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This episode is brought to you by Progressive Insurance. Do you ever think about switching insurance companies to see if you could save some cash? Progressive makes it easy to see if you could save when you bundle your home and auto policies. Try it@progressive.com Progressive Casualty Insurance Company and affiliates. Potential savings will vary. Not available in all states. Welcome to the Tara Palmieri show. Today we've got a special guest. We have a journalist who has been covering the Jeffrey Epstein story probably longer than anyone else out there. In fact, my next guest, Nick Bryant, actually was the first journalist to get his hands on Epstein's little black book and the flight logs. And he was finally able to publish it, but it took him a very, very long time and he was rejected by so, so many publishers and magazines and newspapers. And then he finally got Gawker, a media blog in New York, to publish it. And it didn't quite make the bang that we all expected. It didn't have that sort of impact of a major story about a sex trafficking operation including some of the most powerful people in the world. Now, a lot of people confuse the little black book with the Epstein client list. The little black book, they're just Epstein's friends. They're his contacts. But arguably, if they spent time with him, they would know that a man who needs three massages, that's three times per day when he would sexually abuse girls, that this man was up to no good and perhaps took part in it themselves. So at the very least, they could be seen as enablers for not doing anything about it. But, yeah, Nick, Nick, Nick got the, these, these very crucial pieces of evidence from lawyers for the victims. And he's been following this story since at least 2012. And even before that, he said he's been on to the Jeffrey Epstein story. And we talk about all of that, the rough road to publishing and how he's become an act, an activist now for the victims. He has a nonprofit called Epstein justice. And it's, he's calling on people to, to reach out to their, their legislators. They actually pick one every week and their congressmen, their senators, and to call them to pressure them to vote, to compel the Department of Justice to release the Epstein files. As we know, there will be a House vote soon if this, if this discharge petition passes. And Speaker Mike Johnson has tried his hardest to, to make sure that his members, that these Republicans don't have to vote against releasing the Epstein files because nearly 90% of the public wants the files out there. He even changed the schedule, the summer schedule, so that These, so that these members would not have to vote. Obviously, they are feeling pressure from President Trump, their donors, as I've talked about many times before the Web that Jeffrey Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell lived in the power circles. It's insidious. It's a part of the swamp. It is everything that is really kind of corrupt in our, in our political system. So Nick goes into all of his activism. He talks about the long road to making people care about the Jeffrey Epstein story, why it has been disregarded for so long. And of course, we get into some spy craft towards the end. As with everything in the Epstein story, there's so much intrigue around Jeffrey Epstein and his intelligence and his possible connection to intelligence circles and why there would be anything of national security inside the Jeffrey Epstein files, as Attorney General Pam Bondi suggested. So stick around for this very interesting interview with a man who is very passionate. And I've got to say, it's really refreshing to see a male journalist really believe in this story and follow it for decades and see it through the eyes of the survivors and really demand justice for them because it often feels like it's women that say we're not being heard, we're not being seen. And it's really something to hear and to hear his level of compassion and his desire for justice. So take a listen Monday Sidekick, the.
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AI agent that knows you and your.
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Business, thinks ahead and takes action. Ask it anything seriously. Monday Sidekick, AI you'll love to use. Start a free trial today on Monday.com send here Nick Bryant. Thank you so much for joining the show. I've got to say, you know, a lot of people talk about who's actually been covering the Epstein story and for how long. And you, you have been at this probably longer than most. And I, and obviously you, you were the first person to gain access to Epstein's little black book, his, his book of contacts. Can you tell our audience how you came across it, why you sought it out, how you obtained it? Just the whole process of getting this, you know, I would say, key piece of evidence into Jeffrey Epstein's orbit. Even if you're in the little black Book, it doesn't necessarily are a sex offender, but it certainly puts together the pieces of who this person was around and could provide witnesses for the many, many victims.
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Yes, I put up the black book and also I was the first guy to put up the flight logs. And how this.
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How did you get the flight logs, by the way? How did you get all this evidence?
