Law&Crime Sidebar - New Jeffrey Epstein Evidence Drop Reveals Shocking Details of Rape Investigation

Episode Date: July 3, 2024

A Florida judge just released a trove of evidence related to pedophile Jeffrey Epstein’s criminal indictment in Palm Beach County in the early 2000s. Transcripts from grand jury proceedings show prosecutors knew about Epstein’s interest in young girls, as well as his scheme to draw more victims into his web. Law&Crime’s Jesse Weber discusses what we can learn from this newly released evidence with current State Attorney for Palm Beach County Dave Aronberg.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 SzokeVideo 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.

Wondery Plus subscribers can binge all episodes of this Law and Crimes series ad-free right now. Join Wondry 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. views 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. The reason why I wanted to talk to is I am conducting an ongoing investigation for quite some time now on the subject by the name of Jeffrey Epstein. Another release of court evidence against sexual predator Jeffrey Epstein is shedding new light on the Palm Beach, Florida investigation that could have put a stop to his widespread sex trafficking operation. And what happened that led to Epstein basically getting off Scott free? What we're learning about not only what was said during grand jury proceedings, but also police interviews with Epstein's alleged victims, this will shock you. We're breaking it all down with current Palm Beach County State Attorney, Dave,

Aaron Berg. Welcome to Sidebar. Presented by Law and Crime. I'm Jesse Weber. So, MIDI outlets like the Miami Herald, Palm Beach Post, CNN, and more, they have been fighting for years to get their hands on documents related to a Florida investigation into infamous predator Jeffrey Epstein. Now, before we get into this latest development, and there's a lot to talk about, we need to provide you some backstories. So the Palm Beach Police Department, they opened up an investigation into Jeffrey Epstein back in 2000.

This, after the parents of a 14-year-old girl came forward accusing the financier of paying her to give him a massage. The police find out that Epstein had purportedly set up a system to recruit girls to provide him massages and sometimes other sexual activity. So the case was brought to the state attorney's office. A grand jury was impaneled, and they indicted Jeffrey Epstein in 2006 on felony solicitation of prostitution. Now, as you're about to see, the argument is. is he could have been hit with much more serious charges. This didn't even encompass a fraction of his purported criminal conduct. In fact, it has been reported that the Palm Beach Police Department chief and lead detective were particularly troubled by this prosecution, so they

refer the matter to the FBI, and the FBI brings it to the assistant U.S. attorney. Now, in the end, what happens? In 2008, Epstein and prosecutors, they work out a deal where he pled guilty do state charges of solicitation of prostitution and procurement of minors for prostitution. He's sentenced to 18 months in prison, only serves 13, spends most of the time in a work release program where he can leave the jail to work at his office and then go back to jail at night. And of course, he avoids federal charges. He had to register as a sex offender too, but this is why people call this a sweetheart deal. And it was very, very controversial, especially knowing what we know now. Survivors, and their

attorneys alleged that if Florida prosecutors had charged Epstein correctly and thrown the book at him, he would have been unable to continue hurting girls in New York and beyond. And there have been allegations that prosecutors were concerned about him and his legal team, that there were allegations about his ties to the rich and powerful that may have protected him for more serious consequences. We can't verify the motivations behind all this just to say this is part of the conversation that is circulated. Then, we know. know in 2019 what happened. He's arrested on New York federal sex trafficking charges. He winds up dead in his jail cell before going to trial. Authorities conclude he took his own life.

And as for his accomplice, girlfriend, Madam Galane Maxwell, who helped Epstein procure young girls to assault, she was found guilty of sex trafficking and sentenced to 20 years in prison. But now, let's talk about what's happening today. Let's talk about this investigation that happened back in 2005, 2006, and the grand jury that was in panel. like I mentioned. And a little quick primer on this. We've talked about grand jury proceedings before. They are highly secretive. It's a way for prosecutors to indict a defendant by presenting evidence and witnesses to a secret panel. But what happens? A Palm Beach Post investigation in 2019 revealed that the then Palm Beach County State Attorney Barry Kircher actually seemingly

torpedoed his own case in front of the grand jurors, or at least that's the allegation. because when the Post published its investigation, it also sued for the release of the grand jury documents, and it has been fighting the courts ever since. While Governor Ronda Santos of Florida signed a bill that required a judge to release the information on July 1st or after, and the judge did just that on Monday. Judge Luis Delgado released all of this evidence in the investigation in grand jury, and I will tell you, and I can't emphasize this enough, this is a massive trove of evidence. evidence. It includes hundreds of pages of documents, audio recordings, video interviews with

