Shaun Newman Podcast - #884 - Nick Bryant

Episode Date: July 21, 2025

Nick Bryant is an investigative journalist and author best known for his book The Franklin Scandal: A Story of Powerbrokers, Child Abuse & Betrayal (2009), which details a nationwide child-trafficking and pedophilia ring in the United States during the 1980s and 1990s. Bryant’s work, supported by extensive documentation and interviews, highlights corruption and the exploitation of disadvantaged children, a recurring focus of his journalism. He faced significant resistance from publishers and media, who dismissed the story as a conspiracy, and has since connected the Franklin case to broader issues like the Jeffrey Epstein networkTo watch the Full Cornerstone Forum: https://open.substack.com/pub/shaunnewmanpodcastGet your voice heard: Text Shaun 587-217-8500Silver Gold Bull Links:Website: https://silvergoldbull.ca/Email: [e-mail] Grahame: [phone]Bow Valley Credit UnionWebsite: www.BowValleycu.comEmail: [e-mail] Use the code “SNP” on all ordersProphet River Links:Website: store.prophetriver.com/Email: [e-mail]

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before you watch today or as you're watching that, you know, if you're on Spotify, Apple, YouTube Rumble X, make sure to subscribe, make sure to leave a review, make sure to hit the retweet button, make sure to just share it if you're enjoying it. And it's the month here while I'm off on holidays. So there's no Tuesday episodes for the month of July. And Fridays, we have a guest co-host with twos and then Thursdays or throwback Thursdays. So you can shoot me a text. This will be the month where if you don't hear back for me for some time, it's just because I'm spending time with the wife and kids and look forward to being back fully here in August. Either way, let's get on to that tale of the tape. Today's guest is an investigative journalist and author

best known for his book, The Franklin Scandal, a story of power brokers, child abuse, and betrayal. I'm talking about Nick Bryant. So buckle up. Here we go. Welcome to the Sean Newman podcast today. I'm joined by Nick Bryant, sir. Thanks for hopping on. I'm glad to be with you, Sean. I was just saying to him before we started. Like, um, this all, I had Dave call him on, well, I've had him on multiple times and, uh, he'd kind of let off. Like, you, you want to learn some things? Have Nick on. And I'm like, oh, okay. Yeah, gladly, you know, and then you sent me a couple things and then that sent me down a rabbit hole. And I'm like, ah, crap like this is good. Um, just that, uh, you know, uh, the Franklin.

scandal. I had no idea it was. I was just saying I was like two years old when it was all going down. And so, you know, like I just knew nothing about it. That all being said, it's the first time on the show. So to the audience, maybe they know who you are. Maybe they've know a bunch of your work. Maybe they don't. Just tell them a little bit about yourself and how you got into, you know, writing books on this and following the Epstein and on and on and on. I'm a journalist and I moved to New York City. I'm originally from Minneapolis and I went to the University of Minnesota and I worked at the University of Minnesota for about five years.

And then I started a freelance career. I decided to get out of academia and I started a freelance writing career in 2000, or actually 1995. And then around that time, I mean, I'm going to do. I moved to New York City. And I focused, I've written about a lot of different things in my, over the course of my career, from Chinese organ distribution to mob bosses, to Hells Angels, to genetic engineering. I've got a lot of interests.

And I've written a lot, my writing is pretty panoramic. And in 2002, I was going to write an article for Rolling Stone about a very dark subject. And I came across a U.S. Customs Report. I was going to write about the occult. And I came across a U.S. customs report where these two guys who were part of a cult called The Finders have been busted in Tallahassee, Florida, with six kids. And concerned citizens called the police and then the police took one look at this and they immediately arrested the guys and it ran them on multiple accounts of child abuse and put the kids in protective custody and a physician had said two of the kids had shown signs of sexual abuse. A woman named Elizabeth Voss has written an article, a very good article about the finders.

