Joyce Vance & Maria Farmer

This is an iHeart podcast. Guaranteed human. Run a business and not thinking about podcasting? Think again. More Americans listen to podcasts, then add supported streaming music from Spotify and Pandora. And as the number one podcaster, iHeart's twice as large as the next two combined. Learn how podcasting can help your business. Call 844-844-iHeart. Hi, I'm Molly Jongfast, and this is Fast Politics, where we discuss the top political headlines with some of today's best minds And the U.S. economy has slowed to 1.4 GDP growth in Q4 2025. We have such a great show for you today. Sisters in Law's own Joyce Vance stops by to talk about SCOTUS striking down Trump's tariff policy. And then we'll talk to Epstein survivor Maria Farmer about her experiences with Jeffrey Epstein and Les Wexner. But first, the news. Molly, the Republicans are holding on to their majority by a thread. There's Tony Gonzalez we talked about in the last episode, who if he leaves, will leave Mike Johnson in a very bad spot in Congress. And it now appears from this latest video that Mitch McConnell may not be all the way there. Are you ready to watch this? Yeah, let's watch this video. Okay. Senator, you're up for election in three short years. What are your thoughts on this? I'm sorry. I had a hard time hearing it. That's okay. What are your thoughts on running for re-election in 2026? What are my thoughts about what? Running for re-election in 2026. That's good. Did you hear the question, Senator? Running for re-election in 2026? Yes. All right. I'm sorry, you all. We're going to need a minute. Let's talk about that. We're not playing that to be cruel. Getting old is something we're all going to have to deal with. If we're lucky. Yeah. Better than the alternative. We're playing that because we have a real problem in this country at this moment. And we need age limits on electeds. And that is what we're trying to get here. left, right, time to have some age limits. People just don't want to leave office. Power is hard to give up. And I get it, man. But we're just seeing this again and again and again. We really need our politicians to have age limits. Yeah, it's interesting because I've seen some people saying, oh, they're worried Bashir will be able to replace him with somebody. But the state Senate actually They put limitations on Bashir's ability to do that. Because why? Because they're worried that a Democrat would get that job. Yeah, this is like what we're on his third senior moment here that we've seen, like where he just disconnects. Yeah. And this is not to say that, like, we don't understand the sensitivity of getting older or that we don't appreciate how hard that is. It's more just that we see that this is a real problem that we keep seeing again and again and again. And that there's only one way that we're going to get through this, and that's to have term limits on candidates. Yes. So Harry Enten on CNN was talking about a concept that many people discuss, which is that, you know, Trump will never go below this four of a certain approval. And he's saying, I don't know, man, these polls are looking so bad. The four may be lower than we thought. Yeah. Harry Enten is a pollster and he has been covered. You know, we've all been covering this forever and ever until we die. But this is two points lower across the number of pollsters. And he is now in worse shape than at any point in his first term or where Biden was ever. So it's basically he's underwater. Like 20 points is the low, according to Yahoo. 19 points, according to NBC, is 20. I mean, he's really underwater. And it's worth realizing that like when he came in the second time, he actually was more popular. He had won the popular vote. He had really a lot of opportunities to connect with voters. He had billionaires talking about how great he was. you know, he had the closest thing he's ever had to a mandate and he absolutely squandered it like you can't fucking believe. And so we have these polling low numbers that are pretty spectacular. And what we're seeing now is that he's sending these insane truth posts about fixing the vote because he sees how unpopular is. We have one here that is just insane about voter ID. Yeah. So here's what's happening. Trump and Republicans see the polls. They know that they're in big trouble. They see it happening. And so they really, really, really want to mess with our voting and they want to pass the SAVE Act. They can't pass the SAVE Act unless they get rid of the filibuster. If they get rid of the filibuster, that means that everything changes, that legislation is much easier to pass. But it's also the SAVE Act is really bad. It would federalize elections. I mean, this is why he's so hot on it. I'm going to read a little bit of this Truth Social post because it has a lot of capitalization. And like it's important to hear Donald Trump's own words sometimes because you have to know how unhinged a lot of this stuff is. We cannot let the Democrats get away with no voter ID, all caps, any longer. These are horrible, disingenuous cheaters, all caps. They have all sorts of reasons why it shouldn't be passed. And they boldly laugh in the back rooms after their ridiculous presentations. If it weren't such a serious matter, it would be considered a total joke. No, voter ID is even crazier and more ridiculous than men playing in women's sports. Right. These are the three things he thinks he wins on men playing in women's sports, open borders or transgender for everyone. OK, is clearly like these are his three greatest hits. My favorite right that we should add to the Constitution, transgender for everyone. Transgender for everyone. Republicans must put this at the top of every speech. It is a can't miss for reelection in the midterms, huh? And beyond explanation point, even Democratic voters agree 85 percent that there should be voter ID. And there are, by the way, a lot of states where there is voter ID. It's only the political, quote unquote, leaders, crooked losers like Schumer and Jeffries. By the way, if only they were as bad as Trump says they are in this truth that have no shame. Explain why it's racist and every other thing they can think of. This is an issue that must be fought and must be fought now. All caps, exclamation point. So I always feel like with Trump, it's important to just look at what he says, even if he's a liar. I just want to keep going. I will present them shortly in the form of an executive order. I hope the Supreme Court realizes as they painstakingly review the very simple topic of country saving tariffs. Important, right, because he was really anxious about this tariff decision and they ruled against him. Those same tariffs have been used by other countries against the U.S. to drain it of its