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A newly released F.B.I. report shows that Donald Trump involved himself in the case against the convicted sex trafficker as early as 2006. The Miami Herald reporter Julie K. Brown discusses the revelations with David Remnick.
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00:00almost single-handedly responsible for thrusting this into the light, this terrible subject.
00:07What does it feel like to see this gigantic onslaught of files after all this time?
00:16Well, I wish I could say it was somewhat satisfying to finally see some truth in this,
00:23but the way that this is being handled right now by the administration is very chaotic.
00:28And, you know, it's very messy, and it's very hard to figure out what's what when half a document is redacted,
00:36when the recipients and the person that sent the document is redacted.
00:40So I think in some ways this raises more questions and makes the public more distrustful,
00:47because they weren't supposed to do this.
00:50This wasn't—it was supposed to be an act of transparency, and I don't see it as that, quite frankly.
00:56Would you say that the release of these documents is purposeful or chaotic on purpose or chaotic because of a chaotic administration?
01:10I think it's both.
01:11I actually think part of it was done on purpose, you know, because, you know, it's sort of like what this administration does,
01:21you know, distract, try to take people's minds off of things, to confuse.
01:26So I think part of it is purpose.
01:28But I also think from reading what I've read so far that it also has to be a reflection on the fact that
01:37the Justice Department has never really organized themselves well enough to figure out how to go about this investigation.
01:45It is so massive, and I think that it was just something that they just never got a handle on to begin with.
01:53How many documents are there?
01:55They're saying 6 million because they released 3 million, and they say that there's 2 to 3 million documents left.
02:02Now, remember, though, part of this is a lot of repetition.
02:06Sure.
02:06These documents you see multiple times.
02:09But, you know, the other interesting thing is we haven't seen any of Epstein's emails from around the time that he was buddies with Trump.
02:18So we can't get a handle.
02:20Not that Trump used emails, but that was when Trump was in his orbit, so to speak.
02:26So we're not getting any, you know, view of what was going on during that time period, which would have been like the early 2000s.
02:36What specifically have you been able to look at that surprises you in all the documents that have come your way?
02:44What have you found out?
02:46That this is a lot bigger, you know, and it spans the globe more so than I ever thought before.
02:53And I say this because, you know, even from my early reporting, I had spoken to investigators who looked into Epstein who said that he had recruiters, for example, and scouts in other countries to get Epstein women.
03:09We are now seeing from some of these emails that he had not just a couple scouts.
03:15I mean, he had scouts, it seems like, in almost every country.
03:19What does that mean?
03:20And he had people looking out for teenage girls to bring to the United States?
03:27Yes.
03:27And he had lawyers, by the way, who did their – he hired lawyers that did their visas to get them over here, work permits.
03:36I mean, he used his modeling agency as a way – as a, you know, a way to get them over here.
03:43But it was clear they definitely were not just here to do modeling.
03:48You know, in my original reporting, I reported that there was a bookkeeper for that modeling agency who did a deposition.
03:55And she said that that was not what this was about, that there were these so-called parties and events that were held that they would send models to.
04:07But they – it was essentially to have sex.
04:10It was sending them there to have sex.
04:12You're publishing a story that has implications for the president of the United States where the Epstein case is concerned.
04:18What does it say?
04:19We have found a document in these files that is an interview that the police chief of Palm Beach gave to the FBI.
04:30And in that interview, the police chief, Michael Ryder, told the FBI that back when Epstein's case was first came to the attention of the police and Epstein was first reported as a suspect in doing this.
04:46Around 2006, around that time period, Trump called the police chief, and he said to the police chief, thank God you're doing something about him because – and I'm just quoting off the top of my head.
04:59I don't have the document in front of me, but he said, thank God everybody knew.
05:05He also, by the way, told the chief that Maxwell was involved and that she was quote-unquote evil.
05:12So he also knew about Maxwell's role.
05:16You know, we have this FBI report of this interview that the chief gave to the FBI where he is recalling this conversation that he had with Trump many, many years ago about Epstein.
