Speaker 1: By Alec Baldwin and you're listening to Here's the Thing.
Speaker 1: Last year, Julie Brown of the Miami Herald conceived, reported,
Speaker 1: and wrote one of the most explosive criminal justice stories
Speaker 1: in recent memory. She tracked how the US Justice Department
Speaker 1: shut down an FBI investigation that may have been on
Speaker 1: the verge of discovering the full extent of a child
Speaker 1: sex trafficking operation run by billionaire Jeffrey Epstein. The U
Speaker 1: s attorney in charge of that case was none other
Speaker 1: than alex A Costa, now the United States Secretary of
Speaker 1: Labor under Donald Trump. As punishment for recruiting underage girls
Speaker 1: to perform sex acts at his Palm Beach mansion, Epstein
Speaker 1: spent barely a year in the local lock up. With
Speaker 1: a liberal daily work release, Julie Brown found many many
Speaker 1: or victims who had not spoken up and revealed the
Speaker 1: extent of acustas capitulation in the face of Epstein's high
Speaker 1: powered defense lawyers. For her crucial work, she's been given
Speaker 1: a Poke Award for Justice Reporting. While she was in
Speaker 1: New York to receive it, she joined me on stage
Speaker 1: at w n YCS Green Space. I had so much
Speaker 1: for coming um and thank you to Julie Brown for
Speaker 1: coming to do the show. You first started reporting on
Speaker 1: this case when um a year and a half ago.
Speaker 1: But I knew about the case for a long time,
Speaker 1: and you got involved in the case. Why because I
Speaker 1: was I did a lot of human rights reporting for
Speaker 1: the Miami Herald. I covered the prisons, and I knew
Speaker 1: that Florida was one of the states that had a
Speaker 1: huge sex trafficking problem. And I always everything that I
Speaker 1: read was they were going after little cases. But I
Speaker 1: knew that there were some big fish, so to speak,
Speaker 1: in Florida, that we're probably behind sex. I just you know,
Speaker 1: it's it's it's just reasonable to think that there are
Speaker 1: uh this it's a big money making operation. It's it's
Speaker 1: all over the country, all over the world, really human
Speaker 1: trafficking and sex trafficking. There really was nobody pursuing this
Speaker 1: at all except for lawyers. And that was one of
Speaker 1: the other things that didn't treat me about this case.
Speaker 1: You know, you would read about it and then you say,
Speaker 1: you know, how does this happen and why isn't anybody
Speaker 1: standing up yelling and screaming. But the case has been
Speaker 1: ongoing for quite a while. Before you got involved, Well,
Speaker 1: it actually had quieted down. I compare what I did
Speaker 1: in this case to what a cold case detective does.
Speaker 1: Let's say you have someone who disappeared, and the detectives
Speaker 1: come in and they find a suspect, but they can't
Speaker 1: prove it, and then they put it all away in
Speaker 1: a box. And then somebody comes along who maybe just
Speaker 1: got hired by the police department, and they just decide
Speaker 1: that they're going to, uh, hey, I'm going to take
Speaker 1: a look at this, and when time goes by. I
Speaker 1: know this also from other stories I've covered, Other people
Speaker 1: come out of the woodwork, or there might be people
Speaker 1: that didn't want to talk when it happened. We're afraid
Speaker 1: for one reason or another, and time has gone by
Speaker 1: or or what happened right, And and these girls were
Speaker 1: at the time, you know, thirteen, fourteen, fifteen years old.
Speaker 1: Now they're in they're only thirties. Actually, what really launched
Speaker 1: the piece was when Alexander Acosta, who was the prosecutor,
Speaker 1: the federal prosecutor in Miami who handled this case, got
Speaker 1: nominated by President Trump to be Labor Secretary. I thought
Speaker 1: I knew about the case, and I thought, well, let's
Speaker 1: see 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: they really made sure that no one really knew that
Speaker 1: know the scope of this crime. Now for those people
Speaker 1: who 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: Am 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 no Bill Prize
Speaker 1: winning scientists were in his circle 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 mathematics and there through the students parents, he
Speaker 1: ended up working for Bear Star 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 had been doing this activity
Speaker 1: with young girls. 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 spas. 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 copy 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 Palm
Speaker 1: Beaches everybody's wealthy, but there 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 that.
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 in New York.
Speaker 1: And from the women that I interviewed, he did it everywhere.
Speaker 1: He had an island in the Caribbean. Uh, he would
Speaker 1: send one of the girls or probably more than one,
Speaker 1: but one that I know of who I interviewed out
Speaker 1: to for example, he had the island, so they would
Speaker 1: take a furry or helicopter from St. Thomas. What she
Speaker 1: told me was we would go to the nightclubs in St.
Speaker 1: Thomas and I would just bring him more girls. And Uh,
Speaker 1: there was Sarah Kellen who was a scheduler. What did
Speaker 1: she schedule? She scheduled the girls. Did you interview her? No,
Speaker 1: she hasn't spoken to anybody, and she got immunity under
Speaker 1: the non prosecution agreement that he worked out. So she's
Speaker 1: off the hook. A lot of people are off the hook.
