Part Two: Jeffrey Epstein: Pimp to the Powerful

In Part Two, Robert is joined again by Daniel O'Brien to continue discussing Jeffrey Epstein.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Hmm, we're back. I'm Robert Evans. This was another terrible introduction.
Sophie is ashamed. Dan looks ashamed. He's not making my
eyes over the internet here now he is, but only
because I brought it up. Uh. I'm Robert Evans, is
behind the Bastards podcast. Bad people talk about him. Uh.

(00:20):
This is part two of our episode on Jeffrey Epstein. Uh.
Don't listen to this if you haven't listened to part one,
because it will not make as much sense as it should. Daniel,
how are you doing? Literally minutes after we finished the
first episode, I'm doing well. I'm learning a thing that
I didn't know what was true. I thought anytime you
did these like two or three part episodes, that you
would break when I, the listener would break. I didn't

(00:43):
know that you and Jamie Loftus talked about Mark Zuckerberg
for Yeah. It was it was too much talking about Yeah. No,
there's never any break. The reason we do it this
way is because some amount of deceit to the audience
is always necessary. You understand, this, being a TV, you
have to lie to Uh. So this is the lie

(01:04):
we've chosen. Um, and it's a beautiful lie, I also
wear a hairpiece. But anyway, Uh, let's let'st but not
on my head back. It's like I've got a triple
latched onto my spine. Yes, that was a that was a.
That was a good joke. Okay, let's talk about Jeffrey

(01:26):
Epstein some more now. Uh. Yeah, so we were already
acquainted with Jeffrey Epstein's illicit child pimping business. Um, so
let's take a minute at the start of this episode
to talk about his big, stupid house. Now, most of
the early positive articles you'll read about Jeffrey Epstein spent
a lot of time talking about his mansion in New

(01:47):
York City where you are, Dan Woo woo. Now, I
should note that he does not just own a mansion
in New York City. He owns the mansion in New
York City. Epstein's residence is the largest private home in Manhattan.
It has a fifteen foot high oak door, nine floors,
and takes up an entire city block. Seventy one Street

(02:07):
between Fifth and Madison is all Epstein's home. Uh. If
you're curious, here's how Vicky Ward, a Vanity Fair, described
being inside of Epstein's manner. Quote amid the flurry of
men's servants attired in sober black suits and pristine white gloves,
you feel you have stumbled into someone's private zanado. This
is no mere rich person's home, but a high walled, eclectic,

(02:29):
imperious fantasy that seems to have no boundaries. The entrance
hall is decorated not with paintings, but with row upon
row of individually framed eyeballs. These, the owner tells people
with relish, were imported from England, where they were made
for injured soldiers. Next comes a marble foyer, which does
have a painting in the manner of Jean du Buffet.
I don't know who the hell that is but the Coast,

(02:50):
but the host coyly refuses to tell visitors who painted it.
In any case, guests are like pygmies. Next to the
nearly twice life size sculpture of a naked African warrior,
he tells people he off the house because he knew
he could never live anywhere bigger. He thinks square feet
is an appropriately large space for someone like himself, who
deals mostly in large concepts, especially large sums of money.

(03:11):
So that's Jeff Epstein's house in Manhattan. Evans. I'm gonna
I'm gonna ask you to do something that you might
not like to do. But you're the only person I
know that I can ask to do this. If I
ever make a billion dollars, just fucking kill me. Don't
let me turn into one of these people. I'm worried
that it's that it's it's going to happen. So if
I ever become like crazy rich, don't assume that I'm

(03:32):
going to be good. But soon they're going to catch
whatever disease these these mutants have and and uh, kill
me in an environmentally conscious way. Yeah, yeah, that will
that and and we'll we'll have this podcast as evidence
on the trial. Uh. And I am inefinitely brought to
trial for murder. Oh heavens. You fool to assume that
in the future there will still be trial and laws. No,

(03:55):
I'll just wind up like bicycle jousting with your next
of kin around the water now. Uh. Jeffrey Epstein's big
stupid mansion has a gigantic, leather lined room dedicated entirely
to drinking tea. If you want to make somebody start
embracing the tenants of socialism, you might point out that
there are twenty three thousand homeless children in New York City,

(04:16):
and the child pimp to the stars has a dedicated
room just for tea. Just let that rattle around in
your head a little bit when you think about where
the top marginal income tax rate should be. We can't
just say, like, look, this is what they do when
we give them too much money. Yeah, it's very embarrassed.
It's very very right. And that I I gotta give

(04:42):
credit to Vicky, the author of that Vanity Fair article,
because that was published at a time before many dark
details were known about Epstein, and she was like the
first person to really dig into him in a critical way.
She definitely hinted at some very bad stuff and did
a better job of anyone else of shining a spotlight
on the darker parts of his career. And her article
is kind of a masterclass in journalistic shade throwing. You

(05:03):
can tell that she really dislikes this guy as she
describes his giant house and all of his fancy things.
Um well, she includes it keeps a pretty fair neutral
tone throughout. She includes ample quotes from her subject that
present a more damning indictment of his person than any
polemic ever could. At one point, he shows her his
giant living room rug, which he describes as quote the

