CLASSIC: How Jeffrey Epstein Broke The Law and Got Away - podcast episode cover

CLASSIC: How Jeffrey Epstein Broke The Law and Got Away

Apr 23, 20241 hr 1 min
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Episode description

Jeffrey Epstein made a name for himself as a mysterious money manager with friends in very high places, from Bill Clinton to Donald Trump, British royalty and more. His firm refused to do business with anyone worth less than one billion dollars, and Epstein traveled the globe, often throwing exclusive parties on his own private island. Yet this jet-setting money whiz was also dogged by rumors -- rumors of ongoing sexual abuse with multiple victims. At least some of these rumors turned out to be true. Any other person would have spent years in jail ...so why is Jeffrey Epstein walking free today? Tune in to learn more.

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Transcript

Speaker 1

Welcome back to the show, fellow conspiracy realist. The following classic episode may not be appropriate for all listeners, so if you've got some kiddos in the crowd in the road trip with you, maybe check out a future episode or tune into our earlier interview with Aaron Manky. This is the story of Jeffrey Epstein at its way back in what January twenty nineteen.

Speaker 2

Yes, this is right before the major news started hitting or with Jeffrey Epstein getting arrested and all the stuff that we're not going to spoil right now. Just to listen to this episode because it takes you back to a time when I think maybe we and much of the world was really discovering what this guy was doing.

Speaker 1

Yeah, and again, at this time that we recorded it, one of our big questions was why is this guy not arrested? So you can get a snapshot here and tune in for our upcoming episode on the aftermath of the Epstein scandal. From UFOs to psychic powers and government conspiracies, history is riddled with unexplained events. You can turn back now or learn this stuff they don't want you to know.

Speaker 2

Welcome back to the show. My name is Matt.

Speaker 1

My name is Noman. They call me Ben. We are joined with our super producer Paul Mission controlled Decat most importantly, you are here and that makes this stuff they don't want you to know. Before we get started, we have a very important message regarding today's episode.

Speaker 3

Today's episode discusses very frankly, some horrific sexual crimes against underaged victims, and it's quite disturbing, but I think it's an important discussion to have and we try as always to be as respectful and thoughtful about it as possible.

Speaker 1

Let's cut straight to the heart of the matter. In an earlier episode, we mentioned the ongoing legal battles of one Jeffrey Epstein. Today we are diving into a sordid tale that will take us from the posh tony area of Palm Beach Island, Florida, to New York, to New Mexico, to Paris, to a private island in the Virgin Islands and a particularly strange series of private plane flights. But first things first, who is Jeffrey Epstein.

Speaker 2

Oh, the man of the hour. Jeffrey Epstein was born in nineteen fifty three on Coney Island. He went to Lafayette High School. He also attended Cooper Union. He dropped out of Cooper Union. By the way. He also went to New York University's current Institute, which he also left without a degree, surprisingly, especially as we continue to learn a little more about this gentleman.

Speaker 1

Yeah. Yeah. For two years, from nineteen seventy three to nineteen seventy five, Epstein taught at a very upscale Ivy League prep school called Dalton School in Manhattan. You'll read accounts that say he taught calculus and physics, and then you'll read accounts that say he taught physics and math. But it was definitely the quantitative, the quantitative disciplines. New York Magazine initially likened his time at Dalton School to the teacher that Robin Williams plays in Dead Poets Society.

Do you guys remember that film.

Speaker 3

Oh Captain, My Captain, Yeah, man, the first really really sad movie I ever saw.

Speaker 1

Right, Yeah, poetry was made for one reason, boys to.

Speaker 2

Woo women and also carpe dm Right.

Speaker 1

So, one parent of a student worked on Wall Street, and this guy was so inspired by Epstein's methods and the math rants that he was known for that he approached Jeffrey Epstein and said, essentially, what the hell are you doing here, buddy, Why are you a teacher? You should be on Wall Street, which lets you know what Wall Street thinks about teachers.

Speaker 2

Yeah, why would you be inspiring the young people? Just make more money.

Speaker 1

And so this guy, this parent, doubled out on this and said, no, really, I'm serious, jeff Let me introduce you to my buddy, Ace Greenberg. You've got to call him. Ace Greenberg is a senior partner at the time at bear Stearns. Greenberg really dug Epstein because this guy Greenberg definitely played favorites. And one thing that he was known for was he had a certain type of young employee

he liked or knew hire. He didn't want people who were just fattened off inherited money or third generation bankers. He wanted brilliant poor people and poor as anything beneath a millionaire to him, who were very, very hungry. And at the time, Epstein ticked all these boxes. So nineteen seventy six he says, all right, screw teaching, I'm going

to work at bear Stearns under as Greenberg. He started from the bottom kind of the way Drake wants you to believe his career began it's untrue, But in Epstein's case, it is. He started as a junior assistant to a floor trader at the American Stock Exchange, and it quickly became apparent that Jeff had a gift for this sort of work.

Speaker 3

So Epstein was, to be fair either a complete genius or very very close to that. He had a specialty, which was in options, and that was at the time something that wasn't particularly well understood, and he amassed a group of clients, really really quite wealthy clients who thought that his ability to assess the tax implications on large portfolios and then to recommend kind of tax loopholes I guess advantages you could say for some of these transactions.

Speaker 1

Yeah. Absolutely, this At this level of finance, the way in which you move money and the order of operations can make a huge difference in how much of a cut Uncle Sam gets or the state of New York or whatever.

Speaker 2

And it's really crazy that it only took him four years to go from assistant to a floor trader all the way up to a full partner.

Speaker 1

Yeah, he beat the game. He became a partner and then what do you do after you beat a game? You stop playing. So he left the firm in nineteen eighty one and set up his own shop. This is really this is really strange and sketchy. Okay. So the premise behind his shop, Epstein and Co. Is that he would manage the individual and family fortunes of clients with a minimum of one billion dollars in their portfolio.

