The Epstein Files Reveal What Trump Knew | The New Yorker Interview

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959,630 views Feb 13, 2026 The New Yorker Radio Hour

A newly released F.B.I. report shows that Donald Trump involved himself in the case against the convicted sex trafficker as early as 2006. The Miami Herald reporter Julie K. Brown discusses the revelations with David Remnick. This interview is drawn from The New Yorker Radio Hour, a weekly radio show and podcast hosted by David Remnick. For more, follow The New Yorker Radio Hour wherever you get your podcasts. http://swap.fm/l/tny-radiohour-eBFv3Y Subscribe to the New Yorker channel on YouTube so that you never miss an episode: http://bit.ly/newyorkeryoutubesub

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0 seconds

- Almost single handedly responsible for thrusting this into the light, this terrible subject.

7 seconds

What does it feel like to see this gigantic onslaught of files after all this time?

16 seconds

- Well, I wish I could say it was somewhat satisfying to finally see some truth in this, but the way that this is being handled right now by the administration is very chaotic.

28 seconds

And, you know, it's very messy and it's very hard to figure out what's what, when half a document is redacted,

36 seconds

when the recipients and the person that sent the document is redacted.

41 seconds

So I think in some ways this raises more questions and makes the public more distrustful because they weren't supposed to do this.

50 seconds

This wasn't, it was supposed to be an act of transparency. And I don't see it as that, quite frankly.

57 seconds

- Would you say that the release of these documents is purposeful or chaotic on purpose or chaotic because of a chaotic administration?

1 minute, 10 seconds

- I think it's both.

1 minute, 11 seconds

I actually think part of it was done on purpose, you know, because the, you know, it's sort of like

1 minute, 20 seconds

what this administration does, you know, distract, try to take people's minds off of things to confuse.

1 minute, 27 seconds

So I think part of it is purpose, but I also think, from reading what I've read so far,

1 minute, 33 seconds

that it also has to be a reflection on the fact that the Justice Department has never really

1 minute, 40 seconds

organized themselves well enough to figure out how to go about this investigation.

1 minute, 46 seconds

It is so massive, and I think that it was just something that they just never got a handle on to begin with.

1 minute, 53 seconds

- How many documents are there?

1 minute, 55 seconds

- They're saying 6 million because they released 3 million, and they say that there's two to 3 million documents left.

2 minutes, 2 seconds

Now remember, though, part of this is a lot of repetition. - Sure. - Some of these documents you see multiple times.

2 minutes, 9 seconds

But you know, the other interesting thing is we haven't seen any of Epstein's emails from around the time that he was buddies with Trump.

2 minutes, 18 seconds

So we can't get a handle.

2 minutes, 20 seconds

Not that Trump used emails, but that was when Trump was in his orbit, so to speak.

2 minutes, 26 seconds

So we're not getting any, you know, view of what was going on during that time period, which would've been like the early 2000's.

2 minutes, 36 seconds

- What specifically have you been able to look at that surprises you in all the documents that have come your way?

2 minutes, 44 seconds

What have you found out? - That this is a lot bigger.

2 minutes, 49 seconds

You know, and it spans the globe more so than I ever thought before.

2 minutes, 54 seconds

And I say this because, you know, from my, even from my early reporting, I had spoken to investigators

3 minutes, 1 second

who looked into Epstein, who said that he had recruiters, for example, and scouts in other countries to get Epstein women.

3 minutes, 9 seconds

We are now seeing from some of these emails that he had them not just a couple scouts.

3 minutes, 15 seconds

I mean, he had scouts almost, it seems like, in almost every country.

3 minutes, 19 seconds

- And what does that mean, he had people looking out for. - Girls. - Teenage girls to. - [Julie] Yes. - To bring to the United States?

3 minutes, 27 seconds

- Yes, and he had lawyers, by the way, who did their.

3 minutes, 30 seconds

He hired lawyers that did their visas to get them over here on work permits.

3 minutes, 36 seconds

I mean, he used his modeling agency as a way, you know, a way to get them over here.

3 minutes, 43 seconds

But it was clear they definitely were not just here to do modeling.

3 minutes, 48 seconds

You know, in my original reporting, I reported that there was a bookkeeper for that modeling agency who did a deposition.

3 minutes, 55 seconds

And she said that that was not what this was about.

4 minutes

That there were these so-called parties and events that were held that they would send models to, but it was essentially to have sex.

