The Megyn Kelly Show - Jeffrey Epstein： A Megyn Kelly Show True Crime Special

00:00:00.480 Welcome to The Megyn Kelly Show, your home for open, honest, and provocative conversations.

00:00:12.060 Hey everyone, I'm Megyn Kelly. Welcome to The Megyn Kelly Show. It is true crime Christmas

00:00:17.140 week here on the show. And today we take a look at one of the most despised yet very

00:00:23.440 well-connected men in American crime history, Jeffrey Epstein. This is a far-reaching

00:00:29.880 crime story that leads from political figures in Washington, D.C. to the bright lights of

00:00:34.240 Hollywood and even the most powerful political leaders from around the world. Indeed, it

00:00:39.900 stretches right into the royal palace across the pond. How does a man with no college degree

00:00:45.800 teach at a prestigious private school, make his way onto Wall Street, and eventually accumulate

00:00:51.720 so much wealth he owned his own island, all while sex trafficking untold numbers of young

00:00:59.480 girls to the rich and powerful? Joining me now to discuss it all, Barry Levine, author

00:01:06.220 of The Spider, Inside the Criminal Web of Jeffrey Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell. Barry, thank

00:01:13.400 you so much for being here. Thank you, Megyn. Thanks for having me on.

00:01:17.080 Okay, let me start with this. After spending this much time with a subject, the author gets

00:01:22.220 to know him. You know, you feel like you almost not are friends with him, but that you really

00:01:27.060 know him. So how would you, in a few sentences, give us the summary of the man when it comes

00:01:34.100 to Jeffrey Epstein?

00:01:34.800 You know, Megyn, I actually went to his boyhood home in Coney Island and gained access through

00:01:45.200 the gentleman who now lives there to actually spend time in Jeffrey Epstein's boyhood bedroom

00:01:51.120 and looked out his window into this bleak, you know, backyard in Coney Island. The apartment

00:01:59.160 had water pipes, just a one bathroom, very modest row house type of apartment. And Jeffrey Epstein,

00:02:08.280 from the very beginning, was determined to do one thing. He told his, all of his buddies in high

00:02:16.180 school that he was going to be rich. He was going to be rich beyond belief, richer than any of these,

00:02:21.720 his other classmates, was going to blow Brooklyn behind him and was going to, you know, see the world.

00:02:31.160 And Jeffrey did accomplish that. He, however, he made, he made his money, a lot of it through

00:02:40.080 grifting. He took advantage of clients. He was booted off of Wall Street. He skated on the line

00:02:48.440 of credibility enough that he was able to gain one big client early on and made a lot of money.

00:02:58.480 But Jeffrey's dark side festered, really festered inside of him for the last three decades of his

00:03:06.180 life. Jeffrey would engage in sexual abuse with young women. But he went back and forth between

00:03:16.840 these two worlds. And to me, that is the most fascinating thing about Jeffrey Epstein, how he was

00:03:25.700 able to maintain this presence with very smart, intelligent people, very powerful people, people who,

00:03:32.780 you know, you know, made money themselves, people who were incredibly intelligent, you know, Harvard

00:03:39.680 educated scientists and so forth. But Jeffrey was able to live in their world. But at the same time,

00:03:47.520 he also lived in this extremely dark place. And how he was able to compartmentalize these two worlds and

00:03:56.280 go back and forth, I find most interesting.

00:03:58.860 Hmm. Fascinating. You know, when I when I look at Jeffrey Epstein, I think, OK, unlike a lot of the other

00:04:06.160 men who have been very accomplished, but had a very dark side that got outed, I don't see a special skill

00:04:12.460 from this guy other than schmoozing. You know, I think about like Harvey Weinstein, obviously deeply

00:04:18.340 disturbed guy, but incredibly talented Hollywood filmmaker and producer producer. You can't take that away from

00:04:24.600 him. You look at Bill Cosby, right? Gifted actor, comedian, sage when it comes to social issues,

00:04:31.020 when you hear him talk, but clearly had a very dark side when it comes to women. Even Bernie Madoff,

00:04:37.700 right? Like he he was the head of the SEC before he decided to do a Ponzi scheme during a time of

00:04:43.280 trouble and had genuinely accomplished a lot, pulled himself from rags to riches. And then, you know,

00:04:49.340 when it went south, he chose badly and it just spiraled out of control. But Jeffrey Epstein,

00:04:54.880 what what was his special skill? He he wasn't some amazing investor. As you point out, he had one

00:05:00.700 big client, Lex Wexner, the guy who owned and up until recently even owned the Limited, which owns

00:05:08.740 Victoria's Secret and Bed Bath or Bath and Body Works, among other companies. I can't find another

00:05:15.480 accomplishment other than landing that client that he did in his whole career. Jeffrey was a mathematical

00:05:22.620 genius. Jeffrey could have worked for the military. He could have he could have had a very distinguished

00:05:37.400 career if he wanted. But this was a guy who never really wanted to play in someone else's, you know,

00:05:49.240 ballpark. He marched to his own drummer. He, you know, he went back and forth, attempting,

00:05:58.820 attempting some respectability and attempting to get some credibility. But he was never a guy who was ever

00:06:05.160 going to sit behind a desk or attend meetings and so forth. Ace Greenberg, who ran Bear Stearns at the

00:06:19.180 time, whose daughter, in fact, was was taught by Jeffrey at the Dalton School, suggested to her father

00:06:30.780 that this Mr. Epstein is a genius and so forth. And that led to Jeffrey's first job on Wall Street,

00:06:40.240 where he didn't last very long because he got in trouble with the SEC. And after an investigation,

00:06:45.700 even though he became a, at the time, a short period of time, a very brilliant, brilliant options trader,

00:06:52.500 Jeffrey was relatively booted out of there. Jeffrey never was able to maintain

00:06:58.880 anything for a long period of time. He wanted to go to Harvard, but he ended up at two schools in New

00:07:10.460 York and never, never graduated. His Wall Street career was, was very short-lived. He

00:07:18.780 disdained, in a sense, just the normal way of life. This is a guy who wanted things

00:07:27.780 done his way. And as he became older and as he became richer, he created this world around him

00:07:37.300 where he was in total control. I'm not just talking about the, the sex trafficking and the abuse of

00:07:44.440 young women, but it was everything. It was, it was everything about how his many servants and employees

00:07:53.600 at his various homes in the Virgin Islands or New York or the ranch in New Mexico or Florida,

00:08:02.020 how they had a dress, how they couldn't look him in the eye, how the temperature in his bedroom had

00:08:08.980 to be set exactly at 58 degrees, how there had to be X amount of towels folded in a proper way

00:08:19.380 outside the massage room. This was a guy who lived and existed in, in his own world, this very dark

00:08:33.460 world, but to outsiders, wealthy people, former presidents, foreign leaders. He was a character.

00:08:43.580 He was a gruff talking Brooklyn kid. He never lost his Brooklyn accent. Um, there was an attraction,

00:08:52.040 there was a charisma about Jeffrey Epstein that, um, um, attracted, um, a lot of these wealthy people.

00:09:01.260 Um, and it was, it was just something about his presence that he was a guy who for the most part was a

00:09:09.440 failure at any attempts at real business, but, uh, created, uh, a huge amount of wealth. I, I believe

00:09:18.060 through blackmail, through extortion, uh, through stealing, um, Wes Wexner said he, he stole, um, more

00:09:27.320 than $40 million from him. I believe that figure, um, to be, uh, uh, frankly much more. Um, he was

00:09:35.800 involved for a period of time, uh, for a period of time with arms dealers, uh, Adnan Khashoggi, uh,

00:09:43.720 Sir Douglas Lease, uh, Epstein stole countless, um, um, uh, tens of millions of dollars, uh, from these

00:09:52.620 guys through being the middleman in, um, arms trading deals. Um, uh, but it, as I said, it was his,

00:10:02.640 uh, uh, presence, his persona that captured, um, uh, these, uh, these, uh, other individuals.

00:10:12.400 And he, and he went about his life collecting these people, um, almost as if he was, you know,

00:10:20.440 collecting them on a trophy chest or, you know, uh, uh, uh, uh, the, uh, Donald Trump, the,

00:10:26.480 the Bill Clinton, the Harvey Weinstein, uh, the Les Wexner, uh, Prince Andrew, uh, the former

00:10:34.680 Israeli prime minister, Ehud Barak, uh, actors, you know, Kevin Spacey, um, uh, uh, you know,

00:10:43.960 he, he collected, uh, uh, Harvard professors, scientists, um, anybody he could think of that

00:10:54.080 he could bring into, uh, his world. And a lot of it, I, I, um, get to a little bit in the book is

00:11:03.460 that I do think that doors were opened for Jeffrey Epstein among very wealthy men in the financial

00:11:12.540 community in New York, uh, because, uh, because he was Jewish, because he was able to, uh, talk this, um,

00:11:23.480 um, um, um, you know, Brooklyn type of jive, uh, that was attractive to these, to these guys.

00:11:32.500 Once he got less Lex Wexner, you could, he could drop that name with everyone. So that

00:11:38.300 must've made life much easier, but how did he land Lex Wexner to begin with?

00:11:44.980 Well, he was, he was actually on a, on a, um, uh, commercial flight and the guy who was sitting

00:11:51.760 in first class with him, uh, had been a, uh, associate of Lex Wexner. And again, Jeffrey just

00:11:59.320 can talk and talk and talk and, um, uh, gained the, uh, the, the, the trust and confidence of this

00:12:08.680 particular individual who, uh, then mentioned him to Les Wexner. Um, Les, uh, as I said, um,

00:12:19.380 uh, uh, uh, whose, whose mom, uh, grew up in Brooklyn, uh, had, had the base of his operation,

00:12:27.720 um, out in, um, uh, near Columbus, Ohio. Um, that's where he had, uh, started his, his company,

00:12:37.280 The Limited, which, um, um, one of their main assets had been Victoria's Secret and so forth.

00:12:42.840 And he became extremely, extremely, uh, uh, wealthy, uh, through the ownership of that, um,

00:12:50.040 of, of, of that company. And Les at the time was, uh, looking for, um, someone to bring in,

00:12:57.900 uh, a financial genius to help him sort out not only, uh, his, uh, really his personal,

00:13:05.340 uh, financial assets. And Jeffrey was very good at protecting other people's money. Uh, and as I said,

00:13:14.060 he, he managed to skate on the line of, of the law where he was able to move money around to various

00:13:23.000 offshore accounts. We saw he, he was expert at that, but as I looked at it, I just thought if

00:13:31.140 he hadn't gotten Les Wexner, it, it never, nothing else would have happened for him because he wasn't

00:13:35.980 really making it objectively in business. But once you bag a whale like that, you can use him to get

00:13:42.060 anything. And, and frankly, it didn't even seem like he needed to recruit other clients after that

00:13:45.860 because Les was giving him everything. And Jeffrey, according to reporting, I've read from ABC and

00:13:51.560 others was skimming, was engaged in schemes where less, he would take like 9 million of Les's money

00:13:58.560 from Les's charitable trust and put it into his own charitable trust. Suddenly it would be 11 million.

