How Epstein threatened to "take down" President Trump

This is a global player original podcast. What the hell are the House Republicans doing? They have the majority. You can't get the list? Put on your big boy pants and let us know who the pedophiles are. The person calling for the big boy pants to go on is a guy called Kash Patel. Then he was just a MAGA activist. Now he's the director of the FBI and singing a very different tune about the release of that cache of information about Epstein. Without the FBI's help, without Trump's help.

We nevertheless have now seen thousands more emails from Geoffrey Epstein's estate. What do they all tell us about that relationship with the convicted paedophile and the President of the United States? Welcome to the news agents. The news agents. It's John. It's Emily. And yesterday came a little trickle. Three emails released by Democrats about Epstein and Trump.

It was followed by an avalanche, 23,000 emails, sort of trying to flood the zone so that you just wouldn't know where to look. Now the politics of this is critical because Donald Trump A few months ago wanted the release of all the Epstein files. And then his attorney general, a woman called Pam Bondy, says to him, You ought to see what's in these files. Since when Donald Trump doesn't want the files released at all. And in Congress at the moment, you have a lot of Republicans.

Who are hearing from their conspiracy hungry base I wanna see what's in these files that you were all talking about before the election. And not just the conspiracy hungry base, but people who've heard the testimonies of victims who actually just want to get to the bottom of what he did. Exactly. And so there is enormous pressure from the House of Representatives to have a vote to reveal everything that's in the Epstein file. And Donald Trump

is doing everything he can to stop their publication, even though he's maintaining I did nothing wrong, there's nothing to see here, I'm absolutely innocent of anything to do with Geoffrey Epstein in a bad way, and people know that. It's all a hoax. So why are you so resistant to it? And why are you sounding so So touchy when reporters ask you about it. Remember, Donald Trump loves to talk about everything at great length. This is him in the White House yesterday. Thank you very much everybody.

Mr. President, are you prepared to negotiate with Democrats now? Mr President, I'm Jeffrey Epstein. Mr. President, can you respond to these Epstein emails that were released today? What? No questions. The man who is renowned for his two hour-long press briefings has decided that he's had enough. Why is this all so difficult then? That's the question. Well, the emails have been released. The House Oversight Committee in Congress. is the body that has released them.

And they have come from the Epstein estate and as you say there's twenty three thousand, so it's gonna be a jolly long episode. You might want to go for a long run or do some marathon training. But you've heard about that phrase flooding the zone. Yeah. And in a way that is the impact of having twenty three thousand emails. That most most people, most journalists, most publications are sifting through the stuff that is coming out and as we speak.

Only a fraction of what is in those emails is known. There is so much stuff out there that no one can quite get a handle on on what is being revealed. But I think part of our task today is to take you inside some of the emails you might have missed. And see how it shapes the narrative of who knew what about the Epstein crimes. Because I think that the central question is there a smoking gun that links Trump

To Epstein? Well we know they were friends for a long time, but that the friendship went on longer than perhaps we imagined, that's one question. And the other question is was Trump involved in any of this? Was Trump aware? Of what was happening at Epstein's properties on them with the sort of people that were there. Exactly. So there is nothing that we have seen that links Trump to any kind of criminal behaviour. But your question about who saw what?

is critical. And the other thing I suppose to remember is that Epstein was not only a paedophile but a prolific polished liar. So in a way we have to start by taking everything in these emails with a pinch of salt. Nevertheless,

The time frame of the emails, the names they mentioned suggest, as you say, that several people who swore that they broke off their friendships with Epstein in the early two thousand, Trump being one of them who said he didn't have any contact with him after about two thousand and four, two thousand and five. appear from these messages to have stayed in touch and to have been very close friends indeed with Epstein.

Epstein tries to present himself as a Trump insider. He suggests he he wants to leverage his friendship with Trump to store up material we would know that as compromat or or blackmail, frankly. As Trump's campaign gains traction in twenty fifteen, Epstein asks a New York Times reporter, Would you like photos of Donald and girls in bikinis In My Kitchen? A direct quote from one of the emails that's been released.

We don't know those photos exist, of course. We don't think that the reporter ever got them. They were never sent. But he then goes on in the same sort of tranche of the emails to say Trump is so focused on watching girls in his Epstein swimming pool that he bumped into a glass door that left a noseprint on the glass. What does that tell you? It doesn't tell you that Trump is guilty of any specific behavior. It tells you that Trump was in Epstein's house.