Speaker 2

Wow. Minimum.

Speaker 1

Yeah, And according to the scuttle butt about this guy in nineteen eighty two, he immediately began collecting clients. And he didn't go out and have some sort of Ted talk or some sort of Steve Jobs big Apple reveal speech. People just started coming to him because they knew he was open for business and he was also very controlling. He had these specific conditions. If you made one billion or more, you could talk, but you also had to

accept this. He would not just offer investment advice. He was going to become your financial architect, from soup to nuts, stem to stern, from investments to philanthropy to tax planning to security to a swatching. The guilt and burdens that people felt because they had, you know, inherited wealth that they clearly did not earn. He said to one of his friends at the time, I want people to understand the power, the responsibility, and the burden of their money.

He would take total control of the billion dollars. He would charge a flat fee, and he would also get power of attorney to do whatever he deemed necessary to advance his client's financial goals. And he was really strict about all these conditions.

Speaker 2

And there's this whole thing where he really did stick to this whole. If you're a billionaire, we're cool. If you're not, get the hell out. I mean it's I mean, as crazy as that sounds, like. People would come to him with seven hundred million dollars, put it on the table essentially, and say, Jeff, I need your help, buddy. I've got seven hundred million dollars and I need you to work this through or three and he's like, no, get out, basically, not so kind, no thank you, basically because.

Speaker 1

They were just a little that billion. Yeah, it's like I don't run a business for hobos. Yeah, And that's okay. So there is a quick pause here because that's a question I have. How many billionaires were there in nineteen eighty one. We know there are more now, you know, partially due to inflation, partially due to rise of business in other countries. But were there that many billionaires in nineteen eighty one, I don't know.

Speaker 2

I would think not.

Speaker 1

I would imagine it was a very very rarefied field, right were they couldn't have been that many.

Speaker 2

I mean that inherited wealth. There are at least several hundred families that have.

Speaker 1

You know, that's true because I was thinking of individuals. So it might be like a dynasty that collects all of their ill gotten.

Speaker 2

Gains or happy gotten gains. You know, some billionaires are really sweet and do nice things for the earth and for its inhabitants.

Speaker 1

Right sure, maybe I don't personally know everybody on the planet, so I want to be fair.

Speaker 3

Well, there's also probably some that you know, do it with great humility and just don't brag about it, right, right, I would, I would, I would hope.

Speaker 2

But then you give it to Jeffrey Epstein who says I'll handle you all.

Speaker 1

And that's, you know, that's the smart thing to do. It just makes me think of that Balls Act quote. Behind every great fortune, there is a crime, you know. But yeah, you guys are absolutely right there are clearly people who you know, if you're born into wealth and you don't have control over your circumstances, then of course there are people who want to do great acts to make the world a better place. Bill Gates took himself down several notches financially to help combat disease. That's that's

a stand up thing. I still hate Clippy, but fighting disease is a noble thing.

Speaker 3

Do you know what? When Josh Chuck interviewed Bill Gates, I actually got to go with them and meet him in a hotel room, and Josh brought up Clippy, and apparently Bill Gates is still quite fond of Clippy.

Speaker 1

Yeah, Bill Gates loves Clippy. He has like a relationship with it.

Speaker 2

Uh, he's the only one.

Speaker 1

So when I was a kid, I liked it, but it just slowed down the word processor. So, speaking of billionaires, who are Jeffrey's clients? Aside from one client, a billionaire named Leslie Wexler. Epstein keeps his list a closely guarded secret, and he's also sort of evasive about his process and what he does. Yeah, you could call it wealth management, but that's sort of like calling something a structure. A shot can be a structure, so can a skyscraper or

a pyramid or a nuclear bunker. There are a lot of things that could be considered that wealth management. So he's firm employees as many or employed as many as one hundred and fifty people, but their tasks were overwhelmingly day to day bureaucracy and admin stuff like accountants to make sure the internal finances of the company are running.

All the actual decisions, investment and management decisions were made by Epstein himself, and he's sort of computer phobic, not a big fan of emails and so on, so he's always talking on the phone, which will be important later. So how much money is he making. Some estimates will say he is or was raking in around seventy five million a year, but that's a guestimate, and that's why in a lot of stories about the guy, and there weren't many until fairly recently, you'll hear him described as

either a multi millionaire or a billionaire. People don't really know.

Speaker 2

Yeah, you have to imagine if he's bringing in even somewhere around seventy five million dollars a year with his acumen, his understanding of investment, he's probably gotten well upward of a billion, I'm assuming.

Speaker 1

Well, it's like the Putin question. How much money does Vladimir Putin have?

Speaker 2

Not? I mean, which palace are you going to search?

Speaker 1

Right? How long do you want to live?

Speaker 2

Oh jeez? Okay, Well here's the big question. With however much money he's acquired. What does a guy like Jeffrey Epstein do with all of those piles of cash?

Speaker 1

Beanie babies?

Speaker 2

He sets them on fire? Oh man, see, buy a bunch of beanie babies, buy them a bunch of magic cards, then set the whole thing on fire.

Speaker 1

Wear it a cape. What's his monoical top hat position?

Speaker 2

I don't know. Well, I'll tell you for real what he does is and what anyone should probably do.

Speaker 1

I want a cape so bad, I'm sorry.

Speaker 2

Buy a cape first, then just start purchasing real estate, purchasing land, purchasing stuff that goes on land, different structures. Put them on land that you own. That's what you do.

Speaker 1

Yeah, so he owns that private island in the US Virgin Islands. We didn't mention what the nickname for this thing is. No, it's Little Saint Jeffrey.

