Vanity Fair reporter Vicki Ward joins us to talk about her reporting on Jeffrey Epstein and whether she stands by her reporting that he was a foreign agent. Megyn also talks about a new report that casts doubt on whether or not Jeffrey Epstein was an agent for Israel.
00:06:07.320It's interesting because there are some right wing pundits online now who are saying no one cares
00:06:12.500about Jeffrey Epstein. And that's just not true. That's not true. And in fact, Rasmussen recently
00:06:18.860did a poll that showed only 21 percent of the American public believes that Epstein killed himself.
00:06:23.640So the vast majority of Americans actually think that there is a cover up of some sort,
00:06:27.900that he was murdered and would like more disclosure.
00:06:31.780This isn't exactly what Trump ran on. It's not what was a big platform of Trump's.
00:06:37.700But all of Trump's surrogates pushed this. And anybody who says otherwise is misleading you.
00:06:42.540I mean, from his family members to his top surrogates and to the vice president
00:06:45.460demanding more transparency on Epstein. So that's why we are where we are.
00:06:50.840It's not the number one most important thing of the Trump administration. I think it's important to keep in mind.
00:06:57.580Trump has been out there racking up wins. I mean, left and right.
00:07:01.120We talked about last week he nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize with good reason.
00:07:06.160June, for the first time, we saw an economic surplus here in the United States when it comes to our economy.
00:07:12.020And a surplus. For the first time, we weren't spending into the deficit.
00:07:18.220We actually were in the black instead of in the red in the United States of America.
00:07:22.740And you had even CNBC and The New York Times admitting it was because of Trump's tariffs,
00:07:29.000you know, the dreaded evil tariffs that everybody's supposed to hate that are so awful.
00:07:33.360Well, guess what? They're actually bringing in real money.
00:07:36.080And that's before they've even really kicked in in earnest.
00:07:39.680We're still in the middle of his big pause on the tariffs.
00:07:42.060So that's another huge thing. Trump's just recently said he's going to open back up the spigot with Ukrainian arms.
00:07:50.040He's going to go. That was in morning update. He's going to go through NATO and have like provide the arms to them and have them give them to Ukraine.
00:07:57.120So that's a bit of a victory for the more neo-cani wing of the Republican Party.
00:08:02.040But look, they've had a couple of victories lately, the Iranian nuclear strikes and now this.
00:08:07.740So, you know, he's Trump is sort of evaluating his landscape on the foreign policy front and making real time assessments.
00:08:16.660And while he really did try to woo Putin with honey instead of vinegar, it clearly didn't work.
00:08:22.160And I think he's realizing that Putin really can't be wooed, can't be manipulated by praise or flattery, and that he's kind of, you know, an asshole.
00:08:31.160Like, of course, he's doing terrible, awful things in Ukraine.
00:08:34.260But I mean, he's not a man of his word. That's what Trump is realizing.
00:08:38.060And he's coming to his own independent judgment on whether he can trust him.
00:08:41.900And honestly, the neo-cons should just be happy with that.
00:08:44.680Like, no one wanted to give Trump time to come to his own conclusions.
00:08:47.800They just want to shove their purported foreign policy knowledge down his throat.
00:08:52.160It's like, you know what? Trump's the president.
00:08:54.240He's got tons of advisors more informed than you telling him what the competing interests are.
00:09:00.340And at some point, the guy who's actually going to have to supply weapons that are going to kill people, people has to have his own independent experience that leads him to his own independent judgment.
00:10:02.820And I don't think that they would try to deny that.
00:10:05.480I think Bongino and Patel would be really clear about that.
00:10:10.400OK, so you now have some MAGA influencers clearly on direction of the White House saying, OK, I'm done.
00:10:17.420You had Laura Ingram go on her show on Fox News on last night being like, oh, well, you know, after there was the, you know, the pylon at Charlie Kirk's turning point event, you know, where there are all this Republican infighting and then kind of suggested she's moving on from Epstein.
00:12:34.980And my position is you can trust, but you must verify.
00:12:38.960And I refuse, refuse to be the CNN of Trump 2.0, where they just trusted the administration on Biden's mental acuity and willingly, by doing so, ignored the biggest crisis and controversy and scandal in modern presidential history.
00:13:00.460That's not what's happening under Trump.
00:13:02.920But I'm just saying, journalists, people like me who do consider themselves as journalists, you have an obligation not to just trust.
00:13:11.120You approach all stories and everything fed to you by an administration official, like them, love them, respect them, trust them or not, with a hefty dose of skepticism.
00:13:20.880And you drill down and drill down and drill down until you think you've actually captured the story.
