56. Boys Will Be Boys & The Sweetheart Deal- Jeffrey Epstein Part 1

Summary

Flipping Tables Podcast — "Boys Will Be Boys & The Sweetheart Deal: Jeffrey Epstein Part 1"

Host: Monte Mader
Guest: Andy Jones
Date: February 19, 2026

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Overview

This episode launches a multi-part deep dive into the life, crimes, and systemic power that enabled Jeffrey Epstein. Host Monte Mader, a former evangelical navigating her own journey from conservative Christianity to progressive advocacy, alongside co-host Andy Jones, unpacks Epstein’s rise from a modest Brooklyn upbringing to the pinnacle of wealth and influence, exploring how class, charisma, patronage, and institutional complicity allowed him to exploit and traffic minors for decades with minimal consequences. The episode gives particular focus to the so-called "sweetheart deal" of 2008, using Epstein as a lens into broader social, legal, and cultural failures.

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Main Discussion Points & Insights

1. Setting the Scene: Epstein's 2008 "Sweetheart Deal"

Key Segment: [00:00-04:29]

• Epstein pleaded guilty to two state charges (solicitation and procurement of a minor) in Palm Beach, 2008.
• Behind sanitized legal language was a federal sex trafficking investigation with evidence implicating a vast network.
• He received 18 months in county jail, work release (out 12 hours, 6 days/week), and a federal non-prosecution agreement (NPA) shielding himself and co-conspirators.
• The case is positioned as a microcosm of how wealth and status warp American justice—"This is a window into how power works in the United States." (Monte, [00:01])
• Raises the thematic questions: How did Epstein’s elite access and financial patronage shield him, and how does such architecture of power distort justice, particularly regarding sex crimes?

2. Monte’s Local Context & Activism

Segment: [04:40-08:35]

• Monte records remotely from Minneapolis, describing her work supporting immigrant families amidst ongoing ICE raids.
• Storytelling about local solidarity—"They love each other so hard up here. It’s very much Mr. Rogers: Are you my neighbor?" (Monte, [08:03])
• Andy draws historical parallel to 1930s Germany, emphasizing the climate of fear and surveillance.

3. The Ongoing Relevance, Scope, & International Fallout

Segment: [09:01-11:36]

• Monte discusses the sheer scale and darkness of the Epstein files, difficulties in processing, and recently receiving a comprehensive, fact-checked, searchable database from a listener (“now I understand what genius looks like”).
• Notes ongoing consequences in Europe—former UK and Norwegian officials facing investigation.
• Contrasts with US reluctance to prosecute any major participants: "Investigations are happening everywhere but here." (Monte, [10:36])

4. Media Deflections & Misogyny

Segment: [11:15-14:01]

• Critique of media minimization (Megyn Kelly, etc) and victim-blaming—"That’s still illegal. It’s still a child." (Monte, [11:36])
• The modeling industry and direct Victoria’s Secret-to-Epstein pipeline highlighted.
• Examples of accused traffickers being ignored by FBI despite abundant evidence.

5. Systemic Power and the Role of Institutions

Segments: [16:00–43:27]

Epstein’s Early Life & Climb

• Born 1953 in working-class Coney Island, NYC; always acutely aware of class disparity.
• "Poor, smart, and desperate to be rich” was his actual mantra, reflective of what sociologists call status anxiety.
• Attended but did not graduate from Cooper Union and NYU; lacked proper credentials but leveraged "cultural capital" (talent, charisma, performance) to substitute for diplomas.

Institutional Gatekeeping Failures

• Dalton School ([21:45–24:54]): Got hired to teach math despite no degree, thanks to Donald Barr’s favor, thus gaining access to elite children and parents—his first ‘institutional breach.’

• Bear Stearns ([24:54–29:00]): Parents’ connections landed him a job at an elite investment bank, bypassing usual Ivy League recruitment. No credentials, just a personal recommendation. /// Notable Quote:
  "This is the first major institutional breach. Without Dalton’s willingness to bend the credential norms, Epstein never walks into Bear Stearns. Without Bear Stearns, he doesn’t end up as Leslie Wexner’s advisor." (Monte, [25:08])

• Rises quickly at Bear Stearns, then leaves under unclear circumstances—potential regulatory coverup.

Creating the Mirage of Financial Genius

• Launches as an "ultra-exclusive" wealth manager for billionaires (mostly Wexner), using secrecy as a status signal, not an obstacle.
• "In a world of extreme wealth, being hard to access is itself a selling point." (Monte, [32:14])
• Actual operations were likely negligible outside Wexner, full of smoke and mirrors, shell companies, and suspicious money flows.

Les Wexner: The Key Patron ([39:19–46:55])

• Wexner (founder of The Limited, Victoria’s Secret, billionaire philanthropist) gives Epstein power of attorney.
• Epstein uses this access to take control of assets, gets the infamous $50+ million Manhattan mansion.
• These financial structures directly enabled and camouflaged spaces of abuse.
• Wexner eventually accuses Epstein of massive theft, but handles it privately, thus avoiding public scandal or legal exposure for either.

Notable Quote:
"He curated this connection with Ohio State University through Les Wexner’s wealth... later he’s sending thousands of dollars to the head of gynecological department... that’s where the financial story and abuse story start to intersect." (Monte, [44:01])

6. Real Estate, Private Islands, and Sex Trafficking Infrastructure

Segment: [50:21–57:07]

• With Wexner’s backing, Epstein acquires a mansion portfolio and two islands (Little St. James, aka "Pedophile Island", and Great St. James), creating controlled, surveilled environments for triaging both legitimate and criminal activity.
• Properties were "infrastructure built in to start to build this ring that Epstein would later curate." (Monte, [45:41])
• Critics highlight spatial privilege: "Certain spaces - wealthy enclaves, offshore zones, private compounds - are less likely to be subjected to proactive enforcement... become dark zones in which powerful people can operate with relative freedom." (Monte, [54:00])

7. Networks, Complicity, Philanthropy, and Reputational Laundering

Segment: [57:08–61:00]

• Epstein’s web included "presidents, princes, academics, and celebrities," allowing plausible deniability or shield for some.
• Some figures may not have known, but Monte is skeptical: "I don’t believe for one frickin’ second anyone who went to that goddamn island didn’t know exactly what was going on." (Monte, [57:07])
• Donations to universities and charities serve as "reputational laundering"—"Philanthropy often functions as a form of reputational laundering, allowing wealthy actors to wrap themselves up in a moral glow of science, education, and culture even when their fortunes are entangled with harm." (Monte quoting Rob Reich, [60:45])

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8. Palm Beach, Recruitment, and the Pyramid Scheme of Exploitation

Segment: [65:00–73:17]

• Epstein (and Maxwell) used slightly older girls and women as recruiters, luring vulnerable, working-class girls for "massages" as a pretext for escalating sexual abuse—normalizing a "side gig" in a town built on inequality.
• Pyramid-style network: Girls were paid both for their abuse and for bringing in others, producing a self-sustaining recruitment mechanism, with Epstein and his associates insulated from direct legal exposure.

9. The 2008 Plea Bargain and Sweetheart Deal

Segment: [73:17–80:52]

• After a 14-year-old finally reports him, the Palm Beach Police build a robust case, but the State Attorney and later federal prosecutors (under U.S. attorney Alexander Acosta) quietly orchestrate a deal.
• Key Features:
  • Epstein pleads to solicitation and procurement of a minor—no acknowledgment of serial or organized predation.
  • A secret NPA prevents any federal charges and immunizes unnamed co-conspirators (including Maxwell and others).
  • Victims were kept in the dark, later found to be violation of their rights (§77:58–78:36).
• Notable Quote:
  "The decision to resolve this large-scale, multi-victim network with a plea to two state charges... and the deliberate withholding of information from victims... The deal was made completely over the heads of victims." (Monte, [76:36])

10. Jail Time: Justice for the Affluent

Segment: [80:52–81:08]

• Sentenced to 18 months, Epstein serves 13—on "work release," out for 12 hours a day, 6 days a week, unsupervised.
• "Work release is usually off-limits to sex offenders, especially those whose crimes involve minors, but in Epstein’s case, exceptions were made and policies were bent." (Monte, [80:52])
• "Justice in America for the wealthy." (Andy, [81:08])

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Notable Quotes & Moments

• "This is how backdoor deals have been working for the wealthy forever." — Monte ([86:09])
• "And for anyone who has ever been a victim of any kind of sexual assault, it was not your fault. It is 100% the responsibility of the person who committed that against you." — Monte ([96:40])
• "You don't hop on a plane and go somewhere where you don't know what's going on. I don't believe 'I didn't know'." — Andy ([57:09])
• "Philanthropy often functions as a form of reputational laundering..." — Monte ([60:45])
• "Hold everyone accountable. Any sexual predator…I don’t care if they’re the star athlete, the favorite principal, the famous pastor, or a politician. We have to hold these men accountable in our system 100% of the time." — Monte ([91:00])
• "The system has failed. The system has failed." — Andy ([86:49])

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Timestamps for Key Segments

| Timestamp | Segment/Topic | |-------------|----------------------------------------------------------------------------------| | 00:00–04:29 | Introduction, 2008 plea deal, themes of power & justice | | 09:01–11:36 | The scale of Epstein's crimes & his international repercussions | | 16:00–43:27 | Epstein’s backstory, career climb, and institutional complicity | | 39:19–46:55 | Les Wexner relationship & the intersection of wealth and abuse | | 50:21–57:07 | Real estate, the islands as sites of trafficking, spatial privilege | | 65:00–73:17 | Palm Beach, recruitment pyramid, survivor/abuser power dynamics | | 73:17–80:52 | The 2008 plea deal negotiation, NPA, secrecy, and victim exclusion | | 80:52–81:08 | Affluent justice: the reality of Epstein's "jail time" | | 86:09–end | Reflections on advocacy, systemic change, and ways listeners can take action |

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Tone & Style

• Candid, fiercely passionate, and deeply informed.
• Monte blends legal/academic language with personal outrage and dark, sometimes cathartic humor.
• The hosts directly critique systems, individuals (including media, politicians, institutional actors), and cultural myths sustaining rape culture and elite impunity.
• Strong survivor-affirming language and calls to action for audience accountability.

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Summary Conclusion

Part 1 of this deep dive places Jeffrey Epstein not as an aberrant "monster" but as a product—and symptom—of systems optimized to protect the affluent, facilitate exploitation, and silence the vulnerable. Using detailed biography, institutional history, and cultural critique, the hosts reveal how charisma, gatekeeping failures, powerful patrons, and manipulative philanthropy conspired to grant him predatory impunity, culminating in an egregious legal deal that became a byword for elite injustice. The episode ends with concrete calls to keep pressure on institutions, listen to children, refuse to let silence or complicity win, and promises a second installment covering Epstein's post-2008 fallout up to the present day.

