stress, weird sleep, takeout meals, blue light, and just the pace of modern life. That's actually what got me curious about Armra colostrum. I started taking it because my gut felt off more often than I wanted to admit, just not feeling great in my body. 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But instead of charging them, and despite the legal and moral reality that there is no such thing as a child prostitute, and that's called a victim of rape, Krischer took the highly unusual step of indicting Jeffrey Epstein on only one minor charge of solicitation of prostitution, not even having sex with a prostitute, just soliciting one, and referring the case to a grand jury before indicting him. Referring the case to a grand jury was done in order to add an extra hurdle before Epstein could even be charged and is usually only done for murder charges. Even though Rekeri had lined up more than a dozen girls brave enough to be witnesses to the grand jury, Krischer's office would not tell him when the grand jury would take place and Krischer's office only called two of them. The grand jury proceedings were sealed, so no one knew what happened there until July 2024, five years after the Palm Beach Post sued to get them released. In the newly unsealed documents, it is clear that Krischer and his Prosecutor Lana Belikev tanked their own case and vilified the victim witnesses, including asking the victims in front of the grand jury whether they had understood that they had engaged in prostitution and could be charged with a crime. At this time, it became obvious to Chief Reeder that whatever Krischer's office was pursuing, it was not justice. Reeder made the remarkably brave decision, putting his career at risk, to write a public letter calling on Krischer to remove himself from the case and then beseech the FBI to take up the investigation. The FBI opened their own investigation in July 2006. It was named Operation Leap Year because at the time there were 29 minor victims in the case. Epstein's response was to assemble the most ruthless and strategically politically connected team of attorneys his incredible wealth could buy. It was now a federal case and the federal prosecutor who was now going to decide whether Epstein was charged was U.S. attorney for the Southern District of Florida, Alexander Acosta, a conservative Republican appointed by G.W. Bush. So Epstein added to his team, Kenneth Starr, the Republican icon who led the Whitewater investigation impeaching Bill Clinton. Like Acosta, Starr had worked at the law firm of Kirkland and Ellis. Also from Kirkland and Ellis was Jay Lefkowitz. Later, Epstein also hired Bruce Reinhardt. Immediately before being hired by Epstein, Reinhardt was an assistant federal prosecutor in, you guessed it, the Office of the U.S. Attorney of the Southern District of Florida, the very office working to prosecute Epstein, where the U.S. Attorney's Office later admitted in court papers, Reinhard possessed confidential information about the investigation and case against Epstein. Reinhard denies that and says he didn't represent Epstein, only his pilots and associates. In May 2018, Reinhard was appointed as a U.S. magistrate judge in Florida. The same week, his wife, who had also been an assistant federal prosecutor in Palm Beach, was appointed by Governor Rick Scott to the Palm Beach Circuit Court bench. Despite all of this, the FBI special agent on the case, Nesbitt Kirkendall, and assistant U.S. attorney Marie Villafana are working tirelessly to make sure Epstein faces justice. They have identified 35 to 40 survivors who were minors when they were assaulted or trafficked, who are willing to give testimony, including being transported across state lines, including Florida, New York, and New Mexico. By May 2007, Assistant U.S. Attorney Marie Villafana is all in and has drafted a 53-page indictment and an 82-page prosecution memo. She has also opened a money laundering investigation and was prepared to issue subpoenas back to 2003 for every financial transaction conducted by Epstein and his six businesses. It is all an open and shut case that would have put him away for the rest of his life, even if he was only convicted of just one count. Despite having an indictment ready to file that would have very, very likely put him away forever, they did not indict him. As is all set forth in the subsequent findings of fact by the federal judge, Mara, Alexander Acosta's Southern District of Florida's Federal Prosecution Office engaged in a prolonged, coordinated, secret effort with Epstein's legal team to negotiate, execute, and implement an agreement called a non-prosecution agreement, which committed the federal prosecution to never be able to pursue charges against Epstein for any crimes arising from sexually exploiting minors, transporting minors, sex trafficking, or any other related conduct. The non-prosecution agreement, MPA, also astonishingly explicitly applied to him and any potential co-conspirators, whether they were named or unnamed, meaning that neither Epstein nor any of his associates, employees, recruiters or co-conspirators would ever face charges for their crimes in the Southern District of Florida. The judge later found that the prosecution had, quote, treated Epstein's interests as paramount, end quote, and not only excluded victims from the process entirely, but actively misled them by assuring them that even after the NPA was signed, the investigation and case against Epstein were ongoing. Knowing that the victims and advocates and press would object to the unprecedented agreement, Acosta's team worked closely with Epstein's lawyers to keep the MPA secret, agreeing to not tell the victims it was happening and to actively minimize any media attention and significantly to seal all the records of the case. the MPA and all the evidence collected in the investigation to make sure that no one, not the public, press, or his survivors would ever know the full scope of his crimes or who else was involved. As of September 24th, 2007, the date that the MPA is signed, the federal case is over. At the time, no one knows this other than those colluding to make it happen. Not Chief