← The Watch Floor with Sarah Adams
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- [00:00]
A
Welcome to the watch floor. I'm Sarah Adams. The Epstein case is no longer about whether the defendant, Jeffrey Epstein, killed himself or not. We're to the point that it's really about institutional rot. It's been over five years since the death of Epstein, and the public isn't debating whether crimes occurred. There's plenty of evidence that crimes occurred. But now they're asking some very important questions. Who else was investigated? Who else was charged? Who was never charged? Why do we only have two convictions in a massive, large scale trafficking ring? And you know, none of this is about partisan warfare. It's about our judicial process. Because we hope the judicial system is based on the rule of law. And within that rule of law, we expect processes to start and processes to complete. So when those two things don't happen, it leaves a lot of people wondering, well, is the system corroded? Like, what is the problem here? I do not feel like this is a system that works the same for every single person. And this is starting to allude to the fact that it seems like a different system for the elites. And we're going to talk about that today. Look at that and see, hey, is there a history of this happening? Right? Should we expect this to continue happening? And hey, what could be some solutions to stop it? The one other issue that's incredibly important in this case is we're talking about crimes against children, the exploitation of children, the sexual trafficking and rape of children. Now, we are the adults in the room, and as adults, it's our moral duty and it's our responsibility to protect children, especially underprivileged children. In this case, we're all seeing pretty blatantly that, well, those in power and those who we elect and those who we elect choose don't seem to have the same moral compass as the rest of us. And they seem to be protecting people who harm children. And that is why this case is so important. And why when people say, we don't want to hear about Epstein anymore, Epstein's closed or Epstein's done, everybody's like, no. Is the public going to learn the identities of the men who abused the girls with the information that you're releasing? And if not, why not? And then I have a quick follow up.
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B
You just baked in an assumption into your question that I have never said and I don't know to be true. Is the public going to learn about the men that abused these girls? Like, what does that mean? I mean, I don't understand what that means.
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A
The men who abused the young women through Epstein's through Epstein.
- [03:16]
B
We said in July and it remains as true today as it was in July. If we had information, we, meaning the Department of Justice, about men who abused women, we would prosecute them. Right? We talked about the work that we're doing. That's why I said that, I said this earlier. There's this built in assumption that somehow there's this hidden tranche of information of men that we know about that we're covering up or that we're choosing not to prosecute. That is not the case. I don't know whether there are men out there that abuse these women. If we learn about information and evidence that allows us to prosecute them, you better believe we will. But I don't think that the public or you all are going to uncover men within the Epstein files that abuse women.
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A
Unfortunately, it's not like Epstein was the only person involved. He had all of these co conspirators that all these individuals harm these children. They didn't just stop harming children the day Epstein died in 2019. Right. These are massive networks of people harming children. And no, we don't want it to go away because we want to stop them from harming additional children. I mean, it's very basic. I mean, in this case, we have one defendant, Jeffrey Epstein, he died before going to trial. We have one co defendant, Giselle Maxwell, and she got 20 years in prison, but now has been moved to Club Fed. And everybody's very concerned. She could be making deals and get out early, which is frustrating. Even when she went in front of Congress, she pled the fifth. She didn't offer anything of value. I invoke my fifth Amendment right to silence. We'll see how it plays out with her. But again, she is an elite and she does get treated differently. And no other third party individual involved in this entire kind of conspiracy around this trafficking has been charged in a federal case. That, unfortunately, is the accountability footprint we're stuck with and we have to work with today. It's not like we can follow all these footprints through all of these trials and compare and research them. We really have Epstein and Maxwell and that's it. And that's the problem. So I want to talk about some of the legal and procedural decisions that made this happen and why it really matters to the victims, but also just to public trust. Why did it happen this way? And hopefully if we understand why, maybe we can push to get it fixed in the future. So where this case got handcuffed is really simple. It's actually back to 2007 and 2008, when people say this, it is true. So this is of course when we had U.S. attorney Alexander Acosta and we had federal prosecutors in Florida looking at very serious federal felonies to charge Epstein with. At the time, they were focused on the sexual exploitation of minors. They were looking at coercion or enticement of a minority, transportation of a minor across state lines and then other federal sex trafficking statutes. I mean, of course the minimum here is 20 years. But when you put all these other charges on, I mean this could end up being, if it was done right, like 100 plus years in charges. Unfortunately, what happened is instead of being indicted federally, prosecutors agreed, negotiated a non prosecution agreement. Right? This is the NPA we all hear about.
