Speaker 1: I'm Alec Baldwin and you're listening to Here is the thing.
Speaker 1: Saturday's arrest of billionaire Jeffrey Epstein at Teterborough Airport got
Speaker 1: me thinking again about journalist Julie Brown was un I'm
Speaker 1: still I think the news outlets say that the arrest
Speaker 1: might never have happened if it weren't for the work
Speaker 1: of the Miami Herald. It's Brown's work they're talking about.
Speaker 1: In three explosive articles, Julie Brown tracked having two thousand
Speaker 1: eight the US Justice Department shut down an FBI investigation
Speaker 1: that may have been on the verge of discovering the
Speaker 1: full extent of a child sex trafficking operation run by
Speaker 1: billionaire Jeffrey Epstein. That's after giving him a sweetheart plea
Speaker 1: deal on the crimes that had been uncovered. The U
Speaker 1: s attorney in charge of the case was none other
Speaker 1: than alex A Costa, now the unit, it states, the
Speaker 1: Secretary of Labor under Donald Trump. A couple of months ago,
Speaker 1: Julie and I sat down in front of a live
Speaker 1: audience at w n y c S Green Space to
Speaker 1: talk about her Epstein reporting and what drove her to
Speaker 1: pursue the story. I had so much for coming UM.
Speaker 1: You first started reporting on this case when UM a
Speaker 1: year and a half ago. But I knew about the
Speaker 1: case for a long time, and you got involved in
Speaker 1: the case. Why because I was I did a lot
Speaker 1: of human rights reporting for the Miami Herald. I covered
Speaker 1: the prisons, and I knew that Florida was one of
Speaker 1: the states that had a huge sex trafficking problem. And
Speaker 1: I always everything that I read was they were going
Speaker 1: after little cases. But I knew that there were some
Speaker 1: big fish, so to speak, in Florida, that we're probably
Speaker 1: behind sex You knew that, how I just you know,
Speaker 1: it's it's it's just reasonable to think that they're are this.
Speaker 1: It's a big money making operation. It's it's all over
Speaker 1: the country, all over the world, really human trafficking and
Speaker 1: sex trafficking. There really was nobody pursuing this at all
Speaker 1: except for lawyers. And that was one of the other
Speaker 1: things that didn't treat me about this case. You know,
Speaker 1: you would read about it and then you say, you know,
Speaker 1: how does this happen and why isn't anybody standing up
Speaker 1: yelling and screaming. But the case has been ongoing for
Speaker 1: quite a while before you got involved, well, it actually
Speaker 1: had quieted down. I compare what I did in this
Speaker 1: case to what a cold case detective does. Let's say
Speaker 1: you have someone who disappeared, and the detectives come in
Speaker 1: and they find a suspect, but they can't prove it,
Speaker 1: and then they put it all away in a box.
Speaker 1: And then somebody comes along who maybe just got hired
Speaker 1: by the police department, and they just decide that they're
Speaker 1: going to, uh, hey, I'm going to take a look
Speaker 1: at this, and when time goes by. I know this
Speaker 1: also from other stories I've covered, other people come out
Speaker 1: of the woodwork, or there might be people that didn't
Speaker 1: want to talk when it happened. We're afraid for one
Speaker 1: reason or another in time has gone by, or yeah,
Speaker 1: or what happened right? And and these girls were at
Speaker 1: the time, you know, thirteen, fourteen, fifteen years old. Now
Speaker 1: they're in their only thirties. Actually, what really launched the
Speaker 1: piece was when Alexander Acosta, who was the prosecutor, the
Speaker 1: federal prosecutor in Miami who handled this case, got nominated
Speaker 1: by President Trump to be Labor Secretary. I thought I
Speaker 1: knew about the case, and I thought, well, let's see
Speaker 1: what happened, which involves to some degree prosecuting human trafficking. Right,
Speaker 1: I mean, it was really the most the biggest scandal
Speaker 1: of his career because he gave uh he really let
Speaker 1: him almost walk away from this crime, and not only
Speaker 1: walk away from it, but they covered it up. They
Speaker 1: really made sure that no one really knew that know
Speaker 1: the scope of this crime. Now, for those people who
Speaker 1: don't know a lot of the details of the case,
Speaker 1: so I want to start with that which is described
Speaker 1: for people, who is Epstein and what was he charged with?
Speaker 1: And what was the eventual outcome of the prosecution that
Speaker 1: Acosta oversaw? Right, Well, he was a billionaire financier and
Speaker 1: he had a hedge fund. He had a hedge fund,
Speaker 1: and he dabbled in a lot of other financing things
Speaker 1: like at one point he wanted to take over pan
Speaker 1: m Airlines. There was a lot of different projects that
Speaker 1: he invested money in and he made a lot obviously
Speaker 1: made a lot of money. He owned, uh two jets,
Speaker 1: and he owned homes in New Mexico, the largest single
Speaker 1: residents here in Manhattan, home in Palm Beach, home in
Speaker 1: um Paris. Uh So, he was extremely wealthy, very smart,
Speaker 1: you know, he was a mathematician and Nobil Prize winning
Speaker 1: scientists were in his circle here in New York. He
Speaker 1: grew up in New York. He didn't finish college, but
Speaker 1: he ended up getting a job at the Dalton School
Speaker 1: uh teaching mathematic and they're through the students parents. He
Speaker 1: ended up working for Bear Start and he sort of
Speaker 1: left under mysterious circumstances there um and then opened his own, um,
Speaker 1: you know, financial firm. And during the course of the trial,
Speaker 1: was it did it become was it exposed or was
Speaker 1: it revealed? How long he been doing this activity with
Speaker 1: young girls. Assumed he'd been doing this ongoing and he
Speaker 1: had people helping him. It was very organized. Described the operation.
Speaker 1: It was like something if you saw a movie about it,
Speaker 1: you would think, oh, yeah, right, this is really going
Speaker 1: to happen. But it's exactly what he did. He had
Speaker 1: a lot of money and he had a lot of
Speaker 1: people around him. And what he he liked massages. So
Speaker 1: what he would do is he had people go out
Speaker 1: to various areas well. Initially it was like boss like.
Speaker 1: In fact, one of the women that he recruited was
Speaker 1: from our Lago, which is right around the corner from
Speaker 1: his home uh in Palm Beach, and once he got
Speaker 1: his hold on a couple of the girls, what he
Speaker 1: would say to them is, you bring me a couple
Speaker 1: more girls, and I'll give you the same amount of money.