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Transcript

[A]

The year is 2008. In a palm beach courtroom, Jeffrey Epstein, a man with a private island, a Manhattan mansion the size of a small museum, and a contact list full of presidents and princes, pleads guilty to two state charges soliciting prostitution and procuring a minor for prostitution. Behind that sanitized language lies a pattern of abuse involving scores of children, a federal sex trafficking investigation, and enough evidence to build a major federal case that would become the part of the Office of professional responsibility in 2020. Instead, Epstein walks away with a mere 18 months in county jail, work release privileges that let him leave the facility for up to 12 hours a day, six days a week, and a secret non prosecution agreement that shields him from federal charges, but also shields any potential co conspirators. In Joe versus the United States in 2014, that's not just a bad plea bargain. This is a window into how power works in the United States. Jeffrey Epstein liked to describe himself as poor, smart and desperate to be rich, a phrase that was reported in a 2002 New York magazine profile that has since become kind of a dark branding slogan for his Life. Born in 1953 to a working class Jewish family in Coney Island, Epstein did not finish college. He did not come from inherited wealth. Yet by the 1990s and the 2000s, he was managing, or at least claiming to manage, the fortunes of billionaires flying private jets and hosting heads of state, academics and celebrities at homes from Palm beach to Little St. James in the U.S. virgin Islands. the same time, law enforcement records and victim testimony show he was recruiting, grooming, and sexually abusing teenage girls across multiple jurisdictions, using money, social connections, and carefully controlled spaces to sustain an organized system of exploitation. So here we end up at our core problem. How did Epstein leverage early elite access and financial patronage to build wealth, social capital and protection? And how did that architecture of power then shape the handling of his sex crimes up to his 2008 sweetheart deal? Epstein's path from a Brooklyn public sector household to teaching at the Dalton School, to trade bearing trading at Bear Stearns, and then into the inner circle of retail magnate Leslie Wexner created overlapping fields of economic, cultural and political power that were not just background details. These were the conditions that created the possibility for the scale of his abuse and the astonishing leniency of his first major criminal resolution. His lack of a degree did not stop him. It helped him learn to weaponize a mix of genuine mathematical ability, imposter strategies, and a charismatic performance to move through institutions in society that normally claim to police their gates Quite tightly. Once inside, he converted those opportunities into long term ties with financial financiers and philanthropists, and above all, Les Wexner. That gave him control over assets, asset access to philanthropic and political networks, and a powerful aura of legitimacy. A lot of the talk about Epstein gets stuck in two places, obviously. The horrific details of his crimes and the mystery of his wealth, wealth that can still not be tracked. $500 million making its way through Deutsche Bank. And we have no origin for where that money came from. But in order to really address Epstein's power and what he got away with, we have to talk about power and sexual violence. We're going to talk about research on power that shows concentrated authority, status and wealth, corrodes empathy, encourages entitlement, and normalizes exploitative behavior. Layered onto this is the political economy of criminal justice. For decades, scholars have argued that the American criminal legal system systematically treats, quote, street crimes and elite wrongdoing differently. We see this in the sentencing differences between crack cocain cocaine and powder cocaine. Wealth and socioeconomic status shape everything. Who gets investigated, what charges are filed, what pleas are offered, how judges sentence and even what conditions of confinement look alike. And we've seen that in the case of Al Capone. Epstein's case is not only relevant to today, but it is an X ray of how wealth and patronage and institutional prestige distorts the administration of justice, especially in sex crime cases. We are also going to discuss the severe mass, just the mass of Epstein's crimes, how long it was able to go, and why it was able to go unchecked for so long. And we're going to understand how a poor, smart and desperate to be rich kid from Coney island ended up with a private Caribbean island dubbed Pedophile island by the press, and then with a plea deal that shocked even seasoned investigators. And it forces us to confront the uncomfortable truth about who the system protects, who it punishes, and whose pain is negotiable. I'm Monty Mater.

[B]

I'm Andy Jones.

[A]

And all this today on highway to Hell. We did it.

[B]

Hey, hey, hey, hey. How you doing?

[A]

I'm good. I'm really tired. If. If you're. If you're watching this on if. I know, right? If you're watching this on video and you're like, why is Monty in this white room with the zebra stripes behind her? It's because I'm in Minneapolis right now. So I am recording remotely so that we can still get our episodes out on time. But I can be up here helping with what's going on. In Minneapolis, it's been really intense, really busy.

[B]

Got it.

[A]

Been working like 14 to 18 hour days up here trying to just help people because they've made the claim that ICE is pulling and they're, you know, ending Operation Metro Surge. We haven't seen any evidence of that yet. I mean as of, as of yesterday, we still had confirmed body snatchings from stops. But I've been working a lot with families who are either like their primary caregiver was abducted or they are too afraid to come out of the house because they're a brown person. And so we've been delivering groceries, like I packed groceries yesterday and it was heartbreaking because one of the bags I packed needed newborn diapers, like for a newborn and can't leave the house. And it's, it's been, it's, it's a lot. It's, it's one of those things. I don't want people to think that just because no one else has gotten shot yet that it's over here because it's, it's absolutely not. And so many businesses are closed, restaurants aren't open, construction projects are halted because all of these people are afraid to go to work. And even like US citizen people, anyone who's a US Citizen, anyone who's with going through their immigration process. Like I met someone yesterday who he basically is like, I only like transport myself in the dark, but like I'm in my green card process. But I know that because that process isn't done. If they catch me, they'll send me back. And I left my home country when I was 7. So it's, it's been a lot, it's been good work. It's been great to meet with the teams in the community here. And this morning I'll, I'll show you a picture. It was really fun. We got up at 7 this morning with the Immigrant Defense Network to go out and hang these signs all over the bridges of Minneapolis. Cause, I mean, obviously it's Valentine's Day and let's see. I absolutely hate Apple's new update. I can't freaking find anything.

[B]

That's why I don't update anything.

[A]

I know I need to stop doing that. I kind of do it like without thinking about it. And then as soon as I have the update, I can't find anything. I can't. Like the folders were so great before. So this is one of the. Oh, the camera's up here. This is one of the signs that we hung up and it says things like we love our immigrant Neighbors and we hung them all over bridges in Minneapolis. It was really cool. So that'll be going on today.

[B]

Just hearing some of that stuff, you know, I'm a little out of the loop. Just have my own stuff going on. But whenever I hear these stories from you or the news or they inevitably pop up online, I'm just like, man, isn't 1933 Germany great to live in? Jesus Christ.

[A]

It is. We were talking about how that's very much, you know, this, this whole atmosphere of like, everyone needs to be prepared to show their papers, you know, like, no. And it's so what, you know, because, I mean, and that's the thing, you know, like your driver's license doesn't necessarily prove that you're a U.S. citizen. Right. Because it's not a citizenship document.

[B]

Sure.

[A]

But who's. One, you know, 40% of Americans don't have a passport. And two, who's going to carry around their passport every day?

[B]

Not me.

[A]

So it's, it's crazy. You'd have to carry around, I guess your birth certificate or your passport, but no, no, thank you.

[B]

You know, vial of blood.

[A]

You guys can prove, you know, are

[B]

you a human or an alien?

[A]

So it's, it is just one of those, one of those things. But it's been good and it's been really cool to see Minneapolis as a community. Just love each other. They love each other so hard up here. That's just in general. It's very much. It makes me feel like Mr. Rogers. Like, are you my neighbor? Is how it feels up here. It's like, man, I would maybe considering living here someday if it weren't so damn cold.

[B]

Yeah, right. Jesus. Well, I mean, Nashville gets cold. We had the ice apocalypse of doom and destruction while it's pretty warm.

[A]

It's been pretty warm up here the last few days. It's been in the mid-50s. Yep.

[B]

That's good.

[A]

But it does obviously gets very, very cold. So. And yeah, we're gonna do. We mentioned this a couple weeks ago. First of all, thank you all to all our Patreon supporters. Thank [e-mail] highway to hellpodcast we're getting ready to do some. We're gonna start working in some videos about true crime that's going on right now. There's some crazy stories coming up that are just crime related.

[B]

Sweet.

[A]

And obviously today's episode is about like a modern true crime story that it's still relevant.

[B]

You might have heard of it.

[A]

You might have heard of it. You might have heard it. Mentioned and I'm actually going to start talking about the files a lot more on my platform. I was getting so overwhelmed by how disgusting and how dark and how many of them. There are some.

[B]

There was a picture is.

[A]

Dude, there was a picture in there. Oh, I bet that like it. I. I couldn't sleep for two days after I saw this photo. It was so horrific. And. And the Department of Justice has been just an absolute mess about like they're redacting co conspirators names but releasing nude photos of victims as children. Like it's insane. But someone this fucking genius. I get a random email from this wizard and I can't remember what his PhD is in but he's like, I have built an extent an extensive searchable database that has everything fact checked with click through links you can find related articles, you can find the related Epstein file. So he put all of that into this massive database that is going to help me so much. It's. I've never seen something this brilliant. And I'm like oh, now I understand like what genius looks like. It's. But he sent it to me and he was like, I want you to be able to keep talking about this without feeling crushed under it because I had released some stories where I was almost in tears and just like I. I don't know how to keep talking about how horrific this is. And it's everywhere. Like Norway. I can't remember his last name. They just arrested their former Prime Minister. I saw his connections to Epstein.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

Peter. What is his last name from the uk. He's had to step down. He's going to vacate his title. He's facing arrest.

[B]

Good.

[A]

France is investigating people like investigations are happening everywhere but here there are some people that are losing their jobs because of their connection to Epstein. And the. Is it Casey Wasman agency in LA that used to represent like Chapel?

[B]

I was just gonna bring that up. Yeah, I saw that the other day.

[A]

They're all like, nope, we're not doing this. We're not. And that's great. And that's exactly what needs to happen.

[B]

And the thing too about it is it's as easy as that.

[A]

It's as easy as that. Just walk away.

[B]

Just walk. Oh, you're involved with this guy by Lose my number and you're arrested. You know, I've never seen just people just make excuse after excuse for this here. I know it's disgusting.

[A]

Well, and like. And like Megyn kelly going on TV and being like. It's. I mean they were 15. It's not like they were five. I'm like, miss, ma', am, first of all, that's still illegal. It's still a child. Can you imagine, like if God forbid, like Obama had done something like that, like what they would have been saying also Megyn Kelly, that bitch, she has a 14 year old daughter.

[B]

I was gonna say, how old are her daughters?

[A]

Yeah. And I was like, you, you would be totally fine with grown men doing this to you. And like we've now confirmed like the, the modeling to Epstein's trafficking ring Pipeline, the Victoria's Secret model to Epstein's trafficking pipeline. Like, it's all, all of that is confirmed and we'll talk about it a little bit later in, in episode two. But there are three brothers on trial in Florida right now. It's Oren Tal and Alon Alexander that are all facing trafficking charges for over 60 women. But they're mentioned in the files. It was FBI and the FBI never looked into it. So. And at the time that was when that was reported, those men were, they were accused of raping two 14 year old girls.

[B]

Oh, take them out back and shoot them.

[A]

Exactly. Like, I, I'm always like, I was like, man, in normal circumstances, I don't believe in the death penalty. But I will say regarding the death penalty, the worst thing that I can imagine as far as punishment for me is to be locked in a cage forever and like have no control over my life. No, I'm never gonna leave. So part of me is like, lock them up forever. And like, you know, they get healthy food, you take care of them in the sense that like you're, you have sustenance, but your life is boring. It is highly controlled. You don't get tasty comfort food, you don't get any luxuries. You live in your cell. You get a certain amount of exercise each day, you get the same boring food every day and you get it for the rest of your life.

[B]

Dude, you take away my Mountain Dew, I'm a caged animal at that point. I'm basically feral without it. But did you see that video of Maxwell pacing in her jail cell recently? I'm like, yeah, that'd be.

[A]

Oh, there's a whole thing about her too that I didn't realize. So she lied on her citizenship applications. Oh, and so she has a she. I mean, she lied about a lot of things. But her Social Security number is, is associated. Is a Connecticut associated Social Security number, which she has no connection. She's a British national. She has no connections with Connecticut at all. On her application, it says yes to military service, but she didn't serve in any military anywhere. But also on her Social Security number, it says that she has a criminal record, but it was approved anyway. But it doesn't specify what that criminal record was.

[B]

Weird.

[A]

It's very strange. It's. So I'm going to be doing a video on that as well, because there was more about, like, her lying on her citizenship applications that came out yesterday. So, anyways, we're gonna get to all

[B]

of this, but all I have to say is, who needs all that when the stock market's doing so well?

[A]

But the Dow. We need to talk about the Dow.

[B]

I saw that, dude. I was hot. I'm like, I was apoplectic, dude. I want to just jump through that TV and start tearing people in half. I mean, I saw that. I'm like, what is wrong with that woman?

[A]

I mean, she's demonic. Nobody, nobody carries water for the patriarchy harder than a white woman who thinks it's going to protect her.

[B]

I've never seen anything like it. I feel like I'm in.

[A]

And she. I know. I feel like I'm in a time warp. And she refused when all of the victims stood up and were raising their hands, and she, like, crosses her arms and turns away, and she refuses to look at them. And heard the documents she brought. They were spying on the congressional people that are coming in and searching through the unredacted files. She had lists of what they had searched. She came in with cards of, like, curated insults for every person on the committee so she could just insult them. And then I was like, are we in third grade? Like, she's like, it's like high school mean girl on steroids. And then the big moment for me was when she accused Representative Becca Belint of being anti Semitic.

[B]

Yeah, I saw that.

[A]

See her face just like Balint's face change. Because she's like, I lost my grandfather in the Holocaust.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

How dare you? Like, but that's what they do is they're just like, oh, you're, you know, Trump derangement syndrome, or you're anti Semitic, or you're this, you're this or this, you this. I'm like, I don't care what race the pedophile is. The pedophiles should all be in jail, all be roasted, not get a pass, you know? And the FBI is now saying there was no trafficking ring. I'm like, interesting. Why is Ghislaine Maxwell in jail then?