05:28So it does raise some questions about, you know, how much Trump knew, you know, whether he knew the extent of Epstein's crimes.
05:38Just hang on for a second. So in 2006, Donald Trump has what kind of communication with the police chief?
05:45He called the police chief on the phone.
05:48And there's paper on that?
05:49There is. There's a report. There's an FBI report. It's an interview that the police chief gave to the FBI in 2020.
05:57So what does that suggest to you about Trump, that he was doing the right thing or that he was complicit in some way?
06:03You know, I think people are going to look at it one of two ways.
06:06A, that he, you know, was somewhat of an informant for the police in that he called them after this case, you know, became active and he became aware of it.
06:17And, you know, admitted, wait a minute, you know, I know he was doing this.
06:24Or you could look at it another way in that he was also one of those people that knew and really didn't go to the police before then to tell them what he was doing.
06:34Because the police were sort of hearing that there were things happening at Epstein's mansion well before this.
06:42But every time they went to investigate, all the women that were coming and going that they saw on the street and stopped were of age.
06:50So they couldn't find any evidence that a real crime was being committed.
06:56But if, in fact, Trump knew that there was some crimes being committed against underage girls and he knew about it and didn't tell them ahead of time, I guess people will look at that from a different vantage point in that he should have told the police sooner.
07:14So this is after he was arrested.
07:17That's right. That's right.
07:19So your sources are not just law enforcement.
07:23You've talked to a lot of survivors.
07:27How are they reacting to these documents?
07:31Well, they're disturbed and very upset because their names are still in there.
07:38I mean, the FBI only had one job here, and that was to take out the victims' names.
07:43And their names are sprinkled throughout these documents.
07:46So they're quite irate about the fact that, you know, they have so many redactions of people, other people, but yet many of the victims' names are still in these public documents.
07:59What are the stakes for Donald Trump?
08:01Trump says he wants the country to move on from this story.
08:04But as you report, Trump is on an FBI list of people suspected of possible wrongdoing in connection with Epstein.
08:11The DOJ says that there is no credible evidence to pursue.
08:17So where are we?
08:19Well, I think that they should pursue everybody.
08:23And I think that's all the victims want.
08:26They want a credible investigation.
08:30Talk about credible tips or credible allegations.
08:34They want a credible investigation.
08:36And they're not seeing it, and quite frankly, thus far, I haven't seen it because you can say that someone's not credible, but there has to be some kind of notes.
08:46There has to be a report.
08:48There has to be some evidence that they went and talked to these people.
08:51Or if they couldn't talk to them, why?
08:53And we're not seeing that.
08:55And I think that's part of the problem here.
08:57The government can say all they want.
08:59There's no credible evidence, nothing to see here, nothing more to investigate.
09:04But this case from the beginning has been, you know, a thorn in the Justice Department's side because the public doesn't trust that they did what they were supposed to do, that the government, that the investigators were thorough.
09:19One of the people in Donald Trump's orbit in his cabinet that comes up a lot, a lot in the new documents is the Commerce Secretary, Howard Lutnick.
09:32Tell me about that.
09:34He was an ex-door neighbor to, as I understand it, to Epstein in New York.
09:40And it sounds like he had been invited with his wife to Epstein's mansion.
09:46He mentioned in an interview that he felt creepy when he got into the mansion.
09:52I don't know if you've seen photographs of his mansion, but there are some creepy aspects to it.
09:57Photographs on the wall, paintings, eyeballs, just very weird things in his house.
10:03So he said, you know, after he had that brief tour, he felt, you know, like, this is horrible.
10:10I never want to, you know, do anything again.
10:13You know, I'm not ever going, I don't want anything to do with this man again.
10:16And he said this publicly, and then we found documents in these files that showed that not only did he continue to communicate with him after this allegedly happened,
10:26but he even, you know, got an invite to the island and took his family to Epstein's island.
10:31And so, you know, you have to wonder, you know, why he would.
10:38This is where I have to stop.
10:39You have no reason of knowing the answer, but I have to bring it up.
10:42What's, why would you bring your family to Epstein's island?