The Trump narrative that yeah, I kinda knew Epstein with back in the day, but you know long time ago and I wasn't ever around at any of this sort of stuff. So look, as you say Emily, and it's absolutely critical to underline it, that you know, just because Epstein says it does not mean it is a hundred percent true. If you're looking at social media, you're gonna find a ton of pictures.

of Donald Trump with young women, all AI generated at the moment. There's nothing that has come from this committee where you see Donald Trump And photos of him with young girls. Exactly. But where it gets interesting is remember that time frame that Trump said he said two things, right?

That he'd kicked Epstein out of Mar a Lago because I think Epstein had made a move on one of the members' daughters. He'd said he'd had nothing more to do with him since two thousand four, two thousand five. That doesn't appear to be true from these emails. A few months later, an email from Michael Wolfe, journalist, author, not a big fan of Donald Trump. Epstein asks what Trump might say about their friendship on a CNN presidential debate.

in the lead up to the twenty sixteen election. And Wolf says, let him hang himself Valuable PR and political currency. If he says he hasn't been on your plane, he hasn't been in your house, in other words, he's suggesting that Epstein should keep something back as ammo, ammunition in case he needs it. By 2018, the authorities are closing in on Epstein. This is the year before he took his own life in prison. This is after Trump has won the election.

And it is after it's become clear that Alex Acosta, who was Trump's first term Labour Secretary in his cabinet, was the one who signed off Epstein's plea deal in two thousand eight. Info the sweetheart deal. The deal that led Epstein walk away from trial and agree to an open prison arrangement for eighteen months where he could come and go as much as he wanted to. He made that trial disappear.

A series of articles in the Miami Herald is what prompts the authorities to reopen a wide ranging criminal investigation, and in December of twenty eighteen, the year before he died, Epstein is writing to somebody in these emails not identified who says They're really trying to take down Trump, and Epstein replies, It's wild. I'm the one able to take him down. Again, what does that mean? We don't know. Does he have anything? Does he just set himself up as the man who has stuff? But

Again, he's talking to Michael Wolfe, the journalist, he says Trump knew about the girls as he asked Ghlaine to stop. He knew Trump knew about the girls as he asked Gullaine to stop. What does he know about the girls? I mean, does he just mean that Epstein kept borrowing or or taking Trump's employees from Mor a Lago and using them as housekeepers or masseuse? We we don't know what Trump knows. Yeah. But

The question is out there now. What did Trump know about the girls that he asked Epstein, he asked Ghlaine to stop? And this is why I think this matters so much. Look, as you said and we're underlining again, Epstein is dead, so we can't question him and there's a whole Big kind of conspiracy theory world out there about did he really commit suicide?

Or was he bumped off? And you kind of when you see messages like that, you know, I'm the one who could bring him down, you can see that there would be an awful lot of people Prince Andrew, others I'm not suggesting any wrongdoing at all, but you can see why a conspiracy theory would take hold that Geoffrey Epstein's death in prison, there's more to it. than meets the eye.

Again this explains the utter discomfort of the White House today that even though there is no smoking gun, there's no gun with Donald Trump's fingerprints on it, none of that that would be conclusive evidence in court is there at all. Yeah. But it raises questions. Yeah. And people are already conspiracy minded about why there's been so little about Epstein come out, why th there is such efforts to suppress all this stuff. that I just think it feeds it. And that is why it is so toxic right now.

for Donald Trump and he's gone into fight mode where you can sense his angry and Caroline Levitt, his inimitable spokesperson, is out there trying to douse the flames. I have your statement about the new Epstein emails that have been released by House Democrats. Separate from why you believe the emails were made public, can you address their substance? Did the president ever spend hours at Jeffrey Epstein?

Uh these two emails prove absolutely nothing other than the fact that President Trump did nothing wrong. And what President Trump has always said is that He was from Palm Beach, and so was Jeffrey Epstein. Jeffrey Epstein was a member at Mar a Lago until President Trump kicked him out.

