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00:00When the Epstein files hit, by then, colleagues here at Bloomberg News, a wonderful team that I
00:06was lucky enough to be a part of, got access to, you should really think of it as kind of
00:12a separate cache, the Yahoo inbox that Bloomberg News got access to through the work of some
00:18amazing colleagues of ours. And so by the time the so-called Epstein files hit, it was really
00:24actually in multiple steps, I think it was like in late December and then again in January around
00:29then, we had a general sense of maybe what we should be looking for, the things that we're
00:34all interested in. Different reporters on the team ended up kind of having like different
00:38things we're interested in, as any group of reporters, any group of people would. You
00:42know, you take the money, I'll take this, you know, celebrity, and on and on. So the boring,
00:48I mean, I hope this doesn't sound banal, but it's just you asked, so I'm going to give you
00:50the honest answer.
00:51I'm just curious.
00:52We were just putting in some words and then we'd read some emails. You know, for example,
00:56it's like if we knew one bank was involved, you type that in. And I would actually recommend
01:01viewers and listeners, the DOJ website, it can be buggy, but it's worth checking out.
01:07It's interesting.
01:07I've played around with it.
01:08One thing leads to another.
01:09Yeah.
01:10And so it just, I want to say that pretty organically, it came up that Epstein had an
01:16American Express and then you start digging and it's like, wait a minute, Epstein had a
01:19black card. And then it's like, you know, when you, when you include kind of additional
01:24users and it's like, okay, Epstein actually had multiple black cards. And then the big
01:28aha moment was, I want to, I want to introduce this idea properly. On the one hand, he and
01:35his office are using American Express to send women around the world, often Eastern European
01:40women. But I want to describe, I think the special thing that we found too, which is that
01:44they're arranging itineraries for trips that were obviously never meant to be taken, but
01:49that were for visa purposes to get visas for women. And we knew that because they were
01:53saying so in the emails.
01:54Which we should know American Express prohibits doing.
01:58Well, I want to, I want to read quickly in American Express spokesperson told us that
02:04American Express strongly condemns abuse, exploitation, and human trafficking. This person also said
02:08the company updates its processes and controls, and we take our legal and regulatory responsibility
02:13seriously, including reporting suspicious activity. But I think what you're referring to there
02:17is that the relationship manager over email says, hey, wait a minute, are you, are you,
02:23are you trying to get me to arrange this for visa purposes? Because that's against the
02:26rules. And then goes on, of course, to, to, to essentially do just that. And, and so what
02:31we were able to see in the files was on the one hand, a red line being drawn and then,
02:36and
02:36then a red line being, being crossed.
02:38There, there, there's a lot in here and a lot has to do with the relationship manager.
02:42You, you, uh, a woman named Natalia Malotkova. Yep. We don't know if she still works at American
02:49Express. No, but I think, I think one thing as, as for, for, for, at least for my takeaway
02:54from this is that it goes beyond just one person. It's clear just anyone who were to, to look it
03:01up.
03:01I mean, there are just a lot of emails between the main relationship manager and Epstein's office,
03:05but there are emails with other people. And there's even some of that visa funkiness that I
03:09described with someone else. I forget our exact tally, but I mean, I think there was
03:13more than a dozen other people from American Express who are helping Epstein's office.
03:17What does a relationship manager do for, for a typical Centurion cardholder?
03:21We were told that it can, that it can really vary. And on the one hand, apparently there's
03:24some very wealthy people who I guess already have a personal assistant, so they don't,
03:28they don't need them and they don't talk much. And then on the other end of the spectrum that
03:31we were told that, that a relationship manager, Centurion or Blackheart relationship manager
03:35can act almost as a kind of extension of a person's own office and act, for example,
03:40as a travel agent, or even in some cases as kind of a fixer. And you really see these problems
03:47being
03:47raised and problems being solved. I want to quickly give a shout out to one really interesting
03:51theme that came up from our reporting, which had to do with secrecy. There was, I hope people
03:56listening and watching go and read the actual story, but there's this moment, actually multiple
04:01moments where emails go out to too many people, more than just Epstein's longtime assistant.
04:08And the, the, the, the fury is palpable and they were, the, the messages are just in black and
04:14white. It's like, we need this to be confidential. Epstein is very upset. Do not send, I mean,
04:19these are essentially travel arrangements for, for, for women. Do not send them to anyone,
04:23but me. I'm not, I'm not reading that verbatim, but that's certainly directionally right.
04:26And I, it was helpful for me because as a reader, you know, and a journalist, Epstein is like
04:31this, he's almost like this abstract figure by now, you know, he's like almost the stuff
04:34of kind of myth, mythology, if you know what I mean. It was so helpful to see the actual
04:38emails from the office being like, this is a secret. We want to be secretive. Do not
04:44do this again.
04:45Listen, we talk about it in terms of the coverage that we do here at Bloomberg and elsewhere
04:49of just like, will we ever know the full picture? And we, you know, stories like this,
04:53you, you get an idea, just this idea, you, Tim, you and I were talking about this. It
04:57said Epstein was a card holder since 1977. At times he spent at a clip of more than a million
05:02dollars per year, likely generating tens of thousands of dollars of fees for American Express.
