EPSTEIN SURVIVORS’ ATTORNEY WHO EXPOSED GOVERNMENT CONSPIRACY: Brad Edwards

Summary

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Podcast Summary: WE CAN DO HARD THINGS

Episode: Epstein Survivors’ Attorney Who Exposed Government Conspiracy: Brad Edwards
Hosts: Glennon Doyle (Treat Media), Amanda Doyle
Guest: Brad Edwards
Release Date: February 12, 2026

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Overview

This episode features an extensive, revealing conversation between Amanda Doyle and Brad Edwards, the attorney who has represented over 200 survivors of Jeffrey Epstein over nearly two decades. Edwards details the systemic governmental failures and conspiracies that shielded Epstein and his associates from accountability, the courage and perseverance of the survivors, the repeated trauma inflicted by the justice system, and what must change to support survivors and ensure true justice.

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Key Discussion Themes & Insights

1. The Courage and Resilience of Survivors

• Courtney Wilde’s Story: Edwards recounts meeting survivor Courtney Wilde in 2008, describing her as the linchpin in exposing the Epstein case and government cover-up. Despite a traumatic life, Wilde’s determination never wavered, and she fought tirelessly for accountability.

  “She’s just doing everything right…she’s just doing everything right…she’s a badass…this girl's been thrown down a million times and will always get up ready to fight.”
  —Brad Edwards [07:14-08:54]

• Wider Impact: Many survivors, including Wilde, endured not just Epstein’s crimes but systemic abandonment, being mislabeled as "prostitutes" by the justice system, and enduring profound, lifelong consequences.

2. Blatant Government Collusion and the Secret Non-Prosecution Deal

• Conspiracy Details: Against all evidence and the recommendations of federal prosecutors, the DOJ and US Attorney’s Office secretly entered a non-prosecution agreement (NPA) in 2007 with Epstein, immunizing him and his named and unnamed co-conspirators from federal prosecution.

  “It was a conspiracy, on paper, indefensible, between the government and Jeffrey Epstein against the victims. There’s no other way to categorize it.”
  —Brad Edwards [15:20-18:19]

• Process Subversion: The NPA was never shown to a judge, was hidden from victims (in violation of the Crime Victims Rights Act), and the DOJ deliberately misled survivors for months about the active status of the federal investigation.
• Impact: This deal allowed Epstein to be prosecuted solely on state charges, which resulted in minimal jail time and ensured public records/press scrutiny were avoided.

3. Consequences for Survivors

• Labeling and Silencing: By only charging prostitution-related offenses, the U.S. government further harmed survivors, branding them as “prostitutes” — a stigma that persists.
• Immunity for Co-Conspirators: The broad immunity deal also prevented key witnesses from testifying, as their immunity could be revoked if Epstein violated his agreement in reaction to their testimony.
• Secrecy: All elements of the deal, including the existence of detailed indictments and memos, were sealed for years, only coming to light through relentless legal action from Edwards and colleagues.

4. The Judicial Battle for Justice

• Groundbreaking Lawsuit: Edwards describes “making up” the victims’ rights lawsuit, Jane Doe vs. United States of America, to force disclosure of the secret deal and advocate for survivor rights.

  “I made up the lawsuit in terms of title and everything, called it an emergency, got an emergency hearing, explained the situation and the judge learned it the first time too.”
  —Brad Edwards [27:33]

• DOJ and Epstein United: For more than a decade, the government and Epstein’s team coordinated to resist these lawsuits and maintain the NPA.
• Public Apologies and Findings: The culmination of these legal efforts included a public apology from Epstein to Brad Edwards (timed with journalist Julie K. Brown’s Miami Herald exposé), and a federal judge ultimately finding in 2019 that the federal prosecutors violated crime victims’ rights in collusion with Epstein.

5. Ongoing Intimidation and Surveillance

• Survivors, their families, and attorneys were surveilled, harassed, and intimidated for years by Epstein’s private investigators.
• Edwards describes being personally sued by Epstein, trailed, and followed for years until his own countersuit forced a public reckoning.

6. The 2019 New York Case and Epstein’s Death

• After years of legal fighting, Edwards worked undercover with the Southern District of New York, aiding the operation that finally arrested Epstein in 2019.
• Epstein was denied bail (in part due to survivor testimony), but died by suicide less than a month later in jail — an outcome devastating to Edwards and survivors but partially mitigated by Judge Berman’s decision to let survivors address the court:

  “For Judge Berman to…make sure that victims could come in and get a chance to actually speak in court was something that most judges don’t have the compassion or time to do. But it meant a lot…we’ve already lost at least five victims to suicide. It would have been more.”
  —Brad Edwards [47:29-49:21]

7. The DOJ’s Mishandling of Document Releases and Survivor Trauma

• Epstein Transparency Act: Intended to ensure the release of investigation records with necessary redactions, so survivors could access their files and be protected.
• Catastrophic Redaction Failures: In late 2025 and early 2026, the DOJ released tens of thousands — ultimately 3.5 million — documents without properly redacting survivor identities, names, addresses, and sensitive personal information.

  “This is very, very standard procedure. A literal classroom of fifth graders can get this right. All the government’s proven is they’re not smarter than a fifth grader here…or they are.”
  —Brad Edwards [57:36-57:44]

• Irreparable Harm: Survivors exposed to new dangers: media harassment in home countries, risk of arrest, mental health crises, and suicide risk — with DOJ refusing to simply pull the files and re-redact, despite urgent warnings from lawyers.
• Selective Redaction: Edwards notes the meticulous redaction of powerful individuals’ names in contrast to the negligence with survivor information.

8. Obstacles to Further Accountability

• Government Inertia: Despite the documentation of wrongdoing, no prosecutors have faced any consequences, and the DOJ (regardless of administration) has insisted the case is closed, refusing to pursue further investigation or prosecutions even as foreign governments act.
• Ongoing Legal Paths: Civil suits, such as those against banks that enabled Epstein’s operations, have provided some measure of justice and compensation—a model for pursuing accountability outside the DOJ’s inaction.

9. Legislative Efforts & Hopes for Systemic Change

• The Courtney Wilde Reinforcing Crime Victims Rights Act: Seeks to establish real penalties for prosecutors who violate victims’ rights and to provide attorneys’ fees for those who take up these cases, ensuring history doesn’t repeat itself.
• Call to Action: Edwards urges Americans to avoid politicizing the issue, to resist spreading conspiracies that harm survivors, and to act as upstanders:

  “There are great Republicans, there are great Democrats, but we’re all Americans and these are real people. Do your job, have a heart, and be a good person. Don’t spread this stuff in the media and spread online because you’re hurting people….”
  —Brad Edwards [82:15-83:21]

• Whistleblowing: Encourages employees at banks and institutions who saw and enabled Epstein’s crimes to come forward.

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On Survivor Strength:

  “She just cared about the right thing happening and could not even fathom that because this guy was rich or powerful, the system worked a different way for him…So if you’re all in, I’m all in.”
  —Brad Edwards on Courtney Wilde [07:14-08:54]

• On DOJ Collusion:

  “What does Jeffrey Epstein want? What punishment will he take? What crimes does he want to plea to? I mean…it was a conspiracy, on paper, indefensible, between the government and Jeffrey Epstein against the victims.”
  —Brad Edwards [15:20-18:19]

• On the Harm of Labeling Survivors:

  “It allowed Jeffrey Epstein and his defense team to have cover…labeling everybody as prostitutes. A label that to some degree is still being attached to them by some and maybe always will. Because…it’s been endorsed by the U.S. government.”
  —Brad Edwards [18:19-20:16]

• On Intimidation:

  “All of the survivors that were either trying to pursue justice, their houses were surveilled. They had private investigators shining lights into the bedroom…You had to move your own clients to other states…to protect them during this whole period.”
  —Krista Tippett [42:59-43:32]

• On DOJ’s Redaction Failure:

  “When they published the 3.5 million documents there were more than 10,000, I want to say more than 20,000 missed redactions of victims. It’s incomprehensible.”
  —Brad Edwards [57:34-58:38]

• On Why Justice Failed:

  “Alex Acosta wanted to get ahead in life…so did some of the subordinates to him, but very high up in the office. And they did…they made this go away in the way that Jeffrey Epstein, his team, wanted to…The rest of them were willing to hurt the victims…if it could promote their career.”
  —Brad Edwards [36:09-38:54]

• On What Americans Must Do:

  “Let’s for once, if everybody else won’t do their job, do your job, have a heart and be a good person. And don’t spread this stuff in the media…you’re hurting people to the point that it’s causing massive emotional distress.”
  —Brad Edwards [82:15-83:21]

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Important Timestamps

• [01:59–10:11] Introduction of Brad Edwards and Courtney Wilde’s story
• [13:10–16:29] Details of the secret non-prosecution deal and its impact
• [18:19–24:46] The broader consequences for survivors and witnesses
• [27:33–32:26] The legal war to expose the conspiracy and enforce victims’ rights
• [42:14–47:29] Personal intimidation by Epstein and the 2019 arrest
• [51:43–64:38] Epstein Transparency Act and catastrophic DOJ redactions
• [69:15–73:30] Missing documents and DOJ refusal to pursue further investigation
• [79:37–80:51] Courtney Wilde Act and the fight for systemic accountability
• [82:15–85:15] Edwards’s call for individual responsibility and civic courage

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Conclusion

This episode exposes, in granular and deeply human terms, how the justice system, across both parties and multiple administrations, worked to shield Jeffrey Epstein and his enablers at the expense of hundreds of vulnerable girls and women. Brad Edwards and the survivors he represents embody heroic courage and persistence. The message is clear: true accountability for such crimes must come not just from government, but from collective public courage, legislative action, support for survivors, and a refusal to tolerate institutionalized abuse of power.

