There is no shorter route to power than through the genitals of male leaders. This principle guided the Lolita Gambit, played by the Mossad through its "Agent" Jeffrey Epstein
Trump Drops GHISLAINE MAXWELL PARDON BOMB Occupy Democrats and The Michael Fanone Show Oct 6, 2025
Donald Trump jut left CNN Kaitlan Collins STUNNED with an Ghislaine Maxwell bombshell! This is not normal, folks…
Transcript
We have even more breaking news at this hour. Donald Trump just dropped a major Epstein scandal bombshell and frankly a baffling one. Strap in, folks. This one requires pearls. Welcome back to Occupied Democrats. I'm David Reddish. With the government shut down due to a budget impass, see our other videos for more on that mess. With the shutdown taking center stage, other major stories have found themselves taking a back seat. That includes the ongoing saga of the Epstein files, which has anyone considered might actually be the reason House Speaker Mike Tiny Johnson wants the government shutdown. When the House comes back, they actually will have enough votes to support that Epstein discharge petition that we've been talking about a long long time before the shutdown took place. They now likely have enough votes to do that because there is a new Democrat that is set to be sworn in next time Congress comes back. And for what it's worth, this isn't the first time Johnson has sent Congress home to avoid a vote on releasing the Epstein files. And no doubt this new bit of news will have him hiding in a closet somewhere, which is part for the course. Stay with me. And on that subject, as well as that of another overlooked political development, the reconvening of the Supreme Court, the Epstein saga has taken a new twist. More breaking news this morning. The Supreme Court rejecting a bid to hear Galain Maxwell's appeal. Maxwell argues she was unjustly prosecuted for her role helping Jeffrey Epstein recruit and groom girls as young as 14. In 2022, she was sentenced to 20 years behind bars for sex trafficking. And joining us now is Eric Budali, who represents several Epstein accusers. Also with us, former US attorney and MSNBC legal analyst Barbara McQuade. Eric, first, your reaction to this big development. Well, it's fantastic news. I mean, this is absolutely the right decision. What Miss Maxwell's team tried to do is they tried really to turn one of the great travesties of injustice when it comes to child sex trafficking, the nonprosecution agreement by Alex Acasta, uh, to allow Jeffrey Epstein to continue to abuse for another decade. They tried to use that to say now you also can't prosecute Miss Maxwell because technically she would have been included as a co-conspirator and that would apply to the United the entire United States even though it very clearly only applied to Florida. So that's what she tried to do. Uh and thankfully the Supreme Court did not buy it just like every court did not buy it. It was a real Hail Mary argument and on behalf of the victims were very pleased. I hope this is the last we hear of Ghislaine Maxwell unless of course the news is that she's being transferred back to a more maximum security prison. Have you heard at all from any of your clients at this point in reaction to this? Certainly. Yeah, they're, you know, they're relieved. You know, everything that every time they have to hear Miss Maxwell's name, remember, she was given this platform by the DOJ to just deny and tell her side of the story, which was nonsense. She got to be moved to this minimum security uh resort. Uh we're really sick of this this the Ghislaine Maxwell special treatment. Really sick of her getting a platform and really sick of her being in the news. She doesn't deserve to be in the news. She deserves to be behind bars where child se sex sex traffickers belong. So, yes, Ghislaine Maxwell's attempt at appealing her conviction to the high court has been shot down, which may yet give her leverage should she suddenly recall certain details of her years with Epstein. Imagine what would happen if she could get a deal in exchange for damning testimony against one of Epstein's closest friends, like Donald Trump. Obviously, if you're a frequent viewer of our channel, and subscribe if you haven't, you know that the subject of Epstein and Ms. Maxwell is one that haunts the taco president. And now it looks like he's faced with a new dilemma in the matter. Following the announcement by the Supreme Court that it would not hear Maxwell's appeal, reporters confronted a rather lackadaisical Trump in the Oval Office and he gave a very strange answer to their question. Take a look.
Yeah, please.
Mr. President, the Supreme Court is back, and they rejected today an appeal by Ghislaine Maxwell to overturn her conviction. That means her only chance of getting out of prison is a pardon from you. Is that something you're --
Who are we talking about?
Ghislaine Maxwell.
You know, I haven't heard the name in so long. I can say this, that I'd have to take a look at it. I would have to take a look. Did they reject that?
She wanted to appeal her conviction. They said that they were not going to hear her appeal.
I see. Well, I'll take a look at it. I'll speak to the DOJ. I wouldn't consider it or not consider. I don't know anything about it. But I'll speak to the DOJ.
Would she be a candidate for ____, sir?
I don't know. I mean, I'd have to speak to the DOJ. I'll look at it. I have a lot of people who have asked me for pardons. I call him Puff Daddy, has asked me for a pardon.
But she was convicted of child sex trafficking.
Yeah. I mean, I'm going to have to take a look at it. I have to ask DOJ. I didn't know they rejected it. I didn't know she was even asking for it, frankly.
So, something is wrong here. First, can we all note that Trump even considering a pardon for a convicted sex trafficker is insane, especially one as firmly convicted as Galileain Maxwell. This isn't the first time he's floated a pardon for her either. Again, check out our other videos. But is it just me here, or does Trump seem like he's kind of sick? His energy level is low. He looks weird. He doesn't seem to quite understand the question. He also seems to have trouble even remembering who Maxwell is. Something's not right. He's not okay. And considering how he dropped out of public view late last week and over the weekend, that raises even more questions about the state of his health. And if Trump wants to take a look at Ms. Maxwell and a potential pardon, why don't we all do it together as a nation? A big family meeting. Release the Epstein files. It's time we all knew the truth.
Epstein BOMBSHELL Leaves Pam Bondi SPEECHLESS. injoyandecstasy Oct 7, 2025 THÀNH PHỐ NEW YORK
In today’s video, I’ll be analyzing, criticizing, and commenting on the shocking moment when Pam Bondi was left completely speechless after a major Epstein bombshell was revealed. This is one of those rare moments when a prominent political and media figure like Pam Bondi was caught off guard and had no response.
I’ll break down the background of the Epstein case, the hidden details, and why Pam Bondi’s stunned reaction has everyone talking. We’ll also examine interview clips, social media reactions, and the potential political impact this moment could have.
Transcript
Seven months ago, Donald Trump's handpicked Attorney General, Pam Bondi, went on to Fox News and made perhaps the largest admission or error of this administration yet by saying, "The Epstein files are sitting on my desk right here." Now, over the past few months, that has respsparked the Epstein controversy, placing Donald Trump and his administration's cover up directly at the center. Yesterday, Donald Trump then said in the Oval Office, "Guilain Maxwell. I haven't heard that name in so long." Pretending like he barely even could recall who that was when we have clips of him two months ago being asked about Gilain Maxwell. So, Pam Bonnie went in front of the Senate Judiciary Committee today and got grilled on Epstein, which we'll get to. She got grilled on the military mobilization into Chicago, Portland, and other cities. and her overall lack of competence as it pertains to this job. She even announces that Cash Patel is currently headed to Chicago, the city that I record and produce and live in. Cash Patel is coming here. What is he going to do? He's going to make matters even worse because he is opposer. Let's start with this clip of Attorney General Pam Bondi being called out by Senator Dick Durban of the great state of Illinois. He asks if the White House has been coordinating with her and when she personally attacks him, he says, "This is exactly what MAGA does. They just attack me." Chairman, uh, Madam Attorney General, let me ask you this question. Were you consulted by the White House before they deployed uh, National Guard troops to cities in the United States? I am not going to discuss any internal conversations with the White House. You won't even say whether you talk to the White House about this. I am not going to discuss any internal conversations with the White House with you chair um ranking member. I noticed that. What's the secret? Why do you want to keep this secret to the American people don't know the rationale behind the deployment of National Guard troops in my state? The word is and I think it's been confirmed by the White House. They are going to transfer Texas National Guard units to the state of Illinois. What What's the rationale for that? Yeah, chairman. as you shut down the government. You voted to shut down the government and you're sitting here. Our law enforcement officers aren't being paid. They're out there working to protect you. I wish you love Chicago as much as you hate President Trump. And currently, the National Guard are on the way to Chicago. If you're not going to protect your citizens, President Trump will been on this committee for more than 20 years. That's the kind of testimony you expect from this administration. A simple question as to whether or not they had a legal rationale for deploying National Guard troops becomes grounds for a personal attack. I think it's a legitimate question. It's my responsibility. She refuses to answer as to whether she had any conversation with the White House about deploying national troops to my state. That's an indication, I'm afraid, where we are politically in this place. She got cooked right there. And here's the thing. When she is reading those personal attacks against Senator Durban, she's reading them. Look it. She's looking down and reading personal attacks that she had pre-written. I wish you love Chicago as much as you hate President Trump. She literally looked down and read that, meaning that she pre-wrote that, meaning that she went in there ready and equipped with insults. And that's the point that Senator Dick Durban makes. Honestly, he probably had his points ready, too, because Pam Bondi is so predictable. He knew she was going to fling insults immediately. In this clip, you see Senator White House, a part of the Senate Judiciary Committee, asking Pam Bondi about the Epstein files, and she refuses to answer whether or not there are photos of Donald Trump and underage girls. Watch. Let me ask you something else. There's been public reporting that Jeffrey Epstein showed people photos of President Trump with half naked young women. Do you know if the FBI found those photographs in their search of Jeffrey Epstein safe or premises or otherwise? Have you seen any such thing? You know, Senator White House, you sit here and make salacious remarks once again trying to slander President Trump left and right when you're the one who was taking money from one of Epstein's closest confidence, I believe. I could be wrong. Correct me. Reed Hoffman, who was with Jeffrey Epstein on multiple occasions, and the senator sitting right next to you, tried to block the flight logs from being released. Yeah, you're grilling me on President Trump and some photograph with Epstein. Come on, good question. Ooh, some photograph with Epstein. Is she admitting that the photograph exists here? I Okay, so a few things. First of all, she immediately launches into the same thing that Senator Dick Durban called her out for. She attacks Senator White House for asking a simple question. You can just deny the existence of the photo. Just deny it. Say, "No, it doesn't." Say, "What are you talking about? This doesn't exist." Instead, she's like, "Why are you grilling me about this photo?" Seems like she's getting real squirmy. And the idea that she wants to flip Epstein attacks against any Democrat. You have no moral high ground. the president of the United States, you by extension, Cash Patel by extension, Dan Banino, I can keep going. You guys are all covering up pedophilia at the very least. At the very most, Donald Trump and his little handwritten notes to Jeffrey Epstein himself are indications of something deeper. question is, did the FBI find those photographs that have been discussed publicly by a witness who claimed Jeffrey Epstein showed them to him? You don't know anything about that? Okay. Um, she's stunned. She Wait, she's stunned into silence right there. Listen, those photographs that have been discussed publicly by a witness who claimed Jeffrey Epstein showed them to him. You don't know anything about that. Okay. Um, just silent silence about Epstein. Not a good look. And then Pam Bondi continues to get grilled on Epstein. Rightfully so. She's asked who was given the order to flag Trump's names in these files or these lists, whatever you want to call them. There are documents and Trump's name was flagged by the FBI. The FBI sat Trump down and said, "Hey, your name is all throughout these files." And then someone must have told Elon Musk during his government tenure because a lot of this was resp-sparked. If you remember, the catal catalyst was Elon Musk tweeting out Trump is in the Epstein files. But let's continue. quarrel with you is to read somebody that you mentioned I never heard of. Reed Hoffman. So who gave the order to flag records related to President Trump? To flag records for President Trump to flag any records which included his name. I'm not going to discuss anything about that with you, Senator. Eventually you're going to have to answer for your conduct in this and you won't do it today, but eventually you will. I yield, Mr. Chairman. Yep. She refuses to answer. In this next clip, Pam Bondi then talks about the National Guard being sent to Chicago. And I will work with you, but you have not done that. Did you take a look? The National Guard is on the way right now as we speak. Oh, by the way, so is Director Patel and Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanch. You're sitting here grilling me and they are on their way to Chicago to keep your state safe. Madam Attorney General, it's my job to grill you. investigation of your agency is part of my responsibility and this this uh committee. You may not like the experience, but others have weathered the storm and answered questions in a respectful manner. Can you tell me the grants ranking member? Please take a look at the president's budget on high grants. What happens to it in his proposed budget? I'd be glad to meet with you on the grants. It's cut by onethird. One more clip of Attorney General Pam Bondi getting grilled on Tom Hman's $50,000 bribe. Senator as Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanch recently stated the investigation of Mr. Hman was subjected to a full review by the FBI agents and DOJ prosecutors. They found no credible evidence of any wrongdoing. And that was not my question. My question was, what became of the $50,000 in cash that the FBI delivered evidently in a paper bag to Mr. Hman? Senator, I'd look at your facts. Are you saying that they did not deliver $50,000 in cash to Mr. Hman? Senator, as recently stated, the investigation of Mr. Holman was subjected to a full review by FBI agents. That's a different question. Department of Justice prosecutors, they found no evidence of wrongdoing. That's a different question. What became of the $50,000? Did the FBI get it back? Mr. White House, excuse me, Senator White House, you're welcome to talk to the FBI. The report to you. Can't you answer this question? Senator White House, you're welcome to discuss this with Director Patel. Did Hman keep the $50,000? As Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanch recently stated, the investigation of Mr. It's like talking to a brick wall. There is no way to do this whatsoever. And you know, Pam Bondi is starting to look increasingly bad here. This has been going on for 2 to three hours at this point. And this tweet reads, "Pam Bondi comes across as an effing lunatic here. Keeps interrupting to demand everyone bow down to Trump. Embarrassing. Let me show you this clip of Senator Adam Schiff getting Bondi so flustered that she just starts blurting things out." Watch. You were asked whether you were firing career professionals, career prosecutors just because they worked on January 6 question, January 6th investigations. You refused to answer that question. You were asked by my California colleague whether you believe government officials like immigration officials have to abide by court orders. You wouldn't even answer that question. This is supposed to be an oversight hearing. Oversight. These Excuse me. You can attack me after my time is over. He's attacked all of us, including president. You can attack me later. And I I know you've got plenty of canned attacks. We've heard them all day today. Canned attacks on you. This is supposed on regular order. Madam chair, I'm trying to speak. This is supposed to be an oversight hearing of the Justice Department and it comes in the wake of an indictment called for by the president of one of his enemies. This is supposed to be an oversight hearing and it comes in the wake of revelations that a top administration official took $50,000 in a bag and this department made that investigation go away. This is supposed to be an oversight hearing when dozens of prosecutors have been fired simply because they worked on cases investigating the former president. This is and now the president fires in California and this is supposed to be this is excuse me this is supposed to be an oversight hearing in which members of Congress can get serious answers to serious questions about are the riots in LA about the cover up of corruption about the prosecution of the president's enemies and I think when will it be when will it be when will it that the members of this committee on a bipartisan basis demand answers to those questions and and refuse to accept lawyers. Refuse to accept what someone can and cannot refuse to accept personal slander as an answer to those questions. Personal slander to Donald Trump. Why does she keep interjecting and saying, "What about Donald Trump? Will you apologize to Donald Trump?" All of these people operate as if Trump is watching it on TV, which I'm sure he is. and breathing down their neck. They're all talking as if they do a phone call with Trump before going in, then they do a phone call with Trump after coming out to make sure that they do a good job, and then they did a good job and make sure that he's happy with everything. They're just constantly defending him. That's the vibe I get. I'm going to leave it there. If you appreciate the videos we make on this channel, make sure you're subscribed below. We're trying to get to 2 million followers on YouTube and on Facebook. We're barreling towards 300,000. We are building rapidly and this community is amazing. I love you all and peace
EXCLUSIVE: Katie Johnson Lawyer Breaks Silence About Epstein and Trump by Tara Palmeri Oct 8, 2025 The Tara Palmeri Show
What secrets lie behind the Epstein files, and why is the truth about Katie Johnson still shrouded in mystery?
In this exclusive episode of The Tara Palmeri Show, Tara joins forces with Reed Galen, author of The Home Front, to dive deep into the unresolved allegations surrounding Katie Johnson, a Jane Doe who accused Jeffrey Epstein and Donald Trump of heinous acts in 1994. Tara shares exclusive insights from her investigative reporting, including interviews with Michael Cohen and Katie Johnson’s attorney, shedding light on the intimidation tactics that led to the case being dropped days before the 2016 election. Together, Tara and Reed explore the political implications, the GOP’s silence, and the tangled web of power protecting these secrets. This collaboration between Tara’s Red Letter and Reed’s The Home Front Substack uncovers why the Epstein files remain sealed and what’s at stake if the truth comes out.
