Julie Brown UPDATED: Acosta's Epstein Explanations Are "Ridiculous," "Disingenuous"

In three explosive articles, Julie Brown tracked having two thousand eight the US Justice Department shut down an FBI investigation that may have been on the verge of discovering the full extent of a child sex trafficking operation run by billionaire Jeffrey Epstein. That's after giving him a sweetheart plea deal on the crimes that had been uncovered. The U s attorney in charge of the case was none other than alex A Costa, now the unit, it states, the

Secretary of Labor under Donald Trump. A couple of months ago, Julie and I sat down in front of a live audience at w n y c S Green Space to talk about her Epstein reporting and what drove her to pursue the story. I had so much for coming UM. You first started reporting on this case when UM a year and a half ago. But I knew about the case for a long time, and you got involved in the case. Why because I was I did a lot

of human rights reporting for the Miami Herald. I covered the prisons, and I knew that Florida was one of the states that had a huge sex trafficking problem. And I always everything that I read was they were going after little cases. But I knew that there were some big fish, so to speak, in Florida, that we're probably behind sex You knew that, how I just you know, it's it's it's just reasonable to think that they're are this.

It's a big money making operation. It's it's all over the country, all over the world, really human trafficking and sex trafficking. There really was nobody pursuing this at all except for lawyers. And that was one of the other things that didn't treat me about this case. You know, you would read about it and then you say, you know, how does this happen and why isn't anybody standing up

yelling and screaming. But the case has been ongoing for quite a while before you got involved, well, it actually had quieted down. I compare what I did in this case to what a cold case detective does. Let's say you have someone who disappeared, and the detectives come in and they find a suspect, but they can't prove it, and then they put it all away in a box.

And then somebody comes along who maybe just got hired by the police department, and they just decide that they're going to, uh, hey, I'm going to take a look at this, and when time goes by. I know this also from other stories I've covered, other people come out of the woodwork, or there might be people that didn't want to talk when it happened. We're afraid for one reason or another in time has gone by, or yeah, or what happened right? And and these girls were at

the time, you know, thirteen, fourteen, fifteen years old. Now they're in their only thirties. Actually, what really launched the piece was when Alexander Acosta, who was the prosecutor, the federal prosecutor in Miami who handled this case, got nominated by President Trump to be Labor Secretary. I thought I knew about the case, and I thought, well, let's see

what happened, which involves to some degree prosecuting human trafficking. Right, I mean, it was really the most the biggest scandal of his career because he gave uh he really let him almost walk away from this crime, and not only walk away from it, but they covered it up. They really made sure that no one really knew that know

the scope of this crime. Now, for those people who don't know a lot of the details of the case, so I want to start with that which is described for people, who is Epstein and what was he charged with? And what was the eventual outcome of the prosecution that Acosta oversaw? Right, Well, he was a billionaire financier and he had a hedge fund. He had a hedge fund, and he dabbled in a lot of other financing things like at one point he wanted to take over pan

m Airlines. There was a lot of different projects that he invested money in and he made a lot obviously made a lot of money. He owned, uh two jets, and he owned homes in New Mexico, the largest single residents here in Manhattan, home in Palm Beach, home in um Paris. Uh So, he was extremely wealthy, very smart, you know, he was a mathematician and Nobil Prize winning scientists were in his circle here in New York. He

grew up in New York. He didn't finish college, but he ended up getting a job at the Dalton School uh teaching mathematic and they're through the students parents. He ended up working for Bear Start and he sort of left under mysterious circumstances there um and then opened his own, um, you know, financial firm. And during the course of the trial, was it did it become was it exposed or was it revealed? How long he been doing this activity with

young girls. Assumed he'd been doing this ongoing and he had people helping him. It was very organized. Described the operation. It was like something if you saw a movie about it, you would think, oh, yeah, right, this is really going to happen. But it's exactly what he did. He had a lot of money and he had a lot of people around him. And what he he liked massages. So what he would do is he had people go out to various areas well. Initially it was like boss like.

In fact, one of the women that he recruited was from our Lago, which is right around the corner from his home uh in Palm Beach, and once he got his hold on a couple of the girls, what he would say to them is, you bring me a couple more girls, and I'll give you the same amount of money.

So he would be paying that. They were paid for services, yes, from massage, from massages, and then and then they were paid as recruiters to bring in more people, right, and the recruiters would recruit more, and it just went on and on the pyramid, and it kept growing and growing until they got to be by your estimation, how many young women were coming in and out of that house over time. I mean it had to be over at least, and they got like if I read correct, and shopping

malls and different. Because what happened was once he got his foothold into one of the high schools there, one girl would tell another girl. And these were girls who came from uh, you know, most people think of Palmp Beaches everybody's wealthy, but they're really is West Palm Beach is a very struggling blue collar area. And there were girls who lived in vulnerable situations where they were in uh,

one step away from homelessness. One girl told me, for example, you know, I've been wearing the same pair of shoes for three years, and I thought, I'm gonna go give him a massage. I'm going to get some money, and I'm going to be abby to puy a pair of shoes, which is really heartbreaking. Actually every time I think about

