The StoneZONE with Roger Stone - July 17, 2025


Nick Bryant ｜ 07-18-25

Topics
Jeffrey Epstein pedophilia scandal child trafficking government cover-up
Hosted by
Roger Stone Troy Smith Jake Novak
Mentioned
Jeffrey Epstein Donald Trump Nick Bryant Bill Richardson Ghislaine Maxwell Bondi Virginia Giuffre Alfredo Rodriguez Stephen Hoffenberg Marianne Williamson Hillary Clinton Gawker Alan Dershowitz Virginia Duffrey Epstein Justice Rodney Jones Marla Maples Willie Brown Little Rod Ehud Barak and 3 more
The Stone Zone ｜ 07-15-25 The Stone Zone ｜ 07-18-25

Episode Stats


Length

20 minutes

Words per minute

145.85

Word count

2,991

Sentence count

197

Harmful content

Misogyny

1

sentences flagged


Summary

Summaries generated with gmurro/bart-large-finetuned-filtered-spotify-podcast-summ .

Nick Bryant is the first reporter in the world to cover the Jeffrey Epstein scandal, and he s also written a book about the Franklin scandal, which is often distorted. In this episode of The Stone Zone, Nick tells the story of how he broke into the Epstein and Diddy sex trafficking ring.

Transcript

Transcript generated with Whisper (turbo).
Misogyny classifications generated with MilaNLProc/bert-base-uncased-ear-misogyny .
Topics generated with Qwen2.5-3B-Instruct.
Hosts, guests, and mentioned names generated with spaCy (en_core_web_sm), reconciled against Wikidata.
00:00:00.000 Welcome back into the Stone Zone.
00:00:02.960 Joining me now is Nick Bryant, investigative journalist and author.
00:00:06.620 Nick Bryant is literally the first reporter in the world to cover the Jeffrey Epstein scandal.
00:00:14.920 He's also written an extraordinary book on the Franklin scandal, which is often distorted.
00:00:21.900 But the Franklin scandal took place in Washington, D.C., in which children were being supplied to high level government officials in the Bush administration.
00:00:33.860 Nick Bryant took his initial story about Jeffrey Epstein's little black book, which he was able to obtain from a source to a number of media outlets.
00:00:44.900 I guess he was freelancing and nobody was interested in this incredible story about a billionaire pedophile and his very important friends until ultimately Gawker published that book.
00:00:57.400 I relied heavily on that book with attribution in my own book, The Clinton's War on Women.
00:01:04.260 Nick Bryant, what a long, strange road it's been.
00:01:06.880 Welcome to the Stone Zone.
00:01:09.260 It has indeed been a long, strange trip, but glad to be with you, Roger.
00:01:15.500 I remember a very, very, very cold day when we were together.
00:01:19.240 We were both going to meet Steve Hoffenberg, who had been Epstein's boss at Tower Financial.
00:01:26.260 He later went to prison in a in an epic Ponzi scheme.
00:01:30.840 We met him after he had gotten out of prison.
00:01:34.540 He told us at the time Jeffrey Epstein is going to be arrested for running a national pedophile ring.
00:01:41.980 I think we were both a little skeptical.
00:01:44.200 But, of course, everything Hoffenberg told us turned out to be true.
00:01:49.320 He seemed to be very psychologically damaged from 18 years in prison, which is completely understandable.
00:01:55.320 So I didn't know exactly what to make of his disclosures.
00:01:59.740 This is a were you surprised when you came to all these major mainstream outlets with this blockbuster story?
00:02:09.840 This would go on to be a story that has now dominated our politics for several days.
00:02:16.600 This is a guy who died several years ago, I believe.
00:02:20.740 Yet the media can't seem to get enough of this story.
00:02:25.420 And I really the real tragedy here, and I know you agree with this, is getting lost in all of this are his victims.
00:02:34.540 Justice for his victims, the people he damaged, the people he assaulted, the people who, in some cases, destroyed.
00:02:41.240 Yeah, and his cronies, too.
00:02:46.760 I mean, Jeffrey Epstein was definitely trafficking these young girls to a wide range of people.
00:02:53.600 And we know that from victim testimony.
00:02:57.080 So it just wasn't Jeffrey Epstein acting alone.
00:03:00.200 He was acting in concert with several other people.
00:03:02.860 Last time I interviewed you, and I think it was because you have written a book, The Truth About Watergate, A Tale of Extraordinary Lies and Liars, which I must tell you, is the definitive book on Watergate.
00:03:17.360 Nick Bryant managed to take a very complicated story.
00:03:21.580 And by the way, Nick's not a conservative.
00:03:23.540 He's not a Republican.
00:03:24.720 Neither is he a Democrat or a liberal.
00:03:26.420 He's just kind of a down the center investigative journalist.
00:03:29.360 His politics do not bleed into his in his into his reporting, but he nails Watergate, which is why I had him on to talk about it.
00:03:39.740 But when we spoke at that time, we spoke about the fact that there seems to be a commonality in all of these cases, whether it is the Epstein case, whether it is the Ghislaine's Maxwell case, whether it is the Diddy case.