Speaker 1: We don't even know what immunity for what she did,
Speaker 1: which only led to a thirteen month jail sentenced for
Speaker 1: him with for him and worked released the whole time.
Speaker 1: They gave her that for some little Yeah, the person
Speaker 1: you did interview who was a recruiter for him, how
Speaker 1: did they strike you? What? What did they was a
Speaker 1: man or woman? Well, you know, remember a lot of
Speaker 1: the girls were recruiters for him too, and uh so
Speaker 1: they you know, it's very sad to think about how
Speaker 1: this changed their lives. Imagine being fourteen years old and
Speaker 1: you know, you basically don't have any place to live,
Speaker 1: and you start doing this and you're fourteen, and you know,
Speaker 1: now you're thirty and you look back on it, and
Speaker 1: and it's very painful to watch how much they blamed themselves.
Speaker 1: They're very ashamed, and they blamed themselves for the other
Speaker 1: girls that they brought into it, and they just didn't
Speaker 1: understand the ramific A lot of the people that you're
Speaker 1: referring to were very young, whether they were uh you know,
Speaker 1: involved in the massage and other related sex activities with
Speaker 1: Epstein or the recruitment. Were there some grown women and men,
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: painted picture of you will of who Epstein you think is?
Speaker 1: And why did he do this? Because apparently I'm not mistaken,
Speaker 1: he had a woman coming in and out of the house,
Speaker 1: and he was having sex with multiple women a day, yes,
Speaker 1: like three times a day sometimes. Correct. What did you
Speaker 1: what kind of of a picture did you get at him? Well,
Speaker 1: obviously he had some kind of an illness to be
Speaker 1: doing something like that. And I think that the biggest
Speaker 1: thing that I came across from reading everything and all
Speaker 1: the research that I did, was he really felt that
Speaker 1: he was above the law. He just seemed to know
Speaker 1: from the get go that he was going to get
Speaker 1: away with it. Uh. He pressured, intimidated, bullied, hired the
Speaker 1: best lawyers that his money could buy. And when those
Speaker 1: lawyers didn't give him what he wanted, he hired more lawyers.
Speaker 1: He hired politically connected people. He pressured the girls, He
Speaker 1: hired private investigators who followed their parents. Uh. He deposed
Speaker 1: the girls and got her medical records, saying that she
Speaker 1: had had abortions, called her parents who were Catholic, and
Speaker 1: asked her Catholic parents when the goal was to attack
Speaker 1: the victim? Oh yes, and not only just the victims.
Speaker 1: Actually the police who had been investigated were followed, the
Speaker 1: prosecutors were pressured. And I think that's what makes this
Speaker 1: a story, really is every step of the way with
Speaker 1: the criminal justice system he powered his way through to
Speaker 1: basically get away with some of the people that you
Speaker 1: some of the lawyers involved in this case. There's a
Speaker 1: left court and Derschowitz and and even ken Star. I
Speaker 1: struggled to think that people at that level. I struggled
Speaker 1: to think that people of that reputation, at least in
Speaker 1: terms of their skills as attorneys or just in this
Speaker 1: for a deep pockets litigant and and fees. I wonder
Speaker 1: what else potentially were you led to believe there might
Speaker 1: be some think, like Star, for example, I was kind
Speaker 1: of taking it back because of course, here's 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 me 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. Yeah, And here's the big
Speaker 1: thing about it. Uh, they didn't care about the girls.
Speaker 1: I mean, these were they felt these were throwaway girls.
Speaker 1: These were prostitutes. Uh they you know, That's essentially what
Speaker 1: What was was Epstein's defense, correct which he said, none
Speaker 1: of these women that came, they came as prostitutes, were
Speaker 1: there for a reason. I paid them. If you want
Speaker 1: 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 then he also, if I'm not mistaken, you could
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 told 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 cost to in order to arrive at the decisions
Speaker 1: they arrived at the agreement. Well, the state prosecutors and
Speaker 1: Palm Beach first had the case. The police brought it
Speaker 1: to them, and within a very short time, all these
Speaker 1: lawyers that that Epstein had hired, uh began to uh
Speaker 1: pressure the state prosecutor to make the case go away.
Speaker 1: And essentially the state prosecutor was ready to make it
Speaker 1: go away, and and really he was going to get
Speaker 1: anything except a misdemeanor. And the police chief, to his credit,
Speaker 1: UH said, wait a minute, this isn't going to happen,
Speaker 1: because at the time this was happening more and more
Speaker 1: girls every time they enter. They keep in mind, since
Speaker 1: it was a sex pyramid scheme, you would interview one
Speaker 1: girl and the one girl would say, well, these two
Speaker 1: girls brought me, and then they go to those two
Speaker 1: girls and they would say these two girls. So they
Speaker 1: were getting an avalanche of girls. And here you have
Speaker 1: the state prosecutors saying, oh, we're just going to let
Speaker 1: him off for a Mrs Meaner, and the chief, to
Speaker 1: his credit and the lead detective said no, and they
Speaker 1: went to the FBI. So then it became a federal case.
