← To The Contrary with Charlie Sykes
To The Contrary with Charlie Sykes
Tara Palmeri: Epstein, Maxwell, and the Survivors' Fight for Justice
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- [00:00]
Tara Palmeri
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- [01:32]
Charlie Sykes
Today, Acast powers the world's best podcasts. Here's a show that we recommend.
- [01:43]
Paige Desorbo
Hey guys. Welcome to Giggly Squad, a place where we make fun of everything, but most importantly ourselves. I'm Paige Desorbo. I'm Hannah Berner. Welcome to the Squad. Giggly Squad started on Summer House when we were giggling during an inappropriate time. But of course we can't be managed. So we decided to start this podcast. To continue giggling, we will make fun of pop culture news. We're watching fashion trend pep talks where we give advice, mental health moments and games and guests. Listen to Giggly Squad on Acast or wherever you get your podcasts.
- [02:15]
Charlie Sykes
Acast helps creators launch, grow and monetize their podcasts everywhere. Acast.com I'm Charlie Sykes. Welcome to the Contrary podcast. We could talk about a lot of things. We could talk about Donald Trump's war on statistical reality. We could talk about his new ballroom, the late stage, Ceausescu meets Liberace meets I don't know what. But I wanted to do something a little bit different today. I wanted to go back to the story that Donald Trump does not want to talk about, the story that he cannot shake. And I want to do it in a somewhat different way. So we are very fortunate to be joined by Tara Palmieri, who has been covering this story for so long. Tara, thank you for coming on the podcast, first of all.
- [03:13]
Paige Desorbo
Okay, thanks so much for having me, Charlie, it's such a pleasure. Been admiring your work for a long time. So thanks.
- [03:19]
Charlie Sykes
Well, thank you. And I would strongly urge people to subscribe to Tara's newsletter, the Red Letter, which has been covering this in a different way. And I told you right before we started this that I was really struck by something that you wrote about your coverage of the Epstein story. I mean, the story is massive. It's power, corruption, secrecy at the highest levels. But you decided at some point that if you were going to do it, it had to be about the survivors, not the wealth porn, not the conspiracy boards, not the political gamesmanship. And that's what I want to focus on today. You know, look, we can talk a little bit about what do you think is going to happen in the future, but I want to talk about that you have been writing about this story. You have been writing about Jeffrey Epstein and talking about Jeffrey Epstein, and I'm going to pronounce it wrong, Ghislaine Maxwell for years now.
- [04:13]
Paige Desorbo
That's pretty close. It's Galen. But yes, if you want to say it the French way, but if you say it the American way, it's Ghislaine.
- [04:21]
Charlie Sykes
Okay, so I'm going to get it wrong either way. So, but, but let's just talk about this. How long have you been reporting on this story?
- [04:28]
Paige Desorbo
Okay, so shortly after Jeffrey Epstein killed himself or was killed, still very much unclear since we don't have footage of his cell and there's a lapse minute. I got a call from Adam Davidson, who you might remember from Planet Money on npr. He's an award winning journalist and any from the New Yorker and Laura Mayer. And she also is very well known in the audio space. She now leads ABC News as audio. And they asked me, would you want to be the host and lead investigator of a podcast? And Julie K. Brown, who broke the story open for the Miami Herald, she would be an executive producer. So would Adam McKay and Adam Kevin Messick, they're both Academy Award winners. So they're like, we're doing this in a really elevated way with Sony Music. And I. And I was like. I remembered at the time that I felt very lost because I had just left network news. I was a White House correspondent for ABC News at the height of my career at 33 years old. And I just felt very unhappy and unsettled and feeling like that wasn't my place to be, even though that was obviously the height of anyone's career, especially at that age. I didn't even think I would get there, but I didn't like it and I left. And I wanted to do more investigative style journalism, and I wanted to break more news, and I just felt kind of like it wasn't going to happen there. So I. Part of leaving is you can't really go across the street to another network, especially if you leave early. So I had this lapse in my contract, and I just sort of traveled around and tried to figure out, like, what am I doing with my life? Why did I throw a grenade into it? I started writing a lot. I got a weird purple lapse laptop and I. I went to Joshua Tree because all my friends said there's great energy there. And. And I love to hike in the desert. And I rented a hotel and I liked it so much. I got a house. And so I just, like, I made fires that night and I looked up at the stars and I was like, God, something tell me, what am I doing with my life? I don't understand. And so the next day, yeah, I get this call from Adam and Laura and I was very intrigued because I've always been drawn to. Well, the reason I became a journalist. I remember being really drawn to the idea of the muckrakers when I was a child, when I learned about them in high school, and that these journalists like Nellie Bly and Upton Sinclair, that they could really hold power to account with their pen, that they could make sure that corruption in cities, in mental asylums, inside of, you know, factories, in our meat packing, that we could. We could get down to the bottom of this and protect people who have less power than the robber barons, as they were called at the time. Right. And so that was always the thing that drove me to journalism. But, I mean, sex crimes are dark. It's really dark. And it is personally heavy for me. And, you know, the Epstein story has it all. It's power, it's corruption, it's secrecy, like you said, and mystery with the death. But it also was about children being raped, I mean, and molested. So it took me a minute to think to myself like, is this your story or do you want to live in this space? Because to do it properly, you can't just go in and out of the Epstein story. You have to stay there and you have to do a lot of digging. There's a lot in there and it has to be stood up. So I knew it wasn't going to be like a quick few month project. It was going to be, it was going to take a while and I thought about it, I kept hiking and I was like, you know what? I feel like this is, this is an important story to tell, but it has to be told through the eyes of the people that were there, the women, the children, the victims. And we can't forget their pain and their, and the way that their lives have been so broken because of it. And it's called Broken Jeffrey Epstein because for so long, people like will say, for a minute, let's, let's, let's reflect on the survivors for a minute. And it's like, just for a minute, right? Let's not, let's just reflect on the people who, by the way, when you look at the number of women who have been compensated from the victims fund that they have out there, so many of them have killed themselves. And so Virginia Giuffre, who I became close with because Adam and the entire crew agreed this story is at its core is about survivors and trying to put the pieces together of their broken life. And by the way, when you go to, to speak to Glenn Maxwell and you take her so seriously, as if she holds the key. All these women that were there, they hold the key. They know the men, they know the witnesses, they know the staff, they know everything. And so we thought, let's, let's go to the survivors and try to report out their stories and cooperate their stories because they've been so maligned throughout the years. The ones who have, the, who are brave enough to speak out and just not go with a single source, but to go out there and retrace their lives. And so I did that with Virginia and I went all over the world, all over the country, honestly knocking on doors with her, trying to speak to people who knew her and trying to get people to show their better angels. And it was really heartbreaking and terrible. And then I went into the Justice Department angle of it all and how this sweetheart deal could possibly be put together. But yeah, it was a lot of just like shoe leather journalism, which I missed doing from my time at the New York Post. And it felt you know, dark and. But at the same time, really gratifying when it came out. But it kind of. Because people were burnt out on Epstein and Covid, it didn't really hit with the bang that I hoped.
