← The Tara Palmeri Show
Loading summary
Transcript66 lines
- [00:01]
A
This episode is brought to you by LifeLock. Between two factor authentication, strong passwords, and a VPN, you try to be in control of how your info is protected. But many other places also have it, and they might not be as careful. That's why LifeLock monitors hundreds of millions of data points a second for threats. If your identity is stolen, they'll fix it, guaranteed, or your money back. Save up to 40% your first year. Visit lifelock.com podcast for 40% off terms apply.
- [00:30]
B
Steve Schmidt here at the Morning, Thrilled to be joined by my friend Tara Palmeri at the Red Letter wearing her clothes for August hat. Close, but not quite.
- [00:41]
C
No. We never stop, do we?
- [00:43]
B
Never stopping. Never stopped. And your reporting has been pretty extraordinary lately about the Jeffrey Epstein case. And you're somebody who, I don't know if people know this about you, but you have a really interesting range of journalism credentials and experiences. You worked for the New York Post. You ran the political. The Politico Brussels bureau.
- [01:20]
C
And I didn't run it, but I was a part of it. You ran. What do you want to take away.
- [01:25]
B
From those you raised? Like, Brussels Playbook, right? You were one.
- [01:29]
C
Yeah, I wrote a column called the Playbook in their publication. Yeah.
- [01:35]
B
And so you, you covered that. You've been at ABC News, you've been at the, you've been at the White House, you were at Puck. And one of the interesting things that I really didn't know about you until I got to know you is that when you left ABC News, you wound up doing a couple podcasts, and you spent a lot of time with a lot of these girls who were Jeffrey Epstein victims. You knew Virginia Go Free. You drove around the country with her, you knocked on doors with her, trying to get to the bottom of, of this story. And more than any other person who writes about this, you've helped me really understand at the core what this is about or crystallized it for me. And what it's about is this extraordinary abuse of power against. Against innocence. Right. Against. Against kids. Some of the most famous names, some of the most powerful people in the country are implicated in this. And you've been on it and you have been all over it as this has swirled for, like, the last month and a half. And you've done an extraordinary amount of reporting. And any person who asked me about, like, what's going on with the Epstein files, I always say a place you have to start now, I think is at the Red letter.
- [03:18]
C
Thank you.
- [03:18]
B
Capitalize in this moment. So you have some extraordinary reporting, including About Epstein's connections to CIA.
- [03:29]
C
Yeah.
- [03:29]
B
Including this interview that you do with Michael Cohen.
- [03:36]
C
Yeah.
- [03:36]
B
This interview that you do with Michael Cohen is pretty extraordinary. It's really dramatic because you're asking him a question and I'm assessing his reaction through a psychological prism of this guy who's under pressure. And you're asking him a question about an Epstein victim and specifically about a girl named Katie Johnson who filed a suit. And I'm going to turn it over to you now, but I want to go inside this Michael Cohen interview and just start out by asking you to give some context to it. What are we watching there in that. In that? Because, because I think there's a pretty big piece of news that comes out of this interview. And news is a four letter word with three of them being the word new.
- [04:44]
C
Yeah.
- [04:45]
B
Right. So. So new information that really moves this story closer to Trump. Not in the realm of conspiracy, but in the world of fact. So, so what, what, what. What were you trying to do in the interview and what's that interview about with Cohen?
