The Daily Beast Podcast - Why Epstein's Shadow Still Haunts Trump

Episode Date: December 25, 2025

Joanna Coles revisits some of The Daily Beast’s most disturbing and revealing conversations about Donald Trump and Jeffrey Epstein. Michael Wolff explains why Epstein’s shadow still looms over Trump, while Stacey Williams and Cleo Glyde recount encounters that expose the brazen culture of power and silence surrounding them. Tina Brown reflects on the scandal she helped uncover and why its consequences continue to fracture Trump’s world. Together, these voices reveal how wealth and influence conceal dark truths—and why the reckoning is far from over. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

I'm Joanna Coles. This is the Daily Beast podcast. And over the past year, we've taken you deep into some of the most shocking, twisted and revealing corners of the Trump and Epstein worlds. And today we're looking back at some of our most extraordinary episodes. We've had Michael Wolfe, the prolific Trump chronicler, walk us through the explosive fallout between Donald Trump and Elon Musk. Remember Elon? And explain why Jeffrey Epstein's shadow still looms over the 47th president of the. United States. I sat down with Stacey Williams, a former sports illustrated model, who told her story of encounters with Epstein and Trump, moments that revealed just how brazen and, frankly, revolting these men were. We were also joined by Cleo Glyde, who at just 22, enjoyed the glamour of New York's fashion scene in the 80s when she was a model, and found herself swept into Epstein's orbit, meeting Trump through him and seeing the glittering dangerous mix of power and charm that masked the darker truths. We revisited the scandal that shook the world with Tina Brown, who not only broke the Epstein story decades ago, but now reflects on why this scandal

continues to haunt Trump and has fractured his base from within. And finally, Michael Wolf returned to unpack Epstein's shadowy empire, his ties to Maga figures, and the unspoken truths surrounding the pedophiles' ignominious end. Each of these conversations is a window into ambition, power, and the moral compromises that surround it. And I promise you won't want to miss a moment. So stay with me because we're diving back into it all. Michael, when we last spoke less than 24 hours ago, we were waiting for Donald Trump to respond

to Elon Musk's. criticism of the big, beautiful bill. Now we seem to be into a full-on W-W-E fight. Explain what's going on. You know, well, as we discussed yesterday, everybody comes a cropper with Donald Trump. Donald Trump is going to screw you and you're going to be screwed. So there has never been someone in a position to try to screw Donald Trump back. And so we have a new paradigm. The richest man in the world and the most powerful man in the world locked in a blood feud. And who's going to win? It could go either way. It has escalated into nuclear territory within the last, what, 30 minutes. Right. And as we're talking,

Elon Musk has just fired back at Donald Trump, who accused him of missing the glamour of the White House. I mean, you made a very good point. In the podcast we dropped today, actually, earlier, saying no one leaves the White House voluntarily. Donald Trump then today, possibly having heard you, makes the point that Elon already misses the glamour of the White House. This is what happens when people leave the White House. There was carefully on the part of the White House, no suggestion that Elon had been forced out, that Elon had been fired. I mean, this is the way men of affairs do this. There is no, you are fired.

There is no reality show, denouement. But now Trump is saying, yes, I fired him. We pushed him out. Forget him. But Elon today dropped an absolute bomb. It may not be a total nuclear bomb. That's in Trump's camp. but he dropped the bomb of Donald Trump is in the Epstein files.

What does he mean? I mean, it is the nuclear. I mean, I think it has been, you know, and it is that issue that I'm particularly interested in because I've been involved in it. And actually, I've been the one who has dropped the bomb or tried to drop the bomb because it's absolutely true. I mean, Donald Trump, here is the story hiding in plain sight for a very long time now. Jeffrey Epstein and Donald Trump were the best of friends for a very long time, for 15 years.

They shared girlfriends, they shared airplanes, they shared business strategy, they shared tax advice, or it's actually, they shared how to not pay taxes. They were inseparable. And as I've said on the Daily Beast podcast and in other venues, I have seen the picture. of Donald Trump and Jeffrey Epstein's girls together. Last November, just before the election, we ran tapes that you had provided us of Jeffrey Epstein talking extremely intimately about Donald Trump. What are the specifics in the files that they won't release? I mean, the files, and I don't know if Elon knows, you know, the, you know, the

idea of files may be, I mean, it may be something specific, including those pictures, which were, in all probability, in the safe when the FBI came and raided Jeffrey Epstein's house after he was arrested. So perhaps that's one of the things that Elon is very specifically referring to. But I think in general it could also be the Epstein file writ large. In the scope of the Jeffrey Epstein life intersects with the Donald Trump life in a very meaningful, in fact, profound way. These guys kind of made each other. And he, Donald Trump is obviously very sensitive about this relationship now. Completely.

Actually, when interviewed Trump at one point, And, you know, they sort of, the people around him ask you, you know, just give us an idea of the topics. And I gave a whole bunch of topics, including Epstein. And all of the other topics, they've said, fine. But if you ask about Epstein, he will end the interview and you won't get anything. Have you ever spoken to him about Epstein? I said once to him, oh, we know someone in common. It's the one person you don't want to have him.

And he froze. Right. So, I mean, you predicted that this would happen. And two or three months ago when we spoke, and I said if it comes down to it between Elon and Donald Trump, who will win. And you said Donald Trump. What's fascinating here is they've both got their own social platforms that they can go after each other on. And as you said, we've got the richest man in the world, now going after the most powerful man in the world. And one of the things that we have talked about, and I find so puzzling, is that nobody seems to stand up to Trump.

And finally, we have Elon, which may turn out to be his gift to the world, standing up to Donald Trump. Nobody goes after Donald Trump because he'll kill you because he has the ability to do. Well, just think about Ron DeSantis. Ron DeSantis tried to stand up to Donald Trump in a very procedural, electoral way. I'm going to run against you. Boom. He destroyed Ron DeSantis. Well, Ron DeSantis arguably also destroyed himself. I mean, he went after Disney. He's not a charismatic politician, though he's an able politician. He's certainly not a charismatic politician, but he's a perfectly ordinary politician who in the scheme of things was a plausible contender.

Certainly his numbers in Florida. And virtually everyone up until a certain point. point regarded Ronda Santos as certainly as a potential Trump killer until Trump killed him. I mean, he just literally went out and pulverized him. And all of this, I mean, what we understand now as Ronda Santas, lack of charisma, more than lack of charisma, the worst politician in the history of bad politicians is all Donald Trump's doing. So, and he will now, I mean, two things will either happen. He will go after Elon in that same way.

And we will see if Elon then can, you know, has the, has the chops, the fortitude and the gift to go after Donald Trump. And then it's a game. Or this is both guys going to the nuclear brink and then they will back off. And there will be some negotiation. and settlement. Right. It was pretty interesting that Elon said

you would never have got elected without my money. The Democrats would have won the House. There should be a third party. Maybe I'm going to finance a third party.

Totally. Just extraordinary. I mean, we are possibly walking through a new portal into something that we have not, that we have never seen before.

And it is then, and you know, I think we have to say this on, And, you know, we've always talked about the power of money in politics. But this might really be the power of money in politics. And the fact they've both got their own social platforms. You said literally on the podcast that we dropped today, yes, he's the president.

He's also running truth social. And this is the perfect vehicle for him. Perfect. And again, remember part of Trump now stepping forward to go after Elon is that Trump is that Trump is saying, fantastic, bring it on. Right. This is what I live for. This is what has made me.

Give me an enemy. Okay, what's a bigger enemy than Harvard? I was just going to say, Alan Garber, president of Harvard, must be exhaling that the attention spotlight from Donald Trump has moved swiftly onto Elon Musk. Also, hard to know with Elon's unpredictable behavior, what he does now. who's advising him and whether or not his Tesla board or his big Tesla shareholders are going to say to him, Elon, you need to back off. This is not a race you can win. Well, and would he listen to him? I mean, Elon and Trump are in that sense evenly matched. Who advises them? Well, nobody really. They advise themselves. You know, it occurred to me when Elon started to go after the big, beautiful

bill and call it in an abomination or whatever, I thought, oh, my God, you know, Elon is Zelensky. And this is exactly what got Zelensky into trouble in the Oval Office. And I think that that's true. I think somebody coming after Trump in that way cannot be ignored. He's going to go after that person. He's going to go to try to kill that person. And that's obviously what's happened. But again, the issue is, has he ever gone after someone with the resources of Elon Musk?

And also, is there a diabolical possibility that Elon is doing this to win back all those Tesla customers that walked away, that walked away from Tesla? We know that Tesla sales have dropped by 50% in Europe. If you were a conspiracy theorist, you might think, oh, Elon is doing this. on purpose, if you were a smart Democrat, you would immediately start courting him. You want the money. You want his support. And he can somehow absolve himself of all the work he did at Doge. Well, I think it's also that Elon is like Trump. He understands the value of an enemy. And Trump is a pretty good enemy. Well, we've got two extraordinary dinosaurs fighting each other now. It's like a triceratops and a Tyrannosaurus rex and you're like, well, they've both got different powers.

Now, one of the things, I've just got to get email after email after email about people asking me if in the Doge data collection, they have gotten a hold of Epstein material maintained by the government or the FBI. Has Doge delved into the FBI? I thought it was more concerned with sort of USA and the education department. I think the point is Doge is everywhere. Doge is all powerful. So if you're Elon, you could have left all sorts of little tech bombs waiting to go off. I'm straining at the edges of my imagination here to try and think what could have been in that safe

that would be so damning to Donald Trump, because there is still a sense that he could stand, as he once predicted, on Fifth Avenue and shoot someone and nobody would care. Well, I mean, I think that that is, that is the point. I mean, I remember Steve Bannon said to me, if there were ever photographs, and this was specifically related to the Russian investigation, Trump would merely say, that's not me, that's somebody else. Right. Fake news. And I think that that is probably true.

I mean, why, I mean, this hasn't been pinned on him yet. Why should it now be pinned on him? But who knows? Elon could have a whole team at GROC AI now just working on imagery, convincing imagery of Trump and how would we know? Yeah, no. And listen, I have seen these pictures. I know that these pictures exist. And I can describe them. There are about a dozen of them. The ones I specifically remember is two of them with topless girls of an uncertain age sitting on Trump's lap. And then Trump's standing there with a, with a, staying on the front of his pants and three or four girls kind of bent over and laughter, they're topless, too, pointing at Trump's pants. God. It's the ultimate in toxic masculinity, this row, isn't it?

Well, it would be interesting if toxic masculinity on this side kills or cancels out toxic masculinity on this other side. Yeah. I think we need a. RFK Jr. to the rescue with the vaccine, with an anti-vaccine. Michael, excellent to check in with you. We'll be coming back to you the minute this escalates. And indeed, as you say, they've both deployed the nuclear option. Who knows what's happening next. Stacey Williams, very pleased to have you on the show. Obviously, I remember your Sports Illustrated covers. We have spent an an inordinate amount of time on this podcast mystified by why Donald Trump is so anxious about

the Jeffrey Epstein story. And one of our regular contributors, Michael Wolfe, talks a lot about understanding the relationship between the two of them, which particularly flourished during the 90s in the model era. You were a model and you knew both men. You dated Jeffrey Epstein. You had already met Donald Trump. And I would love to. to hear from you, first how you got into modeling, because it was many young women's fantasies to be a model. And then tell us about the life of being a model in the 90s. Well, you know, I think my career hit its peak in the 90s, but I actually moved to New York when I was 18 years old in 1986. So that's when it was right after high school graduation. I was on the first thing

smoking to New York. And so, So, you know, when I arrived, it was, you know, think about the sort of social landscape of that period in New York. I mean, the industry was riddled with a lot of carnage from AIDS. It was actually quite devastating time because, I mean, every day I'd go to work in a different, yeah, I'd find out different hair or makeup artist or designer someone had passed. So it was, yeah. Stacey, just stepping back, how did you know you're going into modeling? Because not everybody can be a model. Yeah, so, well, you know, I think by the time I was like, you know, in 9, 14 years old and I was 5.11 and weighed like 120 pounds.

People were like, oh, you look like a model. You should become a model. You know, I think there's just that standard like you're tall and skinny. You should, you know, that idea that indicates. You should be a model. And I heard about it a lot. It was confusing because I think, and a lot. lot of models will share this. You know, I was sort of being ridiculed at school. I was called

olive oil. I mean, I wasn't, a lot of us are particularly gawky as teenagers, but somehow that translates really well in fashion. So I don't think I totally bought into it that I could have become one. And then, you know, basically a former model from Philadelphia saw me at the mall. I mean, we're also to be on Gen X, right? So I'm hanging at the mall outside the Orange Julius. and this former model saw me and said, you know, you could make money, you know, like you could do model, you could work for department stores in Philadelphia. And, you know, I was working, I was working as a janitor and in a fast food restaurant making $3.35 cents an hour. And I went down to Philly, and I got booked right away for a John Wanamaker, which is like a local department,

Pennsylvania department store from back in the day. And I worked for them. And I think I got $1,200 for the day. And I was like, hmm. Wow. You went from the job. janitor to $1,200. Wow. And I remember the last check I got that overlap. So I got the last check from the fast food restaurant. And then a check from the department store had come in. And I think I'd worked to like 30 hours or something in the fast food place.

And it worked out to be like $45, you know. And then that big $1,200 check came in from, you know, having fun in a studio in Philadelphia and people doing my hair and makeup. And I thought, hmm, I think I know where to spend my time or, you know, what to pursue at this point. So you move from Philadelphia. to New York. Yeah, so the agencies in New York somehow saw photos of me from Philadelphia. And some photographers had sent them up to agencies there.

And they started calling and saying, will you please come in and meet with me? And I got signed by an agency called Zoli at the time. I was with them briefly. And then I got a lot of calls from Monique Pilar at Elite, at Elite, who she was sort of the vice president of elite models under John Casablanca. and I went there and I was with elite for many years in New York. And elite was really the elite of the modeling agencies, wasn't it?

I mean, it seemed to have everybody. Yes. And then, you know, they all have satellite agencies. So there's elite Paris and, you know, elite Munich and all of these agencies. So you were traveling around the world modeling, and what were the kind of men that you came across doing this, including the photographers and the makeup artists, many of whom I get are gay, but some of them are not?

You know, we were shit magnets. young pretty teenage girls what kind of men do they attract um so yes there were there were Saudi princes there were very wealthy bankers um there were politicians um you know I think it's not that different than what it is today in a way you know um so yes powerful wealthy men who liked arm candy um were were part of our our orbit, rock stars. Right. But I think it had even more kudos back in the 90s because there was also the sort of, there was the excitement about the supermodels, Kate Moss, Naomi Campbell, Cindy Crawford. Nowadays, I think it's shifted a little bit because of the influences and models like

celebrities have become more democratized. But at the time, it felt like you were an elite forced, didn't it? The most attractive women? Oh, the business is unrecognizable now. I mean, every now and again I'll speak to someone, an agent or a booker I've known from back in the day and they're like, it's just, you know, it's about clickbait now. Nepo babies

and clickbait, but most of us were just, you know, girls from very normal middle America, Midwestern kind of experiences who'd been discovered just because we had a certain look that worked and enabled us to procure work for our image.

