Jeffrey Epstein: Sexual Abuse, Pyramid Scheme Style

hello everybody welcome back to a brand new episode of the casual criminalist as always hello there i'm your host simon what happens here if you're new one of my writers in this case chris thank you chris has written me a script i'm gonna read it i've never read it before this is a story that of course i'm that of course i'm familiar with because everybody is familiar with it today we're covering jeffrey epstein um and that means this comment section i'm sure is gonna be crazy and this is one of those ones i mean there's a lot of conspiracy theories around this or the one big conspiracy theory like about jeff epstein killing himself and then did he have this little book with all of these people who were also like predators and stuff right again like i'm familiar with the story like most people are but not much in depth that is absolutely gonna change after this beast of an episode uh but this is one of those conspiracy theories that is kind of like like the main landing and stuff obviously real like that is just like without question and then there's like conspiracy theories where you're like there's probably something there isn't there like the jfk thing it's always like that's too weird for the to be not something there do i know what that is no does it seem enormously suspicious yes jeffrey epstein just happens to kill himself and that those cameras and guards would just happen to be missing and he just happens to know all of these secrets about all of these very powerful people again it's like one of those conspiracy theories where you're like probably something there isn't there or is that just me i feel like this is one of the it's this is a more believable conspiracy theory right anyway let's just jump into it uh yeah sexual abuse pyramid scheme scar style that's the title chris gave it i might have made it more clickable that's quite clickable isn't it maybe the title will be that you'll be looking at the title right now being like simon respected chris chris's uh artistic freedom or he didn't let's see [Music] jeffrey epstein shouldn't really need any introduction being probably the most famous serial sex offender in recent memory i feel like that's a that's a great time for the use of the word infamous chris rather than famous and the subject of numerous conspiracy theory narratives some plausible some true and some completely insane oh yeah i'm sure that i didn't realize there were so many conspiracy theories i'm sure there are insane ones it's like yeah yeah no he was a lizard he was a lizard and he's in cahoots with the queen he's using lizard dna i'll say up front that i'm not a conspiracy theory fan this is partly because so many of them are so paper-thin and silly shout out to the masterfully ironic birds unreal what what the [ __ ] are birds then i walk like past 700 pigeons on my way to work what do you think they are like cia spy drones come on people stop smoking so much crack it's not good for you i do what i want but it's mostly owing to my career having so frequently compelled me to study and investigate actual criminal conspiracies but the epstein case transcends the debate between conspiracy and cock-up in a magnificent way what we have here is a complex and ongoing criminal conspiracy one which shines a harsh light on the criminal justice system the corruption of wealth and power and the very real inequalities which make so many the prey of the rich and powerful but it's not all doom and gloom the other side of the story is the long tortuous journey of those seeking to bring him to justice a sort of spotlight moment which provides a heartening example of the capacity for motivating principled individuals to achieve some measure of justice even when the very institutions designed to protect us have been corrupted however i mean in the case of jet prieps epstein dead ain't he like what happened to him he's dead and he probably didn't want to be dead he probably wanted to continue being a weird sexual predator in an island didn't he and now he's dead yay justice prevails but then also didn't that other guy the the rapey guy um what's his name who was the tv dude how am i forgetting this guy's name he was like the host of a tv children's tv show and he was sent to prison for like rape and like date raping people and stuff [Music] and then he got released on some technicality and you're like what the [ __ ] is going on rich people never suffer unless you're jeffrey epstein in which case you're dead beyond the tabloid headlines and lurid sometimes pornographic reporting lies a damning failure on the part of key civil institutions to protect the vulnerable against the powerful in fact initially they did exactly the opposite yeah that's another thing it's like yeah i know it's like yay jeffrey epstein's dead um but also he got away with his crimes for a really long time and then he was already like people knew he was a pedo like back in the day and he he was like did he do time in jail or was it kind of just swept under the rug or something but people knew was dodgy and like famous people continued to hang out with him which is a bit weird isn't it and by a bit weird i mean it's a lot weird isn't it but it's also an inspiring tale of a small group of individuals selfless dedication to justice especially julie k brown of the miami herald and of the courage of a handful of victims who over literal decades refused to be silenced even while their powerful opponent used every resource and connection he had to ruin their lives and reputations intimidate them and silence them and then of course there's the highly dubious deaths of epstein and his close associate jean-luc brunelle i'm aware a lot of people have passionate opinions on the subject and while we can't promise to be in 100 agreement on some of the wilder theories i can say that the facts of the case are such that it's not possible to 100 dismiss them either and now with that out of the way let's dive into the dark world of industrialized sexual abuse brilliant this is gonna be a fun one when you've got a script and it says the words industrialized sexual abuse you know you're in for a bad time the great gatsby the world of finance is naturally a secretive one if you've got a whole bunch of money one of the first things you want to ensure is that no one's going to be able to nickel a bit and one of the best ways to do that is to make it very difficult to determine exactly how much you have and where all of it is this is like one of those things you know those rich lists and stuff where it's like and you can like google like different celebrities net worths and stuff it's all [ __ ] because unless i mean if you're like the ceo and you've got shares in like a giant company it's public like how many shares of stuff you have it's like otherwise unless you're that person there's no real way to know because you don't know how much peop these places don't know how much people earn that's private they don't know how much people spend that's also private they can take a wild-ass guess but uh it's it's always wrong the result of this need is a sort of commercial and social natural selection favoring people who are discreet who can keep secrets and who like to maintain a low public profile this is almost the exact opposite of the business world where fame and notoriety are often viewed as primary assets think elon musk and donald trump but for people behind the curtain so to speak the ones who pull the levers facilitate the loans and conveyancing and manage asset holdings and tax minimization their world is normally more or less invisible to the general public but even in this pathologically discreet little subculture jeffrey epstein was known as a mysterious man even those closest to him knew very little about his life where he'd come from where he got his money who his clients were all this and more were shrouded in mystery one source interviewed for a new york magazine profile said he's this mysterious gatsby-ask figure he likes people to think that he's very rich and he cultivates this air of aloofness the whole thing is weird i mean it's also if you just want to be a quietly rich person it's not unreasonable like not everyone wants to be going around like rolling in lambos and just just quietly being rich sounds i don't know sounds kind of better doesn't it because then no one's going to try and nickel your money you don't have people hassling you you don't have like all of the fake friends it just sounds better to just be quietly rich i understand you jeffrey i don't believe what i'm hearing i'm joking you're breaking my heart yeah but i get this a little bit what we do know about him is that he was born in new york growing up in coney island a rat infested sewer of crime and poverty or one of the nicest places in the world depending on which side of town you live his father was a parks department employee epstein was academically gifted skipping two years and graduating high school at 16. he studied at cooper union and nyu both prestigious universities before dropping out for no clear reason and getting a job teaching maths and physics at the dalton school i didn't realize schools would i feel like if you're teaching maths and physics at school no matter how bright you are you need to have a degree don't you the dalton school is a prestigious prep school and arts academy which attracts gifted and affluent students you can either be skilled or your parents can be rich that's who we're accepting at our school welcome to america land of meritocracy and also money and look i also know the uk's like this so uh yeah i just i don't know just because this is set in america it was easy to poke fun at america look i know the uk is also the same in 1974 the year epstein blagged his way into a teaching job without qualifications the outgoing principal was ex-attorney general william barr's father ruben murtagh's daughter was a student adult in what epstein taught there and the school's illuminae figures include the likes of anderson cooper and claire danes holy that school's got some illuminae he was reportedly a charismatic teacher though some students described him as over familiar especially with the female students not something you wanted a teacher he was only 21 years old at the time though and it seems he was mentally somewhat younger so perhaps there's nothing sinister in that when questioned about it in 2009 however he pled the fifth to dodge the questions so maybe there was in any case he wasn't there long before a new headmaster came in noticed he wasn't particularly good at teaching and sacked him as with so much to do with epstein it's impossible to know his plans or motives for so many things but it seems that he'd become impressed with the power and influence of the parents and students at the school possibly as part of a larger plan he made an effort to impress one of the parents at a p t night a man who happened to be a senior partner at bear stearns the merchant back this executive persuaded bear stearns ceo to hire him which turned out to be the first step in epstein's journey into super wealth okay epstein's gotta be like fair you know they said he was charismatic as a teacher if you're a teacher a 21 year old teacher who got fired from their job and you managed to charm a bear stearns what was it a senior partner in super who knows the ceo of bear stern so not just some regular senior partner who's like four levels down but someone who can go to the ceo and get someone a job um that speaks to charisma during his time at bear epstein showed a talent for a whole portfolio of financial management quite a few people dubbed him a genius saying that he had a talent for synthesis that rarest of intellectual abilities were one who's able to cross-connect and interrelate across a range of disparate disciplines and combine them to arrive rapidly and accurately at understandings or solutions of course there were many dissenters from this view notably one man who said of epstein that he'd never received a straight answer from him and that it was all smoke and mirrors he told vox i never saw any brilliance i never saw him work anybody i know that is that wealthy works 26 hours a day this guy plays 26 hours a day well it just sounds like he's doing better than you doesn't it because he's getting rich like one thing about jeffrey epstein very very very rich and he doesn't seem to be working very hard does he so seems like he's got you beat on that one why am i defending jeffrey epstein oh it feels dirty because it is for every person claiming that epstein was some kind of ethereal genius there's another who characterizes him as a dumbass poser it's not been possible to find anyone who ever traded with him and of the many scientists and intellectuals that epstein held dinner parties with more than half report that he didn't know what he was talking about and spent more time trying to look smart than adding to the conversation one of the best ways to look smart though is to be quiet like if you open your mouth people know you're dumb if you don't open your mouth they don't know you're dumb and you just kind of look mysterious like didn't i guess epstein maybe discovered this later like if you're around smart people just listen to them and ask questions it makes you look smarter than you are pro tip it's what i do and it's why everyone thinks i'm such a big brain his work at bear quickly had him charge of billions of dollars in funds and epstein was the kind of financial manager who wasn't shy about his own ambitions to wealth leslie wexner the founder of limited brands a huge company which includes victoria's secret in its holding oh it's victoria's secret in my mind i always had victoria secret victoria's secret makes a lot more sense