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Charlie Sykes
Right.
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Paige Desorbo
There was a lot of stories that came out because we did, we did get some witnesses who had never spoken before to speak, but it didn't move things the way that I had hoped. The next one I did on, on Glenn Maxwell actually was a hit, was number one podcast across the world for weeks and weeks and weeks because she had just been arrested. But like, this one was where I really poured my heart and soul. And, you know, it, to me, it feels like it's coming back around because it really. The story was never finished.
- [10:27]
Charlie Sykes
And, well, that's what I was. That's what I was thinking as I was listening to you and reading your. Your work, that it must feel surreal having known the survivors, having reported on this for so long and now having it come so dramatic. And you wrote something that I thought was very, very powerful last week, I think was last week that this sort of fast forward and because you became very, very close with, you know, Virginia Gifre and, and you wrote, you know, Virginia is dead. Ghislaine Maxwell is inching toward freedom. This is not the way the story was supposed to, to end. So, I mean, it give me some sense of having traveled around the country, known, talked to the survivors, know exactly who, and Maxwell is this moment that we're in right now where the survivors, many of them have not survived, committed suicide, and yet Maxwell appears, was just transferred to a Club Med facility, and certainly possible that she's going to get a commutation or a pardon.
- [11:34]
Paige Desorbo
I mean, it feels like not the.
- [11:35]
Charlie Sykes
Way it's supposed to be.
- [11:36]
Paige Desorbo
No. And it really breaks my heart. I mean, even when you said that you read my words back to me, I felt chills because I did know Virginia and I did travel around with her so, so much. And I was really inspired by her in a lot of ways. I was inspired by her ability to see light in so much darkness. I remember when Jeffrey Epstein's houseman let us into his house and he let us talk to him about what he saw. And this is a man who chauffeur children back and forth from their homes, from their high schools to Jeffrey Epstein's house.
- [12:13]
Charlie Sykes
Did he remember her?
- [12:15]
Paige Desorbo
Of course, yeah. He remembered Virginia. Virginia was so much a part of it. Like she's all over the flight logs. And he let us in and he talked to us and I remembered just feeling incredibly depressed, hearing them talk about their lives, and he was acting like he was enslaved under Jeffrey Epstein. And it was just like as if he had no will, no free will and the depravity and all of that. He just felt like he was a man who, by the way, had been cleaning off the sex toys and cleaning the sheets and driving the girls around and talking, even on camera, on record, as I'm recording this, about how young they were. And it made me just so sad in Virginia when I left that. When we left that. That interaction. We spoke to us for about a half hour. This is pretty crazy, Charlie. The feds actually called. The FBI called while we were talking to him. And you can hear it in the video, in the. In the audio. He picks up the phone. He's like, it's the FBI. And they're calling and talking to him. And later that night, Virginia's phone just explodes. It's probably from being pinged by cell towers. So they were obviously following us around. And so that was very creepy. There were so many creepy elements to the story. But, um, it. She. She. When we got back in the car, I was like, well, Virginia, how do you feel? Yeah, she was like, he remembered me. He wanted to talk to me. He acknowledged me. And this is after so many people just chose to say, I don't. Who are you? You don't exist. Like Prince Andrew, right? Or, you know, the chefs or the cooks. Like, so many people now who she knew and were such a big part of her life when she was enslaved by them for two years, finally one of them was like, oh, Virginia, you look so beautiful. And that, to her, like, that was all she wanted. Instead of me, where I was furious at this man. I mean, I'm a journalist, but I was just like, you disgust me.
- [14:13]
Charlie Sykes
Well, tell me about Virginia. Tell me about who she was. How old was she when she got involved in this, and why did she choose to come forward? You spent a lot of time with her, so give me some sense of who she was, because I think we need to know more about these survivors, these little girls who experienced this and are now grown women, many of whom are suffering greatly. So just tell me a little bit about. I mean, you spent a lot of time with her. So what is it?
