← Bulwark Takes
Bulwark Takes
What We Don’t Know About the Epstein Case (w/ Julie K. Brown) | Bulwark on Sunday
00:39:45
Loading summary
Transcript80 lines
- [00:00]
Bill Kristol
Hi, I'm Bill Kristol. Welcome to Bulwark on Sunday. I'm really pleased to be joined today by Julie Brown, longtime and very distinguished investigative reporter for the Miami Herald, winner of many, many awards, two of the really prestigious George Polk Awards for justice. What on your work earlier on, I think on the Florida prison system, right in early 20 teens, I guess, and then most famously on the Epstein case, which you reinvestigated kind of on your own there in 2017 and 18 and brought to light the, what he had really done and how much little limit had been exposed in that original plea deal in 2008. And for that you got much well deserved praise. It was really, people don't appreciate, I think, how indefatigable and courageous you were in pushing that. There was not a lot of support, I wouldn't say, in a lot of elite circles to let's take a fresh look at that case. Anyway, you wrote an excellent book about it, which people should read, Perversion of Justice. I think that was 2020. And here's Epstein back in the news. And I thought you would explain to us what we know, what we don't know, what we should and shouldn't be asked, what questions we should and shouldn't be asking. What do you, well, I'm curious just about the back. I mean, you did this work for two years, more than two years, probably 20, 17, 18, 19, often against resistance. What lesson do you take away from that? If someone said to you what made you do it? What, what, what do you take about? What lesson do you take from the people who tried to stop you from doing it or weren't very cooperative or weren't very enthusiastic about you doing it, et cetera.
- [01:32]
Julie Brown
Well, I, I, I of course, never dreamed when I started this project that I would be sitting here right now and that we would still be talking about this case. But I think that what I discovered in it was that there was so much, even though it had been written about a lot at the time that I decided to sort of reopen it. There were still many, many, many questions. And certainly there was a feeling that the victims did not get justice. And one of the things that I noticed when I started looking at it, by the way, I started looking at it because Trump was running for president the first time and there was a woman at the time who had filed a civil lawsuit against him accusing him of, of raping her along with Jeffrey Epstein. And there was some talk about why the media wasn't looking at this civil lawsuit a little bit More carefully. So at the time, of course I knew about the Jeffrey Epstein case. And I thought, well, I'm going to just look at the criminal case files, which I ended up finding out were voluminous. And then from there, one thing after another led me to believe that there was so much here that people didn't know. There was so much of a cover up here that I just decided that I needed to, to really dig into it and try to find some answers. And among the things that I was able to do was to get the victims to talk, which they had never spoken to the media publicly before. And also, quite frankly, the police chief and the lead detective who investigated the case initially had never been interviewed. I thought that that was, you know, I thought that that was worth trying to pursue. Like why weren't they, haven't they talked all these years? And one thing, you know, you kind of lift the onion and one thing after another, I discovered, you know, so many inconsistencies, so many problems with how the Justice Department handled it. And I think that that's why the case got a lot of attention. When I finally did write, write about it, about what happened from beginning to end, it was sort of like a, a cold case that I went back to and opened up again and answers that people didn't really have before.
- [03:48]
Bill Kristol
And some people didn't want to know, I suppose. Right. I mean.
- [03:51]
Julie Brown
Right.
- [03:51]
Bill Kristol
Just to be clear, I mean, they had negotiated this plea deal, very cushy plea deal for Epstein in 2008 that was I guess the Bush Justice Department. And was it Florida or was that the Bush Justice Department? I've lost track of the different players in this.
- [04:05]
Julie Brown
In this case it was, it was out of Florida, but it was handled in part in Washington. As you can imagine, it was a high profile case. And Kenneth Starr was one of, of Epstein's lawyers who was trying to pressure the Justice Department in Washington to not charge him at all. Quite frankly, it is kind of amazing that he even got the short cushy jail term that he did get.
- [04:34]
Bill Kristol
And then you brought it back up and your reporting did and that he's re indicted and indicted for new. Different crime. Well, new crimes I guess that hadn't been previously, hadn't come to light. And kills himself apparently in prison in 2019 after his indictment. His associate Maxwell is convicted, I guess in 2021. But that's, that's where we are. Right. I mean that's what's kind of so.