Because Jeffrey Epstein was a pedophile and he was a creep. And this email you refer to with the name of a victim that was unredacted now and has since been reported on in this room, so I will go ahead and say it, Virginia Guffrey. And it was It was CVS's own reporting Ouija that recently wrote that Miss Guffrey maintained, uh, in G in God Rest Her Soul, that she maintained that.

There was nothing inappropriate she ever witnessed that President Trump was always extremely professional and friendly to her. And so I think it's a question worth asking the Democrat Party, and you should all go ask them after this briefing. Of why they chose to redact that name of a victim who has already publicly made statements about her relationship with Jeffrey Epstein is and is unfortunately no longer with us.

Okay, so the reason that the Democrats redact a name is that anyone, anyone, would always redact a survivor's or a victim's name if they were talking about them in sort of public documents. I think the question of why Virginia Dufrey never mentioned that she'd spent time with Trump is a good one. I think that that still is unanswered. She does in her memoir talk about Trump being very helpful to her when she started as a young woman at Mor a Lago and gave her babysitting job.

But I think Caroline Levitt has inadvertently let the cat out of the bag in this one, because she has said more than she needed to, given that the president himself has always called it a Democrat hoax. The two lines that Trump has come back with is that the Epstein files are a Democrat hoa And he didn't understand why anyone would be interested in this guy. So boring. He's dead.

And the fact that Caroline Levitt is actually accepting yes, this stuff does exist. Yes, it has come from the Epstein estate. Yes, there is a lot of stuff to get through and you've got questions for the Democrats. I think tells us that this story is I mean, it's gonna grow manifold from here. You mentioned Prince Andrew. There's a couple of things I just wanna get through. Andrew Mountbatten. Andrew Mountbatten Windsor.

Epstein confirms that the picture that Virginia Dufrey had taken with Andrew's arm around her waist was real. He says many of his employees had their pictures taken. She was on my plane. Yes, she had her picture taken with Andrew, as many of my employees do. That was in the email. Andrew, Prince Andrew at the time, told me that he thought

And there's one other date I want you to think about as well. which is November of twenty seventeen, when Epstein claims in another email that he was going to spend Thanksgiving with Trump. Say that date again for me. Yeah. Twenty third of november twenty seventeen. So the first year of Trump's presidency, when Trump is president. Right. We do not have any confirmation from Trump that he spent Thanksgiving with Epstein. This is all one sided.

But let me just take you into the actual wording. November twenty third, twenty seventeen, at eight thirty six AM. He talks about the three people that he's going to spend Thanksgiving with David Fazel, Hanson, Trump. I mean unless there is another Trump member that he's talking about. So they're talking about who they're going to hang out with on Thanksgiving on that morning, twenty third of November twenty seventeen, when it is no longer just Trump.

It is President Trump. He has been in office a year. And well what's fascinating about that is that The rules of the road in Washington are whenever the President travels The pool travels with him. You sit outside the house, the twelve journalists that are obscribed, so it will be public record. Where Donald Trump was on Thanksgiving the first year of his presidency. Can we see the records? Because there will have been twelve pool reporters.

Who would have been shadowing Donald Trump's movements all day? and would know where he was and I wonder whether we could literally find out who he spent Thanksgiving with. Again, go back to the emails with a pinch of salt. Maybe this is a man, you know, a prolific paedophile and liar. and manipulator who wants everyone to think that he's more in touch with powerful people than he is.

I mean there's also one a year earlier, november thirteenth, twenty sixteen, again, alarm bells ringing in your head, it's a week after Trump has won the twenty sixteen election, where Epstein confirms in an email to Linda Stone that that he is in Trump Tower. So if these dates match up to the kind of investigation that I think will ensue, It is telling us that Epstein and Trump are not We're not only in touch, but in each other's company. For almost a decade longer than

We've originally been told. And of course, as I said again, I'll say it one more time. This may be all in Epstein's head, it may never have happened. There may have been no Thanksgiving, there may have been no visit to Trump Tower. This all could be made up. But what has happened now? Is there a lines of inquiry that journalists are going to pursue, which means that if Donald Trump today wants to talk about the economy or immigration or whatever it happens to be, this is going to consume.

so much oxygen and so much bandwidth about all these questions about Epstein and you can be absolutely sure, and I know for a fact that this is just running rampant across America right now with the all the questions that have been raised by these emails, that this is really starting to hurt Donald Trump because all that people are talking about is Epstein. We are at the tip of the iceberg with the Epstein stuff. For all the reasons you talk about

And let me put this in perspective. The twenty three thousand emails that journalists are right now sifting through Are not even what we mean when we talk about the Epstein files as a tranche. There is video evidence, there is recording evidence, there are post-it notes, there are text, there's all the rest of it, there are letters. That is a whole other tranche.