00:13:28.520Everyone who listens to this show knows if you wanted to hear the in-depth Epstein discussions over the past five, six years, this is not the place you came.
00:13:36.060But we are going to try to get to the bottom of what's knowable now that they're telling us there's no there there.
00:13:42.640I mean, for me, that's just a red cape in front of a bull.
00:13:44.980Like, just I understand some people like, don't do it.
00:15:43.680But Trump doesn't have his finger on the pulse of how important this is, I think, to his base and to many.
00:15:49.400And maybe it's a question, as Pam Bondi, you know, has said, well, sort of.
00:15:54.460In her memo, she's intimated that, look, there's really not anything that can be disclosed, that we've got sealed grand jury testimony, that we've got heavily redacted FBI files that protect the names of victims or alleged victims.
00:16:12.560Then you've got Alan Dershowitz out there.
00:16:14.600This is not the soundbite I was referring to, but you've got Alan Dershowitz out there who represented Epstein saying, OK, there's no client list.
00:16:20.960That's sort of a short form for, like, who was in Epstein's orbit, who went to the island, who was on the plane, who has been accused by these young girls of using them, of having sexual interludes with them.
00:16:35.580If it's a 17-year-old, that's one thing.
00:16:37.440If it's a 14-year-old, that's what we call a crime.
00:19:58.640Wouldn't it be fascinating to talk to him about it?
00:20:00.460I think he's actually going to talk to us about it.
00:20:02.200So there are a lot of questions still to be answered.
00:20:05.420Now, on the subject of what we're going to get, Lara Trump, daughter-in-law of the president, she's married to the son, Eric Trump, as you know, she went on with Benny Johnson yesterday.
00:20:17.100And she actually made news saying we are about to get more disclosures from Team Trump that they actually have had a change of heart when it comes to transparency and what they think we're entitled to.
00:20:35.960I mean, look, I don't know what truly exists there, but I know that this is something that's important to the president as well.
00:20:43.120He does want transparency on all these fronts, everything we're talking about, because it's frustrated him as well.
00:20:48.980As it relates to the president, I know that this is probably not his number one thing he's focused on, but he hears all the noise and he hears all of the consternation out there.
00:20:58.440And I think he's going to want to set things right as well.
00:21:00.380So I believe that there will probably be more coming on this.
00:21:04.140And I believe anything that they are able to release that doesn't damage any witnesses or anyone underage or anything like that, I believe they'll probably try to get out sooner rather than later, because they hear it and they understand it.
00:21:16.860To everybody out there who's all worked up about it, there's no great plot to keep this information away that I'm aware of.
00:21:24.440I do just believe that maybe it's been slow rolled for reasons that hopefully we understand down the line.
00:21:31.680And she's a great spokesperson for the administration.
00:21:35.560I mean, she should, she really should run for that Senate seat.
00:21:38.020I don't know if she can in North Carolina.
00:21:39.680It's just she doesn't actually live there now.
00:21:41.100But in any event, she's got an amazing career ahead of her no matter what she chooses to do and very, very effective communicator.
00:21:46.100And I believe her when she says more is coming.
00:21:48.020She wouldn't say that if it weren't true.
00:21:50.040She's been very credible thus far, even though she's a relative of the president and obviously has motive to, you know, run cover for him.
00:21:56.040Why would she say more is coming on the hottest button issue in the country right now if it's not?
00:22:01.600So maybe we're going to get a presser.
00:22:03.400Maybe we're going to get declassified information from the FBI.
00:22:06.820I do believe there's a lot that's being withheld.
00:22:10.780I do not believe that they've given us everything at all.
00:22:15.380I believe Julie K. Brown, the reporter for the Miami Herald, who's been really owning this story,
00:22:20.860when she talks about the volumes and volumes of materials that are still with the FBI,
00:22:26.200that are still with the Southern District of New York, that are sitting there redacted,
00:22:31.480provided like, you know, one big form that's been blacked out in every line, redacted.
00:22:35.080And I agree with Alan Dershowitz, who said he really thinks that these other men who may be in this file
00:22:41.700should have to defend themselves the same as Alan did.
00:22:44.160The only reason Alan got outed and all these other people didn't who may have been accused
00:22:48.200is because Virginia Dufresne was talked into mentioning Alan by others who thought it would
00:23:20.940Again, go back and look at our reporting on it.
00:23:22.660Poor Alan has been haunted by this allegation for a long, long time.
00:23:25.120But he still thinks we have a right to transparency.
00:23:27.360He still thinks that the other men who were accused should have to speak to it the same as he did.
00:23:32.680And Alan's been making the other point, which is valid too.