- [05:05]
C
Yeah, so. So, Steve, I think what I was seeing a lot of, you know, on tv, on cnn, on msnbc, I saw Cohen coming in and out talking about Trump. In fact, he actually reached out to me and he said, do you want to do like he. I think we connected about doing a live. But he sent me his. His latest from MSNBC and about where how he was saying that he didn't believe that Trump had ever been to Epstein's Island. And honestly, I don't think that Trump went to Epstein's Island. We don't have a record of it on a flight log. And he's just the type of guy who stays on his own properties. Like that's his own. That's his thing. You even watch him flying all over the world to try to stay in his own places. But it doesn't mean they weren't very close. At the height of his sex trafficking operation, they were very good friends in Palm Beach, Upper east side. They swam in the same circles. Um, but there was. It. It sort of dawned on me as I had heard Cohen say, like, I just know that he hadn't been there. And then, you know why? Because of the way he said it four or five times. And it was like there was no question about why he said he knew that, that Epstein had. That Donald Trump had been on Epstein Island. He was just like, I just know. And just didn't like really explain to the audience at all why. And then I was looking at other appearances he had made on tv talking about this. And the other one was he threw cold water on the Wall Street Journal about the card, this kind of lewd card that Trump had given to Epstein for his 50th birthday in the shape of a naked woman's body. And it suggested that they both knew about a sexual, like, secret between the two of them. And so he said, you know, I don't believe that Trump does that. He doesn't doodle. Turns out his doodles have been sold at Sotheby's. You know, he very much poured cold water on this. And I think, like, then the light sort of went on for me and I thought to myself, wait a minute. There were cases of people connected to Jeffrey Epstein, specifically this Katie Johnson, Jane Doe, who came forward before the election and she dropped her case just days before citing intimidation. And who was the fixer at the time, like, who would have dealt with that? Who would actually know about these cases, about these complaints? And I thought, oh yeah, it's Michael Cohen. So obvious that he would be a great source on this. I mean, at the same time he was dealing with Stormy Daniels, Karen McDougal, David Pecker, you know, National Enquirer, like, this was the person that Trump would go to when something like this came up. And Katie Johnson is a Jane Doe name. That's not her real name, but she just kept coming up in all of my comments and my feeds, and everyone's like, tara, Katie Johnson. Katie Johnson, because she's the most prominent complainant to come out against Donald Trump, accusing him of raping her in Epstein's apartment when she was young. Like a 13 or 14 year old model. I think it was 13 year olds. Yeah, 13 year old model. So it's obviously like a very shocking allegation that was dropped days before the election due to intimidation. And it was filed three times, first time in California and the second two times in New York. So it was very clear that the first question to ask him was about this case and, and just his involvement. And he very. I didn't even ask him directly about the case. I just asked like, do you know anything about President Trump's relationship with Jeffrey Epstein? Because you worked for him for a very long time, over a decade. And he was very defensive and he's like, I don't know anything about Epstein. Nothing, nothing. I know nothing about Epstein. Never met him ever this or that. I never talked to Trump about Epstein, nothing. Like, he literally said, I never talked to Trump about Epstein. Which seemed very shocking to me that he had Never talked Donald Trump about Epstein because I knew that a lawyer for one of the victims reached out to Trump's lawyer, saying, I want to subpoena him in our case against Epstein because Trump and Epstein were enemies. And Trump actually helped this lawyer, by the way, gave him tips and told him what to do. They hated each other over a real estate deal, not over the girls, by the way, just to be clear, they were both fighting over waterfront property in Palm beach called the House of Friends, which is kind of ironic. And because of the bidding war, Epstein drove up the price for Trump and he was pissed, and they, their friendship broke up over that. Again, this is the person who was intercepting all this stuff. Like, Cohen would have been the fixer. So I just asked him, and I asked him specifically about Katie Johnson, and he said, no, no, no, I know nothing about it. But then he finally said, I know about this one girl infant. He called her, and it sounded very much like the Katie Johnson case, and that he had sent a private investigator to find her, and that what they found when they went to the address that was listed on the complaint was a parking lot in the Bronx or. And I just thought to myself, like, well, of course Stink Doe, Jane Doe is going to put their own address. They might as well just put their name on it. Like, you're a Jane Doe because you want anonymity. You don't want to be harassed by private investigators. I remember one of the victims for Jeffrey Epstein, of Jeffrey Epstein, Courtney Wild. She told me that when she sued Epstein, his private investigators nearly ran her off the road. They're often using cases like this to dig up dirt on these girls. So, and to, and to intimidate them.