at that. I met a young woman once on the set of the film who had been a prostitute, and she said, and every time I had sex with somebody for money, all I kept seeing was the new drapes in my mother's house, and oh my god, what a You know. The other thing is he sort of led them to believe that he was going to help them out of their misery, you know, like you're beautiful, I'll get you. Yeah. And he had people, He had people, you know, I have people that kind of thing, and

he did. He didn't know some people, and actually some of them did. A couple of them did become actresses, you know, And so he had some contacts, and he led a lot of them to believe that that I'm going to get you out of this. And I don't think of any of those actresses one in Oscar. They would thank Jeffrey Epstein to their acceptance. Probably not. Probably did other victims come forward who wanted to make charges against Epstein for events that predated Palm Beach. Yes, but

the problem is a statue of limitations. So there's there's quite a number of girls in that category, and there's really not a lot they can do because his activities in that regard confined to Palm Beach, or didn't do it in New York, And from the women that I interviewed,

he did it everywhere. He had an island in the Caribbean. Uh, he would send one of the girls or probably more than one, but one that I know of who I interviewed out to for example, he had the island, so they would take a furry or helicopter from St. Thomas. What she told me was we would go to the nightclubs in St. Thomas and I would just bring him more girls. And Uh, there was Sarah Kellen who was a scheduler. What did she schedule? She scheduled the girls.

Did you interview her? No, she hasn't spoken to anybody, and she got immunity under the non prosecution agreement that he worked out. So she's off the hook. A lot of people are off the hook. We don't even know that immunity for what she did, which only led to a thirteen month jail sentenced for him with for him and work released the whole time. They gave her that for so little. Yeah, the person you did interview who was a recruiter for him, how did they strike you? What?

What did they was it a man or woman? Well, you know, remember a lot of the girls were recruiters for him too, and uh so they you know, it's very sad to think about how this changed their lives. Imagine being fourteen years old and you know, you basically don't have any place to live, and you start doing this and you're fourteen, and you know, now you're thirty and you look back on it, and and it's very

painful to watch how much they blamed themselves. They're very ashamed, and they blamed themselves for the other girls that they brought into it, and they just didn't understand the ramification. A lot of the people that you're referring to were very young, whether they were uh you know, involved in the massage and other related sex activities with Epstein or the recruitment. Were there some grown women and men as particularly women. I'm curious who were recruiters or we're helping

to kind of run the operations. Who should have known better. Well, what he did was though when girls got older, he didn't want them anymore, so then they turned into you know, they stayed with him and started doing it. So we don't really know those older women. We don't really know how they got wrapped up into it. They could have very well been trafficked the same way the younger girls were at a younger age, but he kept them on. Paint a picture of you will of who Epstein you

think is and why did he do this? Because apparently not mistaken, he had a women coming in and out of the house, and he was having sex with multiple women day, yes, like three times a day sometimes. Correct. What did you what kind of a picture did you get at him? Well, obviously he had some kind of an illness to be doing something like that. And I think that the biggest thing that I came across from reading everything and all the research that I did, was

he really felt that he was above the law. He just seemed to know from the get go that he was going to get away with it. Uh. He pressured, intimidated, bullied, hired the best lawyers that his money could buy. And when those lawyers didn't give him what he wanted, he hired more lawyers. He hired politically connected people. He pressured

the girls, He hired private investigators who followed their parents. Uh. He deposed the girls and and got her medical records, saying that she had had portions, called her parents, who were Catholic, and asked her Catholic parents what the goal was to at the victim? Oh yes, and not only just the victims. Actually the police who had been investigated

were followed, the prosecutors were pressured. And I think that's what makes this a story, really is every step of the way with the criminal justice system he powered his way through to basically get away with some of the people that you some of the lawyers involved in this case. There's a left court and Dershowitz and and even ken Star. I struggled to think that people at that level. I struggled to think that people of that reputation, at least in terms of their skills as attorneys or just in

this for a deep pockets litigant and and fees. I wonder what else potentially were you led to believe there might be something like Star, for example. I was kind of taking it back because of course, here Star who made his reputation going after Clinton for sex crimes, and here he's defending Epstein. But with people like Dershowitz and left Court and Star, what what do you think? What else? What else do you think was behind it? If anything? You know, it's hard to know. It was a different

First of all, it was a different time. It was well before the mean too movement. Uh and what does that mean? Essentially? Well, I'm not excusing any of it, but I think that they sort of thought people can still get away with Yeah. I think yeah. And here's the big thing about it. Uh, they didn't care about the girls. I mean, these were they felt these were

throwaway girls. These were prostitutes. Uh, they you know, essentially what what was was Epstein's defense, correct which he said, none of these women that came, they came as prostitutes, were there for a reason. I paid them. If you want to get me on a prostitution rap, that's one thing. But to say I was involved in sex trafficking, which is what they try to do, he said, that's not accurate.