treasury and security for many years. Again, not true at all. So pack the courts with 21 Supreme Court justices, their dream explanation points, which they will submit. Look, he's anxious. He's worried. He sees the polls. Here we are. Yep. So 11 million visitors seem to have not come here since Trump was elected, which is hitting the economy very bad. We have this new report where the Walt Disney Company is quite upset about this. And I hear it all the time from people at restaurants and bars I go to in New York that they just don't see the Europeans here the way they used to. And that was keeping them in business. Yeah, I can't imagine why people would not want to come to a country where our police force has murdered two American citizens. I don't know, our masked police force and where we see endless stories of ICE locking up kids and deporting the wrong people. And I don't know why you wouldn't want to come here. Luckily, we have FIFA World Cup coming and Donald Trump has won the FIFA Soccer Peace Prize. So that should get Taurus here. A coveted prize, let me tell you. Yes. FIFA World Cup, the best. So Thomas Massey, who I really, every time we have to quote him, I can't believe we're quoting him in a good way these days. He says the Trump UFO talk is the ultimate weapon of mass distraction from the Epstein files. Yeah. And he's right. He's right. He's right. He's right. Look, Massey is so interesting. And this moment is so strange because he is a libertarian. And like, well, we don't necessarily agree with everything he says. It's really interesting. He and Ro Khanna have tried to pass a War Powers Act. Trump has amassed all of these ships by the Gulf. This is like a real moment. We're seeing like libertarian values like the Rand Pauls and the Thomas Masseys and this sort of like, you know, Democratic values align. I want to talk about UFOs because Trump was on the airplane coming home from Georgia where he was on an affordability tour, though you wouldn't know it because he almost spent no time talking about affordability. And, you know, he's moved as many aircrafts into the Middle East as has been ever since 2003. OK, so that's wild. He's basically wants to bomb Iran. His administration has offered like three or four different reasons for why, which I think what you know about Trump world is when they're lying, which is a lot of the time they offer multiple explanations. So they said that they wanted because the protesters they wanted to, you know, because Iran killed all these protesters. Right. They said it's because of the nuclear program, though. We know all the nukes are buried because of the last saying it's because they want to destabilize the region and terrorism. So there's like a million different answers. So that's how we know they're lying. But the point here is last night on the flight home from Georgia, he is talking to a journalist. A journalist says, well, or maybe this was on the way there. He's saying a journalist says, well, Obama says that there are aliens. And he said, well, that was not Obama. You know, you could see in his head the wheels turning. He said something like that's classified information. Is he releasing classified? I mean, you know, he's thinking like, can I arrest Obama? And then he's like, damn it, wait, I was the one who said that I could declassify things with my brain. God damn it, he was president before me. Right. And in his head, you can see him thinking like, oh, people are interested in aliens. Oh, that is a good one. Oh, that doesn't tie to Epstein. There you go. That's how we got here. I'm I'm I'm at iHeartAdvertising.com. That's iHeartAdvertising.com. Joyce Vance is the author of the Substack Civil Discourse, the co-host of the podcast Sisters in Law, and the author of Giving Up is Unforgivable, a manual for keeping a democracy. Joyce Vance! Hey, how are you? Good. So, okay, we are at a moment where the Supreme Court has actually told Trump no. I think it's happened like, you know, like the number of times as I have fingers on one hand. I think you have too many fingers for this court. But anyhow. Right. Yes, exactly. Too many fingers. Talk about this SCOTUS decision on tariffs. Yes. You make a really interesting point that this is about the court telling Trump no. And first, let me tell you that in the two hours since the decision came out, I have not read all 170 pages with great care. So I'm going to speak broad brush. That makes two of us. Yeah, we'll be doing that this weekend. It's going to be a fun weekend at Chez Vance. I think I have a good bottle of champagne to read with. But look, let me just say this about the context. You know, the theme of this presidency has been Donald Trump's effort to seize more power. Yeah. And he's not seizing it in a vacuum. He's seizing it from Congress in large part. And at the same time, he's trying to tell the Supreme Court it doesn't have the ability to review his decisions. It's not just in this case. That has been a theme, for instance, where he tried to use the Alien Enemies Act to do things with deportation that no president has ever done. And he tried to do it again with the National Guard federalizing them. In both of those cases, he found statutes that gave presidents unusual enhanced powers in emergency situations. And then he claimed that there was an emergency, said the Supreme Court couldn't review his decision and proceeded. And so this is actually the third time that we've seen the Supreme Court tell Trump no. But what's important about this case, the tariffs case was fully briefed, fully argued. We have this long decision that lays out the court reasoning And in the case of both deportations and the National Guard the Supreme Court ruled on early preliminary motions in those cases off of the shadow docket, and they didn't really lay out their reasoning. So it makes it important that they've done it here. Can I just say, though, Molly, I mean, the Supreme Court is not the hero of the moment, right? Certainly not. This is a 6-3 decision, and it should have been 9-0. because I'm sorry, I'm wound up about it, but I'll just say it should have been 9-0. It's not a hard case. This is not about the president's power, you know, with tariffs writ large. Congress has the tariffs power. They can loan it to the president. They do specifically in certain statutes with limitations on how long he can impose it for, what percentage it can be. Here, Trump took this statute, IEPA, that does not have the word tariffs in it. He used it to impose, you know, for all time tariffs as high as he wanted it to. And it should have been nine oaths. The textualists on the Supreme Court should have said the Constitution, you know, the statute, IEPA. None of that says Trump has this power. So no, Mr. President. And the fact that