Law&Crime Sidebar - Jeffrey Epstein Accuser Claims Billionaire Used Sex Tapes as Blackmail

Episode Date: January 9, 2024

Sarah Ransome, one of the women who claims she was sexually assaulted by Jeffrey Epstein and his cohorts, told a reporter that the convicted sex offender had secretly filmed high-profile men like Bill Clinton, Donald Trump, and Richard Branson. She later retracted her statements and no tapes have ever been publicly acknowledged by law enforcement. Law&Crime’s Jesse Weber sits down with attorney Richard Schoenstein to analyze what’s been revealed in the latest round of documents.PLEASE SUPPORT THE SHOW:If you’re ever injured in an accident, you can check out Morgan & Morgan. You can submit a claim in 8 clicks or less without having to leave your couch. To start your claim, visit: https://www.forthepeople.com/LCSidebarHOST:Jesse Weber: https://twitter.com/jessecordweberLAW&CRIME SIDEBAR PRODUCTION:YouTube Management - Bobby SzokePodcasting - Sam GoldbergVideo Editing - Michael DeiningerScript Writing & Producing - Savannah WilliamsonGuest Booking - Alyssa Fisher & Diane KayeSocial Media Management - Vanessa BeinSTAY UP-TO-DATE WITH THE LAW&CRIME NETWORK:Watch Law&Crime Network on YouTubeTV: https://bit.ly/3td2e3yWhere To Watch Law&Crime Network: https://bit.ly/3akxLK5Sign Up For Law&Crime's Daily Newsletter: https://bit.ly/LawandCrimeNewsletterRead Fascinating Articles From Law&Crime Network: https://bit.ly/3td2IqoLAW&CRIME NETWORK SOCIAL MEDIA:Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/lawandcrime/Twitter: https://twitter.com/LawCrimeNetworkFacebook: https://www.facebook.com/lawandcrimeTwitch: https://www.twitch.tv/lawandcrimenetworkTikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@lawandcrimeSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Wonderly Plus subscribers can binge all episodes of this Law and Crimes series ad-free right now. Join Wonderly Plus in the Wondery app Apple Podcasts or Spotify. Agent Nate Russo returns in Oracle 3, Murder at the Grandview, the latest installment of the gripping Audible Original series. When a reunion at an abandoned island hotel turns deadly, Russo must untangle accident from murder. But beware, something sinister lurks in the grand. View Shadows. Joshua Jackson delivers a bone-chilling performance in this supernatural thriller that

will keep you on the edge of your seat. Don't let your fears take hold of you as you dive into this addictive series. Love thrillers with a paranormal twist? The entire Oracle trilogy is available on Audible. Listen now on Audible. We are learning more bombshell accusations and revelations as another trove of legal documentation connected to Jeffrey Epstein and his alleged sex trafficking ringer released. In this fourth wave, there's mentions of videos, photographs, and a secret server. Trial attorney Rich Schoenstein comes on to break down what to make of it all. Welcome to Sidebar, presented by Law and Crime. Jesse Weber.

So we've been closely following the release of all of these documents in the Jeffrey Epstein saga, bringing you what you need to know from thousands of pages of testimony, legal filings, and more. and this legal paperwork is all being released thanks to New York Judge Loretta Prescott because she decided back in December that documents related to a defamation lawsuit filed against Epstein's accomplice Galane Maxwell could be released publicly with most John and Jane Doe as being identified. Now, Jeffrey Epstein, of course, was the financier convicted of state sex crimes charges back in 2008 under a very controversial non-prosecution deal that saw him avoiding more serious

federal charges, but he was arrested or re-arrested years later on federal sex trafficking charges. And while he was awaiting trial in 2019, he killed himself in his jail cell. As for Gleine Maxwell, she was convicted of sex trafficking related charges in 2021, and she's currently serving a 20-year prison sentence. Now let's talk about Virginia Joufrey, formerly Virginia Roberts. She filed that defamation suit against Maxwell in 2015 for statements that were made by Maxwell questioning Joufrey's claims of abuse. This case was actually settled out of court, but there were still huge amounts of paperwork that were filed in the trial or filed in the case, I should say.

