No Epstein List But It's Still Fishy

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
I must say I didn't think I would ever do this,
but I'm still really fascinated by the whole Jeffrey Epstein thing.
And I don't think I'm making too many friends or
influencing too many people when I say, you know, or
the last several days anyway, when I've talked about Epstein,
I've been kind of a pouring cold water on the

(00:22):
whole thing. I just think he didn't have a client list, Like, well,
let me back up. He did not have an actual
physical list gathered in one place of the people who
are on his island, and one single list that he

(00:42):
kept for blackmail purposes. He would never have done that.
Nobody would have done that. No criminal would have done that,
compiled that in one place. Did he have information or
compromot on various individual people. Is there some roster that
maybe law enforcement officials can compile of people who are
suspected with varying levels of evidence to have been clients

(01:08):
of Jeffrey Epstein. Yeah, that probably exists. But the problem
is that we probably have varying levels of evidence with
varying levels of confidence about all these different people. And
so my thought I've slowly gradually begun over time, I've

(01:35):
sort of adopted the position of I just don't think
there's actually anything more there. I don't actually know that.
I don't actually think that the DJ is hiding stuff
from us in a way that's illegitimate. And I say
that with this mindset. The Department of Justice's job is

(01:57):
not to expose the truth in some kind of generalized fashion.
What the Department of Justice does is when they're talking
about criminal activity. When you're talking about a case of
criminal activity, the Department of Justice's job is to investigate
something to see if they can arrest, try and convict

(02:23):
someone of a crime like that. That's the job of
the Department of Justice, of the FBI, and all the
whatever entities are involved in the Epstein investigation. It's not
a question of exposing the truth in some sort of
generalized way that makes people who are on the internet
feel better about justice being vindicated against child molesters who

(02:44):
are connected to powerful people. The DOJ's job is we
got to get a conviction here. And the general policy
that the DOJ follows, which is a sound policy, is basically, well,
we don't if we decide that we can't try somebody

(03:08):
and convict somebody. Then we just move on. We don't
make a public statement that, Okay, we don't make a
public statement that we have some evidence but not enough
so we're not gonna try and convict this person of
the crime. You don't make a public announcement when you
decide not to charge somebody. So let me give an

(03:32):
example to illustrate the point I'm making. All Right, the
Department of Justice is investigating Let's pretend there's a celebrity
who has a sex ring. Okay, let's say let's take
a Okay, Garth Brooks. Okay, Garth Brooks has never ever
been suspected of anything like this. But let's pretend that
Garth Brooks is being investigated by the FBI for running

(03:56):
a sex trafficking ring. Okay, Garth Brooks is all of
a sudden, do the most evil guy in the world,
and they're investigating him, investigating him, investigating him. They have
evidence that he's doing dirty stuff, but it's not enough
evidence really to sustain the charges they want to bring. Okay,

(04:18):
because again, to get a conviction, you have to prove
it beyond a reasonable doubt. In criminal cases, the standard
that you have to reach in order to get a
conviction to which you have to convince a jury is
beyond a reasonable doubt, and that's a very high bar
to meet. It's a very high bar for the prosecution
to meet. In a civil trial where it's just one

(04:40):
private party suing somebody, the standard of proof is a proportion,
a preponderance of the evidence. That's it. Trying to think
of the word I knew it started with a p
A preponderance of the evidence just has to be shown
in civil trial where one party is just suing the

(05:02):
other party, a preponderance of the evidence, which might mean,
like I don't know, like a majority of the evidence.
But in a criminal trial, because basically American law takes
the perspective of Okay, if you're just suing somebody just
trying to get money or an injunction to tell someone
to stop doing something, you need to prove it, but

(05:23):
it just needs to be a preponderance of the evidence,
most of the evidence. You have to make your case
showing it's more likely than not that you are correct.
For a criminal trial, though, where the state is taking
away your freedom, the state has to prove it really,
really well beyond a reasonable doubt. Okay, So maybe the

(05:49):
federal authorities are investigating Garth Brooks for sex trafficking and
they think they've got evidence. Maybe they think they have
a good bit of evidence, but they're like, we really
don't have enough to get a conviction here, and maybe
we hold off on charging him until later, or maybe
you know, maybe we just can't get we just can't