So I would suggest they check that out. And U.S. Customs got involved because of child pornography. That's one of their in their purview is child pornography. And they served as executed a search warrant with the Washington, D.C. police on this warehouse of the finders. And what they found was truly shocking. They found a lot of pictures of nude children. They found a telex saying that the finders were buying two kids in Hong Kong. And then there was, they found this file where the finders would,

people would be looking for babysitters and the finders would show up and say that were babysitters. So there was this seeming nefarious enterprise that the finders were running. And there was a U.S. Customs Officer named Ramon Martinez, and he wrote a very definitive report on it. And it's, I excerpt the whole report in my book, the Franklin Scannell. And he was expecting multiple jurisdictions to come in and start investigating that. the finders and nothing happened. So after a couple of days, he went to the Washington, D.C. police department and he said, what's going on with the finders? And the Washington, D.C. police told him that the finders have become a CIA internal matter and that there would be no further

investigation. And that shocked me. What is the CIA doing in the United States in the first place? it's against her mandate. But what are they doing with this strange cult that seemingly doing nefarious things to children? And I came across, so then opened up my mind to this type of a possibility. And I started to do some additional research and I found what was, I thought might be a similar situation

in Nebraska and Omaha. I was skeptical. But I went to Omaha to check it out for about a week. And at that point, there's a lot of stuff floating around the internet about it, that it was a huge pedophile network that it pandered to politicians, that there was blackmail involved, that they were getting kids from Boys Town, the Distinguished Catholic Orphanage on the outskirts of Omaha. And I didn't, I knew that something had gone down in Omaha, but I didn't think that all those things. things had gone down with this network, that it was transcontinental. And when I got there, I started getting documents and then I started talking about, and people were really reluctant to talk to me. I mean, it was like I was doing a expose on the KGB in Stalinist Russia.

And I eventually got to one of the victims and one of the blackmail photographers and some other people, but very few people wanted to talk to me. They were, they were frightened to death, this and there were a number of people that died very mysteriously over the course of the Franklin Scannell. And then by the time I got back to New York City, which is where I've been living for the last 30 years, I realized that it was true. I mean, that it was a huge pedophile network, that it was flying kids from coast to coast, that it was hooked up to a CIA asset, that there was blackmail involved. Very much like what we've seen in Epstein. And I started to pitch that to editors in New York City and like I got nowhere. And at this point, there was a number of editors that I knew

I could meet with them. And I would pitch him the story. And at this point, I had a list. There was an investigator that was hired by the Nebraska Senate to investigate this. And he compiled a lot of evidence, but his plane blew up. And I believe that, and he and is somewhere in the plane, I believe that he was murdered. And, but I got this list that he compiled and it had 60 victims on it. And I brought these documents to New York editors and I could see the cognitive dissonance go down right before my very eyes. They were thinking, this is a horrible story. And I need to help Nick Bryant tell it because all these children had been molested with impunity and trapped with impunity. Or I can write Nick Bryant off as crazy.

and have a nice meal with my family tonight. So I, and, you know, I knew that most editors would react that way in publishers, but I wasn't expecting all of them to. And even people that had been friends of mine that were in the publishing industry. I mean, one of them had been a very good friend of mine, and he wouldn't touch it. And actually, there was some very good friends of mine that just wouldn't touch it. One eventually apologized to me years after the fact, which was very cool. So I spent the next seven years working on the Franklin scandal.

And I was able to get to a lot of people that had never talked. I had a list of 60 victims and I had to find the victims. I had to get them to talk. And a lot of the victims were marginal. They did not use Social Security numbers. It was very, very difficult to find them. And then to get people on record to talk about this was very, very difficult. why it ultimately took me seven years to write that book. And that book was published in 2009, 2010,

and nobody wanted to cover it. I went on these nascent podcasts where people were, most of the people that were interviewing me were, I don't know, they didn't have much of a psychological equilibrium. Let me just put it that way. And we could get no traction on that book. Nobody would touch that book, even though it was all over the internet. And I found something kind of interesting at that point. I found that people would rather have their own version of this story, even though it's apocryphal and tie it to shape-shifting repelians and the Illuminati than actual the facts of the story. And I was kind of surprised about that because it had that the Franklin story has buzzed around the internet in all kinds of apocryphal forms.

