The Megyn Kelly Show - Jeffrey Epstein: A Megyn Kelly Show True Crime Special | Ep. 228

Episode Date: December 23, 2021

It's a Jeffrey Epstein episode of The Megyn Kelly Show's True Crime Christmas week. Megyn Kelly is joined by Barry Levine, author of "The Spider," to talk about how Epstein got all is money, Ghislaine Maxwell's crucial role to the rise of Epstein, efforts to bring him to justice, attempts to revive his reputation post-jail, whether Epstein really killed himself, and more.Follow The Megyn Kelly Show on all social platforms: YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/MegynKellyTwitter: http://Twitter.com/MegynKellyShowInstagram: http://Instagram.com/MegynKellyShowFacebook: http://Facebook.com/MegynKellyShow Find out more information at: https://www.devilmaycaremedia.com/megynkellyshow

Welcome to The Megyn Kelly Show, your home for open, honest, and provocative conversations. Hey everyone, I'm Megyn Kelly. Welcome to The Megyn Kelly Show. It is true crime Christmas week here on the show. And today we take a look at one of the most despised yet very well-connected men in American crime history, Jeffrey Epstein. This is a far-reaching crime story that leads from political figures in Washington, D.C. to the bright lights of Hollywood and even the most powerful political leaders from around the world. Indeed, it stretches right into the Royal Palace across the pond. How does a man with no college degree teach at a prestigious private school, make his way onto Wall Street, and eventually accumulate so much wealth, he owned his own island, all while sex trafficking untold numbers of young girls

to the rich and powerful? Joining me now to discuss it all, Barry Levine, author of The Spider, Inside the Criminal Web of Jeffrey Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell. Barry, thank you so much for being here. Thank you, Megan. Thanks for having me on. Okay, let me start with this. After spending this much time with a subject, the author gets to know him. You know, you feel like you almost not are friends with him, but that you really know him. So how would you, in a few sentences, give us the summary of the man when it comes to Jeffrey Epstein? You know, Megan, I actually went to his boyhood home in Coney Island and gained access through the gentleman who now lives there to actually

spend time in Jeffrey Epstein's boyhood bedroom and looked out his window into this bleak, you know, backyard in Coney Island. The apartment had water pipes, just a one bathroom, very modest row house type of apartment. And Jeffrey Epstein, from the very beginning, was determined to do one thing. He told all of his buddies in high school that he was going to be rich. He was going to be rich beyond belief, richer than any of his other classmates, was going to blow Brooklyn behind him and was going to, you know, see the world. And Jeffrey did accomplish that. He, however, he made his money, a lot of it through grifting. He took advantage of clients. He was booted off of Wall Street. He skated on the line of credibility enough that he was able to gain one big client early on and made a lot of money.

But Jeffrey's dark side really festered inside of him him for the last three decades of his life. Jeffrey would engage in sexual abuse with young women. But he went back and forth between these two worlds. And to me, that is the most fascinating thing about Jeffrey Epstein, how he was able to maintain this presence with very smart, intelligent people, very powerful people, people who made money themselves, people who were incredibly intelligent, Harvard-educated scientists and so forth. But Jeffrey was able to live in their world, but at the same time, he also lived in this extremely dark place. And how he was able to compartmentalize these two worlds and go back and forth, I find most interesting. Fascinating. You know, when I look at Jeffrey Epstein, I think, okay, unlike a lot of the other men who have been very accomplished, but had a very dark side that got outed. I don't see a special skill from this guy other than schmoozing.

You know, I think about like Harvey Weinstein, obviously deeply disturbed guy, but incredibly talented Hollywood filmmaker and producer. You can't take that away from him. You look at Bill Cosby, right? Gifted actor, comedian, sage when it comes to social issues, when you hear him talk. But clearly had a very dark side when it comes to women. Even Bernie Madoff, right? He was the head of the SEC before he decided to do a Ponzi scheme during a time of trouble. And had genuinely accomplished a lot, pulled himself from rags to riches. And then, you know, when it went south, he chose badly and it just spiraled out of control. But Jeffrey Epstein, what was his special skill? He wasn't

some amazing investor. As you point out, he had one big client, Lex Wexner, the guy who owned and up until recently even owned the Limited, which owns Victoria's Secret and Bath and Body Works, among other companies. I can't find another accomplishment other than landing that client that he did in his whole career. Jeffrey was a mathematical genius. Jeffrey could have worked for the military. He could have had a very distinguished career if he wanted. But this was a guy who never really wanted to play in someone else's, you know, ballpark. He marched to his own drummer. He, you know, he went back and forth, attempting some respectability and attempting to get some credibility. But he was never a guy who was ever going to sit behind a desk or attend meetings and so forth. Ace Greenberg, who

