Tara Palmeri (3:21)

Well, this is based on the fact.

Tara Palmeri (3:23)

That he cooperated in the Financial Towers case. It was a huge Ponzi scheme that he was a partner in and he did not go to jail for it, but his partner, Stephen Hoffenberg did. So it's just sort of trying to understand how Jeffrey Epstein had so much power and how he was able to evade justice for so long. And so Zev Shalev has been covering this story for as long as I have, six years maybe. More and more, he's really been investigating this angle. He follows the money trail and it's led him to Russia, Israel, the monarchy, and even Donald Trump. On the show, we're going to talk about the money laundering probe that federal prosecutors dropped. Like I mentioned, we're going to talk about the billionaires and the bankers who stayed loyal to Epstein after his sex, after he went to prison, after his conviction, while he went to jail for, for procuring a minor for prostitution. I mean, as if a minor can be a prostitute. We also talk about those new Senate documents that reveal that JP Morgan found $1.1 billion in suspicious activity tied to Jeffrey Epstein. And then we get into what I have really been trying to wrap my head around. Who was Jeffrey Epstein an intelligence asset for? Who was he working for when he bragged to people that, you know, he was friends with Vladimir Putin and.

Tara Palmeri (4:50)

African.

Tara Palmeri (4:50)

Dictators and he's spending time with the former Israeli Prime Minister, Ehud Barak. And how was he able to get access to all of these powerful people as a college dropout as if he is some wild financial guru? Was it blackmail? Was it kgb? Were these girls just being used as pawns? Zev and I put our brains together and I think you're going to enjoy this podcast. It is a wild ride and I certainly feel like I know more than I've ever known before about this story. Please leave your comments, let me know what you liked about the show, what you didn't, what you want to learn more about. And as always, I appreciate all of your support. You can go to tarapaulmieri.com. that's T A R-A P A L M E R-I.com to support my independent journalism. I will stay on this story. By becoming a paid subscriber, you keep me in business because while the networks may not care anymore, I will stay.

Tara Palmeri (5:48)

On it just like I have when.

Tara Palmeri (5:50)

Others just didn't seem to care anymore. So thanks so much and take a. Take a watch or listen here.

Zev Shalev (5:58)

Yeah, I'm just very excited to speak to Tara Palmeri today. Many of you know her from the Red Letter. She's done incredible work on the survivors of Jeffrey Epstein. I've been doing work in a different way about Jeffrey Epstein at Narrative. We've been talking a lot about the financial crimes. And what's great about today is that Tara and I get to compare notes about this man and this criminal history that he has, which is quite baffling to me. I mean, it seems endless, the amount of things we're discovering about him. And as I was just saying, there are just so many faces of Jeffrey Epstein. People know him as the rapist, as the human trafficker, as the abuser. But he's also, of course, a financial expert, or claimed to be. He was also financial criminal. He was an espionage guy. He worked for many espionage agencies. So this is a real. It's really great to be able to see this from a different perspective. So I. You know what? Tell me a little bit more about the Jeffrey Epstein that you know.

Tara Palmeri (6:56)

Yeah, I mean, I've obviously spent a lot of time with the survivors of Jeffrey Epstein, particularly Virginia Giuffre. And I've seen it from the perspective of these young girls who were exposed to this life of, like, you know, not just extreme privilege, but power and some of the most powerful people in the world, and we're tossed around like party favors. But, you know, for some reason, that doesn't seem to compel the most powerful people in our country to do anything about it. I mean, you know, we hope that there will be a Congress, a new congressman from Arizona, Grijalva, that she. Adelita Grijalva. She'll be sworn in, and they'll maybe start the process of compelling the DHS to release the files. I am skeptical that we will see anything that is not highly redacted, like what you see already on the FBI vault. But, you know, in the meantime, I do think the drip, drip, drip of information about Jeffrey Epstein, whether it's through emails that have been leaked, whether it's from the estate, having to comply with subpoenas from the House Oversight Committee. And whether it's just from investigations like from the Senate Finance to find out why was this man so protected? How was he able to get away with one of the largest sex trafficking operations in history? And, you know, some of the latest reporting is really shocking to me. You know, Bloomberg has a piece out about how federal prosecutors opened a money laundering investigation into Jeffrey Epstein at the same time that they were investigating him for child sex trafficking and that. And he was genuinely worried about that. He thought he could get away with the sex trafficking, but he was worried about the money laundering. And then Alex Acosta made the decision not to pursue that angle, which seems very clear cut. Like a money laundering case is a very. Not that the child sex trafficking operation wasn't clear cut. I think it was, it was very, very overwhelming. The evidence they had. The, the, the lead prosecutor thought that he should be charged on more than 60 counts. But, but this is also incredible to know that he had another angle of criminality and he still let this guy go with a sweetheart deal. So I was hoping to talk to you more about that. What. You know, and it seems so. And also, just how is he able to get access to some of the wealthiest people in America, Some of these people who are running legitimate financial institutions, like Mark Rowan at Apollo and, and.

Tara Palmeri (9:28)

Jess Staley at JP Morgan.

Tara Palmeri (9:31)

Glenn Dubin, who had this huge hedge fund as well, like Les Wexner, who was, you know, head of Elle Brands, which was Victoria's Secret billionaires. Why would they give a college dropout their money? Was it KGB style? Was it. Were they these girls being used as honey pots and KGB style? Yeah, that's the sense that I got from all of it was that they were being used as honeypots and that perhaps the intelligence that he got from these wealthy individuals was valuable to various governments and that's how he was protected. But that's, that is based on some of my reporting having, you know, found, you know, learned that his bodyguard would go to Langley for him. Why does he get access to Langley? It all, it all seems to me like he had some value to the government. And I don't think it was just in the United States. I think he was probably valuable to multiple governments. And apparently, according to Vicky Ward's report reporting, he used to brag that he was advising Vladimir Putin, you know, African dictators.

Tara Palmeri (10:34)

He liked to.

Tara Palmeri (10:36)

He was very good friends with Ehud Barak, who used to stay in his apartment. You know, we know that Virginia Duffrey was, has said that she was trafficked to him. So I was hoping that you might illuminate my audience with some of the reporting that you have about how he was able to commit so many crimes with among the most powerful people in the world who saw him as not a risky person to be around.