And I thought, I'll set the record straight. And there were a number of myths that I debunked also when I wrote the book. So I went through a real hard time financially and around. by the time the book got published and I tried to get, I went to L.A. and I tried to get interest from people in L.A. and nobody would. There was one person that showed interest, but then I think that he might have been threatened. And no one else really wanted to touch the story. And I really went through a difficult time financially. But as I was going through this difficult period, I was reading about Epstein. And the Franklin scandal was a huge network. It was bigger than Epstein's network. But the Franklin network was around for 12, 10 to 12 years. And the Epstein network was

around for about 25 years. And I saw in Epstein what I'd seen in the Franklin scandal. Epstein was obviously molesting these underage girls. And there was a grand jury that found that Epstein hadn't molested a single underage girl. And that, I mean, just from looking at it from 10,000 feet, I could see that that was wrong. And in the Franklin scandal, there were two grand juries in Nebraska that found that there wasn't any child abuse. Now, I don't know if your listeners are familiar with the machinations of a grand jury, but a grand jury decides who gets indicted, who gets formally accused of crimes and who doesn't. And it's one-sided.

A special prosecutor is chosen, and grand jurors are just people that have shown up for jury duty and been funneled to a grand jury. And what the special prosecutor shows the grand jurors as evidence and the witnesses that he calls determines basically what the grand jurors are going to think about the case. So in both the Epstein grand jury and then the Franklin grand juries, the special prosecutors were very corrupt. And none of the, even though there was tremendous evidence in both the Franklin case and also the Epstein case that a lot of children had been molested, nobody was indicted. So with my money waning, I went down to Florida in 2012 and started knocking on doors and hitting the pavement, the kind of stuff that journalists do.

And I came across Epstein's Black Book, which had, I mean, it was kind of like the grail of Epstein. I think about 200 victims that were whose numbers were in the Black Book. But then there were all kinds of, I mean, there was all kinds of wealthy, powerful people whose names. But there were a lot of victims. I started to call the victims. And because then it's where you really got to start in one of these investigations is you got to talk to the victims and see what happened to them, what they went through. And I was being told about them being flown around and then flung.

to this island and and I think I was the first journalist to really know that Epstein was running an interstate pedophile network and that he had his own private island to molest little girls. So I came back to New York again. This time I've got Epstein's Black Boy and I'm pitching articles on Epstein and the black book and nobody wants to touch it. And after three years of pitching, Gawker, which has since been sued into oblivion, stepped up and they published the black book. And by that time, I had flight logs too. I was the first guy to put up flight logs also. And that's when people became edified about the black book. And then the floodgates opened on the the black book. I mean, there's been tons of ink that has been dumped talking about the black book,

and only two publications have given me credit for ushering the black book into a public consciousness. So with the Franklin scandal, it just kind of bled into the, to the Epstein scandal. And they're very, they're very similar. They're carbon copies almost. With Epstein, All his homes were wired for audio vizier blackmail. He was an intelligence asset or an intelligence agent, depending upon how you want to describe it. And there was a dirty grand jury and he was protected by the federal law enforcement

and federal judiciary. And that's basically how I became kind of an expert on Epstein. As I had this background that was, that I don't think anybody in the media had. You mentioned going to Florida. You had tighten on money. You've been, you know, you've written this book on the Franklin scandal. Nobody wants to touch it with the 10-foot pole.

And you, you know, and I'm fast-forwarding a bit, you go to Florida, and you're walking the beat, you're doing your journalist's thing. And you, and I'm butchering how you said it, I think, but you mentioned stumbling into the black book. How did you find the black book? It was given to me by an attorney that represented some of the Epstein victims. And I'd met with him previously, and I think that he realized that I was sincere. And because of my history investigating this, and prior to getting into Franklin, I had written

a book about lower socioeconomic children in America. And I'd written a number of journal articles about lower socioeconomic children in America. So although people have tried to put me in the box of a conspiracy theorist, I was much more a child advocate. That's what got me into Franklin. I just couldn't believe that the government would allow children to be abused with impunity. I mean, I was really stunned by that. And then we saw it again with Epstein. And I know of other examples of it. too. And that's something that's rotten to the core of the American institutions of government. I mean, it's, we've got this blackmail and we've got churn being used. And that's what really troubled me. I mean, I knew that political blackmail was a reality. I mean, how could you not?