Media outlets, specifically the Miami Herald, have worked for years to get all this paperwork released. And now we are seeing it. But we want to remind you, and this is very, I always have to mention this, not everyone named in these documents is accused or guilty of nefarious or criminal activity. Okay, they could be former employees, they could be victims, they could be associates, even people just mentioned in passing during deposition testimony. But this new round of documents that was released on Monday, it once again names some pretty high profile people like Bill Clinton, Donald Trump, Richard Branson, and there are also mentions of photos and videos. Let me bring in right now trial attorney Richard Schoenstein, who knows a thing or two about very high profile litigation.

Rich, thanks so much for coming back here on Sidebar. It's been a minute. Jesse, my pleasure. My pleasure to see you. Let's, I don't even know where to be. You know what, before we even get to what was released in this latest batch, and there's a lot to get to, I'm telling everybody right now. Everything that's been released beforehand, what's your overall take?

We haven't had a chance to talk about it. Sure. And I think you set this up really well because this is a civil case. This is a defamation case dating back to 2000. And what happens in these cases is all sorts of documents are filed by the parties usually as attachments to various motions. And civil litigation is notorious for parties trying to mark everything confidential. Everybody wants to mark everything confidential and file it under seal. And judges generally hate filing stuff under seal.

One, because it's a pain for the courthouse staff. but also because there's this thought that if you're litigating, you're subjecting yourself to public access in the courts. You shouldn't be able to do that on the one hand and keep everything secret on the other hand. But for whatever reason, there were troves of documents that were marked confidential and filed under seal. And basically what Judge Loretta Preska has ruled recently is that many of those documents either weren't confidential in the first place, place aren't confidential anymore or don't require don't merit continued sealing and they're being released that seems perfectly appropriate to me and also one more thing to add to that

I mean this was a litigation between two people who were saying each was lying right and so I take a lot of this with what we're hearing with a grain of salt right these are allegations I don't see it as oh my gosh now we have the proof of who was on the island who was participating. I don't see that connectivity. I don't see this spurning criminal investigations and prosecutions now because, A, I don't think you have that, but B, if that was the case, we might not have seen the release of all this information. I agree with that for two reasons. One, most of what we've seen is not a firsthand account of anything. We see a lot of this person heard from another accuser that these people did something.

So that's not automatically credible in any event. But also, I haven't seen any really tangible allegations of affirmative misconduct. This person had sex with an underage female, you know, some sort of very graphic, very tangible allegation that could be used in that way. Talking all this Jeffrey Epstein-related litigation, this civil lawsuit, let me just take a second to mention our partner and sponsor of this video. Morgan and Morgan, we are so happy to be with them because Morgan and Morgan is actually the largest injury law firm in America.

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There's no upfront fee. So if you're injured, you could submit a claim at for the people.com slash LC sidebar or by dialing pound law. That's pound 529 on your phone. All right, let's get back now to this Jeffrey Epstein-related civil case. Could this all have very well happened? Sure, but let's break it down. We're going to start right now with Sarah Ransom. This is an accuser. She wasn't part of the legal proceedings in the civil lawsuit, but she provided testimony

about Galane Maxwell being on Little St. James Island, Epstein's Island, at the same time that Virginia Joufrey and other accusers were there, even though Maxwell had said under oath that she was hardly around. And by the way, Ms. Ransom actually submitted a victim impact statement during the sentencing phase of Maxwell's criminal trial. But now, in all of these newly released documents, one of the most significant things are the photos. There are all these photos that have come out. And I will tell you, they seem to line up that Maxwell was on the island and all of these young girls were on the island, including Ransom. What do you make of the photos?

I think they support what we already know, which is that there were bad things going on on this island, and that Maxwell was involved, which I think we already know, and that there were a lot of young girls there for, you know, bad reasons. I think it supports that. And the fact that Maxwell is not so honest. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, I don't think, you know, she and Epstein were obviously up to no good and dishonest. about it from the get-go and remain dishonest about it, to no one's surprise, I think.