[B]

Yeah, exactly. So she's just in jail for no reason.

[A]

She's just in there for funsies.

[B]

And then all these people have come forward. Liars, every single one of them.

[A]

Right. Over the course of decades, like decades, different people, different ages, all calling in independently from different states. Yeah, sure, yeah.

[B]

They're like, I don't care about your facts.

[A]

Those aren't real.

[B]

Oh, they don't line up with what I do.

[A]

Yeah, exactly. So what we're going to do with part one today, because I feel like a lot of people don't know about how Epstein became Epstein.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

So we're going to talk a lot about where he was born, how he got into what he was doing and, and then eventually what led to his first conviction. And then part two is going to cover 2008 to now with his second arrest, his death, and then what's going on currently, today or his death, his death. Quotation marks. Dude, listen, listen, I don't know. After the files revealed that he is essentially like the guy that created essentially the political incel channel on 4chan. Oops, I'm sorry, I forgot my camera

[B]

zoom in was intense.

[A]

It's like I can't move my hands. When I found out that he was connected to that and essentially was the voice behind QAnon, I was like, I, I'm a, I. My tinfoil hat is like out now.

[B]

Like, oh yeah, I don't know, I'm dusting mine off.

[A]

And it like it turns out that we are in fact being run by a ring of pedophiles. They're not Satanists because Satanists are way cooler than that. But they are a ring of pedophiles that are getting away with it. It's just people didn't realize they got played by one of them.

[B]

Unbelievable.

[A]

Anyways, let's jump in. We're gonna jump into Jeffrey Epstein's life. Obviously. I know, it's like, oh, obviously. Epstein's story doesn't begin in his Manhattan townhouse with his private island. It starts in a modest apartment in Coney Island, Brooklyn. He was born in 1953, the eldest of two sons in a working class Jewish family. His father worked for the New York City Department of Parks and Recreation. His mother was a school aide. And this was not the world of trust funds and prep schools. He didn't have that kind of access. This was civil service. Paychecks, rent stabilized apartments and post war New York. The working class families were squeezed between fading industrial jobs and rising living costs. Coney island itself contained contradictions that matter in this context. On one side, the remnants of a glorious amusement district. On the other, the creeping realities of deindustrialization and white flight. So these neighborhoods were collapsing. For a smart kid growing up there, the message was mixed. You could see the affluence and the glamour in the distance. But your own life was very was described by public schools. Modest wages, barely getting by. By most accounts, Epstein stood out early for his abilities. He was a very, very, very smart kid and became a very unfortunately evil genius. Teachers and acquaintances remember him as good at math and capable at the piano. He was the kind of student who could handle abstract reasoning and perform confidently. In the mid century Jewish Brooklyn, that combination math talent plus musical training was more than just like a nice extracurricular. It was a ticket at least potentially to better schools, scholarships and a different kind of life. Epstein also was very aware at a young age of class. Later profiles describe intensely focused even as a teenager on escaping his background and entering the world of the wealthy that he could see around him in New York. And again, New York is just such this picture of wealth disparity.

[B]

Absolutely.

[A]

And this is where his famous self description of poor, smart and desperate to be rich wasn't just a catchy line for him, it really was his personal mantra. And it captures something sociologists call status anxiety. It's this tension of feeling that you have the talent to belong to a higher class class, but none of the built in credentials, connections or access to get you into that class. So long before Epstein met Leslie Wexner and maybe affected how he got a hold of his his wealth and inheritance, Epstein was very, very aware of that he was talented, that he could shape his trajectory and he very, very much wanted to be in that wealthy formal class. Epstein's formal education followed a path that feels familiar to a lot of ambitious kids from modest backgrounds. Until it was it just kind of drops off. After public school in Brooklyn, he enrolled at Cooper Union in the late 1960s or early 70s. An institution known for rigorous programs and for providing high quality education to students who could not necessarily afford elite private tuition. He later attended classes at New York University's current Institute of Mathematical Sciences, one of the premier math centers in the country. Like it needs to be stressed that Epstein was a very good mathematician, like very good with numbers.

[B]

That's one thing I moves.

[A]

Yeah, right. Both moves fit the script. A talented working class student, he uses a public minded institution to gain this elite training. But here's where the first major pivot point for Epstein's life happened. He never finishes a degree at either place. Multiple sources Agree that he left both Cooper Union and NYU without graduating in a labor market that was becoming increasingly credential obsessed. This was really where you had. It began, this whole. You had to have a bachelor's to get a good job.

[B]

Yep.

[A]

So it was, it was a big, A big decision. Probably one that his parents didn't like when he left without a degree from either place. But using Pierre Bodeur's language, Epstein had a lot of embodied cultural capital. The actual skills, habits, and dispositions that marks someone who is intellectually capable. But he lacked the actual form of a diploma. So in spaces where performance and perception mattered more than paperwork, he was able to present himself as a natural math prodigy. Too brilliant to be confined by traditional academic paths. And he let people fill in the blanks. He was an amazing networker. He was amazing at the game of deceit, and he essentially used his swagger and his brain to overcome this hurdle of not having this degree. Epstein allowed others to assume that he had completed degrees that he didn't have because he was smart. He leaned hard into the Persona of a gifted but unorthodox thinker and relied on personal recommendations in place of transcripts. Sociologists of education and work note that when employers prioritize network and impression over credential, people with partial or non completed education can sometimes pass as fully credentialed. In Epstein's case, the pass passing would open the door to his first real elite platform, which was the Dalton School. All right, so if we want to understand his first pivot, we have to talk about how he was hired to teach math and in some accounts, physics. But math is confirmed in the mid-1970s at Dalton, which is an elite private school in Manhattan's Upper east side. So again, remember, he doesn't have a bachelor's degree, he doesn't have a teaching degree. He is not licensed. But he was able to, like, schmooze his way into this position the higher.

[B]

It's like that saying, sorry to interrupt. You fake it till you make it.

[A]

Exactly. And that's exactly what he did. And a lot of successful people have. It's just unfortunate that Epstein was such an evil person or, you know, that he was able to be the smart. Along with that, you knew he was

[B]

going to be a bad person with how, how good he was at math. Yeah, you know the two.

[A]

Exactly. That's how. That's true. Hallmark of psychopathy.

[B]

No, no, no, that's, that's, that's firmly established now here by Dr. Jones.

[A]

So again, so here we have Epstein had no, had not completed a college degree, no teaching certificate, no conventional teaching experience. But Dalton's then headmaster, Donald Barr, appears to have been impressed by Epstein's intellect and his presence and brought him on anyway. So this is kind of the first place that we see gatekeeping in these elite facilities really fail just because someone presented themselves as, you know, this amazing, smart, intellectual. And this is, this is Epstein's first broad access to children. Children. And that to me is. Is meaningful. Former students remember Epstein as flamboyant, charismatic, and often inappropriate. Some recall him as engaging and intellectually sharp. Others described him as a poor teacher whose comments, especially towards teenage girls, crossed professional lines. Obviously, knowing what we know now, those feel like glaring red flags. Because also if you're, if you're a man smart enough to like, trick your way into a school, why would you not go get, like, a better paying job? Not like, granted, these teachers make a lot of money at these private institutions. Why would you not go into, like, trading or some kind of brokerage? It, to me feels very intentional. Yeah, it feels very intentional that he wanted access to young girls even then.

[B]

Man, it's interesting you say that because I, I really didn't put those two things together. It's just kind of like a light bulb went off. It's like, wow, maybe. Yeah, that's probably the reason why he did it. How old, how old is he at this point? Is he in his 20s?

[A]

So he's in his. He's about in his 20s. He's like probably 23, 24 at this point.

[B]

Gotcha.

[A]

So he's mid-20s.

[B]

Gotcha.

[A]

And his tenure there wasn't very long. It was short. By the late 1970s, it was just a few years. Epstein was out. And accounts again vary on whether he resigned or was pushed out, but it was probably a little bit of both. But Dalton had done two crucial things for him. It gave him an upgrade in social environment. So he was networking with parents that were in a very elite class in New York overnight. The son of this Parks Department employee is socializing with the teachers of finance executives, media figures, cultural elites of New York. And number two, it handed him social capital in the form of relationships of those parents. And remember that Epstein's superpower is that he was a powerful networker. So he coerces or he schmoozes his way into the school. He has access to teen girls, but more importantly to their parents. And all of their parents are elite. One parent in particular, who was identified as a senior figure at Bear Stearns, took notice of Epstein's ability with math and recommended him for a position at the firm. This one act of patronage bypassed the normal Wall street recruitment pipeline that Bear Stearns uses, which heavily favors Ivy League graduates with pristine credentials. So now we get Epstein at Bear Stearns without any credentials of any kind.

[B]

And it's just so bizarre to think about that. Yeah, you know, it's like, man, just, you know, it really goes to show you it is all who you know, you know it truly, truly, it's all about that relationship and getting, you know, that's how you get into the door.

[A]

And so Dalton is where he takes his he first success cultural capital so social network into a major scale to get hired at bed Bear Stearns. And those again, those relationships from Dalton rest on the assumption that because Dalton hired him, right? The parents trusted Epstein because Dalton hired him. So they make this assumption that he's been vetted, he's educated, he's got credentials. And obviously none of that was true. So this is the first major institutional breach that puts Epstein on the trajectory to be able to come to become what he became without Dalton's willingness to bend the credential norms. Epstein never walks into Bear Stearns. And without Bear Stearns, he doesn't end up as the advisor to Leslie Wexner. Without Wexner, there's no Manhattan townhouse, there's no $500 million of wealth, there's no private island, no billionaire backed aura of legitimacy that would carry Epstein through the rest of his life. So let's talk a little bit more about Bear Stearns. So the Dalton parent, who's often identified as Allen Ace Greenberg or someone who was close to him, took a liking to Epstein while he was teaching at Dalton, was impressed by his mathematical ability and recommended him for a job at the firm. This is so extraordinary because 1970s Wall street was so, so picky. Investment banks like Bear Stearns and their peers typically recruited from a very tight, narrow school, Narrow list of target schools, Ivy League universities and a handful of other elite institutions. Degrees functioned as technical proof and social sorting mechanisms. They sort, they function as a gateway. Your lines on your resume signaled that you belong to the club. Epstein had none of that. But the Dalton connection, this recommendation from this one man overrode the usual filters. It was a powerful insider's trust. Hey, this guy is smart. You should talk to him. I recommend him in his social capital. With Epstein, the relationship with a trusted Bear Stearns client substituted for his missing cultural, cultural, cultural aura as well as his credentials. It was one of those Moments where you can hear the click of a lock opening. It's like I pictured as boom. This elite class that Epstein has been dying since he was a kid to get into has now just unlocked because of this one. Friendship connected.

[B]

That's all it takes.

[A]

And as Epstein worked for Bear Stearns, he gravitated towards the firm's more quantitatively demanding areas. He worked with other options, other complex financial products, spaces where mathematical skills and comfort with risk were prized. So he was a high risk investor. He was really, really good with math. Colleagues and later observers describe him as unusually gifted at spotting arbitrage opportunities and designing trades that exploited small discrepancies in pricing. The ability to see patterns others missed became part of his internal brand. He rose to the level of limited partner and elite rank that would have placed him high in the firm's hierarchy. And his exact title is not really clearly known. And whether or not that formal status is accurate, that is the, that is the status that he operated with, with within the firm. Epstein enjoyed a level of autonomy that was. And a reward at Bear Stern that was wildly disproportionate to his formal qualifications as well as his time working at the firm. And this is, this is extremely unusual in high finance. And I'm assuming that, like myself, most listeners do not work in the finance realm, but this is a very strange story. Like, this does not happen. Like, you do get a lot of nepotism where daddy works for the finance firm and once his son gets out of college with his degree, you know, dad kind of pulls him into the fold.

[B]

Sure.

[A]

But to get in without any credentials and like your parent or a personal connection to you doesn't work for the firm is extremely unusual.

[B]

Yeah, that's extremely weird. Definitely unheard of, you know, especially within that realm. You know, like you were saying, it's just nepotism seems to be the way to go on on Wall street and things like that.

[A]

Yes, for the most part, you have to be, you have to be in the right class, get into the right schools and know the right people for this typically to happen.

[B]

I just picture Patrick Bateman from American Psycho, right, sitting in the office, you know, because, you know, he didn't have to do anything. His dad runs the thing and he's just sitting there watching TV.