Reeder, who assured the DOJ would pursue the justice, the state attorney general would not. Not the lawyers who were still building evidence and assuring their clients that justice would be served. And not the survivors who, after being so devastatingly betrayed by the state, had braved once again, opening up their harrowing stories and putting their faith in the justice system. None of them knew that in the dark and quiet, a handful of powerful men had legally contractually absolved Epstein and all of his conspirators from any federal consequence. But the colluders had to deal with this pesky matter of the state charge that was still pending when the federal case was opened. Part of the deal for the free ride on the federal charges was to have Epstein plead guilty to some very lenient state charges. On October 12th, Acosta met with Epstein's lawyer, Jay Levkowitz, for breakfast at the West Palm Beach Marriott. Not their offices. Their teams go back and forth over emails, allowing Epstein's legal teams to review and revise it. Finally, they have a deal on the state charges. But for a plea deal to be final, a judge has to approve it. Prosecutors offer to hold the plea hearing in a Miami court to avoid press and victims finding out about the deal. But they end up in Palm Beach. On June 30th, 2008, Epstein, his lawyers and the prosecutors walk into Palm Beach County Courthouse with the goal of getting their plea deal to dispose of state charges approved by the judge. Notice of the hearing was made just three days in advance. But remarkably, the judge assigned to Epstein's case was not the judge who presided over the plea hearing. The judge assigned to Epstein's case and knowledgeable of the case, Sandra McSorley, was a tough judge. She had a record for refusing to accept plea deals because they were too lenient on the defendant. Questions still remain about how they were able to manipulate the docket and ensure that they presented the plea not to Judge McSorley, but to a substitute judge. But that's what happened. The substitute judge asked directly if all the victims had been notified, which prosecutors said they had, which they had not. By the time the plea deal had been approved by the court, a judge had never seen the NPA and the NPA and all the records of the investigation were sealed. The plea deal was as follows. Epstein pled guilty to two state counts, one count of solicitation of prostitution and one count of procurement of a person under 18 for prostitution. Note that neither crime involved sexually assaulting or even having sex with a minor. He had to register as a sex offender, but at the last minute, the prosecution switched the victims in the case, switching them from the original Jane Doe one, who was 14 when she was a victim to another victim who was 17 so that the offenses would seem less egregious. And so that Epstein would not have to register as a sex offender in states where the age of consent is 18. He was sentenced to 18 months in county jail, not the state prison where he should have served. And he had to put money in a fund to pay restitution to identified victims, payments to be made by confidential settlement, most of which required victims to waive civil claims against Epstein and which stunningly would be negotiated by a lawyer paid for by Epstein. What actually ends up happening is that he serves 13 months of his sentence and he serves it in a private T dorm wing of the jail. And unlike other prisoners, his cell door is able to be left open. He's allowed to have the lights off at night. He's allowed to have his own security detail and he was provided with a TV room and access to his computer. He was also permitted to hire his own private psychologist for his required sex offender counseling. Despite explicit sheriff department rules that sex offenders don't qualify for work release within weeks of his entry to jail he was allowed a work release program six days a week 12 hours a day He was picked up at the jail each of those six days by his personal drivers In 2009 when he walked out of the federal jail for the last time, he was supposed to continue on house probation for one year. Lawyers representing the victims provided evidence that he was blatantly violating that probation on a daily basis, even flying to New York City and to his island on his planes. The probation officers did nothing. In 2010, he had a huge party in New York City, confirming he had seamlessly returned to the high society fold. Throughout 2012, he mounts a public relations campaign to mitigate any negative associations with his plea. He brands himself a celebrated philanthropist and renowned educational investor. His foundation donates millions to scientific research and sponsors global conferences on ways to achieve world peace and save the planet. He funds cancer and educational research projects around the country. Back in 2008, when Brad Edwards, one of the tireless attorneys who has represented Epstein's victims on a pro bono basis for the past 18 years, learns about the surprise plea deal, he immediately filed an emergency motion to block it. His petitions asked the court for two things. One, to invalidate the plea based on the Federal Crime Victims Rights Act, which mandates that certain rights for crime victims, including the right to be informed about plea agreements and the right to appear at sentencing, and two, to have Epstein's plea agreement unsealed. Federal prosecutors fight against the first claim for over a decade and argue against the second claim, releasing the agreement for a year. By the time the agreement is unsealed a year later and the survivors, attorneys, and public see the non-prosecution agreement for the first time, Epstein has already been released from jail. The claim under the Crime Victims Rights Act drags on for more than a decade. When the court finally ruled that the prosecution had acted illegally, finding all of the misconduct noted earlier, and finally released hundreds of emails between the Epstein legal team and the prosecution showing their legal collusion, It is February 21st, 2019. No prosecutor then nor ever has faced consequences for what was found by the court to be