- [04:58]
Julie Brown
Except I'm not convinced he commits committed suicide. I think that it's possible he did, but I think there's too many questions. And the fact that they released this prison video, which is a joke, quite frankly, because it's not even of his cell, it's not even of his wing, just makes me think, why are they doing something like this? You know, either they think the public is really stupid or I, you know, they honestly think that this shows anything, that the video was ridiculous.
- [05:32]
Bill Kristol
It's interesting because I'm, you know, all these years in Washington, decades in Washington, I guess I've become, I'm slightly averse to conspiracy theories because often they aren't correct. And people, especially in the last 10 years or so, it's been such an industry of conspiracy theories, you know, whether it's on vaccines or on a million other things. Right. You know, Bush knew there were no weapons in Iraq. All this stuff, I mean, that I, I've sort of, I probably discount them too quickly when maybe they really are cases where cover up.
- [05:57]
Julie Brown
You know, I don't think it's a conspiracy theory to ask questions of things that don't make any sense. And there's no, there's so many holes in the story. Plus you have a forensic pathologist, a really renowned forensic pathologist that was at Epstein's, attended his autopsy, who doesn't believe it was a suicide. I mean, he's a scientist who has done prison deaths for 30 or 40 years and he didn't believe that it was a suicide. So that's not a conspiracy, that's a real scientist who doesn't believe it.
- [06:34]
Bill Kristol
And that was 2019 and that was obviously Trump was president and Bill Barr was attorney general and they had not much interest in looking into this apart from just saying it's suicide, we're washing our hands of it. Is that right?
- [06:46]
Julie Brown
Well, it's possible it was suicide, but let's be open about exactly what happened. Let's not give the public videos that have missing pieces to them. I mean, that's the problem. They're creating their own problem by not being transparent.
- [07:00]
Bill Kristol
And it feels to me then as now, let's get to the present that just for me, as someone who knows so little about it, I mean, you see a statement like the ones that bond, well, first you see the contradictions of Bondi, I'm going through the files and then nothing to see here. But then Patel, that we've looked at it, that's nothing at all. They don't explain anything. I mean, that is to say they think we're supposed to just believe them when they Say there's nothing as opposed you could imagine, I guess what I'm saying a 10 page report or a 50 page report. So we can't give out the names of everyone's in the file. We're not going to make law files from investigative police files public. We're not going to let people be your names be thrown around. If they were mentioned in third party hearsay and one invested, one FBI inquiry, you know, that's not fair. But here's kind of what we know and right. I mean that and I've thinking about this. The Justice Department has done that in other cases. Comey, whatever thinks of Comey and Hillary Clinton thing, they put out a little, you know, they didn't charge her and they said they thought on a whole was not, you know, shouldn't deserve to be criminally charged. But here's what sort of happened and you've got a kind of account that some people thought it wasn't enough, some people thought, you know, but it was a, you actually could look at it and say okay, here's apparently what happened with the emails to take something that's a little less consequential than Jeffrey Epstein's, you know, underage sex ring. But here we don't. Well, I'll ask him do we? I mean you've done the reporting and all that, but from the government, have we got any kind of account of what's happened? Epstein never came to trial. Obviously the Maxwell trial was very limited. Am I right about this in its scope?
- [08:27]
Julie Brown
That's correct. That's correct.
- [08:29]
Bill Kristol
And so we just don't. It's fair to ask questions, right? It's fair to say we know less about this than in another comparable big case of whether.
- [08:38]
Julie Brown
And not only for those reasons, but because we know for a fact that there was a cover up from, from the beginning with this case, that there was an effort to minimize the scope of his crimes which was successful because he was charged with a very like a prostitute solicitation of a minor. And it was so we know already that there was something fishy with this and there was a cover up. So here we are now in 2025 and you know, we had, as you mentioned, it was the Trump administration that said we're going to release all this stuff. It was them that brought this up. So for them now to say, oh sorry, we're not going to do anything. It, it, it just makes you wonder like why now after you've promised to do all this, there has to be something that they can release you Know, there's tons, you know, probably tens of thousands of pages of reports. So why can't they either, as you said, write something that sort of is a 50 page report that explains why they don't feel like could do it. Maybe it's because it, the decision wasn't based on, on law or what a lawyer from the Justice Department would write, but was based on political decision.