00:14:05.100 And he was doing all sorts of funky things with Les's money. I agree. He stole from Les and he stole a lot,

00:14:10.260 but can you just, do you know whether he had something on Les? Because that's of course what

00:14:16.340 a lot of people think. Right. Well, I, I will say, I'll preface that first by saying that there was

00:14:23.140 this inherent trust on Les's part. And again, it had to do with the fact that Les was a part of what's

00:14:32.200 known as the mega group, which is a group of wealthy businessmen across America who support Israel

00:14:43.320 through various causes, charities, defense, and so forth. And Jeffrey, again, was a big backer of

00:14:55.700 Israel. Les trusted him. He, he, he, he said that he, you know, he, he reminded that, that Jeffrey

00:15:05.540 reminded him of the type of individuals that his mom in, in, in, in, in Brooklyn used to hang out

00:15:14.480 with. And he's, and Jeffrey and Les being in the Midwest said, you know, he said, Jeffrey Epstein is

00:15:21.260 different from Midwestern, uh, Jews. He's, um, he's, he's got this charisma. He's, he's exciting to be

00:15:29.700 around. Uh, he, Jeffrey played him. Jeffrey played him. Um, and, and really, as I said, Les was the big

00:15:39.880 fish. And, uh, for a long period of time, Jeffrey was feeding off of him. And because he was able to

00:15:46.560 make that association with Les Wexner, it opened up so many other doors. Now, of course, there's been

00:15:55.080 scrutiny all of these years as to what was the real relationship between these two men. Did Jeffrey have

00:16:04.460 anything over Les Wexner? Was he blackmailing him? Did he have, uh, something in his back pocket that,

00:16:12.360 that, uh, uh, uh, allowed, um, um, this almost total financial control on Jeffrey's part to take

00:16:22.200 over, um, uh, Les Wexner. He, uh, he even wrote Les Wexner's, uh, prenuptial agreement when Les,

00:16:30.180 uh, uh, who had been a lifelong bachelor finally ended up getting, getting married. Actually,

00:16:35.260 Jeffrey was against the wedding because he wanted to control Les Wexner.

00:16:39.020 I was going to say he was the wife. A woman came into, into Les's world and, and, um, uh,

00:16:45.920 things changed a little bit and, and, and she and others, uh, in Les's business were very

00:16:51.720 suspicious of, of, of Jeffrey. To this day, uh, Les Wexner has, um, uh, said, uh, in blanket statements,

00:17:02.340 uh, that he was completely unaware of any of the, um, uh, criminal activities, uh, that Jeffrey was

00:17:10.240 involved in, um, with young women, um, that he knew nothing about it, uh, and that, um, um, that there

00:17:18.860 was nothing untoward, uh, in terms of, you know, their personal relationship together, except there is,

00:17:26.260 there is, you know, one story, um, that, uh, involves a, um, woman named Maria Farmer, uh, who,

00:17:35.300 in fact, she is the, the sister, the older sister of one of the, uh, four victims that the minor

00:17:42.080 victims that the prosecution, uh, has put out in the Ghislaine Maxwell trial. Uh, Annie Farmer is the

00:17:48.620 only, um, victim among the four, uh, who has, uh, publicly, um, put her name out there as, uh, as one

00:17:58.000 of the victims. The others have testified under pseudonyms and under, um, under, uh, different names.

00:18:03.460 But the Maria Farmer story is interesting because, um, um, um, in the, uh, mid, mid nineties, uh, she says

00:18:15.480 that, uh, she had been, um, um, um, um, attacked by both Ghislaine and Jeffrey Epstein. And, and she

00:18:24.400 was actually the artist in residence at Wesley Wexner's estate in Ohio. Jeffrey Epstein had

00:18:30.520 brought her out there. Uh, and she said that she was held against her will by Les Wexner's, uh, security

00:18:38.740 people, uh, many of these guys off duty, um, um, uh, policemen from, uh, this town near Columbus,

00:18:46.300 Ohio. And, uh, Maria Farmer says Les Wexner's wife knew the fact that she was, um, um, about this

00:18:55.440 incident that she was kept behind doors for, uh, um, you know, more than 10 hours before her father

00:19:02.920 was able to come out there and pick her up and so forth. Uh, Les Wexner and his wife have

00:19:09.840 categorically stated that they knew nothing about this incident. Um, and I personally, after the,

00:19:19.400 the, the research that I've done, I, I find that hard to believe that, um, um, Les Wexner wouldn't

00:19:27.440 have been informed of this, uh, uh, horrible incident that took place, um, on his, uh, on

00:19:35.720 his property that this, uh, what woman was held against her will for multiple hours by

00:19:42.580 Well, Maria Farmer's got a long story. I mean, she and her younger sister, Annie have important

00:19:47.500 stories to the Epstein case and that Maria was sort of lured in. She spoke with ABC at length

00:19:52.220 on a podcast about Epstein. Um, uh, I can't remember the name of it. Forgive me. I listened

00:19:57.680 to it, but it was like truth or fault line or whatever. I'll get it. But she talked about

00:20:01.940 how they lured her in. She was an aspiring artist. They got to her by saying, Oh, we're

00:20:05.880 into art. Yeah. We know we can help you. That's how they got into, to a lot of young women's

00:20:10.520 lives saying like, Oh, you know, I'm a mover. I'm a shaker. I'm connected truth and lies.

00:20:14.720 And, um, Maria became part of their staff and then also one of their victims. And eventually she

00:20:20.220 was shipped off to this house in Ohio that was on Les's property, but it was Epstein's

00:20:24.820 house. And that turned into its own thing. Anyway, the story, whenever a young woman comes

00:20:28.380 into Epstein's life, it ends badly. I mean, every single time. Um, and that is where we're

00:20:33.740 going to pick it up after we squeeze in this break, much more on Jeffrey Epstein and his

00:20:38.600 dark, dark criminal side, uh, right after this break, when we rejoin author and journalist

00:20:44.640 Barry Levine, don't go away.

00:20:50.220 Do you know the year that, uh, those two met, uh, Jeffrey Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell?

00:20:59.920 Yes, Megan. They, um, actually came together in New York in 1991. Um, however, we do know

00:21:08.880 that several months before, um, Ghislaine had actually flown on, um, uh, one of Jeffrey Epstein's

00:21:17.280 planes. So there was a relationship earlier, um, before her father's death, uh, in which

00:21:25.100 she was introduced to Jeffrey.

00:21:27.980 One of the questions I have is how did it start? When did it start? Because I know now

00:21:32.540 we're claiming that Ghislaine Maxwell was almost like a pimp for him. She went out and got all

00:21:37.560 these girls for him. Before there was Ghislaine, was there another person in that role? And as

00:21:42.700 far back as we can tell, when did this start for him, this obsession, like thrice daily quote

00:21:48.160 massages that we now know almost always turned into sexual abuse?

00:21:53.400 Yeah. The only other quote unquote true girlfriend that Jeffrey had besides Ghislaine, and there's

00:22:00.260 still questions over what the actual extent of the relationship was between Ghislaine and,

00:22:05.880 and Jeffrey. But before, uh, Ghislaine came in the picture, uh, Jeffrey had been involved with a woman

00:22:14.540 named, uh, uh, Ava, um, Andresen, uh, who, uh, was a Miss Sweden. Um, he had met her in New York,

00:22:22.800 uh, and they, um, uh, dated, um, on and off, um, upwards of, um, uh, 10 years, uh, in the 1980s.

00:22:32.620 Uh, in Jeffrey's official biography that he put together at the time of the, uh, Florida case in

00:22:39.720 2005. Um, uh, I, I just love to read a few lines from this. He said that after, and this is written

00:22:49.600 in the third person, after Ava and Jeffrey decided to put their relationship on a platonic basis,

00:22:55.660 Jeffrey entered into another significant relationship with Ghislaine Maxwell, then 29,

00:23:01.800 beginning in 1991. Um, and Jeffrey writes in this biography, Ghislaine came to New York at a very

00:23:10.100 dark time in her life. Her father had been found dead, uh, floating in the Atlantic Ocean, having

00:23:15.640 gone overboard on his yacht. Um, Jeffrey writes that Ghislaine met Jeffrey through mutual friends.

00:23:22.860 She found the friendship immediately rewarding. And he, as he engaged her in intellectually

00:23:27.940 stimulating conversation, uh, and Jeffrey writes that, um, um, um, moreover, uh, he, uh, attempted to keep

00:23:39.060 her from becoming despondent. Uh, he gave her books to read, scientific studies, novels, uh, challenges

00:23:46.580 to her mind. Uh, Jeffrey writes that he, uh, took her to comedy clubs on a weekly basis, um, to, um, alleviate

00:23:55.420 her, um, um, um, growing depression and so forth. Uh, and Jeffrey writes that without his help, she would

00:24:02.860 have fallen into a, a deep depression. Uh, Jeffrey also writes that he gave her a loan to get her, uh,

00:24:10.320 financial foothold in the business world and so forth. Um, and, and, uh, and, and so on. Um, so

00:24:18.960 Ghislaine, who was 29 years old, came into Jeffrey's life in 1991. Uh, there had been an incident that

00:24:27.960 occurred through a civil lawsuit, an incident that occurred in the mid 1980s, um, down South where

00:24:35.920 Jeffrey was on vacation and this Jane Doe alleges that she was, um, um, uh, 14 years old or so,

00:24:46.700 and that, uh, she was the daughter of the, um, um, woman who was, um, um, um, running this, um, uh, hotel or,

00:24:58.600 uh, um, uh, house where Jeffrey was staying and that she had been, uh, um, sexually,

00:25:05.920 attacked by Jeffrey. Uh, however, she had, she did not report it to her mother out of fear and so

00:25:12.320 forth. So we have a, um, in the timeline, we have this one incident in the mid eighties, uh, that,

00:25:21.480 that, uh, um, uh, had been written about in a civil lawsuit involving what might have been, um,

00:25:30.160 uh, Jeffrey's, uh, first, um, um, sexual attack on. He was born in 53, just, uh, just right. He was

00:25:37.920 born in 53. Yes, that's correct. Yes. So mid eighties, he was, he was, he was 30s. He was in his

00:25:43.960 thirties. Yes. Uh, previous to that, uh, I report in my book that there had been a, a stalking incident,

00:25:51.300 um, uh, over a girl that he was obsessed with in high school. Um, uh, he had followed them to a

00:25:59.400 movie theater and so forth, her boyfriend at the time threatened to beat Jeffrey up and so forth. Uh,

00:26:04.720 he was fixated on this one, one girl. Um, and, uh, but then again, um, he became a teacher at the,

00:26:14.320 at the Dalton school where students found it very strange that Jeffrey, and he was, um, 21 years old

00:26:22.420 at the time would show up at a student parties. He was the only teacher who would show up at student

00:26:28.000 parties and he was, um, um, spent a lot of time around the female students. So we moved forward to,

00:26:37.280 um, um, um, Ghislaine and it was, uh, three years into their relationship together, um, um, in 1994,

00:26:48.360 uh, four when, um, based on the, on the timeline that I put together where they, as a, as a team,

00:26:58.060 um, attempted to recruit, um, their, uh, call her, um, their first victim. And she, uh,

00:27:07.260 in fact was, um, uh, minor victim number one, who is, uh, testified in, you know, in the trial

00:27:13.980 when they, uh, approached her at a, um, music camp in Michigan. That was crazy. No, we've talked

00:27:20.220 about this on the show. So she's testified in the Ghislaine Maxwell trial that she was at summer camp

00:27:25.400 as a 14 year old. I mean, she's a middle schooler and these two come walking along in Michigan,

00:27:30.260 Ghislaine with her little dog and approach her and start chatting her up and they bond. And lo and

00:27:35.100 behold, they're all from Palm beach originally and have homes there. And that's where this young

00:27:38.860 girl, Jane actually lived. And they followed up and that, you know, it was the old, I can make you

00:27:43.580 a star. I know everyone in the industry, I could be a great help to you, but you have to learn how

00:27:47.120 to behave. And one thing led to another, according to Jane, and he started molesting her. However,

00:27:53.060 the cross-examination is saying, uh, you know, of, of Ghislaine's lawyers is pointing out,

00:27:58.460 you never raised that claim until there was a Jeffrey Epstein defense fund. I mean,

00:28:03.180 you know, fund for potential victims. You, um, didn't make any of these allegations while he

00:28:08.560 was still alive. You, your story has changed over time about what Ghislaine may or may not have done.

