WEBVTT - Part One: Jeffrey Epstein: Pimp to the Powerful 0:00:00.040 --> 0:00:06.199 M Hey, everybody, I'm Robert Evans. This is Behind the Bastards, 0:00:06.240 --> 0:00:08.320 the podcast where we tell you everything you don't know 0:00:08.360 --> 0:00:11.520 about the very worst people in all of history. And today, 0:00:11.600 --> 0:00:13.480 as a guest on my show, I have one of 0:00:13.520 --> 0:00:18.200 the best people in comedy history, Daniel O'Brien, my once 0:00:18.280 --> 0:00:21.720 and perhaps future boss guy who I was the intern 0:00:21.800 --> 0:00:26.520 for and uh mentor all those things. Daniel. Yeah, that's 0:00:26.360 --> 0:00:28.360 a that's quite an intro. Thank you for for all 0:00:28.400 --> 0:00:31.320 of that. I will uh just so there are no 0:00:32.320 --> 0:00:35.519 dangling cliffhangers or anything like that once in future. I 0:00:35.560 --> 0:00:37.080 don't think I'm never gonna be a boss again for 0:00:37.120 --> 0:00:40.839 the rest of my life. Having been a boss and 0:00:40.920 --> 0:00:43.840 having now like not be a boss anymore, it's better 0:00:43.880 --> 0:00:45.519 this way. It's way better not being a boss. It's 0:00:45.520 --> 0:00:48.159 pretty great. I mean, I'm I'm I'm talking about more. 0:00:48.200 --> 0:00:50.920 When the Civil War gets sparked off and you wind 0:00:51.000 --> 0:00:54.360 up leading a leading a crude militia in Hell's kitchen, 0:00:54.720 --> 0:00:57.360 uh to fight for the liberation of the East coast 0:00:57.440 --> 0:01:00.880 from the tyrannical Midwest, that's a fair I think. Whenever 0:01:00.880 --> 0:01:03.800 a revolution happens, it seems likely that I'll find myself 0:01:03.840 --> 0:01:10.399 somewhere in middle management feels right. Well, Dan, speaking of 0:01:10.440 --> 0:01:13.480 middle management, that's not what we're talking about today. But 0:01:13.520 --> 0:01:17.720 we are talking about a really famous child molester. I 0:01:17.800 --> 0:01:19.800 knew I was going to have my friend and uh 0:01:19.880 --> 0:01:23.560 and former colleague, expert on many different presidents, author of 0:01:23.560 --> 0:01:27.000 the book How to Fight Presidents, so many exciting people 0:01:27.040 --> 0:01:32.120 we could have talked about, and I picked Jeffrey Epstein, Okay, 0:01:32.480 --> 0:01:37.280 soon to be president, soon to be president, very closely 0:01:37.360 --> 0:01:40.520 tied to two presidents at least. Yeah, So are you 0:01:40.560 --> 0:01:43.360 are you? You're ready? You're ready for this, Dan, I'm ready. 0:01:43.400 --> 0:01:45.640 I got a slight heads up on who the top, 0:01:45.720 --> 0:01:47.280 who the person was, and it was one of those 0:01:47.360 --> 0:01:51.560 names that I knew very little about, just enough to 0:01:51.560 --> 0:01:56.240 know that they were bad, and UH deliberately shows not 0:01:56.280 --> 0:01:58.200 to do any research on it so I could be 0:01:58.200 --> 0:02:03.200 surprised and horrified and and hopefully ask you questions that 0:02:03.320 --> 0:02:06.080 your dumbest listeners will have. That is what I what 0:02:06.200 --> 0:02:08.000 I want from my guests is for them to be 0:02:08.080 --> 0:02:10.919 surprised and horrified. So I'm gonna I'm gonna get into 0:02:10.960 --> 0:02:12.720 this story because well, I didn't know anything about this 0:02:12.760 --> 0:02:14.679 guy either other than, like you know, you hear the 0:02:14.720 --> 0:02:17.040 odd story here and there about him. You know he's 0:02:17.040 --> 0:02:21.120 a creep. He's way more than just a creep. So 0:02:21.440 --> 0:02:25.600 let's let's strap in and and tell this tale. On 0:02:25.760 --> 0:02:29.440 December four, two sixteen, Edgar Madison Welch, a year old 0:02:29.480 --> 0:02:32.520 man from Madison, North Carolina, walked into Washington, d C's 0:02:32.560 --> 0:02:34.920 Comment Ping Pong Pizza parlor with an a R fifteen. 