Ready to launch your business? Get started with the commerce platform made for entrepreneurs. Shopify, especially designed to help you start, run, and grow your business with easy customizable themes that let you build your brand, marketing tools that get your products out there. Integrated shipping solutions that actually save you time, from startups to scale-ups, online, in-person, and on the go. Shopify is made for entrepreneurs like you. Sign up for your $1 a month trial at Shopify.com slash setup. Welcome back to the Terra Pull Mary Show. Before we start, I want to flag a piece I just published in the red letter at Terra Pull Mary.com. It looks into who's actually in charge of the release of the Epstein files right now and the active investigations into Democrats tied to Jeffrey Epstein. It's Jay Clayton. He is the US attorney of the Southern District of New York. And because the core files of the Epstein story are in case are in Southern District of New York, he's in charge of overseeing transparency, complying with the Epstein Files Transparency Act, and into future active investigations. But I've done a deep dive and I found out that his past ties to some of the figures in those files raise very serious questions about his discretion, his independence, and who will ultimately face scrutiny. And believe me, one of these names is very prominent and had to step down from his role for his connection to Jeffrey Epstein. So you can read the full reporting at the red letter by going to Terra Pull Mary.com. It's a way to support my independent journalism of becoming a paid subscriber because all of this reporting takes a lot of work, making phone calls, putting pieces together, trying to get down to the bottom of how things work, the powers that be, how they operate, what people are really saying. I hope you enjoy this episode. It is my appearance on deadline, White House with Nicole Wallace. We talk about the Epstein Files and how it's become a major disappointment for the victims, the conflicts of interest. I bring it up in this segment and I also talk about just how there's so much disappointment that there have been no follow-up investigations. The third parties, perpetrators, the men, they've been protected for so long and survivors have been exposed. Thanks so much and I'm interested to hear what you think so leave some comments. Has the news been getting you down? I'm Megan McCartle and I'm here to help. I'm the host of a news show from Washington Post opinion called Reasonably Optimistic and it's an antidote to the pessimism that's riddling America right now. I'm a colonist of the post and I've been writing about economics, technology, and public policy for decades now. So every Wednesday I'm going to talk to people who see a path forward. I'm going to talk to inventors, entrepreneurs, politicians and okay probably some wonky types like me if I'm being totally honest. Congress to me was a very entrepreneurial place. It's like Shark Tank but a lot less glamorous. When nerds get rich and powerful they can't help but get involved in politics. I want to talk about how we can get unstuck and live up to the country's many promises. It does seem to me that there is some awakening of a desire to act together to solve problems where they are. If we believe in this country it's worth fighting for. Join me Wednesdays on YouTube or wherever you get your podcasts. They really failed all of the survivors on this. After so many months of saying we're being so meticulous about this and we care so deeply about this. I think that that's where this lap in the face really hurts. Hi again everybody it's now 5 o'clock in New York according to Donald Trump's Justice Department. Case closed, cases over in terms of their handling and the release of the Epstein files. But more importantly according to Epstein and Maxwell's survivors the process has been a slap in the face. Over a month after the legally required deadline for DOJ to release the files in their entirety the Department of Justice released a massive trove of 3 million documents. To call the release sloppy and haphazard is about the nicest thing we can say about it. According to my colleague Lisa Rubin at least 40 known or suspected survivors' names were revealed in the files produced Friday not just their names for lots of them. Their addresses, their phone numbers. Your time is reporting that the Justice Department published dozens of unredacted new photos showing young women and possibly teenagers under age girls. In a joint statement 18 survivors slam the government's handling their abuse writing this quote. This latest release of Jeffrey Epstein files is being sold as transparency but what it actually does is expose survivors. Once again survivors are having their names and identifying information exposed while the men who abused asked remain hidden and protected. The Justice Department cannot claim it is finished releasing files until every legally required document is released and every abuser and enabler is fully exposed. This is not over. We will not stop until the truth is fully revealed and every perpetrator is