Speaker 1: And Alexander Acosta was the U S Attorney in Miami
Speaker 1: at the time and appointed by George W. Yes. It
Speaker 1: was a Bush administration, was Republican administration. Now, uh Epstein
Speaker 1: was very much of a Democrat, and he had supported
Speaker 1: Clinton and a lot of other Democratic causes. But he
Speaker 1: he was smart. It was a Republican administration, So what
Speaker 1: do you do you hire a Republican lawyer star kind
Speaker 1: of star Uh you know, left court. And also the
Speaker 1: other connection was Acosta had worked in the same politically
Speaker 1: very important law firm of Kirkland and Ellis, which was
Speaker 1: the same law firm that uh Star worked for and
Speaker 1: left court work for. And so what they immediately started
Speaker 1: doing was try to work out some kind of a
Speaker 1: plea agreement with him, almost from the get go, even
Speaker 1: though the FBI was uh on a parallel course to
Speaker 1: charge him with sex trafficking, and they We're getting more
Speaker 1: and more information and but so there were two kinds
Speaker 1: of things happening. One was the FBI was really going
Speaker 1: full steam ahead, was trying to prosecute him. And then
Speaker 1: you had the prosecutors who were essentially sending emails back
Speaker 1: and forcaying 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 process.
Speaker 1: There they were asking defense attorneys almost like would you
Speaker 1: mind if we charge him with this? Yes? They really
Speaker 1: I mean, from what I read, I'm not an expert
Speaker 1: on this I've rarely heard, I've really observed such a
Speaker 1: deference by prosecutors to the subject of a crime. Yeah.
Speaker 1: And what was amazing about the whole thing is, if
Speaker 1: you follow the whole thing, which this took me over
Speaker 1: a year and a half to do, you to follow
Speaker 1: the sequence of events here, is that they would fight
Speaker 1: down and say okay, we're going to charge him with this,
Speaker 1: and and and he'd say okay, we're going to do it.
Speaker 1: And then you look at it and young go, no,
Speaker 1: I want a better deal than that than they'd start
Speaker 1: all over. And they manipulated. He manipulated the criminal justice
Speaker 1: system like I've never seen before, because every time they
Speaker 1: got him, which was a pretty good deal, he would say,
Speaker 1: well it's still not good enough. Go back again. What
Speaker 1: do you think was behind a custom What do you
Speaker 1: think it was behind I mean, because to me, the
Speaker 1: first thing that come across is they want to bury
Speaker 1: this like it's some kind of radioactive waste because there
Speaker 1: are other people, big people. There's big names of people
Speaker 1: who are clientele of Epstein's massage spa. Are there names
Speaker 1: of people you've heard or big names that are buried
Speaker 1: in those files? Yeah? And what we are doing at
Speaker 1: the Miami Herald, and and my company that owns the Herald,
Speaker 1: at McClatchy, I have to give them a lot of
Speaker 1: credit because we're the only news organization that has really
Speaker 1: done this. Uh is. We've been systemically going through these
Speaker 1: cases now and going to the core. We have a
Speaker 1: case right now here in New York, uh involving Epstein
Speaker 1: and his madame so to speak. He had a woman
Speaker 1: that was helping him allegedly with this uh here in
Speaker 1: New York. And she was a recruiter in New York, Yes,
Speaker 1: and in pomp each each Gelon Maxwell, Yeah, And this
Speaker 1: was a lawsuit involving her. And we're trying to unseal
Speaker 1: the records because we feel that there's more evidence in
Speaker 1: there the New York case that's in New York, and
Speaker 1: who wants to keep those records sealed? Maxwell and Epstein?
Speaker 1: But who else? Well, there's a chance as indifferent to
Speaker 1: the is the New York Prosecutor's office, the d A's
Speaker 1: office as in different Sward letting the light into those
Speaker 1: files as a custom wars. Well, we'll see. I mean
Speaker 1: they knew, let's face it, they knew that this was
Speaker 1: going on. They had the US prosecutors here in New
Speaker 1: York because he was doing in the same deferential treatment
Speaker 1: as a Democratic fundraiser. Well, it's the difference. Well, I
Speaker 1: don't know, It's hard to say, but we do know
Speaker 1: that Advance did make an attempt to lower his sex
Speaker 1: offender registration to a lower level. And that was a
Speaker 1: real joke. I mean, because well he he could do
Speaker 1: what the lower registration level giving him a different codification
Speaker 1: or a different kind of a label. What given more
Speaker 1: freedom what? Well, he wouldn't have to check in, you know,
Speaker 1: like to Dalton and teach kids math. Well, I don't
Speaker 1: know about that. I mean, in this day and age,
Speaker 1: nothing would surprise me. But uh, you know, there was
Speaker 1: a lot of like the Weinstein case, there was a
Speaker 1: lot of complicity. There was a lot of people to
Speaker 1: knew what was going on, and I think that they
Speaker 1: looked the other way. Pivot for a minute to your
Speaker 1: 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: U Sixt delivered flower as well. I finished school and then,
Speaker 1: you know, I didn't have any money to go to college,
Speaker 1: so I worked a bunch of jobs waitresses and did
Speaker 1: hold struggled and to the point that I realized I
Speaker 1: better do something because I don't want to work at
Speaker 1: kmart the rest of my life. Was that something that
Speaker 1: that that you think cause you to have great empathy
Speaker 1: for these girls? Yeah? Yeah, absolutely, I think that personal well,
Speaker 1: that person. It's just for the underdog because I haven't
Speaker 1: really only covered uh, you know, women who have been abused.