(05:23):
largest Persian rug you will ever see in a private home.
So big it must have come from a mosque. Crags
my carpet so big we stole it from someone else's
religious building. Jesus, guy it I shouldn't be surprised, but
like you could ask a simple question. I guess you
didn't even ask a questions about the rug, you know.
He just He's like, I bet I can take this

(05:46):
from normal to awful in seconds. It's not gonna I'm
not gonna break a sweat. How much cultural appropriation can
I include? Uh? Now? In the article, Vicki notes that
most of Epstein's decor has been picked out by a
famous French decorator, a guy who worked for prime ministers
and royalty around the world, and then she notes that

(06:07):
among all this finery quote, there is one particularly startling oddity,
A stuffed black poodle standing atop the grand piano. No
decorator would ever tell you to do that, Epstein brags
to visitors. But I want people to think of what
it means to stuff a dog. I don't know what
that means I don't. I don't. I don't know what
that means. Now, Vicky suggests, Yeah, there is one particularly

(06:31):
startling oddity, a stuffed black poodle standing atop the grand piano.
No decorator, whatever, tell you to do that. Epstein brags
to visitors. But I want people to think what it
means to stuff a dog. I want people to think
what it means to stuff dog? What does it mean
stuff a dog? Let's let's together, let's honor his wishes

(06:52):
and think about that. Think what it means to stuff
a dog. It means you had a dog. Yep. It
means the dog is dead. It means you had stuffing
around or called a guy. It means you remove the
stuff that was inside the dog and replace it with
the stuffing, and then you sewed up the dog so

(07:14):
people didn't so people couldn't see it anymore that it
was sewed up, and then you put it on a
piano because your parents made you take the analysts. Okay,
I've thought about what it means the stuff a dog,
and I'm no closer to anybod. I feel like I
did the thing that he wants people to do. Like.
It doesn't make me feel like I didn't come away

(07:35):
with that thinking like, oh man, he's powerful, he's smart, handsome.
I just thought like, okay, I did. It's like, when
I think about what it means stuff a dog, I
think of a very workmen like process. What it means
you gotta remove some guts, you gotta put some stuff in. Yeah,
gloves are probably involved. You needn't. You don't understand like

(07:55):
embalming and sewing and proper disposal of dog guts a
lot of salt. I've thought about it. Jet It sucks.
It sucks for what it's worth. Vicky Wards says that
she thinks it's Epstein's way of saying he always gets
the last word. I don't know why she thinks that,
but I'm she spent a lot of time with him,

(08:17):
so I'm gonna guess she's privy to some details were not.
I really don't understand it. No, I don't understand like
the way he says it makes people think what it means,
the stuff a dog. It's I feel like I understand
that he's trying to conjure up some kind of mic
drop moment, as if like, yeah, if you walk into
my apartment and saw that I had Willy mammoth tusk

(08:44):
mounted on a wall somewhere. That's a flex. I understand
that being a flex because that means I either found
a Willy manneth, killed it and put its tusk on
my wall, broke into a museum, stole a tusk, or
had enough money to buy a tusk. Those are three
lexes that I understand right as like a power move
to show someone a stuffed dog on a piano is

(09:05):
not one of those flexes. It is not. I don't
know what that means. I don't either. Yeah, and maybe
it's just a way to make people feel Yeah. Yeah,
it just it just keeps it confuses people. And that
was Jeffrey's goal. Yeah, I yeah, mission mission accomplished. Your

(09:26):
Cony Island sex Monster Cony. That's another good title for
the episode, Coney Island sex monster. Okay. Now. Back in
two thousand fifteen, after Epstein's rampant pedophilick pimping was common
knowledge and after he'd been out of prison for several years,
Vicky Ward published another article about the man, this one
for The Daily Beast. Its title was I tried to

(09:48):
warn you about sleazy billionaire Jeffrey Epstein. In two thousand
and three. Now Ward was more explicit and less guarded
in this article, stating outright that Epstein's claims of having
made his fortune by managing the well of multiple billionaires
was quote a story that no one I spoke to believed. Now,
back in two thousand three, she'd spoken to Hoffenberg, his
former partner in that Ponzi scheme. Hoffenberg had made some

(10:10):
allegations about Epstein, but she hadn't really been able to
go off on those alone, because you know, he was
a felon in prison for fraud, and Jeffrey Epstein was
a rich billionaire. You can't just like accuse billionaires of
committing fraud off of the word of a guy who's
in prison for fraud. Uh, you gotta have more info
than that. Okay, just let me know when we reached

(10:30):
the era where I can accuse billionaires of fraud from
an uninformed, gut instinct level. That is the now when
the economy collapses, And that's not a good era either.
So she had done some digging this time and found

(10:52):
proof that Epstein had been chased out of bear Stearns
for committing a violation, which is why we knew that
in the first place. She had brought this to Epstein
and outed that he seemed almost concerned about the allegations
of financial irregularities and crimes. This had baffled her. She'd
been surprised that he'd brushed off these allegations um and
in fact, Epstein had mainly brushed them off so that
he could repeatedly ask her, what do you have on

(11:15):
the girls now? According to ward Quote, what I had
on the girls were some remarkably brave first person accounts.
Three on the record stories from a family, a mother
and her daughters who came from Phoenix. The oldest daughter,
an artist whose character was vouchsafed to me by several sources,
including the artist Eric Fischel, had told me, weeping as
she sat in my living room, of how Epstein had

(11:36):
attempted to seduce both her and separately, her younger sister
than only sixteen. He'd gotten to them because of his money.
He'd promised the older sister patronage of her artwork. He'd
promised the younger funding for a trip abroad that would
give her work experience she needed on her resume for
a place at an Ivy League university, which she desperately wanted, so.