I mean, political blackmail's been around forever. But the fact that there wasn't a line in the sand with children, that really bothered me. That's what gave me the gumption to go seven years on the Franklin scale was because I knew what I was doing was absolutely the right thing to do. And the same thing with Epstein. I've just started to write a book on Epstein, and I've been investigating Epstein for since 2012. And I'm glad that it's taken this long for me to, for that book to marinate, because I have gotten insights into that case in the last couple of years that I otherwise

wouldn't have had. When you look at the United States, maybe just governments, I don't know, how do you like reconcile, you know, you're like, oh, the blackmail, you know, in politics, it happens. But there's a line that I thought they'd never cross. And they, they haven't just crossed it they've they've crossed it then covered it up called anyone who talks about it a conspiracy there's and then some like how do you make sense of that not to mention all the you know you go back to the franklin scandal you mentioned it and i i meant to write it down but like the the the prosecutor who dies in the plane and the fact that actually he was a state he was a state investigator thank you a senator investigator like this is not only cross the line but now they're willing to do

anything or at least it looks like anything to make sure it never sees the light a day. If you're willing to allow children to get molested, you're willing to murder. I mean, that's I think that actually allowing children to get molested is is more seismically evil than murder in most cases because you slaughtered that child's soul. And if those kids, are ever going to come back and become members of society and live halfway decent lives, they're going to have to do a lot of psychological work. And it's going to take them many years to come back. So if the government or some, it's really some dark, malignant corner of the government that is willing to do that. They're also willing to kill too. I mean, it's not like they have a conscience.

If you're taking part in trafficking and sex trafficking in children, you're a psychopath. And you're not really troubled by your conscience. You think, you know, like all the media around Epstein, Maxwell, on and on, the flight logs, everything, you know, being what it is on the media these days. What do you make of where we're at? And do you think, well, I don't know, I don't even know the light of day because you've already talked about the black book and how you've, you've shown all that. You've pointed to all these different things. Well, the media has been unbelievably egregious.

The media loves to pump out salacious dirt about Epstein. But no one in the media, as far as I know, it's called for justice. And that's what we need here is justice. And the way that I've been ostracized from the media is, is really telling that I've been more or less ostracized by the mainstream media. And it's because I believe that children shouldn't be molested with impunity. I mean, I just have that.

I just have that belief. And I've gone from being a writer and a journalist to actually, I started a 501c3 nonprofit organization. It's called Epstein Justice. And your listeners and viewers can go to that website, Epsteinjustice.com. And what we're doing is we're buying for a congressional commission to hire independent investigators to look into the Epstein affair.

And I think that we're long overdue with that. And a lot of people want answers. And we've just got the Trump administration said that there would be transparency, but we've just gotten lies from Bondi and Patel. Attorney General Bondi and FBI director, Cash Patel, I've just told us nothing but lies about Epstein. So if we're truly going to have justice in that case, the only way we're going to get it is through a congressional commission.

How deep does this run? You know, like you say Franklin Scandal is, well, no, Epstein is basically a carbon copy of Franklin scandal. And I assume Franklin Scandal was a carbon copy of something earlier. And you mentioned there's others that I probably don't even know about. Like I understand like, you know, when you see something work, even from the most evil of things, you can replicate it to get what you want. But how like, you know, like you talk about like people going deep into these and construing the story to fit their own narrative.

But when you're looking at this and you've done all this investigative journalism on very high profile powerful people doing things that are like insane, I don't know if I got a better word for it than that. How deep does this go? Well, it goes all the way up to the top. Alexander Acosta was the U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of Florida, and he oversaw the prosecution of Abstein. And at that point, I've got a list of 34 victims that the Department of Justice was aware of underage victims, but ultimately they were aware of 40 underage victims. And Alexander Acosta was going to impanel a grand jury to look to investigate these

Epstein's perversity and the perversity of his cohorts. And he was told that Epstein was intelligence and that he had to stand down. And that's, and he's never denied saying that, that he's, he's never recanted that, that he said that Ebbstein was intelligent. and he had to stand down. Now, according to the Constitution of the United States of America and how it's interpreted by legal experts, there's only two people in the country that can tell a U.S. attorney to stand down. One is the Attorney General, and one is the President. And the Attorney General isn't going to cover up a nationwide child sex trafficking network without

someone giving him the okay and the only person that can give him the okay is the president and at that point the attorney general was alberto gonzalez and the president was bush the second george bush the second so that's how high it goes it had to be quashed from the the highest levels of our government the the president and the attorney general if that's the case what does the everyday citizen like how do you it's like well you know while he's working he's intelligence okay but we have no line now we're just going to do whatever we want like how do how do you actually root that out how does the everyday citizen root that out so that they actually get transparency and that to stop like to be like no this is this is horrific like this is

horrific heck well at this point we're going to need a congressional commission to investigate it. And that's what I'm working on now is I'm the director of this nonprofit, Epstein Justice. And putting enough pressure on Congress, that's what we're going to have to do. We're going to have to come together as one voice and put a lot of pressure on Congress and get them to investigate this. That's the only way we're going to get justice. this year. And that's the only where we're going to be able to stop this type of activity by some dark, malignant corner of intelligence that does this type of stuff. The Congressional Commission. What like, forget me, because I forget the guy's name. You can say it again, the investigator from the Franklin scandal who died in the plane crash.