illegal dealings. In fact, by the time of the ruling, the head of the Southern District of Florida, who had negotiated and signed off on the NPA, Alexander Acosta, had been appointed by Trump and confirmed by the Senate as the United States Secretary of Labor, one of the biggest agencies in the federal government. But throughout that decade, when the case was pending, dozens of civil lawsuits were filed, resulting in vital information on the case. Epstein sued Brad Edwards for malfeasance in representing the survivors against him. Edwards sued back for malicious prosecution. This case was the first time Epstein survivors had the opportunity to testify to Epstein's crimes in state court. Many other civil cases against Epstein settled out of court. The cases are sealed, again, sheltering him from public awareness of his crimes. In 2015, Virginia Roberts Giffray files court papers claiming that as a minor, she was forced by Epstein to have sex with Prince Andrew and lawyer Alan Dershowitz. This is the first time there is a court record of an allegation that Epstein not only abused the victims, but trafficked them to other men to abuse. Both men denied it, and the case concludes in an out-of-court settlement. The same year, Gouffray sues Ghislaine Maxwell in federal court in New York, claiming that Maxwell defamed her in public statements. This case is settled in 2017, but it becomes very important because lawsuits by media outlets to unseal those case records, which Gouffray supported, are successful in 2020, allowing access to the testimony about the allegations. Several other civil lawsuits are filed that year, alleging Epstein and Maxwell operate an international sex trafficking operation. The same year, the ABC News team of Amy Roba and Jim Hill did an in-depth in-person interview of Virginia Gouffre, who for more than an hour spoke to them about her allegations against Epstein, Ghislaine and Dershowitz and others. ABC received multiple calls from Alan Dershowitz and others and did not broadcast the story. Recently revealed files show that Obama former White House counsel Catherine Rumler, now chief legal officer at Goldman Sachs, also worked on the effort to kill the story. In June 2016, a woman who once used the name Katie Johnson files a lawsuit in Manhattan claiming that at the age of 13, she was raped by then presidential candidate Donald Trump at Epstein's New York City mansion in 1994, which both men deny. Johnson was interviewed by CNN. The story never ran. In November, days before the election, Johnson backs out of a press conference saying that she has been threatened and is fearful. Another New York lawsuit alleged that Epstein used an international modeling agency to recruit girls as young as 13 from across the world. The agency, established in 2005, called MC2, was owned by Jean-Luc Brunel, one of the most frequent male guests on Epstein's plane, according to flight logs, and who visited Epstein nearly 70 times during his 13 months in jail, and who lived in an Epstein-owned apartment in New York City for years. Martiza Vasquez, who worked as a bookkeeper for MC2, said in sworn court depositions that Epstein invested $1 million in MC2 and that he paid directly for the visas of the girls brought to the U.S. to work for the company. She gave testimony that models as young as 13 lived in apartments controlled by Epstein in Manhattan and that the agency employed scouts in South America, Europe and the former Soviet Union to find girls to bring to the U.S. Memos of phone messages found at Epstein's house from Brunel left cryptic messages. One example of a message from Brunel taken by staff of Epstein for him in April 2005 said, quote, he has a teacher for you to teach you Russian. She is two X eight years old, not blonde. Lessons are free and you can have first today if you call. end quote. Vasquez says that the agency employed 200 to 300 models and that it was not unusual for the agency to send a girl to an assignment with a wealthy client for $100,000, but that she would not be paid if she refused to be molested. Vasquez says that she was questioned by the FBI and she tried to tell agents where to look for evidence. She says that she never heard back from the FBI about Epstein again. In the newly released files, there are emails to Epstein from a scout at MC2 talking about finding, quote, good ones in Kiev, Ukraine, and telling Epstein that Brunel told her not to introduce herself as an MC2 scout because of the attention, but just to tell the girl she was recruiting that she was visiting her family and to make friends with them and get their contact information. In the email, she also shares the good news that there are some girls who work in New York and Paris with, quote, no visa issues. There are also emails from a scout in Moscow telling Epstein that, quote, he has a few girls to show you, end quote. In December 2020, Brunel was apprehended by Paris police while trying to flee an investigation into charges of rape and trafficking of minors for sexual exploitation. He was found hanged in his jail cell in February 2022, Three months before Brad Edwards and his clients finally get their ruling proving the prosecutorial misconduct. In November 2018, Julie K. Brown, the indomitable investigative journalist for the Miami Herald, who has been investigating the story for a year, publishes a staggering survivor centered three part series that lays bare for the first time the collusion between state prosecutors and Jeffrey Epstein. It is called Perversion of Justice, which she later expanded into a book of the same name. There's reporting in this book are gifts of courage and brilliance and change making that I can't recommend to you highly enough, as is her reporting on Substack. 