Speaker 1: M Hey, everybody, I'm Robert Evans. This is Behind the Bastards,
Speaker 1: the podcast where we tell you everything you don't know
Speaker 1: about the very worst people in all of history. And today,
Speaker 1: as a guest on my show, I have one of
Speaker 1: the best people in comedy history, Daniel O'Brien, my once
Speaker 1: and perhaps future boss guy who I was the intern
Speaker 1: for and uh mentor all those things. Daniel. Yeah, that's
Speaker 1: a that's quite an intro. Thank you for for all
Speaker 1: of that. I will uh just so there are no
Speaker 1: dangling cliffhangers or anything like that once in future. I
Speaker 1: don't think I'm never gonna be a boss again for
Speaker 1: the rest of my life. Having been a boss and
Speaker 1: having now like not be a boss anymore, it's better
Speaker 1: this way. It's way better not being a boss. It's
Speaker 1: pretty great. I mean, I'm I'm I'm talking about more.
Speaker 1: When the Civil War gets sparked off and you wind
Speaker 1: up leading a leading a crude militia in Hell's kitchen,
Speaker 1: uh to fight for the liberation of the East coast
Speaker 1: from the tyrannical Midwest, that's a fair I think. Whenever
Speaker 1: a revolution happens, it seems likely that I'll find myself
Speaker 1: somewhere in middle management feels right. Well, Dan, speaking of
Speaker 1: middle management, that's not what we're talking about today. But
Speaker 1: we are talking about a really famous child molester. I
Speaker 1: knew I was going to have my friend and uh
Speaker 1: and former colleague, expert on many different presidents, author of
Speaker 1: the book How to Fight Presidents, so many exciting people
Speaker 1: we could have talked about, and I picked Jeffrey Epstein, Okay,
Speaker 1: soon to be president, soon to be president, very closely
Speaker 1: tied to two presidents at least. Yeah, So are you
Speaker 1: are you? You're ready? You're ready for this, Dan, I'm ready.
Speaker 1: I got a slight heads up on who the top,
Speaker 1: who the person was, and it was one of those
Speaker 1: names that I knew very little about, just enough to
Speaker 1: know that they were bad, and UH deliberately shows not
Speaker 1: to do any research on it so I could be
Speaker 1: surprised and horrified and and hopefully ask you questions that
Speaker 1: your dumbest listeners will have. That is what I what
Speaker 1: I want from my guests is for them to be
Speaker 1: surprised and horrified. So I'm gonna I'm gonna get into
Speaker 1: this story because well, I didn't know anything about this
Speaker 1: guy either other than, like you know, you hear the
Speaker 1: odd story here and there about him. You know he's
Speaker 1: a creep. He's way more than just a creep. So
Speaker 1: let's let's strap in and and tell this tale. On
Speaker 1: December four, two sixteen, Edgar Madison Welch, a year old
Speaker 1: man from Madison, North Carolina, walked into Washington, d C's
Speaker 1: Comment Ping Pong Pizza parlor with an a R fifteen.
Speaker 1: He fired three shots into the restaurant as part of
Speaker 1: a poorly conceived scheme too. In his own words, self
Speaker 1: investigate the Pizza Gate conspiracy theory. That conspiracy theory, which
Speaker 1: had its origins in the two thus sixteen election, states
Speaker 1: that the Clintons and their longtime supporter John Podesta were
Speaker 1: at the center of a giant child rape and sex
Speaker 1: slave ring. Comment Ping Pong was believed to be a
Speaker 1: nexus point of this international child slave trade. The theories
Speaker 1: evolved and merged with other conspiracy theories and is now
Speaker 1: part of the orbit of the Q and on conspiracy theory.
Speaker 1: There's a general sense among many in the far right
Speaker 1: that global elites are part of a gigantic, satanic, pedophilic conspiracy.
Speaker 1: They are wrong about that, but they aren't a hundred
Speaker 1: percent wrong about the idea that an alliance of powerful
Speaker 1: people are having sex with underaged individuals, because that totally happened.
Speaker 1: And today we're going to talk about the man who's
Speaker 1: at the nexus of a real, honest to god, global
Speaker 1: child molesting conspiracy. He has nothing to do with comment
Speaker 1: Ping Pong or John Podesta, and his victims were teenagers
Speaker 1: and not the little kids that the Peto Gate conspiracy
Speaker 1: theories tend to focus on. But yeah, today we're talking
Speaker 1: about Jeff Epstein. So okay, that is that's that's a
Speaker 1: journey of an introduction the Yeah, I yeah, this. I
Speaker 1: found a Q and on flyer on my run today
Speaker 1: this before coming in this morning. So I've I've had
Speaker 1: this conspiracy theory about child molesting global elites on the brain. Sure,
Speaker 1: I mean, that's that's bound to Happencember four? Good day.
Speaker 1: What else happened out December four? Is that are up question? Yes? You,
Speaker 1: me and of our closest friends and co workers. Oh
Speaker 1: my god, I mean not as bad as the shooting
Speaker 1: the pizza place. Yeah, thing, but but m fourth, no
Speaker 1: one died in that shooting, So I'm gonna say is bad. Okay,
Speaker 1: we all lost healthcare. It's good to laugh now. It's
Speaker 1: good to laugh now. I had forgotten the date because
Speaker 1: of all of the drinking. So Jeffrey Edward Epstein was
Speaker 1: born on January three in Brooklyn, New York. Brook then, Yeah,
Speaker 1: not the proudest son of Brooklyn Um. His wiki currently
Speaker 1: describes him as an American financier, science and research, philanthropist,
Speaker 1: and registered sex offender. His I have some notes on
Speaker 1: how Wikipedia orders things sex offender in the middle or first,
Speaker 1: I wanted first? I think I wanted first. I think
Speaker 1: you start with research, philanthropist, sex offender, financier, science, philanthropist. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's that's my order. I don't want them trying to
Speaker 1: like pre make me like him, you know, like the
Speaker 1: sex metter thing. People are gonna get there. They're not
Speaker 1: gonna like that. So how can we soften this blow
Speaker 1: before they get there? Oh? Philanthropist that's a broadly good word, right,
Speaker 1: philanthropist and rapist. So Epstein was raised in Coney Island.
Speaker 1: The Guardian describes him coming up in a tough Brooklyn neighborhood.
Speaker 1: I'm not sure if that's how you described Coney Island now,
Speaker 1: but that's that's how it was at the time. Apparently,
Speaker 1: according to a Vanity Fair article I read, he and
Speaker 1: his family were kind of solidly middle class. His father
Speaker 1: worked for the city's parks department. His parents saw education
Speaker 1: as the way out for Jeffrey and his brother. They
Speaker 1: put him in piano classes at age five. He was
Speaker 1: a bright student, graduating from Brooklyn's Lafayette High School with
Speaker 1: fantastic grades and mathematics and science. From nineteen sixty nine
Speaker 1: to nineteen seventy one, Cohen started taking college courses at
Speaker 1: Cooper Union, focusing mostly on physics. He left for n
Speaker 1: y u. S. Corn Institute after that and took classes
Speaker 1: on the mathematical physiology of the heart. Epstein was clearly
Speaker 1: smart and very interested in a variety of obscure scientific
Speaker 1: and mathematical disciplines. He never quite found a subject he
Speaker 1: could focus on for more than a year or two
Speaker 1: at a time, though, and he left Corn Institute without
Speaker 1: getting a degree. So so far I'm on board, So
Speaker 1: so far, pretty good, Although I questioned his parents because
Speaker 1: I agree that on education being the way out of
Speaker 1: poverty and into a better life, or one of the ways,
Speaker 1: but still question, like you're on that track. Education is
Speaker 1: gonna save our son. Let's also throwing in piano lessons
Speaker 1: like that, Like how many famous rich piano players are there?
Speaker 1: Still just the three? It's still just Elton, John and
Speaker 1: two guys I can't name, Yeah, Billy Joel and Marshall.
Speaker 1: Elli's character from Greenbook is that I feel bad that
Speaker 1: I forgot Billy Joel. You should feel ironically loved Billy Joel. No,
Speaker 1: I mean so do I Man, it's a good night.
Speaker 1: Saigon is a great aass song. You should get him
Speaker 1: as a guest on this show. I would love to
Speaker 1: have Billy Joel as a guest on He's Antifa. Now,
Speaker 1: if you didn't hear the interview, is that really? Yeah?
Speaker 1: He did an interview with Vice after the Charlottesville march
Speaker 1: where he was like, I don't understand why more people
Speaker 1: aren't hitting Nazis. Oh yeah Joel, Yeah, he's great. Okay,
Speaker 1: so uh. In his early twenties, Epstein got a job
Speaker 1: teaching physics at the Dalton School, a Manhattan private school.