0:02:35.320 --> 0:02:37.400 He fired three shots into the restaurant as part of 0:02:37.400 --> 0:02:40.359 a poorly conceived scheme too. In his own words, self 0:02:40.400 --> 0:02:44.200 investigate the Pizza Gate conspiracy theory. That conspiracy theory, which 0:02:44.200 --> 0:02:46.639 had its origins in the two thus sixteen election, states 0:02:46.639 --> 0:02:49.440 that the Clintons and their longtime supporter John Podesta were 0:02:49.480 --> 0:02:51.480 at the center of a giant child rape and sex 0:02:51.520 --> 0:02:54.079 slave ring. Comment Ping Pong was believed to be a 0:02:54.160 --> 0:02:57.720 nexus point of this international child slave trade. The theories 0:02:57.760 --> 0:02:59.920 evolved and merged with other conspiracy theories and is now 0:03:00.080 --> 0:03:02.560 part of the orbit of the Q and on conspiracy theory. 0:03:02.600 --> 0:03:04.480 There's a general sense among many in the far right 0:03:04.520 --> 0:03:08.240 that global elites are part of a gigantic, satanic, pedophilic conspiracy. 0:03:08.520 --> 0:03:10.840 They are wrong about that, but they aren't a hundred 0:03:10.840 --> 0:03:13.440 percent wrong about the idea that an alliance of powerful 0:03:13.440 --> 0:03:18.160 people are having sex with underaged individuals, because that totally happened. 0:03:18.160 --> 0:03:19.760 And today we're going to talk about the man who's 0:03:19.760 --> 0:03:22.400 at the nexus of a real, honest to god, global 0:03:22.560 --> 0:03:25.640 child molesting conspiracy. He has nothing to do with comment 0:03:25.720 --> 0:03:28.959 Ping Pong or John Podesta, and his victims were teenagers 0:03:29.000 --> 0:03:31.440 and not the little kids that the Peto Gate conspiracy 0:03:31.480 --> 0:03:34.200 theories tend to focus on. But yeah, today we're talking 0:03:34.200 --> 0:03:38.480 about Jeff Epstein. So okay, that is that's that's a 0:03:38.560 --> 0:03:42.120 journey of an introduction the Yeah, I yeah, this. I 0:03:42.160 --> 0:03:44.360 found a Q and on flyer on my run today 0:03:44.400 --> 0:03:46.800 this before coming in this morning. So I've I've had 0:03:46.840 --> 0:03:52.240 this conspiracy theory about child molesting global elites on the brain. Sure, 0:03:52.480 --> 0:03:56.200 I mean, that's that's bound to Happencember four? Good day. 0:03:57.160 --> 0:04:01.600 What else happened out December four? Is that are up question? Yes? You, 0:04:01.720 --> 0:04:04.160 me and of our closest friends and co workers. Oh 0:04:04.200 --> 0:04:10.040 my god, I mean not as bad as the shooting 0:04:10.080 --> 0:04:15.360 the pizza place. Yeah, thing, but but m fourth, no 0:04:15.400 --> 0:04:18.640 one died in that shooting, So I'm gonna say is bad. Okay, 0:04:19.360 --> 0:04:27.200 we all lost healthcare. It's good to laugh now. It's 0:04:27.200 --> 0:04:30.719 good to laugh now. I had forgotten the date because 0:04:30.760 --> 0:04:36.440 of all of the drinking. So Jeffrey Edward Epstein was 0:04:36.480 --> 0:04:42.640 born on January three in Brooklyn, New York. Brook then, Yeah, 0:04:42.760 --> 0:04:48.160 not the proudest son of Brooklyn Um. His wiki currently 0:04:48.200 --> 0:04:52.480 describes him as an American financier, science and research, philanthropist, 0:04:52.600 --> 0:04:57.440 and registered sex offender. His I have some notes on 0:04:57.480 --> 0:05:02.000 how Wikipedia orders things sex offender in the middle or first, 0:05:02.400 --> 0:05:04.400 I wanted first? I think I wanted first. I think 0:05:04.440 --> 0:05:10.080 you start with research, philanthropist, sex offender, financier, science, philanthropist. Yeah, 0:05:10.200 --> 0:05:12.960 that's that's my order. I don't want them trying to 0:05:13.360 --> 0:05:17.880 like pre make me like him, you know, like the 0:05:17.920 --> 0:05:19.720 sex metter thing. People are gonna get there. They're not 0:05:19.760 --> 0:05:21.520 gonna like that. So how can we soften this blow 0:05:21.560 --> 0:05:25.000 before they get there? Oh? Philanthropist that's a broadly good word, right, 0:05:25.520 --> 0:05:32.160 philanthropist and rapist. So Epstein was raised in Coney Island. 0:05:32.240 --> 0:05:35.159 The Guardian describes him coming up in a tough Brooklyn neighborhood. 