Zev Shalev (11:02)

I mean, that really is the big question around Jeffrey Epstein. For me, you know, looking at this, I came at this from a political angle. Cause I wanted to see why he had such an incredible influence politically, especially in my investigation around Donald Trump. That's sort of where I found Jeffrey Epstein. I didn't go through any of the other routes. And it became very clear early on that Jeffrey and Donald Trump were really close friends beyond close friends. Michael Wolf was on the other day. He said that probably for both Jeffrey Epstein and Donald Trump, they were the closest friendships or relationships they'd ever had. So they're not just best friends. They were the kind of best friends that really bonded with each other in everything. They did absolutely everything together, including business. And that to me, was such an interesting piece of this. And one of the journeys I went these. You know, you just mentioned so many questions. Like the first question you asked was, why would these billionaires willing to do this for him? And the answer is partially blackmail. I mean, we know now that that blackmail operation was pretty sophisticated. And it's even been confirmed by Howard Lutnick, you know, who's the neighbor of Jeffrey Epstein, who went there at one point with his wife. And he says he never went back because of the ickiness of the whole thing. And because there was, you know, he saw that the, the blackmail's opportunity there for Jeffrey Epstein. So he never went back. But, you know, it's a lot about that. It's a lot about the leverage he had against them. But it wasn't only the blackmail, the girls and all that. That wasn't what was the only blackmail he had. He had other compromising blackmail. And one of the things he did with Jess Staley, I believe, as I'm looking more deeply into his role at Deutsche Bank. Jess Staley was one of the key executives at Deutsche bank. And he was able to compromise all these people politically too. Because what, you know, or criminally, the thing about the girls, for example, was it wasn't about having Andrew sleep with a. Just another woman. It was to sleep with an underage girl. That was the key to their blackmail. Because they knew that they had him on a potential crime at that point. And he'd be much more usable if they had him on a potential crime. Otherwise, you know, he would say okay, yeah, so what? I had an affair, whatever. But to say, you know, you slept with an underage girl, that really would compromise him and something he couldn't deal with publicly because it was a felony, of course. And so he had that on people like Andrew. He had the same things financially on people, and also operationally. So Jeff Staley, turns out, was a bit of an operative. He seemed to take orders or take undertake missions on behalf of Jeffrey Epstein. Jeffrey Epstein, in some ways, was his handler. And so when Jeffrey Epstein would tell Jess Staley to go do something, he would go do it and come back. Now, that is also compromising, because just the very fact that JP Morgan waited until 2019, you know, it's so unbelievable. They fired him as a client in 2013, but they only reported the suspicious activity report in 2019. Now, why would they wait so long to file these suspicious activity reports? It's because they themselves were compromised. You know, the bank itself was found compromised. We know they agreed to these settlements, although they didn't admit to any guilt, but they agreed to these settlements, which suggests that they were aware that they were part of an operation, a human trafficking operation, a criminal operation, a money laundering operation. And the case of the money laundering. I'm sorry, I'm going on for a bit here, but you asked so many great questions. The money laundering thing with Vilafani, the. The person who came up with a plea bargain.

Tara Palmeri (14:50)

Prosecutor.

Zev Shalev (14:51)

Prosecutor. You know, she launched the money laundering investigation on the back of the human trafficking operation because she was like, they. She had gotten information about it, but she was actually just trying to open up the case. She was trying to. And also to use that as leverage to get him to agree to some sort of plea deal, which he eventually did, of course. And the P. Deal that he landed up getting, he was able to reduce to absolutely nothing, you know, to just basically a small charge and house arrest. But that money laundering operation investigation hadn't continued at that time, I think would have unearthed an enormous amount of crime, an enormous amount of criminal activity, and would, you know, save not only these poor victims who were having such a hard time struggling with what he was doing to them. And every time I read one of those stories, it's just heartbreaking beyond belief. And it still boggles my mind how this presidency and this Justice Department cannot achieve what these women are asking for. It's so obvious what they need. They need closure, and they need to be respected, and they need these files to be released. And like you echo what you're saying about these files needing to come out. But this prosecution would have unearthed so much of that. Would have unearthed so much financial crimes that all these people were colluding with. You know, it was Epstein. It was also Trump. It was also the people at J.P. morgan. It was also Leon Black. All these constellation of names that you mentioned, Wexner, everybody, those. They were all involved in these financial crimes.

Tara Palmeri (16:23)

Yeah. So the financial crimes were they. That they were trying to. Well, first of all, we know that JP Morgan was actually the. Was Epstein's bank when he was paying various women and employees that were used in a sex trafficking operation. So, you know, they were a conduit to a sex trafficking operation. They were like.

Zev Shalev (16:43)

They funded it.

Tara Palmeri (16:44)

They financed with the bank. Yeah, they financed it, you know, after he returned from prison and was not prison jail, county jail, because the sex trafficking not, you know, because if it was a state crime, thanks to the sweetheart deal, they also kept him on as a client even though he was a sex offender. It was. And it was Jeff Staley who really advocated for that. He really fought hard. And then, you know, you see from the emails between Jeff Staley and Epstein that clearly just enjoyed the lifestyle provided by Jeffrey Epstein, and that included. Who would you like tonight? Snow White or Beauty and the Beast? I'm having.

Unknown Guest (possibly a journalist or commentator) (17:24)

I'm.

Tara Palmeri (17:24)

I'm in your hot tub at the Zorro Ranch where Jeffrey Epstein wanted to literally breed humans. I'm in the. I'm in the hot tub with a glass of wine. You know, that's, you know, the relationship was. Bar was beyond cozy for a banker. And it's. And their client. And he pressured top executives at the banks to keep Epstein as a client when most people would say, hell no.

