This Is What's Missing From The Epstein Files w/ Julie K. Brown
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Speaker 1: Welcome, Julie Kay Brown.
Speaker 1: Hi, thank you.
Speaker
1: I was saying before we started recording that why I wanted to talk
to you was because, you know, we had these huge dump of redacted files, a
lot of redacted files, a lot of unredacted files, a lot of Epstein
stuff, likely more.
Speaker 1: But in order to understand this story, we have to know that none of us would know any of this.
Speaker 1: Because it wasn't the FBI that got this story out into the public.
Speaker
1: It was you. And I would love you to talk about how you got to these
victims and how you got their stories out there or how you started,
because it really is you are responsible for.
Speaker 1: I mean, the government has been appalling in the way five administrations have mishandled this.
Speaker 1: But I'd love you to talk about how you were the impetus for all of this.
Speaker 2: Well, I didn't break this story. A lot of people want to say I break it.
Speaker 2: I didn't break it. There were a lot of really good journalists that covered this story when it
Speaker 2: happened back in 2005, six, seven. But it sort of died down. And I always had been, you know,
Speaker 2: I knew about it and everything that I had read, I felt didn't explain to me how this man got away
Speaker 2: with such a heinous crime. Nothing that I read answered that question. So, you know, you fast
Speaker 2: forward until 2016. 17, Trump ends up nominating Alexander Costa, who was the U.S. attorney in
Speaker 2: Miami who approved this deal. They nominated him for labor secretary. Now, remember,
Speaker 2: the Labor Department has oversight of human trafficking, of all things. So they're essentially
Speaker 2: nominating a guy who let one of the most prolific sex predators in history off the hook.
Speaker
2: So I thought, you know, it's been a long time. I wonder what all
these girls, now women, of course, because it's been, you know, like,
you know, almost a decade. I wonder what they think about this man now
heading up this agency that has oversight over, you know, human and sex
trafficking, essentially.
Speaker 2: So I thought I would do a reaction piece tied around his Acosta's confirmation process.
Speaker
2: And I was even more convinced when I realized that the senators who
were supposed to be questioning him about this, one would think it was
probably the biggest case of his career.
Speaker 2: Instead, they barely asked him any questions during the confirmation process about this case.
Speaker 2: so I thought like I said I thought it would be more of a reaction piece but I just I had to find
Speaker 2: the women they were all their names were they were minors so all their names were redacted from all
Speaker 2: the files so that was a long longer process than I thought it was to track them down and in order
Speaker 2: to track someone down you see things that happen in their lives you see for example that they have
Speaker 2: a criminal record or you see that, you know, on Facebook that one of their sisters died
Speaker 2: or their boyfriends died or they were, you know, a victim of domestic abuse.
Speaker 2: And I started to see this pattern that almost all these women in the years after this happened,
Speaker 2: the trajectory of their lives were never the same.
Speaker
2: And I'm almost getting chills remembering it because I thought, I
thought this is just, you know, this is unbelievable that, you know,
that these women, their whole lives were destroyed by him.
Speaker 2: And I didn't feel that story had really ever been told.
Speaker 2: And so, of course, the key to doing that story was to get them to talk to me, you know.
Speaker 2: So, you know, it was a process.
Speaker 2: It was quite a long process to try to, you know, I only was able to find four that were willing to go on the record.
Speaker
2: And at the time, I thought that I had, you know, that it wasn't
going to be good enough, you know, because I imagine since there were so
many, I found 60 of them.
Speaker 2: And I imagine doing this huge story about, you know, at least a dozen or two dozen.
Speaker 2: But I only was able to get four.
Speaker 2: And in hindsight, I can tell you that that was just right.
Speaker
2: It was just right because I was able to really understand what had
happened and really describe it in a way that obviously really touched a
lot of people because the story really, I mean, the prosecutors in New
York, you know, they literally, days after my story ran, the corruption
team at the Southern District of New York took my story.