Speaker 2

Little Saint Jeffrey.

Speaker 1

Well lit saints, Jeffrey of the US virtu pilots.

Speaker 2

Yeah, but seriously, he owns an island.

Speaker 1

He owns an island. It's it's who was asking Oh, Jonathan Strickland was asking me about this earlier. And it is in fact not shaped like a skull, which I know is a huge downer for everyone.

Speaker 2

Do you think he still has a layer though.

Speaker 1

Yes, he does have a layer. He also has a Japanese bathhouse on this island.

Speaker 2

Yeah, we're gonna learn more about that in just a little bit. But here's the other thing, Noel, he owns on the island of Manhattan, the what is considered the largest private.

Speaker 1

Residence nine stories tall.

Speaker 2

Yeah, he owns that and an island. It's insane.

Speaker 1

He also funds extensive, legitimate scientific research through something humbly named the Jeffrey Epstein the six the Foundation.

Speaker 2

And it's cool. It is genuinely cool.

Speaker 1

It's genuinely good. Since two thousand, the foundation is given around two hundred million a year per year to people like Stephen Hawking, Marvin Minsky, Eric Lander, George Church, Ben Goertzel, other like numerous Nobel.

Speaker 2

Laureates, Lawrence Krausman.

Speaker 1

Lawrence Krauss as well, And over the years, the Foundation has brought a lot of these scientists together and these sort of brainstorming conference situations to get on the same page about fundamental topics like gravity, global threats to Earth, the evolution of language. So you can see some of the implications here. Usually when billionaires or philanthropists are saying, let's understand gravity, they're asking, how can we use it somehow?

Speaker 3

Right?

Speaker 1

Yeah, global threats to Earth. I mean, this all goes back to making smart investment choices too. I think the language thing is really interesting. I'm sure there's a lot of group think theory because that would be valuable in the stock market.

Speaker 2

So this is, in my opinion, one of those things that you do see every once in a while when a certain individual or a group acquires enough wealth that philanthropy is able to kick in at this point, at least to this level where a big, a new creation occurs that is helping that truly is helping humanity in

some way, in some small way. In this case, just bringing scientists to a consensus could be massively important to get everyone on the same page to actually get the Earth to start making some big changes, right, Rather than just a country or one small groups. It's tough for me to know this and then also know what we're going to talk about in just a few minutes.

Speaker 1

Right, Let's stick with the good stuff while we can. You can see the official about age for the Epstein Foundation when he talks about how his funded in two thousand and how it in two thousand and three established a program for evolutionary dynamics at Harvard University with thirty thirty five million dollars seed money gift. The program studies the evolution of microbiology through the lens of mathematics. Then, since its establishment, it's made advances in the treatment of cancer, HIV,

infectious diseases. He's also get this well known for his work funding early education for youth in the Virgin Islands to other places other areas of the world.

Speaker 2

So far, so good, right, Yeah, these are genuinely good things.

Speaker 1

Jeffrey Epstein, a self made financial giant. Isn't just killing it. In the world of finance, A lot of finance guys defined success by violent terms. Crushing it, killing it, nailed it, so smashing it, smashing it.

Speaker 2

Destroyed that.

Speaker 1

Yeah, he did all of that stuff. He's also putting a significant amount of capital into globally important issues, though his motivations are not clearly, not entirely true, altruistic, you can make some money off that. Yet, while Epstein remained for many years an international man of intrigue and mystery, tantalizing, bits of information about his private life gradually emerged. And that's when things got ugly.

Speaker 2

And we'll learn about those things right after a quick word from our sponsor.

Speaker 1

Here's where it gets crazy.

Speaker 2

Rumors.

Speaker 1

We're true, yep, even more so than we thought.

Speaker 2

Wait waits, there were rumors. Guys.

Speaker 1

Yes, she was well open secrets. Ah, people called nieces. That's a gross that's a gross detail. First, let's get let's get the one almost side note rumor out of the way. He's a member of a lot of clubs.

Speaker 2

Yeah. The Trilateral Commission that you may remember from an episode that we've done. We have done an audio episode on Trilateral right, I don't remember. Oh man, it's in a video. Go check out our YouTube channel and watch the Trilateral Commission if you don't know much about it. Also the Council on Foreign Relations also a video also maybe not audio topic yet, honestly, don't know.

Speaker 1

A ton of people are in the Council of Foreign Relations, and.

Speaker 2

Yeah, you know, the Trilateral Commission has movers and shakers that kind of come and go over time. But you can imagine how upsetting these two things are for certain a certain number of us within the conspiracy minded world, like, being a part of both of those organizations is pretty bad, because just being part of one is potentially bad. It isn't necessarily a bad thing overall, but for people who believe this, yes it is.

Speaker 1

Do you think they have capes capes not like in public but when.

Speaker 2

They're in the meetings. Yeah, I think it's more of like crowns and different masks that they wear.

Speaker 1

Okay, yeah, yeah, Okay, I mean I feel like that's a big compromise. Okay, maybe you have to be in this straight up illuminati to earn a cape.

Speaker 2

So that you know, that's one of those things that makes you go ooh, interesting, I wanted to know more about this guy if you're of a certain mind. But there's another thing.

Speaker 1

And this is we're being relatively lighthearted about the inequality of wealth and the globe and some of the ridiculous things that could happen when you're a billionaire.

Speaker 2

Because those are the lighthearted things.

Speaker 1

The multi millionaire. Yeah, but those are the lighthearted things. This is where this is where the disclaimer, the warning we had at the beginning, really comes into effect. From here on out, things are going to be pretty pretty dark. So Secondly, and apparently for decades, Jeffrey Epstein had been routinely seducing, assaulting, and in some cases violently assaulting underage girls.