4 minutes, 10 seconds

It was sending them there to have sex.

4 minutes, 12 seconds

- You're publishing a story that has implications for the president of the United States, where the Epstein case is concerned. What does it say?

4 minutes, 20 seconds

- We have found a document in these files that is an interview that the police chief of Palm Beach gave to the FBI.

4 minutes, 30 seconds

And in that interview, the police chief Michael Ryder told the FBI that back when Epstein's case was,

4 minutes, 37 seconds

first came to the attention of the police, and Epstein was first reported

4 minutes, 44 seconds

as a suspect in doing this, around 2006, around that time period, Trump called the police chief

4 minutes, 51 seconds

and he said to the police chief, "Thank God you're doing something about him because," and I'm just quoting off the top of my head,

4 minutes, 59 seconds

I don't have the document in front of me, but he said, "Thank God, everybody knew." He also, by the way, told the chief that

5 minutes, 9 seconds

Maxwell was involved and that she was "Evil." So he also knew about Maxwell's role.

5 minutes, 16 seconds

You know, we have this FBI report of this interview that the chief gave to the FBI where he is recalling this conversation that he had with Trump many, many years ago about Epstein.

5 minutes, 28 seconds

So it does raise some questions about, you know, how much Trump knew, you know, whether he knew the extent of Epstein's crimes.

5 minutes, 39 seconds

- Just hang on for a second.

5 minutes, 40 seconds

So in 2006, Donald Trump has what kind of communication with the police chief? - He called the police chief on the phone.

5 minutes, 48 seconds

- And there's paper on that. - There is, there's a report. There's an FBI report.

5 minutes, 53 seconds

It's an interview that the police chief gave to the FBI in 2020.

5 minutes, 57 seconds

- So what does that suggest to you about Trump that he was doing the right thing or that he was complicit in some way?

6 minutes, 3 seconds

- You know, I think people are gonna look at it one of two ways.

6 minutes, 6 seconds

A, that he, you know, was somewhat of an informant for the police in that he called them

6 minutes, 12 seconds

after this case, you know, became active and he became aware of it and, you know, admitted, wait a minute, you know, I know he was doing this.

6 minutes, 24 seconds

Or you could look at it another way in that he was also one of those people that knew and really didn't go to the police before then

6 minutes, 33 seconds

to tell them what he was doing, because the police were sort of hearing that there were things happening at Epstein's Mansion

6 minutes, 41 seconds

well before this, but every time they went to investigate all the women that were coming and going that they saw on the street and stopped were of age.

6 minutes, 50 seconds

So they couldn't find any evidence that a real crime was being committed.

6 minutes, 57 seconds

But if in fact Trump knew that there was some crimes being committed

7 minutes, 3 seconds

against underage girls and he knew about it, and didn't tell them ahead of time, I guess people will look at that from a different vantage point in that he should have told the police sooner.

7 minutes, 14 seconds

- So this is after he was arrested? - That's right, that's right. - Your sources are not just law enforcement.

7 minutes, 24 seconds

You've talked to a lot of survivors. How are they reacting to these documents?

7 minutes, 32 seconds

- Well, they're disturbed and very upset because their names are still in there.

7 minutes, 38 seconds

I mean, the FBI only had one job here, and that was to take out the victim's names, and their names are sprinkled throughout these documents.

7 minutes, 46 seconds

So they're quite irate about the fact that, you know, they have so many redactions of people, other people,

7 minutes, 53 seconds

but yet many of the victims' names are still in these public documents. - What are the stakes for Donald Trump?

8 minutes

Trump says he wants the country to move on from this story, but as you report, Trump is on an FBI list of people suspected of possible wrongdoing in connection with Epstein.

8 minutes, 11 seconds

The DOJ says that there is no credible evidence to pursue. So where are we?

8 minutes, 19 seconds

- Well, I think that they should pursue all, everybody. And I think the victims, that's all the victims want.

8 minutes, 26 seconds

They wanna, you know, they want a credible investigation, talk about credible tips or credible allegations.

8 minutes, 34 seconds

They want a credible investigation and they're not seeing it.

8 minutes, 38 seconds

And quite frankly, thus far, I haven't seen it because you can say that someone's not credible, but there has to be some kind of notes.

8 minutes, 46 seconds

There has to be a report.

8 minutes, 47 seconds

There has to be some evidence that they went and talked to these people, or if they couldn't talk to them, why?