0:05:35.320 --> 0:05:38.000 I'm not sure if that's how you described Coney Island now, 0:05:38.080 --> 0:05:40.640 but that's that's how it was at the time. Apparently, 0:05:41.320 --> 0:05:43.680 according to a Vanity Fair article I read, he and 0:05:43.680 --> 0:05:46.119 his family were kind of solidly middle class. His father 0:05:46.160 --> 0:05:49.120 worked for the city's parks department. His parents saw education 0:05:49.160 --> 0:05:51.640 as the way out for Jeffrey and his brother. They 0:05:51.640 --> 0:05:54.280 put him in piano classes at age five. He was 0:05:54.320 --> 0:05:57.440 a bright student, graduating from Brooklyn's Lafayette High School with 0:05:57.480 --> 0:06:01.320 fantastic grades and mathematics and science. From nineteen sixty nine 0:06:01.360 --> 0:06:04.200 to nineteen seventy one, Cohen started taking college courses at 0:06:04.200 --> 0:06:07.200 Cooper Union, focusing mostly on physics. He left for n 0:06:07.320 --> 0:06:09.560 y u. S. Corn Institute after that and took classes 0:06:09.560 --> 0:06:13.040 on the mathematical physiology of the heart. Epstein was clearly 0:06:13.040 --> 0:06:15.839 smart and very interested in a variety of obscure scientific 0:06:15.880 --> 0:06:18.840 and mathematical disciplines. He never quite found a subject he 0:06:18.880 --> 0:06:20.520 could focus on for more than a year or two 0:06:20.560 --> 0:06:22.880 at a time, though, and he left Corn Institute without 0:06:22.880 --> 0:06:25.680 getting a degree. So so far I'm on board, So 0:06:25.680 --> 0:06:27.680 so far, pretty good, Although I questioned his parents because 0:06:27.760 --> 0:06:31.279 I agree that on education being the way out of 0:06:31.320 --> 0:06:33.440 poverty and into a better life, or one of the ways, 0:06:33.440 --> 0:06:36.880 but still question, like you're on that track. Education is 0:06:36.920 --> 0:06:39.359 gonna save our son. Let's also throwing in piano lessons 0:06:39.480 --> 0:06:42.760 like that, Like how many famous rich piano players are there? 0:06:42.880 --> 0:06:46.400 Still just the three? It's still just Elton, John and 0:06:46.400 --> 0:06:49.440 two guys I can't name, Yeah, Billy Joel and Marshall. 0:06:49.480 --> 0:06:53.320 Elli's character from Greenbook is that I feel bad that 0:06:53.360 --> 0:06:59.400 I forgot Billy Joel. You should feel ironically loved Billy Joel. No, 0:06:59.480 --> 0:07:02.240 I mean so do I Man, it's a good night. 0:07:02.320 --> 0:07:04.720 Saigon is a great aass song. You should get him 0:07:04.720 --> 0:07:06.279 as a guest on this show. I would love to 0:07:06.279 --> 0:07:09.000 have Billy Joel as a guest on He's Antifa. Now, 0:07:09.120 --> 0:07:13.760 if you didn't hear the interview, is that really? Yeah? 0:07:14.200 --> 0:07:17.280 He did an interview with Vice after the Charlottesville march 0:07:17.280 --> 0:07:19.080 where he was like, I don't understand why more people 0:07:19.080 --> 0:07:28.000 aren't hitting Nazis. Oh yeah Joel, Yeah, he's great. Okay, 0:07:28.160 --> 0:07:31.920 so uh. In his early twenties, Epstein got a job 0:07:31.960 --> 0:07:34.960 teaching physics at the Dalton School, a Manhattan private school. 0:07:35.040 --> 0:07:37.000 He taught physics and math to the children of the 0:07:37.080 --> 0:07:40.160 rich and powerful. A number of fawning articles from before 0:07:40.160 --> 0:07:44.000 Epstein's Crimes Republic Knowledge gave glowing accounts of his mysterious backstory. 0:07:44.400 --> 0:07:46.680 One of those fawning articles was published by New York 0:07:46.680 --> 0:07:50.200 Magazine in two thousand two. It's title, The International money 0:07:50.240 --> 0:07:53.400 Man of Mystery gets across how Epstein was generally viewed. 0:07:53.680 --> 0:07:56.160 Here's how it described his transition from high school teacher 0:07:56.240 --> 0:07:58.840 to finance here. By most accounts, he was something of 0:07:58.880 --> 0:08:02.040 a Robin Williams and Dead Poet society type figure, wowing 0:08:02.080 --> 0:08:05.680 his high school classes with passionate mathematical riffs. So impressed 0:08:05.720 --> 0:08:07.480 was one Wall Street father of a student that he 0:08:07.520 --> 0:08:10.280 said to Epstein point blank, what are you doing teaching 0:08:10.280 --> 0:08:12.360 math at Dalton? You should be working on Wall Street. 