And we were sent, you know, to New York. And it's totally different now. Now it's, you know, you have to build a following. And as you said, it democratizes it a bit, but the middle's fallen out, you know. So you could be totally unknown. Like every other industry, the middle's fallen out, right? So there's like a handful at the top making a fortune. And then there's a million down below, you know, maybe hoping for one or two jobs or calling

themselves models because they have a certain number of Instagram followers. I mean, it's completely changed in the digital era. But I was going to say, you could have, you know, a really lucrative career just shooting Spiegel and JCPenney's and Sears back in the day of catalogs. I have friends who bought up, you know, tons of real estate just doing that, and you wouldn't recognize them, you know, outside of the industry. Right. So there you are. You're in New York. It's your six foot tall. You've got an incredibly glamorous career. You're starting to do the Sports Illustrated cover. What was your dating life like? I don't know if I dated, you know. I was young. I was pretty damaged. I didn't really date much. I'm saying, I'm sorry. certainly not going to mention names. But I was more, I was someone who went from relationship

to relationship. I didn't do a lot of dating in my 20s. But, you know, the men, the men were around. When I, when my parents dropped me off in New York with my, you know, Kmart suitcase in the fall of 86, the agency sent me down to the model apartment and was greeted by my roommate. She was, I think, from Colorado. She was 15 years old and she was holding a gin and tonic and she said, oh, my boyfriend's going to take us out tonight. He's going to take us to a club. It was Nells at the time and a great club. And he

showed up, he was 40 years old. And then we got into the club and his friends were circling me and they were all easily late 30s, early 40s. And I was just very confused. But then, you know, you're young. So you go, oh, you just immediately normalize. Oh, well, this is just the way it is. This is how it is. And I, roll with it, you know. I was just so thrilled to be there. I loved New York so much.

So when did you first meet Donald Trump and when did you first meet Jeffrey Epstein? First time I met Donald Trump was at a taping of Saturday Night Live. I used to hang out there. I was friends with some of the cast and I'd go to tapings. It's a really fun thing to do on a Saturday night in New York and he was there with Marla and that was the first time I met him. And did you have any connection with him? Um, um, it, I was uncomfortable. Go on. Um, he was, you know, extremely flirtatious.

She was looking straight ahead and watching the show and he sort of turned his head and leaned over and was just, you know, raising his eyebrows and doing things like that. Okay. And then how did you meet Jeffrey Epstein? I met Jeffrey when my agent, which at this point was next and it was Faith Kate's, the owner, um, she was very good friends. with Jeffrey Epstein and Donald Trump. And she introduced, the introduction came through her when she took a group of us to a dinner on the Upper East Side in a restaurant, and Jeffrey was there. And it was during the Clinton Gore election.

So someone prompted, probably Jeffrey is my guess, but I don't remember, someone prompted a conversation about the election. And I got very excited because, I mean, how often are you at a model dinner and someone's bringing up something substantive to talk about? and I've always been a bit of a political junkie. So, yeah, Jeffrey, you know, looked at me and he didn't condescend, and he had a very straightforward conversation with me about the campaign, and I remember appreciating that because it was very rare that men in those circles would ever

have a conversation with me about a substantive topic without mansplaining or condescending. And I think that's why I got a little interested. And so what was it like to date him? Yeah, it wasn't really dating, you know. It was very odd. I basically, it was a period of maybe four to five months. He didn't like to go. He didn't like to go to restaurants.

He said he didn't like humanity. He didn't like, I used to joke I was going to make him go on a subway ride someday to force him to be amongst the peasants, you know. He liked his very insular, you know, giant brownstone and his fancy, office, he had the house in Palm Beach, and then he would be transported to and fro in airplanes and limousines and things like that. So the times that we got together really revolved around meeting at the Brownstone and taking walks around the neighborhood, mostly. Having tea in the room that the butler served, you know, Jeffrey had this,

obsession with that Zabar's bread with all the yummy walnuts and raisins in it. I would meet there in the afternoon. We'd have tea. The butler would come in. It was actually like a tray. Like central casting for a butler. The artifice was kind of funny in his place. It was like a little boy with too much money, like acting out or being performatively rich. It was kind of funny. But yeah, so the, the tray would come in and there was, Jeffrey had a thing about that Zabar's bread, which is that yummy, raisinie. walnut bread and he he he seemed to think it was important to let me know that you know he had it FedExed when he would travel because because it was so important to him which is like you know the most obnoxious like self-indulgent thing but like I think he thought it was impressive

you know that he has bread his favorite bread flown to wherever he is so I remember that story about that so that's what we would do we would have tea we'd we'd I spent the night there a couple of times. We took walks in the neighborhood, and that's it. We didn't go to restaurants. We didn't, you know, the second time I met him after the dinner was at the Christmas party in the Plaza Hotel in the presidential suite or one of the big sweets there that Donald threw, and there were a lot of celebrities and, you know, athletes and people

like that, and Jeffrey was there. And that's where we really connected, and I gave him my phone number. the second meeting. So you would be a trophy girlfriend for someone like him? I guess so. Yeah, I mean, but he wasn't parading me around in public, you know, so perhaps I served another purpose, you know. To be honest with you also, and this is hard for people to hear, but, you know, he genuinely liked me and we genuinely genuinely had good conversations. He was insane and a creep and you know once the data points lined up i told him he was extremely unwell and to stay away from me but um you know he we we had some enjoyable conversations and i had been practicing yoga at

that point for many many years yoga meditation i started on my 19th birthday and it's still a part of my life i owned a studio here in los angeles for 25 years um and geoffrey was very interested in it and one time one of the studios where I practice regularly called me and begged me to teach a class because they were short and they said like you know this inside and out and we don't have anyone else and I said of course you know and he actually came to the class and did it um when I taught and that was the only time was he flexible not really it was not very flexible okay and I'm going to ask you something which is it's a slightly odd question to ask you but it's sort of relevant in a way because one of the things that gillen maxwell talked about him after she dated him was that he had this insatiable sexual appetite. Is that something that you observed? No. Mm-mm. No, it was, we didn't have a very sexual relationship.

I mean, yeah, it's, you know, and looking back and knowing now what we know about him, I was probably too old, maybe. I don't know. So tell us about the time that he takes you to visit Donald Trump. You're walking down Fifth Avenue and he looks up at Trump town. Yeah, so we went on one of our walks and we're heading down fifth and he was talking about, he always talked about Donald.

That was, I don't, I can't name another friend that he ever mentioned. He spoke about him regular when we had contact pretty, pretty consistently. And so he was sort of ever present in those conversations and in those months. And so we took a walk down fifth and he mentioned, oh, you know, Donald likes he. so much or he's such a fan or I don't know whatever let's stop by and see him and that was kind of a normal thing to me because I knew at that point how close they were what good friends they were that wasn't the first time I'm hearing you know about the degree of their connection where it's normal or comfortable to just stop by his office in the middle of the day so I said

all right okay let's stop by and Donald came out of his office right outside of in the sort of the waiting area and started groping me while the two of them continued having a casual conversation and Donald had an assistant who was sort of walked back and forth a couple times and they did introduce me to her at one point I will never remember her name but Donald is groping you in front of Jeffrey as they are continuing to talk yes yes just moving his hands sort of up and down my body and like smiling at him and just Jeffrey's smiling back. And I don't remember specific.

It was, I think the conversation oriented around me and my career. You know, Stacey's on fire, blah, blah, blah. Yeah. And what was Jeffrey doing at this time? He was engaging in the conversation and just looking at Donald. He didn't, I didn't read any kind of reaction when it was happening. And was that, because that feels very odd for a man to stand with his girlfriend, talking to another man who is groping his girlfriend.

And you've said that he was groping your breath. He had his hands all over your buttocks. He was just wildly inappropriate with you and entitled. I don't know, Jeffrey, I don't think either of us thought. I didn't think of him as my boyfriend and vice versa. I mean, we were dating. We had, I would say, for a period of four months, almost daily contact. Most of it was the telephone.

And so, yeah, the incident is completely insane. But from the boyfriend point of view, I don't think it brought up any feelings of jealousy. I think he expressed rage to me right afterwards. I wanted to talk to you about that. What did you do in the moment when this was going on when Donald Trump was allegedly groping you? What did you do? I froze. I just froze. And I was just confused because they were continuing to talk. So, as if nothing's happening. And so, you know, everything Donald Dunt does is hidden in its brazeness. You just do it right out there. And everyone goes, well, that can't be happening because it's totally wrong. And he's doing it right in front of everyone. So therefore, it can't be happening. I mean, that's what went through my head at that point. It was just utter confusion. And for me, to to be that frozen when I had a rep for really being a bit of a street fighter and really pushing back

in studios when photographers were inappropriate. And I mean, I was reprimanded for it by my agencies. They'll be so difficult. You know, you don't have to sleep with them, but at least make them think you're going to sleep with them. And, you know, all this game playing that had to go on for these tiny egos. And so, you know, I, and I was really combative. And so for me to free, you know how masterful he is in a way to pull that off. Well, and your remark about his brazenness and it happening in plain sight and people not acknowledging it is, I think, a really valid one. So what happened after you left the building or after you left Donald Trump?

After we got into the elevator and I picked up, I looked at Jeffrey, he would make eye contact with me and he had a really enraged look on his face. He was seething. His whole energy was different. And then by the time I get out on the street, we got out on Fifth Avenue, he just turned and started yelling at me and said, why did you let him do that? He just kept repeating it. Why would you let him do that? And he really, you know, there was a, there was an edge to it that was also very shaming and belittling. And I remember standing there thinking, like, I was starting to come back into my body and I thought, why did I? I was so confused, you know. And then I went home and we went separate ways and it wasn't long after that that I stopped seeing him. And when you think about

the incident, did you think that he had set it up with Donald Trump? Was he trying to gaslight you outside? Did he genuinely not understand why you hadn't pushed Trump away? Or do you think that he had set the whole thing up? I think he was confused. I think, I think he thought, because I told him all of these stories about guys I'd, you know, beaten up on the streets in Paris and Maste and getting in trouble with my agencies for not pretending I'm going to sleep with disgusting Vogue photographers. And I think somehow he thought he has like, oh, this one, you know, this ornament is actually one that fights back. You know, let's let's put it to let's test, let's test my, let's test this right here and have some fun. And so when you split up with him or when you stopped seeing him, how did you tell him? It was a phone call and I said, look, you are extremely unwell.

You need psychiatric help. And, you know, again, I'm like basically a teenager, emotionally, intellectually in a lot of ways. and, but, you know, if I could figure that out about him after a couple of months, all these people that for years have surrounded themselves and gone to dinners there, dinners there, whether they're women or men, whether they were abusing underage girls or not, I just, that's where I get very confused. I'm like, I'm this kid right out of, you know, like I said rural PA and it took me a few months to say, oh, yeah, like you are extremely unwell, get away from me, don't come near me again.

I think there are a lot more people who could have done that. I don't understand why that didn't happen. And what was his reaction when you did that? Well, this is what's interesting, and it's hard for people to grasp, but he actually choked up a little bit. He was upset and said, oh, okay, all right, all right. And he just, he really, it was so odd. It was just so odd because it wasn't really a relationship. And he was so extremely off in so many ways.

clearly very compartmentalized. What were some of the other ways that he seemed off to you in terms of, I take the incident that you allege happened at Trump Tower. What were other things that made you realize he was a bit off? You know, there are more details of things that happened that I'm not comfortable sharing that would solidify this. Can you give us a little? the clue as to what kind of things?

And he liked to intimidate. He liked to send out kind of subtle messages and threats to sort of signal rather than be direct. So he was there was just something very,

very dark and twisted and I couldn't see it all, I couldn't understand it all. There were people who warned me. I was on a trip, I was shooting a catalog in St. Barts with some other supermodels. And one of the very well-known models I was with weird, she said, you're dating Jeffrey, right? And I said, yeah, you know, he's really smart, interesting. And she kept saying, just be careful. And I remember that. I remember that very clearly where we were sitting. I remember that conversation. And that, you know,

that echoed then throughout the couple of months that I was seeing him. That's another thing that would just pop up every time there was a new data point that was very, very strange. And didn't he at one point tell you that he had a video of you getting changed at his house? Yes, so I only supped over in the house a couple times, but the one, I think it was the day after I did the one time, first time. He said to me, you know, I have video of you undress, you know, naked in the bedroom. And it's, you know, one of my prized, it's one of the most beautiful things I've ever seen or something really creepy like that. Yeah, so that was close to the end. And was that one of the things that made

you feel, A, it's a very unusual thing to do to someone and also sort of signaling that I have control over you or I can do something with this video. Perhaps that may have been his intention. he liked to share, he liked to send out little signals and let out, eke out little drops of what was really, I think, going on. And then he wouldn't expand upon it. So it was just enough for you to go kind of stop and think, well, wait, what? What did you just say? You know, today obviously I'd look, the woman I am today as a, you know, a fully formed, hopefully somewhat more actualized person would look and say, what did you do?

What did you just say to me? Like, what are you signaling right now? You know, he's older, he has a bunch of power. I was pretty underdeveloped. And so I would hear it. And it would, you know, it would stick out as odd, but it was very hazy as to the meaning. So you split up. You eventually stop modeling.

You moved to L.A. What did you think when you heard he'd been arrested? So I would. wasn't surprised. I will say that I, over the years, once I, you know, transitioned into my second career and moved to Los Angeles and I opened my studio and was involved in another phase of life, I would still see articles coming out on him. And I think the big one that I noticed was in Vanity Fair was about him on a 747 going to South Africa, I believe. And I read it and I just remember my heart kind of dropping. I was like, there's something so much bigger and deeper to

this guy out of all the men I've dated, even or even been friends with high-level politicians or folks with power. There was something very dark and also very opaque about him. And I remember seeing that and thought, I thought, this story isn't over. There's just so much to this and it's, this story isn't over. I can't remember the name of the article, but I think it was something like the fantastic Mr. Epstein or the mysterious Mr. Epstein. So after he died in prison in 2019 and the news of the extent to which he'd had this network of young girls and then with the sentencing and the trial of Gillen Maxwell the following year, or 2022 she's sentenced. Were you surprised by the extent of it?

No. Did it feel somehow validating for you that you'd always thought there was something odd and then here it was? Yeah, I guess it validated my instincts, but I think, I mean, you know, that doesn't have a ton of value to me. The horror of what those women endured as girls was really upsetting. I think also, you know, me too happened. And it's not just me. it's a lot of women. When Me Too Happen, we suddenly started denormalizing.

So many things that have happened to us, you know, denormalizing, I was a lot of word. And that's also, I think, what prompted me to revisit a lot of this and start connecting more dots. And I remember going to my storage unit and pulling out all of my boxes of, like, magazine covers and tear sheets and everything going through them and lining them up to digitize them in my living room and looking and was like, you know, okay, that guy, that photographer, that shoot, he exposed

himself to me. Okay, that shoot, he got my number, wouldn't stop harassing me. That shoot, he kept coming, you know, it's just, there's just so many data points from those years, and they sort of blended with a lot of the Jeffrey Donald memories in my mind. And then I started sorting through them more, I'd say, when Donald ran in 2016. And he sent you a postcard after the event where he had groped you at Trump Tower, right?