- [10:06]
Bill Kristol
Yeah, no, that, that could well be. It seems to me I want to get to that right now about Bondi Patel, Trump, but Trump's personal friendship with Epstein, which we shouldn't forget about. But just on the, on this other sort of prior matter, were you shocked or have you. I think you've written about this. I mean that you have this massive thing going on for 20 years and the two people end up being indicted. I mean, I don't know. Didn't some of these. Maybe there are legal reasons you, these men who, for whom Epstein procured underage girls and so forth are guilty of something they didn't, they couldn't have been know that. Maybe they didn't want to know the age and they didn't know the age and the case wouldn't succeed and before a jury. But I don't know that that seems to be the common sense. People like me were probably too maga became so obsessed with this as a conspiracy that people like me said, well, I guess this was just another crazy conspiracy. You know, it's like chemtrails or something like that. But it does seem like from a common sense point of view, am I wrong to think that it's a little mysterious that in other cases like this you'd probably have a lot of people getting indicted? No.
- [11:12]
Julie Brown
Yeah. I think the public should be outraged that there's only been two people charged in this case. And let me tell you, for one, of course, these kinds of prosecutions are very, very tricky. You're dealing with women that were very young when this happened. But there's a money factor with this case. A lot of money exchanged hands. We know that the banks settled. The banks who handled Epstein's money settled for millions and millions of of dollars settled lawsuits that were brought by not only the, some of the victims, but also the US Virgin Islands government which investigated him because his island was in the territory of the US Virgin Islands. So there's a money trail here that could easily probably confirm that there was something that was going on beyond, you know, just saying, hey buddy, you know, here's a young girl there, there was money and okay, they might not get him on the sexual assault. But there was a lot of money laundering or some kind of malfeasance going on financially with Epstein, and they certainly could have investigated that.
- [12:28]
Bill Kristol
Yeah, that's interesting. Right. I mean, bankers do get charged all the time with knowingly.
- [12:32]
Julie Brown
Right.
- [12:32]
Bill Kristol
Facilitating money laundering and other criminal enterprises.
- [12:36]
Julie Brown
You know, one of the bankers who has been sued, he. We have emails that show that he was talking to Epstein obviously about this kind of thing because he was referring to certain women or girls as Snow White. He had, they had code names for some of these girls that they were involved with. And so, you know, we know that there are some very big billionaires who were politically connected, were involved. And so it. I think the public should be outraged that nothing has been done really, other than going after one woman who was involved.
- [13:16]
Bill Kristol
And the, that Trump quote from 2002 that, you know, Jeff's a great guy. He's been a friend of mine for 15 years and we both like women, pretty women, attracted women or something. He, he likes them on the younger side. It shows that it was kind of an open secret almost. Right. That Epstein was engaged. Maybe not literally. People might not have known the extent of the procurement and so forth and the arrangements, but they certainly knew something was going on there. What is that? I was thinking about this this morning, that half sentence of Trump's that he likes them on. It's well known that he likes them on the young side. What, what is. How can you say something like that and not think there's something really grotesque going on, really?
- [13:53]
Julie Brown
Well, the issue is probably when he said it, and maybe even to this day, he probably doesn't see anything wrong with, well, with aspect of him going after very young girls, you know, and, you know, there hasn't been any direct evidence linking trunk to Epstein's sex trafficking operation. I'll be clear. And I've been one of the voices of, you know, when it goes kind of crazy and people start saying, well, you know, they put things on the Internet that are totally inaccurate. There is no evidence that I've seen that he was involved in sex trafficking. But that doesn't mean that we don't open the files. I mean, if that's true, then why not release some of the files? I think it raises more questions about how involved he was that they have decided just blankly to say, we're not going to release anything.
- [14:49]
Bill Kristol
Yeah, he may just have known that Epstein had creepy, you know, tastes, whatever the right way to say that is, and, and left it at that. Didn't want to Know, kind of thing that's totally possible. And the other, I was worried when I read this. Do we know whether Trump. But he was a good friend of Epstein and there's all that video of them together. And he says himself I was a friend of his. Do we think he was he in terror questioned by in 201819 when they opened reopened thanks to your reporting, the investigation of Epstein. I wonder.