[A]

But. And then New York magazine in 2002 talks about his resignation from Bear Stearns. Again, it's, it's a little bit disputed. The same with Dalton. They don't know if he was pushed out or whether he was. They were actually Concerned about regulatory trouble or if he just left of his own volition. There's no formal enforcement action that appears on public, public record. And the split happened behind closed doors. It was this powerful institution handled a potential misconduct internally. So Bear Stearns was looking at possibly getting in hot water for having someone who was uncredentialed working with all of these clients finances. They would have lost a lot of clients and a lot of money. So it's thought that as they faced possible regulatory problems or potential misconduct from Epstein or because of their hiring of him, they got rid of him quietly. And instead of a thorough transparent process, they protected themselves in the short term by letting problematic actors like Epstein move along largely untainted. They didn't like let people know, hey, we found out he's uncredentialed. None of that. Epstein walks out of Bear Stearns not as someone publicly sanctioned or reprimanded, but as someone who can say truthfully that he worked at a major Wall street firm and rose quickly there and was incredibly successful. So this adds another line on his resume without any kind of accountability that allows him to again move into this new class of people, move into this other world.

[B]

The luck of this guy is just astonishing.

[A]

It's astonishing. It's such a testament to, I mean, obviously none of us met Epstein. It's a testament to just how charismatic he must have been. Yeah, like he must have been so convincing and so smart probably, you know, had to be, right?

[B]

Yeah, but in any psycho through histories like that, right?

[A]

You know, the Ted Bundy vibes.

[B]

Ted Bundy, I mean, even leaders back in the day, Fidel Castro, Adolf Hitler, Stalin, they all have, so they all have something about themselves that just that people gravitate towards this like, like a magnetic pull. And I'm sure that, you know, I'm sure Epstein had that same thing, you

[A]

know, I'm sure he did too. So after Bear Stearns, Epstein doesn't go to another bank, he doesn't go back to Wall Street Street. He goes solo. At least that's how he presented it. He sets up an independent financial consultant and asset manager, operating through entities that shifted names over the years, but were often grouped under the umbrella of quote, Financial Consulting rather than a standard registered fund. His pitch is that he is the man the ultra rich call when they want sophisticated strategies that go beyond what ordinary wealth managers offer. So he creates that. He's like, I'm this wealth manager. I've got better numbers members. I can do things for you that are outside of the box. He leans hard into secrecy and exclusivity. Epstein reportedly refused to register as an investment advisor in the usual ways. Kept his client list opaque. Both client lists. And claimed to work only for a tiny slice of the global 1%. In some accounts, he insisted that he would only take on clients with at least a billion dollars in assets, and even they had to be invited in to work for him. And this is so smart too, because as soon as you stamp something with gourmet and exclusivity, people that are really, really rich want into the club.

[B]

Of course they can't be left out. But it's just, it's funny how it's all labeled because it seems so legitimate, you know?

[A]

Right.

[B]

We do things secret. Yeah. Okay, that's. That. That seems great. Really legit there.

[A]

And in a world of extreme wealth, being hard to access is itself a selling point. As Brooke Harrington's research on wealth managers shows, ultra rich clients often seek advisors who project not just competence, but exclusivity, a feeling that they are part of a small, elite inner circle. And this Harrington's article in 2016. And of course, Epstein wraps himself in that aura. College dropout or not, he is now solidly in the world to work with billionaires. And he backs it up with mansions and private jets. Behind the curtain, though, the picture appears a lot narrower. So after the 2019 investigations suggest that Epstein's client base may have been way, way smaller and more concentrated than his myth implied, With Leslie Wexler standing out as by far the most important. And that's really all he needed. He needed one ultra wealthy person who really believed in what he was selling. The opacity of opacity. The. The mystery, excuse me, account is. Is it opacity? Opacity?

[B]

I don't know that. That sounds like that. Words above my pay grade.

[A]

That, that's. I was like, My brain is just like, nope, don't know that. So like the vagueness of his operations and the lack of regulatory filings make hard numbers inclusive. Let me just do that. I'm going to do that whole section again. So the mystery behind his operations and the lack of regulatory filings make hard numbers elusive. But the overwhelming evidence shows that rather than running a diversified empire, for many billionaires, Epstein large part the man whose fortune rose and fell with relationship to one person, and that was Les Wexner. Which is again, it's. It's all. It's all shadows. It's all smoke screens, smoke and mirrors lying about it.

[B]

Yep.

[A]

By just. And so from this crim from A criminological perspective. Epstein's business model. Again, so many red flags. There's complex structures, refusal to submit to ordinary oversight, a lot of secrecy. He had so much free will over his clients. Ask assets, close intertwining of personal and professional finances. And these are precisely the conditions under which fraud, self dealing, and other abuses flourish. And when Wexner finally broke with Epstein, he claimed that Epstein misappropriated vast sums of money from him. Allegations reportedly followed by around $100 million in repayments. So Epstein immediately is stealing from people, misappropriating funds. But long before that rupture. Again, the Persona has done its work. By the late 1990s, Epstein is widely perceived, especially by people outside the tightest financial circles, as a kind of intern money man of mystery. He's an ex Wall street guy. He's an independent advisor to billionaires. He's surrounded by very, very young women and powerful friends. And of course, this Persona will later collide with child sex abuse charges in Palm Beach. And when it does, prosecutors are not confronting, like, this random middle aged guy that doesn't have any powerful ties. They're confronting someone who is, is an insider and has this massive network. And I do think it's worth mentioning here because I've had a lot of people ask, like, you know, how did you know? Nobody called this into question sooner. But I think you have to, like, really look at the culture of the 80s and 90s and how different millennial women, millennial women in particular, were groomed for this kind of thing big time. Like, seeing, seeing an older man with a barely legal looking woman was the norm. It was super common. Beauty standards were very pedophilic. Like, you know, because you, I mean, you think like, beyond, like, forcing adult women to shave every inch of their body, but you think about, like, like the thinness epidemic that's coming back, but that was really in vogue in the 90s. Oh, big time. To be as skinny as you possibly can. Like, it's not just white beauty standards, right? It's rooted in that. But it's like white adolescent beauty standards, right? Because. Because women who eat healthy diets don't look like that.

[B]

No, not at all.

[A]

And. And there's going to be someone screaming in the comments about, well, you, you know, healthy weight and you're just, you know, accepting people being fat. First of all, everyone should be accepted for how they are, where they are, are. I'm also a big proponent of taking care of your health. So it can be both. You cannot demonize someone for being overweight and encourage people to have healthy lifestyles at the same time. But like being this thin is not, it's just not healthy. And it makes, not at all. It makes women exhausted, it makes them less likely to push back, it makes them more subservient because they have no energy, because they're starved, because they've only eaten three Cheerios in the last 36 hours.

[B]

You put the. And then not all of them, of course, but like, like, you know, you have that model look or Runway models at the time, probably doing certain drugs too. So a lot of drugs, a lot of smoking. They get into this whole like zombified state, you know, and then they can't fight back.

[A]

And it's all about circles and connections. And especially now with the Epstein files, we have proven this, this model, especially Victoria's Secret model to Epstein pipeline, that was like he was recruiting from modeling agencies was where he recruited a lot of these girls to traffic. And so you think these models are like, they're being told in a lot of cases, oh, you're being hired for this event, your agency or someone you trust is sending you there, you think you're going for a job and then this starts happening to you. But it's, it's such a disproportionate power dynamic. Not just because these girls are so, so, so, so young, but also because you're worried about losing your dreams as a model. You're worried about getting fired, you're worried you're going to get in trouble. People that you trust have sent you there and then by the time something happens, happens, there's so much shame you're not coming forward because you think it's your fault.

[B]

Yep. You know, big time.

[A]

But I, I think that the context of the 80s and 90s and how women were expected to look, the beauty standards and again, as well as seeing like these 50, 60 year old men with barely legal looking women. And it didn't raise any questions at the time. It was just kind of this trope of, well, you know, women like older men. It's like, well, sometimes, but not that old. And also she's a kid. Like, like gross.

[B]

And I mean a lot of times too those guys, you know, that locker room mentality. Oh man, I'm check out my new wife or new girlfriend, you know. Oh, how old is. She's 20. Oh man. Great. You know.

[A]

Yeah, right.

[B]

Weirdo. I mean I, I've never un, I've never understood it, you know, it's. But I, I think that's where a lot of them are coming from too. It's like, oh, I. I'm better than you. You know, my wife's or girlfriend's younger than yours. It's always a competition with these guys. Guys.

[A]

Well, it's that. It's like a status symbol thing, but it's also like, younger women are just easier. Younger people in general, and includes younger women are easier to manipulate. They don't have. They don't have life experience. They don't have the language to stand up for themselves. They are put in these high control situations. Right. So they're so much easier to manipulate and abuse. You know, you look at all the incels screaming on the Internet about women in their 30s, and I'm like, you're just mad that women in their 30s know enough now that they won't put up with your laziness or your abuse or your misconduct. They're not going to give you a pass anymore. The things I put up with in my late 20s and early 20s. Like, my 20s, my late teens and early 20s. Oh, my God, I put up with so much bullshit.

[B]

Oh, I'm sure.

[A]

And I won't now. Like, you chew with your mouth open too often around me, and I'm done. I'm out. I'm not. I'm not torturing myself like that.

[B]

By the way, she's not talking about me with that.

[A]

No, I'm not. I'm not. I'm not. Andy's a very polite eater. We were. We were roommates for a while.

[B]

I don't.

[A]

Polite eater.

[B]

I'm. The reason why I'm so polite is I don't eat. No, I'm just kidding.

[A]

Exactly. I don't eat anything.

[B]

I just ha. Out in the corner.

[A]

Yeah, let's talk a little bit about Les Wexner, because without Les Wexner, none of this happens. So Wexner is already a giant by the time Epstein meets him. He's the founder of Limited and later L Brands, and he built a retail empire that included Victoria's Secret and other mall staple brands. If you grew up going to the mall in the, like, late 90s, early 2000s, Les Wexner was running a lot of those brands that blew my mind. Right.

[B]

Like, sorry to interrupt you. I know we have a little bit of lag here, but, like, when I saw the brands he was responsible for, because I, you know, I knew the name, but when I was looking it up, I'm like, all right, who's this guy? Dang, man, he. He really found it at all it's like, yeah, you see those in malls today, Those brands.

[A]

Yes.

[B]

They haven't gone anywhere.

[A]

It's great. I will never buy Victoria's Secret ever again. Ever. Not that I have in, like, five years. But just a note. So Les Wexner, at this point, he's one of the wealthiest men in America. He's a major political donor and a prolific philanthropist. Philanthropist. Philanthropist. With his name on art centers, hospitals, university buildings in Ohio and beyond. And here's another reason that, like, there has to be caps on how much people can donate to politics, because this type of shit where, you know, like, Citizens United's got to go. Corporations shouldn't be able to donate, and there should be a cap that. To how much individuals can donate, because that's crazy.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

So the exact origin story of their relationship is a little bit funny. Like most things around Epstein, there's a lot of vagueness, a lot of mystery. But most accounts place their first contact in the late 1970s or the early 1980s, likely through, again, mutual connections of the world of finance and philanthropy. By the mid-1980s, Epstein is no longer just an advisor on the periphery. He is becoming, in the language of one of Vanity Fair's investigation, Wexner's quote, shadow. Like, he is glued to Wexner. He is part of this circle, and Wexner is one of the richest men in America. Over time, Wexner gives Epstein something far more potent than just a client account. He gives Epstein power of attorney. That means that Epstein can sign checks, move assets, create structure, and act in Wexner's name across a wide array of financial and legal matters. He also becomes a trustee or officer for Wexner linked charitable entities, positioning himself at the center flows of philanthropic capital as well as private wealth. This is a profound level of trust and is Epstein's first time with major amounts of money. Most billionaires diversify their advisory ecosystem for safety. Lawyers over here, bankers here, separate boards for foundations.

[B]

Right.

[A]

Wexner concentrated an enormous amount of authority on Epstein and again, does not know that Epstein is a complete fraud top to bottom. But it's, again, a very unusual decision on Wexner's part to trust just one person.

[B]

That's so strange, man. It's. It's like. It's like Epstein has this like. Like Svengali hold on people, that he just can win them over. I. I don't understand it. It's just like. And especially to gain the trust of Wexner, like, and how. You were just saying of how he doesn't really put all his eggs in one basket, so to speak. But just this one time. Weird, man. I. I can't wrap my head around that.