- [14:41]
Paige Desorbo
Yeah. Was she okay? So, Charlie, like so many other victims of sexual assault, she was sexually assaulted at a young age, 7 years old, by a family friend. And so a lot of predators can almost smell this on them. You know, they know that these are children who have not been protected in the past that have been. Who don't have boundaries, that don't understand boundaries. Right. And would probably be more likely to talk to an adult or just don't have parents that are really that great. I mean, she lived on the other side of the Intracoastal. You know, that's what they would say, because the other side of the bridge, Palm Beach. Palm Beach Gardens, and. And there were trailer parks. And it's just such a disparity of wealth when you look at that. And Virginia, she was working at Mar a Lago, where her father also did some odd jobs. And she worked in the. She worked in the spa as a spa assistant. And she was reading a book about how to become a masseuse because she thought that could help her get away from this world that she lived in. Right. And, you know, Galen Maxwell sees her. She's beautiful, she's young, she's got these big blue eyes. And. And Glenn says, what are you reading? Because this is what Glenn did. She was.
- [15:58]
Charlie Sykes
She's 14, 15. How old is she then?
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Paige Desorbo
She was either 16 or 17. It's unclear because.
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Charlie Sykes
Okay, okay, we don't.
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Paige Desorbo
I don't. You know, she's changed. Her story has changed on that, and people have used that against her. But then I thought about it, and I'm like, if people tried to nail the date of something for me, when I was 16 years old, I would be like, what? Do you know what I mean? Like, I can't even. I don't even remember my twenties, let alone my. My teens. But I, you know, and. And so it was either 16 or 17, between the years of 1999 or 2, 2002, between. It's either 1999 and 2000 or 2000 to 2002. Regardless, there was no. President Trump had not shown a problem with this at all. And she actually met Trump through Epstein. She never met Trump when she worked at Mar a Lago. So this is what she told me, at least. And, yeah, so Glenn walks up to her, and actually, the houseman remembers the day that Virginia was recruited, and he talked about it on the show. He remembered seeing her and saying, like, she was so skinny and pretty that he knew that she was going to come home because he was in the car waiting, sweating in the convertible while Glenn was inside getting, you know, Virginia and recruiting her. And. And basically, Glenn did the same thing to everyone. She found out what these girls wanted or needed. She looked for the most desperate of them and. Or the most ambitious or usually women without fathers. That are around or prior sexual harassment, like sexual assault against them. And she said, you're so beautiful. You need to be a model. I know Les Wexner, the guy who owns Victoria's secretary. And she did, you know, that wasn't crazy. Just come for an audition in my. In the Upper east side townhouse. I'll make you a star. Or she went to Interlockin's Camp for Arts, where so many of those kids just want to become, you know, artists. And that's. That's a scary route. And not a lot of parents can necessarily fund that. And they would say, we're a couple who can't have children, but we just want to sponsor children who have. Who have great talents because we couldn't have children ourselves. And. And then they would lure them to their ranch in Mexico, where they said claimed to have a camp for talented children, and then assault them like they did to Annie Farmer. She was lured to this camp, to the Zorro Ranch, where, by the way, Jeffrey Epstein talked about creating a literal breeding ground so that he could spread his seed and reproduce multiple Jeffrey Epstein's with enslaved women, children. Most. I mean, he didn't like women. He liked girls. So this is like a very depraved couple that preyed on people. And Glenn had a little Yorkie named Max. And, you know, he had a. She had a chauffeur, and she was posh. She went to Oxford. She just did not look like some madam that you would see on the side of the road. She looked as. And these girls are not prostitutes. I don't even like using the word madam. But if there's any perception that these girls knew that they were going to be brought into some sort of disgusting situation, that they were willingly brought to Jeffrey Epstein to be molested, like, I want to correct that record right now, because when they showed up at his house, in the case of Virginia, she really did want to become a masseuse. And she said, we'll teach you. You can become a masseuse for a traveling masseuse for a wealthy man. That didn't mean. When you get inside Jeffrey Epstein's house, Ghislaine Maxwell is going to be the one who takes your panties off first and then will molest you next, Jeffrey Epstein. And that's the thing that I think Maga and Trump's base and everyone, they keep forgetting that Glenn Maxwell also molested Annie Farmer first in their house in Zorro Ranch in New Mexico, where there were no authorities or anyone around. And she's 16 years old. I mean, this is a woman who molested these girls too, with him.
- [19:47]
Charlie Sykes
She's not a victim. This is. This is not a victim. This is not. This is not the truth teller. This is not the key master who's going to unlock the depravity. Because now she has a chance to tell the truth.
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Paige Desorbo
She's a pedophile. I mean, how is that not pedophilia? A woman who touches children. I don't think that there's a gender line in this.
- [20:08]
Charlie Sykes
So let's go back to Virginia, though. So how did you get in touch with her? She goes through this nightmarish, this nightmarish experience, and yet spoke out, tried to tell people the truth.
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Paige Desorbo
How?
- [20:24]
Charlie Sykes
Just let's do the fast forward. So she's in a car with you, driving around, trying to find people who will remember who she was and what happened. Why was she doing that?
- [20:34]
Paige Desorbo
It wasn't just to remember who she was. Like, for example, when we went to the pilot's house, Larry Vasoski, he had, he had flight logs that she believed could help verify her story and the fact that she was on flights with various men who she was trafficked to. And he never made those flight logs public. Like, they're not in the FBI vault. He said he gave them to Epstein's estate, Epstein's office, instead of holding on to them. Whereas the other pilots, Dave Rogers, for example, he. He gave them over to the FBI because a lot of pilots just hold on to their flight logs. So we went and knocked on the door and we called him and he hung up on her.
- [21:11]
Charlie Sykes
Nice.