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C
Written nearly two decades ago. Prosecutors in Florida detailing the disturbing evidence they gathered against the financier, calling him a continued danger to the community based upon his continued enticement of underage Girls. But that 60 count indictment never filed. Instead Epstein landing the now infamous deal allowing him to plead guilty to lesser state prostitution charges for which he served just 13 months in a Florida jail.
- [07:32]
A
With this NPA, what it's saying is the federal government agrees to not prosecute in exchange for certain conditions. Now when you hear these conditions, they're a little ridiculous and they're all in favor of Epstein because remember, he is in this elite class and we'll spend more time on that. So here is kind of how the deal looked. Epstein pled guilty in Florida to state charges. So he did not get any federal charges in this case, even though it was a federal investigation. So he pled guilty to solicitation of prostitution and solicitation of a minor. Remember he pled guilty to solicitation of a minor at this point. And all of these people for the most part still stayed friends with him. Right? They knew exactly who he was and what he was doing and they were okay with him. So we have to be very honest about that. Another thing is he then served 313 months in county jail. Now, it's not what you think. If you actually look at his deal, he was given like work release privileges for up to 12 hours a day, six days a week. So he hardly even served half that time behind bars. Like he was free all day. He would just go sleep there. So it's a very frustrating thing because you can see him being treated differently and being afforded different privileges. It's not just that that Epstein got a slap on the wrist. So this agreement went so far beyond it is what is stopping current cases and convictions and anything like that from moving forward now, because this has an insane thing inside of it. So when they agreed not to bring federal charges, they also included immunity for any potential co conspirator. Yes, you heard that right. It was broad and unnamed. Any obviously normal immunity does not work like this. You have a witness, they maybe go testify against a defendant and you give them immunity for that role. In this case, it's any co conspirator. You can't go after them. Well, who defines a co conspirator? Because they're not named. So there could be hundreds of people who fall under this because a legal person says, well, they're technically a co conspirator. And so think how frustrating this is for the victims. So anyone who harmed them can just be called a co conspirator and they all get off. None of them are going to get federal charges because of this insane immunity deal. And a deal like this isn't going to be offered to you or me. Right. This is given to an elite. We saw, of course, no federal conspiracy trial that followed, no evidentiary hearing that tested the scope of that immunity. And then the federal case was just quietly closed. None of this is speculation. This is recorded fact. Then this leads to, of course, an important question. Well, can't you just reverse that from 2008? Can it just be reopened and reviewed? Well, if you actually look at these NPAs and the oversight of them, it pretty much does not exist. So unfortunately, realistically, no, that is likely not going to happen. The door is effectively closed. Like these people were given, like a protection they never earned or never deserved. So here's something important though, we do need to think about. Because yes, mistakes were made in the past and we're very frustrated about them, but it was the framework that allowed this to occur. So we have to deal with that. We have to tackle that. Or they'll just do this again and again and again for the next Epstein and that person's co conspirators. And they'll play this game over and over and none of these people will be brought to justice. So here's what we can fix. First off, we can require judicial review going forward. We can prohibit unnamed blanket immunity clauses. Right. Every coconspirator that got immunity should have been named. That didn't happen. So they could just give it to anyone they want. Right. That's basically fraud in the system. Another thing is mandate victim notification before any of these agreements are finalized. I mean, what are the victim's opinions of this person now being Claimed to be a co conspirator who harmed them, just getting immunity for nothing. They did nothing to help in the case, they did nothing to help the victims, They've done nothing to stop this harm from occurring to children. Another thing is we need to require that DOJ at the headquarters level approves these major felony NPAs. There needs to be a senior person in the DOJ that's signs off on this, says I agree to it, takes ownership of it. If anyone can just hand these out nilly willy, think of how corrupt the system becomes because there's no one taking actual accountability. The last thing is we need to codify limits in statute rather than leaving it to internal policy. We need it to be very clear who gets a deal like this, why they get a deal like this, what steps are behind it, et cetera. So you don't just see something like this after and you're like, whoa, whoa, whoa. How can you just do a blanket immunity clause for any co conspirator