Speaker 1: So he would be paying that. They were paid for services, yes,
Speaker 1: from massage, from massages, and then and then they were
Speaker 1: paid as recruiters to bring in more people, right, and
Speaker 1: the recruiters would recruit more, and it just went on
Speaker 1: and on the pyramid, and it kept growing and growing
Speaker 1: until they got to be by your estimation, how many
Speaker 1: young women were coming in and out of that house
Speaker 1: over time. I mean it had to be over at least,
Speaker 1: and they got like if I read correct, and shopping
Speaker 1: malls and different. Because what happened was once he got
Speaker 1: his foothold into one of the high schools there, one
Speaker 1: girl would tell another girl. And these were girls who
Speaker 1: came from uh, you know, most people think of Palmp
Speaker 1: Beaches everybody's wealthy, but they're really is West Palm Beach
Speaker 1: is a very struggling blue collar area. And there were
Speaker 1: girls who lived in vulnerable situations where they were in uh,
Speaker 1: one step away from homelessness. One girl told me, for example,
Speaker 1: you know, I've been wearing the same pair of shoes
Speaker 1: for three years, and I thought, I'm gonna go give
Speaker 1: him a massage. I'm going to get some money, and
Speaker 1: I'm going to be abby to puy a pair of shoes,
Speaker 1: which is really heartbreaking. Actually every time I think about
Speaker 1: at that. I met a young woman once on the
Speaker 1: set of the film who had been a prostitute, and
Speaker 1: she said, and every time I had sex with somebody
Speaker 1: for money, all I kept seeing was the new drapes
Speaker 1: in my mother's house, and oh my god, what a
Speaker 1: You know. The other thing is he sort of led
Speaker 1: them to believe that he was going to help them
Speaker 1: out of their misery, you know, like you're beautiful, I'll
Speaker 1: get you. Yeah. And he had people, He had people,
Speaker 1: you know, I have people that kind of thing, and
Speaker 1: he did. He didn't know some people, and actually some
Speaker 1: of them did. A couple of them did become actresses,
Speaker 1: you know, And so he had some contacts, and he
Speaker 1: led a lot of them to believe that that I'm
Speaker 1: going to get you out of this. And I don't
Speaker 1: think of any of those actresses one in Oscar. They
Speaker 1: would thank Jeffrey Epstein to their acceptance. Probably not. Probably
Speaker 1: did other victims come forward who wanted to make charges
Speaker 1: against Epstein for events that predated Palm Beach. Yes, but
Speaker 1: the problem is a statue of limitations. So there's there's
Speaker 1: quite a number of girls in that category, and there's
Speaker 1: really not a lot they can do because his activities
Speaker 1: in that regard confined to Palm Beach, or didn't do
Speaker 1: it in New York, And from the women that I interviewed,
Speaker 1: he did it everywhere. He had an island in the Caribbean. Uh,
Speaker 1: he would send one of the girls or probably more
Speaker 1: than one, but one that I know of who I
Speaker 1: interviewed out to for example, he had the island, so
Speaker 1: they would take a furry or helicopter from St. Thomas.
Speaker 1: What she told me was we would go to the
Speaker 1: nightclubs in St. Thomas and I would just bring him
Speaker 1: more girls. And Uh, there was Sarah Kellen who was
Speaker 1: a scheduler. What did she schedule? She scheduled the girls.
Speaker 1: Did you interview her? No, she hasn't spoken to anybody,
Speaker 1: and she got immunity under the non prosecution agreement that
Speaker 1: he worked out. So she's off the hook. A lot
Speaker 1: of people are off the hook. We don't even know
Speaker 1: that immunity for what she did, which only led to
Speaker 1: a thirteen month jail sentenced for him with for him
Speaker 1: and work released the whole time. They gave her that
Speaker 1: for so little. Yeah, the person you did interview who
Speaker 1: was a recruiter for him, how did they strike you? What?
Speaker 1: What did they was it a man or woman? Well,
Speaker 1: you know, remember a lot of the girls were recruiters
Speaker 1: for him too, and uh so they you know, it's
Speaker 1: very sad to think about how this changed their lives.
Speaker 1: Imagine being fourteen years old and you know, you basically
Speaker 1: don't have any place to live, and you start doing
Speaker 1: this and you're fourteen, and you know, now you're thirty
Speaker 1: and you look back on it, and and it's very
Speaker 1: painful to watch how much they blamed themselves. They're very ashamed,
Speaker 1: and they blamed themselves for the other girls that they
Speaker 1: brought into it, and they just didn't understand the ramification.
Speaker 1: A lot of the people that you're referring to were
Speaker 1: very young, whether they were uh you know, involved in
Speaker 1: the massage and other related sex activities with Epstein or
Speaker 1: the recruitment. Were there some grown women and men as
Speaker 1: particularly women. I'm curious who were recruiters or we're helping
Speaker 1: to kind of run the operations. Who should have known better. Well,
Speaker 1: what he did was though when girls got older, he
Speaker 1: didn't want them anymore, so then they turned into you know,
Speaker 1: they stayed with him and started doing it. So we
Speaker 1: don't really know those older women. We don't really know
Speaker 1: how they got wrapped up into it. They could have
Speaker 1: very well been trafficked the same way the younger girls
Speaker 1: were at a younger age, but he kept them on.
Speaker 1: Paint a picture of you will of who Epstein you
Speaker 1: think is and why did he do this? Because apparently
Speaker 1: not mistaken, he had a women coming in and out
Speaker 1: of the house, and he was having sex with multiple
Speaker 1: women day, yes, like three times a day sometimes. Correct.
Speaker 1: What did you what kind of a picture did you
Speaker 1: get at him? Well, obviously he had some kind of
Speaker 1: an illness to be doing something like that. And I
Speaker 1: think that the biggest thing that I came across from
Speaker 1: reading everything and all the research that I did, was
Speaker 1: he really felt that he was above the law. He
Speaker 1: just seemed to know from the get go that he
Speaker 1: was going to get away with it. Uh. He pressured, intimidated, bullied,
Speaker 1: hired the best lawyers that his money could buy. And
Speaker 1: when those lawyers didn't give him what he wanted, he
Speaker 1: hired more lawyers. He hired politically connected people. He pressured
Speaker 1: the girls, He hired private investigators who followed their parents. Uh.
Speaker 1: He deposed the girls and and got her medical records,
Speaker 1: saying that she had had portions, called her parents, who
Speaker 1: were Catholic, and asked her Catholic parents what the goal
Speaker 1: was to at the victim? Oh yes, and not only
Speaker 1: just the victims. Actually the police who had been investigated
Speaker 1: were followed, the prosecutors were pressured. And I think that's
Speaker 1: what makes this a story, really is every step of
Speaker 1: the way with the criminal justice system he powered his
Speaker 1: way through to basically get away with some of the
Speaker 1: people that you some of the lawyers involved in this case.
Speaker 1: There's a left court and Dershowitz and and even ken Star.
Speaker 1: I struggled to think that people at that level. I
Speaker 1: struggled to think that people of that reputation, at least
Speaker 1: in terms of their skills as attorneys or just in
Speaker 1: this for a deep pockets litigant and and fees. I
Speaker 1: wonder what else potentially were you led to believe there
Speaker 1: might be something like Star, for example. I was kind
Speaker 1: of taking it back because of course, here Star who
Speaker 1: made his reputation going after Clinton for sex crimes, and
Speaker 1: here he's defending Epstein. But with people like Dershowitz and
Speaker 1: left Court and Star, what what do you think? What else?
Speaker 1: What else do you think was behind it? If anything?
Speaker 1: You know, it's hard to know. It was a different
Speaker 1: First of all, it was a different time. It was
Speaker 1: well before the mean too movement. Uh and what does
Speaker 1: that mean? Essentially? Well, I'm not excusing any of it,
Speaker 1: but I think that they sort of thought people can
Speaker 1: still get away with Yeah. I think yeah. And here's
Speaker 1: the big thing about it. Uh, they didn't care about
Speaker 1: the girls. I mean, these were they felt these were
Speaker 1: throwaway girls. These were prostitutes. Uh, they you know, essentially
Speaker 1: what what was was Epstein's defense, correct which he said,
Speaker 1: none of these women that came, they came as prostitutes,
Speaker 1: were there for a reason. I paid them. If you
Speaker 1: want to get me on a prostitution rap, that's one thing.
Speaker 1: But to say I was involved in sex trafficking, which
Speaker 1: is what they try to do, he said, that's not accurate.