made epstein has financial advisor and helped him to build a fortune for himself it's interesting that in a world where reputations are cemented by prestigious client books every client other than wexner was kept a closely guarded secret it's possible that this is because there weren't any others of note epson appears to have built his fortune on being wexler's water boy and then scamming and brown nosing his way into a space where anyone at all could become rich simply by talking to people and being in the same room this is a bit contradictory because we had the dude earlier being like you got to work 26 hours a day if you want to be rich and now we're saying like no no you just got to go to parties and chit chat sounds a bit easier doesn't it regardless of his actual ability there's no doubt epstein wanted to present himself as a lofty thinker he was a keen patron of the sciences forking out millions in grants and gifts for cutting-edge research research which some of his beneficiaries claimed he actually understood unlike many rich patrons as for his money management he was out of there well before their spectacular failure in the gfc and was running his own firm ah global financial crisis gfc i didn't know we were acronyming that he considered himself a kind of financial architect according to new york magazine who quoted one of his writings saying i want people to understand the power the responsibility and the burden of their money which is odd yeah i feel so burdened by money money's always such a burden where to put it what to buy what a burden one thing i definitely don't feel since having more money is uh more burdened by money having no money is definitely more of a burden what are you talking about which is odd as wexler apparently hired him to find out who was stealing from him and then claimed epstein had stolen 46 million dollars from him too it seems both of these men were a little odd with wexle acting as epstein's patron and epstein hooking wexler up with dates and party invites the characterization of epstein as gatsby is abs he was a shadowy man lauded by some of his acquaintances but in a curious way not really containing any substance and it's clear from his own comments and writings that other people didn't really exist for him as people either which might be a clue as just why he was willing to inflict such appalling abuse on so many children and young women and yet he still seemed so utterly convinced he hadn't done anything seriously wrong yeah well that's just the big mark of a psycho brain isn't it it's like yeah no no no like we always bring it back to pedro lopez he's probably it's okay to kill children they're just small it's like pedro what are you talking about it's like when people really don't even have a grasp on simple basic morale i'm not the most moral person ever i'm not some like saint of morality but there are there is something that you just know is wrong jeffrey jesus or you should know is wrong no [Music] a note on sources epstein's day job took him all over the world he owned private aircraft airstrips and real estate across europe and the usa and its territories and would spend his time scouring the world for investment opportunities his passion project though was recruiting grooming sexual abuse and the rape of young girls at an average rate of three per day what the actual [ __ ] i had no idea he was so prolific i think jeffrey epstein's one of those things it's like why don't it's i feel with this podcast it's like i don't really like these things they're generally unpleasant and so why would i naturally expose myself to this but i haven't read a ton about jeffrey epstein because i'm like wow he's a horrible person i don't want to read about all the nasty [ __ ] that he got up to three a day blows my mind you [ __ ] sicko activity at this level of intensity obviously requires an industrial scale operation to service it and the sheer scale of it as well as the high profile of some of the people involved means that there's a whole bunch of misinformation and disinformation out there so we just need to make a quick note about sources first up the main sources used for this are victim testimonies legal documents and investigative reporting victim testimonies are taken from the handful of victims who've chosen to go public but some information is also taken from anonymized statements and depositions included in the florida indictment the virgin islands doj complaint various civil suits and palm beach police interviews the legal documents are the ny southern district indictment the virgin islands doj civil complaint the maxwell depositions and other depositions unsealed through civil actions against either epstein or as a state and various civil complaints filed in several u.s jurisdictions particularly those alleging epstein's infamous florida plea deal was unlawful and it was oh my god one thing jeffrey epstein had a lot going on before he died he had a lot of lawsuits the main reporting comes from the miami herald especially julie k brown who deserves much of the credit for finally ending epstein's run more on that later and a variety of tabloids who brought victims stories and churned out accounts of court proceedings as the hearings went on as well as this there's a number of hit pieces puff pieces and highbrow intimate profiles on epstein of the kind that occasionally get done by broadsheets and snobby magazines sources avenues include anyone with a width of tinfoil hat this isn't just prejudice the fact is there's no need to turn to these people sticking with sworn authoritative and credible sources uncovers an actual provable conspiracy and strongly suggests another one involving some of the world's most powerful people or getting excited now this is gonna be intense there's no need to go off the reservation to explore the potential involvement of people like prince andrew or alan dershowitz or the extent to which the u.s establishment including law enforcement agencies either turned a blind eye or were complicit in epstein's offending it's pretty clear actually that an operation of this size couldn't have survived without at least the tacit consent of a big chunk of the top end of society and mainstream sources reflect this reality so don't get buttered if we don't entertain the idea that corporate and hollywood elites were using epstein to harvest the blood of children for satanic sacrifices the actual picture is bad enough and we won't be shying away from it yeah this is like we don't why do we need to say that he's doing satanic sacrifices the [ __ ] that he got up to is totally wild if it was less you know obvious and there was settlements reaching stuff with like prince andrew if that wasn't people would be like that's a conspiracy theory i'd be like i don't believe it it's princess it's the queen's son are you insane and never do what he did he's got so much to lose he would put shame on his old family that's crazy and then it's like no no no turns out oh my god the queen's son absolutely mad you don't need all the extra crazy it's already crazy in fact the reality of epstein is possibly a clue as to where some of the ideas of q anon actually come from the kernel of truth within the construction of myth so to speak other sources i've excluded are partisan we will talk about bill clinton and donald trump as they're an important part of this story but i've excluded opinion merchants and political operatives who obscure and allied facts to exaggerate or downplay the involvement of prominent democrats or republicans the reason for this is simply their selective facts and outright lies just cause confusion and finally for boring legal reasons it's important to say that epstein's first conviction was laughable and as he died before he could face the second batch of charges some of this material constitutes the sworn allegations of plaintiffs and witnesses in various cases and may not be covered by the guilty verdict returned in the jillaine maxwell case i've got a pronunciation guide for jillaine maxwell i thought it was jizz lane let's just go with jillaine because i'm assuming chris actually looked into this and i've just like heard it wrong doesn't matter but even though there's no comprehensive epstein conviction the epstein estate has set up a fund to compensate victims and there's little to no denial of the stated facts of the case which saves someone having to put 700 allegedly in front of statements that we're pretty sure are true but have not been proven yes important legal disclaimer probably gonna throw in a bunch of allegedly's anyway just cause it's a powerful people with lots of money [Music] perversion inc now let's imagine you're a middle school girl generally as happy as any teenage girl can be and living an ordinary life or perhaps you're at the start of an extraordinary life as so far in your short career on earth you're a straight-a student and a cheerleader and generally a popular person if you've ever been in contact with the american secondary school system you'll know just how difficult a combination that is to achieve in your life today the only real cloud on the horizon has been money your family is far from wealthy and one problem you're currently casting around trying to solve is how you're going to be able to afford presents for your parents with christmas only a few days away you're sitting in class one day when a friend passes you a note saying that if you're willing to go to a big house in palm beach you'll be paid hundreds of dollars just to give an old guy a massage it sounds simple enough and as one of your relatives is a masseuse you think you've got a pretty good idea of what it's going to look like it might be a bit gross but it's easy money and it shouldn't take too long so you go you get to the massive mansion in el brio and a bond woman named sarah cullen meets you and takes you to a bedroom which is disturbing but the house is enormous and there's pictures of the owner with bill clinton and the pope and all other kinds of famous people so surely it can't be that bad lying face down on the bed wearing nothing but a towel is a silver head 51 year old he tells you you're beautiful and grabs your hip moving you around so that he can look at you that is this is just so gross what's the age of someone in middle school like a teenager i don't know how old that is but it's not it's not dude he instructs you to strip down to your underwear and deliver the massage it's a decision point you're not very well equipped to deal with at 14 years of age well there we go my dude you're alone in a room with a clearly rich and powerful man you're unsure of where you are in the massive house and unsure of exactly where in palm beach you are as you arrived by taxi there was arm security everywhere and the house is fenced and gated and you're not sure if the man on the bed has a weapon somewhere either so you freeze up and acquiesce to the abuse letting him fondle your breasts and genitals while he masturbates under the towel and when it's over he gives you 200 and tells you to come back sometime or if you're not comfortable that you can bring him other girls and you'll still be paid this is already horrible and i know it's gonna get worse yeah i'm afraid so within a few years because you need money for school shoes for uniforms textbooks food and because you feel so dirtied by what you've done you can't really see yourself working a normal job or living a normal life ever again you've recruited up to 70 girls for this man and have been abused by him for years you're hooked on drugs which he helps to get you but pretty soon you're too old for him you're not yet 21 and you lose access to younger girls and the money starts drying up unable to keep your life together without the cash that you've become so dependent on you end up in jail on drugs related charges your promising life is ruined and all you've got to show for it is a felony criminal record and a head full of appalling memories and guilt such is the story of courtney wilde one of the very few epstein victims who was brave enough to come out and tell a story publicly you'll be pleased to know that courtney is doing well these days she's a human rights and victims advocate and the lawsuit she filed in 2008 alleging that epstein's first plea deal was unlawful was successful which means it's possible and certainly something i like to think that some of courtney's extraordinary potential has been fulfilled not all of epstein's victims were this lucky though one was found dead in a motel room from a heroin overdose leaving behind a young son and who knows how many unknown victims have taken their lives well before this vile enterprise was finally exposed given that the numbers that this seem to be operating at and the scale of it it's not nice to think about is it and however well courtney's doing today and however much it's pointed out that she's not at all at fault here she's still got to live with what happens her and with what she did as she herself points out courtney's story is nearly identical to all the other victims we know of epstein didn't usually use force preferring to sweet talk and groom his victims counseling them on their schooling and offering to help get them into modeling or the fashion industry or whatever else they were after some of the girls were made to engage in sex with both epstein and a woman called nadia matsinkova who epstein would also claim that it bought as a sex slave from her mother in yugoslavia why would you claim that what's wrong with you don't claim your crimes that's a bad idea marcenkova would use sex toys and strap-ons to have intercourse with some of the victims under the detailed direction of epstein more typically epstein would touch them or apply vibrators to the victim's genitals