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Paige Desorbo
Just because she was like, you have evidence? I know this. Like, she's smart. She knows how to fill up. They, all of them knew how to, to complete their own stories. They knew who was there, they knew who saw them. We went to Juana Lesi's house because we knew that he was an eyewitness. And like, that was why we went there. We tried to speak to the chef, Adam Perry Lang, who is a famous chef, by the way. He's been on Oprah. He's best friends with Jimmy Kimmel. He, he had a very popular restaurant in Los Angeles called apl. And when we, when we went there, John Hamm was there with him, eating in the back of the, in the back of the restaurant. So this is like a very famous chef who was actually the chef for Jeffrey Epstein for many years. And he never said that even in his book. He just said he had a wealthy client who taught him barbecue on a New Mexico ranch. But Forgot to leave out the part about the literal breeding ground that the ranch was becoming, that that was the goal for it. So it's like. And he wouldn't speak either. He was like. He basically said, oh, my lawyers will talk to you. Same with the prosecutors. Like, I actually, I didn't go to Virginia to talk prosecutors. And when I would go to these prosecutors who were involved in the case at the 2008 Sweetheart deal, I mean, they recommended 60 federal charges against Jeffrey Epstein. It went down to zero. And I would say, how did that happen? Zero. And they were like, these lawyers told me to talk to their lawyers, right? There was just. And then I asked their colleagues who were just in the office at the time, wondering if they gleaned anything from it. And so many of them said, this is how it goes. Like, two tier justice, power, politics, corruption, wealth. This is how it works.
- [22:53]
Charlie Sykes
I want to come back to that because actually, there's two things I want to get to. I want to talk to the men about the men who were involved in this. This vast, bizarre, rich network. And then, of course, the big mystery, what happened to the Epstein case. But going back to the victims again, Virginia. Virginia wanted to have her story told. She wanted to be recognized. And at some point, and I'm sorry to do this because every part of this is, is. Is. It is upsetting. But, yeah, you describe her as, you know, seeing the light, that you couldn't find any heroes, but she did. And at some point, she lost hope. What. What happened? Because I think we need to talk about the human tragedy here. What happened, do you think? Well, I committed suicide.
- [23:42]
Paige Desorbo
I know. And I hate the conspiracy theories about her dad because I stayed in touch with her over the years. And even when we were reporting the story out, like, I saw when we passed by the Palm beach airport, how her body just recoiled looking at that tarmac where Jeffrey Epstein's plane was always parked, and knowing that on those, on the jets, like, she would have to perform sex acts. And she became ill. Like, she became physically ill. Like, after that, she was like, I don't want. She. She had to. We had to stop. And I actually said to the producers and I said, I don't know if we should keep going. I think this is too much. She wanted to, though. I mean, I'm not. I didn't push her at all. In fact, there were many times where I was like, virginia, this is hard for me. I don't know how you keep going. She's like, no, I want justice. I want justice. I Want. You can hear it in her voice if you listen to the show Broken Jeffrey Epstein, like, she's just like, I want justice. I want justice. Because she. The way she explained it to me was first, first of all, she escaped in 2002 when Jeffrey told her to go to Thailand to find twins for him. So she goes to Thailand and because he would often do this, like, tell her to go here and there and find girls for him. But she was so in the web, like, so in there, in the center of it. And she meets her husband, Robbie, and Robbie's the white knight. He comes in there and he's like, virginia, this is terrible. You cannot go back there. This is horrible. And I think she was 19 at the time when she met him, or so. Or 18. It was like around those years. And he says, I'll take you to. To Australia. You'll be so far away from these people, you never have to see them again. And of course, this is a girl who's been sexually trafficked and abused and for really through her whole life. And she looks at him and she's like, he's my savior. And really, even at that time, the way she talked about Robbie was that he was sort of her savior, like, there to that when we work together. But then when I spoke to her last in February, around the time that the. The Bondi, you know, classified documents came out. Classified. Those were really just Virginia's, by the way, court docs. In the civil case with, with Glenn, she told me their relationship had fallen apart. They were heading towards a divorce. There were custody battles, which are totally normal in divorces, by the way. He was treat. He was abusing her and treating her horribly, and they were living separately. And it broke her heart because she was afraid to lose her children. It was looking at her daughter and seeing her daughter. When she was born, she told me that that was when she realized that she had to speak out and she had to say something because she waited a long time. I mean, she waited till 2011 to really come out. And for so long, people just ignored her and dismissed her. And, you know, it's really hard. She's a very rare person, a singular voice, a woman who kept going, really beating the drum for so long and to be ignored and treated terribly, especially in the British press. I don't know if you ever followed the way that they treated her. It was disgusting. And yeah, she just. She just would not stop. And I admired that in her. But I also understood that when she saw her daughter, she saw the innocence in her daughter. Because I keep seeing this and hearing this over and over again from victims of sexual assault. They have been so degraded by the acts against them that they don't see the value in themselves. They don't think they are worth fighting for. So for Virginia, it was always about fighting for either the other women or little girls that could potentially find end up in the same place that she was in. They have to feel like they're fighting for someone else. Like even Courtney Wild's wife interview in the show. She said that she hid from the cops because she thought she was a child prostitute. Epstein told her that. That. That he would provide her a lawyer because what she did was possibly illegal. And she thought that she was. That. She thought that. That when the police and the FBI and the prosecutors and all of these investigators, the FBI, they were coming for her, not to get information for her on Epstein. So she hid from them. But then finally, this very smart prosecutor, Marie Villaf, who did a very extensive investigation, recommended 60 charges, by the way. And she left those documents. She left a deposition from her best friend. And when Courtney read that, she sobbed because she read the pain and the hurt that her friend had gone through. And then she called the prosecutors up and she said, I'm gonna help you. I'm gonna nail this guy to the wall. It wasn't what he did to her, the fact that she showed up with braces on her teeth at 12 years old to Epstein's house. Yeah, it wasn't that. It was. It was seeing that he did it to her best friend that made her decide to fight for it. And that's. That has been. That's why. I know it sounds corny, but we. I call. They call each other the survivor sisters, because when they don't feel like they're worth fighting for, they feel stronger fighting for somebody else. It's a. It's a really beautiful thing, honestly. And I just see how much their strength. I just see how much the government is re. Traumatizing so many of them by engaging with Glenn and saying the case.