- [10:21]
B
So, like, I just, I, I just want to, like, slow this down. So in this moment, when I'm, when I'm watching this and he is aggressive, he's defensive, he's talking, he's saying, I saw somebody say this on the notes underneath that I have nothing to lie about. I have no reason to defend Trump, and so on and so forth. And then, right, this, this interview kind of makes a turn, and he, he says, he asserts, oh, yeah, I sent out a private investigator and the allegations were heinous, and it was a 13 year old. And he's the guy in that moment who admits, yeah, that's, that's, that's me, right? I'm the guy who sends out the private investigator when someone makes this allegation against Trump. Right. So is that. So, like, so he makes that admission, and then he says, And I thought this was very odd and I was wondering if you've checked it out beyond, beyond this. But he says, he calls the lawyer, the lawyer says that, well, my client's not real and I'm sorry. And they withdraw the case and that's the end of it. And I just asked because this morning, as John Bolton is facing FBI agents in his driveway, right. Full weight of the, the government coming down. It doesn't seem really to be in Trump's character, right. To be the forgiving type if he faces a false accusation, a very serious accusation to shake him down. And the accusation. Right. If you're going to make a false accusation about someone. Right. The false accusation of you raped a 13 year old is, is way, way up there. Right. If someone made a false accusation. Right. Against me on that subject, it would be forever war. Right. And it wouldn't be let's forgive and forget. And I just think it's inconsistent with Trump's personality. But did it, but did I understand Cohen correctly? Is that, what, is that what he said happened?
- [13:10]
C
Yeah, he said that they, that he had never met his client before and that he was.
- [13:15]
B
Sorry, who filed the suit.
- [13:18]
C
What was that?
- [13:19]
B
I'm sorry, the lawyer who filed the suit. Right. Cohen had never met this person.
- [13:24]
C
Yeah.
- [13:24]
B
Excuse me. That, that lawyer had never met his client. And they, and they said that to Cohen that, that's, yeah.
- [13:32]
C
And, and Cohen said that this case would have been on the docket too. And so the only case that is on the docket from that period of time before the election is the Katie Johnson one. There's no other one. So I don't know. I don't. And then that one was withdrawn, by the way. So I don't know what this other case is or if he's actually, in fact speaking about the Katie Johnson case because it sounded to me like that's what he was talking about. But it all just doesn't, it doesn't, it doesn't make sense. And I asked him like, well, why didn't you retaliate? Like you could file an anti. Like you should have. It just seems like that's the kind of thing you would retaliate against if someone made an accusation like that. Right. Or of course, yeah, yeah. And he said, oh. And he sort of brushed that off, which I thought was, was, was interesting. And then, you know, there's, there's been some follow up, there's been some other reporting too about David Pecker being involved in this, from Ronan Farrow's reporting for the New Yorker that Cohen may have worked with him on other Epstein allegations for Catch and Kills. I don't, I didn't do this reporting myself, but it's worth looking into. It's hard to believe that he worked for Trump for those years and didn't intercept Epstein issues. I mean, he said he started the interview by saying, I know nothing about Epstein. I never talked to Trump about Epstein. And then he admits that he and Trump had an actual conversation about this Jane Doe. And what Jane. And what Trump says is, it's bullshit. And he says, I'll handle it. And then Trump said. And I said, well, did you ask him any details? Because like, if I was a lawyer working on a case and that was my client, I want to know as much detail as possible so I can defend it. That right, like, tell me everything is what I would say. And he was just like, no, Trump says, I'll handle it. And I believed him when he said it was bullshit. And I just did it. And. And it's like, okay, it seems odd to me.
- [15:32]
B
You then write another story about this, which is about the connections between Epstein the driver and CIA.
- [15:45]
C
Yes. Yeah. The chauffeur. Yeah. Not the chauffeur, the bodyguard. Yeah.
- [15:49]
B
So at some level, right, this reads like a novel. I know, right. But what is the gist of that, of that story that you just reported?