finally held accountable. This afternoon the federal judge who presided over Epstein's criminal case scheduled a hearing. It's on Wednesday to address the Justice Department's redaction failures. Besides Trump there are a number of other powerful men mentioned in these newly released documents. Hitler Musk is one of them. He said in 2019 they never took Epstein up on invitations to his island. It was revealed that he had exchanged multiple emails with the sex trafficker trying to coordinate a visit. Hitler Musk writing in one of those emails quote, what day slash night will be the wildest party on your island? End quote. Former Prince Andrew was also seen in a brand new photo on all fours along with an unidentified woman. Sorry to anyone saying this. Co-owner of the New York Giants Steve Tish shows up hundreds of times, most say in emails for Epstein proposes women for Tish to meet. Tish said in the statement they did not take different Epstein up on any of those invitations. Brett Ratner, the director of the newly released Malania to the college of documentary documentary. This picture alongside Jeffrey Epstein in one of the documents. There he is. Donald Trump's Secretary of Commerce Howard Letnick, who said in a televised interview just a few months ago that he resolved long ago, never to be in the same room as Epstein, said his dining room was weird. Said they cut ties. It's revealed in the documents that he had arranged a private lunch with Epstein and his family on Jeffrey Epstein's island. Am I the fact that all those skies are in the files doesn't mean that they committed crimes or at least crimes that could be executed or proven. Doesn't mean that they gauged and wrongdoing. It does speak to all the powerful and rich people and all the people that happened to be very very close to Donald Trump, all of their presence in these files. When it comes to the idea that anyone would have had an incentive for them to stay quiet. Some of what's been released answers some of those questions. Now when it comes to any potential consequences for the new revelations in this big drop of files, here's what the country's deputy attorney, General Tyblane, she visited Colleen Maxwell in prison had to say. There's a lot of correspondence. There's a lot of emails. There's a lot of photographs. There's a lot of horrible photographs that appear to be taken by Mr. Epstein or people around him, but that doesn't allow us necessarily to prosecute somebody. Okay. So that's hardly comforting to survivors of Epstein's abuse who've instead fastened their calls for accountability and transparency for everyone involved in the heinous crimes carried out against them. It's where we start the hour with our senior legal reporter Lisa Rubin. Danny Benzke's back with us. You saw her at the top of the hour. She is one of the Epstein survivors who's been talking about it, really sharing her story, advocating for herself and the other survivors and for transparency in the Trump administration. Also joining us, Tara Palmeri, she writes the red letter on Substack. She's hosted two acclaimed podcast series on the Epstein case. They are called Broken Jeffrey Epstein and Power the Maxwell's. I'm sorry if you're ready. You ready? Yeah. How you doing? I'm okay. I mean, you know, we talked a little bit before we started that on Saturday, I just felt so broken. I felt like I couldn't get out of bed. I really had a moment where it's like, what is this fight for if we're just exposing people and, you know, we worked so hard. So many of us worked so hard to speak to congressional leaders, to talk to senators, to talk to anybody we possibly knew had any power to say we want this done the right way. We want to see it all. We need to see it all, but we want survivors to be protected. And we've just heard from the beginning, even, you know, when I was at the House Oversight Committee, Mike Johnson came in and shook our hand and looked us that in the eye and said we're all the same side of transparency. We all just want justice and we want to protect the survivors. That is our first goal. Comers on the same thing and those are just to name a couple of people, right? But to then have this come out and I'm looking through the files and I'm seeing my name all over the place. And the redactions don't even make any sense. I almost felt like, you know, if it was like a page where nothing was redacted, then it would make me feel maybe even a little bit better. But instead, it's literally like my name, or my full name there, my address, everything. And then Danny, which is my nickname, of course, is redacted. So there's just no rhyme reason to any of the redactions. But my heart breaks for our Jane Doe Sisters. I came across a black doubt picture of myself. You know, when we as survivors look at these images, people are like, oh, it's redacted. It's not harmful. When you look at the border, you know exactly what that picture is. You know exactly where you are. And so for me, that was a redacted photo. However, there are others that the New York Times just came out with that article that said that there are all these nude