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- [00:01]
A
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- [00:30]
B
Tara Palmieri is here. She writes the Red letter on Substack and has hosted two acclaimed podcast series on this topic, broken Jeffrey Epstein and power the Maxwells. Also joining us, former criminal division deputy chief at SDNY, MSNBC legal analyst co host of the YouTube show Courtside, Christy Greenberg. If you weren't all so accomplished, I would have gotten through this without coughing. Also joining us, my colleague, senior contributing editor at Emmett. I may see Michelle Norris take it away and tell me where you see things in the House.
- [01:03]
C
I am, I am so in shock and I have been for a long time over how Speaker Johnson has not been able to control his caucus. Obviously, the Republicans, they're, they're, they're dug in. I mean, Nancy Mace, Marjorie Taylor Greene, Lauren Boebert, Tom Massie, they're not moving, regardless of the threats from President Trump. And so you are going to have a bunch of House members voting against releasing the Epstein files. And they're going to say, oh, we have to do it to protect the girls. You have the girls, the women now on the steps of the Capitol saying, release the files. We are adults. We want this out there. We need to understand our story, you know, the broken pieces of our lives. And only you can do that. So stop pretending, stop patronizing us and making us feel like you're protecting us. That's not what we want. And it's just a really hard vote to take. And I bet when they go back to those town halls, people are going to be really well.
- [02:03]
B
And the reason the four are standing strong, which we never say about Republicans in the time of Trump, is that they have 81% of the public behind them. 81% of Americans think Donald Trump is covering something up.
- [02:15]
C
Absolutely. And I just don't understand how they, they go back to their districts after this and explain it. And I just think that Speaker Johnson saying, oh, this closed door House oversight hearing, you're going to get more information from that. These meetings, you're not getting anything. All you're getting is dribblings out that Alex Acosta a never read the victim's statements before crafting a non prosecution agreement, a sweetheart deal. He never even looks.
- [02:47]
B
That, is, that, is that credible to anybody.
- [02:50]
C
That is insanity. This. There is one. The lead prosecutor, Marie Vilafagna, worked over a year on this. She put together a 60 count method memo, 80 pages, a prosecution memo. And she talked to so many girls as young as 14, she recommended transporting and trafficking girls as young as 14 to him. And he didn't even look at the memos. He didn't even look at the testimonies. And then neither did Cash Patel. It's just, it's a slap in the face to those 81% of people who think that something stinks.
- [03:23]
B
Well, what it reveals is that when Kash Patel went on Joe Rogan, when. Don't. Dan, Don. What's his name? Dan Bongino. Dan Bongino was talking about this issue. It was never about the girls.
- [03:33]
C
Oh, no, it was never about the girls. It was about getting the cabal of Democratic elites in their minds. It was never about justice. It just never was.
- [03:41]
B
And this was Danny Bensky on this program this week about the sort of two faces of the Republicans that Michelle's getting at. I mean, they know it's the right thing to do, to vote to release the files just based on that reporting that Mike Johnson might let a few of them, quote, do the right thing, might give them a hall pass to do the right thing. Here's Danny describing what Comer was like in private.
- [04:06]
D
Comer came in and said to all of us, you know, we're all on the same side of transparency here. We are all fighting for the same thing. We believe you. We had quite a few Republicans come and shake our hand at the end. And it really, I left that room feeling so hopeful, and then to still not have the vote from that side of the room is really disheartening on.
- [04:29]
C
A lot of levels.
- [04:29]
D
And I don't, I just don't understand why.
- [04:34]
B
I think we understand why.
- [04:35]
C
Right.
- [04:35]
B
I mean, the politics on the right are all about protecting Donald Trump.