while they touched him and he masturbated he would pay premium for oral sex or intercourse and would constantly be pushing them to agree to those one victim who was also victimized by martin kova said that she refused to have intercourse with epstein but on one occasion he pinned her to the massage table and raped her after this he apologized and gave her a thousand dollars in a car there were also allegations particularly from virginia roberts that jalane maxwell bepstein's one-time girlfriend and long-time property manager also participated in sex in a similar way to martin kova maxwell whose life and highly disreputable father could make a video all on its own was convicted of multiple sex trafficking offenders on the strength of these and other accusations it seems to be maxwell who came up with the idea of using girls to recruit other girls it seems that earlier on epstein's staff would scout high schools and shopping malls for likely victims a laborious and unreliable system it's amazing like we've talked about in previous episodes how you shouldn't involve other people with your crimes because the more people you involve in your crimes the more likely one of them is to tell on you but it just speaks to epstein's power and money that he has all of these people doing all of this stuff and no one is coming forward it's crazy setting up what the palm beach police department called a sex abuse pyramid scheme basically supercharged epstein's supply chain on top of this victims were trafficked both to and from the virgin islands a u.s territory in the caribbean additionally epstein had financed a modeling agency called mc2 founded by jean-luc brunel a model scout who had multiple allegations of sexual abuse outstanding against him brunel would according to sworn statements by mc2 staff procured girls as young as 13 from europe and send them on various assignments including to epstein where they were abused epstein's relationship with these girls was complicated not on their part of course they were all victims but his grooming behavior seems to indicate that somewhere in his own twisted mind he thought they were all his girlfriends and that he was some kind of hugh hefner-style playboy i think i'm going to be sick for those who regularly came back to him lured by cash or habituated to abuse or both epstein would get involved in their lives a search of one of his properties found a school report card and he'd ordered one of his staff to send a bunch of flowers to one girl to congratulate her on her appearance in a high school performance a couple of victims interviewed by police claimed they were in love with him a sure sign of manipulative grooming on epstein's part this coupled with his own familiar conduct at the dalton school seem to suggest an interesting deformation of epstein's character a sort of peter pan syndrome which chimes in well with the many descriptions of him as a fantasist and overall strange person he's just poop yeah another way you could describe him as being a dirty pedophile peter pan syndrome i mean that's when people think they they they're like always children in their mind it's not an excuse the main hubs of what the virgin islands doj called the epstein enterprise were in new york palm beach florida and the u.s virgin islands as already mentioned epstein had manhattan's largest single residential property where prince andrew notoriously chose to stay just after the epstein indictment the new york residence seems to be one of the two places epstein did most of his entertaining as well as a significant amount of child sex abuse it's an open question as to whether any of his new york guests participated in the abuse part but the damning by association combined with clear and categorical statements by the likes of virginia roberts very strongly suggests that at least some of them did prince andrew for example settled with virginia roberts for millions of pounds to settle a civil suit in which she claims she was basically pimped out to the role for sex prince andrew denies the charges saying he was at pizza express and also that he couldn't sweat at the time because he got ptsd in the falklands war so virginia robert's account of him sweating and grunting over her can't be true for legal reasons we have to say that there's no evidence prince andrew engaged in sex with virginia roberts or any other victim of epstein's though it's difficult to say this without thinking about that photograph of the prince with his arm around virginia's waist the mansion on the island of palm beach an ultra-affluent community in florida where incidentally donald trump has his famous club was where epstein seems to have been based despite having a registered residential address in a yacht club in the caribbean virginia roberts whose name was virginia dufrey at the time worked at trump's mar-a-lago when she was recruited as one of epstein's victims palm beach police uncovered in excess of 100 victims across a limited time span so it seems that most of the industrialized child sexual abuse was happening here it's hard to know for sure the virgin islands seems to have seen quite a lot as well with with epstein's island nicknamed pedophile island by locals epstein owned two of the virgin islands littlest and james and greats and james as the names imply these are adjacent to each other little james is where epstein's infamous compound was and greatson james was purchased by epstein through serps and holding companies as a way to make his activities on littlest and james harder to surveil a monitor this because epstein was a registered sex offender at the time and subject to routine monitoring by law enforcement monitoring which he made virtually impossible by claiming that the jetty on littlest james was his front door and that law enforcement officers couldn't go beyond it without his permission and also by making any access to greats and james which would have provided an excellent staging and observation post for surveillance of epstein's compound almost impossible for law enforcement the fact is too that the u.s virgin islands department of justice as motivated and dedicated as they are couldn't really compete with epstein's resources even according to their own civil complaint epstein was so wealthy he basically outgunned their enforcement mechanisms wait isn't it a territory of the united states don't they basically have unlimited money you know no matter how rich jeffrey epstein was this is the u.s government get together get some spy satellites or something it's probably unrealistic to have spy satellites isn't it but come on maybe a boat maybe a sneaky boat what about a little submarine with a periscope we're familiar with the basic mechanics of the operation epstein would use his own staff his weird girlfriend not girlfriend julian maxwell and his victims to scout for girls between the ages of 13 and 16. the virgin islands complaint states that he trafficked girls as young as 11. but this isn't a proven allegation and even if true which does seem possibly likely it's probably an anomaly epstein's predations were so consistent and he was so blatant about his preferences it's pretty easy to put him in a category which isn't that interested in girls of that age what he was interested in however was 13 to 16 year old girls who looked younger so it's possible that his procurement mechanisms might occasionally snare an actually younger victim he tended to target disadvantaged or otherwise marginalized girls a classic predator move probably as they tended to be less supervised and more importantly less socially powerful and therefore less capable of bringing credible complaints against him in terms of the sort of precautions one could expect from someone running an illegal enterprise there were practically none epstein openly kept contact details of his underage victims and his various address books including notations which indicated when they could be called and what for this is weird like he's so careful that he buys an island next to his island so that no one can spy on his island but he's like now just write down the names of my victims in a book what are you up to you're writing down your crimes but you're also buying islands out of caution it's very strange he took photographs of his victims either naked having sex with him or with nadia massenkova and displayed them around his house that's [ __ ] up dude i mean all of this is super [ __ ] up but what you up to he talked to people about it even people like michael wolff a journalist notorious for writing tell all exposes about prominent people don't brag about your crimes to prominent journalists according to wolfe epstein told him he liked young girls to which wolff replied that it might be better if he used the phrase young women might be better if you weren't a pedophile even donald trump seems to have known about it saying when asked about epstein that he was a terrific guy who loved ladies on the younger side oh trump at a dinner party once epstein floated the idea of using his ranch in new mexico as a sort of baby farm by stocking it with young women and inseminating them with his dna holy i'm assuming this has got to be out of anyone else's mouth it's a joke a weird distasteful joke out of jeffrey epstein's mouth it's like you [ __ ] sicko as we said before epstein was a mysterious figure even the those closest to him but pretty much the only thing people knew about him was that he liked young girls so how in the hell did he get away with it for so long bloody good question chris especially when the only precaution he and his co-conspirators seem to have taken was to occasionally tell victims to say they were 18. one answer might be the classic it was a different time but another might be the people around him had an interest in protecting him it wasn't that much of a different time being a paedophile was still being a pedophile wasn't it he's just super rich and powerful and he's protecting himself he's he's got such good protection that he's okay with being blase about him putting pictures around his house and writing his victims down in a sick notebook epson is generally described as a financier which basically means he would provide people with capital either directly himself or through connections this capital could be for starting up businesses as in the case of mc2 modeling or for debt relief as with the 24 000 pounds he provided to prince andrew and princess sarah so that they could pay off their creditors 24 000 pounds what are you up to you're the queen's son twenty four thousand pounds is not a lot i mean it's twenty four thousand pounds to a regular person is to a lot a lot of money twenty four thousand pounds to a rich person is not a lot of money in any way to jeffrey epstein it's nothing i assume to prince out i would assume to prince andrew it's also nothing or it could be used a simple investment buying stakes in businesses as a means of generating passive income or buying property or other assets either for the same reason or as a means of parking wealth so far so humdrum i mean from a certain point of view if you own shares in anything you could probably call yourself a financier but as a powerful money man epstein knew where all the bodies were buried he knew where the money was and perhaps more importantly exactly where it had come from he knew details about people's personal and business assets which gave him important insights into their life and especially those aspects of their lives that they'd rather not have made public well yes for all the powerful people surrounding him hey i'm sure i've like i don't know whatever rich money people have but like for the victims they're not rich and powerful the police are not rich and powerful the justice people at the justice department are powerful but they're not rich they probably don't have some horrible secret that jeffrey can hold over them we don't know that so but i don't understand why how those people are being i mean obviously there's the victim stuff you know you'd you could be bullied into it but there are so many it's fascinating he knew the sensitive tax arrangements of his billionaire clients and apparently a fair amount of dirt about bear stearns but more on that later so but bear stearns is a company of course they've done they're they were a giant merchant bank it's like every few years it seems like oh yeah this giant bank was just laundering money for terrorists yeah yeah no they were providing money to drug cartels it's like holy we don't we already expect big banks to be pieces of [ __ ] so when you read these things it's not like oh my god bear stearns no what it's always like of course shocking so both literally and figuratively epstein's day job potentially gave him a large amount of leverage added to this he was also something of a lion hunter meaning that he liked to collect wealthy powerful and distinguished friends and not just in america jillaine maxwell british socialite a daughter of notorious newspaper man and terrible swimmer robert maxwell was able to connect him to european elites up to and including royalty so epstein was able to collect connections with the commercial cultural and political establishment at the highest levels on both sides of the pond okay so i see how this could work like this is how he could potentially have people in government and you know prosecutors and stuff under his thumb not by having something on them but having something on their boss or just befriending them which seems like that shouldn't be possible like if you're like the attorney general of some state or whatever it's like you find out that your mate is a criminal you can't just be like nah it's cool john's a great guy you've got to be like john we gotta have a talk mate just a heads up on monday