That if a vote goes ahead in Congress next week, we could see released in December, and if there is pressure on the DOJ, we will get the testimony of victims, survivors of Epstein, released. from those who gave their evidence, their testimony twenty years ago. And I should say we're focusing on the relationship between Trump and Epstein today because it is the one that is the most highly political right now.

But there are many, many other names in these businessmen, heads of universities, scientists. Who are being named and who we will be presumably chasing up in the days and weeks to come, trying to work out what kind of relationship they had with Epstein. And Donald Trump is trying to turn the screws.

on Republican congressmen and women Who might be thinking of voting with the Democrats for the release of the of these documents And he's had a woman called Nancy Mason, uh a woman called Lauren Bobert in trying to say to them, Don't vote for this, don't vote for this and at the moment they're saying, No, I'm sorry, the public want to know this.

You guys have been the ones telling us this ought to be released before the elections. You were the ones who were saying it was the Democrats who were covering up. We can't just go back to our voters and say, I'm sorry, yeah, we've changed our mind. And so I think Donald Trump is gonna get himself into a losing position in terms of the politics of whether this is released or not.

If he is confident there is nothing in it, then just say of course it ought to be released. Yeah. But you just sense and we've put all the provisos in, you just sense there is something there that he doesn't want to emerge.

Now stay with us for one little bit of detail, which is going to try and make sense of the timing of all of this. You will know that that the US government has been in shutdown, essentially. The government has not been functioning for the last fifty days because the Democrats wouldn't sign off on the Republicans spending plan because it didn't include measures to extend the Affordable Health Care Act. So nothing has happened in American government for the last fifty days. But yesterday

we saw the chink of light as things started to turn again. And one very significant moment happened around nine PM last night, which was that a congresswoman, Adelina Grihalva, who has been waiting fifty days to be sworn in, Finally got sworn in. She's a Democratic Congresswoman of Arizona, and she became the two hundred and eighteenth signatory on what is essentially a petition to release those Epstein files. The moment her name is signed on that list.

None of the Republicans can remove their own name, none of the Democrats can remove their names, and the Epstein Files petition goes ahead. And the irony of that vote is that Far from it being a majority of one or two, I reckon if Republicans know that they've lost it anyway, many more will vote for it because they'll want to be on the right side of this with their voters.

And so it's possible that Donald Trump I mean, you know, look, you never know, Donald Trump may be able to exert enough pressure on enough people that the Republicans back away. But so far it doesn't look like they are. And Democrats are expecting many more Republicans to vote for disclosure, vote for opening this up so that people can see for themselves. what those Epstein files contain. Which as you've said Emily, it's not just about emails from the Epstein estate.

This is about the criminal investigations into Epstein. It's about the interviews that have been held with Epstein, with victims, with associates and all the rest of it. It's a big trunche of information that is about to come out. So politically The question that we're also asking, aside from what we still need to know about that relationship between Trump and Epstein, is whether Trump still has control of the MAGA wing of his party. You mentioned Nancy Mace.

That is a woman who was going for Governor of South Carolina. Trump told her not to put her name on the on this petition, she went ahead anyway. In other words, She's worked out that the voters of South Carolina right now care more about knowing the truth getting to the bottom of the Epstein files than they do about an endorsement from Donald Trump. He may even stop her. You know, he may even stop her from standing. But she has worked out the political cost of not

calling for the release of the Epstein Files. And I think this is a really interesting moment. I mean, Trump always comes back from the dead. We know that. He's very, very good at the Lazarus revival. But it could be a turning point For many in his party who say, actually, that's not the future anymore. That is not the future, and I cannot, for the sake of my voters,

end up on the wrong side of somebody who was clearly friends with a paedophile for a lot longer than we have known. Look, if this happens, it's more than just a little hairline fracture in the MAGA movement. This will be a breach where Donald Trump has put all his weight behind stopping something. And the MAGA movement, whether it be the podcasters like Joe Rogan, whether it be all the other people that have been out there backing Donald Trump The Marjorie Taylor Green.