three justices were still willing to shill for the president to some extent, I think, is disturbing. Let's talk about that. The three justices, not surprising. saying Fox News is favorite, Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito, and Justice Kegstand, Kavanaugh. But that one is a little bit surprising. Let me say, I think people assumed it might be Gorsuch, but he had written, you know, as recently as last term about the importance of textualism. So maybe a little less surprising. What's interesting here, though, and what I haven't looked at yet, we've got concurrences from everybody and dissents from everybody. And it'll take some time to distill what the actual holding is that had six votes to back it. But it is important to realize, like, this is all under the guise of the unitary executive theory, which is a theory that the president is a king and that Congress is a bunch of schmucks who do whatever he wants, basically. I think that's how we should understand this as a power grab. And, you know, something I wrote about a lot in my book and that I've talked about a lot is my belief that at some point the Supreme Court would tell Trump no, not because of legal principles, but because they didn't want to become irrelevant. In other words, if the court keeps letting the president do whatever he wants and erodes judicial review, then there's no role for a Supreme Court. And I think that we should understand this decision in some ways as the court both telling the president no, but maybe more importantly, saying yes to their own ability to remain relevant. It is also important to realize, though, this case was not teed up by some woke squad. This was teed up by Leonard Leo and the surviving Koch brother. Yeah. Pretty hard to think of two people with more skin in the game when it comes to the Federalist Society or the making of the court itself. You know, this case is a decision between, you know, MAGA, which only got three votes, and the Koch brothers, who got six. Yeah. And by the way, one of my friends was sending me market graphics just as we were starting out. But it looks like the market is taking this decision as a good sign. Yeah, because it means that Donald Trump can't kill our economy for no reason. But according to Pam Bondi, that means everything's good. Yes, that's right. Speaking of which, so, yeah, the tariff decision is a big one. A question also how you undo these tariffs now, because remember, this administration is not so big on following the law. You know, there had been a lot of thinking that the court would reverse and would send this back to the lower courts, which it did, but would also, you know, Neil Katyal, who had argued the case successfully, had said an oral argument. Well, maybe you can do that without undoing past tariffs. And again, I haven't read carefully yet, but my quick read suggests that the court didn't do that and that the remedy may be up to the district court, which is which is great. Well, maybe. I mean, the lower court's not going to be thrilled about figuring that out because unwinding the tariffs will be difficult and complicated. The administration, to your point, Molly, has argued that doing this, you know, will put us into bankruptcy. I mean, that's not true, but that's sort of the position that they're taking. But it seemed to me that Neil's position in oral argument, although I thought it was it was a smart thing to give the court that out, to say that you can sidestep all the difficulty of unwinding previously collected tariffs. You know, if the tariffs are illegal, then they were improperly collected and they have to be restored. I want to know, does this mean, you know, I'm a knitter when I buy my knitting yarn from Europe now? I'm paying horrible tariffs on it. I want to know, do I get that money back? I don't have clarity. Yeah, I want my money back, too. It's a really good question. And it's important to see this case as what it is, to be clear eyed that this is not a victory for democracy as so as much as it is a victory for pre-existing financial system. I mean, I don't want to undersell this decision. If the Supreme Court had not pumped the brakes on the Trump presidency here, it would have been a devastating moment. So I mean, it's good to see that at the margins, the court will stand for the rule of law. So it's good that the court pumped the brakes in this instance. And this is a very important decision. It may frankly be the most important one since the criminal immunity decision where the court gave Trump so much power, such an excess of freedom from the possibility of criminal prosecution. And here they're saying to the president, no, you can't steal Congress's power and you can't tell us that we don't have the power of judicial review. In other words, in many ways, it restores the balance of power among the three branches. The reason I'm not willing to be super enthusiastic about the court is I know what comes next. And that's Calais, the gerrymandering case, which has the potential for the court to lock in Republican majorities in the House of Representatives for a generation, depending on how that decision comes out. There are other voting rights cases. And, you know, as the administration is teeing up the SAVE Act and getting ready to pass it, the consequences of those cases could be devastating for democracy. So we'll have to see. Right. Now, that said, they cannot pass the SAVE Act unless they undo the filibuster, which, again, they may try to, but they don't have 60 votes for the SAVE Act in the Senate. I think that's right. You know, they're gaining votes. Are they going to get Democratic votes? I think. No, they're not going to get. But it's disturbing that they're over 50 on the Republican side. Right. No, they're fucking partisan hacks. And also, yes, yes. And it's disturbing. And the voting rights, what's coming down with the voting rights could be crazy. I mean, they could just get rid of every I mean, the South could be all Republican Congress people. I mean, they could just write like and, you know, they could gain five, six, seven, eight, nine, 10 seats. But I want to be 19. I mean, I think it's worth pointing out that the Georgia think tank that Stacey Abrams started has done an analysis of the data. I think they suggest that there are 19 vulnerable districts. That's very sobering. Now, let's talk about Epstein. We've got these documents. Pam Bondi says it's over. Can Pam Bondi do that? We only have half the documents. We have the UK. Andrew has been arrested. We have the rest of the Epstein files. People in the U.S. are in the Trump cabinet. Basically, we have Lutnik. We have I mean, every time, you know, watching the Ministry of Peace or whatever, that Ministry of War, Peace Ponzi scheme that Trump was doing