alleged victims, and more. Some of it is in better quality than others. But in this episode, what we're going to be doing is diving into what the grand jury transcripts reveal, as well as what the teen girls told police happened to them at Jeffrey Epstein's mansion. So Judge Delgado called Epstein, quote, the most infamous pedophile in American history. The details in the record will be outrageous to decent people. The testimony taken by the grand jury concerns activity ranging from grossly unacceptable to rape all of the conduct at issue is sexually deviant, disgusting, and criminal. And now to give you an idea of that, let's play you now some portions of law enforcement's interview with these victims. In fact, this is an interview with a young woman who says she's 20, but she was

19 when she had this interaction with Epstein. She told me about this guy. I was short on rent one month. And she told me that all I had to do was give him a massage, and he would give me $200. And that's pretty much it, and I thought about it. I was like, I really need the money. I've asked my parents, they can't give me the money, I asked everyone I knew. And I went there with her, I gave him a massage, and it was a weird situation. Okay, have you have any formal massage training? No.

Did you provide the massage with clothing on? All I had was underwear on. She did not tell me that. I was absolutely surprised when I got there. I didn't need nothing. Okay. Did she tell you that you would have to provide the massage with just underwear? No.

First of all, aside from how disgusting this is, this is consistent with the allegations that Epstein had women or girls recruit other girls to be abused. And we're not going to go into details of more of what he did during that session or allegedly did during that session. But I want you to listen to how tough this is for her to recount all this. and then anything else happened I'm sorry I don't like thinking back on so okay first watch I know this is hard on you okay I know that you put this behind you a lot of people that I've talked to have okay you're not the only person that he's done this too and now listen to how this whole episode ended because it gets weird and it gets creepy he just got up and walked out

He's like, okay, you can put your clothes on, and he closed the door. And you will pay it how much? $200. He asked me for my phone number just in case he wanted to call me and come back. And they called me, and I never called them back. They called me with a bunch of different phone numbers. And I picked up one time, and after that, I never picked up again because I didn't know who the numbers were. And they left me several messages.

And I never called him back. Very similar to the allegations we heard during the Galane Maxwell. trial about recruitment and contact and staying in touch with these victims but that is not all this young woman had to say the whole situation was odd when when we first pulled up before we even got out of the car she said don't say anything don't speak unless you're spoken to so I got I got like I was like you know what the hell are you getting into you know what I mean so I didn't say anything and the whole there was pictures there were pencil drawings of

naked people i don't know that that's all that looked really weird my investigation deals with uh jeff and that's who i'm looking into at this time okay all right i hope you i hope you do something about it now i want you to remember that comment about the drawings we're going to get back to that in a second but as i said she wasn't the only person to speak to police a friend of mine told me about Jeffrey. She said, like she was helping him find girls. We're not friends anymore, though, so you can't mention my name to her. Um, and she told me basically that you just go and give him a massage for about an hour and for $100. And obviously, that sounds a little too good to be true and as i found out it wasn't quite what she said he just he has the

girls take off their clothes and give him a massage and um he likes walking my head how old were you when you first i'm not sure it was before or after my 17 birthday so i was either 16 about to be 17 Yeah. By the way, you remember when I said the drawings? Well, one of the things that's included in this document release, this material release, is a collection of walkthrough videos that were taken by police when they issued a search warrant on Epstein's Palm Beach property. And aside from just how chilling it is to see the inner workings of his residence, there were odd things like framed pictures of Galane Maxwell and pictures and photos of naked women. here's an officer reading some of the search warrant. or other high-speed data processing device performing logical arithmetic or storage functions. Any notes, leisure, personal phone books, roll-o-decks, books, and any form of record data, I'm sorry, recording data, of records in payments, telephone numbers, and names of girls have frequented the house.

The law is prohibiting sexual activities with certain minors, a second-degree felony, loom, lascivious molestation, the second-of-re felony. This is your copy. When we are concluded, I will leave a list of what items were taken. Okay. I would ask that you don't answer your telephone. I know that the gentleman had his, was having a conversation with Mr. Epstein at the time. So I'm sure he's trying to call to find out what's going on.