8 minutes, 53 seconds

And we're not seeing that, and I think that's part of the problem here. They could, the government can say all they want.

8 minutes, 59 seconds

There's no credible evidence, nothing to see here, nothing more to investigate.

9 minutes, 4 seconds

But this case from the beginning has been, you know, a thorn in the Justice Department's side

9 minutes, 11 seconds

because the public doesn't trust that they did what they were supposed to. That the government, that the investigators were thorough.

9 minutes, 20 seconds

- One of the people in Donald Trump's orbit in his cabinet that comes up a lot, a lot in the new documents, is the Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick.

9 minutes, 33 seconds

Tell me about that.

9 minutes, 34 seconds

- He was an next door neighbor to, as I understand it, to Epstein in New York.

9 minutes, 41 seconds

And it sounds like he had been invited with his wife to Epstein's mansion.

9 minutes, 46 seconds

He mentioned in an interview that he felt creepy when he got into the mansion.

9 minutes, 52 seconds

I don't know if you've seen photographs of this mansion, but there are some creepy aspects to it, photographs on the wall, paintings, eyeballs, just very weird things in his house.

10 minutes, 3 seconds

So he said, you know, after he had that brief tour, he felt, you know, like, this is horrible.

10 minutes, 10 seconds

I never wanna, you know, do anything again.

10 minutes, 13 seconds

You know, I'm not ever going, I don't want anything to do with this man again.

10 minutes, 16 seconds

When he said this publicly, and then we found documents in these files that showed that not only did he continue to communicate with him

10 minutes, 24 seconds

after this allegedly happened, but he even, you know, got an invite to the island and took his family to Epstein's Island.

10 minutes, 32 seconds

So, you know, you have to wonder, you know, why he would. - This is where I have to stop.

10 minutes, 39 seconds

You have no reason of knowing the answer, but I have to bring it up. Why would you bring your family to Epstein's Island?

10 minutes, 46 seconds

There are a lot of islands in the Caribbean and elsewhere.

10 minutes, 50 seconds

You can take your family anywhere on vacation when you have the money that Howard Lutnick has. - Yeah.

10 minutes, 56 seconds

- Why would you bring your children there? - I can't answer it.

11 minutes, 3 seconds

There were plenty of other people in that category too that brought their families there. So, yeah, I can't.

11 minutes, 9 seconds

- Not exactly Disneyland, - No, I can't really answer that question.

11 minutes, 14 seconds

- Julie, I wanna play you a clip of Congressman Ted Lieu, who comes from Southern California, speaking on February 3rd.

11 minutes, 23 seconds

- Why are Republicans so interested in Bill Hillary Clinton is 'cause they're trying to distract from the fact

11 minutes, 30 seconds

that Donald Trump is in the Epstein files thousands and thousands of times.

11 minutes, 36 seconds

In those files, there's highly disturbing allegations of Donald Trump raping children, of Donald Trump threatening to kill children.

11 minutes, 46 seconds

So I encourage the press to go look at these allegations. - Wait, now there's a lot to unpack here.

11 minutes, 55 seconds

Let's start with Congressman Lieu mentioning allegations of Donald Trump raping and threatening to kill children.

12 minutes, 3 seconds

What is he talking about?

12 minutes, 5 seconds

- Well, there's, you know, when this story, when they arrested Epstein in 2019,

12 minutes, 12 seconds

they put out an, you know, on sort of a big call that the prosecutor did.

12 minutes, 19 seconds

And they needed, they wanted more victims to come forward.

12 minutes, 23 seconds

So they put out this like 800 number tip line that you can call from the FBI.

12 minutes, 28 seconds

So the FBI got, I wanna say like hundreds of tips. And there were a couple that mentioned Trump.

12 minutes, 36 seconds

Now, some of them were a little bizarre, that you would sort of think, no way, you know, eating, I don't know, babies

12 minutes, 44 seconds

or there's some strange ones in there that you could see were just. - Who's saying these things? Who's making these accusations?

12 minutes, 51 seconds

- Well, these are people that call the tip line, like, I have a tip on Jeffrey Epstein and Donald Trump. - So it could be any. - [Julie] It could be anybody.

12 minutes, 59 seconds

- It could be any malicious lunatic out there? Let's be very clear.

13 minutes

- It could, it could be, but you know, my point in this is, you know, there was one,

13 minutes, 7 seconds

I know that involved a 13-year-old girl where they said that he, she was giving Trump oral sex and she bit him and he slapped her.