(06:11):
get there. What does the DOJ do they're investigating Garth
Brooks for this, they have some evidence that he's a
sex trafficker, but not all of it. They don't make
a big public announcement of we've decided not to prosecute
Garth Brooks because we have some evidence he's a sex trafficker,
but we don't think enough for bringing charges. They can't

(06:34):
do that for two reasons. One, if Garth Brooks is
guilty is actually trafficking women, he's now alerted that the
authorities are onto him and he's gonna take steps to
conceal his conduct and hide evidence. If Garth Brooks is innocent,

(06:55):
well you've tarnished the guy's reputation forever because everyone's gonna
think he's a pedophile, that he's a sex trafficker or whatever.
So Garth Brooks will be like, Hey, what the heck,
you don't have enough evidence to bring a charge. You've
publicly smeared my name. I'm innocent. I've never done this.
So the Department of Justice can't adopt a policy, and

(07:16):
I think it would be weird to adopt it the
opposite policy just for Jeffrey Epstein's alleged John's to say, well,
when we decide not to prosecute someone, we don't make
a big public show of it. To change that just
for the Epstein guys might not make sense. So I

(07:39):
think the reason why Bondi's not releasing stuff is because
they have names, and we already know a lot of
the names. We have his flight logs, we know who
went to the island on his airplane. But it might

(08:01):
not be possible to get a conviction for these guys,
all right. Alan Dershowitz, who was Epstein's lawyer, who's a
professor at Harvard Law for many years, one of the
most prominent sort of public legal commentators in America, was
Epstein's lawyer for a bit went to the island. Alan
Dershowitz was accused by one of Epstein's one of the

(08:22):
women whom Epstein trafficked. She accused Dershowitz of having had
sex with her, of her being trafficked to have sex
with Dershwitz, and Dershowitz worked tirelessly for years to vindicate
his name. He sued her for defamation. He said, hey,
I never had sex with anybody all right on Epstein's Island.

(08:47):
Absolutely not. And he was like he prevailed in that
defamation suit. He got to a settlement in which the
woman who accused him had to say, this was a
very chaotic time in my life. It is possible. It
is possible that I, in retrospect, that I have misidentified

(09:08):
mister Dershowitz as one of the persons to whom I
was trafficked. So if that's all the evidence that the
FBI has, if that's the kind of evidence that the
DJ has against Epstein's John's, I guess it doesn't really

(09:28):
surprise me that they haven't brought prosecutions, because that's the thing.
It's kind of an all or nothing deal with the
FBI and the DJ when it comes to these kinds
of criminal matters. They're either gonna indict someone and give
all the information in the indictment, or they're not gonna
say anything, and I think they're gonna be inclined to

(09:53):
just not say anything if they don't have enough evidence
for an indictment, They're just not going to say anything. Now,
the problem with all this is the whole Epstein thing
is still weird, and it kind of makes me think

(10:14):
he had something to do with American intelligence. Well, let
me explain why. Okay, he had an earlier trial that
was an earlier case brought against him that was absurdly lenient.
He's carrying on with bringing in all these women. He

(10:39):
was going to go to jail for sex trafficking. I
think the criticism of well, who is he sex trafficking
to just himself? To nobody? We have to know that
there's some people that he was trafficking these women to.
Is there genuinely nobody else other than him and Maxwell?

(11:00):
That he and Maxwell were trafficking these women to whom
just to Epstein? And it's made weirder by how weirdly
wealthy Epstein was. Right. Epstein owned an island, He had
several massive, expensive homes in New York and various other places.

(11:28):
And it's the kind of he had the kind of
setup where it's not that he was a millionaire. He
would have had to have been like a billionaire. And
that's what's weird. Where and how and why was he
getting so much money? The public story about who he

(11:50):
was and what he was doing business wise, his work
as a financier or whatever, that none of that jived
with how absurdly wealthy he clearly was. And the money angle.
I mean, as much as people say I want to

(12:10):
know the list of who his clients were, well, yes,
certainly I would be interested in seeing that, But also
I think I'd more be interested in seeing the list
of who his investors were, who his funders were, who

(12:32):
his financiers were, and which really I think kind of
shines a bit of a light on one particular person
who's been associated with Epstein in news stories is in
the flight logs, etc. Which is Bill Gates. Bill Gates
was at the time that he was associated with Epstein,

