Front Burner - Jeffrey Epstein’s death: The conspiracies and the fallout

Episode Date: August 12, 2019

It was already a story mired in controversy, but with the apparent suicide of accused sex trafficker, Jeffrey Epstein, the scandal has only deepened. Today, on Front Burner, we turn to Marc Fisher, senior editor at The Washington Post, to unpack the conspiracy theories that have erupted around Epstein’s death and what the latest developments mean for his victims.

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Like, yep, I'm disabled. Google it, bitch. You can find Chosen Family wherever you get your podcasts. Welcome to the family. Hello, I'm Jamie Poisson. We've learned Jeffrey Epstein, the financier charged with sex trafficking of minors and conspiracy, has died by suicide. According to the U.S. Department of Justice, Jeffrey Epstein was found unresponsive in his prison cell at the Metropolitan Correctional Center. When I woke up to report Saturday morning that Jeffrey Epstein had killed himself in his Manhattan jail cell, the first thing that popped into my head was, how? I thought they were watching him.

It's one of so many unanswered questions in this mind-boggling case. Here are some others. Why did Epstein get an extraordinary secret deal when facing similar accusations in 2008? get an extraordinary secret deal when facing similar accusations in 2008, a deal that allowed him to avoid federal prosecution and leave jail six days a week to work. What happens now that a public trial won't shed more light on the crimes and alleged cover-ups here? And where does this leave his victims? Today, I'm talking about all of this and more with my guest Mark Fisher, senior editor of the Washington Post, who has been covering this story. This is FrontBurner.

Mark, thank you so much for making the time to chat with me today. I know this has been a really busy weekend for you. Sure, no problem. I wonder if we could start today with these conspiracy theories that have been circling about the death of Jeffrey Epstein since his death was announced, especially because the president of the United States is now essentially promoting them. So just hours after the news broke, Trump took to Twitter and retweeted a post by this comedian who is a supporter of Trump. I told y'all last month this was going to happen, but didn't nobody want to listen to me? And that tweet suggested that the Clintons were behind Epstein's death.

People that have information on the Clintons end up dead, and they usually die from suicide. A lot of people are saying that this is a baseless conspiracy with no evidence backing it up. But just to understand what he's getting at, what's the top line of this allegation against the Clintons? Well, this has been part of the Epstein story for some years because Epstein had various relationships with prominent politicians, princes, plutocrats, all sorts of rich people around the world. He has been the subject of all kinds of conspiracy theories, and several of those have focused on his relationships with Presidents Donald Trump and Bill Clinton. This goes back to when Clinton made a number of trips on Epstein's private jet And Clinton made a number of trips on Epstein's private jet over the years.

Now, the Clintons and the Clinton Foundation say that those trips were entirely on the up and up, that Epstein lent his plane essentially to the Clintons for Clinton Foundation related trips to Africa to work on some of the projects of the foundation. work on some of the projects of the foundation. But in the minds of people who see conspiracies, this has morphed into accusations that President Clinton visited Epstein on what some call the island of little girls, the island, which is the private island in the Caribbean, where Jeffrey Epstein not only lived part time, but had any number of underage girls there for his own sexual pleasure and allegedly for the use of other guests on the island. And there's now a competing conspiracy theory that Donald Trump might also be behind Epstein's death. Am I right about that? Yeah, I mean, you can find any conspiracy theory you'd like

regarding Jeffrey Epstein because he's such a magnet for controversy and for these intricate conspiracy theories. And yes, Donald Trump was someone who socialized with Jeffrey Epstein through the years, more back in the 1980s and early 90s than later on. A tape in the NBC archives of a Mar-a-Lago party shows Trump giving Epstein his personal attention. President Trump is quoted with glowing words about him back in 2002.

I have known Jeff for 15 years, he said in 2002. Terrific guy. He's a lot of fun to be with. It's even said that he likes beautiful women as much as I do, and many of them are on the younger side. In fact, Trump had a falling out with Epstein. There were two bases for that. They were competing bidders for a house in Palm Beach,

a mansion. Epstein and Trump were gunning for the same piece of property. And Trump didn't like that Epstein was bidding up the price. And so the previous friendship kind of vanished at that point. The other reason that's given for the breakup of their friendship is that Trump had indeed banned Jeffrey Epstein from Mar-a-Lago, his Florida estate. He did that after he caught Jeffrey Epstein's longtime girlfriend and alleged procurer, Jelaine Maxwell, a woman who was the daughter of the British press lord Robert Maxwell. of the British press lord Robert Maxwell.