00:28:13.920 You never, it's just so hard when that much time goes by to try to hang a criminal case against it.

00:28:21.240 I'm not saying Jane is making any of this up. In fact, there's every reason to believe he did it

00:28:25.220 because he spent a lifetime doing it. Just saying it's almost impossible to prove criminally when it's,

00:28:31.400 what, you know, 30 years ago, almost. It's like, that's one of the challenges. And, and that's

00:28:37.500 actually one of my bigger, bigger questions for you is even in the Ghislaine Maxwell trial,

00:28:43.120 all four of the victims who have come forward are from years ago, years and years ago. So where did

00:28:49.280 he stop doing it? In the same way, I I'm wondering when did he start, right? When did he stop? Because

00:28:55.400 we have not seen or heard from victims as far as I know in the, in like the last decade of Jeffrey's

00:29:02.200 life. Yeah. Well, I just want to go back on, on Jane quickly. And I, I did devote a lot of time in

00:29:09.420 my book because to me, that, um, um, incident in 1994 in Michigan, to me, that was the point when,

00:29:19.100 um, Ghislaine lost her moral compass. If she ever, if she ever had one, this to me was the turning

00:29:26.800 point of when she went to the dark side three years into her relationship with Jeffrey,

00:29:32.440 you know, a normal individual, if they found out that their boyfriend, um, was obsessed with young

00:29:40.320 girls would have, despite giving her money and finances and so forth would have run in the opposite

00:29:48.420 direction. This, this, this, this, this was the point when Ghislaine made a determination on her

00:29:56.620 own that she was going to go down this, this dark road with Jeffrey. So I, I, I, I do find that, um,

00:30:04.780 um, incident, uh, instrumental in how she became his partner in crime. I, I call them in my book,

00:30:11.500 the predatory Bonnie and Clyde. She presented this cover that Jeffrey never had previously, where

00:30:17.920 she was a big sister figure, where, where she was able to present herself to the mothers of these

00:30:23.900 girls saying, uh, we were interested in mentorship of, of, of your daughter. We're going to take care

00:30:29.400 of her. We're going to send her to college. We're going to make sure she gets to go to music school

00:30:33.660 and things like that. Uh, she was the perfect foil for Jeffrey in this, you know, road that they were

00:30:42.000 going to embark on. Uh, and Jeffrey told many people that she was his wife. So if you're a young

00:30:48.040 mom of a daughter, who's trying to make it in modeling, she would tell people that she worked

00:30:53.340 for less Wexner. And he would tell people that he was like a casting agent for Victoria's secret.

00:30:58.340 And they're telling some of these young girls that they're married. So these girls are thinking

00:31:02.100 they're safe and they were anything, but just before we get, get a break in, but I just want to

00:31:06.940 spend one minute on Ghislaine's background because unlike Jeffrey, she did come from a lot of money.

00:31:12.120 Her dad was, he reminded me in reading the descriptions in some ways of Rupert Murdoch,

00:31:16.500 a medium mogul for during his lifetime, very well respected, very powerful, very colorful,

00:31:22.960 very strong, kind of scary. Uh, she was the apple of his eye, the youngest of like nine children. I

00:31:28.820 can't remember lots of children that he named his yacht, the lady Ghislaine after her. And, um,

00:31:35.340 then he died suddenly and weirdly while at sea on the yacht in like calm waters. And there was a

00:31:41.560 real question about what, what really went down there. Was he a spy? Did he work for the Mossad?

00:31:47.080 Was she a spy? Was Jeffrey a spy? I mean, I've heard it all asked. Um, but she had the proper

00:31:52.600 breeding. She went to Oxford. She had all the connections and that's another way in which she

00:31:58.280 became the perfect Bonnie to Epstein's Clyde. Yes, that, that is absolutely correct. She was able to

00:32:05.400 legitimize their relationship in the pursuit and the grooming of these, of these young women. And

00:32:11.660 without her, uh, I, I wrote that there's no way that the extent of, of the sex trafficking could have

00:32:19.280 gone, uh, as, as far reaching as it did with, with, with, with hundreds of, of young women,

00:32:25.760 if Ghislaine had not been involved in his, you know, in his life. And there are darker conspiracies

00:32:32.380 beyond that, that, uh, you know, that are connected to, you know, Jeffrey always fancied himself as,

00:32:40.100 as something of a spy, as a, as a man of mystery. He would tell girls that he would, he would say,

00:32:45.860 you know, I'm a, you know, I'm a spy and so forth. He, he enjoyed that time when he was an arms dealer,

00:32:51.040 or, you know, flying overseas and having meetings on yachts and things like that. And, uh, we do know

00:32:58.680 that there were, are connections between Jeffrey and Israel and, uh, links to the Mossad and Robert

00:33:05.520 Maxwell, Ghislaine's father, uh, also fancied himself as a spy. He called himself James Bond. He,

00:33:12.660 uh, had ties, uh, direct ties to the Mossad. He was not an agent, but they viewed him as an asset,

00:33:19.500 according to, uh, investigators, one of my investigators who, um, um, uh, dug deeply in,

00:33:26.100 in, in Israel on this and so forth. So there's also a thought that Robert Maxwell had set it up

00:33:32.980 that if something happened to him, uh, Ghislaine would go into the arms of Jeffrey Epstein in America

00:33:39.440 and that he would take care of her financially. Uh, and so there, there, there is a darker,

00:33:44.960 uh, story about this, whether or not the two of them were, were set to go together as part of this.

00:33:53.280 Oh, I've never heard that.

00:33:55.580 Tradecraft, uh, um, um, honeypot, um, operation to, um, um, black male, uh, wealthy and powerful

00:34:04.240 individuals. Um, that is, uh, out there and, you know, we may never know the extent of that because

00:34:12.780 Jeffrey, of course, is dead and, and Ghislaine is, is, is, is not going to talk. Um, and so we'll

00:34:19.760 never truly know, uh, the extent of that. And of course the intelligence, uh, community in Israel has,

00:34:25.960 uh, buttoned up. Um, uh, but, uh, there's no question that there, that it was more than just

00:34:32.620 coincidence that brought them together. Uh, and as Jeffrey writes in his biography, that he was this

00:34:37.980 helping hand to get her out of her depression and so forth. I don't believe that for a second.

00:34:42.660 I do believe that there was, uh, uh, much more there in terms of how, uh, as quickly after her

00:34:48.920 father's death that she ended up with, uh, with Jeffrey.

00:34:53.200 That is intriguing and a good point at which to pause, squeeze in a break, and then we'll pick it up

00:34:58.400 with their scheme on the other side of this much more ahead on the disturbing story of Jeffrey

00:35:04.700 Epstein, his life, his death. And do we think he killed himself or was there plenty of reason to

00:35:12.080 have him killed? Stay with us. And remember, you can find the Megan Kelly show live on Sirius XM

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00:35:31.980 your podcasts. There you will find our full archives, more than 220 shows. Now be right back.

00:35:43.800 One of the questions I had before I knew much about the case was why didn't anybody go to the

00:35:47.180 police? Why didn't any of these young girls go tell their moms, go to the cops, the older girls,

00:35:52.140 you know, once they hit their twenties, realize what was going on and go to the cops. And what I've

00:35:55.780 since learned and you can fill it in is they did some did. And it was ridiculously hard to get

00:36:03.540 anyone's attention for far too many years. And this goes back prior to his 2008 arrest and like the

00:36:11.760 diminished charges there. So I'm talking about like there were women who stood up and tried to call

00:36:16.040 the cops and get them involved, but no action was ever taken. That's correct, Megan. I mean, the

00:36:22.060 Maria Farmer case, for instance, the incident in which she was held against her will at, on Les Wexner's

00:36:32.780 property in Ohio. After that incident and the incident involving her sister, Annie, she went to the

00:36:42.120 NYPD. She contacted the FBI. It went absolutely nowhere. It wasn't until 10 years later during the

00:36:56.040 Ford investigation that began in 2005 that the FBI circled back and contacted Maria Farmer again.

00:37:05.280 There was a woman, Jeffrey had attacked a woman at a hotel in Santa Monica, California,

00:37:12.700 passing himself off as a Victoria's Secret model. She went to the, I looked at the police reports. She

00:37:20.780 went to the police in Santa Monica after she was attacked by Jeffrey. I heard her testimonial. Yeah.

00:37:27.140 He said he was a scout and these women who want to get in the Victoria's Secret catalog,

00:37:31.400 they know that they may have to, you know, strip down to a bikini or even a bra and underwear,

00:37:36.100 but he of course took it further than that and then wanted to lay hands on women and then did

00:37:40.960 sexually assault this woman in which she has now said, and she went to the cops and they did nothing.

00:37:45.500 So the question is with all that doing nothing over the years, like why was it just like,

00:37:50.620 these are prostitutes. Was it one of those things? Was it because he was connected and these women

00:37:56.280 weren't prostitutes? I want to make that clear, but it was, it was that the attitude of the police is what I'm

00:37:59.560 asking. Well, the police didn't, uh, again, these isolated incidents that took place in Ohio and

00:38:06.880 then in California, they went absolutely nowhere. It wasn't until, um, a, um, uh, a kid at Royal Palm

00:38:19.620 High School in 2005 was, uh, found by a family member with, um, a couple hundred dollar bills

00:38:28.540 in her pocket. And they forced that girl to, to say where the money came from. And it came from this,

00:38:35.160 uh, uh, rich guy on Palm beach who was, who was paying, you know, young girls for, um, massages

00:38:41.660 and so forth. And that's when the Palm beach police, uh, first began their investigation, uh, when this

00:38:48.200 information came to them around 2004, um, for the most part, Jeffrey and, uh, Ghislaine, uh, operated, um, uh,

00:38:59.180 from 1994 to, um, 2004, uh, with, you know, building this, uh, uh, um, just this horrific, uh,

00:39:15.260 life of, uh, of sexual abuse of, of, of these, uh, of these, uh, of these girls. The problem was,

00:39:23.640 is that these girls were young. A lot of them were, um, there were a couple like, like the first

00:39:30.900 victim, Jane, who testified, who, um, ended up becoming an actress and so forth, uh, and had a

00:39:37.760 music career ahead of her and so forth. But for the most part, they targeted girls from the other

00:39:43.780 side of the tracks in West Palm beach, uh, Maria Farmer talks about, um, uh, repeated, uh, threats

00:39:51.200 that had been made, um, in the years, uh, since, uh, you know, uh, against her, they would turn on

00:39:59.300 these girls, uh, if they thought that, uh, these girls wouldn't, you know, continue, uh, as part of

00:40:05.760 this, um, uh, pyramid, uh, sex trafficking, uh, operation. Well, that's right. So it was a pyramid

00:40:12.160 scheme in a way, because what they did, and by the way, I should say, we didn't get to this,

00:40:16.280 but early in Jeffrey's career in the 1980s, he was accused of being part of a Ponzi scheme

00:40:23.100 while at this one investment firm that he was accused of being the mastermind of it.