00:03:55.680 The perp, the perp, the main perp gets nailed.
00:04:00.680 Epstein gets charged with conspiracy to engage in child sex trafficking, but none of his co-conspirators are ever identified.
00:04:09.700 The same with Maxwell, the same with Diddy.
00:04:13.700 And as you pointed out, one U.S. attorney presided over all those cases.
00:04:18.700 Well, it was Damian Williams, who was the U.S. attorney that presided over the Maxwell trial, and he made sure that only victims that were molested by Epstein or Maxwell were called.
00:04:33.440 There were four victims that were called, and they had no knowledge of the wider network.
00:04:39.160 So he did his job there as far as containment.
00:04:42.040 And then he went on to oversee the Diddy grand jury.
00:04:46.380 And the Diddy grand jury was kind of a joke.
00:04:49.400 I mean, I knew as soon as he announced it that it was going to be a joke.
00:04:55.240 The thing about Diddy is that, and also we could say that about Epstein and the perpetrators for Franklin, for that matter,
00:05:02.560 what brought all these guys down, at least as far as law enforcement, is they were getting too much media.
00:05:13.420 I believe the Franklin network was certainly about blackmail, and the Epstein network was about blackmail.
00:05:18.820 And then we find out that there are all these hidden cameras in Diddy's various homes, and that's been heavily corroborated.
00:05:27.520 So I think that all three were involved in blackmail, but with Diddy, there were five civil cases pending against him when that grand jury was convened.
00:05:38.920 And two of those cases had been – he had trafficked minors, and that was glossed over by Damian Williams.
00:05:50.240 And Little Rod was the fifth case, and that's when it reached critical mass, where the government said, well, we have to do something about this.
00:05:59.400 Little Rod – his name is Rodney Jones, and he's a hip-hop producer.
00:06:02.940 And he was talking about Diddy trafficking underage girls and boys, and also about his hidden cameras.
00:06:10.820 So with Epstein and also with Diddy, I believe that these are blackmailers, and blackmailers aren't going to be very successful when everybody knows that they've got hidden cameras.
00:06:24.280 So I think that that kind of concludes their careers as blackmailers.
00:06:29.580 As you know, there's been a lot of controversy about, quote-unquote, Epstein's list.
00:06:35.040 And I don't think there ever was like a formal list.
00:06:39.060 You were the first person to publish his little black book, which I believe you attribute to his butler, Alfredo Rodriguez, no longer with us.
00:06:48.360 Although I believe it was you who noted that he circled the name of VIPs in the book who he thought were involved with sex with underage girls
00:06:57.320 or might be material witnesses to pedophilia.
00:07:00.720 I think there never was a list per se.
00:07:05.540 It seems to me, given all the DVDs and the hard drives removed at the time of his 2019 arrest from Epstein's palatial home in New York,
00:07:14.800 his island, Little St. James in the Virgin Islands, from his ranch in New Mexico, and I believe also from his apartment in Paris,
00:07:24.940 that law enforcement should be able to piece together a list from watching those videos.
00:07:31.320 But those videos and those hard drives seem incredibly to have completely disappeared.
00:07:38.380 Well, the strange memo that was released by the Justice Department and the FBI last week
00:07:44.260 actually said that there were 300 gigabytes of child abuse material, but there isn't anybody else in the child abuse material other than the children.
00:07:58.400 And that's a little, I mean, that's ludicrous because there were definitely adults molesting these girls. 0.99
00:08:07.360 And I have no doubts that a lot of that was blackmail footage because all of Epstein's homes had had hidden cameras.
00:08:16.920 So for the Department of Justice and the FBI to say that the over, I do agree that there were over a thousand victims.
00:08:28.320 But for them to say that it was only Epstein that molested these over a thousand victims.
00:08:35.820 That is very absurd.
00:08:38.640 And people are rightfully incredulous of it.
00:08:41.340 That is not the truth.
00:08:43.080 And I just wish that the Trump administration would just start telling us the truth on this.
00:08:51.140 It keeps getting, digging itself deeper, deeper into a hole.
00:08:56.340 In March, Pam Bonney said that she was going to release the quote-unquote Epstein files.
00:09:02.200 And then what she released was like a nothing sandwich.
00:09:05.840 There were no new revelations.
00:09:07.180 And as you said, I put the black book up on the internet in 2015.
00:09:13.320 And then I saw, and with that book, we, for the adults, we redacted their numbers.
00:09:22.460 And for, and there's over a hundred victims in that black book.
00:09:25.680 And we redacted their last names and their numbers.
00:09:28.800 The black book that I put up, that Bondi released 10 years later, everything was redacted.