Speaker 1: He wanted to contend that they knew why they were there,
Speaker 1: they knew what they were there to get paid for sex,
Speaker 1: and that he also, if I'm not mistaken, you can
Speaker 1: you can uh highlight this for us that he tried
Speaker 1: to explain that he told everybody, don't bring me anybody
Speaker 1: here who's under age, and he thought all of them
Speaker 1: were of age. Is that correct? Yes? But I mean
Speaker 1: the women that I interviewed who were involved in it,
Speaker 1: was one of whom, by the way, was involved in
Speaker 1: it for years, said that he made it very clear
Speaker 1: he didn't want anybody who was older. All he wanted
Speaker 1: was young girls, and the younger the better. I mean,
Speaker 1: that's basically what he always told them, the younger the better.
Speaker 1: But of course you know, this is what they say,
Speaker 1: and he and his lawyers, i'm sure would say that
Speaker 1: they're lying and that that was not the case described
Speaker 1: for everyone. Um, what happens in the case involved with
Speaker 1: the costa in order to arrive at the decisions, they
Speaker 1: arrived at the plea agreement, they arrived at well, the
Speaker 1: state prosecutors in Palm Beach first had the case. The
Speaker 1: police brought it to them, and with in a very
Speaker 1: short time, all these lawyers that that Epstein had hired.
Speaker 1: Uh began to UH pressure the state prosecutor to make
Speaker 1: the case go away. And essentially the state prosecutor was
Speaker 1: ready to make it go away, and and really he
Speaker 1: was going to get anything except a misdemeanor. And the
Speaker 1: police chief, to his credit, UH said, wait a minute,
Speaker 1: this isn't going to happen. Because at the time this
Speaker 1: was happening more and more girls every time they entered.
Speaker 1: To keep in mind, since it was a sex pyramid scheme,
Speaker 1: you would interview one girl and the one girl would say, well,
Speaker 1: these two girls brought me, and then they go to
Speaker 1: those two girls and they would say these two girls.
Speaker 1: So they were getting an avalanche of girls. And here
Speaker 1: you have the state prosecutors saying, oh, we're just going
Speaker 1: to let him off for a mr. Demeanor and the chief,
Speaker 1: to his credit and the lead detective said no, and
Speaker 1: they went to the FBI. So then it became a
Speaker 1: federal case. And Alexander Acosta was the uh U s
Speaker 1: attorney and Miami at the time and appointed by George W. Yes.
Speaker 1: It was a Bush administration, was Republican administration. Now, uh
Speaker 1: Epstein was very much of a Democrat and he had
Speaker 1: supported Clinton and a lot of other democratic causes, but
Speaker 1: he he was smart. It was a Republican administration, so
Speaker 1: what do you do you hire a republican lawyer star
Speaker 1: kind of star Uh you know, left court. And also
Speaker 1: the other connection was Acosta had worked in the same
Speaker 1: politically very important law firm of Kirkland and Ellis, which
Speaker 1: was the same law firm that uh Star worked for
Speaker 1: and left court work for. And so what they immediately
Speaker 1: started doing was try to work out some kind of
Speaker 1: a plea agreement with him, almost from the get go,
Speaker 1: even though the FBI was uh on a parallel course
Speaker 1: to charge him with sex trafficking, and we're getting more
Speaker 1: and more information and but so there were too two
Speaker 1: kinds of things happening. One was the FBI was really
Speaker 1: going full steam, was trying to prosecute him. And then
Speaker 1: you have the prosecutors who were essentially sending emails back
Speaker 1: and for saying, well, why don't we charge him with this?
Speaker 1: Or can we charge him with that? And it was
Speaker 1: this sort of collegial thing going on between the processors.
Speaker 1: They were asking defense attorneys almost like would you mind
Speaker 1: if we charge him with this? Yes? They really I mean,
Speaker 1: from what I read, I'm not an expert on this.
Speaker 1: I've rarely heard I've really observed such a difference by
Speaker 1: prosecutors to the subject of a crime. Yeah. And what
Speaker 1: was amazing about the whole thing is if you follow
Speaker 1: the whole thing, which this took me over a year
Speaker 1: and a half to do, you to follow the sequence
Speaker 1: of events here is that they would fight down and
Speaker 1: say okay, we're gonna charge him with this, and and
Speaker 1: and he'd say okay, we're going to do it. And
Speaker 1: then you look at it and gong go no, I
Speaker 1: want a better deal than that than they'd start all over.
Speaker 1: And they manipulated. He manipulated the criminal justice system like
Speaker 1: I've never seen before, because every time got him, which
Speaker 1: was a pretty good deal, he would say, well, it's
Speaker 1: still not good enough, go back again. What do you
Speaker 1: think was behind Acosta? What do you think it was
Speaker 1: behind I mean, because to me, the first thing that
Speaker 1: come across is they want to bury this like it's
Speaker 1: some kind of radioactive waste because there are other people,
Speaker 1: big people. There's big names of people who are clientele
Speaker 1: of Epstein's massage spa. Are there names of people you've
Speaker 1: heard are big names that are buried in those files. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and what we are doing at the Miami Herald and
Speaker 1: and my company that owns the Harold at McClatchy, I
Speaker 1: have to give them a lot of credit because we're
Speaker 1: the only news organization that has really done this, uh is.
Speaker 1: We've been systemically going through these cases now and going
Speaker 1: to the courts. We have a case right now here
Speaker 1: in New York, uh involving Epstein and his madam so
Speaker 1: to speaking, he had a woman that was helping him
Speaker 1: allegedly uh with this uh here in New York here,
Speaker 1: and was a recruiter in New York. Yes, and in
Speaker 1: pomp Beach she worked to pump each to Gilan Maxwell. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and this was a lawsuit involving her. And we're trying
Speaker 1: to unseal the records because we feel that there's more
Speaker 1: evidence in there. The New York case, that's a New
Speaker 1: York and who wants to keep those records sealed? Maxwell
Speaker 1: and Epstein, But who else? Well, there's a John says
Speaker 1: indifferent to the is the New York Prosecutor's office, the
Speaker 1: d A's office as in different toward letting the light
Speaker 1: into those files as a custom wars. Well, we'll see,
Speaker 1: I mean they knew. Let's face it, they knew that
Speaker 1: this was going on. They had the US prosecutors here
Speaker 1: in New York because he was doing in the same
Speaker 1: deferential treatment as a democratic funds. Well, it's the difference. Well,
Speaker 1: I don't know, It's hard to say, but we do
Speaker 1: know that Vance did make an attempt to lower his
Speaker 1: sex offender registration to a lower level. And that was
Speaker 1: a real joke. I mean, because well, he that he
Speaker 1: could do what the lower registration level giving him a
Speaker 1: different codification or a different kind of a label, what,
Speaker 1: given more freedom what? Well, he wouldn't have to check in,
Speaker 1: you know, like to Dalton and teach kids math. Well,
Speaker 1: I don't know about that. I mean, in this day
Speaker 1: and age, nothing would surprise me. But uh, you know,
Speaker 1: there was a lot of like the Weinstein case, there
Speaker 1: was a lot of complicity. There was a lot of
Speaker 1: people that knew what was going on, and I think
Speaker 1: that they looked the other way. Pivot for a minute
Speaker 1: to your background in your life, you had a tough childhood. Yeah, well,
Speaker 1: I moved out of the house when I was sixteen,
Speaker 1: became a mass paidd miner, lived with a bunch of
Speaker 1: different friends for a while, worked the lampshade factory and
Speaker 1: delivered flower as well. I finished school and then, you know,
Speaker 1: I didn't have any money to go to college, so
Speaker 1: I worked a bunch of jobs waitresses and did struggled
Speaker 1: in to the point that I realized I better do
Speaker 1: something because I don't want to work at kmart the
Speaker 1: rest of my life. Was that something that that that
Speaker 1: you think cause you to have great empathy for these girls? Yeah? Yes, absolutely,
Speaker 1: I think personal Yeah, well that person. It's just for
Speaker 1: the underdog because I haven't really only covered uh, you know,
Speaker 1: women who have been abused. I I did a huge
Speaker 1: for your project on the Florida prison system, and I've
Speaker 1: never been in prison, but I know that. Um. You know,
Speaker 1: there's a lot of people out there who don't have
Speaker 1: a voice in our criminal justice system, and they end
Speaker 1: up in very bad places in our system disposes of
Speaker 1: these people and then continues to mistreat them so they
Speaker 1: never have a chance to to get ahead, even if
Speaker 1: they do pay their debt to society. What is the
Speaker 1: law the Crime Victims Rights Act, that's the law that
Speaker 1: was set aside what happened to this victims writes law? Well,
Speaker 1: the Crime Victims Rights grants crime victims certain rights, and
Speaker 1: one of them is they have the right to confer
Speaker 1: with prosecutors. Well, the prosecutors weren't telling them what was
Speaker 1: going on. They weren't even returning their phone calls. What
Speaker 1: happened was they were telling these girls all along, we're
Speaker 1: investigating this, We're going to prosecute him, you know, trying
Speaker 1: to convince them to cooperate, you know, and of course
Speaker 1: they were all very scared. They felt a couple of
Speaker 1: them claimed that he had even threatened them. More people
Speaker 1: that were around him and threatened them, And so they
Speaker 1: were saying, we're going to go after this guy. And
Speaker 1: at the same time, they really were working out a
Speaker 1: deal with him, and they weren't telling the girls. And
Speaker 1: then before that they even knew it. Uh, he appeared
Speaker 1: in court, he did a plea agreement, and they saw
Speaker 1: it on TV and they said, what the heck happened?