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Transcript

[Krista Tippett]

Hi everybody.

[Amanda Knox]

This is Amanda and this is the second episode in my Epstein series. I am honored today to be talking with Brad Edwards, who has fiercely and fearlessly represented 200 Epstein survivors for almost two decades and is the attorney who exposed the prosecution's illegal conspiracy to shield Epstein from facing justice. In this powerful conversation in which Brad shares details he has never shared before, we walk through this the incredible courage and resilience of the survivors, the secret immunity deal between the federal prosecutors and Epstein and the government cover up how the DOJ seems to be intentionally re victimizing survivors in the way they are releasing the Epstein files, how Brad secretly.

[Krista Tippett]

Worked with the Southern District of New.

[Amanda Knox]

York to finally arrest Epstein in 2019, and what the path forward for accountability is now that the government has closed the door on further investigations and prosecutions. If you have not yet listened to the first episode in this series, the Epstein Files explained everything you need to know, I recommend you pause this and start there. It's the episode right before this one in the We Can Do Hard Things feed and there is a link to it in this show's show. Notes. In that show, I walk through in a clear chronological way 30 years of facts, history and reporting on the Epstein case to understand how we got to where we are now. And it will be valuable context for you as you listen to this conversation. Thank you for being here, for caring deeply about survivors and the truth they have fought decades to reveal against overwhelmingly powerful forces intent on bearing it. Let's remember what Andrea Gibson said. Even when the truth isn't hopeful, the telling of it is. Here's my conversation with Brad Edwards.

[Krista Tippett]

To Kill a Mockingbird is one of my favorite books, and I think it's a big part of why I wanted to be a lawyer. It's a story about a brilliant, heroic attorney and his deeply dignified, courageous client who both risk everything to try to extract justice from a system loyal only to power. In the book, Harper Lee writes, real courage is when you know you're licked before you begin, but you begin anyway and see it through no matter what. When you know you're licked before you begin, but you begin anyway and see it through no matter what. I believe that is the truth about courage, which is why I believe some of the most courageous people walking the planet today are the intrepid survivors of Jeffrey Epstein and their steadfast advocates who have for decades risked everything to extract justice from a system loyal only to power. For 18 years, Brad Edwards has represented now more than 200 survivors of Jeffrey, Epistein and Glyn Maxwell, including a case that finally exposed that prosecutors were working for Epstein and against victims, securing the judge's finding that federal prosecutors and Epstein engaged in coordinated secret action to knowingly deprive Epstein survivors of their rights and in cases securing survivors hundreds of millions of dollars in restitution. He was by his client's side the first time EPSTEIN Survivors, even 20 years after the crimes, had the opportunity to have their voices heard by a court of law. But justice has never been served. The survivors are not done fighting. He and his brilliant law partner, Brittany Henderson, are not done fighting. And we Americans who are just starting to understand not only the depravity of Jeffrey Epstein, but the depravity of the justice system that relentlessly protected the rich, powerful predator and ruthlessly abandoned the countless vulnerable girls, are not done fighting. Something is changing in the air. We have finally had enough. We are going to fight with these survivors, and we are going to see it through no matter what. Brad, thank you for being with us here today. I know you are not able to have time for this, and you're making time for it, so it means a lot to us. Thank you.

[Brad Edwards]

I think it's important and I appreciate what you do, and thanks for having me.

[Krista Tippett]

Your first involvement in this case was 18 years ago. When survivor Courtney Wilde comes to you in May 2008. I want to situate folks where we are in the timeline of the case at that point, when you meet Courtney. The Florida state prosecution of Epstein, understate attorney Barry Krisher, has already caved to the Epstein pressure and influence. That's in 2006, returning an indictment of only one count of solicitation of prostitution. No indictments related to sex crimes against minors, which would have allowed Jeffrey Epstein to simply do an intervention program and serve no jail time at all. This was despite the fact that two absolute heroic giants, Detective Joe Ricari and chief of police Michael Reader, had gathered for the State reports from 40 underage victims of Jeffrey Epstein and strong evidence from their investigation and their search of his home on Palm Beach Island. We talk about all of this in depth on the first episode in the series. So listen to that. But Chief Reader is so convinced that something nefarious is going that in July 2006, he takes the very unusual step of probably pressuring the FBI to open a federal investigation to try to get justice for survivors. In 2007, all seems to be going well. The FBI and the DOJ are working the case, talking to all the victims, finding new survivors. FBI agent Nesbitt, Kuykendall is working her ass off to get all the evidence. They have 35 to 40 survivors who were minors when they were assaulted or trafficked, who are willing to give testimony, including being transported across state lines. We know now that by May 2007, Assistant US Attorney Marie Vilafana is all in. Has drafted a 53 page indictment with an 82 page prosecution memo prepared. She is also wanting to open a money laundering investigation. She was prepared to issue subpoenas on that, going all the way back to 2003 for every financial transaction conducted by Epstein and his six businesses. It appears to be an open and shut case that would have put Epstein away for the rest of his life, even if he was only convicted of just one count. It seems to everyone paying attention that justice is about to happen. So Courtney Wilde, she comes to you in May 2008. She's been questioned by the FBI's investigation and she's scared of getting in trouble with the FBI. She's even more scared of Epstein. I love Courtney Wilde.

[Brad Edwards]

Me too.

[Krista Tippett]

I know you do. I don't know her, but I love her.

[Brad Edwards]

She's a badass.

[Krista Tippett]

I was hoping you could tell us just a little about her. Not about what Epstein did to her, but her as a person.

[Brad Edwards]

Yeah, I mean, what I loved about her story when she came into my office was that it was just so pure. I mean, this is somebody who grew up with irresponsible parents to say the least, but kind of against all odds. She's 13, 14 years old. She's a straight A student and really no parental guidance to the point that there were times where she had to stay at her school overnight so that she could make it there the next day because her parents weren't going to get her there. But she's not only a straight A student, she's a cheerleader, she's in the band. I mean, she's just doing everything right.

[Krista Tippett]

First trumpet in the band. She's killing it.

[Brad Edwards]

Yeah, killing it, killing it, you know, and so when she came to me, like, skip all of the stuff in between for now. But when she came to me, it was so pure that she says, hey, look, I'm a part of this investigation. And here was my life before it got totally derailed. I'm no longer in high school. I can't. I didn't graduate. You know, this guy was making me come to his house all the time and do all these things, terrible things, and I'm scared of him. And the government tells me they're going to protect me. And I have this letter and I contacted the government, but this letter was given to me saying, be patient, there's an ongoing federal investigation. It was sent to me in January of 2008. Since then I've been trying to get a hold of prosecutors. Nobody will talk to me. Can you just find out what's going on? Because I want to know, when is this guy going to jail so that I can get my life back in order. And so since then, you know, over the. Obviously now, I've become very close with her over 18 years and I've seen the ups and downs and I've seen the way that her life was totally derailed and it just doesn't matter. Like this girl's been thrown down a million times and will always get up ready to fight. And without her, without Courtney Wilde, nobody would know anything. Yes, I took on a case against the government pro bono. And she just cared about the right thing happening and could not even fathom that because this guy was rich or powerful, the system worked a different way for him. And I agree, that just shouldn't ever happen. So if you're all in, I'm all in. And she's been like that and she still is. I mean, we're in close contact with her all the time. She finally has. I think she's at peace knowing that she carried a lot of the case for a long, a long time. She's a fantastic person.

