Speaker 1: Bloomberg Audio Studios, podcasts, radio news. Today we are producing
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Speaker 2: On Friday, Todd Blanche, the Deputy Attorney General who was
Speaker 2: previously President Trump's personal defense lawyer, announced the Justice Department
Speaker 2: was making public a massive cache of documents related to
Speaker 2: the federal investigation into the convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein,
Speaker 2: who died in twenty nineteen.
Speaker 1: Today's release marks the end of a very comprehensive document
Speaker 1: identification and review process to ensure transparency to the American
Speaker 1: people and compliance.
Speaker 2: With the DOJ has published nearly three and a half
Speaker 2: million pages from the so called Epstein Files since late
Speaker 2: last year. Blanche says that the latest batch, coming more
Speaker 2: than a month after Congress's deadline, fulfills the Justice Department's
Speaker 2: obligation to lawmakers from the Epstein Files Transparency Act.
Speaker 3: My biggest takeaway from these documents is that every powerful
Speaker 3: name or individual that you could think of somehow found
Speaker 3: their way to Jeffrey Epstein.
Speaker 2: That's Bloomberg investigative reporter Jason Leopold, with a slight exaggeration.
Speaker 2: He spent his weekend pouring over the documents.
Speaker 3: Whether it was wanting to do business with him, wanting
Speaker 3: to take a trip to his island. Here, we're seeing
Speaker 3: these emails back and forth between people in business and banking,
Speaker 3: in entertainment, in politics, So it's not a huge surprise.
Speaker 3: It's just the fact of how long the list of
Speaker 3: names are.
Speaker 2: Many of these names are familiar, but being in these
Speaker 2: files doesn't mean an individual or a company engaged in wrongdoing.
Speaker 2: Jason specializes in requesting federal documents through transparency laws like
Speaker 2: the Freedom of Information Act, records he can use to
Speaker 2: piece together how the government works behind the scenes. With
Speaker 2: the Epstein files, Jason is on a team of reporters
Speaker 2: here at Bloomberg sifting through a flood of names and allegations.
Speaker 2: Jason points out these documents aren't in any particular order
Speaker 2: and pretty much everything lacks context, and he says he's
Speaker 2: still looking for some key files that appear not to
Speaker 2: have been released.
Speaker 3: Todd Blanche, the Deputy Attorney General, said that about two
Speaker 3: hundred thousand pages were withheld due to privilege. They were
Speaker 3: privileged materials.
Speaker 2: These are files that the Justice Department says it has
Speaker 2: a legal justification for holding back for privacy reasons or
Speaker 2: to keep from interfering with a live investigation.
Speaker 3: That's a lot of material that they withheld, but we
Speaker 3: don't have a real understanding of what was exactly in
Speaker 3: those records.
Speaker 2: I'm David Gera, and this is the big take from
Speaker 2: Bloomberg News Today. On the show what's in the latest
Speaker 2: drop of Epstein files and what isn't and will this
Speaker 2: be the last set of files made public by the
Speaker 2: Justice Department, my colleague Jason Leopold on what's likely to
Speaker 2: happen next? Jason, we now have access to three and
Speaker 2: a half million pages of Epstein related documents. I assume
Speaker 2: you've gone through all of them over the.
Speaker 3: Course of this weekend.
Speaker 2: But seriously, though, this is just an incredible quantity, and
Speaker 2: I'm very curious sort of what your strategy has been
Speaker 2: trying to make your way through them.
Speaker 3: There's instances where I'm typing names of certain individuals into
Speaker 3: a search box on the Justice Department's website, or trying
Speaker 3: to download, you know, a bunch of files and see
Speaker 3: if I can thematically review a set. But you know,
Speaker 3: my interest has been in following the money to really
Speaker 3: get an understanding of how Epstein made his money, looking
Speaker 3: at anything that may revolve around you know, money laundering
Speaker 3: or you know, financial crime. So I've been focusing on
Speaker 3: that and trying to separate records because it's not just emails,
Speaker 3: you know, we're also talking about business documents as well,
Speaker 3: and really separating those records, reading through them. And that's
Speaker 3: essentially where I'm starting.