Speaker 1: I mean, I just talked to the prosecutor or the
Speaker 1: FBI agent a week ago and they were still, you know,
Speaker 1: working on the case. So, uh, they hired a lawyer,
Speaker 1: and a lawyer said, what happened. They misled these girls
Speaker 1: and their attorneys into believing they were going after this
Speaker 1: guy when they really were working out a deal with him,
Speaker 1: and left them in the dark, and left them completely
Speaker 1: dark and never told them. And if there's a police bargain,
Speaker 1: you have a right to at least know about the
Speaker 1: police bargain. You have a right to appear at the sentencing.
Speaker 1: They didn't tell any of the girls he's going to
Speaker 1: be in court. You know, they found out about it
Speaker 1: on the news. In fact, at the sentencing hearing, the
Speaker 1: prosecutors essentially lied to the judge that the judge asked
Speaker 1: the state prosecutor to to the victims know about this.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, Judge, they know all about it, and they're
Speaker 1: okay with this. Yeah, everything's okay. Well, they didn't know
Speaker 1: about it. None of the girls knew about it. None
Speaker 1: of their lawyers were told about it. Uh so he
Speaker 1: got this deal. And what is even more egregious, not
Speaker 1: only did they keep it from them at the time
Speaker 1: that it happened, but then when they the girls a
Speaker 1: couple of the girls final lawsuit saying you evaluated the
Speaker 1: Crime Victims Rights Act, they didn't even turn over the
Speaker 1: non prosecution agreements. So it took them months before they
Speaker 1: even knew what had happened because the government fought the girls.
Speaker 1: They were going to keep its secret. They did not
Speaker 1: want to reveal it and it and they were hoping
Speaker 1: they would go away. Yeah. Yeah, And keep in mind
Speaker 1: this crime victims rights case has nothing to do with money.
Speaker 1: A lot of people thinking, oh, these are gold diggers,
Speaker 1: are trying to get money. They don't get any money
Speaker 1: for the fact that they won this case. This was
Speaker 1: not about money. It was about overturning a plee deal.
Speaker 1: But too civil. Liigaans settled with him at the end
Speaker 1: of last year. And my question for you is, like
Speaker 1: people that were involved, and again I'm not I'm not
Speaker 1: judging them or criticizing them. I'm just wondering what your
Speaker 1: opinion is. But do these settlements do they stall justice
Speaker 1: in the end when you have people taking money and
Speaker 1: they're the victims of these crime and they take money.
Speaker 1: I think Rose McGowan took money from from Weinstein but
Speaker 1: there was no NDA involved. She thought that does that
Speaker 1: get in the way of us having real justice for
Speaker 1: the probibly But I feel like because our criminal justice system,
Speaker 1: unfortunately in a lot of areas, is so heavily weighted
Speaker 1: towards people who are powerful and wealthy. It doesn't give
Speaker 1: them a lot of options because look what happened with
Speaker 1: these girls. Uh, they they had no I mean, they
Speaker 1: were treated basically like they were just I mean they
Speaker 1: were thirteen fourteen year old girls. He was charged with
Speaker 1: solicitation of prostitution of someone under the age of eighteen,
Speaker 1: in other words, child. There really isn't any such thing
Speaker 1: as child prostitution. You know that back then that was
Speaker 1: still sex books in Florida, but it's no longer on
Speaker 1: the books in Florida. Yeah, it's sex trafficking, but in
Speaker 1: a lot of these people's mind that you know, Epstein's camp,
Speaker 1: the people that worked for him, Uh, these girls were
Speaker 1: processed and he didn't really do anything wrong. When we
Speaker 1: returned Julie Brown on other men accused by Epstein's victims,
Speaker 1: and one of those men, attorney and scholar Alan Dershowitz,
Speaker 1: has his say in response. I also check in with
Speaker 1: Julie Brown about the events of the past week. That's
Speaker 1: in a minute from Here's the Thing. I'm Alec Baldwin
Speaker 1: and you're listening to Here's the Thing. I spoke this
Speaker 1: past spring with Julie Brown, the Herald reporter who dug
Speaker 1: into the plea deal Jeffrey Epstein was given in two
Speaker 1: thousand and eight by Alex Acosta, now President Trump's Labor secretary,
Speaker 1: and even she has troubled expressing how singular his light
Speaker 1: sentence really was. Florida has some of the toughest sex
Speaker 1: offender laws in the country. Uh, they send these guys
Speaker 1: to state prison and Florida state prisons, I can tell
Speaker 1: you because they're they're vicious, you know. But he managed
Speaker 1: to work it out so that he would go to
Speaker 1: the Palm Beach County jail. He had his own private
Speaker 1: little wing. Was a cost of responsible for that as well?
Speaker 1: Have to that well, Acosta claimed he didn't. He had
Speaker 1: no idea that that was going to happen, because what
Speaker 1: a cost essentially did was he washed his hands of
Speaker 1: the case and gave it back to the state prosecutor.
Speaker 1: And it didn't just stand there. I mean, he had
Speaker 1: his driver picked him up. Explain about the work release. Yeah,
Speaker 1: he got work released. Now spex offenders don't get work really,
Speaker 1: the work release was what he was at. What I
Speaker 1: read was he's out for twelve hours a day, six
Speaker 1: days a week, six days. Driver picked him up, took
Speaker 1: him to his nice waterfront office in West Palm Beach,
Speaker 1: and uh, you know they had they did have sheriff's deputies,
Speaker 1: you know, standing outside the office, but they were outside
Speaker 1: the office, and on the inside of the office people
Speaker 1: were coming and going all day, including women coming to
Speaker 1: visit him. I interviewed one of these deputies and I said, well,
Speaker 1: did you even pay attention what he was doing in
Speaker 1: the office? You know he had girls in there, And
Speaker 1: he goes, oh, no, that was not our job. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so he could have been continuing his activities during the
Speaker 1: work release from the private jail cell of the Palm
Speaker 1: Beach and which he just could have kept it going
Speaker 1: and going and going. Yeah. Yeah. Now there are people who, um,
Speaker 1: their names were pulled into this. Um. I'm not going
Speaker 1: to say rightly or wrongly, but that is always a
Speaker 1: really difficult consequence of these kinds of things, for people
Speaker 1: to be wrongly accused and have their name dirtied up.