Maxwell was caught recruiting a towel girl in the locker room at Mar-a-Lago to come be one of the masseuses at the Epstein mansion just down the road. And Trump didn't like that. Well, I knew him like everybody in Palm Beach knew him. I mean, people in Palm Beach knew him. He was a fixture in Palm Beach. I was not, yeah, a long time ago. I'd say maybe 15 years. I was not a fan Palm Beach. I was not, yeah, a long time ago. I'd say maybe 15 years. I was not a fan of his. That I can tell you. I was not a fan of his.

You mentioned earlier that there's no shortage of conspiracy theories around the Jeffrey Epstein case? Like, why is that the case? Well, it's a great question. I think a lot of it has to do with the idea that this was someone, Jeffrey Epstein, who fancied himself and rather successfully conducted his life above the law, that he was someone who walked through life as if the rules that apply to everyone else didn't apply to him. And so someone like that is seen, I think, very easily as someone who has special influence. And indeed, he surrounded himself with rich and famous people, influential scientists, academic leaders, politicians of all kinds. leaders, politicians of all kinds. And there was this sense that he had gotten wealthy and amassed enough political power to get around all of these accusations for year after year. And that lends

itself to conspiracy theories. How could one man have so much influence and power? How could he surround himself with so many powerful lawyers who were able to keep him out of trouble, even when there was so much evidence against him. So it's, there are no easy answers to that. And that is something that lends itself to conspiracy theory. This idea that Epstein is above the law, for some of our listeners who might not be following this case very closely, Can we talk about 2008 and the case that eventually led to charges, and then a deal with the prosecution that has been roundly criticized? Sure. Starting in about 2007, there were a number of accusations, civil lawsuits, and complaints to the police in Palm Beach, Florida, that Jeffrey Epstein had had

improper sexual relations with dozens, as many as 40 young women, and that these were girls as young as 14, 15. And the Palm Beach police looked into this. They conducted a really massive investigation. police looked into this. They conducted a really massive investigation. They put together very compelling evidence. They handed that over to prosecutors. And eventually it made its way to the U.S. Attorney's Office, the federal prosecutors in Miami. They did an even deeper investigation. They came up with a massive document that said, let's indict this guy. We're going to go after him because this is an open and shut case. There's so much evidence here. And then all of a sudden, negotiations began for what's called a non-prosecution deal, which is essentially an arrangement where you don't prosecute someone.

Instead, they perhaps plead guilty to a lesser charge. They get with much lesser sentence, charge. They get with much lesser sentence, a very easy kind of ordeal rather than the extreme ordeal that a trial would be. And this non-prosecution deal was concocted by the then U.S. attorney in Miami, a guy named Alex Acosta. Who then becomes Trump's labor secretary. Yes, many years later becomes Trump's labor secretary. And so the question for all those years, for the last 12 years, was why the prosecutors let him off so easy. This was what appeared to be a very solid case against Epstein. And rather than going to jail for a decade or more, he was sentenced to just 13 months and was allowed to leave the jail each day to go to his office and supposedly work. So not exactly hard time. And the answer to that question, according to Acosta, is that tremendous pressure was put on the prosecutors by this top shelf defense team.

This was the view of the office. There is a value to a sure guilty plea because letting him walk, letting what the state attorney was ready to do go forward would have been absolutely awful. There are also questions about whether there were political reasons why he was let go, because he had all these friends in the high places whose reputations needed to be protected. Alex Acosta says he will now resign because of the controversy. I do not think it is right and fair for this administration's Labor Department to have Epstein as the focus rather than the incredible economy that we have today. And one of the ways in which this has also come forward is the New York prosecutor's office charging Epstein last month with sex trafficking of minors.

As alleged, Epstein also paid certain victims to recruit additional girls to be similarly abused. This allowed Epstein to create an ever-expanding web of new victims. This is essentially New York stepping in all these years later. Would that be a fair way to put it? Yeah. I mean, these are both, both are sets of federal prosecutors, one set in Miami, the other in New York. And the New York U.S. Attorney's Office conducted an investigation. And the New York U.S. Attorney's Office conducted an investigation. And when Epstein came back to the country in July, he was apprehended at the airport and has been in jail ever since until his death.

