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- [00:01]
Mrs. Claus's Younger Sister
Guys, thanks for helping me carry my Christmas tree.
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Elf Drew Ski
Zoe, this thing weighs a ton. Drew Ski, lift with your legs, man.
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Interviewer
Santa.
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David Enrich
Santa, did you get my letter?
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Elf Drew Ski
He's talking to you britches. I'm not.
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Mrs. Claus's Younger Sister
Of course he did.
- [00:12]
Elf Drew Ski
Right, Santa, you know my elf, Drew Ski here. He handles the nice list. And elf, I'm six' three. What everyone wants is iPhone 17 and at T Mobile, you can get it on them. That center stage front camera is amazing for group selfies, right, Mrs. Claus?
- [00:26]
Mrs. Claus's Younger Sister
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Elf Drew Ski
It as a gift.
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Mrs. Claus's Younger Sister
And the best part, you can make the switch to T Mobile from your phone in just 15 minutes.
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Elf Drew Ski
Nice. My side of the tree is slipping.
- [00:39]
David Enrich
Kimber, the holidays are better.
- [00:41]
T-Mobile Announcer
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- [00:45]
David Enrich
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- [00:47]
T-Mobile Announcer
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- [01:06]
Interviewer
As the Epstein files take center stage again, we have David Enrich from the New York Times who wrote a fabulous article regarding Jeffrey Epstein's finances with three other authors from the New York Times that was titled Scams Schemes, Ruthless Cons, the Untold Story of How Jeffrey Epstein Got Rich. I was fascinated from the minute of the title. So just give us an overview. How did Jeffrey Epstein get so rich? Because we know he didn't come from money.
- [01:37]
David Enrich
Yeah, that's right. He came from very modest kind of working class background in Coney Island, Brooklyn. And really and his career started off in this very traditional kind of American, rags to riches way. He's a teacher at a prestigious high school in Manhattan. Some of the parents notice and are impressed by his math skills and they introduce him to Ace Greenberg, who is a top executive at the Wall street firm Bear Stearns. Greenberg is immediately impressed with him and offers him a job. And you know, this should be. And it is his lucky break. However, Epstein, in what becomes this lifelong pattern, is not satisfied to merely be rich and well connected. He needs to take things quite a bit further than that. And so from virtually the moment he arrives at Bear Stearn, he starts to lie Cheat and deceive, and then to use the connections he's built with people like Ace Greenberg to bail him out of trouble. And this is a pattern, again, that extends for the next several decades and just on a larger and larger scale over time. And so the bottom line answer that we found as to how Epstein, at least initially makes his money is that he was a liar and a thief and a con man and stole a lot of this money from people who probably should have known better, but were blinded by greed. And this very thick Rolodex of connections that Epstein toted around with him wherever he went.
- [03:08]
Interviewer
What I found interesting is a reoccurring theme even in his young life, was charming young women. And then they took him into their social circle and he kept. It didn't matter, you know, that if he was dating someone, if there was somebody he can get with, that would get him a higher stratosphere. So it sound. It looked like, from reading the article, that he was using women. Maybe not underage women at that time, but women were a pawn in his life from jump.
- [03:37]
David Enrich
Yeah, that's absolutely right. And, yeah, I think in the early years, it wasn't really until the early 1990s, I think, that he started preying on very young women and in some cases, girls. And initially, he was. Seemed to have a lot of charm and attracted a lot of very successful, wealthy, beautiful women. And as you said, he would use those women as kind of a crowbar to get into these ever more elite circles. And he did it with great success. And, you know, we talked to a bunch of these women for our reporting for this article. And again, this is in the late 70s and through the 1980s. This is before he becomes or develops a clear track record of raping girls and things like that. But in those days, and this is one of the things I found really surprising as we did this reporting, is that one woman after another said that they found him to be really charming and appealing and a gentleman and sexy. And that was not like, on my bingo card as I started this reporting. And these are not. These are sophisticated, smart women. They're not fools who are just swept away by a con man. They're people who, I think really were genuinely charmed by him and helped him kind of climb rung by rung this ladder up the New York and kind of global social stratosphere.
- [05:03]
Interviewer
Okay, so I've always had. So Les Wexner, he is the Victoria's Secret founder, and he's like the first one documented that Epstein made a killing on I've always thought it was love on Wexner's part. I've always thought he was in love with Jeffrey Epstein. That was my own personal theory. You didn't help me in that regard at all on this article. But he seems to have been the one that he started with. Everybody else is screwing you. I alone can fix it. And that was a pattern. How would you characterize that relationship?