knock knock fbi just saying you probably shouldn't even do that because you'll go on the run but i like to think these people do have some sort of is this one of these things where everyone's going to comment in the comments about how naive i am because i feel like these people should be held they are i don't know i watch billions that chuck rhodes character he's not being bought he's he's already rich but god damn it why do why does it have to be like this maybe it's what god intended all along and collect is exactly the word he used to describe his social activities in this sphere if you were a high flyer in society a talented celebrity or a powerful politician or businessman epstein was interested in schmoozing you the fact of him knowing ex-presidents and international luminaries also added to his untouchability it was through these connections that he was able to hire the kind of legal team oj could have only dreamed of some of them had worked for oj one of them had been special envoy to north korea and another was alan dershovitz the grand old man of u.s law also in his team ironically was kenneth starr the lawyer who led the impeachment of bill clinton for sexual misconduct in the white house he was also able to hire an army of private investigators he'd routinely used to coerce and intimidate witnesses plane tips and even law enforcement oh my god okay so that's how he does it's like yeah obviously the big people have something to hide and jeffrey knows all of their like all of their skeletons but he would also use private investigators to dig up like regular small people's stuff and be like oh this is so intense it's money is crazy so much money must been going into this to keep it all secret it's crazy to see all of this in action as well as the breathtaking dereliction of duty on the parts of florida state's authorities let's have a look at the investigators who brought epstein down the long and feeble arm of the law in 2005 a disturbance broke out in a classroom at a school for troubled youths in palm beach one of the girls had been found to have three hundred dollars in cash in her purse more than a week's wages and a princely sum for the mostly disadvantaged students the girl was weeping and her classmates were variously cheering or calling her a [ __ ] when questioned she confessed to have gotten the money by providing a massage to some old guy in a mansion her stepmother put in a frantic call to detective michael pagan of the town of palm beach police department saying she had reason to believe her fourteen-year-old stepdaughter had been abused she was so distraught that she didn't even leave a number for them to call her back on but police tracked her down and the girl was brought in for an interview she told the mattel of sexual activity with a creepy old silver-haired guy called jeff nobody knows how police made the connection but one suspects it might be that some people already basically knew what was happening and who was doing it yeah there's so many people someone be like oh jeff yes jeff in palm beach jeff epstein yeah we knew this day was coming in any event they conducted a photo lineup and she identified jeffrey epstein before opening a major investigation police went to the office of the u.s attorney for the southern district of florida this step is usually taken to determine whether there's sufficient or prima facie evidence to merit the expenditure of resources required to conduct the inquiry why do i get the feeling that that guy is going to be jeff's mate and he's going to be like nah we didn't have the money for that i don't think this is important enough to follow up the abuse of a 14 year old girl we don't need to look into that do we boys do we do we well i'm in charge so no i mean i'm just speculating i don't know what the next line is going to be but that feels about right doesn't it the u.s attorney had never heard of jeffrey epstein hey but approved the police force's intention to throw the book at the child abuse and potentially get him a life sentence [ __ ] legend i was wrong my guess was wrong and i'm so happy they began their investigation and contrary to what casual criminalist listeners and viewers might expect it was absolutely stellar or what simon might expect this is amazing in their first sweep they found more than 50 victims and all of them tell pretty much the same story lead detective joseph ricari reflected on what a strong case they built they had handwritten phone messages from the girls recovered from epstein's garbage they had flight logs and call logs which matched exactly with victim testimony and the days they were scheduled to give massages police chief michael reiter commented on the absolute mountain of witness testimony they had and to quote this was not a he said she said situation this was 50 something she's and one he and the she's all basically told the same story it's not one of those things you know with uh like me too it's like when there are eight women and they are all saying the same thing it's kind of hard to be like wow at that point can you still really deny it like are they all out to get you are they all saying the same thing just by coincidence it's like come on and there's 50 of them but why do i still get the feeling that this isn't the big slam dunk that ends this investigation i get the feeling that someone higher up is gonna kill this real hard and that is insane given how hard given how intense this evidence is in fact i can almost not believe it i'm really inclined to believe that this must be the thing that gets him caught because it would be insane for it to be otherwise girls who had never met each other dozens of them were giving nearly identical accounts of what happened to them even down to descriptions of epstein's genitalia which is why i now know that his penis was mushroom shaped and i really wish i didn't you have what's been described as an egg-shaped penis [Music] yeah thanks chris now i've got that in my mind as well can we just have left it with his genitalia did we have to go there his research is impeccable everything seemed to be coming up roses police had more than enough to lock epstein up for life and because the investigation had uncovered who the guy really was his jet-setting lifestyle and suspicions that powerful and wealthy people might be involved in what was potentially an international sex trafficking ring the fbi was conducting a grand jury inquiry at the same time you gotta be like oh if you're you're jerry see you're gonna be like oh [ __ ] i'm in big trouble or maybe he's like no i got friends who'll take care of this psycho unfortunately the investigation under cover to epstein really was and the wealthy and powerful people connected to him which began to prove a bit daunting for u.s attorney alexander acosta according to detective ricari acosta became increasingly lukewarm on the case and started putting pressure on the department to wrap things up oh my god and it begins and despite an overwhelming pile of evidence warranting a wide-ranging and comprehensive prosecution acosta and started negotiating a plea deal are you [ __ ] me a plea deal for what he abused 50 people at a minimum that's 50 people who came forward what are we doing this is power guys this is power this is inexplicable point number one it's not inexplicable it's the result of money and power after epstein's arrest and searches of his properties and planes one of which had a bed in it and was nicknamed the lolita express a mountain of physical evidence was added to the already formidable pile of testimony corroborating records and high-value circumstantial evidence it's really difficult to understand why a deal was even on the table any u.s attorney eager for advancement should have been slathering for the chance to trumpet this case in court a case like this was likely to be a slam dunk or ratings extravaganza and the sort of career stepping stone ambitious prosecutors absolutely dream of so why then did it costa schedule a breakfast meeting with attorney jay lefkowitz 70 miles away from his own office the customary place to negotiate deals in the west palm beach marriott i assume that's sarcasm why would you have a meeting 70 miles away from your office it's like two hours drive what are you up to perhaps the informal setting had something to do with the fact that lefkowitz and decosta had been past colleagues at kirkland and ellis a high-profile washington practice oh my god this all right begins it began it's so crazy there is no some people just see are above the law this is mental perhaps lefkowitz who've been special envoy to north korea was just too busy to schlep it out to the u.s attorney's office like every other lawyer negotiating a plea deal or perhaps the marriers served a special sort of breakfast especially conductive to productive negotiations whatever the reason the u.s attorney for the southern district of florida alexander acosta struck a deal with the attorney for jeffrey epstein j lepkowitz by the time breakfast was done this account painstakingly researched and reconstructed by the miami herald has since been denied by acosta and the doj formally ruled he was telling the truth but where and when the deal was cut isn't as important as what was in it and what a deal it was epstein would cop to a grand total of three state felony charges two state charges of soliciting prostitution and one of having sex with a minor as well as registering as a sex offender the minor in question was 14 years old at the time of offending was labelled a charred prostitute and actually threatened with prosecution which is ludicrous florida did at the time have some old statutes which defined child prostitution as a crime in which a child could be charged but it had been long superseded by various state and federal acts so that in reality child prostitutes in the sense of children guilty of prostitution didn't really exist in u.s law as they shouldn't be because that's called a victim what the [ __ ] the past but the use of this superseded bit of statute meant that epstein wouldn't be prosecuted on the more serious federal charge which was child sex trafficking which carried a potential life sentence it's insane like what is he's facing realistically a life sentence in prison for this and i don't know what he gets away with but i vague memories that it is very very little jail time if any which if he walks that is absolutely ins i've said insane so many times in this episode but that would just be mind-blowing he would also pay restitution to the 36 victims identified in the fbi probe a mere fraction of his actual victims on top of this epstein would serve 13 months in a county jail 13 months a year and a month for 50 victims this was unusual as well for state convictions the guilty party would ordinarily go to state prison this state prison system in florida is pretty rough and it's likely that epstein going in as a convicted child abuser might not come back out or at least not in one piece oh no whether or not this was a consideration we don't know but the fact is that for state charges people generally go to state prison it's quite strange he was sent to county and if nothing else it's another sign of the sweetheart treatment he was given by authorities for a range of offenses which really should have taken any kind of consideration off the table in any event the deal was cut over 2007 and 2008 and it's noted in the record that epstein provided quote valuable consideration for information given to federal investigators what the [ __ ] does that mean this is apparently cited as the reason for leniency of his sentence what information he gave isn't known and given how many skeletons he knew the whereabouts of it could have been almost anything but it is a bit of a coincidence that the gfc was happening around this time and that epstein cited as a witness in a federal case against some bear stearns executives who oversaw big chunks of the massive mess which was the collapse of the subprime mortgage market well obviously that information didn't go very far because one thing about the great financial crisis is like did anyone really pay the price of that was anyone who was up to that dodgy dealing and securitization and all that did anyone actually get punished wasn't there like one scapegoat dude and that was it so i didn't really go anywhere did it which leaves over the possibility epstein was informing on another matter entirely or his testimony was used as part of the pretext for his unbelievably light sentence it sounds like someone's pressing some buttons upstairs and just using this as an excuse for why he got a year and a month in jail for the abuse of 50 children crazy but the two most outrageous aspects of this deal were the fact that it was sealed into the so-called non-prosecution agreement first of all the details of the deal as well as the fact that it existed at all was kept secret from the plaintiffs and their lawyers not only is this highly unusual it's actually unlawful so the judge found in courtney wilde's case and since then courtney's law the bill she championed has made it even more illegal so to speak not just the law but common sense and any sort of notion of natural justice make it necessary to inform the victims if the accused has received a plea deal but the upshot of keeping this one dark was that on the day the deal was formalized in court not a single plaintiff was present to object to it or to see epstein's sentence as none of them knew it was happening also somewhat strangely a retired judge was substituted for the regular one on this particular day another aspect of the case which has never been satisfactorily explained the most popular theories are that the regular judge was disgusted enough to simply refuse to ratify the deal