00:23:35.640There are probably a lot of accusers in there who are bullshit.
00:23:38.620Who, let's not forget, once Epstein was outed back in 07, 08, there was a pile on.
00:23:45.280They created this fund, hundreds of millions of dollars.
00:23:48.640He became like the number one funder of the litigation bar in Florida.
00:23:54.700All these lawyers were like, holy crap, you can get money from Epstein's fund?
00:23:58.560If you find some victim who says she was groomed by him or, you know, forced into giving him a so-called happy ending at his mansion, great.
00:24:09.460It's kind of like what we saw in the Diddy case.
00:24:11.300There's no question that Cassie Ventura is telling the truth about what happened between her and Diddy.
00:24:17.460The jury may not have thought it was sex trafficking, but even the cross-examination didn't try to combat her allegations of abuse or getting her hooked on drugs or allegations about the freak-offs.
00:24:29.160That doesn't make every accuser who came forth against Diddy real.
00:24:32.840And we exposed one of them on this show as we delved into the one woman who said his guard picked her up after a music awards show and brought her to Diddy for some night of debauchery.
00:24:46.680It was very clear that she wasn't in the right city.
00:24:50.420She was making all the wrong allegations.
00:24:52.260There was no house, as she described, and so on.
00:24:55.080So anyway, keep that in mind that there's another reason, I think, that favors disclosure, which is why do these accusers have the right to stay anonymous forever?
00:25:05.560What is the rule that says you get to do that?
00:25:08.660You know, I've talked about this before, but in the ALS sexual harassment scandal at Fox News, we were told he gets to see your name.
00:25:16.740Like if you come forward against him, he's going to know you did.
00:25:19.600And then there was a time for choosing, right?
00:26:14.040So now we move on to, oh, I actually have one sound, but I want to play a few before I move on to the question of whether he was an agent.
00:26:20.180And this is back to the question of how big is this story and who will cover it with integrity, given that the president clearly is asking people to move on, and yet it hasn't been resolved.
00:26:43.460The best Biden ever, Joe Scarborough, would like to weigh in on this scandal and Republicans who have accepted the president's request to move on.
00:27:19.380You change your mind with those facts that happen.
00:27:23.420But I must say, very rarely have I ever seen people going from a decade-long crusade against pedophilia, against sex abuse, against child exploitation.
00:27:37.960And making that almost a centerpiece of their existence, saying, when we get in power, we're going to release the Epstein files.
00:27:50.120Charlie Kirk said 7,500 people outraged by this.
00:27:57.800And then the next day, magic pixie dust is sprinkled over all of the podcasters.
00:28:09.460And voila, this moral crisis of a decade long about little children getting raped by the richest, the most powerful men in the world goes away.
00:28:45.220My least favorite part of that clip, if you come back and watch it on our YouTube show, you'd have to go about 27 minutes into the show, is Mika Brzezinski sitting next to him with the face of...
00:29:09.340Not only did this pair run cover for Joe Biden for his entire presidency and was telling us he could and should do a second term, that he was totally fine and better than ever.
00:29:20.920Oh, but then the facts evolved that showed him he was wrong.
00:29:34.920But that same man was one of the few reporters in America to get Doug Emhoff sitting across from him after the allegations broke that he was a woman abuser, that he had beat the shit out of his girlfriend he had just prior to dating Kamala.
00:30:24.660Not to mention that he impregnated the nanny when he was married to wife number one.
00:30:29.480And that the nanny, according to the Daily Mail, lost her baby after a particularly volatile fight she had when Doug Emhoff, the baby's father, was visiting her.
00:30:50.740If you ask, if you have any journalistic integrity whatsoever, you ask, even though it is uncomfortable, even though you don't want to hurt the guy, you ask.
00:31:06.740Now, you have no right to lecture anyone on Epstein.
00:31:10.400And one other point, neither he nor Hakeem Jeffries nor Jamie Raskin nor any of these other Democrats that is now trying to make hay of the Epstein issue said anything about it over the past many years when Joe Biden was president.
00:31:44.940Was some sort of intelligence asset for America, Israel, or some foreign government.
00:31:53.040This, many people believed that he might be because he didn't go to college.
00:31:58.180He was a high school graduate who somehow parlayed that into a job at the prestigious Dalton School in Manhattan and was hired by Bill Barr, former CIA, former attorney general now, by his dad.
00:32:17.280And there was a question about whether he'd been potentially recruited by him or potentially brought into or in connection with the Mossad in Israel because Ghislaine Maxwell's father was believed to be connected with Mossad.