What do you think happened to Katie Johnson, and why has her story been buried? Share your thoughts in the comments below and subscribe to The Tara Palmeri Show for more hard-hitting investigations
Welcome to the Tara Palmeri Show Welcome to the Tara Palmeri Show. I want to start this episode with some of my exclusive reporting because so many of you have reached out to me whether through email or comments and I read all of them about a Jane Doe, a woman we've never heard from connected to the Epstein case and President Donald Trump. As many of you may remember, there was a woman who alleged before the 2016 election that she was raped by President Trump in Jeffrey Epstein's townhouse when she was just 13 years old in 1994. In that case, she said, "I loudly pleaded with Defendant Trump to stop, but he did not." She also claimed that Trump threatened her and her family if she ever spoke out. Now, President Trump has denied these claims, but I always wondered what were the circumstances around this case. And why did this Jane Doe who filed three times using the pseudonyame Katie Johnson decide to drop her lawsuit before she was supposed to do a press conference just days before the election? And I spoke to Michael Cohen about it. You might remember that interview. I had to ask him because he was Trump's fixer at the time and he was the guy who handled these problems for President Trump. Right. At the time it was Stormmy Daniels who was speaking out, Karen McDougall. He gave them the hush money. So certainly he would have had to deal with a Jane Doe related to Jeffrey Epstein who claimed that she was raped by President Trump. And so I asked him about it and you'll remember that interview. It was really contentious. Take a listen here. only case that I was involved with was a Jane Doe, an infant um by and through her mom, Mary Jane Doe, right, as legal guardian. That case was dismissed not because of anything that I spoke well I spoke to the lawyers and I've talked to every I've talked about this a million times. I turn around and I receive this summons in a complaint and the averments in it are awful. They're despicable. It talks about uh basically rape of an underage female. Yeah. Blaming and alleging that Donald was involved in it and all that other nonsense. I ended up taking a private investigator and trying to find out who this person was. And we went to the address that allegedly this minor lived at in the Bronx. Well, lo and behold, the investigator responds back and says, "The only thing that's there is an empty parking lot. It's there's no building there. It's an empty lot." If you keep listening, you'll hear what Michael Cohen said. Said that Trump told him it was and that he should handle it. He also told me that he sent a private investigator to find her based on an address that was filed in the lawsuit and it brought him to a parking lot in the Bronx. And so he then contacted a lawyer. He said a male lawyer who said they had never met their client before and that it was But when you take Trump about it though when you when you were like I did ask him I did ask him. He told me it was Take care of it. I said okay. That was it. That was it. It's He said it's Never happened. H Did you Were you like there's all these pictures? Is this going to be a problem around the same time? No. I said you sure? I said you sure? He goes Michael it's That's just the way he communicates. It's like you don't you don't get much more involved than that. It's what he told me on this one. Yeah. And you believed him 100%. Then he said to me, you know, um let let me know what happens. I said, "Sure." Obviously, I had to follow up on this. And by the way, why would a Jane Doe put an address of a parking lot in the Bronx? Well, maybe she doesn't want to put her real address because she doesn't want to be harassed by private investigators or goons. I remember Jane do one Courtney Wild saying that when she was going up against Jeffrey Epstein that she had private investigators stalking her and they almost ran her off the road. This is why so many victims of sexual assault file under names like Jane Doe to be anonymous. But yeah, there is just so much fascination around Katie Johnson because she's never come forward again. And so I had to keep Tara's exclusive on Katie Johnson digging. So I called the lawyers. I called Lisa Bloom. She didn't get back to me. I called Thomas Meager. He didn't get back to me. I reached out to Evan Goldman. He didn't get back to me. But I did hear from one of Katie Johnson's lawyers, Cheney Mason, and he spoke to me for the first time in a decade, nearly a decade. He is telling the story of his client, as much as he can tell, without violating attorney client priv privilege. But here are some of the things that he told me which I found to be really interesting. I'm going to read them to you so I get it right. These are his quotes. The first thing that he told me that was very shocking was he said, "I don't know if my client is still alive." He said, quote, "I would have been the happiest I've ever been if she came forward because I've seen women on television in the category of victim who tell such a similar story to what happened to her. It's almost like they're quoting the affidavit I filed 9 years ago. Let's not forget that this Jane Doe filed this lawsuit in 2016 before Jeffrey Epstein was arrested in 2019 before the world knew the horrors of his sex trafficking operation, the full extent of it, thanks to the reporting of Julie K. Brown at the Miami Herald. Here I want to tell you some more that he some more of the conversation that I had with Cheney Mason. We spoke over a number of days. I really wanted him to come on the podcast, by the way, but he did not want to come on the podcast. He said this was all he could tell me, but he said I was free to use it. He said, "We never we never have known why our client insisted on dropping the lawsuit. We don't know where she is. We hope she's alive." So, they still don't know why she dropped the lawsuit. Lisa Bloom told reporters that she was getting threats. Here's another thing he told me. you know, her lawsuit is often disregarded because President Trump denied it and she dropped the suit, but he thinks that the mainstream media should still be paying attention to it. And I called out CNN um for saying that there were no allegations against President Trump in connection to Jeffrey Epstein. And in Cheny's own words, he said that he met with her over several days. He and his team, they flew her from California and he said several of he said quote, "Sever several of us interviewed her and questioned her before we went through the process of filing the suit." He said, "I sent private investigators to verify her story. I sincerely wish I had the ability to reveal everything, to find the client, confirm her true identity, and try to convince her to back it up. There's no doubt in my mind that she told the truth of everything that's in her lawsuit. Period. That's right. He said, "There is no doubt in my mind she told the truth." Now, Katie Johnson, it's almost a mythical figure at this point because she has never come forward again. I have never met her. I am not planning to go find her. I think if she wants to come forward, that's up to her. I'm not going to hound her or harass her. That is her right. We don't know why she didn't want to go forward. We know that Lisa Bloom said she was experiencing threats and I could understand why she might want to live a low pro profile life especially now that the person that she's accusing of of rape is in power. But I just wanted you to get that update and I'm going to talk about it more in the upcoming podcast with Reed Gallon. Uh he has his own podcast called The Homeront. This is a Substack interview that we just recorded on Wednesday. We also talk about the news of the day. I hope you all enjoy it and thank you again for being subscribers on YouTube, Spotify, Apple Podcast, wherever you get your podcast. But please, you can support this kind of independent journalism, the kind where you leave the questions, the comments, you tell me where you want to go, and I go there by becoming a paid subscriber to the Redletter. And you can do that by going to terara palmary.com. That's t a r a p a i a lm m r i.com. I'm going to keep going after the stories that you care about. I'm going to keep holding truth to power. Thanks so much. Welcome back to the homefront. I'm your Reed Galen joins the Tara Palmeri Show host Reed Galen. Today I am joined by intrepid independent reporter, author of the red letter, Tara Palmary. Tara, welcome back. Thanks for having me. Happy to be here. All right. So, you have been busy uh very busy. So, um I know you've been on the road and back and forth and everywhere in between. So, tell us um you your incredible reporting on the Jeffrey Epstein issue. I don't I don't even think issue is the right word. Scandal, Shondaanda, if you're going to speak Yiddish. Uh what have you learned? What has your reporting over the last several months as this became sort of top of mind for so many people? Again, have you learned something new? have new people come to the four and then I want to talk about the political implications of of the Republicans inability and unwillingness to deal with this. Yeah, I think that that that is where you start, right? Like why is there such a why does no one in the Republican party, you know, why are they protecting President Trump like this? Why is he so afraid of the story? Why is it dogging him? why are these drip drip drips continuing to show a closer relationship between him and Jeffrey Epstein? And you know, this feels like it's his kryptonite. So, it's it's obviously worth exploring why um and continuing to report it out. And um you know, just recently in the red letter, uh which you can all sign up for, I just put out a piece this morning about the Jane Doe who accused Jeffrey Epused President Trump of rape when she was 13. um at in 1994 at Jeffrey Epstein's house. Um and there the she filed three times and then withdrew her suit the day before the the election in 2016 citing intimidation. So I really wanted to understand what were what was the context of all this because we still don't know what happened. Uh first I spoke with Michael Cohen who was uh President Trump's fixer at the time. He was dealing with the Stormmy Daniels case. he was dealing with um you know Karen McDougall at the same time and he was the guy who handled these kind of things um and um you know so that's that's that was my first in thinking and I kept seeing Michael Cohen on TV basically saying like no there's nothing there there Trump you know Trump and Epstein it's nothing to pay attention to so I was like that's a little strange how how would he know right how would you know enough to deny that there was anything. So, I had to ask him, "No one ever asked you about it. Why are you denying it?" Right. Exactly. Or like, "What do you know, then? Why should Why should we believe his denials? Can you give us some more information?" And it just felt like none of the um journalists who had him on their shows were really asking the follow-up questions. So, I um I asked him about Katie Johnson because his case was dropped right before the election when he was still his fixer. Intimidation tactics in Epstein cases What happened there? So, we talked and he wouldn't confirm that it was that lost that it was that um Jane Doe. By the way, Katie Johnson is a pseudonym. It's not her real name, but um he did say that there was a Jane Jane Doe who was a child who filed um ahead of the elections and um ahead of the election and and he said that they sent a private investigator to go find her and they landed on a parking lot in the Bronx um and for her address, the address she listed. And I was like, well, duh. She is a Jane Doe. Why would she put her home address? That would reveal her identity, meaning that she should have never filed as a Jane Doe to begin with. So, it's often that they choose their the firm, the law firm that their um lawyers are at, but sometimes they just choose random addresses. He said that Trump told him it was and to handle it. And that's what he did. He he he sent out a uh a private investigator, which is obviously incredibly intimidating. And in these sexual assault cases, you know, um it's the it's the private investigators that are digging through your life, that are following you that really tend to cause um a lot of these uh Jane dos to back out of the cases. I remember interviewing one of the the Jane Doe won in the Epstein case and she said that Epstein had so many private investigators on her that they nearly ran her off the road and and you saw that in the first case. um the state attorney took up uh when they were presenting it before the grand um jury in Palm Beach County. They they used all this opposition research that Alan Dersitz's private investigators had basically found on these victims saying they were basically because they were on MySpace and they were teenagers, you know, prostitutes, teenage prostitutes was basically what he was saying. So this is the part of these investigations that makes it really um difficult for these women to come forward. So I just had to understand like what was the intimidation? Why did this woman drop her case the day before the election? She was set to do a press conference and I I wanted to know more about her and if this is part of the reason why President Trump um doesn't want these Epstein files out because it's the only known case that we know of that connects him with Jeffrey Epstein. Um not not connects him. We know they were friends. There are tons of pictures, but the only like, you know, improper um behavior, he denies it. She dropped the allegations. And so the mainstream media just sort of brushes it off. Like I saw on CNN, John Burman, who is a great journalist who I respect. He was doing an interview with a congressperson and um who brought this case up and he was like he basically said there have been no allegations against President Trump. There have been no accusations. Like no, there have been, but the case was dropped because of intimidation. So I think it's worth looking into. Fast forward a few weeks ago, I decided to call her lawyers and see if any of them were the ones that dealt with Michael Cohen on the case because he said he spoke to a lawyer who said that he had never met his own client and that it was and they dropped the case because of it. So, I was like, "Did you ever talk to Michael Cohen?" I was unable to find a lawyer that said that they had talked to Michael Cohen on this case, but some of them just didn't respond to me. So, that could have been the case, too. But one did, and his name is um Cheney Mason. Um and he is he was uh one of her attorneys and you know he's won he's a like respectful attorney. He's won awards and stuff like that. Um he had some leadership positions in the bar association and you know he told me in an interview a very brief one because he can't really you know talk about it without her um permission. He said there's no doubt in my mind she told the truth. Uh he said he hired private investigators, spent days questioning her, and then they filed a suit. And this is the first time he's speaking nearly a decade later. And he said he doesn't know if she's alive. He doesn't even know why she dropped the suit. He doesn't know who got to her, what happened. All he knows is she went underground and they never saw her again. And that's it. Well, and and you know, not to certainly not at all to minimize what this young woman uh has allegedly gone through, but I guess Tara, in all of your reporting about this particular story, can you really blame her at this point? given the nature of the environment, given the nature of how much fear clearly President Trump and the White House and all of the, you know, you mentioned the mainstream media, but all of his congressional allies, all of his political allies, even the ones who are clearly still upset about the fact that Trump is not going forth in his promises because again, this is such a foundational piece of the MAGA movement. Can you really blame her for saying, you know what, like this was a horrible deal, but like trying to come out now. Could you blame her for just hoping it all goes away, which of course we know it won't? Yeah. I mean, this happened back she came the amazing thing about her was that she came forward in 2016. Jeffrey Epste was arrested again in 2019. Her story is so similar to the stories of so many survivors that you really didn't hear from until Julie K. Brown came forward with her investigation. It's almost like it's just so similar. Um and she was at a party. She was aspiring model. Uh there were a number of girls there. She was told to there were orgies that she was told to pleasure um Katie Johnson’s allegations and similarities according to her to pleasure you know the president he the former you know Donald Trump and um it's you know then she was threatened that if she told anyone he would come after her family. It's a really I mean he denies all of this and you know she's a Jane Doe and she never came forward like she was planning to. She was supposed to have a press conference the day before the election. Um but you know we just we don't know what happened to her and everybody the reason I kept pursuing this story is because I just keep getting messages all the time from people uh comments emails and um you know I built this red letter community. It's um it's based on, you know, my based on a community of trust, credibility, but also I'm listening to my um I'm listening to the people inside of it and I want to know what they want to know and and Katie Johnson's name just kept kept coming up and they kept asking me to, you know, to to to speak to her lawyers to try to find her. I don't believe that I should have, not that I should have to. I don't want to bring this woman forward or go there and make her do what she wants to do. If she wants to come forward, you know, she knows where to find me. She knows where to find others. Um, I think there's a reason that we haven't heard from her in a long time. And the trauma that you experience, um, you know, especially when your story has been discredited by some of the most powerful people in the world, uh, it's it's really difficult. So, she'll come forward when she's ready to, but in the meantime, um I think it's it was worth it to understand the vetting process of her story, too, because it's just so disregarded in the in the media. It's like it's it's almost like this it's almost like this suit was never filed. It was filed three times. Um so, yeah, I think it's interesting. And then I've done other reporting on, you know, my com what I've known from speaking with the survivors of Jeffrey Epstein, like Virginia Grey and how she had been speaking with Elon Musk and he said he would help her release the files. And then also, you know, I I um I one of the survivors of Jeffrey Epstein was actually um really upset when Lisa Marowski voted. She was a deciding vote against releasing the files and um she looked into this. as a senator in Alaska and what her connections might be to Jeffrey Epste. And what we found was like a really tangled web that connected her to Glenn Maxwell and Glenn Maxwell's husband through this Arctic advocacy um Arctic Circle advocacy groups like they were at you know conferences. They had a friend in this um a mutual friend in Ghislaine Maxwell’s connections uncovered this donor in Alaska who owned the newspaper at the time and um you know her hus Glenn Maxwell's husband was uh working in maritime trade and and obviously in Alaska and he had known Marcowski for decades and it it's uh and and Golen Maxwell was laundering her name her bad reputation at the time for being associated with Epste philanthropy. So, um, you know, there's all all of these connections. So, we we also unveiled that and and that's sort of, you know, what I've been doing is continuing to report out what's going on beneath the surface in the Jeffrey Epstein story as to why we still haven't gotten the files and and and what's why people are voting against it. So, let me ask um Maxwell was married. I know everyone's really shocked by that one, right? Yeah. Where's this guy? And like what I mean was it because she came from a wealthy family like what was in it for him because clearly she was out doing some pretty horrific things. Um not at all what you would call you know and it's not me for me to moralize but you know even this would be pretty far outside the bounds of any typical relationship. Well, they met at uh Arctic Circle conference where he spoke and Lisa Marowski beamed in because she couldn't come arrive there. She she was a a speaker as well, but she had to beam in. They were all together on the same stage in the following year. But um yeah, they met through this Arctic Circle conference. This whole like seat conference circuit was how they met. And uh he was a father of three. She got him to leave his family and that. Yeah. And they were married until I think I mean they're still married. I think they're just estranged. And I believe I saw some reporting that he broke up with her over the phone while she was in prison. But um she was hiding with him. I mean that was that was where she was in hiding. Uh I mean Tara, you couldn't if if you wrote this script and you took it to Netflix, they wouldn't buy it. Oh no. I know. Especially when you think of the it's too dark and crazy and the atrocities that like so many of these survivors have suffered with. I mean I I think about Bridg who I knew really well and who um I traveled with all over the country trying to like work on verifying her story and um you know her book will come out and I almost think it is just too graphic and too horrific to even believe like it was not ma made to be scripted in so many ways. Um, but her story will come out. I found her to be very credible. I know that they have worked relentlessly to try to pick apart her story, but you know, I also think when you've been so abused as a teenager and her abuse started when she was even younger than that at home and then she was trafficked again, like 11 years old. Um, you know, it's I don't think all of her memories were perfect in terms of like the timeline, but then again, I'm like, could I remember the timeline of when I was 16 or 15? Like, no. But her story is so similar to so many others and she had so many witnesses that remember her and who she remembered. And I in one of in the podcast broken Jeffrey Epste. I remember when we showed up at the house of uh Jeffrey Epste's former butler, houseman, driver, chauffeur, whatever you want to call him. He was the one who drove Glenn Maxwell the day that she found and groomed and recruited uh Virginia Gry. And he recalled meeting her and and his, you know, impression of her and and they hugged and they recalled what it was like in the house and um it just seemed so horrific. Uh well, and let let me ask you that because um that is one thing. I think the last time we spoke you might have you might have mentioned this, but again, you know, whether or not it was Virginia or this the young woman who's the Jane Doe, there was the these things weren't oneoffs. There was a system. There was a pipeline. So take us take us through, you know, how how a a young girl, you know, is is drawn in by whatever means and then how it all works from that moment until, you know, now you're you're being literally passed around. So first of all, um, he created one of the largest sex trafficking operations ever, probably. I mean, it was this network was in was Epstein’s sex trafficking network explained crazy. He also had a modeling agency, um, an international modeling agency with a guy named Jean Luke Brunell called MC Squared. By the way, Jean Luke Brunell mysteriously dies in a French prison by being hung. Sounds a little familiar, right? I know. The only thing that would have been more suspicious was if he had thrown himself out a seventh floor window. Right. Right. Well, yeah. And Glenn Maxwell's father is pushed off his yacht or dies off his yacht. She believes he was murdered. He also had connections with Jeffrey Epsteine. But um yeah, so he basically well first of all there was the fact that they would find these like really ambitious young beautiful girls who wanted to be models and he was friends with Les Wexner who was the founder of Victoria's Secret. So sure he had that that pipeline. He also had his own modeling agency. Um so he used that pipeline especially to bring foreign girls there who um didn't have like act like they didn't some of them didn't have passports some of them were just being trafficked internationally which sadly happens all the time especially right so they've got so they've got no place to go no real way to find other accommodation no way to really go to anybody scared they're going to go to the police in a foreign country where they don't have any way of proving that how they got here. Yeah. Exactly. And also where they came from was probably pretty bleak too. Then you had the girls in the Palm Beach High School, the Palm Beach Gardens High School. I believe it was across from Palm Beach. So this is not this is not a wealthy neighborhood. This is like the other side of the tracks you could call it. Um just so happens to share the words Palm Beach, but it's not the other side of the intra coastal. Yes. Yeah. Exactly. And so um these girls, they set up a pyramid scheme there where if you brought one girl, you would get $300. And so then you would also get paid to give him a massage. So he was able in his Palm Beach house to get three massages a day from the girls in the Palm Beach High School uh three times per day, which was what he said he needed. Massages were sexual abuse and he needed to have three orgasms essentially per day. So that was how he brought over a number of girls because these girls really didn't come from much. I mean what they were getting paid by Epstein $300 was probably more than their fathers made in a week. So that was another way um that he did it. A lot of them came from broken homes, had been molested before. He they picked prey that would be easy like this is what predators do. So um so yeah, that was another way. And and then the others were recruiters. I mean they were a lot of them were aspiring models, you know, singers, actresses, and they said especially Glenn Maxwell, I mean she gave him a lot of cart blanch. she helped him um you know get access to girls that wouldn't feel safe spending time with a 50-year-old man at the time. Um but really a woman and she would say that he was she was his wife or his partner and she would bring them in and say we can make your dreams come true. We're just a family that doesn't have kids and we'll take care of you and and this was the this was the story that you heard um from a lot of them that they felt that they were being tricked. um right by by the land. Let let me ask I mean this is this is a broader philosophical sociological question Tara which is it's the scale of this is unprecedented to say the least but this is not really this is not unusual either right there these sorts of predators are on the prow all day every day even as we speak and it is it is one you know horrifying secondly that as you talked about whether or not it was Virginia Dra or or the the Jane Doe that nine times out of 10 the young woman is not believed either the man is believed the institution that is has been you know has housed it could be whether or not it's a company or a school or whatever it is they go on about their lives and it's nine times out of 10 I think there was a New York Times article that says this it's the girls that leave right it's the victims that are pushed aside and said you know for the greater good they have to suffer. Yeah. Um I would say that these women come in with a credibility deficit. Um that's what uh this uh sexual assault prosecutor I spoke with Deborah Deborah Turkheimr who I often quote uh she writes book called credible she talks about this especially vulnerable women Credibility challenges for survivors they come in with a serious credibility deficit. Um they are the ones who have the onus and they are the ones who are forced to prove their story. Whereas people take the take the denial from a a man who tends to be celebrated, powerful, wealthy, comes from prestigious positions as having more value than their account accounts. So they have to they have to go above and beyond to find witnesses, to find women who have similar stories and then they have to suffer the abuse all over again. And she says in some ways it can be worse. And I can totally understand this, right? Some of these women because they have to um, you know, they have to hear the denial, right? They have to relive it. Yeah. That's not their reliving it as much as it is like being called liars or or being questioned um and seeing their own community side with the powerful. It's another form of abuse and and we see it all the time. I mean, Virginia Duvet came out in 2010 with her story of Prince Andrew. It took the crown 11 years. No, sorry. 