00:09:35.440 And so I think, I don't know what was going on with the Department of Justice thinking that they could give us something that we already knew and think that it was revelatory.
00:09:53.400 That really, I think, really got the Trump administration into trouble.
00:09:59.300 And then Bondi got further into trouble.
00:10:04.020 She did say that there was a truckload of evidence.
00:10:07.220 That was, that was her term.
00:10:08.920 And only matters related to national security would be redacted from the documents.
00:10:14.140 So now she has to tell us what a bunch of child molesters have to do with national security.
00:10:20.620 And I think the crescendo of her mendacity was because, as you noted, Roger, there was a lot of disks and there were hard drives taken out of Epstein's home.
00:10:35.400 Actually, the day after he was arrested, the FBI hid his home in New York almost immediately and opened up his safe.
00:10:43.560 And his safe was not the dimensions of the safe that we think about.
00:10:47.600 His safe was like the size of a closet.
00:10:51.420 And Bondi led us to believe that all that material that was taken out of Epstein's safe was being reviewed by the Department of Justice at that time.
00:11:04.500 When I have no doubt that the FBI and whatever dark malignant corner of intelligence deployed Epstein, they were looking at that, everything in Epstein's safe that day.
00:11:17.420 And probably people did double shifts making sure what was on Epstein's disks and hard drives.
00:11:27.900 So the Trump administration keeps digging itself deeper and deeper in a hole with these remarks about Jeffrey Epstein.
00:11:37.540 It is puzzling, even for me.
00:11:40.360 Let me just ask you a direct question.
00:11:41.680 In all of your research into Jeffrey Epstein, have you seen or heard any evidence whatsoever that Donald Trump himself engaged in any inappropriate behavior in or around, with anyone, in or around Jeffrey Epstein?
00:12:01.320 With Trump, Alfredo Rodriguez circled people that he said were in cahoots with Jeffrey Epstein as far as his pedophilic pandering.
00:12:11.680 And a number of those people that were circled were certainly in cahoots.
00:12:16.840 There was Ghislaine Maxwell was circled, Ahud Barak, Les Wexner, Alan Dershowitz, Bill Richardson, and Jean-Luc Brunel, who was a fellow pimp of Epstein's.
00:12:29.220 They formed a modeling agency together, MC Squared.
00:12:32.980 And then we have victim testimony that corroborates that, these circled people in Epstein's black book.
00:12:40.920 So, Rodriguez did circle Trump's name.
00:12:46.980 And Trump said he'd never been to Epstein's home, but we know that he had.
00:12:53.000 And then we also know that he flew on his plane.
00:12:56.020 But I haven't come across any victims that said that they were molested by Trump.
00:13:03.300 So, you can make with that what you will.
00:13:07.920 Yeah, I mean, I interviewed Virginia Roberts Giffray for six hours, two, three-hour sessions.
00:13:13.600 I read all of her testimony.
00:13:15.800 She said that she did meet Donald Trump.
00:13:18.800 He went to a charity event at Epstein's home, which I report in my book, and that he was a perfect gentleman.
00:13:25.200 Also, Roberts Giffray, who we were told recently committed suicide, I will come back to that, said both in her sworn testimony, but her lawyer.
00:13:36.740 And she both said afterwards the only well-known public figure who would help her, who would support her in a lawsuit, and who would help her was Donald Trump.
00:13:44.840 I've written about Trump being on Epstein's plane.
00:13:50.420 The plane flew from New York, actually, Teterboro, New Jersey, to Palm Beach, leaving on a Friday, coming back on a Sunday.
00:13:58.120 And Marla Maples, his wife at the time, and his daughter, Tiffany Trump, were on the flight.
00:14:03.520 None of these flights, based on the FAA records that I examined, you reported extensively about this, show Trump going to the island.
00:14:11.660 I don't believe there's any evidence he was ever on the island.
00:14:15.060 He has certainly denied it.
00:14:17.420 So I don't thinkβ€”
00:14:18.600 I haven't seen any evidence of him being on the island.
00:14:23.020 I'm sorry. Say that again, please.
00:14:25.480 I said I haven't seen any evidence of Trump being on Epstein's island.
00:14:30.840 Yeah, nor have I.
00:14:32.480 So I do think this much we know.
00:14:36.600 Trump definitely cuts Epstein off prior to Epstein being exposed and charged with sex crimes in Florida.
00:14:44.280 And this happens when Epstein makes an improper advance to an underage girl working in the spa at Mar-a-Lago.
00:14:50.480 Trump hears about this.
00:14:51.500 He bans Epstein from all of his properties and from his life.
00:14:54.960 Well, juxtapose that with Bill and Hillary Clinton, who continue to socialize with Epstein, who continue to take contributions to Epstein.
00:15:04.680 And Virginia DeFray, in her sworn testimony, says that Bill was on the island at least once.
00:15:10.600 Bill has denied that.