[A]

It's. It's truly a testament to. To who Epstein was and how he could manipulate people. And so three things happen from him being able to honestly say, I'm Lex Wesner's manager, essentially.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

It grants him, obviously, economic power. He's got control over Wexner's entire wealth. It grants him social power. Now he has because he's Wexner's shadow. He. Wexner's connected. Connected to Midwestern politics, national philanthropy, corporate America. And it gives Epstein symbolic power. Right? He's the man this billionaire trusts with everything. So this is elite patronage. This is not a casual relationship. This is deep dependency. Wexner has put the entirety of his wealth and assets on Epstein to manage and structure his wealth. And of course, Epstein is relying on Wexner to anchor his own fortune and reputation. This mutual entanglement will later make it much harder to separate cleanly, mainly when problems arised. And so the most striking manifestation of this relationship shows up in the form of 9 East 71st Street, a seven story mansion on Manhattan's Upper east side that would later become notorious as Epstein's New York base. And this mansion is huge. Because I used to live in New York, I've walked by it multiple times. This house is gargantuan.

[B]

I saw pictures, I was like, it's shocked how big this place is.

[A]

So big. And in Manhattan, to own a property that size, so. And this. This is crazy. So. Originally owned by a Wexner linked charitable entity, the townhouse passes into Epstein's effect control in the late 1990s through a series of trust and corporate maneuvers that Epstein does. Public records show transfers between non profit and private entities associated with Wexner and Epstein. And at the end of that chain of transfers, Epstein is living in and controlling a property that real estate observers valued north of $50 million.

[B]

Good God.

[A]

And Epstein just buys himself a house with. With Wexner's property, functionally so again, billionaires do not usually hand over prime Upper east side mansions to advisors for nominal. Because Epstein didn't pay $50 million for it. No, but that appears to be what happened. Wexner would later claim that Epstein misappropriated vast sums of money from him, and he had been deceived at the extent of Epstein's self dealing. So whatever. We don't know exactly what happened, but it very much seems like Epstein finagled. Wexner's estate to be able to take over this. This mansion and the townhouse is just one piece. With Wexner's backing and authority, Epstein gains control over an influence and other high value assets and entities, including banks, bank accounts, investment vehicles, entire charitable donations and indirect, indirectly the rep. And indirectly the reputational capital of Wexner giving to places like Ohio State University and Ohio State University. The head of the gynecological department is in the Epstein files because Epstein was giving him thousands of dollars. And there's series of emails asking who's the. Who's the gynecologist. Gynecologist you send your victim comes to. But Epstein creates, yeah, he curates this connection with Ohio State University through Les Wexner's wealth and connections that later would become the same university that he is sending thousands of dollars a year to the head of the gynecological gynecological department. And nobody, nobody knows clearly why. I mean, I think we know why. We can guess now. Yeah, but that's where that relationship started was because of this connection with Less Wax Exner. And this is where the financial story and the abuse story start to intersect. Obviously we have complaints at Dalton that he was inappropriate with teenage girls. But properties like the Manhattan townhouse and the Palm beach mansion were not just backdrops. Again, this is where we start to get victim testimony in the mid to late 90s. Victim testimony and law enforcement records. There were, they were sites of abuse spaces designed and managed in ways that facilitated the recruitment, grooming and sexual exploitation of children. There was massage rooms, private floors, controlled access. They were infrastructure built in to start to build this ring that Epstein would later curate. So when we talk about the architecture of Epstein's wealth, we're quite literally talking about not just the architecture he built with Les Wechner's fortune, but also how he built these houses and these islands to be able to like have social networking at the highest level and chronic sexual violence at the most intimate level and to be able to have plausible deniability. And this concentration of authority that Epstein created, created. The conditions for alleged financial abuses only surface much, much later. Wexner's own statement described realizing very late that Epstein had moved money in ways Wexner had not authorized, understood or had been told about, resulting in the loss of tens or hundreds of millions of dollars in losses from Wexner. And once that realization hit, the relationship of course ended. But again, it ends quietly. Lexner should have set him on fire and he doesn't.

[B]

And that's what blows My mind about it. It's like, how does this guy keep getting off scot free? It's like he's bulletproof, you know?

[A]

Well, and I think with Wexner, I think Wexner didn't. Because of his prestige and his network and his wealth. He didn't want to admit he got fooled.

[B]

Yeah. But it's like, dude, come on, burn

[A]

this guy, you know, but he doesn't like. And Epstein is forced to repay some of it. But this, at this point, Epstein has generated hundreds of millions of dollars that nobody knows where it came from. You know, ostensibly it came from Wexner's wealth, but he does end up having to pay some of it back. But they settled it. This is like elite damage control, right? This is what they do. Settle things privately, avoid the courtroom, protect the brand. And because Wexner didn't blow the whistle, just like Bear Stearns didn't blow the whistle, just like Dalton School didn't blow the whistle, Epstein has absolutely. There's no reason for people to think that Epstein is shady because there's been nothing public. And so, no. Now, after his break with Wexner, he now has control of enormous sums of wealth. He's got access to the most prominent philanthropists of the Midwest. Foundations that are in funded leadership programs, Jewish communal projects, medical centers, institutions. Epstein's network has now stretched into state and national Republican politics. Back in the 90s, university boards, major nonprofit organizations. By standing next to Wexner as advisor, trustee, guest, Epstein gained. That's not a word. Credible entry into those circles. So now this is the huge shift, and this is where Epstein starts to influence politics. And it's not that long after that he. Steve Bannon.

[B]

Yep.

[A]

Peter Attia, you know, connections with the QAnon conspiracy that would rise in the early 2000s, like, all of these go back to Epstein from his connections with Wexner. So now we see this change in three areas. Epstein begins making donations to universities, research institutes, and think tanks, particularly in science and tech. He was obsessed with eugenics and being able to curate the human genome. Institutions like Harvard accepted his money, sometimes even after his 2008 conviction. We're not going to let Harvard slide on that. And he hosted academics and intellectuals at dinners and gatherings that gave him this intellectual seriousness about him, that he was. He was a donor, but he was also really smart. He was engaged in these conversations. He was very much interested in the same type of eugenics that Elon does is like this kind of pronounced natal curate, the master race type thing. Which again, considering that Elon's grandparents were Nazis. Not great.

[B]

I was gonna say. I wonder where this comes from, Jay. This sounds vaguely familiar.

[A]

So he was known again to be close to donors like Wexner. Made him seem like a safe and valuable figure for these institutions to engage with. The second thing it did was flight logs, photographs, correspondent show Epstein hosting and spending time with high profile politicians, business leaders, cultural figures, again, at his various properties. Some relationships predated Wexner, but his credibility was very much deepened by his relationship to Wexner. And then the third thing it gave him was this symbolic association by being understood again as Les Wexner's guy is this powerful signal. He's been trusted by this billionaire, by this magnate. So Epstein is not just wealthy, but he's also trustworthy. He's clearly competent. He's part of the club. And that I think that capital that he got from this relationship with Wexner is worth more than the millions of dollars that. That he stole. Because again, it opens doors. And we all know that the elite don't have to play by the same rules that we do.

[B]

Oh, yeah, yeah. They have their own set of rules, if you want to call it that. It's, you know, rules for us, rules for them. Same with laws.

[A]

So we go from teaching at this private school from the mid to late 70s to by the late 1990s, Jeffrey Epstein's life looked like a real estate portfolio designed by a Bond villain. So you have your seven story townhouse on East 71st street in Manhattan, a waterfront mansion in Palm Beach, a sprawling ranch in New Mexico, that Zorro Ranch. So if you've been reading through the files or watching updates on those, this is the same ranch where allegedly two bodies of miners are that were buried out there by Epstein and Ghislaine. He has an apartment in Paris, and he is not one, but two private islands in the U.S. virgin Islands, Little St. James, and later Great St. James. And again, all of these properties signal wealth and status. But this is coming from someone who has not been a major broker for that long in the context of. Of working finance. And also less than 20 years ago, was a teacher at a school. So now that we have all of this wealth and status, we now have three overlapping goals with it. One is to project reputation. So he's hosting billionaires, academics, politicians, all in these spaces that people are like, whoa, this guy is like, on our level, he's great. He's amazing. He's doing all these things. Project finance, of course, having. He also had physical anchors for like his web of trust, shell entities lack structures that underpinned his fortune. So much of it was smoke and mirrors. But having this real estate was for him to leverage real estate, to open up all these other financial ventures, and also to create controlled private environments where children could be recruited, transported, exploit, and exploited with minimal outside scrutiny, especially on the islands. Because, you know, you. You can only come by invitation. People aren't just driving by, seeing something suspicious happen. So all of this serves to protect his reputation, to project wealth, and to protect his abuse, which I. I think was likely going on well before he had access to this wealth. But probably on much smaller scales. I can't imagine that he wasn't grooming people. Starting back at Dalton.

[B]

Yeah, I could totally see it, being with him for quite some time. You know, I don't think it was just because he got wealth and he started doing this. I think this is who he's always been.

[A]

Yep. And especially the US Virgin Islands added another layer of protection and tax exemption to him. By incorporating entities such as his financial trust company there and establishing a tax residency in the US Virgin Islands, Epstein took advantage of local incentive programs aimed at attracting financial services. And done properly, this arrangement can be legal, but it also creates what we call a jurisdictional haze. So there's like, it becomes a question of whose jurisdiction is this, who's investigating this? Multiple agencies share responsibility. The geography makes routine oversight really difficult. And wealthy private island owner can regulate who physically enters his space. So this really protects his trafficking ring. The remoteness of the New Mexico ranch was his protection. Protection in that instance. So let's talk about Little St. James. We're going to zoom in on this one property that, after his death, of course, came to embody his story and his network. This was purchased in the late 1990s. Little St. James was a small private island in the US Virgin Islands that Epstein transformed into a heavily controlled compound. There was a main house, guest cottages, a dock for boats, a helipad, because, of course, you have to have one of those staff quarters and a structure that would later fuel a lot of tabloid speculation. Circulation survivor accounts and court documents describe the island as a place where girls and young women were brought for massages, quotation marks, and in many cases, were coerced or pressured into sexual acts. And again, we have, like, this power dynamic that happens here with these young girls, some of whom are masseuses, some of whom are just models that get brought in and, like, this is the job you're paid to do, and then you're in this room alone with this powerful man who's now naked and forcing you to perform sexual acts. The island seclusion was the big feature, not a bug. To get there, you had to fly private or chartered, then transfer by boat or helicopter. Staff were dependent on Epstein for employment and immigration status. So he manipulated people that were working for immigration status to keep them quiet. Social norms and tourist economies was don't ask question about rich, weird people. And so everyone stay. Everyone who's in the know stays quiet. Because either he controls your economic, like your job, or he controls possibly your immigration status. Locals would later refer to it as pedophile island. But for years, that knowledge remained kind of a rumor. Like there were rumors, there was suspicion. Right. But because these kind of transfer points, people would notice who was coming in and out, but didn't have any proof, like, real proof. So this is a classic illustration of what critical criminologists call spatial unevenness in policing. There's certain spaces, wealthy enclaves, offshore zones, private compounds that are less likely to be subjected. Subjected to proactive enforcement. Law enforcement's not going to poke around in there unless they have a real specific reason to. So these become dark zones in which powerful people can operate with religious relative freedom. When survivors did eventually report the abuse that occurred on Little St. James, the physical and temporal distance made corroboration hard. Witnesses had scattered. Right. It's. It's years later. Staff had re. Had rotated. Travel records were partial jurisdictional questions about who could lead the investigation created friction. Who has a warrant? All of that fed into later prosecutorial calculations about how to charge.

[B]

And sorry, not a lot of solid evidence either. At that point.

[A]

There's not a lot of solid evidence. And it's so hard to investigate. Investigate because of where he's located. Again, evil genius.

[B]

It's just. Just sitting here, hearing you say all this, I'm just shaking my head. Sorry if I'm not contributing a lot. I'm just kind of going, you know, just shocked by how insane the whole story is. How just he just got away with everything for so long. You know, it's. It's just. Just God is so evil.