Zev Shalev (17:53)

Tara, that's exactly right. I mean, it's shocking to me. That is the problem as I'm writing this new series on substack called the greatest heist 2. It looks at exactly that. It looks at why Jess Staley and others were so sympathetic to Jeffrey Epstein after his plea deal. There's a conversation between Mary Erdos, who's the private wealth CEO, and Jess Staley, who is also an executive at JP Morgan, and the day. And she's saying, oh, it's so heartbreaking. It's so sad about Jeffrey, you know, and then he's saying, yeah, I saw him last night. He really denies all the ages. Meaning he doesn't deny the charges, just the ages that were in question here. So he was sort of bragging about all that. And they sort of found that the only. That was the defense that they were able to rest on is that they took Jeffrey Epstein's word that these women were not underage. But what we're finding out is that they not only kept him on as a client, they actually accelerated the work that they did with him. They wanted even more business with him. They elevated him inside J.P. morgan, into this. Into almost like a consultant and advisor to the senior ranks of JP Morgan. And he was sending Jess Staley on missions. You know, the whole JP Morgan goes to China thing, that was ordered by Jeffrey Epstein and constructed by Jeffrey Epstein. There's all these detailed, detailed conversations where he's giving him cultural advice and saying what to ask the Chinese for. Why is it?

Tara Palmeri (19:26)

Yeah, but why would Epstein be someone who's seen as an expert on how to negotiate with the Chinese? Like, what does he know?

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Tara Palmeri (20:01)

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Zev Shalev (20:05)

Nothing. It really was beyond bizarre. I mean, unless he's a spy, which I believe he was, and I believe he was a spy for the Israeli military intelligence. You know, several sources who've come on the record to say that for me. But that's the only thing that becomes clean about this, is when you see him as a spy running a major intelligence operation that allows for all these possibilities. It allows for the human trafficking. It allows for him getting these executives to do things for him operationally. It also allows for the capture of all these famous people. He was going around trying to capture not only politicians, but all these scientists, all these other people, and trying to capture them, capture their brain, fund them, do whatever he can to own what they were doing. And then went for the banks as well. It went for the presidents as well. A lot of the people that we see that went to the island were Democrats because they wanted to compromise. Democrats that were basically on side of the Republicans. So that's why that's the only way I can think of that allows for all these different things, all these different faces of Jeffrey Epstein. And what I'm really curious from you is did these, you know, you know, the survivors very, very well. Did they ever know that did they ever understand that they were being used as pawns in a blackmail operation, in a. In a scheme that had huge global implications?

Tara Palmeri (21:31)

Most of the girls, no, because they were kids. They didn't know any better. Like, they just had no idea. They just thought he was a rich guy who had really wealthy friends. And they. A lot of them didn't know even the people that they were being trafficked to.

Zev Shalev (21:45)

Oh, wow.

Tara Palmeri (21:46)

You know, it's not like you could. They're not like, hanging out, reading about Nobel Prize laureates or. You know what I mean? Or knowing who runs the media lab at mit, you know what I'm saying? Not that he actually was a recipient, but you know what I'm saying? They weren't reading academic journals. But it's interesting because the way you're putting it, like, if you did want to have control of a country, then you. Then you have, you know, you stranglehold the leadership in finance, in science and academia, in politics. You take all of the power centers and you. And you control them by having blackmail on them. It's very KGB style, in a way.

Zev Shalev (22:26)

It is, yeah.

Tara Palmeri (22:28)

And so it's interesting, too, with Jess Staley, though. So when Jess was clearly losing power within JP Morgan, it was Epstein who helped Jess get a job at Barclays, that thing, move on from there. And I think he was a CEO of Barclays. Yes, I believe that's right. And so he was not only, you know, perhaps control, he was literally controlling their lives. He was a fixer for them. And it's interesting to see him as this, like a hyper operator, hyper fixer, which is also why I think, you know, when you see that he met with the Deputy Secretary of State, Bill Burns, and people don't realize this, but State and CIA are very much connected.

Zev Shalev (23:14)

Burns was CIA, wasn't he?

Tara Palmeri (23:16)

I think he became CIA, but not when they met. They met when he was Deputy Secretary of State, but he went on to be CIA under the Biden administration. At that time, he was Deputy Secretary of State and, you know, a lot of foreign diplomats, they're not diplomats, they're CIA, you know, and so I think people kind of underestimate how intertwined those two agencies are together. And there. And when his schedule was. Was foiaed, Freedom of Information act, when he was. They were compelled to hand over his schedule. It showed that he had three meetings with the CIA. And like I said, his bodyguard, Igor Zinoviad, went to Langley while he was in prison and. And in jail and gave. And came back with a binder for Epstein to read. And so, I mean, that's his account that he told Brad. Brad Edwards, who's the lawyer for the victims, who told me. And I think it's just really, really interesting, all of these connections. And of course, everyone says he's a spy.

Tara Palmeri (24:22)

I mean, the thing is, how did.

Tara Palmeri (24:26)

He get his money? Like, why would Les Wexner be the origin of his money? Can you explain that?

Zev Shalev (24:30)

That's a huge question. Look, the way I explain that is through Wexner was a big supporter of the Israeli state and Zionist causes. And if Jeffrey Epstein was working for Israeli military intelligence, it explains a lot of connections in his life. Firstly, the hut. Barak, before he was prime minister, was the defense minister. Or maybe even after he was prime minister, he was the defense minister. I'm not sure which way it went.

Tara Palmeri (24:59)

Foreign minister, too, as well.

Zev Shalev (25:01)

And that Defense Ministry would have put him in charge of the Israeli Defense Forces, which had inside of it military intelligence, which is what Epstein worked for and Ghislaine worked for. People often call it Mossad, and it's a bit of a misnomer. And it's why the Israelis have been able to play a game with everybody. You know, on the one hand, they often come out and say Epstein was not part of Mossad. Well, he wasn't. He was part of Israeli military intelligence. Amman, two different organizations, but both spying organizations within Israel's, you know, intelligence infrastructure. So they. They. The way he. I explained Wexner is through that some people say he and Wexner had an affair, had a life.

Tara Palmeri (25:39)

Yeah, I've heard that before.