[Krista Tippett]

Her story is really illustrative of the way that Jeffrey Epstein's crimes just derailed people's lives. She's 14 when she is introduced to Jeffrey Epstein. At that point, she's basically effectively unhoused. She's crashing with her friends because she does not have any support. She needs money to take care of.

[Brad Edwards]

Herself for basic life needs.

[Krista Tippett]

Basic life needs, does not have a place to live and does not have money for food. So she's 14. A friend at school says that she can come with her and give a man a massage for $200. And this is money that she needs. It will go a long way to taking care of herself. Instead, she is assaulted by him. And she is tangled in this web for three to four years. Then, you know, she starts self medicating. She's actually imprisoned. She served triple the time that Jeffrey Epstein ever served for drug related offenses related to herself medicating from it. And she comes out and is like, let's go. And she hasn't stopped. I just please tell her on behalf of all of us, thank you for what she has done.

[Brad Edwards]

I will and you've done your homework. You couldn't have said it any more succinct or better than that. Everything you said is right on the money.

[Krista Tippett]

So she comes to you. She has this letter. Your take is nothing to worry about here. This is all good news. This guy's going away forever. 18 years later, you're still doing it. You and your private investigator start digging in. What do you learn about the case very quickly?

[Brad Edwards]

Within days of meeting with Courtney, I had already gone. And I understood the operation that it was essentially bring girls in under some false pretense that it would be a massage for a high school girl to give. She gets $200, and then there's kind of two options. Every time you come back to me, you get $200, and every friend that you bring me, I will pay you, basically, a finder's fee. And so he. He started to run what it was essentially a spider web of recruitment of victims, recruiting other victims. And I understood that many of the victims, including Courtney, got to the point where the abuse was so bad that one of the ways to ensure she wouldn't be personally abused was to bring one of her also needy friends. And these are also other people who kind of need the life's essentials. I mean, this is not, you know, spending money at the mall. When she kind of explains this, and I start meeting other victims and realizing, okay, this is what he did. And the stories are all the same, and they have documents proving when they went there, how they got the money, etc. I said, this is the easiest case that I've ever seen. I mean, I was a prosecutor. I'm going to call the prosecutor. And I'm sure consistent with the letter that you just received from the FBI saying, be patient. It's a federal investigation. She's going to tell me that, yes, this is. He's going to prison for life and then some. You know, when I called Marie Villafagna, it was very clear to me from the beginning that she wanted. Not only wanted to prosecute him, she believed very strongly in the case, agreed with everything that I said, but that there were things that she couldn't tell me and that she was restricted from telling me to the point that she even came to my office personally. And I really thought, I'm going to call her, say, hey, this is what's happening. And she's going to say, don't worry about it. At the end of it, she said, hey, you know, there are things happening that I just can't tell you. And I Said that shouldn't happen. This makes no sense. I mean, victims have rights, at least the right to know what's going on. And she said, I don't disagree with you. And so that's what led to me kind of trying to figure out what can be done on an emergency basis and in filing the case against the government for Courtney.

[Krista Tippett]

So to situate this, tell everyone what happens. June 30, 2008. So, like, on the day that unannounced, no media, Jeffrey Epstein walks into court. So again, the FBI has the case. They're telling everybody, including the victims, that they're actively working on the case. They have all of this evidence. And then June 30, 2008, what happens that day?

[Brad Edwards]

So June 29, 2008, I got a call from Marie Villafanya saying, Jeffrey Epstein's he's pleading guilty tomorrow in state court to state offenses. And I said, okay, well, your case is a federal case, so the federal case is still ongoing. And she said, can't talk about that. I said, that's weird. I was out of town at the time. So I sent an associate to the hearing who reported back on June 30, Epstein shows up to court. He pled guilty to solicitation of prostitution and procurement of a minor for prosecution. Prostitution. Two felonies. And I said, well, what about the federal offenses? And he said, unclear what happened there. So I kept trying to get a hold of Marie and saying, hey, what happened with the federal offenses? She just wouldn't tell me. She couldn't tell me. She told me she couldn't tell me. But there was an envelope attached to the plea agreement, which I said, as a prosecutor, this makes no sense. I've never seen something like this. So fast forward, I think it was July 5th or 6th. So a few days later, after trying to get an answer to what's happening with the federal investigation and getting nowhere, I filed a claim. Jane Doe vs United States of America. Went to the courthouse and said, this is an emergency. We need to get before the judge. And the crux of the pleading was, you know, just in layman's terms, something is going on that is definitely improper, probably illegal. The government's involved. I'm not a conspiracy theorist, but I'm telling you what happened. And he pled guilty to these charges in state court, but it was a federal investigation that I have these letters saying, the federal investigation is still going on. The prosecutors won't talk to me. They won't talk to the victims. I think that there is A secret deal in the works where the prosecutors are now secretly negotiating with Jeffrey Epstein. So that's what I want, a hearing immediately. And so we got a hearing within four days. And it was at that hearing where I was in court with Courtney Wilde, who as you said, was 14 when she was brought to Jeffrey Epstein's house. Another victim by that point who had joined the litigation, who was 13 when she was brought to Jeffrey Epstein's house for the first time. The prosecutors stand up and say essentially Mr. Edwards is wrong about one thing. We're not secretly negotiating a deal with Mr. Epstein. We secretly negotiated a deal with Jeffrey Epstein many, many months ago. In fact, the timeline really is. In September of 2007, the federal government gave Jeffrey Epstein immunity through a non prosecution agreement. And as part of that agreement, Jeffrey Epstein would plead guilty to state offenses and go to state jail. And between the time where they worked out the immunity agreement in September of 2007 and the time of the guilty plea in State Court, June 2008, in order to make sure victims didn't complain about that, the federal government just simply told the victims, flat out in black and white, the investigation's still ongoing. So it was blatantly intentionally misleading the victims so that they could work out a deal in favor of Jeffrey Epstein. And then I don't know if you've seen the correspondence, but they're literally corresponding, basically. What does Jeffrey Epstein want? What punishment will he take? What crimes does he want to plea to? I mean, it was a conspiracy, on paper, indefensible, between the government and Jeffrey Epstein against the victims. There's no other way to categorize it.

[Krista Tippett]

I just wanna make sure people really hear exactly what you're saying because the insanity of it is tremendous. You get a call the night before, the next morning he's in court for a matter of minutes. What has happened in the court is that he pleads guilty to two state counts. So we have a 53 page federal indictment ready to be filed. And instead two counts, neither of which involve sex with a minor, because there is solicitation of prostitution, doesn't mention a minor, and procurement of a person under 18 for prostitution, which does not involve having sex with a minor. So Those are the two charges that are against him. The deal also includes 18 months in county jail. That is what his sentence is going to be, not prison for which he will get 12 hours a day of work release six days a week. So he essentially just sleeps in the jail. And then what you're talking about right now, this is the Part I don't think I've ever heard of anything like this. In exchange for. There's no exchange. I mean, what he's pleading to is so exceptionally lenient that it's absurd. He gets from the federal government a non prosecution agreement, which basically means we agree to never charge you for anything under the federal law of that jurisdiction. So he doesn't have to admit to any federal crimes. He gets this non prosecution agreement. It also covers non prosecution for any of his co conspirators, whether the federal government knows about them or doesn't know about them.

[Brad Edwards]

The way that you just described that already sounds absurd. And it's not even close to as bad as it really was because the effects of the way that the federal government and Jeffrey Epstein orchestrated that type of plea by pleading to two counts involving prostitution, which is absolute insanity when you're talking about 13 to 14 year old high school children who were going over there under false pretenses and then being raped. It allowed then Jeffrey Epstein and his defense team to have cover categorizing everybody as prostitutes, labeling everybody as prostitutes. A label that to some degree is still being attached to them by some and maybe always will. Because it's not only been, it's one thing when a criminal defendant says it, but it's been endorsed by the US government as their prostitutes. So it's a label you can't get rid of. And the last part where not only was Jeffrey Epstein receiving immunity, but coconspirators were receiving immunity, both named and there were four people named and unnamed. Those people. And we just learned this in the last two years, those co conspirators that were named, they did not know that they were being named. So when we went to talk to them and said, you know, in the civil cases, hey, will you flip on Jeffrey Epstein? Will you tell us what happened? They said we can't because we just learned we were thrown into this agreement without us knowing about it. The prosecutors never talked to us, they never tried to talk to us. We wanted to talk to them. They would not talk to us so that we could tell them, help them out with their prosecution. But now if we help you, we lose immunity and the prosecutors will prosecute us. So the prosecutors were able to silence the best witnesses against Jeffrey Epstein by letting Jeffrey Epstein label them as co conspirators and attaching their immunity to his behavior.