[A]

Well, and it's. It's also this thing. Not only does he have this island and all this privacy, but the people that are traveling, you know, they're politically sensitive figures, princes, ex presidents, major donors. So their movements are shrouded in secrecy as well, because that's kind of a. And. And nobody thinks of that as being suspicious because they have to do that for their security. So. But it Adds this other layer of smoke that people have to try. Try to, to see through, you know, wow. And again we see like after, you know, flight logs and photographs revealed after 2019 and even the Epstein files that released two weeks ago. Former US presidents, British royalty, tech billionaires, Harvard scientists, media personalities. Some flew on his private plane, other attended dinners or salons at his Manhattan townhouse. And I do want to say that, like, especially in Manhattan, people that attended his dinners and stuff were not aware of what was going on. Obviously some were and some were participating in this, but some were not. But his network shows just how infiltrated he was in like all of these different circles because you have people who were attending dinners and academics, and then you have people that are flying down to the island. And I don't believe for one frickin second that anyone who went to that goddamn island didn't know exactly what was going on there.

[B]

Oh, you know what you're.

[A]

That's one I don't buy.

[B]

You don't hop on a plane and go somewhere where you don't know what's going on. Yeah, Yeah. I don't believe it. You know, I didn't know what's going on, guy.

[A]

And it's like, for me, it's more like, where were you and how many times were you around him? The more times your name shows up and I don't give a who you are or how many charities you donated to, the more n. The more time you spent with him, communicating with him, especially after he was convicted in 2008, the more culpable I find you. Absolutely. I'm very much veering towards like, guilty until proven innocent in a lot of ways with like, some of these guys that are in here hundreds and thousands of times. I don't, I don't believe that you didn't know. Yeah, I don't.

[B]

Yeah. Guilty until proven innocent. Now, I mean, look, you know, look at the.

[A]

I know it's not supposed to be that way, but that's how I feel.

[B]

But I mean, like, look at all the fricking evidence against some of these people at this point. It is, you know, it's like, dude, you went to the island how many times. Times. And you say you're not friends with them, you're guilty. Now prove to me why you're not guilty.

[A]

Yeah, you know, exactly.

[B]

It's, it's like.

[A]

And that's the other thing is like, as the Epstein files came out and, and myself and a lot of other creators are talking about it, people like, well, we just need evidence. I'm like, what do you think? Flight logs and emails and photos and video? Are you dumbass. Like, are you just out here defending your favorite pedophile? Like, again, big steak. Tie them to it. Set it on fire.

[B]

Yeah, it's. What more do you need?

[A]

Yep.

[B]

What more do you need? I mean, it's the same. Like, what more do you need? You have flight logs with everybody. They were there. What's going on here, man? I feel like I'm taking crazy pills, you know? Like, I've never seen anything that was so. Just blatant in everybody's face. And everybody's just like. Like, so nonchalant. I mean, this is pure evil.

[A]

It's.

[B]

We have to, like, what? I. It's. It's just. Good God, man. I. I can't even. I can't even talk right now, people. I'm just. I'm so disgusted by all this stuff.

[A]

And it's also this. Like, he's got this shroud of secrecy from his island and from being in these elite circles, but he also. And this is the same thing. This is the same thing that a lot of elite do. And then when the sexual accusations come out or money crimes come out, people are like, oh, I can't believe they did that. And the biggest thing they do is they donate to universities, they donate to research into institutes, they donate to charities. Think takes they. They really lean into philanthropy. And Even after his 2008 conviction, institutions were accepting Epstein's money. They kept his name on their list of supporters. They rationalized that funding was separate from his personal life, which just means they were willing to take his money. They didn't care if he was a pedophile file or not. And Rob Reich calls this reputational laundering. He says philanthropy often functions as a form of reputational laundering, allowing wealthy actors to wrap themselves up in a moral glow of science, education, and culture, even when their fortunes are entangled with harm. And that's exactly what Epstein did. And in his case, his scientific and academic patronage constructed an image of a curious, cosmopolitan benefactor. And when paired with his ties to figures like Wexner and his visible relationships with powerful people, this footprint makes him look less like a potential trafficker of minors and more like some kind of weird, eccentric, kind of off, but fundamentally respectful and rich. White guy. White presenting Jewish man. So these networks absolutely protected him. And then he donates a bunch to philanthropy and charity, and it's all good, right? It's fine. It doesn't matter. He was convicted. Yeah, he did that thing. But that's separate from his donations. Drives me crazy.

[B]

Oh, oh, yeah, he can't be bad. He donates to schools and charities. Charities. Yeah.

[A]

And then like is talking to scientists back and forth in emails about how to curate babies, like genetically. So weird. It just makes me so mad. So mad.

[B]

And then the current administration we have just. They don't do anything.

[A]

Don't do anything. No arrests, no investigations. The GOP is calling for an investigation into Bad Bunnies lyrics at the halftime show, but not investigating anyone in the FC files.

[B]

Attack the brown person immediately.

[A]

We live in a clown car.

[B]

I, I, I, I don't want to insult clowns. I mean, that's, you know, also one thing that really bugs me is like these people that get called like, oh, the elite. Can we stop calling them the elite? They're freaks. Yeah, they're, they're just rich. They're just rich freaks is what they are. Them.

[A]

This is not the same as like, like a Nobel Prize winning scientist who has dedicated their life in a lab to cure a disease and the only reason you know their name is because they got nominated. You know what I mean? Like, these are not elite in that way. That's actually a really good point.

[B]

Yeah, yeah, yeah. It, it, it, it bugs the out of me. Sorry if I'm yelling here. I have these headphones on and I'm not used to it, but it's, it's. I'm so sick of all this stuff. I mean, this has to be. Not trying to jump ahead. It's just. This has to be just one of the greatest conspiracies ever with how ever, just how much is entangled in this thing. And I mean, what's her face said? Oh, if, if it gets revealed, like the whole system's going to come down. I think it needs to come down to the ground. Don't defend these people. Anyway, I'm jumping way ahead. Sorry, I'm, I'm fired up. I woke up now.

[A]

It's like, woo. This is going to be one of those moments in history where like, you know, like the, the, I'm sorry, I'm having such a hard time remembering names today, but the, the double agent in MI6 that was really famous during the Cold War. But like, this is that level of scandal of like deeply entrenched conspiracy. This is going to be one of the stories from our moment in history that goes down in history books that people will study and, and just be like, how was this allowed to happen?

[B]

And also, you know, it isn't finished yet. Yet. But People in the future are going to look back and go, why didn't they do anything?

[A]

Especially in the U.S. especially the U.S. that's supposed to be this beacon of morality, you know, not doing jack, which

[B]

the beacon of morality seems to just go away with every passing. I would say year, but let's just say month. You know, it's, it's really strange, you know, being 34 and kind of seeing what the countries become and maybe just realize what it's always been, but it just seems like I don't recognize it anymore, man. I, I, I, I can't relate. It's very, it's. I never thought I'd say that, you know, but it's, We've never been perfect, but, man, this is, this is a new low, you know? Yeah, it's just to defend these people. Just, I don't want any part of that, you know?

[A]

And I, and I truly, I truly believe that this is who the US has always been and we've always protected. Like, because you and I, we've done multiple episodes where, like, this type of person gets protected every time, every time. And I think at this point, with the, the advent of the technology we have, things are just getting exposed finally. But this is who America has always been. And that's what I, when I, when I'm meeting with people in Minneapolis about. You know, what we're seeing right now with, with ICE and federal law enforcement, I'm like, this is the exact same thing that happened in the civil rights movement. People didn't have a camera in their pocket to pull it out and record.

[B]

Yeah, it was killing people back then.

[A]

They were storming cities, they were beating people of color, they were gerrymandering, they were trying to steal votes the way they were doing, doing now. It was all happening back then. We just didn't have a way to get the news out fast enough. And so I think, I think we're seeing America for what it's always been. But I think the hope of that is that it doesn't mean that the America we were taught existed can't exist, but it means that we have to build it, that we have to tear down this structure and we get to build something new that, like, actually stands for the values that America claims that it has. So anyways, let's go back to Epstein. So things.

[B]

I digress. Sorry about that.

[A]

He's pretty, he's pretty untouchable on Little St. James. But things start to heat up in Florida. So in Palm beach, the pattern starts to emerge from the Palm Beach Police department starting in 2006, with a probable cause affidavit that is chillingly consistent with what would come out later about Epstein. So in Palm beach, teenage girls, some as young as 14, 13, were recruited by slightly older girls and young women, including Ghislaine Maxwell, which. It's insane to me that women participated in this. Like, it just makes me so angry that as a woman, you would participate in this. But they were recruited by women because that makes. Right, that makes young girls feel safe. It's another woman, like, oh, she's fine with it. That's great, you know, because you're not gonna go with a strange old dude that walks up to you. You're not gonna do that.

[B]

No.

[A]

But they would find them at malls, schools, neighborhood hangouts, and, again, modeling connections. A lot of times, they offered a few hundred dollars to give Epstein a massage at his mansion. Then the girls would be taken to the upstairs room where Epstein, usually in a towel, would escalate from conversation to sexualized conduct and slowly request more and more intimate acts over time in exchange for higher payments. Some girls went once and never returned. Others, especially those under severe financial pressure, right? They need money for their family or for whatever, were drawn into a string of encounters. Encounters. Epstein encouraged those who had participated to recruit their friends, paying them a fee for each new girl they brought to his home. In effect, he created a pyramid of exploitation, delegating recruitment and normalizing this arrangement as just a kind of weird side hustle in a wealthy town where economic inequality was. Inequality was stark. And that's again, exploiting young girls who are one, not only like, super, super young, but are financially disadvantaged. It's the same thing that Matt Gates did when Matt Gates. Gates was, you know, again. And he hasn't faced charges either, even though we know that he was trafficking a minor. She was homeless, and he told her that he would pay her pay to get her teeth fixed.

[B]

You know who it reminds me of, too, with the whole, like, accomplice thing and getting them to bring other people in is Candyman down in Texas. That right when you said that, I'm like, man, it sounds just like coral, you know, My God, bringing in those

[A]

teen boys to help him. And so this is where, again, the web starts to build. 2006, when things heat up. And obviously, so much more would come out later in 2019 and beyond. But survivor accounts from New York, New Mexico, and the US Virgin Islands all echo the same exact framework. Recruitment was framed as work grooming that blurred lines between transactional sex and Survival strategies and abuse carried out in controlled environments where Epstein and his associates set the terms. From the standpoint of sexual violence research, several elements stand out. They targeted structurally vulnerable, vulnerable youth, girls from working class or unstable backgrounds, those needing money for basic survival, and those who were already stigmatized. They used money both as an inducement and coercion, especially in communities where a few hundred dollars is a big deal. They also delegated recruitment to peers, which reduces direct exposure to them. Right. It gives them plausible deniability for the principal offender and makes victims feel complicit, further silencing them. Right. If I go down, you're going to go down. Crucially, Epstein's operation was not a one off crime of opportunity. It was organized pattern behavior sustained over years in across jurisdictions. They were trafficking minors in and out of state and should have, that should have been legally and morally like, able to crush instantly, but it wasn't, it wasn't enough. It, this network was so expansive and no one ever, like, no one that was part of the organization ever really came out and said, wow, anything. Until much later the victims started reporting it. So prior to 2005, it's not that his behavior went entirely unnoticed. It didn't. Neighbors in Palm beach saw a constant flow of young girls to and from his home. Home staff members and local residents were kind of unsettled by what they observed, but they either felt like they couldn't say anything or were told not to ask questions. In some media circles, Epstein had a reputation as a man who liked young women. Again, this is the, the culture of the time, often framed with a kind of wink. You know, give him a wink is like, oh, he's just this rich, eccentric guy who likes really, really young girls or young women. Young women. Right. That's what they call them. They're minors, but they're young women.

[B]

No matter what, they're women.

[A]

Right, Exactly.

[B]

They're never girls.

[A]

Right. That gives them responsibility. Right. If they're a woman, then, well, you're culpable. You participated in this. You don't hear like anytime like a young man is raped, you don't. You never hear the phrase underage man.

[B]

12 year old man. 12 year old woman. Yeah, sick.

[A]

So again, that disconnect between what people see and how seriously they take it as a core theme of how he was able to get away with this for so long. Organizations and communities often treat early reports as, oh, it's just gossip. It's a misunderstanding. It's not my business. Especially when the accused, again, is the high status person. And the accusers are who? Young, poor, devalued teenagers.

[B]

And they look at them as nobodies.