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I got the flight logs and the black book through victims attorneys. Okay, so that was. But what happened? I wrote a book called the Franklin scandal, A story of power brokers, child abuse, and betrayal, About a network ex exactly like Epstein's. I mean, they're almost like a carbon copy. And I. I started that book in 2002, and I published it in 2000, and it was published in 2009, 2010. And in that book, there's a very corrupt grand jury, like there was in the Epstein case. I don't know if your audience is familiar with how grand juries work, but a special prosecutor is chosen to oversee a grand jury, and he or she selects evidence that the grand jurors see and calls witnesses that the grand jurors hear. And grand jurors are only. Are citizens that have just shown up for jury duty, and they've been funneled to a grand jury, and they're very easy to manipulate. And there was a New York supreme court judge that said special prosecutors have so much power over grand jurors that they could get them to indict a ham sandwich.
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I remember that famous quote.
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And both the Epstein grand jury and the Franklin grand jury both declared that no children had been abused whatsoever. But then I was.
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The actual phrase was, there are no victims. Here is what the state attorney's deputy said.
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Lana Belovic. Good old Lana Belovic. She should be. She should be mentioned all the time when we talk about an Epstein cover up.
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Right?
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So I was reading these accounts of Epstein molesting these underage girls, and then this grand jury said that he hadn't molested anybody. And that kind of. I was. I was a little exhausted. I'd been working on the Franklin scandal for about seven years, and. And I just. I did not want to investigate another network, but I saw that the mainstream media wasn't doing anything about this. So in 2012, I flew down to Florida. I live in New York City, and I flew down to Florida, and I just started knocking on doors and do the things that reporters do. And I cultivated a relationship with one of the victim's lawyers, and he ultimately gave me the black book. And I came back to that.
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A
He got through discovery, I'm guessing, right.
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In a lawsuit, and it had been impounded by the FBI. And I came back to New York City, and I was showing all these editors and publishers the black book, and no one wanted to touch it. I had the black book for, like, three years before anyone was willing to touch it.
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Did they. Did they tell you why they didn't.
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Want to touch It I had when I was pitching the Franklin scandal to editors and publishers. The Franklin scandal is exact. Is many ways like the Epstein scandal. As I said, it's. It was a huge pedophile network that flew kids around the country. It was covered up by federal law enforcement. It was hooked up to blackmail and intelligence. Very, very similar to the Epstein case. So when I was pitching the Franklin case, I could see this cognitive dissonance going down with the editors and publishers that I was talking to. I. They were thinking to themselves, this is really a horrible story, and I need to help Nick Bryant. Or I can choose box B and say, I think Nick Bryan's crazy and I don't have to do anything about this story, and I can have a nice meal with my family tonight. And I knew a lot of people in New York publishing, and I knew that most of them would go to door B, but I didn't think that all of them would go to doorbeat. So that was the problem with the Franklin scandal. And I had to get it published. I. Two agents tried to sell it, or I gave it to my agent at that time, and she summarily dismissed me. And then I got another agent that tried to sell the Franklin scandal. He couldn't do it. And these are both good agents. And no one wanted to trifle with that story. So it was ultimately published by a very small press on the West Coast. But when I came across Epstein's black book, I started calling the names of the girls that were under massages. That was his euphemism for underage molestation. And one told me about being flown to an island. Another told me about being flown to different states. And at that point, I realized that Jeffrey Epstein was running a nationwide or international pedophon network. So I went back to New York and I said, epstein is almost a carbon copy of the Franklin scandal. And still editors and publishers didn't want to touch it.
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Do you think they were afraid of getting lawsuits and being sued? I mean, that's always the first thing that I sense when I'm talking to a report, talking to an editor, or going up to standards, that they're very cautious. They don't. They don't actually want to stick their necks out at all, even if they know the story is true?
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Yes. Editors don't want to jeopardize their jobs. And in 2015, I met John Cook, who was the editor in chief of Gawker, and he was willing to do it. He was willing to publish it. And at that time, I'd had The black book for three years and I'd just been sitting on it. And I was just. A lot of people think that that was kind of an epic thing, me publishing the black book and the flight logs. But I was just glad that someone was going to publish it and let me write articles about it that was going to be published on a large platform.