- [15:17]
Julie Brown
I mean, I, I would, I, I, I would guess so because I do know that he was questioned by a lot of the lawyers who represented the victims and he spoke to them and you know, by the lawyer's account, he was very cooperative and helped them, you know, with his knowledge of Epstein. So I wouldn't surprise me if they, if they interviewed him or they got, they could have interviewed witnesses that had information about, you know, some of these other men. I mean, that's the thing. There might not be, there's been a lot of attention for the list, so to speak. There might not be a list, but there could, could certainly be names in those files that indicate who else was helping him. Epstein didn't do this all by himself, and he didn't do it just with Ghislain Maxwell. There were a lot of other people that helped him. He couldn't have done this by himself. He couldn't even really tie his shoes by himself. He had butlers doing everything for him. So he had other people helping him. And I'm sure that some of those names of those people are in those files.
- [16:26]
Bill Kristol
Yeah, I think that, and that just that statement by Patel, was it a. Or the justice overstatement itself? The Justice FBI statement a week ago, the unsigned memo which says, well, there's no, how do they put it?
- [16:36]
Julie Brown
There's no list, no credible evidence that he was blackmailing people. Well, it's interesting that they use the word credible because who decides what's credible here? I mean, let's face it, they didn't think the, the girls in the in 2005 that came forward were very credible because that's why they only gave him a slap on the wrist. And as it turns out, we now know that there's hundreds, at least of victims who told the same story of exactly the same M.O. the same things. So if they had paid attention to the lead detective who investigated it and had quite a few girls telling him the same story, then this would have nep. We wouldn't be sitting here right now. They would have put him away on a federal sex trafficking charge. And we probably wouldn't. He probably wouldn't have gotten out.
- [17:27]
Bill Kristol
Yeah, as you said. But others also would have been indicted or at least as accomplices or had to plea bargain or turn states evidence, who knows? But I mean, if you think of it as an. I was trying to think about this. What if it were or a pure money case, no sex, you know, just a money launder, like a Madoff type case. You know, there are a lot of other people who went down with Madoff. Right. I mean, people he had people working for, as you say. It's like the idea that he had a little black book and he had a list. Yeah, it's childish, right? I mean, he had, as you say, once they started the investigation. There are voluminous files. It doesn't mean there's not one list. Somewhere he deals with Mr. X here, he deals with Mr. Y there. There's back and forth correspondence. Some of it may not amount to anything. Some of it may be right, innocent. Some of it may be not really innocent, but not enough to prove anything. Some of it may be.
- [18:15]
Julie Brown
They said they found pictures and video. I mean, Pam Bondi said, oh, we have, I don't know, sounded like she said they had voluminous, you know, videos and photographs and how disgusting it was, you know, so that's pretty good evidence, you know, so. And then you look at his bank accounts and see who he was paying, you know, or getting money from. I, I don't know. I just think that there's something there and we just, you know, we might not find out about it until, you know, it'll be like the jfk. You know, people will still be looking at, at this, you know, decades from now.
- [19:00]
Bill Kristol
Why do you think so? Once Maxwell is convicted. Nothing, sort of. Then they let it die down, basically. The, The Biden's not president, the Biden Justice Department. Do you think that was just. Who wants to turn over that rock? I mean, one of the things. Okay, yeah, say a little more about that.
- [19:17]
Julie Brown
Exactly. Yeah. Because they minimized that case. It was very hard case to prove. I actually thought she might get acquitted. I was at the trial every day. And her. Gilan Maxwell's lawyers were very successful in pointing out the inconsistencies in these victims. It was based mostly on their testimony, which is very hard because it happened to them when they were very, very young. And now it's been, you know, 20, 25 years later. And they have to go back there and they have to remember like the sequence of events. And if you're traumatized to begin with, you don't remember things well, and it's sexually traumatized as a child makes it even worse. So it was a hard case and I think when they got done that they thought, that's it, we can't go through this again. You know, the victims, it just was painful, really painful to watch. But as I said, if they had approached it from a financial or a follow the money kind of investigation, I think they could have. You know, I don't know what they have, but it just seems to me, given all the, the things that have happened and that I know about all these civil cases that there might have been an avenue to pursue there.