Speaker 2

And it goes even further than that. The really upsetting thing is that this whole deal that he had going on seemed to be pretty much an open secret in certain parts of both Wall Street as well as Washington.

Speaker 1

Yeah, we have a quote from current president as we record this, Donald Trump in two thousand and two, talking about his relationship with Jeffrey Epstein.

Speaker 2

He said, I've known jeff for fifteen years. Terrific guy. He's a lot of fun to be with.

Speaker 3

It's even said that he likes beautiful women as much as I do, and many of them are on the younger side, no doubt about it.

Speaker 2

Jeffrey enjoys his social life. Well, that was hard to get through that.

Speaker 1

I know. You know, that guy's the president. Yeah, that guy's the president. In a two thousand and seven New York Magazine article, Vanity Fair column list Michael Wolfe described flying on Epstein's private plane in the nineties, saying Epstein was followed onto the plane by how shall I say this, by three teenage girls, not his daughters, who were eighteen nineteen twenty. Who knows they were model like. He's never

been secretive about the girls, wolf said. At one point, when his troubles began, he was talking to me and said, Hey, what can I say? I like young girls? I said, maybe you should say I like young women.

Speaker 2

A lot of smoke.

Speaker 1

A lot of smoke here, A lot of smoke, A lot of smoke. The mainstream public learned of this semi open secret in the early two thousands, thanks in large part to some groundbreaking work by the Miami Herald. These encounters with undraged under A victims the ones that were the subject of the investigation in Florida. They took place from nineteen ninety nine to two thousand and five in mister Epstein's mansions, the one in Palm Beach Island, New York,

and the US Virgin Islands. Many of the girls were runaways or foster children. People from broken homes, people of vulnerable situations. And it's important to note Epstein did not work alone, like we remember when Matt earlier said this is just the beginning.

Speaker 2

Yeah.

Speaker 1

His his operation functioned like a pyramid scheme. A girl would be approached by one of Epstein's assistants or often a previous victim, and told, hey, you can make pretty good money by giving this middle aged rich guy a massage.

Already creepy, right, So once the victim arrives at the mansion, this in the Palm Beach operation, at least not far from Mar al Lago, not very far, she would be escorted to a particular room and then that person would leave, and you can find descriptions of the room in the Miami Herald's piece. Epstein would come in wearing only a towel on the phone, this robe, lay down naked, belly down, belly first, and he would tell the victim to massage

his legs. And then you would start escalating this stuff and offering more money. Also, there were sex toys around. And again I cannot emphasize this enough. When we say underage, we're talking about kids who are fourteen and fifteen years old.

Speaker 2

I can't even say words. I'm going to be making guttural noises for the rest of this.

Speaker 3

And I know this doesn't make me like special sensitive, but it does a little just having a daughter that's entering into kind of the teenage pre teenage phase.

Speaker 2

Yes, I mean, I can't even imagine.

Speaker 1

It's insane things. A lot of these kids are coming from terrible home lives anyway, you know, so.

Speaker 3

They're even like thinking they might get an opportunity or something that might help them out, and right they're just totally abused and used.

Speaker 2

The rage, the rage really just immediately sets in. We haven't even gotten like all the way into this.

Speaker 1

So he would attempt to entice entice some victims to disrobe and do increasingly intimate physical things. He would intimidate others. In at least one case that made it to the public sphere, he did forcibly assault somewhat, and afterwards the girls would be paid two hundred and three hundred dollars

so to pay on what they did. The person that he forced himself on says she gave him a thousand bucks and asked her to be quiet, yeah and apologize, so they would get paid and they would be informed that if they'd like to make more money, they could recruit their friends to come visit Epstein, so long as they were around the same age. And some of the handlers, they're very careful about this. Some of the handlers told the girls the victims when they first came to Epstein

to say that they were eighteen to him. Who the idea being that this will providability, Yeah, some kind of legal defense, but that doesn't fly in Florida. Florida specifically has laws say ignorance of that age is not an excuse.

Speaker 2

Geez, man, you can already see in my mind, I'm picturing something like Nexium that we covered not long ago. Hm, that kind of extremely wealthy person somehow just with the enticement of money, and in Jeffrey's case, I guess in some way not necessarily for the younger girls, but this aura of a wealthy man that knows what he's doing is going to make more money and like has this special place in Palm Beach, but then also knowing that perhaps he has an island it's and then getting your friends,

like everything just feels so disgusting and icky about this and calculated.

Speaker 1

Yeah, that's the thing. It's very calculated. This is not an impulse decision, you know what I mean. And not that not that an impulse decision is in any way better. It's just that this calculated, organizational systematic approach is it is insidious.

Speaker 2

Yeah, it's the spider thing in the web.

Speaker 1

And so let's look at some of the characters that become involved in this ongoing story. First is Epstein's associates and staff. So one of his assistants was a person named Sarah Kellen, and Kellen was accused by lawyers and legal filings of bringing girls to Epstein's mansion to be abused.

Speaker 2

Yeah, according to the police files, there was this whole series of alleged victims that told investigators that they were led like this is the person, Sarah Kellen led these girls to the massage room in the mansion where all this other stuff with the disrobing occurred. And this was in the Palm Beach mansion. I mean, this literally is a conspiracy.

Speaker 3

There are other players involved that are being used as pieces in this like elaborate ploy.

Speaker 2

I mean, well, and it's so scary because who knows, who knows how much of a victim somebody like Sarah Kellen is of him right early on in some other way, like she's in his pocket in some way or something. Well, I mean, yeah, who knows the psychologically trapped. Yeah, that's not just excusing her of what her actions and what she did, but still like we don't know the circumstances.

Speaker 3

How deep this guy's kind of tendrils go, you know, absolutely terrifying.