00:40:28.860 And in a way that's what he was running with the girls, because what he's accused of doing is you

00:40:34.880 get a young girl in and the women have now, and now they're women and they'll, they'll explain how it

00:40:39.120 worked. They'd call you in. Okay. He wants, wants massage. You're going to get 300 bucks. You know,

00:40:43.800 it's like a 15 year old girl. She's like, okay, fine. I don't know how to massage. Ghislaine will

00:40:47.640 show you. Don't worry. It's nothing. They'd go in there and massaging him. And then before you know

00:40:52.460 it, he had his clothes off and he's asking for oral sex or he's just, he's, or, you know, doing any one

00:40:57.940 of a number of things to them. Ghislaine was allegedly in on the actual sexual behavior and with a number of

00:41:03.720 these girls. And then he would turn to this, this girl or she would, and would say, now go get me

00:41:10.740 another girl. And for every girl you bring in, you get another 200 and so on. I mean, it really was

00:41:17.220 like a, like a sex pyramid scheme, a sexual abuse pyramid scheme. Yes. And in fact, um, um, one of the

00:41:26.500 girls now, now an adult named, uh, Haley Robson, uh, was kind of the linchpin in the, um, Palm Beach

00:41:33.520 police investigation in 2005. The police, uh, put surveillance on her. Uh, Haley had told me that,

00:41:40.160 uh, you know, she was a, uh, young girl there, um, had been brought in for a massage, came, had a

00:41:46.820 terrible life before then, had been, uh, raped by, uh, uh, you know, at a party. Um, it was,

00:41:54.520 came from a very dark place and ended up at Jeffrey Epstein's house. Uh, she wouldn't, um, um,

00:42:01.840 go through with the massage. However, uh, against, she said her better judgment, she went and brought

00:42:09.340 35 girls, uh, that she knew in the local community there, um, to, um, um, come to Jeffrey Epstein's

00:42:17.880 house. Every time she would bring a girl, she would receive $200. Um, she,

00:42:23.640 she has to live now with this for the rest of her life that she, you know, brought these,

00:42:29.200 brought these girls in, but the police put surveillance on her and then, um, uh, threatened

00:42:35.800 to, um, a charger. She, her, in fact, her father was a local police officer there. And the toughest

00:42:43.940 thing she said was having to tell her dad that she, you know, had been caught in, in the middle

00:42:48.420 of this, um, the Palm Beach police, uh, detectives had the prosecution been done properly. Um, they

00:42:58.100 could have sent Jeffrey Epstein away. I mean, they had the goods on him. This was in 2005.

00:43:04.980 The, the memories of the girls, these incidents had just happened, um, in the past couple of years,

00:43:10.660 all the information was, was fresh. They had evidence, Jeffrey buying, um, um, uh, slave, uh,

00:43:18.680 uh, uh, servitude, uh, books, uh, through Amazon. They had the case nailed. And as we know, um,

00:43:26.360 the Florida case, uh, fell apart, uh, because it was, um, it ended up, uh, being put in the hands of the,

00:43:33.800 um, um, uh, local, uh, uh, Florida attorney there. The police chief was furious, uh, that he, that

00:43:42.080 this, that, um, uh, this guy ended up convening a grand jury, a very rare instance. They are only

00:43:47.860 bringing two, uh, victims forward in the grand, grand jury. The police chief said, this is, this is

00:43:54.800 awful. This man has to go away to jail. Uh, he's abusing these girls. Police chief went to the FBI.

00:44:00.920 The FBI, uh, began an investigation, a more wide ranging investigation of not only what was going

00:44:07.340 on in Florida, but also what was going on in New York at the time. And they were compiling a very,

00:44:13.340 very strong case. And then as we know, uh, it ended up in the hands of Alex, uh, Acosta, uh, at that

00:44:19.660 time, um, in charge of the Southern, uh, district, uh, in charge of the, um, um, uh, Southern, uh,

00:44:27.340 Florida, uh, district. And this is the federal prosecutor,

00:44:30.620 the, uh, the, the U S attorney at the federal level, uh, who that he would oversee the FBI's

00:44:36.460 investigation. He's the one who'd have to bring charges. Yeah. So they brought it to him. Go

00:44:39.700 ahead. And, uh, it was a, um, uh, he was a Harvard man, uh, um, Jeffrey Epstein's main, uh,

00:44:49.100 lead attorney, Alan Dershowitz, of course, was a Harvard man. Uh, experts say today that, uh,

00:44:56.620 uh, you know, that some type of, uh, um, uh, you know, deal was struck. Jeffrey, uh, ended up, um,

00:45:05.700 um, being charged with, uh, two counts of, uh, of prostitution. He did, uh, of, uh,

00:45:11.880 Well, and just to, just to stop you for a second. So what happened was, as I understand it,

00:45:16.260 Alex Acosta, and for our listening audience, this is the guy who Trump would later,

00:45:20.320 later nominate as secretary of labor. And he had to bail because this became such a big deal.

00:45:25.520 The episode was out. Yeah. So he, but, and it was all because of this moment we're talking about.

00:45:30.620 So Acosta, rather than saying, what do you mean the Florida case, they're going to charge him with,

00:45:35.280 with, it was some BS. It's like a solicitation of prostitution of a minor was basically the

00:45:42.180 solicitation of prostitution of a minor. Okay. A minor cannot be a prostitute. If a minor is being

00:45:47.720 prostituted, she's being trafficked and it's rape what's happening to her. So that's one of the

00:45:52.240 indignities for these victims. Um, but it's only one count. It's a slap on the wrist. Yes. He would

00:45:57.040 have to register as a sex offender, but it's like, it's nothing compared to what they could have done.

00:46:01.180 So you think the feds are going to swoop in and say, well, that that's bullshit. We're not going

00:46:04.580 to allow that. It was exactly the opposite. He cuts a deal to say, why don't we just let it be a

00:46:09.400 state matter? The state is only about to slap him on the wrist. We can just defer to the state

00:46:14.680 and they'll wrap it up nice and tidy down there in Florida. And Dershowitz, who is a friend of mine

00:46:20.400 and who I really admire, I have to tell you, maybe, you know, something different, Barry,

00:46:24.620 but I don't blame him for this because defense attorney's jobs are to get you the best job

00:46:30.920 possible. It was Acosta who was supposed to be representing us and the girls.

00:46:36.340 He, he got, listen, Alan Dershowitz did, did his job. Uh, Alan Dershowitz got Jeffrey Epstein off. I

00:46:42.380 mean, it was, it was a dream team. Jeffrey Epstein spent a lot of money. He combined, he, he brought

00:46:47.040 together a group of, uh, high profile lawyers that we had not seen since, um, um, you know,

00:46:53.240 that we would see OJ Simpson, uh, case, uh, there's no question, but Acosta also added a veiled reference

00:47:02.100 that, uh, there was a higher authority involving Jeffrey Epstein, that he might've been a part of

00:47:08.180 intelligence that it was above Acosta's head. And so you had this, you know, slap on the wrist,

00:47:13.960 uh, uh, NPA non-prosecution agreement, uh, Epstein ended up serving, uh, 14 months, um, uh, most of it

00:47:23.080 on work release. So he was able to fly to his house in the Virgin Islands. He was able to fly to New York.

00:47:29.340 He had a, um, um, uh, an ankle, uh, uh, monitoring bracelet and he had sexual relations with,

00:47:38.320 with the young girl we know from, uh, uh, uh, private investigators report during this period

00:47:43.680 of time. It was a joke. It was interesting to note is that 16 hours a day during his incarceration,

00:47:49.340 he was out of the jail and it wasn't even the real jail. It was something called the stockade down

00:47:53.940 on Palm beach, but wait a minute. That's, that's, you know, you, you mentioned, okay, so why,

00:47:59.360 why did they give him? That's the big, that's the $64,000 question. What was the real reason?

00:48:04.700 I don't buy Acosta new Dershowitz from Harvard and they struck a deal. I don't buy that because

00:48:10.040 it was bubbling up that there was more than just these victims. This was a massive. And that's the

00:48:16.440 question whether, because there's reporting that the young, there's the U S attorney that was Acosta,

00:48:21.780 but there was a woman coupled down from him, an assistant U S attorney who was very angry about

00:48:26.780 this being swept under the rug. She's never been allowed to talk and I'm sure she knows what was

00:48:33.100 going on, but there are too many people too close to that deal who haven't been allowed to talk,

00:48:37.320 who haven't been able to tell us what they think Acosta was really doing or who was ordering.

00:48:41.900 Like, why would they be so interested in protecting Jeffrey Epstein?

00:48:46.780 Yeah. It's, it's, it goes back to, as I said, the coupling of Jeffrey and Elaine, who may have

00:48:57.340 been brought together by, you know, through intelligence. We do know that Jeffrey Epstein

00:49:03.400 gave, gave up some information to the FBI at the time of this. We believe it was dealing with

00:49:11.080 financial matters on, on wall street that it wasn't, that he wasn't rat ratting out any, uh, men, uh,

00:49:17.560 as part of his trafficking, uh, operation. Um, but, uh, there's so much more mystery to this. And

00:49:25.160 that's, what's so frustrating to me about the, about the trial itself involving, let me sit,

00:49:32.320 let me stand you by there. Cause that's a whole other ball of wax, which we will tackle right after this.

00:49:37.860 Don't go away. Well, one of the problems with the deal, he struck with, uh, the prosecutors back,

00:49:49.060 I thought it was 2008 that the deal was struck. Was it 2005?

00:49:52.140 No, no. The, the, the Palm beach, uh, detectives, uh, investigation began in 2005.

00:49:57.760 Okay. Okay. Got it.

00:49:58.560 A deal came together in 2008.

00:50:00.820 So once that was struck, one of the contrary to the two most controversial,

00:50:04.640 maybe not most, it's so hard to pick what's most controversial, but a couple of the controversial

00:50:08.400 things about it, in addition to what a slap on the wrist it was, were number one, the feds are

00:50:13.500 required. The prosecutors are required to advise the victims before they enter into an agreement like

00:50:20.360 this. And not only did they not advise the many victims that they were about to do it,

00:50:24.040 they lied to them. They had to admit it later in court. They told the victims,

00:50:28.840 oh, we'll let you know it's proceeding. We're negotiating. And the deal had already been

00:50:35.520 signed. So there was dishonesty within the U S attorney's office, which is extraordinary.

00:50:41.820 And we still don't have a full accounting for it, but for why and how it went down and who told you

00:50:46.920 to do that. Very frustrating and very suspicious, very sus as my daughter would say. Um, and, uh,

00:50:53.620 the other piece of it is, um, Oh, that, that immunity was basically crafted for Jeffrey's

00:51:02.220 co-conspirators. He specifically named four women in the deal. He struck saying, you can't go after

00:51:08.240 them. You can't charge them, which is like unheard of, right? It's so weird in a deal like this

00:51:14.020 for the feds to agree to such a thing. And, um, and then they broadened it, it broadened it. It was

00:51:20.700 like these four people and any other co-conspirators. So this, that's a nightmare for

00:51:27.600 the young women who are trying to go after him or see civil or criminal penalties against them.

00:51:33.500 But weirdly buried, let's start with this. Do you know why Ghislaine Maxwell was not one of the four

00:51:40.120 women protect specifically protected by name in that deal? Well, she was assumed to be part of this,

00:51:47.980 uh, immunity deal for others. Jeffrey did not want her named at the time. He wanted to protect her

00:51:54.860 name by not attaching, uh, her as the, as one of the four, uh, potential co-conspirators. Um,

00:52:05.780 he, uh, uh, told Ghislaine that she would not be, um, um, named, uh, as part of this,

00:52:14.060 that she wouldn't have that attachment to the, uh, Florida case. And in fact, uh, when she was,

00:52:20.220 um, initially, um, arrested, um, her, her lawyers were fighting back that, Hey, you can't,

00:52:27.640 you can't do this because, you know, she was technically part of the, um, uh, other, um,

00:52:33.140 given immunity as part of this broad, uh, deal in 2008. So, you know, the, the feds can't go after her.

00:52:39.500 However, that of course, uh, you know, completely, uh, fell apart as part of her prosecution, uh,

00:52:45.900 by the Southern district, by Jeffrey Berman, uh, uh, here in New York at the time. Um, but, uh,

00:52:52.160 she, she, she wasn't named because she did not want to be attached, uh, and have that, uh, you know,

00:53:00.060 in Google history as, you know, as being one of the co-conspirators.