He will be told what was going on as soon as we're done. By the way, a lot of litigation surrounding the Epstein. case. We've talked about that before on other sidebars. And speaking of litigation, let me talk about specialists in this area, specifically the personal injury litigation area. Morgan and Morgan are incredible sponsor, America's largest injury law firm. Let me talk about them. You know why they're so big? Because they win a lot. They have secured verdicts and settlements in the multi-millions. They will fight to protect your legal rights and for what you deserve in compensation. But one of the best things about Morgan and Morgan is how easy.

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one of the most controversial aspects, something that we have to talk about further, and that has already been discussed a lot in the news, is the court transcripts of the grand jury testimony. And that included testimony of a 16-year-old girl who says she was 14 when Jeffrey Epstein abused her. Now, I believe he was in his 50s at the time this happened. So keep that in mind. Now, this victim said again, when she was 14, an acquaintance, another teen, asked her if she wanted to make $200. She said all that she would have to do is give this man, Jeffrey Epstein, a massage. She said she spoke with a female assistant of Epstein's who asked her how old she was. The girl's acquaintance had told the victim she should lie and say she was 18, so she did because she said she wanted to make money.

So the acquaintance picked her up, took her to Epstein's home in Palm Beach, where a security guard met them and let them through. and the teen testified that an assistant took her upstairs to a room with a massage table, told her to get on dress down to her bra and underwear before Jeffrey Epstein came in in a towel. I'm not going to go into further detail of the encounter, but Epstein had apparently offered $300 for something else, and this is where it gets really disturbing on a different level, because I want you to listen to this questioning. The prosecutor points out that when the girl originally

spoke with the detective, parts of her story were a little different. The girl said she was scared. So the transcript of this grand jury testimony, again, in front of the grand jurors, question, so you didn't want to admit that you had allowed him to touch you? Answer, yeah. Okay, and he gave you $300? Uh-huh. You left your number so he could contact you again? Yes. I think a fair argument would be is that the prosecutor seems to be placing the impetus on her. Remember, this is a child we're talking about, someone who couldn't give consent. So obviously, you could look at this line of questioning and say how improper it was. What was the motivation there? On the other hand, you could say maybe a prosecutor has a duty

to present exculpatory evidence as well. So asking her about inconsistencies, like you say the assistant asked you to undress, but then you told the detective Epstein told you to do that. So then it may be necessary for the prosecutor to present what could be exculpatory evidence about Jeffrey Epstein to the jury during this grand jury process. But there's more, there's more. Because later in the transcript, the prosecutor is asking the witness about other things going on in her life. And the girl admitted she'd experimented with drugs and at one point was sent away to a camp for troubled teens. Transcript says, question, do you drink beer? Answer at parties. It says you have four piercings.

Not anymore. Now I only, well, I used to have my belly button pierced. It takes, you have to be 18 in the state of Florida to have body piercings other than your ears. How? My dad. How did you get those? My dad took me to get my belly button pierced for my 14th birthday because like everybody was getting one. So I begged for it and then I just got my nose pierced.

Did you have to provide identification for your nose just to prove you were 18? No, my dad, my dad let me. Your dad, okay. So you didn't have false identification at that time. No. So you said yes to drinking and smoking, smoking pot? Yeah. Then the prosecutor asks this witness, you're aware that you committed a crime?

Now I am. I didn't know it was a crime when I was doing it like, I don't know. I guess it was prostitution or something like that. Now, in a grand jury process, it's not unusual for grand jurors to submit questions to the witnesses. And that is what happened here. It wasn't even submitting written questions. it was asking directly the questions. The prosecutors offered jurors a chance to ask questions,

and I will tell you it wasn't easy. It was quite brutal. For example, one juror asked, do you have any idea deep down inside of you that what you're doing is wrong? Yeah, I did. Oh, do you? There's another question,

and you're well aware that what you're doing to your own reputation? Yes, I do. Huh. Another juror asked, did it ever occur to you that he could have hacked you up? The witness responds, yes, I thought about it a lot. And then the juror responds, you should give it a little further thought. Wow. Wow. Now, it's almost like they're shaming her in a way or suggesting that she should have known better, almost like they're guiding her about how to live her life. So it was very troubling to see this line of questioning, but we're going to talk

about it more with Dave Arrenberg in a minute. Now, we did hear the opposite. We heard one young woman who testified about how Epstein had sexual relations with her as a teenager, and one juror asked her, do you think he took advantage of your youth? The response was maybe, but it was also stupid of me to put myself in that situation. The response from the juror was, perhaps you were too young to be up against a man of that age who had more control over you and that you know. Now, the prosecutor also called in for the grand jury Palm Beach Police Detective Joe Ricari for questioning. And he talked about an interview he did with a woman who said she was 17 when she met Jeffrey Epstein and that she started bringing girls over to his home. According to the grand