- [05:37]
David Enrich
Well, you know, it's a bit of a mystery still, to be honest with you. I mean, I think the way you described it is spot on. And there this is Wexner as someone who is super successful in his industry, but is not someone who's super sophisticated about money and finance. We talked to his financial advisor, whom Epstein ultimately replaced, and Epstein did this thing, and again, he just said this. I'm repeating this back at you. But he convinced Wexner that he was kind of the victim of this theft from his current financial advisor and persuaded Wexner that he, Jeffrey Epstein, was the one person who could fix this and help protect him from the betrayal of his close allies and, in some cases, his family members. You know, the question of what exactly Wexner knew about what Epstein was doing and what was what Wexner found so appealing about Epstein remains a bit of a mystery, to be honest with you. And we saw later in Epstein's life, and he got very close to the private equity billionaire Leon Black, who paid him in the same range of money that Epstein got from Wexner. And with Black, our reporting has shown that Epstein actually was providing some pretty valuable tax and financial advisory services, as well as interacting with some of the young women whom Leon Black had been allegedly engaged in misconduct with. We're not seeing any of those shades with Wexner, which does not mean it's not happening. But really, the Wexner, what Wexner thought about this remains a really deep mystery. And we've tried, very hard, as have other journalists, to get Wexner or his people to talk to us openly about what was actually going on. And we have been rebuffed every time we've done that. And so I think it is pretty safe to assume that there is more to that story that Wexner's camp really does not want to get out there.
- [07:35]
Interviewer
You know, it's interesting. Wexner is a very old man, and I'm waiting for the documentary on this after his death. I hope I live long enough to see it. Okay, so somebody else that I found very interesting in the way you phrase the article you talk about how he becomes in a relationship with Alan Dershowitz. They become friends, they become pal around guys. And then it alludes to, after they were friends for a while, then Alan Dershowitz writes a letter to. Or, I'm sorry, an opinion piece for the Los Angeles Times about the age of consent. And I just thought that was interesting how you integrated that in the story. What can you tell us about that relationship?
- [08:18]
David Enrich
Well, Epstein's relationship with Dershowitz starts when one of their mutual friends, a woman named Lynn Forester, and introduces the two of them on Martha's Vineyard in 1996. And Epstein tells Dershowitz, and they go on this walk around a pond near Dershowitz's home. And Epstein tells Dershowitz that he wants Dershowitz to come out to Ohio to celebrate Les Wexner's birthday. And so Dershowitz goes out there, and, yeah, that's the beginning of a long and very fruitful relationship for both men. And Dershowitz becomes Epstein's one of his primary lawyers who helps engineer the Sweetheart deal firm in 2007. And really, up till the present, or at least up until Epstein's death, Dershowitz was one of the few people who was publicly speaking up on Epstein's behalf. And so one of the things that we found interesting was that just several months or maybe six months after Epstein and Dershowitz met, Dershowitz wrote this opinion piece in the LA Times calling for the lowering of the age of consent, I believe, to 15 years old. And that is. Now, look, there's Dershowitz, I think, would say that that's something. That's a view he had previously held. He had told students about it, things like that. I think he would deny that this was because he had just met Jeffrey Epstein or that Epstein had put him up to it or something like that. But it is quite a coincidence, I think, that, you know, just months after meeting someone who at that time was preying on teenage girls and young women, that his new friend and his soon to be legal counsel would decide that that is the moment that they want to commit to writing an argument for lowering the age of consent. Now, again, that it could very well be a coincidence, but it would be an interesting coincidence, I think.
- [10:12]
Interviewer
Well, and I've heard those same claims attributed to Jeffrey Epstein about how when he was in foreign countries, the age of consent was lower. So it was an arbitrary regulation put on by the government. So I, too, thought that was interesting. Okay. Then he.
- [10:27]
David Enrich
Let me just kind of just say for clarity, though, I mean, With Epstein, it's like, you know, yeah, I've heard him make that argument as well. But Epstein, even if the age of consent was lowered, and maybe reasonable people can disagree about that, I'm not sure. I don't. Haven't thought this through very hard, but there's like, what Epstein was doing was not having consensual sex. Young women who happened to be just under underage. He was raping and. And trafficking women and trafficking these girls. And so even if the age of consent were a couple years lower, that would not excuse, legally or morally, what Epstein was doing.
- [11:04]
Interviewer
Now, did you find. Okay, so there was somebody that shared office space with them, that was a partner that then started working with Brad Edwards, who represented a bunch of the Epstein victims. I found that to be somewhat interesting. What was.
- [11:17]
David Enrich
Yeah, that was another of the things that we were really surprised when we heard. So Brad Edwards is probably the single most famous lawyer representing Epstein's victims. He's got hundreds of them or has had hundreds of them as his clients, and he's been one of the loudest voices calling for justice for a lot of these victims. So. And this guy named Stan Pottender, who died a couple years ago, was his longtime partner on those cases. And what we found is that in the early 80s, after Epstein had left Bear Stearns under this kind of. With this cloud of suspicion that Epstein and Pottender had briefly gone into business with one another. And, you know, there's the whole. We've been covering this Epstein saga for, like, God, more than six years now. And we've grown accustomed to seeing these kind of overlapping concentric circles of relationships and coincidences that seem too good to be coincidences. This is one of those that really caught us by surprise. The notion that of all the people in the world you would be going into business is a guy who's not only a sexual predator, but whom you and your future law partner are going to kind of make your names pursuing is. I mean, it's very strange, to say the least. And I do think that there have been some of Edwards and Pottinger's clients over the years who have grown. I think that they have had qualms at times about how they are being legally represented and whether they are being pushed into settlements that end up muzzling them and preventing them from speaking publicly and basically allowed some of this activity to go on longer than it might have had these allegations been public early on. And Edwards would vehemently disagree with that characterization. And I don't really know where the Truth lies. But again, it is a very bizarre coincidence that Edwards, longtime legal partner, was in business with Epstein. And it's also strange to me that that has not previously been disclosed by anyone.