He did. He did. It's the front of the postcard. It's a postcard of Marilago. Like, it's just so funny. Like, know your audience, dude. Like, that is such a turn off. But anyway, so it's a postcard of Marilago and then on the other side and is very, I mean, iconic.

handwriting is Stacey, your home away from home, love Donald. And you didn't, I was interested that you kept it. I thought props for keeping it, because I think I would have been tempted to rip it up. Yeah, I was actually surprised when I found it. I found it during the Me Too, this period that I talked about when I was getting stuff out of storage, and there was news about Jeffrey, there was news about Me Too and Harvey Weinstein, and it was all sort of swimming around, and I was trying to sort through it. Because also, you know, I've written about it for myself.

And so I opened up a box and it was in there. I don't remember putting it away. I don't remember. But I'm glad I'm glad I hung on to it. Yeah, well, it turns out to be sort of evidence of a sort, doesn't it? And when you look back on your modeling career now, if you were talking to a young woman who wanted to go into modeling, what advice would you give her? I mean, people reach out to me all the time and I say I want to advise or talk about it. this because there's no point that I wouldn't do it. Listen, there's no business model anymore,

you know? So like there was a reason for us. It got me out of rural Pennsylvania when I was, where I was looking at piles of student loans for college. And I did like my existence there, to be honest with you. I mean, when I was 12 years old, I saw the KKK burning across. All of that, those aspects of rural Pennsylvania really, really affected me deeply. And I did not like being there. That's another reason. That was why it worked perfectly to get to New York. That was the impetus to get to New York. It wasn't just to become famous and make money. It was to get out of a place where I was not happy. That wasn't aligned with my values. And so, well, and also, it's a great career to earn a lot of money quickly if you're successful, which you were. I was. I was lucky. I did

really well. I had my little niche, was able to set myself up and buy a home, you know, how many people can do that now? But like I said, there's no business model. I mean, I could be, yes, I did some high-level stuff and I did Sports Illustrate and I got some contracts and things like that. And I had a nice lucrative career. I was on the cover of a lot of catalog, or sorry, a lot of calendars and there were a lot of posters. And I, you know, I was sort of, I'm in the Hall of Fame and I was in the Hall of Fame shoot and everything. But it was a record number of appearances, I believe, at the time. Kathy Ireland and I both had that. So yes, yes. So, I mean, I was very known. And I was hosting Access Hollywood and hosting MTV and doing a lot of television

work and things like that. I mean, I was, you know, I was, I had a good career. But, but, you know, like I said, there were, there were dozens and dozens, hundreds of models who you would never recognize who were working every single day, putting money in the bank, buying up real estate, you know, all of us setting ourselves up to go back to college or to start a business or, I mean, how many people get to front load their maximum earnings in their lifetime in their 20s? It's like the only industry I've ever heard of, right? So, you know, and then you fade out. Sports for guys. Right.

I mean, it's modeling or sports for guys. Yeah. Right, right. So, and so, you know, it was a tremendous, it was a great opportunity. But as, you know, in a lot of the essays I've written about this, you know, you had that devil on the shoulder, right? the devil and the angel. So, you know, the devil would be like, okay, you're around some of the biggest lease bags. You know, what are you doing here? And then, you know, the other shoulder is you're working in a creative industry at a creative peak in New York City. I mean, I'd go out, I'd see Bosca,

I'd see Warhol, I'd see Herring. I was working with the greatest hair and makeup artists and photographers in the world, you know, being photographed by Richard Avedon and Skavolo and all these people. So it was an incredibly alive, vibrant, compelling world, especially for me coming from rural Pennsylvania with a sort of maybe an innate artistic and intellectual curiosity. And it was a perfect world for me. So did anything ever get, did everything ever get bad enough for me to want to give it up? No. But I was navigating so much, especially for a very young person. Well, it sounds like you managed to navigate it pretty well. When you heard the news last week that Gillen Maxwell, Jeffrey Epstein's partner in crime who was sentenced to 20 years and 2022 for sex trafficking,

that she was being moved to jails from a federal jail in Florida to what's known as a camp, a minimal security prison in Texas. What did you think? I cannot believe, again, how brazen to do this backroom deal with a trafficker, a child sex trafficker, and then in addition, not have a single conversation nor acknowledge any of her victims. It's heinous. It speaks volumes of this administration and what they stand for. Right. And of course, we don't know that they've done a backroom deal,

but we should say that obviously the move of Jay. came after Todd Blanche, Donald Trump's former personal lawyer, now number two of the Justice Department went down and spent a day and a half with Gillen Maxwell interviewing her. So it's hard not to put two and two together and conclude that she's moved as a result of that conversation. Are you in touch with any of the other victims? Yes. I know there are women who have interacted with them who haven't come forward.

They haven't come forward. And as far as the young women or the women who were trafficked as young women and girls by him, I've never met any of them, but my heartbreaks. And I was really quite leveled when I, you know, when I heard about Virginia, had to go for a walk. Yeah, Virginia Jewfrey, who, of course, was one of the victims who gave evidence very movingly at Gillen Maxwell's trial. Yeah. And was poached from Mar-a-Lago where she was working. in the locker room at 16 to go and be Jeffrey's personal masseuse by Gillesne Maxwell.

Yeah. Well, Stacey, thank you very much for talking to us. I think, you know, I just want to reiterate to you, and you probably know this, that I was polygraphed by a very leading renowned examiner. Passed it. That postcard, I know CNN verified its origins. the signature is obvious and

you know I appreciated Michael Wolfe sharing that he had confirmed with Jeffrey about what the two of them did to me in his podcast Did Jeffrey tell Michael Wolfe that they'd done it as a premeditated sort of joke between them? Not sure actually I'd have to revisit

I couldn't listen to it more than once to be honest with you but I don't know you'd have to ask Michael that Yeah. Okay, well, thank you very much for joining us. And what an extraordinary experience. And then to have it revisited in such a scaled way so much later on in your life when you probably had forgotten almost all about it. Yeah, it's, it's mind-blowing. I've said to people that when I first started talking to reporters about this in 2016 and I was off the record. but I spoke to a lot of reporters. When I tell the stories out loud, I almost don't believe myself.

It's so truth is stranger than fiction in a weird way. Or I hear myself and I think, wow, would that be hard to believe? It's all true. I've been polygraphed 100%, but, you know, my life's been, as well as these other victims, I'm sure it's truth is stranger than fiction. So it's, I don't know if I'll ever fully be able to digest or process it, you know. Well, thank you for coming on and talking to us about it.

And it does shed light on the nature of Jeffrey Epstein and Donald Trump's friendship. We know they were very close, especially during the sort of peak model era of the 90s. And your story puts it in some perspective for us. Sad perspective for you, but helpful, I think, to understand the drama about it now. Yeah, thank you. I think it's really important. It's driven me nuts that people for years, have been saying, oh, come on, just because they were in photographs together, it doesn't mean

when I know the truth, and a whole bunch of us know the truth. And so the more, it's healing to have the truth come out, right? I mean, that's where the alchemy comes, you know, of healing. Why do you think more people haven't spoken out? I mean, look at what women endure when they come forward. Blasey Ford had to, what, move out of her house, sell it. Gene Carroll. Well, I've seen before to Brett Kavanaugh. Yes. I mean, women take on these men and they get shredded. Their lawyers go after them.

I mean, I've seen some of the things written about me. And so that's just the, okay, so you, you know, you just block that out. But then, you know, I know women who have received death threats. Women have children. A lot of these models now are raising children also, or a lot of these victims that I know haven't come forward. and they don't want to bring that into their kids' lives. That's why I didn't right away.

That's why I was off the record, you know. So I think first and foremost is you want, you know, especially when you've come from that kind of insanity and darkness, once you're having kids and you're a parent, you know, you really long for just the calm, normal stability. And you want to provide that for your kids and not have that part impacting their lives. And I think that's another reason why a lot don't come forward.

Well, I think we would all like some calm stability. Oh, man. It just looked like it's on the cards. I can't wait for boring times. We can't wait for boring times. Stacey, thank you very much for joining. Thank you. Thanks so much.

Thanks for having me. So Cleo Glide, you are an Australian model. You're in your early 20s. You moved to New York and you are introduced to Jeffrey Epstein. What was he like? What was your first impression? tell us about hanging out with him. Yeah, so I'd been a teenage model in Paris.

I'd spent years at the Saint-Laure house, and then, you know, you're travelling in this gypsy caravan, Milan, Paris, Rome, you know, in London. And I fell in love with New York and that energy at that time that you could bottle, you know, and the club scene and the creativity. So by the time I met Geoffrey, I would have been probably about 22.

The really important thing, Joanna, and it's probably what's made me hesitate to talk about knowing Jeffrey for so long, The really important thing is as a lived experience, it's you're looking forward. So, you know, looking backwards, seeing the mugshot, being world famous as a Darth Vader villain is what people's understanding of Jeffrey now is. At that time, my lived experience was he was a high society, A-Lister, a sort of an enigmatic great-gapsby figure with these on-paper, ludicrously over the top, a Kutremont, like having a, you know, a mansion that had an entire city block and a vaguely nebulous, wealthy, very, very much a self-made man. He was on boards. He was

at events. He was loud at. And so by the time I met him, there was, on paper, nothing to fear. I had actually heard about him before I met him. A friend of mine, a good friend, a fellow Australian model who I adored, had met him out on the traps. And models at that time... Out on the traps. What does that mean? Well, you know, parties, vanity fair parties, models are essentially, even though you're very young and in many cases unsophisticated, you're aping a high fashion ideal. We have the keys to the city in London, Rome, Milan, Paris.

You're instantly connected with a network of, let's say, the parties and the people that make the city tick. And you're a Ford model at this point, which is about as good as it gets. Now take us back to your Australian friend introduces you to Jeffrey Epstein. She had a sense that he was someone too tough for her to handle. She said, I kind of got to know him a bit, and I realized, he's a bit too much of a player for me to really seriously consider him as a boyfriend. But she knew I sort of liked that very sort of smart, superverbal, funny New York, high-speed kind of personality.

And so she said, I was thinking it could be someone interesting for you to meet. And this was not done. I isn't to add in any sleazy way at all. It was more, oh, you know, out of all the men out there in New York, you should really meet him. But I know that I can't take on that. level of player. Now, the context was Playboy, and at that point, it was way more James Bonder than Darth Vader. He was somebody that was known as many a girl on his arm, lots of girlfriends.

He eventually, when I met him, I realized he had that sort of smarmy self-satisfaction of like, oh, women would love to take me down and they never will, you know. And when I actually met him, What do you mean women would like to take him down, but they never will? I think, you know, when someone's very wealthy, they're on their guard, and they like to use the fact that on paper, they're an object of desire for women that want to be with a wealthy man. Okay. So he knew that. So he's fending people off.

Well, I think he enjoyed it. I think he enjoyed it. And I guess part of our dynamic when I met him, I actually, and it's sort of hard to say because I never, ever, ever want to be in a problem. for someone that caused so much destruction and destroyed so many lives. But if I'm being really honest, my lived experience was we became friendly. And that's the actual truth. It's like a little, it's a whole kaleidoscope. It's a very complex situation.

And my little, you know, shard of glass in the kaleidoscope that I'm just contributing to the picture is initially when I met him, he did have a charm. And I did, we sought at each other's company. and we did hang out in a non-sexual way. And you spent, how long was he a friend of yours for? Oh, for years, you know, for years. Like, especially in that early period where we were, you know, he'd be someone I'd call, he would call the back or he would call me.

At that time, we had answering machines and, you know, God knows where those little cassettes are, you know, but so it was like, probably there was a two and a half three year period where it was at its apex. And you met Donald Trump through him, right? Yes. And as a precursor to the Donald Trump encounter, I have to say by that time I'd also sort of realized he's a black diamond run of a man. Way too much for me to handle.

I'm a romantic. So I knew there's no way that I'm going to just be a part of a harem. You know, and that was considered attractive at the time. In a post-Me2 world, everyone's like, oh, gross. But at that time, it just made you a player. And it was a value and people, it was shiny, you know. And at that point, also, people behaving outrageously was something that was I sought out. And it was part of the fashion world.

And it was part of the 80s and the 90s, wasn't it? I mean, Wall Street was on at the movies. This was about money. It was about glitz. It was about glamour. And you were living in that in your day job because you were dressing up as that. And then in the evenings, you were actually living. it. Exactly. And also when you're modeling, when you're doing couture, this whole idea that this,

a Parisian designer like Yves Saint Laurent, he's basically liberating women from stifling bourgeois convention by this highly eroticized sexual glamour. So in my hilariously undercooked, teenage, youthful, book smart, life, completely naive way, I thought I got the players and the, and the world. And I was like navigating. But even then I thought, yeah, there's no way I can take on a Jeffrey Epstein, you know, in terms of being, auditioning him or him auditioning me for partner material. But we instantly slipped into a friendly catch-up mode. And he was someone who was always super busy.

He didn't really do like four-hour lunches in a cafe. He'd be like, hey, I'm going to the airport. Why don't you come in the car and we'll hang out? And then I'll just, the car can take you back wherever you want to go. He was always on the run, on the run, on the run. And then one day, he'd spoken. about Donald Trump as someone that, you know, he kind of had a, he was kind of a bit self-satisfied about that friendship, I think,

because at that point Donald Trump was, you know, larger than life, you know, almost like cartoon-like character in the New York landscape. And he mentioned, I had this white rapper, rapover dress, and he said, oh my God, you look just like a nurse in that. It'd be really fun if we got this other mutual friend that had introduced us. Why don't we both go over to Donald's? And you both look like nurses and I'll just knock on the door and we'll go to Trump Tower and it'll be hilarious. And it kind of, you know, looking back, obviously, it's like there's something kind of mortifying about that story about me putting myself in that Benny Hill position.

But I'm being like sort of on Jeffries's arm going to Donald Trump's. It's completely surreal. I mean, it's really mental. But at the time, it just felt like a bit of fun. And obviously now I look back and go, okay, it's a very odd story. and especially when it blew up into this global horror show. So take us back to, so you're sauntering over town, cross town, from Jeffrey's House on East 71st Street to, was this Trump Tower you go to meet Donald Trump? Yeah, we went to Trump Tower and we get ushered up.

And so I suppose there was a sense of anticipation. And I wasn't that invested in Donald Trump, but anyone that lived in New York at that time knew he was an outsized figure. So he was like a Macy's Day parade float of a man, you know. And then, you know, so then, and I don't know, you know, I'm pretty sure that the, I remember the doors being sort of having all this kind of embedded Byzantine detail, like, you know, like this Persian prince that we're going to see on the other side. And then when the doors sort of swung open, the two things that really hit you. One is the outrageous skyline. I mean, it's just, you know, it's just, you know, it's just the. the embodiment of all aspirational New York desire.

In the view from his windows. Unbelievable. I remember that. And I also remember the OTT, outrageously opulent Romanian dictator look of the... Honestly, it was shocking. Like, it actually blew my mind. And I'd been in very opulent French spaces,

but this was on steroids. And so I remember blurting out, oh, good thing that we didn't... A good thing I didn't wear silver earrings, you know, and just being a smart arse. And we came in and he was gracious and I think he offered us a drink. And Jeffrey was sort of a little bit, you know, you know, cat that got the cream, like a little bit, you know, well, aren't I cool, aren't I great, aren't I fun?