Zev Shalev (25:40)

Relationship. And that was really close. Which, you know, opens up a whole lot of questions around why Jeffrey Epstein, if he wasn't exclusively interested in women, maybe not interested in women that much at all. Why was he doing all this? You land up back at the. Well, he was a spy. He needed to do this. He needed to compromise people. I don't believe that it was necessarily one way or the other, but I think he was. There was a gay aspect of Epstein's. Maybe it was a control aspect, maybe it's more power aspect. Who knows what it was that he was using. But everyone who he seems to have come in contact with, it was Jess Staley included, had this kind of oddly. Ellie Leonard, who's on the chat right now, telling me last night that she thought out of reading all these emails that there was a connection between Jess Daley and Jeffrey Epstein. That was kind of romantic. It was more than just a friendship. It was more like, you know, at one point, Jess Staley says, I want to come give you a big hug to Jeffrey Epstein after while he's doing an house arrest, but was, you know, obviously traveling around and doing things he shouldn't have done. I mean, that's a very unusual thing for an executive at a bank or even, you know, even a friend. I think it's kind of the strangest kind of comment to say that I want to come give you a big hug for two guys. I mean, I don't know. Maybe it's a little. It's possible.

Tara Palmeri (26:55)

No, it is weird. And, you know, he. He introduced Les Wexner to his wife Abigail. So they were. He did a lot of things for these people, and he knew a lot about them. And I think there were a lot of implicit handshakes going around about, hey, this could be socially embarrassing. And I. And do you think he was willing to launder their money? I mean, that's another part of it.

Zev Shalev (27:18)

Oh, yeah. This is the thing that I find so fascinating about what Wyden came out with this. You know, the financial reports that he says J.P. morgan had, and they finally have released these suspicious transactions or suspicious activity reports. There was $1.1 billion of suspicious activity. Now, Jeffrey Epstein did not have $1.1 billion. Even over the years. He did not. Maybe he went. He had some of that throughout the years, but he died with $600 million, which is a lot of money anyhow. But what was all this other money that was flowing through these accounts? He was the number one client for private wealth for JP Morgan. Private wealth. How did he get to be the number one client getting $60 million of revenue just for the bank? That's a tenth of his total wealth at the time that he died. And what I reveal in the greatest heist is that he was obviously laundering large amounts of money. That would create transaction fees. You go to the bank, you. You trade your foreign currency for US Dollars, they'll take a little piece of that. They take a lot more for that than they would for just managing your huge fortune. So they. Those foreign interest rates, commissions that they took at those banks is how he amassed all those millions and millions of charges that went to the bank. And it's another reason the bank was so complicit with him. They didn't want to lose a $60 million man. At one point, they called him that in their emails. They didn't want to lose a $60 million man from their balance sheet every year, which it would be a huge hit for them if he wasn't their client.

Tara Palmeri (29:00)

Okay. We started this conversation with you saying that there was a connection, a financial connection between President Trump and Jeffrey Epstein, that they were friends. We know that. We know that a real estate deal was the breakup. They were bidding over a place ironically called the House of Friends, and it was in Palm Beach, a waterfront property. And because Jeffrey Epstein got in a bidding war with Trump, who is famously cheap, he had to pay $46 million to a place that he ultimately flipped shortly after to a Russian oligarch for $96 million. Question mark. A few years later. But I do want to ask you about this, and, like, we don't have to talk necessarily about this real estate deal unless you think it's connected, but was there a financial relationship between Epstein and President Trump?

Zev Shalev (29:50)

I believe so. I think that there was. And I think when I did, in the first part of the greatest heist, is I look back at their entire financial network and how they. How they both became quite rich. And, you know, Jeffrey Epstein became rich by laundering and crashing these companies. He's a collapse expert, if you want. If you want to call him that. He'll go into companies and crash them, build up their wealth and then crash them in order to take out the. What some people call control fraud is the crime in order to extract all the. All the money out of it before that crash or after the crash. And he did it several times. That's what he did with Towers Financial with. With Steve Hoffenberg or Tower Financial. But I think the Towers, I should say. Sorry, what was the question again? You were asking about the.

Tara Palmeri (30:43)

I asked if there was any financial connections between Epstein and Trump. Yeah.

Zev Shalev (30:47)

Now it's understood. You know, a lot of the money that he was laundering through Towers was Robert Maxwell's money, amongst others. It was also Adnan Khashoggi's money. It was also, you know, probably, possibly Putin's money at some point, maybe not through Towers, but through later deals that he did in laundering things. So a lot of this money came from very wealthy people that he was laundering into through his company called JE Epstein. And as some of that money that came from Maxwell at least, was part of this, this project that the KGB started before the end of the Soviet Union, which was about infecting American capitalism because KGB had a lot of foreign assets. They put a lot of money outside of the country, and they did it partially through Robert Maxwell. He was the conduit that, you know, parked all this money in the United States under various firms or everywhere else around the World.

Tara Palmeri (31:42)

Well, he bought media. Was that. Was that part of it was the buying of the media properties?

Zev Shalev (31:48)

He did. But he also, you know, Robert Maxwell ended up bankrupting the Murray Group pension fund, for example. That was not just a bankruptcy because he wanted to collapse the company. He was stealing the money. He was stealing a lot of money. You know, he was worth way more at his death than he claimed. And he claimed he was, you know, completely bankrupt, and he was not. And the person who would have known all those secrets and would have hidden all of that would have been Jeffrey Epstein. Because Jeffrey Epstein, you know, the part that they're sort of missing in his. In his life, a lot of people, is when he met Ghislaine in the. In the 90s, or, sorry, 80s, and that's where he was first recruited to Israeli military intelligence by Robert Maxwell. Robert Maxwell was one of the people who recruited him. And so, you know, they were having this relationship or this friendship, whatever it was they were doing. But he was also working for Robert Maxwell. Hoffenberg told me and various others have said to me that he was cleaning up Robert Maxwell's files, this financial mess at the end, and maybe even before that was working on behalf of Robert Maxwell as learning a lot of the craft that he later brought to the United States. So the relationship between Ghislaine and Jeffrey was more of a partnership that took over the Robert Maxwell business.

Tara Palmeri (33:05)

Bonnie and Clyde, Yeah.