Speaker 1: I I did a huge for your project on the
Speaker 1: Florida prison system, and I've never been in prison, but
Speaker 1: I know that, you know, there's a lot of people
Speaker 1: out there who don't have a voice in our criminal
Speaker 1: justice system, and they end up in very bad places
Speaker 1: in our system disposes of these people and then continues
Speaker 1: to mistreat them so they never have a chance to
Speaker 1: to get ahead, even if they do pay their debt
Speaker 1: to society. But too civil and agains settled with him
Speaker 1: at the end of last year. Yeah, and my question
Speaker 1: for you is, like people that were involved and again
Speaker 1: I'm not I'm not judging them or criticizing them. I'm
Speaker 1: just wondering what your opinion is. But do these settlements
Speaker 1: do they stall justice in the end when you have
Speaker 1: people taking money and they're the victims of these crimes
Speaker 1: and they take money. I think Rose McGowan took money
Speaker 1: from from Weinstein, but there was no Nda involved, or
Speaker 1: she thought that. Does that get in the way of
Speaker 1: us having real justice for the very Probably? But I
Speaker 1: feel like because our criminal justice system, unfortunately in a
Speaker 1: lot of areas, is so heavily weighted towards people who
Speaker 1: are powerful and wealthy, it doesn't give them a lot
Speaker 1: of options because look what happened with these girls. Uh,
Speaker 1: they they had no I mean, they were treated basically
Speaker 1: like they were just I mean they were thirteen fourteen
Speaker 1: year old girls. He was charged with solicitation of prostitution
Speaker 1: of someone under the age of eighteen, in other words,
Speaker 1: child product. There really isn't any such thing as child
Speaker 1: prost to ship. You know that back then that was
Speaker 1: still sex traffick books in Florida, But it's no longer
Speaker 1: on the books in Florida. Yeah, it's sex trafficking. But
Speaker 1: in a lot of these people's mind that you know,
Speaker 1: Epstein's camp, the people that worked for him, uh, these
Speaker 1: girls were prostitutes and he didn't really do anything wrong.
Speaker 1: Once she discovered her calling in journalism, Julie Brown drove
Speaker 1: relentlessly to realize it. The previous guest of mine on
Speaker 1: Here's the Thing, George Stephanopoulos, took longer to land in
Speaker 1: the same career he first worked for President Bill Clinton.
Speaker 1: When I left the White House in early I was
Speaker 1: I guess I was watching thirty six. Then I felt
Speaker 1: much older, and I you know why, Oh yeah, I
Speaker 1: mean White House. Here's her dog. Years multiplied. But I
Speaker 1: also knew I had a better sense of what I
Speaker 1: didn't want to be than what I wanted to be.
Speaker 1: After I left, I knew that in order to feel
Speaker 1: my age again, I had to start a different career.
Speaker 1: The rest of my conversation with George Stephanopoulos is on
Speaker 1: our archive at Here's the Thing dot org when we
Speaker 1: return Julie Brown on the other men. Some of Epstein's
Speaker 1: victims have claimed were involved, and one of those men,
Speaker 1: attorney and scholar Alan Dershowitz, has his say in response,
Speaker 1: I'm Alec Baldwin and you're listening to Here's the Thing.
Speaker 1: Investigative reporter Julie Brown of The Miami Herald broke the
Speaker 1: scandal of Jeffrey Epstein's plea deal, but even she has
Speaker 1: trouble expressing just how singular his light sentence really was.
Speaker 1: Florida has some of the toughest sex offender laws in
Speaker 1: the country. Three. Uh, they send these guys to state
Speaker 1: prison and Florida state prisons, I can tell you because
Speaker 1: they're they're vicious, you know. But he managed to work
Speaker 1: it out so that he would go to the Palm
Speaker 1: Beach County jail. He had his own private little wing.
Speaker 1: Was a cost responsible for that as well well. Customer
Speaker 1: prosecutors have to sign off on that. Well, Acosta claimed
Speaker 1: he didn't. He had no idea that that was going
Speaker 1: to happen, because what a cost essentially did was he
Speaker 1: washed his hands of the case and gave it back
Speaker 1: to the state prosecutor. And it didn't just stand there.
Speaker 1: I mean, he had his driver picked him up, explained
Speaker 1: about the work release thing. Yeah, he got work released.
Speaker 1: Now don't get work really And the work released was
Speaker 1: what he was at. What I read was he's out
Speaker 1: for twelve hours a day, six days a week, six days.
Speaker 1: Driver picked him up, took him to his nice waterfront
Speaker 1: office in West Palm Beach, and uh, you know they
Speaker 1: had they did have sheriff's deputy. He's you know, standing
Speaker 1: outside the office, but they were outside the office, and
Speaker 1: on the inside of the office people were coming and
Speaker 1: going all day, including women coming to visit him. I
Speaker 1: interviewed one of these deputies and I said, well, did
Speaker 1: you even pay attention when he was doing in the office?