Speaker 1: I mean, as I told you backstage, my name was
Speaker 1: in Jeffrey Epstein's phone book, along with countless thousands of
Speaker 1: people who were celebrities, are well known people. Remember when
Speaker 1: people online would attack me about that. They'd say to me,
Speaker 1: you perv you rapist? I mean to me, they said,
Speaker 1: before my name was mentioned in anything to do with
Speaker 1: the case, they'd write these things, and I would think
Speaker 1: to myself, I literally said that away. Where the hell
Speaker 1: did I ever meet Jeffrey Epstein? I couldn't put it
Speaker 1: thought to myself in the nineties. Was he at some
Speaker 1: event that was a fundraiser that I knew? And of
Speaker 1: course I have a phone number that we give people.
Speaker 1: That's what we in my office we called the Dummy line,
Speaker 1: and it's a number we've given out to four maybe
Speaker 1: five million people over the course of the last twenty
Speaker 1: five years. But there are people who have had their
Speaker 1: name pulled into this whole thing. Dersha Witz is one.
Speaker 1: And do you think some of the people whose names
Speaker 1: have been pulled through this are innocent or you're not sure?
Speaker 1: I think with dershe Witz, his name was on flight
Speaker 1: uh manifest flying to his on his plane. So before
Speaker 1: he became counsel to Epstein, he was a guest of
Speaker 1: Epstein's at his home. And I think that that's the
Speaker 1: reason why Dershowitz is significant to a lot of people,
Speaker 1: is that the idea is that he was Epstein's friend,
Speaker 1: he stayed at his Palm Beach house, he vacationed at
Speaker 1: his Palm Beach house, and then he represented him and
Speaker 1: he helped fashion a plea deal that essentially not only
Speaker 1: gave Epstein immunity, but gave his co conspirators both named
Speaker 1: an unnamed immunity. So the implication is that you know,
Speaker 1: and I you know. I'm not saying Deerschwitz, you know,
Speaker 1: is guilty or not. I'm just saying the implication. The
Speaker 1: reason why the lawyers representing one of the victims brought
Speaker 1: it out was to demonstrate that if if you know,
Speaker 1: it is true that he was involved, he definitely had
Speaker 1: a conflict of interest. How how do people get immunity
Speaker 1: as potential co conspirators? How do they have they continued
Speaker 1: to get away with that in court? I mean, that's
Speaker 1: I've talked to so many lawyers about this, and I
Speaker 1: don't know of anybody that has ever heard of a
Speaker 1: plea agreement like this before. You know, it's impert It
Speaker 1: is unprecedented that did anybody, any of the women come
Speaker 1: forward and accuse Dershowitz or anyone else. Two women said
Speaker 1: he was a party to what happened yes, and nothing
Speaker 1: has happened with that protected by immunity. Well no, I'm
Speaker 1: not saying he's part of that because they didn't name
Speaker 1: him so, and of course he denies that he had
Speaker 1: anything to do with it, but he has been accused
Speaker 1: of being involved in this. He insisted women, yes, by
Speaker 1: two women, and uh he insisted their liars. And you
Speaker 1: know he has uh you know, says that he has
Speaker 1: proof that that this isn't true, but it's been Uh.
Speaker 1: I haven't seen the proof yet. You know. I'm still
Speaker 1: trying to work with him on that, but he's he's
Speaker 1: come out and attacked me pretty aggressively. Uh So we'll
Speaker 1: see what happens. I try, you know, I try to
Speaker 1: keep an open mind. You know, it must be a
Speaker 1: terrible thing to be wrong if he's wrongly accused. To
Speaker 1: be wrongly accused, this is a horrible crime. And you know,
Speaker 1: I guess what I could say is I still try
Speaker 1: to have an open mind, and I want to. I mean,
Speaker 1: the truth is the truth is the truth, you know,
Speaker 1: and only one person can really be telling the truth
Speaker 1: in this case. And I don't think anybody really knows
Speaker 1: because these are he said. She said in a lot
Speaker 1: of cases. Uh so nobody. I mean, we might never know.
Speaker 1: Do I have a picture of you that were you
Speaker 1: sitting at a kitchen? I mean, I'm gonna be very
Speaker 1: melodramatic now, but um, were you sitting at a kitchen
Speaker 1: table at the end of some days and just staring
Speaker 1: at a you know, a cup of tea or something
Speaker 1: that's saying, you know you you just couldn't believe, not
Speaker 1: not that this not just that this happened, and not
Speaker 1: that's just that it was covered up, but the way
Speaker 1: that it was covered up, and this is so insidious,
Speaker 1: how this was done. And they gave this guy like,
Speaker 1: uh like he went to camp for a while, an
Speaker 1: extended trip to camp. Yeah. And with everything that I
Speaker 1: uncovered a little by little, you know, it's like peeling
Speaker 1: away an onion. And I get so tired because it's
Speaker 1: a lot of dense court documents, you know, ten thousand
Speaker 1: probably records, I mean, just so much and it's a
Speaker 1: lot of it is so it's all legally's and I'm
Speaker 1: not a lawyer, and trying to make heads or tails
Speaker 1: out of it, which just gets so tired. For a
Speaker 1: good point backstage, backstage, which you said the herold like
Speaker 1: other newspapers, are not wealthy organizations and institutions anymore. So
Speaker 1: this money meant a lot. They had spent a lot
Speaker 1: of dough to do this legwork. Yeah. Yeah, they invested
Speaker 1: a lot of money into this. They believed in me.
Speaker 1: Be Bradley there in your story. Yeah, well it was
Speaker 1: Casey Frank. I have to give him. He's my editor
Speaker 1: who actually even went to bat with me. The police
Speaker 1: chief to not want to go public. He had never
Speaker 1: gone public with this before. He had been also, you know,
Speaker 1: his career was because he went after Hepstein to his career.
Speaker 1: Uh was hurt by it. And well a lot of
Speaker 1: people went after him, you know. And is he still
Speaker 1: the police chief. No, he retired and he wasn't taken
Speaker 1: out of office removed, No, but it became hard for
Speaker 1: him to be the police chief. And he he and
Speaker 1: uh and the detective Joe Ry Carey who had who
Speaker 1: after I interviewed him, unfortunately bested away. They were really
Speaker 1: the only two people other than lawyers who risked their
Speaker 1: careers really, uh for these girls, and uh, you know,
Speaker 1: and as I was mentioning my he didn't want to
Speaker 1: talk to me. It took me months to get him
Speaker 1: to talk to me, because I said it has to
Speaker 1: be on the record, you know, because he had he
Speaker 1: had talked quite frankly. The reason why he didn't want
Speaker 1: to talk to me, he said, he talked to a
Speaker 1: lot of reporters off the record and sort of told
Speaker 1: them where to go, and nothing ever happened. He was
Speaker 1: convinced that a lot of media had squashed this story,
Speaker 1: and he had was really at the point where he
Speaker 1: was fed up and didn't want to talk to any
Speaker 1: media anymore. And so I said, we're not going to
Speaker 1: do it, and he said, no, somebody's going to call
Speaker 1: your publisher and the next thing you know, you're going
Speaker 1: to be assigned to the obit department. So I said, no,
Speaker 1: you know, talk to so Casey called him up and
Speaker 1: told him, is that the game show host of the
Speaker 1: journalism department dement? Yeah, exactly, that's about it. Yeah, Um,
Speaker 1: the like, what was the part that really just made
Speaker 1: you go, oh my god? It was really among many
Speaker 1: things that I think, it was the fact that the
Speaker 1: government now think about, um, you know, we know about
Speaker 1: the abuse in the Catholic Church, and the Catholic Church
Speaker 1: protected the priests, and we know about the abuse with
Speaker 1: the Olympic gymnasts. The university had protected this doctor, but
Speaker 1: this was our fermant, even after they knew what he
Speaker 1: had done. The biggest thing that drove me was how
Speaker 1: they continued to fight these girls after they filed this
Speaker 1: crime victims rights lawsuit. It was almost like they were Epstein.