ran Bear Stearns at the time, whose daughter, in fact, was taught by Jeffrey at the Dalton School, suggested to her father that this Mr. Epstein is a genius and so forth. And that led to Jeffrey's first job on Wall Street, where he didn't last very long because he got in trouble with the SEC and after an investigation, even though he became, at the time, a short period of time, a very brilliant, brilliant options trader, Jeffrey was relatively booted period of time. He wanted to go to Harvard, but he ended up at two schools in New York and never graduated. His Wall Street career was very short-lived. He disdained, in a sense, just the normal way of life. This is a guy who wanted things done his way. And as he became older, and as he became richer, he created this world around him where he was in total control. I'm not just talking about the sex trafficking and the abuse of the young women, but it was everything. It was everything about how his many servants and employees at his various homes in the Virgin Islands or New York or the ranch in New Mexico or Florida, how they had a dress, how they couldn't look him in the eye,

how the temperature in his bedroom had to be set exactly at 58 degrees, how there had to be X amount of towels folded in a proper way outside the massage room. This was a guy who lived and existed in his own world, this very dark world, but to outsiders, wealthy people, former presidents, foreign leaders. He was a character. He was a gruff talking Brooklyn kid. He never lost his Brooklyn accent. There was an attraction, there was a charisma about Jeffrey Epstein that attracted a lot of these wealthy people. And it was just something about his presence that he was a guy who, for the most part, was a failure at any attempts at real business, but created a huge amount of wealth, I believe, through blackmail, through extortion, through stealing. Wes Wexner said he stole more than $40 million from him.

I believe that figure to be, frankly, much more. He was involved for a period of time with arms dealers, Adnan Khashoggi, Sir Douglas Lease. Epstein stole countless, tens of millions of dollars from these guys through being the middleman in arms trading deals. But as I said, it was his presence, his persona that captured these other individuals. And he went about his life collecting these people, almost as if he was, you know, collecting them on a trophy chest, or, you know, Donald Trump, the Bill Clinton, the Harvey Weinstein, the Les Wexner, Prince Andrew, he collected Harvard professors, scientists, anybody he could think of that he could bring into his world. get to a little bit in the book is that I do think that doors were opened for Jeffrey Epstein among very wealthy men in the financial community in New York because he was Jewish, to talk this Brooklyn type of jive that was attractive to these guys. Once he got Lex Wexner, he could drop that name with everyone. So that must have made life much easier.

But how did he land Lex Wexner to begin with? can talk and talk and talk and gained the trust and confidence of this particular individual who then mentioned him to Les Wexner. Les, as I said, whose mom grew up in Brooklyn, had had the base of his operation out near Columbus, Ohio. That's where he had started his company, The Limited, which one of their main assets had been Victoria's Secret and so forth. And he became extremely, extremely wealthy through the ownership of that company. And Les at the time was looking for someone to bring in a financial genius to help him sort out not only really his personal financial assets. And Jeffrey was very good at protecting other people's money. And as I said, he managed to skate on the line of the law

where he was able to move money around to various offshore accounts. Yes, we saw. he was expert at that. But as I looked at it, I just thought if he hadn't gotten Les Wexner, it never nothing else would have happened for him because he wasn't really making it objectively in business. But once you bag a whale like that, you can use him to get anything. And frankly, it didn't even seem like he needed to recruit other clients after that because Les was giving him everything. And Jeffrey, according to reporting I've read from ABC and others, was skimming, was engaged in schemes where Les, he would take like 9 million of Les's money from Les's charitable trust and put it into his own

charitable trust. Suddenly it would be 11 million. And he was doing all sorts of funky things with Les's money. I agree he stole from Les and he stole a lot. But can you just, do you know whether he had something on Les? Because that's, of course, what a lot of people think. Right. Well, I will say, I'll preface that first by saying that there was this inherent trust on Les' part. And again, it had to do with the fact that Les was a part of what's known as the mega group, which is a group of wealthy businessmen across America who support Israel through various causes, charities, defense, and so forth. And Jeffrey, again, was a big backer of Israel, less trusted him. He said that he, you know, he reminded that Jeffrey reminded him of the type of individuals that his mom in Brooklyn used to hang out with.