jury transcript, Detective Rakari said, quote, she agreed to bring the girls to him and he told her the younger, the better. She brought a 23-year-old to massage him. and he told her that she was too old, and he wanted someone younger. Knowing that she went to a local school, he recommended that she asked her friends. During the statement, she gave me approximately six names that she can remember that she took to the house that all went to the school. So it's pretty horrifying stuff all around. Well, now I want to do something. I want to bring in a very special guest, and somebody who has a very interesting connection to this,

the current Palm Beach state attorney, Dave Aaronberg, to talk more about this. Dave, great to see you. So the Palm Beach prosecutor at the time, Barry Kircher, and the lead prosecutor who was doing the questioning in the grand jury, Lana Belavik, I might be mispronouncing her name. They have taken quite a bit of hit, a heat over their handling of the Epstein case, and particularly how the case was presented to the grand jury. I've mentioned how there's an analysis, an argument to make that were they trying to not get an indictment back? Were they trying to tank their own case? What's your perspective on it? Well, good to be with you, Jesse. So Barry Crisher, who was a state attorney at the time, he doesn't do many interviews. That's his style. He was more about,

prosecuting cases than to do the media stuff. And it's very different than mine. I do a lot of the media stuff. So this is not an instance where all of a sudden he's clamming up. He's just, that was that's just his thing. He'd never like to talk. to the media. And so I can tell you this. I came in six years after the case was finally over. I started a state attorney in 2013, so it was multiple state attorney administrations after Barry Crisher was state attorney. And as far as what went on back then, I can only speculate, you know, I did not see the grand jury transcripts, didn't have access to them until they were released by the court, I saw them when you did. And my take on the question of why would a prosecutor

try to intentionally tank their case is that I don't think they were trying to intentionally tank the case. I think what happened was, is that they were living in a different time. They were living in a time when if you were an underage girl who engaged in sex acts for money, you were seen under the law as a lawbreaker, as a criminal, as a prostitute. Nowadays, thankfully, law has changed. We have a different attitude towards it to understand that these young women, these girls, were victims as they are. They were victims of exploitation, of sexual assault, but it was a different time back then. They had different laws in the books. And I think the questions reflected the laws at the time and the sentiment at the time. You saw it wasn't just

the prosecutor who made a question that we now find offensive. It was two of the grand jurors, apparently we're asking these tough questions and it doesn't look good i too just like you i thought the grand jury records were disturbing and i understand why the decisions uh that the prosecutors made back then are being revisited now and i'm not trying to justify what happened right i'm not trying to excuse it just trying to provide a little insight and let's and if you can do that that would be helpful because again people are looking this with the lens they did they went out of the way to make sure geoffrey epstein was not prosecuted they're not prosecuted for serious crimes right that's what allegation is. That's the viewpoint people are looking at. And would you say the line of questioning

both by the jurors and the prosecutor was appropriate? Or was it more of the idea of, you heard me say before, you know, prosecutors have to present sometimes exculpatory information to grand jurors. Was it a way to say, listen, she's providing this testimony, but we're going to, you know, hit on some things that are inconsistencies, some problems in her background? I mean, was there any part of it that you felt was appropriate? Or was, or am I looking at a complete wrong? Well, it was what, 160-some-odd pages? I did not read every line of all the pages, so I can't say what line I found appropriate or inappropriate. I just know what I saw and what I saw on the grand jury records that were disturbing. And I guess I'm not going to justify

it. I only add that when the prosecutors have a case, any case, they take it to the grand jury and they want to test the case before the grand jurors. And they want to see if they could get, a conviction beyond a reasonable doubt. Although the standard for getting an indictment is just probable cause, it's really not a very high standard. Prosecutors don't want to bring a case unless they think they can get a conviction beyond a reasonable doubt. And in this case, you had some very high-powered defense lawyers who were doing a full court press against these young victims. And they were doing, you know, with private investigators and according to reports, presenting prosecutors with all this information that perhaps was then used against them

in the grand jury but also according to reports there were only two victims who appear before the grand jury when they were several other victims yeah yeah why is that why weren't more people brought in well we don't know because grand juries are done secret and i have no inside information on it because i came into this job years later but i can say this since we don't know it is possible that there was a lack of cooperation especially when there are reports and it was in in fact the the book Filthy Rich, which I read, where the girls were intimidated by private investigators and others. And so that could be one explanation that they did not want to participate in this process because of perhaps intimidation or it was an imposing process to go before the secret