So name was Gary Caridori. My understanding from watching some things you've, you've done on it and then others was he was, by all accounts a stand-up guy but it looked like he was he was one of the good guys am i am i wrong in that no he is great guy and a great investigator too and you know like no i got the evidence that they crashed the plane no but i mean it looks it looks it looks really suspicious and if you read my book the franklin scandal i make a pretty strong case that the plan was blown up so what i'm trying to point out is is okay, so you finally get the one, you get the right guy to go investigate the Franklin scandal.

And instead of that coming to light, they kill him. And then it's like it's almost swept back under the rug. And then they, you know, they use the media to attack everybody and they and, and, and, and misdirection and all the things. What gives you hope about a congressional commission that that's a different outcome could happen this time around? With presidential commissions like the Warren Commission and the 9-11 Commission, we haven't seen the Wheels of Justice really at work, but we have seen the wheels of justice work with congressional commissions and congressional hearings. In the 70s, the church hearings were able to bring out Cointel Pro, which was an illegal spying program by the FBI on American citizens. and the CIA was also spying on American citizens had a program called Chaos. And then there was M.K. Ultra and assassinations and the overthrow of governments,

all these things did come out. So it is possible with a congressional commission. They have to have a congressional commission would have to have a certain autonomy. And a congressional commission can definitely have. that autonomy to really investigate something. If you go to Bondi and Patel right now, with Donald Trump at the top, faking a hornet nest all the time with the way he does things,

why didn't they, like, why aren't they? Or is there just way more going on from pressures from inside that thing that we could never understand? When Epstein was arrested at Teeterbury Airport in 2019, the FBI drilled his safe the next day. And actually, his safe was the size of like a closet. It was a huge safe. And they found, I'm not going to say child pornography. I'm going to use the word that really should be or the words child abuse material.

They found hundreds, if not thousands of images of child abuse material. There were lots of disks. There were hard drives. And fast forward to Pam Bondi a couple of months ago, she said that there were thousands of hours. Well, she was going to release what we thought was going to be incriminating Epstein information. But actually, in 2015, I released more incriminating information with the Black Book and the flight logs than Pambani released a couple of months ago. It's actually kind of unfortunately, pathetically laughable. But she said that the FBI had to go through these thousands of hours of child pornography or child abuse material.

But here's a lie right there. I mean, when the FBI drilled that, say, for saw it open, however they got it open, they would have been looking at that material. Because I believe that there was compromise, compromise, compromise material there. They would have been looking at it that day or the next day. It wouldn't have taken six years for the FBI to look at what is an Epstein safe. So that's a lie right there. And then she got herself and further quagmire when she said anything that pertains to national security will be redacted. Well, what does a bunch of child molesters have to do with national security?

So she's digging herself deeper and deeper into this whole of prevarication. And then you've got Cash Patel come out and say, all that stuff is. a fiction. It never existed. So they couldn't even get their story right on that, the Attorney General and the FBI director. They're obviously swimming in a morass of lies. And Americans know that. And it's up to us to take our democracy back to make sure that our government or any part of our government is a trafficking children and blackmailing people. In your investigations, you know, there's been a lot talked about with child trafficking. And you mentioned it, I think, right at start with the finders, but linking child trafficking to the occult.