ever? I mean, it's insane if you think about it, but when you don't have this kind of internal checklist, they can kind of get away with writing this any way they want. And like I said, there's pretty much no oversight to come in and say, whoa, a deal like this should never have been made. And that is a fact. A deal like this should never have been made. And Acosta should be really ashamed of himself. There is another question that comes up a lot and it's how much did the wealth of Jeffrey Epstein affect this case? And it is important to understand. So I want to look at it through a wider lens. And so we're just going to talk about federal sex trafficking cases and show you what it usually looks like. We're focusing a lot on the coercion, enticement of a minor, transportation of minor across state lines, and then some of these other federal statutes Epstein fell under because we obviously have to compare the same type of cases. Usually this process is predictable. You get an indictment, you get a federal prosecution, you get a conviction, and then a person spends decades in prison. This is how it works in these cases. It did not work this way in the case of Epstein. One thing when we talk about wealth, there's different ways to look at wealth. We have obviously just a normal defendant like me, if I was charged, obviously I'm not wealthy. Then we have very wealthy individuals and we'll talk about what their cases look like. Then you have this ultra high net worth, but elite, the top 1% to 2% of the world who are engaged and have influence with all the key leaders in the first world countries, et cetera. They are each distinct category. I want to walk through some cases. In each, we just have everyday defendants and we're just going to use Michigan, so we can just keep a bunch of these within a state. There's Tori Franklin. He was sentenced in 2022. He's not an individual that you put in a high net worth status. And he was federally convicted for the sex trafficking of a minor and he got 26 years. Another was Torrence Dante Clay. He was sentenced in 2021. Again, not ultra high net worth. He was charged with sex trafficking and sexual exploitation. He got 25 years. Then we have Kenneth Zender. He was sentenced in 2022. So these are all very recent cases in the last five or six years. Again, not known to be ultra high net worth. He was charged with transporting a minor across state lines and he got 30 years. Now these are perfectly common, normal sentences for these crimes, okay? Especially when the cases involve minors. So now let's move to the wealthy and the elite and kind of talk through some of those cases. Just if we stay in Michigan for a minute, there's a very famous case. It was Frank Sheldon, if you don't know him, in the 1970s. He was very similar to Jeffrey Epstein. He brought miners to an island, it was North Fox island in Michigan, did a lot of the same things. Things. He was a multimillionaire. He was like a real estate developer. He was involved in a lot of kind of infrastructure, very wealthy. He was never federally prosecuted. And then of course, he went overseas. He ended up dying abroad. It was similar though, in Epstein's case, besides him getting off, it's the fact that he did have a co conspirator that was charged for 20 years. And then nobody else kind of within their network in any way received any sort of charges. So very, very similar to how we've seen Epstein handled. And again, these are crimes against children, the exploitation of children, the sexual exploitation against them. Now when we get to some of these modern examples, it's really interesting. So if we just look at high net worth, but not elites, we obviously had R. Kelly. He was sentenced in 2022, kind of at his height, he was worth about 100 to 150 million. And his charge was racketeering and sex trafficking. And he got pretty much the expected sentence, which is 30 years. Then we have Keith Rainier, if you remember him. He was the cult leader for nxivm. And that was Obviously a sex cult. So this was a much bigger deal. So he led, like, a multi million dollar organization. He really did have a lot of wealthy patrons, but he was not what you would call, like, tied in or influential in the elites. So his charges were sex trafficking, forced labor, and racketeering. And he actually got 120 years. Kind of what you would have maybe expected for someone like an Epstein if the system worked the way it was supposed to. So that's just kind of an interesting view when you're rich but not an elite. I've never had a complicated skincare routine. 10 steps, layered cream serums. That's not for me. I'm a keep it simple kind of girl. I rarely put anything on my face. So if it's gonna go there, it has to do something. It has to work. And that's when I notice one skin. Now, it's not the packaging or the hype around it. It's the thin fact that it was created by longevity researchers. Right? Those are scientists, not influencers. And they took a moment to just ask basic questions about aging. And what they did is they focused on the sunescent cells, and those are the ones that kind of build up. And then they show us that visible sign of aging. So they didn't create some product to cover this up. Many of us are perfectly fine, fine with aging naturally. What they did is they created this product, OS1. It's a proprietary peptide. And what it does is it switches off those damaged