(11:57):
The girl's mom had figured that they'd be safe at
Epstein's home. After all, he'd flown around with Bill Clinton,
funded tens of millions of dollars in critical scientific research,
most of his friends were physicists. Plus she knew Gill
Say Maxwell would be there the whole time. The mother
later told Ward quote, at the time, I wanted to
go to after him, I mean physically, mentally, you know,

(12:17):
in every way, shape and form. And the advice I
was given was, you know, he is so wealthy. He
can fight you, he can make you look ridiculous, he
can make your daughters look ridiculous. Plus he can hurt them.
And that was the thing that frightened me, was that
he would know where they lived and could possibly just
send somebody when they walk the dog at night or
something around the corner and we'd never hear from them again. So, yeah,

(12:37):
there's a lot there, But uh, most of his friends
aren't physicists. Is kind of a new in stageul defense
of a person. He seems nice. Most of his friends
are physicists. Like, I'm not saying that, like it's it's
one of the assumed golf physicists are bad. I definitely
didn't assume they were all good, though. I mean, it's
just it just seems like an innocuous thing. It's one

(12:59):
thing if it's like, oh, my teenage daughter is going
to be hanging out with uh fucking Jeremy Piven, which
you know is immediately shady. It's another thing to be like, oh, well,
this guy is like a billionaire who funds scientific research
and pals around with Stephen Hawking and the like, like
that seems like he's probably an upright citizen, you know, Yeah,

(13:21):
he doesn't seem shady, like I can see how. It's like,
it's one thing, you know, you can throw some judgment
on the parents who let their kids hang out with
R Kelly when they were fifteen, and it's like there's
been allegations about R Kelly for a long time. You know.
In two thousand two, nobody was saying anything about Epstein
but that he'd given twenty million dollars in Harvard for
math research. Like that's it doesn't sound like stereotypical sexual abuser,

(13:46):
although now it does because Jeffrey Epstein Pimp to the Stars. Okay,
so Ward brought the allegations that these young women had
made to Epstein, and he denied them to her face, saying, quote,
just the mention of a sixteen year old girl carries
the wrong impression. I don't see what it adds to
the piece, and that makes me unhappy. Now, after she

(14:08):
brought this up to Epstein, he repeatedly called her and
Graydon Carter, the editor at Vanity Fair. Epstein took extreme
measures to discredit the witnesses, reportedly mailing forged letters from
them to Vanity Fair. At one point, Epstein made it
somehow made it past building security and into Vanity Fairs offices.
It's unclear exactly what threats he made or didn't make,
but Graydon Carter made the call to pull the women's

(14:30):
allegations from the article. It came down to my sources
words against Epstein's and at the time great and believed Epstein,
and my notebook I have him saying I believe him.
I'm Canadian. I don't know what the hell Canada has
to do with it. Is that like a throwing Canada
under the bus moment of like I believed him because
we are this is this is before it was like

(14:53):
the before the he was charged with cars. I'm I'm yeah,
I'm a sweet that yeah, yeah that that vanity fair
article includes no allegations of sex crimes. She had two
witnesses going on record saying Epstein tried to seduce them
when they were underage, but her editor talked to Epstein
about the allegations against him and made the decision to

(15:15):
pull those allegations because he trusted Epstein. Okay, not a
great thing. It's because he's Canadians are trustworthy, classic not
believing child sex abuse victims. I mean it just it's
an easier to assemble puzzle than stuff poodle. That it
is that it is very fair. Now Ward claims that

(15:37):
during this time when she was writing the article, she
became terrified of Jeffrey Epstein and what he might do
to her. She says she was frightened enough that had
probably had some impact on the children that she was
pregnant with at the time. Both of her babies were
born premature um Epstein. Yeah. Epstein had asked her where
her babies were going to be born, and she knew
that he had deep connections in the medical community, so

(15:59):
she paid for security guards to watch her babies where
they were in the n I C. U. Her two
thousand and fifteen article ends with this line quote when
they've been released home. Some months later, I went out
to my first party. There was Jeffrey Epstein sucking a lollipop. Vicky.
He said, you look so pretty. Epstein. Yeah, it's we

(16:23):
have a couple of different types of bastards. I mean,
I'm yeah, putting the cuffs on. When you say he
saw him at a party. Second a lollipop, I'm like, no,
this gout's done some ship. This guy is a pedophile.
Woke up from a thirty year coma, walked into a
party and I saw this forty two year old billionaire.
Second a lollipop. Put him in the chain, put him
out of here, put him in prison. We'll try him later.