yesterday. And we had Tony Blair in the Epstein files. We had Mark Rowan in the Epstein files. Like everyone around Trump is in those files. Can Pam Bondi say it's over and done? And talk us through what you think the legal remedies here are. So look, Pam Bondi is the attorney general of the United States. And if she wants to say it's over, she can do that. It's clear that the Justice Department is not contemplating prosecution of anyone who is not a Democrat at this point. That was the president's guidance to his attorney general. I mean, I think the real question is this, Molly. What are we going to do about it? Right. Congress has already shown it's vulnerable to strong American public opinion on this topic. And I think we need to be fierce and unrelenting and demand answers. If Bill Clinton can testify under oath in Congress, there is no reason that Donald Trump cannot. And I think that's frankly, you know, it's hard because there's a new issue every day. Right. And it seems to me if I was in charge of leading public opinion and trying to get the public to influence Congress, it would be that simple point. If Bill Clinton can testify under oath, so can Donald Trump. Yeah. When we look at these, so we had yesterday, we had Les Wexler did a four hour deposition at his house, right? Congress traveled to him, which is such an irony because Bill and Hillary Clinton will be on Capitol Hill. Right. But this is obviously partisan hackery here. But the head of oversight is a guy called James Comer. Yeah. The ranking is Robert Garcia. Now, I think it's interesting that we are seeing them do anything, because if Donald Trump had his way, there would be nothing coming out of this. And when they interviewed Les, he said, I met Jeffrey Epstein a number of times with Donald Trump. So I wonder, what do you think's going on there with James Comer? Because there's no world in which James Comer is just committed to the truth. Yeah. So, you know, I mean, Wexner is obviously getting up in years during his deposition. In one of the cases, there's reporting that his lawyer leaned over and used profanity to say, if you answer any further questions with more than five words, I'm going to kill you. Yeah. And so, you know, that's the problem. What are people going to say? You know, the former Prince Andrew, what might he try to say to save his own soul and justify what he did? What might, you know, maybe a Kathy Rumler, what might she know and what might she say? There's inherent risk to everyone who engaged in misconduct right now. As you know, I mean, I've seen this so many times as a prosecutor, right? When the gig is up, everybody who's on the sinking ship tries to save themselves. And sometimes the best way you can do that is to make somebody else the person who's going to fall off the boat next. So to your point, Comer obviously is not interested in eliciting the truth. But look, something that we have forgotten as an American people during Donald Trump's administrations is that the power in democracy belongs to us. Our elected officials, Donald Trump may primary them, but he doesn't determine if they get reelected. We do. And that's why we saw the Epstein Files Transparency Act passed. That's why there is even this modicum of congressional oversight hearings taking place. And so I think that this is, you know, modestly my suggestion, a moment where Americans need to speak to their elected officials. My senators are Tommy Tuberville and Katie Britt. They don't listen to me a whole lot when I talk to them. But, you know, you can be damn sure I'll be writing and calling both of their offices saying we need to get to the bottom of this because girls, girls were raped. Girls were trafficked. Prosecutions didn't happen. There's a lot of blame to be shared for that. In this moment, we can at least provide some form of justice to the survivors by exposing the truth. And that's your obligation as my elected official. So I wonder if we could talk about this for a minute, because I have now spent a lot of time talking to elected about this, about like what the legal remedy here is. And they say, you know, there's like no chain of the chain of custody on the the videos on a lot of the stuff is all fucked up because this FBI messed it all up, basically. And there's all sorts of tips that weren't followed that, you know, sheets and sheets of things that were not followed. But you do have more than a thousand victims and they have put together a list of 250 people that Thomas Massey has in his office. Do these women have any chance for criminal charges? And if not, do they have chance for civil? There are a lot of complications here, right? For one thing, some of these now women were young girls when this happened. And whether they have the ability to identify the powerful men who were there and who abused them, we don't know, right? I mean, these men are famous now, back then, maybe they weren't. And maybe these identifications can't be made in court. So there's all these technical legal issues. You referenced the chain of custody. But but look, these women, I think, are increasingly angry. They are willing to testify whether some brave prosecutor will try to make a criminal case, because in many states there's no statute of limitations for rape and other child sex trafficking. Right. Yeah. Well, and in the federal system. Right. And so what I would say to anybody who's involved in the Epstein case is that this is their moment to come forward and come clean and do the right thing, because in three years, God willing, there will be a new attorney general on Pennsylvania Avenue. And that I hope will be someone who will be committed to delivering justice even if it has been severely delayed You know civil cases will suffer from the same sorts of legal hoops that will have to be jumped through identifying people responsible, chain of custody on evidence. Civil cases are very slow. Frankly, I think at least for starters, the most important thing for survivors is having the truth come out because they've been told for years that they were lying, that they were making it up, that they were prostitutes. They need to be publicly vindicated. And then we can talk about criminal and civil remedies. I just want to talk about this idea that there are things people can do. You wrote this book about how important it is not to give up. And I want you to talk about this quiet message of the importance of citizens, because the reality is we would not have had any of this Epstein stuff, not any of it, had it not been for this sort of dogged work of Julie K. Brown going back to a story that was supposedly dead and the work of Ro Khanna and Thomas Massey. So talk us through what you think citizens can do today. Yeah, I mean, you know, the most important myth of the