[Krista Tippett]

Wait, holy shit. I've never heard, Wait, why would they have lost their immunity by testifying against him? Isn't immunity something you can either exercise or not it's not a binding contract.

[Brad Edwards]

So here's how it worked. I mean, this is so crazy, but if you go back and look at the non prosecution agreement, Jeffrey Epstein has 18 months in jail followed by house arrest.

[Amanda Knox]

Right.

[Brad Edwards]

And if he violates during that time, he loses his immunity deal. Well, during that time we were going to the alleged co conspirators and saying, tell us what you know. Their attorneys are calling saying we can't do that. Imagine we tell you what we know. It causes him to violate his agreement by reacting to it in some way. They then lose their immunity. And certain things that they did, even though they were under his coercive instruction, are things that could be prosecuted. And we have prosecutors who were intentionally only trying to protect Jeffrey Epstein. So if we do something to disrupt that agreement, they are going to come after us because Jeffrey Epstein's going to come after us. And we heard that from all of them.

[Krista Tippett]

Right, of course.

[Brad Edwards]

And I think that it's pretty reasonable to think when the government is essentially working for the bad guy, you can't say anything against the bad guy.

[Krista Tippett]

And by the way, every bit of what we're talking about, none of this is conjecture. These are findings of fact by a federal court. There's plenty in this case that is conspiracy theory. Plenty of those myriad theories that I personally believe in the fullness of time will be found to be correct. We are not talking about any of those today. We are talking about findings of fact that have been made by courts and things that have been reported.

[Brad Edwards]

Indisputable facts.

[Krista Tippett]

Indisputable facts.

[Brad Edwards]

That's all we're talking about. Yes.

[Krista Tippett]

The other thing about the non prosecution agreement is that no judge ever saw it. They didn't enter it before a judge to say, hey judge, we want you to review and approve this agreement. It was a side contract made for the benefit of Epstein by some people in the Department of Justice that was never seen by anyone other than the folks who conspired with Epstein and Epstein's team.

[Brad Edwards]

That's correct. Marie Villafagna really wanted to prosecute Jeffrey Epstein. Her superiors going all the way up to Alex Acosta were buddying up with Jeffrey Epstein's defense team. They decided to end the case with this immunity deal and they took very concerted efforts to make sure, just to add on to your point, to make sure that no judge saw this. And there are specific emails where they talk about, we want to make sure that the judge doesn't understand all of the crimes that we could have prosecuted him for, that he doesn't understand the facts of this, so this needs to be a private agreement. They even talked about moving the case for certain aspects of it to a different location so that the press wouldn't pick up on it.

[Krista Tippett]

They offered to file and said, would you like us to file this in Miami? Because Palm beach knows a little too much about this case. So if we show up there, there might be press coverage. They had a no press policy where they would write back and forth to decide what would be less obvious and.

[Brad Edwards]

Not to get too in the weeds about that. But that is a different provision we haven't talked about yet where Jeffrey Epstein wanted to make sure that civil lawsuits didn't expose this deal. So the federal government said, okay, Here are the 40 underage minors that we identified so far. Why don't we get them the same attorney under strict instructions that they settle all of these cases for the bare minimum under a restitution related statute so that all of your problems are wrapped up in one. And nobody ever hears about this. Because there are three categories of people that could disrupt this secret deal that we have here. It's a judge, it's a, it's the victim and it's the press. So let's work together to make sure nobody can ever uncover this and anybody ever knows about it. Because if they do, they're going to see that the federal government has conspired with probably one of the most notorious and, and worst sex offenders that's, that's ever lived and ever been able to, to, to kind of exist and run a sex trafficking operation. So that was their plan.

[Krista Tippett]

10 to 20 million dollars. Because that's another point in the non prosecution, which appears to be an overture to victims, but is actually a way of silencing them. Where they say, oh, also Jeffrey, in addition to the eventual 13 months, you'll spend 12 hours out of jail and sleeping in jail, you will put 10 to 20 million dollars in a restitution fund and 10 to 20 million dollars pennies of his money. And then we will have a lawyer that will negotiate and divvy out those funds to these people. But when they receive the funds, they will have to sign agreements that say we will never talk about this again.

[Brad Edwards]

Yes. But worse than that, Jeffrey Epstein rejected that part of the deal. And the ultimate deal was that each of the victims would be paid $50,000. That's, that's the ultimate deal that they agreed on. So it actually wasn't the 10 to 20 million dollars put into the trust. He rejected that. That never happened. It was they would each get paid $50,000. The only reason that whole plan got disrupted is we filed the case against the government, exposed this deal and then just started suing him one after the other. Otherwise that is the way that the government and the Epstein, what you just described would have resolved it and nobody would have heard anything.

[Krista Tippett]

Okay, so the survivors of Epstein find out that he has done this plea deal on the news or if they're your client, you had found out the night before. So they find out from you that tomorrow this case is going away. You later find out that it is actually months before he makes the plea deal is when the federal government has actually made their non prosecution agreement with him. So he for seven months knows he's never going to face federal charges before he even says, yeah, sure, I'll, I'll plea to that prostitution thing. You immediately upon hearing that he has pled to these state, I can't even call them charges. I mean you immediately go file a crime victims rights act claim for Courtney Wild and you say this is some horseshit. What you described before. What is going on here? The judge granted you summary judgment motion and said, yeah, this is, this was a collusion. It was a coordinated effort. The U.S. department of justice acted in the interests of, of Epstein and against the interests and rights of the survivors.

[Brad Edwards]

I mean I essentially made the case up, right? Like if you look at victims rights law, there's none. And I looked at the statute and said, okay, they're violating their rights. I made up the lawsuit in terms of title and everything, called it an emergency, got an emergency hearing, explained the situation and the judge learned it the first time too. Brad, you're wrong. They're not secretly working out a deal. They just told you they secretly worked out a deal. So is there anything more to talk about? And I said, well the first thing we want, we want to see the non prosecution agreement which we fought both the government and Epstein over that they didn't even want to show us this agreement.

[Krista Tippett]

Okay, this is an important piece. Can I stop you one second? Because the whole, the other part, right, with the press and the, and all the ways that they have all that the prosecution and Epstein's team has worked together to try to figure out what could be future problems for us. Let's together coordinate a plan to eliminate all of those. One big piece of this is, well, shit. We know that there's a 53 page indictment. We know there's an 82 page prosecution memo that walks through exactly why and how he should be prosecuted. For all these crimes, we know there's all these police records. We got to make sure that no one ever sees those. And we also have to make damn well sure that no one ever sees that we conspired with him to make his sweetheart deal. So this is a big part of this. All of this is sealed. None of this is available to anyone.

[Brad Edwards]

The non prosecution agreement itself was not available to anyone. The judge at that hearing that we just described that happened after, you know, on July 11, I think of 2008, said, I agree the government should have to turn over the non prosecution agreement to the victims. And the government and Jeffrey Epstein fought us on that and we won. So a few months later, we get the agreement and we realize all of the different pieces that we've been talking about that were part of this cover up within the immunity agreement. And I said, okay, well, we're not done with this case. I want to know how deliberate the violation of the victim's rights were so that we can understand what the possible remedy is. Because I think that the remedy should be if a criminal defendant and the government conspire against the victims and they tell the victims actively there is a case, be patient, don't come to us, don't bother us. And really, you've worked out a secret immunity agreement, then you have intentionally violated their rights under the act. And it's a contract, right? We talked about it as a contract. The contract should be invalid because there's a third party to this contract whose rights have been taken from them. So invalidate the contract and we'll just put them in prison later. And that was always the goal, the government and Epstein throughout this case from 2008 until 2019, 11 years of fighting this case, they worked lockstep with one another. It was us and at times just me fighting the government and Jeffrey Epstein on this nuanced and very like novel legal theory saying, give me evidence, give me documents. In fact, to get the emails exchanged between Jeffrey Epstein and the government, Epstein's team, and you would think there's three or four, there's not. There's thousands of documents. We had to get an order from the judge. We won. Epstein and the government appealed it. We had to go to the appellate court and get the appellate court to say, under these circumstances, the victims should see it. That's the only reason the world can see now the conspiracy between the government, Epstein and your last point about there being a. And we had it referenced in the documents that there was a 52, three page indictment, an 82 page pros memo. The first time that I have seen those documents was last Friday in the document release. All these years, I've personally never even seen those documents because the government has refused to give them to us. So we've known that they exist. Still, the government fought us. Even after Jeffrey Epstein died, the government continued to fight us. But you're right, in 2018, the government ruled in our favor, saying yes, the victim's rights were violated and it was our intention to get the remedy that we asked, rip up the agreement and get him arrested. At the time in 2019, I was cooperating essentially undercover with the SDNY to get him arrested again in New York. And we all know that he died in jail. And so our case in Florida that we had been pursuing to undo his immunity agreement there was deemed moot because what's the point of undoing an agreement and prosecuting somebody who is dead? You can't do that. So that's the short version of a really, really long.