0:08:12.440 --> 0:08:15.400 Why don't you give my friend A. S. Greenberg a call? So? 0:08:15.880 --> 0:08:18.600 What what year do you say? This was? This is, uh, 0:08:18.920 --> 0:08:21.960 it's kind of unclear, but it's like nineteen seventy seventy 0:08:22.000 --> 0:08:25.200 six when this has happened. Yeah. So Ace Greenberg was 0:08:25.240 --> 0:08:28.440 a senior partner at bear Stearns who you may remember 0:08:28.520 --> 0:08:32.800 from the whole that time the economy collapsed. Yeah, that 0:08:32.800 --> 0:08:36.120 they were. They were pretty big part of that. Uh. Now, 0:08:36.200 --> 0:08:38.600 Greenberg was a legendary trader in his own right and 0:08:38.640 --> 0:08:41.680 has long made it clear that the basically famous for 0:08:41.720 --> 0:08:45.400 picking out what he described as like hungry and brilliant guys. Um. 0:08:45.480 --> 0:08:48.439 So he liked finding like poor smart people and then 0:08:48.480 --> 0:08:50.640 giving them jobs in trading because he figured that they 0:08:50.679 --> 0:08:53.200 do better than like rich kids, which is probably a 0:08:53.200 --> 0:08:56.160 good strategy, and it worked out for Epstein Uh. In 0:08:56.240 --> 0:08:58.880 nineteen seventy six, he joined the firm UH. He started 0:08:58.880 --> 0:09:01.080 off as a junior assist into the floor trader at 0:09:01.080 --> 0:09:04.640 the American Stock Exchange, and according to most accounts, his 0:09:04.679 --> 0:09:08.480 ascent was rapid. UH. Newark Magazine quoted former bear Sterns 0:09:08.480 --> 0:09:11.480 CEO Jimmy Caine as saying of Epstein, he was not 0:09:11.520 --> 0:09:15.360 your conventional broker, saying by IBM or Sell Xerox. Given 0:09:15.360 --> 0:09:18.320 his mathematical background, we put him in our special products division, 0:09:18.440 --> 0:09:20.560 where he would advise our wealthier clients on the tax 0:09:20.600 --> 0:09:25.080 implications of their portfolios. He would recommend certain tax advantageous transactions. 0:09:25.080 --> 0:09:26.800 He's a very smart guy and has become a very 0:09:26.840 --> 0:09:30.280 important client for the firm as well. So most coverage 0:09:30.280 --> 0:09:32.400 of Epstein's rise to power and wealth are vague about 0:09:32.400 --> 0:09:34.560 his time at bear Sterns. They just say he rose 0:09:34.640 --> 0:09:36.880 quickly and then left suddenly. A couple of years later 0:09:36.920 --> 0:09:40.640 to found his own company now. Vanity Fair published a 0:09:40.720 --> 0:09:43.440 much better article on Epstein in two thousand three, which 0:09:43.480 --> 0:09:46.840 did a more thorough job of investigating his backstory. According 0:09:46.920 --> 0:09:49.880 to that reporting, his rise at bear Sterns was literally 0:09:49.920 --> 0:09:52.800 the opposite of mediorc. It looks like Epstein was forced 0:09:52.800 --> 0:09:55.000 out of the company as part of an insider trading 0:09:55.040 --> 0:09:58.160 scandal in March of nineteen eighty one. Several Italian and 0:09:58.200 --> 0:10:00.320 Swiss investors were found guilty in the s you see 0:10:00.400 --> 0:10:03.240 questioned Epstein over the matter. It's kind of unclear exactly 0:10:03.240 --> 0:10:05.520 how he's involved, but he resigned one day after the 0:10:05.600 --> 0:10:09.040 violation occurred. So yeah, that's that's the real story of 0:10:09.080 --> 0:10:11.360 his time in bear Stearns. Um. That's good. I like 0:10:11.440 --> 0:10:13.720 when crimes sort of line up with my level of 0:10:13.800 --> 0:10:17.240 understanding them, where everyone's like, we're not exactly we can't 0:10:17.280 --> 0:10:20.000 figure out what kind of crime you did, but it's 0:10:20.080 --> 0:10:22.240 bad and you have to go away now. Yeah, he 0:10:22.360 --> 0:10:25.800 got certainly you're guilty of something with money, Get out 0:10:25.840 --> 0:10:27.679 of here. You did something you shouldn't have. He had 0:10:27.679 --> 0:10:31.480 to pay a fine, and it's really unclear to me 0:10:31.559 --> 0:10:33.360 exactly what he did. It's one of those things where 0:10:33.360 --> 0:10:36.000 I've read like three explanations of it and I'm like, okay, 0:10:36.000 --> 0:10:42.200 finance crime, lame finance crime, Okay, got it? Uh now. 0:10:42.320 --> 0:10:45.400 For years, up until about two thousand five, the reporting 0:10:45.440 --> 0:10:48.480 on Epstein mostly focused on his utter brilliance as a financier. 