Speaker 1: He taught physics and math to the children of the
Speaker 1: rich and powerful. A number of fawning articles from before
Speaker 1: Epstein's Crimes Republic Knowledge gave glowing accounts of his mysterious backstory.
Speaker 1: One of those fawning articles was published by New York
Speaker 1: Magazine in two thousand two. It's title, The International money
Speaker 1: Man of Mystery gets across how Epstein was generally viewed.
Speaker 1: Here's how it described his transition from high school teacher
Speaker 1: to finance here. By most accounts, he was something of
Speaker 1: a Robin Williams and Dead Poet society type figure, wowing
Speaker 1: his high school classes with passionate mathematical riffs. So impressed
Speaker 1: was one Wall Street father of a student that he
Speaker 1: said to Epstein point blank, what are you doing teaching
Speaker 1: math at Dalton? You should be working on Wall Street.
Speaker 1: Why don't you give my friend A. S. Greenberg a call? So?
Speaker 1: What what year do you say? This was? This is, uh,
Speaker 1: it's kind of unclear, but it's like nineteen seventy seventy
Speaker 1: six when this has happened. Yeah. So Ace Greenberg was
Speaker 1: a senior partner at bear Stearns who you may remember
Speaker 1: from the whole that time the economy collapsed. Yeah, that
Speaker 1: they were. They were pretty big part of that. Uh. Now,
Speaker 1: Greenberg was a legendary trader in his own right and
Speaker 1: has long made it clear that the basically famous for
Speaker 1: picking out what he described as like hungry and brilliant guys. Um.
Speaker 1: So he liked finding like poor smart people and then
Speaker 1: giving them jobs in trading because he figured that they
Speaker 1: do better than like rich kids, which is probably a
Speaker 1: good strategy, and it worked out for Epstein Uh. In
Speaker 1: nineteen seventy six, he joined the firm UH. He started
Speaker 1: off as a junior assist into the floor trader at
Speaker 1: the American Stock Exchange, and according to most accounts, his
Speaker 1: ascent was rapid. UH. Newark Magazine quoted former bear Sterns
Speaker 1: CEO Jimmy Caine as saying of Epstein, he was not
Speaker 1: your conventional broker, saying by IBM or Sell Xerox. Given
Speaker 1: his mathematical background, we put him in our special products division,
Speaker 1: where he would advise our wealthier clients on the tax
Speaker 1: implications of their portfolios. He would recommend certain tax advantageous transactions.
Speaker 1: He's a very smart guy and has become a very
Speaker 1: important client for the firm as well. So most coverage
Speaker 1: of Epstein's rise to power and wealth are vague about
Speaker 1: his time at bear Sterns. They just say he rose
Speaker 1: quickly and then left suddenly. A couple of years later
Speaker 1: to found his own company now. Vanity Fair published a
Speaker 1: much better article on Epstein in two thousand three, which
Speaker 1: did a more thorough job of investigating his backstory. According
Speaker 1: to that reporting, his rise at bear Sterns was literally
Speaker 1: the opposite of mediorc. It looks like Epstein was forced
Speaker 1: out of the company as part of an insider trading
Speaker 1: scandal in March of nineteen eighty one. Several Italian and
Speaker 1: Swiss investors were found guilty in the s you see
Speaker 1: questioned Epstein over the matter. It's kind of unclear exactly
Speaker 1: how he's involved, but he resigned one day after the
Speaker 1: violation occurred. So yeah, that's that's the real story of
Speaker 1: his time in bear Stearns. Um. That's good. I like
Speaker 1: when crimes sort of line up with my level of
Speaker 1: understanding them, where everyone's like, we're not exactly we can't
Speaker 1: figure out what kind of crime you did, but it's
Speaker 1: bad and you have to go away now. Yeah, he
Speaker 1: got certainly you're guilty of something with money, Get out
Speaker 1: of here. You did something you shouldn't have. He had
Speaker 1: to pay a fine, and it's really unclear to me
Speaker 1: exactly what he did. It's one of those things where
Speaker 1: I've read like three explanations of it and I'm like, okay,
Speaker 1: finance crime, lame finance crime, Okay, got it? Uh now.
Speaker 1: For years, up until about two thousand five, the reporting
Speaker 1: on Epstein mostly focused on his utter brilliance as a financier.
Speaker 1: That Vanity Fair article was titled the Talented Mr. Epstein.
Speaker 1: The introduction to the New York Magazine article was even
Speaker 1: more fawning. So this is the introduction to Jeffrey Epstein,
Speaker 1: international money man of mystery. He's pals with a passle
Speaker 1: of Nobel Prize winning scientists, CEO is like Leslie Wexler,
Speaker 1: have limited socialite Gassain Maxwell, and even Donald Trump. But
Speaker 1: it wasn't until he flew Bill Clinton, Kevin Spacey, and
Speaker 1: Chris Tucker to Africa on his private Boeing seven seven
Speaker 1: but the world began to wonder who he is. So,
Speaker 1: so do we need to just by association, do we
Speaker 1: need to look into Chris Tucker or something we might
Speaker 1: We might need to look into Chris Tucker. We definitely
Speaker 1: need to look into Kevin Spacey. Yeah, I mean, that's
Speaker 1: like I know right now that that plane is full
Speaker 1: of mostly monsters. And Chris Tucker, and so I just
Speaker 1: just is poor Chris Tucker just some guy who got
Speaker 1: caught up with some bad people? Or is he like
Speaker 1: this is my crew of this is we I write
Speaker 1: a plane with my buddies and we all do the
Speaker 1: same terrible stuff. See that's one of the terrifying things
Speaker 1: of the Jeff Epstein story because no matter who you are,
Speaker 1: someone you think is awesome has wound up in close
Speaker 1: proximity to him, and it's impossible to know if they
Speaker 1: did something terrible. Oh that's not great, No, it's it's
Speaker 1: really bad. So no one really seems to know how
Speaker 1: Epstein went from the guy who got forced out of
Speaker 1: bear Sterns for insider trading to the billionaire who flew
Speaker 1: Bill Clinton and Kevin Spacey and Chris Tucker to Africa
Speaker 1: as part of a charity in two thousand two. Um,
Speaker 1: we don't really know how that happened. It's kind of
Speaker 1: a mystery. Epstein's became famous starting in the nineteen nineties
Speaker 1: as a man who would only work for rich people
Speaker 1: whose assets were worth more than a billion dollars. So
Speaker 1: he basically jumped right from or at least his claim
Speaker 1: is that he jumped right from you know, bear Stearns too,
Speaker 1: I only manage the finances of billionaires, and like did
Speaker 1: that in the space of less than a decade and
Speaker 1: nobody really knows how. So that's that's the basics of it.
Speaker 1: When journalists would write articles about him during this period,
Speaker 1: they would interview people who would tell stories about unnamed
Speaker 1: plutocrats worth five million or seven hundred million who supposedly
Speaker 1: reached out to Epstein and gotten turned down for being
Speaker 1: too small beans when asked. Also, when you say he
Speaker 1: went from bear Stearns to billionaires and no one knows
Speaker 1: how it happened, this is I know you're a factual show.
Speaker 1: I feel like I can say this. There's a zero
Speaker 1: chance that it was for good reasons, right, There's a
Speaker 1: zero chance that was zero chance that people are just
Speaker 1: like he's just the sweetest. He remembers my kid's birthday.
Speaker 1: I kind of feel like that might be the case
Speaker 1: with anyone who manages the money of billionaires, Like I
Speaker 1: feel like no billionaires, Like I love my tax guy
Speaker 1: because he's so fair. I love my tax guy because
Speaker 1: he overthrew the government of that one country that I
Speaker 1: was using as a tax shelter. He blew up the
Speaker 1: journalist who wrote the Panama Papers with a car bomb. Now,
Speaker 1: when he was reached out to like asked about how
Speaker 1: he had sort of turned into the guy who only
Speaker 1: works for billionaires and made that into a business, Epstein
Speaker 1: would say stuff like quote, I was the only person
Speaker 1: crazy enough or arrogant enough, or misplaced enough to make
Speaker 1: my limit a billion dollars or more. So he would
Speaker 1: just claim it is like I was so bold that
Speaker 1: it like impressed people, and that's why they started giving
Speaker 1: me their business, which is again, it's remarkable how many
Speaker 1: journalists just ran with this story for like twenty years
Speaker 1: and we're just like, I guess that's what happened. Uh.