Trump era is that we are powerless, that you are powerless, that there's nothing you can do. So you should just give up and sit aside. And obviously, if there's a silver lining to everything with the Epstein files, it's that we are powerful. And so look, if you know, you as an individual are doing what you can do, that might be contacting your elected officials. And if you are getting together with groups, maybe you're joining with your local indivisible group and planning to participate in the No Kings rally on the 28th. And if you are working to educate other people in your community, because, you know, your friends and your neighbors, especially the ones who lean MAGA, they're not going to listen to Molly Zhang fast or Joyce Vant. We're the enemy. But they will listen to you, their neighbor, their friend who they trust. And if you're patient and if you ask them questions and let them answer and begin to plant seeds, we're seeing that now, right? We're seeing Trump's ratings are the lowest they've ever been. He's down in the 30s on immigration. And that's because of these patient, quiet conversations we've been having and the innate goodness of Americans. Trump has sold people a lot of snake oil and a bill of goods based on hate and racial disharmony. I think Americans are ready to take that back and we should all try to play whatever role we can. Thank you, Joyce Vance. Maria Farmer is a visual artist. She provided the first criminal complaint about Jeffrey Epstein to the New York City Police Department and the FBI. Welcome to Fast Politics, Maria Farmer. Hi, thank you for having me. I wanted to have you so much for any number of reasons, but the first of which is you and your sister were the first people ever to raise the alarm and to come forward about Jeffrey Epstein. So if you can just talk a little bit about your story of the sort of end of it and how you got because I've read it. It is harrowing and horrific. Right. So not to take anything away from Annie at all, but she was only 16 when I reported. She did not report anybody like it was me. I hated that people think that I like dragged a little teenager to the NYPD. She had already been traumatized. So, you know, my mom and I protected her from reports or anything like that until 2006 when they followed up. Tell us what happened when you came to the court in the 90s, because I think it's really important. Well, you went in and reported Epstein and then because you were really the first person. Yeah, I'm definitely the first person and I'm the only one who reported the people I did. So let me just explain first who I reported. I went first to the NYPD and they were so blown away by it. I spoke to the chief of police and he said, Maria, this is not even in our jurisdiction. I'll take down what is in our jurisdiction. And what happened is Ghislaine Maxwell had just threatened arson against my building, 52 Barrow in Greenwich Village. And so that was like elderly people and artists. And I didn't want anyone harmed. And so I was under an obligation to alert FBI that her threats included arson against the building where I was residing. So she told you she was going to burn down your house. She said my career is burned. She said she's going to burn all my art whenever I make it, that she was going to burn down the building of 52 Barrow. And it was a tenement building. You know, we were all just struggling in there. And I didn't want these innocent people harmed. And the NYPD told me, you have to call the FBI. Because this is, you know, more international and also national. It involves many states. So I'd never really even thought about, you know, the FBI before. I was a 26-year-old. I didn't think about things like this. I thought about art all day, every day. And that's why I loved Manhattan, because I just became embedded in the art world. And I called the FBI, and this is who I reported. I reported Leslie Wexner. I reported Ghislaine Maxwell, Jeffrey Epstein, Bill Clinton, and Donald Trump. Wow. And let me explain why, okay? Still to this day, I don't believe some of the things saying that these presidents raped teenagers, I don't think that's how it went down. That's my personal opinion. Because some of their stories just seem, but there's a pattern to all the abuse. And the people who aren't involved in the pattern tend to make up things. And they make it more extreme than it really was. Like right now, there's this satanic panic BS going on, and that is not what our case is about. And it's really, really disrespectful to victims. There's this really gross man named Nick Bryant who's pushing this satanic panic. And like people like Tim Burchett, you know, he's a representative, and they're pushing this to harm survivors, to harm truth, to desensitize the truth. Make everyone think, well, it doesn't matter that Virginia was a little girl trafficked and raped because people were eaten. That never happened, right? So what people need to understand is in that files release, everything pre-2019, you can pretty much hold on to it as truth. But once the case broke, there's a lot of people who called in and declared, you know, I'm a victim, you know, to get involved in our case. And it's some kind of a psychological problem that's going on here with these people. But the truth of it is, this is not satanic panic. This is about child trafficking and rape. And for me, I've been a lot less focused on the adults involved because the difference between what Annie went through and what I went through, we had totally different experiences. But the thing is, I knew to report and my little sister didn't even understand what happened because she was 16 years old. And she's a genius. Like she's an IVP doctor. And even she did not understand what happened. Right. It made me wake up to the fact that teenagers' brains are totally different, just totally different than adults. So I'm very defensive for all the girls. And some of them began as teenagers and they were swept into it and they never got to leave. And they're just as much victims. There's a girl, Nadia Marcinko, and all these people are trying to blame her. She's a 15-year-old survivor. She was 15 when she was lured from Eastern Europe. They took her passport away from her. They kidnapped her, raped her. She did whatever she could to survive. She really did. She had to just survive. And whenever she tried to run away, they took her back. And she's a beautiful young woman. And so it's a very complicated situation. But the ones who started as adults in the luring and procuring of children, I don't care about them. The other thing is there's a lot of employees that are now declaring they were victims, but they were adult employees. They were co-conspirators. They knew what was going on. They saw it every day and they