14 years into chief reader, Detective Rickeri, and all the survivors risking everything to demand justice. And eight months after Julie's story breaks. On July 6, 2019, the FBI arrests Jeffrey Epstein as he is getting off his plane from a holiday in Paris. They raid his Manhattan mansion and the Southern District of New York charges him on sex trafficking of minors and conspiracy to commit sex trafficking. Less than a week later, Alexander Costa resigns as the secretary of labor. At Epstein's July 15th bond hearing, where he pled not guilty, the court had to decide if he would be released pending trial. His attorneys were offering up to five hundred million dollars bond to ensure he would be released. For the first time in federal court, survivors were there and were able to argue against it. U.S. Attorney Ross Miller told the court that in the raid of his New York City home, FBI agents had found hundreds, if not thousands of pictures of naked children in his vault. And in another safe, they found a trove of loose diamonds, stacks of cash and a fake Austrian passport for Epstein under a new name and with a Saudi Arabian address, corroborating that he had an established escape plan. Incidentally, the house had a leaded room full of TV monitors recording every room in the house. Judge Richard Berman denied bond and Epstein was taken to the security housing unit within the Metropolitan Correctional Center, where every inmate has a cellmate and guards check the cell every 30 minutes. Eight days after he was taken in at 1.27 a.m. on July 23rd, Epstein was found unresponsive in his cell with marks on and injuries to his neck. As a result of that, he was put on suicide watch, held in an observation cell surrounded by windows with the lights left on. After six days, he was returned to Security Housing Unit, SHU, with his cellmate. According to newly released Epstein docs, that same day, on July 29th, Epstein lawyers spoke to the federal prosecutors about Epstein possibly corroborating, which is often code for being willing to rat out on others, which parallels his brother Mark's assertion, revealed in an FBI report in the first batch of Epstein files, that Epstein was killed because he was ready to name names. Ten days later, Epstein signed his last will and testament, placing all of his fortune into a trust in the Virgin Islands valued at more than $577 million. The very next day, even though security policies at HSU require that each inmate have a cellmate, Epstein's cellmate was transferred out of his cell and no replacement was brought in. The next day, August 10th, Epstein was found dead in his cell. The night before his death, in violation of prison policy, he was escorted to a shower stall to make an unmonitored phone call. Despite the fact that inmates are required to be checked every 30 minutes, the two guards, one of whom was a substitute who did not work regularly as a corrections officer, did not check on him after 10.30 p.m. Both cameras monitoring him inexplicably malfunctioned. For one, there is no footage. For the other, one minute of the footage is missing. The newly released video footage of his cell released by the DOJ this year in an effort to quell concerns about the one minute missing from the original video has approximately two minutes and 53 seconds removed. Even though the DOJ described the released footage as the full raw surveillance video, it is actually a file stitched together using Adobe Premiere Pro from two video files. The metadata on the purportedly raw data shows that it was actually edited and saved several times over a period of more than 3.5 hours on May 23rd, 2025, weeks before it was released. The video's aspect ratio also shifts noticeably at several points. Newly released Department of Justice documents show that investigators reviewing the surveillance footage from the night of Epstein's death observed an orange colored shape moving up the staircase toward the isolated lock tier where his cell was located at approximately 930 p.m. Now, I just need to insert here the reminder that none of this is conspiracy. This is all listed in all of the documents. There are FBI observation logs and also DOJ observation logs that show their folks reviewing this video after Epstein died and what they notice. This is what this stuff is from. The FBI observation log states a flash of orange looks to be going up the L tier stairs could possibly be an inmate escorted up to that tier. But the DOJ log states it was likely an officer carrying orange linen or bedding. The final report says it was, quote, an unidentified CO or corrections officer who appeared to walk up the L tier stairway. CBS News consulted an independent video analyst who said that the movement was more consistent with an inmate or someone wearing an orange prison uniform than a corrections officer. The official reviews at the time of Epstein's death make no mention of the figure in orange. And later pronouncements, including then Attorney General Bill Barr, were that no one entered Epstein's housing tier the night of his death. Last summer, in an interview, then-Deputy FBI Director Dan Bongino said, quote, There's video clear as day. He's the only person in there and the only person coming out. You can see it. The morning of August 10th, guards found Epstein in a kneeling position with a bedsheet around his neck, which was tied to the top bunk. The official autopsy found that it was suicide. Epstein's brother, Mark, who did not believe it, hired a renowned forensics expert, Dr. Cyril Wecht, to review the autopsy. He found no evidence that he had jumped or leaped from the bunk. And there were three fractures of the hypoid bone, a delicate U-shaped bone and lower jaw, which Dr. Wecht said are inconsistent with a hanging based on leaning forward, but would have required force. Epstein now dead, the charges, which we now know, based on new files released, that were being considered by the DOJ against up to 10 co-conspirators were also not pursued. The only person criminally charged to date was Ghislaine Maxwell. who was arrested in July 2020 on five sex trafficking related counts. When Trump was asked about the news of her facing charges, he said, quote, I wish her well. On October 29th, 2021, she was convicted and is serving a 20 year sentence. Hiring isn't just about finding someone willing to take the job. It's about finding the right person with the right experience who can actually move your business forward. And that's why when it comes to hiring, I trust Indeed Sponsored Jobs. 