Zev Shalev (33:06)

But he was working for the kgb. You know, that's who he was working for. So it's. So it's. It's not hard to see how all of those connections and all of that operation, with all the. All that that entailed, would have passed down to Ghislaine and to. To Jeffrey. So that's. That's then Donald Trump, we know, very heavily connected to Russian money as well. We had, you know, all the money through his condos were. Were. Were laundered Russian money. A lot of it at least, was his casinos were laundering Russian money. He's also connected to a KGB operation, you know, the Krasnov thing that we know, plus many other things. So you've got a major KGB operation which was designed to take money out of Russia and pump it into the United States in order to destabilize the American capitalist system. And then they did that. They actually did that. And then you get to the House of Friendship, or Maison l', Amity, where, which was a Wexner property in Palm Beach. And Jeffrey always believed, I believe, that Donald Trump was financed in the purchase of that house by Robolev himself. So the person who landed up buying the property at the end from Donald Trump at $95 million, which was a $50 million profit. That person was Rubobilev, the Russian oligarch, I think. So you say it. And Jeffrey Epstein believed that he was also the person who financed Donald Trump to get that house from him. I can't remember the exact year. It was 2004. I think that they first. That Trump first bought it and then he sold it in 2008 for 95 million. Which is just to say that there's Russian oligarchy money pouring into Donald Trump's world and also pouring into Epstein's world. Were they connected in other places? I believe that the bankruptcy that followed the 1996 casino bankruptcies, that they were also connected there. And Michael Wolff said this the other night, that Jeffrey Epstein helped Donald Trump hide the money that he had suddenly after declaring bankruptcy, but then also emerged as very quickly as a, as a top Fortune 400 billionaire soon after those bankruptcies. Sorry, I'm getting very tangled up in all these details, but, you know, that's how the mind works when you spend so much time looking at these things.

Tara Palmeri (35:37)

I think for a long time, I mean, I did a podcast on Glenn Maxwell and her father Robert. It's called Power the Maxwells. And I think like, one of the things we were really trying to find out about was whether Robert introduced, you know, Glenn to Epstein. Something that's never, you know, it's never been established, like on the record by anyone. And it was interesting when she was asked during her interview with Todd Blanche, the deputy attorney general, that interview from this summer, whether there was a connection between her and her father. And she, it was the first. She had long denied that there was any connection at all between, between Robert and her father, but she seemed to hint that there was some connection. In the interview, she said that he called both Jimmy Cohen and Ace Greenberg, I think at Bear Stern, to ask what sort of guy Epstein was. And he said, but she claims they never met. But it's interesting that like they, that she would even acknowledge that they had a connection because for so long she was like, my father had no connection to Jeffrey Epstein, that she met him on her own. She shows up in New York broke, okay, after his death, and then suddenly Epstein, you know, suddenly a year later, after living in a one bedroom apartment, broke, as she would say, she ends up living in a luxurious townhouse paid for by Jeffrey Epstein. And also, you know, she, she's filed in A case against his estate, saying that he promised providing for her financially for the rest of her life.

Zev Shalev (37:15)

Yeah.

Tara Palmeri (37:16)

And you got to wonder why? I mean, was it just because she was bringing grooming young girls for him or grooming elites as well? I think she groomed elites. She brought a lot of really powerful people around him.

Zev Shalev (37:27)

She was the network, you know, he didn't know people. She did because of her father's work. I mean, for me, the story is very different because I, you know, I've understood the story to be that they met in the 80s, Ghislaine and Robert, but maybe even sooner because, you know, In Jeffrey Epstein's 50th birthday book, there is a note there from one of the Bear Stearns executives saying that he had met Epstein at the same time as he was doing Bob Maxwell's account at Bear Stearns, which suggests. And then he also said maybe you met the daughter than his teenage daughter at the same time. He didn't say teenage daughter, he said his daughter at the same time, which suggests to me that Jeffrey Epstein would have met Bob Maxwell or Robert Maxwell in the 70s almost. Did we lose you? There you go, 70s or early 80s. And then that he maybe met Ghislaine at a very early age when she was still a teenager, potentially. Which is also a little interesting because Ari Ben Menashi told me that Robert Maxwell had the same interest in very young women as well, that maybe there's something connecting that between the two of them, Jeffrey Epstein and Robert Maxwell, that. And maybe Ghislaine was, you know, in some ways, I don't want to say the word traffic, that is not the right word. But, you know, we don't know how that relationship evolved and at what age and how that developed. It's just too, too much to speculate about, obviously. But there's, you know, potentially that was a very long connection there that existed from the 1980s all the way until, you know, his death in 2019. So I think, you know, do I believe that it was just her riding broke? No, I think that was a cover story. I think their cover story the whole way through has been I didn't know Robert Maxwell. I had no connection to Robert Maxwell. This is for Jeffrey Epstein, that she just took the Concord and arrived in his arms, in Jeffrey Epstein's arms. And it was a beautiful love story that just developed from there. I don't think anything like that. I think that they had made this scheme up to travel to America to take Robert Maxwell's fortune, to take Robert Maxwell's operation and then continue it in the United States under different circumstances. I'm curious to know from you whether this was ever. Did the survivors talk about the espionage at all? Was there ever an element that they knew that they were dealing with, you know, that some of this was going to be not only blackmail, but also potentially sold or given to foreign intelligence agencies?

Unknown Guest (possibly a journalist or commentator) (40:05)

No, they knew that everything was being recorded because you could see that just from walking into the house. There were cameras everywhere, but they knew that there were cameras on everything. I think they knew as an adult when they were brought into the FBI. Like Virginia told me she was brought into the headquarters and shown bodies of young girls and older men, and she didn't recognize her body. She was like, I didn't see my own breasts or this or that. But she. No, I mean, they don't. They didn't know. I mean, they're. They're kids.

Zev Shalev (40:38)

Yeah. This is just. You know, one of the things that is so daunting about this and so traumatizing for everybody in this case is how much wasn't known about Jeffrey to everybody and to. It's almost re. Traumatizing for them to go through these experiences and know this new information.

Unknown Guest (possibly a journalist or commentator) (40:54)

They loved him. A lot of them did.

Zev Shalev (40:56)

Yeah. Yeah, I got that sense of that. I got this. A lot of.