(16:44):
Something's big broken here. We do like, there's a couple
of different kinds of bastards. We get there's the guys
like l Ron Hubbard, who, like, in an objective way, yeah,
probably did more evil in the world than Jeffrey Epstein
has if you look at all of the consequences of
his actions, but you can't help it. Kind of like
the guy when you read about him enough because his
evil is just so like cookie and weird and eccentric,

(17:07):
and he's like getting people to look for gold on
boats in the ocean and stuff that's fun. Epstein like,
there's no fun in him. He's just it's like Cosby,
it's just horrible. It's just a bad guy with no
conscience and is there. I mean not to make you
play armchair psychiatrist psychologists or anything like that, but that's

(17:29):
basically nothing about what you said about his upbringing made
it seem like the seeds of evil were playing there,
like like you brought up no trauma. You say, like
Coney Island was rough, but he also had parents that
were spending a lot of money to give him a
good education. So I'm not that I'm trying to find

(17:51):
good in him. I'm trying to find uh an inception point,
because the alternative to it would trauma that caused this
moral lapse, not moral laps, moral implosion in this person.
The alternative to that is he was born soulless and evil,
which is the thing that I I know, I don't

(18:12):
really believe in. I don't think he thinks like I
don't think he's a mustache twirling villain. I don't think
he viewsed these girls. These girls are obviously victims. I
want to be clear about that. I don't think he
views them that way. I think he probably felt bad
when he penetrated that teenager with his penis and she
said no, um, which is why he gave her a
thousand dollars. Now, obviously that doesn't doesn't come close to

(18:35):
making it right. But I think he viewed most of
these is like, well, these girls are getting money out
of this, and they're getting connections, and I'm not forcing
myself on them. They're coming into my room and providing
this service. It's fine. I'm so smart and evolved in
our Society's attitudes on when young girls should have sex

(18:56):
with fifty eight year old men are behind the times.
I mean, I guess that's Epstein's justification that there's no
reason that I shouldn't have sex with a twelve year
old as long as I'm not violently forcing it on her.
This is a question that I don't know if you
have the answer to or or you're gonn answer, well
what it will do to me? But does he have children? Epstein?
Do you ever end up having children? Not even like

(19:18):
like like, I don't think so. He's probably had children
and and covered it up. But like children that are
that that he claims was his own and had any
kind of part in raising. I didn't run into any
story of that. I don't think he's been married. Uh.
He was kind of famous in the art ladies. Like
there was a lot of speculation that Gil say in

(19:39):
maxwell Um that British socialite was like his lover and stuff,
and it turned out she was just you know, helping
him run his pimping empire, pimpire. Uh sure, yeah, so
I I think he was just like he had this
image of like being kind of this like rich bachelor,
like Bruce Wayne type character. Yeah, that's what everyone think. So,

(20:01):
but we have as that was good. Do you want
to you want to try doing a product? Damn? Do
I want to try to doing a products? You know catchphrase?
Give me one? Yeah, products, that's it. Sophie's giving me
a thumbs down. But I think you were great. You

(20:21):
need to know that I'm shouting products alone in my apartment, Dan,
I do that every single night of my life. Products
we're back. Those services also good. You know, we don't

(20:44):
think enough about the services, but without services, products are
just half produced. Yeah, I mean like anyone could buy,
uh belt or a nice really hitting on the belt.
Also the services of that, like therapy that you talked
to on your phone or whatever. We have not gotten money.

(21:05):
You haven't. No, they don't don't advertise on our show.
I don't know. We did have Air Emirates advertising our
show once and people got very angry for me because
I just got and finished talking about the death squads
that Erik Prince operates for the Emmirates. We don't like,
we don't. It's just randomly slotted ads a lot of
the time if I don't read them. Uh, it's it's

(21:27):
it's tough because as we're recording this, I have insider
information that all of your ads are Jeffrey Epstein speaking tours.
It's just it's it's the only guy who bought any
add time on this episode. He's giving me a lot
of money, and he actually demanded this episode. A weird guy.
He gave me a stell story. Robert. I don't know

(21:48):
what I'm supposed to do with the poodle, but I've
got you thought about it. I think about it every day. Okay. So,
roughly two years after Vicky Reward wrote her first article
in Vanity fair uh and you know, had her premature babies.
Investigators in Palm Beach started talking to young women they
believed might have been abused by Jeffrey Epstein. This was

(22:10):
two thousand five. They started pulling his trash and they
found scraps of paper with phone numbers in the names
of several young girls on them. Next, they talked to
Epstein's butler and eventually gathered enough evidence to charge him
and two of his assistants with unlawful sex acts with
a minor. This led to a larger FBI investigation, which
identified some forty suspected victims, and forty is just sort

(22:30):
of where they stopped. It was clear from the details
of the case that many, many, many, many, many more
girls have been victimized by Jeffrey Epstein over the years,
and across the country, probably hundreds of them, maybe more
than hundreds of them. The two cops most responsible for
bringing Epstein down were Palm Beach Police Chief Michael Writer
and Detective Joseph Riccari. They conducted their investigation in the