Speaker 1

And speaking of that, there's another character, Nada Marstankova or Marchinkova. She We'd first learned about her through statements of some alleged victims, who one claimed the police that Epstein told her that he had purchased Nada from her parents in Eastern Europe when she was fifteen. They were described as Yugoslavian or Slovakian. Another victim alleged that she was forced to have sex with Nada marstan Kova and then watch

her have sexual interactions with Epstein. According to the Miami Herald, sometimes Jeffrey would instruct a young woman he described as his quote Yugoslavian sex slave, not Mrsenkova, who was over eighteen, to join in, and he took photographs, and he displayed these photographs around the house. The guys. There's a phrase noll that you in your roommate used, I think applies here. That the guy's proclivities were wide, rife, wide rife throughout

his house. This was not a secret. There was also Ghislaine Maxwell, the socialite and heiress who was occasionally referred to as Epstein's madam and was asked to turnover records. And then there's Alan Dershowitz.

Speaker 2

Alan Freakin Dershowitz, whose into.

Speaker 1

This like an enormously prestigious lawyer. He worked with Epstein on the business side. Dershwitz told outfit called Axios that Epstein lent his family the Palm Beach, Florida house and that he received a therapeutic massage with an old Russian there, but that he'd had no idea anything improper had even

taking place in that house. In twenty eighteen, he said that Epstein, after this stuff became public, he said, Epstein's called me a couple times about legal issues because I'm still technically his lawyer, but I haven't had any social or any other kind of contact with him. But you never stopped being someone's lawyer. And then there's a guy we got to mention just casually he'll come back. Trust us guy named alex Acosta. He was formerly the US

attorney in South Florida. He's currently the US Secretary of Labor. We'll get to him in a bit, but just remember the name alex Acosta.

Speaker 2

We shall remember you. So let's talk about the victims here. The authority has identified more than thirty victims of Epstein. And then if you look at the Miami Harold in their latest report, they identified eighty victims and they located sixty and spoke to four of them officially on the record.

So again, trying to track down all of these people who are alleged victims, and you know, you can only get a certain percentage of those people to even talk because this kind of thing is it's so in citia. Even being able to speak about something like this, especially on the record, is difficult. So let's go through a

few of these. The first one is Virginia gfree geuffree g I U F f r E. She claimed in court papers that she was recruited into this whatever you want to call child's sex ring that this billionaire was running when she was only fifteen years old. She was working as a towel girl at mar A Lago, Oh boy, and that's how she got wrapped up in it. And she also claims that Dershwitz as well as Prince Andrew

participated in her sexual abuse. What is a towel girl a towel girl, I'm assuming at mar A Lago because there's a vast outdoor area at mar A Lago with a pool and everything like that, as well as there are or what do you call them, all of the other things you find out a spa bathhouse kind of thing. I can only imagine that a towel girl had the towel.

Speaker 1

They bring towels. It's like a like a caddy, but with towels instead of clubs.

Speaker 2

I see. And in this case, she's fifteen, which is fifteen, and sixteen is a very common age for these private clubs to hire. When I was fifteen, that's no. Yeah, when I was fifteen I started working at one of these places.

Speaker 1

Not as a towel girl.

Speaker 2

I was in I was a pool boy, right, so I mean.

Speaker 1

And it's a great and it's also that's a great summer job for kids. Yeah, it is, you know what I mean. You make a little scratch, can save up for Nintendo Switch.

Speaker 2

Or whatever, especially out in that area. Some of these private clubs provide some of the best money for your work. Oh, I bet.

Speaker 1

And then there's Courtney Wilde, who was a victim beginning at the age of fourteen. Wild says, by the time I was sixteen, I had probably brought him seventy to eighty girls who are all fourteen. I'm fifteen years old. He was involved in my life for years.

Speaker 2

Ugh. Ugh, And do you me just not skip over the fact that this one person Virginia claimed that both Dershowitz the lawyer and Prince Andrew Royalty were involved. How intense is that and especially occurring at mar A Lago where all of these highly important people are just kind of coming through whenever whenever, and now we have somebody who's claiming to have brought him seventy to eighty girls. I'm sorry, we just had to pause for a moment, and now let's continue with the disgustingness.

Speaker 1

So there's Jenna Lisa Jones who said that she was also she was also assaulted by Epstein when she was fourteen, and she has a chilling and haunting quote here. I was I was somewhat divided over whether we should read it aloud, but here it is. You can't ever stop your thoughts. A word can trigger something.

Speaker 2

For me.

Speaker 1

It is the word pure, because he called me pure in that room, and then I remember what he did to me in that room. Just I don't know gets to me. And there's Haley Robinson. Virginia Robinson was working at mar A Lago when she was recruited to be a massuset to Palm Beach Hedge fund manager Jeffrey Epstein. There are tons of Jane does. We don't know how many there are. We know what the Harald found, right

The Harold says they found eighty. They located sixty. They talked to eight, but only four would go on the record with their names. And you can understand that too, because a lot of these people have been quashed by

settlements and non disclosure agreements. A settlement with a NDA or non disclosure agreement means that if someone if someone alleges a crime and you want to keep it out of court, regardless of what it is, you can have a legal team drop a contract that says, without admitting guilt, here's X amount of dollars, And in.

Speaker 2

Turn, you can't talk about it.

Speaker 1

You agree to never talk about this. The problem is that a lot of those things, as we see, don't really hold up in court if you're asking someone not to confess a crime, you know what I mean.

Speaker 2

Yeah, yeah, So.

Speaker 1

Those are victims, those are collaborators or as you said, no old conspirators. But there are some people fighting the good fight on this side as well.

