Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
My next guest. Charlie Gasprino has.
Speaker 2 (00:03):
Been a guest on the show many times before. You
might not know this, but back in the day when
he was Leon Spink's sparring partner, he accidentally knocked Leon
Spinks out cold during a sparring session. So that's such
as the boxing prowess of Charlie Gasprino.
Speaker 1 (00:21):
Hi, Charlie, welcome back to the show. It's good to
have you.
Speaker 3 (00:24):
You know, I'm impressed that you actually know who Leon
Spinks is. So, but ever.
Speaker 4 (00:30):
Happened, I got knocked out, probably more than I knocked
anybody else out, just so you know. That's that's such
as my boxing prowess back in the day.
Speaker 1 (00:38):
All right, I got a few I.
Speaker 3 (00:40):
Did come back from I've had.
Speaker 4 (00:42):
I had a nasal infection recently, so I went to
the doctor and he had to check my nose.
Speaker 3 (00:46):
He goes, you do.
Speaker 4 (00:47):
Realize that you have a severe deviated septum from blunt
force trauma.
Speaker 3 (00:53):
I said, yeah, I know that.
Speaker 1 (00:58):
Yeah, not a big surprise.
Speaker 2 (01:00):
All right, you've written a whole bunch of interesting stuff lately.
I mean, you always do. I should note, by the way,
Charlie is senior correspondent at Fox Business Network. You actually
you also see him on Fox News a lot, and.
Speaker 1 (01:12):
He writes columns for The New York Post.
Speaker 2 (01:15):
So what you're gonna hear me talking about today relates
to some things of his that I've.
Speaker 1 (01:19):
Seen at the New York Post.
Speaker 2 (01:21):
So, Charlie, So this Jeffrey Epstein thing, I feel like
it's a scene in a mafia movie where you know,
I feel like I'm out and then they drag me
back in. And there are a lot of different aspects
to this story, some of which are more interesting than others.
But you wrote a piece a couple of days ago
and you referenced the fact that you interviewed him more
(01:42):
than once I don't know how many times, including shortly
before the arrest that led to his jailing and suicide.
So just kind of want to open this to you broadly,
your thoughts about this guy and the recent politics around
the so called Epstein files and any of that.
Speaker 4 (02:00):
Well, you know, I've always, you know, for most of
the time that Jeffrey Epstein was, you know, bouncing around.
I remember first he was just known as a major
feed ins here, a guy that handled a few accounts,
you know, New York Magazine, did a bunch of stories
on him, and there were the Vanity fair. I mean,
I kind of knew who he was because I covered
the big Wall Street firms for so many years at
the Wall Street Journal and all the places, and he
(02:23):
was very plugged in at bear Stearns where he used
to work. So I used to hear his name a lot.
He was not a hedge point manager. He was a
wealth manager. He would have a few clients and he'd
trade his own account, he trade their accounts, and he
traded a lot, and he was like one of the
best customers for bear Stearns. And then later even after
he got out of jail the first time, for JP Morgan.
(02:43):
So it was kind of interesting. So what happens is
he gets tied up in this in this this thing
with you know, essentially soliciting a child for prostitution. I
didn't really cover it, you know, I read about it.
I stayed away from it. He goes to jail for
thirteen months, he comes out, he kind of resumes where he's.
Speaker 3 (03:03):
He picks up where he left off.
Speaker 4 (03:05):
You know, I hear he's bouncing around Palm Beach by
the way, not with underage girls. He always had a
girl in his arm, but it was apparently of age
model type women. And you know, then heat gets turned
up on him in this sort of major way where
you know he's going to be reindicted. Miami Herald like
(03:26):
just starts doing story of the story about these other
victims that, you know, the sort of the volume of
his crime. Apparently he was much bigger than anything anybody thought,
or at least that he pled to the first time
that he pled to one count, and we're talking about
multiple dozens and dozens and dozens of alleged victims, and
(03:46):
you could.
Speaker 3 (03:46):
Tell that the walls were closing in on him.
Speaker 4 (03:50):
And then something caught my eye in the Miami Herald
coverage and it said that, you know, one reason why
he got out of jail with just a slap on
the rest the first time is because he was a
government witness on the two thousand and eight financial crisis
that he somehow helped the government prosecute cases. And I
(04:12):
was like, well, that's interesting, because I covered the financial
crisis inside and out, his name never came up. I mean,
I dealt with all the prosecutors, I dealt with the
people at the SEC and the aftermath of the whole
thing that he was. Then the Obama sec was a
guy named Rob Kazami, who I knew. Who was I
think he was the US attorney I think he was.
(04:32):
I think it was the US Attorney Eastern District. You
have to check me on that. But Rob has been
around in law enforcement circles for a long time, so
I actually sat down with him, and you know, Jeffrey
Epstein's name never came up.
Speaker 3 (04:46):
The only time his name came up is the.
Speaker 4 (04:48):
One of the hedge funds that sort of blew up
and precipitated the financial crisis, and were not precipitated, but
it was the canary in the coal mine was a
bear too, Bear Stearns hedge funds. You might remember this
in two thousand and seven, they blew up. When they
blew up, everybody kind of said, well, there's issues here
regarding mortgage backed securities because they were all in that
(05:10):
these hedge funds, and the hedge funds kind of mirror
what was on the balance sheet of the banks, that's
what people were positing. So that was a year before
the financial before Bear Stearns actually went under. And I
covered that, and I covered that slow burn where you know,
it became bigger than bear Stearns and was leaning and
it was the whole thing. Well, but in the aftermath
(05:32):
of those hedge funds blown up, Epstein was actually in
those hedge funds and the two guys there were two
guys that got indicted on that and they both were
exonerated and I covered that case. And one of them's
name is Ralph Chioffi, is a you know, guy I've
known for years, really honest guy. I mean, they did
nothing wrong, they disclosed the risk involved in this, but
(05:55):
you know, the government sort of went after them. And
the theory was even then and maybe Epstein helped prosecute
Ralph Chioffi, but I checked that out and that didn't happen.