- [13:16]
Interviewer
Yeah, it took me by surprise. One thing that also came out is, you know, the Palm beach connections. And so we have dawn jr's now current fiance. Her father was a big buddy with Epstein, wrote him letters. Tell us about that.
- [13:33]
David Enrich
Yeah, I mean, again, same thing. I'll say the same thing again. We've grown accustomed to coincidences in these weird, concentric overlapping circles, but this is another one where we were just like, oh, my God, are you kidding me? So back in the late 1990s, when Epstein was. And his business had been based in New York basically his whole career. And he decided in the late 1990s that he wanted to relocate to the US Virgin Islands because of. I mean, I think in part because there were some very generous tax breaks down there. Also, I think the regulatory and legal infrastructure there was a lot more lax, shall we say, than it might have been on the mainland. And so as part of the application to be able to relocate his business and be eligible for these tax breaks, Epstein needed to appear at a hearing and also need to submit kind of evidence that showing that he was someone of good character. And so what we found was that the evidence of him, of his good character, which. And at this point, by the way, he was deep into the sex trafficking operation, was fairly well known in his circle for being someone who preyed upon girls and young women. And so the person he turned to, to vouch for his character was the head of this bank in Palm Beach, Florida, whom Epstein had this long relationship with. And the guy wrote a letter, Leroy Anderson's his name, wrote a letter to the US Virgin Islands calling Epstein a gentleman of the highest integrity. And really several paragraphs writing about what a good guy this was and how we had no qualms about working with him. And it turns out, first of all, that the man who wrote that letter is the father of the woman who just recently got engaged to Donald Trump Jr. The other interesting thing we found was that the bank that he was running at the time was one of the banks that Epstein and his assistants were using to write checks and to pay off some of his victims. That bank, which is no longer in existence. And Anderson, he died years ago, but they were playing a role in not only kind of enhancing Epstein's credibility and vouching for his character, but also in financing, at least in a small way, his sex trafficking Operations. And here we now have them, you know, through this engagement to Donald Trump Jr. Kind of part of the Trump family.
- [15:57]
Interviewer
Yeah. And I noticed that, like, he was at Trump parties. Well, you know, early. Early on. So this whole notion that they didn't know each other. What I found interesting, though, was he was ruthless. Epstein. He was a con man. He alone could fix everything, and everybody's screwing you, but then in reality, he's the one that screwed all these people. Right. I just. It was like bo. And there's all these connections, so I'm just like, huh, that's interesting.
- [16:26]
David Enrich
Yeah, it's. I mean, to me, one of the things this really speaks to, aside from the fact that Epstein was a very effective con man and manipulator, is that there are a whole lot of people and institutions out there that were just very easily conned and manipulated. And to me, that boils down in large part to just greed. I think a lot of these people and companies were so eager to take advantage of Epstein and his money and his connections that they kind of suspended disbelief a little bit and just either managed to look the other way and not think about what Epstein was doing and how he'd been so successful at what he's doing. And that's the most generous explanation, by the way. And the less generous explanation is that they knew exactly what he was doing and either didn't care or thought they could somehow benefit from it. But there's. In the most generous explanation, it's still not great, because it shows that people were so eager to impress Epstein and work with him and kind of take advantage of his network of connections that they turned a blind eye to the great con that this man was pulling off. And in some cases, they then fell victim to that same con. And so that's a mark of someone who is just an expert, expert fraudster and manipulator. And it's interesting to see Epstein in that light, as opposed to the light that I think many people have portrayed him as. As this very sophisticated financier who is a math genius, is cooking up all these super complicated tax strategies. What we found. And again, there may be more to this story. I'm not completely convinced that we have the exact comprehensive picture of him yet, but. But to me, that's a much simpler and easier to kind of grasp explanation for how Epstein got so rich and so deeply kind of embedded in American society is that he was just a really good con man.
- [18:11]
Interviewer
Yeah. And as we would all agree, America is very susceptible to con men's. But Loved your article. Thank you for coming on. It's in the New York Times now. Scams, Schemes, Ruthless Cons the Untold Story of How Jeffrey Epstein Got Rich. Thank you so much, David.
- [18:29]
David Enrich
Thanks for having me.
- [18:40]
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