← The Epstein Chronicles
The Epstein Chronicles
The Sarah Kellen Congressional Transcript (Part 3) (6/12/26)
00:13:40
Sarah Kellen told Congress that she was not a willing architect of Jeffrey Epstein’s operation but one of his victims, claiming Epstein groomed, abused, isolated, and controlled her for years. She described herself as trapped inside his world through...
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A
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And welcome to another episode of the Epstein Chronicles. In this episode, we're going to get right back to the Sarah Kellen transcript from her meeting with Congress. Questioned by Ms. Brignac after he picked you up at the dock, where did he take you? Answer. We just went up to like the main part of the house and I remember like Lane being there and the assistant that I was potentially going to replace. We were only there for a few days. I remember being it was very luxurious. I remember that I shared a room with redacted and in the morning she was like, you can ask for whatever you want. For breakfast, she's like, I'm going to have a big bowl of berries. And I was like, wow, like a whole bowl of berries. Like those are really expensive. It felt very luxurious, like nothing I had ever encountered before. Question so you understood the couple could be wealthy? Answer yeah. Question what did you understand their positions to be? How did you believe that they acquired their wealth? Answer I know at one point I learned what he did, but I understood that he managed billionaires money. Like they told me he wouldn't take on a client unless he was worth $1 billion. Ghisan would tell me, you know, you should really listen to what he says and, you know, do what he says because he's clearly very successful and influential and he can help you. Question who told you that he wouldn't take a client unless they were worth over a billion? Answer Probably Ghislaine. Maybe him. It was just my general understanding, so I'm sure it would have been one of those two. Question. You mentioned that you believed that you were replacing Ghislaine. Who told you that? Answer Not Ghislaine, her assistant. Question okay, I apologize. When did you first. Did you meet? Redacted on the island trip? Question why did you believe you were replacing her? Answer that. That's what I was told. She wanted to go to LA to pursue acting, so she was preparing to leave. Who would have told you that she was leaving for acting? I don't know if it was redacted or redacted herself. We'll go into more specifics on this, but can you briefly describe the nature of your relationship with Jeffrey Epstein? He was terrifying. He was completely dominating of everything in my life. I had an apartment to live in in New York, so I had to live where he told me to live. He dictated what I wore. If I wore something that he didn't approve of, he would look at me and say, it's disgusting. Where did you get this? Throw it away. So every time I would buy anything new, I would have to immediately go to him and get approval. He just decimated any source of autonomy that I had, which was very little at the time, considering my upbringing. He dictated my haircut, my hair color. He would go to the salon with me and tell me what color to make it, what cut to make it. He gave me a boy cut with bangs, blond hair, brown hair, and every length, every cut. He was extremely, extremely demanding and he had no sense of reality and what it took to get things done. He would get so angry if things weren't done immediately or the next day. And he would keep you in such a state of terror that most menial things weren't done. It was the smallest things became important to him. Like just a silly example. We were in Beijing one time and he would go through periods of obsession of different types of foods. He would eat one thing for months at a time. And he was on an Oreo kick and I forgot to pack Oreos for the trip to China. And he was so angry that he had to have Oreos FedEx from New York to China. And it was like those things in the moment were so important, so terrifying, and they were always on high alert of making sure you didn't forget anything. And he was constantly giving you more and more things and he would ask that you didn't exist in the world. Like, go source this, go find this. So you were constantly trying to find something that didn't exist. And if you couldn't find it, then you'd have to try to find how to have it made. So it was just being completely inundated with tasks and responsibilities and then traveling. I traveled with them every two to three days. So I always, you know, had to pack a bag if we weren't staying at one of the houses. And he would want his own bedding to be brought if he was staying at a hotel. So I would have to pack all the bedding and then we would go to the hotel, change his bedding into, change the sheets out of the hotel bedding into his sheets. Various projects. He eventually had me become his interior designer, Ben. Because he was so difficult to work with, nobody wanted to work with him anymore. So then I was in charge of going out and getting fabric samples and sourcing furniture and paint colors on top of all my other responsibilities while I was being sexually abused on a regular basis. Question. Thank you. Over how many years did your relationship take place? Answer. I met him. Well, technically, I started working for him in 2020end of 2001 and started segueing out in 2012 when I became engaged to my ex husband. Second ex husband question Is that when your relationship ended, when you segued out? Answer that's when I stopped working for him. We would keep in contact occasionally, just kind of appease him and not get it on his bad side. Question how often would you communicate with Mr. Epstein? Answer at what time period? Question over the time period that you work with them? Answer Almost daily. Depends on where we were in New York. I answered to Ghislaine. I mostly worked out of her house when we were there. So she would give me all my tasks in the morning if we were traveling. I would see Jeffrey every day because I was staying at their homes or, you know, in a hotel with them. Question what was the manner of your communications? What method did you communicate with them through? Was it in person over email? How did most frequently communicate with him and in which method? Answer Mostly in person, sometimes over the phone. In the first few years he didn't really use email. He didn't have a cell phone. So he would call me mostly when he needed something or wanted something or to give me something if I was in New York or if it was at his home, he would in person give me a list of things to do. Question Was the communication always direct to you or did he ever use intermediaries? Answer Sometimes through assistance in his Madison Avenue office in New York. Leslie Groff, other assistants that may have been at that office. There was Helen Kim, a few others. Cecilia Steen I believe her name was. So sometimes he would give