cells. So it basically goes in and targets at the source. We all know I love targeting. You know, it might be a different approach, but it works great. So when I started, I used the OS one face. It's a very simple moisturizer. You know, I put it on at night, and then when I get up in the morning, it's super lightweight. It absorbs quickly and evenly. My skin feels so much healthier. You know, it's not just softer, it's stronger, and it's subtle, but it's more reactive, and it's just consistent throughout the day. And then I moved on, and I started using osi. And this is interesting. It's the same peptide, but it's made to go into some of those more delicate areas around the eyes where we all know we see our stress and fatigue so much more. And since I've been using it, it looks a lot healthier, and it's very natural. It's not like it leaves any kind of artificial feeling or look or shine around that area. I love that I'm not Juggling a bunch of products to fix things. You know, just two items. I travel a ton. I can throw them quickly in the bag and they're evidence based. And when I say evidence based, that's backed by four peer reviewed studies. But also you can go see plenty of reviews from people like me. There's over 10,000 of them. When people saying, hey, here's what I felt and here's what I think of the product. Lastly, Bloomberg even highlighted this product in the skin longevity space. That's the kind of science that matters to me and I like that I can trust it. Born from over a decade in longevity research, 1 skin OS1 peptide is proven to target the visible signs of aging. It helps you unlock your healthiest skin now. And as you age, for a limited time, try One Skin at 15% off using code watch. At One Skin OneSkin Co watch again, that's 15% off at OneSkin Co using Code watch. After your purchase, let them know we sent you and thanks for supporting us here on the watch floor. In a normal case, you would get 25 to 30 years, right? And we saw that pretty consistently in the examples we gave. When I'm talking about elites, I want to explain a little bit about how this works because it's not just about having money. It's connections to, you know, these wealthy families, the political elite. It's like influence you have. So when we talk through the influence Epstein has, people like just to pick a little pocket of it and say, well, oh, he has influence here, but it's so much grander because nobody takes a step back and looks at the entire picture. So I just want to walk through talking about some of the most elite people in the world that are connected to Epstein, at least through these email communications. We of course have Ehud Barak. He's the one mentioned the most, right, because he was the former Israeli Prime Minister. But he isn't the most powerful person Epstein is connected to, which is interesting. So we're just going to go through a list so we can tell you some of these people. Another one was Sultan Ahmed Bin Suleiman and he was really this massive business broker in the Emirates. Another was Sheikh Jabour Yusuf Yasmin Al Thani. Again, this is from the Al Thani royal family. Again, he was in the ruling family, but also a really big international businessman. And then of course, Qatar's prime minister had a close relationship with Epstein. That was Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdul Rahman Al Thani. He had a relationship with Princess Sophia of Sweden, Andrew Duke of York, Sarah Duchess of York, Lord Peter Mandelson, who was just charged for having these corrupt practices in office due to the files. He was a former European Commissioner for Trade, and as most people know, he even served as a British Ambassador to the United States. We had Miroslav Lychunk. He was a Slovak diplomat, but he's a former Minister of Foreign and European affairs and the former President of the United Nations General Assembly. Right. This is a very high position. We had Torbjorn Yenglund, and if you just saw, he just attempted suicide over these emails. He was the former Prime Minister of Norway. We had Bergi Brende, former Minister of Foreign affairs for Norway. And then we had Jack Lang, the former French cultural Minister. And this is on top of being connected to, obviously, US Presidents like Bill Clinton and Donald Trump. So when we say elite, this is what a member of the elite looks like. This isn't a style by. This is a power broker in these circles. These are his friends. Okay? So we have to be very clear about this. And when you have friends like this, they come to bat for you, they protect you, and that's an important thing. But also you protect them. Right. The door swings both ways when we talk about these elites. It doesn't mean every single one of them was involved in exploitation of children, even though, you know, when he went to prison for it. I'm very confused with the people who stayed connected to him after, because since they knew who he was. But regardless of that, the bigger question is, and what the public wants most is essentially the client list who was proven to have harmed and raped children. Right. It's very simple. Now, our government keeps playing, playing with this term, and I really don't like it. So what Department of Justice says is there is no formal client list. Our memo on Epstein clearly points out that there was no client list. Our July 6th memo. Okay, that's fine. So the DOJ and the FBI did