2021. They decided 21 years. Exc No. No. Is that 11 years? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. 11 years. Excuse me. I'm not good at math. I was told there would be no math, Tara. Yeah, I know. I'm a writer. That's why I'm not good at math. It took them 11 years to finally acknowledge her and pay one of a historic settlement to her for what happened. And he obviously lost some of his titles. Not all of them, but some of them. But he even said that the photograph of them was was falsified. It's like, right, because he doesn't sweat or something, right? Like something just ridiculous. Um, I mean it's and again the the the horrificness is is is is trumped so to speak only by the willingness of so many people to deny things, to stay quiet, to not do that. So let's let's bring it up to the present day. Um, so right now we have a government shutdown going on. Um, and so I want to I want to talk about Speaker Mike Johnson for a second. So he has, I think, sent his conference home yet again, right? So they're all scattered to the winds. Uh he has not seated uh Rep. Electriala from New Mexico, who would be the 218th signature on a discharge petition about um about Jeffrey Epstein. And so take us through your experience. I mean, he is a I I will say this, no one expected that this man, probably least of all him, was going to be speaker of the house. But there only there's only so much political energy, right, or strategic capacity that even the speaker of the house or the white house has. So give us a sense from your experience about how you think they're dealing with all this because there's only so many flaming frying pans he can juggle at once. Yeah, I mean I I would agree. I didn't I don't think anyone thought um that this guy was was going to be speaker of the house. I was like Mike Johnson who I mean we all were but now he I mean and I don't think we're at all surprised that he was just going to become a lackey for Trump and this is what that's a perfect example of it. I mean you're literally this is the second time he's changed the congressional calendar to avoid an Epstein vote. The first time was the summer in July. He let them break early for uh recess. By the way, we're paying them when they're breaking early. These are civil servants. We pay these people. We s we pay their staff, too. And they get they get longer breaks because he doesn't want to take a vote on Epstein, right? When they already had all all of August off, right? DOJ and the Epstein files coverup Yeah. And most of August. Um and yeah, so again, they he's stalling to confirm her because we do know that in the past that they've confirmed members that were Republicans during recess. uh not recess during like um when when when the chamber was not right. He can do it anytime he wants. Yeah, he can do it if he wants to. He doesn't want to, but they're just kicking the they're just kicking it down the the the can down the road. I mean, here's here's the reality. Like, I actually don't think that the DOJ will ever produce all of the files, right? If they do, it'll be extremely redacted like what you see right now on the FBI's website um in their Epstein vault. Um it's that's the problem. like you don't know what's behind the blocks of lettering that that white blocks used to be black, but I think people realize they could kind of figure out the number of the letters and figure out the names that were behind it. But um yeah, now they've made it even more difficult. They've made it more difficult to to see what is behind um those uh redacted documents. It's it's crazy. Well, and at some point they just won't release anything and say, "Come make us, right? Who's going to make me?" Well, yeah. It's the DOJ's never really been good at policing itself. No. So, and they've never even even in the best of times, they were never exactly huge fans of foyer requests, right? Oh, yeah. That's I almost people God bless people who do foyer requests. It's a it's a certain type of hell uh to deal with it back and forth. uh they'll kind try to catch you on like a word to not give you the the foyer request information back. So um yeah, then it'll go back to the Senate, see if Lisa Marowski continues to vote the way she does and uh if it ends up on the president's desk, then it Yeah. And that's just looks pretty shitty. But it'll be a day of news and then he'll do something really crazy during that day that he vetos it. So yeah, right. Yeah. May may maybe shoot a couple of priests in the head with pepper balls or, you know, knock a knock a congressional candidate across the street or send fat national guardsmen from Texas to Illinois. I mean, this is this let me just say as an aside, Tara, as you've watched this and you've covered the White House and you've covered Trump for so so long that the it's always fascinating how quickly their incompetence catches up to their rhetoric, right? So they're like, you know, like if Greg Abbott was doing his job right, there was a there, for people who don't know what I'm talking about, there was a there was an image of Texas National Guardsman getting off a truck or something in Chicago this morning or somewhere in Illinois. And these were overweight guys. These were not guys in tip-top physical shape. And you'd think that even Greg Abbott would be like, "Okay, can we find like 15, 20 like dudes in their early 20s who seem to be in good shape?" No, they found like guys in their 40s, right, who do not look like they are not going to be able to chase a running pickle down the street. If you have not seen that video, look it up. It is absolutely hilarious as a pickle outruns law enforcement officers. Um, but this is the world we're in. Tara is running pickles, dancing and dancing animals in Portland, right? I mean, it's the world is upside down for Christ's sakes. I mean, it really is upside down. And I'm not sure that that the impetus other than someone like Trump could create that, right? like the the license for constant chaos and insanity. I don't know that anybody else could have I don't know that he orchestrates it necessarily, but somewhere in that weird ugly, you know, ability of his, and it is an ability. Uh, this stuff just occurs in ways that no one else could even have imagined. Yeah. Yeah. No, I think you're right. It's the execution has been mindblowing. Uh, but he's doing it. I mean, the things that he couldn't do during his first term, he's just doing it because he's surrounded by so many yesmen. There's no one there to say no. This is we're crossing the line. So, so you know what, te tell us a little bit about um Steven Miller um as you as you've covered him or you know him because he seems to be uh you know the man behind the man at this point. Yeah, I think he plants a lot of ideas. I think he likes to take credit for a lot of it as well. Um, I think he relishes in this. This is his moment to enact every dream he's ever had. Um, you hear it like the way he shouts on TV. It's very scary, honestly. I I don't understand. Uh, I don't understand what motivate like I mean, I get what motivates him, but uh I think he probably creeps out Trump a little bit. Oh, for sure. Yeah. Yeah, he definitely creeps out Trump, but loyalty above all else for President Trump, right? Because for as weird as Trump is, he doesn't like weird people, right? Yeah. But Steven Miller was with him after January 6th. And I think you have to remember that like all the people that are with Trump right now, they were either never worked with him before. They were a lot of them former Dantis staffers who were treated like or got fired like Susie Wilds as chief of staff. Or they are people who didn't abandon him after January 6th and that is Stephen Miller. And believe me, most people thought that his political career was dead. So, um, yeah. And and was and while while Trump was in the wilderness, you know, Miller was there with was it America First Legal or one of those front groups, right, Day in and day out, you know, carrying the flag. Yeah. Everybody else was hitching their star to Dantis and those people that hated Dantis couldn't do that. So, they stayed with Trump and they won in this sick game. Actually just wrote about this too in the red letter um about how the Ronda Santis Trump feud continues to play out and particularly within his White House um political staff and it's going to cost them millions of dollars more in the midterms to to So, take us through that. Is that because because there will be there will Trump-DeSantis feud impacts politics be Trump candidates and there will be non-Trump candidates and there will be primaries and the primaries will cost a lot and so take us through that. Yeah. So like Trump's the establishment now or the anti-establishment, whatever you want to call it. I think he's the establishment. He controls literally everything. He is by definition. If the NRSC is behind you, if the NRCC is behind you, those are the committees in Senate and the House. You are the establishment. He picks the candidates. He's the golden kingmaker. His endorsement clears a um clears the decks. So his team hates Ronda Santis. The bad blood goes way back. They hated Jeff Row, this consultant who won who helped Glenn Yncan win. He's very close to Ted Cruz. He had one of the biggest Ted Cruz's guy, right? Yeah. He had one of the biggest consultancy firms in um in Washington, but they hated him by proxy of the fact that he ran Ronda's super PAC, the one that famously like torched $145 million, right? And it was insane. He didn't make it to New Hampshire, right? So, they hate him. And Jeff at one time was going to be Trump's campaign manager. So I'm sure there's a little bit of tension over that. Trump still hates Deantis. So he hates Jeff Row because of that as well. These stupid consultancing war consultancy wars. They're basically telling clients if you work with Jeff Row, you're not getting the endorsement. Now, Jeff refuts this and some people in the White House do as well, but you know, it's it's caused Jeff because his business has taken a hit, to pitch new clients, that means that's more candidates in a primary field. Um, and back primary challengers like Ken Paxton, the attorney general from Texas, who is has like a truckload of scandals. The guy was under indictment for security fraud since 2012. He was impeached. His wife is suing him on biblical terms, which I love that phrase. And so, because Jeff Row, as he tries to like keep his business intact, is going after all of these primary challengers, that's just going to make it cost more money for the Republicans to keep seats. Like, it would be pretty crazy. Um, so in the polls that the Senate Leadership Fund has done, it shows that Paxton, at least the one from back in May, was beating Cornin by 16 points. Now after Cornin spent some money, it's like eight points. But he loses to a generic Democrat like Colin, right? So or James Tarico who raised like six million bucks in like three weeks. Yeah. And you know, Texas is a defensive seat to defend. It can cost a hundred million dollars or more because of the um the media markets there. So, it's all to say that they are sort of eating their own and it could cost them a ton of money, which I'm sure everyone who does not want them to win AC is enjoying in the Well, let's be clear like Jeff is not a sympathetic character. Like, this is not a good This is a guy who once drafted a letter in Missouri about a man about a Missouri legislative candidate potentially being a homosexual that was so damaging to the man he killed himself, right? So, like this is not a good guy. Yeah. Um, so like if let me just say this. I I'm I'm going to put the this is not Terara's opinion. This is only Reed's opinion. If Jeff Rose business goes out of business, I am totally okay with that. And if it costs the Trump people millions of dollars while it happens, even better. Well, I was going to say you should like this story. This is a story I do because they're all horrible people. Like I hope they all tear one another to shreds in the next nine months in primaries. I hope they spend outrageous amounts of money. In fact, the one of the reasons I I wanted to talk about this is because of who in the donor community too has gotten on board with Trump. So, let's let's bring this all together. So, Thomas Massie, who is probably the tr most sort of true blue MAGA member of Congress from Kentucky, right? This is a guy who's been a thorn in the side of Johnson and of Trump both on the budget issues and on on um on Epstein issues. So, this came out in July, but there's a super PAC that's going after Thomas Massie in Kentucky. And the three top donors are Paul Singer. Remember Donor influence in MAGA politics Paul Singer was the guy who was lauded by everybody for funding the progay marriage stuff as a Republican for years, right? John Paulson who famously made a gajillion freaking dollars shorting the American housing market. And Miriam add, right? Like, so like guys, money trumps all. Like, let's be care. Like there is no morality in any of this stuff. No, we get to this level. I don't think I don't think that was the point. They're all just trying to make money. Um, everyone and when you have the power when you're in the White House, you're you're going to be all the firms associated with you like Chris Losa's firm, like they're going to make more money. They're going to sell their services to every dirty freaking country around and uh make millions and millions of dollars and it's the swamp. Like that's what I'm explaining is what how the swamp works. This is um you know this is how a swamp works. This is how right not many people are are no look imper this is imperial cities are like have like been like this throughout history, right? Money and power trade one another and they trade up and up and up and up and up, right? And then um as soon as the power is gone, right, and people think that they need to find a new benefactor or a new place to make money, they'll go there, right? So it's, you know, to me it's, you know, I sound so naive and I maybe I maybe it's the last sliver of idealism I have, Tara, but like it's the thing that I was thinking about this morning about something else is just the freaking cynicism, right? Like there no one in any of this has any any thought for a moment about whether or not like the country matters, whether or not, you know, history matters, whether or not decency matters. And and the people who come last of all obviously are the American people. Yeah. I mean, of course, I don't know if they tell them that themselves that at night. Um but you know, this I hope they're tortured by those demons like in Ghost. Remember those things that come out of the sewer? I hope those people come after them at night when they're trying to sleep. My guess is they've rationalized themselves within, you know, uh, you know, they've rationalized themselves so much that they don't think about that stuff anymore. They they've they've made their they've Look, even my friends who are insult hijinks too on the left. I don't think it's just Oh, no. Oh, listen. Believe me. Oh, yeah. I'm not I was not I Yeah, please believe me. I The cynicism is a is by far bipartisan. It is not It is not a uni party issue. It is bipartisan. Um, I mean, even look in, you know what I was f I haven't read uh Vice President Harris's book. Um, but what I thought was fascinating in all of the things I've seen about it, Tara, is the consultants don't get mentioned once near as I can tell. Yeah. The people who made decisions tactical and strategic to spend several billion dollars, not one word about them anywhere, right? Yeah. Yeah. Uh, well, she might Kamala Harris’s book and political fallout need them again if she runs in. Uh, and what does that say? What does that say? Well, the book is a platform to run again. But, uh, you know, I just had James Carville on my show and he had a lot of choice words for Kla Harris. She he felt like she was complaining a lot in the book where he said felt like she was handed basically everything. Um, and that, you know, there was that that her gre is a bit of a grievance tour. Um, well, I think that Americans, you know, Americans love, as you know, love to tear down their idols, but the thing they love more than tearing down their idols is redemption. Americans love a redemption story. Um, but they want to see some level of with, let me put Trump as the notable example of this. They they or uh uh exception to this, I should say, they like to see a little bit of contrition in the process, right? They like to see a little reflection to say, "Yeah, like I didn't understand where the country was. I didn't understand what my role was. If I truly cared about these things, and my name was on the ballot, I should have had the fortitude to say, I'm going to be the leader of the free world. This is where I belong." Um, and so, yeah, I I think you're right. And unfortunately for for the vice president, a lot of her opponents like Carville, I don't know if he's an opponent, but a consultant or a you know, commentator will jump on that and it will dog her for the next couple of years until the next primary season starts. So, um, all right, Tara, thank you. I don't think that's the thing that's going to dog her. I think the thing that dogs you is when you lose, the stink of loss is a hard one to to to shower off. Yeah. Right. Oh, no. Yes. I mean, I I think that I agree with you. Yes. And I think her book 107 days is about, listen, it wasn't my fault, right? I had 107 days. I was stuck with Biden's mess. yada yada yada. Right. And the way they treated me was like crap, which is true. They didn't treat her well at all. But but that's also not unusual for vice presidents. Think about I'll leave you with this story. Well, two stories I've heard. One is when Ronald Reagan was leaving office and George HW Bush was about to be inaugurated, the Reagan people would not allow the gates to the White House to be open until the exact second they were required to. That's how much disdain they held for George HW Bush. even as Vice presidential challenges discussed president-elect. They weren't going to let do any of that. Then I heard a story which might be apocryphal that when Clinton was taking office, um Hillary had claimed the vi the traditional vice president's office in the West Wing as her own. And Al Gore, not surprisingly, not okay with this and said, "I'm not going to the capital until I get my office back." And finally Hillary relented and Gore got his office back. But like vice presidents, even the first vice president we ever had, John Adams said it was the it is the worst job that humanity has ever created. So yes, I have no doubt they treated her badly. But also not There are a lot of worse jobs than being vice president. I'm pretty sure if you do your tour of vice president, you can write a book, make a few million dollars on the speaking tour. No, listen, I listen. I agree. I mean, I you know, you get a helicopter, you get a nice house, you get a motorcade, you get an airplane. your life. It's a It's a pretty good gig, right? Um but again, and it's public service. Does anyone forget about that? Sorry you didn't get to do the You didn't get to do the glory jobs, but you got the southern border, but this is which was which was a mess she was not going to have anything to do with. Right. Yeah. Well, because they didn't want to deal with it either, so they gave it to her. Again, the vice president has two jobs, right? Break ties in the Senate when there is one and wait around for somebody to die. Those are the only two jobs listed in the con ceremonial duties. Ceremonial duties. Yeah. But again, Pence was constantly traveling for Trump. He hated traveling. So, he just sent Pence and all those things and Vance is, you know, and Vance is is using making the most of it, right, in his time. He's doing everything he can. Um podcast. All right. Well, speaking of podcast, so Tara, tell everybody where we can find you before I let you go. Thank you so much for giving me so much time. Of course. Yeah. No, no, it's great. Um, you can find me at the red letter obviously right here if you subscribe. That would be really helpful for me and my um mission as an independent journalist. Uh, do a lot of investigations. I've been following the Epsteine story very closely, but I also give you the inside story on what's going on inside the swamp. Um, also um you can find me on YouTube, the Tara Palmary Show, where I put up a lot of my where I do a show almost every single day and I'm on Apple Podcast, Spotify, the Tara Palm Mary Show. You can find me everywhere. Thanks, guys. All right. Yeah. Hey, listen. Go subscribe everybody. Come on. Hit hit the button. Hit the button. In fact, I think somebody told me this thing right here at the top. If you click on that, you can subscribe to Tara right from there. All right. As always, gang, you can find me here on Substack at the Homefront, also the Homefront podcast, wherever you want to find it. Thanks everybody for joining me. Tara, have a great day. Yep. You too. Thanks, Reed. This is great. And everybody else, we'll see you next time. Okay. Cheers. Bye. That was another episode of the Tara Palm Mary Show. Thanks for watching the Tara Palmeri Show Thank you again for tuning in. I am so grateful to all of you. W
Trump pulls INSANE stunt to bury Epstein files by Brian Tyler Cohen Oct 11, 2025
INTERVIEW: Rep. Melanie Stansbury reveals Trump has been threatening Republicans over Epstein files
Transcript