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And so we want to tell you about another podcast you might enjoy listening to that embodies similar values to We Can Do Hard Things. Kelly Corrigan Wonders is a podcast hosted by Kelly Corrigan, New York Times bestselling author and PBS host, and really just a delight. She sits down with big thinkers like Father Greg Boyle, Bono, and Bryan Stevenson. Oh, God, love them. Together, they talk about creativity, humility, love, grief, faith, and the quiet courage it takes to keep becoming ourselves. Kelly Corrigan Wonders has more than 20 million downloads and thousands of five-star reviews from listeners who say, the show feels like sitting with a wise friend, the kind who asks the question you didn't know you needed. Her deep dives are one part inspiration and one part how-to on getting yourself in the right headspace for a great 2026. If you're longing for conversations that delight and ground you, listen to Kelly Corrigan Wonders wherever you get your podcasts. Now we're moving on to the files. In the 2024 presidential campaign, Trump campaigned on the promise to release the Epstein files. In the two months after his inauguration, DOJ Director Pam Bondi tells Fox News on separate occasions that the Epstein files is, quote, sitting on my desk right now, end quote, that Americans will get the full Epstein files, that the DOJ has received a new, quote, truckload of evidence from the FBI, and that everything's going to come out to the public. In April, Trump says, quote, 100% of all of these documents are being delivered, end quote. The following month, sometime in May, Pam Bondi briefed Trump that he was in the files, along with other high profile people. For the first time, the administration begins downplaying the Epstein conspiracy theories. FBI Director Cash Patel and Deputy Director Dan Bongino appear together on Fox News and say Epstein indeed did die by suicide. This despite both of them having promoted conspiracy theories before joining the FBI. May 29th, Bongino on Fox again downplays the significance of what will soon be released. Quote, there is nothing in the files at this point on the Epstein case, end quote. In July, for the first time, Trump lashes out at questions related to Epstein. He tells reporters, are you still talking about Jeffrey Epstein? This guy's been talked about for years. Also in July, the DOJ releases a memo laying out its conclusions that Epstein died by suicide and that there is no client list. The DOJ says it won't release any further documents because much of it is under court ordered seal. Quote, through this review, we found no basis to revisit the disclosure of those materials, end quote. There is a public outcry. On July 15th, Trump is asked about whether Bondi told him his name was in the files. He denies it. Also in July, Democratic Rep. Ro Khanna, Republican Rep. Thomas Massey, introduced a measure titled the Epstein Files Transparency Act to compel the government to release the files. Because of public pressure, they know that they would have the votes to get the act passed, but Republican leaders refused to put it up for a vote. So they have to use this procedure called discharge petition to force the House to call a vote on it. Trump was putting pressure on people not to have the petition passed, and they were one vote away from having what they needed. On July 24th and 25th 2025 Trump Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche who is Trump former personal defense lawyer for his hush money trial and two federal criminal cases against Trump met with Maxwell for nine hours over two days from her Florida prison where she has been for three and a half years. Her attorney reports that she was asked questions about, quote, maybe 100 different people. Maxwell is currently in the process of appealing her conviction. When Trump was asked if clemency was on the table, he said, quote, I can't talk about that now because, you know, it's a very sensitive interview going on. I don't know exactly what's happening, but I certainly can't talk about pardons, end quote. A week after meeting with Blanche, Maxwell is transferred to a minimum security prison in Texas, Nick's named Club Fed, which offers a range of recreational amenities, including an athletic field, a library, vocational training programs and access to service dogs. This despite the fact that Bureau of Prisons policy generally prohibits people with a sex offender determination known as a public safety factor from being housed in minimum security prisons. In September, under oath, FBI Director Cash Patel testifies, quote, there's no credible information that Jeffrey Epstein trafficked minors, end quote. September 23rd, Adelita Grijalva wins a special election as the first Arizona Latina elected to Congress. House Speaker Mike Johnson delays the swearing in of the newly elected Democrat for seven weeks because she would have been the final signature needed on the petition to force the vote to release the files. On September 12th, House Democrats released the emails in which Epstein talks about Trump, including one where he claimed Trump, quote, spent hours at my house, quote, with one of the sex traffic victims. The same night, Grohlva is sworn into office, becoming the final signature of the petition. Now that it is clear that the act will come to a vote, Trump immediately reverses course and stops his public effort to deter the inevitable. On November 18th, 2025, the Epstein Files Transparency Act is passed by the House by a near unanimous margin of 427 to 1. And the Senate, it was approved by unanimous consent without objection. According to the law, the federal government has until December 31st, 2005 to release all the files. The DOJ violates the law by only producing a tiny fraction of the files by that date. As of today, they have released in several batches roughly 3.5 million pages of the heavily redacted files, which represent just 60% of the total files. Despite the fact that the federal law says the redactions cannot be made or files withheld from publication, quote, on the basis of embarrassment, reputational harm or political sensitivity, the redactions cover up senders and receivers names in violation of the law. Further, while