0:10:48.800 --> 0:10:51.959 That Vanity Fair article was titled the Talented Mr. Epstein. 0:10:52.360 --> 0:10:54.880 The introduction to the New York Magazine article was even 0:10:54.920 --> 0:10:57.559 more fawning. So this is the introduction to Jeffrey Epstein, 0:10:57.600 --> 0:11:01.200 international money man of mystery. He's pals with a passle 0:11:01.280 --> 0:11:04.960 of Nobel Prize winning scientists, CEO is like Leslie Wexler, 0:11:04.960 --> 0:11:08.760 have limited socialite Gassain Maxwell, and even Donald Trump. But 0:11:08.800 --> 0:11:11.199 it wasn't until he flew Bill Clinton, Kevin Spacey, and 0:11:11.280 --> 0:11:14.320 Chris Tucker to Africa on his private Boeing seven seven 0:11:14.559 --> 0:11:18.880 but the world began to wonder who he is. So, 0:11:18.880 --> 0:11:25.679 so do we need to just by association, do we 0:11:25.720 --> 0:11:27.920 need to look into Chris Tucker or something we might 0:11:28.120 --> 0:11:30.640 We might need to look into Chris Tucker. We definitely 0:11:30.679 --> 0:11:33.400 need to look into Kevin Spacey. Yeah, I mean, that's 0:11:33.520 --> 0:11:35.640 like I know right now that that plane is full 0:11:35.640 --> 0:11:38.319 of mostly monsters. And Chris Tucker, and so I just 0:11:38.320 --> 0:11:41.600 just is poor Chris Tucker just some guy who got 0:11:41.600 --> 0:11:43.400 caught up with some bad people? Or is he like 0:11:43.600 --> 0:11:47.280 this is my crew of this is we I write 0:11:47.280 --> 0:11:48.800 a plane with my buddies and we all do the 0:11:48.840 --> 0:11:51.760 same terrible stuff. See that's one of the terrifying things 0:11:51.760 --> 0:11:54.320 of the Jeff Epstein story because no matter who you are, 0:11:54.960 --> 0:11:57.880 someone you think is awesome has wound up in close 0:11:57.880 --> 0:12:00.280 proximity to him, and it's impossible to know if they 0:12:00.320 --> 0:12:03.559 did something terrible. Oh that's not great, No, it's it's 0:12:03.600 --> 0:12:08.120 really bad. So no one really seems to know how 0:12:08.200 --> 0:12:10.680 Epstein went from the guy who got forced out of 0:12:10.679 --> 0:12:13.839 bear Sterns for insider trading to the billionaire who flew 0:12:13.880 --> 0:12:16.720 Bill Clinton and Kevin Spacey and Chris Tucker to Africa 0:12:16.760 --> 0:12:20.319 as part of a charity in two thousand two. Um, 0:12:20.360 --> 0:12:22.400 we don't really know how that happened. It's kind of 0:12:22.400 --> 0:12:25.920 a mystery. Epstein's became famous starting in the nineteen nineties 0:12:25.960 --> 0:12:28.120 as a man who would only work for rich people 0:12:28.160 --> 0:12:30.720 whose assets were worth more than a billion dollars. So 0:12:30.720 --> 0:12:34.240 he basically jumped right from or at least his claim 0:12:34.240 --> 0:12:37.080 is that he jumped right from you know, bear Stearns too, 0:12:37.400 --> 0:12:40.280 I only manage the finances of billionaires, and like did 0:12:40.360 --> 0:12:42.440 that in the space of less than a decade and 0:12:42.520 --> 0:12:46.120 nobody really knows how. So that's that's the basics of it. 0:12:46.120 --> 0:12:48.400 When journalists would write articles about him during this period, 0:12:48.440 --> 0:12:51.160 they would interview people who would tell stories about unnamed 0:12:51.160 --> 0:12:55.000 plutocrats worth five million or seven hundred million who supposedly 0:12:55.040 --> 0:12:57.400 reached out to Epstein and gotten turned down for being 0:12:57.440 --> 0:13:01.240 too small beans when asked. Also, when you say he 0:13:01.280 --> 0:13:04.840 went from bear Stearns to billionaires and no one knows 0:13:04.840 --> 0:13:07.640 how it happened, this is I know you're a factual show. 0:13:08.320 --> 0:13:10.000 I feel like I can say this. There's a zero 0:13:10.080 --> 0:13:12.120 chance that it was for good reasons, right, There's a 0:13:12.160 --> 0:13:14.160 zero chance that was zero chance that people are just 0:13:14.160 --> 0:13:16.600 like he's just the sweetest. He remembers my kid's birthday. 