Speaker 2: You mentioned you've been searching for names. I'm genuinely curious
Speaker 2: how good the search functionality is.
Speaker 3: I'm going into it immediately using the Justice Department's own
Speaker 3: search engine, and it's not bad. It's just a lot
Speaker 3: to plow through. But what I've been noticing over the
Speaker 3: weekend is that there have been documents disappearing. Essentially, they've
Speaker 3: been taking it down. Document I may have been looking
Speaker 3: out on Friday on Deutsche Bank, for example, would disappear,
Speaker 3: and then other documents would reappear. I'm still unsure of
Speaker 3: why that is the case, if there's anything that maybe
Speaker 3: needed to be redacted and they're pulling it down and
Speaker 3: maybe adding later on.
Speaker 2: You and our colleagues have reported on what this redaction
Speaker 2: process was supposed to be like, and maybe you can
Speaker 2: remind us sort of what's been happening behind the scenes
Speaker 2: in the federal government over the last few months that
Speaker 2: they've been preparing these documents for public release.
Speaker 3: The Justice Department, because the agency had to respond to
Speaker 3: the Epstein Files Transparency Act, had been working over time
Speaker 3: going through these records and having their lawyers review and
Speaker 3: redact certain material. The law itself dictated how the redaction
Speaker 3: it in some way should work, or at least what
Speaker 3: needed to be disclosed. First, let me just note they
Speaker 3: had more than four hundred Justice Department attorneys working on
Speaker 3: this pretty much exclusively for the past month and a half.
Speaker 3: And there are names of victims that are redacted. But
Speaker 3: then there is there's a ton of victims' names, victims
Speaker 3: who never came forward revealed over the weekend. Then there
Speaker 3: is I looked at a document and it kind of
Speaker 3: blew me away. They redacted the JP in JP Morgan,
Speaker 3: just the JP. I don't know why they did that, David,
Speaker 3: but they just redacted the JP. So easy to figure
Speaker 3: out they're talking about JP Morgan. But there's no real,
Speaker 3: you know, understanding, like why is this being redacted? There's
Speaker 3: no index to go along with it to see this
Speaker 3: was redacted for national security, this was redacted for privacy,
Speaker 3: this was redacted for you know, the deliberative process. So
Speaker 3: it's been chaotic.
Speaker 2: Jason, you mentioned the victims, who, of course are front
Speaker 2: and center here, and I saw a story in the
Speaker 2: New York Times over the weekend that reporters there found
Speaker 2: in all of these documents photographs of victims. Those reporters
Speaker 2: flagged that to the Department of Justice, and ultimately the
Speaker 2: DJ took many of those photos down. We have heard
Speaker 2: a lot of talk from the DJ about how important
Speaker 2: it would be to protect victims in this process, to
Speaker 2: hide their identities, to not retraumatize those victims. What have
Speaker 2: you taken away from the care with which they've approached
Speaker 2: it in that regard.
Speaker 3: I think that the way in which they have approached
Speaker 3: redacting victims' names or trying to protect victims has been
Speaker 3: really messy. There are names that have been revealed while
Speaker 3: other names, say on the same page, were of victims
Speaker 3: that were redacted. So it begs for a deeper understanding
Speaker 3: as to why did they leave this name unredacted? How
Speaker 3: did that happen? The fact that you have Justice Department
Speaker 3: attorneys handling the reactions is problematic because that's not usually
Speaker 3: how it works when government documents are being released. You
Speaker 3: have document experts, people who are experts on the Privacy
Speaker 3: Act and going through records and handling the reactions here.
Speaker 3: You have attorneys you know, who are working on cases
Speaker 3: that have been kind of shifted over to this process.
Speaker 3: In some ways, you have to understand that they were
Speaker 3: going through millions and millions and millions of pages and
Speaker 3: trying to meet a deadline that has since passed. You're
Speaker 3: bound to have some details that are just going to
Speaker 3: be left unredacted. It's just it's not a surprise for me.
Speaker 3: I think it's really really unfortunate.