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And did you feel the impact of the story when it hit?
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Well, that's the thing.
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I.
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Saw all this ink getting dumped on stories about the black book and no one really wanted to talk to me about it. I mean, Vanity Fair was the only magazine that wanted to talk to me about the black book. Meanwhile, all these other magazines can't write articles on the black book fast enough. So I'm grateful for Vanity Fair that they singled me out and said that I had published the black book and the flight logs.
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Yeah, it seems like the story really only took the nation's imagination after the Miami Heralds series came out. Perversion of Justice. And then Alex Acosta was forced to resign. But you know, I remember at the New York Post that we were fully aware of Jeffrey Epstein and his scandals and there were reporters that were running to his house, into the houses of his victims and his friends. It wasn't entirely a secret in New York City circles, but yet it wasn't covered by the press. And we know that the abc that ABC News was working on a big story and that Brad Edwards tried really hard, he's a lawyer for the victims, to get the story out there. And he struggled to get any mainstream media to pick it up and to cover it.
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And that shows how spineless our media is. I've been on Epstein since 2012 and I'm not aware of, of one major media outlet that's called for justice. They're very good at digging up salacious dirt, but they don't really seem to be. They don't really seem to care about justice for all these victims, which, which I find mind boggling. I mean, it's still that way. Epstein has mushroomed lately, but I don't, I still don't see any mainstream media outlets calling for justice. The federal government came out with that very strange document on July 6 and it said that there were 300 gigabytes of information that receives from Epstein, which I do agree with. I the New York Times. The day after Epstein was arrested in Teterburg Airport in 2019, his, his safe in New York and new, his New York mansion was sawed open. It was a huge safe, more like a closet than a Safe. And the New York Times reported that hundreds, if not thousands of discs were taken out and a lot of it was child abuse material. And then Business Insider reported that hard drives had been taken out too. So the feds had all this stuff in 2019. And then Pam Bondi goes on Fox in February and says she's going to release the Epstein files. And then she releases a nothing sandwich. And then she says she's been bamboozled by the FBI and that she's going to make sure that the FBI doesn't bamboozle her this time. And. But she said something that really kind of dug herself into a deeper hole. She said only matters of national security will be redacted. So now she has to tell us what a bunch of child molesters have to do with national security.
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A
That's a really good point. You know, that's actually. That is a huge point. Also, just the fact that the FBI said when they arrested Ghislaine Maxwell that there is as many as a thousand victims. How could just one man, you know, abuse 1,000 victims? It seems. It seems unfathomable. Unfathomable. Especially when you hear from some of the victims who've come forward and really only a small handful of them have actually decided to speak about their stories. And they say that they were abused multiple times by Jeffrey Epstein over years. I mean, and.
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And others.
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Exactly. And they speak. And in their court documents, they especially Virginia Giuffre, she speaks about being, you know, pl. Passed around like a fruit platter to his friends. So, yeah, there's so much, so much there and so little that we even really know, or at least the public knows. But.
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And Pam Bondi also said that the child abuse material that they had showed Epstein abusing children. She actually said that. And, and then the FBI comes out and says that, yeah, you're right. Epstein and Maxwell acquired and abused over a thousand victims by themselves. It's a very absurd story that they want the American public to buy. I, I just. It. It baffles me.
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Yeah. Well, here we are. And we are probably nowhere closer to the truth. I do want to get into that where we are right now. And your non. Profit, Epstein justice, can you tell our listeners about it and what it does?