(22:51):
face of overwhelming resistance both from state level elected officials,
fellow law enforcement officers, and Jeffrey Epstein's formidable legal machine,
and I do want to like, I'm not normally you
know me, Dan, I'm not normally one for the law
enforcement side of things, but these guys are legitimate heroes.
In my book. It was one of those things where
like they saw something was fucked up and realized that

(23:12):
it was going to be a nightmare for them to
go after this guy, and they did it anywhere because
he was abusing dozens of young girls and that's not cool. Yeah,
I agree. Yeah. According to the Miami Herald Quote, police
reports showed that Epstein's private investigators attempted to conduct interviews
while posing as cops, that they picked through writer's trash

(23:34):
in search of dirt to discredit him, and that the
private investigators were accused of following the girls and their families.
In one case, the father of one girl claimed he
had been run off the road by a private investigator.
Police and court reports show who now Epstein hired a
legal dream team in order to defend him from these
allegations of sexual trafficking. This dream team included Alan Dershowitz,

(23:56):
noted celebrity lawyer of Mike Tyson, Patty Hurst, and O. J. Simpson.
It also included Kenneth Starr, a man whose investigation of
a minor land deal had spiraled into an investigation into
President Clinton's relationship with an intern. Now that he defended
morality in a battle against the Clinton machine, Starr went
to work defending one of Bill Clinton's good friends from
charges of serial child molestation. Consistency is important now, as

(24:21):
we all know, in any case where a bunch of
young teenage girls are accusing a man of means of
rampant sexual assault and trafficking, step one of any competent
legal defense is going to be to dig into those
girls lives and destroy them in front of a judge.
Epstein's team of super good human beings got right to
work doing this. First, Alan Dershowitz met with Detective Raccari
and shared with him the results of an investigation Epstein

(24:44):
had paid for, which revealed one of the girls to
be quote an accomplished drama student. In other words, Derschwitz
is saying she's a liar. According to a letter that
Derschwitz wrote, the detective quote, our investigation has discovered at
least one of her websites, and I am inclosing some examples.
The site goes onto detail, including photos her apparent fascination
with marijuana. Oh oh yeah. In interviews with the Miami Herald,

(25:10):
Riccari further recalled quote his attorney showed us on my
SPAE page where one of the girls was holding a
beer in her hand, and they said, oh, look, she
is underage drinking. Well, tell me what teenager doesn't Does
that mean she isn't a victim because she drank a beer. Basically,
what you're telling me is that the only victim of
a sexual battery could be a nun. I like Detective Riccarry.
Another Epstein victim, reported similar behavior from his lawyers, telling

(25:32):
the Miami Herald quote his lawyers were just in my
life inside and out. They asked if I had a baby,
if I had an abortion, did you sleep with thirty
different guys? Do you think that played a part? I said,
you're going to come at me like that when you
represent a guy who is doing this to hundreds of girls.
How do you sleep at night? And I hate to
say this, young woman, but all of Epstein's lawyers sleep

(25:52):
at night on a pile of money, uh, hundreds of
feetle I don't think I think it's pretty safe to
say that Uh. Anyone who's ever been asked the question
how do you sleep at night? I think it's pretty
fair to say basically just fine. Yeah, if you're asking
a person that question, if there's not like guilt and
shame on their face, yeah, if they did the thing,

(26:14):
then they already don't know why they should be ashamed
of it. It's it's I mean, I have trouble sleeping
at night because these people exist. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah,
the rest of us have trouble sleeping at night, not
the sociopaths who exist in the orbit of helping these
these people not get charged for You got rich by
ruining people's lives. How did you sleep at night? Easily? Comfortably, really,

(26:36):
no problems. You guys don't know how good bed technology
has gotten. If you're you got your beds out of
a box. My bed was forged in the Himalayan mountains.
It's yeah. I had like a bed bed guy come
and measure me and then make a bed around my body.
It's perfect. It's never had a better sleep. It's the
only one of its kind. They actually burnt down the

(26:56):
forest that made the fibers for the beds that no
one else could ever have a mlar bed it cost
a little bit extra, but it's worth it. So Palm
Beach attorney Barry Kersher and state prosecutor Lana below Lavic
seemed to have found themselves in a similar situation to
Vanity Fairs editor. As the case progressed, Epstein's attorneys made

(27:17):
the kind of quiet, technically legal threats that lawyers know
how to make, and so the prosecutor and state attorney
stopped picking up the phone for Detective Raccari and police
chief Writer that allayed approving subpoenas for the case. Writer
later recalled quote. Early on, it became clear that things
had changed from Cursher saying we'll put this guy away
for life to these are all the reasons why we
aren't going to prosecute this. There was evidence of shady

(27:40):
donations made by Epstein to the police department after the
beginning of the investigation. Writer returned at least one of
these donations, but it's entirely possible that more money changed hands.
Some of Epstein's victims later recalled him bragging that he
owned the Palm Beach Police department. Both the police chief, Yeah,
it's called a humble now, both the police chief and
the detective became convinced their trash was being sorted through