- [28:48]
Charlie Sykes
And I think we're going to be hearing a lot more from them. So let me talk. Let's talk about the men, the men who are part of this network. So you have the recruitment of these girls, Epstein and Maxwell, but the number of people who have been associated who are on that airplane, the rich, the famous, the powerful. You know, I mean, let's leave aside how Jeffrey. Well, I don't know if you want to. How did Jeffrey Epstein create that network? And then what Were all of these men thinking when they were given these young girls to have sex with on an airplane? I mean, talk to me about. Because there are a lot of people. We don't know how many, but there are a lot of people who were involved in this.
- [29:33]
Paige Desorbo
Yeah, there are a lot. And the. The whole idea of an Epstein list, it's. The victims have lists, you know, of the men, and they've put them in their depositions and they've all been, you know, redacted.
- [29:45]
Charlie Sykes
There are lists. I'm going to make that clear. Maybe not a client list, but there's a list. Right? Victims list. Okay.
- [29:51]
Paige Desorbo
The victims have their own lists. They have name the names of the men that they were trafficked to. Now, I wonder if some of the men knew that the girls were underage. Now, these girls looked young. I do think Jeffrey kept a lot of the girls, the really young ones, to himself. I don't think all men wanted to be with girls that looked like that young as the way that Jeffrey wanted them. I know in the case of Virginia, she said that. That he really wanted the girls to be really small and look like children. And they even controlled their diets. And I know, you know, Virginia was trafficked to many men, and I think. I think it was a part of a honey pot scheme. Honestly, I think it's that simple as Jeffrey Epstein using kind of old KGB tactics where he creates this bacchanal style environment that Glenn Maxwell actually helps foster with her, you know, naughty, raunchy birthday book. And I did another piece on this about the song they played at the 40th birthday about the schoolgirl crushes and the 24 hour erections. This was a song that Glenn Maxwell had commissioned for EPSTEIN for his 40th birthday that was sung aloud before his powerful friends at their townhouse. So this was sort of just like the depraved nature of hanging out with Jeffrey Epstein. So you go and hang out with him and you think everything's cool and safe and fun and this is the Jeffrey Epstein experience. Right. And you get a girl. But then I think what it seems to me is that at the end, Jeffrey then has some kind of compromise on you. So he has information that is so embarrassing.
- [31:19]
Charlie Sykes
Yeah.
- [31:20]
Paige Desorbo
To get your money.
- [31:20]
Charlie Sykes
What purpose? Honey Pots has a goal, Right? What's for money?
- [31:24]
Paige Desorbo
For money?
- [31:24]
Charlie Sykes
Just for money.
- [31:25]
Paige Desorbo
Yeah. Well, I mean, he had so much money. How could you own. How could you. He wanted to take their money to. He needed money. Like he was not like an analyst sitting on the trading floor, you know, he was not. He was a financier. He was a. He was like a dropout, former math teacher. I mean, this guy was getting money from people like that worked at huge banks and getting huge investments like Les Wexner and Jess Stanley and Mark Rowan. Like the. You know, all of these banks are giving him money. Why, why Jeffrey Epstein, he wasn't known as like, amazing financier unless he's saying to them, like, hey, got some pictures of you? And everybody knows that those places were highly surveilled. Those girls may look like they were 18, they're a little younger. Like that. That is.
- [32:13]
Charlie Sykes
You think he was blackmailing them?
- [32:15]
Paige Desorbo
Absolutely. That is, to me, the most possible. And even when you see the text between Jess Stanley and. And Epstein, the girls may have been of age that he was with. With Jess Stanley, the Beauty and the Beast, Snow White, as he text. Who would you like Snow White or Beauty and Beauty and the Beast? And, you know, maybe those. Maybe those women were of age. Maybe they were not girls, they were women. But at the end of the day, if Jeffrey Epstein wants to make it known that he's bringing you women on an island, I mean, that's a social embarrassment for that someone who is in leadership.
- [32:49]
Charlie Sykes
How does he get in touch with people? Like, how does. I mean, even if you're a rich guy, how do you get in touch with Prince Andrew, with Bill Clinton, with all of these people, with. With Donald Trump? I mean, he, he, he, he. Okay, how did that work?
- [33:02]
Paige Desorbo
Glenn Maxwell's. I mean, she was born into insane, like, right? Into a very powerful father. He owned the New York Daily News. Her father owned it. He owned the Daily Mirror, one of the most famous newspapers still in the UK. He owned MTV Europe. He owned McMillan. He owned. He was a larger than life figure. I would compare him to a cross between Donald Trump and Rupert Murdoch. And she was born into that. So imagine if, like someone like Elizabeth Murdoch had dated this guy, then you would understand why he had that Rolodex. Okay? So she also gave him the veneer of acceptability in these spaces. He actually introduced Les Wexner to his wife. Les Wexner, who owns Victoria's Secret, to his wife Abigail. They were very close. He managed Les Wexler's money. That's a huge client. Bought his $20 million townhome for basically nothing. And so he had this incredible network, but it was certainly fostered by Galen Maxwell, who was essentially just an operator at the end of the day. She managed the Black Book and she met, she. Listen, Glenn Knew Donald Trump from before the. Before she was dating Epstein back in the uk, she, she was asking her father, daddy, can I sell my corporate gifts? That was her fake job at the time to Donald Trump. And he said, according to his former assistant, why the f would you want. Why would he want your stupid corporate gifts? Because her father was also very abusive to her. She has very weird daddy issues. I did a whole podcast on the daddy issues called Power the Maxwells. But yeah, so, and this is all through friends and former employees of Robert. And, you know, Donald Trump went on her father's yacht, the Lady Glenn, named after his favorite daughter, and he remarked how beautiful it was inside. So, like, they, they go back. They go way back. And. Yeah, yeah.