Let me add a little bit more context to Ms. Ransom here. So in a 10-hour-long deposition, she gave insight into how things were run on this island and why the girls were there. She said, quote, I would just like to clarify, body massages meant sex, okay? That's like a key word for sex. So as soon as you stop having sex with Jeffrey and his friends and his girls, you're out because otherwise there's no reason for you to be associated with Jeffrey because you're just there to have sex with him.

She also testified that Maxwell ran the house like a brothel with girls on rotation for the purposes of giving Epstein sexual massages each day. She actually said in a deposition that there was a constant influx of girls. There were so many girls. And she also provided testimony that linked Maxwell directly with Epstein saying that she was his right hand, that she told the girls that they had to listen to her, that she was called the mama bear. So again, like we said, not only showing that Maxwell wasn't being transparent, but I thought this was interesting because it definitely gave a little bit more

context to understanding what happened. Yeah, it gives more context. It's really gross, obviously, what she is describing. My question the credibility of this witness, I don't know how much we know about that, what her ulterior motives might have been to testify in that regard, but it does seem to line up with what we've been led to believe about this island. It's consistent with other allegations. It's consistent with what we've heard of from other accusers. But now let's talk about the biggest bombshell. This is the one that everybody's been talking about and the most controversial in terms of credibility.

So one of the big revelations to making headlines is that Epstein may have secretly filmed his celebrity friends having sex with underage girls. So Sarah Ransom made that allegation in emails with a reporter for the New York post back in 2016, she said that a friend of hers slept with former president Bill Clinton, Prince Andrew, billionaire Richard Branson, quote, thank God she managed to get a hold of some footage of the film's sex tapes, which clearly identify the faces of Clinton, Prince Andrew, and Branson having sexual intercourse with her. Frustratingly enough, Epstein was not seen in any of the footage, but he was clever like that. When my friend eventually had the courage to speak out and went to the police in 2008 to report what had happened, nothing was done, and she was utterly

humiliated by the police department, where she went to report what had happened with Epstein, Clinton, Branson, and Prince Andrew. Now, Ms. Ransom later retracted those claims. Yeah, she told the reporter that she wanted to, quote, walk away from all of this. In an email, she said, quote, I shouldn't have contacted you and I'm sorry I wasted your time. It's not worth coming forward and I will never be heard anyhow and only bad things will happen as a consequence of me going public. This will just create pain for my family and I, and they have already helped me pick up the pieces once again.

I can't ask them to do that again. Now, just to add a little bit more context to that, in 2019, in a New Yorker article, Ransom added that she had invented the tapes. Why? To draw attention to Epstein's bad behavior, to make him believe that she had evidence that would come out if he had harmed her.

So it was kind of blackmailing him. So with all of that description, how should we be thinking about these tapes, Rich? Okay, well, first of all of that goes to the credibility issue I just mentioned. The fact that this person had one story and then retracted it and then said something different. I mean, you have to take with a grain of salt what she had this say. Obviously, the prospect, Jesse, that there is video footage of any of this, is tantalizing. to everybody who has any interest. I mean, there would be no better evidence of what people were involved, what they were

up to, and what went on on that island, then video. So, you know, we're all fascinated to see if it actually exists. One would think if there was video evidence, we would have seen it by now, or it would be confirmed somewhere else. But you never know. Let's keep that in mind. And look, I will tell you, you know, I have. haven't seen personally, you know, official corroboration of that, right?

But it can also be complicated because if you really parse through what she's saying, she felt threatened. She didn't say that she made up the tapes because, you know, to get money or anything like that, she made up, she said she invented the tapes to kind of keep an eye out in what was happening. But then my understanding, she actually appeared on Good Morning Britain today, doubled down that she's telling the truth, says she was forced to retract her claims. because she and her family were threatened by Epstein and Maxwell and others.