Speaker 2: to the U.S. attorney in New York, Jeffrey Berman, and said,
Speaker 2: did you see this? We've got to do something.
Speaker 2: So it was just the right amount of, they were so powerful.
Speaker 2: One of them was Virginia Giuffre, who we all know passed away earlier this year.
Speaker 2: So it just was a new way of looking at this story that really hadn't been done before.
Speaker 1: You had four.
Speaker 1: And while this was going on, Jeffrey Epstein was back out there.
Speaker 2: He was. And what I'm seeing right now, I just did actually a sub stack about this today.
Speaker 2: There's stuff from 2018. My series appeared in November of 2018. And there are emails in there
Speaker 2: where he is trying to find schools for a girl that's under the age of 17, like a prep school.
Speaker 2: There's all kinds of evidence that he was doing this right up into the end. So he was able,
Speaker 2: after getting this lenient plea deal that they let him off the hook, he, I mean, God knows how many
Speaker 2: other girls and young women that he prayed upon and sexually abused. One of the things I'm struck
Speaker 1: by when I went to the press conference in D.C. with some of the survivors, there were maybe 15.
Speaker 1: There are likely upwards of a thousand victims. Is that right, do you think? That's what the
Speaker 2: Justice Department says, and quite frankly, at this point, I don't trust the Justice Department.
Speaker 2: So I don't know if that's, it could be more because I just don't trust that they really
Speaker 2: ever thoroughly investigated this crime.
Speaker 2: So say why you don't trust them.
Speaker 2: From the very beginning, they dropped this ball.
Speaker 2: And, you know, the other thing that we're seeing in these, there is a lot in these files.
Speaker 2: I know that, you know, I don't sense that there's, that people are understanding the
Speaker 2: depth of this crime because these files are so messed up and the way they come out and they're
Speaker 2: redacted. But because I know this story so well, I can recognize things that other people don't.
Speaker 1: That's what I'm hoping you could do.
Speaker 2: One of the things, and we have a lot of stories lined up with the Miami Herald doing this because
Speaker 2: I'm able to see these things. But one of the things we could clearly see is the influence
Speaker 2: and the pressure that he put on law enforcement officials and the prosecutors and anybody that
Speaker 2: tried to become an obstacle to his sex trafficking and money laundering empire. It was a sex
Speaker 2: trafficking and money laundering empire. So tell me, say more.
Speaker 2: Worldwide empire. And so anybody that was an obstacle, he was pretty shrewd. He just hired
Speaker 2: them. He tried to bring them to his side of the table in one way or another. If he couldn't hire
Speaker 2: them he would god knows i mean we don't really know the extent of the influence that he had
Speaker 2: and that pattern just continued i think throughout you know his his life really that that he wanted
Speaker 2: to manipulate all the people that he thought were going to pose you know an obstacle to what he
Speaker 2: wanted to do and how much money he wanted to made i mean he just kind of he kind of you know they say
Speaker 2: what is it? Do you keep your friends close and you keep your enemies even closer?
Speaker 2: And he was very sharp in how he manipulated people that way. And we're seeing that in these files,
Speaker 2: these emails that are going to some of the very first prosecutors in Palm Beach County who,
Speaker 2: that was the first, you know, what do you call it? The first failure was in Palm Beach County
Speaker 2: with the state attorney there who was going to let him completely off the hook for this
Speaker 2: crime. And we see now that there were emails back and forth between Epstein or his lawyers and these
Speaker 1: prosecutors. This is like a nonpartisan failure. Like there's some of these are Democrats. Some of
Speaker 1: them are Republicans. Yeah. Men in this are Democrats, are Republicans. It's nonpartisan.
Speaker 1: But I think the biggest crime here is not believing women because it seems like women
Speaker 1: keep trying to come forward throughout the story. And let me tell you another part of this,
Speaker 2: not only not believing the victims, but not believing the female prosecutor, federal prosecutor,
Speaker 2: who wanted to take this case on and wanted to indict him and wanted to put him in prison forever.