- [35:01]
Charlie Sykes
So the power and wealth nexus, I think, is, I mean, obviously, you know, an irresistible part of this story. But I want. I wanted to shift now to the one mystery of this story. And you touched on it before, how he got away with it for so long. You had the 60 charges, federal charges that were reduced to zero. You had these sweetheart deals. What is your take on this? I mean, up until the time when he was arrested, he was in prison. Maxwell is serving the term. What was going on there? Is it as simple as simply that you're dealing with the rich and the powerful in a two tiered justice system? Is there anything behind that?
- [35:46]
Paige Desorbo
There's a little more to that. It's part that, I mean, he hired Ken Starr to deal with Alex Costa. He hired a hero in conservative circles. He also hired Jay Lefkowitz. And they met secretly off campus, an hour and a half away at an airport hotel in Palm beach that no one would ever recognize them in. Just to talk about this deal, which is unheard of, you never as a state, you know, just. Sorry, what attorney? No, no. What was Alex Acosta's role at the time? He was the U.S. attorney. As U.S. attorney, you would never meet with, you know, a defense attorney privately about a case, and then it'd be dropped after that. Then, then at the state level, they hired Alan Dershowitz, who at the time was still a Democrat. And at the time, the Barry Krisher, who was the state attorney on that case, he obviously had a. Admired Alan Dershowitz, and, and they, they used him. But I do think there's a little bit more to this. And first of all, Jeffrey Epstein had long been cooperating with the feds. In the first Ponzi, there was a Ponzi scheme. So Jeffrey Epstein worked with a man named Stephen hoffenberg, who spent 20 years in prison before he died. And he worked for him at a place called Towers Financial Corps. And Stephen Hoffenberg was a Ponzi schemer, One of the largest Ponzi schemes at the time. $400 million and, you know, 460 million. Okay. And he spent 18 years in prison before he died. And Jeffrey didn't, you know, he didn't face any justice for this. And it's thought that he cooperated with the Feds, he helped them put their case together against Stephen. And so he got immunity for that. So I think that was probably one of his first experiences working with the government. And he was a useful tipster on other cases in the same way that a lot of, you know, mob bosses, you find out they're playing both sides of law. Yeah, they help. And so that's always taken into account in these kind of cases. You know, there's a document that shows that he cooperated with the FBI on one thing so that he could get his. His forfeiture of his seizures back at the seizure, the forfeiture of his assets back, essentially. And so I believe that he was always helping out the. The law enforcement community in some way throughout his life, and I think that gave him some leniency. We know that he worked on, you know, some deals internationally. He was always talking to foreign, you know, princes, dignitaries, businessmen. And he may have, as a American businessman, offered information to the CIA just as voluntarily, not as a spy or not as an asset, but just as a. Here's a tip I'm going to pass along. And people say kindly to those things, and. And the law enforcement community does. So I do think in some. I do think that they were willing to perhaps make this exception as part of it as well, that Jeffrey was giving them information that helped them with their cases because of its.
- [38:54]
Charlie Sykes
Well, and there's also, you know, part of this is also, and we've seen this again and again and again, the campaign to smear the victims, survivors, to, you know, challenge their credibility. Right. I mean, they went after them, particularly in Britain, rather aggressively. So, okay, let's come up to the current day. What do you think is going to happen now? You know what, before I ask that question, why is Donald Trump, and we have not talked about him yet much, why is he so adamant not to release the Epstein files? What is it that he does not want people to see in the Epstein files that we don't know?
- [39:39]
Paige Desorbo
I think that Donald Trump may. Well, obviously we know that he's been told that he is in the files by his own attorney general. That's been reported.
- [39:48]
Charlie Sykes
Right.
- [39:48]
Paige Desorbo
And knew. Yeah, we knew that. So in what context? Right, we don't, we know that he's. We already know that he's in the little black book 14 times. Right. We know that he's in the flight logs. So what else? Question mark. Exactly. That's what we need to know. Perhaps that, that, that book with the, with the birthday tributes would be revealed. Right. Because.
- [40:18]
Charlie Sykes
Well, that triggered him.
- [40:19]
Paige Desorbo
That would be probably in a seizure, that, that the FBI would probably raid the house and find that. And so that is something that I would, I would think, you know, he would be, he would be unhappy to have happy release. But then also the people, the network around Jeffrey Epstein, an incredibly powerful network, and I do think that that would also probably be dangerous for Trump, even though most of the people are Democrats, to be fair, like a lot of them are. But that was still his network. He was a Democrat when he was hanging out with Jeffrey Epstein.