not ever do their jobs and sit down and put a master list together. Fine. Okay. That failure is on you. I get it. But you can't say you cannot put together a list. Right. We have obviously plenty of victims still alive. A lot of them did depositions. A lot of them gave tips willingly to our law enforcement, state authorities, and federal authorities over the years. So all the information is there to create a list. You just chose not to do it. So that's a very different thing. So for people to go around, say, there's no list. Yeah, because they didn't feel like writing it. They didn't feel like putting it together. But you can literally do the list. I mean, we've had people like Nancy Mace come out and give names on the list, obviously David Copperfield being one of them, of course, Prince Andrew, et cetera. So don't let them play with this list term. And don't believe that just because someone didn't put a list together. There isn't a list of the people who caused all this harm. It there's people who did it. You've seen most of the files. Who, if anyone, did Epstein traffic these young, young women to besides himself.
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Himself. There is no credible information. None. If there were, I would bring the case yesterday that he trafficked to other individuals. And the information we have again is limited.
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A
So the answer is no.
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1 for the information that we have
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A
in the files, in the case file. I don't care how you define it. You can make a list if you feel like it. And that's what I think people are getting really frustrated about. Who are these alleged abusers? You know, recently we had Pam Bondi play this little game where they extracted all the names from the emails they released and like, here's your list. That is not the list. We want the list of people who did the abuses, committed the crimes. I don't care if you have Elvis and Marilyn Monroe on a list. Like that is a game. And I think the public is a lot more knowledgeable than they're being given credit for. And they're just thinking, hey, people are going to run with the names of this list and we're done. And that is not the justice people are asking for. We just want to know who committed a crime and who got away with it. It's pretty simple. And the fact that you can't tell us it is the problem because this is the problem with our system. It is two tiered. If, if any of us on our level committed this crime, we'd be federally charged. Not only were these people not federally charged, they won't even tell us who they are. And then they say, oh, well, all these victims sign these confidentiality agreements. We can't put the names out. Yes, the victim maybe can't go say the name on Oprah, but the Department of Justice can say the name. And so all these games are being played with the public. But just I want you to be very clear that they are games and you need to keep pushing and you need to at least say, hey, we care about accountability. Now there is another piece of it and people haven't spent a lot of time on it. But I Do think it's also important. So besides Epstein having this whole web of business connections and political connections, he also did other things. He formed a foundation, for example. You know, he did a lot of philanthropy work instead. It supported the sciences, the education things to help children. He had friends running child focused orphan programs, et cetera. Susan Hamlin being a really great example in the emails. And this is something that everybody else is also concerned about. Wait, we're saying, oh, some of these photos are from NGO trips to Africa. Well, what were these NGOs doing? There's a whole nother layer in here that people are really frustrated about because clearly there's harm to children here. And then there's relationships with organizations that are supposed to protect children. We even have United Nation officials who are supposed to be protecting children's and women's rights, which clearly in the email seem like they're also involved in the trafficking. So at what levels? We have leaders across the eu, the un, across the Middle east, in the United States, all across Britain, and then of course, all these Scandinavian royals. This is a really big problem because if you're not addressing these individuals and what else they're connected to, remember, it's not just absent. So what other crimes and harm and even money laundering and type of things are happening within these other kind of nonprofit organizations these people are supporting, are they really helping anyone? You know, I think people find that very frustrating. Now there is the question, let's set immunity aside and we actually have an individual that they're not a co conspirator. Right? We can see say, hey, nope, this is really a person who did the trafficking, harmed a child, what can still be prosecuted because the DOJ is not even coming out and saying this. They always say stuff, hey, we're working on things. Be patient. But there still are crimes that can be prosecuted. Of course, there's sex trafficking under 18 USC 1591, because there's no statute of limitations when you do the sex trafficking of minors. Then there's conspiracy charges. Remember, there's a lot of different acts