13 minutes, 21 seconds

This is one of the tips that came in and what the FBI and the Justice Department is saying,

13 minutes, 28 seconds

this tip list, by the way, we think that it was, they didn't mean for it to be put out there in this tranche of documents.

13 minutes, 37 seconds

My point isn't whether it should have been made public or not.

13 minutes, 40 seconds

My point is that we can't see whether they followed up on all these tips.

13 minutes, 46 seconds

And certainly they should have followed up on the ones you know, that had names attached to them.

13 minutes, 55 seconds

- One of the most shocking revelations in this document dump was how many prominent people continue

14 minutes, 2 seconds

to engage with Epstein after, after he was registered as a sex offender.

14 minutes, 9 seconds

I'm not asking you as a psychologist or sociologist, how do you explain that and what was known to the general public about his crimes at the time?

14 minutes, 18 seconds

- Well, that's really a good question because you have to sort of break it down.

14 minutes, 23 seconds

You have to remember that when he was in Florida, and he served that year, 13 months in jail,

14 minutes, 32 seconds

he had pled guilty to essentially what was a prostitution with a minor charge, okay?

14 minutes, 38 seconds

When he came out of jail, he really mounted a PR campaign.

14 minutes, 43 seconds

Hired, you know, a lot of people that could help him with his image to point out. - Like Peggy Siegal, the PR person?

14 minutes, 51 seconds

- Yeah, to point out, and he did press release.

14 minutes, 55 seconds

We could see it on the, you know, in the history that he was doing all these press, donating tons of money to all these causes and trying to just, you know, improve his image.

15 minutes, 8 seconds

And when you think about it, if all you knew at the time, oh, well, this is the charge on paper was that he solicited a minor for prostitution.

15 minutes, 20 seconds

That's what the charge was. But the years wore on, by like 2010, 2011, there were underage girls who filed civil lawsuits against him.

15 minutes, 31 seconds

And there was a huge lawsuit that was filed against the United States government for giving him this plea deal, which by the way, they kept secret for a whole year until he got out of jail.

15 minutes, 42 seconds

And that was by design, because they did not want the victims to know that they did this deal. 'Cause they knew the victims would protest.

15 minutes, 52 seconds

And then the judge would say, "Well, wait a minute, I've got, you know, 25 victims in court here that are protesting this.

15 minutes, 59 seconds

I'm not gonna approve this plea deal." So it was done the way it was.

16 minutes, 4 seconds

His lawyers were pretty brilliant and figured out a way to make it look like he hadn't really committed a series of crime.

16 minutes, 11 seconds

They limited the scope of his crimes.

16 minutes, 15 seconds

- Julie, when you inevitably punched your own name into the search engine of these files, what did you discover?

16 minutes, 23 seconds

- Well, just like everything Epstein, in Epstein's, you know, in his mind he wants to control

16 minutes, 35 seconds

the narrative and he wanted to meet with me after my series ran. - Did he reach out to you personally?

16 minutes, 43 seconds

- No. - So he never did try to meet with you?

16 minutes, 46 seconds

- He was advised that it probably wasn't a good idea, his idea of doing that. Yeah, and followed it. - [David] Yeah. - I guess.

16 minutes, 55 seconds

- You know, I have to confess, of course, I punched my name in there and thinking it would come up zero. And there it was multiple times.

17 minutes, 2 seconds

It was just articles that people had sent him writing about Russia, whatever it was.

17 minutes, 6 seconds

And then there was, at one point, my name appears on a long list assembled by a PR person of people you might invite to a, some sort of social event with, you know, 200 other people.

17 minutes, 15 seconds

I never got such an invitation, I'm not worried about it.

17 minutes, 18 seconds

But it was a bit startling - [Julie] Yeah. - To see that. - Yeah.

17 minutes, 23 seconds

- And I wonder if you think that there are people who are more implicated who might have, you know, stupidly gone to a dinner

17 minutes, 31 seconds

and then never seen him again, who are somehow, implicated, injured by this process, what do you think about that?

17 minutes, 39 seconds

- Yes, I definitely think that there are probably some people in that category that made a bad decision to go to an event where he was,

17 minutes, 47 seconds

you know, a prominent guest or one of his dinners, you know, at his own mansion.

17 minutes, 56 seconds

And they went because somebody invited them and told them, for example, the prince was going to be there.

18 minutes, 3 seconds

And so I do think, but I also think that those people that are in that category aren't mentioned repeatedly in these files.