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[Krista Tippett]

In our first episode, we go kind of really methodically in detail about who the lawyers were on each side, the connections between the prosecution and the defense to kind of shed light. But how and why do you believe that that happened, that that conspiracy happened? Do you have a theory of that or are you at liberty to share why?

[Brad Edwards]

Like I told you before, I don't buy into conspiracy theories, but I've seen a lot of evidence and I there's a couple things that happened here. One, he had a legal team that had influence not only in the legal world, but also made it pretty clear that anybody who agrees with Jeffrey Epstein gets promoted in life, and anybody who doesn't goes in the other direction. So Jeffrey Epstein hiring people that could make those types of things happen and also were his friends and would carry water for Jeffrey Epstein. I think it made people in political positions because I think we've all learned, right, that there are great prosecutors, there are line prosecutors like Marie Villafana, but above that, at the very top, those are political positions that are usually not even Prosecutors, I mean, whether you were talking about Alex Acosta or Jay Clayton, I'm not putting him in the same spot. Right, but, but they're political positions. They're not prosecutors. They're not people who've been in the trenches. Alex Acosta wanted to get ahead in life, so did some of the subordinates to him, but very high up in the office, and they did, you know, the proof is in the pudding, so to speak. Right. It's like they did all of this, they made this go away in the way that Jeffrey Epstein, his team, wanted to. And, you know, Alex Acosta was promoted to, you know, a cabinet member in the first go round with, with President Trump, you know, others in line, whether it's Matt Menshell, you know, he went to a big firm and, and, and got something out of it. Whereas Marie Villafana has just been stepped on from the time that she tried to prosecute him all the way through the very end. And I should say that when I was battling that case, I had a legal expert in victims rights, Paul Cassell, who was a former federal judge. And we would get, the two of us would get information that, hey, look, this was done by Clinton or it was done by some other politically powerful person. So we investigated that. And while that is not directly true, what the Epstein lawyers did do is communicate repeatedly to the U.S. attorney's office that they have powerful people that Jeffrey Epstein has associated with. And it wasn't only Clinton, it was other world leaders, other senators, people in power, federal judges that could help their career. And that this is going to be a career defining moment for the prosecutors to go up or down. And Marie was really the only one that just wanted to do what was right. The rest of them were willing to hurt the victims as much as you as they could possibly be hurt if it could promote their career. That's really why it was done, which is sad. It's like this good old boys, you scratch my back, I scratch yours kind of bullshit.

[Krista Tippett]

And that's exactly what happened. Your victims rights case is in the courts for 11 years before you get the ruling saying, yeah, you're right, it was a conspiracy. By that time, Acosta is appointed by Trump to be the Secretary of the Department of Labor. So now we're kind of fast forwarding.

[Brad Edwards]

10 years, by the way, as an aside that I've never told anybody, I got a call before he was appointed by somebody close to President Trump, who has later become somewhat of a friend, asking whether this was a good idea, whether whether this was going to blow up on President Trump. And I said, it's a terrible idea. It's definitely going to blow up on President Trump. And he did it anyway. So again, I've never said that, but that that happened. And I don't know why the call was made because I told him this is the worst idea that I can think of and it was done anyway.

[Krista Tippett]

Well, that's really interesting because he is appointed in two years before your case is ruled on. Right. So that means the non prosecution agreement isn't even public at that point. That means that there is no.

[Brad Edwards]

It was, it was public. So, so just the timeline. The timeline, you know, June, June 30, 2008. Epstein, please. July 11, so 12 days later, we ask that the non prosecution. That we get the non prosecution agreement, which we get like two months later.

[Krista Tippett]

Oh, it's just the actual saying of, yeah, you're right. There was a prolonged collusion between.

[Brad Edwards]

Okay, it took us five years to get the emails that were exchanged because they fought us on that. Which was the proof that it was a conspiracy. Because before that they acted like, ah, no, we didn't really talk. This was just. It's a regular old agreement, you know, we just do these things. So you're right on everything else, though, but the timing.

[Krista Tippett]

So you get your ruling. February 2019, during kind of that period of time preceding that, the indomitable Julie K. Brown has just blown open with an investigative report. She started by saying, like, aren't people gonna be talking about this Acosta thing? This is weird. And she does a huge series for the Miami Herald. Then things start going really fast. A few months after you get your ruling, the Southern District of New York charges come out. It's July of 2019. Jeffrey Epstein is returning from Paris, lands in a New Jersey airport, is arrested. The FBI raids his mansion in New York and they charge him on sex trafficking of minors and conspiracy to commit sex trafficking. I didn't know you had been working with the Southern District of New York on that. This is just a story of being crushed by the system and having the audacity to hope that next time it'll come. Right. It is like that quote, like, keep going no matter what. Did you believe that this was the time that he was gonna be brought to justice?

[Brad Edwards]

I knew that we were not gonna quit until at happened and I knew that early on, just to tell you how it really went down in 2009, because I would not quit on Jeffrey Epstein. And he couldn't get me to go away. He sued me personally. Which was the dumbest move that he could have made, but really dumb.

[Krista Tippett]

It's the discovery disaster. Like, good, good luck. Sue me.

[Brad Edwards]

But he thought, this is the way that I'm finally going to get this guy off my back. But I thought, okay, like, if you're a fighter, you want to fight, like, now we're in a real fight. So that. Because he had a lot of lawyers on that case, and they took my deposition a bunch of times, they followed me. They've put. They tailed me with investigators, everything that they could do.

[Krista Tippett]

They followed your wife. They had. They had your house under constant surveillance. This is another piece of this that is just a backdrop. There's so many levels. All of the survivors that were either trying to pursue justice, their houses were surveilled. They had private investigators shining lights into the bedroom, bedrooms where they slept from their cars all night long. You had to move your own clients to other states and locations to protect them during this whole period. So this. This surveillance and intimidation is going on for years.

[Brad Edwards]

Yes. So it took me three years to get his case against me dismissed. So then I sued him for malicious prosecution. When I did that, it was us who. Contact who. Who worked with Julie Brown. Julie Brown said, hey, I want to investigate this. I go, good. So we started giving her the information. We were timing her story coming out at the end of 2018 with what was supposed to be my trial against Jeffrey Epstein. Jeffrey Epstein and I, by that point in time, because he thinks he can control everything, he said, let's just drop lawyers and let's start meeting. So he and I were meeting regularly at Starbucks, sitting across from each other.

[Krista Tippett]

No.

[Brad Edwards]

Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. I mean, at first he thought he could intimidate me, and it worked into him saying, how much do I have to pay you to go away? And I said, it's not about that. It's about you're going to have to make the most public apology in the most. The most clear apology, admitting to all of your wrongdoing to me in open court. So that case ends with him making a very clear apology to me, saying everything he said about me is wrong. My relentless pursuit has held him accountable. He did these things, which nobody really picks up on, but he makes this public apology. But we time Julie Brown's story coming out with that. And at the same time, I'm communicating with the FBI saying, he's about to make this apology. Listen to it come to my office. Southern District of New York comes down. I said, look, let's start working a Secret operation. The problem is Jeffrey Epstein has contacts in the government. He's. He's going to learn about it. So I have to keep personally meeting with him and telling him I'm meeting with him over the Crime Victims Rights act case, because ongoing, he's worried that I'm trying to disrupt his immunity deal still. So as we're meeting, I'm able to tell the government I know where Jeffrey Epstein is, because I have a meeting with him here on this day so that you know his whereabouts. You can then come meet with certain clients, and we can start building a secret operation. So we would be at meetings at Starbucks, and Jeffrey Epstein, he was getting paranoid. He would look over his shoulder and say, who's that guy in the parking lot? Thinking, now I had him under surveillance, so I don't even know what you're talking about. But I was telling the government, you got to indict him soon, because he's starting to make me nervous. He's getting really, really scary, really antsy. So I remember when it was right after the 4th of July that he was coming back from Paris and they arrested him. They knocked his door in at his New York townhouse. And then we started going to the hearings to make sure his bail was denied, because I was telling the prosecutors, if he gets bail, he's dangerous all over again. So everything that can be done to keep him in jail, once you have him there, you have to keep him in a cage. Otherwise the harm that he is going to inflict is going to be enormous on me, my family, on everybody.