And there wasn't anything really seedy or sexual or weird apart from the aspect of us being sort of trophies on display. He was really invested in us knowing about, I bought this, I got that, I paid the most at the You know, he was really, really invested in making a good impression, which I found startling. I just could not believe that sort of chasm of need in him. Like, it really, really blew my mind. And what was the relationship like between him and Jeffrey? They seemed warm and friendly, you know. You know, Jeffrey was kind of a bit boasty about knowing Donald.

You know, Donald was much more famous than him at that time, you know. So I think he loved kind of accentuating the connection. he probably was showing off Donald to us and us to Donald. And I mean, look, at that time, you know, there was, he was so proper. So this was part of your New York adventure. It was just an adventure and Donald Trump was just another, you know, I'd done a show and shaken Diana's hand.

It was like Meet Godzilla. This is just another, you know. Diana Princess Day. Diana Princess of Wales. It was like all these towering figures, you just ended up meeting them. It's very surreal. to look back at now. There was no weird, dark sexual undercurrent. He was gracious. I do remember

where did he look when, because there's you, your friend, you're both dressed in tiny little white dresses that Jeffrey thinks give off a nurse vibe. Is Donald responsive to that? He smiled. He smiled and he laughed. And he obviously thought, oh, this is just Jeffrey. Because obviously Jeffrey's thinking, I'm literally walking down Fifth Avenue with two nurses. This is, you know, that he, they, they, he smiled and he laughed, but not in a way that made me uncomfortable at the time. And it's really, really, I feel so exposed telling this story in a way. But it is, you know, let's face it, it's, um, the oddest thing in the world to be remembering that story is considering the, everything that's swirling around all these,

you know, seismic events globally now. I mean, so does he invite you in and do you spend, do you have a drink? Yes. Yeah. He was gracious. Um, but I, you know, and I remember he was extremely eager to please in the sense of this very odd Gatsby-esque need for us to know how much things cast and I found that a little bit odd and needy and very bizarre. But there was no, there was definitely no seedy undercurrent, I have to say that. And what was Jeffrey's relationship like with Donald Trump? He spoke about him as somebody that he, I think he felt that he, that was at a time when Donald Trump was going through some bankruptcy issues. And he definitely loved. He kind of was a little boasty about the fact he lent him his plane and I've helped him out a lot.

And, you know, definitely the sense that he was the power center at the time. Definitely, that was how he spoke of it in those terms. So what was it like actually hanging out with Jeffrey Epstein? Where did you go? You mentioned that he would go to the airport and say, hop in the car with me so he can catch up. Did you go to his various houses? I'd often meet him in his Madison Avenue office. I went to his home on 71st. So when you were hanging out at his house, did you come across Gillan Maxwell? I did. And when I met Gillen, it was very odd because at that point I didn't understand or know about the backdrop of her position as this very high-octane figure in British society. And obviously now I know all about her father and how connected and how there was this incredibly valuable.

valuable relationship between what she was offering Jeffrey, which was all these open doors and what he was offering her and supporting her. And there was, when I first met her, initially, he was asking her to do this and do that. And she was running off and doing things and arranging. And I just thought she was a, some sort of executive assistant. And then she came in and she was really rude to me and cocky and sat on his lap. And so all my signals were jammed. I'm like, what on earth is going on?

And then people would explain, oh, no, no, I mean, no one's ever going to get to the bottom of Jeffrey and Golan like she's semi-girlfriend, semi-hand man, semi-this, send me that. And I realized, oh, it's just extremely bizarre and unknowable. And when I actually went to Jeffrey Zorro Ranch, I was going to L.A. to do a show at the Playboy Mansion. And it was the one night where it was actually an AIDS benefit. And it was with Suzanne Barsh, who was a friend in a very, very iconic nightclub promoter who still doing the pony somewhere in a club today as we speak.

And she took over with us and a retinaue of drag queens, the Playboy Mansion. And I told Jeffrey about it and he thought it was hilarious. And he said, oh, well, you have to go and visit my ranch. And I remember him saying, it's bigger than Manhattan. It's bigger than Manhattan. I said, well, then I guess I better see it. And I took my girlfriend, Daniel, who was also modeling in the show. And we went on a road trip.

And I remember feeling. And his lunch was where, New Mexico? Yes, yes. And it was at that time he hadn't built. the main structure. And I took a lot of footage. And there was a very bizarre mannequin that was there. And it was dressed in a Zorro costume that George Hamilton, a friend of Jeffries had given him from the movie Gay Blade. Because I said, what's the Zorro costume? And I've actually got video where I think I'm like talking to him in the distance and my friends chatting about to her mom saying,

yeah, we've met this friend of Cleo's, this crazy guy, Jeffrey. I mean, he was almost like Mr. Howell and Gilligan's Island to us. You know, It was just this sort of roughly sketched New York billionaire, you know, almost like a cigar. Like it was, he wasn't like that, but that's what he kind of seemed to us. And we still wonder why he was offering these things with very little in return except friendship. Because I prided myself, and this was sort of my youthful arrogance, on being the girl at the poker game, that can handle hanging with the big boys, but not getting burnt. And there was a little bit of shame when the whole story exploded, a little bit of survivor guilt.

It was kind of a cocktail of shock, dismay, relief and guilt. And it kind of paralyzed me a lot. But at that time, I didn't think I had anything to fear. I just thought it was this, it was exciting. And did you sleep with him? No, I didn't. I didn't. But he did do the pounce.

I was, we went down to Palm Beach once on his plane and I thought it was very exciting going on a private plane. And when I got on the plane, it's funny because I'm a total fantasist. So I always kind of visually project things. So when I think private plane, I always think there's a chic in the corner. He's holding a falcon. There's a woman in a Pan Am outfit. And there's a tinkling fountain. And she's kind of carrying trays of champagne.

It was a little bit more shabby than that. It was a bit more. It's like an office, you know. So it felt a little bit more shabby, a little bit more grubby. I mean, it was still a private plane. And obviously that was impressive and it had a novelty to me. But it wasn't, it felt more like a mid-level executive's office in the sky than a rock star Led Zeppelin fantasy.

And when, and it came out of nowhere. So when he did the pounds, it was genuinely shocking because it was, we were in the middle of a conversational beat and it was a pleasant, happy time. And, you know, he was being gracious and there was probably a fruit. platter and there would have been a server and but I do remember that there it was just us. I couldn't handle it. He actually got that sort of gimlet stare. You know, I think most women are familiar with when the light goes out of the eyes and that kind of lustful laser beam focus. Most women are probably experienced where you realize if it's unwelcome and unwanted, if you start to feel

queasy and scared and worried about how you could handle it. And I had a dress with a wrap dress he was able to put his hand between my legs at the knee and then start to kind of get rough, you know, get rough and put his hand on my breast and put his hand on my leg and like creeping up to my underwear. And I was, I was, I was, I sort of teared up. And I was like, Jeffrey, why are you doing this? I thought we were friends. Like, you know, I don't want to be. And I think I said, you know, I really don't want to do the whole Jeffrey Epstein Roadkill thing, you know. And, and, and he kind of stopped. And then he dropped it, like, completely. It wasn't like a second or a third or a fourth attempt.

He almost was like shoulder shrugging about it and he dropped it. And it shocked me to my core, which sounds very silly and naive, but I did not see it coming. Were there other people on the plane? It's interesting you asked me that because they would have been staff, but I definitely don't remember anyone looking on all staring, which would have actually been horrific in a way that that would be just another person dehumanizing you by not even reacting. I don't remember that element. So they must have gone to the front of the plane.

There was always, you know, staff, someone serving drinks. And obviously, you know, but I remember the roughness of the physical. It was, it really shocked me. Like, it really shocked me. And so you'd been friendly with him up until this. We were mates. That's how I described. Now, obviously, this sounds ludicrously naive now.

But I just thought I was, you know, the girl that was, that was, it was enough for us to just have banter and talk. And what happened off? that because you still had some of the journey presumably. I had a very heightened sense of what happens. I've got a people please of personality. So when something happens that confronts me, I bury it and fake it immediately. So I immediately went back.

I was shaken, but I buried it and tried to act like nothing was happening to make it all okay. That's how I make things okay, especially at that time. So it made it, of course, appallingly easy for him to not even and care about, you know, damaging the friendship. But I do remember being violently recoiling and being upset and verbalising, you know. And now I realize, you know, there's always kind of an element of danger to planes and boats, obviously, because you're isolated and you're away from... And do you think he had planned it?

Or do you think it was just... I do, yeah, I think so. Yeah. It was premeditated. Yeah. And I do remember when we went to Palm Beach, I do remember that he went and got a massage. And I thought, that's odd. Like, you know, why, you know, surely that's something you can put off to another time and you don't have a guest.

So now I realize that that was obviously his, you know, he would have had on-tap relief at all times, which is obviously creepy and horrific and gross. Did you see who was massaging him? No, no, I didn't. But he just said, look, I'm going to go up and have the massage, make yourself at home. You know, he was, he, I picked up on his casual. normalization without realizing, oh my God, what is really happening? You know, and that's, you know, that's the God's honest truth. I just didn't know.

And the thing that I now realize is, now that I understand that I only had one piece of the puzzle at the time, everybody knew that Jeffrey had a harem-like attitude to women. Everybody forgave him for it. Everybody normalized that. But now, of course, we know that he wanted something much darker. He wanted girls that were underage, friendless, vulnerable from poor backgrounds. That was something I literally had no knowledge of. But when I heard it, I realized how little I really knew about what I was living at that time,

because that was all going on at the same time. So he pounces on the plane. You repel him. He doesn't try again. Do you stay friends with him? I, the, my memory of it is that it was downhill to a certain extent. The intimacy, the excitement wasn't there for me, but I actually did, it wasn't the end. I did actually look him up again when I came back to New York.

I returned to Australia when I had a baby. I got married and had a baby and I kind of fell out of that single bachelorette living the Carrie Bradshaw life. I actually, my life can take. went back to Australia and I did look him up when I came back. Yeah. So obviously, to answer your question, I guess I did forgive him yet. And so you forgive him, you come back to New York and you call him up.

Yeah. And he invited me over to the house. And I had a friend with me, an Australian friend. And she had a very overtly sexy, sex witch kind of sexuality. She was someone who was very attractive to man and, you know, had the kind of geisha way of, you know, like you just pretty and much more, I think, pleasing. I was sort of had much more of a, shall we say, fag-hag energy. And you were sort of sharp.

I've known you for a long time and you're very funny, you're fast, you're sort of sharp talking. This is probably the least funny subject we've ever had. I know I sound quite sober, but yeah, usually I'm a bit more upbeat. But yeah, she had that, you know, the skin and the body conscious clothes and, you know, really sexy. And so when we went over there, I said, yo, I felt like Jeffrey was sort of like the Empire State Building, another interesting aspect of New York to come and visit. Come and see this, come and eat that, come and meet Jeffrey Epstein. It just felt like another creature in the New York

jungle to meet. And when we went to the house, that was then the time when I really started to just see the kind of seediness where the murkiness. I thought the biggest problem with Jeffrey was that he was a, you know, a kind of a slightly misogynistic playboy. And then I guess I had this weakness of my flaw in my character, of the vanity of thinking I can pass through this, I can move over these laser beams and I'm going to be okay. And of course, I feel kind of a bit of shame about around that.

But at the time I didn't, you know, I wasn't there yet. And we went there and he kind of pulled her. He said, can I just borrow her for a minute? And he pulled her into the cupboard. And she seemed breathy and giggly and okay with it. What do you mean in the cupboard? Well, there was a, what I assumed was somewhere where you hang coats. It was a big room.

There was kind of, it was almost like, you remember in 2001 Space Odyssey where the aliens create this 18th century room of this is a human room? It was like, this is a rich man's room. So there's a giant globe. But he was always like in jeans and a polo shows. He was almost like, I've set the stuff. stage, this Gatsby-esque stage of this wealthy man. But it was almost like you're expecting to see somebody come in

in a velour robe and slippers and a pipe. It was like very gentleman's club. But then he was very contemporary New York. But she was, he dragged her behind the door and they disappeared. And she said he was just whispering all these filthy things. And that's when I thought, oh my God, like that's appalling. Like it's, it's, I was like, are you okay? I'm so sorry.

I felt really bad that I'd put her in that position. and she was like, no, it's okay, it's okay. But, you know, she had obviously internalized that it was okay. And that's when I just didn't contact him again after that. I just felt that it was an appalling way to, you know, and that I'd kind of sunken and slipped and, yeah, I don't want to go back. And then when you, well, when did you first begin to hear the news that he was arrested? I was in some ways horrified and other ways not surprised.

I remembered things. I got flashback memories. I remember him once talking about how he had nicknames for women that were akin to hamburgers at McDonald's. Like what? So you'd get the Big Mac, you get the Junior Burger, you know. So in other words, kind of their status and their appeal and their looks and whether they're, you know, just pretty or pretty and smart or pretty and funny. Like, you know, basically categorizing women and all those things that I'd buried. And... Called women junior burgers.

Yeah, junior burgers or Big Max, he told me about that. So telling in retrospect. And in retrospect. And the thing is, when you let things slide, you sort of go into a delusional state. You know, it's like the lead cape at the dentist. You know, it's like this... And it just lifts.

And that's when I thought, oh, my God. And I felt really paralyzed about telling anyone, I must have told maybe on one hand, people that I actually knew him, because I felt... really odd that I'd gotten through it with really just a grope, if I'm being honest. And it was also very hard to explain to people at that time why I would even hang out with the monster.

Like, how do I even begin? Where do I start? Well, and he didn't seem like a monster when you were hanging out. Not at all. Not at all. And we had conversations and fun. And I was embarrassed. I was ashamed.

And I didn't want to appear to be an apologist for someone who would hurt these, you know, girls. And I think about someone like Virginia Guilfrey who never wavered from her story and had this unbelievable arrow-strape bravery. And, you know, I guess, you know, we have to honour what, you know, the long-lasting damage, but also the courage. And I just didn't feel like I had a place in the conversation at all at that time. I was really ashamed. So why did you decide to start talking about it now? I think because now I realize, as I, you know, it's the decades whizz by, you know, at startling speed, I realize that, you know, it's startling speed. I realize that even with an issue as black and white as the moral carcass of that whole situation,

of Jeffries, the damage he's done and what a creep and what a predator he was. I guess I'm just bringing another hopefully a bit of understanding on what it was like on the other side, why he was loudness known and befriended and just it's another person. of, it's another shard of glass in the kaleidoscope. It's another piece of, it's another little piece in the puzzle as I look back on my life and try and make sense of it all. So Donald Trump had a modelling agency. There was Jeffrey Epstein's friend who ended up committing suicide actually, whose name was, is it Jean-Luc Bernal? Oh yeah, and he was just appalling. There are horrific stories of girls coming, you know, because the girls are really young,

14, 15, and you're staying, and you're staying with a 45-year-old grisible. dushy playboy who's going to put the hard word on you night one and possibly or maybe not even reward you for your services really. There are horrific stories and the thing I guess that I like to think of when I talk about that world and I build that world in my mind, it's a double helix because there's the trapdoors, there's the pitfalls, but there's also the glamour and the intoxicating creativity and they're entwined. So a lot of people, they either say, see the glossy fashion page, which doesn't really capture the grit, or they see a very understandably sober, maybe documentary on sex pests that is horribly lit and everybody's, you know,

distraught. But when you actually experience it, it's all intertwined at the same time. And also, there's a lot of money. And you're kind of getting heart search and money at the very start of your life. And of course, you're getting ripped off left, right and center. Like I remember they would take out a lot of money for tax in Italy. I said, but I've never filled out of form, you know, like 18, 17, impossibly naive, but even allowing for how much money is cascading through everyone's hands apart from your own, you still get plenty. So if you were to go back and talk to your younger self, would you encourage her to go into modelling?

