Hi, I'm Molly John Fast and this is Fast Politics, where we discussed the top political headlines with some of today's best minds, and the US economy has slowed to one point four GDP growth in Q four twenty twenty five. We have such a great show for you today. Sisters in Law's own Joys Vans 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 Ebstein and Les Wexner.
But first the news.
MI 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 want his video. I'm sure, okay, centerator for election three short years?
What are your thoughts on.
I'm sorry, I had a hard time here, that's okay.
What are your thoughts on running for.
Reelection twenty What am I thoughts about.
What running for re election in twentelve?
Absolutely?
Did you hear the question senator running for reelection in twenty twenty six? Yeah, all right, I'm sorry you all were going to need a minute, Manny.
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 you 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.
Get's interesting because I've seen some people saying, oh, they're worried Bashir will be able to replace him with somebody, but the eight Senate actually put limitations on Basher'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 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 tournaments on candidates.
Yes. So Harriet's 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 poles are looking so bad. The four may be lower than we thought.
Yeah, Harry Enton is a polster 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 a number of posters, 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 twenty points is low according to Yahoo, nineteen points according to NBC is twenty. 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 grat 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 pulling low numbers that are pretty spectacular.
And 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 this Save Act. They can't pass the Save Act unless they get rid of the filibuster. If they get rid of the philibuster, 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. Okay, is clearly like these are his three greatest hits.
My favorite right that we should add to the constitution transgender.
For 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 eighty five 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 be fought now, all caps explanation 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 US to drain it of its treasury and security for many years.
Again not true at all.
So pack the courts with twenty one 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 eleven 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 a posse 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 Trumps 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 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, Massy 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 Rocanna 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 Ran Pauls and the Thomas Massey's and
this sort of like, you know, democratic values aligned. 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 you 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 two thousand and three.
Okay, so that's wild.
He's basically wants to bomb irand 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 that 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 classifiedamin? You know, I think you're like, can I arrest Obama?
And he's like, good, damn it. Wait, I was the one who said that I could declassify things with my brain. God damnit. He was president before me, right, And in.
His head you can see him thinking like, oh, the people are interested in aliens. Oh that is a good one.
That doesn't tie to Ebstein. There you go. That's how we got here.
Joyce Fans 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 Fans, 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 and 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 any hind.
Right, yes, exactly too many fingers. Talk about this Scotis decision on tars.
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 one hundred and seventy pages with great care. So I'm going to speak for it makes two of us. Yeah, we'll be doing that this weekend. It's going to be a fun weekend at shay 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 APT 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 know. But what's important about this case. The tariff's case was fully briefed, fully argued, we have
this long decision that lays out the court's 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 that, I mean, the Supreme Court is not the hero of the moment, right, certainly a six y three decision and should have been nine zero because I'm sorry, I'm wound up about it, but I'll just say it should have been nine oh. It's not a hard case. This is not about the president's power. You know, with Tariff's writ large Congress has the tariff's 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 AEPA 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 oh. The textualists on the Supreme Court should have said the Constitution, you know, the Statute AEPA, none of that says Trump has this power.
So no, mister President. And the fact that three justices were still willing to shill for the President to some extent I think is just.
Let's talk about that the three justices not surprising. Fox's surprising at Clarence Thomas, Samuel and Leito and Justice kegstand Kavanaugh.
But first, but that one is a little bit surprising. Let me say, I think people assumed it might be gor such but he had written, you know, as recently his less term about the importance of textualism, so maybe a little less surprising. What's interesting here though, in what I haven't looked at yet. We've got concurrences from everybody, in the sense 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 the Congress is a bunch of schmocks who do whatever he wants.
Basically, I think that's how we should understand this as ab 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 rule 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 so 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 federalist society or the court, the making of the court itself.
You know, this case 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, but speak you have Wench. 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 kat y'all, who would 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 preexisting 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 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 breaks 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 feal 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 or is 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 Klay, the jerrymandering 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 undue the filibuster, which again they may try to. But they don't have sixty 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 fifty on the Republican side right, No, they're.
Fucking partisan hacks. And also it's yes, 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 rid and you know, they could gain five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten seats.
But what's going to be nineteen? I mean, I think it's worth pointing out that the Georgia think tank that Stacy Abrams started has done an analysis of the Dawn I think just as nine nineteen vulnerable districts.
That's very sobering. Now let's talk about Epstein. We've got these documents. Pam Bondi says it's over. Can Pambondy 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 US are in the Trump cabinet. Basically we have Lutnick. We have I mean, every time you 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, Pambondi 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 Clint 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, Yeah, 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 Las Waxar did a four hour deposition 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 hackro here. But the head of oversight is a guy called James Comber. 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 reviewed less, 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 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 are elected officials. Donald Trump made primary them, but he doesn't determine if they get re elected.
We do.
And that's why we saw the Epstein Files Transparency Act pass. That's why there's 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 Tubervill 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 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 electeds about this about like what the legal remedy here is yea, And they say, you know, there's like no chain of the chain of custody on the videos, on a lot of the staff 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 cheats of things that weren't not followed.
But you do have more than a thousand victims and they have put together a list of two hundred and fifty 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 reference the chain of custody.