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I started a non profit organization called Epstein justice and we've got a stellar staff and we've got a stellar advisory board. I had seen an. As I said earlier, I had written about a network just like Epstein's and then Epstein and I, I saw both covered up and I just felt like the Government shouldn't be in the business of covering up child sexual trafficking. If you cover up a crime, you're aiding, abetting that crime. So essentially, our government has been aiding and abetting child sex trafficking since it made that dirty deal with Acosta or since Acosta made that dirty deal with Epstein in 2007. And right now we have Thomas Massie and Ro Khanna offering a discharge petition, and it's House House Resolution 581. Now, we seem to have a majority there. There was a woman that was elected to an ERA, the 7th district of Arizona, I believe, and her name was Adelita Rojava, and she is going to give 218 votes to the discharge position. But then the discharge physician becomes bill. It'll become Bill 165, and then the House will vote on it. And if through some miracle it gets through the House, then the Senate Majority leader, John Thune, he can, he can quash it right there without the Senate voting on it. And he has said things to that effect. But if it gets past the House and then it gets past John Thune and then it's voted on. And Chuck Schumer put a rider on a defense bill a couple of weeks ago, and the defense bill said that the Epstein file, or the writer said that the Epstein file should be released and that Epstein should be investigated. And it was voted down 51 to 49 in the Senate. So if Massey and Ro Khanna's once bill 165 can make it through the House, can make it through John Th can make it through the Senate, then it goes before Donald Trump, who hasn't been very receptive to helping Epstein's victims out now.
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Well, he's called it a hoax.
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Yes, he's. He's called it a hoax. And that's exact. That's the exact same word that one of the grand juries used to cover up the. The network that I wrote about a hoax. So that word is extremely chilling to me. And then we've got Mike Johnson's antics. There's something seriously wrong with Mike Johnson. He is the one. He's the speaker of the House that's prevented the House from voting on the discharge petition. And he's got. He adjourned the House early so it couldn't vote on the discharge position.
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And then pretty extreme move.
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And then he said Trump was an FBI informant vis a vis Epstein, which was a lie that the Trump administration didn't even want to propagate. And he's got a back. He's got A strange app on his phone, it's called Covenant Eye. And yeah, his 17 year old son has Covenant Eye on his phone so they can monitor each other's consumption of pornography. And now he wants to delay the, the woman, the representative from Arizona being sworn in for that 218th vote. And I don't know why he's fighting so hard. I mean We've got 217 people in the House that are aiding embedding child molestation and we've got 49 people in the Senate that are aiding embedding child molestation. And then we've got a administration that's aiding and abetting child molestation. And we as Americans, we, we have to take back our power. A CBS poll found that 89% of Americans want full disclosure and an investigation of the Epstein case. And that's what we need. And what we're proposing at Epstein justice is a, an independent congressional commission. An independent congressional commission is, is the way to go here. It does need a majority in the House and it does meet them, need a majority in the Senate. But I think that that can be done. Epstein Justice. There are, we're growing every day and every week we have a legislator of the week that we have people call. So and I think if, I've been told that if a legislator gets like 20 calls on a subject, it definitely perks up their ears. So we've been doing that for quite some time. And what we want is, is an independent.
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That's the magic number.
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What's that?
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That's the magic number. 20.
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Yeah, that's, that's, that's what I've been told. And we want an independent congressional commission. And the independent congressional commissions have been completely independent of politicians. I mean politicians have taken part in them occasionally. But it's. Independent congressional commissions are often called when there's something that the Congress doesn't want to deal with. And an independent congressional commission will make it easier for the Congress to deal with it and make it easier for the public to deal with that. And, and the Epstein case is the perfect case for an independent congressional commission. And it's something that we really need to do. We cannot, we cannot let our government let all these girls get molested with impunity. And there were over a thousand of them. I've got, I mean our government even says that. But only 225 came forward to get money from Epstein's victim compensation program. And 150 were awarded compensation and 12 declined compensation. Because if you got compensation from the Epstein victims compensation program you signed a release where you couldn't sue anybody else. And these other, these 12 women who declined, I believe, don't want to sign because they have multiple perpetrators and. But the fact that there's so many of these victims out there or survivors and only 225 came forward shows that they're terrified.
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Yeah. No, I agree. I think even after survivor Lisa Phillips said we're going to come up with our own list, I spoke to so many of the women afterwards and they said they were terrified that she even said that they, she felt like. They felt like she put a target on all their backs. So it's a really scary place to be. I don't know. I find it hard to believe that they're going to have. You're going to get a majority for a congressional commission. I hate to. To be a downer, but if you think that that's possible, I mean, it's.
