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- [00:00]
Jake
Are you feeling more fulfilled now that you're back to work this Friday?
- [00:05]
Cenk
No, I need a vacation.
- [00:07]
Tara Palmeri
See the movie that critics are saying.
- [00:09]
Jake
Is an awesome look at that crowd.
- [00:11]
Tara Palmeri
Pleasing, fist pumping all out brawl of a film.
- [00:17]
Jake
You're right about that.
- [00:20]
Michael Cohen
They're coming after our family. Go fix this.
- [00:24]
Jake
Oh my. Nobody 2. Rated R only in theaters Friday.
- [00:32]
Tara Palmeri
Welcome to the Tara Palmeri Show. For me, the Epstein story isn't about politics. It's about putting the pieces together of a massive sex trafficking operation for the many survivors who have had to suffer without justice and answers. I don't care where this investigation leads, whether Democrats or Republicans look bad. I have been looking for tips and information everywhere and so many of you have sent them to me. So thank you so much. Please continue to do so. I am trying my hardest to investigate this, to put the story together. And I've got to tell you, I think about it all the time. And this weekend I saw one of the most glaring and obvious leads to talk to President Trump's fixer during the 2016 election, Michael Cohen, because he was on TV talking about the Epstein case, saying there's no way that Trump went to Epstein's island. And there is no flight record of Trump going to Epstein's Island. And he may not have. Right. But it was weird because Michael said.
- [01:37]
Michael Cohen
I just know he didn't because I.
- [01:38]
Tara Palmeri
Just know him and didn't really give a reason why. And then I started looking around and Michael had also said on CNN that he sort of cast doubt on the Wall Street Journal's reporting that President Trump gave Jeffrey Epstein a card in the shape of a naked woman that was doodled. And in it, it was a suggestion that they had a shared secret about, you know, sexual trist and that he used the word enigma. And Michael Cohen went on TV to say Trump doesn't doodle. And, and he doesn't use the word enigma. Well, it turns out Trump's doodles have been sold at auction at so and he's used the word enigma. So I'm thinking to myself, like, why is Michael Cohen covering for Donald Trump? And it wasn't even so much covering. It's like, why is he defending him? And then the lights went off from, went on for me and I thought to myself, duh. Cohen was around when Katie Johnson, the Jane Doe, that's her name, but her Jane Doe name, Katie Johnson filed three suits against President Trump during the 2016 election. And the run up of it, she said that she was raped at Jeffrey Epstein's townhouse by President Trump in 1994 when she was a 13 year old aspiring model. These are her allegations in a complaint, but they went away right before the election, days before, citing threats. Now, who was dealing with President Trump's allegations of affairs and indiscretions? Who was his fixer at the time? Michael Cohen. He dealt with the Stormy Daniel hush money payments, which actually ended up sending him to jail. He dealt with the Karen McDougall payment through the National Enquirer. Michael Cohen would be the one to deal with this case as well. So I thought, let's talk to him. And we had a conversation on my substack live. You can go to tarapaum mary.com and sign up for that substack, the red letter. I have a lot of these live conversations on there. I just wanted to know, did he deal with the Katie Johnson case? Did he know more about it, what happened there? And so we start the conversation and Michael is extremely aggressive, saying, I don't know anything about Epstein. I know nothing about Epstein. I know nothing about Epstein. He said he started working for Trump after they broke up, after their friendship ended. And that's true. He started working for him after 2007. But Trump was also called on by a victim to, to testify against Epstein for, you know, for her. And I mean, Epstein was everywhere, right? But after getting very upset and really defensive, within minute four of our conversation, he finally makes a very shocking admission. He handled a case, a complaint related to Trump and Epstein. An infant, in his own words, as he called her, accused President Trump of rape. And in Cohen's telling, Trump told him to handle it. So he hired an investigator, an investigator, a PI Private investigator to track the woman down. But this is why Jane does use these fake names like Katie Johnson and Jane Doe, because they don't want to be tracked down. Because private investigators are used to intimidate them, to dig up dirt on their lives that can be used to smear them in court and elsewhere to make it difficult for them. And here's Michael Cohen saying he just hired a private investigator to try to find out who this person is, who was trying to be anonymous. Well, he said the private investigator led to an empty parking lot in the Bronx, which actually wasn't that surprising to me, because why would a Jane Doe use their own address? That would give away their, their location, their home, their identity, who they are? Most of them actually just use the law firm, the address of the law firm. He says in his account that he talked to one of the lawyers. The lawyer said they never even met the, the victim. It wasn't real, and it was dropped. And I said, well, why didn't you retaliate against the lawyer? This is crazy. And he seems to suggest that it might not be the Katie Johnson case, but there is no other case complaint on the docket relating to Trump and Epstein during this exact same period of time right before the election in the fall of 2016. But I remember, I remembered that Courtney Wilde told me she was an Epstein survivor. She told me that when she was trying to. When she was filing a suit against Jeffrey Epstein and she was trying to take him to court, that, that his private investigators were so aggressive against her, and they nearly ran her off the wall, the road. Okay. Like, it's just, it's a, it's a form of intimidation. It's frightening. And then I think, and I look and I see in the reports that at the time this Jane Doe said that she dropped the case because of, because of intimidation. You would think that just the fact that President Trump's former fixer is admitting that he hired a private investigator to try to find this Jane Doe, just like he paid off this porn star, Stormy Daniels, and handled this, this National Enquirer payment to Karen McDougall, you would think this is a major breakthrough, right? That, that all of the media would be covering this. It's his words.