going on in these cases. They're not just committing one crime. And then we do have financial crimes, money laundering, because there is trafficking proceeds occurring in this case that's still actionable. There are bank accounts. We've heard from people from banks. They were fired for saying, hey, we really shouldn't be doing business with him anymore. We have this strange new case where we find out Epstein paid a company to go take a bunch of files from his home and move them into storage units. That sounds like conspiracy to me. That sounds like something you can charge. So the door is not completely closed, even though this immunity deal really, like I said, handcuffed this whole thing. And so we do need to keep pushing for some sort of accountability against these people. And you are seeing, at least in the uk, there are some charges coming out, more about the corruption piece of this and less about the harm to children, which is frustrating, but you're seeing small things. Now, when we talk about all these documents that were released, it's not all of them. There's three terabytes. I want to tell you what documents were released and then what you're not seeing. What was released was the 2008 NPA that we've discussed, discussed Maxwell's trial transcripts, civil depositions, flight logs, portions of Epstein's address book, and then some redacted search warrant materials. So what hasn't been released? What are these sealed materials? We have grand jury transcripts, we have the full FBI case files. And then, of course, course, if Epstein was in any other government documentation, like if he was ever mentioned in CIA cable traffic, we have internal memos regarding some of these prosecutions, and then we have criminal search warrant returns. So in a case, especially when we're talking about kind of these trafficking cases across state lines, just one case can produce 100,000 pages of documentation. But then there's other things in there that can be more protective. Emails. Because remember, we're not seeing everybody's emails. You're seeing kind of out of Epstein's email box, financial data, different digital forensics. A lot of this isn't going to the public because it's protected under different secrecy rules. That is perfectly normal. But as you know, the public has this tension because with Epstein, it's not like he went to trial, got a sentence, and there was a conclusion. So it's like it's all hanging. And as not every piece is out there and clear to people, then of course it feels like the government's withholding the truth. And it does feel to a lot of the public that, hey, they are withholding this information and not sharing it and redacting names to protect the elites. And, you know, we're not okay with that. We're fine if you protect the names of the victims, but we're not fine if you protect the co conspirators and everyone else, you know, involved in this case. You know, so in closing, I'm not interested in any sort of conspiracies around this. Like the majority of Americans, I just Want to see some accountability? You know, when we look at this case, it's very clear there is not full accountability. There is this large network that was protected in shield. The large part of it was under the NPA from 2008, but it happened. And then it makes you wonder, well, how often does this happen? How many of these type of networks are being shield by what looks like potential corruption within our judicial system? Why did they get this type of deal? Who else is getting this kind of deal? Why are we even allowing this to occur? Because it really isn't fair. It is not an equal application of the rule of law. And with the Epstein case, it's not like it's not solved because of lack of information. It just has never been fully adjudicated. And the public's starting to feel like that is likely never going to happen. And it looks like for Epstein, his access really became currency. His influence became an armor, not just to him, but to his entire network. Who harmed these children. And then that justice was never a plan for any of them. So this erodes trust. Public trust is gone. And it does show that power protects these ecosystems. This isn't a party issue. It's not Republican versus Democrat, but there is this grouping of elites and there is a social tier that gets treated a different way. And they don't have to face accountability for their actions like you and I have to. And that frustrates the American people. So this isn't some grand conspiracy. But we see now faults in this system. We see the problems. And we want a system that is just and it does the right thing and within the law. And if it's not doing that, then we need to push to get it changed to get these fixes done. And if people in the top of the DOJ aren't going to do it, then unfortunately we're probably going to have to rely on Congress or someone to mandate some of these fixes. But clearly things need to be fixed. Like this blanket immunity, simple fix that should never be offered in a case like this. Right? You need to name the people. That is such a simple thing. If they leave it in place, they're going to misuse it again and again. And we can't allow that to occur, especially in cases like this when children are harmed. Thanks for being here today on the watch floor,
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C
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