or the powerful forces maneuvered a judge they knew would give the right ruling into the court specifically for that purpose jesus allegedly this is just speculation yes thank you chris jesus the fact is that this is a strange thing that happened and we've no idea why but by far the most egregious aspect is the non-prosecution agreement at first glance it might not seem so exceptional in granting immunity to co-conspirators in exchange for a guilty plea this does happen from time to time but the language of this one is to every lawyer and legal expert who's seen it utterly baffling and it's pretty clear they're only using words like inexplicable and baffling because lawyers aren't generally comfortable we think calling things criminal or sinister and we would never call things like that i would just agree with the lawyers and say that it's baffling other people might call it sinister and criminal definitely not us at the casual criminalist allegedly what the provision includes is immunity from federal prosecution not only for epstein's four co-conspirators but also for every other co-conspirator or potential co-conspirator named and unnamed that is sweeping and uncertain guys which is what you don't want laws to be what this essentially means is that anybody at all who might have been involved in epstein's offending people who'd accepted offers of girls which his accusers categorically state happened frequently people who'd done logistics or transport or basically anyone else who had anything to do with epstein's industrial scale international child sex ring would basically get off scot-free and further to that the fbi's grand jury inquiry and powerful people who might have been involved in this intentional child sex ring would also be shut down because anyone they might be investigating would by virtue of this deal become immune to prosecution by federal authorities so to sum up the u.s attorney alex acosta agreed to a deal which ensured that the scope and range of epstein's offending would never be found out that anyone who'd been involved with him would be protected that the victims would have not only no opportunity to object but would be effectively silenced and the offender himself would get a slap on the wrist which isn't really anyone's interpretation of fearless advocacy on behalf of the people of the united states except possibly and allegedly alex acosta's now there's a lot of theory and speculation about how and why a deal like this would ever be cut and this is one of those weird occasions where i'm simultaneously agreeing and disagreeing with various conspiracy theorists out there most of them say that stuff like this is normal par for the course and that all government is like this i've worked for and in government and happen to know it's not this is an exception a shocking startling and outrageous exception yeah i agree like this is some the reason that we are and i assume you dear listener are so shocked by this is because it is unusual if this stuff was happening all the time we wouldn't be so shocked and deplored by it would be like i apar for the course but we're not we're shocked and alarmed and this stuff's generally pretty public record if something's been sealed you can't can't see what's in the sealed thing but you know it's been sealed and you know it's weird and you know he's only gone to prison for 13 months despite all of this stuff if this was happening all the time well i i think we'd know again am i just being naive i know the conspiracy theory people are going to call me naive i i agree with chris i don't think this is regular par for the course it's not unique by any means i can think of three cases at the top of my head two american and one british where people in positions similar to epstein have either mysteriously died vanished or sailed off into the blue yonder with pockets full and a new name but it is far from usual where i find myself agreeing with the conspiracy types is in their contention that there's some kind of conspiracy of silence going on here julie k brown the dauntless miami herald reporter who cracked this case wide open was able to obtain communications between the prosecutors and epstein's lawyers these revealed in her own words quote an unusual level of collaboration between federal prosecutors and epstein's legal team that even government lawyers in recent court documents admitted was an orthodox in an interview given to npr brown expanded on this saying that she never had seen a case like this before where federal prosecutors seem to be working with the defendants against the accusers the reasons for this do seem pretty obvious even if they can't be proven to be true high-profile business tycoons shady and otherwise celebrities politicians and even royalty are implicated in the case and it's probable that the language granting immunity to any potential co-conspirators was designed to protect them there's even a and will point this out a conspiracy theory that we are certainly not saying is true it's a conspiracy theory that is out there that alan dershowitz harvard law professor and ultimate legal heavyweight got the language included to protect himself again that is a conspiracy theory that you might choose to believe in or you might not alan jersuit strenuously denies this and all involvement in all knowledge of epstein's offending and was able to get his own name stricken from the records of the relevant civil actions which accused or mentioned him which tells us something but what we really couldn't say adath okay so obviously i've even got a note here from chris saying don't accuse this dude of anything um because obviously he's gone to great legal length to remove his name from this but i also think like if if you are guilty we're not saying is again like to remove this entirely from this situation if a person is guilty of a crime and there is court proceedings against them somehow and they can get their name removed from that they're going to do so but if a person is completely innocent and they're also included in that they're also going to go to great lengths to remove it possibly even greater lengths because they're actually innocent and they're like what the [ __ ] are you doing wrapping me up in this if i was this dude and i was innocent i'd do the exact same thing i don't think it indicates dick as for acosta he says that he was simply outlawed by the all-star bench that epstein's unlimited funds allowed him to muster to be fair epstein's defense was hugely aggressive not only whereas heppy hit a legal team all over the u.s attorney's office the accusers and their families they hired a small army of private investigators these people dug up dirt on the victims and their families trawling through their social media accounts and criminal records many of the girls had understandably gone off the rails or were never properly on the rails in the first place they put them and their families under physical surveillance as well in one instance tailings so aggressively they ran on a victim's parents off the road they even paid visits to victims and their families trying to coerce them into recounting their testimony through threats of dark consequences for going after such a powerful man yeah and you can i get this like if you're just a regular person living your regular life and suddenly all of this pressure is put upon you that's got to be incredible i mean like incredibles almost sounds like a positive word it's got to be incredibly scary it's got to be like you must seriously consider this because why am i doing this this guy's going to crush me he's so much more powerful than me power to the people power to the people power to the people now you might think that this sort of behavior could constitute obstruction of justice or at the very least interfering in a police investigation both of which are crimes you'd be right but astonishingly nobody ever took any action to pursue these avenues which emboldened the investigators so much that they started putting surveillance on the task force detectives but even the chief of police this feels like an unnecessary risk so possibly acosta was simply outgunned and outclassed but there's some things going against that not least of which is the fact that prosecutors also threatened the victims remember that suspended statute about child prostitution multiple victims reported that prosecutors warned them they might be exposing themselves to criminal charges by testifying against epstein which is insane these people are so clearly the victims that isn't independently verified good that we're covering that and acosta denies this but multiple victims make the claim and like we say it is just a claim it is not proven it's all allegedly make up your own mind they would use ground tactics hand-to-hand combat and then there's the fact that an ambitious u.s attorney whose reputation rests on him being an awesome lawyer presents as his excuse that he just wasn't good enough at lawyering again you can be the best lawyer in the world but when you are facing an army of other best lawyers in the world that is still going to be intimidating this is just my personal opinion but if your excuse for something is to trash your reputation then that says a lot in chris's opinion but of course the doj found that acosta wasn't hiding anything that had simply exercised poor judgment in agreeing to the deal it also found that the breakfast meeting hadn't been where the deal was cut and that their main consideration had been to prevent more trauma for the victims by avoiding a lengthy trial which might seem plausible until you consider the sheer scope of the offending uncovered by the palm beach police and the fbi you know what as a victim i wouldn't be so worried about a trial i'd be worried about the guy who has done this to me getting a slap on the wrist which is the outcome here which is insane at which point it becomes absolutely ludicrous totally agree chris but that's what the doj found so i guess that's the end of it unless anyone else out there happens to be an investigative journalist and wants to do a bit of digging that is epstein then went off to do his very little bit of time and it's clear that his special treatment didn't end with the deal the u.s attorney so obligingly gave him early in jail he applied for day release something sex offenders aren't really supposed to get and was allowed to travel to a luxurious office that had set up near the prison pretty well every day during this period epstein bought children's underwear right under the noses of the authorities a childless sex offender allowed to leave prison every day and buy underpants which wouldn't fit an adult woman is appalling enough but there's more god while there he had full access to the internet and phones and also had paid for a detail of sheriff's department officers to escort him and function as a security team for him this is insanity they would drive him to his office or even his home if he asked them to and then sit outside never coming in just reading magazines drinking coffee and signing visitors in and out some of these visitors were no no no how is this how how is this what is going on this is one of the most insane miscarriages of justice that i've ever seen some of these visitors were young girls whom epstein had called in for sex when asked by the miami herald whether they'd ever questioned any of this or even inquired as to the nature and purpose of these visits for a registered sex offender accused of abusing young girls no less they simply replied that it wasn't their job what is your job then exactly so what we've got here is three levels of law enforcement the town of palm beach police department basically the city police frankly and fearlessly attempted to do their jobs to the utmost of the ability the sheriff's department basically one level of government lower allowed their officers to be hired out as bodyguards and chauffeurs for a prisoner this isn't an unheard of arrangement most police can be hired for special duties by private citizens closing off roads for film crews or providing special protection for example but this one's very on the nose and then very on the nose they are signing young girls into a man who is currently in prison for sex offending's house jesus and then finally and probably most egregiously there's the federal prosecutors the ones who are supposed to be the beacon of integrity in a justice system where local authorities are known to be more susceptible to corruption the very authorities you go to when you suspect the lower levels of officialdom to be derelict in their duty or corrupt these federal prosecutors committed a breathtaking dereliction of duty at the very least defanging the city police investigators and basically allowing a situation where a serial sex offender on a massive scale was able to do a life reset and continue offending even while he was meant to be serving the ridiculously tiny sentence that he'd been given it's very difficult not to conclude that the likeness of the sentence and the ludicrously liberal conditions under which it was served constituted a tacit approval of epstein's behavior i don't think it's a tacit approval scene's behavior i think it's just corruption allegedly the whole deal feels like frantic measures just to make the whole problem go away as if the federal authorities involved were more worried about the embarrassment than they were committed to punishing something they truly thought was wrong i say feels like because that's really what it does feel like despite the fact that everyone involved including acosta vehemently denies this so i guess it's up to all of you to decide was acosta outlawed by epstein's team was he pressured by powerful groups or individuals or was he unbothered by the industrial