He wanted to contend that they knew why they were there, they knew what they were there to get paid for sex, and that he also, if I'm not mistaken, you can you can uh highlight this for us that he tried to explain that he told everybody, don't bring me anybody here who's under age, and he thought all of them were of age. Is that correct? Yes? But I mean the women that I interviewed who were involved in it, was one of whom, by the way, was involved in it for years, said that he made it very clear

he didn't want anybody who was older. All he wanted was young girls, and the younger the better. I mean, that's basically what he always told them, the younger the better. But of course you know, this is what they say, and he and his lawyers, i'm sure would say that they're lying and that that was not the case described for everyone. Um, what happens in the case involved with the costa in order to arrive at the decisions, they arrived at the plea agreement, they arrived at well, the

state prosecutors in Palm Beach first had the case. The police brought it to them, and with in a very short time, all these lawyers that that Epstein had hired. Uh began to UH pressure the state prosecutor to make the case go away. And essentially the state prosecutor was ready to make it go away, and and really he was going to get anything except a misdemeanor. And the police chief, to his credit, UH said, wait a minute,

this isn't going to happen. Because at the time this was happening more and more girls every time they entered. To keep in mind, since it was a sex pyramid scheme, you would interview one girl and the one girl would say, well, these two girls brought me, and then they go to those two girls and they would say these two girls. So they were getting an avalanche of girls. And here you have the state prosecutors saying, oh, we're just going

to let him off for a mr. Demeanor and the chief, to his credit and the lead detective said no, and they went to the FBI. So then it became a federal case. And Alexander Acosta was the uh U s attorney and Miami at the time and appointed by George W. Yes. It was a Bush administration, was Republican administration. Now, uh Epstein was very much of a Democrat and he had supported Clinton and a lot of other democratic causes, but

he he was smart. It was a Republican administration, so what do you do you hire a republican lawyer star kind of star Uh you know, left court. And also the other connection was Acosta had worked in the same politically very important law firm of Kirkland and Ellis, which was the same law firm that uh Star worked for

and left court work for. And so what they immediately started doing was try to work out some kind of a plea agreement with him, almost from the get go, even though the FBI was uh on a parallel course to charge him with sex trafficking, and we're getting more and more information and but so there were too two kinds of things happening. One was the FBI was really

going full steam, was trying to prosecute him. And then you have the prosecutors who were essentially sending emails back and for saying, well, why don't we charge him with this? Or can we charge him with that? And it was this sort of collegial thing going on between the processors. They were asking defense attorneys almost like would you mind if we charge him with this? Yes? They really I mean, from what I read, I'm not an expert on this.

I've rarely heard I've really observed such a difference by prosecutors to the subject of a crime. Yeah. And what was amazing about the whole thing is if you follow the whole thing, which this took me over a year and a half to do, you to follow the sequence of events here is that they would fight down and say okay, we're gonna charge him with this, and and and he'd say okay, we're going to do it. And then you look at it and gong go no, I want a better deal than that than they'd start all over.

And they manipulated. He manipulated the criminal justice system like I've never seen before, because every time got him, which was a pretty good deal, he would say, well, it's still not good enough, go back again. What do you think was behind Acosta? What do you think it was behind I mean, because to me, the first thing that come across is they want to bury this like it's some kind of radioactive waste because there are other people, big people. There's big names of people who are clientele

of Epstein's massage spa. Are there names of people you've heard are big names that are buried in those files. Yeah, and what we are doing at the Miami Herald and and my company that owns the Harold at McClatchy, I have to give them a lot of credit because we're the only news organization that has really done this, uh is. We've been systemically going through these cases now and going

to the courts. We have a case right now here in New York, uh involving Epstein and his madam so to speaking, he had a woman that was helping him allegedly uh with this uh here in New York here, and was a recruiter in New York. Yes, and in pomp Beach she worked to pump each to Gilan Maxwell. Yeah, and this was a lawsuit involving her. And we're trying to unseal the records because we feel that there's more evidence in there. The New York case, that's a New

York and who wants to keep those records sealed? Maxwell and Epstein, But who else? Well, there's a John says indifferent to the is the New York Prosecutor's office, the d A's office as in different toward letting the light into those files as a custom wars. Well, we'll see, I mean they knew. Let's face it, they knew that this was going on. They had the US prosecutors here in New York because he was doing in the same

deferential treatment as a democratic funds. Well, it's the difference. Well, I don't know, It's hard to say, but we do know that Vance did make an attempt to lower his sex offender registration to a lower level. And that was a real joke. I mean, because well, he that he could do what the lower registration level giving him a different codification or a different kind of a label, what, given more freedom what? Well, he wouldn't have to check in,

you know, like to Dalton and teach kids math. Well, I don't know about that. I mean, in this day and age, nothing would surprise me. But uh, you know, there was a lot of like the Weinstein case, there was a lot of complicity. There was a lot of people that knew what was going on, and I think that they looked the other way. Pivot for a minute

to your background in your life, you had a tough childhood. Yeah, well, I moved out of the house when I was sixteen, became a mass paidd miner, lived with a bunch of different friends for a while, worked the lampshade factory and delivered flower as well. I finished school and then, you know, I didn't have any money to go to college, so I worked a bunch of jobs waitresses and did struggled in to the point that I realized I better do something because I don't want to work at kmart the

rest of my life. Was that something that that that you think cause you to have great empathy for these girls? Yeah? Yes, absolutely, I think personal Yeah, well that person. It's just for the underdog because I haven't really only covered uh, you know, women who have been abused. I I did a huge for your project on the Florida prison system, and I've