Speaker 2: Though, coming up the most surprising details in the Epstein
Speaker 2: files Jason has identified so far and what comes next? Jason,
Speaker 2: you and I last spoke in December, so when the
Speaker 2: run up to this big release, and something you mentioned
Speaker 2: then is that you'd obtained what's basically an index of
Speaker 2: the Epstein files. How good a guide has that been
Speaker 2: for you as you've begun to go through this latest
Speaker 2: tranch of documents.
Speaker 3: I don't think that has been a very good guide
Speaker 3: in terms of what's been in here. I believe what
Speaker 3: is missing based on what the index says is communications
Speaker 3: with foreign governments, additional banking records, financial records. This was
Speaker 3: an index that we when we discussed, came from the FBI.
Speaker 3: R The FBI was documenting all of the records that
Speaker 3: they had collected during the course of their investigation between
Speaker 3: two thousand and seven and two thousand and eight and
Speaker 3: a few years beyond. I have not seen much of
Speaker 3: the material that they documented. There are some FBI interview summaries.
Speaker 3: That's something that I had been waiting for, but there's
Speaker 3: a lot missing.
Speaker 2: Jason, I want to talk about the sweep of federal
Speaker 2: investigations into Jeffrey Epstein. So the first was in Florida.
Speaker 2: Federal investigators started looking into allegations back in two thousand
Speaker 2: and six, but Epstein signed a plea bargain, pleading guilty
Speaker 2: to one state charge before federal charges could be filed.
Speaker 2: That deal became notorious for its leniency. Victims later said
Speaker 2: they weren't told about it. Then almost a decade later,
Speaker 2: federal prosecutors in Manhattan investigated and then indicted Epstein, and
Speaker 2: he died. The ruling was by suicide while he was
Speaker 2: in jail. In twenty nineteen, what have we learned about
Speaker 2: that federal investigation and potential offshoots.
Speaker 3: So in the you know, two thousand and six to
Speaker 3: two thousand and eight investigation, what the files that we
Speaker 3: do have show the emails, right, particularly the ones that
Speaker 3: have been released over the weekend, It really shows how
Speaker 3: this investigation evolved, how the US Attorney's Office in Florida
Speaker 3: approached it, notably, you know, one particular prosecutor there pretty aggressively,
Speaker 3: and how this prosecutor was in many instances kind of
Speaker 3: blocked from higher ups in terms of going further, really
Speaker 3: really going to the mat in terms of wanting to
Speaker 3: indict Epstein and being forced into negotiations in order to
Speaker 3: get him to you know, sign a non prosecution agreement
Speaker 3: and plae to a stage charge. And you could see
Speaker 3: the evidence she was collecting and it was pretty extraordinary.
Speaker 3: You know. You fast forward to the investigation that took
Speaker 3: place more than a decade later, and that was quite
Speaker 3: aggressive as well. What stood out from that investigation is
Speaker 3: that there were co conspirators, right that the government had
Speaker 3: alleged that there were a number of co conspirators that
Speaker 3: they were interested in indicting as well. They were scooping
Speaker 3: up evidence in the form of records from banks. They
Speaker 3: interviewed a number of people in Epstein's orbit. It looked
Speaker 3: like they had the goods already, but that first investigation
Speaker 3: you could see it moving aggressively and aggressively, and it
Speaker 3: was you know, the evidence was damning, and then you
Speaker 3: know they were blocked.
Speaker 2: You mentioned Jason. These FBI documents indicated that there had
Speaker 2: been about a number of individuals, including Jeffrey Epstein. How
Speaker 2: should we look at those particular documents. What do they
Speaker 2: tell us, what don't they tell us? And do these
Speaker 2: files indicate what the FBI did with those tips that
Speaker 2: they received.