DOJ exercised great care to do redactions to protect the identity of Epstein Associates, they failed to redact the required identifying information of nearly 100 survivors, including their names, addresses, phone numbers, IDs, thousands of pages of intimate details about their lives, as well as nude images. In our next episode on Thursday with Brad Edwards, you'll hear more about how the DOJ's continued re-traumatization of survivors is happening through this release. The official DOJ statement in connection with their release reads like a statement from Trump's personal defense attorney, which remembers exactly who Blanche was immediately prior to becoming deputy attorney general. The DOJ wrote, quote, some of the documents contain untrue and sensationalist claims against President Trump that were submitted to the FBI right before the 2020 election. To be clear, these claims are unfounded and false, end quote. In the last days of January, Blanche said that the remaining files, as much as 40 percent of the files, are being withheld based on unspecified privileges that the transparency law doesn't authorize. He said they are not releasing the remaining files, that there is nothing in the files, quote, worth pursuing, and proclaimed that Epstein investigation and sex trafficking case is over, closing the door on any further investigations or prosecutions. On February 3rd, President Trump said the public should move on from Epstein, quote, I think it's really time for the country to get on to something else, end quote. So what's in the files? What is it that is not worth pursuing? What is it that we need to get over? First, it has to be noted that these documents were released in what can only be an intentionally chaotic way meant to make them as close to unintelligible as possible. It is like the law said they have to turn over a completed six million piece puzzle, but instead they handed over a box with three million individual pieces all mixed up. There might be one doc from a certain investigative file, and then 700 pages later, there's another doc from the same file. So the point is, it's intentional chaos. But there are some themes. The first theme is some very horrifying violence and crimes alleged to have happened against young girls are just being openly discussed with associates, most of whose names are carefully protected with redactions, including things that seem to suggest that he did provide girls to other men. For example, Epstein tells someone in emails that he, quote, loved the torture video. He asked another person if he should, quote, try to do her or, quote, just torture her. Hundreds of photos and videos depict child sexual abuse, which are completely redacted, including the perpetrators in them. Documents seem to show that Epstein provided victims to other powerful men, including Harvey Weinstein, as well as to business associates. For example, he writes to British entrepreneur Isan Osborne saying, I will bring two girls, to which Osborne replies, that's excellent. There is a lot of interest in what Trump is doing in the files. So here's some things that we know based on the release. Trump said he never flew on the Epstein jet, but FBI files reveal that Trump flew on the jet eight times between 1993 and 1996, including one time with a 20-year-old. The FBI flagged this discovery in 2020 for the Trump administration so that it, quote, wouldn't be a surprise down the road. There are records in the released files of more than a dozen tips submitted through the FBI's National Threat Operations Center regarding accusations of abuse by Trump and Epstein that FBI officials seem to have compiled last summer. This is the summary doc that many have seen with appalling accusations of multiple sexual assaults of young girls. Also in the files, Juan Alessi, who worked for Epstein, is reported to have told investigators that Trump visited Epstein's home. There's also the infamous birthday book that many have already seen that was written for Epstein's 50th birthday in which there is an entry signed from Trump where it says, quote, we have certain things in common, Jeffrey. Enigmas never age. Have you noticed that? As a matter of fact, it was clear to me the last time I saw you. A pal is a wonderful thing. Happy birthday. And may every day be another wonderful secret, end quote, which Trump denies writing and he has sued the New York Times for 10 billion for publishing. The New York Times moved to dismiss the case. In 2011, in the release files, Epstein writes to Galeen Maxwell saying, I want you to realize that the dog that hasn't barked is Trump, an unnamed victim, which he writes, spent hours at my house with him. He has never once been mentioned, police chief, etc. I am 75% there, end quote. To which Galeen writes back, I have been thinking about that. In 2018, two weeks after Julie K. Brown's piece runs, someone unnamed writes to Epstein saying everything will blow over. They're just trying to take Trump down, to which he writes back, quote, it's wild because I am the one able to take him down. Another theme in the files that is clear that there are very, very powerful people all over the files. Peter Mandelson, former British ambassador to the U.S., there's bank records that show that he has three separate payments of $25,000 from Jeffrey Epstein. There's photos of Mandelson in his underwear standing next to a female whose face is redacted. Another theme is that there is very, very powerful people in these files, including Howard Letnick, the current U.S. Secretary of Commerce. New docs show that he and Epstein were business partners in an advertising tech company deal signed in late 2012, contradicting Letnick's claim of having cut ties in 2005. Bill Clinton is also in the files. Jeffrey Epstein visited the White House on a number of occasions during Clinton's administration. For example, in September 1993, he was with Maxwell, a photograph speaking with then-President Clinton after an event for donors to a White House restoration project. After Clinton's presidency, he took four international trips on Epstein's plane in the early 2000s to Europe, Asia, and Africa, including stops for work connected