- [06:50]
Michael Cohen
It's not me give.
- [06:51]
Tara Palmeri
As a source telling you that. A source told me this. It's. It's Michael on the record. I mean, just listen to him right here. But no, and I can tell you this. You know this. If you've been watching this channel. I have been on msnbc, cnn. I have been on TV every single night.
- [07:07]
Michael Cohen
These shows want me on because they.
- [07:08]
Tara Palmeri
Know that I am a, a Epstein expert. I've also worked at a lot of these networks, and I am a credible journalist. And yet this is a major breakthrough. And I, and they don't want me to go on TV to talk about it. They're not even covering it. And I'm just wondering, why is this, is this getting too close to the sun? I mean, it just seems very strange to me. Is it because, you know, Michael Cohen is now a useful cudgel in the resistance against Trump? And, and he, and if he's, you know, if he's seen as, as, as no longer reliable, then they can't use him as a source on tv? I don't know. But I just, I just have to say, like, to me, this seems like a very important breakthrough that Michael Cohen might understand why President Trump doesn't want the files released. I mean, he was involved in the one complaint against him that's public. He started our conversation saying he had no. No knowledge of Epstein. And then. And then within four minutes that he dealt with one complaint. He was all over the place afterwards. And he was angry with me at one point. Debating the truth. I mean, when you're debating the truth, saying your truth and my truth are not the same, it's just not a great place to be. But I just want to reiterate that when we look at this case, at the Epstein story, we have to look past the politics and who is helpful to our political causes and what facts are helpful for our political causes. Instead. Instead look for answers to this insidious corruption. That is the answer to this. This is for the survivors. Okay? This is for the many, many broken lives caused by Jeffrey Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell.
- [08:59]
Jake
Trip planner by Expedia. You were made to outdo your. Your hammocking and your pooling. We were made to help organize the competition. Expedia made to travel.
- [09:15]
Cenk
When we come back, journalist Tara Palmieri will join us to talk about her reporting on the Epstein files. She's, you know, had an interesting realization about something Michael Cohen had told her. So we're gonna talk about that and more. Don't miss it. We'll be right back.
- [09:31]
Jake
All right, we got a great interview for you guys. Now, Tara Palmeri, she's the author of the Red Letter on Substack, which matches Anna's dress today.
- [09:39]
Cenk
It does.
- [09:40]
Jake
So it's appropriate. It makes a lot of sense. And host of the Tara Palmeri show, unsurprisingly, on YouTube. All right, Tara is an expert on the Epstein case and recently interviewed Michael Cohen, Donald Trump's former fixer, and joins us now. Tara, welcome back. No problem. So let's talk about your Michael Cohen interview. So he used to be Donald Trump's lawyer. He told you something interesting. What was that?
- [10:08]
Tara Palmeri
Yeah, I think this is a pretty.