So here was this thing where I was going to
write a story that said, the mystery deepens even further
about why Jeffrey Epstein got such a sweet art deal
(06:15):
because he definitely wasn't a witness for the prosecution. And
I went back to the prosecutors and the sec on
all that stuff. I went back to the lawyers on
the Giaffi case. Nowhere to be found, and then then
I realized, I, well, if I'm going to write this story.
I got to get in touch with Epstein and I
went to dinner. I'll never forget. It was at a
place called Nicola's on the Upper East Side. I was
(06:37):
in there and I was with a very rich guy.
I'm not going to say his name. Two very rich
people had billionaire types. And they tell me what, asked
me what I'm working on. I tell him and I said, ay,
but I got to get in.
Speaker 3 (06:48):
Touch with Epstein.
Speaker 4 (06:49):
He's not exactly in the phone book. And the guy
whipped out his iPhone, one of them, and gave me
his number. I called him the next day and he
called me back like immediately, and we then had a
series conversations and I asked him was he a witness
for the prosecution. He said no, And then we got
into like just the facts and circumstances around this case.
And by the way, you could see all that reporting.
If you just google my name at Epstein, you'll see
(07:10):
that I actually was. I did a ton of TV
on it. I wrote a lot about it. And this
was about a month. So first I blind quoted him saying,
you know, according to people direct matter, direct knowledge, Epstein,
you know, you know wasn't a witness. I didn't quote
him directly, but so he gets arrested, like a month
(07:31):
later that he kills himself in his jail cell, like
just weeks after getting elected, arrested, And then I went
to the Fox people and I said, can I use
these quotes on the record. He's dead, he killed himself,
and they were like, go for it. And that's why
you'll see the stories, you know everything he said to me.
I guess my point here is that I got kind
(07:53):
of got to know him a little bit. I mean, not, well,
this was not a guy that was This was a
guy that was on the verge of committed suicide in
my view. You know, he was. He was depressed, He
was forlorn. He was like complaining about the the trial
lawyers going to you know, sort of bankrupt them, how
(08:14):
the government is feasting off these trial lawyers and there
in their salacious claims, which he said were not true.
You know, I did ask him, how do you so,
I'm assuming you're saying to me that you didn't know
they were underage, the women that you already like you
already said you solicited and he said yeah, and you know,
(08:35):
he just went on and on and and then you know,
that was how I got into it, and I kept
following it, and then after he died, obviously it became
a big story. But my you know, just everything I
know from the people around him that did business with him,
like a Leon Black, like I you know, Apollo is
(08:57):
what leon Leon Black was the head of Apollo and
he he was doing business with Jeffrey Epstein. Has it
turned out a lot of business Abobble did like a
deep dive into that relationship. They found nothing that substantiates
anything of that Leon Black other than doing business with
Jeffrey Epstein. And by the way, I also did some
research into what he did. He was actually pretty good,
(09:19):
as you know, wealth manager, He was good at the
tax code, saving people money. There was nothing, there's no
evidence about any of this stuff going beyond him and
just laying Maxwell, who was his right hand person, who
allegedly procured the kids for the sex acts that he
(09:41):
was convicted on and he was charged with and you know,
she's spending twenty she's got a twenty year prison sentence,
and one by one, all these sort of connections with
people that everybody said, oh they were involved. I mean,
remember there was a time when people thought Alan there
was charges at Alan, that charges, but there was some
(10:01):
One of one of Epstein's alleged victims said Alan Dershowitz raped.
Speaker 3 (10:06):
There no evidence and by the way, she led later.
Speaker 4 (10:10):
Later and in her case was taken by David Boyce,
you know, the big time attorney. Later she disavowed that,
and she said she had faulty memory. There was no
evidence to that. There was no evidence of anything of
anything going beyond Epstein himself and Maxwell, And it always
just struck me as just so odd that this thing
(10:32):
just kept picking up, and you know, the conspiracy theories
and this, and he was a Masad agent and you know,
people like, how could he kill himself in his jail?
Speaker 3 (10:41):
Said, well, do you know how jail's are run.
Speaker 4 (10:43):
I mean, if you know anybody went to jail, they're
like not exactly well oiled. You know, we're not talking
about Apple and Amazon here, right.
Speaker 2 (10:50):
So let me ask you a couple of things, and
you've touched on them already, So just give me quick
answers to these couple. But I just want to kind
of lock you in, even though you've said it already
and in fact, you wrote it in this article and
for folks just joining. We're talking with Charlie Gasperino, senior
correspondent in Fox Business. You see him all the time
on Fox News as well, and he writes for the
(11:11):
New York Post and I'm working from some New York
Post stuff today. But okay, so you always believed that
he actually killed himself and you still believe that.
Speaker 3 (11:21):
Absolutely, Okay, me too.
Speaker 2 (11:24):
The other thing that I think was interesting you hear
you hear a lot of these very upset maga folks
right now. And maybe we'll get into that in a minute.