- [40:54]
Charlie Sykes
Well, you know, I thought it was very interesting that, you know, that, that Wall Street Journal report on the birthday card. I mean, it was, it was, I thought it was incredibly sleazy. It was certainly not a massive, massive bombshell, but it triggered Donald Trump to the point that he is going to legal war with Rupert Murd. So there's a level of sensitivity. It's also rather extraordinary because Donald Trump has gotten away with so much so far. I mean, right. He's been found guilty of sexual. I mean, liable for sexual abuse. He's done all of these other things and it has not hurt him. And yet there's something about this that bothers him and he's going to extreme steps. So give me. You're in touch with the survivors. What was the reaction to moving Ghislaine Maxwell to the club medicine? Because they, they know, they know the trajectory. They know where this is going.
- [41:41]
Paige Desorbo
Yeah.
- [41:42]
Charlie Sykes
What do they think?
- [41:42]
Paige Desorbo
They're, they're so upset. I mean, they were telling me, I was talking to one of them yesterday. They're like, next thing you know, she's gonna be on house arrest. They just feel, I mean, Annie Farmer testified in the 2021 case. She was assaulted at 16 years old in the Zorro Ranch by Galen and Jeffrey Epstein. It was Galen first, and she spent hours and years of her life working with the DOJ. The first time they called in 1996, and where they didn't help again, they cooperated before the sweetheart deal, that nothing happens. You know, slap on the wrist, sex offender. Spend some time in, you Know, a county jail with work release. And now, again, she did. They did the hard stuff. They re traumatized themselves by telling these stories over and over again. They took the stand. They wasted, like, it feels almost like wasted. And then they feel betrayed. And by the way, you know, government is supposed to look out for you. They're supposed to be the ones protecting you. If not them, who? Right? And here they are again, betraying them. And that's how they feel right now. They feel betrayed. It's. It's traumatizing, frankly. And I'm really proud of them, a lot of these women for coming out and speaking, but it's. Some of them are even more afraid than they were before, especially now. Yeah, of course, if Glenn's free, these men, like, they're. They're gonna all get a pass. Before Pam Bondi announced that the case was closed, I had been staying in touch with people in the. In the Justice Department, and I would ask them, like, what's going on with the case? You guys working on it? Anyone knew? And they said, you know, we've got pictures, we've got surveillance, we've got footage. Got all this stuff. We're working on it. Hang tight. You know, these. And I. And I assumed, yeah, these are the best defense attorneys in the world. Right? It's actually kind of ironic, Charlie, but I did an interview with Joanna Coles the week before of the Daily Beast about the Epstein story, and. And just somehow we really got into it, and she said to me, tara, you're such an expert on this. Why don't you just do a podcast on Jeffrey Epstein or write your substack on Jeffrey Epstein? I go, joanna, it's such a dark story. I was like, it's terribly dark. And I told her, you know, my sources tell me they're still working on it, though. They just know that they have to. Like I remembered, Virginia told me that they brought her to the FBI. Stan Pottinger, her. Her. Her lawyer, and she went to the FBI to try to identify her body in pictures that they had of her with men. And it wasn't her. It wasn't her body. But, like, the fact that they even asked them to come in there to identify them means that there is evidence.
- [44:25]
Charlie Sykes
And I told her, what Donald Trump's afraid of. Is he afraid of photos? Is he afraid of surveillance?
- [44:31]
Paige Desorbo
I. I personally don't. No one has ever told me that they were trafficked to Donald Trump, so I can't personally speak to that. But I. I mean, you heard him. I'm afraid of the innocent getting in trouble. Who are the innocent? He's not thinking about the girls. I mean, he's thinking about the men, the guys. And so I said to her, like, this is going to come out. And it's so crazy because I. We put out that podcast on my channel, the Tara Palmeri show, on the, like, I think just around the day that the Pam Bondi came out, said, case closed.
- [44:59]
Charlie Sykes
Yeah.
- [44:59]
Paige Desorbo
And I went to my source, I said, what happened? Source said, we gave the DOJ everything we have. And I was just like, what do you mean, case closed? You know, case.
- [45:13]
Charlie Sykes
So what happened? I heard you say the other day, I think it was to Terry Moran, that you were speculating about a possible pardon dump. You know, Diddy and Maxwell and somebody else.
- [45:25]
Paige Desorbo
George Santos, another one, George Santos, which.
- [45:29]
Charlie Sykes
I don't think would distract from all of this. If that's Trump's play.
- [45:35]
Paige Desorbo
You don't think the Diddy stuff would cause, like, outrage and the moral lines would all be blurred because people would be. Because there's, you know, there's a lot of discrepancy in how people feel about the three stories.
- [45:46]
Charlie Sykes
Right. But I, But I think that would be an amplifier that it would amplify what the hell is Trump doing? I guess the question is, will the survivors then speak out? Will there be a backlash that will make them. Somebody used the phrase household words. I mean, they've been telling their story, telling their story, telling their story. You're saying that they feel frustrated about all of this, but if she walks free as part of this deal, will. Won't that, Will that be one of the consequences? That all of the stuff we have been talking about becomes front and center in a way that it's never been before.
- [46:22]
Paige Desorbo
I think that President Trump believes in his ability to change the news cycle, and he probably wants her out. And, and that he does not think this is going to dog him forever.
- [46:33]
Charlie Sykes
And that's what he thinks.
- [46:35]
Paige Desorbo
Yeah. I don't know. I mean, my fear is that if the victims see her walk free, they know that they don't have anyone. They have no support, they have no one behind them, and they will not. They'll become quiet. Some will speak out. I think so, Yeah, I do. I'm already seeing it. People are afraid. It's just the shifts. Like, there is no more justice. We don't live in a place, not that there ever was justice, but we don't even live in a place anymore where people will pretend there's even justice, like, not even create a veneer of it. So.
- [47:10]
Charlie Sykes
Okay, yeah, I have some dark moods, Tara, but that is really dark.