10:46There are a lot of islands in the Caribbean and elsewhere.
10:50You can take your family anywhere on vacation when you have the money that Howard Lutnick has.
10:55Yeah.
10:56Why would you bring your children there?
11:01I can't answer it.
11:03There were plenty of other people in that category, too, that brought their families there.
11:07So, yeah.
11:09Not exactly Disneyland.
11:11No, I can't really answer that question.
11:14Julie, I want to play you a clip of Congressman Ted Lieu, who comes from Southern California, speaking on February 3rd.
11:22Why are Republicans so interested in Bill and Hillary Clinton?
11:27It's because they're trying to distract from the fact that Donald Trump is in the Epstein files thousands and thousands of times.
11:35In those files, there's highly disturbing allegations of Donald Trump raping children, of Donald Trump threatening to kill children.
11:45Wait, now, there's a lot to unpack here.
11:55Let's start with Congressman Lieu mentioning allegations of Donald Trump raping and threatening to kill children.
12:03What is he talking about?
12:05Well, there's, you know, when they arrested Epstein in 2019, they put out in, you know, on sort of a big call, the prosecutor did.
12:18And they needed, they wanted more victims to come forward, so they put out this, like, 800-number tip line that you can call from the FBI.
12:28So, the FBI got, I want to say, like, hundreds of tips.
12:33And there were a couple that mentioned Trump.
12:36Now, some of them were a little bizarre that you would sort of think, no way, you know, eating, I don't know, babies.
12:44Or there's some strange ones in there that you could see were just crazy.
12:49Who's saying these things?
12:50Who's making these accusations?
12:51Well, these are people that call the tip line.
12:53Like, I have a tip on Jeffrey Epstein and Donald Trump.
12:57So, it could be any malicious lunatic out there.
13:00Let's be very clear.
13:01It could be.
13:01But, you know, my point in this is, you know, there was one I know that involved a 13-year-old girl where they said that she was giving Trump oral sex, and she bit him, and he slapped her.
13:20This is one of the tips that came in.
13:22And what the FBI and the Justice Department is saying, this tip list, by the way, we think that it was, they didn't mean for it to be put out there in this tranche of documents.
13:37My point isn't whether it should have been made public or not.
13:40My point is that we can't see whether they followed up on all these tips.
13:46And certainly, they should have followed up on the ones, you know, that, you know, that had names attached to them.
13:55One of the most shocking revelations in this document dump was how many prominent people continue to engage with Epstein after, after he was registered as a sex offender.
14:08I'm not asking you as a psychologist or a sociologist.
14:12How do you explain that?
14:13And what was known to the general public about his crimes at the time?
14:18Well, that's really a good question because you have to sort of break it down.
14:23You have to remember that when he was in Florida and he served that year, 13 months in jail, he had pled guilty to essentially what was a prostitution with a minor charge, okay?
14:37And when he came out of jail, he really mounted a PR campaign, hired, you know, a lot of people that can help him with his image to point out that this was—
14:50Like Peggy Siegel, the PR person.
14:52Yeah, to point out—and he did press release.
14:55We could see it on the—in, you know, in the history that he was doing all these—donating tons of money to all these causes and trying to just, you know, improve his image.
15:07And when you think about it, if all you knew at the time, oh, well, he—this is the charge on paper was that he solicited a minor for prostitution.
15:20That's what the charge was.
15:21But as the years wore on by, like, 2010, 2011, there were underage girls who filed civil lawsuits against him, and there was a huge lawsuit that was filed against the United States government for giving him this plea deal, which, by the way, they kept secret for a whole year until he got out of jail.
15:42And that was by design, because they did not want the victims to know that they did this deal, because they knew the victims would protest.
15:52And then the judge would say, well, wait a minute, I've got, you know, 25 victims in court here that are protesting this.
15:59I'm not going to approve this plea deal.
16:01So it was done the way it was.
16:04His lawyers were pretty brilliant and figured out a way to make it look like he hadn't really committed a series of crime.
16:11They limited the scope of his crimes.