Is that something you find in your digging that those are two or side by side? Or is that something way off in a different land? I said the occult was with Franklin. I've looked pretty deeply for the occult and Epstein. I haven't seen it. There have been other cases where the occult is seemingly involved in child abuse, like the Presidio Daycare scandal and also the West Point child care scandal. It's there.

and some networks. But then there are other networks that are just guys aren't into the occult. They're just pedophiles. And I think that more, there's more guys that are people that are that are pedophiles and are into that occult side of it. So the move to normalize pedophilia, I would assume you have some very strong thoughts on that. Well, here's the situation. According to the Centers for Disease Control, 25% of American girls have been molested as minors and 5% of American boys have been molested as minors. 25% of girls. Yeah. So, and there are people in the field that think that that's a little conservative for girls, but it's way conservative for boys. But if you just take those, numbers that's over 50 million Americans that have been molested as minors and

then you look at the numbers of like trafficking according to the Department of Health and Human Services somewhere between 240,000 and 325,000 women and children are sexually trafficked in the United States every year 240,000 to 3,000 325,000. And in 203, there was 523 individuals charged with child child sex trafficking. So we're talking about a fraction of 1% actually gets busted. And then there's millions of hours of child abuse material that infest the internet, millions of hours. And Our government, according to our government, 1,409 people were charged with making or disseminating child abuse material in 2023. So again, we have a fraction of 1% of people, of criminals that are involved in this activity that actually get incarcerated.

A fraction of 1%. And we've got all these law enforcement entities and we've got all these anti-trafficking, anti-exploitation groups, and only a fraction of 1% ever gets convicted. And this is the problem because we've got millions of Americans that have been molested that will never see justice. But with Epstein, you've got a proven trafficking case. And if people that have been molested as minors see this get covered up, they will, they're feeling like, well, this is a proven trafficking case and no one's going to prison. I have no voice. I have no hope for justice. It doesn't pay for me to come forward.

So that's what makes this so important is you've got millions of Americans that have been molested as minors. And they need to see justice with the Epstein case. And we also have to say to the world and to ourselves, regardless of how much money you have or how much power you have, if you're going to molest children, you've got to go to jail. That just should be a slam dunk. but it's not because of our government and our media. Yeah, I wish it was a slam dunk. Like I sit and listen to, I'm just, you know, it shouldn't, in one breath, none of the surprises me. But the numbers are so high, it's just staggering.

It's just like, how do you root out something that's so, you know, rooted in, I guess? Because when you look at some of the names, you go, Franklin was basically, carbon copy of Epstein or Epstein is a carbon copy of it. You just look at how many people in high positions it is in their best interest to cover this up and walk away from it. So I don't even know if I have a question to that. It's just more of a thought. I just like I look at it. I don't want to be I don't want to be. Well, let me ask you this. Would you ever trust anyone or befriend anyone who is molesting children or covering up children being molested or trust anyone? Would you ever trust anyone who is covering up children being molested. You would never even trust that person. How can we trust our

government? The cover-up now is within the government. And it's within the House. It's within the Senate and also the media. So we have a media and a government that's covering up child station how how can we trust well this is why this is why trust in media and government is so low yes i mean this is just one more piece to that puzzle of why the trust is just like going in the tank because you can't like yeah i i don't know i mean how would you build trust back well you'd start locking up some people that you didn't think could ever be locked up but in order to do that you have a system that doesn't like there's just people in all these different parts of the system that are compromised.

Well, like I mean, in your Franklin scandal, you break down. I forget what it is, is it ain't individuals that are not small fry individuals. And that's the ones we know about that are sitting there and you're like, holy crap. Like this isn't, you know, this isn't Tom from down the street. This is big profile names in, you know, Congress. And the same thing with Epstein. And that's why we have to, we have to clean out.

I think that a commission will also enable us to clean out our government. The congressional approval rating now, I think, is 12%. And obviously, I don't know what Trump's approval rating is, but I'm sure it's been dipping lately. But only 12% of Americans think that the Congress is acting in their best interests. think about that 88% of Americans do not think that the Congress is acting in their best interest

yeah well it's they're all disinful I mean you just tack on the last what has it been five years probably longer than that I can't believe the Franklin Scandals in 1980s and you know once again a show to Dave column for

suggesting I have you on because it sent me down a ravenhole. I'm just, I'm like, how the heck have I never heard of this? You know, like, I mean, it's, sure, different countries, absolutely. But the profile of it is not small. This was not just some small, you know, like, you know, as we got young kids, Nick, and the town right beside a little, a little town next door to Moid where I'm from, you know, we were looking for a daycare.