scale abuse of poor people i know what i think and it's a combination of those three i don't think again i don't want to jump to like people's defenses too hard but i also feel that you don't want to jump to accusations too hard this guy seems like he was just put under a ton of pressure by people more powerful than him i don't think he's like poor people they deserve to be abused i think that's insane to say like people generally don't again people are going to call me like super naive in the comments but i don't think people generally go into the kind of job that he has uh i don't think they're bad people i think they probably believe in justice and stuff and then they get beaten out of by people that are more powerful than them in this situation maybe it's interesting have different opinions to chris on some of this stuff miami herald investigative reporter julie k brown had been following the case and got wind of the plea deal like every other sane humanol saw it she was utterly mystified as to how such a thing could have happened without a serious dereliction of duty on the part of the authority so she and her photographer emily mitchot got to work she and her team at the herald managed to locate 60 victims out of 80 identified and began doggedly contacting them hoping to find some who'd be willing to go on the record as she says herself in a book perversion of justice which is well worth a read this was difficult and emotionally harrowing work not only was she deadly afraid of re-traumatizing these women but there was also the fact that none of these people had any reason to trust any social institution ever again i get that i get that but also if you're if the government and the police haven't helped you i mean i feel like journalists and reporters are the last beacon of like hope in a free society it's why it's so important for for newspapers to be free to publish what they want without fear of repercussion because these are the sort of people that will who aren't money driven who aren't afraid because i could never be a journalist i'm way too afraid of of all of this stuff um but there are these people who exist and they're like the heroes digging things out in these when the rest of society has failed victims in my opinion they'd been betrayed in the worst conceivable way by the system and were likely to see the media especially the mainstream media as an element of that system which was just as rotten as the rest of it yeah but there are investigative journalists there are people are they off they're the people who win pulitzer prizes who aren't the mainstream media pumping out the 24-hour news cycle of bull and my opinion of the media is not particularly high but my opinion of like journalists within you know certain uh papers news organizations is super high like it's a interesting contradiction i'm just realizing mainstream media kind of bull investigative journalism super important happily eight of them agreed to speak with her four of whom consented to giving video interviews she also began digging into the investigation and plea deal making contact with lead detective and absolute legend joseph ricari as well as ex-police chief michael reiter she was able to obtain the previously sealed police reports details of the plea deal and a host of other information which pointed to a miscarriage of justice on a truly biblical scale the amount of detail she was able to uncover was truly astonishing and the fact that members of the palm beach pd cooperated with her is a heartening note in this story it is that feels good and a testament to their dedication to obtaining justice for the victims julie describes detective rickary as salt of the earth and a man who doesn't care who you are if you've committed a crime he's coming after you she says he was absolutely furious with the plea deal and the fate of the case in general sadly joe riccari died shortly after speaking to the herald so he never got to see epstein's ultimate demise that's a shame once she'd gathered all of her material julie published the first in a six-part series also entitled perversion of justice describing the extraordinary plea deal and recounting victim testimonies of epstein's offending in the offices of the maya herald there's a board which shows the most read news stories of the day she recalls the top story of that particular day was a piece about a woman who farted in a gas station which is definitely the sort of article i'd click on immediately so that's understandable oh my god sliced up a little bit of levity jesus even this relatively unfunny thing from chris i'm like ah sweet relief they're three days apart so i'm guessing she didn't actually check a piece until it had been up for a little while the actual story was about a woman who farted in a grocery store and then pulled a knife on a customer who called her out for it holy sh did you fart you shot your filthy mouth i found it in case jen wants to put it up there's a link in the chat if you want to find this gen edit is the videos that i probably mentioned at the beginning uh you could put it on screen if you want to a little extra bit of enjoyment for our video viewers this comes out on youtube as well as at a pod as a podcast if you want to check that out it's just as fun some might even say more fun and you get to look at my wonderful face anyway seeing her work at the bottom of the pile she basically went about her business as any good journalist does once they've been put on a story once it's out there it's time to live your life for a bit and then get into the next story but pretty soon her story absolutely blew up julie was charmingly surprised by this but the fact is that it had all the elements of a blockbuster all along the rich and famous sex crimes apparent or alleged or possible running out of qualifying words here perversion of the course of justice it was the whole shebang she recalls that when her story outstrips the farting woman piece the whole newsroom applauded because while all journalists will do the click-bait stuff because they have a crippling addiction to food and shelter a good number of them still care about public interest reporting once the story came out it rocked the establishment this was a moment similar to the boston globes reporting on the catholic church's child sex abuse cover-ups which is was made in that great movie with um why can't i remember neither of the two super famous actors that are in this movie god damn simon your memory is terrible a story which literally changed the world this is impressive as it dropped in 2018 a year when the entire news cycle was basically dominated by the trump administration in its favor however was the fact that this was the height of the metoo movement harvey weinstein and others had just recently been exposed to sex predators and the cultural moment was exactly right and unlike other metoo cases this one wasn't about actors celebrities or athletes but was about the poor and the disadvantaged proof that the culture of harassment and abuse stretched across the full spectrum of society people were surprised by this people look at me too i'd be like nah nah nah this is just happening with uh producers directors young actors that's uh that's only where it's happening of course it's not it's happening across the board in every level of society just people care about it less when it's not famous rich people julia herself became an overnight celebrity inundated with phone calls and emails and has been the face of this story ever since though she's always quick to point out there's large teams that have nothing to do with her still working on this to this day i like this julie room she sounds very modest despite doing this incredible thing more importantly those victims who chose to speak out both initially to julie brown and later were finally getting the public hearing they deserved quite a few people came under the microscope as a result of julie's reporting epstein of course and alexander acosta architect of the 2008 plea deal and then secretary of labor under donald trump interestingly labor is one of the bigger departments in the u.s federal government and human trafficking falls under its remit acosta resigned and began defending himself and figures who'd been associates of epstein including prince andrew president trump president clinton alan dershovitz and many others began fielding questions about whether they'd been preying on young girls all this time this was also around the time that people outside of the uk first started hearing about jillaine maxwell architect of the epstein enterprise when it first entered its full production phase other journalists many of whom claimed to have been stymied or obstructed in their inquiries either by epstein's goons or allegedly their own editors began blatantly publishing their own stories and serious scrutiny was applied how sections of the media protect the evil and the corrupt so long as they're also rich and powerful but probably most importantly the u.s attorney for the southern district of new york a district famous for taking on tough high-profile cases began the process which would finally see epstein indicted on the correct federal charges and facing the correct potential penalty life imprisonment we all know how this story ends epstein was arrested returning from an international journey one of many which he incidentally hadn't reported despite being required to as a registered sex offender a new indictment was filed and extremely broad in general which covered the whole scope of his offending as it was known to have occurred within the continental us and epstein was locked up at the metropolitan correctional center or mcc then on august 10 2019 epstein was found dead in his cell this devastated his victims who had once again had their day in court cruelly snatched from them some would still get it though as the southern district of new york simply shifted its prosecution to long-time epstein associate julaine maxwell when maxwell tried to cite the non-prosecution provisions in the acosta deal the new york southern district simply shrugged them off arguing successfully that they weren't bound by the terms of that deal this is probably bad news for the likes of sarah kellen and nadia masinkova in any event maxwell went to trial and some of epstein's victims were finally able to accuse her and him of the crimes which had been committed against them maxwell was convicted on five counts relating to sexual trafficking and activity with minors and is due to be sentenced later in 2022. as of now she's 60 odd and the likely sentence is in the neighborhood of 40 years the likeliest outcome is that she'll spend the rest of her life behind bars this is something that's so intense right like when you are you've been convicted and it's like you're looking at all these years in prison and then it's like now we're gonna send to you in a few months you got to be like i mean i guess she knows that it's going to be for the rest of her life most likely but that's got to be like like the the thera-nose trial's going right now she's guilty of these counts of stuff and she's waiting to be sentenced and she's young though so she and it could be the sentence could be small it could be massive that's got to be like you got to be biting your freaking nails on that one [Music] who else was involved i said at the top that we weren't going to entertain the idea that epstein was part of a global conspiracy to harvest the blood of abused children for satanic rituals and we aren't that's just madness but what we are going to entertain is the idea behind the idea that the rich and powerful will coordinate and cooperate take advantage of the poor and the powerless or at the very least connive at protecting each other from the consequences of their actions this is something we know to be true as we've seen it over and over again as much as western countries like to talk about being nations of laws the fact is that this is only a relative statement for the most part when compared with dictatorships and banana republics the law applies equally to all citizens at least in theory yeah but i mean come on like better lawyers are going to get you a better deal and better lawyers cost more money but it is objectively true that the rich and powerful can and will circumvent legal penalties organizing amongst their little clubs and finding ways to soften or avoid legal sanctions entirely the most basic interpretation of epstein's treatment throughout much of his life is just that he was able to get away with it for so long and was so surprised when he was finally brought to account simply because there's one law for the rich and one law for the poor this isn't technically true but it does in fact often work out that way especially when participation in the legal process is paid for by the hour i don't think this bill cosby it just came to me now um he recently got out on some technicality didn't he which is mad and it's like whoever his lawyer is he should be kissing that guy's shoes and he should be also back in prison allegedly in my opinion sorry it just came to me right now as we were reading this it mentioned it earlier i couldn't think of the guy bill cosby this isn't technically true but it does in fact often work out that way especially when participation in the legal process is paid for by the hour i don't think this entirely explains the first deal however and the fact of epstein's final imprisonment actually stands as proof that our social institutions can work eventually the media as represented by the herald reporters did their job by scrutinizing something fishy in government when it was exposed the full machinery of the state kicked in to correct what should have never been fumbled in the first place there's