- [04:39]
C
Yeah. And they, and they try to spin and obfuscate and tell these victims, no, no, no, we're looking out for you. We just want to do it in a safe, methodical way in which the Department of Justice and we get to, you know, redline everything or, you know, redact everything. So you really don't know anything. Because if you want to right now, we could all go to the FBI's vault and you can look at the Epstein files. Whatever is Public. And there are just pages that are blank, blank, blank, blank, blank, full of redactions. It's just. It's incredible. And just the fact that, I mean, I just feel like these victims have settled for breadcrumbs for so long. Why are their accounts of being trafficked to other men not credible? What have you done to verify that those accounts are incredible cash? Patel, if you haven't even read those accounts yourself, why don't you have the victims testifying in these hearings? Why don't you want to hear from them yourselves? I mean, there is a literal effort to plug their ears and avert their eyes by the Republican Party. And it's painful for these girls. I mean, I speak to them frequently. I'm on text chains with a lot of the survivors. I keep calling them girls, but they're women, they're my age, they're your age. And they tell me, you know, they're fed up. And they're talking about doing opposition research on these members and shaming them and showing their ties to Jeffrey Epstein, because everybody has a tie to Jeffrey Epstein, I can tell you that. And I've got some reporting coming out to show that. What a deciding vote, the kind of ties that this senator had to Jeffrey Epstein on deciding not to release these files. And you know who's looking into all of that? It's the survivors. They're sitting around and they are angry and they are lobbying and they are calling and they are trying to figure out how to make the door to justice open, even if they have to break it down.
- [06:29]
B
What is it that is worse than that? That could be in the files about.
- [06:33]
C
Donald Trump, you know? Well, we know that there was one Jane Doe that made an allegation of rape before the election, said that she was raped by President Trump when she was 14 in Jeffrey Epstein's townhouse. She withdrew that lawsuit right before the election in 2016, citing intimidation. So that's something that's out there. We saw the birthday card that President Trump claims that he did not sign. You know, there's more. I mean, there's likely more. And here's the thing, you know, they can say, oh, it's a group of Democrats, and it's true. A lot of people will look bad if the full files are released. Right? A lot of people on the left will look bad. And I think a lot of people forget that President Trump was a Democrat back then. You know, he was signing checks for Hillary Clinton, he was signing checks for Bill Clinton, he was signing checks for Chuck Schumer. This was a different crowd that he used to run around in between Palm beach and New York. And they were friends. You know, there is a sensitivity about what, how close their friendship might be. The Epstein estate, which is clearly either, you know, is handing over documents, but there are leaks going on with emails. We just saw that, Sarah Ferguson's emails where she was saying, I'm so sorry that I publicly denounced you for being a pedophile. You're a supreme friend. Somebody has access to his emails. Things are going to leak, and they are going to be embarrassing for people in power, and it's going to be a drip, drip, drip, drip, drip. So, you know, we don't know everything. I've always believed with this story, and I've been investigating it for a long time, that this is only the tip of the iceberg. And the allegations, they're going to affect a lot of people. And there's going to be a lot of questions about why has the DOJ protected this man for so long. The first case, The Costa case, 2008 sweetheart deal that went all the way to the attorney general under George Bush, went all the way to the White House. I mean, that is saying something. And for so many decades, this story has remained quiet. You know, I mean, people have a right to want to know why.
- [08:51]
B
Tara Palmeri, Kristi Greenberg, Michelle Norris, thank you so much for starting us off and for enduring my weak voice. Thank you, guys.
- [08:58]
E
That was another episode of the Tara Palmeri Show. If you like this show, please rate it, subscribe, share it with your friends, leave comments, tell me everything you want to hear.
- [09:08]
C
If you like my reporting, you can.
- [09:10]
E
Go to tarapaumary.com that's T A R A P A L m e r I.com and sign up for my newsletter, the Red Letter, and you'll get my exclusive reporting straight to your inbox. It's also a way to support my independent journalism by becoming a paid subscriber. I want to thank my team, my producer Eric Abenate, Adam Stewart on the thumbnails, and Abby Baker, who is doing research for us. If you like this show, I'll be back again, so please hang on and stick around for this wild ride. We have so much to cover, and I'd love to hear from you about what you want. Want to know more about. See you again soon.