I'm joined now by New Mexico lawmaker and overall badass in the House, Melanie Stanbury. Thanks so much for joining me. It is awesome to be here today. So, right now we're in the midst of this government shutdown. We're over a week into this thing. To what extent do you think that your Republican colleagues are starting to feel the pressure now that the the narrative surrounding this shutdown is the reality of the situation? the fact that the only reason that we're in this mess is because they refuse to extend the ACA subsidies that will ensure that 24 million Americans can continue to receive health care unobstructed. Yeah. Well, I think it's very clear that the public is not buying their lies. And part of the problem is is because they're not believable. The Republicans have shut down the House. They've locked us out. The speaker of the house has canceled votes now for two weeks in a row and has refused to bring his own members back to Washington DC. And by their own caucus's admittance, they're doing that so that their Republican colleagues don't say anything stupid. That's literally what they said. And so Mike Johnson can go on TV all he wants and try to claim that somehow Democrats caused the shutdown, but his own members aren't here and he shut and locked the doors. So, I think the American people are smart. They see what's happening. They can see that the doors are locked. They can see that Democrats are showing up. And it's just it's not a believable lie. And then when you add that on top of the reality that millions of Americans are about to get their health insurance doubled, tripled, people are freaked out. You know, they passed this big ugly bill just a couple of months ago. People knew it was going to impact their health insurance. And now the, you know, roost has come home to roost. So these guys now need to fix the problem that they broke to begin with. And they're unwilling to do that. And the American people are really mad. Well, you know, they're saying just reopen the government and then trust us, we'll totally definitely sit down with you guys and hash something out as it relates to uh extending these Affordable Care Act subsidies. And so, do you believe them when they say, you know, trust us, guys, we're we're going to we're good for our word. Uh, just reopen the government and then let's talk ACA subsidies. Well, I mean, they've shown that they are not a reliable negotiating partner. And if Mike Johnson's willing to go on national TV and lie all day long, why would we take his word for it? But let me just point out that Marjorie Taylor Green has publicly made statements not just once, but she is now on her social and on podcasts and on TV saying Republicans don't have a plan. They don't have a plan to fix healthcare. They don't have a plan to reopen the government. And she's even sharing her own family stories of her kids not being able to afford their health insurance. So, how can we have confidence in the Republicans when their own members are pointing out that they don't have a plan? Well, and and I think it's worth noting, too. I mean, this is the this is the party that got us into this mess in the first place. The only reason that we are even talking about uh trying to get funding to continue the ACA subsidies is because this Republican party led by Mike Johnson, led by Donald Trump, led by John Thun were the ones who took those subsidies away. And so, excuse us if we don't believe when you say that you're totally good for it when you promise to restore these ACA subsidies when the only reason that we're in a situation without ACA subsidies is because of this Republican party. The same Republican party that's stripped a trillion dollars away from healthcare in the budget bill. The same Republican party that's taken Medicaid away from 17 million Americans. And so could anybody, you know, blame us for not just accepting the Republicans promises up and down that they're going to be good faith negotiating partners when they are the cause of this problem in the first place? Well, and I'll also add that if you remember three weeks ago when we Democrats requested a meeting with Trump to work out a bipartisan agreement before the shutdown, Donald Trump said yes and then he was convinced by Mike Johnson and Thun to cancel the meeting. And then he literally said that he read the proposal and told Democrats to go themselves. He said that the president of the United States because he knows what we were asking and he does not agree with it because as he argued at that time, this was one of his signature moves in his domestic policy that he put through the big ugly bill. So they knew they were taking away healthcare from millions of Americans and they were proud of it. But now that they're feeling the heat from the American people, they're like, "Well, maybe we'll negotiate." But when Mike Johnson was asked about it two days ago, they asked, "Well, are you now willing to negotiate putting it back on the table?" He he literally said no and then stumbled to try to like cover it up. Can you just help me understand here? Because look, everybody in elected politics, these are these are political animals that are that are presumably uh focused on self-preservation to some degree. And so it's not just Democrats who are going to be impacted by uh rescending these ACA subsidies and watching health care costs double or triple or even quadruple or more or lose healthcare altogether. It's it's plenty of Republicans, too. In fact, the the states that have seen the biggest increases in ACA enrollment are Republican states. It's Georgia. It's Texas. It's West Virginia. It's Tennessee. So, so what are the what are your Republican colleagues doing here trying to like die on this hill of allowing everybody's healthare costs to surge notwithstanding the fact that we're heading into an election year? Like I'm I'm tr I'm honestly trying to just understand the the political mentality in all of this. Yeah. Well, I think going into the dark mind of the GOP right now is a somewhat futile task. But let me just say this that um you know the Republicans have been trying to repeal the Affordable Care Act since it was passed. And even during the debates last year, you know, Trump's famous line when they asked him what he was going to do about healthcare is he said he he had concepts of a plan. Well, his concept of a plan was to basically totally screw over the Affordable Care Act and millions of Americans healthcare through the big ugly bill. And now they know that they have a problem. In fact, before the shutdown, it was reported that multiple Republican senators had been talking to their leadership about trying to put together some sort of fix. But because we have disorganized extremists running the Republican party right now, you've got Mike Johnson over here who's closed down the house that is trying to give the president cover on the Epstein list and investigation. You've got Thun over here who is a pretty old school kind of normal conservative trying to do something over in the Senate but responding to the chaos. And then you've got the president just randomly tweeting things daily saying, "Okay, we should fix healthcare." And then saying, "Oh, wait, no, we're not." And then saying, "Go yourself." Like these people cannot govern. They don't have a plan. I think Marjorie Taylor Green hit the nail on the head yesterday when she said it. they don't have a plan and she's pointing it out. So, I want to switch gears a little bit to something that you just mentioned which is the Epstein list. To what extent are you confident that Mike Johnson refuses to swear in Representative Grahala because she would be the 218th vote uh allowing this discharge petition to take effect? Well, I think if if I was to dive into the strategy of Mike Johnson right now, I think it's twofold. I think that he is taking the hardline position that if he keeps the House out then there is no way to negotiate that they're going to continue to force the Senate to take votes and the Senate Democrats have said no we are not folding till you fix healthcare. They are holding the line because the American people are telling them to. So I think in one like strategically I think that they are holding the house out to try to force a vote in the Senate. But it has this other effect which is that it is shielding the Republicans from the monthsl long criticism that they have not complied with our subpoena to release the Epstein files. And even the president reportedly was bragging that no one was talking about Epstein right now. So, uh, part of why I do think he's keeping people out of DC is because, frankly, as long as the House is not in session, you're not going to have, you know, Epstein at the forefront. But it is very clear that Aralita Grihalva who was just elected in Arizona, the speaker indefensibly is saying that he can't seat her even though they've had proform sessions now on multiple days and he's done it with three other members of Congress is not swearing her in because she would be the 218 signature. And whether or not ultimately, for example, he tried to table that motion on that um discharge petition, it still forces every member of the House to take a vote on Epstein. And he does not want his members being in the news voting basically to silence the Epstein victims because that's exactly what's going to happen as soon as she's sworn in. You know, this is a very short strate short short-sighted strategy because at some point Mike Johnson's going to have to swear her in and at some point we're going to get the 218th vote to force this discharge petition and at some point all of this process is going to move forward if the four Republicans who've signed on continue to be uh uh signitories onto this discharge petition. Um and it eventually works its way through, you know, the the the House and the Senate. um you know there is no world in which Donald Trump signs this into law and so I'm just thinking thinking you know 10 steps ahead here if there is a veto proof majority that's needed do you think that beyond just those four Republicans who've signed on that more Republicans will sign on to this thing like once that dam has broken well I think it's important to not um think that the discharge petition is the end all be all of this investigation it's just one tool right it is one way to get every member of Congress on the record on the release of the files. But and it is very likely that Mike Johnson is going to try to table the resolution. And uh even if you have Republicans who've signed on to it, they will try to use a procedural motion, I am positive, to try to sideline the motion. And their argument is, well, we're already doing an oversight investigation, which is really just a smoke screen to show that they're doing something without actually trying very hard. But the 10 steps ahead is actually what happens when the real files are released, not just by Department of Justice, but the continuing disclosure by the estate, which is happening weekly. We just had new files released last week that showed that Steve Bannon, Peter, Theel, Elon Musk, and other allies of the president are in the files that the estate has. We have subpoenas out to multiple witnesses. We are subpoenaing the financial documents, which we are certain contain uh financial crimes. So, this is just the beginning of a massive investigation that I believe will be as significant as, you know, some of the historical investigations that we're familiar with like the Watergate scandal because the president is not only implicated in these files. We know that for a fact because Pom Pam Bondi told him that. Yeah. but also because uh at the end of the day he is engaged in a systemic cover up and threatening members of Congress and that is as big a scandal as the actual crimes that he may have committed as well. So um yeah, this is not going to stop with the discharge petition. I I I don't know how much interaction you have with Republican members uh of Congress, but in in so far as you do have any communication with them, is there uneasiness about the position that they've landed themselves in, which is basically just to protect like to to to facilitate Trump's cover up of of a sex trafficking ring and and be be part of this whole thing that they all predicated their brands on on purportedly opposing. Yeah. I mean, I think it's important like when you hear the actual stories of the victims, uh, you know, many of them are my age. They're in their late 40s and they were teenagers when they were raped or otherwise groomed and abused by Epstein and his associates. Um, it's impossible to not um be disgusted um understand the gravity of what Jeffrey Epstein did. And I think that anybody who has heard their testimony and their stories understands what we're dealing with here. This is possibly the largest sex trafficking and predatory scheme in American history. and Donald Trump and Mike Johnson are engaging in a cover up to shield people that were involved in raping children. Like that is actually what we're talking about. So I don't know how you can be a person of conscience, a person of faith, or a person just with eyes and ears and not be hearing these stories and think that this is wrong. And I know, you know, there's several members including Marjorie Taylor Green and Thomas Massie who have been very public about it. And when you listen to them and you see them talk about this, you can tell that it's sincere. Like this is this is very real. And I know there are other members who care about it, but they are actually being threatened by the president. The president and his uh chief staff are literally calling members and saying, "If you sign on to this discharge petition, it's considered a hostile act. You'll never get anything again. We're going to cut you off." So th this is this is this is gangster activity. The president is trying to shield pedophiles by calling and threatening members of Congress. And we need more members of Congress, whether it's the Epstein files, whether it's the shutdown, whether it's healthcare, whether it's democracy, whether it's the rule of law, to just do their jobs. Yep. I I could not have said that better. And uh that seems like the perfect place to leave off. So Congresswoman, I appreciate your time. Thanks for bringing the fight that you have been bringing. Thank you. [Music]
Trump DARK PAST Under INVESTIGATION by TOP Congressman MeidasTouch Oct 11, 2025 MissTrial
Congressman Jamie Raskin says when it comes to Epstein — follow the money. In revealing letters, he pushes major banks to not be part of the cover‑up. Dina Doll reports on the latest effort by Democrats to get to the truth for the victims.
Transcript
We have a major development in the Epstein files. Follow the money. That is what Congressman Jamie Rascin has not only told the American people, but now has told the CEOs of four major financial institutions in the letters he sent to each of them asking them to provide the information regarding the transactions that their bank handled regarding Jeffrey Epstein and failed to report and failed to report in a timely manner. Don't be part of the cover up, he says. Hand over the information to the judiciary committee. Let's get this all out there. My name is Dena D with the Midas Touch Network. I've got the receipts. I've got the letters. Will these financial institutions continue to be part of the cover up? Or will we see the longawwaited financial information that could very well blow this whole thing wide open? Now, take a listen. He mentions in each of his letters to these CEOs the specific testimony that Cash Patel recently gave to the Senate where he said to Senator Kennedy who asked were there any other co-conspirators. Their new framework, let's say the Trump MAGA framework, is not that Jeffrey Epstein is not a sex trafficker, but that he was the only pedophile. Again, very far-fetched, but this softball question seemed to kind of be thrown to Cash Patel. Is what is now being cited in these letters by Congressman Raskin? Let's just take a listen to what Cash Patel had testified to. You've seen most of the files. Uh who, if anyone did Epstein traffic these young women to besides himself? Himself? There is no credible information, none. If there were, I would bring the case yesterday that he traffked to other individuals and the information we have again is limited. So the answer is no one for the information that we have in the files in the case file. Okay. Congressman Rascin cites that Cash Patel testimony, saying they need the banks to cooperate in order to reveal who the co-conspirators are because they are not getting that information from the FBI or the DOJ and banks. Are you going to continue to be part of the cover up? The letters were spent specifically to cha JP Morgan Chase, Bank of America, Deutsche Bank, and Bank of New York Melon. Now each of these banks had a duty to report any kind of suspicious financial transactions under the bank secrecy act. They have to have whole institutions in place within their banks that would help root out let's say money laundering and other criminal practices. You could say it's similar to the duty to report that hospitals and doctors have when patients show up and they think maybe that person was subjected to abuse. Well, a similar idea with the laws around reporting for banks. Well, sure enough, these banks, which handled in total $1.5 billion in transactions for Jeffrey Epstein, did not timely file any report despite the fact that their transactions were very suspicious. And we know also Senator Widen from Oregon has been on top of this as well as Jamie Rascin. So in his letter, in Rasin's letter to JP Morgan, he talks, he brings up the fact that JP Morgan didn't file the necessary transaction report that they should have. It is called a suspicious activity report or SAR. They did not file any report until after Epstein died. And then they filed a report that covered $4,700 transactions totaling $1.1 billion. Let's just take that in for a minute. All of those 4,700 transactions went through their bank were authorized despite their system practices that are in place purposely to highlight suspicious activities. So, it wasn't that those transactions weren't suspicious, because they were suspicious enough to be caught up, but only after he died. Talk about complicit. Now, if you're wondering whether or not JP Morgan had any civil liability regarding these transactions, they have in fact settled lawsuits with the victims of Jeffrey Epstein. In 2023, JP Morgan paid $290 million to settle a class action lawsuit on behalf of Epstein victims and they reached a $75 million se settlement in a separate case brought by the US Virgin Islands. So they although did not they weren't found guilty or liable in a court of law they obviously made a calculation that they could have some sort of liability based because they did not file those SARS transactions as they should have allowing for Epstein to continue to abuse and traffic these children and young women. They paid millions of dollars in class actions. Now we are seeing Democrats sending this letter to JP Morgan who has said that they want to cooperate and he is saying if you want to cooperate then send us the information. The Democrats tried to get an official legal subpoena to force the banks to turn over this information and every Republican other than Massie declined to vote for that. So this is Jamie Raskin asking them to do the right thing for their reputation, for the fact that they helped Jeffrey Epstein traffic these children because they were willing to turn the other cheek or turn a blind eye. I don't know about you, but for me, a good night's sleep is essential and a good mattress is key. Lesa has a lineup of beautifully crafted mattresses tailored to how you sleep. And Lesa has been tested and awarded best hybrid mattress by the New York Times Wire Cutter, which is my personal go-to for brand recommendations. And it is exclusively featured by Westm as their go-to mattress partner. In fact, that's how I picked my mattress. I went to a Westm, I tried them all out. It was super easy, super quick. I got the Legend Hybrid. Lessa mattresses are meticulously designed and assembled in the US for exceptional quality. And it's not just about sleep, it's about impact. They donate thousands of mattresses each year to those in need while also partnering with organizations like CleanHub to help remove harmful plastic waste from our oceans. I feel so good enjoying their mattress while knowing I'm helping a company that's helping our environment. Go to lessa.com for 20% off mattresses. Plus, get an extra 50% $50 off with promo code mistrial exclusively for my listeners. Go to lessa.com for 20% off mattresses. Plus, get an extra $50 off with promo code mistrial exclusive for my listeners. That's lsa.com promo code mistrial for 20% off mattresses plus an extra $50 off. Support our show and let them know we sent you after checkout. lessa.com promo code mistrial. He even though goes as far in this letter to talk about a very disturbing interaction with somebody who was at JP Morgan. Evidently, documents further show that Mr. Epstein repeatedly communicated with the chief executive of the investment bank at JP Morgan who alerted Mr. Epstein to the bank's sensitivity about his constant cash withdrawals and offered him the opportunity to alter his tactics to avoid detection. He is getting not only maybe a wink wink look the other way. This letter is saying how he's actually getting help to how to hide it. The letter goes on to say, even more startling, that JP Morgan executive also repeatedly intervened to ensure that JP Morgan's compliance functions would not interfere with Mr. Epstein's activities. Even more disturbing, in 2010, after Mr. Epstein plead guilty to engage in sex with a minor, the same JP Morgan executive visited Mr. Epstein properties in New Mexico, New York, and the Caribbean. His email correspondence with Mr. Epstein after one of these visits suggests he may have become complicit in Mr. Epstein's sex trafficking operation. He wrote, and this is uh really disturbing, he wrote, quote, "That was fun. Say hi to Snow White." And Mr. Epstein chillingly responded by asking which character he would like next to which the JP Morgan executive responded quote beauty and the beast. This is all in the letter that Congressman Rascin sent to JP Morgan. Nebraskan not allowing Trump and Johnson and MAGA to distract from these Epstein files from the thousand victims, children and young women who were sex trafficked by Jeffrey Epstein and were able to continue to do so because the banks allowed it to happen. And so he is asking in his letters for them to do the right thing to hand over the transaction information that they have. And it's not just JP Morgan. He goes bank by bank as calling them out for their complicit or their interactions, their failure to report. Rascin calls out Bank of America in the letter to them, saying that they failed to timely flag transactions worth $170 million between Leon Black and Jeffrey Epstein, only filing them years later. And in his letter to the Bank of New York Melon, they did something very similar. They did not timely report $378 million of transactions. They only flagged them and filed the SARS years after he died. Then Deutsche Bank, Deutsche Bank had to pay millions and dollars in settlements as a result of their transactions with Jeffrey Epstein. Now, their compliance department evidently did raise concerns about the transactions that they saw between Jeffrey Epstein and others, including the fact that his lawyer withdrew $800,000 in four years, but just below the $10,000 reporting requirement, which is a red flag for money laundering and other criminal activities. They also asked um Jeffrey Epstein and his lawyers about sending millions of dollars to women with Eastern European surnames. And the answers they got from Epstein and his lawyers were that they were going to things such as quote tuition or rent, things that would normally be triggering the fact that these types of transactions sounds like sex trafficking. Well, the concerns were raised not only to Epstein and his lawyers, but up the branch. And evidently the it says in this letter that Jeffrey Epstein said, he says Deutsche Bank executives merely asked Miss Mr. Epstein about the veracity of the recent allegations and appear to be satisfied by Mr. Epstein's response. This is after internally the concerns were raised to the executives. The letter goes on to say, noting almost comically that they were quote comfortable with things continuing end quote particularly given the quote number of sizable deals recently. So, as they say, follow the money. And these banks were willing to not follow the money because they were making money. But we have Democrats like Rascin and Widen saying this is the solution to the Epstein files and sending letters to these banks making this information public, asking them to not be complicit and continue to be part of the cover up, but help the victims and shed light and hand over the transactions and financial information that they have. Be sure to free subscribe if you haven't already so you can get updates on this and many others to come. Love this video? Support independent media and unlock exclusive content. Add free videos and custom emojis by becoming a paid member of our YouTube channel today. You can also gift memberships to others. Let's keep growing together. [Music]
Prince Andrew Gives Up Royal Titles Amid Jeffrey Epstein Allegations E! News Oct 17, 2025 #jeffreyepstein #princeandrew #enews
Prince Andrew said that after a discussion with King Charles III, he has given up the royal title of Duke of York due to continued scrutiny over his ties to convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.