[A]

Nobody's. And that's exact. Like literally my next sentence in my notes was part of that comes down to misogyny and class bias. Teenage girls, especially those who are considered fast or troubled or from the wrong side of town, are often viewed as less innocent, less believable, less deserving of protection than the carefully curated daughters of again, the elites, like, look at how pure and pristine and wonderful they are, not these poor girls, girls who are fast and trashy or whatever. When those girls also accept money, however coerced, they are easily relabeled as prostitutes instead of victims. And in Epstein's case, this narrative moves. Moves from abused minors to child prostitutes, which would become tragically central to the legal framing of his acts in 2008. And that is the other thing is like calling there is no such thing as a child prostitute. Yeah, it is an abused or a trafficked mic minor, like, let's be so for real. But again, it's, it's to offload culpability on the men committing the crimes. Like anything but take responsibility. Because men can't do. They can't control themselves. It's got to be her fault.

[B]

It's never the man's fault. It's always the woman. And again, there's no girls. It's always women. Guys, you know, it's.

[A]

Men are supposed to be the leaders, but they can't lead themselves. And they certainly can't be helpful, accountable for bad behavior. It's got to be the women's fault.

[B]

Dude, most men being leaders, that, I mean, that's, that's a joke in and of itself. Half of them can't remember to zip up their pants. But you're gonna lead a country or get the out of here.

[A]

I'm preparing this debate on feminism and like the, the premise of the debate, like, there's three people on Proposition 3, people on opposition. I'm on opposition because the, the phrase is this house believes that western feminism has found failed men. And I'm like, dude, like, oh, there's so much here. There's so much here. Like, what are you talking about? It's crazy.

[B]

Jesus Christ.

[A]

So the turning point of all of this comes when a 14 year old girl told her parents that Epstein had sexually assaulted her at his Palm beach mansion. And finally, not only did parents know about it, but her parents went to the police. And unlike many stories that die at the doorstep of the police department, this time The Palm Beach Police Department decided to look into it. Over months, detectives conducted surveillance, interviewed dozens of potential victims and witnesses, compiled a detailed probable cause affidavit that recommended multiple felony charges, including unlawful sexual activity with minors and lewd and lacious conduct. They identified a recruitment network. They documented his payment patterns. They corroborated victims accounts with phone records and other evidence. The case they built did not describe an isolated incident. They were describing a serial offender. They were getting into his network. Network. But when that fire went to the Palm Beach County State Attorney, Attorney's office, friction began. The state attorney at the time, Barry Krisher, appeared reluctant to file the full slate of recommended charges and initially explored lesser state offenses. Epstein's high powered defense team, featuring some of the country's most prominent criminal lawyers, launched an aggressive campaign challenging the evidence and quietly, behind closed doors, lobbying for a non trial resolution. Frustrated, frustrated, frustrated by what they saw as soft pedaling, the Palm beach police did something, something rare. They referred the case to the Epstein. They referred the Epstein case to the FBI themselves. They argued that Epstein's conduct might constitute federal sex trafficking and child exploitation crimes, which it did. The FBI opened an investigation called Operation Leap Year and began building a federal case. This set the stage for major prosecution. And so literally, the state attorney is trying to let Epstein off. And it's actually the police department that says, no, no, no, no, no, no, you're not going to do that. This is too expansive. And it was the police department that took it to the, the FBI.

[B]

So I have a, I have a quick question before, before we move on. And maybe this is like, yeah, no, duh. This girl that had gone to her parents and told them about what happened and, and the police followed up with that. I, I, it sounded like maybe they had gotten people coming to them before, like talking about, like there had been,

[A]

I believe there had been tips already, like tips that weren't deemed credible.

[B]

Gotcha. Okay. That, that's of what I thought.

[A]

Yeah. Yeah. So this was, and there obviously had been rumor, but there wasn't anything substantial. This was the first time that the police, like had something really substantial. Wow. To go off of. And so for the 2008 Florida prosecution, let's go to the like over the evidence versus the charges. So by late 2007, federal investigators had assembled a huge body of evidence. There was more than 30 potential victims identified consistent patterns in their testimony, which is like a signal. Every time I do that, this thing zooms. I'm using a new webcam and it has gesture control. And I Accidentally do the symbol to zoom in, and then it comes right into my face. So you can see every single pore I have. But the FBI has. Okay, so there's more than 30 potential victims. Identified consistent patterns in their testimony. So these victims don't know each other. They've never met each other. They're all telling the same story, which is an indicator of it being true. Right. They're. They don't know each other to, like, come together and be like, we're going to collaborate against this guy. Corroborating witnesses among staff and associates. So now staff who are in the rooms are speaking out. Associates are speaking out. They also pulled up financial records and phone logs supporting the recruitment and payment network that he was using in this trafficking. Wow. So this should have been enough for a federal indictment under sex trafficking and child exploitation statutes. Instead, federal prosecutors in the Southern District of Florida, led by U.S. attorney Alexander. Okay, Acosta chose a radically different path. And we'll get more on Acosta as we go through this. They negotiated a deal under which Epstein would plead guilty only to state charges to two charges. Solicitation of prostitution and procurement of a minor for prostitution. Notice the language. There's no sexual assault of a minor. There's no trafficking. It's prostitution, Always prostitution. Again, a term that implicitly shifts the blame and contamination onto the victim, not Epstein. Like, again, there is no such thing as a child prostitute.

[B]

You're.

[A]

You're raping her or him. Like, no such thing. So this semantic downgrade, again, was not neutral. And I really want to know who Epstein had in that office. It reframed Epstein's actions from a systematic predation on vulnerable minors to something more like, oh, he just made a couple bad decisions. And this framing made it easier, psychologically and politically, for prosecutors and judges to accept a light sentence. So the centerpiece of the 2008 resolution was not the state plea. It was the federal non prosecution agreement, or npa, that accompanied it. They were also able to get him, basically get the feds to stand down. Under this NPA, the U.S. attorney's office agreed that it would not bring federal charges against Epstein for the conduct described in the investigation. Again, remember, they've already confirmed at least 30 victims. It further stipulated that under this episode, NPA extended to any potential co conspirators in Epstein's network of trafficking language so broad, it effectively granted immunity to a range of accomplices without naming them.

[B]

Jesus.

[A]

The NPA also included restitution provisions for certain victims, but these were negotiated and implemented that in A manner that kept the victims in the dark. Most were not informed about the existence or terms of the NPA until long after had been signed. The victims were not not told that this non prosecutorial agreement had been signed with the feds. In 2019, a federal judge ruled that this secrecy violated the Crimes Victims Rights act which guarantees victims a right to confer with prosecutors. Which it did. So the NPA is shocking. 1 the breath of immunity for unnamed co conspirators. Like he's just saying. And they're just saying anyone who worked with you is not going to be charged. They're not naming them, they're not identifying them, they're not looking into what they might have done. They also the decision to, to resolve this large scale multi victim network in a with a plea of two state charges that were framed as prostitution and the deliberate withholding of information from victims which violated the victims rights statutes. And the deal was made completely over the heads of victims. The Office of Professional Responsibility later reviewed and concluded that Acosta and his team exercised poor judgment. Understatement. But stopped short of finding intentional misconduct or corruption. I so disagree with that finding. Yeah, it's poor judgment. This is absolute misconduct and, and corruption. These girls are 14. Like the average age that I've seen in the Epstein files is 13 and 14.

[B]

Not girls though. Women. Remember there's no, no such thing as a girl.

[A]

And there are some that are a little older. You see some mentions of 16 year olds but there are also some that are much younger. In the Epstein files he's talking about trafficking a nine year old Brazilian that he calls very sexy. They're talking about 8 year olds. They talk about babies. There's a picture in the Epstein files of a tall toddler that's redact. Like the part of the toddler is redacted but part of the toddler is nude. Like, like this was. It is insane to me that they were able to get this npa which, which to me is a failure of the state government, the attorney's office, the FBI. Because how dare you give anyone a sweetheart deal like this when you're not talking about some, some dude that like engaged in illegal prostitution with an adult person. You're talking about someone who has over 30, 30 minors like identified over 30 victims. You have witnesses, you have patterns and they just, they just let it, let it go. And they used prostitution to offload the sentence. Right. Because the, and that's to be fair to people who associated with Epstein after that if you're hearing oh he got he got slapped with pro with prostitution charges. If that's what you hear, you're going to be like, oh, he went and hired, you know, some adult prostitute or whatever and go got busted. Like, assault of a minor is a very different connotation. And I'm not giving anybody a pass who associated with him because he was still convicted of these crimes. But that language has impact. That language is really important. So let's talk about what they did about jail time under the sweetheart deal. So on paper, Epstein was sentenced in 2008 to 18 months in Palm Beach County Jail with sex offender registration and probation to follow. In practice, he served roughly 13 months and spent much of that time on a work release program that was custom tailored for him. The sheriff's office allowed Epstein to leave jail for 12 hours a day, six days a week to work at his private office. Reports indicate that he spent these hours largely unsupervised, with his staff and visitors coming and going. Work releases usually limited and often off limits to sex offenders entirely, especially those whose crimes involve minors. But in Epstein's case, exceptions were made and policies were bent. Compare this to, like a typical outcome. People with far less serious or less extensive sex crimes routinely receive multi year prison sentences. And they should. Intense post release supervision, strict limitations on contacts with minors and movements banned from schools and such. Work release, when it's allowed, is tightly monitored and often unavailable to those convicted in offenses against children. Epstein's experience fits the pattern described in research as what's called affluent justice. When a defendant has money, status, and powerful advocates, the system finds a way through facility choices, program eligibility, and discretionary rules to make the punishment less punishing. Like, he had to sleep at jail, that's it for 13 months.

[B]

Oh, my God, 13 months. Here's the thing too, like, listening to that. I'm like, did they ask him what would fit his schedule best? What works best for you, Jeff? You know, look, ladies and gentlemen, gentlemen. Justice in America for the wealthy, right?

[A]

Ex. And we're seeing it right now with all the people that are in the files, like h. So again. But Even, even in 2008, there was a level of public outrage which it should have generated. The Palm beach police chief criticized. The plea is far too lenient. Correct. Victims, once they actually were told what had been done without their knowledge, felt betrayed and sidelined. Who wouldn't? Their attorneys filed a federal suit under the crime Victims Rights act arguing that prosecutors had violated their rights by cutting a secret deal, which they did. Jud Kenneth Mara eventually agreed, finding that the U.S. attorney's office had broken the law by failing to inform victims about the npa. But the real turning point in public awareness came a decade later with Julie K. Brown and God bless Julie K. Brown, who in the Miami Herald series Perversion of justice, laid out in painstaking detail the scope of Epstein's abuse and inner workings of the plea negotiation that was released much, much later in 2018. That reporting reframed the 2008 case as not just this local scandal, but a national symbol of how the criminal leg system bends around the wealthy, well connected men accused of harming vulnerable girls. And in response to mounting pressure, finally, and keep in mind this because this is relevant, this is Trump's first term. In response to mounting pressure, only after that article goes viral and releases what really happened, the Department of Justice Office of Professional Responsibility launched a review which again found poor judgment, but said there was no intentional misconduct. Alexander Acosta, who was by then serving as, as us. So Alexander Acosta, who gave Epstein this sweetheart deal, Trump's first term, he's nominated for the U.S. secretary of labor. So when the Department of Justice finally reviews this after this article is released, these series of articles released in 2018, Alexander Acosta is the Secretary of Labor of the entire country. He had to resign under public pressure after the reports released and renewed scrutiny of his role in the deal. So the guy who orchestrated this deal was our US Secretary of Labor under Trump's first turn. And then legally, the NPA was never undone politically and morally. However, it of course becomes this exhibit about how the criminal justice system doesn't really, doesn't really hold justice for those people.

[B]

No, never.

[A]

So essentially like all of this goes down and so after 2008, they know the network exists. Like the police department knows, the victims know, the U.S. attorney's office knows, the FBI knows. But the FBI, FBI, the attorney's office allow for this NPA to be signed with no regard to the victims. Doesn't tell the victims it's happening, does it? Behind closed doors. And then the very attorney who created, who curated this sweetheart leave the jail for 12 hours. And also was part of making sure that none of his co, none of Epstein's co conspirators would get in trouble. Becomes nominated as the US Secretary of, of labor under Donald Trump. And unfortunately in our, in the most recent release of the Epstein files, and we're going to get into this more in the second episode, so many people in our cabinet leading our agencies are all in the files and they're not in the files because someone was mentioning an article about them or a book they wrote. They're in the files because they're visiting, they're meeting with Jeffrey Epstein, they're talking to him. It's themselves like sending emails back and forth. And in many cases their names were redacted when the files was released, but the victims names weren't reduced, redacted. And there were nude photos of victims released, but these co conspirators were protected. And that's what makes to me Pam Bondi's hearing last week that much more enraging. Because she, she's carrying on Acosta's legacy.