Unknown Guest (possibly a journalist or commentator) (40:59)

He's a very manipulative person. He was very manipulative.

Tara Palmeri (41:02)

You couldn't seem like that.

Zev Shalev (41:05)

Yeah, it really is. It's kind of shocking to think about. I know you told. You told the story before of knocking on someone's door of the. Virginia. And I think someone told Virginia you killed Jeffrey Epstein, that she was responsible. A lot of the victims blamed for that, they still care about.

Unknown Guest (possibly a journalist or commentator) (41:20)

They cared about him still this day. I mean, they would. You know, when the. When the FBI was trying to contact the girls to try to get, you know, statements from them, victim statements. He told the girls that the. That they were. The police were coming for them because they were young prostitutes and that he would be generous enough to give them his lawyers. So some of them took his lawyers. And how would they know any better? They were kids, you know.

Zev Shalev (41:43)

No, absolutely. I think that this is the most. The most. You know, the survivors are such real victims of this, as we all are, are ultimately of the. Of the financial crimes. But these. These poor girls, to be trafficked in that situation and then to be used in this way as pawns in a. In a foreign espionage thing is so. It just. It's so depraved. It's so lacking of Any humanity. And it's so. It might be the way things happen in intelligence communities, it might be how spy agencies work. It's certainly what you see glamorized in, in movies. But the reality of it is so harsh. The fact that they were lured into these situations without any knowledge of what was really going on is just so sad. It's just, it's daunting to think about. And no wonder they're out there all the time trying to complete the picture, trying to get the closure. Because for them, how do you get it to move on with your life if you don't know everything that happened during those years and how you used those years?

Unknown Guest (possibly a journalist or commentator) (42:47)

Okay, so I went to Davos World Economic Forum a few times as a journalist, and I was invited to Oleg Deripaska's parties twice.

Tara Palmeri (42:58)

And.

Unknown Guest (possibly a journalist or commentator) (42:58)

Or I crashed them kind of, you know, and so he had the big party. He's a Russian oligarch, very close to Putin. They all are, obviously. And I remembered the first year, you know, obviously World Economic Forum is where you have some of the most influential, wealthy people in the world at Davos in Switzerland. And, you know, you see these, like, young, beautiful women, kind of scantily clad, dancing on these men, right? And, you know, it was kind of a shocker to me. And then, you know, people were like, well, yeah, that's sort of just a regular KGB kind of top. Like, that's a strategy to have something on these men, right? And you have to assume that the space is being filmed in some way. And then I went to it a second time, and who was it that was performing? Enrique Iglesias was performing the second time. And again this time the girls were not as scantily clad because apparently there was a, there was a, like, complaint that they were, it was too, they were too provocative. It was awkward for men there that were with their colleagues that were women or this and that. And so they sent them out looking like secretaries and like a, you know, button down shirt and like a tie and a skirt. And I was just like, I wouldn't know how old these girls were. They could have been very young. But it was all kind of. It felt like they were just being used as pawns in some sort of larger scheme. I mean, why else? Some people might say, okay, they want them there because it's nice to have beautiful women at a party, or are they being used for blackmail purposes?

Zev Shalev (44:36)

The Russians are notorious for this. I mean, the Russian, you know, Putin always likes to brag about how fantastic the prostitutes are in in Russia. But it's because. And how aware they are of that is because they run a lot of the prostitutes in. In Moscow and in other big cities there. It's a huge operation there for them to. To get information. Donald Trump, you know, those supposed P tapes or whatever those T tapes are, or, you know, Leon Black, when they went to that trip to. To Jeffrey Epstein, probably when he went on the trip to Russia, they would all have been surveilled under enormous and then also entrapped into these events. Because it's not just, as you point out the party mentioned with Derek Pascha, it's not just prostitutes. It's an entire event where everybody is an operative. Everyone from the guests to the Bard people to the girls, they were all digging for information. They were all trying to pull together some information on whatever clients they could get. This is how Russia operates, both internally and externally. So we know they do this to foreigners. But the way that Putin keeps his oligarchs close to him is through compromise. This is the.

Unknown Guest (possibly a journalist or commentator) (45:46)

And so I just think of, like, it's compromise.

Zev Shalev (45:48)

Yeah, it's horrific to do this to people who are unsuspecting of it. I suspect the prostitutes in Russia know what they're doing. I think they know what the targets are. They're operatives themselves. But in the United States, what they did is just completely something else. With trafficking these young women in the way they did and then the cases being dropped, as you pointed out, provided so much cover for Jeffrey Epstein to continue to do so many terrible things. It wasn't just the human trafficking that he continued to do. It was the financial criming that he kept doing. And one of the things I do in this new Greatest Heist is I explore, you know, the relationship between JP Morgan and Jeffrey Epstein was so big and so momentous that when the 2008 crash happened, when that recession happened, there were two major, major parties involved. Three major parties involved. The first part of it was Bear Stearns collapsing. Bear Stearns again, the same. The same bank of Donald Trump, same Bank of Robert Maxwell, the same bank of Jeffrey Epstein collapsing. And it was Bought by whom? J.P. morgan. By Jamie Dimon at J.P. morgan. Now that it was a distress sale that happened because of the collapse in the mortgage market. That collapse in the mortgage market, as we reveal in the Greatest Heist, and I kept telling you this for the first time, is, is related to a structure, an offshore structure that Jeffrey Epstein managed with $6 billion. In other words, he had the capacity to manipulate the market to. In order to Crash Bear Stearns and also crash the economy down the line as a domino effect. And JP Morgan were there to pick it up. And this was all in 2008, right after that plea agreement. Which makes you wonder what that plea agreement really caused.

Unknown Guest (possibly a journalist or commentator) (47:40)

He would have been in, he would have been in jail right at the time.

Zev Shalev (47:43)

He, he quit this chairmanship at 2007 of this offshore holding. So he wouldn't have been directly involved in that. But what he is also he invested in two funds that Bear Stearns had in the same space. He invested $57 million into these funds. And just by pulling those $57 million, he could collapse those funds. Then he collapsed Bear Stearns. So if you're sophisticated enough to know how the dominoes fall and if you have the network to know who the people are who are going to call the right people at the right time, you could engineer a crash of a market. And I think they did that several times. I think this, this, this network of, you know, foreign funded business people engineering the crash of the American economy and the stock market on several occasions.