Transcript
Prince Andrew is giving up his royal titles after a discussion with the king. The royal revealing in an October 17th statement that he is relinquishing his title as the Duke of York amid continued speculation into his relationship with accused sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, the wealthy financier who died by apparent suicide while awaiting trial on his charges. Andrew says, "In discussion with the king and my immediate and wider family, we have concluded the continued accusations about me distract from the work of his majesty and the royal family. I have decided, as I always have, to put my duty to my family and country first. I stand by my decision 5 years ago to stand back from public life. With his majesty's agreement, we feel I must now go a step further. I will therefore no longer use my title or the honors which have been conferred upon me. As I have said previously, I vigorously denied the accusations against me. Andrew will still be known as Prince as he is the son of Queen Elizabeth II. He faced ongoing scrutiny over his connection to Epstein, initially stepping back from his duties as a senior royal in 2019 amid sexual abuse allegations. In 2021, Virginia Duffrey, who died by suicide in April, alleged that she had been trafficked by Epstein and subsequently sexually abused by the British royal when she was 17 years old. The royal settled the suit the following year per NBC News and has continued to deny that the two engaged in any sexual relations. Andrew telling BBC News Night at the time, "I have no recollection of ever meeting this lady, none whatsoever. [Music]
Prince Andrew and the Epstein scandal - Virginia Giuffre in her own words The News Agents Oct 20, 2025
Virginia Giuffre is speaking to us from beyond the grave - with her memoir about the abuse she suffered at the hands of Epstein and - she claims - Prince Andrew. Prince Andrew continues to deny those allegations.
The book is a harrowing account of abuse, pain and control. Does it change how we see Andrew? Should he now stand trial? And what does it tell us more widely about complicity and power?
Transcript
Bigger than Andrew: powerful men vs vulnerable women This is not just about Prince Andrew and Virginia Duprey. This is about powerful men, plural, and vulnerable women, plural. No one, no one serves justice. Gile Maxwell is behind bars. Epstein is dead. Prince Andrew is still, as you said, Prince Andrew, but it is much, much bigger than him. The Epstein story goes to New York, Palm Beach, London, Paris, Mexico. It is a global ring of pedophilia. It's John. It's Emily. And on Friday evening with a thud a brief statement was issued by the palace well by Prince Andrew where he says in discussion with the king and my immediate and wider family we have concluded the continued accusations about me distract from the work of his majesty and the royal family. I have decided as I always have to put my duty to my family and country first. He is no longer the Duke of York. He is no longer a member of the Order of Garter. He is still living in Windsor Lodge, the 30-bedroom palace on the Windsor estate. He is still Prince Andrew. But undoubtedly, this statement came, this mega statement came because of the impending publication of the new book by Virginia Duy, which is coming out this week. Yeah. By the time many of you are listening to this, you will know about this memoir. It's called Nobody's Girl. And it was finished by Virginia Dupra, the woman who accused Prince Andrew of raping her essentially three times. It was finished in October of last year. And less than six months later, Virginia Dupra had taken her own life. And in the book you will find a harrowing, devastating account of that life of abuse. And one of the things that we will come to learn is that she wrote believing that she was fighting this fighting this abuse making it known to help other victims. It's what she said her her whole life. I want to make these stories known because I want to overcome it. I want to be a warrior. want to be the person who takes on predatory men who always seem to escape justice. And she's now dead. So, she was clearly unable to continue with that life of unbearable pain. And what we have in this memoir, what we will soon all be able to read about is the very specific details of how she was drawn into that web of abuse. how she in her own description over time we've we've heard became complicit and the role that GM Maxwell also played alongside Epstein in procuring pulling in to this horrendous web underage girls for Epstein's consumption. Well, let's dig into all of that and we're kind of going to take you know you through this sort of as we can. Um because I think that one of the things and you use the word harrowing and it is harrowing and I'm sure people will find it harrowing is that this didn't start with Epstein and Prince Andrew. It goes back a lot further. Yeah. She's going to tell us that she was first abused at the hands of her own father less than 10 years old. And these are claims that she makes in the book that her father denies. And that her father's friend was also an abuser. And there was even the idea of a swap that two pedophiles would swap their own children with each other. So I mean, why am I going into this kind of detail? Um because I think it prepares the ground for what happens later that she claims to have been abused by her father, claims to have been abused by her father's friend. It it becomes totally understandable that she will then run away. She then gets picked up by another pedophile who runs a modeling agency. She becomes his kind of sex slave for six months until he turfs her out. And it is only when she then goes back home and starts um a job at Mara Lago uh working sort of you know basically folding towels she wants to train to be a massuse. She thinks this is a proper professional job and she will describe how important it was to sort of work in a rules-based order. So Mara Lago actually comes across very well here as a place where there were rules, there was a uniform, there was a sort of hygiene code of conduct. She even meets Donald Trump uh you know and who she speaks glowingly of. She does and she says that it was Trump who then said oh you know if you want to come and babysit there are lots of families here sort of high-end elite families who'd love to have a babysitter in the evening. Would you like to do that? And so she really really wants to have a job. She really wants to be something other than a sex slave. She she she wants to train as a masseuse. She goes to babysit you know kids of of the family staying at Mara Lago. And one day a car pulls up behind her and it is the moment that she will meet Gen Maxwell. Yeah. And we played that clip at the top of the podcast of uh Virginia Duprey outside the court where she wants to see people brought to justice. The only person that has been brought to justice for what happened was Gileain Maxwell, who is still in prison, having been moved to a less highsecure prison as a result of goodness knows what was going on. But anyway, she is in a less secure prison, but she has been convicted. And what I think people will find striking is this phrase apex predator, but not being used about a man, but being used about Gileain Maxwell. Yeah. I mean, this idea that Jeffrey Epstein and Gileain Maxwell were less boyfriend and girlfriend, but more, in Virginia's words, two wicked halves of the same hole. And what she describes is the really invaluable role that Gileain Maxwell played in creating this web of pedophilia. that the idea that there was a woman involved with a posh voice, with a friendly manner, with beautifully manicured hands made it all seem normal. And so every time she or the other women Grooming timeline: Mar-a-Lago to Maxwell started to doubt themselves, there is this very vivid description of the first time she goes to massage Jeffrey Epstein. And it's it's Maxwell who says, "Oh, you know, put a dab of cream on your arm there when you're massaging." So that when you run out of cream, you don't need to stop the massage. You just take it off your arm and go and start with his feet and push the blood up. And she shows Virginia how to do this massage on the feet and then the calves. And Virginia says, "I didn't want to touch his buttocks. He's naked on the table." And Maxwell goes, "Oh, don't be silly. You can't be squeamish about this, otherwise the whole rhythm is lost." And you just get the sense of how Virginia was carried along with this. You know, she keeps looking at at the woman, the Maxon, going, "Oh, I'm just I'm I'm being silly, aren't I? It's all it's all fine. It's all fine." And it's Maxwell who says, "Oh, just take your clothes off. You know, you'll be much more comfortable taking your clothes off." And so, she plays an absolutely pivotal part in breaking down the defenses that Virginia would have naturally had as a young woman. It is Maxwell and Epstein that abuse her. It is Maxwell that makes Virginia feel that if she says no, she's somehow, you know, overthinking these things. I thought you want to be a massuse. Don't you want to be professional? Don't you want to learn? Don't you want to study? You know, this I'm helping you. And she will describe how Jeffrey Epstein himself wants to be seen as a mentor, not a predator. after sex um he will start to describe to her you know how the markets work or or all the Greek gods or he'll tell her about the sort of the ways of the world he'll tell her about art and it's almost like he wants to be in this position of teaching rather than you know he doesn't want to think of himself as a predator he wants to think of himself as somebody who's sort of elevating her giving her these great chances right I mean this is all stuff that we know but it is frightening to suddenly understand just how powerful it was to have that extra woman in the room. Yeah. I think what she will say is that you know she there were no bars on the windows. There was no prison but she was absolutely trapped by the sort of coercive control exerted by both Gileain Maxwell and by Epstein himself. Now, Gileain Maxwell, of course, has been moved to this lower security prison because I mean, there's talk that it's possible that Donald Trump will pardon her because Donald Trump has got his own problems as well with Jeffrey Epstein, that there are all these people in Congress who want the Epstein files to be released so that the public can see what has gone on. And you can see how much this is in the public interest. If there were all these rich and powerful men who were going to Epstein's island or being flown around by Jeffrey Epstein to get the favors of young women who are there kind of almost being trafficked, then sure, the public need to know this stuff. But of course, Donald Trump thinks that anything that comes out might reflect badly on him and so doesn't want it to come out. Yeah. And I think there are a lot of people who up to this point um sort of fell into the sort of school of thought which is you know it's men's crimes and one woman is paying the price for it. And in Virginia Dupre's account what becomes much clearer is just how culpable Gen Maxwell was. So this idea that Trump would somehow find a pardon for Gileen Maxwell because you know she'd sort of said nice things about her to Todd Blanch in the testimony I think will become a lot harder once people digest Virginia Dry's words this week and I think what you say what you raises is a really good point and it's something that I guess a lot of people think and feel, you know, maybe uncomfortable asking. Well, she was free to go, wasn't she? You know, she there were no bars on the window. She was getting paid, you know, she was getting uh her own apartment. She was getting a flat paid for by Epstein. And why didn't she leave? And I guess that is the hardest thing to understand. And I wouldn't be able to answer that myself, but I have heard I I've talked to a lot of abuse victims. And I think there were two things going on with Virginia. One was that, as I said at the beginning, she came from this incredibly broken home. She even admits that Maxwell and Epstein seemed to her at times like a like parents. They they they took on the position of being kind of parents in this absolutely dysfunctional family. But the other thing was that Epstein made very clear. He has a photo of her brother on his desk. He says, "I know where he goes to school." He says, "I control the Palm Beach Police." In other words, they send out signals which are threats. If you leave, you are putting your brother in danger. If you leave, you cannot go to anyone because I control the police. I mean all these things to a vulnerable 17-year-old I think start to explain why someone feels more trapped than maybe the the physical sense of whether they are or not. But I think there's also in her own words this idea that she is made to be complicit. You know she does feel complicit in this. She even describes how she procured other girls for them. Something that she says she will it was the worst thing she did in her life. she will never forgive herself for. She told the girls what would be expected, you know, but they would get pocket money. They would they would pay, you know, they would get paid for sexual favors, but she becomes complicit in their web, which is she says the worst thing of all. And that's so interesting because the I suppose the flip side of the coin of Epstein's subtle threats of I know where your brother is or whatever is exactly the reassurance that the men who are abusing these young girls want. Oh, I I can do this and no one's no one's ever going to find out of it. And into, you know, and into that world enters Prince Andrew feeling safe that none of this will ever come to light because everyone is going to keep quiet about it. Yeah. I mean, the first time she meets Epstein, uh, he asks her, you know, when she first lost her virginity. He asks her about her relationship with her parents. He asks her if she's on birth control. In other words, he knows he's got somebody absolutely at their most vulnerable, at their most broken. You know the the girls in in other interviews victims of Epstein I I am calling them girls because they were girls at the time have described a life being snapped into at the moment they met Epstein. You know a childhood suddenly ending at the point where he took over because he had an absolutely brilliant sense of finding the most vulnerable women, the most vulnerable The Belgravia photo & island allegations girls and knowing that he could get away with whatever he wanted. and she describes in great detail being taken to London and GM pulls her aside and says, "You will do for Prince Andrew, my friend Prince Andrew, what you do for Jeffrey." And a lot of this will be very familiar to our listeners because I guess they will have watched the NewsNight interview that we did in 2019. And she describes going out in London, nightclub, going back to the flat in Belgravia, this tiny little Kodak camera that she carried around with her everywhere, the disposables, you know, and she she hands it to Jeffrey Epstein and says, "Will you take a picture of me?" And the prince has his arm around her. Gileen is just in the background. The banisters of the stairs in Belgravia are are just uh in in shot. And this is the moment where, you know, in terms of evidence, everything hinges on that because Prince Andrew is photographed with his arm around Virginia Gupy with Gile Maxwell in the background. And it is there then that Virginia Du Fray makes those claims that Prince Andrew then takes her off and has sex with her. She is told to please him and she gets paid money by Epstein for doing that. This is something that Prince Andrew has continuously denied. And another revelation that's going to be made in the book that there was an orgy and that Prince Andrew was part of this orgy where there were eight women and two men. Him and Epstein. Yeah. And that happened. It was the third time in her claims that she had sex with him on the island little St. James that Epstein owned. She describes it as Little St. Jeff's. That's what he wanted to call it. St. Jeff's. I mean, you know, where do you start? But there has been another account from somebody who worked on the island of seeing Prince Andrew and in their words sort of frolicking by the pool with a number of young women. And I think it is that scene that Virginia then goes on to describe. She calls it an orgy between eight young women, many of whom didn't speak English, and Andrew and Epstein. with Epstein and she remembers this line joking that, you know, women that you couldn't communicate with were were the easiest ones to deal with. In other words, they didn't have English, so you just sort of, you know, you did what you wanted. And that then opens the door to so many more claims, which is not just that Prince Andrew had sex with Virginia Gupy three times, but possibly with other women whose names we don't even know. Yeah. And if you read Andrew Low's book, Yeah. Maybe not that many more people have come forward from what happened on Epstein's Island, but if you read Andrew Low's book, which is a pretty unsparing biography of uh Prince Andrew and Sarah Ferguson, as we now call them, um it is that this was happening around the world. Wherever Andrew went, there were young women who were being served up uh to him. I there's another story in the book and you know that people I'm sure will find distressing as well and this concerns a pregnancy. So Virginia Grey will tell us that she lost a baby just 4 days after she flew back from that orgy with Andrew and the eight other girls. Epstein's baby we assume. and she describes how they landed at Terra airport and says she wasn't in great shape and later she woke up in a pool of blood and that Epstein took her to a hospital and she was heavily drugged at this time. I mean, not just uh after the medical procedure, but because she'd been on a lot of Xanax and a lot of sort of painkillers, frankly, she she describes herself as sort of going in and out of consciousness this whole time because presumably, you know, she was living a fairly unbearable life at that stage. So, she wakes up to find him whispering to the medical professionals about her own care. And what she will describe is that she had this tiny incursion sort of cut near her tummy button, which was consistent with keyhole surgery. Somebody else kind of explains to her what what this means. Epste had told her she'd had a miscarriage, something altogether different, and a doctor had come up to her and said, "You might never be able to have children." So, you're left trying to piece together what this means, that she had been taken to hospital in a pool of blood. She'd lost a baby. She wasn't even made aware of it because it was a conversation between her abuser and the doctors. And she finds this tiny scar which is suggestive of an ectopic pregnancy and is just landed with the news that she'll probably never be able to have children. It is difficult to listen to some of this stuff, but when we come back, we're going to talk about where this leaves Prince Andrew and the rest of the royal family in what they do about this troublesome prince. So, we talked about the Prince Andrew's statement of him stepping back from his royal duties and the fact that he was no longer going to be the Duke of York and the membership of the Garter. But there was also a whole pile of other stuff that he said in this very brief statement that I've always been a person of honor. I deny every, you know, allegation against me. Well, one of the allegations against him now is that he bloody well lied to you. And that is absolutely clear. Now, either he didn't send the email after the interview in which he said, "Let's carry on playing in his email to Jeffrey Epstein," or he didn't say to you in the interview, "I cut off all contact with him." You can't have it both. And so I'm kind of left with this frustration of people saying uh he denies all allegations against him. It's it's palpably clear that some of what he's saying is not true and it makes you question everything else that he said. And I I still wonder, you know, look, he stood back from his royal duties. It's probably the the best that the royal family can hope for. There are still an awful lot of things where I don't think there is satisfaction that Prince Andrew has, you know, um he's still going on in a cloud of disbelief saying everything's fine. I've done nothing wrong. By the time Virginia Grey finished writing her memoirs, six months before she took her own life, she had faced consistent denials about her story from Prince Andrew, even though he'd settled to a figure of around 12 million, we understand, but without guilt. She'd also been gagged Inside the memoir: coercion, threats, escape from actually talking about that in the Queen's Platinum Jubilee year. In other words, you're back to this place once again of powerful men silencing vulnerable women and no one no one serves justice. Gile Maxwell is behind bars. Epstein is dead. I mean, she even raises the spectre of whether or not he was killed in jail. I know that's, you know, something that a lot of people have considered, including her own father in the past. Prince Andrew is still, as you said, Prince Andrew. Whatever he chooses to use by way of title, whatever, you know, note paper he writes on, he is still Prince Andrew, living in a 30-bedroom, whatever house on the royal estate. And Virginia Grey describes in a way what it would have been like to live a life that didn't pursue justice. She could have had a much simpler life. She ran off to Australia. The reason she ran off to Australia actually was that GM Maxwell and Jeffrey Epstein turn around to her and say, "We've decided we'd like you to have our baby." like a modern-day handmaiden. I mean, can you imagine any greater sense of ownership than forcing a young woman to have your baby and then explaining that she won't really be the mother? You'll be the mother. You're going to have the baby. You'll have our baby. We're going to take your baby and it's going to be our baby from then on. And this is the point at which Virginia breaks. She just snaps and she finds a very clever way of getting out of their grasp without alerting their suspicion. She says, "Send me off to um Chiang Mai in Thailand, a wonderful spa where I'm going to learn to be a massuse. You promised me that I would always be a professional massuse. Just give me the chance to go and do my my lessons, my instruction." And so they go, "Fine, you can have, you know, a couple of months there, go off and do that." She lands in Chiang Mai, she's in Thailand, she's on her own for the first time in two and a half years, and she falls in love with a man there, and they marry within a week, right? I mean, you know, if that doesn't spell PTSD, I don't know what does. But this is the man who she will then leave Thailand married to to start a new life in Australia. And she will make a phone call to Maxwell and Epstein and say, "You can't touch me now. I'm I'm married." And Epstein will say, "Have a nice life." To get to that point, we will learn about all the other abusive men in her life as well. There is, she quotes, a former prime minister who repeatedly choked her until she lost consciousness and took pleasure in seeing her fear for her life. We don't know who that is. We do not know and obviously they haven't come forward for days. It hurt to breathe and swallow. He raped me more savagely than anyone had before. We will hear about um the kind of sedo masochistic sex that Epstein has. We will hear about the number of times that she had infections, you know, urinary tract infections because she'd slept with so many men in such violent and extreme kind of conditions that she was constantly in and out of hospital, you know, in and off antibiotics on painkillers the whole time. And so I think that takes you to the place where she then tries to escape. She then runs away and she goes to Australia and at that point she she tries to live a normal life. She doesn't want to start pursuing justice. And it's only when Epstein gets back in touch with her in 20067 when the FBI are on his case that she and and even then she says, "I want to make it all go away." But she finally ends up realizing when she has her her baby girl that this is something she wants to do for other women. And this is where the story with Prince Andrew essentially starts. When she comes forward, she gives an interview to American broadcasters and says, "It is time I spoke out." And this is where you're absolutely right, Emily, to talk about how this is not just about Prince Andrew and Virginia Dupra. This is about powerful men plural and vulnerable women plural and how powerful men but the Prince Andrew is almost like a paradigm example of what powerful people can do. You talked about a figure of I think 12 million to settle a court case. The FBI wanted to interview him. He didn't wouldn't be interviewed. He could have had his day in court. He could have explained why this is absolutely monstrous that he has been charged with these things. He chose not to have his day in court. He chose to cough up 12 million instead. That is making a problem go away. That is using your power to kind of ensure that justice is not done. That there are NDAs, that there are gagging clauses, that there are things that will keep people quiet. And so, yeah, this story is about much more than Prince Andrew, but he's sort of emblematic