Speaker 1: The government was in Epstein's camp, they were his counsel. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and they were saying, we're not giving you these documents.
Speaker 1: We're not going to tell you what we did, like
Speaker 1: defense attorneys, and that just I mean, how do you
Speaker 1: do that? How in good conscience do you do that?
Speaker 1: What can we do to help protect young women from
Speaker 1: this kind of sexual abuse? Well, there's a lot of
Speaker 1: different things. Um. I think our law enforcement agencies, police officers,
Speaker 1: prosecutors especially need to be better trained to handle these
Speaker 1: kinds of cases. There's a whole different way you handle
Speaker 1: trauma victims. You can't treat them like just any other victim.
Speaker 1: They're in a different category because trauma does things to
Speaker 1: your brain and it makes it so that you you
Speaker 1: you react to things differently. I mean, there's a whole
Speaker 1: science behind trauma and so a lot of law enforcement
Speaker 1: people don't know how to question victims who are are
Speaker 1: victims of sexual assault. They expect that they're going to
Speaker 1: go ask them a question, and when they hesitate, you know,
Speaker 1: or they're not consistent in some of the answers, that
Speaker 1: they're unreliable witnesses. But I've interviewed uh FBI experts who
Speaker 1: have who have made their careers in this, and they
Speaker 1: said that actually, you should expect that their memories are
Speaker 1: not going to be consistent, and if they are consistent,
Speaker 1: that's a sign that that maybe they aren't telling the
Speaker 1: truth because the consistency is that they suffer from trauma
Speaker 1: and they won't remember exactly every detail the same way,
Speaker 1: because that's the way your brain is. You you know,
Speaker 1: I've been through some trauma and there are things in
Speaker 1: my life that I can't remember. I mean, I'll never remember,
Speaker 1: you know. So uh, you know, you have to have
Speaker 1: law enforcement people who are really trained to understand that.
Speaker 1: And there's a whole like I said, there's a whole
Speaker 1: science behind it. Um, do we have any questions from
Speaker 1: the audience from market? Um? You got the mic here
Speaker 1: right over. UM. I just wanted to ask if you
Speaker 1: had received any pressure similar to the people involved in
Speaker 1: the case, to not continue the investigation, to not publish
Speaker 1: the article. Uh well, I wouldn't phrase it that way,
Speaker 1: but let's put it this way. There's a lot of
Speaker 1: people who have been pretty aggressive with trying to uh
Speaker 1: discredit me in certain ways. Uh, so, you know, I'm
Speaker 1: pretty tough. There are countless journalists that are killed all
Speaker 1: over the world for fighting for the truth and for democracy. Um.
Speaker 1: There are countless journalists right now being tortured in prisons
Speaker 1: all over the world. And so anybody that every time
Speaker 1: I you know, that question comes up, of course, you know,
Speaker 1: you think about it in the back of your head,
Speaker 1: but I think about all the other journalists out there
Speaker 1: that are just really risking their lives every single day.
Speaker 1: On the end here, UM, thank you. I have two questions.
Speaker 1: First is did you have a chance to interview him?
Speaker 1: And second question is what happened this moment? Now? Were
Speaker 1: they doing in life? And if you touch with them
Speaker 1: an interview again? Yeah, thank you. I tried several times.
Speaker 1: I went to his house when I knew he was there,
Speaker 1: knocked on the door, wrote letters to him, certified letters,
Speaker 1: wrote wrote letters to his lawyers, reached out to people
Speaker 1: that I knew knew him, but no, I I just
Speaker 1: he probably just thought I was this little reporter from
Speaker 1: the Miami Herald. It wasn't, you know, just like any
Speaker 1: other reporter, just doing another rehash of the case. So
Speaker 1: I you know, I don't think he felt that he
Speaker 1: had to respond to me. And that's just my guest. Uh.
Speaker 1: I still stay in touch with the girls, and and uh,
Speaker 1: I was really touched. They were very young. Some never
Speaker 1: even told their families that this happened. One of the
Speaker 1: girls in that category who shared her story to me,
Speaker 1: was scared to death about how her grandparents would read
Speaker 1: the story. And after the peace came out, she called
Speaker 1: me and she said that her grandparents had we turn
Speaker 1: said that they were really proud of her. You know.
Speaker 1: So I'm sorry, but that being really touched because it
Speaker 1: takes a lot of courage to do that. She she
Speaker 1: she was really worried about what they would think of her.
Speaker 1: You know, a lot of the girls, I'm sure field
Speaker 1: that way. And uh and like I said, they feel
Speaker 1: really ashamed. They really punished themselves. A lot of them
Speaker 1: didn't turn out well. Some of them are dead. Um,
Speaker 1: they've overdosed. Uh. Some of them became strippers, and you
Speaker 1: know we're we're victims of violence addicts. The one girl
Speaker 1: I interviewed, I interviewed her the first time I interviewed her.
Speaker 1: She was in prison. She was serving a longer term
Speaker 1: for selling drugs than he served for molesting underage girls.
Speaker 1: So that that that's amazing. I want to go over
Speaker 1: to this side this Showman and the r In the
Speaker 1: Southern District of New York, there was a lawsuit brought
Speaker 1: by a Jane Doe against Epstein and Trump. It had
Speaker 1: previously brought in California. Uh, it was subsequently this continued.
Speaker 1: Uh do you know why it was? And have you
Speaker 1: ever dealt with the Jane Doe in that case? And
Speaker 1: what did you think of her? Nobody knows who that
Speaker 1: Jane Doe is. She's sort of disappeared after Uh that
Speaker 1: came out. And you know, at the time, the lawyer
Speaker 1: Lisa Bloom was representing her and had said that she
Speaker 1: had been threatened in some way and decided not to
Speaker 1: go through with it. I haven't been able to find
Speaker 1: out who she is or find any evidence at all
Speaker 1: that that that her story was true, which is why
Speaker 1: most of the media has not really written about it
Speaker 1: since because Uh, you know, we can't find any evidence
Speaker 1: that any of it had been then it was right
Speaker 1: at the time of the election. I think it was
Speaker 1: a couple of days before the election. So there's a
Speaker 1: lot of Yeah, there, there's a lot of people that
Speaker 1: suspect it might have been politically motivated. I'm not saying
Speaker 1: it was, but I've never been able to find out
Speaker 1: any evidence that it's true. And I have looked into it,
Speaker 1: and I've talked to a lot of people who were
Speaker 1: affiliated with it, and I haven't just been able to
Speaker 1: confirm it. And this gentleman way in the corner right First,
Speaker 1: I have to say bravo for the work that you've dot.
Speaker 1: I know, as a journalist you cannot pay sources, and
Speaker 1: I didn't hear a whole lot about whistleblowers or leakers.