never been in prison, but I know that. Um. You know, there's a lot of people out there who don't have a voice in our criminal justice system, and they end up in very bad places in our system disposes of these people and then continues to mistreat them so they never have a chance to to get ahead, even if they do pay their debt to society. What is the law the Crime Victims Rights Act, that's the law that

was set aside what happened to this victims writes law? Well, the Crime Victims Rights grants crime victims certain rights, and one of them is they have the right to confer with prosecutors. Well, the prosecutors weren't telling them what was going on. They weren't even returning their phone calls. What happened was they were telling these girls all along, we're investigating this, We're going to prosecute him, you know, trying to convince them to cooperate, you know, and of course

they were all very scared. They felt a couple of them claimed that he had even threatened them. More people that were around him and threatened them, And so they were saying, we're going to go after this guy. And at the same time, they really were working out a deal with him, and they weren't telling the girls. And then before that they even knew it. Uh, he appeared in court, he did a plea agreement, and they saw it on TV and they said, what the heck happened?

I mean, I just talked to the prosecutor or the FBI agent a week ago and they were still, you know, working on the case. So, uh, they hired a lawyer, and a lawyer said, what happened. They misled these girls and their attorneys into believing they were going after this guy when they really were working out a deal with him, and left them in the dark, and left them completely dark and never told them. And if there's a police bargain, you have a right to at least know about the

police bargain. You have a right to appear at the sentencing. They didn't tell any of the girls he's going to be in court. You know, they found out about it on the news. In fact, at the sentencing hearing, the prosecutors essentially lied to the judge that the judge asked the state prosecutor to to the victims know about this. Oh yeah, Judge, they know all about it, and they're okay with this. Yeah, everything's okay. Well, they didn't know about it. None of the girls knew about it. None

of their lawyers were told about it. Uh so he got this deal. And what is even more egregious, not only did they keep it from them at the time that it happened, but then when they the girls a couple of the girls final lawsuit saying you evaluated the Crime Victims Rights Act, they didn't even turn over the non prosecution agreements. So it took them months before they even knew what had happened because the government fought the girls.

They were going to keep its secret. They did not want to reveal it and it and they were hoping they would go away. Yeah. Yeah, And keep in mind this crime victims rights case has nothing to do with money. A lot of people thinking, oh, these are gold diggers, are trying to get money. They don't get any money for the fact that they won this case. This was not about money. It was about overturning a plee deal. But too civil. Liigaans settled with him at the end

of last year. And my question for you is, like people that were involved, and again I'm not I'm not judging them or criticizing them. I'm just wondering what your opinion is. But do these settlements do they stall justice in the end when you have people taking money and they're the victims of these crime and they take money. I think Rose McGowan took money from from Weinstein but

there was no NDA involved. She thought that does that get in the way of us having real justice for the probibly But I feel like because our criminal justice system, unfortunately in a lot of areas, is so heavily weighted towards people who are powerful and wealthy. It doesn't give them a lot of options because look what happened with these girls. Uh, they they had no I mean, they were treated basically like they were just I mean they

were thirteen fourteen year old girls. He was charged with solicitation of prostitution of someone under the age of eighteen, in other words, child. There really isn't any such thing as child prostitution. You know that back then that was still sex books in Florida, but it's no longer on the books in Florida. Yeah, it's sex trafficking, but in a lot of these people's mind that you know, Epstein's camp, the people that worked for him, Uh, these girls were

processed and he didn't really do anything wrong. When we returned Julie Brown on other men accused by Epstein's victims, and one of those men, attorney and scholar Alan Dershowitz, has his say in response. I also check in with Julie Brown about the events of the past week. That's in a minute from Here's the Thing. I'm Alec Baldwin

and you're listening to Here's the Thing. I spoke this past spring with Julie Brown, the Herald reporter who dug into the plea deal Jeffrey Epstein was given in two thousand and eight by Alex Acosta, now President Trump's Labor secretary, and even she has troubled expressing how singular his light sentence really was. Florida has some of the toughest sex offender laws in the country. Uh, they send these guys to state prison and Florida state prisons, I can tell

you because they're they're vicious, you know. But he managed to work it out so that he would go to the Palm Beach County jail. He had his own private little wing. Was a cost of responsible for that as well? Have to that well, Acosta claimed he didn't. He had no idea that that was going to happen, because what a cost essentially did was he washed his hands of the case and gave it back to the state prosecutor. And it didn't just stand there. I mean, he had

his driver picked him up. Explain about the work release. Yeah, he got work released. Now spex offenders don't get work really, the work release was what he was at. What I read was he's out for twelve hours a day, six

days a week, six days. Driver picked him up, took him to his nice waterfront office in West Palm Beach, and uh, you know they had they did have sheriff's deputies, you know, standing outside the office, but they were outside the office, and on the inside of the office people were coming and going all day, including women coming to visit him. I interviewed one of these deputies and I said, well, did you even pay attention what he was doing in the office? You know he had girls in there, And

he goes, oh, no, that was not our job. Yeah, so he could have been continuing his activities during the work release from the private jail cell of the Palm Beach and which he just could have kept it going and going and going. Yeah. Yeah. Now there are people who, um, their names were pulled into this. Um. I'm not going to say rightly or wrongly, but that is always a really difficult consequence of these kinds of things, for people to be wrongly accused and have their name dirtied up.