00:53:04.460 Now, after he gets out of his BS quote jail term, uh, which is more than nicer than how most people

00:53:11.580 spend any given year. Um, there's a, there's a celebratory party for him. This, this is the night

00:53:18.260 that we've seen a fair amount of reporting on at the East 71st street mansion in New York. He goes

00:53:24.060 up to New York and it's like a who's who of American media, uh, Hollywood. It just to me shows

00:53:32.080 you how disgusting and chummy my industry is media with, um, you know, the Hollywood crowd,

00:53:39.700 the it crowd. They think whatever they, what they think is the crowd on, on wall street and rubbing

00:53:44.620 the elbows because they knew he just got out of jail for solicitation of sex or prostitution with

00:53:52.080 a minor. He was a registered sex offender at that point. And you got, well, why don't you tell us who

00:53:57.680 was there and just fine with celebrating that night with Jeffrey Epstein? Well, there were,

00:54:02.540 there were many, uh, celebrities. I recall that, uh, I believe Katie Cork might've been,

00:54:07.500 might've been there. Stephanopoulos, Charlie Rose. Charlie Rose, uh, uh, uh, Stephanopoulos,

00:54:14.840 uh, what was there? I mean, it was, it was, uh, Chelsea Handler. Oh, and also Woody Allen. Uh,

00:54:19.640 what a shock. Well, Woody, uh, I have a picture in my book of Woody and Soon-Yi walking,

00:54:24.100 you know, with, with Jeffrey outside of their, outside of Jeffrey's house. I mean,

00:54:27.920 they were of course pals. Oh, of course. Woody was Jeffrey's hero.

00:54:32.180 What wonder why? Uh, but Jeffrey, you know, he, he hired a publicist in New York as, as you do.

00:54:38.840 And he, he attempted to basically pass off what happened in Florida is nothing. There's a direct

00:54:44.940 quote from him where he said, he said, I am not a sexual predator. I'm an offender. It's the

00:54:49.880 difference between a murderer and a person who steals a bagel. That's how he explained what

00:54:55.900 happened down in Florida to his high society media pals, uh, who were invited, uh, to New York. And

00:55:05.080 he later, um, uh, you know, he, he, he, he basically put off in an off the record conversation

00:55:12.300 with, with, uh, uh, uh, uh, reporter, uh, George Rush for the daily news. Uh, Rush has, has since

00:55:20.500 put it on record after Jeffrey Epstein's death. Jeffrey passed off what had happened to him in

00:55:27.360 Florida. Uh, he, he said, these, these girls were, uh, quote, like experienced sex workers. Um,

00:55:35.380 he said, uh, the statutory aspect of his prosecution was unfair, uh, because he said, if I had done the

00:55:41.920 same thing in a different state, there'd be no cause to arrest him. Uh, Jeffrey was making excuses

00:55:49.600 about his, um, um, his, his dark side right up until the time he, uh, uh, uh, uh, ended up behind bars,

00:56:01.060 uh, where he was, where I quote, uh, him telling a, an inmate, uh, um, one of the, um, um, in, in,

00:56:08.500 in jail companions, but by basically saying, Hey, listen, it wasn't a big deal. Uh, these,

00:56:14.900 these girls were 15 and 16, 17. It wasn't like they were five or six. Jeffrey was always trying to

00:56:22.480 justify, uh, his actions, but it bothered him, bothered him deep down. And he told, um, he told one

00:56:29.520 publicist, he said, you know, he said, I don't want to go to my, I don't want my obituary to read

00:56:34.000 in the first paragraph, uh, that, uh, that I was a billionaire pervert. Um, so, you know, he, he

00:56:41.440 would, he, he would, he would tell people what he was doing was, was, was nothing. But at the same

00:56:47.400 time, I do think he was, you know, greatly concerned about his, his reputation. Well, meanwhile,

00:56:53.580 the people who are behind the scenes say that, and the women, the accusers are saying they heard him

00:56:57.520 firsthand, tell them, you know, they're the women who became his recruiters, um, the younger, the

00:57:03.220 better, the younger, the better. He wanted even prepubescent girls, though. I haven't seen any of

00:57:09.080 them come forward. 14 is the youngest I've heard directly. I mean, Haley Robson, who I, who, uh,

00:57:14.920 wrote, um, uh, for me, cause she was a bit of journalism student. I want to give her the

00:57:19.440 opportunity to write something at the end of my book. I mean, she wrote that Jeffrey specifically

00:57:23.560 told her the younger, the better. Um, that's where that, uh, that quote came from that came

00:57:28.200 from, uh, Haley. So, but can I just round back though, Barry, cause that leads me to when did

00:57:34.640 he stop? Like, why does the trail seem to go cold later in his life? Well, he, after Florida,

00:57:41.780 after the 2008 case, uh, at that time, uh, first of all, Elaine made the decision to, um, um,

00:57:50.900 end things with him, uh, after the Florida case, um, she had been advised, listen, you know,

00:57:57.480 you need to leave Jeffrey behind. He attempted to, um, recruit some girls directly, uh, on his own.

00:58:05.240 He did not stop. However, it was, it wasn't this feeding frenzy of girls that, uh, Elaine, you know,

00:58:14.040 where, where they recruit girls and one girl would, would, would bring another that, that went by the

00:58:18.740 wayside. He was relying on, um, international contacts to bring girls over from Soviet countries,

00:58:27.700 uh, from Europe, from Brazil. Uh, he had a fixer, uh, in Paris, uh, you know, Jeffrey had an apartment

00:58:35.180 in, uh, swanky apartment in Paris. Uh, he would abuse girls there. Um, he tried to do it away from,

00:58:43.200 uh, U S authorities. A lot of activities took place at his Island in the little St. James,

00:58:48.740 James, in the Virgin Islands, where, um, the, um, district, uh, um, attorney down there, uh, um,

00:58:56.760 is, got an ongoing investigation and has, uh, interviewed, uh, uh, airport workers, uh, who saw

00:59:04.980 girls as young as 11 years old, uh, getting off of, uh, private planes to be taken, uh, to be ferried

00:59:13.100 over to Jeffrey's Island. So Jeffrey was bringing girls in, uh, from overseas, um, to continue, um,

00:59:21.960 his abuse at his, uh, at his house in the Virgin Islands, um, away from, you know, Florida and for

00:59:29.780 the most part away from, uh, New York where authorities could see him. But this reminds me

00:59:34.640 of, let's just keep in mind what we now know just to fill in some of those blanks. As you point out,

00:59:38.600 yes, the Island totally secluded. It was his Island. So once he gets a girl down there,

00:59:42.980 God only knows. Um, and that the, the women who have worked for him have testified. He had those

00:59:47.680 little pinhole cameras all over his facilities. He, he was filming everything, even in the bathroom

00:59:52.900 he had, he was filming people. And when the U S attorney's office finally arrested him for real,

00:59:58.300 not the BS 2008 thing, but the 2019 right after they rated, arrested him on, on, uh, at the airport,

01:00:06.000 the private airport, um, they raided his home in Manhattan. And they found this is according to the

01:00:10.680 U S attorney's office in Manhattan, revealing some of the objects they found. Uh, a couple of

01:00:14.480 examples, hundreds of nude photos of girls and young women, CDs labeled miscellaneous nudes, one girl

01:00:21.540 pics nude or individual names of girls notes and messages that allegedly back up new sex trafficking

01:00:27.300 charges against him, a massage table, sex toys. A lot of the staffers talk about the sex toys all

01:00:32.140 over the place, everywhere. The massage tables, lubricant, a safe containing cash and diamonds

01:00:37.780 and an expired passport with Epstein's picture and a fake name issued in the early 1980s in a foreign

01:00:42.720 country, uh, listing Saudi Arabia as his country of residence. Sure. That's what everyone's safe

01:00:48.000 looks like. It's like straight out of a novel of what a bad guy would be storing inside of his

01:00:54.620 safe. So, okay. They, they're all over the place. Can I just stop on this?

01:00:59.180 One, one of the people, and that wasn't just Stephanopoulos and Woody Allen, by the way,

01:01:02.440 Stephanopoulos has said he regrets going to that party.

01:01:04.980 They all do. They all say on the record that they regret having been brought there and they,

01:01:09.060 you know, so forth naturally. But you know what? Do your homework. He was convicted felon,

01:01:13.460 convicted of hurting little girls, sex offender. Uh, secondly, one of the people who had no problem

01:01:18.200 with his imprisonment and those charges was Prince Andrew. You hear so much about this today. Uh,

01:01:23.840 he's, he's one of the ones still on the hot seat and he did, he went and visited Jeffrey Epstein at

01:01:30.040 the New York mansion after Epstein got out of prison in the 2008 thing, jail, and is accused of a woman

01:01:38.040 whose name we should spend some time on. And that's Virginia Roberts, Jufre, Virginia Roberts, when she

01:01:43.640 was younger than that, and she got married. And, um, I'll tell you this. I want to, I want to know

01:01:48.400 your take on her, Barry, but I looked into her before I did a long interview with Alan Dershowitz.

01:01:53.240 She's accused him among others. She's accused a lot of guys, a lot. And, um, I don't doubt her for

01:02:00.040 a minute with respect to the Epstein story. I believe Epstein did abuse her and did probably traffic

01:02:05.760 her as alleged. However, I don't believe her with respect to all the men she accuses. And Alan happens to

01:02:12.700 be one of them, not just because I'm friendly with the guy. I took a hard look at it. And this

01:02:16.540 is, I was going to do a long interview with him and I was going to, if, if it went the wrong way for

01:02:20.540 him, it wasn't going to be a pleasant interview. But I saw the number of inconsistencies in the story

01:02:25.660 she was telling about him. I saw a reporter egging her on to name him because he was famous and it

01:02:31.260 would get more attention, even though she hadn't named him yet and hadn't, and hadn't even remembered

01:02:35.780 him. And, and many other pieces of evidence that led me to believe Virginia, I do believe as a

01:02:41.460 victim, but I do not believe she was a victim of Alan Dershowitz among many other pieces of

01:02:44.900 evidence. However, she's important because among other guys, she's pointing the finger at Prince

01:02:49.860 Andrew in a litigation that's heating up right now. He's been forced to answer it. He could be

01:02:54.720 forced to testify. He's in potentially some trouble. So tell us what we know about Virginia

01:02:59.860 Roberts, her credibility and those claims. Well, listen, I mean, there's no question that,

01:03:06.820 you know, we've conducted interviews with family members. Her father was a maintenance man

01:03:14.440 at Mar-a-Lago. Ghislaine Maxwell recruited her right out of Mar-a-Lago when she was,

01:03:21.860 she had remembered that she was 15 at the time. It turns out she was 16 at the time.

01:03:28.900 Um, the fact is she was recruited into their world. Uh, she traveled with them. Um, she's listed on the

01:03:37.360 flight manifests, uh, many, many dozens and dozens of trips. I mean, they, they, you know,

01:03:43.680 went around the world and so forth. Uh, there's no question that she was, you know, abused. Uh, she was

01:03:50.960 the first, um, uh, victim to come forward and, um, make the allegation that she was trafficked out to,

01:03:59.960 um, um, a, uh, you know, at least a half dozen, um, uh, rich and powerful friends.

01:04:07.500 And this is, this is the one just to pause you there. This is the one that Amy Roebeck was complaining

01:04:11.560 about in that now infamous tape, um, on ABC, the satellite feed was going out when she was ripping on

01:04:17.640 her staff and her, her superiors, I should say for not, she's like, I had this whole story.

01:04:22.580 I had Virginia Roberts, I had it all. And they wouldn't let me air it. Um, that, that was all

01:04:27.020 about Virginia. Sorry, go ahead. Correct. No, I was going to say on, on Virginia, there's no question.