Tara Palmeri (48:31)

Wow.

Unknown Guest (possibly a journalist or commentator) (48:33)

So you're not. It wasn't just mortgage crisis with people over, over extending themselves.

Zev Shalev (48:40)

It was, people were over, people weren't personally overextending themselves. The banks were loaning them ridiculously bad loans that were called liars loans. They were things that were just, you know, worth nothing. Or there were dirty money that was being washed through all these instruments and people landed up being defrauded. I mean Americans were fraudulently pushed into this crisis. Everyone knew the crisis was gonna happen. They triggered it and then they could, they managed themselves. Not a single banker went to jail, not a single person in Wall street went to jail for that crash. And millions of people lost their homes because of their fraudulent behavior. They basically lied their way through that entire crisis. So now add on top of that you've got Jeffrey Epst people as one of the key figures who helps trigger this and one of the key figures who facilitates the sale of Bear Stearns to JP Morgan. Which means only Bear Stearns was saved. Every other financial firm like the Lehman Brothers and you know, we would know what happened to others. But it's the, it's Bear Stearns that got the save early on. Why Bear Stearns? You know, you come back to the same question of Maxwell, Epstein, Trump, all being clients of the same place.

Unknown Guest (possibly a journalist or commentator) (49:49)

Yeah, it is interesting that that was the place that even Ghislaine Maxwell mentioned Bear Stearns. You know, I have to go back too to Stephen Hoffenberg who was His, I would say, partner, right at financial powers. He spent the rest of his life in prison for the largest Ponzi scheme in the world. At that time, it was close to $400 million. Jeffrey Epstein, according to Vicki Ward, was an informant three times to the FBI on that case, it seems to me. And I believe he also helped them in Bear Stearns, but I'm not sure. The Bear Stearns case. Do you think that. Do you think that the. What do you. Why do you think the Department of Justice protected Epstein, you know, not looking at the money laundering, not looking at the sex trafficking? Do you think it was because they saw him to be a valuable.

Tara Palmeri (50:43)

Source.

Unknown Guest (possibly a journalist or commentator) (50:44)

You know, a valuable witness? Or they saw him to be someone who gave them great tips or helped them in cases that he cooperated. He was, you know, or an asset in some ways. Or do you think it was because they had this relationship with Israel and.

Tara Palmeri (51:01)

Or.

Unknown Guest (possibly a journalist or commentator) (51:01)

And they felt that they had to maintain that because of his connection to him?

Zev Shalev (51:06)

I think, as well, it may have had a lot to do with the prince. You know, he was the subject of that case. And, you know, if they were aware of all of this, the Royal family would have done, certainly Prince Andrew, not even Royal Family, they would have done a lot to try and influence it. And I know a lot of the survivors felt that that was the case, that the. That the fact that you had a royal member of the Royal family compromised in this way would hold huge sway with the President and anyone in the government. Because, of course, no one wants to, you know, go up against the Royal Family. It's certainly not something one wants to do, you know, willingly. So I think that's. That's one of the things that broke the Justice Department. I think they would have probably helped, you know, they would have figured out the CIA stuff, they would have figured out the intelligence stuff, and they would have figured out another way to get him to stop what he was doing. That's what counterintelligence is all about. But I think once you've got the Royal family attached to this, it's very difficult. And I'm not sure if Epstein went after Prince Andrew for that precise reason, knowing that that would be the ultimate card to play if anything ever happened to him. Because he could say, yeah, but I've got Andrew. You know, that could be. It could be. I don't know. It's speculation. But it's something that makes me wonder a lot of the time about why. Why they dropped that. Because, you know, other than that, there was, you know, it was not in the national security interests of the United States. It was not in the economy's interest. It was not in anyone's interest to allow this to continue the way it did, because, you know, it really gave us Donald Trump. This whole network that Jeffrey Epstein cultivated is the same network that helped Donald Trump become president in 2016.

Unknown Guest (possibly a journalist or commentator) (52:53)

So, Zev, for some of my followers who don't know you, can you just give them a little bit of your history? I mean, we've thrown out a lot of possibilities, right? A lot of this is really hard to confirm, and I think it's. The difficulty of covering Jeffrey Epstein is that it's hard to get, like, a second source or a third source. On a lot of it, it all seems to be. It. It seems to make sense. It seems to stack up. But some things we can point to an email or we can point to a financial transaction, but then it's kind of like the gray area in between where it's hard to really kind of connect the dots. And that's why I think the Epstein.

Tara Palmeri (53:31)

Story can fall into conspiracy land.

Unknown Guest (possibly a journalist or commentator) (53:33)

You know, of course, a lot of the connections that we've laid out between Jeffrey Epstein and President Trump, he denies them, right? He doesn't deny that they were friends, but he would. He would deny that there is a Russia connection and that they were committing financial crimes together. But. And the fact. And any sort of sex trafficking. But, you know, can you sort of explain to our listeners, like, how you came across, how you came to believe a lot of this information?

Zev Shalev (54:03)

Firstly, I'm a. I mean, journalist. I'm a political journalist. I'm a TV executive producer. I've produced network morning news around the world, including CBS News. I mean, this is not something I wanted to seek out. It is something I landed up seeking out because I was curious about the Donald Trump story. I did not understand how Donald Trump was elected in 2016. And at that time, I was trying to launch this independent venture of. Of doing something like I'm doing now with live streaming online about the news. And I started it off by writing a blog about Donald Trump and Russia. And I did a weekly thing on narrative that basically exploded the Trump Russia narrative. And it became quite popular at the time. And that led me to Jeffrey Epstein. At one point, I saw an article by press release from Hoffenberg, and he had a number on it. I said, well, I'm gonna give him a call, you know, talk to him. And what he did is he really gave me so many new avenues of investigation, and I just you know, I'm a curious journalist and I just want to go down these paths. And this has turned out to be, you know, a six year thing for me now where I've covered Jeffrey Epstein so closely and Donald Trump so closely. But for me, I've always looked at it from a political, economic, financial crime perspective because there was so much coverage of the survivors and that was taking up so much of the space around Epstein. I thought there was a really unexplored territory to go down. How do we know that these things really happened? We'll probably never be able to figure everything out, but we do know. I got it from two sources, from Ari Ben Menashi, who was Robert Maxwell's handler and co conspirator in Iran Contra, and he worked for Israeli military intelligence at the time. That and Steve Hoffenberg confirmed this and various others have confirmed this off of. Not on the record, that Epstein did work for Israeli military intelligence. And we also know to have that.