I mean, as I told you backstage, my name was in Jeffrey Epstein's phone book, along with countless thousands of people who were celebrities, are well known people. Remember when people online would attack me about that. They'd say to me, you perv you rapist? I mean to me, they said, before my name was mentioned in anything to do with the case, they'd write these things, and I would think to myself, I literally said that away. Where the hell did I ever meet Jeffrey Epstein? I couldn't put it

thought to myself in the nineties. Was he at some event that was a fundraiser that I knew? And of course I have a phone number that we give people. That's what we in my office we called the Dummy line, and it's a number we've given out to four maybe five million people over the course of the last twenty five years. But there are people who have had their name pulled into this whole thing. Dersha Witz is one.

And do you think some of the people whose names have been pulled through this are innocent or you're not sure? I think with dershe Witz, his name was on flight uh manifest flying to his on his plane. So before he became counsel to Epstein, he was a guest of

Epstein's at his home. And I think that that's the reason why Dershowitz is significant to a lot of people, is that the idea is that he was Epstein's friend, he stayed at his Palm Beach house, he vacationed at his Palm Beach house, and then he represented him and he helped fashion a plea deal that essentially not only gave Epstein immunity, but gave his co conspirators both named an unnamed immunity. So the implication is that you know, and I you know. I'm not saying Deerschwitz, you know,

is guilty or not. I'm just saying the implication. The reason why the lawyers representing one of the victims brought it out was to demonstrate that if if you know, it is true that he was involved, he definitely had a conflict of interest. How how do people get immunity as potential co conspirators? How do they have they continued to get away with that in court? I mean, that's I've talked to so many lawyers about this, and I don't know of anybody that has ever heard of a

plea agreement like this before. You know, it's impert It is unprecedented that did anybody, any of the women come forward and accuse Dershowitz or anyone else. Two women said he was a party to what happened yes, and nothing has happened with that protected by immunity. Well no, I'm not saying he's part of that because they didn't name him so, and of course he denies that he had anything to do with it, but he has been accused of being involved in this. He insisted women, yes, by

two women, and uh he insisted their liars. And you know he has uh you know, says that he has proof that that this isn't true, but it's been Uh. I haven't seen the proof yet. You know. I'm still trying to work with him on that, but he's he's come out and attacked me pretty aggressively. Uh So we'll see what happens. I try, you know, I try to keep an open mind. You know, it must be a terrible thing to be wrong if he's wrongly accused. To

be wrongly accused, this is a horrible crime. And you know, I guess what I could say is I still try to have an open mind, and I want to. I mean, the truth is the truth is the truth, you know, and only one person can really be telling the truth in this case. And I don't think anybody really knows because these are he said. She said in a lot of cases. Uh so nobody. I mean, we might never know. Do I have a picture of you that were you

sitting at a kitchen? I mean, I'm gonna be very melodramatic now, but um, were you sitting at a kitchen table at the end of some days and just staring at a you know, a cup of tea or something that's saying, you know you you just couldn't believe, not not that this not just that this happened, and not that's just that it was covered up, but the way that it was covered up, and this is so insidious, how this was done. And they gave this guy like, uh like he went to camp for a while, an

extended trip to camp. Yeah. And with everything that I uncovered a little by little, you know, it's like peeling away an onion. And I get so tired because it's a lot of dense court documents, you know, ten thousand probably records, I mean, just so much and it's a lot of it is so it's all legally's and I'm not a lawyer, and trying to make heads or tails out of it, which just gets so tired. For a good point backstage, backstage, which you said the herold like

other newspapers, are not wealthy organizations and institutions anymore. So this money meant a lot. They had spent a lot of dough to do this legwork. Yeah. Yeah, they invested a lot of money into this. They believed in me. Be Bradley there in your story. Yeah, well it was Casey Frank. I have to give him. He's my editor who actually even went to bat with me. The police chief to not want to go public. He had never

gone public with this before. He had been also, you know, his career was because he went after Hepstein to his career. Uh was hurt by it. And well a lot of people went after him, you know. And is he still the police chief. No, he retired and he wasn't taken out of office removed, No, but it became hard for him to be the police chief. And he he and uh and the detective Joe Ry Carey who had who

after I interviewed him, unfortunately bested away. They were really the only two people other than lawyers who risked their careers really, uh for these girls, and uh, you know, and as I was mentioning my he didn't want to talk to me. It took me months to get him to talk to me, because I said it has to be on the record, you know, because he had he had talked quite frankly. The reason why he didn't want to talk to me, he said, he talked to a lot of reporters off the record and sort of told

them where to go, and nothing ever happened. He was convinced that a lot of media had squashed this story, and he had was really at the point where he was fed up and didn't want to talk to any media anymore. And so I said, we're not going to do it, and he said, no, somebody's going to call your publisher and the next thing you know, you're going to be assigned to the obit department. So I said, no, you know, talk to so Casey called him up and told him, is that the game show host of the