- [10:09]
Michael Cohen
Big breakthrough, actually, in terms of understanding why President Trump might not want the Epstein files out there. And it's actually been really underplayed. I was thinking about it as I saw Michael Cohen on a number of shows saying President Trump doesn't doodle. His doodles sell at auction on South. The basis was after the Wall Street Journal reported that President Trump gave Jeffrey Epstein a doodle of a woman, a naked woman, with sort of a suggest that they both knew about sexual trysts. And then we find out that they sell an auction. He also says he doesn't use the word enigma. We have clips of Trump using the word enigma. He said, there's no way that Trump went on the island. We don't have any proof of Trump on the island. Epstein's island, by the way. It's not in the flight records, but he was just saying, I know this because I know Trump. Okay, so it's like, you know, right? You were the fixer. And there was a case right before the election. There was a woman named Katie Johnson, which is not a real name. It is a Jane Doe name. She came through in three lawsuits right before the 2016 election alleging that she was raped by President Trump in Jeffrey Epstein's house in 1994 in his townhouse when she was a 13 year old trying to be a model. The case was dropped right before the election in November 2016. And she cited intimidation. And I thought to myself, well, who would have handled something like that? And at the time, Michael Cohen was Donald Trump's fixer. Right. He handled the Stormy Daniels case the exact same time. That was the hush money case. That actually led to him going to prison for campaign finance violations. He also dealt with the Karen McDougal payments through the National Enquirer. Another attempt to keep an affair quiet before the elections. And I first talked to him on his substack and he was very defensive. He said, I don't know anything. I don't know anything. I don't know anything about Jeffrey Epstein. And then he finally said there was one complaint of it, and he called her an infant, alleging rape of President Trump and that he sent a private investigator to try to find this Jane Doe.
- [12:19]
Cenk
So, Tara, first of all, I'm sorry to interrupt you, but we actually have that portion of your interview with Michael Cohen. So I kind of, if it's okay, I'd like to play that for the audience so they can hear what he said out of his own mouth and then we'll discuss. Let's take a look.
- [12:33]
Tara Palmeri
Okay.
- [12:34]
The only case that I was involved with was a Jane Doe, an infant, by and through her mom, Mary Jane Doe. Right. As legal guardian. That case was dismissed not because of anything that I spoke. Well, I spoke to the lawyers and I've talked to. I've talked about this a million times. I turn around and I receive this summons in a complaint. And the averments in it are awful. They're despicable. It talks about basically rape of an underage female, claiming and alleging that Donald was involved in it and all that other nonsense. I ended up taking a private Investigator and trying to find out who this person was. And he went to the address that allegedly this miner lived at in the Bronx. Well, lo and behold, the investigator responds back and says, the only thing that's there is an empty parking lot. There's no building there. It's an empty lot.
- [13:53]
Cenk
Wow. So. So what was the takeaway from what he admitted there?
- [13:59]
Michael Cohen
First of all, he's never admitted that before. Literally, he says, I know nothing about Jeffrey Epstein. And that was how he spent the first four minutes of the conversation saying, I know nothing about Jeffrey Epstein. I know nothing about Jeffrey Epstein. I know nothing about Jeffrey Epstein, and then finally admits that he worked on a Jeffrey Epstein complaint. The reason that Jane does might use an empty parking lot, a place they don't live, is to protect themselves from private investigators and harassment. It is a known fact that they decide to be Jane does because they are afraid of intimidation, of threats. Courtney Wilde, who was a very brave survivor of Jeffrey Epstein when she decided to, you know, file a suit against him, his private investigators were so aggressive, they almost ran her off the road. This is a very common tactic when trying to intimidate Jane Does. Now, the fact that this Jane Doe led to a undisclosed location, a lot of them just choose their lawyer's law firm, you know, that doesn't mean anything. I'm not saying that President Trump raped this woman. This is an allegation of rape. But what I am saying is just because it led to an undisclosed parking lot, it doesn't change the case. He's very obtuse in this interview. He won't confirm that it is the Katie Johnson case, even though that is the only case that was filed at that time, the only complaint that was filed against Trump in relationship to Epstein before the. Before the campaign. And he says it was dropped around the same time, just days before the election. He says he doesn't remember very well. He says that the lawyers apologized to him when they dropped the case, but the case was withdrawn, citing intimidation. And I just think this is just such a bombshell in a lot of ways. And I asked Michael, what did President Trump say when you asked him about it? Because you have to know what your client says about this, Right? They're friends. There's tons of pictures together from that period of time. And he said, michael, it's nothing. It's bullshit. Handle it. And he's like. And then I took care of it. And I said, and you believed him? And he said, 100%.
- [16:15]
Jake
Hmm. Okay. So, well, part of your theory is that private investigators get hired, and that's why they hide the address. And in this case, they did hire a private investigator. So that kind of proves a point. And if it turned out she'd used her real address, the private investigator would have tracked her from there on. So, like, already this is super uncomfortable. I mean, I think that there's another part of the story that we're kind of missing here, which is. So Donald Trump hired a private investigator to track one of the victims from Epstein.
- [16:47]
Cenk
Exactly.
- [16:48]
Jake
Who had, you know, had allegations against him. That's kind of a big story, right?
- [16:54]
Cenk
That's a big deal.
- [16:55]
Jake
Yeah.