[B]

Yep, big time.

[A]

Remember Pam Bondi became AG of Florida.

[B]

Oh, that's right.

[A]

She was the same, same jurisdiction. She's carrying this on after this happened. She was, I believe her tenure started in 2000 2011. Let me double check that. Let's see.

[B]

Unbelievable.

[A]

Yeah, so she was a member of the Republican Party. She served as the 37th Attorney General from 2011 to 2019. So she like fills the seat. She knows about this case. She knew about it when she was AG of Florida. She knew about it when the article first came out. And she is actively, as the Attorney General of the United States, continuing to protect it the way that Acosta have protected it in Florida. And Epstein's 2008 deal shows what happened. When discretion operates inside a system that is warped by class, gender and racial inequalities, fixing the system means not just punishing bad apples after the fact, but punishing them in the beginning. Because this is a series of things where Epstein was never held accountable for anything he did. Any of his lies, any of the grooming he did to those teenage girls at Dalton, or lying about his credentials or stealing from Wexner because Wexner didn't to want be embarrassed. And he gets away with this. And then the law, the legal system comes in. Because he's this rich affluent guy, right? And we didn't have social media really at the time, like 2008. Social media was picking up, but it wasn't the same as it is now?

[B]

No, no, not at all.

[A]

There wasn't a way to get this information out. And so they got away with it. This is how backdoor deals have been working for the wealthy forever. And it's just now that we have the resources and we have enough independent journalists and creators who are actually airing this stuff out and this is like so incredible. We're talking about a multi state child trafficking ring and you got to spend 12 hours a day in jail for 13 months. Are you fucking joking?

[B]

And then it's just unbelievable. I'm just shaking my head. I'm. Again, sorry if I'm not contributing a lot. I'm just taking all this information and just. And just shaking my head with just pure disgust. It just goes to show you, I mean, this system has failed, people.

[A]

Yeah, it really has.

[B]

The system has failed.

[A]

And. And this. This, to me, like, as someone who. I mean, I've been a woman my whole life, like, And. But so many times, like, there have been times I've also been sexually assaulted. I was assaulted by a boyfriend and all these things. And the first thing people say to you, they ask one of. They do one of two things. One of two things. What were you wearing? As if you're. As if men don't traffic children or rape toddlers. And then the second thing they say is, well, did you go to the police? Look what happened when these women went to the police.

[B]

Goddamn thing.

[A]

Not a damn thing. Yeah, not a goddamn thing. It pisses me off so much. But this is such a testament to. This is how, you know. And. And I know that there's a lot of talk online right now about, you know, feminism's gone too far in Missandry. Understand that Missandry is the very logical response to hundreds of years of mistreatment and misogyny. Missandry is the response to systems like this that demonize a child for what a grown man. Man does and acting like it's her fault and asking a victim of sexual assault that if their clothes were the reason it happened to them. Like, it. I'm sorry. I'm so wound up. I, like, went to that Pam Bondi hearing, and now I'm, like, all kinds of angry about it. But this is. This is how we got Epstein. Yeah.

[B]

No, I mean. And you should be angry about it, though. People should be angry. I don't see people being angry.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

Like, I. I like. And again, I guess maybe a lot of people don't know what they can do in this situation. Right. Because it's. You know, a lot of people are just trying to work and keep a roof above their heads and raise their family or whatever. I understand that, but I mean, this is just. To me, this has been such a game changer. This is bringing. This needs to bring everything down, like I was saying earlier.

[A]

And everyone who was involved, everybody and every single person who knew about it and didn't say anything, they need to catch a couple charges, too, for obstruction, at the very least.

[B]

You didn't say anything. You're guilty. You know, what were you hiding? I personally, you know, let's. Let's bring back impalement, right?

[A]

Like, bring back impalement. People are listening to this and be like, oh, they're so violent. Like, this stuff, it just like, I'm not violent.

[B]

I'm. I'm just responding as. In a logical way.

[A]

Yeah. And I think it's like, listen here, eye for an eye. Like, let's go, buddy. Let's go. Let's, let's, let's. Let's make the punishment fit the crime. And, and what I will say to people, especially people, because I get a lot of messages about the ABE files where people like, I am so overwhelmed. I don't know what to do. What we do is we don't let this slide. In our circles, if there's a teacher that is consistently getting these reports of being inappropriate with students, call them out. Make the school face it. Make it scandal. Who cares? Don't like. Because how many times we've seen this with, like, high school teachers or the football coach or, you know, the pastor or the youth pastor, like, whatever institutions you go to, when allegations come up, investigate them. Don't let it slide. Don't allow, oh, it's not our business to happen. Don't allow, oh, well, you know, that's just, you know, we don't trust this little kid. This. I don't care if that kid is misbehaved. If a child brings sexual allegations up, listen to the kid until you look into it thoroughly. Like, the reason that Epstein was able to build this was because he was allowed to get away with for so long.

[B]

Gotta hold people accountable. That's the whole.

[A]

From the beginning. And hold them, because this makes me think of. What's his name? Jesse. Jesse Mac Butler. Jesse Butler Mack. I can't remember what order it goes in, but he was the guy in Oklahoma, the kid, he's. I guess he's 18 now, who raped two girls as a teenager. And he gets, he gets absolutely. He's. No, he's not going to serve any jail time. I don't. And this, we see this most often in high school student athletes where they get away with it because they're the. The captain of the football team or whatever. Hold everyone accountable. Any sexual predator. I don't care if they're the star athlete. I don't care if they're the favorite principal. I don't care if they're a famous pastor or a politician. We have to hold these men accountable in our system 100% of the time. And I say, man, I do understand that women do commit crimes.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

Against minors. But it is so rare most of the time.

[B]

It's mental.

[A]

So rare. 93% of global sexual crimes are committed by men. So we have to put the blame where it sits. Don't blame the victims, don't blame women, don't blame their parents, blame the men. And if we start holding them accountable from a young age. So like, the first. Think about the first time, like, let's say a student athlete gets really handsy with a girl. If he gets in trouble for that the very first time, he's going to be less likely to do it. But if you let him push it a little further and you let him push it, let him push it. It. Let it push it. And he goes to the NBA or the NFL. That's when we hear about these professional athletes beating women, raping women and getting away with it. Because they've been getting away with it since they were in high school.

[B]

Yeah, it's the frog in the pot. Like I've said here before, you know. Oh, just. They do it once. That was. They won't do that again. Yeah, what a, What a crock of shit. Of course they're going to do it again. Also, also the people that you listed there, you know, principals, politicians, religious people, I mean, those are the ones that are going to do it. You know, it's never like just, oh, the normal guy.

[A]

You know, there's so much evidence.

[B]

It kind of makes me wonder, kind of going back to my high school years, if any of those people have gotten in trouble, you know, because I went to a Catholic high school and I didn't get molested, which is amazing. You know, I'm just throwing that out there. I went to a Catholic high school and didn't get touched by, by, by a priest.

[A]

Yeah, man. Too. Like, even within the Catholic Church, like, there are so many amazing, amazing Catholic people, Catholic ministers. But because of the church's system of secrecy, it. You build a system that's. That makes abuse possible. They, like, we have to disrupt these systems and we have to have transparency in all of these institutions. And quite frankly, especially with just how much rampant sexual abuse there is in these institutions, churches should not be tax exempt.

[B]

Oh, taxes, tax those. Yeah, tax them.

[A]

Get a look at their financial records, see what they're doing. Because even. Sorry, go ahead.

[B]

No, I was just, I was just going to say going back to Catholicism for two seconds, I kind of have, I've just given up on them. I think they just. It needs to go away. People that, you know, when they need

[A]

to let their priests marry.

[B]

Yeah. Or, you know, when their priests molest a kid and then they sweep it under the rug and then just shoot, you know, ship them off somewhere else.

[A]

Yep.

[B]

If that's.

[A]

They've been doing it for centuries.

[B]

If that's your organization, your organization needs to cease to exist. Exist on planet Earth.

[A]

I agree.

[B]

And, you know. Oh, don't forget. Who else did they help? Oh, oh, yeah. The Nazis. Get out of here.

[A]

Yep. And the same with. I mean, the Evangelical church, in many ways is not better. It's just not as the. The networks in the Evangelical church seem to be a little bit smaller because they're not. They're not this big hierarchy like the Catholic Churches. But, I mean, we live in Nashville. And the Southern Baptist Convention had to sell their headquarters in Nashville to cover the cost of sex abuse cases. And it was found that they had a list of 700 men who were working in their facilities that had very credible allegations of sexual abuse across ages. And they still kept them hired. They just. They did the same thing the Catholic Church does where they just move them to a different church in the organization and pretended that none of it happened.

[B]

They'll get better. What the Right.

[A]

They'll stop.

[B]

And here's my thing.

[A]

They frame it in the church. It's like it was just spiritual warfare. She tempted him. I was like. She was 15. She didn't do jack shit.

[B]

Spiritual warfare. Oh, my God. And let me go back and preface something here. Like, I. Sorry if my hatred for the Catholic Church might have been a little intense there. I know. Like, if you're a Catholic, I'm not going to come for you or anything like that. You know, it's like, I understand there's good people, but you have to. You have to look at your organization and go, yeah, man, maybe this. Maybe this isn't right, you know? Well, nothing wrong with Christ. Not. Not saying that, but it's just I.

[A]

The Catholics, if you participate in a system that, you know is doing that and you're not pushing to hold them accountable.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

Yeah, that's. That's what it is. So, like, if you. If you as someone who are, like, a good person and you are, like, so overwhelmed, like I have been about what's going on with the Epstein files, that's what we do. One, we keep demanding that they do investigations here in the U.S. but two, we hold the systems in our country community accountable. And I will also say, keep that creepy uncle out of your house.

[B]

Absolutely.

[A]

Everybody. Everybody's got one, right. That same. And he gets invited to Thanksgiving and everyone tells the teenage girls, well, make sure you're wearing long pants. Don't talk to him too long. Don't be in a room alone with him. Why is he in your house? Why is he in your house?

[B]

Yeah, that, that. That's a good point.

[A]

That never made circles accountable. Hold your circles accountable. That's what we do in the face of something like the Epstein files.

[B]

Yeah, that's. That's a really good point. Like, yeah, the creepy. The creepy uncle shouldn't be a thing. Creepy uncle's not coming over to my place.

[A]

I mean, he should be ex family.

[B]

I mean, I don't have any family. I was born in a test tube. But anyway, that's. That's a topic for another day. But just kidding. But like, yeah, like, yeah, that's. That really just broke my brain with the simplicity of it all. But I'm just like, yeah, there shouldn't be that. But anyway, sorry, I'm just rambling.

[A]

No, it's totally fine. Totally fine. So listen, this is like, we are almost at two hours. This is exactly why we had to do this in two parts, because it is so expansive. And next episode, we're going to go from 2008, after the sweetheart deal all the way until his death and even what's going on now, because obviously Epstein's story is not over yet. I want to say a special thank you to again, Patreon supporters who are helping us fund the show.

[B]

Thank you, guys.

[A]

If you sign up over there, you can be a hellion. And we're going to release episodes there early. They will always be ad free because we are now running ads. And also we're going to start doing some shout outs for Patreon supporters and we're going to start doing some live streams on Patreon itself. And for anyone who has ever been a victim of any kind of sexual assault, it was not your fault.

[B]

Nope.

[A]

It was not your fault. It is 100% the responsibility of the person who committed that against you. And I want to say that I'm sorry that we don't live in a system that protects victims better. But I'm hoping that as we go through this and you hear Andy and I get riled up and about to go off on some hillbilly justice, that you know that it was not never your fault. It was never, never, never, never, never, ever, ever for any reason your fault. We have to do another. We have to do another episode of these. I'm so angry, man. I need to listen, y'. All. That's it. I know. I'm actually going to go get one. That's it for us today, y'. All. This is episode one of the Epstein Files and Epstein's network. We are going to cover episode two next week where we will cover 2008 to now 2026. Thank you so much for being part of our community. Thank you for being a hellion. My name is Monty Mater. I'm Andy Jones and this is highway to Hell.

[B]

Thanks, guys.