- [20:36]
Bill Kristol
And then these men, I mean, are they all just innocent? For if they were, if they let Epstein procure underage girls for them? I don't know. I don't know what the law exactly is on this. I'm sure it's hard to prove, could be hard to prove knowledge of exactly how old these girls were, I suppose, and it's years later, as you said. But it does feel like an awful. For a big, a big criminal enterprise. Yeah. As you say, two people get, get charged, right?
- [21:04]
Julie Brown
Yeah, yeah. And I, I think that, like I said, I think that there was a lot of, you know, the idea that these are all powerful people and do we really want to take on that all these powerful men, you know, because it's going to be a long haul. And then of course it's going to span different. It. You don't do these kinds of cases overnight. So it's going to span different, you know, administrations. So I just think they looked at it and said, we got Maxwell, let's get out of here. You know.
- [21:40]
Bill Kristol
So then the thing comes back to life because it becomes such a maga. So interesting to Trump supporters in Mega World and Bondi and those ink. Patel and Bongino are among the main, especially Patel and Bongino, I guess main promoters of this. A conspiracy. There's a cover up. The FBI has. I mean they don't really know anything. It sounds like the FBI has the black book. I mean, again, yeah, yeah. Childish maybe. Well, maybe there was a black book. Who knows?
- [22:04]
Julie Brown
We're all, they were all clueless because, you know, I would hear sometimes some of them and how they spoken. The stuff that they were saying was absolutely wrong. So that, you know, Bondi saying, I have, I have it on my desk. I'm like, you don't have anything like that on your desk. I knew, you know, I knew that there's no list per se. Listen, Epstein is not the kind of person that would keep a checklist of all the people that he was doing this with. He didn't operate that way. He wouldn't even have to openly blackmail anybody. He would. These guys knew that he had dirt on them. They already knew it. So if he was sort of pressuring them to do something, they knew why. It wasn't one of those things where he said, look, I have your name on this list, and if you don't give me this money or invest in this project, then I'm going to rat you out. That's not how it worked.
- [23:02]
Bill Kristol
Right. It's like Trump himself and a lot of his other enterprises. You don't quite say what the threat is, but people understand.
- [23:12]
Julie Brown
This case was not a case where somebody passed a suitcase full of money under a table. That's not the way these kinds of things work anymore. And you, you know, we know in politics, it's, it's sometimes not even about money. It's about power. It's about getting something else that you want.
- [23:29]
Bill Kristol
Right. So Bondi sort of, I'm going to say, forgets she's Attorney General and thinks she's still on, you know, a podcast and can't resist boasting and preening in February. But she's Attorney General of the United States. I really, for me, that's a very important part of it. It's. People shouldn't be irresponsible when they're on podcasts and they don't know anything and say things that aren't true, as you say, and actually sort of discredit a genuine set of questions. Not discredit, but calls it call to question. A genuine set of questions because they make it sound like a kooky MAGA conspiracy theory. That's all bad from 2022, 23, 24. But what's your Attorney General of the United States? And she says what she says and then three months later, nothing there. I mean, I feel like that's itself in any normal administration or in any normal time in American politics, that's a huge problem and scandal. And even if your party controls Congress, there would be hearings. You can't just, you know, Attorney General of the United States, the top law enforcement official, said X and then said Y and never explained, which are contradict each other and never explain why she went from X to Y. And just. And, and then, I don't know, I feel like the whole. That takes it to a different level in terms of the Trump administration. It's not that Trump was friend and that's part of It. Trump's a friend of Epstein. It's not that Bongino and Patel said all these things. It's that we actually have now a. A matter of governance, not just a matter of right rhetoric, don't you think?