- [16:03]
A
Hey, it's Ryan Reynolds here for Mint Mobile. Now I was looking for fun ways to tell you that Mint's offer of unlimited Premium Wireless for $15 a month is back. So I thought it would be fun if we made $15 bills, but it turns out that's very illegal. So there goes my big idea for the commercial. Give it a try@mintmobile.com Switch upfront payment.
- [16:25]
C
Of 45 for 3 month plan equivalent to 15 per month required new customer offer for first 3 months only. Speed slow after 35 gigabytes of networks busy. Taxes and fees extra. See mintmobile.com okay, so that story is based on an interview that I had with a lawyer for one of the victims, Brad Edwards. Um, he led the Crime Victims Rights act, which was the attempt to try to overturn the sweetheart deal. And so he had a lot of interaction with Jeffrey Epstein as he tried to overturn the 2008 Sweetheart Deal, making the argument that the victims weren't actually told that there was a non prosecution agreement and therefore they violated their crime victims rights. And this is an invalid. This is invalid. It should be overturned and the case should be opened again and re prosecuted. And so Epstein wanted Wanted Brad gone. The last thing he wanted was his 2008 sweetheart deal overturned and re prosecuted. And so Brad really became a threat to him. And Brad, in his process of trying to put together a case, thought that the chauffeur, five years during the height of the sex trafficking operation, around the years, I think from 2003. Ish, 2002 to.
- [17:38]
D
He's a.
- [17:39]
C
He was an MMA fighter named Igor Zinoviev. Okay. From Russia. And sorry, Mmf. I'm not a big wrestling person, but he, he's from Russia. Big guy, looks like a bouncer. His name's Igor Zinoviev. And he warned Brad, you don't know who you're messing with. You're on Jeffrey's radar. It's really bad. And, and, and Brad's like, well, well, tell me, like, wow, what do you mean? And, and Igor says to him, he's CIA or he's got connections to CIA. He's very much protected there. And then Brad says, like, tell me how. And so this is all Brad's reporting about, retelling he writes about in his book. But he told me in an interview, which you can listen to, and he, he says, I. During, During Epstein's arrest, when he was in that state prison, state jail, county jail, whatever you want to call it, he went to the CIA headquarters in Langley, Virginia for Epstein, for him. And he sat through classes for about a week that no civilians were sitting through. And at the end he got a binder with a letter in it. And in that binder, he brought it to Epstein in prison in his detention. Not prison, jail and detention. And he said that when he was there, he got the in. He got the feeling that Epstein was a very powerful person inside of CIA. I know you might be thinking, okay, this is just like one person's account. This guy, Igor Zinoviev, he sounds like a shadowy sort of bouncer type bodyguard. But I went back to a. A colleague of mine from the New York Post who had interviewed him on the record and had used him as a source. And El Nisdahl. And I asked him, I was like, what's the story of this ego guy? Is he legitimate? And an ML said he very much thinks he's illegitimate, but he had gone under the radar and he was really hard to find after the Epstein story broke, which is actually true of a lot of people around Epstein. They've been very hard to get to talk. And I called the CIA and I exchanged emails with them over a month saying, hey, I know you guys keep A record of all of the people. At the very least, you have a log of all the people that have come through Langley, gone in and out. You would know if this person was in your building. Just give me a yes or a no. Yes or no on the record. Yes or no? Yes or no. Nothing. It's been months called email exchanges. It's not like it's just been a one way thing. Like, they're like, we'll get back to you by your deadline. We'll get back to you by your deadline. We'll get back to you by your deadline. They never do. And so on Monday, I sent out another one saying, like, just so you know, I am going to publish. This is your opportunity to say, this guy was never on our grounds. And then I interviewed a former CIA analyst of 28 years, clandestine services, very high up. And he said, oh yeah, no, they have a record of everyone to fucking CIA. Excuse me, It's a CIA. Like they know everyone. And so it was really kind of like, it was strange to me that they would, you know, not even respond. But it makes a lot of sense. And the more I've done reporting on this, it made me realize, it made me start to think that Epstein was very much working both sides of the law. I'm not saying that he was a spy. He couldn't. I mean, Americans are not. They can't really be a assets, you know, they're not supposed to be. They can volunteer information. If you're an American who travels around a lot and meets with a lot of very prominent people, like princes, dignitaries, prominent business people abroad, you can volunteer information that you get to the, to the FBI or the CIA, to intelligence services. And that certainly puts you on the good side of the law. And I mean, it's not unprecedented for criminals to tip off law enforcement. It's not always a gun to the head type of relationship. I mean, look at Whitey Volga. He was killing people.