Speaker 1: You know he had girls in there, And he goes, oh, no,
Speaker 1: that was not our job. Yeah, So he could have
Speaker 1: been continuing his activities during the work release from the
Speaker 1: private jail cell of the Palm Beach and which he
Speaker 1: just could have kept it going and going and going. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: and all those Now do you know I did hear
Speaker 1: he's in Palm Beach today. 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: other people who were celebrities are well known people. Remember
Speaker 1: when people online would attack me about that. They'd say
Speaker 1: to me, you perv you rapist. I mean to me,
Speaker 1: they'd said, before my name was mentioned in anything to
Speaker 1: do with the case, they'd write these things, and I
Speaker 1: would think to myself, I mean, I literally sat that way.
Speaker 1: Where the hell did I ever meet Jeffrey Epstein? I
Speaker 1: couldn't put it thought to myself in the nineties. Was
Speaker 1: he at some event that was a fundraiser that I knew?
Speaker 1: And of course I have a phone number that we
Speaker 1: give people. That's what we in my office we call
Speaker 1: the Dummy Line, and it's a number we've given out
Speaker 1: to four maybe five million people over the course of
Speaker 1: the last twenty five years. But there are people who
Speaker 1: have had their name pulled into this whole thing. Dersha
Speaker 1: Witz is one. And do you think some of the
Speaker 1: people whose names have been pulled through this are innocent
Speaker 1: or you're not sure? I think with dersh Witz, his
Speaker 1: name was on flight uh manifest flying to his on
Speaker 1: his plane. So before he became counsel to Epstein, he
Speaker 1: was a guest of Epstein's at his home, And I
Speaker 1: think that that's the reason why Dershowitz is significant to
Speaker 1: a lot of people is that the idea is that
Speaker 1: he was Epstein's friend, he stayed at his Palm Beach house,
Speaker 1: he vacationed at his Palm Beach house, and then he
Speaker 1: represented him and he helped fashion a plea deal that
Speaker 1: essentially not only gave Epstein immunity, but gave his co
Speaker 1: conspirators both named an unnamed immunity. So the implication is
Speaker 1: that you know, and I you know. I'm not saying
Speaker 1: deersch Witz, you know, is guilty or not. I'm just
Speaker 1: saying the implication. The reason why the lawyers representing one
Speaker 1: of the victims brought it out was to demonstrate that
Speaker 1: if if you know, it is true that he was involved,
Speaker 1: he definitely had a conflict of interest. How do people
Speaker 1: get immunity as potential co conspirators? How do they have
Speaker 1: they continued to get away with that in court? I
Speaker 1: mean that's I've talked to so many lawyers about this,
Speaker 1: and I don't know of anybody that has ever heard
Speaker 1: of a plea agreement like this before. You know, 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's
Speaker 1: happened with that protected by immunity. Well no, I'm not
Speaker 1: saying he's part of that because they didn't name him. So,
Speaker 1: and of course he denies that he had anything to
Speaker 1: do with it. But he has been accused of being
Speaker 1: involved in this, he insisted, Yes, but two women and uh,
Speaker 1: he insists that their liars, and you know, he has
Speaker 1: h you know, says that he has proof that that
Speaker 1: this isn't true, but it's been Uh, I haven't seen
Speaker 1: the proof yet. You know. I'm still trying to work
Speaker 1: with him on that, but he's he's come out and
Speaker 1: attacked me pretty aggressively. Uh So we'll see what happens.
Speaker 1: I try, you know, I try to keep an open mind.
Speaker 1: You know, it must be a terrible thing to be
Speaker 1: if he's wrongly accused, To be wrongly accused, this is
Speaker 1: a horrible crime. And you know, I guess what I
Speaker 1: could say is I still try to have an open mind,
Speaker 1: and I want to. I mean, the truth is the
Speaker 1: truth is the truth, you know, and only one person
Speaker 1: can really be telling the truth in this case, and
Speaker 1: I don't think anybody really knows because these are he said,
Speaker 1: she said, in a lot of cases. Uh so nobody.
Speaker 1: I mean we might never know. Do I have a
Speaker 1: picture of you that were you sitting at a kitchen?
Speaker 1: I mean, I'm gonna be very melodramatic now, but um
Speaker 1: were you sitting at a kitchen table at the end
Speaker 1: of some days and just staring at a you know,
Speaker 1: a cup of tea or something and saying, you know,
Speaker 1: you just couldn't believe not not that this is not
Speaker 1: just that this happened, and not that's just that it
Speaker 1: was covered up, but the way that it was covered up,
Speaker 1: and this is so insidious, how this was done. And
Speaker 1: they gave this guy like, uh like he went to
Speaker 1: camp for a while, an extended trip to camp. Yeah.
Speaker 1: And with everything that I uncovered, a little by little,
Speaker 1: you know, it's like peeling away an onion. And I
Speaker 1: get so tired because it's a lot of dense court documents,
Speaker 1: you know, ten thousand probably records, I mean, just so much,
Speaker 1: and it's a lot of it is so it's all
Speaker 1: legally's and I'm not a lawyer, and trying to make
Speaker 1: heads or tails out of it, which just gets very
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 did 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 quite frankly. The reason
Speaker 1: why he didn't want to talk to me, he said
Speaker 1: he had talked to a lot of reporters off the
Speaker 1: record and sort of told them where to go, and
Speaker 1: nothing ever happened. He was convinced that a lot of
Speaker 1: media had squashed this story and he had was really
Speaker 1: at the point where he was fed up and didn't
Speaker 1: want to talk to any media anymore. And so I said,
Speaker 1: we're not going to do it, and he said no,
Speaker 1: somebody's going to call your publisher and the next thing
Speaker 1: you know, you're going to be assigned to the Open Department.