- [16:55]
Michael Cohen
And no one in the mainstream media is covering it. And yet it's in his own words. It's not me with a single source saying. A source told me this, that Michael Cohen did this. This is Michael Cohen's own words.
- [17:08]
Jake
Yeah. I mean, and do we know if the private investigator eventually did find her? Because she opposed the lawsuit saying intimidation. Now we know there was a private investigator. Maybe they. They did find her. Maybe they did intimidate her. We don't know that, but we certainly don't know the opposite either, given the situation here. So that leads me to a broad question.
- [17:27]
Michael Cohen
I know Cohen said that she didn't exist. That's what Cohen said, that this woman didn't exist, and that his lawyer said that they had never met her before. But she had three lawyers. If it's the same case of Katie Johnson, she had three cases. The entire interview, for everyone who wants to watch it, it's on my you YouTube channel. It completely devolves into him screaming at me, telling me that I'm wrong and that the. And debating the truth for just asking these really simple questions. It's really something.
- [17:58]
Cenk
Sounds like the tone of someone who has nothing to hide. Yeah.
- [18:03]
Jake
Yeah.
- [18:03]
Cenk
This is crazy. This is crazy. I mean, the behavior of Donald Trump as it pertains to the potential release of the Epstein files is super shady. I mean, super shady. He couldn't have handled it worse if he wants people to think he has nothing to do with Epstein or any of the disgusting, loathsome criminality he had engaged in. And it really does beg the question, why are we not getting the Epstein files? What did Trump's personal lawyer, Todd Blanche, talk to Ghislaine Maxwell about? And why was she moved from, like, a higher security prison to. To, like, the Club Med of prisons? Considering the fact that she was the person who recruited these minors, groomed these minors, and in some cases, even sexually assaulted these minors, what kind of favor was done there? So I just think the whole thing is so deeply shady. Did you have a question, Jake?
- [19:05]
Jake
Yeah. So he's. Michael Cohen's yelling at you, which is kind of curious because he's obviously turned on Donald Trump. He's been on this show a couple times and every other show. And so if Trump was implicated, presumably he wouldn't be angry about that if it didn't involve him. But it does involve him. He was a lawyer in that case, right? He was a fixer in that case. So that might be why he's reacting in such a hostile way when it's otherwise. Like, if it was just a junk lawsuit, easy to say, hey, you know what? Nothing of it. If he's not involved in it, he might go, yeah, look at Trump. Right? Because he's certainly not on Trump's side. But we're all guessing here. So my question is about the actual allegations. I remember when they came out and most of mainstream media treated it as outlandish. There's no way it's true. And then the case was dismissed. And I have to confess. I. That was my reaction. The charges were so significant that I thought, really, is this possible? And then when it went away, I thought, well, okay, I guess there's a lot of people who don't like Donald Trump. Maybe it was one of those. Now, I know there's no way you could know, right? But what is your educated guess on how real that lawsuit was?
- [20:28]
Michael Cohen
I mean, the lawsuit was filed three times, and the lawsuit was dropped, citing intimidation. I. You know, I can't say that I have spoken to this Jane Doe, Katie Johnson. It's her decision if she wants to come out. But like I've said before, a lot of these Jane does do this. I mean, this is the power source. If she wanted to go out and speak out about the allegations, right now she's going up against the most powerful person in the world. And that takes. That's. I think that explains a lot. And, yeah, there's a lot of fear. This is. I do a lot. My. My focus on the Epstein story is on the survivors and what they have been through and trying to put the pieces together for them. Right?
- [21:17]
Jake
So.
- [21:18]
Michael Cohen
And it's really hard. It is not easy. That intimidation is a huge part of why women stay quiet. And I'll tell you this, more women than you think are staying quiet about Epstein.
- [21:29]
Jake
Hmm. Interesting. So, okay, Ro Khanna and Tom Massey are gonna do a press conference on September 3rd with some of the victims, and they want the Epstein files released. So the victims are out there, and there's a lot of them. I mean, from what I understand, there are hundreds of them, right?
- [21:46]
Michael Cohen
Thousand.
- [21:47]
Jake
Thousand. Over a thousand. So, I mean, I guess. Last question here. Do you know to what degree they've. Have they all been interviewed? Do we know how many of them have named other people other than Epstein and Maxwell? Because to me, the bottom line is always, yeah, you could pretend that the file is not there. You could pretend that there's no actual list, per se. Right. You can pretend a lot of things, but you can't pretend that there aren't over a thousand victims. There are.