Let's play it. There are videos that exist. The people that know they exist, I'm sure are very frightened of them being released. So how do you know then that Epstein had cameras on the island? It's no secret that everything was recorded. Multiple victims have come forward confirming my account along with others. I've also seen recordings in his office.

What do you make of that now? Again, I find it positively tantalizing that there might be video evidence of some of this. Now, it seems a little odd to me if she's saying everybody knew this was being videoed, are you telling me all these high-profile people went to this island, had sex with underage women knowing it was being videoed? I mean, were they that foolish? I find that a little bit hard to believe. It was secretly recorded.

Now, secretly recorded, right? I find that a little easier to believe that if somebody set up this kind of island and had this going on, they might want to record some of it. I could, you know, one can imagine uses for that. You mean like Epstein? Epstein might have wanted, again, assuming these tapes exist, assuming she's telling the truth that it was a way to blackmail these people? yeah for for potential blackmail down the road or for protection if the people tried to turn on you at all you would always have that hanging over their head but you know i don't know

he's he's deceased obviously maxwell isn't talking um if the minute we see one of these tapes will know they exist i thought it was interesting and look we we really don't know i'm trying to piece together with the different you know statements from miss ranson because at one point she had said that you I have backed up the footage on several USB sticks and have securely sent them to various different locations throughout Europe with only one other person close to me knowing where their locations are just in case anything happens to me before the footage is released. News Nation reported that. Now, let me ask you, again, when you hear that and you hear there's issues of her credibility

and we know that Virginia Joufrey actually backed away from her claims against Alan Dershowitz, it doesn't mean that none of this happened. It doesn't mean that these people weren't abused by Jeffrey Epstein and high-profile people and Gleine Maxwell. But it does, I think, cast a little bit of a shadow, a little bit of doubt when people are reading this. Does it not? I mean, in a sense that there's questions here.

And I'm curious what you think that effect of that will be once we have all the release of all these documents, but you're seeing there's some issues here. Yeah, there's definitely some issues here. I mean, I'm not surprised that somebody who would make allegations of misconduct against a specific person would back away from them. It's real hard to go public. Still, we've gotten better, but it's real hard to go public with that kind of allegation against a powerful individual. You're attacked in social media and everywhere, and I can see somebody throwing up their hands and saying, I can't do that anymore. I'm going to back down.

I'm understanding that a story might change over time. Very interesting now that she has shifted and gone back to the story that the tapes do exist. That sort of interests me. You mentioned a high-profile individual. Let's talk about former President Donald Trump. Now, he was previously mentioned in documents that have already been released since last week. Specifically, there was an account of an alleged Epstein victim who said that when she was on a plane with Epstein, They were in bad weather, and Epstein allegedly made a comment.

Let's go to Trump's casino, you know, divert plane there. But there's been no allegations of wrongdoing on the part of Donald Trump, including from Virginia Joufrey. She never said that she was victimized or assaulted by Trump or anything like that. And Trump said he's been very adamant that at one point he was associated with Jeffrey Epstein back in the day, but he cut off contact with him years ago. Except now let's talk about what Ms. Ransom said. So Ms. Ransom claimed that former President Donald Trump had said.

with, quote, many girls, including an unnamed friend of hers, quote, she confided in me about her casual friendship, this is air quotes, with Donald. Mr. Trump definitely seemed to have a thing for her, and she told me how he kept going on about how he liked her, and I apologize for this in advance, her hurt nipples. She also said, Ms. Ransom, I also know she had sexual relations with Trump at Jeffrey's New York Mansion on regular occasions, as I once met Jen for coffee just before she was going to meet Trump and Epstein together at his mansion. Now, in response to the release of these documents, Stephen Chung, a spokesperson for Donald Trump, told Newsweek this past on Monday,

quote, these baseless accusations have been fully retracted because they are simply false and have no merit. What do you make of this? So I go back to something you said at the beginning of this discussion, which is simply the fact that a name pops up. doesn't mean that there's proof of misconduct. And we all know Jeffrey Epstein was sort of a high flyer and associated himself with powerful people.