Speaker 1: So I said, no, you know, talked to so Casey
Speaker 1: called him up and told him, is that the game
Speaker 1: show host of the journalism department? The open Apartment? Yeah, exactly,
Speaker 1: that's about it. Yeah, Um, the like, what was the
Speaker 1: part that really just made you go, oh my god.
Speaker 1: It was really among many things that I think, it
Speaker 1: was the fact that the government now think about, Um,
Speaker 1: you know, we know about the abuse in the Catholic Church,
Speaker 1: and the Catholic Church protected the priests, and we know
Speaker 1: about the abuse with the Olympic gymnasts. The university had
Speaker 1: protected this doctor. But this was our government, even after
Speaker 1: they knew what he had done. The biggest thing that
Speaker 1: drove me was how they continued to fight these girls
Speaker 1: after they filed this crime victim's rights lawsuit. It was
Speaker 1: almost like they were Epstein. The government was in Epstein's camp,
Speaker 1: they were his counsel. Yeah, and they were saying, we're
Speaker 1: not giving you these documents, We're not going to tell
Speaker 1: you what we did like defense attorneys, and that just
Speaker 1: I mean, how do you do that? How in good
Speaker 1: conscience do you do that? What can we do to
Speaker 1: help protect young women from this kind of sexual abuse? Well,
Speaker 1: there's a lot of different things. Um, I think our
Speaker 1: law enforcement agencies, police officers, prosecutors especially need to be
Speaker 1: better trained to handle these kinds of cases. There's a
Speaker 1: whole different way you handle trauma victims. You can't treat
Speaker 1: them like just any other victim. They're in a different
Speaker 1: category because trauma does things to your brain and it
Speaker 1: makes it so that, uh, you you you react to
Speaker 1: things differently. I mean, there's a whole science behind trauma,
Speaker 1: and so a lot of law enforcement people don't know
Speaker 1: how to question victims who are are victims of sexual assault.
Speaker 1: They expect that they're going to go ask them a question,
Speaker 1: and when they hesitate, you know, or they're not consistent
Speaker 1: in some of the answers, that they're unreliable witnesses. But
Speaker 1: I've interviewed uh FBI experts who have who have made
Speaker 1: their careers in this and they said that actually, you
Speaker 1: should expect if their memories are not going to be consistent,
Speaker 1: and if they are consistent, that's a sign that that
Speaker 1: maybe they aren't telling the truth because the consistency is
Speaker 1: that they suffer from trauma and they won't remember exactly
Speaker 1: every detail the same way, because that's the way your
Speaker 1: brain is. You you know, I've been through some trauma
Speaker 1: and there are things in my life that I can't remember.
Speaker 1: I mean, I'll never remember, you know. So, uh, you know,
Speaker 1: you have to have law enforcement people who are really
Speaker 1: trained to understand that. And there's a whole like I said,
Speaker 1: there's a whole science behind it. Um. Do we have
Speaker 1: any questions from the audience from mart? Um? You have?
Speaker 1: You got the mic here right over here. UM. I
Speaker 1: just wanted to ask if you had received any pressure
Speaker 1: similar to the people involved in the case, to not
Speaker 1: continue the investigation, to not publish the article. Uh. Well,
Speaker 1: I wouldn't phrase it that way, but let's put it
Speaker 1: this way. There's a lot of people who have been
Speaker 1: pretty aggressive with trying to uh discredit me in certain ways. Uh, so,
Speaker 1: you know, I'm pretty tough. There are countless journalists that
Speaker 1: are killed all over the world for fighting for the truth.
Speaker 1: And for democracy. Uh, there are countless journalists right now
Speaker 1: being tortured in prisons all over the world, and so
Speaker 1: anybody that every time I you know, that question comes up.
Speaker 1: Of course, you know you think about it in the
Speaker 1: back of your head, But I always think about all
Speaker 1: the other journalists out there that are just really risking
Speaker 1: their lives every single day. Um, over here, what's being
Speaker 1: done to stop him from continuing doing this today? Are
Speaker 1: they keeping an eye on him? Are they watching him? No? Um,
Speaker 1: I can't find any evidence that anybody's watching him. That
Speaker 1: That's another part of my story really, Uh, that the
Speaker 1: sex offender registration that alex a Cosa keeps referring to
Speaker 1: as sort of this great part of the deal that
Speaker 1: he worked out. In reality, we don't know he's jet
Speaker 1: setting his life around the world right now. And I
Speaker 1: don't know if even if he gets off the plane,
Speaker 1: if his passport even says that he's a sex offender.