(28:02):
and that they were being followed through about the day
by private eyes. When they finally got to raid Epstein's
mansion on October two, five, it looked as if he'd
been tipped off. Most of his hard drives, surveillance cameras,
and videos had been removed hastily. Still, they found a
lot of damning material. According to the Miami Herald quote,
they obtained dozens of message paged from his home that

(28:23):
read like a who's who of famous people, including magician
David Copperfield and Donald Trump, an indication of Epstein's vast
circle of influential friends. There were also messages from girls,
and their phone numbers matched those of many of the
girls Riccari had interviewed. Riccary said they read Courtney called
she can come at four or Tania can't come at
seven pm tomorrow because she has soccer practice gross gross

(28:47):
gross gross, on the same pieces of paper with Donald
Trump's phone number. Regardless of the of the year. It
feels like my my two friends Donald Trump and David
Copperfield was never never reflex Yeah. They also found naked

(29:08):
photographs of underage girls in Epstein's closet, which means the
fact that they still found all this stuff after he'd
been tipped off means that before Epstein had his house cleaned,
there was so much child pornography and incriminating information that
a billionaire's team of cleaners couldn't remove at all. Yeah,
and checked the closet, they in his close I mean,

(29:30):
I assumed that there were a lot more naked photographs
and they just missed some because he had so many.
That's what that that's got to be what that means
can be like, look, you gave us a month. We
your house is so huge. Yeah, we we got rid
of so much illegal stuff from the main wing of it.
But I don't know, there's some so many it's a

(29:51):
huge house, Jeff, Like, you have a lot of pictures
of children. So the case dragged on through two thousand
six and into two thousand seven. By October, the prosecution
was in the hands of Alexander a Costa, the top
federal prosecutor in Miami. He met with one of Epstein's lawyers,

(30:11):
j Leftowitz, with whom a Costa had worked in the past.
The two former co workers hammered out a deal for
the final resolution of Epstein's case. This non prosecution agreement
shut down the ongoing FBI probe into Epstein's crimes. It
also guaranteed that the full nature of Epstein's crimes would
be concealed from his victims. In other words, a coasta

(30:32):
agreed to give Jeffrey Epstein a plea agreement that no
one actually got to see or read, including his victims. Epstein,
how long? Yeah, is that one of the types of
legal things that one day will get revealed? No, no, no,
it's a forever. Listeners at home, you can't tell this

(30:55):
because this is again in the audio medium. But I
am sad physically, yeah, very visibly sad. Sad with a
dog in your lap, which is a hard hard to be. Yeah,
like just crest fallen while getting my my chin licked
by my adorable puppy dog. It's Bill, he said, Yeah,
he doesn't know, but he's sad. Now. Epstein did have

(31:20):
to plead guilty to two prostitution charges in state court,
but his four named accomplices received immunity from their federal charges.
The deal also gave immunity to quote any potential co conspirators,
meaning anyone else involved in Epstein's crimes who the government
hadn't found out about yet was retroactively declared off the hook.

(31:41):
That's the kind of agreement Jeffrey Epstein got thanks to
Alexander A Costa. How what do you bet like? That's
such a sweet deal. It's a great deal. What do
you what do you think happened to the guy who
gave him that great deal? Alexander A Costa. He's Donald
Trump's Secretary of Labor. You didn't let me guess. I

(32:05):
was going to say something good and wholesome. Oh. When
questioned about his role in letting a criminal network of
child molesters off the hook in exchange for giving one
guy a slap on the wrist, a Coasta said quote
at the end of the day, Based on the evidence,
professionals within a prosecutor's office decided that a plea that
guarantees someone goes to jail, that guarantees he registered as

(32:27):
a sex offender generally, and guarantees other outcomes is a
good thing. How long did you go to jail? Four? Well,
we'll get into that. You said you said he got okay, Yeah,
you said he got more than a year. Yeah, which sucks.
Epstein was required to register as a sex offender and
pay restitution to three dozen victims. He was also required

(32:50):
to admit to committing only one offense against an underage girl,
and that girl was labeled a prostitute in the official
court documents, although she was fourteen at the time. Just
so we're clear, there was no such thing as a
fourteen year old prostitute. By law, any fourteen year old
having sex with an adult is a rape victim. Any
fourteen year old being sold for sex as a trafficking victim.

(33:10):
There is no such thing as a fourteen year old
prostitute unless you are as wealthy as Jeff Epstein. So
the thirty six women he had to pay did get
sizeable chunks of money, but only after enduring multiple years
of having their lives torn apart by Epstein's army of
private eyes and lawyers. Jenna Lissa Jones, who says Epstein
molested her when she was fourteen, later recalled, you beat
yourself up mentally and physically. You can't ever stop your thoughts.

(33:33):
A word can trigger something for me. It is the
word pure, because he called me pure in that room,
and then I remember what he did to me in
that room. Oh, you're leaving, you're leaving air there for
me to make a joke. It seems more to have
some kind of comment other than like, no, it's even
vomiting or screaming. It's it's worse than that. It's it's

(33:55):
ad plugged time. Oh my god, I know what a
bad lied to lead into ads. Oh, this is why
we have trouble. Dad. I hope you're happy to be
associated with this. Uh whatever. It is the name of
that company that the culture Kings used to buy shoes on.