01:04:31.920 She has tremendous credibility directly related to Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell. And she, um,

01:04:40.380 if she was able to be, um, examined by prosecution specifically on that, um, uh, because she fits

01:04:49.960 into the, fits perfectly into the, you know, into that pattern. Uh, and, and she, you know, horrendous,

01:04:58.280 horrible stuff, horrific stuff happened to her. Uh, however, the prosecution made the decision,

01:05:05.300 um, not to, um, um, um, bring her in as, as one of the minor victims one through four or as a fifth

01:05:14.520 because of these, and you addressed it with, with Dershowitz because of these credibility issues.

01:05:21.340 And they were very fearful of, um, um, you know, well, she could certainly testify to the grooming

01:05:30.120 and the abuse. Uh, the prosecution was fearful that, um, um, Ghislaine's defense would take it in a

01:05:38.100 completely other direction, muddy it with, um, the, um, um, discrepancies, um, you know, in her story

01:05:46.620 and some of the allegations involving these other men. And it would become very complicated, very muddy,

01:05:52.440 and it would take away from the, um, direct testimonies of the four, um, accusers that they

01:05:59.760 decided, uh, that they thought were relatively as best as they could determine airtight cases to

01:06:06.600 present in a very clean cut fashion to the, to the jury. Uh, so Virginia, who is, you know,

01:06:14.940 without question, the most famous accuser because of her accusations against Prince Andrew, uh, and others

01:06:21.600 is not, um, testifying. She's off in Australia. Uh, she has not been, um, she's, you know, she's not

01:06:27.780 been coming forward, uh, as, as part of the, as part of the case. It is troubling, however, because

01:06:33.520 she has been referenced in the case and the jurors may be asking, well, why are we not going to hear

01:06:39.640 from her? But the reason why they're not hearing from her is because of the, um, um, discrepancies,

01:06:46.600 uh, over the course of the years. I mean, there's been other discrepancies with some of these

01:06:53.160 accusers. You're, you're talking about asking these girls who made some initial comments, some of them

01:06:58.900 to law enforcement, uh, many of them in, in, in various civil depositions and so forth. You know,

01:07:06.100 they're remembering things that happened to them, traumatic events that happened to them when they

01:07:11.440 were 14 and 15 years old. There's no question that, that there would be inconsistencies because

01:07:17.120 they're now in their forties, their testimony. Um, but, but the, um, uh, prosecution decided that

01:07:24.100 Virginia was, um, too much of a risk, uh, and it would take the, um, it could take the trial in,

01:07:31.500 in a different direction. So they've lost her out. However, she is continuing now to pursue Prince

01:07:38.420 Andrew and that, uh, is, is, uh, moving forward, uh, here in New York. And, uh, you know, I mean,

01:07:47.140 I think with Prince Andrew, we have the, the photograph of the two of them together taken at

01:07:52.480 that Jeffrey Epstein took a photo of, uh, of, uh, Prince Andrew and, uh, Virginia together with

01:07:59.920 Ghislaine in the, in the background at Ghislaine's house in, uh, in, in London. I mean, there is

01:08:06.060 some tremendous evidence and, and proof of that, uh, um, relationship. And he says he doesn't

01:08:13.520 remember ever meeting her that Andrew has done everything he can to, uh, put his foot in his

01:08:19.200 mouth in interviews he's done overseas and so forth. He comes across as an absolutely terrible,

01:08:24.980 uh, witness. Yes. So this is why he got booted from Royal duties because he made the mistake of

01:08:30.440 giving an interview. That was an absolute disaster. And before you knew it, he lost his Royal duties.

01:08:35.240 Um, but he does for the record, deny her allegations. He doesn't remember her,

01:08:39.960 her sides pointing out when he got sued by her, uh, his response didn't seem all that surprised.

01:08:44.680 He texted, I think Ghislaine or, or Jeffrey saying, uh, we need to talk about Virginia Roberts. It

01:08:49.740 didn't sound, you know, it could have been just the name of this woman who mysteriously sued me,

01:08:55.060 or it could be the way he said it made one believe he, he knew, and he wanted to have a conversation

01:09:00.180 about her. We'll see that'll play out, but she does have credibility issues as do a lot of

01:09:04.440 accusers. And no, you know, it's hard to pick up. I mean, to your point earlier that they picked

01:09:11.140 women who did have certain issues. They were very clever, um, in their general approach. Now he went

01:09:17.460 through hundreds of women, so he wasn't that clever with everybody, but certainly with the ones that

01:09:21.400 he made his constant, you know, concubines or whatever you want to call someone like Virginia

01:09:25.200 Roberts is victim. Um, they're going to have some issues and that's not to excuse the inconsistencies.

01:09:30.320 It's just one of the challenges prosecutors are up against. I'll give you the last word before we're

01:09:34.540 going to break.

01:09:35.580 No, I, Virginia, I mean, I view her and all the accusers who have come forward as, as, as courageous

01:09:42.000 women. Um, and, and they had their childhoods taken away. They had, they have suffered, uh, like,

01:09:50.440 you know, I have a teenage daughter. I, I can't think about what they, what they went through

01:09:56.320 at the hands of, uh, killing and Jeffrey Epstein. So she's courageous along with, with all of these

01:10:02.840 other, uh, well, think about it. I mean, it's hard, it's hard to go up against anybody and make this

01:10:06.300 kind of an accusation. And you're talking about somebody who's, who hangs out with former

01:10:10.060 presidents and princes and heads of industry and universities. Good God, you can understand why

01:10:15.680 they were like, this is not, it's not worth it. And then the women who came before me, by the way,

01:10:19.800 were either ignored by the police or diminished by the FBI or lied to by the feds. Okay. Next,

01:10:25.100 we got to get to Jeff, Jeffrey Epstein's, um, famous friends, including Trump and his mysterious

01:10:31.340 death. Don't go away. Before we finish off with the Royals, Virginia has alleged that in that picture

01:10:43.280 where she looks very young, he's got his arm around her at Ghislaine's house in London. She said that

01:10:47.540 night, she, um, she, uh, let me get it in front of me. He asked her how old she was. She said,

01:10:55.240 how old, how old do I look? He guessed 17. She said he later would grope me, touch my breasts,

01:10:59.840 my behind licked my toes, the arches of my feet. I mean, these are specific details made love to me

01:11:07.020 without a condom. And that the next day, Jeffrey Epstein paid me $10,000. She alleges she was

01:11:12.680 forced to have sex with Prince Andrew many times in London, New York, and the Virgin Islands,

01:11:17.700 I think are the places. She says he knew I was a minor. Um, and he says he had zero recollection

01:11:23.660 of ever meeting her and that the photo may be fake. Um, Epstein, I've read two different things

01:11:28.940 about him and the Royals. I've read that he was actually invited to a party. It was Prince Andrew's

01:11:39.280 40th and, and Prince Charles's 50th and Prince William's 18th birthday. And that even the queen

01:11:45.960 and Prince Philip may have been there and that Jeffrey and Ghislaine were invited. And then there

01:11:50.860 was a separate party for Princess Beatrice. That's Andrew's daughter, her 18th birthday that he had,

01:11:56.160 I mean, is it, did Jeffrey Epstein party with the queen? We have never seen any actual photos of the,

01:12:02.420 of the two of them together. And in fact, at the, um, at the trial, uh, prosecution released, uh,

01:12:08.140 uh, uh, an image of the two of them at the queen's, uh, personal, um, uh, cabin at, uh, Balmoral. Uh,

01:12:15.580 this shows you how, uh, what incredible access, uh, they had to, uh, literally being, um, uh, inches away

01:12:26.360 from, uh, uh, uh, from the queen. Um, Prince, uh, Prince Andrew, there's no question, opened the,

01:12:33.780 the, the doors to, uh, the Royal Kingdom for, uh, uh, Jeffrey and, uh, um, uh, Ghislaine. There's a,

01:12:43.160 there's an image of, uh, Ghislaine and one of her friends, Kevin Spacey sitting on, um, um, um, what had been,

01:12:50.720 uh, I think the official, like Royal Throne, uh, for photo, uh, uh, uh, opportunities and so forth. Um,

01:12:58.780 Prince Andrew was in deep with, with, with Jeffrey and, and, and Ghislaine. And, uh, uh, of course he

01:13:07.380 regrets that association now, uh, because it's destroying his, his life. It's having all,

01:13:13.540 as you pointed out, all of his Royal duties taken away from him. Um, but, uh, again, he was collected

01:13:19.940 by, uh, Jeffrey, uh, and, and Jeffrey had the goods on him as Jeffrey has the goods or had the

01:13:26.700 goods on, uh, many other, um, famous and powerful people. Well, that's, that's what people wonder,

01:13:32.840 you know, in elsewhere in that safe, because when they raided his, uh, Florida place and they

01:13:37.720 arrested him in 2008, he had clearly just disconnected hard drives before they got,

01:13:41.660 somebody clearly tipped him off and he, he had moved and hidden hard drives. And then something

01:13:46.580 similar happened when he was arrested in 2019, they had hard drives that they found or CDs,

01:13:51.700 and then they left them there because they weren't within the scope of the search warrant

01:13:55.640 to actually look at them. And then they were gone when they went back. So that's one of the big

01:14:00.640 questions. Like what was on those, what was on them? What do we, did we see Prince Andrew with,

01:14:05.200 with a young girl? Did we see Bill Clinton, Donald Trump? I mean, these are, these are some of the

01:14:09.980 massive questions that loom over. Did Jeffrey Epstein really kill himself? Right. That's one of the,

01:14:13.880 the things. Um, so that's, that's Prince Andrew and who knows what we're going to learn if that

01:14:19.500 trial goes forward. Um, then there's Bill Clinton, by the way, is it, why, why are there so many people

01:14:24.240 who have been, you know, accused credibly of sexual misconduct, you know, from Charlie Rose to

01:14:30.100 Woody Allen to Bill Clinton to, um, Kevin Spacey to, you know, it's like, there's a lot of questionable

01:14:37.980 people that surround him. I mean, you know, I've in the book, the photo from, um, uh, I think it was,

01:14:45.300 uh, uh, Beatrice's, uh, party where Jeffrey and, uh, Ghislaine, uh, have their arms around Harvey

01:14:52.720 Weinstein. The three of them are, of course, are all photographed together there. I mean, this was the

01:14:58.020 circle of, uh, of friends that, uh, that, that Jeffrey had, uh, men, uh, with, uh, with, with similar

01:15:05.580 dark, uh, uh, uh, you know, lifestyles. Well, you talk in the book about, I mean, Bill Clinton was

01:15:13.060 on Jeffrey's Lolita Express, which was the nickname for his aircraft, um, at least four times overseas

01:15:20.340 to Africa a couple of times. Now I will say, uh, it was Epstein's quote, personal massage therapist

01:15:26.920 on, on board with them who she said, I heard her say in an interview, nothing untoward happened when

01:15:33.820 Bill Clinton was on those flights. Like, uh, and, and, you know, she is saying that untoward things

01:15:38.700 happened with Epstein elsewhere, but she says not, not when Clinton was there. So take it for what it's

01:15:44.520 worth. Um, with respect to Donald Trump, you've done some reporting of your own about their relationship

01:15:49.080 and some party at Mar-a-Lago. Can you inform us on that? Well, my, my book on Jeffrey Epstein came out of the

01:15:56.920 previous book that I had written on, uh, called all the president's women, Donald Trump and the

01:16:01.440 making of a predator. And it was through the development of those sources, uh, in Florida

01:16:06.200 that, where I began to see this much deeper, you know, connection. And, and at the time when that book

01:16:13.380 was being published, uh, it was, um, right at the time of, uh, uh, after Epstein had, uh, um, died

01:16:21.920 behind bars that the, uh, uh, my, uh, book editor, uh, said, you know, you kind of go now focus on,