never reported. So what's shocking to me is that I'm the only one who reported all this. And why I reported Bill Clinton and Donald Trump, I didn't ever see anyone harm a child this whole time. I surmised based on the fact that Epstein and Ghislaine stole photographs from my lockbox that were not, people misstate this. They weren't X-rated photographs. These are photographs I used. I was in a figurative art program. Okay. So we used photographs as reference pictures. They were kind of blurry. You know, sometimes my sister's putting on a shirt, you know, it was all about body movement. And I was using them not to paint from directly, but as reference pictures for anatomy. I couldn't afford a life model. Right. So for those to be stolen, one of my sisters, when I took that picture was 11 years old. The pictures they stole of her, she was 15. So then I knew that these were pedophiles, right? And so I surmised from there when I reported that the sitting president who had come to the mansion multiple times to visit Ghislaine Maxwell, that's Bill Clinton, he came to that mansion, 71st, and she announced it. I did not see him there. She announced it beforehand, and we always had to prepare things the same way, and she was just giddy whenever he would get there. Why is the sitting president hanging out with pedophiles? That's why I reported him. I didn't see him do anything nefarious. I reported Donald Trump because he was a ubiquitous character in the life of Jeffrey Epstein. Epstein declared that was his best friend. This man had more money than God. He ran a modeling thing like this is nefarious. So I said, you need to look into these other people. I reported Leslie Wexner because he was he's he was in charge of the whole thing. Like he funded it. Jeffrey Epstein told me that Leslie Wexner funded him entirely and provided him access to everyone and provided him with his credibility. That's what Epstein told me personally. I also reported Leslie Wexner because I was held captive on his estate. He and Abigail, their estate. And I want to explain to people that estate is 330 acres. OK, and there was at the time when I was there, there was one entrance and exit. There was no other way to get through except through the white barn gates on White Barn Road. There were these white picket gates. And the sheriff often and the sheriff's deputies sat in that building. And the only way to get in and out was through their property. And that building he designed, Leslie Wexner designed after the Rotunda, I believe years before he knew Epstein. I don't know what year, but he designed it to match the Capitol building in Ohio, and he called it the Rotunda. Epstein hated Ohio. He had no desire. That wasn't his property. It may have been handed to him for a short time, but I doubt it. But they're claiming that. But it's my opinion that maybe records were altered. I can't say for sure. That's my opinion I'm entitled to. But it seems very odd. So I just want to explain to your audience that when I called to report what had happened to me, my assault, I called 911 from Leslie Wexner's guest house. Wow. And they hung up on me. I called again and the same girl answered. And she said, listen, let me stop you. The sheriff's at the gate. We work for Wexner. And she said, you know, you're just not leaving. And she hung up on me again. His bodyguard, Randy Bowie, held me against my will in a standoff for over 12 hours and wouldn't let me leave. Okay, he had three sharpshooters on his property. And Randy's the one who told me that there were the three sharpshooters. I have pictures of them. There were three of these men who kept me inside all day. I'm a nobody. Like, why are you keeping some artists, you know, in a guest house? Well, it wasn't a very funny experience. And I believe it led to my cancers. One of the most horrible things about this whole thing is that people have have attacked you guys. Oh, yeah. And then when the files were released, there was actually proof that you had done it. Was that like amazing? Well, it's a few things. First of all, I did this beside Virginia. So for 23 years, no one really, you know, my sister was harmed, so I couldn't really be talking to her about it. And she wanted me to move on with my life. So she was like, Maria, no one's ever going to know who Epstein is. You need to move on, you know. And I just kept trying to manifest this overtake. I tried to expose power like the whole time. And I did things. I talked to people like crappy podcasts. I had all these, you know, bad experiences because no one would let me say the word Wexner. The mainstream media, who's been ethical and amazing, just had liability. So they wouldn't let me talk about Wexner. And so I talked about Wexner in any way I could, and it didn't make me look so great, but I just did it for the greater good, I guess. And I got it out there, right? And basically, I was doing it with Virginia. And Virginia kept me alive with Marika. The two victims kept me alive by starting a GoFundMe for my cancer. And so it's a mixed bag because I can't really celebrate totally right now because she's not here. So it feels like I ran this whole race and handed the baton to her and we ran together. And then she's not there. And I can't win a race without her there. Right. So I'm kind of stuck in this limbo feeling that isn't very celebratory. But I look to her amazing family. They're so strong. And they're the ones who, you know, are truly suffering this. loss. And they're just carrying on her legacy bravely. I wonder if you could talk about when you the last time you talked to her was. The last communication was quite a bit before she died. I don't remember exactly, but her husband was preventing us from speaking with her. And so he was sending us ugly messages through their email, making us think that, I mean, I even contacted Marika and said, does Virginia not love us now? Like, you know, I just didn't get it. I'm like, This doesn't sound like her. I can't remember exactly, but for the last couple years, she was tormented by this man That is truly the reason we don have her here now It was just too much Her children were her entire life I mean I not here to speak for her Her family is But I can just tell you from my vantage point, that man is the reason she's not here. Combined with all these other horrible people and the fact that we were being bullied so, so badly online, it's continuing. There's a woman named Jessica Reed Krause who has been staying at the White House. She has singled me out to torment to death. And she hired a felon on parole to lie about me with a fake royal named Hervey. I mean, whatever, a royal lady, Victoria Hervey. And they went after Virginia even post-mortem. They've even picked up steam and they're pretending to be affiliated