photos. That is your government that is exposing victims to that degree. So it's so devastating and heartbreaking that the government, the people, the Department of Justice, right? Justice. Like that this is what they're willing to do to citizens, you know, abuse survivors makeup, quite a big population. And it is about survivors. We don't want this to become a chilling effect where survivors feel like they can't come forward and those in power will always be able to pull the strings. And that's, it's hard right now to feel any other way. What have you been given any explanation for why you're, I mean, it's your cell phone number, your address, your work? No, nothing. Nothing. And you know, we had written letters to talk blanche. Well, one of the survivors that I wrote a letter to Todd Blanche, I've been saying in every interview that we would love to talk to GOJ. We've been asking and requesting through all the non-profit organizations we know. And we've never had interaction with them. And I think that that has been a big misstep here because even in the labeling of all of these files, they're labeled wrong, you know, and a lot of nobody would know that unless they live through it. And so we could have been a real asset here. And instead, it's just been like the survivors asked for this here you are. And it's like, well, we didn't ask for this, right? This is not correct. So, you know, at this point, I, you know, it's really hard to know where to go from here because we also, the fight for transparency, has to continue, you know, and so to pull everything back now, of course, we want survivors to be under-adacted. But this is the way to get the people that we were trying the perpetrators, right? And I think about Virginia so much, and I think about her fight, and I have said this from the beginning where it feels like she clawed her way through to create a tunnel that we pushed the boulder through now. And it's like she named 40 people, like she named them, and she was so brave to do that. And it just feels like in her memory, like we, we need to make sure that people are held to account. And it just feels like at every turn, it's just a game. And it's not a game for us. It's our lives. What, do you feel safe? Not at the moment. Yeah, it's a really hard question to answer. I think I'm so angry at this point, but it doesn't matter. And that's, you know, my sadness, and I felt so all that shame that I felt from such a young age really came back while I was looking through this. And it's expected a little bit, right? Because I knew that like, there would be redacted things that I would see that would trigger emotions, but not to this degree with my name out there. And, you know, Jane Does that I know exposed, it's just absolutely egregious and appalling. But moving through that, there's like, I couldn't get out of bed for a day. And then after that, the rage, the anger is like, and honestly, listening to Virginia's family, to Sky and Amanda, we were all on Zoom call together, just a call just to check in with each other. And listening to Amanda speak, I was like, yeah, we have fight. This is great. Like we are in this together. Yes. And so I do think like that's the difference is that we do have each other now. And that changed the world in September. And I think as we move through these files, we get really stuck in our own stories, but we have to remember that we are collective and we are really strong together. Tara, I'm dying to hear what you think of what's been released, but really I think Danny gave us a new sort of place in on this. What they've done to the survivors is an insult to injury, doesn't begin to capture it. This episode is brought to you by Vanta. Security and compliance, Done Wrong is a headache. Done right? You build trust and grow faster. That's Vanta. For startups, Vanta acts as your first security hire, using AI to get you compliant fast. For enterprises, it's your AI powered hub for compliance, risk and automating workflows. From startups like Kersa to enterprises like Snowflake, top companies choose Vanta. Do security and compliance right? Get started today at Vanta.com. Reason is there is only a few dozen of them like Danny who have come forward and spoken about it, even though the FBI has said there are a thousand victims. It's because this is a really difficult crime for the victims to deal with to process. Everyone handles it in a different way. A lot of the women too that have come forward, they were older too. They weren't really young. Some of them were young, but it's often the really young ones that have a really hard time. The older ones, they speak for them. I just think this was handled so happy. Then you see the lack of interest in pursuing any further investigation into the many men that were named. The many men that could have, the tips that came in there could have been a follow-up investigation. I'm not reading. I know there are three million files, but I haven't seen any follow-up, true follow-up investigations in these files that show contact with a suspect's lawyer in the very least or contacted the suspect to ask them, we