- [21:30]
B
I was just thinking the same thing.
- [21:32]
C
Yeah, he was killing people while he was informing the FBI. And so the thinking is that Epstein could have been a sort of hyper fixer for the F. For the CIA. And he was certainly informing the FBI for a very long time, at least according to Vicki Ward's reporting. I mean, she, she's another journalist who's been covering Epstein for a long time. And she interviewed his partner, Stephen Hoffenberg, who ran one of the largest Ponzi schemes in history. $490 million. Stephen Hoffenberg was in prison till the rest of, for the rest of his life. But his partner, Jeffrey Epstein, did not go to prison. And Ward reports that at that point, Epstein was. Had given. Met with prosecutors at least three times and given them information on Hoffenberg. So he basically dimed out his partner and didn't have to go to prison. And according to her reporting, Epstein would have spent maybe even more time in prison than Hoffenberg. Hoffenberg went on to sue Epstein and say that he was the architect of the scheme, which, I mean, that's kind of. You would expect him to do something like that. But the point is that Epstein was very much aware of how to work with law enforcement and intelligence services like the FBI and the CIA, which worked very closely together. There's also a Freedom of Information request that the Wall Street Journal put in for his calendar. And in Epstein's schedule, there's a meeting with Bill Burns, who is the Deputy Secretary of State. And Secretary of State and CIA work very closely together. In fact, a lot of diplomats are actually CIA analysts. And so. And then Bill Burns obviously went on to be CIA director under the Biden administration. So there are a lot of connections. And it explains why someone like Epstein would get a sweetheart deal. I mean, there's even a document in the vault if you guys ever want to go in there and look through Epstein's files. Thousands and thousands of pages, mostly redacted, but it says that his assets were returned to him after giving the FBI information. So this was very common. He knew a lot of really powerful people. And I also believe that a big part of the way that he was able to. I guess people say, where did his wealth come from? Right. I think he ran a classic KGB honeypot scheme in which he brought very wealthy, powerful people around him, men. And he had these girls around that were. Some of them underage, young. And he created this sort of bacchanal experience on the island or any of his other very isolated properties. He surveilled them. He had dirt on them, and at the end of the time that they were together, he was basically like, invest in my. Like, invest with me, and I will put the money somewhere, and I'll make. You know, and. And they're probably like, who is this guy? But they also know that he knows things that would cause social embarrassment for them. And so he gets their money, and he puts it probably offshore somewhere where it's very hard for them to reach. Right. Or difficult. And. And even just Stanley, I mean, he's a huge banker, and everyone's like, why would he give Epstein, a guy who was a math teaching dropout. All of his money doesn't make any sense. He wasn't some great financier who was tripling people's wealth. But you do see emails where just Stanley's asking Epstein for Snow White or Beauty and the Beast for next time.
- [24:55]
B
I, I, I am truly right. We got, we got like over a thousand people with us. And I just, like, I'm, I'm totally whatever end of the spectrum. Right. The most allergic to the conspiracy theories is. That's like where I am. Right. I'm just like, I'm very, very skeptical. But the, but the one thing, I mean, like, talk to me like I'm an idiot here. There's like, there's, there's, there's like one thing that makes no sense to me.
- [25:29]
C
Yes.
- [25:30]
B
Around the Epstein suicide. He got away with all of this. Yeah, he, he, he was the most prolific pedophile. A thousand girls abused. He got caught, but he didn't go to a dark hole for the rest of his life. He had a very minor sentence and then he went back to his life, so.