16:14Julie, when you inevitably punched your own name into the search engine of these files, what did you discover?
16:23Well, just like everything Epstein, in Epstein's, you know, in his mind, he wants to control the narrative.
16:36And he wanted to meet with me after my series ran.
16:40Did he reach out to you personally?
16:43No.
16:44So he never did try to meet with you?
16:46He was advised that it probably wasn't a good idea, his idea of doing that.
16:51Yeah.
16:52And followed it.
16:53Yeah.
16:54I guess.
16:55You know, I have to confess, of course, I punched my name in there and thinking it would come up zero.
17:01And there it was multiple times.
17:03It was just articles that people had sent him writing about Russia, whatever it was.
17:06And then there was, at one point, my name appears on a long list assembled by a PR person of people you might invite to some sort of social event with, you know, 200 other people.
17:15I never got such an invitation.
17:17I'm not worried about it.
17:18But it was a bit startling.
17:20Yeah.
17:20To see that.
17:22Yeah.
17:23And I wonder if you think that there are people who are more implicated, who might have, you know, stupidly gone to a dinner and then never seen him again, who are somehow implicated, injured by this process.
17:38What do you think about that?
17:39Yes, I definitely think that there are probably some people in that category that made a bad decision to go to an event where he was, you know, a prominent guest or one of his dinners, you know, at his own mansion.
17:56And they went because somebody invited them and told them, for example, the prince was going to be there.
18:03And so I do think, but I also think that those people that are in that category aren't mentioned repeatedly in these files.
18:14Yeah, hundreds of times, yeah.
18:15Yeah, hundreds of times.
18:17It's different if you just see one person you knew had dinner with in one time and you don't see anything else in there.
18:23Well, let me ask you this.
18:24What did the Biden administration do about all this?
18:27Why did the Biden administration sit on these documents?
18:30They had access to these files too, didn't they?
18:33They, definitely, and one would hope that they would have, you know, really pressed and continued this investigation.
18:42We don't know that they didn't.
18:43We don't know that they weren't still investigating some of this.
18:47It's just not clear from the files whether they did or they didn't.
18:51And the other thing to remember is they did convict Maxwell and she did appeal that conviction.
18:59So technically the case was still an open case.
19:02So you usually don't open your files when you still are investigating or litigating, you know, a conviction.
19:11So in some sense that's, you know, one excuse I guess they could use.
19:17But I do think that, you know, the Justice Department failed these survivors through almost every presidential administration that we've had.
19:25I mean, this should have been investigated throughout this time.
19:30And now what's really horrible about it is, as you know, when a crime is committed, especially against young people, children, you know, as they get older, their memories fade.
19:42The evidence isn't as readily available.
19:45You know, the diary that maybe these girls kept when they were 16 about this probably they don't have anymore.
19:53So had the prosecutors done their job back in 2007, there would have not only been far less victims here, but he could have gone to prison and we wouldn't even have this happening right now.
20:09You know, you know, we wouldn't even be talking about him.
20:11What were Epstein's politics and do they matter?
20:19Let me tell you why I don't think it matters.
20:22Sexual assault doesn't discriminate based on political party.
20:26There were bad people on all sides here.
20:28There was not one party or the other.
20:30And it kind of frustrates me sometimes when people try to make this into a Republican versus Democrat issue because it had nothing to do with that.
20:40It had to do with power and money and sex.
20:43And it really didn't matter what your political party was.
20:48There were people, you know, as I said, on both sides here who who were implicated or have been implicated.
20:56But what were his politics?
20:57I just just incidentally.
20:58I'm sorry.
20:58He was more of a Democrat.
21:00He he he donated to both Republicans and Democrats, but he clearly was more aligned with the Democrats.
21:10When you look at the array of people who spent time with Epstein.
21:14Who among the the high and the mighty do you come out shocked at how they behaved?
21:20Look at Bill Gates's behavior, for example.
21:22I don't know the guy.
21:23I've interviewed him on this program.
21:24But he's been in our lives in one way or another for a very long time.