(12:54):
And I don't know why Gates isn't sort of more
front and center in some of these discussions. Bill Gates
was the wealthiest man in the world. He's still top
what top three? I mean, we kind of don't count
like the Saudi oil guys who they don't you know

(13:15):
they're not reporting their income and they're sitting on top
of oil. I mean, some of those guys might be
actual trillionaires for all we know. But Bill Gates was.
Bill Gates was still one of the wealthiest men in
the world when he was hanging out with Epstein. And why,

(13:36):
you know, I guess that's the other thing. On the
one hand, there's some people who say, okay, if Epstein
was involved with intelligence in some way, with some kind
of intelligence asset, the theory would be, all right, well,
was was this something really embarrassing to the US government,
that Epstein was somehow connected to American intelligence some sort

(13:59):
of And you know, it's plain to see how this
could be embarrassing for the CIA or whoever that was.
He some kind of paid or designated intelligence asset who
is tasked by the CIA at some point with a
really unseemly task that went way south of trying to

(14:21):
get compromot compromising material and certain kinds of extremely powerful people.
The whole project went haywire. The CIA, FBI, whoever it was,
now looks terrible, and so details of it are getting
hushed up. And maybe the only way we could show

(14:44):
that we have evidence against these John's is by compromising
certain kinds of intelligence gathering. Now, the counter to that
argument is, why would if that's what American intelligence was doing,
why would they fly someone all the way to an island.

(15:06):
Why would they traffic in girls rather than adult women?
Why would they go through this elaborate show rather than
just you know, a hotel in New York City with
a prostitute who's not fifteen. You know, I don't know.

(15:30):
Why would they go to all those lengths. The counter
to that is, well, they did go I mean Epstein
was going to such lengths. They did go to those places,
and it is compromising and it's so shrouded in mystery
that it makes you think, well, maybe maybe that was
what was happening here. Now, when we return, I want

(15:54):
to talk about sort of the fallout of what should
be done with these administration officials who talk this up.
I mean, I kind of think Pam Bondy, there's a
part of me that thinks Pam Bondi needs to go
given how she handled this, because I think she is
the real not a villain might be too strong of

(16:16):
a word, but she screwed up massively with this whole thing.
We'll talk about it next here on the John Gerardy Show.
So with the Epstein thing, I kind of think Pam
Bondi needs to go because there's kind of no outcome
that makes any sense. I don't think Trump's gonna get

(16:37):
rid of her because I think Trump doesn't want to
have the appearance of disunity, and clearly a lot of
the efforts that have been happening the last month or
two like they don't want Basically, they don't want to
give the media a victory. They want to demonstrate that
the Trump administration is a united front and that we're

(16:59):
all on the same page. So there are news reports
that Jade Vance was tasked and it seems like he
does this a lot, and that he seems like he
must be pretty good at it. Vance was tasked to
go kind of Playkate Cash Patel and Dan Bongino, who
were apparently so furious with how Bondi was handling everything

(17:21):
that they were threatening to quit and they're saying that's
ruining their careers by making them look like a bunch
of government shills. And I do think Bondi mishandled this
whole thing. So here's why BONDI comes out and says,
and early on is ramping up hyping up the Epstein

(17:42):
maximalist folks by saying she's got the client list. She
literally said, I have the client list on my desk
for review. She literally said that, and has the audacity
to say, now, well, I just had the whole Epstein
file on my desk, and you know, there isn't really

(18:02):
a specific client list. And it's also I think the
whole thing is, this whole discussion is hindered by the
ambiguity of the words client, of the expression client list.
All right again, I will I will give this assessment.
Did Epstein have an actual physical piece of paper or

(18:28):
a word document in which was written names of people
who've come to my island to have sex with minors?
Bill Gates, so and so, so and so. No. I think,
first of all, the existence of such a list has
never been there's no evidence that such a list exists.