Taylor Green used to be his biggest fan and now stands very independently on this particular issue. Not just about Epstein and the victims and justice and what really happened and who he associated with. It's also about whether Donald Trump controls the movement that has propelled him for the last decade.

We'll be back in a moment speaking to one of the key lawyers representing Epstein's victims and asking whether this new tranche is opening the door to further prosecutions. Museum. With award winning. Okay. Yeah. Marks, my American week is next. Reporting from the heart. Listen on our free Or the new LBC app. LBC, leading Britain's conversation. The news agents. Well joining us now is a man who has followed the Epstein saga from inside.

The US Attorney Spencer Coven has represented victims of Geoffrey Epstein going back I'm gonna say, Spencer, probably two decades now, right? Just for our viewers and listeners who don't know your work, just take us up to date with what you have done with the victims of Epstein. Sure. Thank you for having me on today. So I represented victim number one to step forward to police and bravely tell her story to the Palm Beach Police Department back in two thousand and seven.

So yes, we're almost going on twenty years now of representing victims. And ultimately I represented nine total victims of Jeffrey Epstein. But that first victim was the one that started this snowball down the hill of investigating Jeffrey Epstein's crimes and sexual exploitations. And then I've stuck with these victims over the years. through all of the different iterations of state prosecution, federal prosecution.

Crime Victims' Rights Act litigation and his subsequent death and all of the other proceedings therewith. And I just asked you how many of the twenty three thousand emails that have been released overnight um you've got through and Y you're aware of all this stuff. This is all material that you know about already, right? Yeah, sadly, there's a lot of information in my head that I cannot disclose and could not disclose until it's out in the general public.

So yes, these emails that were disclosed is uh they're nothing new. These were emails and communications that were disclosed in the Crime Victims Rights Act case that was filed here in the Southern District of Florida many years ago. That lawsuit was filed because the federal government violated my client and uh others' rights.

with respect to their abilities to discuss any plea deal before it was entered with the federal government. And a federal judge here in South Florida found that the federal government did violate their rights. So these emails were part of that discovery in that case, but as I said, they were subject to a protective order, so none of the lawyers or clients could talk about them. So now they're out, now they're public.

Tell us what this changes. I mean, for you, what is the most explosive or potentially dangerous? Part of this whole tranche of emails, where does it take us to in terms of future prosecutions? Well, I don't know that it takes us anywhere in terms of future prosecutions, but what I think it does do is it gives the public more of an open sight into what we have known as lawyers and advocates for the victims for years.

And that is the true scope and breadth of Jeffrey Epstein and Glenn Maxwell's attempts at leverage on powerful, influential people around the globe. Um, we've always known this and we've always talked about it in general terms, but I think now with the disclosure of at least these emails, the general public is seeing the evidence that supports

why advocates for the victims were talking about this for so long. A lot of the initial work has been concentrating on that relationship between Epstein and Trump. Bearing in mind, of course, that Epstein was a prolific liar and a manipulator, does it actually take us any closer to understanding Trump's role in all this? I think it's one step uh in that direction. Now you must remember back when I was litigating one of the first cases to be filed here in two thousand eight.

We issued a subpoena for the deposition the sworn testimony of Donald Trump back then. This was pre Donald Trump political career. And we issued that subpoena because we knew he had information due to the close relationship he had with Jeffrey Epstein and the issues that were surrounding Glenn uh Maxwell uh at Mar-a-Lago and recruiting victims at that location. But our focus wasn't Trump. Our focus was getting more information on Jeffrey Epstein at the time.

So uh, you know, I think that the breadth of that relationship between Trump and Epstein has yet to be fully disclosed. And I think that the general public needs to see the video tapes, the surveillance tapes that the FBI have. and the photographs that I believe they have in their custody. And that will really truly start to begin to tell the story. Do you think we will see that now? Well, we know the FBI has them.