Speaker 3

So there were several investigators involved in the case. We have Joseph for Carey, who was the lead detective for the case, and in his first interview, he said the evidence the department collected to support the girl's stories was overwhelming and included all kinds of stuff, all kinds of

damning evidence. Phone call records, copies of written phone messages from the girls found in Epstein's trash, and Epstein's flight logs that showed his private plane in Palm Beach on the days that girls were scheduled to give massages.

Speaker 1

Pretty damning stuff.

Speaker 2

Yeah.

Speaker 3

The police also showed how eerily consistent the girl's stories were, just down to the tee, right down to their detailed descriptions of Epstein's genitalia.

Speaker 1

And then there's Michael Writer, who is the former chief of police in Palm Beach. He was the chief during this investigation, and he said detectives were astonished by the sheer volume of victims coming and going from the house, the frequency, sometimes several in the same day, and the universally young ages of these girls. Michael Writer says, it started out to give a man backrup but in many cases turned us so far worse than that, elevated to

a serious crime in some cases sexual batteries. And then there's another good I mean, this is almost true detective level, you know what I mean. Yeah, as far as the web that is unearthed here, there's the attorney for the victims, Skinning Brad Edwards. He's representing several of the young women who were abused as miners by Epstein. His law office is packed with files from the case, and he's been fighting the power at every turn, often outnumbered, outgunned, outmanned.

Because you see, that true detective thing is not just a pop culture reference for us.

Speaker 2

Here.

Speaker 1

There are multiple very powerful people that have been implicated in one way or another with Epstein, and to be fair, a lot of it is not proven, other than the fact that we know they hung out, they maybe took his playing place as the plane, which was also informally known as the Lolita Express. That's true, was in formally known as that. But who are some of these implicated implicated celebrities.

Speaker 2

Well, let's jump in first with Bill Clinton, because he was known to have taken the Lolita Express to the Virgin Islands, to that island that Epstein owns on numerous occasions, as well as hanging out at the Palm Beach and.

Speaker 1

He went to Africa, Yeah, using that plane. I think Chris Tucker was on the plane too.

Speaker 2

There's this huge list of celebrities that have been on there, you know, but Bill Clinton was definitely one of the ones that popped out in my mind around the time. This is awful to say, but it was around the

time that Pizzagate was kind of coming out. That's when I started to really learn about Bill Clinton's involvement with Epstein, and that connection was one of those things that freaked me out a little bit and made me start to think there was more to the whole Pizzagate thing, which I don't necessarily believe, but it's definitely one of those things that creeped me out.

Speaker 1

And then Donald Trump has come up several times here current President Donald Trump, he had this association.

Speaker 2

He made that really creepy quote.

Speaker 1

He made that quotation. He made that quote in two thousand and two that certainly didn't age well. And there's one thing we do have to say in Donald Trump's defense. When Trump was when Trump learned that Epstein may have been romantically entertaining or attempting to recruit underage girls at mar A Lago or bringing these young women with him, these young girls, these children with him and calling them his nieces, which is so creepy, Donald Trump said, Okay, look,

this can't happen here. You gotta go. So Trump asked him to leave. Trump kicked him out.

Speaker 2

That's good.

Speaker 1

I guess I feel like that's the bare minimum of decent. No, it's not. The bare minimum of decency is calling the police.

Speaker 2

Yeah. His his whole thing is just don't do it where I can also be implicated.

Speaker 1

It's right, you think that was what it was.

Speaker 2

I mean in my opinion, Oh yeah, Oh well, I don't know.

Speaker 3

I mean, I don't want to throw around implications like that.

Speaker 2

It sure feels like it based on what we know about. Yeah, the act of kicking someone out or not allowing someone to do something illegal in your place of business, but not alerting the authorities that someone is doing something illegal in your place of business. Now, that's that's that's very damning.

Speaker 1

Yeah, I see what you're saying. Yeah, that makes sense. And then we mentioned Prince Andrew, the Prince Andrew, the allegations that Epstein forced his teenage victims to become physically involved with Prince Andrew on three separate occasions. And the you know, the UK Press is having a field day with like tabloids like the Sun or whatever.

Speaker 2

Well, what's blowing up right now?

Speaker 1

Well, a lot of I mean also a lot of royalty are untouchable.

Speaker 2

Yeah, you know what I mean.

Speaker 1

When When's when is the next time? When's the last time a royal family member went to jail?

Speaker 2

Prince Charles spent a lot of time in the old Slamma. No, I'm just kidding any slam.

Speaker 1

Little slammery that's what they call it there, right, So okay, as we said, the alleged abuse is pretty well documented by numerous sources going back to at least the nineteen nineties. And if you want to be less than optimistic, then you can reasonably say that it's possible it went or went back earlier than that. So how did this go from rumors scuttle button secrecy to an actual legal matter. How did the cops get involved? Well we'll get to that right after a quick break.

Speaker 2

So let's start in March of two thousand and five, when a woman called the police in Palm Beach, and after first refusing to give her name, she said that she believed her fourteen year old stepdaughter had in some

way been molested by a wealthy man, just a wealthy man. So, at the time, the victim in this case lived at this involuntary admitted juvenile education facility, which I'm assuming is some kind of juvi what you would call a juvi or I guess something to that effect, because she was having behavioral problems, right, So apparently she shows up at this school with three hundred dollars cash in her purse,

and it became basically the talk of the class. Everybody's saying, oh my god, you see that she's got three hundred cash. Now you get that, dude, that's crazy. And then the friend called the girl a terrible name, yes we'll say it, a whore. Another friend put a fist through the wall in anger, apparently like punched the wall. And then the girl left school, and then the stepmother gets this call

from another student's mother. So this just this act of bringing three hundred dollars into this school was enough to get basically the entire school talking. Then a policewoman was talking to the girl with a therapist there, so they're just having a conversation about what's going on. That's when this victim she begins crying and breaking down, and she dug her finger into her thigh and she just began

out telling this entire story about how she was. She was taken to this big house on the Atlantic in the Intracoastal Waterway, which is where Epstein's mansion was located. She remembers climbing this spiral staircase to the master bedroom where this woman, a blonde woman who you know, she's probably in her twenties, twenty five or something.