Speaker 1: If we could incentivize leakers in government, there have to
Speaker 1: be people there that despise what's going on, and it
Speaker 1: wouldn't it be possible if they could find a way
Speaker 1: to get to you through a neutral source. Is that
Speaker 1: at all possible? Well, you know there's these Uh I
Speaker 1: have a pro proton email. I'm new to all this
Speaker 1: kind of technology. Yeah, well, it's encrypted, uh email, thank
Speaker 1: you somebody. Other people know about this. I have younger
Speaker 1: people fortunately on my staff, on our staff, who have
Speaker 1: helped me with this kind of new technology. So there's
Speaker 1: ways for people to get me and not reveal who
Speaker 1: they are, without you know, having to pay anybody to
Speaker 1: do that. That lady weigh in the back. I want
Speaker 1: to get back to the safety of journalists. What concerns,
Speaker 1: if any, do you have about your own personal safety.
Speaker 1: I want to know what you do, what locks you have,
Speaker 1: what the security is. Well, for a long time I
Speaker 1: had a nice loud dog when I was covering the
Speaker 1: Florida prison system, and there were some people that would
Speaker 1: show up, you know, lurking outside my and the dog
Speaker 1: would be so loud. It was my daughter's talk. So
Speaker 1: now my daughter has her dog back, So I'm thinking
Speaker 1: maybe I should get another dog. But uh, you know,
Speaker 1: I don't really think about it until people ask me.
Speaker 1: Then I get worried. You just keep doing your job.
Speaker 1: We think you're from Florida. Automatically you carry a gun,
Speaker 1: don't you. Yeah, well I've had you know, I have
Speaker 1: a lot of friends who are police officers. In fact,
Speaker 1: my ex husband is a police officer. And they've all
Speaker 1: advised me that I should have one, but I just
Speaker 1: can't bring myself to do it. Like I said, I
Speaker 1: grew up in Philly, and you know, you just pay
Speaker 1: attention to where you're going and what you're doing. Look,
Speaker 1: if anybody really wants to get you, they're going to
Speaker 1: get you. I can't finished. If we didn't call, we
Speaker 1: didn't call you. I'm sorry, We're gonna finish with you. SCA.
Speaker 1: What do we know specifically about the relationship between Epstein
Speaker 1: and Clinton. Uh, he was absolutely on Epstein's plane. Uh,
Speaker 1: you know there it's been documented that he's help where
Speaker 1: South Africa. Epstein donated some money to the Clinton Foundation,
Speaker 1: and during this time period, which was I think the
Speaker 1: early two thousand's, uh you know, they were the AIDS
Speaker 1: epidemic was spreading in Africa, and there was you know,
Speaker 1: a sort of a fact finding plane trip that Epstein
Speaker 1: took trip Clinton on. Now he went on his plane
Speaker 1: more than that, though. We know that there was probably
Speaker 1: like twenty trips, and uh, you know, of course, a
Speaker 1: lot of people suspect that maybe he was involved in
Speaker 1: some way. He's denied that he was involved. And the
Speaker 1: one girl that we know was very much involved. Underage
Speaker 1: girl Virginia Roberts said that she never saw him with
Speaker 1: any that's correct. That's correct. Well, I was gonna say
Speaker 1: I could talk about sex trafficking all night long. I
Speaker 1: think I've had about enough of that subject for now
Speaker 1: and around the time, I want to say that, you know,
Speaker 1: journalists who do the job you're doing our heroes, and
Speaker 1: I admire you very very much. That please. I admire
Speaker 1: you to mens Thine for what you've done. Uh, thank
Speaker 1: you to my guest Julie Brown for the Miami herold.
Speaker 1: I thank you all for coming. Thank you Julie Brown
Speaker 1: on threats to her safety and that of other journalists
Speaker 1: around the world. When former Epstein lawyer Alan Dershawitz heard
Speaker 1: that his name had come up, he wanted the opportunity
Speaker 1: to respond. Here is our conversation. Julie Brown denied your
Speaker 1: listeners the full truth about her reporting. Um. She mentions
Speaker 1: two women who accused me of having sexual accounts with them.
Speaker 1: I never met these women. I don't know who they are.
Speaker 1: They totally came out of the blue. This is the
Speaker 1: only me too case that I'm aware of where there
Speaker 1: was no prior relationship, where there was no knowledge. These
Speaker 1: are just strangers who were for mostly accusing me. These
Speaker 1: are both women who have long records of falsely accusing
Speaker 1: famous people. The first woman, named Roberts, who Brown relies
Speaker 1: on for her reporting, had gotten a hundred sixty thou
Speaker 1: dollars from The Mail in London for an article in
Speaker 1: which she remembers vividly meeting al Gore a typical or
Speaker 1: on Jeffrey Epstein's island. They've never been on the island. Uh,
Speaker 1: secret Service and other records confirmed that she also remembers
Speaker 1: meeting Bill Clinton on the island. Secret Service records confirmed
Speaker 1: he was not on the island. Her own lawyer, UH.
Speaker 1: Robert's own lawyer admitted to me in a tape recorded
Speaker 1: conversation that his client was quote wrong, simply wrong. That
Speaker 1: I couldn't possibly have been in any of the places
Speaker 1: where she claimed to have sex with me. I produced
Speaker 1: all my travel records every single day of my life
Speaker 1: during the two years this woman and Jeffrey Epstein and
Speaker 1: proved conclusively that I couldn't have been at the places.
Speaker 1: That's why uh. The the head of the FBI, the
Speaker 1: former head of the FBI, Louis Free, did a complete
Speaker 1: and thorough investigation and concluded that the stories were made
Speaker 1: up and that they were a false The judge struck
Speaker 1: the allegation sanctioned the lawyers, profiling them. The lawyers then
Speaker 1: withdrew the allegation, admitting that it was a mistake. And
Speaker 1: yet your audience didn't hear anything about that. Um. The
Speaker 1: second woman went to the New York Post and claimed
Speaker 1: she had sex takes of Hillary Clinton, of Donald Trump,
Speaker 1: of Richard Branson, and of Bill Clinton. And of course
Speaker 1: she was lying through her teeth, and the New York
Speaker 1: Post threw her out the reporter's name as a marine
Speaker 1: Callahan show confirm all of this. And yet um, they
Speaker 1: produced her as the second woman after I was threatened
Speaker 1: that if I didn't withdraw a bar charge against the
Speaker 1: first lawyer, they would find a second woman. Because two
Speaker 1: women are better than one. You know, people say when
Speaker 1: they smoke this fire, sometimes when they smoked this arson.
Speaker 1: This is a case of arson. This is a case
Speaker 1: where two women for profit, and they've earned an enormous
Speaker 1: amount of money. Yes, um have falsely accused me to
Speaker 1: frame me, and I'm sinking an FBI investigation. I've asked
Speaker 1: for the FBI to investigate me along with these two
Speaker 1: women because they filed out to David's an eye filed
Speaker 1: after David And how was that and how was that going?
Speaker 1: Is the FBI responding to your request? Well, we're waiting
Speaker 1: to hear obviously. I've also asked for any law firm
Speaker 1: in the country to conduct an independent investigation. I'm willing
Speaker 1: to show everything to everybody because i did nothing wrong.
Speaker 1: I've lived an exemplary private life for all the years
Speaker 1: that are relevant to this, these inquiries, and these women
Speaker 1: just made up these stories, and and and Brown wants
Speaker 1: to win the fuel is surprised, but you didn't tell
Speaker 1: the public that the source she relied on, the major source,
Speaker 1: Virginia Roberts, is a proven perjura and a proven liar.