I mean, we had Stacey Williams on the podcast about a month ago, and she said she gets outreach all the time from young women saying, oh, how can I be a model, how can I be a model? and she says, I'm the wrong person to talk to. I could never encourage someone to go into modelling. What's your feeling? Well, you know, it's funny. I was thinking about that the other day. I did buy an apartment.

I bought an apartment in Paris and I'd always been haunted. And how old were you? I would have probably been 1920. Right. So the age of 20, you were able to buy your own apartment in Paris? And I had a mortgage. But it was, and I have footage, because I have hours and hours of footage, I have footage of that apartment and there's just empty,

vodka bottles and Malbrious cigarettes and I look back and then couture, strawn all over the, and all the, and I was spending so much money on the clothes because we could buy at ludicrously low prices, these clothes that were being designed for these high society women. And we were aping them. That was our job, was to bring these, to animate these dresses and get their clients to buy them. And we would sort of tour, you know, Salzburg and castles and the south of France. It was all very rarefied air. but then there was also the cattle calls and the auditioning to get to that point where they were brutal. Like people would talk about you like you went there and that.

It's very paradoxical because you're on a pedestal but you're also being dehumanized in many ways. You're the centre of attention at a shoot with all these adults plucking you and fluffing you, but really you're the least powerful person in the room, but it's all about you. It's a very bizarre paradox. So in answer to your question, I've had girls talk to me about it before and you can see that they're very, drawn by it. And I would say if they're straight arrow gagging for this, just you've got to have your, you've got to have your financial plan in place. But what 17 year old girl is ready to hear that life wisdom from someone, you know, that's 45 plus? No one. And what did you think when you heard

he had died? Ah, I was, it felt like the under the underbelly of evil has reached up. and the claw has struck. It just instantly felt very menacing and sinister to me. And did he feel menacing and sinister when you were hanging out with him? The only glimpse of that was that time with my friend in the cupboard. I thought, ooh, this is really off. Before that, I thought it was, you know, Leonardo DiCaprio man about town level. I got that spectacularly wrong, obviously.

I, but it was, it was basically the groping was the beginning of the end and then the, and then him being really sleazy and gross with my friend. But before that, if I, you know, in all honesty, he, you know, there was plenty of charm, fun, laughs. You know, it felt like, it felt like good company. And that's what was so mortifying to admit. And when you look back on your friendship with Jeffrey Epstein and how he died, Do you think that he was murdered? What do you think about his life?

I do, yeah, I think so. I think so. I think it's very possible. I mean, we don't know for sure. I think there's something very, his blueprint in my mind has been completely overwritten, as has everybody else's, by the mugshot, that, the garish horror of that jail cell.

And then all these towels, you know, like the 20 towers, there's all this really garish, horrific image. imagery. And there's a lot of high stakes. I mean, it's kind of, there's something very, there's something very scary swirling around this whole story. That's why I kind of stayed in the shadows for so long about it, I think. You know, there's something very menacing, very sinister. There are deaths, there's power plays. There is no way on God's Green Earth, obviously, that we've gotten to the bottom of all the players that were involved. And there's no way that somebody as transactional and as now we know manipulative and clever as Jeffrey wouldn't have used

girls as a way to entrap and ensnare power players, both politically and wealth? I mean, it's clear to me that there's many, many, many, cataclysmically profound secrets left to uncover. Would you agree? I mean... Well, I spent no time with him. I oddly spent 25 years in New York and never came across him, never really heard. never really heard of him. Well, isn't it just not my world? And isn't it telling that you and I,

we worked together at Mariclair, um, not short, you know, shortly after probably the last time I saw him, and it never occurred to us to even discuss him because he wasn't on radar yet, you know, in the radio and now we can't get him off the radar and the president can't get him off his radar. And I think that, um, yeah, I cannot tell you, Jero Anna how surreal it has been as, you know, this story has become a frenzy and it's, number one on everybody's minds and it's etched in the public consciousness and I'm sitting there going, I cannot believe I actually was in a room at these two people. It's very pinch me. It's very bizarre. And you're making a documentary about what it was like being a model in these heady days?

Well, the thing is, at the time, there was something that came out and of course it looks like a gigantic loaf of bread to people now, but at the time something called a high-eight digital camera came out. And everybody could not believe the luxury of being able to I hold in the palm of your hand a video, whereas before, you know, you needed a gigantic piece of extremely expensive equipment. So it became a really fun novel thing. And I had this instinct to document everything. And I just somehow knew there was just as much story going on backstage as the hyper interest of what was going on in the front stage on the catwalks.

And at that time, it was a very elite world because as amazing as it is to think, you know, pre-digitally, the fashion magazines were the only authority, and they held onto those secrets and those images and the next, the new, the now, for months. And then only fashion people knew what was coming. Now an image is digitally ricocheted around the globe in five seconds. So at that time, it was this really contained world. And I suppose it was a part of me that then later blossomed into a journalistic instinct to capture it. And there's a lot of candid footage. And now that I've realized, now that a few decades have passed and I can make sense of it, I've actually found all of the people in the footage, the friends that I was still in contact, the models that I'd lost

contact with, their stories are extraordinary, their origin stories, how they got addicted to the industry, how it scar their soul, how they loved it, how they miss it, how they hate it. And this was before inclusion was a movement. It was exclusion. Luxury, you know, elegance is refusal. Luxury is exclusion. Did you come across Melania Trump as a model? Because she was modeling around the same time. She was sort of floating around and Donald, at that time, Donald Trump was, you know, a kind of a cartoon-like figure in the streetscape of New York. But I didn't actually get to know her. She wasn't really ever editorial high fashion. So, you know, but I'm sure I was in the room at some point at the same time. Tina, it's an absolute honor to have you at The Daily Beast.

It's fun for me to be back. Welcome back to this building. We still, we live in your vision. You created this site and that is exactly what I want to get into with you. And it thrives and roars. Well, the thing that I want to talk about is one of the greatest roars of the Daily Beast, which was a groundbreaking piece of journalism that was produced under your watch. But the reason that I mentioned fresh hell, your substance,

is because you dropped an incredible set of revelations about Jeffrey Epstein, the man of the moment, the scandal of the century, a story that you continue to cover. And I want to talk about those. I want to talk about what must be the most chilling encounter that I have read about with Jeffrey Epstein, which happened right in this building where we are sitting. Yeah, it was. It was a step. And there's just, there's so much to get into. this is an amazing opportunity to talk about Epstein, about Trump and about MAGA. I will just say to everybody, subscribe to fresh hell.

It is absolutely unmissable. Obviously, subscribe to The Daily Beast as well. But, Tina, thank you for joining us. Thank you for the comments. Just to set this up, I'm going to go back in time. 1980s and 1990s, you were at the center of the New York social scene. You were covering it. you were editing First Vanity Fair in the New Yorker.

Was Geoffrey Epstein a name on your radar? You know, he really wasn't much. I mean, I had met Jeffrey Epstein, it is true, because I used to attend the Clinton Global Initiative every year in September. You know, it happened at the time of the UN. And there was always a big opening night reception. I met at Jeffrey Epstein there

because actually he was one of the first donors to CGI. So he always was there kind of working in the room. And I, you know, he's just, he was like this cold-eyed financier. kind of working the crowd. Not anybody that was kind of particularly memorable to me. I do remember him as being a very... It was cold.

There's a cold about his eyes, but that's all I knew. I never really sat and chatted with him much. And whether whispers? Was it where there... No whispers. I mean, at that time, Jeffrey Epstein, he was just a financial coffee society guy.

Gilae Maxwell was a far more sort of prominent social figure. I knew her, not well either, but, you know, being a Brit and, you know, my husband had exposed her father, you know, Robert Maxwell when he was editor at the Sunday Times, he did this excoriating piece proving her father was a crook. And so I sort of, you know, I didn't therefore eagerly chum up with Gillesne Maxwell because I'm sure that certainly know that Harry was a kind of, you know, bet noire to that family. but you know she was a lively sort of girl about town woman who you saw a book parties and literary functions and you know black tie evening sometimes so i did know her a bit but the interesting thing was she was never with epstein so it wasn't as if she came in with epstein she didn't she never came anywhere with epstein at that time so i mean i didn't even know she had this deep relationship with him because i never saw him with her And the other person on the scene, of course, or is now on the scene, Donald Trump. Indeed. Indeed. And I certainly did know him. Yes, indeed. I was, I sat next to him at a first at a dinner that Ivana, a lunch that Ivana gave with Anne Getty at the time. And Trump was sitting. There was somebody quite boring next to me and somebody quite boring next to him. So he and I were sort of talking to each other over our lunch partners. And he was, I thought, hilarious, you know, bravado sort of swashbuckling New York character. You know, he said, oh, you know, Ivana made me go to the opera last night.

You know, four hours, like Pavarotti, who cares? You know, it was like it was like that. And I thought he was quite amusing. And we covered him, you know, subsequently a lot until he started to unravel his business and his divorce and then he did not like what we said about him. But, yeah, I knew him too. So I'm going to fast forward to 2010 because that was the year that you, You commissioned Conchita Sarnoff to investigate Jeffrey Epstein.

And we are going to put links to those stories in the show notes because they can still be read. They are absolutely extraordinary pieces of journalism. They are full of details and names that continue to resonate to this day. But can you just unpack the backstory? What brought this to? Well, it's very interesting because I didn't know Conchita Sarnoff before. I'd been at the Beast at that point, you know, a couple of years. I didn't know Contri de Sarnoff at that point, but I was called by somebody we both knew who said that because I used to do the women in the world's summits, which were about empowering women who, many of whom had been sort of sexually trafficked or, you know, no education, etc.

He thought that I would respond well to a story that he knew someone who'd written, who is a, sex, was a trafficking activist, a sex trafficking activist, Conjita Sarnoff. she'd stumbled on this story and he thought that I should see it because he thought it was a big story and others wouldn't have the courage to publish it and he thought that we would because we'd shown a commitment to women who had been, you know, abused. That's really why I think she made her way to me. And she came to see me and told me this extraordinary story about how she had been in the course of her sex trafficking investigations. Nothing to do with journalists about activism. She had been interviewing a child sex, Mexican child sex trafficker in the Palm Beach Stockade. And during the course of the interview, he told her that a great many of these very underage girls were trafficked to rich men, American men in Palm Beach. And she was really taken aback because she had thought that the whole kind of route of these girls was like, you know, cartel members, etc.

She didn't expect to hear that wealthy, you know, alist kind of Palm Beach people were having girls delivered to them. So she decided, and then she remembered a small item saying that Jeffrey Epstein had been arrested. she actually did know Jeffrey Epstein who'd asked her out for a date in New York, so the name resonated. So she decided to go to the Palm Beach police and ask if she could look at the files. And when she looked at the files on the case, she was completely, I mean, her hair was on fire because it turned out, Epstein had received a 13-month sentence for soliciting prostitution with two minors. But actually, in the files, it showed that he had, there were multiple girls. I think it was two dozen girls who had been, who had lodged complaints about him, his activities.

it is. And she couldn't understand how this had got, you know, bargained down to such a tiny sentence of 13 months of, you know, where he was able to, it was a work release program. It wasn't even actually behind bars. That's when she thought, we've got a story here, and she found that he'd made this sweetheart deal with the attorney general there. And then the question was why it was. And so what the story really became was how this man, because of his contacts, his political donors, who he gave a huge amount of money, of course, to politicians, his contacts, his wealth, his pressure, you know, with his lawyers, his willingness to humiliate and sort of, you know, totally denigrate the young girls who'd accused him,

had actually got him to a place where he could just get out with a slap on the wrist. So that was our story, really. And it was an outrageous story, in my view. I mean, I think I was totally shocked. I think with someone who was obviously such a predatory pedophile could have such a small sentence. And he was back in society. I mean, that's when I began to take notice of him again. And, you know, he wasn't totally prominent.

It's not like he was in the papers every day, but Jeffrey Epstein was back on the scene. You mean, you could see that. So that's what, of course, made it very interesting to me. And so we published, I think it was a six-part series by Conchita that was fantastic journalism. I just want to, I think I should highlight the original headline, Jeffrey Epstein, billionaire pedophile, goes free. And in this piece, Conchita, who I had the privilege to speak to yesterday, and who remains engaged in this story,

she highlighted some of the names that still resonate to this day, Prince Andrew, the connections to Bill Clinton, Ehud Barak, who was a former Israeli Prime Minister, Bill Richardson, who was a former New Mexico governor, who now the late Bill Richardson, and Larry Summers, who at the time was described as a former Treasury Secretary, went on to run Harvard, still a prominent economist. When you saw those names, what was your feeling? Well, I was just stunned.

You know, I just thought, it's a web here that we have here. It's something much bigger than I had realized. So we published the first piece, and that's when I first got a phone call. First of all, I got a call from Epstein's lawyer and making sort of noises about suing. I kind of we ignored that. Then I got a call from Epstein himself. You know, now he's my best friend, having met him, you know, twice or something at the CGI. You had never really spoken to him. No, I mean, no, no, he knew who I was. I knew who he was. But yeah, no, so he wasn't a friend. And he kind of was very sort of on the phone. It was like, I just want to say, you know,

you should be aware that Conjita Sarnoff is a well-known nutcase. I mean, she's been spreading this nonsense about me, you know, it's totally ridiculous. You should kill him. this story. So I thanked him. I said, well, thank you very much if you've got a problem, you know, talk to the daily beast lawyer. End of story. And then a couple of days later, I went out to lunch and I came back from lunch into this very glass building that we're sitting into my, you know, glass office. And sitting in my own office in a chair in front of my desk was guess who? Jeffrey Epstein. And I was stunned. I mean, I stood in front of the door just kind of aghast. because my question is like, how did he get past security?

Because we have a security desk downstairs who apprehended me today and took my picture and they were there in force then. Very hard to get past those guys. I don't think people ever do. So how he got through, I don't know. I mean, he is a masterclass or was a masterclass con man. So maybe he was just able always to kind of get what he wanted. But he came up and he'd come into my office and he'd obviously said to my assistant,

you know, where is Tina Brown's office? And then he went inside in my room. So I stood by the door and I said to him, Jeffrey, you know, what are you doing here? He said, just stop. And he looked at me with this kind of snake eyes cold. And it was menacing. It was a really menacing. And he pointed his finger and he said, just stop.