One of the things they keep raising is how suspicious
it is how much.
Speaker 1 (11:38):
Money he had.
Speaker 2 (11:39):
We don't They along the lines of, we don't know
where he got his money. But if you're a very
good wealth manager with a couple of very big clients,
you could make a lot of money pretty fast, especially
if you're a good trader in trading some of your
own money alongside them, right, Yeah.
Speaker 4 (11:56):
And he was very good. You know, people are like, well,
he's a college dropout. Let's people real clear here when
he was When bear Stearns discovered him right back in
the seventies, it was actually ast Greenberg, the legendary trader
who's went to Dalton, like the high end private school
in New York City. Jeffrey Epstein was a man teacher there.
(12:17):
And you know, if you know Ace, you know Ace
is far from a perv.
Speaker 3 (12:21):
You know what I'm saying. He didn't recruit him because
of his because of anything sexual.
Speaker 4 (12:26):
He recruited Epstein because Epstein was really smart, and he
was driven, and he knew how to make money and
he poured over the And I talked to Jimmy Kane
about this. Jimmy came is the former CEO of bear Stearns.
You know, he and the Ace were like partners and
running bear Stearns. And Jimmy told me no one knew
the tax coll better than him than he's ever met
in his life.
Speaker 3 (12:46):
I mean.
Speaker 4 (12:47):
And by the way, and when I'm talking so when
you talk to people, they're like, well, why did Leon Black,
you know he could have access to the best tax experts,
why go to Jeffrey Epstein? And I'm like, why does
any ceo? And I know a lot of the of
the major investment banks have a broker. They all have brokers,
(13:07):
you know that, right, well they have brokers because brokers
are you know, this is what they do all day,
you know, they invest money, they they watch the markets,
and he can pay them a lot of money. They
can help you with a million different things. And that's
what Epstein did. It was like one stop shopping for
rich people. You want the taxes, he was good at that.
At tax avoidance. He can get you because he traded
(13:29):
so much. You can get the best research at bear Stearns,
which is what he did. And then JP Morgan, you know,
you have your yacht, you want to sell your yacht,
He can deal with that.
Speaker 3 (13:38):
He knew, he knew the art world.
Speaker 4 (13:39):
It was all one stop shopping for these rich guys
that have these sort of multiple, you know, portfolios, and
that's kind of what he did. And there's not a
lot of brokers that do that. But make no mistake
every you know, it's it's just so it just bothers
the imagination. Why would they need a Why would Leon
Black need a broker? Well, why would any Why does
Jamie Dining need a broker? You know, he's I'm sure
(14:01):
Jamie Diamond has a broker. By the way, I definitely
a wealth advisor that helps him with his money. And
you know that's because that's what people do you know,
you know, you get someone, you get an intermediary who
helps you with stuff because you can't handle it all.
Speaker 3 (14:16):
They're busy working all day.
Speaker 4 (14:18):
And if he's smart, like Epstein was pretty smart at
this stuff, you kind of keep hold on to him.
Speaker 3 (14:23):
I mean, he was a smart dude. By the way,
life isn't binary.
Speaker 4 (14:27):
Just because you're good at investing doesn't mean you're not
a pervert.
Speaker 3 (14:31):
You see what I'm of course, I mean, well, you know,
people don't understand that.
Speaker 4 (14:36):
And then most of these guys had really no clue
what he was doing on the side. I just know
it because I know people had dealt with him for years.
Speaker 3 (14:44):
They had no clue about girl.
Speaker 4 (14:46):
You know, young kids, you know they you know, they
went to his house. They might have had a future.
You think Trump really knew about the young kids. No, Trump,
I hung out with him in Palm Beach like like
a bunch of rich people.
Speaker 3 (14:58):
Did doubt.
Speaker 4 (14:58):
The story goes that Trump threw him out of mar
A Lago once he found out, right in two thousand
and seven, wasn't that.
Speaker 1 (15:04):
The story story? Yeah, that's the story.
Speaker 4 (15:07):
By and complained and he threw him out. So I mean,
kudos to Trump when he found out. But you know,
most people just didn't know. I mean, and and he
didn't like when he had girls on his arms.
Speaker 3 (15:18):
They were never they were never kids. Just so you know.
Speaker 2 (15:21):
Okay, So last thing quickly on Epstein. Then I want
to do two other very quick things with you. A
lot of people. So Trump put out this whole screed
about Epstein on True Social over the weekend, and basically
he's saying it's time to stop talking about this and
move on. That's a short version of a much longer,
a much longer thing. But a lot of his base
seems really pissed off, and they seem to have two
(15:42):
different takes on it. One is, hey, you promised this,
you were going to release this stuff, and we want you.
Speaker 1 (15:47):
To live up to your promise.
Speaker 2 (15:48):
The other is, we believe there are all these kind
of upper echelon elite pedophiles and we want them to
go to jail. I want to ask you on the
second one. Is there evidence of that.
Speaker 1 (16:00):
Zero zero?
Speaker 3 (16:02):
You would think that someone like me would find it?
Speaker 1 (16:04):
Yeah, everybody, you.
Speaker 3 (16:06):
Know Vicky Warred that deep dives into this.
Speaker 4 (16:09):
You know, the closest she came is you know allegedly
Alex Acosta telling her at some point that that.
Speaker 3 (16:17):
Thats the reason why he got such a light sentence.