grand jury. And so you had two victims. And then you saw what happened with them inside the grand jury. When you look at this in totality, and I know you haven't had a chance to to look at all the materials. I mean, it's so much breadth of materials here. But do you think it's a fair assessment to say that he could have been brought up on much serious charges, both state charges and federal charges? Because it seemed to me, based on the investigation of the materials that were presented, you could have had sexual assault charges, perhaps rape. You could have had even sex trafficking charges. I think that could be a fair assessment. But you tell me if I'm wrong. After looking at all these materials, is it fair to say he

could have been stopped oh there's no doubt he could have been brought up on more serious charges yes yes now as far as human trafficking the laws have changed human trafficking significantly so i don't know what the laws were at that time back in 2006 human trafficking was still in like in infancy of with laws being passed and people starting to understand what it was but i do think and i agree with you that tougher sanctions could have been applied to him and i think that's why A lot of people are upset out of what happened because he was not stopped. He was sent to jail for, I believe it was 13 months. He had that work release program and then he got out and did it again.

But eventually, you know, he was caught. Unfortunately, they were too many victims in its wake. I mean, one of the witnesses testified that Epstein sexually assaulted a stripper who was screaming, no. So when I talk about is there other charges that they, could have brought him on or at least investigated. And I, you know, I look at the breadth of this material. And I wonder, do we have a better answer today about why these charges were not brought? There's a lot of it that's the internal communications between government attorneys about the plea negotiations. Do you think we have currently or will have a better understanding about

why he was not charged as thoroughly as he could have been after the release of these materials? I don't know. The materials only tell you so much. I think you'd have to get into the minds of the prosecutors back then and, you know, if they decided to speak up, also the federal prosecutors. Remember, this wasn't just a state prosecution. This went before the federal prosecutor's office, the U.S. Attorney's Office, that got involved and then reached a deal, which was not only a deal that led to what you saw the 13 months in county jail, but also a non-prosecution agreement in the future where you couldn't prosecute. them for other acts, which is not just Jeffrey Epstein, but Galeigh Maxwell and others, which was such a broad immunity deal that the Southern District of New York said, we're not going to even agree to this. We're not going to listen to it or obey it. We're going to go our own way years later, and we're going to ignore that non-prosecution deal that was in the Southern District of Florida because we are the sovereign district of New York. That's the nickname for the Southern District of New York.

And that's how Galeigh Maxwell was charged. That's how Jeffrey Epstein was charged again, even though they still had this non-prosecution agreement, which probably made them believe they were going to be immune for life, which was incredibly broad agreement that was kept from the victims of the case. Another disturbing part of this case, but the victims were kept in the dark of all this. And let's talk about this document release in the sense. I've seen some people say, and you have to imagine this was the motivation by Governor DeSantis to ultimately authorized the release of this, that this is a great thing for transparency and

understanding what was happening. At the same time, there's an argument that this can create pain and embarrassment for the people who spoke up. So is this a good thing or a bad thing that these materials have just been released? Well, the victims and their lawyers wanted this to be released. So I think it's a good thing. When the victims said we want transparency and they get transparency. I think it's a good thing. It's important to keep grand jury record secret in general, in general. That's why the law here only applied to this case. It was written in such a narrow way. And although it was Governor Santos who signed it, the credit really goes to the legislators who worked with the local clerk and comptroller Joseph Abruzzo to draft this up and then get it through

the legislature. It took a couple years to get it through. They had to draft it so narrowly were really only applied to this one case where, you know, for example, the person of interest here is dead and these particular things have happened. And that's why we're able to get this in a very remarkable, unique situation. And I think it's always better to have transparency. But, you know, in the criminal justice system, there are reasons why, in general, that grand juries are secret. You do want to protect the witnesses to speak freely. But in a case like this where the victim, are demanding it and the witnesses want this and the perpetrator here is dead, then I think this was a step in the right direction. I think we definitely have more answers. There's still a ton of

mystery surrounding the Jeffrey Epstein saga. This is continuing on. I'm sure this is not the last we will discuss of this, not the last we will get more answers to a lot of questions that we have. But what a development, disturbing development, nonetheless. Dave Arrenberg, thank you so much. And that's all we have for you right now here on Sidebar. Everybody, thank you so much. much for joining us. And as always, please subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Jesse Weber. I'll speak to you next time.