- [47:16]
Paige Desorbo
Yeah, yeah. No, this is a scary spot to be in. This is a scary place. And that's why I'm like, let's not get so obsessed with the. Was he CIA? And like, I, I am going to go into that in some of my reporting. I mean, if you follow me, the Tara Palmeri show, the Red letter. I am going to go into my, you know, like, go into what I was talking about with Jeffrey Epstein's relationship with intelligence circles and how he may have used that for these deals. And I definitely want to explain more about the psychology of Glenn Maxwell so that people really understand what type of criminal mastermind she was and how she was created. Because I think if you understand how she was created from her father, from this really dark, evil person, you will understand how she has the capacity to do what she did, and you will not see her as the victim that she claims to be. You know, I think I'm going to try to make that clear, and I'm going to try to keep reporting the story. But, like, I'm. There's a. And not just that, the fact that the, you know, Trump can slap the Wall street journal, the $10 billion lawsuit, which I'm sure he's going to drop, but, you know, that's also created a really big chill because that he can slap the Wall Street Journal with the lawsuit. We can also slap a victim or a survivor that wants to speak out with a defamation lawsuit.
- [48:30]
Charlie Sykes
Were you journalist.
- [48:31]
Paige Desorbo
A journalist that's not with a big news organization that doesn't have Ruth Murdoch behind them. So it's a scary time to be in right now.
- [48:39]
Charlie Sykes
It is a scary time. And yet Donald Trump does believe he can change the news cycle, but he hasn't so far. And I'm looking at public opinion polls showing 70, 80% of Americans who think the government is covering something up. So this is the one time when he has not been able to use that playbook. You don't take any hope from that.
- [49:00]
Paige Desorbo
I do. I. Yeah, listen, I don't know why I'm still a journalist after all these years and the, and the back and the twists and turn in my career. I love what I do, obviously, but, like, you know, you have to have those checks every day in your life where you're like, am I doing the right thing? Because as you said before we even started, this stuff is hard. Right. And if this is. I've always said this is the most important story of my career. I said that even before it came back around, that it was the most meaningful. And the fact that it's come back around, I do feel like a responsibility to keep pursuing it and to keep. And make sure that people understand the full depth and of this story and to keep reporting on it. So I'll do my part in terms of. And I'm not motivated by politics. Like, I really am not. Like, yeah, let's take down Trump with this story. Like, I. I'm not that type of journalist. I really am not. I just believe in, like, justice. And I found it to be very, very infuriating, this whole idea that the case was closed and that there were no third parties and that we're all supposed to believe that, and that that really bothered me. And. And some of the language that's being thrown around, like, Virginia being stolen, it's just like, it's. It. It's dehumanizing. And I also don't like how the. The survivors have been turned into political pawns at the same time. Like, what if you find out that the entire list that these girls give you is all Democrats? How are you. How are the Democrats going to do? Because it's got a lot. A lot of Democrats were in there.
- [50:38]
Charlie Sykes
Yeah.
- [50:39]
Paige Desorbo
You know, and so everybody has to realize that no one looks good in this. This is a bad story. This is a really dark story. And, well, we can't. Yeah, yeah, we have to stay on it.
- [50:53]
Charlie Sykes
We can't control the outcome, and we can't make justice flow like a river. All we can do is tell the truth. Right. And continue to tell. And to continue to tell the stories. That's just simply the choice. Control what we can. And also recognize that these are dark times. And so the. The question is whether, you know, you keep the light going in the darkness. And I appreciate your efforts to do that.
- [51:17]
Paige Desorbo
Tara, thank you. And, Charlie, thank you for, you know, having me on and to talk to your followers and your fans, just because I feel like the more people who know it and understand it, the better. And people have asked me really simple questions about it, but, like, why is this a problem? And I get kind of angry, and I'm like, why? Why do you not see it as clearly as I do? But I do think the more that they can see through the eyes of somebody who is a victim, I think that they'll be able to understand why this is not. This is why this can't go away. I mean, and I agree. Yeah. Yeah.
- [51:56]
Charlie Sykes
That's why it's so important, is to put the lens of the survivors remind us with as opposed to the usual sort of pundit talk about, well, what are the, what do the polls say? What are they, you know, what, what are the, you know, what are the implications for the midterms? No, actually, can we just talk about what happened to these human beings, to these young girls and what it means? Can we just take a moment to focus on that? And I think you've done an outstanding job. So thank you so much for coming on the podcast.
- [52:20]
Paige Desorbo
Thank you, thank you. And maybe hopefully next time we'll have some great updates and yeah, we will have updates.
- [52:29]
Charlie Sykes
And thank you all for listening to this rather extraordinary episode of to the Contrary Podcast. I'm Charlie Sykes. We do this because we need to remind ourselves that no, we can't control the outcome, but we can remind ourselves that we are not the crazy ones. Thank you.
- [52:57]
Tara Palmeri
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Paige Desorbo
I had joint pain and I couldn't.
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Charlie Sykes
Move like I used to. I needed relief.
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Tara Palmeri
I got Cosentyx.
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Charlie Sykes
It helped me move better.
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Paige Desorbo
Ask.
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Charlie Sykes
Your dermatologist about Cosentyx.
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Tara Palmeri
Hey, it's Christy and I'm Kelly.
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Paige Desorbo
You might remember us as the OG Partners in Crime from Dance Moms. Well, this is Back to the Bar, the podcast where we drag out every insane, chaotic and iconic moments from the show. We're spilling the tea, calling out all the BS and sharing stuff you definitely didn't see on tv. New episodes drop every week and yes, we're laughing through the drama for once. Follow grab a drink and join us as we go back to the bar.
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Charlie Sykes
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