(34:15):
I forget they haven't advertised on me. They haven't. Oh
well they won't. Now know, we should get like a
like a guillotine manufacturer or or something like that on board.
Those are now huh yeah, yeah, it's coming back, baby, Okay. Well,

(34:35):
uh well, we'll talk about the exact nature of how
much time Jeffrey Epstein did and what his time in
jail not prison was like. But first product products, we're
back now. Yeah, this is a this is a rough one. Dan.

(35:04):
At the point at which that plea agreement was reached,
Detective Raccari said that he and his team had identified
about fifty victims, all of whom told nearly identical stories.
The Miami Herald's investigation found more than eighty victims. In
two thousand nine, Epstein's former butler, a guy named Rodriguez,
tried to sell Epstein's Little Black Book to an undercover
FBI agent pretending to be a lawyer. You know this

(35:26):
is illegal. You can't do that. Uh. And he served
some time in prison, more time than Epstein served for
running a child rape ring. Fourteen months is what. And
he did not go to prison. Epstein went to a jail,
a private luxury jail, basically a country club with bars,
the absolute minimum level of security and restriction possible for

(35:49):
an incarcerated person. And he didn't even have to stay
there all the time. He was allowed out on work
release for up to twelve hours a day, six days
a week, which he spent in his own off us,
taking male and female visitors freely, with no oversight by
the deputies who sat outside the reception room and waited
for him to go home. Also doing he was having

(36:11):
sex with people. Dan Also, he paid the salaries of
those deputies while they were watching him. There's no conflict
of interest there. Here's the Miami Herald again, In their
early reports in July two, the deputies referred to Epstein
as inmate, but within a few weeks the language had

(36:31):
changed and he was called a client. He was occasionally
allowed to take a break for lunch by sitting outside
in a park, the record show, and they also gave
him permission to scout for a new office while on
work release. He was required to wear an ankle bracelet
to monitor his whereabouts, So that's something now disagree. Epstein's

(36:53):
work release was approved by the Palm Beach County Sheriff's
Office because they say he met the criteria for their
work release program and there was no actual basis to
deny the program to him when any other inmate in
his situation would have been eligible. However, an incredibly basic
amount of digging, literally reading the department's work release policy,
reveals that sex offenders are specifically ineligible for work release.

(37:14):
When questioned about this, a department spokesperson first claimed that
Epstein was not a sex offender at the time, and
then clammed up and stopped responding when it was noted
that he had been required to register as a sex offender. Also,
it came out that Epstein was paying the officers who
guarded him while he was out on work release. So
that's good. That seems like justice. Now, I will say

(37:36):
Dan Epstein's lifestyle certainly took a hit during his time
in jail. A report by The Smoking Gun revealed that
his purchases, from what his purchases were from the jail commissary,
he spent most of his money on Taryaki meatsticks, pop tarts,
and Little Chubb sausages, along with substantial quantities of Lubra
derm and the finest leather shoes a jail store could provide. Uh,

(37:57):
what are the finest leather shoes a jail store can provide?
Haven't been to jail little while, and I don't really
know how the market has shifted since they cost seventy
two dollars, so I'm gonna assume it's a serious step
down from Epstein's usual leather shoes. That's more than I
typically spend on shoes, though, yeah, more than yeah yeah yeah.
Now during his parole, uh yeah, he spent like a
year on parole after he got out of jail, where

(38:19):
he was supposed to be, you know, confined to staying
in Florida. But every time he requested to travel outside
of the state. His request were granted seemingly with no resistance.
After his pearl. In the almost decades since it ended,
Jeffrey Epstein has continued to enjoy a life of unbridled excess.
He bought a new private jet. He switched his permanent
residence to his island Little Saint jeff since New York

(38:40):
and Florida required him to register as a sex offender.
Whatever the truth behind Epstein's rise to wealth and power,
it's clear that his financial resources are still seemingly inexhaustible.
He's continued to donate to charities funding scientific research, and
even starting an online TV network, NEUROTV, that focuses on
interviews with great thinkers and scientists. His great and good
friends seemed to have forgiven him his trespasses. Stephen Hawking

(39:02):
visited his island two thousand six. In two thousand ten,
his island or He hosted Katie Couric, George Stephanopolis, Chelsea Handler,
and Woody Allen to a lavish dinner. Woody Allen, I
get yeah, I get why Woody Allen didn't have any
issues with this. Alan Dershowitz, who at age eight, seems

(39:23):
to spend most of his free time defending the Trump
administration on TV. Responds to questions about his representation of
Epstein with lines like I plead guilty to making a
deal that was favorable to my client. Kenneth Starr said,
I was happy to respond to the needs of a
client of the firm. When Daily Beast reporter Alexandra Wolfe
questioned theoretical physicist and professor Lawrence Krauss about his friend

(39:43):
and benefactor Jeff Epstein, Kraus said, quote, as a scientist,
I always judge things on empirical evidence, and he always
has women aged nineteen to twenty three around him. But
I've never seen anything else normally. Yeah, that's a troubling
quote about shaking the show up and like doing something
that won't bump people out. Is that is that on

(40:06):
your list? Is like a Christmas episode we did, We
did that Christmas episode about Raoul Wallenberg, the guy who
saved a hundred thousand Jewish people during the Holocaust and
then got murdered by the Soviets. Okay, and that's your example,
is like a thing that doesn't bump people out? Yeah,
that that's that's upbeat for us. Okay, sure. Oh. Now.