Speaker 3: The FBI documents there are interview summaries, so there's interviews
Speaker 3: that the FBI conducted with people who may have been
Speaker 3: witnesses who provided information to the FBI, confidential human sources,
Speaker 3: essentially informant. And then there are folks that just called
Speaker 3: up the FBI offering up tips, and the FBI memorializes
Speaker 3: this and you know in a document that's what we're
Speaker 3: looking at. None of those records are something that you
Speaker 3: can rely upon in terms of verification, because it doesn't
Speaker 3: appear that the FBI followed up on it, and if
Speaker 3: they did, we're not seeing the records in here that states,
Speaker 3: you know, that they did follow up on the tips
Speaker 3: or that they investigated any of the allegations that were
Speaker 3: being made. And that's one of the problems with these records, right,
Speaker 3: is that we have three and a half million pages
Speaker 3: of records, you know, millions of pages of emails, but
Speaker 3: they're completely out of context. So when we're reporting it,
Speaker 3: we're actually going out and doing additional reporting right to
Speaker 3: understand what it means what happened in this particular timeframe.
Speaker 3: So there's lots of FBI documents that contain allegations against
Speaker 3: President Donald Trump, but we don't know if it's true.
Speaker 2: You mentioned your interest in following the money, Jeffrey Epstein's money,
Speaker 2: how he made it, how he used it, any more
Speaker 2: specifics on what you have learned from this cash of
Speaker 2: documents or what you are learning about them.
Speaker 3: What I'm kind of blown away by from reviewing the
Speaker 3: documents thus far is the inclusion of suspicious activity reports
Speaker 3: from various financial institutions, and the suspicious activity reports comes
Speaker 3: directly from FINSEN. FINSEN is the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network.
Speaker 3: It's part of the US Treasury Department and their job
Speaker 3: is to combat money laundering and other financial crimes, and
Speaker 3: so financial institutions whenever they see signs of money laundering
Speaker 3: or financial crime, they send over to Finsen a suspicious
Speaker 3: activity report. Finsen then puts it into a database. Here.
Speaker 3: Those are impossible to get. First of all, you can't
Speaker 3: foia them. They're never usually introduced in court cases. But
Speaker 3: there are a whole bunch of them here in these files.
Speaker 3: They come in around twenty nineteen, and they show how
Speaker 3: some of the financial institutions flagged Epstein's movement of money.
Speaker 3: And there's a lot of it there. And to me,
Speaker 3: that really stands out as a noteworthy document because it
Speaker 3: provides a bit of a roadmap to understand one how
Speaker 3: he was moving the money, why it may have been suspicious,
Speaker 3: and potentially following it up in a much deeper way.
Speaker 2: There was a moment when Todd Blanche, the Deputy Attorney General,
Speaker 2: took the stage at Main Justice around the release of
Speaker 2: these documents and said, effectively, this is it. Here you go,
Speaker 2: these are the last documents that we're going to make public.
Speaker 3: Can he do that?
Speaker 2: Can the DOJ do that? How do you see that
Speaker 2: part of this story evolving from here, if at all.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I was actually surprised that he said that that's it.
Speaker 3: We're done here. We're not going to release anything else.
Speaker 3: I mean, he as I noted, he said that they're
Speaker 3: going to withhold two hundred thousand pages. One thing that
Speaker 3: they're supposed to provide Congress with is a document that
Speaker 3: explains what names were redacted, what information was redacted, justifying
Speaker 3: the redactions, what records were withheld, why they were withheld.
Speaker 3: So we do need to see that, but this fight
Speaker 3: will play out between Congress and EOJ. However, when we
Speaker 3: spoke late last year, I mentioned the freedom of information
Speaker 3: at case right that had been winding its way through
Speaker 3: the courts to try and gain access to this. Well,
Speaker 3: there was a hearing in the Second Circuit Court of
Speaker 3: Appeals in New York last week, and in fact, that
Speaker 3: case is still alive. There may be, in fact, you know,
Speaker 3: additional records that come out as a result of that
Speaker 3: freedom of information at case. So I don't think this
Speaker 3: is a last you're going to see of the Epstein files,
Speaker 3: but we do already have three and a half million pages.
Speaker 3: It's a lot, and I believe Over the next six
Speaker 3: seven months, you know you'll see some deeper reporting about
Speaker 3: what this reveals, including from us here.
Speaker 2: This is the Big Take from Bloomberg News. I'm David Gura.
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