Unknown Guest (possibly a journalist or commentator) (56:12)

You know, if you have that on the record from. They're reliable sources.

Zev Shalev (56:16)

I believe that they're reliable. I believe everything that Hoffenberg says. You know, a lot of people dismiss him.

Unknown Guest (possibly a journalist or commentator) (56:21)

He's in jail for a Ponzi scheme.

Zev Shalev (56:23)

Yeah. There's good reason to question him because he's got a criminal record. But on the other hand, he had had so much to lose by coming out with all this information afterwards and really nothing to gain. I don't think he. I don't know how much money he had.

Tara Palmeri (56:34)

I think he was very angry at.

Unknown Guest (possibly a journalist or commentator) (56:35)

Jeffrey too, though, for, for, for. Because of the fact that he took the fall.

Zev Shalev (56:39)

Yeah, but he could have just asked for money or something, you know, he could have gone into the could said, you know, just make me whole, give me, you know, make my life better. He. He didn't. He supported the survivors and, and I believe his efforts were genuine. Maybe he was trying to get it for himself, I don't know. But. But his efforts seem pretty genuine to me. And everything he said has checked out. There's not a single thing that he told me and I did maybe 50 on the record interviews with him.

Tara Palmeri (57:07)

Wow.

Zev Shalev (57:09)

And I ran all this before while he was still alive. I was developing this understanding of this whole world and I ran past him and we went through it in great detail, actually, a lot of the stuff, and he confirmed it. So it's not. He's just one person with one viewpoint, but a lot of others have corroborated all of this over the years and the more people start to understand it as a financial crime network and you start looking at all the possibilities around what that is, it sort of makes sense. It's the only thing that really makes sense.

Unknown Guest (possibly a journalist or commentator) (57:42)

Also a really easy thing to confirm if the government wanted to, like, you can look at transactions, you can subpoena banks, you can. It's not a hard thing to confer.

Zev Shalev (57:53)

Yeah.

Unknown Guest (possibly a journalist or commentator) (57:53)

Sex crimes are harder. This is an easy.

Zev Shalev (57:56)

Yeah. These, these suspicious activity reports that have been coming out, I mean, these are the. Those are billions of dollars.

Unknown Guest (possibly a journalist or commentator) (58:03)

It was deferred. It was deferred. Alex Costa said, don't go down that rabbit hole.

Zev Shalev (58:08)

Yeah.

Unknown Guest (possibly a journalist or commentator) (58:08)

And it wasn't even a real rabbit hole. It was pretty easy. Money laundering. People go to jail for money laundering all the time.

Zev Shalev (58:14)

Yeah. And it's very easy to prove, as you point out. And I think the prosecutor had a very good, compelling case and she didn't want to drop it. But they packaged all this, the. Nope. The plea agreements into one package deal which, you know, got them all off the hook, which is a brilliant thing to happen. And then just before the financial crisis, which was a huge crime that they were undertaking. So.

Tara Palmeri (58:37)

Yeah.

Zev Shalev (58:37)

Hey, Dean, how you doing? Dean, we'll see you later at 3:00'.

Tara Palmeri (58:40)

Clock.

Unknown Guest (possibly a journalist or commentator) (58:40)

Yeah, I may have to jump because it's. It's block is going to be 1pm Eastern time over here. Thank you guys. This was fabulous. I feel like I've learned a lot. And thank you so much, Seb.

Tara Palmeri (58:54)

And it's great to meet all of.

Unknown Guest (possibly a journalist or commentator) (58:55)

Your followers who are very much also interested in a similar. Probably one of the biggest corruption stories of my lifetime. At the very least, I think it's.

Zev Shalev (59:06)

Really the biggest criminal story of the last hundred years, if not more. It's not the greatest heist ever, which is why I call it that. And you know, to everyone who's watching, everyone should really subscribe to Tara's incredible substacks. She does incredible work and has done incredible work with all the survivors and every aspect of this, of this Epstein caper. You really do an amazing job, Tara. And thank you very much for all the service you do to the community for that. Thank you.

Unknown Guest (possibly a journalist or commentator) (59:34)

Thank you. Appreciate all of your hard work and reporting. And I mean, that's how you. I believe all. Ultimately it'll be journalists and whistleblowers who will reveal this story. I don't think the government will be.

Tara Palmeri (59:45)

The ones to hand over.

Zev Shalev (59:47)

Yeah, it's gonna be really interesting. It's gonna be interesting. If they release the files, we'll see what happens. Now if they shut down ends we'll.

Tara Palmeri (59:51)

See if that happens if it ends ever.

Unknown Guest (possibly a journalist or commentator) (59:53)

Okay. Bye everyone.

Zev Shalev (59:55)

Bye, everybody.

Tara Palmeri (59:56)

That was another episode of the Tara Palmeri Show. Thank you so much for tuning in. I hope you learned a lot again. Please leave your thoughts and comments. Share Rate Subscribe Tell all your friends about this show.

Tara Palmeri (60:07)

That's how you keep me in business.

Tara Palmeri (60:08)

You can Also go to tarapaulmary.com Sign up for the red letter, you can become a paid subscriber and you get all of my exclusive reporting straight to your inbox by doing that. And also you can support an independent journalist. So great feeling I hope and it supports the free press. I also want to thank my producer Eric Abenate. I want to thank Abby Baker who does my social media and my research. I want to thank Adam Stewart who does graphics and Dan Rosen who is helping me with growth so I can stay in business. Thanks to everyone and see you again this week.