Speaker 4 (16:19):
And Alex the Costa was the US attorney from from
Florida who prosecuted him. Now, now he's how a government
used to be. I think he was the Trump's first
labor secretary. I could be wrong on that, but you know,
he's reachable. Alex, you know, allegedly told her that, you know,
he was protected as a government witness, and he's never
really confirmed that. But that's where we are with this stuff.
(16:43):
So my point is there's never been any evidence, like zero,
zero evidence that anybody other than Epstein has done and
everybody is poured over it. And you know, look look
as close as he's come to all these people that
he's shared emails with, there are logical explanations for I mean,
(17:04):
Epstein dated of age people too, and some of these
other people dated of.
Speaker 3 (17:08):
Age people, you know. I mean, it's just there's never
been any evidence.
Speaker 4 (17:12):
And you know, if you have the evidence, I'd like
to see it, you know what I'm saying, And I'm persuadable,
But until I see evidence, evidence is what matters to me,
I cannot write something that there is a rich pedophile
ring unless I have evidence that there is a rich
pedophile ring. All right, Okay, no evidence of that. Now
we could speculate. It might be good on a on
(17:34):
a podcast, but when you get into government, then you
know it's hard to do that because then everything is
evidence based. And that's why Cash pattel And that's why
Dan Bongino and I don't know Cash.
Speaker 3 (17:46):
I know Dan's I considered Dan a friend. He's a
nice guy.
Speaker 4 (17:49):
That's why they've done one eighties on their initial skepticism
that there was you know, they initially thought he killed
him he was killed and he didn't kill he didn't
kill himself, and there was a bigger conspiracy there, doing
one eighties on that, and that's why Pam Boondi's doing
the eighties because there's no evidence and now there may
be at some point.
Speaker 3 (18:06):
But by the way, how many the clock is ticking here?
Speaker 4 (18:09):
I mean, that's why I kind of like, you know,
I feel for Trump, He's like, how long are we
going to talk about this?
Speaker 3 (18:15):
On one hand, though, you know, Donald Trump at.
Speaker 4 (18:17):
Times does indulging conspiracies, right, his people dolts in the
Epstein conspiracy wasn't too long ago where he said he raised, well,
you know, maybe ted Crius's father did the assassinate something
like that. I'm not trepersing, but you know, he said,
it's an interesting story in the National Achoir. I just
remember it was because we're all laughing at the time.
(18:39):
So that's one thing. But here's the other thing. And
you got to ask yourself, why do people believe in conspiracies?
And here's why. If you have a news media that
tells you while there's burning buildings in the back, this
is a largely peaceful protest. If you have a news
media that tells you, well, you know, Joe Biden is
really sentient, he's like up there, he's doing backflips in
the Oval office. Never better if you haven't news media
(19:02):
that tells you what Kamala Harris totally earned everything she's done.
Speaker 3 (19:05):
She's a policy walk if you haven't used me.
Speaker 4 (19:08):
And it says Donald Trump is a I mean for years,
a Russian asset without any evidence. That took that Steele
dossier like it was like written like it was.
Speaker 3 (19:19):
The Ten Commandments.
Speaker 4 (19:21):
And it's fantastical as that Steele dossier was that had
that you there was nothing corroborated in that and take
that as gospel. You have an FBI that took that
almost as gospel because they investigated it. Right. Wasn't that
the whole thing with the Russia Gate? That's what you
have that coming from a trusted source. Man, you're gonna
(19:44):
believe you know this Epstein, You know, conspiracy is pretty
pretty run of the mill in my view, you see
what I'm saying.
Speaker 3 (19:52):
So all comes back to.
Speaker 4 (19:55):
How the media has totally screwed the American people on
fact that journalism in my view, because now no one's
gonna trust them, And I mean, it's going to write
what I'm gonna write and be who I am. And
that's why I move stocks and that's why people you know,
I don't have a million followers, but I have a
lot of good ones, and you know followed my stuff
(20:16):
on x and various social media platforms and on Fox
and New York posts. But you know, this is a
media that is really broken. You know, if if you're
going to go out and now I know sixty minutes
says it didn't duplicitly edit the Kamala Harris interview.
Speaker 3 (20:36):
It did. That led to the Trump lawsuit that just
got settled.
Speaker 4 (20:39):
We go back and look at the transcript on that
and look at the question that was asked and the
way they framed the answer, and I mean, you know
this is like this, And then they never released the transcript,
so you can you should have been able to see
that day one. Why wouldn't people believe stuff like this
if if the news media is constantly tilted scales, particularly
(21:01):
on ideological level issues. I mean, we're led to believe
men could be women, women could be men, and men
that are women can should be able to compete in
women's sports. Tim Waltz supported a bill when he was
governor he is governor, but before he ran as vice
president to put tampons in the boys' locker room.
Speaker 3 (21:21):
I mean, I mean, do you understand where we are here?
Speaker 1 (21:25):
I do, folks.
Speaker 2 (21:27):
This is why Charlie Gasprino is probably the best business
reporter in America. You can catch him on Fox Business regularly,
Fox News regularly, and a lot of writing and some
great stuff we didn't have a chance to get to
today about the potential CBS merger, about Elon Musk and
the Tesla board of directors. It's all linked in my
blog Today's You can find the links to the New
(21:48):
York Post articles quite easily if you go to Rosscomminsky
dot com. I've got all the links for the stuff
I just mentioned.
Speaker 1 (21:54):
Charlie Gasprino, thanks so much for your time. It's always
great to have you.
Speaker 3 (21:58):
On the show anytime.
Speaker 1 (21:59):
Ross alight, all right, Thank you.