And I said, Jeffrey, you know, we are continuing to do these pieces. If you have an issue, talk to a little, just stop. He said there will be consequences if you don't stop. and then he just got up and he left my room. And it was a very chilling experience. I mean, it was scary, actually. But we barreled ahead. Obviously, it meant we were extremely careful with the legal readings, you know, which were very careful.

But, and I fully expected a sort of, you know, a 12, 12 barrel kind of legal assault after this. But he went very quiet. And I think that he decided that at that time this was the early days of the beast. it was also a time when there was a less of a sense of like a story going viral, you know. And I think that he decided, you know what, I'm going to wait it out, see how bad it gets. If I start to fan the flames, it might get worse. Let's see whether we can just kind of ride it out. And he's swiftly followed up with a whole kind of philanthropic charm offensive

where he was constantly being quoted as having given money to various foundations, etc. And I think that one of the points then was that, A, Jeffrey Epstein wasn't terribly well known at all. I mean, he wasn't really known to anyone except, you know, the kind of social in-crowd, as it were. Secondly, it was pre-Me-2. And in those days, you know, those kind of stories didn't quite get the same traction that they might do, they certainly did do later. And, of course, the story was then taken up by Julie Brown in Miami Herald. And she actually built on Kat Conti's story, but that was post-Me2. So, you know, it had a far bigger impact then.

but it was a very unsettling experience, and you could see what a menace he could be, and how, of course, he would overpower some young, you know, 15-year-old girl. You know, very easily he was so intimidating. So, you know, it was a – I look back on it, of course, with, you know, in a very different way than how I saw it at the time. Interestingly, about six months after this, I got a phone call from the publicist,

Peggy Siegel. And she said to me, Tina, I want you to come to a great dinner that we're having tonight. Prince Andrew's in town. And I thought you might want to come to this dinner because I know Prince Andrew. She said it's at Jeffrey Epstein's house. And the other guests, wait for it, Woody Allen and Charlie Rose. So I just, I was standing out there. And I don't know whether, I don't think Michael heard it, but we had a writer called Lloyd Grove, who at the time was working for us. And he was in the next desk. A legendary deal. A legendary deal. legendary media journalists. He's never forgotten it because I just kind of exploded into the phone.

What the fuck is this? The pedophiles ball? I said, you know, what are you? How dare you like ask me to this? Because she obviously hadn't read our pieces. I don't know what she said. Oh, I don't know what you're talking about. I mean, that's all old stuff.

That's just nothing to do. She obviously, I mean, he was still perpetrating the mist that he was an inviteable human at that point. And people were still buying into it. I am happy to say I declined. And now, of course, that dinner has become almost like a. sort of, you know, were you one of the people who went to that faint? You know, because it was like such a, I mean, part of me wish to God I had been there. Because, I mean, what a scene, frankly.

This, I believe, was the dinner that was also attended by George Stephanopoulos and Katie Coor. Indeed. And both of them have expressed grave regret for that. Indeed. I said that they had clearly no idea of the intention. I believe George Stephanopoulos has said that he was fascinated by the idea of meeting Prince Andrew and had no previous or experience of Epstein and no subsequent dealings. That irritated me even more because it also meant they hadn't read our six-part series

in the Daily Beast of which I was enormously proud. But you see, that is how Epstein worked though. I mean, the hook was Prince Andrew. Yes. I mean, the fact is that George Stephanopoulos would not have gone to dinner at Epstein's house, but he always used these people. And in many ways, you know, it's interesting. His whole game, you know, was to kind of use other names to count.

only the big whales that he was interested in. Because as we know, he really didn't have any clients. He only had about three clients, essentially. It didn't matter. The whole kind of charade of like knowing people and being able to get anyone to come to his house was really all about creating the social theatre that would excite, he thought,

and build credibility with the big whales that would then invest. So did you have any subsequent encounters with him? Was never another unwise invitation from... No, no. There was no more, well, no, indeed. I mean, Peggy backtracked. It's like, she had no idea. And then called me back and said, you're not,

because I was actually about to sit down and write the story. And then I'm afraid I, I, I, I, I went out because she then called me, said, oh, you won't write this, will you? You won't write this? So, yeah, no, she, and then, of course, Peggy suffered a lot from the fact that she did continue to see Jeffrey and invited him to her screenings and so forth. I believe that Peggy Segal had said that she was never paid by Epstein or represented him.

directly, but that she helped him socially. And who knows? It kind of speaks to that appeal that you're talking about. Listen, I mean, I think that to be in his web was to be, you know, acting as with the likes of the people I just mentioned. So there were some people who dug that, you know. One of the, I was just talking, you mentioned Michael, and that's Michael Daley, who is our senior correspondent.

He's a legendary figure in The Daily Beast, an amazingly distinguished journalist. And I was just talking to him. we were discussing the impact that Jeffrey Epstein has had on this web and the names of people that he has either brought down from public life, Prince Andrew. He had possibly terminal effect on Bill Gates' marriage. He's led to the disgrace of Jess Staley, who was a very senior and significant banker. And there have been suicides, too.

I mean, there is a kind of terrible darkness around Jeffrey Epstein. I mean, there have been at least four suicides in the wake of Epstein. You know, two of the young girls died, you know, in their 30s. More recently, there was, of course, the suicide, which made quite a lot of news of Virginia Jufrey, who was the girl, of course, who was trafficked by Epstein to Prince Andrew. And she committed suicide in Australia, age 41, having said she never would. So once again, it's like, did she commit suicide? There's always this strange question mark around all these people around Epstein. course, there was another suicide of his major partner in crime who was, you know, Jean-Luc

Brunel, who was the man, the French model agency owner, who really essentially was a kind of partner for in Epstein in finding girls and sending them to Epstein. You know, he was another real kind of underage shark. And he killed himself in a prison in Paris. Same way. He knotted bedsheets in his case. Well, one of the one of the other really chilling and, um, prescient revelations on your substack was what an FBI agent told Conchita in 2019. Just to see in 2019 in July, Jeffrey Epstein was arrested at Tita Burratt Airport in New Jersey when he returned from Paris where he had been spending time. And it was, I was a working journalist, I'm a working journalist, but at the time,

we were absolutely astonished to learn that this had happened. We had many people, every outlet had covered Jeffrey Epstein extensively for the last few years. And this revelation came out entirely out of the blue. But Conchita told you something absolutely chilling. Well, Conchita and I sort of stayed in touch. And she remained like her dog with a bone, like every sort of great investigator. She just remained outraged. Her outrage never went away anyway.

So she texted me and she said, you know, I've just got, I must have. you something incredible. And I said, what's that? She said, I just heard was talking to one of my major FBI sources. And she's sourced up the wazoo in the FBI. She really is. She has incredible high echelon relationships in that, in the Justice Department. And she said, he just said to me, I asked him what he thought about the Epstein arrest. And he said, Jeffrey Epstein will never make it to trial. There are towels in there. It's a chilling thing. I mean, I personally am of the persuasion that it was not suicide. I. It was not suicide. I I have always found it very hard to believe that it was because he was actually, you know,

this was not long after his arrest. There was still some legal hope that he could be got out on bail. In fact, he'd had a pretty positive meeting before he killed himself with his own lawyer telling him that he thought the chances of getting bail were, you know, getting out on bail were actually better. So he, you know, it was too early in the moment for him to really, I think, you know, commit suicide. not to mention all the multiple, you know, so-called coincidences of the two guards, you know, who were asleep outside, is apparently outside the cell. And so they didn't notice anything. One of them was supposedly online shopping. You know, there was the cellmate who was supposed to be there, who everybody who's a suicide risk in Rikers always has, or MCC as it was, always has, you know, a co-cellmate. That person had been moved. And so he was on his own, which was quite against, you know, prison protocol, in fact.

And then, of course, the missing minutes in the surveillance footage, which gets more and more murky as it went on. Just before we started this recording, those missing minutes apparently grew. Some excellent reporting by Wired magazine had found initially that the metadata suggested that what we were told was the full video, was not in fact the full raw video, and that it was at least a minute missing. There are now at least three and a half missing minutes. Indeed, and it was spliced together from other.

It wasn't a single discrete piece of video. It was spatched together. And no, I mean, it's three minutes is long enough. I mean, how long did it take the Navy SEALs to get into a bin Laden house and, you know, kill everybody there? I mean, it's a mysterious question. And I don't think has been fully, properly investigated. I mean, I never understood why Bill Barr, like the day after kind of was certainly very close to. the day after it flew immediately down there and spent a long time in the prison.

I mean, why? There's too many unanswered questions. And of course, now the biggest question is why having hyped this whole question of Epstein all these years, I mean, Don Epstein, Don Trump Jr. tweeted, I think, in 2003, in time to release the files, you know, so they were all on it. I will say for Trump that when he was asked by Fox, if he would pardon him, the full tape, if you look at it, as opposed to the soundbib, is more equivocal than what we've been told. Because we only ever see the thing where he says, yes, I would release the files.

He then followed it up with quite a lot of demurring of if it seems as if there is credible. So it was a little more, much less emphatic than when he was asked about the JFK files. I thought you offered a brilliant description of this scandal and misconduct. that it's like JFK and Marlon Monroe. It seems that every time we pull back another layer, we just find more mystery. One of the most remarkable things is we're sitting discussing this in 2025. The events that we are talking about began at the very latest in the 1990s. Jeffrey Epstein was abusing children.

He was first investigated by the police in 2004. He signed a non-prosecution agreement 2007. He was convicted by plea agreement for only one count in 2008. And this should all be ancient history. But instead, we have a live unfolding scandal in front of her eyes that appears to, well, certainly engulfs the president and may threaten his connection to his base. It is. I mean, you know, well, I think one thing, you know, before when you talked about the names, right, One of the things that makes the Epstein story sort of so complex is that his swirl and network of connections were often involved with him for sort of different reasons in a strange way.

I mean, there were the people, because I mean, he was a crook, Jeffrey Epstein. You know, he was either laundering money for people or hiding money for people. He was very, very good at hiding people's money, and he knew how to do that. And there are a lot of people, I think, whose money he hid. And, of course, once he'd done that, they were in his thrall. So there were the people that were, you know, it were going to him because they knew they knew he could hide money. There were the people who were, you know, he was laundering money. There were the people who, you know, were sort of interested in his whole social stuff, you know, in a kind of slightly comfy society, where's the action kind of way.

And then there were, you know, the outright, you know, hardcore pedophile, you know, people who realized that Jeffrey Epstein could provide them with underage girls, which he did. So there's a lot of different layers of the people around Epstein. So that when there are some who say, look, I had nothing to do with this stuff, it's true, you know, because he had a big network. I mean, when I mentioned, you know, that dinner party, I mean, they weren't all there for underage girls. I mean, George Stofertobber certainly wasn't, you know. I mean, there were people who used to fraternize with Epstein who had nothing to do with those things. So it makes it sort of doubly hard to penetrate. And, of course, for the untutored in kind of what social names mean, you know,

you know, for the MAGA base, it's like all these names are fancy people who were pedophiles. So that is the perfect moment to ask Donald Trump, a man who absolutely was somewhere in Jeffrey Hepstein's web. Where do you place him in that web? Well, it was 15 years, wasn't it, that he was hanging out with Epstein. I think that, I think if you look at the video that you know, that very good piece of video from, I think it was CNBC, which shows them at a party to get their talking. and actually I think it's worth getting a lick reader to just see if you can find out exactly what they were saying to each other. But to me, the conversation was straight grabber by the pussy.

It was a grabber by the pussy conversation. It was a quote. They're talking together, heads together, and you know that Trump is saying, you know, he's talking. And you can see that they're looking at women on the dance floor and saying, well, she's hot. And, you know, wouldn't you like to do X with her? And, like, you know, so there was clearly a bond of, you know, loosh. a girl hunting kind of behavior. So, yeah, I think he was very much involved with that sort of source scene with Epstein.

I don't happen to think that little girls are the presidents. You know, I really don't. I think that he's a guy who likes, you know, we know what he likes. He likes, you know, very sort of playboy money types and, you know, models. And, you know, he's never shown a predilection for that. So I think that that's why it's complex. I think that he was hanging out with Epstein because there was a lot of a lot of stuff going on, girls, rich people. I mean, all this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this is, you know, loves, frankly.

He loves that, he loves that kind of scene. And it doesn't do him any good, the fact that he used to hang out with him as, as president, uh, before he was president. I mean, I mean, he obviously doesn't want to talk about that. Uh, it's strange to me, actually, though, that he's become so agitated about these files. Now, I mean, why is he so agitated? Is it simply that. simply that they lied for so long about what was there, you know, or his circle did that he doesn't want to be revealed as there's really nothing here genuinely. Or, you know, are there people in those files? I mean, is he in the files a lot and it just simply doesn't want to be there?

Are there people with whom he's entangled now, who he feels he owes something to? I mean, I did actually think of another possibility, which was like, is it more useful for Trump to know the names than other people don't? I mean, Trump is the king of leverage, right? Compromat. Compromat. It's great compromise, frankly. So that could be one thing, you know, that is there to be explored. I do think, though, that he has not understood how this is such a kind of core article of fate for MAGO. For some reason that it's worth a psychologist telling us is like they're obsessed with pedophilia, his base.

I mean, it's the whole Q-Anon thing, it was all pedophilia. There was the whole thing about how he was. Hillary Clinton was supposed to be running a pedophile ring in a pizza store. I mean, what it is about pedophilia and these people, I don't know, but they are obsessed. And I don't think it is going to get dropped. And I think that what is interesting is that the explosive tweet that he sent out on Tuesday about, this is like, it's, you know, I'm sick of this, basically, you know, it's like, and I don't care what my supporters think about, you know, like, if they don't want to be my supporters,

I don't care. I thought it was a very ill-advised tweet on his part because essentially it was like, he's forgetting who owns him, right? And he's mad as hell now because they're supposed to be owned by him. I mean, as we know, famously he said, I can walk down Fifth Avenue and shoot somebody and my base would still love me. He finds this insurrection deeply aggravating because they're supposed to just get in line and worship him. And they're not, you know, and they on their part have begun to suspect, I mean, as Candace Owen said, I mean, with a sort of... We are finding ourselves agreeing with...

Yeah, Candice Owen. Candice Owen suddenly says in her thing about, it's almost as if Trump thinks his base is stupid. And I'm thinking, you think, you think? I mean, he's always thought you they were stupid. That's the whole point. That's been his superpower. He has known this, you know, he knows in his heart.

You think he wants to hang out with a lot of those people? No, he doesn't, you know. So just in the last, I think this is, I think I've collated 48 hours. That explosive tweet, he's then followed that up. He talked about how people had bought into bullshit, that they are bad people, that they are weaklings, that they are stupid people. And he sought to blame the Democrats who very clearly are nowhere near. Which, even MAGA are like, you know, they're not buying that. Yes.