And now it's just a matter of whether or not um our government is brave enough to make them produce. So uh as I've always said on behalf of victims throughout this process for almost twenty years, we are hopeful. But unfortunately the government has let down my clients time and time again. Should we do you believe Trump's own account?

which is that he cut off contact, he cut off his friendship with Epstein in around two thousand and four, two thousand and five, more than, you know, fifteen years ago he said in twenty nineteen. So I do believe that the relationship did terminate at some point. Uh the evidence that we saw in the litigation did show that there was this break and split between the two in the late two thousands at some point.

But what's important to remember is is that Jeffrey Epstein and Glenn Maxwell were abusing young girls and trafficking young women dating back to the early two thousands, back when Trump and he were still friends. We know that Virginia Duffrey, for example, was recruited directly out of Mar-a-Lago. And whether you believe Trump's story that that's why he ended the relationship or not, their friendship

Trump and Epstein dated back to when Epstein and Glenn Maxwell were actively participating in sex trafficking. So in that tranche of emails that we've been reading overnight. There are clear indications from Epstein that He was with Trump. He says that he was meeting with Trump on Thanksgiving of twenty seventeen. He says that he was in Trump Towers the week after Trump won the election in twenty sixteen.

I mean these are not obviously corroborated from Trump's side, but do you think these are all fabrications or do you think the two men did stay in touch, did meet up in in much more recent years? Well, I think that from what I have seen much like we saw with Andrew.

when he attempted to say that he had cut off all ties and then he's caught in Central Park taking photographs walking with Epstein and staying at his home in Manhattan, there are a number of individuals that were wealthy, powerful, politically connected individuals that stopped talking to Epstein for a while, but then when it seemed like the dust had settled, reestablished contacts with him for some unknown reason.

So I would not be surprised if Trump was one of those individuals that felt that it was getting too heated with respect to the investigations going on with Epstein and what he was doing. that he broke contact, but then when things seem to be dying down, they have reestablished contact, especially when Epstein presented to him, hey, look, Yeah, you know, I've got information and if I use this information, it could hurt your career, so you better talk to me and meet with me.

So it was like a yo yo. He could just pull them back when he wanted to. We know that they use leverage. You know, we see that in the emails that they were utilizing that type of leverage or at least discussing the concept of utilizing that leverage to Jeffrey Epstein's advantage.

Well, you see that in the email with uh Steve Bannon and discussions about leverage and what can be used. Yeah. And Spencer, we're talking a month after the publication of Virginia Dufray's memoir. a young woman who went on take her own life earlier this year. I guess for you, you want to do best by victims and there will be many women probably looking at what is happening over the coming weeks and months and thinking

Am I gonna fight this? Am I gonna come forward? Am I gonna am I gonna get closer to justice now? Are you hearing from them? Are you are you thinking you wanna take on more cases or I mean is the lesson of all this that it's barely worth the price? Well, I I appreciate your raising the issue because it's an important one.

Um my clients cross the gamut from individuals who have still yet, 20 years later, never been named publicly and choose to remain that way, and others who have chosen to speak out.

I didn't represent Virginia Dufrey directly, but I was very close friends with the attorney that did represent her. We worked together on the cases at the inception of this litigation. And you know It definitely takes a toll on a victim when someone has the type of wealth and power that Epstein did to attack these girls' integrity. and lifestyle and follow them with trucks and private investigators and dig into their personal lives to intimidate them. Of course it affects them.

But what I would say to victims everywhere is that there continue to be Gladiator. fighters like myself and other attorneys that will fight for you to make sure that the truth comes out. And had the victims not been brave enough to come forward in the case of Jeffrey Epstein, he may still be trafficking young girls even today.

So it is only but for the courage of these young girls that were brave enough to stand up and come forward that he was able to be stopped in his tracks eventually, um, as well as Glenn Maxwell. And we need victims to speak up, talk about what's occurring, because for it to stop in the future.

We need the bravery of these young women to speak about what's happened to them. That courage has been so noticeable and so remarkable with those who've come forward and sometimes they've they've had the evidence to present to us to show us what they mean. And one of those was the photo that Virginia Dufray had taken with Prince Andrew then's arm around her waist.

a photo that he told me in twenty nineteen was probably a fake because he was wearing the wrong clothes or wouldn't have been upstairs or he didn't recognise his own hand. I mean from this tranche of emails, Epstein has confirmed that photo is real. It it it kinda makes you wonder why people would come towards an interview or come towards a testimony with a lawyer and just tell lies that are so easily Disproved.