(18:51):
It's been theorized, but it has not actually that, there's
no actual evidence that's such a thing actually exists, and
it would make no sense for it to exist because
it would be evidence of Epstein's crime as well. All
right it criminals aren't in the business of creating evidence

(19:14):
against themselves, creating evidence to allow their conviction to be
absolutely perfect. Okay, Epstein was at least as interested in
him not going to jail as he was in as
he allegedly was in getting compromot on his John's and

(19:37):
taking an attitude of I mean, the only thing I
could see that would be reasonable there would be holding
onto evidence in a If I'm going down, they're all
going down with me. But again, you're creating evidence against yourself.
No criminal is going to do that, all right, So
a physicalist does not exist. However, a physicalist created by
Epstein does not exist. I am certain of that. Whoever,

(20:01):
law enforcement officials who investigated this probably have a list
of people whom they suspect, with varying degrees of certitude
and with various levels of evidence, went to the island
and had sex with people. So for BONDI to say

(20:28):
at first I have the list on my desk and
ramp up this speculation, but then come back and say, no,
there's no list, it means that she was either lying
at the start to kind of hype things up, or
she's kind of lying now. She was either lying at

(20:51):
the start and just trying to say something that sounds
cool and aggressive when she didn't really have a list
and didn't or maybe she probably had a list. But again,
it's not a list of people we know dead to
rights and are planning to and should prosecute and are
recommended by the FBI to prosecute because we have solid,

(21:14):
prosecutable levels of evidence against them. It's probably a list
of here are some people that we suspect, that we
know when to the island, and that we suspect had
sex with people with varying levels of evidential r RE certitude.
I'm guessing Alan Dershowitz is on that list. And yet

(21:35):
in a civil proceeding, Dershwitz was able to get one
of the women who said that she had ZEX with
him to admit, well, I might have made a mistake,
and I don't actually know that it was Alan Dershowitz.
So I have a deep suspicion that the FBI's real
problem here is that their evidence isn't very good. They

(21:57):
probably have some evidence, but it's probably not that good,
and BONDI oversold it and she should have known that
before she talked it up real big. She should have
known that, well, Okay, we need to like actually really
assess this first, because again, the DJ is not in
the business of just releasing information about cases. It's not

(22:18):
going to try. The DJ is in the business of
indicting and prosecuting and convicting people. That that's what they're
interested in. That's their job. It's not about just releasing
all the evidence they have about a possible criminal matter.
That's not what that's not how they should operate. Frankly,

(22:43):
or Bondi's lying Now, she did have a client list,
she did know that there are a whole bunch of
bad people, and she's covering something up. I mean, I
think it's more likely the former than it is the latter.
But either way, it's a real problem what she did,

(23:06):
and it does make Patel and Bongino look stupid, and
they are probably right to be ticked off. And so
I guess I wouldn't be crying big alligator tears if
she had to go. She has been a very effective
attorney general, I think in a lot of other respects,
but I mean, this is really bad for her. Again,

(23:28):
there are only two options. Either she was way irresponsibly
over talking it up then, or she's lying and covering
something up. Now those are kind of the only options
for her. I think it's the former, And if it

(23:48):
is the former, then that's really really bad, and I
think she should consider either resigning or Trump should consider
maybe replacing her. When we return my struggle trying to
listen to Agavin Newsom interview that's next on the John
Girardi Show. Guys, I set myself a task that I'm
now not sure if I'm going to be able to
do it. So I heard the other day that Gavin

(24:13):
Newsom sat down for a four hour long, four hours
and twelve minutes long in interview with this guy named
Charles Ryan. Charles Ryan is a former United States No

(24:36):
Sean Ryan. Sorry, why do I think Charles anyway? Sean Ryan.
Sean Ryan is a former US Navy seal, and he
has a very popular podcast sort of YouTube show, and
he has apparently been wanting a liberal to be on
his show, and he gets Gavin Newsom. So Gavin Newsom
sits down with him for four hours and twelve minutes,

(24:56):
and I think to myself, Okay, here's a nang enterprising
media guy that I am. I like, you know, writing
stuff for National Review I like talking about stuff on
the radio. I'm gonna do what no one's actually gonna do.
No one is going to actually sit through this, listen
to it for four hours, and then be able to

(25:17):
comment on it, you know, with legal and political analysis.
So I'm gonna do it. I'm gonna I can have
a whole angle. I'm like, all right, I'm already like
pre writing a piece for National Review in my head.
By the way, I have a new piece for a
National Review out today. It's about the financial impact of
the OBBB on defunding planned parenthood and what that's actually
going to mean physically for planned parenthood. So I'm I'm