Speaker 2: All her superiors were men. And, you know, this has been reported when they finally did a
Speaker 2: Justice Department probe after my series, the Office of Professional Responsibility,
Speaker 2: did it uh there are emails that show that they kept telling her basically sit down shut up
Speaker 2: we're going to make a deal with this guy whether you like it or not and and it was all men that
Speaker 2: did that it was clear and she actually issued a statement after this report came out saying
Speaker 2: that it was very it was all you know biased because these men were very you know
Speaker 2: Misogynistic. Treated her like she was, you know, crazy for wanting to prosecute him.
Speaker 1: And then also Tina Brown, another woman who was like, I'm not going to a pedophile. Right. Didn't
Speaker 1: she say I'm not going to a pedophile? What are you thinking? You know? Yeah. Right. So tell us what
Speaker 1: else you see in the files that that you think is that is sort of confirmed thoughts or that you had
Speaker 1: suspicions about that you because the the money laundering is new right well I've always said
Speaker 2: people ask me the question all the time how did Jeffrey Epstein get make his money and I've always
Speaker 2: said from the very beginning I think he was a super super duper money launderer I mean really
Speaker 2: we know his job was to try to find ways you know with Leon Black you know the former CEO of Apollo
Speaker 2: Capital, I think Leon Black paid him like $160 million for tax advice, you know, and he was
Speaker 2: also helping him with, you know, some of his art deals, you know, so using buying art as a way to
Speaker 2: essentially get out of paying taxes. So, you know, I'm sure it's on a much larger scale that we don't
Speaker 2: even know the extent of it this time, but we do know that that was, you know, one of the things
Speaker 1: that he was doing, you know, to earn, you know, a lot of money. There are these redactions and I
Speaker 1: want you to talk about the redactions because I read this piece in the Times and I couldn't believe
Speaker 1: it about how they had not redacted child pornography and put it up. Right. But they weren't redacted.
Speaker
1: Right. And I couldn't believe it. I could not believe it. So I wrote
to the journalist who wrote it and said, this cannot possibly be true.
And he said, yes, we had to tell the Justice Department that there were
unredacted photos of what could be children online. That is shocking to
me. And it makes me wonder, do you think they didn't go through the
file? I mean, what do you think happened? Because they've had this
information for years and years and years.
Speaker
2: I think that they were so focused on trying to protect the elites or
the famous people or, you know, those people that they focused too much
on that and they didn't focus enough on what really mattered.
Speaker
2: You know, here it is. They really only had one job, according to
this new law that was passed, was to remove the names of these victims,
make sure that they were protected.
Speaker
2: They weren't supposed to remove names of prosecutors, which they
did, of, you know, these other people who he, you know, there's emails
where you have, there's one that's going around the Internet that
someone's saying, you know, I really had a good time.
Speaker 2: And something like, it's something about.
Speaker 2: The littlest one is naughty.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 2: The little girl, something about the little girl, you know, and they redacted that guy's name.
Speaker 2: And it's the name is redacted.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Why?
Speaker 2: They're protecting these potential perpetrators.
Speaker
2: They're protecting them, but they're not protecting the victims,
which is, I feel like it's been this story behind this story here since
the very beginning.
Speaker
2: Because, look, the reason why they gave them the deal to begin with
is I'm sure that they didn't want, you know, all these other names to
come out, you know, from the very beginning.
Speaker 1: So let's talk about that because you'll remember Pam Bondi said she had a list, the client list.
Speaker 1: on her desk. And then she gave these binders to conservative influencers. They got very excited.