of the story in what he has done to ensure that nothing gets out. And so, when you still see every news organization in the world doing as it has to do, Prince Andrew has categorically denied all the allegations. Yeah, we've all got to do it. But it is somehow unsatisfactory given the opportunities that the prince has had to come out and say, "Well, what do you know?" This weekend, we heard the Met Police opening investigation into why Prince Andrew passed on Virginia Grey's security number, presumably obtained from Epstein himself in the days when he was still alive, and tried to smear Virginia Gay. tried to drag her name through the mud. In other words, if you can make the person who's testifying against you seem like an unbelievable witness, then you've destroyed their reputation. They're out of your way. Look, the sheer act of that, and this is a small geeky point, but it needs to be made, is that access to someone's social security number should be totally impossible. In the United States, you get this ninedigit social security number. When I used to go into the White House, the Secret Service officers would say, "Last four numbers of your social." They would never ask. No one ever asks for your entire social security number because that has your identity. That has everything. It's like your DNA, isn't it? Is your DNA. No one ever gives it out. So, the fact that Prince Andrew in an Fallout for the Royals: emails, denials, accountability email to his uh deputy communications director at the time, the deputy communications director at the time uh at Buckingham Palace, this is her social security number. We want, you know, I've asked whether there could be an investigation that is so on the wrong side of the line of what is acceptable to do. How he got hold of it. I mean, presumably from Epstein, but that suggests a degree of collusion. These are these are questions that are legitimate to be asking now about what Prince Andrew was involved in in trying to smear her. And we also understand that, you know, it's alleged that he tried to get trolls involved kind of to be out there on social media to bismerch her name, to spread, to, you know, trash talk her. Yeah, it's wrong. I mean, there's a moment where Virginia Du Frry describes a photograph taken on holiday with her two young boys before her daughter was born and says, "That was the moment I could have chosen just to live my life, you know, in Australia on the beach, calmly getting on with my family life. Instead, what she does is she goes back into the fray and she goes, "No, I'm going to fight. I'm going to become the warrior. I'm going to raise my voice. I won't be silenced. I'm going to fight for other people. And this kind of example tells you why so few women may have chosen to do that. Because you've been through a life of abuse. You've been through whatever physical torment comes, you know, alongside the emotional um abuse. And then you find that your reputation is being trashed, that people are hanging out in your driveway, that people are coming to threaten your family, that you don't ever escape from this because too many people with too much power and too much money realize that for the first time you are a threat to them and then they try and shut you down. Well, I've spoken to someone close connections to the royal family who's said about Prince Andrew. This person said he's basically extremely stupid, but now he's cornered and he's trying to cling on to what he's got left. And the frustration, I think, from Buckingham Palace's point of view is that there's not much they can do now. It will take an act of Parliament to strip him of, you know, the title and all the rest of it. It seems that he has got a lease that is legally binding for Royal Lodge. He said, you know, back in the day, the ideal solution would have been to banish Prince Andrew to a little tiny cottage on the Balmoral estate where he would never be seen again and he would just live out his life quietly there. But he's still very close to London. He can still do whatever he likes. And they say that his arrogance, stupidity, sense of entitlement, the thick skinnness means that he will just carry on being Prince Andrew and carry on being a thorn in the side of the royal family. And the one thing this other this person said to me is that Prince William is a lot less tolerant of it than the king and that will change when the prince rises to the throne. Yeah. Yeah, I mean I guess one of the questions that people are trying to ask is why now? The memoir explains part of it. The king's trip to the Vatican to see the Pope explains another. They're fed up quite frankly of all the headlines being about Prince Andrew. But I think there's another thing and that is um a very sensitive issue which is we know the king has been ill and there is probably a place in his mind where he's thinking I don't want to leave things unsettled. I don't want to leave the dodgy uncle problem for my son, for William. And presumably between King Charles and Prince William, they're thinking this has to be sort of sorted, whatever sorted looks like. I mean, there is a world of course in which Prince Andrew says, "Let me stand trial, right?" You know, I will go. I will stand trial. Maybe that is the most wholesome thing that he could do. And there's also, and I feel this actually really strongly, a world in which we kind of I mean, you're so right to say that Prince Andrew kind of epitomizes so much of the story because it's about wealthy, powerful men and vulnerable women, but it is much, much bigger than him. The Epstein story goes to New York, Palm Beach, London, Paris, Mexico. It is a global ring of pedophilia. And we don't know the names of many of the other men involved. We know people who had associations with him. We know people who had money from him. We know people who owed him favors. But we don't really know how many other men were involved in this. how many men were complicit in his crimes or really the total number of women that went through his grasp. And so I I guess there is a moment at which we stand back and we say this is this is not just a story of royal protocol. It's not just a story of titles, you know, it's not just a story of where Prince Andrew lives. It's a story of how complicit so many people were in what happened during that decade. It's also a question of why that trial into Epstein in 2007 was shrunk into a tiny plea deal. What was going on at the Department of Justice? Who spoke to who about what? You've mentioned Alex Aosta in the past. You know, the man who converted what should have been the trial of the century plea deal. into a plea deal. I mean, there were 40 witnesses or more young women who'd already given their stories to police, already come forward, talked to the FBI, told their most grueling, intimate, you know, humiliating stories of what happened. And what happens? Epstein gets 18 months on a plea deal in an open prison where he's out during the day and is still seeing, as far as we understand, underage girls during that time and just goes to prison to sleep at night. What on earth happened there? So I think there are so many bigger questions really into how so few people have been held accountable for what went on over decades and decades. Today has been I don't know whether to apologize or not really but a pretty hard listen. It's a tough listen isn't it? The book is out tomorrow and we will have plenty more details plenty more to discuss then the ramifications of that more widely. We'll see you tomorrow. Bye-bye. Bye for now. The news agents. This is a Global Player original podcast. [Music]
He was on the island': Giuffre memoir co-writer says Andrew could help investigation ITV News Oct 20, 2025
The co-writer of Virginia Giuffre's memoir has said it would be a mistake to think "the fetishisation of young girls" died with Jeffrey Epstein, as she detailed how Prince Andrew could still help with the investigation.
Speaking to ITV News, Amy Wallace, who helped write the book, said she had "no doubt" about the truth of the allegations Giuffre made about the prince in it.
The book, titled Nobody's Girl, details Ms Giuffre's life and her interactions with Prince Andrew, Jeffrey Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell.
Transcript
He was in the houses. He was on the jets. He was on the island. And he could come forward and help investigators. Somebody said to Prince Andrew, "Enough is enough." And that's a step in the right direction. My sense of King Charles is he's always been a very decent man. I'd be thrilled if you'd read it. You're in no doubt about the claims that she makes about Prince Andrew, not just knowing her, but abusing her. I have no doubt. Amy, thank you very much for joining us uh talking to ITV News about this uh very remarkable book, a survivor's memoir, aostumous survivor's memoir. Um it's 6 months since Virginia took her life. Um and she defined this book in a way by saying if it helped one survivor, it was worthwhile. So I guess by that definition, she and therefore you would regard this as as a success already. Well, you know, we're just at the point where readers, average people are about to be able to read it uh tomorrow as is when it actually comes out. And I think that's when we're really going to see whether it helps people or not. Um it's gotten a lot of attention before it's coming out. Um and a lot of the salacious details, which is not the whole part of the book, but those a lot of the details of some of the worst things she's endured have come out. But I think, you know, one of the things that Virginia really hoped for, it's the reason that she wrote the book, is that she would help other survivors of sexual abuse, not just Epstein and Maxwell survivors, but anyone, male or female, who's been coerced into a sexual situation that they didn't want. And her hope was to say to those people, "I see you. I am you. And I understand the shame you feel. I understand how difficult it can be to get up in the morning sometimes because I'm going to show you it is still difficult for me even though I'm very well known and have won settlements in certain cases. It it's something that sticks with you all the time. And so there was a feeling of if this book could come out some people would feel less alone and as she writes in the book if only one person feels less alone it will be a success for me. So we're hoping that that's how it's received. And obviously, you know, it tells of some very dark parts of her life um right from childhood onwards um to the terrible abuse by Epstein and how she was trafficked. I wonder if she would feel do you think some validation that publishing day is here postumously for her and that this message is is about to reach a much wider audience. Yes. Well, you have clearly read the book, so you know that I wrote a pref preface to the book. Um, I I went to Australia in October. It was my second visit there um to be with her and go over the final manuscript one last time. And while I was there, she approved the manuscript, the cover, the cover image, the cover title, all of those things. And then the holidays happened and then we were preparing for publication and then in April she died. So I felt and and we all felt the team that had been involved in the book that it was important that we helped the reader understand what had happened basically between finishing the book, locking the book in October of last year and publishing it now. And so there's a preface that talks about her hopes for the book. She wrote me an email just a few weeks before she died saying, "In the case of my passing, it's important that this book be published. Please publish it." So that is also in the preface, people can read the entire email. Um so yes she was thinking a lot about and hoping for the publication of the book to do a couple of things. You know survivors and particularly in this case Epstein and Maxwell the people who they hurt and believe me Maxwell is just as guilty of hurting as Epstein which we can discuss. But the survivors in this case have been asked not just to come forward bravely the first time. Not just to tell law enforcement over and over again about what they suffered, but then to continue repeating, repeating, repeating, repeating on demand the most terrible things that have happened to them in their lives. And Virginia wanted and hoped for that if we could put her story between the two covers of a book, then she could put it on a bookshelf. And whenever anyone going forward in her life said, "Tell me about that time when Prince Andrew abused you that first time." She could say, "I respect your need to know those details. They're important for you to know. Please go to my book." And I'm no longer in the business of repeating and repeating and repeating. You don't have to buy it. You can take it out of the library, but I we are hoping that you can get the most careful, supremely accurate, nuanced telling of her story in the book. And the idea was that she could then move forward into her life and stop replaying the past and become the full-time advocate that she was hoping to be. So some of the claims clearly in this book are contested. Uh for example, Prince Andrew uh has denied even knowing uh Virginia Duffrey. Um certainly denies many of the allegations, all of the allegations in that book. Um what is your uh judgment about the accuracy of Virginia's memories? I've worked with her for four years. Um, she told me every thing she could remember about her life and what she cared about and who she was with and where she was. The thing she always said to me about her memory was, "I may not remember a particular dates, times, days of the week, but I remember as you would. If there's a man on top of you raping you and his face is six inches from your own, you remember that face." I would also say that I was very impressed because I did a lot of the work of corroborating her story. We didn't just tape record interviews, transcribe them and edit them down to a book. We talked to a lot of people in her life and people who could corroborate or were various places when she was there. Um, and her memories stacked up. So my own reporting corroborated her stories. And finally, I would say her her very own lawyers were very meticulous about trying to help her identify who she had and hadn't been trafficked to. Remember, a lot of the time these young girls were sent into a darkened massage room where there was a naked man lying on a table and told to service them sexually. They were not politely introduced. They they weren't necessarily they never even knew the name. They just went in and did what they were forced to do and left. So, how do you hold those people to account? Her lawyers were very careful about showing her a wide variety of photographs. People well-known people who didn't know Epstein, well-known people who did. She never made a mistake. She never picked from the wrong group. They mixed them all up on a table. She never made a mistake. So given the number of people she was trafficked to, given the trauma that she experienced in her life, you might think that might all be too much and it would all become a big jumble. That was not my impression and that was not the impression of people who tested her very carefully before they prepared her for for depositions. So, as the ghost writer of her book and the her great collaborator and a independent journalist in your own right, you're in no doubt about the claims that she makes about Prince Andrew, not just knowing her, but abusing her. I have no doubt. I've been a journalist for 30 years. I've worked at magazines, newspapers. I understand fact-checking. We had a professional fact checker go over this after my own meticulous research. Uh, I have no doubt of what we assert in this book. This book is about accountability. It's about justice. It's about transparency. Prince Andrew's name is mentioned dozens of times, but it's opaque on other things. It talks about a heralded statesman being involved in the trafficking and the abuse of of young women. It talks about Billionaire One and Billionaire 2, a a former senator, a scientist, academics, all involved in this ring of sex trafficking. Why aren't they named? Well, we do a good job. I think at the end, Virginia, it was important to her to explain to readers why she had named certain names, and there are names that are in the book and why she didn't name other names. And I think for any victim of any sort of abuse, there's always a a costreward ratio that you have to evaluate. You know, you know that you want to to prosecute those to hold accountable those who have hurt you and others. and you and you believe in Virginia's case that that will theoretically make the world a better place for all of our kids if you can start to do that. So that's obviously sounds great. The cost of that they're innumerable, loss of privacy, threats to your life, which she did receive, credible threats. The FBI called her at one point and said, "We have a credible threat to your life." Her family rented a camper van and they fled into the wilds of Australia for 3 weeks. So these were real things. These were not in her head. You know, there are other threats that are about litigation and being basically kept in a courtroom or in a deposition for the rest of your life or bankrupted by that. And there were particular people who made that clear to her that if they if she didn't take their names out of her mouth that she would be kept in court forever. And if the goal for any of these victims is to come forward bravely, but then be able to heal, to be constantly asked not just about what happened to you with that particular person, but in those depositions, you get asked everything about everything, any sensitive thing in your life, your therapist notes, your your physical maladies, they're grueling, they're embarrassing. Now, so so the bottom line is she names some of her abusers, but not others. She had to balance the risks to herself and to her family and postumously. Is it not possible that these names should be published? Should I mean presumably you know who they are. Should you not put them in the public domain since uh she's very clear that they have used her and she knows their names. Well, I'll be clear. I know every one of their names. But I would say this. It's not Virginia's job. It's not the book's job. It's not my job to make a list. This is why people are clamoring for the Epstein files. All those names are in the Epstein Files and that's why Americans are calling for their release. They law enforcement has to do this work. And these women have come forward. They haven't been secretive with law enforcement about who these people are. They have mentioned their names repeatedly about what was done to them. So the FBI know the names of all of these people that Virginia talks about in the book but doesn't name. The FBI have that have that information. My understanding is the FBI has the name of every man that Virginia knew she had been trafficked to. Um absolutely. But it begs the gigantic question is why aren't they being prosecuted? Well, that's we could talk for three hours about that misogyny. I mean, remember until Me Too, the Me Too movement, women just were not believed and and Virginia lived through when she came forward, there was no Me Too movement. Arguably, we haven't come that far because of the Me Too movement either, but way back then, you came forward and you were called a You were called a liar. You were called trash. Why did you were a prostitute? Didn't you get paid $200? By the way, there is no such thing as a child prostitute. It's still illegal even if they got paid. So that whole way of thinking which believe me is alive and well on this earth. It's still there. Um I I I I guess I just repeat the law enforcement should do its job and investigate. There's often a problem with a he said she said case. You know, any lawyer could tell you that sexual abuse happens in darkened rooms when generally there are two to three people in it. In the case of Epstein and Maxwell, Epstein and Maxwell often abused women together or girls together, but usually it's just a couple of people. And so you you don't have 10 witnesses that you can bring into a trial. All you have is girl after girl after girl saying something similar happened to them with that person. And that's what they did. That's how they convicted Gilen. C can we turn to the royal family's reaction to some of the allegations in this book? And I should make clear that that, you know, Prince Andrew still vigorously uh denies uh those claims. Um obviously we know that Prince Andrew has now lost his titles. Do you think Virginia would be satisfied with that or do you think he she would demand that the royal family go much further perhaps that he loses a title of of prince as well? Well, I know her brothers and their wives pretty well at this point. They were very helpful to me in finishing the book and and in researching the book. And I know they have said it's a it's a day of victory for them. Um that it's a a step in the right direction. Yes, two more titles may to many seem like a symbolic gesture, but what it actually means is that somebody said to him, somebody said to Prince Andrew, "Enough is enough." And that's a step in the right direction, but only a step in your view. I mean, I I know that the family, particularly her little brother Sky, has has asked for the title of prince to be removed. I don't know that that's even possible. He is technically a prince. He is the son of of the queen. Um but I think a better question is you know Prince Andrew can deny and he has repeatedly that he himself is not a person who did anything wrong. I'll leave it at that. But he was in the houses. He was on the jets. He was on the island. and he could come forward and help investigators. Remember, he said at one point that he was perfectly willing to do so. And then he never that never that help never materialized. So that avenue is still open to him. He could still come forward and say, "I feel terrible about this. I'm still not going to admit any wrongdoing on my part, but I do understand that women, girls, young girls who were the age of my daughters, what at the time that I abused Virginia, he's not going to say that, young girls were hurt. And that is a travesty. And let me take you into the world that I saw when I was at all of those places with Epstein and Maxwell. He could do that. I'm not holding my breath, but there are different ways for each of us to step forward and that avenue is absolutely open to him. There's obviously been a financial settlement between Prince Andrew and Virginia. Um, and we understand that was funded by the late Queen. I mean, is there a sense of disappointment, do you think, from Virginia that the late Queen uh financed that? Is there a sense that the late Queen did not uh meet the moment as well? I guess I would say I don't think Virginia had any bad feelings about the queen. Um, she did have bad feelings about the royal family in general, putting pressure at different times to try to keep her either silenced or make her credibility look bad. You know, there there are scenes in the book where where there were trolls hired. Now, this was particularly Prince Andrew's camp, allegedly to to make her look like she was not believable. The these girls were not people to them. So, if they're in our way, let's tear them apart. And there were several instances where pressure was applied to keep her story silent or to keep it being to keep her story from being heard by others. And would you want King Charles to read this book and react to this book? Are you hoping that he's among your readers? My sense of King Charles is he's always been a very decent man um in the sense of trying to champion ways to make the world a better place, particularly climate change in recent years. Um I'd be thrilled if you'd read it. It's not my main goal in life. Um, as I say, Virginia's um, hope was to really help other victims of of abuse. Um, and but but yes, we need this cause needs more people speaking out and it needs men speaking out, not just women. The king of England would be a prime example. He would be a prominent man saying this is this is an outrage. you know, I I he has grand granddaughters. You know, I the men need to play a role in this as well. And while we're speaking about men versus women, one thing I really want to make clear, there's been this narrative about Gillin Maxwell that has I'm not sure how it's evolved, but it has definitely evolved since she was convicted on sexual trafficking and helping in aiding abetting in that scheme. And somehow people have sort of forgotten. It seems it's almost as if she was like a receptionist that was keeping the the schedule book, but then she would send these girls in to be abused by Epstein. Gileain Maxwell was a sexual abuser herself, and this book makes that completely clear, if it should have been clear already, but she was having sex with girls. She was saying, "Come over here and sexually service me." She was hurting people, hurting young girls during sex when she was not happy with them. She was intentionally inflicting pain on them during sex acts. Were you shocked when she was moved to a low security prison in Texas? Absolutely. She most prisoners who've been convicted of things that like as she has do not get moved into a minimum security prison. What we call that in the United States is a club fed, which is like a club med. It's like a resort. Now, I wouldn't want to live