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Our only, it's our only hope, right? It's our only hope. And I think my, my belief is that we will get politicians that will have signed on. Actually Thomas Massie has signed on to Epstein justice and we will get other legislators and then we will shame and harass the legislators that do not want to vote for independent congressional commission. But it's an independent congressional commission is our only hope for justice and we really need justice. We can't let this abomination rule our government. I believe, and I saw this in the Franklin scandal and I wrote a book called confessions of a D.C. madam, the politics of Sex, Lies and Videotape with Henry Vincent, who ran a gay escort service in D.C. intelligence agents would use his escorts to compromise politicians. So we've seen compromise politicians in the Franklin scandal. We've seen it in confessions of a D.C. madam, and we've seen it with Epstein. And I believe that the reason why we're not getting justice is our, our political system.
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It is. It is. Or the donors, you know, you wrote that you believed, you know, that there are donors involved in this right now are working on disinformation campaigns. We know from Virginia Duffrey Roberts defamation case that she accused Senator Mitchell of molestation of Maine of molestation. Bill Richardson, who's deceased. They both are deceased. And she's, you know, accused others and you know, in the political sphere. So. And she's only one that we, you know, and there are others, I'm sure.
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Well, she also named Ahud Barack, who was the former prime minister of Israel and the. And he was head of Israeli military intelligence at one point. And Les Wexner, too, right? The potentate of Al Brands, the former potentate of Albrands. And this is the. The me. The reporting on. On this story has been so disingenuous. Wexner gave Epstein power of attorney in 1991 so Epstein could do whatever he wanted with Wexner's money.
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That's crazy. He made $200 million off of Les Wexner. Isn't that great? That's insane. Off of 1%.
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And. And wexner is a billionaire, so Epstein had lots of money to play with. And Vanity Fair reported. And I. You can't make something like this up. Vanity Fair reported that the reason why Les Wexner gave Jeffrey Epstein power of attorney over his vast fortune, the keys to his kingdom, is because he was lonely. You can't make it up.
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And then Leon introduced him to his wife, Abigail.
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Yes. And then Leon Black gave Epstein 160 million. And it was reported that Leon Black gave him 160 million because Epstein was helping him with his taxes. Now a billionaire like Leon Black has got like a battalion of accountants to make sure that he doesn't pay a penny more than he has to. So the reporting on this story has not only. It's. It's really been just egregious and it's not called for justice, and it's pumped out cover stories that are. That are just absurd, often, I think.
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Based in fear journalism, very much hindered by fear of litigation and powerful forces. So not a lot of heroes in this story. So appreciate what you're doing.
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A major hero in this story is Michael Ryder. He was the chief of the Palm Beach Police Department, and he would not let this go. I mean, we would. If it wasn't for Michael Ryder, we wouldn't even know the name of Jeffrey Epstein.
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No, it's true. He refused. He refused to just accept this idea that there are no victims. Barry Krisher was the state attorney, and he completely dismissed these women. They found MySpace pictures of them and said that they were promiscuous. They smoked, they. They spent time with boys, so they should not be believed. They actually went out of their way to paint them as prostitutes. And this was in collusion with Alan Dershowitz, who was Epstein's lawyer. I mean, I don't know any other word to use besides collusion, because that's what it felt like. They were colluding to. To indict a ham sandwich, as you say, or not indict the ham sandwich. It was their. Their. Their presentation to the grand jury was More of an indictment on the victims than it was on Jeffrey Epstein. But Ryder was not satisfied with that. And he went over krish her's head and he was the chief of police, I believe at the time. And he went over his head. Yeah. Palm beach police. And he went to the state attorney. Sorry, the u. S. Attorney in Miami, Alexander Acosta.
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Yes.
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Yep. And alas, it was kicked right back to the state. It's amazing. And that was after really hard work from Marie via fania. Marie via fania, who was his deputy. Did you ever speak to her? She was a lead prosecutor on that case.
