Law&Crime Sidebar - ‘Total Bombshell’: Secret Testimony From Jeffrey Epstein Case Could Soon Be Revealed

Episode Date: May 12, 2023

Secret grand jury testimony from a case involving admitted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein could soon be made public. The Law&Crime Network’s Angenette Levy speaks with Insider’s legal correspondent Jacob Shamsian and former Watergate prosecutor Nick Akerman about what the documents could reveal.SUBSCRIBE TO OUR OTHER PODCASTS:Court JunkieObjectionsThey Walk Among AmericaDevil In The DormThe Disturbing TruthSpeaking FreelyLAW&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.

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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. Well, this could be a total bombshell because people testified in that grand jury a lot of different women about what happened, what Epstein did, and who Epstein set them up. Grand jury testimony from convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein's Florida case could soon become public. What could it possibly reveal? I'm Anjadette Levy and welcome to Law and Crime Sidebar podcast. There are still so many questions about convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein and his ties to the rich and famous

and his ties to sex trafficking around the world. Epstein died by suicide while awaiting trial on federal charges in New York in August of 2019. But before that, he pleaded guilty in 2008 to state charges in Florida of procuring a person under age 18 for prostitution and felony solicitation of prostitution. That guilty plea followed a 2006 Palm Beach County grand jury investigation where teenage girls testified Epstein paid them to give him massages. Critics have called that plea agreement a slap on the wrist and the Palm Beach Post has sued to obtain the grand jury testimony. The paper won an appeal with a judge writing that grand jury transcripts are secret, but there are exceptions to each rule. Joining me to discuss this development in the Jeffrey Epstein case

is Nick Ackerman. He is a former Watergate prosecutor. Nick, your thoughts on this grand jury testimony becoming public. It sounds like it's going to happen. Well, this could be a total bombshell because people testified in that grand jury a lot of different women about what happened, what Epstein did, and who Epstein set them up with. And there are a lot of famous people whose names may come out in the course of this thing. So we don't know what was said in these grand jury proceedings, you know, which individuals, friends of Epstein were fingered by these various women that testified. I mean, this is unusual in the sense that normally, grand jury testimony is absolutely sacrosanct and secret. But under these circumstances,

I could understand with the judge, might want to release it because Jeffrey Epstein is no longer among the living. There's a lot of questions about what happened in Florida in terms of why Epstein was dealt with so leniently. So when you put all those things in combination, I think there's a big public interest in knowing what exactly is in those transcript. scripts. And that, I think, is going to be extremely, extremely interesting. I think it'll be really interesting, too. And, you know, just the fact that the Palm Beach Post went to court, sued over this. They lost their first fight. They won on appeal. You know, the judge basically said in the decision, yes, grand jury testimony is secret, but there are exceptions to rules. So could we see more

of this possibly in other cases in the future? Well, I wouldn't necessarily extract. appellate this to other cases. But certainly this is an unusual case. And I could see where a state court judge would order that. Now, don't forget, there still could be an appeal. This could go to the Florida Supreme Court before we're finished. So it may not be over until it's over. So we'll just have to see where this goes next. Nick Ackerman, thank you so much, as always, for your time. Thank you. I also spoke with Jacob Shamsian. He is a correspondent for Insider. and has covered Jeffrey Epstein. Yeah, so I think this is a really fascinating development.

So as some of your listeners might recall, before Jeffrey Epstein was arrested and died in jail in 2019, he was the subject of investigation in Florida in around 2006, 2007. And even though law enforcement identified around like, you know, several dozen, around 40, if I remember correctly, possible victims of Jeffrey Epstein, they only brought one in front of a grand jury. They only brought the details about one in front of a grand jury. and Jeffrey Epstein famously got to just plead guilty to a couple of charges and had this like a very light sentence where he just got to like basically, you know, hang around and jail

on the weekends. And so, you know, we don't really still have a good understanding of how that came together. And hopefully by getting these grand jury records, we can, we can understand exactly what happened there, how this decision was made and, you know, what else did law enforcement have at the time. Do you expect to hear about any names, big names, people that we know in these grand jury transcripts, should they be approved for release, which it sounds like could very well happen? I mean, are we expecting just a document dump or just portions? I mean, what do you think we'll get? The case specifically is the Palm Beach Post has been suing to get these records. As you said, grand jury records are normally sealed and stay sealed. But, you know, they've argued that this is like absolutely in the public interest and we should get them out there.

In terms of names of other affiliates, I think we'd have a hard time, I'd have a hard time imagining getting information about, like, people who we don't already know about. Like, there's no indication as far as, as far as I know, that back in that 2006, 2007 investigation that Palm Beach police and the FBI were looking to charge anyone else, you know what I mean? Like, it was like still a focus on Jeffrey Epstein. That said, obviously, like, you know, he was still enormously well connected at the time, better connected than he was after that guilty plea, where he became still a little bit ostracized, not as much as he should have been from some powerful people. So it would be interesting to know more about what his circle looked like at that time.