- [26:00]
C
Celebrated afterwards as well.
- [26:03]
B
Right. And so it makes. What, when, just how does a layperson who's not an expert in all things in the case, what is the contrary to that? What, what do people say when you assert where someone asserts it? It just makes no sense from a, from a motive perspective that the guy would have killed himself in Rikers Island.
- [26:33]
C
Well. Oh, he was actually in downtown prison. Yeah, downtown prison.
- [26:37]
B
That's right. That's right. That's right. He wasn't even at Rikers Island.
- [26:40]
C
He was in, he was in the, he was in the, actually the prison where El Chapo was placed.
- [26:45]
B
Yeah.
- [26:45]
C
I'm a bit of an Epstein nerd. So I know some people are saying she's talking very quickly and hard to follow and this and that. I just been so in this for, really for a very long time. I'm sorry, Steve, can you, you asked me for the, for the people. Why wouldn't he kill himself?
- [27:00]
B
Don't live it and breathe it. Like, are you skeptical? Right. Like when the state says right now he killed himself. Right. And then the minutes of the tapes are meeting. You sit there, you say, what? Like what, like what, like what is happening with that? And then simultaneously, the last thing I wanted to ask you, I know you have to go, is about Maxwell's move to the minimum security facility and what that preface is, but I just, on the question of the guy's suicide, it's just like when you process his Story. Am I crazy as a person who looks at the suicide and just says, this makes no sense to me?
- [27:47]
C
No, you're not. In fact, I have the same feelings. Julie K. Brown, who a lot of people are referencing in the comments. Like, I worked with her on one of my podcasts. She was the executive producer and she thinks the same way. I mean, it's really hard to take it. And again, I'm a journalist. I've been a journalist for 15 years. Like, I work in the land of facts. I don't post things that I think will. I'm not a conspiracy theory theorist. I'm just presenting what I know. And I go to the sources and try to get, you know, like, I try to get confirmation. But it is very strange. Like the fact that they presented us with a video, but it doesn't show the actual cell, you know, that's very strange. That's supposed to be the surveillance that we should consider to be a fact. The missing minute. It's just, it doesn't make sense. Also his like, whole idea of like, I don't know if you saw his note before he died, but he wrote to someone like, prison is no fun. If there's one thing about Epstein and, and Brad Edwards, who I interviewed, by the way, and if everyone like really wants to deep dive into this, I just wrote a piece on it. I also have a YouTube post I just put up, but Brad Edwards, real.
- [28:59]
B
Quick, just for everybody, before you, before you into Brad Edwards thing, what are the names of the podcast that you've done on this and where can people find this? And just like the pieces, just go through them real quick that are on the Red Letter in the last last couple of weeks before.
- [29:17]
C
Okay, yeah. So my latest piece on the Red Letter was about the bodyguard and it and his and how he explained Epstein CIA connections and then my experience reporting this out and getting in touch with people and trying to put the pieces together based on my reporting, prior reporting and my latest interactions with the CIA and trying to follow up with Igor the the Bodyguard. I also was the host of Broken Jeffrey Epstein that is executive produced by Julie K. Brown. Like I mentioned, I'm also and a number of other great journalists like Adam Davidson from the New Yorker and Adam McKay, the Academy Award winner. I also did another series on Glenn Maxwell and her family called Power the Maxwells for Sony. And then I wrote a piece for political magazine called the Women who Enabled Jeffrey Epstein. Took me months to do that one as well. So I've been on this for a while. I'VE remained close with, you know, Virginia Duffrey even up until her death. And I don't believe that she was killed, like people say, having spoken to her, I'm not a conspiracy theorist. I know she struggled after living a lifetime of abuse. But I do think on the whole idea of him not killing himself, he was very much a narcissist who believed he could get away with things because he did. And even in his final days before his arrest, he bragged to Brad Edwards, who is trying to overturn his sweetheart deal, and said, like, you're wasting your time, like, Trump's my boy or something like that. And like Bill and Bill Barr says, it was something along those lines, like, you're wasting your time because I've, you know, I've got chump in my pocket kind of thing. And not that I think that. I think he believed it. I think he did. I think he believed he'd get out again. Think about how many times he had brushes with the law and he had been able to continue on. He probably, he felt invincible. He felt untouchable.