with this case. It's got to be mental illness. Like, I don't know what it is, but I know that it's a lot of felons and people in power as well. Like Daphne Barak was working with them. And, you know, Ehud harmed Virginia. Right. That's Ehud Barak's wife, right? Yeah. And Ehud almost killed Virginia. She makes it very clear. So the point is, like, everyone's going after the victims right now. It's BS. Like that Nick Bryant guy is going after Haley Robson. But Haley was a teenager when she was roped into all this. And people don't understand the power that these people had over us, right? So yes, people like Danny and me and a lot of us, we refused to recruit, but who knows what he said to her to make her do that. And so why are you going after people who survived it instead of the men and women who worked for Jeffrey Epstein for real as adults? Yeah. With adult brains, right? And there's a lot of them. There's a lot of them. One of them's like suing the government right now with a group of women. And she was there 13 years as an adult co-conspirator, in my opinion. So people have muddied the waters and now everyone's a victim all of a sudden. I know you know that Vicki Ward like originally took our story and now she's suddenly declaring herself a victim and a hero. But she tormented my family for decades. Wait, what happened? She never wrote the story. And when she promised my entire family safety and she said that it would be okay that I could confide in her and I could trust her. And she ended up befriending Ghislaine Maxwell instead. And she called me and said, Maria, we're not doing this story now. She said, you put a heart next to your name on a birthday card. You signed heart, Maria. You've lost all credibility. And then she served me for mentioning her to this amazing woman, Tatiana Siegel. I got to talk to her and I really, really like her. And we had a fun chat publicly. So Vicki Ward served me for telling the truth about it. Would she sue you? No, she served me a cease and desist. Said I couldn't say her name anymore. That's bullshit. I'll say her name when I want to. This is my experience, and she tormented me half to death. And she can't just serve me to get out of this, right? So she's, in my opinion, these people that aided and abetted are co-conspirators. They're not victims. They're people who enabled this to go on decades. And I looked it up, and Vicki Ward wrote about herself for decades. She wrote this one article that says, when I was in my 20s, I was brunette with wonky teeth. But now that I'm 40, I'm a fabulous blonde. And here's how I did it. That's not writing about Epstein. That doesn't make you a hero. You weren't afraid. You had the ability to write about him. If she was afraid, then why? I wasn't afraid. I fought him. And I'm a nobody. It's been a real battle to be not wealthy, have my career stolen from me. Ghislaine Maxwell made it clear to me, you've been Leon Blackballed, Maria. You will never have an art career. And it was true. And I was studying with the phenomenal Eric Fischel. And he kept beating his head against the wall, like, why can't I get you a gallery? All the doors were closed to me. So I gave up, right? But that man, he's just such a phenomenal artist and tried so hard. And he's the reason I survived Wexner's, because I called him and he gave me instructions on how to fight. You have cancer. Yes. How are you? Are you okay? Oh, thank you. So it's kind of complicated. I believe that I've recovered from Hodgkin's lymphoma, which, you know, is a slow growing cancer. I do have a brain tumor that will never go away. It's not removable. It's vascular. So it's really damaged my faculties. I'm deaf in one ear. I'm very disabled from it. Like I can't drive. I can't bend over without passing out. There's a lot of stuff. I have superior vena cava syndrome from it. So my face gets really swollen. So that's why in a lot of the interviews, I look really funny and people make fun of me. Like all the trolls say, look at her. And meanwhile, I was just being brave. I knew I looked horrible, but I did all those interviews during chemo and radiation. I still have to deal with the cancer. It's, you know, ongoing. One of the things that you have been doing is you've been painting. Right. I haven't really done that much. You have some of those paintings. Right. I did some. They're really great. I mean, you should do more. Thank you. Yeah, my lawyer, Jennifer Freeman, I just want to give her a shout out. She's the most phenomenal human being. I love her to pieces. She's truly a victim's advocate, for real. She's a tremendous soul. And she's always fought for children and for survivors. Unlike a lot of the other lawyers who entered as superstars and screwed us over, Jennifer Freeman and James Marshlaw are really, and this isn't a commercial. I'm being serious. No, no. But if any survivors need a victim's advocate lawyer, they need martial law because I went through it and I want the world to know these people. So Jennifer's trying to get me back on my feet for making my art again. And I'm going to. I work really, really quickly. So I think for about a month, I drew revenge art and somebody hacked me and sent that in to the FBI. So it's in the file. Right. That was never. It's really good. I mean, I like your revenge art. It's funny. Yeah. This is something I actually asked Danny Belsky, too. She's amazing. She's amazing, too. Yeah. You know what? Her personality is so aligned with Virginia's. They're just so similar that I just really love her. I feel immediate love for her. Yeah. And she loves you, too. Yeah. But what we talked about was that she thinks there are still a lot of victims who have not come forward. Do you think that's true? And if we're talking to any of them right now, what would you say to them? Okay, well, I'll tell you the theory. Marika Chartone, she's another genius victim that was one of Virginia's closest friends. And her theory is that a lot of them were models. And I agree with her. She was a model. And a lot of them were models, and they don't need resources, and they don't need the harassment they've witnessed that victims have endured. And so they're just kind of sitting it out because it's not going to contribute to their lives very much. It's not that they're not brave. It's that they don't want to ruin, maybe endanger their children's lives, right? Yeah, I don't criticize them for not coming forward. Yeah. Do you think some of the victims have been murdered? Yes, I'm going to tell you why. When I was on Wexner's estate and I tried to leave, Randy Bowie looked me dead in the eyes. Now, this is a sharpshooter. He looked me dead in the eyes and he said, you are never leaving. Do you understand? Never leaving. And I said, what does that mean? And he said, it means