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I have never spoken to her, but I have her emails between her and Epstein's lawyer and it just shows how corrupt that process was. I haven't. I have an email. The deal that they've cooked up where they get. The feds give immunity to everybody. Everybody in that deal, that non prosecution.
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A
Named and unnamed is the actual language.
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Potential co conspirators. Yes.
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Potential coconspirators, named and unnamed. Who gets that kind of broad immunity in a, in a, in a non prosecution agreement?
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B
No one except Jeffrey agreed.
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A
Yeah. And then they agreed not to tell the victims. They agreed to keep them out of the loop. And they, they like misled them on the trial date, on the sentencing hearing. They misled them on everything. And that was the basis for the. Not that was the basis for the crime victims rights act case, but which was a very strong case except for the fact that there was no. They argued that there was no actual. Like there was no crime. There was no crime because they never actually charged him. And it's just an insane loophole. It was. I saw, I saw Courtney Wilde, Jane doe one in court. I followed her for the broken Jeffrey Epstein podcast and, and you know, she got out of court and she just said to her. They apologized to her. The, the judge did. They said, I'm just so sorry this happened to you. And when she left court, she just, she cried. She was like. Just to hear an apology was so much for me. Just to hear an acknowledgment that we were wronged. They have settled for so little. This, the survivors, they've just settled for breadcrumbs this whole time. And that, that, that moment in court that really. That showed it to me. I mean I saw it, I experienced it up front how little that they got.
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B
The crime victims rights act wasn't heard by the supreme court. But now the, the supreme court is contemplating whether it should hear Ghislaine Maxwell's case.
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A
It's Insane.
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B
And unfortunately Ghislaine Maxwell does have a case because she was charged in the Southern. She wasn't shot. The non prosecution agreement was from the Southern District of Florida and her lawyers are arguing that she should be given blanket immunity to all districts because it was the Southern District gave her immunity. And that was the rationale that they. The rationale that the feds used for picking up Epstein and then prosecuting Maxwell was that the Southern District of New York didn't have to abide by the Southern District of Florida which generally isn't the case. Because if a mafia turncoat gets immunity from the Southern District and gets relocated to the witness protection program, their, their immunity is categorical. So unfortunately Galaine Maxwell has an argument and I really hope, I mean she's been given. She was put into a. When she was in Florida she was put into a dormouse dormitory style living which is very. Which is the cushest part of a prison. It's generally prisoners that have done time and have been exemplary prisoners and are nearing the end of their sentence. You put into dormitory style living.
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A
But she's been complaining the whole time her family has been just going off about her conditions. But you know, she's not named. There are four co conspirators who were named. We believe that it was Epstein's assistance but Galen Maxwell is not one of them. But still, like I said, there's that caveat. Potential co conspirators named and unnamed. And she'll argue that she is one of the unnamed potential co conspirators which I could also argue. I'm kidding. But like you know anybody could argue that in, in an insane way. It's, I think the whole case is just. It's, it was.
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B
It's justice turned on its head.
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A
It's really, it's, it's. It's mind boggling.
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B
And that's why Epstein justice is so important. Because we cannot let the government.
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Give.
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A immunity to a bunch of pedophiles that were molesting little girls. We can't do that. I mean just self preservation as a country. I, I think America might be on its way to losing its soul. But if it allows Epstein and those perpetrators to walk, I, I think are government will have fully lost its soul. And with Epstein justice we have two simple objectives. We want to know why the government covered up child sex trafficking which is embedding child sex trafficking. And we want the perpetrators to be prosecuted. Very, very simple. We distilled it to the two most simple things that we could come up with. And now it's up to America to decide whether they want to join us or not.
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A
Yeah. I do want to ask you about one thing that you've said in the past about Stan Pottinger and how he had a conflict of interest while representing the Epstein victims. I know he was Virginia Duffrey's lawyer at one time, and he, he worked with David Boyes, who was also Virginia's attorney when she went after Prince Andrew for his sexual abuse that she led. So, you know, apparently Brad Edwards, another lawyer involved in this case, confronted him for, for these conflicts of interest. What, what were they exactly for our, our listeners?