journalism department dement? Yeah, exactly, that's about it. Yeah, Um, the like, what was the part that really just made you go, oh my god? It was really among many things that I think, it was the fact that the government now think about, um, you know, we know about the abuse in the Catholic Church, and the Catholic Church protected the priests, and we know about the abuse with the Olympic gymnasts. The university had protected this doctor, but this was our fermant, even after they knew what he

had done. The biggest thing that drove me was how they continued to fight these girls after they filed this crime victims rights lawsuit. It was almost like they were Epstein. The government was in Epstein's camp, they were his counsel. Yeah, and they were saying, we're not giving you these documents. We're not going to tell you what we did, like defense attorneys, and that just I mean, how do you do that? How in good conscience do you do that? What can we do to help protect young women from

this kind of sexual abuse? Well, there's a lot of different things. Um. I think our law enforcement agencies, police officers, prosecutors especially need to be better trained to handle these kinds of cases. There's a whole different way you handle trauma victims. You can't treat them like just any other victim. They're in a different category because trauma does things to your brain and it makes it so that you you

you react to things differently. I mean, there's a whole science behind trauma and so a lot of law enforcement people don't know how to question victims who are are victims of sexual assault. They expect that they're going to go ask them a question, and when they hesitate, you know, or they're not consistent in some of the answers, that

they're unreliable witnesses. But I've interviewed uh FBI experts who have who have made their careers in this, and they said that actually, you should expect that their memories are not going to be consistent, and if they are consistent, that's a sign that that maybe they aren't telling the truth because the consistency is that they suffer from trauma and they won't remember exactly every detail the same way,

because that's the way your brain is. You you know, I've been through some trauma and there are things in my life that I can't remember. I mean, I'll never remember, you know. So uh, you know, you have to have law enforcement people who are really trained to understand that. And there's a whole like I said, there's a whole science behind it. Um, do we have any questions from the audience from market? Um? You got the mic here

right over. UM. I just wanted to ask if you had received any pressure similar to the people involved in the case, to not continue the investigation, to not publish the article. Uh well, I wouldn't phrase it that way, but let's put it this way. There's a lot of people who have been pretty aggressive with trying to uh discredit me in certain ways. Uh, so, you know, I'm pretty tough. There are countless journalists that are killed all

over the world for fighting for the truth and for democracy. Um. There are countless journalists right now being tortured in prisons all over the world. And so anybody that every time I you know, that question comes up, of course, you know, you think about it in the back of your head, but I think about all the other journalists out there that are just really risking their lives every single day. On the end here, UM, thank you. I have two questions.

First is did you have a chance to interview him? And second question is what happened this moment? Now? Were they doing in life? And if you touch with them an interview again? Yeah, thank you. I tried several times. I went to his house when I knew he was there, knocked on the door, wrote letters to him, certified letters, wrote wrote letters to his lawyers, reached out to people that I knew knew him, but no, I I just he probably just thought I was this little reporter from

the Miami Herald. It wasn't, you know, just like any other reporter, just doing another rehash of the case. So I you know, I don't think he felt that he had to respond to me. And that's just my guest. Uh. I still stay in touch with the girls, and and uh, I was really touched. They were very young. Some never even told their families that this happened. One of the girls in that category who shared her story to me, was scared to death about how her grandparents would read

the story. And after the peace came out, she called me and she said that her grandparents had we turn said that they were really proud of her. You know. So I'm sorry, but that being really touched because it takes a lot of courage to do that. She she she was really worried about what they would think of her. You know, a lot of the girls, I'm sure field that way. And uh and like I said, they feel really ashamed. They really punished themselves. A lot of them

didn't turn out well. Some of them are dead. Um, they've overdosed. Uh. Some of them became strippers, and you know we're we're victims of violence addicts. The one girl I interviewed, I interviewed her the first time I interviewed her. She was in prison. She was serving a longer term for selling drugs than he served for molesting underage girls. So that that that's amazing. I want to go over to this side this Showman and the r In the Southern District of New York, there was a lawsuit brought

by a Jane Doe against Epstein and Trump. It had previously brought in California. Uh, it was subsequently this continued. Uh do you know why it was? And have you ever dealt with the Jane Doe in that case? And what did you think of her? Nobody knows who that Jane Doe is. She's sort of disappeared after Uh that came out. And you know, at the time, the lawyer Lisa Bloom was representing her and had said that she had been threatened in some way and decided not to

go through with it. I haven't been able to find out who she is or find any evidence at all that that that her story was true, which is why most of the media has not really written about it since because Uh, you know, we can't find any evidence that any of it had been then it was right at the time of the election. I think it was a couple of days before the election. So there's a lot of Yeah, there, there's a lot of people that

suspect it might have been politically motivated. I'm not saying it was, but I've never been able to find out any evidence that it's true. And I have looked into it, and I've talked to a lot of people who were affiliated with it, and I haven't just been able to confirm it. And this gentleman way in the corner right First, I have to say bravo for the work that you've dot. I know, as a journalist you cannot pay sources, and I didn't hear a whole lot about whistleblowers or leakers.