you're never leaving. And he tried to take me over to Wexner's main house from the guest house. And I would not go. I would not go because I know about if a person's going to kill you, you make them do it there. It means if they're trying to take you elsewhere, it means they're uncomfortable doing it there for whatever reason. And so, you know, this has been on Oprah, but also my mother, I witnessed an experience with my mother when I was little and she fought very bravely in front of me. And so I knew you never go to the second location. So I said, no, I'm not going with you. And I fought. And that's when I called everyone. I called, you know, I want to say also there are a lot of people falsely accused here. Like there's a man named John Paulson, JP. Yes, he's a billionaire. You know what? He's the most stellar gentleman I've ever encountered. Oh, that's interesting. He's not a co-conspirator. If I'm wrong, I apologize. But my experience of this man is that he was truly a gentleman. I mean, I don't know that I've ever met such a gentleman. He had feelings for me and never, ever tried anything and was very, very accepting of the fact that I just wanted to be friends. And he was a mentor that would take me to Christie's and Sotheby's and taught me all about antiques. He was a gentleman. This man, Massey, tried to destroy John Paulson's life and said he's on the list. First of all, there's a list. Secondly, JP's not on it if there is one that I know of. It's just been all of it. from like instead of speaking to us, a lot of these people like Massey will just say things that have been harmful. There's video everywhere, right? They hear cameras everywhere. Virginia talked about cameras in the bathroom. She saw cameras in her bedroom. So clearly the point here was to get compromising video. Yes or no? No, I don't think so. OK, so this is what I think. This is my theory. I don't believe the blackmail thing at all. I just I don't believe that. I think that's an easy way of thinking of it. I think it's much scarier than that. I think this is a group of people with shared proclivities. And I think they used these videos for enjoyment. I do not think he held videos over people. I don't think it's that simple. If everyone's in on it in the room, who are you going to blackmail? Like everybody's in on it. And so maybe there was some compromise. I don't know. And maybe somebody thinks they were blackmailed. But I think I think it made them all in a club that made them vulnerable. And they did it like a ceremonial club thing. But yes, I actually was the first to mention the pinhole cameras because I reported that to the FBI because that was used over me, you know, by these people. So Ghislaine and Jeffrey told me that there were pinhole cameras that Wexner outfitted all of his buildings with pinhole cameras. So the buildings that weren't owned by Wexner at some point, as far as I know, did not have those pinhole cameras. But Ghislaine and Jeffrey said that Wexner was paranoid and that all of these videos streamed back to New Albany. That's what they told me. I'm not, you know, I don't know. I didn't see it. But I asked why. Why is everything on video, right? Because Ghislaine, the first time she showed me to intimidate me, she said, be careful what you say, because right above. Here's a pinhole camera. See? In the limestone, right? And then Virginia and I, and I believe Danny, we were all shown the video room where they recorded everything. There were men permanently there working. And it looked like the old time TV stacked, you know? And, you know, this is the 90s. And people don't understand. We didn't have cell phones. We didn't have cameras on us. We couldn't record anything ourselves. But this is what we witnessed. And since three of us witnessed it. It's, you know, I think these cameras were because he's paranoid, also because of proclivities. That's what makes sense to me. It bothers me because there's a woman who sold this two-part sleazy book about blackmail on our case, and it took away the voices of victims and rewrote the story because that's just, it just doesn't make sense to me. So now everyone believes it's blackmail, and that's not what I witnessed. I witnessed people that were so deeply perverted and enjoyed this perversion and shared it with many. Thank you so much. Thank you. I'm sorry. Oh, thank you so much. I'm honored to speak to you, by the way. You're adorable. And Danny, Danny adored you too. I think the worst part of the whole story is that people are bullying you guys. I've clung to life through part of it. I've really had to, like at one point During cancer, I wanted to give up. Honestly, like because of Virginia and Marika, I stayed alive. So it's some of the victims that kept me alive. Yeah. But I have to tell you, like, it's so inspirational. And like, you should be so proud of yourself for doing, you know, like it just, I mean, it's bravery is contagious. and like your story, you getting out there and talking to the FBI, it's just... Yeah, well, you know, Annie spoke to them in 2006 and she was still pretty young and she had to go through that. It shows that your parents like gave you the fortitude to be able to do something like that. Her mother is the most amazing woman alive and she just taught us to survive. Yeah. Thank you. Thank you so much, Molly. And now your moment of fuckering. Jesse Cannon. Molly, I will forgive you if you are a little confused with this next headline, because one day you hear tens of millions of dollars for IRS settlements, tens of billions of dollars, all sorts of things with Mr. Trump. Today's newest one is we have a $10 billion from the taxpayers bill for Trump's Board of Peace extortion rig. Yeah, I don't know. I like that somehow $10 billion. He really loves the number of $10 billion. That's like kind of his thing. He's saying that everybody paid him a billion dollars. I bet you none of those people paid him a billion dollars. And, you know, he had a board of peace meeting the day that he is putting military airplanes and aircraft carriers in the Gulf to maybe do some kind of bombing. so it's all very very non-peaceful this board of peace and it has probably a lot more to do with kleptocracy than anything else also i like that he said it's going to replace the united nations and he also said and this is my favorite part of the whole story first of all it's going to replace the un and donald trump will be the head of it forever and ever and ever that's it for this episode of Fast Politics. Tune in every Monday, Wednesday, Thursday, and Saturday to hear the best minds in politics make sense of all this chaos. If you enjoy this podcast, please send it to a friend and keep the conversation going. Thanks for listening. This is an iHeart Podcast. Guaranteed human.