05:07He had that Centurion card at least from at least 2004, but it talks about, um, the daughter
05:15of his billionaire friends, Glenn and Eva Anderson Dubin, Glenn Dubin, right? She had a card,
05:21um, and spent, I don't know, had a $60,000 monthly limit. He had 11.2 million rewards. Like
05:29you and I, what we said is the money, like where is all this money again coming from?
05:35To quickly pick up on what you're talking about. I mean, it's, it's one of the blessings
05:38of being a journalist and it's also kind of one of the curses. Like we are not going to
05:42gather every puzzle piece. I'm sorry to say that's, that's my instinct. And one of the blessings
05:46has been working with a team. I'm thinking of Surya Matu and Eva Benny Morrison and Jason
05:50Leopold and Harry Wilson and, and lots of other reporters, Lauren Etter, uh, our editor
05:55on some of these stories, you know, we, we ended up writing about this, this, this large
05:59array of the people around Epstein, billionaires, lawyers, academics, investors, advisors, executives
06:07and, um, American Express. It was, it was, um, satisfying to like, I think maybe, maybe
06:12it was like a sort of, uh, just a small way of adding a small piece so that you can
06:16kind
06:16of understand the, the bigger picture. Yeah.
06:18Carol mentioned the authorized users for people who aren't familiar with, with how it works
06:22with, with credit cards. You can, you can essentially have add somebody, typically somebody
06:28would, it would be a family member, right? Like a partner to your account. What did you
06:32learn about how Epstein added people to his account? Like who are the others who, who had
06:36access?
06:36Yeah. Well, Epstein's inner circle is really, um, that, you know, we were talking about some
06:42of the mysteries. That's one of the mysteries to me, sort of like how, how the sort of the,
06:47the, the company, the business of being Jeffrey Epstein really worked. And I love, I want to
06:52give a shout out to the journalists, you know, beyond Bloomberg News who've been working to
06:55try to figure, figure that out. And there's, I want to mention someone really important
06:58named Leslie Groff. Um, Leslie Groff, whose lawyer I think previously has said that she
07:03just simply did not witness anything illegal. Uh, her attorney has said previously, but Leslie
07:07Groff is this long time assistant and you just see her, um, you know, authorized user
07:14barely, barely covers it as a phrase, just see her as an extension of, of his whims and
07:19his needs, uh, and his business that I, I don't want to exaggerate, but, but I, I'm
07:23going to say, I think there were thousands, thousands of emails between Groff and American
07:28Express. If not literally thousands directionally. Um, I think, I think it quite literally thousands
07:33of, of, of American Express files in the, in the DOJ files, but you just, you just get
07:37to see what it looks like when someone who was on the one hand rich and powerful and
07:44also had, had pled guilty to, to state sex crimes in, in, in Florida. Um, just, just how
07:50much, um, how much deference he got. And the, the, maybe one good takeaway from the story
07:55is, is that Epstein just, he just got so much help. He got such luxury help. And my, my wife
08:00is a public defender and, you know, I think more than a million people leave prison and jails
08:05in, in, in, in this country every year. And they often leave on, under very, very, very
08:09dire grim circumstances. Um, and, and we just got to see really, really in email by email
08:15Epstein receiving essentially the most luxuriant and exclusive help that money can buy in consumer
08:21capitalism here in America. Yeah. I, you know, you talk about Leslie Groff, this long time
08:26assistant to Jeffrey Epstein. And as you say, you know, she was often messaging this relationship
08:32manager. And that one time where you said that, I guess too much stuff went out and
08:37she's like, Jeffrey was livid because he's extremely private, does not want any flight
08:41confirmation sent to anyone but me. But like you said, you know, this, this story just
08:47helps kind of fill what the world was like, right. Around Jeffrey Epstein.
08:52That's one of the amazing things about emails. And I, you know, I think it's important for,
08:55for people who are spending a lot of time in, in, in the inbox and in the, in the DOJ
08:59files.
09:00Um, I can also give a shout to, to Jmail. That's one of the entities that's not at Bloomberg
09:03news, but it's just a way of kind of organizing Epstein's emails, um, in a sort of pseudo
09:07Gmail fashion. I think that it, it kind of demands a certain kind of, uh, like humility
09:12because you know, it would be so absurd to think you could read someone else's emails and
09:18understand them fully as a person because people are so enigmatic and, and, and, uh, complicated
09:22and the context isn't always there. Context isn't always there. How many times do we misread
09:26an email? Right. And you're like, that's exactly right. And it's very powerful to be
09:32able to see, you know, in capital letters, please help take all email addresses out of
09:37our account. Yeah. Just like you said, Jeffrey was living, does not want any flight confirmation
09:40sent to anyone but me. He's extremely private and that's not the full picture, but it's a
09:45piece of it. And it's, it's helpful to see.
09:47That's the other thing I will say, whether it's texts or emails you do, there's a, I think
09:50there's a comfort level that we've all gotten is, although we remind our kids, just remember
09:55anybody can like, you know, access this at some point, but you feel safe and you can
10:00kind of say anything, especially to people you're close to. And like you said, you get
10:05this window into people he was really close to and what his world was about.
10:10You get this, you get this window. And for us, you know, I think the, the window is like,
10:15maybe the way that I would put it to you, Carol, it's like, it's sort of like a means
10:17to an end that what the, for us here at Bloomberg News, you know, we're, we're
10:21trying to understand money and power and it's like these emails are, are almost
10:25like kind of a window and we're doing our best to look through it and to
10:28understand what we're seeing and, and to put it together as best we can.
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