00:32:34.520And that guy I mentioned to you yesterday, Ari Ben-Massad said he was Ghislaine Maxwell's father's handler and that Jeffrey Epstein was connected to Israeli intelligence, the Mossad.
00:32:49.520And there were many Israeli politicians like heads of state and Mossad officials at Ghislaine Maxwell's father's funeral and on and on it went.
00:33:01.020So there had been speculation about whether Epstein was connected to American intel, Israeli intel, or some other country's intel.
00:33:11.160And there were a bunch of possibilities because he got very, very rich in a very, very short amount of time, notwithstanding the fact that he wasn't very, very impressive on his academic resume.
00:33:21.320At least not in a way that you typically see of people who suddenly make hundreds of millions of dollars based on their smarts and their connection to powerful people.
00:33:28.780So that was a question that was buzzing around.
00:33:31.200And then it got even more furious when he copped that amazing plea deal in 2007 to 2008.
00:33:39.040Now, because it looked like somebody stepped in to make it go away.
00:34:14.960And this is where Vicki Ward's reporting comes in.
00:34:19.680She reported, as I started off the show with, in 2019, that in 2016, she'd spoken with a person on the Trump transition team about Alex Acosta, who had been nominated for labor secretary.
00:34:32.340And there was she knew the case very well because she'd been reporting on Epstein for years.
00:34:36.760And she could see, you know, that that was an interesting choice.
00:36:10.780Then, so Vicki Ward hits that reporting in 2019, and she dropped that report in the Daily Beast the day before Alex Acosta was forced, now he's labor secretary, to hold a presser about the fact that he's been embroiled in this controversy.
00:36:49.540Mr. Secretary, were you ever made aware at any point in your handling of this case that Mr. Epstein was an intelligence asset of some sort?
00:36:56.960So, so, so, so, so there has, there has been reporting to that effect.
00:37:02.820And, and let me say, there's been reporting to a lot of effects in, in, in this case, not just now, but over the years.
00:37:11.240And, and again, I would, you know, I would hesitate to take this reporting as fact.
00:37:20.340This was a case that was brought by our office.
00:37:42.860That, that, that I don't know whether he actually said that to Trump transition, but that is about as mealy mouth and wormy an answer to a direct question.
00:37:55.520Were you made aware that he was an Intel asset as you could ever hope to hear?
00:38:25.840This case was settled based on perceived weaknesses in the government's case.
00:38:30.840While it was a very strong state case, this is what Alan Dershowitz has said, by the way, it was less of a strong federal case.
00:38:36.680I don't know if I believe that, but I'm just saying, if you wanted to find a way of justifying to the press in front of you why you walked away from the deal, it would be very easy to say it had nothing to do with him being an intelligence asset.
00:39:14.260I'm just trying to do an honest investigation for you guys.
00:39:17.240I'm not somebody with a horse in this race.
00:39:18.940I don't discount the allegations he was or the allegations, the defenses that he wasn't in any event.
00:39:27.100So then he speaks to the OPR and reportedly he told OPR that no, he wasn't told that Epstein was an asset.
00:39:40.580Or at least that's what most reports that write about the OPR investigation say, Alex Acosta said.
00:39:48.240Enter Mike Benz, former State Department employee, now heads up an open intel-type organization where they're demanding transparency from government, no matter the party, on all sorts of important issues.
00:40:02.100And he knows this case like the back of his hand, and he was making some very good points about this OPR report.
00:40:10.800I think this was yesterday, and it's SOT 7.
00:40:15.360They tried to put this story to bed by saying, oh, we did this OPR report, and Alex Acosta walked back what he said to the Trump transition team or what he contradicted Vicky Ward's reporting.
00:40:29.220Well, we don't know that because we never got the transcript.
00:40:31.980We got a one-line summary description buried in the 244th footnote.
00:40:38.220Now, that OPR investigation is totally sweeping.
00:40:43.140All of the audio files, all of the transcripts, all of the interviews can be made public.
00:40:49.620Now, OPR reported directly to Bill Barr.
00:40:52.600Bill Barr was the CIA's mop-up man for Iran-Contra.
00:43:22.840I'm Megan Kelly, host of The Megan Kelly Show on SiriusXM.
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00:45:29.020Because it's a very complicated subject.
00:45:32.580And it's very hard to do it justice quickly.
00:45:36.140Because there are, as you say, so many questions.
00:45:39.700First of all, I 100% stand by what I reported in the Daily Beast in 2019.
00:45:46.920I was told directly by someone in the Trump transition who had met with Alex Acosta in the transition and asked if the issue of Jeffrey Epstein would be a roadblock or a problem for his confirmation.
00:46:07.040And the answer came back, no, you know, I was told Epstein belonged to intelligence and they moved on.