received this tip, even President Trump himself. Why did the FBI not pick up the phone once if they were receiving all of these calls and reach out and ask what this was about? It's really shocking. Then you see Jake Clayton, is the US Attorney at the Southern District of New York, which has been really holding on to most of the documents, and you know how closely connected he is with Mark Rowan, the head of Apollo, who's very, I'm sorry, Leon Black, who picked him to succeed him at Apollo, and Leon Black is so prominently featured in the files. There's an FBI presentation that lays out one of the, you know, victims' claims against Leon Black. Now he has denied these claims. He settled with one accuser, and he had to step down from his role, but when he stepped down from his role, he picked the guy who was leading the Epstein investigation to succeed him. This is the power, this is the network that has kept this story dead, and the survivor suffocated for decades since 1996, because Epstein and all of his friends had so many connections at the highest level of power, from administration to administration, and you're even seeing it now after his death, and it keeps his co-conspirators, it keeps the perpetrator safe. You're cracking away at it with sort of old-fashioned return lesson, tell me what you're reporting. Well, Nicole on Friday, I started going through the files, and I started doing it by methodically searching for the names of the people that I knew to be victims, people like Danny and many of the others, survivors who have been most prominent, and that's when I found the driver's license of a particular survivor with her full photograph unredacted, her name, and to Danny's point about sort of these nonsensical redactions, her address was redacted, but I could see her name and her photograph, and I picked up the phone and I called her lawyer, and I said, these are some things that I found about her. I also found handwritten notes from her FBI interview in the summer of 2021, when she was preparing to testify at Gleimaxwell's trial. This was a trial she'd ended up being one of four testifying survivors at. There's an interview that always comes before a victim or a cooperator testifies it a trial, where you're basically expected to come clean. You tell the prosecutors in the FBI everything about your life, history, including anything that you're embarrassed of, or you might have done that you can survive cross, right? Correct. So that you can survive a withering cross examination, which is what the expected Gleimaxwell's lawyers would do to her, which is sick on its own level, but it's correct. But those notes were presented in such an unredacted form that I knew unmistakably who they were about, and so I called the lawyer, and the lawyer called this particular survivor who said she was floored, and she took the time to speak with me over the weekend. Her name was Anishka DeGeorgio. She testified as Kate at Gleimaxwell's criminal trial, and Anishka wrote a blistering email to prosecutors at the Southern District of New York demanding that they explain to her how this could have happened, how they had the audacity to retraumatize her, particularly when she, like so many of the other survivors, has worked so hard to put this in her past. No, Anishka's mental health professional now, which is ironic, but she is also particularly composed at discussing this and what she has gone through. And one of the things she said was, look, you didn't just expose me to trauma, you expose me to legal and professional harm, because my clients or my patients know, know these things about me. I have said things in my FBI interviews that expose other people. She talked about her romantic dating history, for example. She talked about her sobriety coach. These are things that some victims and survivors expected would always be concealed from the public, and they didn't get an opportunity to preview it. There are survivors who said to the Southern District or to me, justice, why don't you give me my file first before you let the rest of the world save me? Could you give me my file? And not only did they get no answer at all, and she still hasn't gotten an answer to this letter. She sent to us, Dan. Why? It's infuriating, Nicole. Did you get your file before? No, no. I found it in a, it was 245 pages of other 302s. I was just combing through it, and I had done it by searching my name, which originally I was like, oh, nothing will come up, because it's all redacted. Not true. And so, and actually, what's weird about that is, I searched my name, and there were only like two or three files, but then as I combed through more, than I'm finding more, and my name is not redacted. And so, the search isn't even working correctly. You know, it's just a nightmare. It is a nightmare. Nicole, can I add something to what Dan just said? I found Danny's 302 over the weekend too, and I found it in a stretch of 21 pages across which the personal information of 13 different women was splashed all in a row. It was stunning to see. Now, the Department of Justice says they've now taken those things down, but