(40:29):
Epstein has of course continued to fight his accusers in
court over dozens of lawsuits across the last several years.
He settled a civil case against him just last December.
There is currently a pending suit in Florida that seeks
to throw out the entire non prosecution agreement against him
on the basis that it was illegal to make because
dozens of Epstein's victims were never given the chance to
know about it. So, Dan, I will end this on

(40:50):
a little bit of an upside note. It is still
possible that some version of justice will be done and
that some of his named and potential co conspirators might
finally have to spend time him in court. It's not
necessarily likely that this will happen, but it is possible.
That's the happiest, happiest ending I got for you, man.
Unlikely but possible. Yeah, Eventually justice might get done. All right,

(41:14):
that's that's a put that on au and then drive
that car right off a cliff and and Dan, I mean,
this is pretty bad. Alexander A. Costa was in line
to become the new Attorney General and then people made
a big fuss out of him letting this serial pedophile
off and he had to just stay the secretary of Labor.

(41:34):
That's a bummer for him and his family of goblins. Yeah,
and his family of goblins. I bet the health plan
isn't as good as Secretary of Labor. Yeah. Yeah, Hey man,
this sucks. This whole thing sucks that. This is a real, real,
real soul crush. Here. Can you tell me what Jeffrey
is doing right now? Uh? Spending most of his time

(41:56):
on his private island, still probably having a lot of
sex with very young people. Is he professionally, Like, does
he run a consulting firm? Is he still doing Yeah,
he still manages money. I suspect if he ever did
much of that. Like, that's the thing I have to wonder,

(42:17):
Like the conspiratorial side of me thinks, like, yeah, ship,
maybe he was just pimping out kids and getting paid
by rich people for that. I don't know. It was
probably a mix. He probably did some financial stuff, but like, clearly,
who knows what he's doing now other than being impossibly wealthy. Uh,
in owning a house in Manhattan that could comfortably How's

(42:42):
ten thousand at least of the three thousand homeless kids
in the city I don't know, Dan WHOA You wanna
plug your Twitter? No? I don't. I mean I maintained
it pretty strict. I don't plug like Twitter Instagram, so

(43:05):
I don't know. It's like my least favorite part of
podcast when I guess the end, it's like said, where
can people find you online? I understand it's good for
creators to everything, much like as a podcast listener, I
hate it. UM. I will tell Children of the Night
dot org is a great organization. I mentioned it in
the last podcasts for children rescued from childhood prostitution. You
should support them in anyway you can. Um, I will

(43:28):
plug a thing that I was associated with, just because
there are other people who work there that aren't just me,
so it feels less selfish. I read for a show
called Last Week's Night. It requires a lot of work
from a lot of people. Were an amazing staff of writers, researchers, producers,
footage people, directors, and they all worked very hard, spend
a lot of time reading about horrible issues, same way

(43:50):
that Evans does, and then at the end of the
week we try to present that work to you in
a thirty minute occasionally funny, attempting to be funny, but
always trying to be informative format. Uh, lessons and jokes,
you know. So check out Last Week Tonight if you
have HBO. Yeah, check out Last Week Tonight. And I'm

(44:11):
gonna plug a thing, probably the worst. I'm gonna get fired.
That's probably the worst plug. I am going to plug
your books since you didn't if you if you could
use a pick me up after all of these horrible
stories of child molestation. Dan O'Brien has a really fun
and entertaining an educational book called How to Fight Presidents.

(44:32):
And after this episode, you probably want to fight a
couple of presidents. Yeah, the main one that you're gonna
want to fight, The main two that you're gonna want
to fight. Yeah, they're not featured in the book. They're
not apologized, but you can synthesize some of that information. Uh.
And and maybe this episode will get Dan talked to
by the Secret Service again. Yeah, or all pals at

(44:56):
this point they got you on speed dial. Well, I'm
Robert Evans. I also think you should donate to Children
of the Night or volunteer if that is possible in
your area. Um and uh, now I'm going to seamlessly
transition to saying you can buy t shirts and hoodies
and stickers, uh from Martie Public store. Behind the Bastards. Uh,

(45:18):
we've got a Raoul Wallenberg hoodie. Save lives, do crimes.
That's that's my motto, not the kind of crimes Epstein did.
Good are you? Are you still doing the Nazios one?
We do have nachos, not nazis, Doritos not dictators. Doritos
has not suit us for using the name of their products,
so that's counts as a kind of support. That's good. Yeah,

(45:40):
thanks John Dorrito. Well, you can find this podcast on
Twitter and Instagram and at Bastards pod. You can find
us on the internet at behind the Bastards dot com
along with all of the articles and sources and stuff
for this this podcast of horrors. Uh. That's all. We'll
be back next week with something else that break your
heart in that you'll listen to for reasons that are

(46:04):
beyond my understanding. I love about h m hm