01:16:29.820 on, on, on Jeffrey Epstein. So that kind of led, led me to, um, the, um, uh, the Epstein book. But,

01:16:36.800 uh, as I point out in the book, Jeffrey Epstein said to a very, very close source, and I, I can't give

01:16:44.000 up the, the person's name, but incredibly connected to Jeffrey Epstein and extremely close. And Jeffrey

01:16:51.480 Epstein said, if the public knew, uh, what I know about, uh, uh, the Trumps and the, uh, and the

01:16:58.120 Clintons, uh, there wouldn't be a, uh, 2016 election. Uh, Jeffrey, Jeffrey claims he had the

01:17:05.040 goods on, on, uh, both of those men. Of course, uh, um, Donald Trump, like Bill Clinton, denies, uh,

01:17:12.460 any wrongdoing. Uh, however, we, you know, there's a lot of material there showing, um, Trump and,

01:17:21.640 uh, uh, um, particularly, um, uh, Epstein partying together. They once attended a party at Mar-a-Lago,

01:17:29.400 uh, just the two of them, uh, Trump and Epstein with, um, uh, uh, I think it was more than a dozen,

01:17:36.740 um, yeah, your book says 28. Yeah. Uh, I mean, they were caught up in, um, I mean, there's deeper

01:17:46.520 allegations that I, that I put forward in both books about one, uh, lawsuit, uh, from a girl who

01:17:52.180 claimed she was 13, uh, that, uh, uh, was, um, um, filed at the time of the, in 2016, but then, um,

01:18:00.820 withdrawn, uh, involving both Epstein and, uh, Trump. Um, of course, you know, there's been

01:18:07.100 complete denials all around, but there's no question that there was a, uh, true, uh, friendship

01:18:13.920 and, uh, the two of them parting together. And they knew a lot of the same people. I mean, there

01:18:18.760 was, you know, when Donald Trump had his modeling agency, um, you know, there were, um, modeling

01:18:26.240 agents and heads of fashion companies and so forth, uh, that Epstein, uh, where all, you

01:18:32.420 know, where the two of them were part of this much, um, um, larger world involving, uh, young

01:18:38.980 women. I mean, I, I make several allegations in the, in the Trump book, uh, involving Trump

01:18:44.660 and, uh, and younger women. Um, of course, Trump issued this statement saying, um, well,

01:18:52.280 it was a comment, I think, to a magazine about his relationship with Epstein saying that they,

01:18:57.380 they did know each other. Um, by the way, I should mention that Clinton denies anything

01:19:01.900 on tour and so does Trump, but, uh, I want to get the, I'm just looking for the, for the

01:19:05.500 quote, um, that's what Trump said specifically. Okay. Here it is. Uh, Donald Trump in 2002 to

01:19:11.560 New York magazine. He's a terrific guy. Epstein's a terrific guy. It is even said that he likes

01:19:16.460 beautiful women as much as I do. And many of them are on the younger side.

01:19:20.500 That is so classic Trump. I mean, this is classic.

01:19:24.020 Donald Trump has said since then that, that those words were manufactured for him, that they were

01:19:30.320 created, uh, for that, uh, particular article that he, uh, denies that, uh, that, you know,

01:19:36.980 that, that he actually said that, but we do know of a, of a very close, uh, uh, friendship

01:19:41.820 between the two of them, particularly in the early years. And, and Ghislaine was-

01:19:45.500 And this is before his 2008 arrest, I should, I should point out.

01:19:48.660 Oh yes. Yeah. I mean, and, and in fact, Jeffrey Epstein has told people, um, uh, goes against

01:19:54.680 the official Trump story, but Jeffrey Epstein claims that he introduced, uh, Melania to,

01:19:59.500 uh, Donald Trump.

01:20:01.140 Oh gosh, that's not something you want to put in a wedding toast. Um, so, okay. So now finally

01:20:06.800 to their credit, I mean, I will say there was one girl, Courtney, who was recruited by him

01:20:12.660 as she was a victim. And then she was made sort of a helper, you know, for lack of a better term

01:20:16.540 to go recruit other girls. She recruited a lot of them. And she was one of the ones really angry

01:20:21.840 when that 2008 sweetheart deal was cut and she hadn't been consulted. And she was a woman on a

01:20:27.280 mission from 2008 to 2019. She wasn't the only one to get some accountability and stayed on this

01:20:34.880 case, like a dog with a bone. Like, I just don't care. I'm just, I will devote the rest of my life to

01:20:38.960 getting some accountability from this guy. And that's really, you know, the women not just refusing to

01:20:44.140 give this up is what finally led, I think, to the 2019 arrest. It was a different climate,

01:20:50.420 right? We had Trump president, the Me Too movement was, you know, underway or had already started at

01:20:57.000 least. And it was a different climate in the country. So they, he did get arrested. He did

01:21:03.580 find it, found a U S attorney who took this more seriously. Um, he gets arrested unexpectedly to him,

01:21:09.300 which was, you know, important. Um, and the biggest decision then was, do we give him bail?

01:21:17.140 And the women were hardcore against bail because they knew from experience how connected he was.

01:21:23.180 If he got out, he'd hide everything. He'd work every connection. He'd have it managed such that

01:21:29.580 they were dead in the water again. And at that bail hearing, the judge did something extraordinary.

01:21:34.960 He let some of the women who showed up just to see him get sentenced to jail while, while pending,

01:21:40.420 they are hoping he let them speak. And those to this day are the only women who have gotten to

01:21:45.960 confront him face to face with what he did. It's incredibly dramatic and then good for them for

01:21:52.960 finding the nerve to stand up and do it. Cause usually your lawyer would be like, don't say

01:21:55.860 anything unless I'm there. We'll do, we'll cross it. You know, we'll do it in the civil case when we're

01:21:59.000 suing for millions of dollars, but they did get up there and he did not get bail. And that was a

01:22:04.700 big decision. He had to be remanded. And then there begins probably the biggest of the mystery

01:22:12.200 of them all. You know, so many men, where are the hard drives? You know, what, why did the feds give

01:22:17.660 him the sweetheart deal? Like what was the motivation and what, what happened to him in that jail?

01:22:24.620 The New York Times just did a FOIA request to the jail trying to find out what happened.

01:22:29.720 They were denied. They got their legal team involved. They won the access to the documents.

01:22:34.180 It's just this week. They reported that there were anomalies right upon check-in. I don't know

01:22:39.580 what you call booking, I guess. It's not check-in. It's not a hotel. Um, they said he was a black

01:22:44.700 man. Um, they had a couple of other weird things about him. They said he wasn't a person who was a

01:22:49.760 public figure. You know, he was, of course, they put him in gen pop originally. That wasn't supposed

01:22:54.840 to happen. Then they rectified it about a day later. I put him in a cell. Then, then there was one

01:23:00.700 attempted suicide, which I like to ask you about whether it really was and what kind

01:23:04.560 of thing happened. And then he was supposed to be kind of on suicide watch. He had, he

01:23:08.920 had told all the doctors, he wasn't suicidal. It's absurd. I have so much to live for. Why

01:23:12.180 would I kill myself? Um, and then they, they were, they were supposed to put a roommate in

01:23:16.780 with him, a cellmate again. I'm talking about like a dorm cellmate and they didn't. And then

01:23:21.180 those two guards that night, the cameras were off. They were supposed to be patrolling.

01:23:24.920 They weren't. They, they found from the records that they had been searching the internet for

01:23:29.300 shopping and sports. Um, but there's just so much of a smell around the whole thing. And given the

01:23:35.760 history, you and I've been discussing for two hours, people have real questions. So your take on it.

01:23:41.060 Yeah. I just want to add that because of the reporting done by the Miami Herald, uh, yes,

01:23:47.400 going to the Acosta deal and so forth, that really, uh, ignited, um, public interest again in,

01:23:54.480 in basically pushing the feds into, I think, acting on material that they've had in their files,

01:24:01.740 all those years from the FBI investigation, uh, that began, um, you know, in the mid 2000s. Uh,

01:24:09.600 but it was that Herald story that really, I think, uh, uh, in the Me Too era really pushed them forward

01:24:15.820 to, uh, um, Jeffrey Berman's office here in New York, the Southern district to really go after, uh,

01:24:22.440 Epstein. And I write in the book, how dramatic it was that they were fearful that, uh, um, when his

01:24:28.720 plane was returning to Titoboro, that he would have been, um, passed on the information that leaked to

01:24:34.560 him and that he would pull Roman Polanski and, uh, divert the plane, um, you know, to another country

01:24:39.860 and so forth, but he did land and they were able to, um, you know, apprehend him and, uh, uh,

01:24:45.680 put him in handcuffs. Huge, huge. So when he went into the jail, do you believe, how, do you know

01:24:54.700 how he allegedly attempted to take his own life the first time? Well, we, we, we, uh, part of the

01:25:02.380 book, uh, I, I was working with Philip Messing, who had been, uh, the, um, legendary, uh, crime

01:25:08.140 reporter for the New York Post, uh, for, um, uh, decades and, uh, Phil, uh, and I worked together

01:25:15.340 and, uh, we, we spent, uh, uh, you know, a year investigating what went on behind bars there.

01:25:21.640 We had a lot of the information in the book, uh, uh, long before the New York Times, uh, sued, uh,

01:25:27.440 Bureau of Prisons for that, uh, report. Uh, we interviewed, uh, two of the, uh, um, uh, Epstein's

01:25:34.340 inmate companions who spent, were the only real people who actually talked to him, um, in the days

01:25:40.620 leading up to his, uh, his, his death. And, uh, Epstein reported in the book, uh, that there were

01:25:46.740 actually, um, um, we believe two suicide attempts before, um, he ended up taking his life. Uh, one was,

01:25:56.120 um, uh, only reported, uh, but the incompetency in that jail, the MCC, uh, there's a reason why

01:26:04.220 that jail's been shut down. It's because it was just, you know, run horrifically as, as you pointed

01:26:10.660 out, they put him in gen pop. He was surrounded by, uh, um, uh, gang members. Uh, they were trying

01:26:17.060 to shake him down. Um, uh, Epstein was, I can, I can tell you this and write about this extensively

01:26:24.520 in the book, uh, Epstein fell apart, uh, behind bars. Unlike Ghislaine Maxwell, who I actually think

01:26:31.540 is, is made from tougher stock who has been willing to, um, put up with, with, uh, the,

01:26:37.380 the, the, the many, many months he's been held awaiting trial. Uh, Epstein was a basket case. Uh,

01:26:45.000 this was a guy who I said, uh, needed to have things. He needed the temperature in his bedroom

01:26:50.100 set, uh, one way, uh, he needed all of these things. And when he was behind bars, he had no control

01:26:56.820 over anything. And he was also terrorized as he told these gentlemen, uh, that he was going to be

01:27:04.240 bullied. Like he had been bullied as a boy back in Coney Island. And, uh, uh, I do believe, uh, based

01:27:11.300 on the reporting we did, uh, that, uh, despite, um, crazy circumstances, the, the guards at night

01:27:18.960 falling asleep and so forth, I do believe that he took his, took his life because for someone to enter

01:27:25.340 that cell, it would have had to have been a massive conspiracy. Uh, there were safeguards in

01:27:30.900 terms of the main door locks were controlled by the, uh, central jail's, um, office that had nothing

01:27:38.420 to do with the, uh, the guards who were, um, um, in the shoe, uh, that particular night, um, to have

01:27:46.720 placed someone in there to take his life, uh, would have been an absolute massive, uh, conspiracy. Uh,

01:27:53.240 but, uh, we, we don't know the, uh, specifics of the secret suicide attempt, uh, in which he was

01:28:00.560 then put behind suicide watch. We know in the, in the, in the second case that he had a, um, uh,

01:28:08.840 a cellmate, uh, Jeffrey Epstein told two different stories. Uh, he said he, uh, um, um, uh, you know,

01:28:17.280 the cellmate found him on the floor. Uh, uh, there were, uh, marks on Jeffrey Epstein's neck and so

01:28:24.420 forth. We don't know, you know, he was telling different people, different accounts of, of what

01:28:29.020 was happening. Uh, what we do know is that he should have never, ever been left alone in the cell by

01:28:36.680 himself. And the night he decided if he did take his life was the one night when the, uh, cell,

01:28:44.760 other cellmate that he had had just been transferred out and another one was supposed to come, uh, the

01:28:50.820 next day. And so Jeffrey Epstein had this one specific window if he was going to, uh, hang

01:28:57.500 himself. And, uh, uh, it appears, uh, you know, that's what he did because he wasn't going to live

01:29:03.340 a life behind bars. He knew he was going to be convicted. Uh, and he wasn't, as he's told, he's

01:29:08.860 indicated to these cellmates that this was not the type of life that he would, um, be able to live.