I will tell you before I came on air today, I was looking at a document that another reporter here had found. And I saw again, an unredacted picture with a name and last initial of a survivor witness, the audacity of these folks to tell us on one hand that it took them six extra weeks because they were being so careful to ensure the privacy and safety of the victims. And yet to do this like this is just astonishing. Well, and it's so haphazard. I think something that I was looking for because, you know, in 2008, I was subpoenaed and I was terrified. I did not. I was not one of those people knocking down the door to the FBI saying, please take my statement. I was like, I'm very scared 20-year-old. I was 17 when my abuse happened. You know, 20 years old, I wasn't in a place. I was trying to distance myself as far as humanly possible from this horrific experience that had happened to me. And so what I gave them needed to be clarified, quite a bit. There were things that I really needed to sit with that I hadn't really thought about until I went through a lot of therapy and understood the situation a little bit better about the manipulation about, you know, my mom's brain tumor has been something that's been reported on and, you know, even just that interaction of bringing Jeffrey the scans and his response of being more abusive after that. That was something that I really needed to think through and come to terms with. So my 2008 is very like word-volody of I scared 20-year-old. So I really felt strongly that I needed to clarify in 2018, 2018 or 2019 rather, I'm so sorry, 2019, the FBI came to my door. And they sat down in my apartment with me and I finally felt like I was able to tell more of the truth than I ever had before. And I cannot find anything reported on for that. I found a Manila envelope with chicken scratch handwriting that I think is something about my case and something about me. But there is no like anything that would sort of give me like, I don't want to say the credibility because it's not the right word. But I'm knowing that that that that that that my story was recorded. Right. Yeah, exactly. And so I think, you know, it does feel strategic and very deliberate that what they're pushing out there with our names for anybody that's been publicly. All right, no one's going anywhere. Also, head for us. The backlash among folks that have been largely quiet for the last year, folks in entertainment and sports, cultural backlash to Trump and ICE and has a salt on immigrants, protesters and ordinary citizens on the streets of our cities. We heard one of the sharpest and most really fiercest rebukes to ICE last night from worldwide music superstar, bad money at the Grammys as the voices criticizing Donald Trump and ICE are growing ladder by the day. Also, head for us, Brandy reporting the New York Times and have a director of national intelligence, Tulsi Gabbard arranged a phone call between Donald Trump and a group of FBI agents one day after those agents search the election headquarters in Fulton County, Georgia. It comes as the Wall Street Journal is reporting about the existence, the mysterious whistle lower report about Tulsi Gabbard that has been stalled for months. That then White House continues Dr. Quick Break. Don't go anywhere. Hey, Saints Breeze, we get through so many snacks. Have you gone to think to help me save? Well, we're always matching and lowering prices. So hundreds of Saints Breeze fresh fruit, veg and everyday products are priceless to Aldi and every week with nectar you can save money on thousands of the products your family loves. So you can snack away knowing you're saving money. Saints Breeze, good food for all of us. Selected products, Aldi priceless, not in an eye. Nectar prices require nectar recumb. Terms at www.sensbiz.co.uk, slash Aldi priceless, and nectar.com slash prices terms. We're back with them, right? So, Tara, I want to ask you, you know, take me to school. How do you cover what has been released? I think there's a real caution, which is right, right? Under the one, we are careful. But I think that the perpetrators are benefiting from all the small sea conservative approach to what's been released. And just tell me what to you is most interesting and what you're pursuing in terms of what new information has been released. Yeah, I mean, right now it's hard to say because there's a lot of information in there. There are a lot of tips. But there's not a lot of follow-up, right? And so I think as reporters, we can look at it. We can take that information in and then try to corroborate it, find sourcing, speak to survivors, witnesses, people who were in Epstein's orbit, to find out if it's true or not. I mean, that's the job of the Justice Department, you would hope. But as we've seen, they haven't done that. It's also just interesting for me and a lot of other reporters who cover politics and power to just see the web of power around Epstein and how far his network extended, even to the White House Council, Kathy Rumler, getting a Birken bag from him and advising him on how to kill ABC's interview with Virginia Dufrey. I