And so we, we did our due diligence. We went to way too many and probably not. I shouldn't say that. We went to a lot because, you know, it's our children. And so, you know, you want to find the best spot to put them where you know, you feel comfortable and you can trust that they're in a safe environment. And we went to one. And as soon as the guy walked around the corner, I had this like gut instinct of this is not

the right place. Well, it was like a year or two years later. You found out there was cameras in the rooms. He abused children, like all the things. And my heart just saying, you know, like I should have trusted that. instinct even more to just warn people. I don't know. At the time, I was just, the podcast was certainly in a different realm. We were talking a lot of sports. And, you know, like, that's just the, the smallest of things, you know, that impacted a community, 110% would never downplay that. But

compared to what the Franklin scandal is, or Epstein, like, these are monstrous. And then the people that are tied up into it are not, once again, Tom from down the street. We're talking, you know, like, I mean, there's a reason why Clinton is, you know, and Prince Andrew and all these different powerful figures are there. Yeah, it's truly unfortunate that our ruling class is so depraved. Truly unfortunate. I also believe that there are a lot of good people in Congress. And I also believe that there are a lot of good people in the government. And I think that that is what ultimately is going to break this open, is these good people.

But the Franklin is, it gives us a good history of what Epstein ultimately is. And the only way we're going to be able to do this is by coming together and working towards a congressional commission. So if you're, yes, our Americans, or listeners are Americans, I should say, I would suggest that they visit Epsteinjustice.com. Yeah, that'd be the way that they can actually push for something to happen. Exactly. And forgive me, with Epstein Justice, the website, is there a certain, like, number of people you have to have? Like, is it signatures? Like, explain that to me just so I can understand.

Well, we have a petition that has like 44,000 signatures. And then we have a petition about saying that Trump has to live up to what he had said about transparency. I think that's up to like 12,000. It started a couple of weeks ago. But to have a congressional commission, you have to have a majority in the Senate and you have to have a majority in the House. So it's going to take a lot of initiatives.

for us to get that commission. Do you have a number in your head, though? Like is it 100,000? Is it a million? Is it five million? Do you have a number where you're like, this should be enough pressure to where they have to act? Well, we're trying to circle the wagons at this point and rally the troops.

It's a slow burn. I mean, and we, when we formed Epstein, justice, we thought that people would just automatically want to get involved with us, but that hasn't been the case. We, I mean, we've had to get more proactive. And we've worked out a strategy that is much more proactive than the strategy that we initially started with. I have to assume people listen to us. You know, I'm predominantly Canadian, but I want to say it's like 20% now roughly of the audience is outside Canada, and a good chunk of that is American.

I have to assume people when they hear who you are and what you're doing would sign that in a heartbeat. I assume because I think there's a lot of people waiting for, you know, like it's a drop. Like at some point, somebody get arrested. At some point, something just to break free of that because, you know, when the files were all being carted out in those books and everyone's like, here we go, here.

Like it's a book. And then, you know, you talk to slow burn. It's like, well, was that it? That was it. We're going to carry on and nothing else. Well, I mean, that was all theater and bullshit. I mean, you know, the books with the influencers. And what I find fascinating is you're not seeing any of those influencers pushing for the truth at this point.

I guess they're good sycophants. people like to be sycophons. They get ahead that way. Forgive me, sycophons. What is a sycophon? Someone who is more than willing to tell lies to get ahead in life. And it generally applies towards like one individual. Like people are willing to tell lies to ingratiate themselves with an individual or a movement or a political system.

I don't need you to name any names, but at the same time, I'm like, I wonder if there's one you're thinking of where you're like, that person will say anything to get ahead. I mean, we're talking most of the media. Just the media. I mean, that, that is our media. When you think about it, that no media has called for justice. because I was the guy that released the Black Book and put the flight logs up, CNN called me. There was a huge Epstein document dump, not last January, but the January before. So CNN called me and asked me because I was the guy that first ushered, like, very incriminating documents on Epstein to public consciousness,

asked me if I wanted to be on their show and talk about this latest document dump. And I said, sure. So I was texting with this producer throughout the course of the day. And he and at one point I said, you know, I'd like to talk about Epstein justice a little bit. Not a lot, but a little bit. And and then about 10 minutes later, I got a text that said, Nick, we're going in a different direction. So just by mentioning the word justice, you think That's what it was. Epstein Justice, yeah. And that's happened to me with a number of, that, that's happened to me a number of times.

There was a Fox affiliate that was going to have me on when the Sandusky case was breaking. And they were going through my publisher. And a junior producer had read the Franklin scandal. And I'd talked to her a couple of times. And she was, she really wanted to get me on that show. and talk about my expertise about child trafficking. And her boss called me. And our conversation lasted three minutes or so, four minutes, something.