[Krista Tippett]

Plus, he's gone. I mean, when they.

[Brad Edwards]

So that's really. Yeah, that's how it happened.

[Krista Tippett]

Holy shit. Okay. So, in part because of Courtney and Michelle's testimony to Judge Berman, he is denied bond. He is sent back to jail to await trial. This is the first time that's happened. Less than a month later, he is dead. The official inquest said suicide. We go over all of those things in the first episode. I want to know just how crushing was that to the survivors and tell me a little bit about what it meant to them that Judge Berman insisted. When the Epstein lawyers came in and said, well, these charges need to be dismissed. This case is moot. Insisted that each of the survivors that wanted to speak and tell their stories be able to do that.

[Brad Edwards]

I'm gonna answer by saying, I've never pursued one bit of this case. For me, it was always only with the victims in mind. That's all I've cared about from the day one. But to answer Your question and put it in perspective. When he was found dead and committed suicide, it was crushing to me. It felt like, oh, my God, I've done everything I possibly can put my life, everything on the line to protect these people who can't protect themselves. And I've told them, I promised them, I'm going to fight with. For them until this day happens, and then this happens. So I was crushed, which means whatever I felt was exponentially greater for the victims. So I'm telling you that for perspective, like when I would have to call one victim after another and tell them what they're reading in the news is true. It was on the floor. Can't handle it. One after another after another after another. So for Judge Berman to make a monumental kind of order that these people can. These victims can come in and. And get a chance to actually speak in court was something that most judges don't have the compassion or time to do. But it meant a lot had he not done that, had he not allowed the victims to speak and share their stories and share what they wanted to say. You know, I think that it's pretty public that we've already lost at least five victims to suicide. It would have been more. It would have been more that was cathartic, helpful in the healing process. It wasn't obviously the way that it should have ended, but had he not done that, the damage that. That we all know happened, it would have been beyond anybody's imagination. So we owe a lot to Judge Berman just for, you know, being a real person in addition to being a great judge.

[Krista Tippett]

I heard one of the survivors say that it was Judge Berman allowing her to speak was the first time in her life she had experienced a person in authority who treated her with respect and dignity.

[Brad Edwards]

How sad is that, right?

[Krista Tippett]

It is such a fucking low bar that being able to share your story to a court that will listen is a transformational moment.

[Brad Edwards]

And we're in the United States of America, and we're talking about a case that went on for over a decade, and this is the first person of authority that gives her that feeling is.

[Krista Tippett]

In this case, I mean, the whole time she's talking to FBI agents and investigators who have already made a deal on behalf of her abuser.

[Brad Edwards]

That's what I'm saying. It's so sad that that's even true, but it's true.

[Krista Tippett]

What is equally amazing is that even all of these crushing defeats, the survivors don't stop after that. They don't stop. They are pursuing civil cases this entire time with you they are working just tirelessly with Kana and Massie on the Epstein Transparency act. Even though this has plagued their entire lives, they want the world to know this information.

[Brad Edwards]

They want accountability.

[Krista Tippett]

They want accountability. They want accountability. The act says that all the documents, files, records, videos and images related to the investigations and prosecutions need to be released. And tragically, once again, the DOJ has not only failed to follow the law, they have also done horrifying, irreparable harm to the survivors in this release. This is important because we're now up to now all of this has been passed, but we're now up to now. And a lot of people learned about the Epstein case at the same time that they learned about the Epstein files. These, like, infamous files tell us what they are, what happened with the release and how. Yet again, this has just been a re. Victimization.

[Brad Edwards]

Just for brief context. You know, I think that it started with President Trump running on a platform that if he's elected, he's going to release all the files. And then fast forward and we hear last summer that there's been an about face and they're releasing no files, which I'll tell you, for the victims, most of them wanted to know what was in their file, what does the government have on them that can help them get closure? And they had been requesting it from the federal government all of 2025 and were denied receiving their own files. So that's what they really wanted.

[Krista Tippett]

This is such an important point. The survivors that have been at this case for over a decade, I can't imagine the exacting level of torture it has taken to relive their experiences to local police, to federal authorities, going in front of Congress, people to tell their stories. They do not have access this entire time to what the government has on them in the files and what has been found in the investigation of their particular claims.

[Brad Edwards]

Exactly. And they wanted it for them personally. They don't want the whole world to see their name and things like that associated with Jeffrey Epstein and the abuse that they endured. But they want their own files. They can't get it now that President Trump has said, I'm releasing everything, I'm releasing nothing. We knew that nobody's going to have this on either side of the aisle, whether you're Republican or Democrat. Everybody says, hey, this doesn't make any sense. I know that. So what can we do now? And not that we speak for every victim, but having represented 200 victims, it was very clear what everybody thought is the answer to this is release all of the files. Redact all of the victims names for once. The victims should be protected in this process. So when we went to Washington D.C. last summer and spoke for hours with the House Oversight Committee and explained what the case really is about, what should be in the files, you know, if you really boil it down, it's like now that we've talked, it's pretty obvious. His information was taken from his house in the 2008 case. And when he was arrested in 2019, the terabyte or whatever of information was taken from his computer when his house was raided. There was other information that we had gathered in civil cases that the government had. There were witness statements, victim statements called 302s that were provided. And that was most of that was the basics of the investigation. Turn everything over, redact the victims names. We were fought on that by the administration. The administration fought hard about agreeing to that process. And that's why there had to be this act that was drafted, the Epstein Transparency Act. The administration was actively telling Republican members of Congress, do not sign off on this. If you do, you are a traitor. Or this is going to be considered an act of aggression against the administration. The same administration that said we're going to release all the files. So it made no sense. Although, you know, between us, obviously it makes sense. Right? That was the goal. I said right away to Ro Khanna and Tom Massie in a way you have to remember where you're signing into law enact where the fox is guarding the hidden house. The administration doesn't want the files to come out that now there's a federal law mandating they come out. Isn't it possible that as pure retaliation, that there will be missed redactions and victims names will come out? I even wrote a letter to Pam Bondi saying I fear for this could happen and that one of us or somebody on our side should be involved in the redaction process. And I was told, come on, like, come on, I mean that's, that would be childish for somebody to retaliate against victims. That's not going to happen.

[Krista Tippett]

So what you were saying is, isn't it possible that what will happen at the next step is what has happened at every single step so far, is that at least possible that the interests of the people who are powerful will be protected at the expense of the people who are vulnerable? And then. And they're saying, well, you're a wild conspiracy theorist here.

[Brad Edwards]

Yeah, it's not conspiracy. I'm just, I've lived this case. I know what's going to happen next. There was a release of a fraction of documents. I think it was 20,000 documents. And there were missed redactions. I think that was in November. I don't know if I have the timeline perfect, but they missed redactions. And it was in November. And we immediately, when I say me, my law partner, Brittany Henderson, and I contact DOJ immediately.

[Krista Tippett]

She's.

[Brad Edwards]

She's the best. She's really. She's really. She's really the best. We'll have a whole new podcast on that.

[Krista Tippett]

Yeah.

[Brad Edwards]

So we contact DOJ immediately and we say, hey, look, you miss these things and I'm going to give you the benefit of the doubt. It's. Anybody can make mistakes. Mistakes happen by anybody. We know that. But here's how you miss them. So what we're going to do for you is we're going to help you compile a list of victims, all of them. You run some list by you, we'll run some by. By. By you. And we'll make sure that we have hundreds of victims so that you know who needs to be protected. They say, okay, we agree when it comes out, these are going to be protected. There was then a rollout of some additional documents. You remember there were kind of two or three tranches before. There's been this big tranche. We said, hey, you missed it again. This is easy, though. This is a simple process. In cases like this, where we only represent crime victims, we have to redact all the time.

[Amanda Knox]

Yeah.

[Krista Tippett]

This is very, very standard procedure.

[Brad Edwards]

A literal classroom of fifth graders can get this right. Right. Like all the government's proven is they're not smarter than a fifth grader here. But.

[Krista Tippett]

Or they are.

[Brad Edwards]

Yeah, right. That's. That's where I'm going with this. Because I don't want anybody to think that what I'm going to say is unfair to them and understand how fair we've been along the way. So another tranche comes out and we say, hey, look, you messed up again. This can't keep happening. Here's what you do. When you're getting ready to process them, you put it into the same system that you have up for everybody else to search. You search all the victims names. If the result is a number greater than zero, you haven't finished your job yet. You redact you on your AI software, you hit redact on these names, and they're redacted before you publish it to the world. Okay, we got it. Last Friday, when they published the 3.5 million documents, there were more than 10,000, I want to say more than 20,000 missed redactions of victims. It's incomprehensible.