Speaker 1: The government won't tell me. They say that that's kind
Speaker 1: of something that they don't have to reveal. End here, Um,
Speaker 1: thank you. I have two questions. First is did you
Speaker 1: have a chance to interview him? And second question is
Speaker 1: what happened this woman. Now we are they doing in life?
Speaker 1: And if you touch with them an interview again, Yeah,
Speaker 1: thank you. I tried several times. I went to his
Speaker 1: house when I knew he was there, knocked on the door,
Speaker 1: wrote letters to him, certified letters, wrote sort of wrote
Speaker 1: letters to his lawyers, reached out to people that I
Speaker 1: knew knew him. But now I just he probably just
Speaker 1: thought I was this little reporter from the Miami Herald.
Speaker 1: It wasn't, you know, just like any other reporter, just
Speaker 1: doing another rehash of the case. So I you know,
Speaker 1: I don't think he felt that he had to respond
Speaker 1: to me. And that's just my guest. Uh. I still
Speaker 1: stay in touch with the girls, and and uh I
Speaker 1: was really touched. They were very young. Some ever even
Speaker 1: told their families that this happened. One of the girls
Speaker 1: in that category who shared her story to me, was
Speaker 1: scared to death about how her grandparents would read the story.
Speaker 1: And after the peace came out, she called me and
Speaker 1: she said that her grandparents had we turn said that
Speaker 1: they were really proud of her. You know, So I'm sorry,
Speaker 1: but that's being really touched because it takes a lot
Speaker 1: of courage to do that. She she she was really
Speaker 1: worried about what they would think of her. You know
Speaker 1: a lot of the girls, I'm sure field that way.
Speaker 1: And uh and like I said, they feel really ashamed.
Speaker 1: They really punished themselves. A lot of them didn't turn
Speaker 1: out well. Some of them are dead. Um, they've overdosed.
Speaker 1: Uh they some of them became strippers. And you know,
Speaker 1: we're we're victims of violence addicts. The one girl I interviewed,
Speaker 1: I interviewed her the first time I interviewed her. She
Speaker 1: was in prison. She was serving a longer term for
Speaker 1: selling drugs than he served for molesting underage girls. That
Speaker 1: that's amazing. Um, I want to go over to this side.
Speaker 1: I want to get back to the safety of journalists.
Speaker 1: What concerns, if any, do you have about your own
Speaker 1: personal safety. I want to know what you do, what
Speaker 1: locks should have, what the security is. Well, for a
Speaker 1: long time, I had a nice loud dog when I
Speaker 1: was covering the Florida prison system, and there were some
Speaker 1: people that would show up, you know, lurking outside my
Speaker 1: and the dog would so loud. It was my daughter's dog.
Speaker 1: So now my daughter has her dog back, So I'm
Speaker 1: thinking 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 automatically. You carry a gun, don't you. Yeah,
Speaker 1: well I've had you know, I have a lot of
Speaker 1: friends who are police officers. In fact, my ex husband
Speaker 1: is a police officer, and they've all advised me that
Speaker 1: I should have one, but I just can't bring myself
Speaker 1: to do it. Like I said, I grew up in Philly,
Speaker 1: and you know, you just pay attention to where you're
Speaker 1: going and what you're doing. Look, if anybody really wants
Speaker 1: to get you, they're going to get you. I can't finished.
Speaker 1: If we didn't call, we didn't call you. I'm sorry.
Speaker 1: We're gonna finish with you, sir. What do we know
Speaker 1: specifically about the relationship between Epstein and Clinton. Uh, he
Speaker 1: was absolutely on Epstein's plane. Uh you know there it's
Speaker 1: been documented that he's going where South Africa. Epstein donated
Speaker 1: some money to the Clinton Foundation. And during this time period,
Speaker 1: which was I think the early two thousand's, uh, you know,
Speaker 1: they were the AIDS epidemic was spreading in Africa, and
Speaker 1: there was you know a sort of a fact finding
Speaker 1: plane trip that Stein took trip Clinton on. Now he
Speaker 1: went on his plane more than that, though. We know
Speaker 1: that there was probably like twenty trips, and uh, you know,
Speaker 1: of course, a lot of people suspect that maybe he
Speaker 1: was involved in some way. He's denied that he was involved.
Speaker 1: And the one girl that we know was very much involved,
Speaker 1: underage girl Virginia Roberts, said that she never saw him
Speaker 1: with any come forward. That's correct, that's correct. Well, I
Speaker 1: was gonna say I could talk about sex trafficking all
Speaker 1: night long. I think I've had about enough of that
Speaker 1: subject for now, and around a time, I want to
Speaker 1: say that, you know, journalists who do the job you're
Speaker 1: doing our heroes, and I admire you very very much.
Speaker 1: That plays. I admire you, Tomnes though for what you've done. Uh.
Speaker 1: Thank you to my guest Julie Brown from the Miami Harold,
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 Dersha has
Speaker 1: heard that his name had come up, he wanted the
Speaker 1: opportunity to respond. Here is our conversation. Julie Brown denied
Speaker 1: your listeners the full truth about her reporting. UM she
Speaker 1: mentions to women who accused me of having sexual accounters
Speaker 1: with them, I never met these women. I don't know
Speaker 1: who they are. They totally came out of the blue.