- [31:12]
B
He had no reason to be pessimistic. Let's put it. Let's put it.
- [31:16]
C
And who, if I was, if you wrote me from prison and I said.
- [31:20]
B
No fun, no fun, no fun, no fun. Speaking of fun, I was thinking about the Ghislaine Maxwell minimum security prison to which she's been transferred. I was just saying to somebody, apparently they raise puppies there. And I could, I think I could enjoy a sentence there for like a year if I could get into that. Right. With puppies. So anyway, I, I don't know what insight you have on this, but, but this is another thing that's clear to me. Right? So there's, there's some conversation, I believe, that went on. Right. I have no evidence of this. Right. But common sense tells you that, you know, she probably is sitting there saying, I want to pardon somebody, tells her, Trump can't pardon you, but what he can do, what we can do for you is we can move you right to the, to the best place that you can possibly go, which is this place. And so she goes to this place and she gets there, and all the women at the prison who raised the puppies do not want the sex trafficker raising puppies with them. So she's banned from raising the puppies with them. Another inmate who has complained about her, she's in the news today that she was disciplined and put into solitary for making a complaint about Maxwell. So at any rate, she's sitting There now at this minimum security prison, what is going to happen to her next? Right. It seems like she's kind of in a, in a waiting place, like in a, in a temporary location, waiting to get sprung, which I think they intend to do, but I don't think the Trump people know how to do. Am I analyzing that correctly? Like, what's going on with that, with her? And then the last thing I want to ask you is just to tell people who she is. Who is Ghislaine Maxwell?
- [33:34]
C
Yeah. She is the right hand man to Jeffrey Epstein. Bonnie and. Bonnie and Clyde, the woman who went out and was able to satisfy, as she would say, his desire for three girls per day. And she did that as a posh English woman who told these young girls, teens that they were beautiful, they were wonderful, and she could make their dreams come true. She trapped, she trapped them, you know, bait and switch. Terrible. And so many of them actually feel more betrayed by her than even by Epstein. Um, she was off. And she often actually molested them alongside Epstein. So this is a person that should be probably in a maximum security prison, not in a day camp with tents and like a, with fences and, and puppies. And yet here she is. And a lot of the survivors that I speak to fear that it's just, it's just going to be house arrest next ankle bracelet. And then we're just sort of getting the American people used to the idea with the idea that she is not actually innocent. I mean, she's not actually guilty culpable for this. I mean, the fact that Newsmax is suggesting Greg Kelly said maybe she's innocent. A thousand victims all with the same story. But no, maybe she's innocent. It's kind of, it's, it's. And the, and the creepy thing is that they're. The way that they groomed. They did it the same way every time. They almost have near identical stories. That's, that's the very, the crazy thing about this all. And so many parents went to the Palm beach police to complain. It was. This is not some like this was so out in the open. That's the craziest part about it to me too, is how obvious it was. And yet people looked away for so long and, and even now, it's so obvious that what's happening is injustice. And still there's just. Yeah, there's just. It feels like it's slipping away. For a lot of the survivors who thought that this was at least a shred of justice. I mean, they were hopeful that, believe me, all Thousand of those victims were not just for Jeffrey Epstein. And that's, and they were hoping for more. And so that is sort of the, that that's what's really, that's what's really hard about this if you actually think about it from a human perspective. Like we get into the politics and the COVID up and the, and the, the whole idea of this international con man, which he was, you know, but like let's not forget the people whose lives are broken because of it and how the way that the Justice Department is playing with this is only creating more pain for them.
- [36:37]
B
And yet it keeps inspiring you to keep chasing them down.