Speaker 1

Is likely Sarah Kellen.

Speaker 2

It's probably, yes, exactly, probably Sarah Kellen. She wasn't very friendly. She laid out sheets as she put lotions on a massage table, and then she leaves. That's when Jeffrey Epstein comes in. This is the story. Worry this similar story that we've already talked about. He's naked except for a towel. He sternly orders the girl to take off her clothes and then the rest of the details are pretty much what you've heard before and stuff that I honestly don't

want to say here. But the police at this point were very much convinced that this was at least worth looking into.

Speaker 1

And then this girl says that she had been brought there by two other girls. Please spoke to those two girls. Those two girls pointed to two more girls who had also been there and also recruited them. By the time detectives tracked down one victim, there were two or three more to find, and very very soon there were dozens. So also in two thousand and five, the Palm Beach PD obtains a search warrant and they visit Epstein's mansion. They cart off massage tables, photos of naked girls, soaps

shaped like Genitalia. Epstein sent an urgent message to the detectives through his attorney. It said, the shadiest thing.

Speaker 3

Mister Epstein is this is laughable. I'm sorry, this is just mister Epstein is very passionate about massages. The massages are therapeutic and spiritually sound for him.

Speaker 2

That is why he has had many massages. I mean, really, I'm sorry, I'm laughing. It's just come on.

Speaker 1

It's laughable. It's like it's such a bad attempt at an excuse that it sounds like it was poorly translated from a different language.

Speaker 2

Yeah. Well, the craziest thing here is that if you're a wealthy individual and you really are passionate about massages, it makes sense that you have massage therapy equipment in your home. You can afford that, even rooms dedicated just to getting therapeutic massages, and you can also hire a masseuse.

Speaker 1

A professional massuse, which she did have. He paid her one hundred dollars an hour. There you go, so he had a professional messuse.

Speaker 2

Yes, there are your massages that you're passionate about, enjoy them.

Speaker 1

So we shall also note that computers and hardware were missing in the mansion.

Speaker 2

In two thousand and five when the Palm Beach investigators were to.

Speaker 1

Be taken out pretty quickly, so that's two thousand and five. They're fighting this in court. As as we said earlier, the head detective on the cases like we have this, this is five by five, this is buttoned up, this is game over, you know what I mean. Yeah, But then quickly what he sees is that there are there's a network of things, institutions and people stymying the investigation. And this is where our previous cast member, Acosta makes.

Speaker 2

A return, good old Alex Costa.

Speaker 1

Remember we said he was a state attorney there for Florida. He started meeting with Epstein's team, who had such legal luminaries Zalan Derschwitz, Kenneth Starr from the Clinton investigation. Where these guys are in terms of their legal reputation, these are very, very influential and prominent lawyers and legal minds. So Acosta and his team eventually, in two thousand and eight, they strike a secret deal with Epstein to shield him

from federal investigation and prosecution. The victims were not made aware of this agreement. It was called a quote non prosecution deal. Acosta and his team at the time were in possession of a fifty three page draft indictment charging Epstein with serial child abuse child molestation. Instead, he took instead, Acosta, acting on behalf of the US government, keep in mind, gave Epstein. This this deal in instead of quurte essentially

immunity pretty much and worse than immunity. So Epstein pled guilty to two state level prostitution charges, so not sex trafficking, prostitution charges. They essentially made him a john. And what did he get in exchange for that?

Speaker 3

And man, I mean talk about a sweetheart deal. This is a lot immunity from all related federal criminal charges, not only for himself, but also for any quote, any potential co conspirators, royalty.

Speaker 2

Yeah, yeah, oh my god, the President.

Speaker 3

Anyone who might have been involved in these alleged federal crimes. This provision would effectively completely shut down any FBI investigation, any further investigation into the evidence, the overwhelming evidence, the piles of evidence.

Speaker 2

Of international sex trafficking.

Speaker 3

Yeah, and essentially make it retroactively legal for anyone to have conspired with him to rape any of the alleged victims.

Speaker 2

Good god.

Speaker 1

He did get jail time. He got a thirteen month sentence. He served it in a private wing of the county jail, and he was there except for the six days a week when he was on work release. He would he went to he commuted to his private office for twelve hours, and his sentence was eighteen months, but he just served thirteen. There was also we mentioned this earlier, but there was

also this important legal snag. There was a commitment verified through email chain, that this agreement would be kept secret from the people identifying as victims, so that they would not have the opportunity to protest this extraordinary agreement in court. And that's despite the fact that keeping a plea agreement secret from victims is a violation of the law and it should go without saying, this is not the typical

plea deal. For his part, Acosta and his team would later say, all right, we caved on this agreement, but we did it because we were being harassed by Epstein's high powered legal team. They hired private investigators to defame witnesses, to dive into personal lives. They said they felt physically threatened. However, emails and documents show the lie here. The relationship between

federal prosecutors in Epstein's was more collaborative than adversarial. They spent a lot of time figuring out how to settle the case with the smallest amount of scandal. They even decided not to charge them with the sex offense, they considered witness tampering and obstruction charges and misdemeanors, and they wanted to allow Epstein to secretly plead guilty in Miami instead of Palm Beach County, where the victims lived, because that would limit media exposure and it would make it

less likely for the victims to appear at sentencing. And they also in these emails, again leaked by the Herald, they also referenced discussions they wanted to have by phone or in person, so there wasn't a paper trail. And this agreement, this non prosecution agreement, sealed until after it was approved by a judge, made it virtually impossible for

anyone to interfere, including Edwards, the attorney. This all came to public attention with the Miami Herald released a comprehensive, damning, groundbreaking investigation of Epstein's activities and the Pleat deal and the corruption and the long term damage to the underage victims. Yet at this point there's very little indication that that deal will be thrown out or reneged upon, because he already fulfilled his part of the agreement. And I guess

we just have to emphasize how extraordinary. It is that there's a federal agreement that says, not only do you have to do this, not only are suddenly now calling abused children prostitutes, which itself is an offensive term, right, because that's they're trying to be defamatory. Believe the correct term is sex worker.