Well, we know for sure that Galane Maxwell was in his circle at that time. Also, Sarah Kellan, she is somebody whose name came up repeatedly in Galane Maxwell's trial. So do we think Sarah Kellan's name will come up in this? I mean, there were non-kind of prosecution agreements with certain people, if I recall, from this particular case. Yeah, I do think that as for this four women, Sarah Kellyn, I remember correctly being one of them, would come up. And there, as you noted in the non-prosecution agreements that Jeffrey Epstein signed, allowed him to plead guilty to a minimal charge, there were these four women who were

apparent, like co-conspirators, so to speak, who prosecutors weren't allowed to go after. So I would hope that this grand jury material would shed more light on exactly what they were up to in their relationship with the victims that the law enforcement identified. I feel like we're getting a constant drip, drip, drip. As more time passes, more information comes out, more documents become available. I'm kind of wondering, is this case over as far as other people in Jeffrey Epstein's orbit go? I keep coming back to this. Galane Maxwell, when she was convicted and after the sentencing, the U.S. attorney didn't have a press conference. And they really talked a lot about Sarah Kellan, who's really denied any wrongdoing, but they've talked a lot about her in the

trial of Galane Maxwell, and she was brought up quite a bit. So what do we think is going to be the endgame here? Do we expect more to possibly come out of the Epstein case other than just documents? Yeah, you know, we've talked about this, but I, you know, I really do wonder if the investigation in New York, the Southern District one that brought the charges against Epstein, they brought charges against Glenn Maxwell, that's still ongoing if they plan to bring charges against anyone else, like if that's perhaps the reason why there wasn't a press conference because there's still an ongoing investigation. It's hard to understand why it'd be taking so long, so I just don't know. Another angle at this, though, is, of course, there's a number of civil

lawsuits against J.P. Morgan and, you know, thanks for how they handle their relationship with Jeffrey Epstein. And I think through there, we're already seeing some of the mechanics of how Jeffrey Epstein, you know, used his connections, you know, in power, how he kind of managed to builds a good relationship with the head of private banking of J.P. Morgan at the time, who later became the head of Barclays from Kirkley, right, Jess Staley, and kind of like how he maintained these connections in high finance. So there's just that angle, and I think probably in the near term, we'll learn more about that as those lawsuits continue to advance.

And I'm looking forward to learning more about it. I know you are too. So, I mean, do you think we know most of the big names out there who've been kind of affiliated with him over the years. It seems like there are a lot of people who were in his orbit who he was a rich guy, a billionaire. He would seek out these relationships. I mean, it seems like these people are automatically tainted just because they hung out with him or knew him. Yeah, I do think at this point, any names of affiliates are known. The degree of their, you know, the depth of their relationships is maybe a bit of a of a more question mark. But I think in general,

you know like he he and uh prince andrew for example didn't make any much of a secret of their uh relationship and that obviously famously blew up and there's the famous virginia jiffrey case and there's the famous settlements that prince andrew brought and you know as as i as i just said i think the focus now um civil lawsuits from victims is on is on these institutions like jp morgan which which jane do a victim and also the u.s virgin islands per new general alleges like enabled facilitated geoffrey abstein's like sex trafficking so i think that's kind of like where that direction is now. I think another piece of this is the Epstein compensation program, right? There's a, I think around 100 women took money, money from it. And then they

had to, you know, say, well, we can't sue Jeffrey Epstein's estate and we can't sue Glenn Maxwell. But aside from that, like, you know, they can still like sue anyone else who, you know, they might allege or they were sex traffic to. And we haven't really, you know, we haven't really seen that any lawsuits like that. And you would, you would, I think I would think that, you know, know, we would be seeing more in those terms if there was more to find out. Of course, we saw the Prince Andrew lawsuit, as I just mentioned, but beyond that, there hasn't been, been much. So I think it's kind of, that's how I see it anyway. Well, Jacob Shamsian, we will be keeping a close eye on this. I know I'll be looking forward to reading some of these transcripts when they are released

and hopefully they'll be released at some point soon. Thanks again for your time and your expertise, as always. Totally. Thanks for having me so much. And that's it for this edition of Law and Crime Sidebar Podcast. You can listen to and download Sidebar on Apple, Spotify, Google, and wherever else you get your podcast. And of course, you can always watch it on Law and Crimes YouTube channel. I'm Ann Jeanette Levy, and we will see you next time. Wondery Plus in the Wondery app, Apple Podcasts, or Spotify.