My next guest. Charlie Gasprino has.
Speaker 2 (00:03):
Been a guest on the show many times before. You
might not know this, but back in the day when
he was Leon Spink's sparring partner, he accidentally knocked Leon
Spinks out cold during a sparring session. So that's such
as the boxing prowess of Charlie Gasprino.
Speaker 1 (00:21):
Hi, Charlie, welcome back to the show. It's good to
have you.
Speaker 3 (00:24):
You know, I'm impressed that you actually know who Leon
Spinks is. So, but ever.
Speaker 4 (00:30):
Happened, I got knocked out, probably more than I knocked
anybody else out, just so you know. That's that's such
as my boxing prowess back in the day.
Speaker 1 (00:38):
All right, I got a few I.
Speaker 3 (00:40):
Did come back from I've had.
Speaker 4 (00:42):
I had a nasal infection recently, so I went to
the doctor and he had to check my nose.
Speaker 3 (00:46):
He goes, you do.
Speaker 4 (00:47):
Realize that you have a severe deviated septum from blunt
force trauma.
Speaker 3 (00:53):
I said, yeah, I know that.
Speaker 1 (00:58):
Yeah, not a big surprise.
Speaker 2 (01:00):
All right, you've written a whole bunch of interesting stuff lately.
I mean, you always do. I should note, by the way,
Charlie is senior correspondent at Fox Business Network. You actually
you also see him on Fox News a lot, and.
Speaker 1 (01:12):
He writes columns for The New York Post.
Speaker 2 (01:15):
So what you're gonna hear me talking about today relates
to some things of his that I've.
Speaker 1 (01:19):
Seen at the New York Post.
Speaker 2 (01:21):
So, Charlie, So this Jeffrey Epstein thing, I feel like
it's a scene in a mafia movie where you know,
I feel like I'm out and then they drag me
back in. And there are a lot of different aspects
to this story, some of which are more interesting than others.
But you wrote a piece a couple of days ago
and you referenced the fact that you interviewed him more
(01:42):
than once I don't know how many times, including shortly
before the arrest that led to his jailing and suicide.
So just kind of want to open this to you broadly,
your thoughts about this guy and the recent politics around
the so called Epstein files and any of that.
Speaker 4 (02:00):
Well, you know, I've always, you know, for most of
the time that Jeffrey Epstein was, you know, bouncing around.
I remember first he was just known as a major
feed ins here, a guy that handled a few accounts,
you know, New York Magazine, did a bunch of stories
on him, and there were the Vanity fair. I mean,
I kind of knew who he was because I covered
the big Wall Street firms for so many years at
the Wall Street Journal and all the places, and he
(02:23):
was very plugged in at bear Stearns where he used
to work. So I used to hear his name a lot.
He was not a hedge point manager. He was a
wealth manager. He would have a few clients and he'd
trade his own account, he trade their accounts, and he
traded a lot, and he was like one of the
best customers for bear Stearns. And then later even after
he got out of jail the first time, for JP Morgan.
(02:43):
So it was kind of interesting. So what happens is
he gets tied up in this in this this thing
with you know, essentially soliciting a child for prostitution. I
didn't really cover it, you know, I read about it.
I stayed away from it. He goes to jail for
thirteen months, he comes out, he kind of resumes where he's.
Speaker 3 (03:03):
He picks up where he left off.
Speaker 4 (03:05):
You know, I hear he's bouncing around Palm Beach by
the way, not with underage girls. He always had a
girl in his arm, but it was apparently of age
model type women. And you know, then heat gets turned
up on him in this sort of major way where
you know he's going to be reindicted. Miami Herald like
(03:26):
just starts doing story of the story about these other
victims that, you know, the sort of the volume of
his crime. Apparently he was much bigger than anything anybody thought,
or at least that he pled to the first time
that he pled to one count, and we're talking about
multiple dozens and dozens and dozens of alleged victims, and
(03:46):
you could.
Speaker 3 (03:46):
Tell that the walls were closing in on him.
Speaker 4 (03:50):
And then something caught my eye in the Miami Herald
coverage and it said that, you know, one reason why
he got out of jail with just a slap on
the rest the first time is because he was a
government witness on the two thousand and eight financial crisis
that he somehow helped the government prosecute cases. And I
(04:12):
was like, well, that's interesting, because I covered the financial
crisis inside and out, his name never came up. I mean,
I dealt with all the prosecutors, I dealt with the
people at the SEC and the aftermath of the whole
thing that he was. Then the Obama sec was a
guy named Rob Kazami, who I knew. Who was I
think he was the US attorney I think he was.
(04:32):
I think it was the US Attorney Eastern District. You
have to check me on that. But Rob has been
around in law enforcement circles for a long time, so
I actually sat down with him, and you know, Jeffrey
Epstein's name never came up.
Speaker 3 (04:46):
The only time his name came up is the.
Speaker 4 (04:48):
One of the hedge funds that sort of blew up
and precipitated the financial crisis, and were not precipitated, but
it was the canary in the coal mine was a
bear too, Bear Stearns hedge funds. You might remember this
in two thousand and seven, they blew up. When they
blew up, everybody kind of said, well, there's issues here
regarding mortgage backed securities because they were all in that
(05:10):
these hedge funds, and the hedge funds kind of mirror
what was on the balance sheet of the banks, that's
what people were positing. So that was a year before
the financial before Bear Stearns actually went under. And I
covered that, and I covered that slow burn where you know,
it became bigger than bear Stearns and was leaning and
it was the whole thing. Well, but in the aftermath
(05:32):
of those hedge funds blown up, Epstein was actually in
those hedge funds and the two guys there were two
guys that got indicted on that and they both were
exonerated and I covered that case. And one of them's
name is Ralph Chioffi, is a you know, guy I've
known for years, really honest guy. I mean, they did
nothing wrong, they disclosed the risk involved in this, but
(05:55):
you know, the government sort of went after them. And
the theory was even then and maybe Epstein helped prosecute
Ralph Chioffi, but I checked that out and that didn't happen.