(25:44):
gearing up, and I'm like, all right, I'm going to
try and listen to this whole interview for four hours.
And I keep kind of turning it on, like I'm
working at right to Life in the afternoon. I keep
i turn it on, and he's so grating. I just

(26:06):
really have a hard time listening to the man talk.
And he gets started and he's so just everything he
says is two faced. I just can't stand it. Like
in the in the brief window that I've been listening

(26:26):
to this, he talks about how hey, we have to
be able to talk with each other. We have to
be able to bridge the gap. And you know, divorce
is not an option in America, and people on the
left and people on the right need to be able
to sit down and have conversations like this. And he's
talking to this to Sean Ryan, who I think is
much more conservative aligned, And I'm listening to this and

(26:48):
I'm like, you, son of a you know what, like
you really has Gavin Newsom has done nothing to lower
the temperateure of American politics at all. I mean, how
much stuff has he done to isolate villainize people on

(27:11):
the other side of debates from him? And now all
of a sudden he's, oh, divorce isn't an option. We
need to have, you know, a national healing conversation. I
mean he took maximalist pro abortion views. Maximalist. I mean
he signed legislation to outlaw protesting within one hundred feet

(27:33):
of any vaccine site, which basically outlawed all pro life
sidewalk ministry, a law that I actually sued the State
of California over I and Right to Life es Central
California sued the State of California over this law that
was passed in twenty twenty one and prevailed and got
the state to stop enforcing it because it violated the
First Amendment. Like he's passed laws about transgender children being

(28:00):
able to come to California and parents losing custody of
them because they're not gender affirming. I mean, he's done
so much stuff that is just maximally on one side
of the culture war, issued to villainize people on the
other side. Sign into law of the legislation saying that

(28:20):
if your kid is gender transitioning at school, the school
can't tell the parents about it if the kid wants
its secret. Sign that legislation to basically give the presentation
that parents who are not all on board with their
own child wanting to socially identify as opposite gender are

(28:43):
basically engaged in child abuse. Like he has taken just
these maximally hardcore left positions whose logical conclusion can only
be that people on the right are are monsters. So

(29:06):
I this idea. So he first he presents this idea that, oh,
you gotta be able to have these conversations with each other.
He also in this interview he's cursing like a sailor,
which is weird for, you know, a sitting politician to
be doing that. I guess this is his way of

(29:26):
trying to relate to people, of trying to relate to
male voters, to make it seem like, yeah, he's just
one of the guys. And it's weird because it's like,
I don't think he needs to do that necessarily. Like
I think Newsome, as much as I hate his guts,

(29:49):
I don't think he's a like a sissy boy or
a Namby Pamby. I think he does have actual interests
that normal male's male voters could relate. He played baseball
in college. He likes sports, clearly, but he goes so

(30:09):
over the top because he's such an obvious people pleaser,
like he's cursing up a storm. So Sean Sean Ryan,
the host of this show, he gives Newsom a gift.
He gives him a California compliant sig sour handgun, and

(30:30):
he's kind of doing it as a joke just because
Newsom is just known to be anti Second Amendment and
Ryan is, you know, he's a former Navy seal. He
likes guns and pro Second Amendment clearly, and Newsom then
starts talking this whole big game that I got no
problem with.

Speaker 2 (30:48):
The Second Amendment. I'm pro Second AMENDMENTUM in favor of people.
I just think we need to have better background checks
and blah blah blah blah blah, which is like, and
he's trying to act as a you know, I'm a
good skeet shoe and I don't have any problem with guns.

Speaker 1 (31:02):
And blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah. Meanwhile,
on the actual planet Earth that you know, you and
I inhabit, Gavin Newsome was one of the most pro
gun control gun control restrictive politicians in all of America.