[Krista Tippett]

And we're not just talking about names, we are talking about addresses. We are talking about photographs, phone numbers, IDs. Something that happens in cases where if you're prosecuting a case, you have to prepare witness for cross examination. And cross examination, especially from Ruthless Epstein, people is rough. They're going to go after everything. They are, they went after in depositions, victims, how many abortions have you had? So you have to do an interview where the witness tells you everything about their life. Their medications, their sexual history, their mental health, their. Everything in their lives. Some of those interviews of the survivors are in these documents.

[Brad Edwards]

Yeah. And they were released to the public. And so just so that everybody knows, because people don't really know this. Within an hour of the release, we had already contacted top brass at DOJ saying, hey, look, there's so many mis redactions here. When I say so many thousands and thousands and thousands victims are going to be irreparably harmed. This is going to destroy their lives and they're going to be in danger. Some of them are foreign countries where their culture is not such that they will protect them at all. They're going to be blasted in the media. They could be arrested. I mean, just for having anything to do with a sex offender. They can be arrested. They're in real danger.

[Krista Tippett]

Their bosses, their children, their. Their own clients, everything.

[Brad Edwards]

Pull the whole site down. That's the only thing you do. Pull the whole site down. We will help you with the redaction process. It'll take hours. If, if not hours, then a day. And you can have the whole site after you've properly redacted. They refused. They said, here's what you're going to have to do. You, which has been primarily Brittany Henderson and me sending them emails and literally going on the site and dragging and dropping the individual documents to send to them. And if they receive the document, they pull it down. But if we were to find that a victim had been exposed on 350 documents and we said, here's 50 of them we pulled over, there's 300 more up there. They would pull those 50 down and leave the 300 up. No help whatsoever. The problem has been, now that it's been a week, the press has downloaded it, people have screenshotted it, it's all over Reddit.

[Krista Tippett]

You can never get that back.

[Brad Edwards]

You can never get it down. We have, we have victims right now who had to escape their country literally get on an airplane, escape their country. The press is at their door talking to their kids at their schools. We've had, we've had victims that have had to leave their children multiple with, with relatives so that they can check themselves into hospitals. We have victims who are suicidal right now. And this is not information that, that the government doesn't know as it's happening in real time. The victims are telling the government this and we are telling the government this. It was no mistake. Because even if you wanted to say somebody is so incompetent that they made 20,000 errors at one time when we told them the only remedy to this is pull it down and redact and they don't, that is intentional.

[Krista Tippett]

Yes.

[Brad Edwards]

And when people are tell hey, this is going to be the consequence and you do nothing to remedy it, knowing that within every hour the consequence continues to grow. You do nothing, it's intentional. I have no doubt in my mind that what I told Ro Khanna and Tom Massey when this law passed. Fox guard in the hen house. When the administration doesn't want this bill to pass, there is going to be some revenge against those who helped it pass, which are the victims. You wanted this done so that the files could be out there but the victims names redacted. You're about to feel the impact of you wanting something that the administration didn't want and they do. It's happening, it's real and there's really nothing that can be done about it. Whether or not a lawsuit can be brought for the irreparable harm that has happened and in real time, as we're speaking is continuing to happen, we are investigating. Whether it can be done or whether the government has sovereign immunity from these intentionally harmful acts is still kind of a question. But it is the clearest case of a privacy violation by the government, both in terms of liability and damage that you can, that you can dream of. I wish 100 law firms hearing this would say let's just band together and sue the government because until you match their power, you're not going to be able to change things. But there is something very wrong with the culture that has developed over the last year. And again, like not getting political at all. I don't care if Republican Democrat. But there was a time in this country where at least the top people, the leaders, cared about other people no matter what their political beliefs were. They didn't teach hate speech. You didn't call people Miss Piggy. You led by example, you know, and that's just something that is so disheartening to me. And I think you hear it. It's like you fight for justice for so long, and then you feel how in this day and age, are we still being let down on an issue that seems so bipartisan? I mean, if there ever was one, like sex trafficking is bad and sex traffickers are bad, and the victims of those should be protected. How do we not agree with that?

[Krista Tippett]

Yeah.

[Brad Edwards]

Sorry for my rant.

[Krista Tippett]

No, I love your rant. I think when we can't agree on justice. And the biggest obstacle is the Department of Justice is officially threat level red. This is really dangerous stuff. It isn't sloppiness that results in the dissemination of survivor information. When you have meticulousness with the redaction of senders and receivers of email. That must be powerful people. People like the two that are existing at the same time.

[Brad Edwards]

You juxtapose the way that they redacted the victim's names versus the way that they were able to redact some of the other powerful individuals involved with Jeffrey Epstein. And it's not even on the same level. I mean, we have examples where victims names. The entire victim's name is there, and the redactor drew a pencil line in. In the middle of it, knowing that this should be redacted. But I'll just put a pencil line so everybody can read it. It. I mean, it. It's blatant. It's intentional. And there are really good prosecutors and really good people at doj.

[Krista Tippett]

Yeah.

[Brad Edwards]

And. And that's the problem, is they're all getting thrown into this category, which isn't fair. I know a lot of them, and I know. I know a lot of them that would never have let this happen. But it only takes a handful that kind of watches the leadership, and. And that's how they think it's acceptable to behave. And that's not okay. And I hope at some point in time we can get away from. From this part of history.

[Krista Tippett]

It's such an important point that you made. There's. There's heroic. Some of the people I respect the most are. Are people in the FBI and the DOJ that are hanging on by a thread, trying to fight the good fight. It's not them.

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[Krista Tippett]

You mentioned the first time you've seen the actual draft indictment was in this document release. Is there anything else that you have seen here that has been new information for you in these new documents?

[Brad Edwards]

Categorically no specific examples of things, yes, but mainly because what we have dealt with for the last last week, our victims constantly. When I say constantly, I mean, I can't even describe to you. Brittany and I haven't barely slept for the last week trying to make sure that this redaction process gets corrected. So most of the things we've seen have been brought to our attention by victims. And so there's individual emails that kind of put some pieces together. But because we were lead counsel in the cases against JP Morgan and Deutsche bank, the two banking institutions that we sued, we've seen a lot of the connection type stuff. So categorically, I would say nothing new. But, you know, we've still looked for things like Virginia Roberts, who I think everybody in the world knows at this point, if you follow the story at all. She gave a victim interview back in 2011, what's known as the 302. And I know that we have her redacted version that lists out the people that she claims that, you know, she said, hey, I was sent to these people. And either that 302 is still out in redacted form or it's not out at all. I mean, that's just one document I can think of at the top of my head because the people that she named, nobody's. Nobody's talked to us about them. And I think that that's a document that would be very important that people will want to know. What did Virginia Roberts tell the government when they went to see her in Australia at that time? The government would never tell us that, that even though we represented her, they wouldn't tell us that. So I've wanted to see that document. Nobody's been able to bring it to my attention. My belief is it's either out there still redacted for whatever reason, protecting whoever, for whatever, or it's not out there at all. We haven't had a time to really investigate these files. We've been trying to fix a mess.

[Krista Tippett]

And for folks, Virginia Roberts is Virginia Roberts Giuffre, who was a main witness and one of the first ones to bring to light the trafficking out from Epstein to other folks. She's the one in the picture with Prince Andrew. She also claimed to have been trafficked to Alan Dershowitz. Her claims were new in some Ways that beyond the initial kind of pyramid scheme that was happening out of Epstein's.

[Brad Edwards]

House, she's the first person who told us that he sent girls to any of his friends. We now have represented 20 or 25 other women who were similarly sent to other men. But before Virginia Roberts, we didn't even know that that was a facet of the operation.

[Krista Tippett]

It really feels kind of impossible to be an American right now, to see this with our own eyes. It seems every other country in the world that has any intersection with this case starting investigations, digging in, and to know that we need to rely on the government to pursue any charges and investigations. A DOJ who has already said even before their release, there is nothing to see here, and even after the release has said, this is over, there will be no further investigations. It feels like gaslighting on a level that is honestly impossible for me to metabolize. So please tell me, Brad, that there is something, some legal theory of this, some case law, some anything that allows for other avenues for justice to happen, even legislatively. I don't know what the hell it is, but that doesn't rely on this administration and the foxes that are protecting the hen house.