to the Clinton Foundation. There are photos of him in the files on the plane during the trip, including one with a female who has her arm around him, whose face is redacted. Another photo in the files shows Clinton in a hot tub with someone whose face is also redacted. In 2003, Bill Clinton also submitted an entry to Epstein's infamous birthday book in which he lauded, quote, your childlike curiosity, end quote. Clinton says he stopped speaking to Epstein sometime before his 2006 indictment, but it seems as if Clinton stayed in relationship with Ghislaine well after. She was in attendance at his daughter's wedding in 2006 with her then boyfriend, who was a Clinton friend and donor to the Clinton Foundation. And she says that she had dinner with Clinton as late as 2016 to 2018. Ghislaine played a substantial role in supporting the creation of the Clinton Global Initiative, one of his key post-White House projects, including arranging a wire of $1 million to pay the company that produced its first event. The source of the money is unclear, but Epstein was aware of it. And Ghislaine says Epstein was, quote, very enthusiastic about her involvement in the initiative. Hillary Clinton, about whom there are no allegations she has ever been on the plane or had meaningful relationship with Epstein and Bill Clinton, have been ordered to give closed door depositions before the House Oversight Committee. They have pressured the committee to hold the hearings, which will happen at the end of the month publicly. There's also PayPal founder Peter Thiel, who paid for J.D. advances political assent and is co-founder of Palantir, the corporate backbone of ICE and the corporate energy working on mass surveillance of civilians in USA and abroad. In the files, Epstein calls former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak and tells him to look into Peter Thiel and suggest that Thiel would put Barak on the board of Palantir. In January 2024, Palantir boasted about its, quote, strategic partnership with the Israeli Ministry of Defense to supply the country with technology for its military. Steve Bannon is in the files all over the place. Epstein tells Bannon, there are many leaders of countries we can organize for you to have one-on-ones with if Bannon agrees to spend eight to 10 days in Europe. They discuss using cryptocurrency to fund quote, coalition and quote of populist, nationalists and conservative Christians to combat the Me Too movement for quote, the next decade plus. And Brandon bragged to Epstein that he could get right-wing leaders to, quote, shut down crypto legislation or anything else we want. Bannon relayed info back to Epstein, including details of his meeting with the U.S. Senate Intelligence Committee. There also seems to be indications of Epstein threatening his leverage over influential people based on what he knew about them. Before we talked about Leon Black, for a second we referenced him, I want to dig into him for a couple minutes. Leon Black, for decades, was one of the richest and highest profile people on Wall Street. He's the founder of Apollo Global Management, who has in cumulative made payments to Jeffrey Epstein of $170 million, all allegedly for estate planning matters. In 1997, Black puts Epstein on the board of his family foundation. In early 2003, Black contributed to Epstein's infamous birthday party book with a poem referencing to his unique tax strategy and writing about his sexual issues. Quote, Blonde, Redder, Brunette spread out geographically with his net of fish. Jeff's now the old man and the sea. End quote. Black said he thought Epstein's 2008 plea was not a big deal. He said, quote, I mean, he was with a 17 year old prostitute, got prosecuted for and got put away for a year. I didn't think this was the end of the world, frankly, end quote. By 2011, Apollo had gone public and Black began paying Epstein millions of dollars, including 23.5 million in 2012 for estate planning matters. When in 2015, Black seems reluctant to continue paying, Epstein gets real mad. He demanded, quote, the usual 40 million per year, end quote. In the recently revealed files, there are horrifying references to multiple allegations against Black, including violent assaults on several girls, and showing that Epstein reminded Black, in connection with pressuring him to keep sending him the money, that Epstein had structured Black's payment to a woman who had accused Black of sexual assault. Black keeps bankrolling Epstein into 2017. One woman filed a lawsuit that Black raped her at Epstein's New York City mansion. Black paid millions of dollars to eight women, at least three of whom were associates of Epstein. In 2023, he paid $62.5 million to authorities in the U.S. Virgin Islands, the territory including Epstein's Island, based on claims by at least two women that they had been abused by Black after Epstein introduced them. In 2021, Black was pushed out of the Apollo Global Management Group because of his dealings with Epstein. To replace him as chair of the board of Apollo, he picked Jay Clayton. In 2025, when Trump was picking who would become the U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York, which is the jurisdiction that had charged Epstein in 2019 and which had jurisdiction over the full Epstein files, investigation and case prior to any documents being released, he chose for that Southern District of New York position, Jay Clayton. He is still serving in that role. In the files, there are also emails about Bill Gates. Epstein sent to himself notes about the billionaire, including, quote, morally inappropriate work supposedly that he did for Gates, including procuring antibiotics to deal with the consequences of sex with Russian girls and arranging illicit trysts with married women. It is not clear whether it was ever sent to Gates. Also, remember Wexner. Remember him, the guy whose wife discovered that he had defrauded him? In the newly released Epstein files, there is a draft letter that Epstein wrote to Wexner. It's not clear whether he ever sent it, but wanting to re-engage their financial situation, saying he was, quote, truly sorry to hear that you have been the target of