- [22:18]
Michael Cohen
And Those are the FBI's own words. They estimated that. They said there are about a thousand victim. Well, first of all, we know the file exists. It's on the FBI's website right now. You can see it. It's just all black. That is the Epstein file. You just can't read it because it's all redacted. And the victims have lists of the men that they were. That they were sexually abused by. I mean, even just Virginia Giuffre's. If you look. Well, you can't read it because the men fought to redact their names. But if you actually look at her, at her depositions in the case against Maxwell, it names a number of men that she was trafficked to. This isn't. This isn't something that's just contained. So the idea that there are no third parties is just. It's just ridiculous.
- [23:06]
Jake
Yeah. I mean, it's ludicrous to say that it was just Epstein and Maxwell with over 1000 girls. And by the way, that might mean that there were a couple of dozen or a couple of hundred clients. Or it might mean there were a couple of thousand clients because they could have unfortunately pedaled the same girl to multiple men. Right? So I'm just. Okay, I keep saying last question, but Tara, has no one ever even. I know they didn't bring a case against anyone else, but that seems so unbelievable that I'm struggling to find a way in.
- [23:48]
Michael Cohen
Is there any.
- [23:49]
Jake
Any case brought by any local authority, federal authority, anyone who thought about bringing a case and then a criminal case and then pulled it back? Or has it been from day one, the US Government saying, we're never gonna prosecute any of these by their actions. Right? Not by their words, which they eventually did say those words, but by their deeds. No effort to prosecute a single one of these. A massive amount of clients from Epstein.
- [24:15]
Michael Cohen
Okay, so, Cenk. I was on the show. I think I was on the show. Earlier this summer. And I was explaining that there is no master list. Right. That there's no one list that Jeffrey Epstein held onto, and it was all the guys that he trafficked women to. Right. That it was mostly the women that had these lists. And, yes, there is no master list. And I actually started going back to some of my FBI sources after we talked, senior FBI sources, senior law enforcement sources, just because I wanted to see, well, what's happening with that? You know, are they actually pursuing this. This case? There's 3,000 gigabytes of files that they're hanging onto. Virginia Giuffre told me that her lawyer brought her to the FBI to try to identify her body among the bodies of girls with men above them. And this person said, yes, we have files, we have documents. We're still working on it. That we're gonna be up against the most powerful defense attorneys in the world and prosecutors, when they want to bring. When they want to try someone in court, when they want to prosecute them, they want to have a strong case. These are really powerful people. And then it's case closed. Just like a week or two later after I made that phone call, it.
- [25:21]
Tara Palmeri
Was crazy to me.
- [25:22]
Michael Cohen
Case closed from. So you're saying no third parties.
- [25:26]
Jake
So, Tara, you're saying that there were active, open investigations and people might have been tried and charged soon, and then Trump shut down all the cases.
- [25:39]
Michael Cohen
That's what I understand from my source, that they were still investigating it. Very much so, at least at the FBI level, hadn't maybe reached to the doj, and prosecutors were working on it, but at least at the FBI level, they were very much still investigating.
- [25:54]
Jake
All right, everybody, check out Tara Palmeri's channel on YouTube. She covers this material along with a lot of other good investigative journalism and news. And check out that interview with Michael Cohen. We'll put a link down below in the description box and check out.
- [26:09]
Michael Cohen
Thank you.
- [26:09]
Jake
Yeah, no problem. And check out red letter.
- [26:11]
Michael Cohen
Thank you for being brave enough to talk about it, too. I feel like that's why this is such a great place for people to come to, because it's. You know, the mainstream media doesn't want to touch it. It's like.
- [26:21]
Jake
Yeah, that is weird.
- [26:22]
Cenk
I mean, well, thank you for your focus on the. On the victims, because they are out there, and, you know, they're. They're not being represented. It's disgusting.
- [26:30]
Jake
Yeah. And by the way, Tara's worked at a number of major mainstream media outlets. Abc, Politico, et cetera, and been a White House correspondent. So it's not like she's a rabble rouser and so they can't talk to her about it. I mean, it's easily the biggest story of the year and mainstream media not wanting to talk about it is strange.
- [26:51]
Cenk
Yeah.
- [26:51]
Jake
All right, Tara, you're awesome. We appreciate you. Thank you.
- [26:54]
Michael Cohen
Thank you, guys. Thank you both. Bye.
- [26:56]
Tara Palmeri
That was another episode of the Tara Palmieri Show. Thanks to all of you. If you want more of my reporting, you can go to tarapaulmary.com and sign up for my newsletter, the Red Letter at 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 to sources and try to get down 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.