- [24:53]
Julie Brown
I mean, yes, and the Justice. It says a lot about the Justice Department. I mean, what kind of a Justice Department we want? Do we want a Justice Department where we actually really look into serious crimes and investigate them, or do we want a Justice Department where we're going to fire people that don't do the kinds of cases that our politicians want them to do or don't want them to do? I mean, I think she just fired, over the past couple of days, a whole bunch of Justice Department officials who were support people. They were not, as I understand it, they were not lawyers that went after Trump. These were probably clerks and secretaries and paralegals who were, you know, who had bosses that told them to do this work. So they're all fired. So it begs the question of what kind of a Justice Department does our country want? Do we want a Justice Department where we're going to fire people for taking on cases that. That, you know, that were valid cases to look into? You know, whatever the outcome is, there are still cases that we should probably look into, Epstein being one of them.
- [26:03]
Bill Kristol
Yeah, no, that. I think that's certainly true about Bondi in general, certainly the January six cases, but so many others, they're just dismissing all the cases for Trump's friends.
- [26:12]
Julie Brown
Now, remember that it's possible that Trump's friends are in these files. So think about that. You know, he. He knows a lot of important people, and even if he's not in the files, it's possible there are friends of his in the file.
- [26:27]
Bill Kristol
Right. He's presumably in the files. He may not be in the files, as you say.
- [26:30]
Julie Brown
Right.
- [26:31]
Bill Kristol
But. Yeah, well, that's what I was going to get to. So why. I mean, so it comes back to the obvious. Why did they dismiss? I mean, what do you think? I mean, why does Bonty so. Because you could imagine. Well, I don't know what you could imagine. You can imagine a lot of things, but they could also benefit from. We're really digging into this stuff that now. It's gonna take a while. You're not going to hear everything. We're going to invest. We've got a special task force you could have in a different world, I think. Imagine them going that way. In fact, I. They're doing that in other cases. Right. They're investigating a whole bunch of quote, conspiracies and, and this deep, this, this behavior by a ton of other institutions and people they don't like. You know, they've got test cases on this and they're going after Harvard University for like, you know, whatever gotten around.
- [27:12]
Julie Brown
It by just saying that very thing. We, we are working on it. It's more voluminous than we thought it was, that it has a lot of serious implications to our government and it's going to take time. And, you know, I think they could have done that and maybe at least forestalled this uproar. But saying what they did was just very curious, I think, to a lot of people.
- [27:37]
Bill Kristol
Why do you so, I mean, why, why would they not. I mean, why would they just want to shut it down? So. Absolutely. I guess because there's stuff in there they don't want to come out. Right. Be simple minded about this. Right.
- [27:47]
Julie Brown
I mean, why. I mean, that's the only reason I can think of. There's, there's something in there that they don't want the public to know about. I can't really think of any other reason why they would shut it down completely like this. So what that means, I don't know. But I, I do know that there's probably a lot of names in there of some powerful people who were at least interviewed or looked at in some way in connection with Epstein.
- [28:20]
Bill Kristol
One point that Sarah Longwell and I were both struck by yesterday when we had a conversation about it was people are talking and we are now about Bondi and that's fair enough. She's the one who made the original statements in February and it's her justice, she's in charge of the Justice Department talking about Bongino, who seems to maybe is very obsessive. And then Patel put out the statement yesterday and has been such a promoter of the Epstein thing. But it's surely it goes to, it gets back to Trump. I do not believe for a second the Pam Bond never done this.
- [28:53]
Julie Brown
She would never. And Trump is defending her. I'm told on True Social. I think it was like a real lengthy. I saw on the news.
- [29:01]
Bill Kristol
Yeah. Last night. Yeah.
- [29:03]
Julie Brown
Defending her to the, you know, defending her completely. So this decision was really made by him. I mean, I don't think there. She would have ever made this decision without him signing off on it.
- [29:17]
Bill Kristol
I totally agree. I mean, maybe even. And same with Patel and Bongino and, and he either signed off or maybe ordered this outcome, which makes you wonder. And this would be an interesting thing for people in Congress to ask the FBI director and the Attorney general. Well, did you discuss this with Trump length. Did he look at the files personally? Did you tell him X, Y and Z is in the files? Or did you just say, we think there's nothing there, sir, we're gonna, we're gonna close it down? He said, fine. I mean, who. They won't testify. I'm sure the conversations with the president and they may not tell the truth about the conversations with the president, but he and, and others could be asked about this. And also again, sort of like you're saying about, about Epstein, I will say this having worked in the White House a while ago, but still, it's not like it could be that the three of them met super privately or four of them and discussed this, but probably some other people know something, right? I mean these things don't just happen in government without the White House counsel maybe knowing something or the chief of staff or, you know, other people.