So here was this thing where I was going to
write a story that said, the mystery deepens even further
about why Jeffrey Epstein got such a sweet art deal
(06:15):
because he definitely wasn't a witness for the prosecution. And
I went back to the prosecutors and the sec on
all that stuff. I went back to the lawyers on
the Giaffi case. Nowhere to be found, and then then
I realized, I, well, if I'm going to write this story.
I got to get in touch with Epstein and I
went to dinner. I'll never forget. It was at a
place called Nicola's on the Upper East Side. I was
(06:37):
in there and I was with a very rich guy.
I'm not going to say his name. Two very rich
people had billionaire types. And they tell me what, asked
me what I'm working on. I tell him and I said, ay,
but I got to get in.
Speaker 3 (06:48):
Touch with Epstein.
Speaker 4 (06:49):
He's not exactly in the phone book. And the guy
whipped out his iPhone, one of them, and gave me
his number. I called him the next day and he
called me back like immediately, and we then had a
series conversations and I asked him was he a witness
for the prosecution. He said no, And then we got
into like just the facts and circumstances around this case.
And by the way, you could see all that reporting.
If you just google my name at Epstein, you'll see
(07:10):
that I actually was. I did a ton of TV
on it. I wrote a lot about it. And this
was about a month. So first I blind quoted him saying,
you know, according to people direct matter, direct knowledge, Epstein,
you know, you know wasn't a witness. I didn't quote
him directly, but so he gets arrested, like a month
(07:31):
later that he kills himself in his jail cell, like
just weeks after getting elected, arrested, And then I went
to the Fox people and I said, can I use
these quotes on the record. He's dead, he killed himself,
and they were like, go for it. And that's why
you'll see the stories, you know everything he said to me.
I guess my point here is that I got kind
(07:53):
of got to know him a little bit. I mean, not, well,
this was not a guy that was This was a
guy that was on the verge of committed suicide in
my view. You know, he was. He was depressed, He
was forlorn. He was like complaining about the the trial
lawyers going to you know, sort of bankrupt them, how
(08:14):
the government is feasting off these trial lawyers and there
in their salacious claims, which he said were not true.
You know, I did ask him, how do you so,
I'm assuming you're saying to me that you didn't know
they were underage, the women that you already like you
already said you solicited and he said yeah, and you know,
(08:35):
he just went on and on and and then you know,
that was how I got into it, and I kept
following it, and then after he died, obviously it became
a big story. But my you know, just everything I
know from the people around him that did business with him,
like a Leon Black, like I you know, Apollo is
(08:57):
what leon Leon Black was the head of Apollo and
he he was doing business with Jeffrey Epstein. Has it
turned out a lot of business Abobble did like a
deep dive into that relationship. They found nothing that substantiates
anything of that Leon Black other than doing business with
Jeffrey Epstein. And by the way, I also did some
research into what he did. He was actually pretty good,
(09:19):
as you know, wealth manager, He was good at the
tax code, saving people money. There was nothing, there's no
evidence about any of this stuff going beyond him and
just laying Maxwell, who was his right hand person, who
allegedly procured the kids for the sex acts that he
(09:41):
was convicted on and he was charged with and you know,
she's spending twenty she's got a twenty year prison sentence,
and one by one, all these sort of connections with
people that everybody said, oh they were involved. I mean,
remember there was a time when people thought Alan there
was charges at Alan, that charges, but there was some
(10:01):
One of one of Epstein's alleged victims said Alan Dershowitz raped.
Speaker 3 (10:06):
There no evidence and by the way, she led later.
Speaker 4 (10:10):
Later and in her case was taken by David Boyce,
you know, the big time attorney. Later she disavowed that,
and she said she had faulty memory. There was no
evidence to that. There was no evidence of anything of
anything going beyond Epstein himself and Maxwell, And it always
just struck me as just so odd that this thing
(10:32):
just kept picking up, and you know, the conspiracy theories
and this, and he was a Masad agent and you know,
people like, how could he kill himself in his jail?
Speaker 3 (10:41):
Said, well, do you know how jail's are run.
Speaker 4 (10:43):
I mean, if you know anybody went to jail, they're
like not exactly well oiled. You know, we're not talking
about Apple and Amazon here, right.
Speaker 2 (10:50):
So let me ask you a couple of things, and
you've touched on them already, So just give me quick
answers to these couple. But I just want to kind
of lock you in, even though you've said it already
and in fact, you wrote it in this article and
for folks just joining. We're talking with Charlie Gasperino, senior
correspondent in Fox Business. You see him all the time
on Fox News as well, and he writes for the
(11:11):
New York Post and I'm working from some New York
Post stuff today. But okay, so you always believed that
he actually killed himself and you still believe that.
Speaker 3 (11:21):
Absolutely, Okay, me too.
Speaker 2 (11:24):
The other thing that I think was interesting you hear
you hear a lot of these very upset maga folks
right now. And maybe we'll get into that in a minute.