Speaker 1: And then all of a sudden, nothing. So what do you think was happening there? Do you think there
Speaker 1: really is a client list? I mean, there certainly was a list of 10 men or 10 sort of people they
Speaker 1: thought about prosecuting. Can you talk about that? Yeah, I've always said that Epson didn't
Speaker 2: keep like a piece of paper with the list or even a digital footprint. I think he had a list in his
Speaker 2: head, but I don't think he ever had a real list. But I always also said that the FBI had to be
Speaker 2: nuts if they didn't compile some kind of a list of suspects, especially after they arrested Epstein
Speaker 2: the first, I mean, the second time after my series, they put out a whole big call, hotline for people
Speaker 2: to call with tips. And we now see the result of those tips in some of these files, and they did
Speaker 2: get a lot of tips. And we're also seeing some of these tips were very detailed. And, you know,
Speaker 2: back to the redactions, you know, when they have some of these reports that are in there about,
Speaker 2: you know, this woman or girl said she was underage and, you know, she names, the names are in there,
Speaker 2: Leon Black, Jess Staley. Again, of course, they're all saying, you know, that it's untrue and it can't
Speaker 2: be proven but their names are in there okay and there was a name there were names compiled what
Speaker 2: they redact and this is really important they redact anything that shows what they did to address
Speaker 2: those allegations it's all redacted and why supposed to take their word for it that they were all not
Speaker 2: credible these think about this all these women lied or they didn't have proof but they don't show
Speaker 2: us the forms that the reports that they had to fill out saying i interviewed so and so which you
Speaker 2: redact the person's name and here is what she said and it was a second-hand account or whatever it
Speaker 2: was that she said the there's huge swaths of pages that show they completely blacked out i don't even
Speaker 2: know what it is we don't know if they ever really took these allegations yes some of them sound crazy
Speaker 2: but you know i know as a journalist even the crazy you have to listen to even the crazy tips
Speaker
2: You have to pay attention. This is such a heinous crime. I don't
think you should discount anything, no matter how crazy it is. That
person still deserves a phone call, you know, and tell me what you know.
Speaker 1: So it sounds like they redacted potential perpetrators names in a lot of these cases.
Speaker
1: And then what the potential malfeasance that the DOJ might have
committed or the prosecutors at the state level may have committed.
Speaker 1: Is that right?
Speaker 2: That's true.
Speaker
2: And also the details about what investigation, if any, they
conducted on all the tips, all the victims that came forward.
Speaker 2: Like, what did they do with this tip? Did they interview the woman? What did they do? We don't
Speaker 2: know. They're asking us when we call the Justice Department and we say, OK, we see this tip from
Speaker 2: this woman and she said, A, B, C, D. What did you do? We're not going to talk about that. So they're
Speaker 1: asking the public to trust them. Right. There's no reason to trust them. And Ro Khanna, who I've
Speaker 1: talked to before in Thomas Massey, one of the things they said was that the DOJ was supposed to
Speaker 1: talk through the redactions and explain them that they weren't allowed to just make haphazard,
Speaker 1: willy-nilly redactions, but that's exactly what they did, right? Yes. There's things in there that
Speaker 2: they've redacted that are inexplicable. You cannot figure out the trajectory of that original deal
Speaker 2: from 2007. You can't figure out who was doing what. Even his lawyers' names are redacted. Now,
Speaker 2: why do they have to redact, you know, Roy Black's name or Kenneth Starr's name? They redacted the
Speaker 2: name of the lawyers, the name of all the prosecutors. It's absurd. I can't figure out who's talking to
Speaker 1: who. There were other names that are redacted, too. I wonder, there's another thing that somebody
Speaker 1: saw. I just want you to speculate for a minute because we don't know. But it seemed like there
Speaker 1: where the word don't was redacted.
Speaker 1: Did you see that?
Speaker 1: Like maybe someone had done a word search
Speaker 1: for other letters in the word don't.
Speaker 1: I just wonder if you saw any other patterns
Speaker 1: like that in the redaction.
Speaker 2: I didn't see that.
Speaker 2: Although that wasn't really something
Speaker 2: I was focused on.
Speaker 2: Now that you mentioned it,
Speaker 2: I'll focus on it a little bit.