- [30:13]
Julie Brown
Right, right. I also wonder, I don't really follow Bongino and didn't watch his podcast or anything before, but from what I know he's very distraught over this. And I guess I just, I'm curious what he's really distraught over. Is he distraught over really the wording of the statement or is he distraught that this is a horrible thing and that there's people in there that he knows whose names are in there and it's being covered up? I don't know. I don't know the answer that I'm just throwing it out there.
- [30:46]
Bill Kristol
No, no, it's a very good.
- [30:47]
Julie Brown
Well, he seemed to be full, you know, throttle on. Let's get to the bottom of this. And now for this to happen, I wonder if that's what's happening really disturbing him.
- [30:58]
Bill Kristol
And again, just asking Bonnie, did she go through the files? I mean, did she have a task force of five attorneys which would have been fine, go through the files. Well, can you tell us a little how that worked? How long did it take? Who were they? Maybe you know, did they do an internal report that we can see? I mean this is what's so I think is why people are not satisfied. Leaving aside what you whether they were in Maga Bongino world before this or not, you know, I mean, it's like this is not how government works when this is going to say, yeah, take the Comey Hillary case, but there are others too. You know, if something gets raised, sometimes people don't like the outcome. Sometimes there is maybe a quasi cover up, but things are shaded in A certain way, but there's like a process and people do look at it, presumably. And here we're supposed to believe, I guess, that she personally had it all on her desk. I guess she reviewed tens of thousands of pages of documents and chatted about it with Patel and just decided nothing here. And that's it. We're supposed to believe that. That just seems incredible, right?
- [31:55]
Julie Brown
It's just incredible. Yeah, it really is. It's, it's, it's. I, you know, I, I think people are upset for a reason, you know, and she did make some promises pretty publicly on Fox News and, you know, and for her to make this about face, the only way she would have done that is probably because the president told her to.
- [32:20]
Bill Kristol
No, like it's such an important point to make. Where do you think it goes? I mean, you investigated all this stuff once before when they had tried to shut it all down. I mean, is, is it, is it just going to be kind of continued up for, for a while, but at the end of the day, the files stay in some fall, you know, locked up cabinet and justice and we never learn anything. Or are there chances that some stuff I don't know gets from your point of view. What do you think is this? Do things get raised and open?
- [32:45]
Julie Brown
I think if they decide to relent, release something, they're going to release things that don't. Like she did before. Look what she did before with the files that she gave to the influencers. Look, look, look at everything we have here. And I'm just sitting here laughing because I think I pointed out this was on the Internet for the past 10 years. You pulled stuff that's already completely public. Some of the documents they released were redacted and you can find them elsewhere on the Internet. I mean, they've even published part of this on Amazon, I think. So it, it was foolish and it, I, I, like I said, I don't know. Same with the prison video. I don't know if they think they can fool the public that easily or if they actually don't understand this story and actually thought they were releasing something that was new. Either way, it's not a good look, you know.
- [33:46]
Bill Kristol
Yeah. And certainly their general behavior now seems more consistent with the notion that they desperately wanted the thing to go away. They released what they thought might satisfy people minimally. When it didn't, for reasons you, you, you articulate, they just said, okay, nothing here, forget it. And that's very striking in that Patel, the conspiracy theories are wrong. It didn't say what case it is. Or what theories or which. It's such an easy way to go. Right. Conspiracy theories are wrong. Who could. Who could argue with that? You know, but what about the actual facts? You know?
- [34:18]
Julie Brown
Right. They want to now just say it's all, you know, a conspiracy theory. But in reality, and I've also been very careful in every time I've been interviewed, pointing out something very, very important is the victims deserve to know why Jeffrey Epstein was allowed to abuse hundreds and hundreds of girls and young women over two decades. How does that happen when our people in government, in the Justice Department, knew what he was doing? So I think that's not a conspiracy theory. That's a fact. And I think that the public, and especially the victims deserve some answers on this.
- [35:01]
Bill Kristol
If. Let's close with this. That's so eloquent and important. The victims really have been treated horribly for even now.