0:13:16.880 --> 0:13:18.280 I kind of feel like that might be the case 0:13:18.320 --> 0:13:22.160 with anyone who manages the money of billionaires, Like I 0:13:22.200 --> 0:13:24.679 feel like no billionaires, Like I love my tax guy 0:13:24.720 --> 0:13:27.880 because he's so fair. I love my tax guy because 0:13:27.880 --> 0:13:30.040 he overthrew the government of that one country that I 0:13:30.040 --> 0:13:33.800 was using as a tax shelter. He blew up the 0:13:33.880 --> 0:13:38.920 journalist who wrote the Panama Papers with a car bomb. Now, 0:13:39.080 --> 0:13:42.600 when he was reached out to like asked about how 0:13:42.679 --> 0:13:45.720 he had sort of turned into the guy who only 0:13:45.800 --> 0:13:48.600 works for billionaires and made that into a business, Epstein 0:13:48.640 --> 0:13:50.959 would say stuff like quote, I was the only person 0:13:51.000 --> 0:13:53.600 crazy enough or arrogant enough, or misplaced enough to make 0:13:53.640 --> 0:13:55.720 my limit a billion dollars or more. So he would 0:13:55.720 --> 0:13:57.880 just claim it is like I was so bold that 0:13:57.960 --> 0:14:00.400 it like impressed people, and that's why they started giving 0:14:00.400 --> 0:14:04.120 me their business, which is again, it's remarkable how many 0:14:04.160 --> 0:14:07.000 journalists just ran with this story for like twenty years 0:14:07.040 --> 0:14:11.400 and we're just like, I guess that's what happened. Uh. 0:14:11.400 --> 0:14:13.480 He was said in the nineties to manage more than 0:14:13.520 --> 0:14:16.280 fifteen billion dollars in assets, which would mean he was 0:14:16.320 --> 0:14:18.319 taking in close to a hundred million a year just 0:14:18.520 --> 0:14:21.640 in commissions. He described his job as being like an architect, 0:14:21.760 --> 0:14:24.520 helping the very wealthy maintain the stability of their portfolio 0:14:24.600 --> 0:14:28.040 so they would never wind up not rich ever. Again. Now, 0:14:28.600 --> 0:14:31.120 Epstein's claims about how he got to this point are 0:14:31.160 --> 0:14:33.400 that in nineteen eighty two, after leaving bear Sterns, he 0:14:33.440 --> 0:14:36.320 opened his own company, Jay Epstein and Company, and somehow, 0:14:36.360 --> 0:14:38.520 despite being new to the industry, he immediately amassed a 0:14:38.560 --> 0:14:42.040 stable of billionaire clients. According to New York Magazine quote, 0:14:42.080 --> 0:14:44.440 there were no road shows, no whiz bang marketing demos, 0:14:44.480 --> 0:14:46.720 just this Jeff Epstein was open for business with those 0:14:46.720 --> 0:14:49.600 one billion dollar plus. I want people to understand the power, 0:14:49.640 --> 0:14:51.880 the responsibility, and the burden of their money, he said 0:14:51.920 --> 0:14:54.400 to a colleague at the time. As a teacher at Dalton, 0:14:54.480 --> 0:14:56.720 he had witnessed firsthand the troubled attitudes of some of 0:14:56.720 --> 0:14:59.200 the poor, little rich kids under his charge at Bear. 0:14:59.240 --> 0:15:01.920 He had come to the realization that counterintuitively, the more 0:15:01.920 --> 0:15:04.560 money you had, the more anxious you became. For a 0:15:04.560 --> 0:15:07.080 middle class kid from Brooklyn, it just didn't make sense. 0:15:07.520 --> 0:15:12.320 So podcast listeners can't tell because this is an audio format. 0:15:12.400 --> 0:15:14.360 But you're listening at home. My dog is sitting in 0:15:14.360 --> 0:15:17.240 my lap and he just did a huge jerk off 0:15:17.240 --> 0:15:19.600 motion with his paw for a while at the sound 0:15:19.720 --> 0:15:22.800 of poor little rich kids. And also the burden of 0:15:22.840 --> 0:15:26.080 lots of money. The burden of lots of money. Uh, 0:15:26.120 --> 0:15:29.200 what what a great burden that would be? The burden 0:15:29.240 --> 0:15:32.080 of going to the doctor regularly. Yeah, let me let 0:15:32.120 --> 0:15:34.360 me check in with those guys. You're tired. You need 0:15:34.440 --> 0:15:36.600 some help with your burden. You need someone to lighten 0:15:36.640 --> 0:15:42.200 that load for you. I have some suggestions. Now. The 0:15:42.280 --> 0:15:45.880 first journalists who actually do a not completely garbage job 0:15:45.880 --> 0:15:48.240 of writing about Jeffrey Epstein where they just repeated all 0:15:48.280 --> 0:15:50.600 of his his his bullshit