them tasks for me to do. Question Any other intermediaries beside the assistants? Answer Ghislaine. Question did you sign a non disclosure agreement upon being hired as Epstein's assistant? Answer yes. Question what were the details of the agreement? Answer I don't remember exactly. I don't have a copy. But I remember there being some sort of financial I would have to pay money if I broke it. I forgot how much, but there was a clause in there. Question did the NDA reference any activity that you know was criminal in nature? I don't remember what it said exactly. I just remember that there being consequences monetarily. Did the NDA reference any massages or masseuses? No. Question. Tell me about your first interaction with Glenn Maxwell. It was on the island that first trip. I remember her kind of showing me some things around the island. Like she had these treasure chests she would fill with pottery and things that she would find on the island from when it was like an old sugar mill. I remember that's where she told me that you should really listen to what Jeffrey has to say. You should listen to him because he clearly knows what he's doing and he could help you. I don't remember much else that particular trip when I came, when she called me like a month after the initial week, she called me and was like, can you come to Palm beach today? And I was like, I have to work tonight. I'm like, don't you have to buy a flight like two weeks in advance? That's kind of what I was always told. So she's like, how about tomorrow? So I was like, okay, well, I can ask for time off. And I flew out the next day to Palm beach and she put me to work right away, like she had gotten back from a trip to Paris. And she had me, like, help her unpack her bags and showed me how to make Jeffrey's coffee and, and his breakfast and where to buy newspapers in the morning. I was helping with laundry, kind of just anything that kind of needed to be done to serve him. Basically. Mentioned in your opening statement that you were on call 24 7. Uh huh. Was that the case when you first started? Answer. The entire time of my employment, I remember being at dinners with like, one of my boyfriends at the time and him calling and I had to leave in the middle of dinner. Like I had to. Anytime he called or summoned me, I had to jump and leave right away. Glain would do the same thing. She would call. She did it all the time to all the staff members. She would call and just ask for unreasonable requests like 10 o' clock at night, can you come make Jeffrey this, you know, this snack or this meal? Or they would just, they would do it to everybody. It was just completely overwhelming and just. There were no boundaries. How would you characterize your relationship with Ms. Maxwell? I thought she was the most selfish person I had ever encountered. She was mean and belittling. She would literally call me her slave, her minion, piglet, polyp on a donkey's ass. Like, she would belittle you as much as she could to make herself more superior. She would do things like, you know, just to make sure you knew that she was in charge. She would, you know, ask me to make her a cup of coffee. And I would make her coffee and then she would not even take a sip and let it sit there for like an hour and be like, can you make me another cup? And I felt like she would just felt like she was on purpose, created chaos so that I couldn't finish my tasks, that she would then have to sweep in and save the day and make it seem like it was needed or useful. Ms. Brainiac. And we have another member who's just joined us. Can you state your name for the record? Ms. Ansari? Yes. Yasmin Ansari from Arizona's third district. Ms. Brignac, question. Did your relationship with Ms. Maxwell change over the years? Answer. The first several years I worked out of her house in New York, and then she started kind of slowly distancing herself from Jeffrey around the time he got arrested, probably around 2005 time frame. She was still around, you know, in charge of all the houses and the staff and, you know, in charge of his life, basically approving all the bills. She just didn't travel with him as much at that time. She started dating Ted. Wait, so she was traveling with him a lot? How is Mr. Epstein as a boss? Terrifying. He was like Jekyll and Hyde. He could be the most charming, like, playful. What I considered generous at the time. Now I know it was more about control. You didn't want to get on his bad side. He could turn around at the drop of a hat, and you would see the fire in his eyes. It was horrifying. I would witness him bring even Ghislaine to tears, who I thought was like the strongest, coldest woman I had met. And you just didn't want his rage turned on you. It was impossible to ask questions. He would get mad at you and be like. He would tell you something to do, and you would try to ask for clarification. And he would just be like, don't ask questions. Just do exactly what I say. Like, there's always a reason for everything I tell you to do. Like, you couldn't waver from that at all. Question in professional settings, would he cross the line as a boss? Answer. He sexually abused me on a weekly basis. He would come into my room at the house, wake me up, molest me. He would literally just grab me by the hand, but pull me to his bedroom. In New York, I even had my own. I had my own apartment that he let me stay in. But he would call me at night and he had a code word, and that would call me and just say, cold sheets. And that meant I had to go to his house and sleep with him. And he referred to me as his human hot water bottle. Question did he ever yell at you? Answer yes. Question did he yell at other staff? Answer yes. Was he inappropriate towards other staff? Answer in what way? Question. In the manner you've described so far, would he direct that towards other staff members as well? Answer I don't know. I didn't witness any. Well, he would definitely yell and belittle and get mad at them if they didn't do something to exact specifications. Question Would he apologize afterwards? Answer Never. He never apologized to me once for anything. Question. He was acting inappropriately. Were there witnesses? Ms. Hamm jumps in. Can you clarify? Do you mean when he was yelling at staff? Or maybe just a little bit of clarification on inappropriate, however you interpret the question. When he would turn his rage on you or would act inappropriately. Were there witnesses? Ham, why don't you say how you're interpreting the question? Inappropriate, Kellan. I mean, either the house staff or other assistants would have witnessed that. Did you ever spend time with Mr. Epstein, apart from your duties as his assistant? I had a few times of contact with him when I stopped working for him. He would ask to see me sometimes in New York. And I would see him at the townhouse in New York, and I believe one time in Miami. Alright, folks, that's gonna do it for this one. All the information that goes with this episode can be found in the description box.