18 minutes, 14 seconds

- Yeah, hundreds of times, yeah. - Yeah, hundreds of times.

18 minutes, 17 seconds

It's different if you just see one person you knew had dinner with him one time, and you don't see anything else in there. - Well, let me ask you this.

18 minutes, 23 seconds

What did the Biden administration do about all this? Why did the Biden administration sit on these documents?

18 minutes, 30 seconds

They had access to these files too, didn't they?

18 minutes, 34 seconds

- They, definitely, and one would hope that they would've, you know, really pressed and continued this investigation.

18 minutes, 42 seconds

We don't know that they didn't.

18 minutes, 43 seconds

We don't know that they weren't still investigating some of this.

18 minutes, 47 seconds

It's just not clear from the files whether they did or they didn't.

18 minutes, 52 seconds

And the other thing to remember is they did convict Maxwell, and she did appeal that conviction.

18 minutes, 59 seconds

So technically the case was still an open case.

19 minutes, 3 seconds

So you usually don't open your files when you still are investigating or litigating, you know, a conviction.

19 minutes, 11 seconds

So in some sense, that's one excuse I guess they could use.

19 minutes, 16 seconds

But I do think that, you know, the Justice Department failed these survivors through almost every presidential administration that we've had.

19 minutes, 25 seconds

I mean, this should have been investigated throughout this time.

19 minutes, 30 seconds

And now what's really horrible about it is, as you know, when a crime is committed,

19 minutes, 37 seconds

especially against young people, children, you know, as they get older, their memories fade. The evidence isn't as readily available.

19 minutes, 46 seconds

You know, the diary that maybe these girls kept when they were 16 about this, probably they don't have anymore.

19 minutes, 53 seconds

So had the prosecutors done their job back in 2007, there would've not only been far less victims here, but he could have gone to prison.

20 minutes, 5 seconds

And we wouldn't even have this happening right now. You know, we wouldn't even be talking about him.

20 minutes, 12 seconds

- What were Epstein's politics and do they matter? - Let me tell you why I don't think it matters.

20 minutes, 22 seconds

Sexual assault doesn't discriminate based on political party. There were bad people on all sides here. There was not one party or the other.

20 minutes, 30 seconds

And it kind of frustrates me sometimes when people would try to make this into a Republican versus Democrat issue because it had nothing to do with that.

20 minutes, 40 seconds

It had to do with power, and money, and sex. And it really didn't matter what your political was.

20 minutes, 48 seconds

There were people, you know, as I said, on both sides here, who were implicated or have been implicated, - But what were his politics just incidentally?

20 minutes, 58 seconds

- I'm sorry. He was more of a democrat.

21 minutes, 2 seconds

He donated to both Republicans and Democrats, but he clearly was more aligned with the Democrats.

21 minutes, 10 seconds

- When you look at the array of people who spent time with Epstein, who among the high and the mighty do come out shocked at how they behaved.

21 minutes, 20 seconds

Look at Bill Gates's behavior, for example.

21 minutes, 22 seconds

I don't know the guy, I've interviewed him on this program, but he's been in our lives in one way or another for a very long time.

21 minutes, 29 seconds

And I was appalled, although I should say that Gates denies the behavior that's mentioned in the files. - Yeah. - Who's in that list for you?

21 minutes, 37 seconds

- I, you know, he's definitely one of the people I think everybody was a little surprised at, but. - I wasn't a little surprised.

21 minutes, 45 seconds

I was a lot more than that. - [Julie] A lot? - Yeah.

21 minutes, 48 seconds

- Well, you know what, I've been doing this for so long, and I just know from covering, especially sexual assault cases.

21 minutes, 53 seconds

- Yeah, - A lot of men act completely different.

21 minutes, 59 seconds

You wouldn't even know them when they're among their, you know, their buddies, you know, just talking about women.

22 minutes, 5 seconds

So in some ways, there really hasn't been a whole lot that has been surprising to me.

22 minutes, 10 seconds

Like I said, Gates is sort of this guy that seems like a, you know, a little bit of a geek, quite frankly. - Yeah.

22 minutes, 17 seconds

- So you wouldn't, but you know what, a lot of these men were older men too.

22 minutes, 21 seconds

So it's almost like maybe a club of people that don't normally get the girls, so to speak. And maybe that's why.

22 minutes, 29 seconds

- Despite all their wealth and power, they needed Epstein in some way to do what for them? To hook them up with? - Yes.