One of the things they keep raising is how suspicious
it is how much.
Speaker 1 (11:38):
Money he had.
Speaker 2 (11:39):
We don't They along the lines of, we don't know
where he got his money. But if you're a very
good wealth manager with a couple of very big clients,
you could make a lot of money pretty fast, especially
if you're a good trader in trading some of your
own money alongside them, right, Yeah.
Speaker 4 (11:56):
And he was very good. You know, people are like, well,
he's a college dropout. Let's people real clear here when
he was When bear Stearns discovered him right back in
the seventies, it was actually ast Greenberg, the legendary trader
who's went to Dalton, like the high end private school
in New York City. Jeffrey Epstein was a man teacher there.
(12:17):
And you know, if you know Ace, you know Ace
is far from a perv.
Speaker 3 (12:21):
You know what I'm saying. He didn't recruit him because
of his because of anything sexual.
Speaker 4 (12:26):
He recruited Epstein because Epstein was really smart, and he
was driven, and he knew how to make money and
he poured over the And I talked to Jimmy Kane
about this. Jimmy came is the former CEO of bear Stearns.
You know, he and the Ace were like partners and
running bear Stearns. And Jimmy told me no one knew
the tax coll better than him than he's ever met
in his life.
Speaker 3 (12:46):
I mean.
Speaker 4 (12:47):
And by the way, and when I'm talking so when
you talk to people, they're like, well, why did Leon Black,
you know he could have access to the best tax experts,
why go to Jeffrey Epstein? And I'm like, why does
any ceo? And I know a lot of the of
the major investment banks have a broker. They all have brokers,
(13:07):
you know that, right, well they have brokers because brokers
are you know, this is what they do all day,
you know, they invest money, they they watch the markets,
and he can pay them a lot of money. They
can help you with a million different things. And that's
what Epstein did. It was like one stop shopping for
rich people. You want the taxes, he was good at that.
At tax avoidance. He can get you because he traded
(13:29):
so much. You can get the best research at bear Stearns,
which is what he did. And then JP Morgan, you know,
you have your yacht, you want to sell your yacht,
He can deal with that.
Speaker 3 (13:38):
He knew, he knew the art world.
Speaker 4 (13:39):
It was all one stop shopping for these rich guys
that have these sort of multiple, you know, portfolios, and
that's kind of what he did. And there's not a
lot of brokers that do that. But make no mistake
every you know, it's it's just so it just bothers
the imagination. Why would they need a Why would Leon
Black need a broker? Well, why would any Why does
Jamie Dining need a broker? You know, he's I'm sure
(14:01):
Jamie Diamond has a broker. By the way, I definitely
a wealth advisor that helps him with his money. And
you know that's because that's what people do you know,
you know, you get someone, you get an intermediary who
helps you with stuff because you can't handle it all.
Speaker 3 (14:16):
They're busy working all day.
Speaker 4 (14:18):
And if he's smart, like Epstein was pretty smart at
this stuff, you kind of keep hold on to him.
Speaker 3 (14:23):
I mean, he was a smart dude. By the way,
life isn't binary.
Speaker 4 (14:27):
Just because you're good at investing doesn't mean you're not
a pervert.
Speaker 3 (14:31):
You see what I'm of course, I mean, well, you know,
people don't understand that.
Speaker 4 (14:36):
And then most of these guys had really no clue
what he was doing on the side. I just know
it because I know people had dealt with him for years.
Speaker 3 (14:44):
They had no clue about girl.
Speaker 4 (14:46):
You know, young kids, you know they you know, they
went to his house. They might have had a future.
You think Trump really knew about the young kids. No, Trump,
I hung out with him in Palm Beach like like
a bunch of rich people.
Speaker 3 (14:58):
Did doubt.
Speaker 4 (14:58):
The story goes that Trump threw him out of mar
A Lago once he found out, right in two thousand
and seven, wasn't that.
Speaker 1 (15:04):
The story story? Yeah, that's the story.
Speaker 4 (15:07):
By and complained and he threw him out. So I mean,
kudos to Trump when he found out. But you know,
most people just didn't know. I mean, and and he
didn't like when he had girls on his arms.
Speaker 3 (15:18):
They were never they were never kids. Just so you know.
Speaker 2 (15:21):
Okay, So last thing quickly on Epstein. Then I want
to do two other very quick things with you. A
lot of people. So Trump put out this whole screed
about Epstein on True Social over the weekend, and basically
he's saying it's time to stop talking about this and
move on. That's a short version of a much longer,
a much longer thing. But a lot of his base
seems really pissed off, and they seem to have two
(15:42):
different takes on it. One is, hey, you promised this,
you were going to release this stuff, and we want you.
Speaker 1 (15:47):
To live up to your promise.
Speaker 2 (15:48):
The other is, we believe there are all these kind
of upper echelon elite pedophiles and we want them to
go to jail. I want to ask you on the
second one. Is there evidence of that.
Speaker 1 (16:00):
Zero zero?
Speaker 3 (16:02):
You would think that someone like me would find it?
Speaker 1 (16:04):
Yeah, everybody, you.
Speaker 3 (16:06):
Know Vicky Warred that deep dives into this.
Speaker 4 (16:09):
You know, the closest she came is you know allegedly
Alex Acosta telling her at some point that that.
Speaker 3 (16:17):
Thats the reason why he got such a light sentence.