00:15:12.060 The FAA records seem to indicate that Bill was on the Lolita Express at least 26 times.
00:15:19.280 That's the number that I have felt comfortable using based on research.
00:15:24.880 So it's interesting to me.
00:15:26.720 Epstein is clearly much closer to the Clintons than he ever was to Donald Trump.
00:15:32.720 If I reject this motive that Trump is covering this all up because he himself has exposure of vulnerability.
00:15:39.780 Why would you pledge to expose everything if that were the case?
00:15:42.900 If you're just tuning in, this is the Stone Zone.
00:15:45.000 And I'm talking to one of the best journalists in the country, Nick Bryant.
00:15:49.180 We're going to talk about your 501c3 that you've set up to help the victims of Jeffrey Epstein when we come right back.
00:15:56.040 The Stone Zone.
00:15:57.680 Entertaining and informative.
00:15:59.680 On the Red Apple Podcast Network.
00:16:03.000 And we're back in the Stone Zone.
00:16:04.880 We're talking to Nick Bryant, investigative journalist and author.
00:16:07.640 He is the man who broke the Jeffrey Epstein story when he obtained Jeffrey Epstein's Little Black Book.
00:16:15.820 Nobody would publish that.
00:16:17.100 And ironically, Gawker, no longer in business, then considered to be the mean kids of the media, had the fortitude to publish the story.
00:16:24.860 And the story was kept alive by Julie Brown, a crusading reporter at the Miami Herald, whose politics are not mine.
00:16:32.940 She's a fine journalist.
00:16:35.000 Nick, you've set up a 501c3 nonprofit group, Epstein Justice, that's working to ensure that all the pedophiles who used Jeffrey Epstein to satisfy their sick, pedatory desires are put behind bars.
00:16:50.820 Can you speak about your important work there and how people can get involved in that fight?
00:16:57.320 Your audience, they just have to go to EpsteinJustice.com and they can sign up with us.
00:17:04.280 Because Epstein has been in the news a lot lately, our organization is beginning to grow.
00:17:11.940 And we want two relatively simple things.
00:17:16.040 I mean, just that would be considered baseline morality.
00:17:20.280 We want to know why the government covered up child trafficking.
00:17:24.740 And when you cover up a crime, you're aiding and embedding that crime.
00:17:28.160 So essentially, the government is aiding and embedding child trafficking in the Epstein case.
00:17:32.940 And we want the perpetrators to be prosecuted.
00:17:36.120 Very simple.
00:17:37.800 If our government had any kind of decency, that would happen.
00:17:45.140 And we need a majority in the House and we need a majority in the Senate to make this, that we can do it.
00:17:54.480 I think that people are really, really fed up over this story.
00:17:59.040 And our government has lied to us before on a number of different things.
00:18:03.740 But this is different because it involves American children getting molested with impunity.
00:18:11.200 And I think that this is an issue that can bring the right and the left together because the right and the left have been divided and conquered.
00:18:21.420 And the right and the right and the left need to come together on this issue so we can protect our children.
00:18:28.000 In the short term, I have urged the president to direct the attorney general, to direct the interim U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York to move in court to unseal all of the grand jury testimony and evidence in Jeffrey Epstein's 2019 indictment by the Trump administration
00:18:48.900 for child sex trafficking and conspiracy to commit child sex trafficking and on the basis of a whistleblower.
00:18:56.860 Also very important to to unseal the search warrants for Epstein's home in New York and for the island, both issued out of the Southern District of New York.
00:19:07.080 I hope the president is listening.
00:19:08.980 I hope he will do that.
00:19:10.000 I think that would go a long way to start to answer a lot of these puzzling questions.
00:19:16.260 Anyway, we have to end this here.
00:19:17.780 I want to thank my guest, Nick Bryant.
00:19:19.980 Again, go to EpsteinJustice.com, EpsteinJustice.com to get in the fight to expose those who have done wrong in the name of justice for all of Jeffrey Epstein's victims.
00:19:34.000 Also commend to you Nick Bryant's book on Watergate, The Truth About Watergate, A Tale of Extraordinary Liars and Liars.
00:19:40.400 It is the definitive book on Watergate, why it happened, how it happened, who the good guys were, who the bad guys were, who the guys who were in the dark were.
00:19:50.940 I commend that to you as well.
00:19:52.760 Nick, thanks for making the time to join us today in The Stone Zone.
00:19:56.540 Thanks for listening to The Stone Zone with Roger Stone.
00:20:00.740 You can hear The Stone Zone with Roger Stone weeknights at 8 on 77 WABC.
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00:20:24.780 See you next time for a new episode so you never have to wonder.
00:20:28.620 What the heck is going on here?