there. It still has a wall around it, but it's way better than where she was before. So you see Gilelay Maxwell as as prominent a sex predator as as any of them well as Epstein himself. I mean Virginia called the the two of them two halves of an evil hole. But she felt that Gilen was actually even more ghastly and monstrous in this particular way. Galen Maxwell was a woman and she used her gender to lure young girls into this den of hell with her gender. Virginia would never have gone to the home of an old man who had approached her at Mara Lago Spa, which is where Galen procured her. She would never have followed a a man into a massage room. But she thought that because she was approached by this beautiful, very well-dressed, posh, very expensive handbag, beautiful accent at Mara Lago. This was a classy person. This was somebody upstanding that was that and Miguel traded on that with all the girls she procured. And then once she got you behind the locked door, then there was a whole different person there. But she is the way Epstein got, you know, these women into his net and she was in there with him. I was very struck to read that uh and to hear you say that um Donald, you know, that Virginia was a supporter of Donald Trump's that, you know, she welcomed him winning the presidency and she saw no evidence that he had participated in any of these uh sex trafficking rings at all. Is that correct? That's correct. She I mean again let's she was in the Epstein Maxwell orbit for a little over two years. During that time she did not see Donald Trump on the island. She did not see him being given any girls that she knew of and she herself was not trafficked to him. So Epstein was, you know, hurting girls for a long time, many of the years with Maxwell, sometimes with not with Maxwell. So I don't know what his involvement was in those years. But from Virginia's perspective, Trump was not an abuser. In addition, she had met him because she worked at Mara Lago as a $9 an hour spa attendant, and her father worked there, too. and she had been introduced to Trump as a as a young girl. So he'd been very kind to her. So she had personal memories of Trump that were positive. And then most importantly, I mean, I saw her in October, that's right before the presidential election. She was very high on President Trump being reelected as president. And the reason was one of his main planks of his campaign was releasing the Epstein files. And she wanted that because it validated her and others experiences. She knows what what is in those files that she told them and she knows of many other women who some of whom we don't even know what their names are but they have talked to law enforcement. They just haven't been made public to the world. And she felt validated by that. You know, these are women who've been told over and over and over again that they are liars and that they don't deserve to be listened to. and a presidential candidate who once was the president is saying, "Release the files." She was overjoyed. Would she feel betrayed? Do you feel betrayed that the Epstein files still haven't been released and the Department of Justice says they're hollow. There's nothing there. There's no files to be released. Well, I know that there's something there because Virginia has told me and I only know the swath that Virginia told them, but I know there's a lot there. And I I know that there's a lot more because a lot of women have come forward to them and have been there's a scene in the book where they're all personally thanked by investigators who work for the Department of Justice for coming forward. So, we know they've unless those files have been destroyed in some way, those files are full of information. There's absolutely no question of that. So, I don't know why they're not being released. It seems bizarre, frankly, to campaign on a plank of releasing them, which is something that's important nonpartisan across the board. It's important to his MAGA base, and it's also important to all people in America. in the world. You know, rich people should not just be able to mistreat poor people. And believe me, most of these girls had no resources. They were picked for that reason. And so people are mad about that. And I have I don't have any, you know, vision into why the about face on the Trump administration's part, but it's baffling. So is your takeaway from working and co-writing and collaborating with Virginia is your takeaway look this is an attempt at accountability of transparency of bringing justice but this is just the tip of the iceberg that there is some unbelievably dark uh you element to this uh crime spree uh that is the very kind of nature of these sex trafficking rings that's yet to be uncovered. I mean, are you are you despondent despite the sort of success of this book in shining a light on one woman's story of survival? Are you despondent about where we are in the postme? Well, I think what this book is about is misogyny and the fetishization of young girls. And anyone who thinks that those two things died with Jeffrey Epstein when he hung himself in his cell is sadly mistaken. So what I'm despondent mostly about is that Virginia isn't here with me right now or sitting in the seat instead of me. This is her book. I'm a ghost writer. I'm supposed to be invisible and that's the way I like it. But this book is so important and in in the absence of Virginia being here, it's important that we all and I'm not alone. Her family is is speaking out as well. That Prince Andrew is the is just one of many. This book is not about Prince Andrew. This is about a system of powerful wealthy people hurting people who aren't powerful and wealthy. It's a system about men who are powerful and wealthy hurting young girls and th that dynamic is alive and well in this world. And the men who hit who hurt the the victims of Maxwell and Epstein, those people who they were trafficked to are walking free. So that's one, you know, direction to look. But also, I think it's part of our culture. It's not the only example of of that kind of thinking. And and there's one other element to add into it, which is, and I've touched on it, but another element to add to it is class. You know, they they went across in Palm Beach, Florida, they went and procured at the poor high school because they knew those girls would be more desperate. And this was an intentional strategy. It wasn't by accident. Now, so what does that say? I think that's something we need to look at. And it's not just one apex predator and his sidekick Gillen doing it and now she's in jail and he's dead so we can all rest easy. What's what's in the book is the predator's playbook. And if any parent out there is thinking, "How could this happen? It wouldn't happen to my children." There's a psychic manipulation that goes on with these kinds of people. And they are not rare that is about grooming children by telling them they matter. grooming children by saying, "We see something special in you, and we believe that we, because we're posh, can help you achieve your goals in life. And oh, by the way, we're also going to completely do away with your self-esteem while we're raping you or trafficking you, but but put up with that because we're going to help you live a better life." And that's a class issue. And despite his denials, clear denials, you believe that class issue of engaging in that kind of abuse of young women reached all the way up to the British royal family. Well, what what Virginia describes is his sense of entitlement that she existed for his amusement. And I think that's sort of the height of this, which is these aren't people, these girls that we're abusing. They exist for our pleasure. And I think yes, that that is what Virginia experienced and what she writes about in her book, which is that needs to stop. Great. Thank you so much for talking to us, sharing your story. And like you said, the only tragedy is that Virginia is not here to to tell her own story. Well, she's here right here. This is a ring that she gave me. Um 50 cents at a thrift store. It's made out of a zipper and I've been wearing it on every interview. Wonderful. Thanks for joining me. Thank you so much. Really appreciate the time. Thank you very much. Of course.
The DARK Truth About Prince Andrew - Virginia Giuffre’s Memoir The News Agents Oct 21, 2025
Amy Wallace, the co author of Virginia Giuffre‘ s memoir - which is published today - has told Emily it’s possible more women will now come forward to reveal what they know about Prince Andrew’s actions on Epstein’s island. She calls on Andrew to “name names” of other abusers around Epstein. And she speaks for the first time about what Virginia believed happened on the night Epstein died.
Transcript
Should Andrew Face Trial? What is your sense now of the correct actions that Prince Andrew should be taking? Would you like to see him stand trial? In a court of law, you need to have an accuser and she is no longer alive. But he was on the island. He was in the Manhattan townhouse. He was on the jets. I think what's important is that we're watching a man have his life diminished because of his past experience. You are clear that there are at least eight other women now who could testify if they chose to that Andrew had been on that island having sex with underage girls. Amy In another world, uh, you wouldn't be sitting here today. Virginia would have been retelling her own story. She would have been doing this interview. She died last April. Um, tell us about the last contact you had with her. And was there ever a question over whether this book would be published? Well, a few weeks before her death, she sent me an email. um uh me and another member of our team an email explicitly saying in the case of my passing uh I want this book published. Um that email is actually re replicated in the preface that I wrote to the book to help readers understand what had happened between when we finished the book last October and when it was published. there were many events and we needed to help people understand and people obviously had heard that she had passed away. Um so so we knew that that was her desire and basically the question was how could the team of us get it in fighting shape. It was already finished but um needed to bolster it um particularly without her there to to talk about it herself. We just needed to be very careful. So there was a there was just a a series of meticulous things that we went through to get it done. But it was never a question of whether we wanted to or whether there was interest. We felt all the more that it was important that her legacy and her voice um live on. Um and so we got it done. I mean it must have been a a a shocking message to get that. I mean, did you did you think that you were about to lose Virginia then? Did you understand what was going through her head at that point if she was talking about her own death? Well, there is some context that makes it a little less like ominous, although it was still sad, is that she had just been in a a car accident and she had posted an Instagram post that she meant to be private, but it went out to the world and everybody had written about it with with a picture of herself very battered. Um, and so it was in the the email to to us was in relation to that post which had said I may only have a couple of days to live. Um, I'm in kidney failure. That post had gone out and so it it was not just I got something out of the blue saying in the case of my passing. Um, it was a relation to something that had already happened very publicly. Um but but you know “On the island. In the townhouse. On the jets.” she recounts in the book that that sort of this feeling of worthlessness that that trauma victims often feel was always something she had to fight against and that it was sort of a wolf at the door. You know that she she had tried to hurt herself in the past and that's in the book. She was adamant that we include her ups and her downs, her highs and her lows, because she never wanted other trauma victims to feel um any shame. She wanted them to not feel alone and and so she wanted to say, "Look, I struggle too." And so she was very principled about when when some terrible things would happen or some setbacks in her life, she was like, "That goes in the book." And you know, I've written other collaborative books. That is not often the way people react to things that are difficult in their lives. They don't necessarily think, well, I need to put that out for the world to see. But for Virginia, since her whole purpose in this book was to help other survivors of sexual abuse, not just Epstein and Maxwell survivors, but but all survivors, um make them feel less alone, make them feel seen, um and understood. She she was very adamant that we include all of those things. Many people will know Virginia as the outspoken warrior who took on Epstein, took on Gile Maxwell, took on Prince Andrew, but you reveal here that her sexual abuse started much earlier at the hands of her own father than his best friend claims he denies. And I guess it explains why she says she became used to powerful men having sex with children and never feeling the repercussions. Yeah, I think the important thing here is, you know, for so long, and you know this very well, the the victims of Epstein and Maxwell were treated like bad girls, people who shouldn't be believed. Um, and a really important point in this book is that victims of sexual trafficking are not born, they are made. and they are made by terrible experiences that they they endure in their lives. By the time she meets Gilen Maxwell at the Mara Lago Spa, which Donald Trump, our president, owns, she's 16 years old, and she's already been treated very badly and betrayed very painfully by members of her own family, people who she trusted. So, a lot of the victims of of Epstein and Maxwell who are known, and there are many who have not come forward publicly, which I completely understand that decision and respect it, but a lot of the ones who are known have said that they had other um traumas in their past. And I think Epstein and Maxwell had a particular knack for sniffing out those girls. They were more they were easier to manipulate and easier to hurt. So, the sexual abuse destroys the relationship that she has as a child with her father, she also thinks her mom knows. And one day at a campsite um a few years after the abuse has begun when he's rude to her friend, Virginia loses it. And in front of her aunts and uncles, she she turns around and she exposes him. She says, "This guy has been me for years since I was a little kid and no one has done about it." And she thinks that that moment is going to change everything. And then she gets up the next morning and life just carries on and they offer her breakfast. I I guess that's the first time, isn't it, that uh Virginia Dra issues a cry for help which goes completely ignored. It goes completely ignored and she's also beaten very badly after she says Giuffre’s Final Email & Plan to Publish that by her father. I mean, she's she's bloodied. Um her mom was not around the campfire when that utterance was made. I've spoken to her mother. Uh she was inside the camper I think taking care of some other children. Um so she didn't hear that. She told me um she only learned of Virginia's allegations about her father later when Virginia was already grown up a a mom herself. She told her mother about it. Um her mother absolutely told me that she believes um Virginia's allegations against her father and her her mother and her father are no longer together. Um they are divorced. Um and it was a very painful um conversation that I had with her mom just because there's so much sadness and um regret there. And as you say when she's 16 she starts work at Mara Lago. She thinks it's going to change her life. And that is where she meets Maxwell and Epstein. And she describes them as less boyfriend and girlfriend, more two halves of the same wicked hole. For anyone wondering about the part that Maxwell played, for anyone wondering if she should be granted clemency now after her conversations with Todd Blanch uh at the DOJ, what would your response be to Maxwell's wrong? Well, I I think it's just sort of fascinating. This is a woman who's been convicted of hurting girls and also of being a key part of the sex trafficking scheme. And somehow the narrative, maybe partly her family has pushed it, she's pushed it, she's is that she was somehow just some sort of receptionist who kept track of the daybook about who was coming when. Um, there is absolutely no question that she was an active procurer of girls. She procured Virginia and many others who have come forward. But make no mistake, this woman was just as much of a sexual abuser as Epstein himself. She was in the rooms. She was having sex with the girls. She was saying to them, "Come over here and sexually service me." She was hurting the girls during sex when she was angry with them for whatever reason using various heinous sex tools to hurt them during sex. So this is a person who who abused girls. She is a sex sexual offender and and she's convicted like it's not you know with so many of these things it's everybody is innocent until proven guilty. This person has been proven guilty. So, the idea that she would be pardoned is is unfathomable to me. I don't even know why it would be even considered. Um, she's been moved into a a much minimum security prison from where she was before, which is clearly a, you know, quid proquo in response to her giving an interview to, you know, Trump's former lawyer. What message would it send out, Amy, if she was released? Rich people can hurt poor people and not pay the price. Misogyny is alive and well in this country and in the world. Fetishization of young girls is okay. And none of those things are true. And and frankly, that's why people are Maxwell’s Role: Abuser and Procurer calling for the release of the Epstein files because people are sick of it. We know that these women have come forward, not just Virginia, and they have talked to law enforcement. There's a scene in the book of of Department of Justice people thanking them for coming forward in a private room. Please come forward more. We need more information. We know they have the information. I know from Virginia exactly what she told them and the name she named. She didn't hold back. So, all of those things are in the files. We don't need anyone to interview Glen Maxwell, who by the way has never shown any indication of wanting to help any of these girls. He she saw them as trash and she made that clear. She doesn't think of them as people or people who need to be stuck up for. And so, the idea that someone's going into her prison cell and saying, "We need your help." They don't need her help. She's convicted. She's a sexual abuser. The case is closed on her. What what they need to do is look back into the very rigorous, as far as I understand, investigation that was done over many, many years. And unless they've somehow lost track of where those files are, they exist and there the information inside them is powerful. So, just explain what you're calling for now. Is this the FBI? Is it Palm Beach Police? Is it the Department of Justice? You're saying that they are sitting on many names. I don't know, dozens of names that they could be chasing and they're not. I have no window into what they are or not doing. Um, I'm talking about the Department of Justice, the Palm Beach, you know, remember the Palm Beach investigation, which was very rigorous, and I've read the entire file, um, which is public and anyone can read it. Very rigorous. They found more than 30 victims, some of whom were 14, 15, 16, um, most of them underage. They interviewed them all. They interviewed their families. And in the end, Epstein gets this sweetheart deal, which they don't tell the victims about. They don't consult the victims. He's he's sent to to prison, and I put quotes around that because he's allowed to leave during the day and go to an office where he abuses more teenagers during his sentence. So, a slap on the wrist is a cliche, but that's what he got. Why do you think that happened? Uh because he was very close to very powerful people like who? Um I don't know that I can spell out the names. Some of the names I cannot utter. Um, but there have been reports that I haven't independently verified that he somehow promised the government something that would be helpful in other areas. I I don't know what that is. Um, but again, let's remember this is 2008. This is a time when, and I would argue we're still in a time like this to some degree, but it definitely was worse in 2008 when women were not believed. Why Victims Weren’t Believed And certainly poor women, young women were not believed. They were be they were described as drug addicts, They were described as liars. And their class was used against them. They were not trustworthy. They were poor. They were they would do anything for money. They were bad girls who just loved the lifestyle. They loved being on the jet. There was this whole campaign to cast them as unbelievable or to be disbelieved. And so in this period, you know, the old boys club worked. It stuck together, closed ranks and took care of him. So, so now we have, you know, subsequent investigations. The Department of Justice obviously went after Gillin and got her and convicted her and she's tried to appeal and it hasn't worked. But but but in the meantime, there was there were attempts to investigate Epstein, which is why he was picked up at Teter airport and ultimately jailed and ultimately killed himself. Um there were there were investigators who were working on that case. Those files exist. You you just you paused before you said um killed himself. Do you think that that was a question mark that Virginia had. You talk about the powerful men and the the ring of men that covered up for him. Yeah. I noticed myself pause. Um I in the book Virginia kind of argues both ways. She says that she absolutely can understand why he would have killed himself. um in the sense that this is a man who had all these sort of su pseudoscientific self-justifications for why he had to rape girls repeatedly throughout the day and he had you know I need to have sex three times a day and I have to he was very very very um arrogant and he loved his ego to be stroked and to be act as if he was he was so powerful and so obviously being in jail you don't get any of those things it's a very humbling experience and so she could imagine that it was awful and that he might want to end his life. On the other hand, she also knew because she'd seen the uh videotaping equipment and the monitors in his homes that and he had said things to her that indicated that the whole goal of that taping system was to entice powerful men into the house, serve them up underage girls against their will and videotape those things. again those tapes theoretically are in the Epstein files and so so she on the one so in that sense she understood there were a lot of powerful people who might have an incentive to have him killed um so I don't know one way or another I know that it's been officially ruled by authorities law enforcement authorities that it was a suicide um I don't I don't have any independent knowledge that I can used to to to interrogate that. Uh Virginia could see it both ways. Let's go back to her story because uh one of the things she says is that all the of all the terrible wounds they inflicted that forced complicity was the most destructive. Will you just talk to us about that? Because I guess people still look in on this and say why didn't she just leave? You will understand why not. Just try and share that with us. Yeah, I think that one of the reasons that it was Forced Complicity & The Procuring Scheme important that we include and and Virginia insisted on on this, although it was difficult for her, that we include her earliest abuse, is that, you know, she she learned she was living in a world where she was going to be mistreated one way or another. Um, and she kind of had to make the best of it. That was that was where she was coming from when she meets Epstein and Maxwell. Um, but the complicity you're describing is the procuring. So, remember this is a pyramid scheme. So, what they would do is they would bring in a girl. Um, they would pay her $200 after they had abused her. She would think she was going in to give a massage and then they would sexually abuse her. Sometimes Glenn was in the room, sometimes she wasn't. If she was in the room, she was participating in the abuse. Make no mistake. So the next time they call her, they say to this girl, and this the many people have testified about this, "Well, if you don't want to come, bring a friend, and we'll pay you $300 if you do that." And that teenager is thinking, "Well, I didn't like what ended up happening that first time. maybe be better if I brought a friend. Virginia herself procured and she writes about it in the book. Now, she didn't have much of a choice at that point, but that's no excuse and she doesn't make an excuse for it. She says it's the worst thing she's ever done in her life. Um, but the pressure was always there to bring in more for him. And and and so then you become part of it. You're no longer just a victim. you too are part of the scheme and you two are vulnerable um to being prosecuted if it was ever discovered and you're still a child or a young teenager um but now you're part of it and that was a key part of of them keeping