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B
Well, Stan was an assistant U.S. attorney, and if you needed a cover up, Stan was your man. I, I call him the Forrest Gump of COVID ups.
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A
Really?
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B
Yeah. He covered up the Martin Luther King killing. He covered up Kent State, where National Guard shot and murdered four people. He covered the. The CIA was outed with a bunch of malfeasance, including Operation Chaos, which was sparing spying on Americans. He covered that up. And he covered up the FBI's program to cover just spying Americans called COINTELPRO. He covered that up. And then after he'd covered all these crimes up, he said to himself, you know, I've been covering up all these crimes. I'm going to become a criminal and make some real money. And he put together an arms deal with the Hashemi brothers. They were from Iran, and this was when Iran, in 1980, when Iran was a combatant state. So this would have been high treason. And he was caught on tape discussing this arms deal with the Hashemi brothers and how they were going to get the arms out of the United States and the various machinations that are going to be required to smuggle the arms into Iran. And he was actually caught on tape explaining to the Hashemi brothers how they were going to do this.
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A
How does, how do you not lose your law license by doing something like this?
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B
Here's what happened. Rudolph Giuliani, that paragon of integrity, lost the tape. The Department of Justice, they said they lost the tape that incriminated Stan Pottinger.
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A
And wow. So insidious.
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B
Therefore, he was able to watch and he would go on to represent the Epstein victims. And actually, David Boies conscripted him very quickly when he started to represent the Epstein victims.
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A
Are you suggesting that he made deals on both sides?
- [39:13]
B
I'm suggesting that Stampanjer has a long history of intelligence, and it's kind of strange that David Boies would conscript him almost immediately when he started taking on Epstein victims, which we know is Epstein, is an intelligence operation.
- [39:29]
A
So that you think to help him with the case. He used Stan. Not to.
- [39:34]
B
Well, whatever. However you want to explain help or define help. But Stampanzer wasn't he. He wasn't the paragon of compassion to a number of these Epstein victims. There was an Epstein victim named Sarah Ransom who tried to kill herself. She jumped out a window, and she was recovering, and she was on heavy psychiatric drugs and pain medication. And Stan Pottinger was pressing her to take the settlement that was being offered by the victim, the Epstein victims compensation program. And as I said earlier, that program is bad news because victims, they heal by talking about what they've been through and the hell they've been through. But if someone. If someone takes money from that program and signs a release, I mean, they can talk about their other perpetrators, but they can't sue them. And that's really just. Just really heinous, I think.
- [40:48]
A
Yeah, no, I think it is. They shouldn't have those sort of conditions to take the money for the pain that they've been through. Nick, this was really, really, really great. I appreciate your time. And, hey, who knows? You may get this independent committee. We can only know that will happen.
- [41:07]
B
You should help us. You should help.
- [41:09]
A
I mean.
- [41:10]
B
I mean, I feel like, as a.
- [41:11]
A
Journalist, there is a line between being an advocate and a journalist.
- [41:16]
B
I am. I'm a journalist, and I believe in this. I mean, I don't think that the two are mutually exclusive. To be a journalist and then also to be an activist. A lot of journalists have become activists.
- [41:29]
A
Yeah. Yeah.
- [41:32]
B
So you should. You should sign on to Epstein justice, and you could be a great help to us.
- [41:39]
A
All right. I'll think about it. Thank you. And all the listeners who want to sign on to Epstein justice, they should check it out. What's the website again, for everyone?
- [41:50]
B
It's pretty simple. Epsteinjustice.com and we have webinars, and we also were organizing people by state. So, yeah, we. We are going to succeed at this. And I. I believe that we are. But we need. Really. We need people like you, Tara, to help us.
- [42:10]
A
I know, and I appreciate that. I think, though, as I'm a bit more of a traditional journalist in the sense that I draw a line between advocacy and journalism, and I do that to maintain my credibility and, you know, in certain. And everybody has a different way of. Of doing journalism. But that's my. That's why I stand by the. The. The no bias. The no bias tagline. And so as much as you know, there are injustices and I highlight those stories. I, I, I, there's a line for me with this.