Speaker 1: This is the only me too case that I'm aware
Speaker 1: of where there was no prior relationship, where there was
Speaker 1: no knowledge. These are just strangers who are falsely accusing me.
Speaker 1: These are both women who have long records of falsely
Speaker 1: accusing famous people. The first woman named Roberts, who Brown
Speaker 1: relies on for her reporting, had gotten a hundred sixty
Speaker 1: thou dollars from the Male in London for an article
Speaker 1: in which she remembers vividly meeting Al Gore and typical
Speaker 1: or on Jeffrey Epstey's island. They've never been on the island.
Speaker 1: Uh Secret Service and other records confirmed that she also
Speaker 1: remembers meeting Bill Clinton on the island. Secret Service records
Speaker 1: confirmed 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 of 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 it was a mistake. And yet
Speaker 1: your audience didn't hear anything about that. Um. The second
Speaker 1: woman went to the New York Post and claimed she
Speaker 1: had sex tapes of Hillary Clinton, of Donald Trump, of
Speaker 1: Richard Branson, and of Bill Clinton. And of course she
Speaker 1: was lying through her teeth, and the New York Post
Speaker 1: threw her out. The reporter's name is a marine Callahan.
Speaker 1: She'll confirm all of this. And yet um, they produced
Speaker 1: her as the second woman after I was threatened that
Speaker 1: if I didn't withdraw a bar charge against the first lawyer,
Speaker 1: they would find a second woman. Because two women are
Speaker 1: better than one, you know, people say when they smoke
Speaker 1: this fire. Sometimes when they smoked this arson. This is
Speaker 1: a case of arson. This is a case where two
Speaker 1: women for profit and they've earned an enormous amount of money,
Speaker 1: have falsely accused me to frame me. And I'm sinking
Speaker 1: an FBI investigation. I've asked for the FBI to investigate
Speaker 1: me along with these two women because they filed out
Speaker 1: to David's an eye file after David And how was
Speaker 1: that and how was that going? Is the FBI respon
Speaker 1: to your request? Well, we're waiting to hear obviously. I've
Speaker 1: also asked for any law firm in the country to
Speaker 1: conduct an independent investigation. I'm willing to show everything to
Speaker 1: everybody because i did nothing wrong. I've lived an exemplary
Speaker 1: private life or all the years that are relevant to
Speaker 1: this these inquiries and these women just made up these stories.
Speaker 1: And and and Brown wants to win the peel is surprised,
Speaker 1: but she didn't tell the public that the source she
Speaker 1: relied on, the major source, Virginia Roberts, is a proven
Speaker 1: perjura and a proven liar. I won't rest until Virginia
Speaker 1: Roberts goes to prison and the other woman goes to prison.
Speaker 1: False accusations are serious, whether it's the actor in Chicago
Speaker 1: Smollet who falsely accused people, or it's these women false
Speaker 1: accusations hurt me too. Movement very serious, and Julie Brown
Speaker 1: hasn't reported the other side of the story. Sure, she
Speaker 1: put into the story that I denied it. That's not enough.
Speaker 1: She the readers the obligation to say, I produced all
Speaker 1: my travel records. There was an FBI report, the judge
Speaker 1: struck everything. That's uh, that's true, and then nobody would
Speaker 1: believe these stories. It's pure advocacy. And if a lawyer
Speaker 1: ever behaved that way, that lawyer would be disbarked for
Speaker 1: failing to produce relevant evidence that shows that I was
Speaker 1: innocent when the women are claiming falsely that I'm guilty.
Speaker 1: So thank you for an opportunity to tell your listeners
Speaker 1: the whole truth. Well, I mean, I listen. I have
Speaker 1: tremendous in my own life public life. I've had my
Speaker 1: share of things that I felt were not reported accurately
Speaker 1: or not really very fair, and so I have tremendous
Speaker 1: empathy for that. I only have one question, which is
Speaker 1: that in the world we live, and of course this
Speaker 1: is the American way, which is to torpedo people's careers
Speaker 1: over sexual charges. America is particularly obsessed with the sexual
Speaker 1: clinton and so everything is in other countries. The differences
Speaker 1: they did it here, we have no right and I
Speaker 1: didn't do it. No, no, no, I'm not disputing them.
Speaker 1: I'm just leading up to something, which is that that
Speaker 1: in this country people are often doing this too, this
Speaker 1: as a form of character assassination and to nullify someone's
Speaker 1: career with these sex charges. Because in other countries this
Speaker 1: doesn't play that much. And I mean in other countries
Speaker 1: they don't care. In other countries these women would be
Speaker 1: put in prison. But 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 accusations against
Speaker 1: famous people. She claims to have had under age sex
Speaker 1: with the Prime Minister of Israel, with the majority leader
Speaker 1: of the United States Senate, the United States Ambassador to
Speaker 1: the United Nations, with the man who invented artificial intelligence.
Speaker 1: You name it. I mean, it's a pantheon of famous people.
Speaker 1: Professor Alan Dershowitz. Julie Brown is still working the Epstein story,
Speaker 1: reporting on the fallout, including one lawsuit that has the
Speaker 1: potential to overturn the Plea deal. I'm Alec Baldwin and
Speaker 1: you're listening to Here's the thing.