Transcript
Tara Palmeri (0:02)
Welcome to the Tara Palm Mary Show. Thanks to all of you who have been with me since I launched this show back in March, and to all of you who have just come along and joined this community. I'm back from vacation. Thank you to all of you who gave me those few days off. I just celebrated my birthday and I came home to a tree that is very much dead. This fiddle leaf behind me, and I think it's a symbol of my life, sadly, the symbol of a globe trotting journalist who can't deal with a plant baby right now. If you have any advice on how to save this fiddle leaf, please let me know. It has sadly been dying for a long time. But you can leave your comments and tell me what I can do. If there is anything left. Perhaps I just need to replace it with a fake tree. But, yeah, I'm heading to D.C. tomorrow at a very ungodly hour. About like four in the morning. I'm gonna wake up to get on a train so that I can cover the presser for all of the Epstein victims. They will be there and they will be telling their stories of survival. And they'll also be pressuring Capitol Hill members to vote to release the Epstein files. That's what they want. And yet the speaker of the House, Mike Johnson, said, no, no, no, I'm protecting these ladies by not releasing the files. And they're saying, no, no, no, actually release the files. If they're Jane does, then just redact their names. If they're not, you can put it out there. You know, when Mike Johnson says protect the victims, is he talking about these women who came all the way down to D.C. to say release the files, or is he talking about the men who they are accusing of being sex traffickers, men that they have been trafficked to, powerful men, friends of Jeffrey Epstein. Are they the same men that President Trump wants to protect? That's the real question. Right. Well, I am going down there not just to cover this event and this rally. I am also there to reunite with some of the brave, brave women that I have worked with over the years, like Marika Chartuni. She's a survivor of Jeffrey Epstein. We traveled all over the country together with Virginia Giuffre, who sadly won't be there, but her family will be there for her. It'll be a moment for us to reunite and to see Annie Farmer and so many other women that I am incredibly proud to know and who have helped me report this story out so that you can know more, who have taken really, really brave positions. You know, I just bought this book that Marika has been reading and told me to read. It's called Credible why We Doubt Accusers and Protect Abusers by Deborah Turkheimer. I think I might try to have her on the show, by the way. And I think it's interesting because it really is the overarching theme for all of this, right? Who are we trying to protect in this case? Are we trying to protect the accusers or. Or protect the abusers? And this book really goes into this whole idea of credibility bias and how the people who accuse really have to go above and beyond to prove their credibility, and that there's always a bias towards the powerful in these cases. Really, it's a. It's really a reckoning of the MeToo movement and what we've actually. What we've actually gained from that, if anything, I mean, what does it really take to be believed? And I think that's what we're starting to see with this Epstein story. But, you know, it's incredible what Congressman Thomas Massie was able to do with Democratic Congressman Ro Khanna. Massie is a Republican who has been on the wrong side of Trump, and he is not afraid to pick a fight. And this was one of the fights he chose to pick. It's one that has dogged Trump for months. And he is basically saying, release the files. Speaker Johnson did not want his Republican members to have to vote to release the Epstein files, forcing the members of Congress, Republican members, to decide whether whether they will vote for transparency, to release the Epstein files, to vote along with what the survivors of Jeffrey Epstein want, or whether they will vote along with President Trump, who wants this story to go away, who says that he does not want this release because he's protecting the innocent, but never really clarifying who the innocent really are. Now, I heard from a source inside of the room. Speaker Johnson met with some of the survivors, Jeffrey Epstein, and their attorney, Sigrid McCauley. She's a powerhouse attorney. She's a partner of David Boies, who really took them on, took Epstein on, and represented so many of the victims. And she said she warned them, if you get these files from the Department of Justice, if they're released and the names are unredacted, it's going to show you the names of very powerful men that my clients have been trafficked to. And what are you going to do about it? Are you going to build a real case? And, you know, these members promise justice for these victims who have for so long been overlooked and disregarded by the justice system. We'll see if they are actually able to do that. In the meantime, the DOJ Department of Justice is dribbling out just really, you know, small dribbles of information. 1% is the latest of the gigabytes. The 300 gigabytes that they're holding on to. 1 gigabyte came out okay, and here's the problem. How much of it is actually redacted? How much of it is new? House Oversight Chairman James Comer, who received them, told NBC that there is nothing new in these files. Now, there are some flight logs from the Customs and Border patrol between the U.S. virgin Islands and. And Jeffrey Epstein's little St. James island, where so much of this depravity happened. And if those flight logs, which I haven't been able to look over yet, show the names of victims and the men that they've accused of sexually assaulting them or molesting them on the same flights, I mean, that could certainly help if you wanted to build a trial. Right? If these prosecutors actually wanted to build a trial, they could do that, and they could use that as evidence. I mean, certainly that was used in the cases against Epstein and Glenn Maxwell. Well, it would have been used in a case against Jeffrey Epstein if they actually brought it to trial. But in Maxwell's case, I mean, they used Jane does to prosecute her. You can use Jane Dodes to build a case, and this is the kind of evidence you need. You need the flight logs, you need the pilots, the chauffeurs, the chefs, the people, the witnesses around. This is just more of that, if you choose to use it and to actually build a case. So, you know, this has been, you know, very underwhelming, obviously, that only 1% of the files have been released. But if the Congress votes to release them, maybe all of them have to be released. We'll see what happens. But, you know, I'm really proud to see so many of these survivors out there. They're sharing their truth. They're pushing, you know, our leaders, and they are, you know, doing what they believe. And they are. They're coming from all over the country. I mean, Marika is coming all the way from the west coast, from Washington State, and, you know, they're doing this because they really believe in it. And I don't think we can dismiss them. And I hope that they'll be heard on those Capitol Hill steps, that the government will finally take them seriously. I break down all of this and more on Aaron Burnett's show on Tuesday night. Take a Listen here.