Because, to be quite honest, I mean, half the people on those planes were Democrats. I mean, I don't think any Democratic president wanted to release, you know, get any more names like Governor Bill Richardson and the whole thing that Clinton was constantly being. tarred with and resident. None of them wanted to go there at all. So this is a nonsense. And it's like suddenly it must have sort of hit him in the shower or something. I can blame this on Democrats. He's too late. I mean this has not been for him

a dexterous sort of, you know, use of lying, which is usually very effective in his side, but it's not working this time. What do you think you've observed so many scandals, sagas over the years and reported on them so rigorously,

What is it about this that sets it apart? And what is it that makes it so difficult for Trump to shake? Well, I mean, I think it's the names, obviously. It completely dovetails with the theory of his base that there is this elite global power class who have always sneered and had contempt for them. And Trump is supposed to be the, person who understands them and their value. You know, he was the one who saw them, as it were.

And indeed, if you, Alexander O'Polozzi's wonderful documentary about the January of Sixers has got some great interviews with people who come at, the January 6thes who came out of prison, you know, long before they were pardoned, who, you know, who she asked, like, how do you feel about Trump? Now, we love him. I mean, the fact, we don't care. We know, he's our guy. He knows who we are. He speaks directly to us. They kept saying, you know, he speaks. to us. So suddenly, it's like Trump's not speaking to them anymore. He's behaving as if they're fools. In fact, he said so. He said, you're weakly. So he's really misjudged this because he's basically telling them, he's treating them like the global elite that they hate so much,

have always treated them. This is not good. This is not their guy. This is not the president they thought he was going to be. And it's almost as if Trump has forgotten who owns him, essentially, and is turning into a president who does things that they hate. Like, you know, he's supposed to be a get, he's done great for them on immigration. You know, they always, they love what he's done on that. But I mean, he's supposed to hate foreign wars. And what's he doing, sending, you know, arms to Ukraine now and dropping bombs on Iran. And, you know, this is not what he's supposed to be doing. So they're beginning to think what's happened to our guy. Is he our guy? And if they start to think he isn't, that's a very dangerous moment, I think.

for Trump, because it could be a huge sort of pivot in his power, because this has always been his power, that they believe that they have this intimate bond of sensibility and value to him. And if they think he's just, you know, kicking them to the curb and calling them weaklings and just get on the train because I'm telling you, I don't think that's going to play well. Do you sense this man you sat beside that was gregarious and hilarious, do you sense he has the survival skills that he can come through this? Or is this as, as you put it, a moment that Maga splits asunder? Well, I think ironically, and who would have thought it?

Because how many times in the last decade have we all said, we'll never get away with this? I mean, all the way. This is the moment. This is it. It's the moment. I mean, from the moment he said, you know, John McCain was like a loser. You know, it's like every time you thought, well, that's the end of his career.

Never was. And to his supporters, that's Trump derangement sentence. It's hard people. So it's never, he survived. I mean, look at all the lawsuits he survived. I mean, he was supposed to be crushed by all of these, you know, lawsuits during the last four or five years. He won every one of them or he got away with one of them.

And the ones he didn't win, it hasn't mattered. So he has been this Teflon creature. And, you know, he's shot and he isn't, you know. I mean, it's like he's been absolutely untouchable. And who would have thought that it's this, you know, tawdry old scandal that might be the tipping point? I don't think any one of us would have said, if you were asked any of us, what is the thing that will finally be, you know, a bridge too far for the Maga Bays to turn on him?

Well, none of us would have said that Jeffrey Epstein is scandal. If you were to go back to 2010, that moment that you commissioned, I'll just repeat my point there, was a scandal foretold. Almost all the details of what we know about Epstein are in these extradant, this extraordinary series, what would have made it more resonant? What would have made people understand it? Or is it something that? I think it was at the moment, it was too early.

You know, sometimes when you're first, you're too early. People were not interested enough in him at that point. You know, I mean, there are plenty of stories about, you know, sleazy socialites or whatever that you read, but, you know, you don't know them, you know. I think perhaps obviously if I, you know, if it's, If it had happened when I was the editor of Vanity Fair, I could have probably made a bigger noise with it. You know, don't forget the Daily Beast was a young, you know, a sort of, you know, renegade site that had not, you know, been on the scene that long. So, you know, had it been published in the New York Times, perhaps it would have had.

But I sort of somehow think it wouldn't because people weren't that interested in Jeffrey Epstein. I think what people were really interested in, and the sort of story moved to that, which was like what was Bill Clinton doing on that plane, you know. So then that became that story. What do you... One of the things that you wrote about on your latest fresh hell on Tuesday night is about Dan Bongino. Yes. Who is an extraordinary avatar for what is happening inside MAGA. He's a deputy director of the FBI, a position that in normal times would be held by somebody with extraordinary law enforcement experience.

he is, admittedly, a former police officer and secret service agent, but he's really known for being a podcaster. And for expressing robust right-wing views would be one way to put it, and somebody who had absolutely fuelled the Epstein fire. But he is now, and I just want to highlight the way you express it, a tattooed snowflake. He was absent, missing without leave, absent without leave, from FBI headquarters for days.

Yeah, absolutely pathetic, wasn't it? I mean, I think that he hates the job. I mean, he really has made no secret of that because it's so much easier and, PS, much more lucrative, to be sitting in your basement bloviating and grabbing rumors out of the air and putting them out there and getting adulation for it and, you know, big bucks,

then it is to be sitting, as he put it in a white office at 7.30 in the morning, like, hello, that's what most people do. Yes. you know, and sort of working. I mean, he said, oh, I don't deal, I don't deal in rumors anymore. You know, I deal in, you know, we have to deal in evidence. Yeah, I guess what happens when you deal in evidence? I mean, this rumor mongering goes out of the window.

So he's in a very difficult position because all of his life has been about undermining the FBI. And it's been about, you know, propaganding absolute rubbish on the airways. and now he's in the most kind of forensically fact, you know, driven organisation in the country, essentially, which has to be about backing up what you say. So he's in a very difficult situation. And I think it's quite obviously he's so much rather back in his basement, bloviating and getting big checks.

Is he, obviously, we don't know if he's going to stay or go. And I should say we are taping this a few, enough hours before it's going to go out on air that anything could happen. I think he's toast already. I mean, you know, one thing one learns about Trump is you have to listen very carefully to his endorsements, like his fulsome endorsements, and his fulsome endorsements of Michael Wals, you know, who was part of Signal Cade. And the next thing is, you know, wait a bit and then suddenly, bam, he's out of there.

I think what done is is, is toast because, you know, Trump says he was asked like, well, is he still imposed, you know, is he still? And he goes like, yeah, I think he's doing well. I think that, yeah, I think he, you know, I actually loved his show. I used to go on his show a lot. You know, I mean, that's not an endorsement at all. It has a kind of sinister vagueness to it. And I think he's already decided that he's going to go. And I don't think that Dan Bondino will care much.

I think that he will go back to his basement. Who else are you, who are you looking at next as avatars for this scandal? because we've had this parade of extraordinary names. Well, I think the banking piece of it still hasn't really been looked at as closely as it might. I mean, obviously, Jess Staley is the guy who knows more than anyone, essentially. He was the banker at J.P. Morgan who then moved to Barclay's bank. But he managed, you know, he was the kind of the guy who managed the Epstein account, you know. And he also, his emails are very incriminating.

I mean, he clearly had more than a money managing relationship with Epstein and his will. So there's a lot, I think, that he hasn't come up with. And I think he's not a dead story in that there might come a point when he starts to sort of talk and talk and talk to get some change in his predicament, whatever it might be. So I think the banking part of it is very, very interesting. I mean, I think we have to have a sort of really sort of an autopsy on the way that Epstein died again. I mean, what is the reason for these tapes being spliced together? I mean, somebody knows who did that. And so let's go back in terms of reporting and find out who's the guy who spliced the tapes

and who was he reporting to and what was he asked to do? Because that's a very mysterious circumstance. I think one of the things that you were absolutely right to put at the very heart of that reporting back in 2010, and I hope that we continue to do it, the beast, is the victims. Yeah. There are, according to the Department of Justice's allegedly final memo, as many as a thousand young girls were victimized. Yes. And of those we know, as you were just highlighting, that at least three of them are dead. by suicide and drop all the causes.

It's a toll of tragedy. It's a total tragedy. I mean, this is one of the things that absolutely appalled Conchito when she went through those first police files that, you know, that two of the girls, you know, were 14 years old who were shipped in from the Balkans, you know. I mean, this is really heinous. And I think that the Dufrey story remains, Virginia Dufri does remain a very interesting story because she was at the heart of this case.

You know, she's the one who brought down Prince Andrew. she was there for years with them. She's the one who really sort of helped a finger Jelaine as an accomplice. So her story, like, she suddenly commits suicide in Australia. I mean, I know she'd been having a rough time. You know, marriage had gone very bad, and her husband, she alleged, you know,

was abusive towards her. But there's too many questions, again, about that. And what Virginia knew, I noticed that the sort of the day after her, you saw people, two people carrying boxes out of her apartment and I thought to myself, well, I wonder what those, I mean, two specific boxes and you think who, who made the decision to go in there right away and take these two boxes out. There's more there than we know. And I think that story has got more legs in it. And for Donald Trump, what's your prediction? He's going to have to come up with a better version than he is at the moment, you know. I mean, he has got to be made to understand this is not. something he can blow off. So what does he do? I mean, is he going to, we don't know what's in those files. If there's nothing in the files, as he says, then why not release them? There is something in those

files he does not want to see out there. And how he gets around that, I don't know. I think it's a really knotty issue for him. And I don't think it's going to go away. I think he will try to do things that will distract everybody. I mean, I think he can drop a bomb on Moscow or he'll do anything you can to try to change the subject. But I don't think this particular story can be expunged like he usually does. Well, Tina, thank you for coming and talking to us. Thank you for being part of it,

for setting up the Daily Beast. I'm just going to say again, the six-part series is an extraordinary work of journalism and it stands not just a test of time, it shows the direction of travel. Tina, thank you for commissioning it. Thank you for an extraordinary, set of insights also into Donald Trump, a man who I do not think is going to be inviting

you to dinner in the near future either. I'm afraid I've burned a lot of bridges in fresh hell, but I will say that the beast is alive and I'm so, so thrilled at the current regime. I think it's finally got its kind of gusto back. It's always been a wonderful sight, actually, even in periods which has been less, you know, less good than others. But right now it's on fire. So congratulations to be tuned. And thank you so much for giving us the vision and the DNA. And we so much appreciate it and cannot wait to welcome you back when I think my much more distinguished co-host Joanna Coles will be asking the questions. Well, Joanna and I go way back. So that'll be fun. Thank you, Tina. Bye. Michael, very good to see you. You posted an intriguing

Instagram today. We're recording this on Tuesday morning about the Epstein files. And you mentioned that Cash Patel and Don Bongino, the number one and the number two at the FBI, respectively, have been hoist by their own part of the conspiracy theorists demanding the release of the Epstein files and the Epstein client list. And now, of course, Pam Bondi at the Department of Justice, has said there's nothing to see here. There is no client list. He definitely killed himself. It wasn't murder. and now the people that were very much at the forefront of the conspiracy have had to accept that it is indeed so.

So what are your thoughts about all this? I really want to unpack Jeffrey Epstein with you. I know you spent a lot of time with him and I really want to understand it. And also, so interesting to me that the DOJ literally released or Axios got the story, the initial story about the DOJ saying this, exactly six years from when Epstein was arrested at Teeterborough Airport. It was July the 6th, 2019, and I was just checking today when he was arrested, and it was exactly six years after that they released the statement. Just to fill in some details, he left his apartment in Paris and got into his Mayback.

to go to the airport. Nice detail, most expensive Mercedes, I think. And called me to a... And called you. Whoa, okay. Okay, now I'm really paying attention. Right. To arrange breakfast the next morning.

So this was a Saturday to arrange breakfast on Sunday. We never had that breakfast, of course. He arrived at the airport and then was immediately, arrested. So how did you find out that he wasn't able to meet you for breakfast? You know, I can't quite remember who called and how I may have heard it from the news. It was immediately enormous. But somebody in the circle of people who knew Epstein. And in fact, it may have been Steve Bannon who called me.

Steve Bannon, who was a friend of Jeffrey Epstein's too. Yeah. Bannon and Epstein were very close. I knew them both. And Bannon was very concerned about this. Well, can you remind people what the first thing Steve Bannon said to Jeffrey Epstein was when they met? I was there and it was that moment. And Bannon said to Epstein and he said this in a,

in a good humor. He said during the campaign, that would be the 2016 campaign, you, meaning Jeffrey Epstein, were the only person I was afraid of. Meaning that he had stories about Donald Trump that should they surface. Yes, Bannon felt that the one person who had the goods on Donald Trump was Jeffrey Epstein. So we had Anthony Scaramucci on the podcast. on Tuesday morning. He said this doesn't smell right. Something definitely odd about this. Elon definitely thinks there's something between Trump and Epstein. You should ask Michael Wolfe. So we're asking you.

Tell us about the relationship between Jeffrey Epstein and Donald Trump. But how significant is this statement from the DOJ that there is no client list? Are they passing words? Well, I think, I mean, Pam Bondi, let's understand. understand the context in which she functions. She functions. She takes instructions. So the idea of an independent attorney general no longer exists. And my understanding is that when the White House team, the inner Trump circle had had the initial discussion with her about taking this job, And remember, the first choice was Matt Gates. And then he was pushed out for all kinds of. Well, he was pushed out for his own shenanigans with underage girls and drugs.

Yes, interlocking scandals. And so she was the second choice and she was rather forthrightly told, your job, we're not doing this anymore like they used to do it. independent attorney general, always at or often at loggerheads with the White House. Your job is to carry water for the president of the United States. You work for him. So when you say she takes instruction, she takes instruction from the president. Yeah, or the president's people.

She, from the White House. So the attorney general of the United States works as essentially an adjunct to the to the West Wing, to people in the West. swing. They are her superiors. And I think it was, you know, she completely, she accepted this. This is she was going to be Donald Trump's lawyer, not the nation's highest ranking law enforcement officer, but Donald Trump's lawyer. Okay. So she's not like Jeff Sessions who got appointed as first Attorney General, during Trump one and promptly recused himself from pretty much everything that was going on and turned out to be a great disappointment to Trump. Right. She's not like in any, even the others, even Bill Barr, who was certainly carried his share of water, was still there trying to, trying to at least maintain the pretense of some independence successfully or not. But she doesn't. She doesn't maintain. There virtually is no pretense.

And Bill Barr, who has a strange connection to the Epstein story because his father was the headmaster of Dalton who actually hired Jeffrey Epstein. This is the stuff of which conspiracies are made. Well, that's true. Just handed, just delivered. Right. I mean, you can't make it up. And he wrote a book about sex in space. Very odd for a headmaster to do.

He did it after he left Dalton. Well, he was, let us say, a very hard headmaster. And Jeffrey Epstein, without a college degree, was a very odd teacher in an expensive private school, in any school. True, true. And he didn't last very long, although he obviously liked underage pupils. Whatever, let's not go down there. But let us talk about how significant is it that Pam Bondi said there's no quiet list, there's nothing to see here. He wasn't murdered. We're putting this to bed. Well, I think there is this, there was, there has been this peculiar tension of the, of the right wing of a lot of the MAGA base propounding this conspiracy theory about Jeffrey Epstein. And in their mind, you know, this was a bunch of Democrats. Remember, Bill Clinton was very close to, for a period was very close to Jeffrey Epstein.