the women who were in the sort of tight circle complicit and quiet and then I want to take you to her trip to London. This is the first time that she'll meet Prince Andrew in the Belgrave house that belonged to Gen Maxwell. And he asks her age or he's made to guess her age. He talks about his own daughters. I just it's a game that Genan liked to play where she would say, "Guess how old she is." And he she says that to Prince Andrew, who is a dear friend of hers, and he guesses correctly that she's 17. Um, and he then adds, "I have I have daughters around your age." I think he says, "A little younger than you." Explaining why he can actually read correctly her age. So, it's an important moment because I think if we could line up all the men that that Virginia was trafficked to and make them answer questions, a lot of them would say, "Well, I didn't know what age she was." In this case, we know he knew because he guessed and he was right. And he even makes the connection to his own daughters, which shows something pretty twisted about I guess my daughters are royals, so they shouldn't be raped, but London Meeting: Andrew Guesses “17” you can be raped by me. Like I I don't know exactly what the mental jiujitsu is there where where he's he's still about to go take her upstairs and have sex with her. Um but as she writes in the book, you know, it was as if it was his birthright, you know, that he there was a sense of entitlement. Um he was fairly polite about the sexual encounter. And I say that within the context of there were people she was trafficked to who were incredibly brutal to her. Um but he was not a brutal person. He was just taking what he wanted at the time. Her feelings be damned. And Maxwell has said jokingly at that time, "Oh, it's almost time that we trade her in." As if to say that 17 is now the the higher end of what would be desirable. Absolutely. She said that to Virginia all the time. We need to marry you off. Um we need to marry you off to one of Epstein's friends because you're getting too old for this. And this relates also to the earlier point of complicity and procuring. There were there were women at that point, women who were no longer teenagers who were in the inner circle who and we describe this in the book had been girls who Epstein and Maxwell abused, but they had aged out. And so now their full-time job was procuring. They were not having sex anymore because they were in their early 20s. They were old. So there was a model. It wasn't a hypothetical scenario. You could look over here and see, well, this woman who I have breakfast with every morning, she she procures full-time, and I don't want to do that. I mean, Virginia's very clear that she wasn't particularly good at it. Again, not an excuse, but she was so conflicted as she did it that she wasn't a very persuasive procurer. Um and and it was it made her feel awful. Yeah. And so she didn't want to do it at all and she was realizing if she stayed in this in this world that was her future was that was going to be her full-time job. We also know uh from this memoir now that there was a time when Prince Andrew rem Virginia on Little St. James Island, Epstein's Island, and had sex with her and eight other girls and Epstein as well. Clearly, I'm I'm not asking you to name the women, but do you know who they are? Is there a chance that they will want to come forward now this has all been made public? Are they talking to you? The eight other women are a mystery. Um because so to be just direct about my answer, I do not know who they are. The key thing about them was that they were very young and they didn't speak English. Her impression was that they were from perhaps some Eastern European country and she was told that they had been procured by Jean Luke Brunell who was the French modeling agent um who had discovered some bigname models um but also was a one of Epstein's closest associates was one of the people who procured girls for him around the world. At one point, Virginia was told he sent uh triplets, I believe, who were 12 years old from France and then he abused Little St. James Allegations & Eight Other Girls them and then they were flown back to France. Um, this is a evil dude. And um, the the other key thing in that scene is that Epstein and Prince Andrew joke that these girls who don't speak English are are the best kind of girls because you don't have to talk to them. So, she didn't know who they were. She couldn't communicate with them because she didn't speak their language and they didn't speak hers. But just to stand back from that, we you you are you are clear that there are at least eight other women now who could testify if they chose to that Andrew had been on that island having sex with underage girls. If they are still alive, they could do that. When Virginia Grey finally sues Prince Andrew, it's just short of her 38th birthday and it's under the Child Victims Act in New York State. She says that in her claim she alleged that Prince Andrew had raped and battered her when she was a minor causing her severe and lasting damage. It's a very chilling phrase that. Will you just explain to us what that means? Raped and battered. Uh my sense of that phrase, it's a sort of term of art. I think that battery and I'm not a lawyer, but that includes sort of mental anguish. Um so it doesn't mean physical assault. He did. I have no knowledge that he hit her in any way or or hurt her physically other than the hurt of being raped. Um there were three incidences. one, you know, in London, the the first time she meets him thinking she's meeting a charming prince, um then told to service him. Then there's another time in New York, um at Man and Epstein's Manhattan townhouse. And then, um and then the orgy scene you described, which is on the private island. And when she is finally suing him, there is this description in the book of a a game of hideand seek with the authorities. He runs off to Balmoral. He tries to bar himself behind the palace gates. Uh he doesn't want to come forward. What is your sense now of the correct actions that Prince Andrew should be taking? Would you like to see him stand trial? Well, that's going to be up to the authorities. Um and again, I think the challenge here is that often in a court of law, you need to have an accuser and she is no longer alive. We have her account. We have those who she told about it. I don't know all the intricacies of that. Um, so do you think that his life has been made easier by her death? Well, I don't think it's easy right now. And I think that's entirely appropriate. I would say maybe in the minutes after she died, it was made easier, but then whoops, she left a book behind. And I guess here's what I would say about Prince Andrew. Um, there was a time that he asserted that he was willing to help US authorities in the investigation of Epstein and he stated that through his lawyers more than once and it never Civil Suit, Settlement & “Name the Names” materialized. What I would say about Prince Andrew today is that I know he continues to deny even though he settled with her for a great sum of money that he didn't do anything wrong. Um, fine. Let's leave that there for the moment. But he was on the island. He was in the Manhattan townhouse. He was on the jets. And remember, those jets aren't just jets with seats like we all live in when we travel. They're jets that are retrofitted with bedrooms so that you can traffic girls there. So, he saw inside the world of Epstein and Maxwell. And if he really means it when he says, as he did in his settlement with Virginia, that he feels it's awful what these girls endured. it's a travesty. Then he could come forward right now. He could say, I'm not going to talk about me or what I did or didn't do because I didn't do it. But I do want to validate the experience of those women. I do want to say what I saw because I was there a lot and I saw they aren't lying. They tell the truth. I saw the codery of girls. I saw the men who came in. He could name names. You think you should name the names that were complicit in Epstein's crimes? I am not holding my breath that that is going to happen. But I'm just reminding people that that is an option. And if he sort of took the measure of his own moral compass and felt as strongly as he says he does as the father of daughters, as a person who theoretically cares about other people, there are things he could still do. Is it possible that he didn't see anyone else? That he didn't notice any other man? I wasn't alongside him in those homes, but I know from Virginia and from reading the accounts of other victims. It was like a parade of people were constantly going through. There were dinner parties. There were, you know, cocktail parties. There were, you know, all kinds of events that these these girls were basically the little garnish that was sitting on the side table as as actual people spoke to each other. And so, yeah, you know, the the 4-day visit that you interviewed him about in your amazing BBC Newsite interview where he says, "I went there to tell him the friendship was over." and he stayed in his house in order to do that and he stayed there for 4 days. There were parties that went on then and we know some of the names of the people of those parties because they were it was reported at the time. So, so he absolutely saw Do you think he ever had that conversation with Epstein that he told me about where he he he alleges he broke off the friendship? Do you think he ever did that? Well, emails are coming forward, it seems, every other day this past week that indicate that he was not and that that friendship had not ended. I mean, the emails are pretty damning. You know, we're we're in this together. Does that sound like something you'd say to someone you'd already told you didn't want to be friends with anymore? I mean, again, I I don't have any, you know, any more access to those than than you do, Four-Day Visit, Parties & What He “Saw” but I I'm reading them in the in the press, so I I clearly things he said to you, there are more than one thing that have been proven to be a lie. Do And so, who knows? I don't I don't know the extent that we'll find more of those things being lies, but he wasn't forthcoming with you as much as we had hoped. Do you think we'll ever see more of those complicit in Epstein's actions brought to justice? I mean, do you think there is an appetite not just amongst the the global public, but actually amongst those who can make a difference to bring these people to justice? I wish I thought that that was true. I mean, in the United States, we we've watched numerous career prosecutors, people who, you know, lived lives of service working for the Department of Justice, making far less money, frankly, than they could if they worked in private practice. One by one, those people are being forced out of our Department of Justice at the moment. And people who are replacing them are are people who are being directed to prosecute where they want to proc where the administration wants them to prosecute. So, I don't know the inside of of either President Trump's mind or his administration's plans. Um, but again, I think this is why the Epstein files uh and the release of them become such a pivotal issue. I mean, normally investigative files are not released to the public. I understand that. But in the absence of action, in the absence of any indication that they're going to try to make this right, people are like, "Well, then we want to see for ourselves. You're calling this a Democratic hoax. It's not a hoax. This happened to these women and girls." So, so the game is kind of getting complicated here because Trump campaigned on releasing the files. I'm not sure why he did it if he wasn't planning to actually do so, but he did that and now people are like, well, you made a promise. Make good on it. Um, and I think that that the files relate to whether any prosecutions could go forward. And I just don't I don't know the full extent of what's in them. I mean, we've seen the birthday book uh in the last few months. This kind of collated book that Galen Maxwell put together. Contributions from 150 people in there saying how close they were to Epstein, how much they loved him. There these seedy pedo pictures in there. Does that change anything? Does that bring us any closer to knowing what questions to ask or who to ask? Well, I think it does just show what I think we've all been piecing together for years is that prominent people who you might think were upstanding people making jokes about having young women around, you know, how young they were, the hand drawings of women's breasts. The it's like a it opens this window into is this how these people actually talk to each other when we aren't looking? And apparently, yes, it is. and that his influence that his power or at least the power he indicated to people that he had, he was a huge braggard um was working and that people wanted to stay in his circle. And do you put do you include President Trump in that or do you believe him when he tells us that it's not his signature and it wasn't his drawing? Well, you know, I I think journalists, the New Beyond Horror: Purpose of the Memoir York Times has done an analysis of how many times he signed his name with that same same signature. So, you know, this is we're getting into kind of a weird land where people say this isn't true and it's like obviously patently true. So, I you know, I don't need to take on President Trump personally. Um, and I'm not privy to any. I don't have a copy of the birthday book. I mean, I guess I guess the other thing that I I really want to say about Virginia's book, um, is that obviously a lot of the worst things that she went through are getting a lot of attention right now. Um, and and and for good reason. But the book is not just a catalog of horrors. It it is an attempt to show you what it feels like to be brought into the world of these powerful people uh as a teenager and then to find a way sort of amazingly to escape and then to become a mom and then to become an advocate. And we all know that her life ended tragically, but but I I would hate for the takeaway there to be it's just too scary to come forward. Don't come forward. I'm hoping that there actually even with the sad end of her life that there is inspiration in this book, which is there are people still in this world who will stand up for the rest of us. And Virginia was one of them. She was she was a galvanizer. She was a hero. And there is uplift here in the sense that she's an icon for us all to aspire to be more like. I mean, it's so interesting you say that because at the end of the book, we see her looking at a family photo that suggests she could have taken another path, a path to self-healing and and sort of self-care, I guess, rather than uh trying to find retribution or trying to find justice. She called herself a warrior, you know, the mom who fought bad guys, but it killed her. I I mean, I I I wonder whether she ever admitted to you privately that she she wished she had taken the other path, that she wished she'd just never come forward, you know, never actually fought that that fight. She, you know, she never did say that to me. And in fact, I I I think that she had looked at it differently and she said this to me several times. She felt like she had experienced such awfulness and she wanted to turn it into something good and if she could turn it into something good that would make it less awful for her. And at the end of the book, um, she tells us how, I think you both sat down to watch a very royal scandal, the three-part drama that we did about the the Prince Andrew interview. And the bit that chimed with her was where the actor Ruth Wilson was saying, "Why is it always incumbent on the victims to repeat their stories again and again?" It really moved me to read that. And I wonder whether you think um that also contributed to her pain after the abuse, after the physical pain, just having to prove yourself again and again. Was that what drove her, do you think, to to take her own life? Well, obviously I can't I can't speculate. Another person can't be inside an anyone. I was very close to her, but I can't tell you exactly what made her take her own life. Um but but yes there was an irony that Titles Stripped, Consequences & The Epstein Files we discussed between the two of us that she was trying to take back her own story, her own narrative um tell it in full warts and all honest accurate um and that ironically the idea was that for the first time she would be able to stop talking about the past. Yeah. We would put it between the covers of a book. it would be on a bookshelf. And from that point forward, she could say to anyone who asked, "Go, read my book. I I I so respect your need to know about it. I've been very careful. Read that best version right there. And I'm going to talk about the present for me. I'm going to talk about my future. I want to talk about protecting all of our children. I want to spend more time with my children." And she had this idea that that if we could get to the pub date, which is today, she could then start a part of her life that would be very different. And from the entire time between 2011 when she came forward and today, she's had to repeat, as do all victims. Um, it was incredibly painful for them and for her to constantly be demanded to repeat this. And ironically, basically in writing the book, she had to do it one more time, but it was with the goal of not never having to do it again. You did say that it would be a victory for her to see uh the response that this has had and to see that Prince Andrew has now lost his dukedom, his title. Would you like to see his title of prince removed? I guess I'm less hung up on the titles. I think that um and technically he is a prince. He is the son of the queen. I I understand that. Um I think what's important is that we're watching a man have his life diminished because of his past experience. And that is just it should be diminished. And even if I think in the United States, you know, Duke of York titles, people are like, "Isn't that just a weird gesture?" Like, who cares? But it's important because it's a step in the right direction. It shows that somebody said to him, we won't know exactly whom. There are theories. Enough is enough. Like, you did these things. You need to step away. And that's appropriate. And it's been a long time coming. Um, so my my hope, I guess, is that we see more of that happening, not just with Prince Andrew, but with others. And again, we're only going to know if that's going to be able to happen once the Epstein files are released. But she would feel this was a victory. Um, and it's and it's to her great credit that she came forward and that she wrote a powerful book that helped drive public sentiment and even royal family sentiment. It appears to say this is not okay and we are done. Like step back, you still get to live in a fancy house, but don't be out here anymore. Don't come to Christmas. Like that's going to be a lonely life he leads and he deserves it. Amy Wallace, thank you so much. Thank you. The news agents, this is a Global Player original podcast. [Music]
Exposing Trump’s Elite Pedophile Protection Program Thom Hartmann Program Oct 23, 2025 The Hartmann Report #MoreFromThom
Trump’s Elite Pedophile Protection Program: Who are they Protecting? Amy Wallace says the FBI and DOJ have the list. Twenty abusers. Zero accountability. How long will we tolerate this cover-up? by Thom Hartmann Oct 23, 2025 https://hartmannreport.com/p/trumps-elite-pedophile-protection-46a
Amy Wallace says the FBI and DOJ have the list. Twenty abusers. Zero accountability. How long will we tolerate this cover-up?
Transcript
But was Donald Trump also raping children? Was his Miss Teen USA pageant that he owned back then when he was friends with Jeffrey Epstein, part of Epstein's network? Was he feeding teenage girls to predators? I mean, remember the Newsweek headline? This is an actual Newsweek headline. There's a hot link to it in my article today. Quote, "Epstein victim was contestant in Donald Trump's teen beauty pageant." Amy Wallace is the biographer, or the co-author, basically kind of not quite a ghost writer, who worked with Virginia Giuffre on her book Nobody's Girl, I think is the title of it. And what comes to mind, and I mentioned this in my op-ed, this is my daily take today over at hartmanreport.com, is titled "Trump's elite pedophile protection program. Who are they protecting?" It brings to mind Emmett Till’s mother. You know, just basically pulling back the veil, saying this is what racism looks like. This is what hate looks like. And now you've got Virginia Giuffre and Amy Wallace saying, this is what a sex trafficking ring of wealthy men looks like. And Amy Wallace in an interview specifically said that she knows the names of the men who were raping these little girls, and that the FBI, and presumably Kash Patel, its director, and the Department of Justice, and presumably it's director, Pam Bondi, know those names too.
Now, Pam Bondi spent eight years as the attorney general of Florida during the time that Jeffrey Epstein was living down there raping young girls and running a sex ring. And she did prosecute sex crimes against children, but she never even looked, to the best of anybody's knowledge, at Jeffrey Epstein. Inquiring minds want to know what's up with that. And Amy Wallace, in this interview, said, "Yes, I know." She said, quote, "Yes, I know who the names are. Virginia knows who the names are. So does the FBI and the DOJ." End of quote. And then she went on to say, "By the way, the information is not in my house, so don't try to break in to get it." Which I thought was fascinating. And yet these files remain sealed.
We have ongoing investigations, and there's legal process, and it all appears designed to protect one man, Donald Trump, although I'm guessing that there's more than just Trump that's being protected, obviously, but was Donald Trump also raping children? Was his Miss Teen USA pageant that he owned back then when he was friends with Jeffrey Epstein, part of Epstein's network? Was he feeding teenage girls to predators? I mean, remember the Newsweek headline? This is an actual Newsweek headline. There's a hot link to it in my article today. Quote, "Epstein victim was contestant in Donald Trump's teen beauty pageant." So, why is Mike Johnson refusing to swear Adelita Grijalva into office? Is it just because of this? And how long can he pull this thing off? I mean, most recently, we've been treated to these naked lies by Pam Bondi. Pam Bondi came out and said "yes, the Epstein files are sitting on my desk," literally, she said, sitting on my desk. And now she and Kash Patel say, "Oh, there's nothing to see. No, there's nothing there. And please don't tell Donald that I ever said there was."
You've got basically every institution that is controlled by Republicans right now participating in this cover up. The FBI is participating in the cover up. The Department of Justice is participating in the cover up. The Republicans in the House of Representatives are participating in the cover up. The Republicans in the Senate are participating in the cover up. The Supreme Court has refused to take any of these cases as they float up there. The Republicans on the Supreme Court, and the White House, of course, is participating in the cover up. I mean, we've seen this kind of thing before, right? The Catholic Church and the pedophile priests.
We've also seen it in realms that have nothing to do with sex. The asbestos industry had known since 1934 that their product produced meotheloma, but they concealed it, and it killed my father, who worked in a steel mill. He was going to college, he wanted to be a history professor, and when I was born, or when mom got pregnant with me, he dropped out of college and got a job in a steel mill because, you know, hey, I got a family coming here. And the steel came out of the blast furnaces, or whatever it was, and ran over these rollers that were coated with asbestos. My dad worked in a cloud of asbestos, and it killed him.
My brother Stan smoked all his life, and died from it. The tobacco industry spent millions, these executives, covering up what they knew about the associations between smoking and COPD and lung cancer, and things like that, a whole bunch of cancers actually. I mean, we've seen this before with no accountability. None of these executives ever went to prison. Nobody from the tobacco industry ever went to prison. Nobody from the asbestos industry ever went to prison.
The Sackler family, you know, they made billions hustling Oxycontin. Nobody from that family ever went to prison. They're billionaires. They're untouchable. They they don't even live among us. They travel on private jets, and live in mansions, with security. This is what wealth can do. The formula never changes. When uncomfortable truths threaten rich and powerful people, they figure out how to insulate themselves. So, the FBI, the Justice Department, the Republicans in Congress, every public servant with knowledge of this, needs to be speaking out. They need to participate. We need to get to the bottom of this. It's not about revenge. It's about the cleansing of the moral fabric of our country, and it's time to do something about it. Emmett Till’s mother showed us what courage looks like. Now, that same courage is needed again in my opinion. Till the truth comes out, till justice is real, the stain is going to stay on all of us.