Speaker 4 (16:19):
And Alex the Costa was the US attorney from from
Florida who prosecuted him. Now, now he's how a government
used to be. I think he was the Trump's first
labor secretary. I could be wrong on that, but you know,
he's reachable. Alex, you know, allegedly told her that, you know,
he was protected as a government witness, and he's never
really confirmed that. But that's where we are with this stuff.
(16:43):
So my point is there's never been any evidence, like zero,
zero evidence that anybody other than Epstein has done and
everybody is poured over it. And you know, look look
as close as he's come to all these people that
he's shared emails with, there are logical explanations for I mean,
(17:04):
Epstein dated of age people too, and some of these
other people dated of.
Speaker 3 (17:08):
Age people, you know. I mean, it's just there's never
been any evidence.
Speaker 4 (17:12):
And you know, if you have the evidence, I'd like
to see it, you know what I'm saying, And I'm persuadable,
But until I see evidence, evidence is what matters to me,
I cannot write something that there is a rich pedophile
ring unless I have evidence that there is a rich
pedophile ring. All right, Okay, no evidence of that. Now
we could speculate. It might be good on a on
(17:34):
a podcast, but when you get into government, then you
know it's hard to do that because then everything is
evidence based. And that's why Cash pattel And that's why
Dan Bongino and I don't know Cash.
Speaker 3 (17:46):
I know Dan's I considered Dan a friend. He's a
nice guy.
Speaker 4 (17:49):
That's why they've done one eighties on their initial skepticism
that there was you know, they initially thought he killed
him he was killed and he didn't kill he didn't
kill himself, and there was a bigger conspiracy there, doing
one eighties on that, and that's why Pam Boondi's doing
the eighties because there's no evidence and now there may
be at some point.
Speaker 3 (18:06):
But by the way, how many the clock is ticking here?
Speaker 4 (18:09):
I mean, that's why I kind of like, you know,
I feel for Trump, He's like, how long are we
going to talk about this?
Speaker 3 (18:15):
On one hand, though, you know, Donald Trump at.
Speaker 4 (18:17):
Times does indulging conspiracies, right, his people dolts in the
Epstein conspiracy wasn't too long ago where he said he raised, well,
you know, maybe ted Crius's father did the assassinate something
like that. I'm not trepersing, but you know, he said,
it's an interesting story in the National Achoir. I just
remember it was because we're all laughing at the time.
(18:39):
So that's one thing. But here's the other thing. And
you got to ask yourself, why do people believe in conspiracies?
And here's why. If you have a news media that
tells you while there's burning buildings in the back, this
is a largely peaceful protest. If you have a news
media that tells you, well, you know, Joe Biden is
really sentient, he's like up there, he's doing backflips in
the Oval office. Never better if you haven't news media
(19:02):
that tells you what Kamala Harris totally earned everything she's done.
Speaker 3 (19:05):
She's a policy walk if you haven't used me.
Speaker 4 (19:08):
And it says Donald Trump is a I mean for years,
a Russian asset without any evidence. That took that Steele
dossier like it was like written like it was.
Speaker 3 (19:19):
The Ten Commandments.
Speaker 4 (19:21):
And it's fantastical as that Steele dossier was that had
that you there was nothing corroborated in that and take
that as gospel. You have an FBI that took that
almost as gospel because they investigated it. Right. Wasn't that
the whole thing with the Russia Gate? That's what you
have that coming from a trusted source. Man, you're gonna
(19:44):
believe you know this Epstein, You know, conspiracy is pretty
pretty run of the mill in my view, you see
what I'm saying.
Speaker 3 (19:52):
So all comes back to.
Speaker 4 (19:55):
How the media has totally screwed the American people on
fact that journalism in my view, because now no one's
gonna trust them, And I mean, it's going to write
what I'm gonna write and be who I am. And
that's why I move stocks and that's why people you know,
I don't have a million followers, but I have a
lot of good ones, and you know followed my stuff
(20:16):
on x and various social media platforms and on Fox
and New York posts. But you know, this is a
media that is really broken. You know, if if you're
going to go out and now I know sixty minutes
says it didn't duplicitly edit the Kamala Harris interview.
Speaker 3 (20:36):
It did. That led to the Trump lawsuit that just
got settled.
Speaker 4 (20:39):
We go back and look at the transcript on that
and look at the question that was asked and the
way they framed the answer, and I mean, you know
this is like this, And then they never released the transcript,
so you can you should have been able to see
that day one. Why wouldn't people believe stuff like this
if if the news media is constantly tilted scales, particularly
(21:01):
on ideological level issues. I mean, we're led to believe
men could be women, women could be men, and men
that are women can should be able to compete in
women's sports. Tim Waltz supported a bill when he was
governor he is governor, but before he ran as vice
president to put tampons in the boys' locker room.
Speaker 3 (21:21):
I mean, I mean, do you understand where we are here?
Speaker 1 (21:25):
I do, folks.
Speaker 2 (21:27):
This is why Charlie Gasprino is probably the best business
reporter in America. You can catch him on Fox Business regularly,
Fox News regularly, and a lot of writing and some
great stuff we didn't have a chance to get to
today about the potential CBS merger, about Elon Musk and
the Tesla board of directors. It's all linked in my
blog Today's You can find the links to the New
(21:48):
York Post articles quite easily if you go to Rosscomminsky
dot com. I've got all the links for the stuff
I just mentioned.
Speaker 1 (21:54):
Charlie Gasprino, thanks so much for your time. It's always
great to have you.
Speaker 3 (21:58):
On the show anytime.
Speaker 1 (21:59):
Ross alight, all right, Thank you.
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