And her boss told my publisher that I was incoherent. I mean, a lot of people have accused me of being many things, but no one's ever said I'm incoherent. So she was willing to lie to my publisher. to make sure that I wasn't on that television show. And the irony of it is, I've spoken at a lot of major anti-trafficking conferences. The National Center on Sexual Exploitation has a global summit every year,

where a number of experts, there's like about 100 to 120 presentations on different forms of abuse and exploitation and trafficking. I've spoken at three of those. The International Society for the Study of Trauma and Dissociation has an international conference. I've spoken at one of those. And then I've spoken at these lesser conferences. So I'm someone who has a lot of expertise when it comes to child trafficking. And I'm not a conspiracy theorist. Everything that I say, I can prove. And if I was a conspiracy theorist, I wouldn't be speaking at the National Center on Sexual Exploitation's Global Summit, let alone three times.

So this is a situation where the media has completely elbowed me out. And I can get the word out through podcasts. And I've been on a number of podcasts. Some of them have been large podcasts. But yeah, I can't rely on the mainstream media. And why do you think that is? I mean, it's because people are afraid of not getting what they want or losing what they have. And they think if we invite Nick Bryant on, I might lose what I have or not get what I want.

And that's their driving utilitarian mode of thinking. If you were talking to parents, let's go with parents. And you're saying, you know, you can't, it's not like you need to be terrified of every individual. It's not like there's an Epstein Island, I don't think, on every street corner. But if you were saying, you know, like in my research, what pedophiles do, what these people do, is there anything you could enlighten parents on? To keep pretty close tabs on your kids, most of the kids are abused. the 50 million Americans, over 50 million Americans that are abused.

It's in the home. And if it's not the father, it's often the stepfather. But then there's schools and churches. And you have to keep a pretty close eye on your kids because there are a lot of predators in this world. And predators are good predators. I mean, guys that are that have are accomplished predators, they really know how to get kids. I mean, they really, they're highly skilled at. Speaking of one predator here before I let you out, Larry King, the, I don't know, the ringleader.

Lawrence of King, yeah. Yeah, whatever, whatever you want to call him with the Franklin scandal. He went to jail not for that. He went for, for, was it fraud? Financial crimes. Financial crimes, thank you. Were you, I listened to you on somebody's show, I think. Talk about, you know, like after he got out,

he tried going around children, not once, not twice. He was like three times in like he was getting hired. It wasn't like he wasn't getting hired. He was getting hired for different. He was volunteering at. Or volunteering. Sorry, sorry. That's what I heard.

Yes. He had a no show job at a BMW dealership in Alexandria, Virginia. And then he tried to insert himself into organizations that would give him access to children. And here's another travesty. I am the guy that had to call these organizations and tell them that they should have nothing to do with Lawrence King because he's a super predator. Not law enforcement, but a journalist is the person that has to call. these organizations that would give King access to children and tell them, stay away from Lawrence King.

I've got him kicked out of three organizations. I'm working on getting him kicked out of another organization, too. Because he's already back in trying to volunteer for another kid. Yeah, he's a predator. I mean, and his predatory behavior has the, and this is troubling. I mean, there are people in the federal and federal law enforcement that know exactly what he is. exactly what he is. And it's up to a journalist to make sure that he doesn't pray on children.

Pretty inverted. Well, I have to assume this can't be, I don't mean easy in the sense, like it's not easy to do because like, you know, when, when you're talking about meaningful work, I think what you're doing is very meaningful. I just assume being surrounded by like stories of the worst humanity has to offer. I just, my hat off to you type thing. Well, thank you. And if there was anything you wanted to say to the listener before I got you out of here, one, go buy your book. Obviously, if you want to learn more about the Franklin scandal, that would be one.

I assume it's on Amazon, but maybe not. Is that where you suggest? Any where books are sold, you can find the Franklin scandal. And is there any other things you'd want to bring up before you hop up? off, Nick? I would say that by the Franklin, the full title of the Franklin Scal, the Frankl's story of Power Rookers Child Abuse and Betrayal by Nick Bryant. And also, if you're American and you're sufficiently outraged by what I've had to say,

then check out Epsteinjustice.com. Nick, thanks for hopping on and doing this. Okay, thank you.