22 minutes, 37 seconds

- Children. - Yes, yes, or young women.

22 minutes, 40 seconds

But it was done, it's important to understand this wasn't Epstein going to these women and girls and saying,

22 minutes, 48 seconds

I'm gonna pay you $200 if you go have sex with me or if you have sex with, you know, so and so.

22 minutes, 56 seconds

- Yeah. - That's not what he did.

22 minutes, 57 seconds

He used fraudulent means, which is one of the elements of sex trafficking.

23 minutes, 3 seconds

In other words, he said, "I wanna hire you as my assistant, and I'm gonna pay you a hundred thousand dollars a year,

23 minutes, 10 seconds

or I wanna send you to college, or you're a great artist, or a ballerina or a model.

23 minutes, 18 seconds

I know that I can get you in the Victoria's Secret catalog." That's how he got these women trapped. And that's how he did it.

23 minutes, 28 seconds

He did not.

23 minutes, 29 seconds

And then they got kind of enamored with him because he acted sort of like this father figure, and I'm gonna change your life and, you know, you can do this, that.

23 minutes, 40 seconds

There's tons of emails between him and women in these tranches that show him talking to these women that he wants to sort of snare.

23 minutes, 50 seconds

And then there's other emails that are clearly after he already had his way with them, or they got too old for him, where he's saying, "Well, I don't know what you want me to do about it.

24 minutes

You know, this was your choice." There are this trajectory that you could see with some of these women that at first he kind

24 minutes, 8 seconds

of gets them under his wing and then makes them believe that he's gonna change their lives or that, you know, some of them fell in love with him,

24 minutes, 17 seconds

and then you could see in later emails where he's essentially just discarding them. - Let's talk about conspiracies.

24 minutes, 26 seconds

QAnon, for a long time, has been full of crazy lurid imagery about, God knows, human sacrifice.

24 minutes, 37 seconds

And watching the grotesqueness of Epstein's world laid out in these documents one after the other, how do you, again, this is not crediting QAnon

24 minutes, 48 seconds

with truth telling, but I have to think that it fuels conspiracy thinking because, in fact, the Epstein world was full of it.

25 minutes, 2 seconds

- Yeah, and you know, and I'll point out another part of this that isn't talked about much, but some of the victims here were really damaged.

25 minutes, 14 seconds

I mean, he didn't go after, you know, he wouldn't have been able to go after someone who, you know, had a lot of confidence and had a real life.

25 minutes, 26 seconds

You know, that had a future.

25 minutes, 27 seconds

He purposely targeted vulnerable girls who came from nothing, you know?

25 minutes, 34 seconds

Or they were even homeless or in foster care, for example.

25 minutes, 39 seconds

And the damage that he did to some of these girls, you know, affected them the rest of their lives.

25 minutes, 48 seconds

And there are some of his victims, like you mentioned, those tips that we saw, that come from people who have been really traumatized.

26 minutes, 1 second

And that's why I'm saying I don't think you can discount all those crazy tips, because I have found that some of the women

26 minutes, 9 seconds

that had those crazy aspects to their stories, there was still some shred of truth to what they were saying.

26 minutes, 17 seconds

It's just that they were so traumatized. And this is common, by the way.

26 minutes, 21 seconds

I've talked to FBI specialists who interview, especially children who have been traumatized.

26 minutes, 29 seconds

Your brain is almost damaged when something like this happens to you as a child.

26 minutes, 34 seconds

- One of the theories that was going around a lot, as you know, Julie, was the idea that somehow that Epstein

26 minutes, 42 seconds

was not only trying to enrich himself all the time and also have lots of girls underage

26 minutes, 50 seconds

and otherwise around him for the obvious purpose, but that he was working for some sort of foreign intelligence agency.

26 minutes, 58 seconds

That's, I assume you're discounting that. - This is how I look at that.

27 minutes, 2 seconds

I don't think it's impossible, but I haven't seen any evidence that shows that he worked as an employee by the CIA or Mossad or any other government.

27 minutes, 13 seconds

But I do think that he, like everything else that he did, he used his contacts in all these places,

27 minutes, 22 seconds

in Israel, in Russia, and, you know, in London, wherever he had a connection,

27 minutes, 30 seconds

he used that as currency in order to enrich himself to make money in some way.

27 minutes, 36 seconds

- Is there any evidence that you credit that he did not commit suicide in jail? - Well, I don't think he committed suicide.