Speaker 2: Did you see anything else?
Speaker 2: It's hard to know what they're redacting
Speaker 2: because they're redacting it.
Speaker 2: In some cases you can figure out what it is
Speaker
2: Because I know, for example, sometimes they'll be talking about a
certain victim and I'll know who that victim is because I've had
encounters with that victim.
Speaker 2: I've spoken to that victim, which I would never reveal who that person is.
Speaker
2: You know, or just some of the prosecutors, I can tell when Marie
Villafana was the lead prosecutor, I can clearly tell when, even though
she might be redacted, I can clearly tell that she wrote something.
Speaker 1: Have more victims come forward that you've talked to?
Speaker 2: Now or since he was arrested?
Speaker 2: Either.
Speaker 2: Yeah, there were a lot.
Speaker 2: I mean, we have a document that shows how many tips they got, how many they referred for further investigation.
Speaker 2: And, you know, there's some kind of a breakdown.
Speaker 2: We got, you know, 300 something.
Speaker 2: And then we referred, you know, 40 of them.
Speaker 2: And then out of that 40, you know, we did something else with them.
Speaker 2: But then that's the end of it.
Speaker 2: You don't know whatever happened to them.
Speaker 2: So there were, I think there were.
Speaker
2: But here's what I think happened, though, especially within the past
year under Trump, really, is I think a lot of these women are really
getting more and more reticent for obvious reasons to come forward.
Speaker 2: They don't have any guarantee that anybody's going to protect them.
Speaker
2: You know, if anything, this is intimidation so that the way that
they're allowing some of these names, these victims' names to be exposed
is almost to them, you know, and to any, I think, reasonable thinking
person.
Speaker 2: It's almost an intimidation tactic so that other women don't come out, you know, and come forward.
Speaker 1: I've talked to members of Congress who've said that there's a huge amount of pornography of these victims.
Speaker
1: Do you think, and again, speculative, I know because you haven't
seen them because none of us have seen them, but that some of this was
blackmail to blackmail these guys?
Speaker 1: Because there were video cameras everywhere, thousands of dollars of tapes and hours.
Speaker
2: I don't know. You know, Kash Patel, the director of the FBI, one of
the things he said when he announced that they weren't going to pursue
anything was that they found no, quote, credible evidence of blackmail.
Speaker 2: OK, it's interesting to me that he used credible.
Speaker 2: So what does that mean?
Speaker
2: You know, you have all these videos there, but maybe there's not an
email accompanying it saying, if you don't do this.
Speaker 2: Right. You know, Epstein was pretty shrewd.
Speaker 2: He wouldn't send a video that he had of somebody and put a memo attached to it saying they would just send it.
Speaker 1: You know, I mean, clear.
Speaker 1: You saw that with his emails with Elon Musk, right?
Speaker 1: Where he said, you know, International Assembly is here.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 2: There's codes words they use.
Speaker 2: They use words like fun for sex.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 2: I can't think of all the words, but there's certain words that they use.
Speaker 2: They didn't say, you know, I had sex with this girl.
Speaker 2: Thanks a lot.
Speaker 2: They were more like, you know, wow, that was really a great evening, you know, and what fun.
Speaker 2: You know, yeah, there were code words they used.
Speaker 1: Julie, I really am.
Speaker 1: I, you know, I'm indebted to you for what you have done in this story.
Speaker 1: And I just am so grateful to get to just pick your brain about this.
Speaker 1: So thank you.
Speaker 1: Thank you.
Speaker 1: Thank you.
Speaker 1: And your sub what's your sub stack called?
Speaker 2: JKB journalists or the Epstein files.
Speaker 1: And there are also pieces in the Miami Herald.
Speaker
2: Yeah, we're going to be breaking some stories in the coming weeks.
We'll work on quite a number of things. Thanks, Molly.
Speaker 1: Yes. Thank you, Julie.
Speaker 1: Thank you.
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