Speaker 1: He was said in the nineties to manage more than
Speaker 1: fifteen billion dollars in assets, which would mean he was
Speaker 1: taking in close to a hundred million a year just
Speaker 1: in commissions. He described his job as being like an architect,
Speaker 1: helping the very wealthy maintain the stability of their portfolio
Speaker 1: so they would never wind up not rich ever. Again. Now,
Speaker 1: Epstein's claims about how he got to this point are
Speaker 1: that in nineteen eighty two, after leaving bear Sterns, he
Speaker 1: opened his own company, Jay Epstein and Company, and somehow,
Speaker 1: despite being new to the industry, he immediately amassed a
Speaker 1: stable of billionaire clients. According to New York Magazine quote,
Speaker 1: there were no road shows, no whiz bang marketing demos,
Speaker 1: just this Jeff Epstein was open for business with those
Speaker 1: one billion dollar plus. I want people to understand the power,
Speaker 1: the responsibility, and the burden of their money, he said
Speaker 1: to a colleague at the time. As a teacher at Dalton,
Speaker 1: he had witnessed firsthand the troubled attitudes of some of
Speaker 1: the poor, little rich kids under his charge at Bear.
Speaker 1: He had come to the realization that counterintuitively, the more
Speaker 1: money you had, the more anxious you became. For a
Speaker 1: middle class kid from Brooklyn, it just didn't make sense.
Speaker 1: So podcast listeners can't tell because this is an audio format.
Speaker 1: But you're listening at home. My dog is sitting in
Speaker 1: my lap and he just did a huge jerk off
Speaker 1: motion with his paw for a while at the sound
Speaker 1: of poor little rich kids. And also the burden of
Speaker 1: lots of money. The burden of lots of money. Uh,
Speaker 1: what what a great burden that would be? The burden
Speaker 1: of going to the doctor regularly. Yeah, let me let
Speaker 1: me check in with those guys. You're tired. You need
Speaker 1: some help with your burden. You need someone to lighten
Speaker 1: that load for you. I have some suggestions. Now. The
Speaker 1: first journalists who actually do a not completely garbage job
Speaker 1: of writing about Jeffrey Epstein where they just repeated all
Speaker 1: of his his his bullshit and talked about how nice
Speaker 1: his house was, and we will talk about his house
Speaker 1: a little bit. But the first journalist who actually dig
Speaker 1: into it was a reporter named Vicky Ward with Vanity Fair.
Speaker 1: She actually dug into his finances and found evidence that,
Speaker 1: for one, Epstein worked with a ton of non billionaire
Speaker 1: clients during the nineteen eighties and nineties. She found a
Speaker 1: nineteen eight and nine deposition in which he testified under
Speaker 1: oath that of his business was not helping billionaires, but
Speaker 1: helping people find money that had been stolen by fraudulent
Speaker 1: brokers and lawyers. They also found a lawsuit against him
Speaker 1: in nineteen eighty two which said that he received four
Speaker 1: hundred and fifty thousand dollars from a client worth four
Speaker 1: point five million dollars to invest in oil and promptly
Speaker 1: lost all of it. May recognize four and a half
Speaker 1: million dollars as less than a billion dollars. So I
Speaker 1: do want you guys, thank you. Yeah, yeah, I know.
Speaker 1: Math is nobody's strong suit. On this podcast, I run
Speaker 1: the numbers twice. Uh Now. Vanity Fair writer Vicky Ward
Speaker 1: interviewed some people who had been friends with Epstein during
Speaker 1: since the nineteen eighties. These people recalled that after his
Speaker 1: Bear Stearns period, rather than jumping right into billionaire money management,
Speaker 1: Epstein was a self described bounty hunter, recovering lost and
Speaker 1: stolen money for a variety of clients. He had a
Speaker 1: license to carry a handgun in New York City, which
Speaker 1: is a really hard thing to do, like the hardest
Speaker 1: gun related license to get in this country. But yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: it's you don't get a carry license in New York
Speaker 1: City unless you're really rich or the governor okay, or
Speaker 1: the or the or the really rich governor that currently
Speaker 1: Yeah anyway, now, uh, can I just ask what the
Speaker 1: what the name of the article that was the Big Lord? Yeah,
Speaker 1: her article was the talented Mr Epstein. Okay, it was
Speaker 1: a play on the talented Mr. Right. It's it's continuing
Speaker 1: the theme of late nineties movies about Jeff Epstein for
Speaker 1: some reason that was that was the only way to
Speaker 1: rate a title back then. Yeah, yeah, yeah, I'm looking
Speaker 1: forward to Epstein Love been Red Epstein, Epstein to when
Speaker 1: Nature Calls. Yeah yeah, that's the story about that flight
Speaker 1: to Africa. Bam brought it, brought it around. So it's
Speaker 1: clear that Epstein's rise to billionaire financier was not as
Speaker 1: smooth as he presents it. It's almost impossible to unwrap
Speaker 1: exactly how Epstein got so rich and precisely what he did,
Speaker 1: but we do know that either in nine or nineteen
Speaker 1: eighty six, he started up a friendship with Lex Wexler,
Speaker 1: the billionaire founder of Victoria's Secret, among other retail companies.
Speaker 1: By the time people started writing about Epstein, he managed
Speaker 1: virtually all of Wexler's money. Now, most coverage at this
Speaker 1: time focused on his connection to Wexler as an explanation
Speaker 1: for how Epstein rose to prominence. Taken that way, his
Speaker 1: rises the story of a brilliant and an orthodox funds
Speaker 1: manager who proved himself so invaluable to one billionaire that
Speaker 1: he soon became the go to money guy of the
Speaker 1: incredibly rich. But there is no hard evidence that this
Speaker 1: is the case either. Even Epstein's friends at the time,
Speaker 1: including Tiffany and Company CEO Rosa Moncton, admitted that there
Speaker 1: was something strange about Jeffrey's background. So this is what
Speaker 1: she told Vanity fair quote. He's very enigmatic. You think
Speaker 1: you know him, and the new peel off another ring
Speaker 1: of the onion skin and there's something else extraordinary underneath.
Speaker 1: He never reveals his hand. He's a classic Iceberg. What
Speaker 1: you see is not what you get. So can we
Speaker 1: talk about um, this can't be an original thought. When
Speaker 1: you peel back a layer of an onion, it's more onion.
Speaker 1: It is more onion. It's never like you don't peel
Speaker 1: an onion. It's like there's seeds and fruit in here.
Speaker 1: It's just more on you. Well, Daniel, Sometimes you peel
Speaker 1: back an onion and you find an Iceberg. Okay, yes,
Speaker 1: and then behind with Iceberg is a different hand of poker, right, yeah,
Speaker 1: this is this, This horse is just the tip of
Speaker 1: the onion. Part of why Epstein was able to remain
Speaker 1: so enigmatic may have been the fact that he threatened
Speaker 1: the journalists who wrote about him. That is, at least
Speaker 1: the allegation made in Vicky Ward's Vanity Fair article, She
Speaker 1: notes that a reporter she talked to told her that
Speaker 1: they were threatened three times during the preparation of a piece.
Speaker 1: The threats quote were delivered in a jocular tone, but
Speaker 1: the message was clear, there will be trouble for your
Speaker 1: family if I don't like the article. I'm not really
Speaker 1: sure how you deliver that in a jocular tone. Yeah,
Speaker 1: slap on the back and I'm gonna kill your wife.
Speaker 1: Your daughter's name Susan, right, How I know that I'm
Speaker 1: not trying to get these pictures of her school. People
Speaker 1: who view Epstein as a financial genius tend to say
Speaker 1: that he was made by Wexler. Epstein, for his part,
Speaker 1: is too prideful to give any one person credit for
Speaker 1: his rise. He claims he had other rich accounts that
Speaker 1: he managed before being put in charge of Wexley's fortune.
Speaker 1: But Vanity Fair found another Epstein connection that suggests a
Speaker 1: somewhat less savory jump start to his fortune. Stephen Jude
Speaker 1: Hoffenberg met Jeffrey Epstein in London at some point in
Speaker 1: the nineteen eighties. Hoffenburg was the head of the Towers
Speaker 1: Financial Corporation, which was on paper, a collection agency that
Speaker 1: bought debts people owed to hospitals, banks, and other institutions.
Speaker 1: In reality, the company was a gigantic ponzi scheme. Hoffenberg
Speaker 1: used the company funds to pay off early investors and
Speaker 1: by himself mansions and homes, as well as a small
Speaker 1: fleet of jet planes. When Epstein and Hoffenberg met, the
Speaker 1: former had been running a small consulting company out of
Speaker 1: his apartment. He'd just been ousted from bear Stearns, and,
Speaker 1: in Hoffenberg's words, was getting into trouble. Uh Hoffenberg hired
Speaker 1: Epstein on as a consultant. At the time the Vanity
Speaker 1: Fair article was published two thousand three, It was unclear
Speaker 1: exactly what Epstein did for Tower Financial, but it is
Speaker 1: clear is that the sec came down on the company.