01:29:14.760 Could he have paid off the guards to, to look the other way? Uh, you know, the, the guards have

01:29:21.900 been through a, uh, a full investigation. There's been no indication that they, uh, uh, received any,

01:29:29.720 uh, money. We do know that Jeffrey Epstein had paid off, um, had been extorted, um, um, uh, by some

01:29:36.840 other, um, um, um, guys in, you know, in jail early on, um, for, uh, out of fear, out of safety and so

01:29:45.860 forth. But there's nothing concrete that shows that, uh, uh, he had paid off, uh, anyone, any

01:29:52.280 officials in the jail. Wow. Leaving us all to wonder whether his many secrets died with

01:29:59.560 him or whether Ghislaine Maxwell, uh, knows more than she's letting on a little more on

01:30:06.760 that when we come back right after this break. Back with me now, Barry Levine, author of The

01:30:15.400 Spider, inside the criminal web of Jeffrey Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell. And speaking of Ghislaine

01:30:21.520 Maxwell, Barry, what do we think she knows the answer to all of these questions? What,

01:30:27.600 what did Bill Clinton do? What did Donald Trump do? What did Prince Andrew do? You know,

01:30:32.480 did his secrets die with him or do you think she knows the answers? Oh, I think, I think she knows,

01:30:38.400 she knows a lot. I mean, I was early on, I thought that possibly on her arrest that there might be a

01:30:46.140 deal with the government. I mean, you know, this is someone who is turning, um, uh, 60. She's 59 right

01:30:53.320 now. She turned 60 on, on, on, on Christmas day. Uh, the difference of doing 10 years, uh, behind bars,

01:31:00.400 uh, and still having something left of her life as opposed to, you know, the 70, uh, years that

01:31:06.660 she's facing on this, uh, particular trial. And she's also facing 10 additional years in a separate

01:31:12.240 trial, uh, perjury trial for statements she's made in, um, uh, lying in, in depositions. Uh, I thought

01:31:20.220 that she would do a deal. I thought that she might give up some names to the government and, uh, get a,

01:31:25.640 um, um, uh, some type of sentence because at this point, Jeffrey is dead. And what does she

01:31:31.880 have, you know, have to lose, but she has remained tight lipped. Um, she denies any wrongdoing. And,

01:31:38.800 uh, I, I, I think that she's going to take, uh, their secrets to her grave. Um, there's no question

01:31:45.480 about that. Um, she, what about, what about secret option number two, which is Epstein was a

01:31:52.560 pervert. He was a bad guy. He was a criminal, but I don't want to say he was the only one,

01:32:01.120 but that Prince Andrew and Bill Clinton and Donald Trump didn't do anything to those young

01:32:06.500 women. And she doesn't actually have the secrets to tell. I mean, her lawyers say that she wasn't

01:32:13.800 ever offered a deal, that they were not offered a deal. Um, um, I, I do believe that she knows

01:32:19.920 a great deal about very, you know, about their powerful friends, uh, from, um, uh, scientists to

01:32:28.220 world leaders, uh, the people that they associated with Jeffrey Epstein had, in fact, he had asked the

01:32:34.460 Palm beach police. This is how tight the cops were down there in 2005 with the, you know, with the

01:32:41.360 millionaires who lived, uh, in Palm beach. He said that, uh, people were stealing from him. Uh, so they,

01:32:47.580 the police helped him install a surveillance system, uh, at the Palm beach mansion. Of course,

01:32:52.860 he was using that surveillance system, uh, to, uh, capture, uh, his famous, uh, I believe his famous

01:33:00.100 guests with, um, um, some of these, uh, girls. Uh, I, I do believe that Jeffrey, um, um, and it shows

01:33:08.880 the history, the pattern of how he made money. Uh, Jeffrey was about collecting people, about having

01:33:14.680 goods on people. And I believe it carried through all the way, um, to, um, his, his, you know, final

01:33:21.140 days of, um, um, abuse, uh, at his home in the, uh, in the Virgin islands, uh, before they were tipped

01:33:29.060 off in Florida before it was raided there. And in fact, one of the four co-conspirators, uh, has been

01:33:35.140 alleged to have, uh, uh, removed all the hard drives. So when the search warrant was issued, um,

01:33:41.220 they didn't have the, um, uh, the hard drives that where they are now remains a mystery.

01:33:46.920 That's the question. Where is this blackmail material that he had possibly over all these

01:33:53.300 people? Where are those hard drives? Why in that list that we got from the U S attorney in Manhattan,

01:33:57.060 you know, it says CDs labeled nudes and girls and so on, but there's not an allegation of videotape

01:34:03.200 with Prince Andrew. You know what I mean? If, if that happened, you know, Jeffrey Epstein had a

01:34:06.780 picture of it. So where's that stuff at, if it existed? Well, I, I, I, I write in the book that

01:34:12.680 there is a, uh, it's, it's an, it's a crazy spy story. There's a, there's a gentleman in Russia

01:34:17.820 who was affiliated with, um, um, um, one of the lead detectives on the case. Um, um,

01:34:25.480 detective. Don't tell me his name is Christopher Steele.

01:34:28.740 No, not Christopher Steele. Who has, uh, the lead detective, as the story goes, was so

01:34:35.000 sickened by the slap on the wrist that Jeffrey Epstein was given that he turned over to this

01:34:42.500 man, allegedly, um, uh, copies of, uh, some incriminating material that they had that, uh,

01:34:50.480 you know, that the FBI didn't want or, or, or, or, or wouldn't look at. Um, and this man ended up in

01:34:56.760 Russia and, uh, tells a story there that has been corroborated by, um, some other journalists that,

01:35:04.480 um, um, you know, the Russian government may have, uh, the goods on, on some of this blackmail

01:35:11.840 material, that they may be sitting on, um, material related to, um, um, powerful people

01:35:19.020 connected to, uh, Jeffrey Epstein. I forgot to mention Bill Gates. He was one of the guys who

01:35:24.180 was connected with Epstein and on the plane. I mean, all these people deny knowing anything about

01:35:28.140 him and his sketchy history. And that could very well be true. You know, we don't know, but man,

01:35:32.000 there were a lot of sketchy people who, uh, love to hang out with him. So that leads me to this,

01:35:37.120 the, the Epstein fund, is it gone? Um, my understanding is he was worth someplace between

01:35:43.420 five and 600 million when he died, or at least that's what I read that they paid out $121 million

01:35:49.180 to 135 people. They'd only expected about a hundred claimants, 225 showed up. They did a

01:35:55.200 vetting process. They paid 121. Some of these women got millions, some got less. His estate also paid

01:36:01.340 almost 200 million to the federal government in estate taxes. By my calculations, that's about

01:36:05.320 320 million. There should be between 200 and $300 million left. Where is it? Can people still get

01:36:10.940 money? Uh, what's the status of that? Well, the compensation fund, which was, which was actually

01:36:17.100 directed by, uh, some individuals who were actually connected to the 9-11, um, compensation fund. It was,

01:36:23.240 it was a very, you know, well run, um, uh, separate entity that had nothing to do with Jeffrey Epstein's,

01:36:30.900 uh, uh, lawyers and so forth. Uh, we do know that the, the, the four victims who were testifying,

01:36:37.740 um, for the government, uh, each of them received between 1.5 million and $5 million from the

01:36:43.880 compensation fund. And everything has been sold. His, uh, house in Palm Beach has been sold. His jets

01:36:50.240 have been sold. His cars have been sold. Um, the, the, um, um, New York, uh, mansion is being

01:36:56.820 renovated right now. Someone, a wealthy individual has, has purchased that. So, uh, his estate has

01:37:02.920 been, uh, liquidated. Hmm. Along with the house in Palm Beach, uh, has been actually destroyed. It's

01:37:09.340 been, you know, knocked down, which, uh, uh, uh, is, is a, is a good thing. Yeah. I mean, I feel like

01:37:15.320 that's what it, that's what should happen to all of them. Who would, I realize Manhattan real estate is

01:37:19.720 what it is. No, who would live in such a place? Come on, like, come on, where's your,

01:37:23.800 where your moral compass? Well, maybe we'll, maybe they'll find something when they're,

01:37:28.340 when they're renovating, maybe there's something buried away that the, uh, that the FBI didn't

01:37:32.480 find. So who knows? Well, um, listen, we're taping this before the Maxwell trial wraps up any,

01:37:39.220 you want to make any predictions by the time it airs, we know, we may know the answer. What do you

01:37:42.720 think? Well, this was certainly not a, you know, a slam dunk case for the prosecution. Um, I mean,

01:37:50.800 I, of course, in my gut, I'm hoping that, uh, justice will be served here and that, um, um,

01:37:57.640 Ghislaine will be spending a considerable amount of time of the remainder of her life behind bars.

01:38:02.840 Um, I, I think she absolutely deserves it. I think she was his partner in crime. Um, I, I quote in the

01:38:09.920 book, uh, an interview, not an interview, but a conversation she had with a close friend in 1997,

01:38:14.480 in which she said that she couldn't, um, fulfill Jeffrey's, uh, insatiable sexual appetite.

01:38:21.220 It was impossible to meet. And she felt obliged to bring him young girls to fulfill his sexual needs.

01:38:27.780 And this woman was completely horrified with what, what Ghislaine was telling her. And Ghislaine went

01:38:34.320 on to say, uh, this is a direct quote, they're nothing. These girls, they are trash. And to me,

01:38:40.480 that sums up the only way she could justify in her mind to go down this dark road with Jeffrey Epstein

01:38:47.360 is to not have a feeling whatsoever for any of these girls, uh, in her mind, she, she didn't feel

01:38:54.320 anything for them. They were in her words, trash. And, uh, I, I think that's the only way that, that,

01:39:01.060 that she, um, um, was able to get through this. Wow. What a note on which to leave it.

01:39:07.940 Barry Levine. Again, the book is called the spider. Check it out. So appreciate you coming

01:39:13.200 on. Hope we can talk again. Uh, well, our true crime Christmas week continues all week. Nothing

01:39:19.500 says Christmas, like a week of crime. Um, but let's face it. We love talking about these cases

01:39:24.820 because they're fascinating and they're kind of case studies in human nature too. Don't miss any

01:39:28.820 of it. You can download the Megan Kelly show right now on Apple, Pandora, Spotify, and Stitcher

01:39:32.440 so that you get a little tap on the shoulder when the new shows drop. Um, and also check

01:39:36.880 us out on youtube.com slash Megan Kelly. Thank you all so much for listening. Thanks for listening

01:39:44.320 to the Megan Kelly show. No BS, no agenda, and no fear.

The Megyn Kelly Show - December 23, 2021

Jeffrey Epstein： A Megyn Kelly Show True Crime Special ｜ Ep. 228

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