almost certainly more to this than the effect of social inequality though what's truly disturbing about the epstein case is the extent to which the world's elite was implicated in his wrongdoing epstein had many powerful friends and he entertained them frequently in all of the places where he did most of his offending on top of that he was open about his tastes even to the extent of displaying pictures of his victims and many of these are given sworn statements to the effect that they were expected to have sex with epstein's friends and associates so was epstein a pimp for the rich and famous the problem here is that there's no evidence for it in the sense that there's nothing we can point to as a smoking gun at least not in any way which would pan out in a criminal court or protect us from libel action this absence of evidence can however be construed as suspicious in itself especially given how much of the investigation into epstein remains under seal despite the sterling efforts of investigative reporters around the world what we do have is the accusations of people like virginia roberts and it's definitely not just her whom we know have been victimized by epstein we also have the flight logs from his private planes phone records and his digital address book from which it's clear that very prominent people in business entertainment and politics were frequent visitors at his houses his island and his ranch it's difficult to believe that they went to parties and for long visits at epstein's properties and didn't notice all the young women hanging about it's even unlikely that they didn't notice epstein using these girls for sex three times a day michael wolff noticed girls in their late teens or early twenties forming a part of epstein's entourage when they flew off to palm beach and there are plenty of other accounts of his masseurs and of topless girls on swings or posing by the pool when you put this together with the vagina soaps and naked pictures on the walls the whole vibe must have felt like the last days of sodom and it strains credibility to breaking point to imagine these people didn't know what all of this meant knowing it was going on is different to being involved in it as uh there's morally complex do you have an obligation to report it morally yeah i'd say so it certainly did for the fbi who centered their whole investigation on the involvement of prominent members of the u.s establishment and were looking likely to seriously embarrass and even possibly even convict some of them until acosta's deal shut the whole thing down and in terms of the civil complaints and we need to tread carefully here some of those complaints dealing with epstein associates have been settled prince andrew's case is well worth looking at virginia roberts publicly accused him of raping her on three occasions in three different locations which he denied and for which she sued him andrew's lawyers tried everything in the book attempting to get the whole complaint dismissed refusing interviews with u.s authorities and trying to argue that her original 500 000 payout from epstein indemnified him against any further litigation when all these failed andrew's lawyers settled for what is reported to be 16 million us dollars but that is not confirmed just reported to be that it's possible this settlement was undertaken merely to avoid further embarrassment to the royal family but it's also plausible to think that nobody who's innocent no matter how wealthy will drop that much money on a case they think they'll win yeah but you can you can also be innocent of something and still think you'll lose and settle happens all the time or agree to a sealed settlement and perpetual doubt about their guilt if they think there's a reasonable chance they'll be acquitted and vindicated before the entire world the publication of epstein's address book another sordid episode in this sordid case must have had some very powerful people getting very nervous indeed they must have squirmed at the idea of their own personal details being mixed in with those underage girls and women whom ebstein would routinely call for sexual services and they must have been hugely relieved when the butler managed to scan it before epstein could destroy it was jailed trying to sell it to the highest bidder a circumstance which meant that the contents weren't actually available at the height of the investigation into epstein's network leland nalley a writer of mother jones undertook the herculean task of calling everyone in the book oh my god if this this butler has made a tactical error if you have scanned that address book you have an enormous amount of leverage over all of the people in that book and over the prosecution how are you in prison how did you end up in jail number one thing upon scanning that book i would do is encrypt it encrypt the [ __ ] out of it so no one can access it i would not write down the password anywhere and i would hold it in my big brain and then i would be like i have the password to that book uh i'd not go to prison you want to know who's in that book you want to be able to prosecute all those people i am going to need blanket immunity right now you're testing me to see if i think like a sociopath get that signed up i'll give you that password and you can carry on and i'm going to go on my merry way thank you very much the butler made a tactical error leela nally a writer for mother jones undertook the herculean task of calling everyone in the book of course in a sample of more than 1 500 numbers some were going to be wrong and some reallocated but he did manage to talk with some of epstein's oldest friends in amongst getting brushed off by the flunkies of the global elite what emerges is a layered picture where only a very few people seem to have known the full extent of what he and jillaine maxwell were doing one of epstein's oldest friends a woman with no real public profile and therefore no expensive asked to cover said that epstein's ammo was basically to track down rich or famous men and introduce them to a girl he liked to have lots of girls around as a symbol of his power and his party time playboy image and he'd use this to impress people this chimes in with the notorious video of donald trump and epstein ogling young women at a party way i haven't seen this infamous video but of course it exists but the majority of the people in epstein's address book had only met him a couple of times at most and a good number were astonished that they were in there at all and those who knew jelaine maxwell said they thought the book looked a hell of a lot more like her address book than his also hi i'm doing an investigative report on geoffrey epstein jeffrey who who would be like oh yeah yeah yeah jeff my mate yeah we're real close no one's saying that it seems the book was just another aspect of epstein's collecting of prominent people a sort of systematic social climbing powered by jillaine maxwell's connections to the aristocracy which makes the idea of it as evidence of a global child abuse conspiracy amongst the one world oligarchy a little bit hard to swallow what's more likely is that for most people involved with epstein ordinary everyday sleaze was going on and if they were paying to participate in that sleaze anywhere in the u.s then in a just world they'd be prosecuted for it but none of this takes us away from some particularly damning associations trump and clinton keep coming up trump because he was good friends with epstein for quite a long time i was not a fan of his that i can tell you i was not a fan of his and clinton because he visited littlest james several times a distinction which hardly any of epstein's associates could lay claim to is manikin there one accuser in particular claims trump and epstein raped her when she was 13 but it's really difficult to get at the merits of that claim beyond this admittedly very serious allegation that not very much to suggest that the two of them were doing anything beyond being sleazy old pervs together immoral and nauseating behavior yes almost certainly but serious sexual offenses apart from that single accuser and the fact that multiple women have accused donald trump of sexual misconduct and assault there isn't anything we can grab a hold of so to speak it doesn't really look good though and it's pretty certain that so long as people keep digging into epstein's past as they currently are that picture might one day change as for bill clinton it's a similar if somewhat worse situation clinton has a record of promiscuity and sexual misconduct it's also widely claimed that he's repeatedly gotten away with sexual assault and these claims aren't easy to dismiss as a wild fabrication in fact the accusations have bent both clinton and trump of a disturbing consistency to them in clinton's case there really isn't anything pointing towards a fixation with underage girls this combined with his multiple visits to littlest and james though and his frequent flights on epstein's plane make for a highly disturbing set of circumstances in terms of solid evidence though there's practically none and unlike some other prominent people connected with the epstein case i haven't been able to find any credible accusers who name bill clinton in fact investigators say again again that there's nothing to link clinton to the sex trafficking and abuse cases which brings us back once again to the idea of ordinary everyday sleaze bad enough in itself but certainly not on the scale of epstein's offending epstein's offending is on a rare scale there are also wild rumors abounding around the nature of epstein's connections to the elite we know that his townhouse and compound on the island were all rigged for video and it's been posited several times that epstein was able to get away with it so long because he had copious blackmail material and that his death meant it could all be made to go away this is plausible but it's impossible to prove and then there's the rumors that he was some kind of spy one book claims that acosta in trying to explain the plea deal to an associate said he was told to back off because epstein was connected to intelligence this claim hasn't been corroborated and may very well either be a error or a fabrication but it could also be true it's plausible someone like epstein would make a fantastic intelligence asset the access he had to world elites combined with the absolute shed load of compromising material an intelligence officer could use to turn and burn him make him absolutely perfect but against this is the problem that he spent a fair amount of effort posing as a sort of james bond figure he kept a loaded pistol in his bathroom and would in the words of one of his friends talk stupid to make himself seem more interesting than he really was some of that stupid being dark hints that he was a spy i think this is the thing like spies don't say they're spies spies don't do behavior like spies because they don't want people to know their spies that's the point of being a spy people who aren't spies but want you to think they're a spy are all like well i couldn't say if i was a spy but you know i don't think so this doesn't invalidate the idea but it does call into question whether the rumor arose from a kernel of truth or from epstein's own fantasy of himself i think in my opinion is probably the latter as a general rule people who are really spying on people don't tend to say that they're spying on people as i said there are exceptions of course the mi5 officer tried to avoid a fair jumping fine by shouting you can't do this i'm a spy springs to mind but for the most part it's true i remember that like what are you doing what seems most likely to be true here is that a small group of high status people were possibly compromised by their association with epstein and potentially by the things they did while associated with him and an even smaller number appear to have been directly involved in the web of sexual transgression and abuse that surrounded him almost everyone concerned is implicated however is in turning a blind eye to his misdeeds whether or not they knew the full extent of them even the stuff he did which was mostly all borderline legal was pretty disgusting and those who knew him a right to be ashamed of their association and of the fact that they didn't have a problem with a rich guy sexually exploiting the young and the poor yeah that's the moral question it's not a legal question there you mentioned earlier do you have a moral obligation to report crimes of your friends and associates and i think there's a point like there's a line there's definitely a line there's like some crimes no i'll just be like okay whatever i'm not telling but then there's a point where you get to real serious crimes and it's like uh i should do something about this and that is for every individual to make their own moral decision on where that line is for them but the fact of the matter is that entry into the world's elites isn't necessarily a meritocracy there's plenty of dumb shallow incompetent people who stumble into real wealth and power usually by exploiting human relationships or to put it another way sucking up people and doing their dirty work for them there are strong indications that that's how epstein himself got his foot in the door it's the reality of just how silly shallow and self-obsessed epstein's circle was that speaks most strongly against an organized global conspiracy what seems much more likely is that epstein and maxwell created an assembly line of sex abuse for their own dark reasons and their silly and venal friends either didn't care tried to ignore it or in a few cases actually got involved yeah i think you know for all the conspiracies and all of this stuff this is probably the most likely explanation