21:29And I was appalled, although I should say that Gates denies the behavior that's mentioned in the files.
21:35Yeah.
21:36Who's in that list for you?
21:37I you know, he's definitely one of the people I think everybody was a little surprised at.
21:44But I wasn't a little surprised.
21:45I was a lot more than that.
21:47Well, you know what, I've been doing this for so long, and I just know from covering especially sexual assault cases, a lot of men act completely different.
21:59You wouldn't even know them when they're among their, you know, their buddies, you know, just talking about women.
22:05And so in some ways, there really hasn't been a whole lot that has been surprising to me.
22:10Like I said, Gates is sort of this guy that that seems like a, you know, a little bit of a geek, quite frankly.
22:17So you wouldn't.
22:18But you know what?
22:18A lot of these men were older men, too.
22:21So it's almost like maybe a club of people that don't normally get the girls, so to speak.
22:28And maybe that's why.
22:29Despite all their wealth and power, they needed Epstein in some way to do what for them?
22:34To hook them up with children.
22:37Yes.
22:38Yes.
22:38Or young women.
22:40But it was done.
22:42It's important to understand.
22:43And this wasn't Epstein going to these women and girls and saying, I'm going to pay you $200 if you go have sex, if you have sex with me, or if you have sex with, you know, so-and-so.
22:56Yeah.
22:56That's not what he did.
22:58He used fraudulent means, which is one of the elements of sex trafficking.
23:03In other words, he said, I want to hire you as my assistant, and I'm going to pay you $100,000 a year.
23:10Or, I want to send you to college.
23:14Or, you're a great artist, or a ballerina, or a model.
23:18I know I can get you in the Victoria's Secret catalog.
23:22That's how he got these women trapped.
23:25And that's how he did it.
23:28He did not—and then they got kind of enamored with him because he acted sort of like this father figure.
23:36And I'm going to change your life, and, you know, you can do this, that.
23:40There's tons of emails between him and women in these tranches that show him talking to these women that he wants to sort of snare.
23:50And then there's other emails that are clearly after he already had his way with them or they got too old for him where he's saying, well, I don't know what you want me to do about it.
24:01You know, this was your choice.
24:02There are these—this trajectory that you could see with some of these women that at first he kind of gets them under his wing and then makes them believe that he's going to change their lives or that, you know, some of them fell in love with him.
24:16And then you could see in later emails where he's essentially just discarding them.
24:22So let's talk about conspiracies.
24:26QAnon, for a long time, has been full of crazy, lurid imagery about, God knows, human sacrifice and watching the grotesqueness of Epstein's world laid out in these documents, one after the other.
24:42How do you—how do you—again, this is not crediting QAnon with truth-telling, but I have to think that it fuels conspiracy thinking because, in fact, in fact, the Epstein world was full of it.
25:01Yeah, and, you know, and I'll point out another part of this that isn't talked about much, but some of the victims here were really damaged.
25:14I mean, he didn't go after—you know, he wouldn't have been able to go after someone who, you know, had a lot of confidence and had a real life.
25:24If he—he, you know, that had a future, he purposely targeted vulnerable girls who came from nothing, you know, or they were even homeless or in foster care, for example.
25:38And the damage that he did to some of these girls, you know, affected them the rest of their lives.
25:48And there are some of—some of it is victims, like you mentioned, those tips that we saw, that come from people who have been really traumatized.
26:01And that's why I'm saying I don't think you can discount all those crazy tips because I have found that some of the women that had those crazy aspects to their stories,
26:14there was still some shred of truth to what they were saying.
26:18It's just that they were so traumatized.
26:20And this is common, by the way.
26:22I've talked to FBI specialists who interview especially children who have been traumatized.
26:29Your brain is almost damaged when something like this happens to you as a child.
26:34One of the theories that was going around a lot, as you know, Julie, was the idea that somehow that Epstein was not only trying to enrich himself all the time
26:45and also have lots of girls, underage and otherwise, around him for the obvious purpose,
26:52but that he was working for some sort of foreign intelligence agency.
26:58That's—I assume you're discounting that.