Speaker 1: Hard Hoffenburg was charged with running a four d and
Speaker 1: fifty million dollar ponzi scheme, one of the largest in
Speaker 1: American history, and was sentenced to twenty years in prison.
Speaker 1: He has more recently claimed that Epstein was behind the
Speaker 1: entire ponzi scheme and was in fact the architect of it,
Speaker 1: but somehow managed to escape prosecution. But that's only in
Speaker 1: the last year or two. Okay, seems like he made
Speaker 1: his money from a pyramid scheme. Yeah, that's fine at
Speaker 1: a certain point, when you're dealing with lots and lots
Speaker 1: of money and people with no conscience, I can't even
Speaker 1: understand the crimes that they're doing anymore. I just like,
Speaker 1: this person took a lot of money from a lot
Speaker 1: of other people and lied to people, and there were
Speaker 1: jets and planes and consulting, and I was like, okay, yeah, money, money,
Speaker 1: money only crime, crime, crime, that's fine. I I I
Speaker 1: will never make enough money to either commit one of
Speaker 1: these schemes or um be taken in by one of them,
Speaker 1: so I I feel I'm protected there. But it's just
Speaker 1: again the same thing with like Bernie made off or
Speaker 1: I'm just dimly aware that he did a bad thing,
Speaker 1: but I can't, like if you put a gun to
Speaker 1: my head right now. I was like, we'll give me
Speaker 1: a five pterograph essay. Yeah, crimes. And if if this
Speaker 1: was he was just a guy who became a billionaire
Speaker 1: because he did some insider training and ran a Ponzi
Speaker 1: scheme and then uh lied about how he became a billionaire,
Speaker 1: he wouldn't be interesting. Um. But the fact of the
Speaker 1: matter is that Epstein there was something else going on
Speaker 1: in this entire period, um that maybe are we going
Speaker 1: to get into this philanthropy now or what? Yeah, we're
Speaker 1: talking philanthropy. So we're gonna talk about Jeffrey Epstein's sexual crimes,
Speaker 1: uh and how they may be tied to the gigantic
Speaker 1: and possibly inexhaustible fortune that he still maintains to this day.
Speaker 1: But first is an ad pivot dance. Oh yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1: Some of those some of those tasty, tasty ads which
Speaker 1: I can promise all our listeners are are not Ponzi schemes,
Speaker 1: although I don't know what a Ponzi scheme is. U. Yeah,
Speaker 1: they could be. That feels like a crazy thing to
Speaker 1: promise your listeners. You're right, uh, yep. Like I believe
Speaker 1: that you spent two weeks reading International Money, Man of
Speaker 1: Mystery and uh doing lots of research for this episode.
Speaker 1: I don't believe that you thoroughly vetted like a belt
Speaker 1: company that's gonna advertise on the podcast. So that's not
Speaker 1: attactive belt companies, Daniel. No, I mean, I don't know
Speaker 1: what a Ponzi scheme is. That's all I can say.
Speaker 1: Oh boy, this this ad pivot has gone off the rails.
Speaker 1: Stand Yeah, products we're back. We still don't know what
Speaker 1: a Ponzi scheme is or what a belt is because
Speaker 1: I have worn nothing but sweatpants for the last six months.
Speaker 1: Uh that's true. Yeah, Sophie's Sophie shaking her head because
Speaker 1: she has not seen me in another pair of pants.
Speaker 1: Every year or so, I find a pair of sweatpants
Speaker 1: that looks just enough like real pants that I feel
Speaker 1: like I can get away with wearing them every day,
Speaker 1: and then I do. They don't. I know, everyone knows
Speaker 1: I'm wearing pajamas, but yeah, I don't think I've seen
Speaker 1: you in sweatpants. I've seen you in pajama pants, and
Speaker 1: I've seen like different weird pants. You. You've got a
Speaker 1: bunch of weird pants. I do that that that I
Speaker 1: find alienating, that eccentric pants. I've had a number of those. Yeah, well,
Speaker 1: we all go through stages in our lives. Nope, you
Speaker 1: had that whole sleeveless shirt period. Yeah, it was hot.
Speaker 1: It did give me the courage to to to go
Speaker 1: sons out, guns out, So I thank you for that. Dan.
Speaker 1: Let's talk about horrible sex crimes. Jeff Epstein's sex crimes
Speaker 1: were not public knowledge until two five, but he spent
Speaker 1: the entirety of the yearly two thousands, and probably the
Speaker 1: nineteen nineties as well, committing them, maybe even further back.
Speaker 1: We don't really know how far back crimes go, but
Speaker 1: I think now is a prudent time to get into
Speaker 1: some detail about what exactly jeff Epstein was up to.
Speaker 1: The Miami Herald, which published a massive investigation at Epstein
Speaker 1: just this year, describes his activities as a sort of
Speaker 1: sexual pyramid scheme. And I do know what a pyramid
Speaker 1: scheme is, Okay? Is that not a Ponzi scheme? I
Speaker 1: don't think so, Dan, But I don't know. I did.
Speaker 1: I didn't do that research. I know it's I know
Speaker 1: it's it's shady. Now. Epstein had a team of helpers,
Speaker 1: primarily in Palm Springs, but all around the world, everywhere
Speaker 1: he had residences, which included New York City and New Mexico. Uh.
Speaker 1: These helpers would find young women that they could bring
Speaker 1: back to one of Jeffrey's various mansions, and then, while
Speaker 1: here's a helpful summary of the scheme by the Washington
Speaker 1: Post quote, Epstein would the help from several female assistants
Speaker 1: would recruit underage females to travel to his home in
Speaker 1: Palm Beach to engage in lewd conduct in exchange for money.
Speaker 1: Some went there as many as a hundred times or more.
Speaker 1: Some of the women's conduct was limited to performing a
Speaker 1: toplesser nude massage, while Mr Epstein masturbated himself. For other
Speaker 1: women that escalated to full sexual intercourse. Now that's a decent,
Speaker 1: high level overview, but I want to correct one thing,
Speaker 1: which is that most of these people were not women.
Speaker 1: They were girls. The majority of them were under eighteen
Speaker 1: at least that's what it seems. We don't have, you know,
Speaker 1: exact evidence, but most of the people that the police
Speaker 1: and the FBI later talked to were like between twelve
Speaker 1: and sixteen when he started. Yeah, yeah, yeah, So I
Speaker 1: do think it's important that we bring in some of
Speaker 1: the human stories of the individual young girls who got
Speaker 1: caught up in this mess. The story of Virginia Roberts
Speaker 1: is a good case study. Like many of the literal
Speaker 1: children that Jeffrey Epstein targeted, she had a hard childhood.
Speaker 1: At age eleven, she had been molested by a family friend.
Speaker 1: By age twelve, she was by her own recollection, smoking
Speaker 1: weed and skipping school. By age fourteen, she was living
Speaker 1: on the street. Her family was ship and she had
Speaker 1: very little support. She wound up in the clutches of
Speaker 1: a sixty five year old sex trafficker named Ron Eppinger.
Speaker 1: She was abused and pimped out for months until Eppinger
Speaker 1: was indicted in two thousand. Virginia traveled back to West
Speaker 1: Palm Beach reconnected with her father, who worked as a
Speaker 1: maintenance man at Donald Trump's Mara Lago resort. He got
Speaker 1: her a job as a locker room attendant at the spot.
Speaker 1: That very summer, sixteen year old Virginia Roberts met Gilsain Maxwell,
Speaker 1: a British socialite and heiress to one of Britain's great fortunes.
Speaker 1: Gilsain happened to be a longtime friend of Jeffrey Epstein.
Speaker 1: Hilsain offered Roberts the opportunity of a lifetime get paid
Speaker 1: to learn to become a massage therapist at the home
Speaker 1: of a wealthy billionaire, Jeffrey Epstein. That Vanity Fair article
Speaker 1: that about Epstein, written the same year all of this happened,
Speaker 1: but way before his sexual crimes were public knowledge, described
Speaker 1: the relationship between Epstein and Gilsain Maxwell this way quote.
Speaker 1: Epstein is known about town as a man who loves women,
Speaker 1: lots of them, mostly young model types, have been heard
Speaker 1: saying they are full of gratitude to Epstein for flying
Speaker 1: them around, and he is a familiar face to many
Speaker 1: of the victorious Secret girls. One young woman recalls being
Speaker 1: summoned by Gilsain Maxwell to a concert at Epstein's townhouse,
Speaker 1: where the women seemed to outnumber them in by far.
Speaker 1: These were not women you'd see at Upper east Side dinners,
Speaker 1: the woman recalls, many seemed foreign and dressed a little bizarrely.
Speaker 1: The same guest also attended a cocktail party thrown by
Speaker 1: Maxwell that Prince Andrew attended, which was filled, she says,
Speaker 1: with young Russian models. Some of the guests were horrified.