- [35:09]
Julie Brown
You know, it's like they're a second thought, you know, to release a cold memo like that. Could you imagine if you're one of the victims and you would read something like that? I mean, there was really no thought given to them in that memo. Like, you know, any kind of. Like, we know the victims deserve answers or there was really no thought given to them at all.
- [35:32]
Bill Kristol
It is striking for all the, you know, the pretend concern that Bondi and Patel and those guys had about it. Yeah. It was never somehow, they never really said much about, you know, our heart goes out to the victims. And that's. They deserve, as you just said eloquently, they deserve clarity or closure or just the just justice really, you know, leaps like closure, justice.
- [35:53]
Julie Brown
Look at it this way. What they could have said is, we're not making anything public, but that doesn't mean we're not looking at it. So still. Because the victims deserve us to take a look at it. And then even if they weren't really doing it, I would have in it sort of gotten them off the hook or bought them some more time.
- [36:11]
Bill Kristol
Yeah, but unlike in your work, for them, it was never about the victims. It was about using it as a political weapon and then carrying the political weapon when it looked like it might snap back on them. But that's where I do wonder. There are victims, there are facts that people know. There are loose ends that could be pulled, I suppose. And I. I don't. I wonder how easy it is to just put this lid back on and stomp on it and say, never open this again, you know?
- [36:36]
Julie Brown
Yeah. There's so many avenues of inquiry. I could go into it, you know, for hours, because I have examined every aspect of this and there's so many avenues that they could have followed so many trails. So it, it's. And the victims, you know, they have for years and look, one of them just committed suicide. The most public victim, the most, the one that was really the face of this case just committed suicide. So, you know, quite a few people have been in that category where they have suffered so much that their lives have been in, you know, either they took their own lives or they're very, very not well, you know, never really recovered from the trauma.
- [37:25]
Bill Kristol
Terrible, really terrible. And it is important to remember that side of it. We're not just talking about a gotcha about Pam Bondi here, you know.
- [37:32]
Julie Brown
Right, right. I always try to remind people that, you know, because it is, I mean, from the beginning, that's why I did the story, to be honest with you, because a lot had been written about the, the politics of it, but nobody had really interviewed the women. And once I interviewed them, I realized what a big story it was because they were willing now to finally say, look, this is what happened. We were told this and that's not what happened. You know, we were lied to.
- [38:04]
Bill Kristol
Well, thank you for what you did and continue to do on this case and let's see if this cover up works or not. Sometimes they do, unfortunately, in the real world. But I don't know, I feel like this one, it's just because they touted it so much in some way, maybe Biden, Justice Department, they decided we don't overturn the rock and whatever. A few people probably said, hey, wait a second. But there was no real impetus to do it, perhaps. But I wonder now whether there'll be more pressure and more of a sense that. Well, again, I come back to the point you made very well, which is these are questions. I mean, what did Pam Bondi learn and when did she learn it? When she looked at the files, what did she discuss with Trump? I mean, these are just practical questions about how government has worked in the last several months. These are not about their, them, What Trump did 25 years ago, necessarily. They're not about, you know, things they did when they were on podcasts and being irresponsible two or three years ago. The Attorney General of the United States, President, United States, the FBI Director of the United States. What do they do, you know?
- [39:08]
Julie Brown
Right.
- [39:09]
Bill Kristol
It will be interesting to see if we, if we can push and learn. Julie, thanks so much for taking your time on this Sunday morning and thanks for everything. You've done. Really. It's perfectly impressive and courageous reporting and which you deserve the praise you got. And you probably stopped from getting a couple. I read about that somewhere. They stopped a couple of people, Epstein's friends kind of weighed in and said she doesn't deserve a Pulitzer and stuff. So.
- [39:33]
Julie Brown
Yeah, this is old news.
- [39:34]
Bill Kristol
Yeah.
- [39:37]
Julie Brown
It'S old news.
- [39:39]
Bill Kristol
Well, now it's new news again. So.
- [39:41]
Julie Brown
Right.
- [39:42]
Bill Kristol
Thanks. Thanks for joining, joining us today on Bulwark on Sunday.
- [39:45]
Julie Brown
Thanks for having me.