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 Rocanna 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 siticide. 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 con tacting 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 King's rally on the twenty eighth, 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 Malijan Faster or Joyce fam 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 thirties 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 Ebstein to the New York City Police Department and the FBI.
Welcome to fast Politics, Maria Farmer.
Okay, 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 Ebstein.
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 sixteen when I reported. She did not report anybody. Yeah, like it was me. I hated that people think that I 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 two thousand and six when they followed up.
Tell us what happened when you came to the court in the nineties, 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 Gaelen Maxwell had just threatened arson against my building fifty two 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's burned. She said she's going to burn all my art whenever I make it.
That she was going to burn down the building a fifty two 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 the twenty six 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 Geeln 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. 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 twenty nineteen, you can pretty much hold on to it is truth. But once the case broke there's a lot of people who called in and declared, you know, I'm a victim involved in our case and it's some kind of a psychological problem that's going on here with these people. But that 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, oh 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 sixteen years old and she's a genius, like she's an IVY 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 Marsenko, and all these people are trying to blame her. She's a fifteen year old survivor.
She was fifteen 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 cost 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 Geelen stole photographs from my lock box 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 his shirt. You know, it was all about body movement. And I was using them not to paint
from directly, but his 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 eleven years old. The pictures they stole her she was fifteen, 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 Geelen Maxwell, that's Bill Clinton. He came to
that mansion seventy first 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 Ronald 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 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 three hundred and thirty acres okay, 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 Whitebarn gates on Whitebarn Road. There were these white picck of gates, and the sheriff often and the sheriff's deputy 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 nine to one one from Leslie Wexner's guesthouse, Wow, and they hung up on me. I called again and the same girl answered, and she said, listen, let me stop you. The sheriffs at the gates we worked 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 twelve 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 sharp shoot 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 fun experience, and I believe it led to my cancers.
One of the most horrible things about this whole thing is that people have attacked you, guys the vegetara.
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 twenty three 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, and no one's ever gonna know who Epstein is. You need to move on, you know. And I just kept trying to manifest this overtaking. 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 Mariika, 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 I handed the on 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, 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 Mark and said, does Virginia not love us? Now? Like what you know? I just didn't get it. I'm like, what, this doesn't sound like her. I can't remember exactly, but for the last couple of years she was tormented by
this man. That is truly the reason we don't have her here now. It was just too much. Her children were her entire life. I mean, I'm not here to speak for her. Her family is but I can just talk 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 Mrvey, and they 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 Daphney Barock was working with them. And you know a hood harmed.
Virginia, right, that's a hooed Barack's wife, right.
Yeah, and who'd almost killed Virginia. 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 Hailey 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 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 thirteen years as an adult co conspirator in my opinion, So people have muddied the waters and now everyone's victim all of a sudden.
I know, you know that Vicky 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 Geeln Maxwell instead, and she called me and said, Maria,
we're not doing this story now. She said, you put a hawk next to your name on a boothday called you signed hawt to 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 Vicky Ward served me for telling the truth about her. Would she sue? Do 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 aid it and about it are co conspirators. They're not victims. They're people who in nab this to go on decades and I looked it up and Vicky Ward wrote about herself for decades. She wrote this one article that says, when I was in my twenties, I was brunette with
wonky teeth. But now that I'm forty, 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. Gelan Maxwell made it clear to me, you've been leon blackbald Maria, you will
never have an art career, And it was true. And I was studying with the phenomenal Eric Fischer, 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 he called him and he gave me instructions on how to f 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 Hodgkins 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 suberior vena cavas 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 here vendeark.
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 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 marshallaw are real And this isn't a commercial.
I'm being serious. 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 I mean, I like your bunny, ye.
Yeah, this is something I actually asked Danny too.
She's amazing. She's amazing too. Yeah, you know what, her personality 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. Mariika Chartoni, 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, I think some of the victims have been murdered. Yes, I 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. 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 frama like instead of speaking to us, a lot of these people like Massy will just say things that have been harmful.
There's video everywhere, right, he can 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 now no.
I don't think so. Okay, 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 Gaylan 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 Gaelan and Jeffrey said that Wexner was paranoid and that all of these videos dreamed 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 why is everything on video? Right? Because Geelan the first time she showed me to intimidate me, she said, be careful about you say, because right above he'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 nineties,
and people don't understand. We didn't have cell phones. We couldn't 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 parts 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 black fail and that's not what I witnessed. I witnessed people that were so deeply perverted and enjoyed this perversion and shared it with Minnie. 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 adorable and Danny adored you two.
I think the worst part of the whole story is that people are bullying you guys.
I've flung 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 Virgin and Mariika, I stayed a lot. So it's some of the victims that kept me a lot.
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 two thousand and six 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.
Well, mother is the most amazing woman in life, and she caught us to survive.
Yeah, thank you, Thank you so much, Molly.
Nod 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. It's billions of dollars, all sorts of things with mister Trump. Today's newest one is we have a ten billion dollar from the taxpayer's bill for Trump's Board of Peace extortion ring.
Yeah, I don't know.
I like that somehow, ten billion dollars. He really loves the number of ten billion dollars. 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 golf.
To mabe 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 cryptocracy 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 and 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.