Speaker 1: The women says, so that's what people knew before the
Speaker 1: sex crimes were common knowledge. Jeff Epstein likes really young girls.
Speaker 1: There's always a out of young women at his parties. Um,
Speaker 1: now's a certain kind of money or status or whatever
Speaker 1: it is that like people can be that public about. Yeah,
Speaker 1: he's known for liking women, a lot of them young.
Speaker 1: The fact that he is fine with that a with
Speaker 1: that reputation existing and be the people who are saying
Speaker 1: it fine with saying it, just like broadcasting this this
Speaker 1: this common supert Like I don't even understand people. Is
Speaker 1: that it I don't understand rich people aren't like I
Speaker 1: would not like to have a reputation like even like
Speaker 1: if they're like the young part out of it, you
Speaker 1: were like, oh, Dan, I know, here's what he's known
Speaker 1: for love and women like now, I'd rather not be known.
Speaker 1: I a much of like Dan Glasses runs a lot.
Speaker 1: Glasses and runs a lot you don't want to be
Speaker 1: known for. Like every time I go over to his house,
Speaker 1: there's a bunch of different strange women in weird outfits
Speaker 1: hanging around, right enough enough of a reputation that it's
Speaker 1: the first thing people think of about you. Is it
Speaker 1: is bad to me, but everyone there is fine with it.
Speaker 1: I don't know. And that's part of why this is
Speaker 1: like a bit of a leap of a conclusion on
Speaker 1: my apartment. This is part of why I suspect all
Speaker 1: of this stuff. Even though every everything we have details
Speaker 1: on of his sex crimes dates back to the early
Speaker 1: two thousand's, I suspect it goes back to the nineties
Speaker 1: and probably the eighties, because that's everyone who talked to
Speaker 1: him and those periods of time or talked about him
Speaker 1: was like, yeah, he really likes his young ladies hanging around,
Speaker 1: which is like, okay, so this has been going on
Speaker 1: for a long time. Yeah, and we're this is the
Speaker 1: timeline on. This is a little wonky. So we're switching
Speaker 1: around a little bit, but we're building to something weird here.
Speaker 1: So cool now. Virginia Roberts, again sixteen at that time,
Speaker 1: started off giving Epstein massages, and those massages inevitably progressed
Speaker 1: to blow jobs and other sexual stuff that we're not
Speaker 1: going to cover into tail he raped her because the
Speaker 1: age of consent in Florida is eighteen. So any sex
Speaker 1: that Jeffrey Epstein had with Virginia Roberts was by definition rape.
Speaker 1: I just want to be very clear about that. Epstein's
Speaker 1: pattern was remarkably consistent among the dozens and dozens of
Speaker 1: girls he abused. According to the Miami Herald quote, most
Speaker 1: of the girls said they arrived by car or taxi
Speaker 1: and entered the side door, where they were led into
Speaker 1: a kitchen by a female staff assistant named Sarah Kellen.
Speaker 1: The report said, a chef might prepare them a meal
Speaker 1: or offer them serial. The girls, most from local schools,
Speaker 1: would then ascend a staircase off of the kitchen and
Speaker 1: up to a master bedroom and bath. They were met
Speaker 1: by Epstein. Clad in a towel. He would select a
Speaker 1: lotion from an array lined up on a table, then
Speaker 1: life faced down on a massage table and struck the
Speaker 1: girl to strip partially or fully and direct them to
Speaker 1: massages feet and backside. Then he would turn over and
Speaker 1: have the massages chest, often instructing them to pinch his
Speaker 1: nipples while he masturbated. According to the police report, again,
Speaker 1: the youngest girls brought in on this were like twelve,
Speaker 1: So Jesus yeah Christ yeah. Photos of the young girls
Speaker 1: were allegedly taken and displayed around Epstein's home. At least
Speaker 1: one victim accused him of penetrating her with his penis
Speaker 1: after she explicitly said no. He apologized afterwards and gave
Speaker 1: her a thousand dollars. So two hundred dollars if he
Speaker 1: just masturbated him, if he like, not just statutorily raped you,
Speaker 1: but other type raped you, raped you, he'd give you
Speaker 1: a thousand dollars. That's that that's Epstein's price sheet. Like
Speaker 1: many of his victims. After her first encounter with Epstein,
Speaker 1: Virginia was asked to help in essentially feeding more young
Speaker 1: girls into Epstein's well oiled rape machine. Virginia believes she
Speaker 1: eventually became one of his top recruiters. Here's what she
Speaker 1: said later in a court affidavit quote. Epstein and Maxwell
Speaker 1: also got girls for Epstein's friends and acquaintances. Epstein specifically
Speaker 1: told me that the reason for him doing this was
Speaker 1: so that they would owe him. They would be in
Speaker 1: his pocket and he would have something on them. I
Speaker 1: understood him to mean that when someone was in his pocket,
Speaker 1: they owed him favors. He Epstein would tell the girls, hey,
Speaker 1: I will give you a modeling contract if you go
Speaker 1: have sex with this man. So you see what we're
Speaker 1: building two here a little bit. Yeah, I'm starting to
Speaker 1: put the pieces together. I know a lot of my
Speaker 1: role on as a guest on your show is to
Speaker 1: is to ask questions and jump in with with jokes,
Speaker 1: not not really loving the setups. Not like in the
Speaker 1: raw materials. I'm getting to spin into comedy. Gold Bro. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's it's it's more like it's more like I've given
Speaker 1: you comedy copper, and I we can keep the rust
Speaker 1: off of it. When Virginia Roberts turned nineteen, she was
Speaker 1: officially too old for Jeffrey Epstein. She asked him to
Speaker 1: fly her to Thailand so that she could take massage
Speaker 1: training classes and you know, move on with her life now.
Speaker 1: A man who was actually as smart as Epstein likes
Speaker 1: to think he is would probably have just given her
Speaker 1: some of his unlimited money to set this woman with
Speaker 1: incriminating information about him up in a comfortable new life.
Speaker 1: But he only agreed to pay for her to Thailand
Speaker 1: if she'd agreed to pick up a teenage tie girl
Speaker 1: that he'd basically arranged to buy an import into the
Speaker 1: United States. Um. Yeah, Roberts did not do this. She
Speaker 1: apparently met a guy while she was in Thailand. They
Speaker 1: fell in love and ran away to Australia together. She
Speaker 1: kept the paperwork that Epstein had given her, though, including
Speaker 1: instructions for how to bring this literal child into the
Speaker 1: United States so he could pass her around to his
Speaker 1: rich friends, which is again some of the mountain of
Speaker 1: evidence that was collected by the prosecutors when this finally
Speaker 1: got investigated. Now, It's impossible again for us to know
Speaker 1: how much of this was going on in the late
Speaker 1: eighties and the nineteen nineties during Epstein's rise to power
Speaker 1: and prominence. But if you assume it goes back a
Speaker 1: long way, well, a lot of awful things Vanity Fair
Speaker 1: found that we're just sort of baffling at the time,
Speaker 1: make an awful lot of sense. Now. Jeffrey Epstein was
Speaker 1: pimping out children to their rich and powerful. If he
Speaker 1: didn't directly profit from that by charging them, it got
Speaker 1: him favors and access that were crucial to the building
Speaker 1: of his vast fortune. Many of the lines from that
Speaker 1: Vanity Fair article and other articles written about Epstein in
Speaker 1: the early two thousand's sound down rite sinister with the
Speaker 1: knowledge that when they were written, he was actively importing
Speaker 1: teenagers from foreign countries and recruiting disadvantaged teenagers here in America,
Speaker 1: raping them himself, and then lending them out to his wealthy,
Speaker 1: powerful friends. Quote from the Fanity Fair article. Some of
Speaker 1: the business men who dined with him at his home.
Speaker 1: They include newspaper publisher Mort Zuckerman, banker Lewis Ranieri, Revlon
Speaker 1: chairman Ronald Perlman, real estate tycoon Leon Black, former Microsoft
Speaker 1: executive Nathan Meyer, old Tom Pritzker of Hyatt Hotels, and
Speaker 1: real estate personality Donald Trump sometimes seem not president the president.
Speaker 1: Weird sex stuff that's probably illegal. That guy who just
Speaker 1: sucked a flag, And I hate to say this, but
Speaker 1: I don't think that flag was eighteen Dan damn it. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I wish he'd done it to a statue because then
Speaker 1: we could then we could have had a good statutory
Speaker 1: rate joke. Yeah, but just another tragedy of this. It's
Speaker 1: I'm sorry I took the wind out of your sales
Speaker 1: if you were ramping up to something. Can I ask
Speaker 1: a question now? No, No, it's it's it's basically people
Speaker 1: back then. Uh, I know, it's it's I'm trying not
Speaker 1: to get too conspiracy theory here because we just don't
Speaker 1: know that much that's solid before the early two thousand's.