mean, that just is a very clear example of why this was able to stay secret for so long. It was proximity to power. And it was power across multiple administrations. And you see it even in financial elites, the legal elites, it's just so many people that were in his network that were friends with him after the happy to go to his home after he was a convicted sex offender. And it explains why these people continue to have a sort of immunity after as well. What do you explain Trump's reluctance to dump all the files? I mean, there's not a lot about some of his relationships with Russia. There's not a lot about his really with Prince Andrew. There's that picture, but there's not much else there. There's not much about his relationship with Saudi Arabia. Anyone who's been covering this story knows that Epstein had a very vast international network. And they might be protecting that or withholding it for national security purposes as was indesignated inside of this Epstein Files Transparency Act. But this is the Department of Justice led by President Trump with holding documents at its own discretion, which is why I brought up the Clayton example of something appears that just doesn't look right to have a person who worked at an institute was selected by the head of an institution who clearly is very closely implicated with Jeffrey Epstein to be so closely aligned with him. And I just think that there's just so many obvious conflicts in this story. And I don't think anyone's taking it seriously enough. And I think there's a lot more to learn and to know, but you'd have to actually put the resources into doing a true investigation and take the depositions of the survivors seriously. I don't know why they're not taking a serious, you know, they're not they're not seen as credible evidence in this case. It's just the word of a woman is essentially what I take away from it. That's the way they see it. Oh, this woman says this, whatever. Yeah, well, we take it seriously. I'm looking to stand top of this. Thank you. Thank you for being here. Thank you so much. And I really, I think that when the history is written of this time, your courage, I think, made other people feel brave in moments when this fight came to them in other forms. And I think everything that people find a way to do that they think is beyond their capacity has its roots in the displays of courage of you and all the survivors who went public. And I know that behind all of you who went public or many more who didn't so. Well, that's, I think the push right is that we know that for every one of us that is standing up here, we actually represent, you know, a thousand, but not just obscene and maxill survivors. I have survivors that write to me all the time. And I love it getting these, you know, messages in my inbox. And it's like, you know, thank you. I finally came for it in my family. I finally came for it. You know, and like that's that's what we need is just to keep shining the light in the darkest places. So I just appreciate that everybody's, you know, that's what fuels us. So, um, yeah, I just hope that everybody can continue to stand together and push it forward. Oh, we got you. Thank you. Thank you. Mr. Rubin, thank you for your reporting on this. Tara, thank you. Can't do these conversations without you. Thank you. That was another episode of the Tara Paul Mary Show. Thanks so much for tuning in. I have been feeling under the weather, but of course the Epstein files always drop when I'm not feeling great, but this is how it is. And I power through because I believe this story is so important. I hope you appreciate my reporting that you can find at Tara Paul Mary.com. You can sign up for my newsletter, the red letter. That's how you'll get my exclusive reporting about Jay Clayton about his ties to some of the people who work closest to Jeffery Epstein and why this should be concerning for future investigations and the release of the files. If you like my reporting, please like, comment, subscribe, share this with all your friends, follow. It's how you keep me in business. Please leave a comment. I like to hear what you have to say. I'm always interested. I want to thank my producer Eric Oppenate. I want to thank Abby Baker, who's handling my social media and research. I want to thank Adam Stewart, who does my graphics and Dan Rosen, my manager. See you again soon. Hi, I'm Tamsen Fidel, journalist and author of How to Menopause and host of The Tamsen Show, a weekly podcast with your roadmap to midlife and beyond. We covered all from dating to divorce, aging to ADHD, sleep to sex, brain health to body fat and even how Perry menopause can affect your relationships and trust me it can. Each week I sit down with doctors, experts and leaders in longevity for unfiltered conversations, packed with advice on everything from hormones to happiness. And of course, how to stay sane during what can be, well, let's face it, a pretty chaotic chapter of life. Think of us as your midlife survival guide. New episodes released every Wednesday. Listen now on Apple, Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts.