And so this was a case where one set of prosecutors said, let's take another try at this. And one question that they would have had to face had this gone on to trial was, was this what's called double jeopardy? Was Jeffrey Epstein being accused of exactly the same crimes a second time, which is unconstitutional? Or did they have new evidence of new crimes, which would have allowed them to go forward? That's something that now will never be adjudicated. And so where does the investigation go from here? Are they looking at other people? The prosecutor in New York said on Saturday after the death of Jeffrey Epstein that they were going to go ahead with that investigation. Obviously, the investigation into Jeffrey Epstein himself comes to a crashing halt with

his death. But the facts that they collected for that investigation are now going to be deployed in search of whether there were people around Epstein who were also guilty, who recruited the underage girls, who paid them, who perhaps sexually abused them as well. And so if they're able to find people who fit that bill, it sounds like the prosecutors want to go ahead with those charges. Okay, and then you mentioned earlier these civil cases, and I understand that on Friday, the day before Epstein's death,

hundreds of sealed documents were released in New York federal court, and this is part of a civil case that one of Epstein's alleged victims, Virginia Gouffray, was bringing case that one of Epstein's alleged victims, Virginia Gouffre, was bringing against an associate of Epstein's, this woman Ghislaine Maxwell that you mentioned. In an interview with the Miami Herald, Gouffre describes how she was trained. The training started immediately. Give Jeffrey what he wants. A lot of this training came from Ghislaine herself. And being a woman, it kind of surprises you that a woman could actually let stuff like that happen,

but not only let it happen, but to groom you into doing it. And can you tell me what was in those documents? Yeah, it's about 2,000 pages. We went through them on Friday. And it's not exactly earth shattering, but it's terrible to dismiss it as more of the same because the allegations are shocking and disturbing. They are details in many cases, affidavits, depositions, legal documents that have the stories of several of the women who said that they were abused by Epstein and by his longtime friend, Ghislaine Maxwell. According to Roberts' attorneys, another Epstein accuser, Joanna Schoberg, was recruited by Ghislaine Maxwell under the guise of a legitimate assistant position,

but asked her to perform sexual massages. In a deposition, Schoberg says Epstein described his sexual desire. It was biological, she said he told her, like eating. And so it's some of the material that we can assume the prosecutors in New York have and have used to in this investigation that is now shifting gears. Going through those documents on Friday, we were able to find one case after another where prominent people were named politicians, former governor like Bill Richardson of New Mexico, a former senator, George Mitchell of Maine. And these were some of the prominent people who the women named as people who had come to Epstein's houses and the women had been sort of given over to these men for whatever sexual deeds they had in mind. These are unproven allegations. They are vigorously denied by all of the men involved. But that's what's in those documents. Just to be clear, is it very possible that some of these prominent men could find themselves facing criminal charges?

that some of these prominent men could find themselves facing criminal charges? It's hard to imagine that that would happen, in part because Epstein is dead, in part because these events took place so long ago. The women involved who've made these accusations, in some cases, have civil lawsuits that have been going on for years and years. In a few cases, they have settled those lawsuits, and so they're not really talking anymore about some of these events. So a lot of time has gone by, and it's hard to imagine that there is evidence, although I should say that there is one of the pieces of the Epstein mystique

that gave him this extraordinary influence through the years was that he would let people know some of the women who were his masseuses, as well as some of the men who had visited him, he would let them know that he had video. And we don't know what the video was. We don't really know that the video even shows any of these sexual encounters. But the idea that they might certainly had an effect on what people felt free to say through the years. And now the prosecutors said that in their raid of Epstein's house in New York, they found a whole bunch of videos in a vault. So we don't know whether that's commercial child pornography that they were going to charge him with possessing or his own homemade tapes of some of these encounters with underage girls.

Is it possible that that could come out in some way through the courts or with Epstein dead now, is it more likely that it will just remain a mystery? Well, if the prosecutors do go ahead, as they said yesterday that they would, if they do go ahead with charges against those who enabled Epstein in these encounters, the co-conspirators, so to say, then these videotapes could very well come out.