an extortion attempt by Virginia Giuffre, who had sworn in a deposition that Epstein had trafficked her to Wexner. He also reminded Wexner of their mutual indebtedness and suggested that he had been protecting Wexner's secrets by not defending himself against Wexner's wife's accusations. Quote, you and I had gang stuff for over 15 years, he wrote. A great deal of it that she was unaware of. I had no intention of divulging any confidence of yours, no matter what the accusations she made. The last group of things that I think we see are the geopolitical implications. There is suggestions, especially from his draft emails to himself recalling what info he had on men, that in some cases, he's reminding men of their shared history that he was implicitly or explicitly using that for the advancement of his own financial interests. In other words, I know that you know that I know stuff about you. Let's keep this thing going where I get money from you. Whether he was also using it to advance interests beyond his own financial interests, including larger intelligence efforts by the U.S. or Russia or Israel is so far not clear. He certainly had the footage. All of his properties had full surveillance of rooms and he hosted parties with young girls and powerful men at them, both small gatherings and wild parties. What is absolutely clear is that he was acting as a kind of non-state behind the scenes orchestrator of diplomatic, economic and intelligence deals around the world. Epstein had strong ties to Israel and particularly to former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak, with whom he shares thousands of messages. We already talked about the introduction to Palantir. He also helped executives at J.P. Morgan arrange a private meeting with Israel's Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, which Netanyahu agreed to on March 23, 2011, the same day Israeli's Finance Committee voted on a major tax increase on natural gas exports, which J.P. Morgan ended up financing for a multibillion dollar deal to develop Leviathan oil fields. Another part of his international dealing is he's offering folks ways to understand Trump, including Russia. So leading up to Trump's 2018 bilateral meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin, Epstein reached out to the former prime minister of Norway, who was leading the Council of Europe, and suggested that Russia's longtime foreign minister reach out to Epstein. I think you might suggest to Putin that Lavrov get insight on talking to me. During the exchange, Epstein said he already spoke with Russia's ambassador to the United Nations in order to help understand Trump. Quote, he understood Trump after our conversations. It is not complex. He must be seen to get something. It's that simple. End quote. He maintained relationships with Russian intelligence, including officials who he connected to Peter Thiel as well. He was advising governments like Mongolia and the Maldives, as well as traveling to and doing business in the United Arab Emirates, Morocco, Ivory Coast, China, Russia, Qatar, Belarus. And some of his most extensive contacts were in Saudi Arabia, including with Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman. Given the international reach, the response to the revelations has been quick everywhere else in the world other than the United States. Latvia, Lithuania and Poland have set up wide ranging official investigations. Poland's prime minister said a team would scour the files for potential Polish victims and any links between Epstein and Russia secret services would be investigated. Britain's mounted a huge investigation after Peter Mendelssohn forcing his resignation, which could result in his imprisonment. And the prime minister is now facing a leadership crisis over appointing Mendelssohn. Slovakia's national security advisor who once had a year long term as the president of the U.N. General Assembly, who is in the files discussing, quote, gorgeous girls and telling Epstein he would, quote, take the MI girl, has resigned. In Norway, Mona Gould, who is a key player in the so-called 1990s Israeli-Palestinian peace efforts, resigned as ambassador to Jordan and Iraq after an investigation into her ties with Epstein, including Epstein's reported $10 million bequest to her children. Crown Princess Met Merritt, who is married to the heir of the throne of Norway, faces mounting backlash over previously undisclosed yearlong's email correspondence with Epstein. In France, the former minister, Jack Lane, resigned from his prestigious institute role due to financial ties to Epstein. Joanna Rubinstein, a Swedish UN official, quit after the revelation of a 2012 visit to Epstein's Caribbean island. And in America, the DOJ says everything is over and there will be no further investigations or prosecutions. Thomas Massey and Ro Khanna, who co-sponsored the Transparency Act, say that that is not good enough. They are demanding a release without redactions of names to protect Epstein Associates. Rep Massey said that if Pam Bondi does not release without the redactions protecting Epstein Associates, he will start reading Epstein's clients' names out loud during congressional hearings. During this week right now, members of Congress will be able to begin reviewing the unredacted versions of the Justice Department files in person at the DOJ. This is only available to the members, not to their staff, and will only be of the files currently available to the public, not the six million in total that are in the DOJ's possession. Bondi is set to appear before the Judiciary Committee on Wednesday. Galene Maxwell is also set to appear via Zoom from her prison, and indications are that she will plead the fifth, not answering any questions. Please come back on Thursday to hear from Bad Edwards about the continued fight for justice for the 200 survivors he represents. And thank you for being part of my meditation. We Can Do Hard Things is an independent production podcast brought to you by Treat Media. Treat Media makes art for humans who want to stay human. And you can follow us at We Can Do Hard Things on Instagram and at We Can Do Hard Things show on TikTok. you