Speaker 2

Right.

Speaker 1

So not only are they doing that, but they're also saying, if any potential co conspirator worked with you, then they're scott free. Yeah, scott free.

Speaker 3

Just by association, like even if they weren't named, like they were discovered later.

Speaker 2

Those are the real This is my This is my take. It's not about Jeffrey Epstein, and it's not about the billions and billions of dollars that he manages. It's about the high powered people. In my opinion, this is not proven. The high powered people that took trips with him on that Lolita Express, the high powered people they got massages other than Jeffrey Epstein. That's why he got that deal. No, I think you're right.

Speaker 3

I mean, because it's just it makes no sense. And I believe the lawyer that got him that deal is now a member of Trump's cabinet.

Speaker 1

Yeah, Alex Cossa's Secretary of Labor.

Speaker 3

Yeah, yeah, I mean once you start getting into those circles, those those power circles, there is just so much insulation that can happen. Favors owed, you know, from high up politicians or law enforcement or whatever, and people.

Speaker 2

Call that stuff in it it's real. This is not tinfoil hat stuff, not imaginary. These people have immunity to future international sex trafficking. They have immunity to anything that they would catch them up in that And it's like, it's ten years since two thousand and eight he spent his time in prison. Do you guys really think all

of this, any of this has stopped. I mean, the guy is probably under surveillance of some sort, even though well would he be, because why would you spend your money if you're even the FBI or even the CIA looking at international stuff going on, which I guess I don't know how that works with the Virgin Islands because technically aren't they part of the United States?

Speaker 1

The US Virgin Islands.

Speaker 2

Yeah, okay, yeah, it's just it's so infuriating to think that this kind of terrible abuse is occurring and is allowed to occur, and it's simply because have money and tremendous power.

Speaker 1

So maybe an act of Congress could change it, could trigger it, you know, maybe just legally speaking. Legally speaking, it's tough to get this. I mean, the DOJ is in this. You know. I hesitate so often to accuse people of operating in large groups and lockstep because, as we know, groups of people stink at cooperation after a

certain threshold has reached. But while we were working on this, and while we're looking into it, I honestly started to wonder, you know, will there be consequences for us for making

this episode interesting? Which I rarely think about. And you know, I don't think anybody cares what we have to say about this, but we do want to get this out in the public sphere because regardless of what actually happened, even if you want to take this entities side and say that this was some sort of hit piece or something like that.

Speaker 2

Yeah, since two thousand and five and before that, sure, since.

Speaker 1

The eighties, something happened, Something happened. There wouldn't be a deal like that. If there wasn't pernicious, horrific stuff there. Powerful people needed to be Powerful people are conspiring right and closing ranks. This is infuriating. This is infuriating. We want to hear what you think. Thank you for listening. We want to know what you believe would be the next step for a legitimate investigation which did not occur right at least on Uncle Sam's part. We want to

know how far you think this goes. We want to know who else you think is involved, who are those unnamed potential co conspirators, And most importantly want you to know that, as we say in any episode that deals with the horror of abuse, that if you are if you have found yourself in that situation, or if you know someone that is in a situation like that, you are not alone. You are not powerless. There are people

who are there to help and support you. You can call one eight hundred sixty five six four six seven three. That's one eight hundred sixty five six hope and contact people at the National Sexual Assault Telephone Hotline.

Speaker 2

I don't know what else to say here. That's thank you, Ben for that. If you want to learn more, literally, just do some Google searches. The Guardian is a good place to start. Like we said in New York mag Miami, Harold, there are a bunch of places where you if you want to continue to follow this story.

Speaker 3

You can, and I will say that there's some hope here because we're obviously in a time where powerful men are getting taken to task more so than we've seen in the past, certainly, but it still feels like once you get when you're at a certain level, it's very hard, you know what I mean, It's very hard to actually make people answer for their crimes, even if it's all laid out on the table like this, which is which

is the most gut wrenching part of this story. That it's like there's no doubt in anyone's mind of this stuff happened. And like you said, Matt, when you know back in the circulation, aside from maybe keeping his nose clean to appease his handlers for a little while, you know, this is a man that has a mission. He's driven to behave this way, and the fact that he's allowed to be out in.

Speaker 2

Makes me sick, all right? So what do you think? Right to us? Find us on social media where conspiracy stuff in most places, conspiracy stuff show on Instagram, Join us on Facebook and our group. Here's where it gets crazy. If you want to get into a discussion about this. It'll be a difficult one for our mods. Sorry everyone, but let's just you know, let's try and have a conversation about this that isn't that it doesn't turn into

a flame war because nothing. We don't have to turn discussions about something as word as this into just being angry at each other. Let's try and figure out something. So let's go have a discussion on here's where it gets crazy on Facebook. If you don't want to do that, and that's the end of this classic episode. If you have any thoughts or questions about this episode, you can get into contact with us in a number of different ways. One of the best is to give us a call.

Our number is one eight three three st d WYTK. If you don't want to do that, you can send us a good old fashioned email.

Speaker 1

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Speaker 2

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