- [36:41]
C
Yeah, I do. Because like this is a story about people ultimately and two tiered justice. And like it's just, you know, it's funny, I was, somebody was asking me like, what would you do if you weren't a journalist? And I'm like, probably be in law enforcement. Like this is, this kind of story is the one that gets me angered, you know. And I think we've lost a lot of trust in the institutions because of stories like this.
- [37:11]
B
Do you, do you think that the deployments of National Guard and military and the escalations there are related to the heat of this story? Getting close to Trump and singing him that they are cause and effect. That that story, the mishandling of it by Bondi and others over the last 30 days has created the situation in D.C. for instance?
- [37:41]
C
I do think so. I mean it's pretty outrageous, right? And maybe. But at the same time it could be normalizing future cities to be held under national by the National Guard. But I do think like they're really trying everything. First it was, let's rename the commanders back to the red, whatever they're called, the Redskins before that. Let's do this, let's do that. Shock and awe, shock and all. Let's try to get people to not pay attention to the story. It's just, it's just shocking. Like it just reeks when someone's a case closed. I think it reeks of corruption. You can't tell people case closed without actually investigating the case. Yeah. So I can't tell you how like I've never felt that they were that strategic case people. But this is, this is a problem that's probably not going away. So.
- [38:33]
B
Well, here we are. Well, you, I'd like to see you live out some of the words on that hot close for August. That'd be, that'd be good, right? We're now, we're now north of the 20th. So we're in the dog days of August, everybody. I hope everybody gets some time off. It's good to know that Tara Palmeri is on the case and reporting. I read the Red Letter every day. It's one of the best substack publications out there. I love every time that Tara comes on and when you look at the places everybody where you're going to find out the information. You know, we have a First Amendment in the United States and the First Amendment is what creates the free, free media, not the corporations that own networks. And in the 1910s and the 1910s, there were reporters who were known as muck wreckers. Got to the bottom of what was happening in the society because it wasn't printed in the major newspapers necessarily. And so Upton Sinclair, the jungle. Think it's Upton Sinclair history and. And others. You know, Antara is one of a small group of people that are in that elite group of the 21st century muckracker.
- [40:01]
C
That's a huge compliment. Thank you, Steve.
- [40:04]
B
Highly experienced reporter who has become an entrepreneur and started a media business. And all of you on this should subscribe to it and you should do paid subscriptions. That's how independent journalists keep going. And so support the muckwhrackers. Support the people that are giving you the information you need to know in a free society where our leaders are accountable to us and not the other way around. And so she's just one of the best.
- [40:39]
C
Tara, thank you. I appreciate. No. And Steve. And obviously you all know Steve. I'm sure most of you are here for him. He's obviously a great thought leader and seems to really get to the heart of the issue. So I'm so grateful for you that you have had me on your platform and introduced me to your community at the warning. You do always seem to see things before the others. You are prescient in that sense. So thank you and just very flattered to be here. And. And yes, we got to keep holding people to account. So I appreciate that.
- [41:16]
B
The Red Letter, everybody. And have a good weekend.
- [41:19]
C
Thank you.
- [41:20]
B
Good afternoon. Take care. Go Blue Jays.
- [41:24]
D
That was another episode of the Tara Palm Mary Show. Thanks to all of you. If you want more of my reporting, you can go to Tara Palmeri.com and sign up for my newsletter, the Red Letter. That's T A R A P A L m e r I.com and you can get my exclusive reporting straight to your inbox. And you can watch these lives in real time as I try to talk.
- [41:44]
C
To sources and try to get down.
- [41:45]
D
To the bottom of things. You can also support this show by liking subscribing, sharing it with your friends, leaving a review, rating it. You can, you know, you can just send me tips, leads, let me know what you know. This is a huge, sprawling case and it's going to take a lot of time. I want to thank my producer, Eric Abenate. I want to thank my thumbnail artists, Adam Stewart, Sarah Carney and Abby Baker on socials. And Luke Radel, who has been helping with research. I'll be back again soon.