that we're looking at but now we come to the big conspiracy question did jeffrey epstein kill himself the last chapter of julie k brown's book perversion of justice is entitled jeffrey epstein didn't kill himself as we're probably all aware this particular sentence was all over social media for quite a long time and it's such a controversial topic that it's well worth devoting a section two all by itself there are quite a few people who are 100 sure that epstein either definitely did or definitely didn't kill himself anyone who's 100 sure of anything either way is you need to open your mind to the possibility that you're wrong all i can say is that i envy their assurance it'd be really nice to be able to settle this issue definitively and say once and for all that jeffrey epstein was killed by satan as an injured hired by bill clinton or something to that effect there's probably a conspiracy theory out there saying that isn't there but the real situation is much messier than that we can of course all believe what we want i'm not so sure about that but the available evidence doesn't really allow us to prove anything one way or another the question was jeffrey epstein murdered isn't a very productive one as there's no evidence for it none whatsoever did jeffrey epstein kill himself is a better question though as there's quite a bit of circumstantial evidence which raises significant doubts about whether he did or not in fact epstein's death ruled a suicide by hanging by the coroner stinks to high heaven there are so many factors which render it improbable that the only rational position is to have serious doubts as to whether his suicide was unassisted or whether it was a suicide at all it's important to note however some important factors in favor of the suicide theory firstly there's the fact that the metropolitan correctional center where epstein was locked up was a farcically poorly run facility yeah there weren't the cameras out and the guards weren't there and stuff which looks extremely suspicious until maybe you find out yeah the cameras are out most of the time and there aren't enough guards possible when epstein was processed into custody for example he was listed as black and with no prior sex offenses i get the price right but jeffrey epstein is a really white dude people have since said that this was to obscure his identity but that makes no sense obscure it from whom and why if they were trying to hide his identity didn't they just register him under a different name it's like no no no no one will be able to get it you're just your name's jeffrey epstein but we'll just write down your black and no one will be able to figure it out you're not famous at all or part of some giant case right and what would have been the point anyway for a man whom everybody in the country had seen on television online in newspapers yes even the prisoners would likely have recognized him immediately his face had been splashed around so much and for so long and beside which media reports show him being taken to the facility so the whole idea is ridiculous the hugely incompetent running of the prison does take away some of the weight of the argument that killing himself or would have been physically impossible given the level of supervision he was under the problems with this are that people managed to kill themselves in prison all the time and that apart from the time he was on suicide watch there wasn't really that much extra monitoring of epstein despite his high profile and high risk status and then there's the 1953 foundation 1953 is epstein's birth year in case you're wondering about the name anyway the 1953 foundation was set up and filled with a huge amount of epstein's assets a few days before his death the virgin islands doj claims this was an attempt to hide his wealth from seizure or civil claimants and to be fair it was set up through numerous intermediaries and holding companies but the problem with that is that all of epstein's money management worked this way he was obsessed with privacy the holdings he was trying to hide are for all we know mostly still hidden but the ones he more or less openly used were typically squirreled away into arcane labyrinth cat cradles of corporate obfuscation other reporters have commented that this consolidation of a large bulk of his assets basically all his openly held and known ones into one place could be interpreted as him cleaning house like a jumper writing a note tidying the house and then taking off their spectacles before they leap off a tall building sands parachute or superpowers this is interesting but not particularly compelling because it's equally likely that he gathered these assets into a foundation to protect the rest from litigation yeah he knows he's going to jail which is also another reason you might be like let's get all this stuff sorted because when i'm in jail it's going to be a lot more difficult basically this little fact could just as easily be interpreted either way this is what's so maddening about epstein's death the fact that it's so hard to grab onto anything solid or conclusive we're on more solid ground with the circumstances of the death itself as badly run as the mtc was the whole thing still looks unbelievably silly epstein was supposed to be in the special housing unit or shoe on suicide watches he'd already made an attempt on his life the shoe conditions mandate to be placed with a cell mate and that he be checked every 15 minutes then the night before his death he was transferred back to his cell both of the guards tasked with watching his wing managed to fall asleep at the crucial time and of the three cameras covering the area two were inoperable and the third produced what was described as unusable footage the two guards who also falsified records to say that they conducted mandatory checks were given 100 hours of community service and non-custodial sentence an oddly light penalty for being responsible for the death of such a high value prisoner they probably also lost their jobs i would imagine while the coroner ruled the death as a suicide determining epstein had hanged himself with a bed sheet there were like lacerations on his neck but no blood on the sheet and the hyoid bone which is usually untouched by hanging was fractured a medical expert hired by epstein's brother registered the opinion that he had been strangled is mad suspicious the wire the bone thing it's like holy and the guards it's just like there is so much smoke there is so much smoke there's got to be a fire on the other hand one of epstein's fellow inmates who'd become somewhat close to him claimed that all the signs were there saying that he'd gone into his cell one day and found him eating his dinner on the floor because it was easier he says that he knew epstein had given up on life i say that's pretty flimsy no individual piece of evidence here can be taken as conclusive proof that epstein either was or wasn't murdered no not even the hyoid bone thing or the lacerations but to put it all together it's highly suspicious i don't think any reasonable person can say with absolute certitude that epstein decided to kill himself sure he'd attempted suicide already and sure the mcc was so symbolically run that it could explain the cameras and as for the guards i personally worked with sentries and found many of them to be constantly trying to bunk off for a nap and falsifying their records of rounds and logs of observation the conjunction of all these factors however converging at the exact same time of epstein's death combined with the highly unusual postmortem details cast serious doubt on the coroner's verdict there was even a large and powerful group of people who would have found epstein's death convenient and some of them were more capable than either donald trump or bill clinton of the kind of skullduggery needed to pull the levers on someone in prison and then there's the fact that jean-luc brunel allegedly a procurer of underage models for epstein and in french prison on rape and other charges apparently hanged himself in a cell with a bedsheet less than three years later we've got to stress here that nothing has been proven about any of this but as we say in australia this doesn't really pass the pub test and i think it's eminently reasonable to be highly suspicious of this highly suspicious chain of circumstances yeah it's again it's one of those things where it's like it's like the jfk thing at the beginning there is a lot of smoke it's really weird there's definitely something going on do i know what it is no do i think we'll ever find out probably not probably the same with what's going on with epstein here do i think there's something suspicious hell yes it's very suspicious julie k brown and others believe that epstein's death may have been a sort of assisted suicide let's say you're a rich and powerful person who's likely to be compromised by an epstein trial let's further say you hear the guy is already suicidal and he's been trying to kill himself unsuccessfully it'd be reasonable if he had the means to reach into a fantastically corrupt and incompetent prison and make it a bit easier for epstein to do what he's already tried to do that's a favored theory among many and like we've repeatedly said there's no real evidence for it all the evidence really points to is doubt so i guess we'll just have to watch what happens to just lane maxwell and hope that one of the many freedom of information requests or perhaps the 30-year rule will one day reveal the actual truth whatever that is dismembered appendices number one jeffrey epstein is survived by his brother mark epstein a prominent businessman and philanthropist mark isn't accused of being involved in his brother's wrongdoing and has even been involved in the process of setting up jeffrey epstein's estate's victim restitution fund having said all of that some tabloids have pointed out that he ran a modeling agency allowed epstein to host models in some of his real estate and has very slightly checked business passed on balance though it seems mark epstein is clean and he's genuinely disturbed by what his brother did and what happened to him number two apart from jelane max well epstein's alleged accomplices are still at large and until a court tests the idea they're in theory immune from prosecution the strap on lady nadia marcinkova for example is a commercial pilot and a high-profile instagram personality a business appears to have been seed funded by epstein sarah kellen who's described by many victims from the pre-maxwell era as the fact totem who organized their massage appointments and showed them the massage room or bedroom as an interior designer married to nascar driver her business is also registered to an epstein property marx though not jeffrey's number three epstein reportedly donated a hundred thousand dollars to ballet florida's massage fund as daily massages are an important part of any professional dancer's routine that's weird my dude why would you do that it's interesting if a bit creepy to think that epstein's own obsession with massages may have prompted him to think of this otherwise somewhat random means of charitable giving that's so creepy that's so creepy it's just creepy because it's from jeffrey epstein jesus number four those of epstein's closest associates who have agreed to speak with journalists have often defended his actions some including the parent of a girl epstein paid for sex but who never made a complaint suggests that his generous payments made the whole arrangement not only morally fine but commonplace holy [ __ ] my dude that's your kid what the [ __ ] others say the relations between older men and young girls only became taboo recently that's not true that's not true like people getting married in the past and stuff like younger that's that's largely just not historically accurate that's that's super that and if you find yourself saying that that's a super creepy thing to say that's a super creepy thing to say and epstein is a victim of changing times and me to hysteria what the [ __ ] you talking about jeffrey epstein is a sex trafficking predator pedophile a victim of the me to me my ass what the [ __ ] you talking about needless to say neither the law basic morality or common sense agree with these points of view and if you find yourself agreeing with these points of view your morality compass is off number five there are dozens of civil complaints still outstanding against the epstein estate and jazlane maxwell's conviction is likely to trigger even more civil trials differ from criminal trials in the way they deal with evidence and much of what we know about epstein's operation come from the unsealing of criminal evidence as part of civil proceedings if this continues there's actually a chance that much of the mystery and suspicion around who exactly was involved and how exactly epstein died may come out in the not-too-distant future i for one hope that it does and those involved are held accountable for their disgusting crimes yeah i think we can all hope for that um because this is a horrible story about a horrible man and some horrible people that surrounds him and also just this disgusting miscarriage of justice that the rich and powerful seem to be able to perpetrate which is absolutely it's just absolutely mad this has been an episode of casual criminalist i hope you didn't enjoy it because it was horrible um leave us a review if you're listening as a podcast that would be awesome spotify now accepts ratings go give us a rating if you're on spotify thank you very much uh youtube subscribe like and i'll see you next time [Music] you

Channel: The Casual Criminalist

Views: 306,969

Keywords: true crime

Id: fwnSGUBOVRQ

Length: 103min 11sec (6191 seconds)

Published: Tue Aug 30 2022