And there's no doubt that he hung out with Donald Trump at a time. There's no doubt that he hung out with Bill Clinton and Prince Andrew and maybe Richard Branson. Those are the circles he traveled in. Does it mean that every one of those gentlemen went to his island and had ill. illicit sexual relationships with underage women? No, it doesn't automatically mean that.

It could be that they were associated with him or knew him or socialized with him, but didn't do that. That is certainly a possibility. But it does get you thinking. And, you know, in fairness, it's not so far off script with what we already know about the former president that he would have engaged in conduct. that. Well, I tell you what's problematic for Ms. Ransom's account is that in one email, she tells, I believe it's the New York Post reporter, that she says she'll make sure neither

Hillary Clinton nor Donald Trump gets elected. And she called him a pedophile. But, I mean, that adds to the problem of credibility, I think. That adds to the problem of credibility. And again, she's not really saying that she saw anything directly. She's reporting. She's reporting. things she heard from other people and you know it's hearsay it's multiple levels of hearsay it's what she's saying she heard another person say and it becomes sort of very if it was in if it was in court i'm not even sure it would be admissible as testimony because it lacks some fundamental credibility so everybody knows that rich showinstein is a great lawyer and as we go through all of this uh he always presents great defenses this is a defense that i have to ask you about and

concerns Prince Andrew, Duke of York. And we know we've talked about the allegations against him before. Virginia Jufre claims that she was trafficked to Prince Andrew by Maxwell and Epstein. He's always maintained his innocence, even though there is a photo of them together. And we can always, we can do a whole show on that. But here's where things took a wild turn in these new documents, because we saw some of the defenses provided by Maxwell's lawyers in this defamation suit. They say that, look, Joufrey claimed that she was assaulted by Andrew.

in a bathtub, but the attorneys argued that the bathtub was too small to even enjoy a bath in, let alone have sex. So that was an interesting defense. What did you make of that one? There was no way he could have done it because the bathtub was too small. Well, you know, when I was a young person, I found use of some pretty small places. Oh, we're learning a lot about Rich on this sidebar episode. I don't want to go to any details here.

But I just, you know, I would have to see the space. I don't know. A bathtub too small to have any kind of intimate relations in. I don't really buy it. That seems to me to be not the front line defense you would want to make if you were accused of that kind of thing. I had to point that one out. That one just stood out to me and I wanted your perspective on it. So, you know, Rich is not going to be arguing any kind of defense like that.

But if the bathwash does, if the bathtub doesn't fit. the claim is a wash. See, just came up with that. He didn't even know I was going to talk about that. So there you go. By the way, Joufrey had filed a lawsuit against Prince Andrew. It was settled out of court for millions of pounds back in February of 2022. Let's now go to another aspect.

Because this actually came out a few days ago, but I think it kind of ties to what we're talking about here. So we know that there was no footage secret or otherwise of any sex acts that's ever been publicly and officially acknowledged or release. But we know that the FBI went into Epstein's mansion in New York in 2019 taking photos of evidence, but the actual physical evidence wasn't taken at the time. No, FBI Special Agent Kelly McGuire testified back in 2019 that agents had found a safe with CDs, computer hard drives, money, jewelry, passports. But McGuire explained that they didn't have a valid warrant to actually take the evidence. Now, according to McGuire, the FBI comes back with a warrant.

the evidence is gone. It vanished. Come to find out, McGuire says, that it was later returned by the executor of Epstein's estate. The FBI says everything is accounted for. Now there are calls. After all these documents are being released, we should all see what this physical evidence is. Should it be rich? Should it be released? Should we release at all? I don't know. I mean, we don't release all pieces of evidence that law enforcement, look at in any criminal investigation, right? We look at, we look at evidence that's used as part of a prosecution, or if you're prosecuting someone, the defense has a right to access the evidence, but we don't automatically get the FBI's work product every time they do an investigation, nor should we. So I don't know that it should be released. I'd like some more details on that story, though, because that's sort of an unacceptable chain of events that you describe. The evidence is there, then it's not there, then it's returned. Oh, golly, they returned

everything. I mean, I find it suspicious. Talk about suspicious. Let me tell you about something else that happened in this document dump. And I actually believe this was the first exhibit in the lawsuit. The exhibit said that the claim was that Maxwell and all of Epstein's other employees used a secret server to communicate. The server was called Mindspring. It was supposed to be used by all the household staff. But in fact, Epstein allegedly would use it to ask for things like coffee and orange juice to use the server. One employee said this was ridiculous.