- [42:44]
B
I mean, you've written some very good articles on Jeffrey Epstein and his minions and you wrote an article about his helpers that should all be imprisoned for multiple counts of child trafficking.
- [42:56]
A
Yeah, it's called the Women who Enable Jeffrey Epstein. It's a long piece on Politico magazine. I wrote it back, I think in 2021. Yeah.
- [43:05]
B
And the New York Times wrote an article about those women in 2019. So, yeah, we have enough evidence on those women. I mean, the Department of Justice could indict those women for child trafficking.
- [43:22]
A
They claim that they are victims themselves and some of them are represented by the same lawyers as the victims. It's, it's really quite tangled and messy.
- [43:31]
B
And they've, Kellen Grof and Ross have been taken care of very well. Kellen has a multi million dollar home in New York and a multimillion dollar home in Miami. And we haven't heard from Nadia Marenova for about a year. So I don't know where she's at. I wonder where she's at though.
- [43:54]
A
But this is, she goes by so many names.
- [43:56]
B
Go ahead.
- [43:58]
A
She goes by so many names. Hard to find her. Well, what was that?
- [44:04]
B
I, I've been looking for, I'm pretty good at finding people, so we'll see what happens.
- [44:11]
A
Good luck. Let me know. All right, well, we'd love to do a follow up with you soon and best of luck for your, to your mission and we will see what happens next. And paying attention to this, to this, this vote, I know a lot of people have reacted to some of the reporting I've done on Lisa Murkowski and her connections to Glenn Maxwell's husband. And I'm sure she's getting a lot of phone calls about that.
- [44:38]
B
Well, Lisa Murkowski was our legislator of the week week.
- [44:43]
A
Oh, was she?
- [44:44]
B
Yeah, her name went out to about 80,000 people.
- [44:51]
A
Oh. So they're getting a lot of.
- [44:55]
B
I'm sure that they're getting some calls and that's how we're going to beat it.
- [45:00]
A
Do you think that, do you agree that she should have had to disclose her relationship with Epstein, I mean with Galen Maxwell's husband and, and Alice Rogoff and the connection she had with Glenn before she voted?
- [45:12]
B
Absolutely. But that hasn't prevented ethical conflicts, haven't prevented people from voting along the lines of Epstein. So that's, I know we just have to come to the, to the really stark reality that yeah, our government, the politicians in our government, a lot of them are compromised, a lot of them are blackmailed. Why else would they vote against an investigation into a bunch of child molesters?
- [45:44]
A
They also feel, they feel the pressure from President Trump, too, to cover for him.
- [45:49]
B
I believe that, too. But it's so wrong. I mean, this is in life very seldom, you know what to do. I mean, yesterday I, I had sushi for lunch. I don't know if that was the right thing or it wasn't the right thing. But in this case, and it's very rare, do you know categorically what to do and so right for me to pursue this? I think I'm categorically doing the right thing.
- [46:19]
A
I would agree with you. I don't think there's any doubt about that.
- [46:23]
B
And that's why I've been at it since 2012. Well, actually, 2002 is when I started investigating this type of phenomena.
- [46:31]
A
Yeah, no, it's horrible. It's the kind of thing you can only imagine, but. And then you find out it's real. All right, Nick. Well, we all appreciate you and your work and keep digging and keep us posted and love to have you on again soon of the Tara Palmieri Show. Thank you again for tuning in. I am so grateful to all of you. We hit a major milestone on YouTube. I keep bringing it up, but we hit a hundred thousand subscribers. Thank you all for that. We're soon to hit 30,000 subscribers at the Red Letter. That's my newsletter where you can get my exclusive reporting straight to your inbox. It's a way to support my independent journalism by becoming a paid subscriber. You can find my work@tara palmeri.com that's T A R A P A L M E R I dot com. I want to thank my producer, Eric Abenate. I want to thank Adam Stewart, who does my graphics and thumbnails, and Abby Baker, who handles the research. I'll be back again this week.