27:01This is how I look at that.
27:02I don't think it's impossible, but I haven't seen any evidence that shows that he worked as an employed by the CIA or Mossad or any other government.
27:14But I do think that he, like everything else that he did, he used his contacts in all these places, in Israel, in Russia, in London, wherever.
27:28He had a connection.
27:30He used that as currency in order to enrich himself, to make money in some way.
27:36Is there any evidence that you credit that he did not commit suicide in jail?
27:43Well, I don't think he committed suicide.
27:46You don't?
27:46No, I absolutely do not think he committed suicide.
27:50You're making a supposition.
27:51You don't have evidence that this was the case.
27:55Well, what's evidence?
27:56Evidence that, you know, that the guards lied on their reports and never reported.
28:02They reported they made checks on him, and he didn't.
28:06Is it that all the cameras didn't work, you know?
28:10Is it that, you know, by the way, they didn't take pictures of the scene?
28:14They never treated it like a crime scene.
28:18They'd never recovered the so-called noose that, you know, the piece of fabric that he allegedly used.
28:25They don't even know which one it was.
28:27They, the fact that if he broke three bones in his neck, which is with a lot of force, this man was a very frail man at the end.
28:36Even if he was to do that by tying himself to his bunk, the bunk, the top bunk, when every single item on that top bunk was undisturbed.
28:48If you're pulling on a bunk with enough force to break three bones in your neck, wouldn't you think that the items would have been sort of toppled?
28:57I mean, I could just go on and on.
28:59The reports are very odd.
29:01And he allegedly tried to commit suicide before this, a couple weeks before this.
29:07But when he went in to tell them what had happened, when they found him on the floor, the first thing he said is,
29:14my roommate did it to me.
29:16He tried to kill me.
29:18And that he had been threatening me for weeks.
29:20His roommate, why would you even, his cellmate, why would you even put a former ex-cop who has, was in jail for killing four people?
29:30That was the cellmate that you picked for Jeffrey Epstein?
29:35I mean, it, too many things don't make any sense.
29:39Epstein said he tried to kill him and then he sort of changed his story and said, I don't remember.
29:44But he never, Epstein never said he tried to commit suicide.
29:47He only said that he thought that this, his cellmate had tried to kill him.
29:53Julie, if you had had the opportunity to interview him in prison, what would you ask him?
29:58What would you want to know?
29:58I think that I would have asked him about, you know, in my view, I don't, I think he, he believed he was above the law.
30:11And I think I would have tried to, to get at that and why he thought he was above the law.
30:17Who are these people that you associated with?
30:20Did anybody lead you to believe this?
30:23What did, you know, who knows?
30:24He would have said, you know, everybody has a price, you know, or, you know, I was smart because I got the right people in my corner.
30:32And I think I would have tried to sort of get him to admit that there were other people that were in this to help him get away with these crimes, that it wasn't just, you know, an act of nature that, you know, they decided not to go after him.
30:49Julie, you've been on this story for, for years.
30:52You've spent a lot of time with people who've been harmed terribly by Epstein.
30:58You've, you've been immersed in this and it's very hard to explain to civilians what being immersed in a story for year after year can be like, especially something this ugly.
31:09What mark has it left on your life?
31:13You have to be a little driven to do this kind of work and to keep, you know, to keep hammering at it.
31:20I've hammered at it.
31:21It wasn't just the first story.
31:22I mean, I've hammered at it all this time.
31:25And I think really, to be honest with you, it's the victims and with almost anything that I've done.
31:32You know, when I covered prisons, I remember some of those inmates who were tortured.
31:35And so with this story, I think about the victims all the time.
31:41And I think, you know, I just think what, you know, as if they were, you know, a friend of mine or, or a daughter, if it was my daughter, you know, I just feel like, you know, they can't all be lying.
31:55You know, this, this happened.
31:57And I just feel driven by the fact that people have covered it up.
32:02They've covered it up.
32:03And I think that I'm going to keep working on it because until we find out why they're covering it up or who is covering it up.
32:11Julie Brown, thank you.
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