00:46:17.820I obviously wasn't in the room in the Trump transition.
00:46:20.980I was told this anonymously, so I can't name my source.
00:46:29.300But nothing has happened since then to make me think that there was anything wrong with that person's memory or what they told me.
00:46:40.760So does that clear that up for you, Megan?
00:49:29.160And according to Jeffrey Epstein, who was a complete con artist and master manipulator, he spent a few years hanging out with a guy called, a British guy called Douglas Lease, who was certainly known to be in the arms business.
00:49:44.720And according to Jeffrey Epstein himself, he spent a few years going and recovering stolen money from wealthy Europeans in places like the Cayman Islands.
00:49:59.180He would tell people stories of sort of literally flying into places where people put money offshore and leaving quickly with suitcases of cash on private planes and depositing this cash in Switzerland.
00:50:11.560So, I mean, he himself propagated this myth that he was some sort of James Bond.
00:50:18.700Meanwhile, his circumstances in New York are humble.
00:50:23.120He lives in a one bedroom apartment on E66 Street in New York.
00:50:30.120There's no evidence of any sex with underage girls in this time period.
00:50:47.020First of all, little known piece of data, but an important one.
00:50:51.260He cooperates with the government in a criminal investigation against a businessman he had worked with very closely, a guy called Steve Hoffenberg, who's now dead, who was convicted of pulling off the biggest Ponzi scheme in American history prior to Bernie Madoff.
00:51:10.000Steve Hoffenberg wound up going to jail for 20 years.
00:51:13.960Steve Hoffenberg wound up going to jail for 20 years.
00:51:14.660Steve Hoffenberg wound up going to jail for 20 years after he worked for 20 years after he was killed.
00:51:15.420The money from the company, Taz Financial, disappeared.
00:51:23.820And in the 1990s is when you see Jeffrey Epstein suddenly amass a vast amount of money.
00:51:30.800And he buys the most valuable townhouse in New York. He buys an island. He buys a ranch in New Mexico. And it's at this point in his life that the underage girls first make an appearance.
00:51:46.880It's also, by the way, this is the decade that Ghislaine Maxwell, her father died and she became a fixture in his life. It's also in this decade that Leslie Wexner, the richest supporter of Israel in this country, becomes Jeffrey Epstein's benefactor.
00:52:12.300And it's at this moment, this is the decade when Jeffrey Epstein really immerses himself at Harvard. He becomes, on behalf of Wexner, a major philanthropic donor to all these scientific and cultural and educational institutions.
00:52:32.680We know that in 1992, he and Ghislaine Maxwell went into the Clinton White House. We also know that it's at this point that he becomes very tight with Ehud Barak, the Israeli former prime minister.
00:52:50.820And it's at this point that he starts to spend a lot of time with Prince Andrew.
00:53:00.280And he basically, through Ghislaine Maxwell, acquires the international Rolodex of her late father, which puts him in a very unique place in the world.
00:53:19.280It puts him at the centre of international soft power.
00:53:25.800The question that I think you want to know, and I think everybody wants to know and wants to get some answers to, is what did he do with that soft power?
00:53:38.320And what did it ultimately, you know, how did that help him?
00:53:44.580If it helped him in 2008, get out of the federal charges, get that cushy plea deal, you know, how exactly did that happen?
00:53:58.040And I think people are also wanting to know, you know, without the money, he could not have committed the sexual crimes.
00:55:06.320And, I mean, one thing that struck me, Megan, when I was sitting through Ghislaine Maxwell's trial were that, you know, I mean, you're a trained lawyer.
00:55:14.740You know this, that they kept that prosecution so tight, tightly focused on her and the sexual crimes.
00:55:24.680It was deeply frustrating to sit there and sort of see names of famous, wealthy people.
00:55:34.520But you kept wondering, well, what else did they know?
00:55:38.360And did they, you know, did and did did they fund Jeffrey Epstein?
00:55:41.800And by the way, did Jeffrey Epstein then steal from them?
00:55:45.040Because that was the other thing that Epstein used to say to me back in 2002 was that, you know, one of the reasons he was able to come in and, as he described it, be James Bond for all these wealthy Europeans and go and find their money for them, was they came to him because rich people, when they lose their money, he said, they don't go to the authorities because it's too embarrassing.
00:56:05.080Well, you know, look how history turned full circle when, after Jeffrey Epstein died, Leslie Wexner, his benefactor, suddenly admitted, because he was sort of caught in a public crosshair, that Jeffrey Epstein had in fact stolen $47 million from him.
00:56:26.180But it's not something that Leslie Wexner, you'll know, went to the authorities over.