They would certainly be a key piece of evidence, and they would by all means come out if charges were brought and there was indeed a trial. One thing I am hoping to get your perspective on is his apparent suicide itself. It comes after an earlier incident in late July in which he was found in his jail cell with injuries on his neck. Investigators initially thought the wounds were self-inflicted, believing he might have tried to take his own life. But after the 66-year-old was revived, he told authorities he couldn't remember what had happened. But after the 66-year-old was revived, he told authorities he couldn't remember what had happened. And so he was put on suicide watch. But what do we know today about what precautions the jail was or wasn't taking to monitor him?

Well, immediately after the incident where he was found injured, injuries to his neck, he was assessed as a suicide risk. So he was moved into an area of the prison where they have suicide watch. Guards come by every few minutes. They check in on the prisoner. It's a very kind of close watch. And that lasted for six days, after which Epstein was determined no longer to be a suicide risk. He had been meeting with his lawyers every day. He met with the doctors at the correctional institution. And the consensus was that he was no longer a danger to himself. So he moved back into a special cell block where he got more attention than the average prisoner, but nowhere near the attention that someone on suicide watch would get. And it was there that he was found on Saturday morning, having hung himself. Do you know if it's common for people to be moved this quickly after what seems like a prior suicide attempt? Apparently, the standard term on suicide watch is 10 days, he got out of that level of care in six days. I don't know if that's unusual. but 10 days is a generally standard amount of time before someone is checked again, perhaps by a psychiatrist, perhaps by their own attorneys to some of the victims of sexual abuse who are saying that it's outrageous that this that there was not a closer watch on someone guards every 30 minutes since he was taken off suicide watch.

And that did not happen on the night of his death. Epstein was also supposed to be housed with a cellmate and not left alone. But he was left alone. You know, one last question before we go today. Talking about the victims in this case, I've been listening to some of them speak over the weekend or speak through their lawyers. Jennifer Rose tells CNN she was angry at news of his death. I am angry Jeffrey Epstein won't have to face his survivors of his abuse in court.

We have to live with the scars of his actions for the rest of our lives while he will never face the consequences of the crimes he committed. There's clearly this incredible sense of frustration and disappointment that they won't be able to confront Jeffrey Epstein in a court of law, that this case won't be able to be aired in the way that they have wanted it to be. I wonder if you have any sense, if it's still possible that they could get, you know, some restitution here, even financial restitution? Could something be done with Jeffrey Epstein's very large estate? Well, first of all, we have to determine how large his estate really

is. He told a court within the last month or so that he was worth $559 million. There are people who say he was worth far more than that. There are people who say he was worth far less than that. people who say he was worth far more than that. There are people who say he was worth far less than that. What everyone seems to agree on is that his assets, whatever they are, are hidden overseas somewhere. And so it will be difficult for those who want restitution to, first of all, find those assets, second of all, lay claim on them, and third of all, they'll have to get in line with others, because there are victims of Jeffrey Epstein, both the sexual abuses through the years, but also some of his financial chicanery going back to the late 1980s and early 1990s, when he was allegedly the mastermind of a

Ponzi scheme in which 200,000 Americans, mostly elderly retirees, had lost their life savings because they bought bonds and notes from Epstein and a company that he was working with that turned out to be worthless. And so there are millions, hundreds of millions of dollars of claims and will be on this estate. And it's not clear who will manage that estate, who really represents Epstein's interests going forward. It's going to be a long, convoluted mess. On that note, Mark, thank you so much for taking me through this incredibly complex story. We're really appreciative. You're quite welcome. So before I let you go today, in my conversation with Mark, he mentioned alleged financial crimes that Epstein is also caught up in.

We didn't have a ton of time to dig into that today, but Mark has done a lot of reporting on this, and you can find that on the Washington Post website. That's all for today. I'm Jamie Poisson. Thanks so much for listening to FrontBurner, and see you tomorrow. For more CBC Podcasts, go to cbc.ca slash podcasts. It's 2011 and the Arab Spring is raging. A lesbian activist in Syria starts a blog. She names it Gay Girl in Damascus. Am I crazy? Maybe. As her profile grows, so does the danger. The object of the email was please read this

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