Speaker 1: But we do know that for decades before it was
Speaker 1: public knowledge that he was a child rape rapist, everyone
Speaker 1: in the finance industry was baffled by how Jeffrey Epstein
Speaker 1: got his money. Um, there's yeah, here's a quote from
Speaker 1: New York Magazine. Quote. My belief is that Jeff maintains
Speaker 1: some sort of money management firm that you won't get
Speaker 1: a straight answer from him, says what one well known investor.
Speaker 1: He once told me he had three people working for him,
Speaker 1: and I've also heard that he manages Rockefeller money, but
Speaker 1: one never knows. It's like looking at the Wizard of Oz.
Speaker 1: There may be less there than meets the eye, or
Speaker 1: a giant child rate machine, which I think is what
Speaker 1: was actually there. I think I can take comfort and
Speaker 1: the fact that no one will ever about me say
Speaker 1: we didn't know where he got his money from or
Speaker 1: what he spent it on, because it was like in
Speaker 1: two thousands nine, I could tell he got a bonus
Speaker 1: at work because he bought an iPad and that's it,
Speaker 1: and then he paid his bills and groceries. Everyone can
Speaker 1: see where all of my money went. In the tape
Speaker 1: covered Toyota prius uh, I drive to Hollywood to record
Speaker 1: this show kind of quickly. I don't know if there
Speaker 1: if there's been a study on this, or if you
Speaker 1: have any kind of fringe theory the relationship between being
Speaker 1: rich and powerful and having disgusting sexual tastes is that
Speaker 1: can you even like guess any kind of connection for them.
Speaker 1: Like I don't want to say, oh, BILLI eaters do
Speaker 1: this because like it seems hard for me to buy
Speaker 1: that maybe Bill Gates is getting on a plane and
Speaker 1: trying to have sex with a fourteen year old child.
Speaker 1: But if there's enough of them that Epstein knows that
Speaker 1: there is a business in specifically connecting rich people with children,
Speaker 1: I don't know why does that market exist? You know,
Speaker 1: what is the relationship therein? Yeah? I mean I think
Speaker 1: for a guy like Epstein, it's simple enough. I think
Speaker 1: he's he's a predator, and I think, like whether or
Speaker 1: not he get rich, he would have preyed on people.
Speaker 1: But I think maybe for maybe one reason why so
Speaker 1: many really rich people uh wind up in doing this
Speaker 1: is because like and I think you could see it's
Speaker 1: starting almost innocuously where just or not innocuously, but without
Speaker 1: any sort of predatory behavior on their behalf, just because
Speaker 1: money and power are so like valuable in our society.
Speaker 1: If someone has the ability to get you roles in Hollywood,
Speaker 1: or someone has the ability to get you a job
Speaker 1: that can set you up for life, then maybe you'll
Speaker 1: sleep with that person and like not even sort of
Speaker 1: question it. So they get used to that sort of thing,
Speaker 1: and it kind of spirals out from there, like, Oh,
Speaker 1: I just get whatever I want because I have all
Speaker 1: this money, And that goes from like what I want
Speaker 1: is having sex with these twenty year old models to
Speaker 1: like they get younger and younger and younger, and you
Speaker 1: just stop, like taking account of the ages and stuff
Speaker 1: you assume you're above. Like I don't know, um, I
Speaker 1: could see it. It's just so confusing to me as
Speaker 1: someone who grew up lower middle class and has since
Speaker 1: gotten more money and the end, like I still don't
Speaker 1: even fly first class. That even feels like an extravagance
Speaker 1: to me, like the things that I would consider like, oh, yeah,
Speaker 1: I have this amount of money, so I deserve like
Speaker 1: a nice meal at a nice restaurant every once in
Speaker 1: a while. I can't imagine. By some strange sis to fate,
Speaker 1: we decide comedy is the most important thing in the world,
Speaker 1: and then I become a billionaire ten years from now,
Speaker 1: is a switch going to flip in my brain that like,
Speaker 1: now that I have a billion dollars, you know, I've
Speaker 1: always wanted to try, like, like, how is it that
Speaker 1: so many billionaires want to have want to get on
Speaker 1: a plane and have sex with children with their fucking
Speaker 1: psychopath predator friend Jeffrey. Well, I'll say this, and I
Speaker 1: didn't prepare the information for this podcast, but it's something
Speaker 1: I've been researching for another project. There is some sign
Speaker 1: entific evidence on how both wealth and power affect the brain,
Speaker 1: and it's been described as similar to a head injury.
Speaker 1: Um So, one of the things that happens when you
Speaker 1: have an elevated position of wealth and power, uh, is
Speaker 1: that you become separated from the consequences of your actions,
Speaker 1: which leads to an increase in impulsive behavior. And again,
Speaker 1: like that increase and impulsive behavior has been compared by
Speaker 1: the scientists doing the neurological research to some of the
Speaker 1: things that happen when you have a head injury. Um so,
Speaker 1: that's could Probably part of it is that like you,
Speaker 1: just like like you and I have gotten lucky enough
Speaker 1: that we've gotten like book deals and stuff and jobs
Speaker 1: that paid us better than we expected to be paid,
Speaker 1: but we still didn't like fly first class because you
Speaker 1: look at that and it's like, well, that's I could
Speaker 1: buy a new laptop, and I want that more than
Speaker 1: I want to be more comfortable for seven hours or whatever.
Speaker 1: Someone who has billions of dollars, then money is not
Speaker 1: a thing, and so like that, it just sort of
Speaker 1: like I think it just warps your perspective on everything
Speaker 1: over a time, as does power, and so like you
Speaker 1: don't like, I'm gonna guess a lot of these people.
Speaker 1: This is one of the things where like one of
Speaker 1: the many things where like the Q and on people
Speaker 1: and the Peto gate people get it wrong. Is they
Speaker 1: assume all these people want to funck literal children. I
Speaker 1: don't think that's it. And from what I've heard, age
Speaker 1: never came up with the people that like the kid,
Speaker 1: the young women that like, and the girls that Jeffrey
Speaker 1: was basically handing out to his friends. They weren't even
Speaker 1: checking on the age. They weren't saying I want an
Speaker 1: underage girl. He was just finding girls he found attractive
Speaker 1: and handing them off to his rich friends, and nobody
Speaker 1: questioned what age they were because they were usually on
Speaker 1: his plane or on his island in international water, So
Speaker 1: why would they ask, Like, I think that's what it
Speaker 1: is more than anything, is this like knowledge that you'll
Speaker 1: never be accountable for your actions whatever they are. And
Speaker 1: also because you're so rich, and powerful, Like nobody asks you,
Speaker 1: they just bring you things, right, Like that's kind of
Speaker 1: how it is. It's like at the Oscars you get
Speaker 1: a box of fucking iPads or whatever that you don't
Speaker 1: even give a it about because it's like, well, it's
Speaker 1: thirty thou dollars with the free stuff, because that's what
Speaker 1: everyone gets at the Oscars. But like we're all rich,
Speaker 1: nobody cares like, yeah, it's it's it's a different world,
Speaker 1: and it's a world where it's easy to accidentally or
Speaker 1: maybe not accidentally. Maybe a lot of these people were like, hey, Jeffrey,
Speaker 1: do you have any twelve year olds? I don't know, Um,
Speaker 1: I mean, I guess was probably a mix of the two,
Speaker 1: depending on who you're talking about. So hopefully Chris Tucker
Speaker 1: and they weren't all children. So even if Chris Tucker
Speaker 1: had sex on Epstein's creepy plain, maybe it was with
Speaker 1: an adult trying to give Chris Tucker the benefit of
Speaker 1: the uh the doubt here, I am too, just because
Speaker 1: I don't Yeah, I've heard nothing bad about him, Yeah, exactly,
Speaker 1: And that was a charity, So maybe that one was
Speaker 1: one where he didn't do anything shady. But we will
Speaker 1: talk about that. It could have been a case where
Speaker 1: like he got he got there and did charity. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it was like Bill Clinton, Kevin Spacey. Why are you
Speaker 1: guys so disappointed? We were here for charity? Was great? Oh,
Speaker 1: speaking of Champagne, Daniel Lobrien, it's time for an ad
Speaker 1: break and maybe that ad will be for Champagne. And
Speaker 1: I don't know about it. I bet it's sucking Mario
Speaker 1: Lopez talking to you about weird stuff. Mario Lopez with
Speaker 1: his dead eyes? Can we say that, Sophie, she's saying,
Speaker 1: we can't talk about Mario Lopez's dead eyes. Mario Lopez
Speaker 1: is lively, lust filled heart add We're back and we're
Speaker 1: talking about how De Rito's hasn't wised up yet. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I can't understand it. I mean, I just just do it. Deritos,
Speaker 1: What the fuck? They're rich in? Wealth warps your perceptions?