(31:28):
He's literally proposed a constitutional amendment to alter the Second Amendment.
He like, I mean, he's endorsed all I just don't
want weapons of war on American streets, which is like,
all right, well that that makes no sense. None of

(31:49):
what you're saying about gun control makes sense. And now
he's all of a sudden trying, oh, I don't have
a problem with that. I'm down with that, which is like,
it's he's so inauthentic, he's so full of it. I
just can't get through it. I've tried to listen like
four or five different times, and he's so dishonest. He

(32:13):
even had this whole thing talking about California's population decline
and he's like, oh, no, last two years, we're growing, man,
we're growing. I mean, yo, California's population is going up.
And it's like, well, no, you're still experiencing this massive
emigration of Californians out of the state to Texas. I

(32:34):
think Ryan is based in Texas. So Ryan was sort
of teasing k Newsome about, Hey, I was wondering if
you came here to do the show so you could
visit the ninety two thousand Californians who've moved to Texas
in the last you know, X number of years, and
Newsom starts laughing and says, no, no, no, that's be us.
Let's be us. California's population is actually growing. We're growing
in population. But all right, our population is growing because

(32:57):
of immigration, immigration and people in the state having babies.
People aren't moving within the United States to California. It's
just not happening. And he he is very big on
talking up aspects of California that are doing well that

(33:21):
he cannot reasonably take any credit for California's leading manufacturing
state in the Union. Well, it's got forty million people.
It's got like ten million more people than the next
most populous state at least. I mean, let's see second
most populous state in America. I think Texas is now

(33:45):
the second most populous uh state. And let's see da
da da da da da da. Yeah, Texas is the
second most populous state. Okay, Texas is eight million behind,
more than eight million people less. California is thirty nine
nine million, Texas thirty one million. So he talks up
all these things where California is leading the country. It's like, well, yeah,

(34:08):
we have more people, and it's it is actually estimated
that our population declined from twenty twenty to twenty twenty
four by about one hundred thousand people, whereas Texas's population

(34:28):
increased by two million. People are leaving California. We are
going to lose our share of the electoral college vote,
We're going to lose our share of representation in the House.
I mean, he's so dishonest that I felt like, I mean,

(34:49):
my kind of rough game plan was I was going
to turn on the interview. You have my laptop and
take notes. And I'm like, am I going to be
stopping this and taking notes and researching every single lie?
This man? Tell yes, I don't know that I can
physically do that for four hours and twelve minutes. So anyway,
say a prayer for me that I can actually get

(35:09):
through that, cause I do think it would be funny.
I think it would be a good article to write.
I think it would be interesting to talk about on
the radio. But gosh, this is going to be torture.
All right. When we return, I have a new piece
out in National Review. I'll just talk about it right
after the break. This is the John Drowardy Show. I
have a new piece out in National Review. You can

(35:31):
check it out. Go to my Twitter account. I've got
it retweeted over there. It's basically what I did was.
I did this. I talked about it, I think a
bit on previous episodes of this show. I did this
deep dive financial analysis into Planned Parenthood and their various
affiliates and dug into it and figured out that, you know,

(35:54):
I had been sort of trying to figure Okay, they're
going to lose one year of federal funding under the
One Big Beautiful Bill. What's that actually gonna mean? I mean,
how bad is that gonna hurt? The original proposal was
ten years. Now it's just one year, all right, Well,
are they just gonna be able to bounce back? And
after assessing it, I think it's actually gonna be much

(36:17):
worse than I realized, Like the amount of money they're
gonna lose, Like just their California clinics are gonna lose
like at least nine figures. Okay, they're California clinics. That total,

(36:38):
all told, all of their California clinics have about five
hundred something million dollars worth of expenses, and they're gonna
lose one hundred at least one hundred million dollars possibly
two hundred million dollars in revenue. Like they're gonna have
a single year with a nine figure deficit just in California.

(36:59):
It's kind kind of mind boggling, how like huge the
impact could genuinely be. I'm sort of I had not
expected this outcome. Like the way planned Parento works is
basically they get some money from donations and then they
get a lot of money from what's called program services,

(37:21):
which is a huge percentage of all their revenue their
program services is money they get for providing services. So
Planned Parenthood give someone contraception, they get a reimbursement for Medicaid.
And Medicaid funding, which is what's really been cut off,
is an enormous amount for them. So I mean, I
could really see even this one year hit to plant Parent,

(37:46):
and I hope it could be. I mean, it's so
bad that I sort of think, gosh, if it was
like two or three years, the whole operation might have
to go under. I mean, it's that bad. I mean
I think they're gonna have to close down huge numbers
of clinics as a result of this. Like I it's
it's really gonna be pretty devastating for them, which is
great less fewer abortions, the better that'll do it. John

(38:08):
Gilady Show, See next time on Power Talk