If we could incentivize leakers in government, there have to be people there that despise what's going on, and it wouldn't it be possible if they could find a way to get to you through a neutral source. Is that at all possible? Well, you know there's these Uh I have a pro proton email. I'm new to all this kind of technology. Yeah, well, it's encrypted, uh email, thank you somebody. Other people know about this. I have younger people fortunately on my staff, on our staff, who have

helped me with this kind of new technology. So there's ways for people to get me and not reveal who they are, without you know, having to pay anybody to do that. That lady weigh in the back. I want to get back to the safety of journalists. What concerns, if any, do you have about your own personal safety. I want to know what you do, what locks you have,

what the security is. Well, for a long time I had a nice loud dog when I was covering the Florida prison system, and there were some people that would show up, you know, lurking outside my and the dog would be so loud. It was my daughter's talk. So now my daughter has her dog back, So I'm thinking maybe I should get another dog. But uh, you know, I don't really think about it until people ask me. Then I get worried. You just keep doing your job.

We think you're from Florida. Automatically you carry a gun, don't you. Yeah, well I've had you know, I have a lot of friends who are police officers. In fact, my ex husband is a police officer. And they've all advised me that I should have one, but I just can't bring myself to do it. Like I said, I grew up in Philly, and you know, you just pay attention to where you're going and what you're doing. Look, if anybody really wants to get you, they're going to

get you. I can't finished. If we didn't call, we didn't call you. I'm sorry, We're gonna finish with you. SCA. What do we know specifically about the relationship between Epstein and Clinton. Uh, he was absolutely on Epstein's plane. Uh, you know there it's been documented that he's help where

South Africa. Epstein donated some money to the Clinton Foundation, and during this time period, which was I think the early two thousand's, uh you know, they were the AIDS epidemic was spreading in Africa, and there was you know, a sort of a fact finding plane trip that Epstein took trip Clinton on. Now he went on his plane more than that, though. We know that there was probably like twenty trips, and uh, you know, of course, a lot of people suspect that maybe he was involved in

some way. He's denied that he was involved. And the one girl that we know was very much involved. Underage girl Virginia Roberts said that she never saw him with any that's correct. That's correct. Well, I was gonna say I could talk about sex trafficking all night long. I think I've had about enough of that subject for now and around the time, I want to say that, you know, journalists who do the job you're doing our heroes, and I admire you very very much. That please. I admire

you to mens Thine for what you've done. Uh, thank you to my guest Julie Brown for the Miami herold. I thank you all for coming. Thank you Julie Brown on threats to her safety and that of other journalists around the world. When former Epstein lawyer Alan Dershawitz heard that his name had come up, he wanted the opportunity to respond. Here is our conversation. Julie Brown denied your

listeners the full truth about her reporting. Um. She mentions two women who accused me of having sexual accounts with them. I never met these women. I don't know who they are. They totally came out of the blue. This is the only me too case that I'm aware of where there was no prior relationship, where there was no knowledge. These are just strangers who were for mostly accusing me. These are both women who have long records of falsely accusing

famous people. The first woman, named Roberts, who Brown relies on for her reporting, had gotten a hundred sixty thou dollars from The Mail in London for an article in which she remembers vividly meeting al Gore a typical or on Jeffrey Epstein's island. They've never been on the island. Uh, secret Service and other records confirmed that she also remembers meeting Bill Clinton on the island. Secret Service records confirmed he was not on the island. Her own lawyer, UH.

Robert's own lawyer admitted to me in a tape recorded conversation that his client was quote wrong, simply wrong. That I couldn't possibly have been in any of the places where she claimed to have sex with me. I produced all my travel records every single day of my life during the two years this woman and Jeffrey Epstein and proved conclusively that I couldn't have been at the places.

That's why uh. The the head of the FBI, the former head of the FBI, Louis Free, did a complete and thorough investigation and concluded that the stories were made up and that they were a false The judge struck the allegation sanctioned the lawyers, profiling them. The lawyers then withdrew the allegation, admitting that it was a mistake. And

yet your audience didn't hear anything about that. Um. The second woman went to the New York Post and claimed she had sex takes of Hillary Clinton, of Donald Trump, of Richard Branson, and of Bill Clinton. And of course she was lying through her teeth, and the New York Post threw her out the reporter's name as a marine Callahan show confirm all of this. And yet um, they produced her as the second woman after I was threatened that if I didn't withdraw a bar charge against the

first lawyer, they would find a second woman. Because two women are better than one. You know, people say when they smoke this fire, sometimes when they smoked this arson. This is a case of arson. This is a case where two women for profit, and they've earned an enormous amount of money. Yes, um have falsely accused me to

frame me, and I'm sinking an FBI investigation. I've asked for the FBI to investigate me along with these two women because they filed out to David's an eye filed after David And how was that and how was that going? Is the FBI responding to your request? Well, we're waiting to hear obviously. I've also asked for any law firm in the country to conduct an independent investigation. I'm willing to show everything to everybody because i did nothing wrong.