It's absurd. It's absurd. But I mean, look, time and time again, um uh you know, we have seen politicians and wealthy individuals and powerful individuals around the globe. just try to completely gaslight the general public when the information is right in front of them. And, you know, what I would say is that if people buy into those lies, they will continue to do it. And unfortunately there are a group of individuals that regardless of what these powerful or wealthy

uh individuals say will believe them and they know that. You know, there is a certain group of individuals that follow Donald Trump, for example, that he said it himself in his own words. I could shoot somebody in the middle of New York and get out of it and and not be convicted. So there are these individuals that are gonna believe whatever they say. We've got to stand behind the truth though. And we have to see the facts for what they are.

And unfortunately, you know, with the current administration we have here in the United States and the evolving news uh that I've seen develop over the last twenty years, that line between truth and

False has been blurred. Last question to you. And uh this will probably matter much less than much of the other stuff we've been talking about, but there are many now who look at the kind of information that's emerging and say If these emails are even halfway true, if he did have this compromise material on many other people

Is it so unlikely that he was murdered in prison? Is it so unlikely that Epstein didn't in fact take his own life? Where do you sit on that? Yeah, well, I have always been consistent about this issue. Um and I believe I gave a quote to um one of the UK papers, in fact, when he was first arrested. And I was the first individual to say he's not making it out a lot.

Um, and I knew that because of what I have learned over the years of litigating these cases, what he had and the information that was there. So I have never been convinced that he took his own life in jail. How and uh who has been a question, but whether it occurred has not. At least not to me, based on the information I've found. and what I've seen. So, you know, that question still remains.

At the end of the day though, what's uh important to understand is this was either a massive failure by our US Department of Justice at the time to allow something like that to happen in its most secure prison. Or someone killed him. Uh those are really the only two options. And I think that option two is frankly more likely. Spencer Coven, great to speak to you today. Thanks for your time. Thanks for having me.

The news agents. Well yesterday we told you about the machinations that appeared to be going on within Downing Street and their briefings about a potential plot to oust the Prime Minister. And today we've had an apology from Keir Starmer to West Streeting, his health secretary, over the Downing Street briefings. And the Prime Minister said he'd launched investigation to find out where those briefings came from and he's told lobby journalists that he's pretty sure it wasn't from number ten.

I have to say, we had the finger very firmly pointed for us at Morgan McSweeney as being the author of those briefings against Wes Streeting. But it sounds as if Morgan McSweeney has the full confidence, at least, of the Prime Minister. of him and apparently there are cabinet ministers who've said that he should be going.

On tomorrow's episode of the News Agents I speak to David Blunkett, Lord Blunkett, Labour grandee, former Home Secretary, former Education Secretary, one of the key people during the Blair years. He's pretty clear about what needs to happen to Morgan McSweeney. Should Morgan McSweeney go as Chief of Staff? Well, if I were Keir Starmer, I would say to Morgan, Look, you've got great skills. You helped enormously with me in building a a a a a winning team before the election.

Now's the time for me to find you another role that you're good at, and I will bring someone in with the overall experience. that uh we need to be the chief of staff. It's a particular role. It's about knowing about government and managing. It's about having been in a senior position where you've had to not only run the show but manage people well. And that isn't rocket science. ma è una particolare skill

So beautifully done, but he's essentially saying time for him to move aside. Time for him to move aside and also you haven't got the skills to be The chief of staff. You don't have what it takes. And and fair enough, I mean actually chief of staffs do tend to kind of swap over quite often. I think here Starmer, I mean, we've talked to at least three of Starmer's chief of staffs, and some of them are very phlegmatic about

the length of their role. They say, look, you know, you go and you do a specific job, whether it's in opposition, whether it's in getting somebody elected, whether it's on a campaign, or whether it's now in government. And yeah, I mean maybe what Blunkett's doing is recognising that one period of government is over and a new one has to be a very good idea. Well one period of campaigning is over. Labour have won the election. Morgan you did a great job then, but governing?

You're just getting in the way. And that seems to be his message. And he's fascinating about the problems that this current government faces, the challenges ahead, how difficult it is His slight contempt about the way the civil service is operating right now. That's all on the newsagents tomorrow. Bye bye. Bye for now. This has been a Global Player Original Production.