Speaker 1: How out of touch with with the real world? The
Speaker 1: mighty are you know, mighty like Dorito's. But back before
Speaker 1: he got rich, John Dorito probably would have recognized what
Speaker 1: an opportunity this podcast is. Oh my god, back when
Speaker 1: we used to call him Johnny Johnny d Johnny from
Speaker 1: up the street for whatever. He just show up at
Speaker 1: punk shows with a homemade bag of Doritos and hand
Speaker 1: them out. I remember seeing him at Chateau Marmont and
Speaker 1: I was like Johnny D from up the street, and
Speaker 1: he was like, it's john Now. I was like, holy shit, Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's when the time's changed. Now he won't even give
Speaker 1: this humble podcast a couple small midsize sedan's worth of
Speaker 1: of advertising dollars. Heartbreaking fools. Okay, so I do want
Speaker 1: to read one other quote from one of one of
Speaker 1: Jeffrey Epstein's famous friends, from that New York Magazine article
Speaker 1: back before anyone knew he was a child molester, or
Speaker 1: at least back before the public knew he was a
Speaker 1: child molest quote. If you talk to Donald Trump, a
Speaker 1: different Epstein emerges. I've known jeff for fifteen years. Terrific guy,
Speaker 1: Trump booms from a speaker phone. He's a lot of
Speaker 1: fun to be with. It is even said that he
Speaker 1: likes beautiful women as much as I do, and many
Speaker 1: of them are on the younger side, No doubt about it.
Speaker 1: Jeffrey enjoys his social life. The president the president of
Speaker 1: a whole last country too, Yeah, of a whole last
Speaker 1: country talking at a time when we know for a
Speaker 1: fact Jeff Epstein was essentially pimping out teenagers. Yeah and
Speaker 1: uh and forgive me again, when when was that interview too? Okay?
Speaker 1: So even that is is is strange to me that
Speaker 1: that anyone listening to him when he's like rumor has it, uh,
Speaker 1: he likes women as much as I do, and sell
Speaker 1: of them young, that no one jumps into be like,
Speaker 1: I mean, what do you mean some of them young?
Speaker 1: Why instead of me just passively writing down what you're
Speaker 1: saying and be like he boomed from a spigger phone,
Speaker 1: just like a single follow up question of like how young? Yeahy.
Speaker 1: Given our society's focus for like men on being like
Speaker 1: smooth and good with them, and I could see something
Speaker 1: like oh, yeah, Jeff, he loves the ladies, but then
Speaker 1: like saying not just he loves the ladies, but and
Speaker 1: they're really young. Yeah. Just googling like two thousand two
Speaker 1: movies to see what we were talking about or thinking
Speaker 1: about at the time, to see if there was any
Speaker 1: like teachable moments like oh, it's two blank movie came
Speaker 1: out and we all learned that it's bad for old
Speaker 1: men to creep on young women. That was the message
Speaker 1: of the first Spider Man movie, Right, yeah, yeah, More
Speaker 1: or less, Donald Trump is not the only president of
Speaker 1: the United States who spent a lot of time with
Speaker 1: Jeffrey Epstein. Bill Clinton spent at least as much time
Speaker 1: and logged even more flights with Epstein on his private plane,
Speaker 1: which some have dubbed the Lowly to express Epstein's hold
Speaker 1: on googling to find out if there's another low leader
Speaker 1: who's famous, then maybe it was like Nope, just the one,
Speaker 1: just one famous, just the one famous. It's not based
Speaker 1: on anything, just a fun nickname. Now. Epstein's pilots log
Speaker 1: books are public domain now thanks to some of the
Speaker 1: many many civil lawsuits around his crimes. Gawker put together
Speaker 1: a pretty good write up over how slick Willie fits
Speaker 1: into all of this. They note that Clinton rode on
Speaker 1: Epstein's plane at least eleven times between two thousand two
Speaker 1: and two thousand three. Okay, what are the on paper
Speaker 1: reasons for writing on Epstein's plane? Oh? Is it always
Speaker 1: going somewhere for charity? Or is it? Or it's sure not, Dan,
Speaker 1: It's sure not? Like what is he telling people? I'm
Speaker 1: I'm getting on this plane. Again, what is his outloud reason.
Speaker 1: He's he's not giving an out loud reason. So here's
Speaker 1: what we have. Quote. In January two tho, for instance,
Speaker 1: Clinton and his a Doug Band and Clinton's secret service
Speaker 1: detail are listed on a flight from Japan to Hong
Speaker 1: Kong with Epstein, Maxwell, Kellen, and two women described only
Speaker 1: as Janice and Jessica. One month later, records show Clinton
Speaker 1: hopped a ride from Miami to Westchester on a flight
Speaker 1: that included Epstein, Maxwell, Kellen, and a woman described only
Speaker 1: as one female. Okay, now I should like like, hey, Bill,
Speaker 1: how was Japan? What what did you get into there?
Speaker 1: And he scraps I found. He just he just flies
Speaker 1: around on this plane and doesn't explain it. He flies
Speaker 1: around on this plane with Jeffrey Epstein, the two people
Speaker 1: who are named in multiple court documents as procuring women
Speaker 1: for jeff Epstein, and the people that he pimped those
Speaker 1: women out to our girls out to uh sorry and
Speaker 1: uh and unnamed women. Okay, yeah, yeah, it seems pretty bad.
Speaker 1: Seems seems pretty bad. Seems like a real bummer evans
Speaker 1: Bill Clinton might have done something really bad. Uh. Now
Speaker 1: that two thousand to New York Magazine article we've been
Speaker 1: quoting from was written because again, you know, Epstein had
Speaker 1: just made the news for flying Bill Clinton, Kevin Spacey,
Speaker 1: Chris Tucker, Gayls, and Gail Smith, who wound up on
Speaker 1: Obama's National Security Council to Africa. Now, on that two
Speaker 1: thousand to flight, Epstein's guests were all accompanied by Chaunte Davis.
Speaker 1: She's one of the twenty seven women listed in Epstein's
Speaker 1: Black Book, which also got out through a court case
Speaker 1: under the heading Massage California. He had a hundred and
Speaker 1: sixty names listed as massage artists in six different locations.
Speaker 1: Many of those women were under age, but for Chris
Speaker 1: Tucker's sake, Shante was not. She was twenty three at
Speaker 1: the time of the flight, So it is possible that
Speaker 1: even if some prostitution went down on that flight, it
Speaker 1: was not necessarily anything terrible on that specific flight. When contacted,
Speaker 1: Shanta did not have much to say. So it's possible
Speaker 1: that Chris Tucker, Gaylee, and Kevin Spacey were just using
Speaker 1: this plane because Epstein offered it very publicly to help
Speaker 1: out a charity. It's possible that if they did have
Speaker 1: any sex, it was with you know, an adult prostitute.
Speaker 1: But when it comes to the case of Bill Clinton,
Speaker 1: it's a lot harder to exonerate him because eleven times
Speaker 1: is a lot of times to fly on Jeffrey Epstein's
Speaker 1: playing with unnamed women. Yes, yes, it's uh, it's I mean,
Speaker 1: I don't I don't even really think we need to
Speaker 1: know the game. No, Clinton, he sucks. Did you do
Speaker 1: a book Clinton episode yet? No? No, but he sucks.
Speaker 1: You should do a Bill Clinton. Well, well, we'll get
Speaker 1: to it. There's a long list now. The one upside
Speaker 1: to the whole horrible Jeffrey Epstein saga is that he
Speaker 1: might actually be something we can unite the country behind.
Speaker 1: Because no matter who you are, and no matter how
Speaker 1: you identify politically, someone you admire wrote on Jeffrey Epstein's
Speaker 1: plane and may have raped a traffic child on it.
Speaker 1: Other Epstein frequent flyers include Alan Dershowitz, the lawyer who
Speaker 1: regularly defends Trump on TV, defended Epstein in court, and
Speaker 1: is accused by name of having sex with an underaged
Speaker 1: child prostitute. Naomi, if you're trying to like prove that
Speaker 1: one of my heroes wrote on this plane and you
Speaker 1: started with Alan Dershwitz. He was just an named Dan.
Speaker 1: Give me a second. Naomi Campbell, the former supermodel and businesswoman,
Speaker 1: former Treasury secretary and Harvard President, Larry Summers, Stephen Pinker,
Speaker 1: the Canadian popular psychologist and author of such best selling
Speaker 1: books as Enlightenment Now and How the Mind Works? And
Speaker 1: Stephen Hawking. What Yeah, Stephen Hawking. See. It turns out
Speaker 1: that Jeffrey Epstein had what the Telegraph called an island
Speaker 1: of sin. It's an island he owns in the Virgin Islands.