27 minutes, 45 seconds

- You don't? - No, I absolutely do not think he committed suicide. - You're making a supposition. You don't have evidence that this was the case.

27 minutes, 55 seconds

- Well, what's evidence?

27 minutes, 56 seconds

Evidence that, you know, that the guards lied on their reports and never reported that they, they reported they made checks on him and they didn't.

28 minutes, 6 seconds

Is it that all the cameras didn't work?

28 minutes, 9 seconds

You know, is it that, you know, by the way, they didn't take pictures of the scene. They never treated it like a crime scene.

28 minutes, 18 seconds

They never recovered the so-called noose that, you know, the piece of fabric that he allegedly used. They don't even know which one it was.

28 minutes, 28 seconds

The fact that if he broke three bones in his neck, which is with a lot of force, this man was a very frail man at the end,

28 minutes, 37 seconds

even if he was to do that by tying himself to his bunk, the bunk, the top bunk, every single item on that top bunk was undisturbed.

28 minutes, 48 seconds

If you're pulling on a bunk with enough force to break three bones in your neck, wouldn't you think that the items would've been sort of toppled.

28 minutes, 57 seconds

I mean, I could just go on and on. The reports are very odd.

29 minutes, 2 seconds

He allegedly tried to commit suicide before this, a couple weeks before this.

29 minutes, 7 seconds

But when he went in to tell them what had happened when they found him on the floor, the first thing he said is, "My roommate did it to me.

29 minutes, 16 seconds

He tried to kill me.

29 minutes, 18 seconds

And that he had been threatening me for weeks." His roommate, why would you, his cellmate, why would you even put a former ex-cop who was in jail for killing four people?

29 minutes, 31 seconds

That was the cellmate that he picked for Jeffrey Epstein? I mean, too many things don't make any sense.

29 minutes, 39 seconds

Epstein said he tried to kill him, and then he sort of changed his story and said, "I don't remember." But he never, Epstein never said he tried to commit suicide.

29 minutes, 47 seconds

He only said that he thought that this, his cellmate had tried to kill him.

29 minutes, 53 seconds

- Julie, if you had had the opportunity to interview him in prison, what would you ask him? What would you want to know?

30 minutes, 3 seconds

- I think that I would've asked him about, you know, in my view, I don't, I think he believed he was above the law,

30 minutes, 11 seconds

and I think I would've tried to get at that and why he thought he was above the law. Who were these people that you associated with?

30 minutes, 20 seconds

Did anybody lead you to believe this? Well, did you know, who knows?

30 minutes, 24 seconds

He would've said, you know, everybody has a price, you know, you know, I was smart because I got the right people in my corner.

30 minutes, 32 seconds

And I think I would've tried to sort of get him to admit that there were other people that were in this to help him get away with these crimes.

30 minutes, 42 seconds

That it wasn't just, you know, an act of nature that, you know, they decided not to go after him.

30 minutes, 50 seconds

- Julie, you've been on this story for years.

30 minutes, 52 seconds

You've spent a lot of time with people who've been harmed terribly by Epstein.

30 minutes, 58 seconds

You've been immersed in this and it's very hard to explain to civilians what being immersed in a story for year after year can be like, especially something this ugly.

31 minutes, 10 seconds

What mark has it left on your life?

31 minutes, 13 seconds

- You have to be a little driven to do this kind of work and to keep, you know, to keep hammering at it. I've hammered at it.

31 minutes, 21 seconds

It wasn't just the first story. I mean, I've hammered at it all this time. And I think really, to be honest with you, it's the victims.

31 minutes, 29 seconds

And with almost anything that I've done, you know, when I covered prisons, I remember some of those inmates who were tortured.

31 minutes, 36 seconds

And so with this story, I think about the victims all the time.

31 minutes, 41 seconds

And I think, you know, I just think what, you know, as if they were, you know, a friend of mine or a daughter, if it was my daughter, you know?

31 minutes, 50 seconds

I just feel like, you know, they can't all be lying. You know, this happened.

31 minutes, 57 seconds

And I just feel driven by the fact that people have covered it up. They've covered it up.

32 minutes, 3 seconds

And I think that I am gonna keep working on it until we find out why they're covering it up or who is covering it up.

32 minutes, 11 seconds

- Julie Brown, thank you. - Thank you.

32 minutes, 15 seconds

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The New Yorker

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Feb 13, 2026

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Saturday, October 17, 2026