And in her lawsuit, Jafre's lawyers say that Maxwell only provided some discovery materials from some of her email accounts. They claim that she might be hiding other incriminating information in a secret email account. Maxwell's denied all that. What do you make of this, Rich? Well, that was the second most tantalizing thing that came out of this document, reveal. The first was the possibility of video, which would be extraordinary. But the idea that there's a secret server that was utilized there that might have email communications between these people and who knows what that would show. That's really interesting if anybody could ever find that.

If we can never find it, there's not much to do with that. Yeah. Well, this is, oh, my goodness. It's just, I'm not surprised. Like, I read it. I'm like, I'm not that surprised by it. I wanted to ask you one final point about the documents that are currently released. By the way, we expect one more, at least one more batch of documents to be released.

I'll see what that is. But in this last batch, there's another document where it seems like both Maxwell and Jew Frey in this litigation wanted Jeffrey Epstein to be deposed by testimony in the case. he opted out at a fear of being prosecuted surprised by that no i'm not surprised that epstein did not want to testify about any of this if he didn't have to so he said he would take the fifth amendment and he ended up not testifying uh that doesn't surprise me and i'm interested too to see the the last batch of documents i think there is one more what we haven't seen the way this was framed originally as we were going to see a list of people. And that hasn't come

out. And I don't think we're going to see that. I don't think we're going to see it. I feel like the media made it more of a list than it was actually a list. We're going to get a list of the people who went down there and had the sex with the underage women. And that's not there. We're getting a lot of documents that were filed in the course of litigation, which may or may not give us some chestnuts and revelations. And by the way, if you're wondering what Galane Maxwell's take is all on this and the release of all this information, so the Independent had a report where her attorneys said in a statement, quote, Galane Maxwell took no position on the court's recent decision to unseal

documents in Joufrey v. Maxwell, as these disclosures have no bearing on her or her pending appeal. Gleon's focus is on the upcoming appellate argument asking for her entire case to be dismissed. She is confident that she will obtain justice in the Second Circuit Court of Appeals. She has consistently and vehemently maintained her innocence. Now, I just thought that was an interesting statement, Rich, and we'll leave it here. If you have a final thought, because when she was first arrested, one of our, we were wondering, would she take a plea, testify against all the other accomplices? There seemed to be an effort to not implicate other people, the fact that she took no position on the release of these documents.

Is that telling to you? No, I don't think there's any benefit to her saying anything. She's got an appeal. She may say she's confident in. I think the chances of her prevailing on appeal are pretty low, but I don't know that she has another path out, right? Even if she knew something about some powerful people, I don't know that that's a path out for her at this point.

And either she doesn't want to protect anybody, assuming there's anybody to protect, or she felt that these documents wouldn't really do much. You know, I'm just, I'm speculating. Right. And she, listen, she may also feel she's at risk. I mean, don't forget the way that Epstein ultimately perished is itself a little bit suspicious. Well, if you really want to, if you really want to go down a conspiracy.

That's another sidebar. We'll do another sidebar. Maybe we'll do a sidebar on that another day. Richard Schoenstein, so good seeing you. Thank you so much for coming on. Can't wait to have you back. Always a pleasure. all right everybody that is all we have for you right now here on sidebar we are going to continue

to follow the geoffrey epstein saga and the release of more documents thank you so much for taking the time to join us as we break it all down please subscribe on apple podcast spotify youtube wherever you get your podcasts i'm jesse weber speak to you next time all episodes of this long crime series, ad free right now on Wondery Plus. Join Wondery Plus in the Wondery app, Apple Podcasts, or Spotify.