And he took him on Jeffery-Somers. There was a whole range of Democrats and pay no attention to that there was a whole range of Republicans too. They were very focused on this. And not focused. And I really don't know what could be on there going through their head. on the fact that Jeffrey Epstein's closest relationship in life was with Donald Trump, that these were two guys joined at the hip for a good 15 years. They did everything together.

And this is from sharing, well, pursuing women, hunting women. sharing at least one girlfriend for at least a year in this kind of, you know, rich guy relationship with each other's planes to Epstein advising, advising Trump on his taxes, had a cheat on his taxes. They were, I dare say they kind of loved each other. These were, these were, these were, you know, brothers in arms for a long time. And why did they stop being friends? 2004 over a real estate deal and always fundamental.

The reason rich guys fall out with each other is nearly invariably about real estate. And in this case, Epstein had bid on a house in Palm Beach. He had bid $36 million. He thought he had had, he thought the deal was his. He brought his friend Trump over to look at the house and advise him on how to move the swimming pool. Isn't that the first thing you do whenever you look at a piece of real estate? Trump immediately went around his back and bid $40 million. And then there was much squabbling after that.

But the relationship immediately broke down. So is the assumption that the reason the DOJ is not releasing any more information on Jeffrey Epstein is because it's somehow trying to protect Donald Trump? Well, yeah. I mean, I think throughout the Trump years, both the first administration and now this second administration and in between, it has always been an incredibly sensitive topic. So, again, that weird juxtaposition of the MAGA guys going Jeffrey Epstein, Jeffrey Epstein, and Trump, you know, basically kind of cowering. And there was a moment which I reported on at the end of the last administration when he became very wary about the arrest of Galane Maxwell and asked whether or not what could she say, what would she say? And should he pardon her? Well, he certainly said, oh, she's a very nice woman.

I wish her well. as she was, you know, shortly after she was arrested for, you know, an accused of grooming young women. Yes, but behind and behind the scenes, and this is, as I say, I reported this, this was a discussion. I mean, he was, I mean, everybody, everybody around him was kind of like, oh, God, do we want to, you know, we hope, we hope she won't say anything, but we really hope he doesn't pardon her. So, do you think the conspiracy theorists stop now? No, this is as I said in the post I did this morning, this is Kennedy assassination level stuff. It just feeds on itself.

And it feeds on itself for a lot of reasons, not to mention Donald Trump at the center of this, but also because overwhelmingly the people who have spoken about this with great authority, who have reported on this, who have made themselves experts on this, don't know anything. They certainly never met Jeffrey Epstein. They were not, they were not part of, of his circle, of his life. And conversely, all of the people who do know something, who were in this inner circle, have scrupulously said nothing, first because, not least of all, because they might then be implicated in knowing Jeffrey Epstein. So who are you talking about? you know, from Bill Clinton to Larry Summers to, you know, a long, a long list. And there have been a long list of people who have known Jeffrey Epstein. And in fact, you can go so far as to say anybody who was anybody knew Jeffrey Epstein at certainly at a moment in time. And of course, now no one wants to have known Jeffrey Epstein. There's a one point in that, and,

after he was arrested, I think that the New York Times said, how did they put it? It was kind of like shocking. They said anyone who has shaken hands with Jeffrey Epstein in the last 20 years is worthy of suspicion. So you spent time with Jeffrey Epstein. Why did you start spending time with him? In 2014, he asked me, and I had had some contact with him before this, but in 2014, he asked if I would be interested in writing a book about him. And I said, probably not. But Jeffrey is charming.

Jeffrey is accessible. Jeffrey is, it's kind of like, what's not to like? Well, what's not to like was the fact that at that stage he'd already been in jail for soliciting underage prostitution. Yes, no, no, of course. But I'm there as a journalist, and that was part of the story. And I considered it. So I said, and part of his then offer was, was you can come in. to my house at any time, you can be part of this kind of ongoing discussion or salon or

whatever you might want to call it, that he had virtually every day and filled with people you might want to meet. From Bill Gates to Peter Thiel to, as I say, Larry Summers, to Ehud Baroque, to Steve Bannon, to Joe E. from MIT, Jess Staley, who is the CEO of Berkeley's, Prince Andrew, Leon Black, the founder of Apollo. Noam Chomsky. Yeah, that one was very confusing to me, Noam Chomsky. The Dalai Lama. I mean, the Dalai Lama at Jeffrey Epstein.

The list goes on. I mean, the list is extraordinary. Did you actually meet the Dalai Lama at Jeffrey Epstein's? Yeah, indeed. Whoa. I don't think I knew that. I mean, I don't know why I'm laughing. It's just so surprising.

Everything is surprising. I mean, that's what, so, so he, one of the answers to why, why I would go or why, or why anyone would go, it was always extraordinary. You know, there was the one time I came, I came in and you go, you go through these immense castle doors and they open. kind of like in a horror film. And this is his house on the Upper East Side, which is rumored to be the largest private house in Manhattan. Yes, and it's sort of open, like, you know, in those films like, you know, Igor opening the door to the castle.

And you came in and then there was a large, a large, kind of formal reception area. And then the house went up several stairs into the main, into the main part of the house. And so I came in and he was standing at the top of the stairs. Wait a minute, he was, the Dalai Lama or Jeffrey Epstein? Jeffrey was standing there with another guy who looked very familiar. I mean, naggingly familiar.

You know, had I gone to high school with him? Who? Did you know, was he an actor? No, it's, it's, he wasn't probably an actor. because he was pretty ugly. Character actor. Yes. But then Jeffrey said, oh, Bill, you know Michael.

And even then it was kind of a second. But then I got, oh, okay, yes, Bill Gates. So it was always that kind of experience. So you went back. You went once. You went twice. you kept going back. So he enticed you with the bait of interesting people. And was he filming these people having sex and then blackmailing them? I mean, that's what we're led to believe. You know, I never, so I never, I certainly never saw any evidence of that. And I would say, on the other hand, the contrary point of that is that everybody showed up there certainly willingly and because they adored this guy. I mean, he was, I mean, this was a collection of people who arrived at Jeffries and didn't want to leave and then would stay there for meal after meal and while away the day.

And they, you know, they were they were not there because they were being blackmailed. They were there very clearly because they wanted to be there out of pure choice. So I understand. what was the role of all these young women that were around Jeffrey Epstein at events like this where he was having his rolling salons which sound a little bit like sort of intellectual freak-offs perhaps without the baby oil well yeah although although it's not it's not that different except for the the quality of the people there who are I mean just imagine any any office around any conference room where a discussion, especially in Washington, because much of the

discussion was always about public policy, about what was going on around the world, this was all a kind of flow of information. And it was incredibly valuable. It could be incredibly valuable information. And what was the Dalai Lama talking about? Well, there was always a steady stream of people coming to try to get money from Epstein. And where did his money come from? That's a, I mean, that's clearly a mystery that remains a mystery, probably a central mystery. So when people talk about the blackmail and the clients, you know, I think that's a way to avoid the fact that that the real. mystery is a much more complicated one. Where did this money come from? And, you know, I don't, I don't know. And I don't know anyone who knows Jeffrey, who actually knows. I have a few things. And I've once asked Epstein directly about this. And he said, he said, I run a reverse Ponzi scheme. In an actual Ponzi scheme,

you make it seem like money that does not exist is there that it exists. I make money that does exist seem like it doesn't exist. So sort of tax loopholes and strange Cayman Island type shenanigans. Yeah, well, the example he gave is if a very wealthy man gets a divorce and can hide $100 million, then he gets to save $50 million. Right. And then Jeffrey gets half of that. And did you ever think of writing the book?

Yes, I've often thought about writing the book. I mean, I didn't, when he was alive, I was always skeptical of doing this book just because I felt he would be a pain in the ass if you went forward with it. And then, by the way, in this conversation with Epstein, as soon as Trump started to run, and he became this key source for me about Trump. And obviously, I had begun writing about Trump as of 2016. But afterwards, after he died, I did consider this. And then I think it has become extremely difficult to talk about Epstein.

in a way that is not entirely focused on his victims, so-called victims. I mean, that became the convention, the media convention. And I think most media, certainly established media outlets, have been very, very, very reluctant to deal with this story. I don't want to deal with this story. It's too, you know, it has a life as too short aspect to it. Everybody feels they're going to get in trouble, say the wrong thing, go in the wrong direction on this story. Well, I can hear listeners and viewers of this podcast saying, oh, my goodness, she let him go unchallenged when you said so-called victims. What do you mean so-called victims?

Because we've heard the women's story from the tragic Virginia Jewfrey, who also took her own life last month, and who appeared to have a terrible life. And we know that a lot of the women that he ended up soliciting massages from and happy endings from came from sad backgrounds where this was an opportunity for them to crawl their way out. There was a sort of pyramid scheme of the girls at the local high school near Mara Lago passing him on. Well, we've had, yeah, and I don't I don't disagree with this. I mean, it's just that the, I mean, all we have is is a set of depositions this comes from. This is all obviously, obviously there are many, each of these things creates many more questions. On top of that, everybody is is fueled by a financial reward here. I mean, this is, we're talking hundreds of millions of dollars that have this, this,

I mean, Epstein basically ended up supporting the South Florida Bar. Clearly, he was doing, you know, Jeffrey Epstein had had a part of his life, you know, a fairly discreet or secret part of his life was a life devoted to, to a serious fetishism, abuse. you know, a kind of outside of the context of what many people who were around him knew was going on. And why do you think that Gellon Maxwell hasn't talked or hasn't talked more about this and has accepted a 20-year prison sentence? I assume because you know that much. you know, why else would you, why else would you, would you not take a get out of jail ticket? When did you last talk to him? So you were due to meet him for lunch the day after, or breakfast, the day after he was arrested.

When did you last speak to him? I believe that I was, I got the last message from him before he died. And what was that message? And this came this came through one of his lawyers. And on a Friday evening, he died on Saturday morning. August the 10th. And his message to me, hours before this happened, was, and it was just in response to me asking, you know, how he was. And he said, still hanging around.

He literally said still hanging around. And was that, do you think that was a code? message? No, I don't, I don't know. I mean, it was, it was in character. Everything that he said was, was, was cast in, in amusing, unsurious, ironic. I'm not sure I ever quite heard him say a, you know, utter an entirely serious sentence. So you mean it was sort of had.

with irony? Yes, or it was just Blythe. So what does that mean? I don't know. So that means he could not, as described, he could not have killed himself. As the circumstances presented, he could not have been murdered. So how do you think he died? I have no idea. I mean. Well, and we're clearly not going to find out anything more from the Department of Justice. Clearly not. But, and again, remember, and I think it's, I think it is vital to understand this story that there is at the center of this a relationship between two men who are doing the same, just involved in the same thing, who are living their, living their similar lives.

They have the same interests, girls, money, not working, you know, living this cyberetic life. And one ends up dead in the darkest prison in America and one ends up in the White House. When Elon Musk and Donald Trump had their big blow up, Elon Musk tweeted about Epstein and then later, deleted the tweet saying he'd gone too far. Why do you think he deleted that tweet? I think probably it was trying to recover some semblance of a civil relationship. You know, I think he probably realized he had a lot at risk here. And I think he realized he had touched the, you know,

the Epstein is for Donald Trump a third rail. It's fascinating, absolutely fascinating. Well, thank you very much for coming on and talking about it. I would refer people to the chapter in your book, Too Famous, which has an amazing transcript of the conversation that you witnessed there with Steve Bannon and Jeffrey Epstein and Erhard Barak, who arrives in the middle of it and asks for a boiled egg with caviar, or possibly an omelette with caviar. He doesn't want the omelet. He wants the caviar. He just wants the caveat. But there's some egg in there as well. And I remember thinking, well, this is clearly a very heady environment. And there appeared to be no girls at that.

I think it was taking place in the morning. Yeah, no, I don't. I mean, the girls at Epstein's house, and I have haven't, I never went to Epstein's island or, or, or the house in Palm Beach. I mean, I've been to the house in Paris and the house in New York. And there were the girls were, I mean, I never had any sense that these girls were younger than they should be, although they weren't old. You know, they were 20, say. And they sort of functioned as assistance partly.

kind of, you know, room decorations. They sort of fluttered around the edges. I mean, they certainly weren't in any way central to anything that was going on. And were the guests solely men or were the women of substance there too? There were a couple of women of substance. Who were they? Women of enormous substance. Can you give us a clue?

I can't. I mean, I could. But you're saving it. Are you saving it for the book? You know, I do feel that, I mean, of the many, there are many people associated with Epstein, and it has become difficult for everybody. So I sort of feel, especially with the women involved, that they don't, I mean, if no one knows who they are, it's kind of, why not leave it like that.

Well, because presumably somebody knows who they are. Are you saving this for your book? No, I'm just, I mean, in one instance, you know, I had made a promise. about this. When you're threading this needle, and I'm in this awkward position of being both a journalist in this environment,

and then someone who, who was shared a lot of confidences, just because that seems to be the, I mean, this happens to me in many situations because I, I kind of fade into the, woodwork. I'm there taking notes. We're having a recorder on and people forget about this. So they don't know if I'm their friend or I'm there or I'm the, I'm the reporter in the midst.

Well, I can't believe that anybody wouldn't understand you were the reporter in the midst. You know, you'd be surprised. I mean, there's a whole, you know, seven months in the Trump White House. Yeah, for the fire and fury. They didn't seem to register, quite register that. Fascinating. Well, Michael has ever very interesting talking to you and come back and talk to us soon. Anytime. And just reminding people that they can follow your daily updates on Instagram on Michael Wolf, NYC.

Let's speak soon. What connects all these stories, models and journalists alike, is the same stark fact. Power attracts predators. Secrecy shields them and reckoning is often long overdue. It's clear Epstein's world was built on secrecy, influence and manipulation, touching the highest levels of wealth and power. From the gilded towers of Manhattan to the chaos of Trump world, we've seen how influence and wealth can mask some of the darkest realities. These episodes remind us that the consequence of those actions ripple far. beyond the boardrooms, the ballrooms and the private planes, and that history, when examined closely, always leaves a trail.

The full picture is still coming into focus, and we'll be here to follow it wherever it leads. We love you, and I notice a lot of you are beginning to comment too. So thank you to Heidi Riley, Karen White, Connie Rutherford, Sharon Shipley, Bocock, D.C., who Michael sometimes calls Bobcock, but it's Bocococ, D.C. Andrea Hodel, Val Love Francisco Bonzo, Las Condi, Andrew Meller, Herbie, Fulvia, Orlando, M. Griner, Daniel Doglover, Dawn McCarthy, Harry Clark, Capinator, Andrew Beaver travels with Carl, me thinks, and Sandra Clark. Thank you very much.

Thank you to our production team, Devin Roderino, Anna Vaughn and Jesse Millwood. Want more great listens? Check out our comedy podcast, The Last Laugh, and our star-studded The Daily Beast podcast at the DailyBeast.com slash podcasts. If you enjoyed this episode, consider becoming a Daily Beast subscriber. Subscribing is the best way to feed the beast and support all of your podcasts as we cover what might become the darkest timeline. Head to the DailyBeast.com slash membership slash podcast and sign up today.