Speaker 1: Little St. James, unofficially known to his friends as Little
Speaker 1: Saint jeff Hawking actually travel they're in two thousands. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's a terrible name. Uh. And the women who have
Speaker 1: accused him of sexual trafficking say that a lot of
Speaker 1: the sexual trafficking happened on that island, and that they
Speaker 1: were passed around on that island, and Hawking traveled there
Speaker 1: in two thousand six, a year after the first allegations
Speaker 1: against Epstein were made public. Uh. Epstein apparently paid to
Speaker 1: modify a ship so the sixty one year old physicist
Speaker 1: could take partner cruise. Hawking is pictured on the island
Speaker 1: with several young but presumably adult women enjoying a barbecue.
Speaker 1: So again, it's really hard to say. Maybe nothing bad
Speaker 1: went down with Hawking. Uh, it was really common for
Speaker 1: Epstein to hang out with physicists. He put tens of
Speaker 1: millions of dollars into research projects around the world. He
Speaker 1: also hung out and flew with luminaries in the field
Speaker 1: like Murray Gellman. Uh. He was close to Martin Novak,
Speaker 1: a mathematical biologist and professor at Harvard University. Epstein put
Speaker 1: twenty million dollars into Harvard University, much of it to
Speaker 1: support Novak's work. Vanity Fair talked to both of these
Speaker 1: guys back into thousand three quote. When these men describe Epstein,
Speaker 1: they talk about the energy and curiosity, as well as
Speaker 1: a love for theoretical physics that they don't ordinarily find
Speaker 1: the layman. Gelman rather sweetly mentions that there are always
Speaker 1: pretty ladies around when he goes to dinner at Shaye Epstein. So,
Speaker 1: I feel like if Hawking didn't, a lot of famous
Speaker 1: physicists probably had sex with underage people and Epstein's Yeah,
Speaker 1: and even if Hawking didn't and had no interest in it,
Speaker 1: if a couple of punks like you and me know
Speaker 1: these stories about Epstein. Stephen Hawking probably did. It was
Speaker 1: probably in the air at that point. And it's very
Speaker 1: easy to say, you're sucking into type. No, I don't
Speaker 1: want to go on on your plane. You can you
Speaker 1: you don't have to go on the Lolita Express to
Speaker 1: Little Sat Jeff like, it's very easy to not do that.
Speaker 1: Didn't say it that way. I'm gonna do it again tomorrow.
Speaker 1: You're not going to get on the Lolita Express to
Speaker 1: Little Sat Jeff to row every single day, I make
Speaker 1: that choice. That's good to know. That's good to know. Now.
Speaker 1: One of the things that's like most common in all
Speaker 1: of his pre sex offender interviews is that Epstein would
Speaker 1: brag about his contributions to science, or at least the
Speaker 1: contributions of his money to science. Most of the reporting
Speaker 1: during the pre sexual crime allegations period tended to portray
Speaker 1: him as an eccentric, mysterious genius. He's another exerpt from
Speaker 1: that New York Magazine article quote, but it is his
Speaker 1: COVID of scientists that inspires Epstein's true rapture. Epstein spends
Speaker 1: twenty million a year on them, encouraging them to engage
Speaker 1: in whatever kind of cutting edge research might attract their fancy.
Speaker 1: There of course quite lavish in their praise in return.
Speaker 1: Gerald Edelman won the Nobel Prize for Physiology and Medicine
Speaker 1: in nineteen seventy two and now presides over the Neurosciences
Speaker 1: Institute at Le Yalah. Jeff is so extraordinary and his
Speaker 1: ability to pick up on quantitative relations, says Edelman. He
Speaker 1: came to see us recently. He's concerned with this basic question.
Speaker 1: Is it true that the brain is not a computer?
Speaker 1: He is very quick. I found that really funny for
Speaker 1: some reason. Now, as smart as he may be, and
Speaker 1: that may be pretty smart, Jeffrey Epstein is not as
Speaker 1: smart as he thinks he is. It seems like after
Speaker 1: who knows how many years of going after impoverished girls,
Speaker 1: foreigners and previously trafficked kids, Epstein got lazy. He started
Speaker 1: targeting more and more girls from local high schools in
Speaker 1: Palm Beach, Florida. In two thousand four, sixteen year old
Speaker 1: Michelle Locata still had braces. She was brought into Jeffrey
Speaker 1: Epstein's mansion to give him a massage in exchange for
Speaker 1: a couple of hundred dollars he immediately asked her to strip.
Speaker 1: Of course, according to the Miami Herald, quote Lacada had
Speaker 1: never been naked in front of anyone else before, but
Speaker 1: she did what he said. Epstein put out a timer,
Speaker 1: set it for thirty minutes, and started fondling her while
Speaker 1: he masturbated. She later recalled, I kept looking at the
Speaker 1: timer because I didn't want to have this mental image
Speaker 1: of what he was doing. He kept trying to put
Speaker 1: his fingers inside me and told me to pinch his nipples.
Speaker 1: He was mostly saying, just do that harder, harder, and
Speaker 1: do this. Eventually, Epstein ejaculated, got up and went to
Speaker 1: the shower. Leocada was sent away, but Epstein's people continued
Speaker 1: to trawl her high school, Royal Palm Beach High. Before long,
Speaker 1: students were talking about quote a creepy old guy named
Speaker 1: Jeffrey who was paying between two hundred and three hundred
Speaker 1: dollars apiece for massages that inevitably turned sexual. Not long
Speaker 1: after her afternoon with Epstein, the Palm Beach police wound
Speaker 1: up at Locata's front door. They'd started an investigation into
Speaker 1: Epstein that year two thousand five, when a fourteen year
Speaker 1: old girl prompted by her parents alleged that Epstein had
Speaker 1: molested her in his mansion. This is what led to
Speaker 1: the trial that ended with Epstein branded a sex offender
Speaker 1: and sentenced to more than a year of prison. The
Speaker 1: story of that trial, of epstein sentence, and of everything
Speaker 1: that came next is arguably even more horrifying than what
Speaker 1: we've discussed today. But you the listener will have to
Speaker 1: wait until Thursday to hear that. In Part two of
Speaker 1: the Epstein Saga, Jeffrey Epstein pimped to the Powerful. But first,
Speaker 1: it's the end of the first episode. So you got
Speaker 1: any plug double as you're gonna plug? Oh? Yeah, the
Speaker 1: only thing that I want to plug relevant to my interests.
Speaker 1: And also this episode of this organization called Children of
Speaker 1: the Night that I used to volunteer with back in
Speaker 1: Los Angeles. It's a privately funded nonprofit organization dedicated to
Speaker 1: rescuing children and young people from prostitution worldwide. You can
Speaker 1: find the Children of the Night dot org. If you
Speaker 1: have some money to kick their way, they will always
Speaker 1: take it for if you yourself are in danger. They
Speaker 1: have a twenty four hour hotline and you can reach
Speaker 1: out to them and they will find you and they
Speaker 1: will save you from your situation. If you have to
Speaker 1: find yourself in a particular situation. Uh. And if you're
Speaker 1: not in this situation and you don't have any extra
Speaker 1: money to spend, but you do happen to live in
Speaker 1: the Los Angeles area, you can volunteer with Children of
Speaker 1: the Night through a company called l A Works and
Speaker 1: just show up there once a week to meet these amazing, wonderful,
Speaker 1: brilliant survivors and just play games here their stories, do
Speaker 1: arson crafts, whatever you want. It's a great organization. You
Speaker 1: should do it. You should support them. You should. We
Speaker 1: all should. Children of the Night. That's great. That's a
Speaker 1: great plug. Dan Uh you know, I I pride myself
Speaker 1: on my plugsman ship. But that was that was the
Speaker 1: finest plug of the episode by far. Oh thank you. Well.
Speaker 1: I feel weird saying you should look up our t
Speaker 1: shirts online. But if you go to T Public and
Speaker 1: look up Behind the Bastards you can also buy a shirt.
Speaker 1: But you should, you should, You should done it your
Speaker 1: shirt money to That's just sorry, Sophie. All right, Um,
Speaker 1: I've been Robert Evans has been Behind the Bastards. You
Speaker 1: can find us on social media at at Bastard's pod
Speaker 1: on Twitter and Instagram. You can find all the sources
Speaker 1: for this episode on Behind the Bastards dot com. Um,
Speaker 1: that's all the plugs I got for the end of
Speaker 1: this episode. Uh check back in Thursday where we will
Speaker 1: have even more horrifying things to tell you I love
Speaker 1: about