Speaker 1: I won't rest until Virginia Roberts goes to prison and
Speaker 1: the other woman goes to prison. False accusations are serious,
Speaker 1: whether it's the actor in Chicago Smollet who falsely accused people,
Speaker 1: or it's these women. False accusations hurt Me Too movement.
Speaker 1: They're very serious. And Julie Brown hasn't reported the other
Speaker 1: side of the story. Sure, she put into the story
Speaker 1: that I denied it that's not enough. She owed the
Speaker 1: readers the obligation to say, I produced all my travel records,
Speaker 1: there was an FBI report, the judge struck everything. That's uh,
Speaker 1: that's true, and then nobody would believe these stories. It's
Speaker 1: pure advocacy. And if a lawyer ever behaved that way,
Speaker 1: that lawyer would be disbarred for failing to produce relevant
Speaker 1: evidence that shows that I was innocent when the women
Speaker 1: are claiming falsely that I'm guilty. So thank you for
Speaker 1: an opportunity to tell your listeners the whole truth. Well,
Speaker 1: I mean, I listen, I have tremendous in my own
Speaker 1: life public life. I've had my share of things that
Speaker 1: I felt were not reported accurately or not really very fair,
Speaker 1: and so I have tremendous empathy for that. I only
Speaker 1: have one question, which is that in the we live,
Speaker 1: and of course this is the American way, which is
Speaker 1: to torpedo people's careers over sexual charges. America is particularly
Speaker 1: obsessed with the sexual clinton and so everything is in
Speaker 1: other countries. The differences they did it here, we no
Speaker 1: no, no no no no, but didn't do it no no no.
Speaker 1: I'm not disputing them. I'm just leading up to something
Speaker 1: which is that that in this country people are often
Speaker 1: doing this too, this as a form of character assassination
Speaker 1: and to nullify someone's career with these sex charges. Because
Speaker 1: in other countries this doesn't play that much. I mean
Speaker 1: in other countries, they don't care. In other countries women
Speaker 1: would put in p But but what I'm asking you is,
Speaker 1: so you think that these two women that are making
Speaker 1: these false charges against you, it's purely about money. Well
Speaker 1: it started with money, uh, driven by their lawyers. The
Speaker 1: first woman, Roberts, told her best friend I have it
Speaker 1: on tape that she was pressured by her lawyers to
Speaker 1: name me. She had never previously named me. There are
Speaker 1: some emails now that are still sealed, but we're waiting
Speaker 1: to get them unsealed. But they show how the plot unfolded,
Speaker 1: how they admitted, how she admitted she never had any
Speaker 1: contact with me at all, but she was told she
Speaker 1: had to put me in her book because otherwise the
Speaker 1: book wouldn't sell because I'm famous, and this is a
Speaker 1: one with a long history of making false acquisitions against
Speaker 1: famous people. She claims to have had underage sex with
Speaker 1: the Prime Minister of Israel, with the majority leader of
Speaker 1: the United States Senate, the United States Ambassador to the
Speaker 1: United Nations, with the man who invented artificial intelligence. You
Speaker 1: name it. I mean, it's a pantheon of famous people.
Speaker 1: Professor Allen Dershowitz I called Miami Herald reporter Julie Brown
Speaker 1: to get her take on what's transpired this past week.
Speaker 1: So tell me what just happened with the accousta news
Speaker 1: conference room. Well, Mr Custa is elaborating on explanations that
Speaker 1: he has given in the past about why he didn't
Speaker 1: of that really prosecute Mr Epstein. They fall into two categories. One,
Speaker 1: he is trying to explain the even itself and and
Speaker 1: how they felt that they wouldn't win a trial if
Speaker 1: they had taken it to trial. And to the second
Speaker 1: part of it is he's being grilled about the secrecy
Speaker 1: part of the agreement where they didn't inform the victims
Speaker 1: and that part of it which led to the judge
Speaker 1: ruling the entire agreement was illegal. Um. So to start
Speaker 1: with the top part, you know, not having the evidence,
Speaker 1: I'm saying that some of the witnesses were reluctant. Um. Look, uh,
Speaker 1: you know he could have continued to investigate this the
Speaker 1: FBI wanted to. They were getting new information and new
Speaker 1: victims every day. You don't need uh, twenty victims. You
Speaker 1: don't need a whole lot of victims. You just need
Speaker 1: two or three good victims. So it's pretty disingenuous for
Speaker 1: him to say, oh, well, there were some victims who
Speaker 1: didn't want anyone to know that this happened. They were reluctant.
Speaker 1: He had thirty six and it would be hard for
Speaker 1: me to believe that there weren't a you know, a
Speaker 1: couple of those victims who would have been really good
Speaker 1: witnesses number one and number two. The FBI was getting
Speaker 1: more information. It's inexplicable that he would just cut that
Speaker 1: investigation short, given the breath of this crime, and then
Speaker 1: the second part of this, the secrecy part of it. Uh.
Speaker 1: He's said, um that one of the reasons why he
Speaker 1: didn't tell the victims was because they they might have
Speaker 1: been compromised by knowing that there was a restitution provision
Speaker 1: in the agreement, um, which is ridiculous because they didn't
Speaker 1: have to tell them about the restitution part. All they
Speaker 1: had to do was tell them that they had an
Speaker 1: agreement by the time it was sentenced. Then they wouldn't
Speaker 1: have been compromised. They could have mentioned something then. So, Uh,
Speaker 1: it's a lot to unpack. Um, it's a pretty lampy
Speaker 1: press conference. It's still going on right now. How did
Speaker 1: you learn about what happened on Saturday? You know, somebody
Speaker 1: called me at home and said, you know, Epstein's been arrested,
Speaker 1: and we had plans to fly to the middle of
Speaker 1: the country the next day to interview two more victims. Um.
Speaker 1: It was all set up for weeks and we had
Speaker 1: to quickly change our plans and come to New York.
Speaker 1: You had no idea that something was brewing, that they
Speaker 1: were going to get him. I had heard rumors that
Speaker 1: something was brewing, but I also heard that everybody was
Speaker 1: keeping a pretty tight little on it because they did
Speaker 1: not want to give him a chance to plea. Um.
Speaker 1: They thought that if he had found out that they
Speaker 1: were going to arrest him, he might flee the Uh.
Speaker 1: I mean without you know, emotionalizing this, because this must
Speaker 1: be this very powerful experience for you personally. How did
Speaker 1: you feel when you heard about what happened Saturday? I
Speaker 1: was stunned. I'm still I think in shock. I I
Speaker 1: just I thought maybe something would eventually happen, but I
Speaker 1: didn't think it would happen this fast. So New York
Speaker 1: must have some good information they obvioust they do have
Speaker 1: some new information. They obviously, I mean, the prosecutor made
Speaker 1: it clear that he felt that a cost and the
Speaker 1: prosecutors and Areta had dropped the ball pretty badly. So, um,
Speaker 1: we'll have to see where it shakes out. Have you
Speaker 1: spoken to any of the victims since the story broke, Yes,
Speaker 1: quite a few of them called me. Um, they're related. Um,
Speaker 1: they're emotional, they're they're ecstatics, they're very happy. Now what
Speaker 1: is there at this point that you want to know? Now, well,
Speaker 1: I'd like to know what prosecutors in his office how
Speaker 1: you know, there's some questions about whether his prosecutors underneath
Speaker 1: him acted properly. Acosta, I've got to go back to
Speaker 1: the set. Um. Uh, they're calling me back. Okay, thank
Speaker 1: you very much, thank you, all right, thanks, Julie had
Speaker 1: to get off of our phone call very quickly to
Speaker 1: get back to the Acousta press conference. I'm Alec Baldwin,
Speaker 1: and you're listening to here's the thing, foll