and talked about how nice 0:15:50.600 --> 0:15:52.440 his house was, and we will talk about his house 0:15:53.320 --> 0:15:55.280 a little bit. But the first journalist who actually dig 0:15:55.280 --> 0:15:59.200 into it was a reporter named Vicky Ward with Vanity Fair. 0:15:59.760 --> 0:16:03.160 She actually dug into his finances and found evidence that, 0:16:03.200 --> 0:16:05.640 for one, Epstein worked with a ton of non billionaire 0:16:05.640 --> 0:16:08.160 clients during the nineteen eighties and nineties. She found a 0:16:08.240 --> 0:16:10.560 nineteen eight and nine deposition in which he testified under 0:16:10.560 --> 0:16:14.360 oath that of his business was not helping billionaires, but 0:16:14.440 --> 0:16:17.080 helping people find money that had been stolen by fraudulent 0:16:17.120 --> 0:16:20.000 brokers and lawyers. They also found a lawsuit against him 0:16:20.000 --> 0:16:22.440 in nineteen eighty two which said that he received four 0:16:22.480 --> 0:16:24.720 hundred and fifty thousand dollars from a client worth four 0:16:24.760 --> 0:16:27.160 point five million dollars to invest in oil and promptly 0:16:27.200 --> 0:16:29.400 lost all of it. May recognize four and a half 0:16:29.400 --> 0:16:32.080 million dollars as less than a billion dollars. So I 0:16:32.120 --> 0:16:34.720 do want you guys, thank you. Yeah, yeah, I know. 0:16:34.800 --> 0:16:38.160 Math is nobody's strong suit. On this podcast, I run 0:16:38.200 --> 0:16:42.160 the numbers twice. Uh Now. Vanity Fair writer Vicky Ward 0:16:42.200 --> 0:16:44.640 interviewed some people who had been friends with Epstein during 0:16:44.760 --> 0:16:47.400 since the nineteen eighties. These people recalled that after his 0:16:47.440 --> 0:16:50.640 Bear Stearns period, rather than jumping right into billionaire money management, 0:16:50.800 --> 0:16:53.880 Epstein was a self described bounty hunter, recovering lost and 0:16:53.920 --> 0:16:56.120 stolen money for a variety of clients. He had a 0:16:56.160 --> 0:16:58.680 license to carry a handgun in New York City, which 0:16:58.720 --> 0:17:01.040 is a really hard thing to do, like the hardest 0:17:01.080 --> 0:17:04.920 gun related license to get in this country. But yeah, yeah, 0:17:04.960 --> 0:17:07.960 it's you don't get a carry license in New York 0:17:08.000 --> 0:17:11.639 City unless you're really rich or the governor okay, or 0:17:11.720 --> 0:17:14.560 the or the or the really rich governor that currently 0:17:14.640 --> 0:17:18.639 Yeah anyway, now, uh, can I just ask what the 0:17:19.720 --> 0:17:22.960 what the name of the article that was the Big Lord? Yeah, 0:17:23.000 --> 0:17:27.879 her article was the talented Mr Epstein. Okay, it was 0:17:27.920 --> 0:17:31.119 a play on the talented Mr. Right. It's it's continuing 0:17:31.160 --> 0:17:35.600 the theme of late nineties movies about Jeff Epstein for 0:17:35.600 --> 0:17:37.080 some reason that was that was the only way to 0:17:37.160 --> 0:17:40.040 rate a title back then. Yeah, yeah, yeah, I'm looking 0:17:40.080 --> 0:17:44.920 forward to Epstein Love been Red Epstein, Epstein to when 0:17:45.000 --> 0:17:49.920 Nature Calls. Yeah yeah, that's the story about that flight 0:17:49.920 --> 0:17:54.280 to Africa. Bam brought it, brought it around. So it's 0:17:54.280 --> 0:17:56.920 clear that Epstein's rise to billionaire financier was not as 0:17:56.920 --> 0:17:59.399 smooth as he presents it. It's almost impossible to unwrap 0:17:59.440 --> 0:18:02.280 exactly how Epstein got so rich and precisely what he did, 0:18:02.600 --> 0:18:04.920 but we do know that either in nine or nineteen 0:18:04.960 --> 0:18:07.400 eighty six, he started up a friendship with Lex Wexler, 0:18:07.480 --> 0:18:11.080 the billionaire founder of Victoria's Secret, among other retail companies. 