[Brad Edwards]

We mentioned that, that Brittany and I and the boy Schiller firm sued J.P. morgan and Deutsche bank for providing the financial infrastructure for this sex trafficking operation. Because when you look at the heart of it, pretty obvious to run an operation the way that Jeffrey Epstein ran it required enormous amounts of money to pay employees, people who are going to cover this up, recruiters, victims, etc. It required enormous amounts of money. Money and financial institutions had to be aware that he was a sex trafficker and then allow for him to run it. So we filed those lawsuits for the exact reason you said we didn't have to rely on the government. We could try to set the financial institutions that we rely upon straight. And those two cases were very successful. And I think that the victims got more justice from those cases so far than they've ever gotten from any aspect of our government. We're currently in a lawsuit with bank of America, same theory, and we're continuing to investigate, you know, in that way too. I think that we have provided to the government other information as they've asked us, you know, who else was involved. And we've simply said, you've looked at the files. Jeffrey Epstein hardly communicates with a person himself. He relies on people who have never identified themselves as victims, who use professional licenses to either move money around, set up corporations, set up phony corporations, make wire transfers Things that are components of this operation that could have never operated without him. Look at them. You're also looking at documents and you see Jeffrey Epstein communicating with a handful of men who claim to be model scouts. And he's saying, okay, I'm a Victoria's secret agent. That's what Jeffrey Epstein, one of his taglines, which he's not, but send them over to me, promises these 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20 year old models that he can get their foot in the door. And Jeffrey Epstein had the connections where he actually could do it. So it wasn't just fantasy. He would get them over here, take their passports, use their immigration status against them, sexually exploit them, send them to men. Well, those guys that Jeffrey Epstein was communicating in other countries, communicating with that was sending these Eastern European women and women from other countries, clearly sex traffickers. I'm telling you right now, they are still sex trafficking to powerful men that are not Jeffrey Epstein because he's dead. Why isn't the government looking at them? That seems like low hanging fruit. Now you have email exchanges about how the setups are happening, happening. That's ridiculous. How is there nothing to see here? There's categories that should be looked into, especially those that were facilitating the operation, making it happen. I think right now though, the biggest message from us is to the media and to the governments and investigators in other countries who. The common theme is your government, US Government said, we're not releasing victims names, we're seeing names of victims coming from our country. So they must not be victims because they weren't redacted. So therefore they must be criminals. We're coming after them because of the redaction problems. The government has now put into danger the victims who they release because other governments can't possibly fathom that, that you could make this type of an error, that. That sounds preposterous to them. So even though we're now getting it redacted, the governments are saying, oh well, it was out there in the media in other places, especially the British press is all over the victims knocking on their doors, going up to their children. I mean, the amount of harm that's been done is outrageous. And if you really think that had Marie Villafane's indictment, had she been able to prosecute him in 2007, 2008, when she wanted to, he would have been in jail forever and this wouldn't have been the story that it's become.

[Krista Tippett]

The civil cases that you're talking about against the banks.

[Brad Edwards]

Yeah.

[Krista Tippett]

Can the evidence that is generated in those could Those be used by subsequent administrations or departments of justices in another world where we have a desire to do so on prosecutions.

[Brad Edwards]

Yes. And I think that especially if this bank of America case continues for much longer, that the evidence that is gathered will at some point in time be used in that way. You understand this. The longer it takes to happen, the more you start running into statute of limitations problems and those problems become real impediments. But we have not given up hope on.

[Krista Tippett]

We started with Courtney Wilde. I want to end with Courtney Wilde. By the time you get your novel case about crime victims rights goes through the court system, it's 11 years later, the 11th Circuit rules, Jeffrey Epstein is dead. There's no way to remedy the wrong. Except that no prosecutor, even though the judge found that there was total prolonged intentional collusion against the victims, no prosecutor was admonished, there were no consequences. In fact, the prosecutor who signed off on it was then in the cabinet. Courtney Wilde has worked hard on the Courtney Wild Reinforcing Crime Victims Rights act that is currently in the House. My understanding of that is that if that passes into law, there will be penalties for prosecutors who try to concoct lenient deals for the benefit of criminals.

[Brad Edwards]

Yes. And you know, that's another act that seems like a no brainer. In fact, it was kind of whittled down, lost a lot of the gravitas that I, that I wanted in it because in an effort to just make sure that it passed and, and still we don't have it as a law. But yes, prosecutors should be prosecuted or investigated or have or suffer consequences if you are materially violating victims rights intentionally. I mean, you have prosecutorial discretion. But this was not one of those situations. Also, there should be attorneys fees for attorneys prosecuting these cases. Not everybody is going to take this on the way that we did, you know, Paul Cassell and myself and Brittany Henderson taking this on for 11 years pro bono. We did it because it's the right thing to do. But you have to encourage lawyers to take these kinds of cases and hold the government accountable. Otherwise the government relies on the fact that lawyers will not take these cases and so they really don't have to worry about this. So there's pieces of the Courtney Wild act that needs to happen.

[Krista Tippett]

Does that not have attorney's fees in it right now?

[Brad Edwards]

Courtney's does it does. That's, that's another component that it has.

[Krista Tippett]

Good.

[Brad Edwards]

Okay, just to be clear, I think this is obvious, but it would not affect this case. Right. That's just to make sure this can't happen again. And I think that that's one of, that's the one, that's one of the main things about the Transparency Act. Like, what's the point of it? It's not to satisfy curiosity of the public, or it might be to dispel some conspiracy theories, but it's to make sure that we learn how did this happen? What exactly happened? Who was at the top levels of governments here and around the world, and the powerful people that helped to give Jeffrey Epstein power and credibility make sure this doesn't happen again. If we don't learn from history, it repeats itself. So that's the point of the act to me, like, let's learn from this. And instead it's just turned into, at least the first week of it, a complete disaster.

[Krista Tippett]

My last question for you is what can everyday Americans do to support survivors, to support your efforts? Is there anything. It just feels like we are in a free fall of disaster on every front. And this is so concerning to so many of us and we feel really like we can't tolerate this just being what it is. Seeing this disgusting behavior of these rich men, the impunity, and then knowing that our justice system has been defending them. What the hell can we do?

[Brad Edwards]

I think that there's a couple things. One, don't look at this issue or similar issues like it's a political issue. I think that, that if you put that aside and you look at it through the lens of let's just be real about a situation. Let's make sure that you don't get so caught up in the scandal that you take the liberties to post online behind your computer nasty things about the victims. They're real people. They see this stuff. They really do hurt. It's really damaging them and their family. We as Americans do not have to latch on to the problems that DOJ or an administration causes. Even if you're politically aligned with that party, fine, there's great Republicans, there's great Democrats, but we're all Americans and these are real people. Let's for once, if everybody else won't do their job, do your job, have a heart and be a good person. And don't spread this stuff in the media and spread online because you're hurting people to the point that it's causing massive emotional distress. That's one.

[Podcast Sponsor/Ad Voice]

One.

[Brad Edwards]

Number two, going forward, if you see something, it's like in an airport. If you see something, say something, like in a contemporaneous basis, it's better to report something and you be wrong. About it than not say anything. Because this case is one where so many people saw these women over the years, people in government, senators, former presidents, et cetera, I can. The list goes on. There's hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of people who could have reported. Nobody did. Why they just didn't want to be involved. That's something that everybody should have courage to stand up and say, no, I know what's right and I'm just going to do what's right and I don't care of the consequences because somebody else is in power that I'm speaking against. Like let's remember what it means to be an American. And when you see somebody who there's a significant power disparity, you got to question that.

[Krista Tippett]

That.

[Brad Edwards]

So I think that to me, if we would just drop the politics and do what you know is right and don't spread the hate and disseminate the gossip and the, and the rumors and the conspiracies because it's hurting real people. We've made a lot of headway, you know, and that, that goes to. Even when we're investigating the banks and financial institutions, there's people that were inside these institutions who know that they kept Jeffrey Epstein even knowing that he was a running a sex trafficking operation and they did it for money. And we're not hearing from these ex employees, not many of them. Why not do the right thing? You know how many times over the years of 20 year investigation that I had to track people down to get them to talk and still they wouldn't. Everybody who's ever been to Jeffrey Epstein's house and seen anything should have on their own called. If it was me, I would have called whoever was looking into this at any time. Because it's just the right thing to do. That's what I think.

[Krista Tippett]

Thank you for just being tireless. Thank you for centering the survivors at every step. We're grateful, we're deeply grateful for your advocacy. We're deeply grateful for them. Please share, share our gratitude with your clients, with the survivors. We're here if you think of anything else we can do to help.

[Brad Edwards]

Thank you so much. I'm a big fan of all of you.

[Krista Tippett]

Thank you, Brad. We can do Hard Things is an independent production podcast brought to you by Treat Media.

[Amanda Knox]

Treat Media makes art for humans who want to stay human. And you can follow us.

[Krista Tippett]

We can do hard things on Instagram and we can do hard things show on TikTok.