I've lived an exemplary private life for all the years that are relevant to this, these inquiries, and these women just made up these stories, and and and Brown wants to win the fuel is surprised, but you didn't tell the public that the source she relied on, the major source, Virginia Roberts, is a proven perjura and a proven liar. I won't rest until Virginia Roberts goes to prison and

the other woman goes to prison. False accusations are serious, whether it's the actor in Chicago Smollet who falsely accused people, or it's these women. False accusations hurt Me Too movement. They're very serious. And Julie Brown hasn't reported the other side of the story. Sure, she put into the story that I denied it that's not enough. She owed the readers the obligation to say, I produced all my travel records, there was an FBI report, the judge struck everything. That's uh,

that's true, and then nobody would believe these stories. It's pure advocacy. And if a lawyer ever behaved that way, that lawyer would be disbarred for failing to produce relevant evidence that shows that I was innocent when the women are claiming falsely that I'm guilty. So thank you for an opportunity to tell your listeners the whole truth. Well, I mean, I listen, I have tremendous in my own

life public life. I've had my share of things that I felt were not reported accurately or not really very fair, and so I have tremendous empathy for that. I only have one question, which is that in the we live, and of course this is the American way, which is to torpedo people's careers over sexual charges. America is particularly obsessed with the sexual clinton and so everything is in other countries. The differences they did it here, we no no, no no no no, but didn't do it no no no.

I'm not disputing them. I'm just leading up to something which is that that in this country people are often doing this too, this as a form of character assassination and to nullify someone's career with these sex charges. Because in other countries this doesn't play that much. I mean in other countries, they don't care. In other countries women would put in p But but what I'm asking you is, so you think that these two women that are making

these false charges against you, it's purely about money. Well it started with money, uh, driven by their lawyers. The first woman, Roberts, told her best friend I have it on tape that she was pressured by her lawyers to name me. She had never previously named me. There are some emails now that are still sealed, but we're waiting

to get them unsealed. But they show how the plot unfolded, how they admitted, how she admitted she never had any contact with me at all, but she was told she had to put me in her book because otherwise the book wouldn't sell because I'm famous, and this is a one with a long history of making false acquisitions against famous people. She claims to have had underage sex with the Prime Minister of Israel, with the majority leader of the United States Senate, the United States Ambassador to the

United Nations, with the man who invented artificial intelligence. You name it. I mean, it's a pantheon of famous people. Professor Allen Dershowitz I called Miami Herald reporter Julie Brown to get her take on what's transpired this past week. So tell me what just happened with the accousta news conference room. Well, Mr Custa is elaborating on explanations that he has given in the past about why he didn't

of that really prosecute Mr Epstein. They fall into two categories. One, he is trying to explain the even itself and and how they felt that they wouldn't win a trial if they had taken it to trial. And to the second part of it is he's being grilled about the secrecy part of the agreement where they didn't inform the victims and that part of it which led to the judge ruling the entire agreement was illegal. Um. So to start with the top part, you know, not having the evidence,

I'm saying that some of the witnesses were reluctant. Um. Look, uh, you know he could have continued to investigate this the FBI wanted to. They were getting new information and new victims every day. You don't need uh, twenty victims. You don't need a whole lot of victims. You just need two or three good victims. So it's pretty disingenuous for him to say, oh, well, there were some victims who didn't want anyone to know that this happened. They were reluctant.

He had thirty six and it would be hard for me to believe that there weren't a you know, a couple of those victims who would have been really good witnesses number one and number two. The FBI was getting more information. It's inexplicable that he would just cut that investigation short, given the breath of this crime, and then

the second part of this, the secrecy part of it. Uh. He's said, um that one of the reasons why he didn't tell the victims was because they they might have been compromised by knowing that there was a restitution provision in the agreement, um, which is ridiculous because they didn't have to tell them about the restitution part. All they had to do was tell them that they had an agreement by the time it was sentenced. Then they wouldn't

have been compromised. They could have mentioned something then. So, Uh, it's a lot to unpack. Um, it's a pretty lampy press conference. It's still going on right now. How did you learn about what happened on Saturday? You know, somebody called me at home and said, you know, Epstein's been arrested, and we had plans to fly to the middle of the country the next day to interview two more victims. Um. It was all set up for weeks and we had to quickly change our plans and come to New York.

You had no idea that something was brewing, that they were going to get him. I had heard rumors that something was brewing, but I also heard that everybody was keeping a pretty tight little on it because they did not want to give him a chance to plea. Um. They thought that if he had found out that they were going to arrest him, he might flee the Uh. I mean without you know, emotionalizing this, because this must be this very powerful experience for you personally. How did

you feel when you heard about what happened Saturday? I was stunned. I'm still I think in shock. I I just I thought maybe something would eventually happen, but I didn't think it would happen this fast. So New York must have some good information they obvioust they do have some new information. They obviously, I mean, the prosecutor made it clear that he felt that a cost and the prosecutors and Areta had dropped the ball pretty badly. So, um,

we'll have to see where it shakes out. Have you spoken to any of the victims since the story broke, Yes, quite a few of them called me. Um, they're related. Um, they're emotional, they're they're ecstatics, they're very happy. Now what is there at this point that you want to know? Now, well, I'd like to know what prosecutors in his office how you know, there's some questions about whether his prosecutors underneath him acted properly. Acosta, I've got to go back to

the set. Um. Uh, they're calling me back. Okay, thank you very much, thank you, all right, thanks, Julie had to get off of our phone call very quickly to get back to the Acousta press conference. I'm Alec Baldwin, and you're listening to here's the thing, foll