0:18:11.359 --> 0:18:13.600 By the time people started writing about Epstein, he managed 0:18:13.680 --> 0:18:16.800 virtually all of Wexler's money. Now, most coverage at this 0:18:16.840 --> 0:18:19.240 time focused on his connection to Wexler as an explanation 0:18:19.280 --> 0:18:22.040 for how Epstein rose to prominence. Taken that way, his 0:18:22.320 --> 0:18:24.639 rises the story of a brilliant and an orthodox funds 0:18:24.640 --> 0:18:27.679 manager who proved himself so invaluable to one billionaire that 0:18:27.680 --> 0:18:29.399 he soon became the go to money guy of the 0:18:29.440 --> 0:18:32.040 incredibly rich. But there is no hard evidence that this 0:18:32.119 --> 0:18:34.480 is the case either. Even Epstein's friends at the time, 0:18:34.640 --> 0:18:38.360 including Tiffany and Company CEO Rosa Moncton, admitted that there 0:18:38.400 --> 0:18:40.760 was something strange about Jeffrey's background. So this is what 0:18:40.840 --> 0:18:44.000 she told Vanity fair quote. He's very enigmatic. You think 0:18:44.000 --> 0:18:45.600 you know him, and the new peel off another ring 0:18:45.640 --> 0:18:48.720 of the onion skin and there's something else extraordinary underneath. 0:18:48.880 --> 0:18:51.439 He never reveals his hand. He's a classic Iceberg. What 0:18:51.560 --> 0:18:54.439 you see is not what you get. So can we 0:18:54.480 --> 0:18:59.040 talk about um, this can't be an original thought. When 0:18:59.080 --> 0:19:01.200 you peel back a layer of an onion, it's more onion. 0:19:01.520 --> 0:19:04.760 It is more onion. It's never like you don't peel 0:19:04.760 --> 0:19:06.800 an onion. It's like there's seeds and fruit in here. 0:19:06.840 --> 0:19:10.280 It's just more on you. Well, Daniel, Sometimes you peel 0:19:10.320 --> 0:19:13.800 back an onion and you find an Iceberg. Okay, yes, 0:19:13.880 --> 0:19:18.240 and then behind with Iceberg is a different hand of poker, right, yeah, 0:19:18.359 --> 0:19:19.960 this is this, This horse is just the tip of 0:19:20.000 --> 0:19:25.520 the onion. Part of why Epstein was able to remain 0:19:25.560 --> 0:19:27.560 so enigmatic may have been the fact that he threatened 0:19:27.560 --> 0:19:29.800 the journalists who wrote about him. That is, at least 0:19:29.840 --> 0:19:32.520 the allegation made in Vicky Ward's Vanity Fair article, She 0:19:32.560 --> 0:19:34.679 notes that a reporter she talked to told her that 0:19:34.720 --> 0:19:37.399 they were threatened three times during the preparation of a piece. 0:19:37.720 --> 0:19:40.280 The threats quote were delivered in a jocular tone, but 0:19:40.320 --> 0:19:42.520 the message was clear, there will be trouble for your 0:19:42.560 --> 0:19:45.000 family if I don't like the article. I'm not really 0:19:45.000 --> 0:19:47.280 sure how you deliver that in a jocular tone. Yeah, 0:19:47.960 --> 0:19:53.040 slap on the back and I'm gonna kill your wife. 0:19:53.240 --> 0:19:56.880 Your daughter's name Susan, right, How I know that I'm 0:19:56.880 --> 0:20:02.080 not trying to get these pictures of her school. People 0:20:02.080 --> 0:20:04.480 who view Epstein as a financial genius tend to say 0:20:04.520 --> 0:20:07.000 that he was made by Wexler. Epstein, for his part, 0:20:07.080 --> 0:20:09.280 is too prideful to give any one person credit for 0:20:09.359 --> 0:20:11.560 his rise. He claims he had other rich accounts that 0:20:11.600 --> 0:20:14.119 he managed before being put in charge of Wexley's fortune. 0:20:14.400 --> 0:20:17.320 But Vanity Fair found another Epstein connection that suggests a 0:20:17.400 --> 0:20:20.960 somewhat less savory jump start to his fortune. Stephen Jude 0:20:20.960 --> 0:20:23.679 Hoffenberg met Jeffrey Epstein in London at some point in 0:20:23.680 --> 0:20:26.280 the nineteen eighties. Hoffenburg was the head of the Towers 0:20:26.320 --> 0:20:29.480 Financial Corporation, which was on paper, a collection agency that 0:20:29.560 --> 0:20:32.320 bought debts people owed to hospitals, banks, and other institutions. 0:20:32.560 --> 0:20:36.119 In reality, the company was a gigantic ponzi scheme. Hoffenberg 0:20:36.240 --> 0:20:38.399 used the company funds to pay off early investors and 0:20:38.400 --> 0:20:40.520 by himself mansions and homes, as well as a small 0:20:40.560 --> 0:20:43.399 fleet of jet planes. When Epstein and Hoffenberg met, the 0:20:43.400 --> 0:20:45.840 former had been running a small consulting company out of 0:20:45.840 --> 0:20:48.359 his apartment. He'd just been ousted from bear Stearns, and, 0:20:48.440 --> 0:20:52.560