And he said, Jeffrey and Les being in the Midwest said, you know, he said, Jeffrey Epstein is different from Midwestern Jews. He's got this charisma. He's exciting to be around. Jeffrey played him. Jeffrey played him. And really, as I said, Les was the big fish. And for a long period of time, Jeffrey was feeding off of him. And because he was able to make that association with Les Wexner, it opened up so many other doors. Now, of course, there's been scrutiny all of these years as to what was the real relationship between these two men? Did Jeffrey have anything over Les Wexner? Was he blackmailing him? Did he have something in his back pocket that allowed this almost total financial control on Jeffrey's part to take over Les Wexner. He even wrote Les Wexner's prenuptial agreement when Les, who had been a lifelong bachelor, finally ended up getting married. Actually,

Jeffrey was against the wedding because he wanted to control Les Wexner. I was going to say, he was the wife. A woman came into into Les's world and things changed a little bit. And she and others in Les's business were very suspicious of Jeffrey. said in blanket statements that he was completely unaware of any of the criminal activities that Jeffrey was involved in with young women, that he knew nothing about it, and that there was nothing untoward in terms of, you know, their personal relationship together. Except there is one story that involves a woman named Maria Farmer, who, in fact, she is the sister, the older sister of one of the four victims, the minor victims that the prosecution has put out in the Ghislaine Maxwell trial. Annie Farmer is the only victim among the four who has publicly put her name out there as one of the victims. The others have testified under pseudonyms and under different names. But the Maria Farmer story is interesting because

in the mid-90s, she says that she had been attacked by both Ghislaine and Jeffrey Epstein. And she was actually the artist in residence at Wesley Wexner's estate in Ohio. Jeffrey Epstein had brought her out there. And she said that she was held against her will by Les Wexner's security people, many of these guys, off-duty policemen from this town near Columbus, Ohio. And Maria Farmer says Les Wexner's wife knew the fact that she was, about this incident, that she was kept behind doors for more than 10 hours before her father was able to come out there and pick her up and so forth. Les Wexner and his wife have categorically stated that they knew nothing about this incident. And I personally, after the research that I've done, I find that hard to believe that Les Wexner wouldn't have been informed of this horrible incident that took place on his property, that this woman was held against her will for multiple hours by well maria farmer's got a long story i mean she and her younger sister

annie have important stories to the epstein case and that maria was sort of lured in she spoke with abc at length in a podcast about epstein um uh i can't remember the name of it forgive me i listened to it but it was like truth or fault line whatever i'll get it but she talked about how they lured her in she was an aspiring artist they got to her by saying, oh, we're into art. Yeah, we can help you. That's how they got into a lot of young women's lives. Saying like, oh, I'm a mover. I'm a shaker.

I'm connected. Truth and lies. And Maria became part of their staff and then also one of their victims. And eventually she was shipped off to this house in Ohio that was on Les' property. But it was Epstein's house and that turned into its own thing. Anyway, the story, whenever a young woman comes into Epstein's life, it ends badly. I mean, every single time. And that is where we're going to pick it up after we squeeze in this break. Much more on Jeffrey Epstein and his dark, dark criminal side right

after this break when we rejoin author and journalist Barry Levine. Don't go away. Do you know the year that those two met, Jeffrey Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell? Yes, Megan. They actually came together in New York in 1991. However, we do know that several months before, Ghislaine had actually flown on one of Jeffrey Epstein's planes. So there was a relationship earlier before her father's death in which she was introduced to Jeffrey. One of the questions I have is, how did it start? When did it start? Because I know now we're claiming that Ghislaine Maxwell was almost like a pimp for him. She went out and got

all these girls for him. Before there was Ghislaine, was there another person in that role? And as far back as we can tell, when did this start for him, this obsession, like thrice daily, quote, massages that we now know almost always turned into sexual abuse? And there's still questions over what the actual extent of the relationship was between Ghislaine and Jeffrey. But before Ghislaine came in the picture, Jeffrey had been on and off upwards of 10 years in the 1980s. In Jeffrey's official biography that he put together at the time of the Florida case in 2005, I just love to read a few lines from this. He said that after, and this is written in the third person, after Ava and Jeffrey decided to put their relationship on a platonic basis, Jeffrey entered into another significant relationship with Ghislaine Maxwell, then 29, beginning in 1991. And Jeffrey writes in this biography, Elaine came to New York at a very dark time in her life. Her father had been found dead, floating in the Atlantic Ocean, having gone overboard on his yacht.

Jeffrey writes that Elaine met Jeffrey through mutual friends. She found the friendship immediately rewarding, and as he engaged her in intellectually stimulating conversation, and Jeffrey writes that moreover, he attempted to keep her from becoming despondent. He gave her books to read, scientific studies, novels, challenges to her mind. Jeffrey writes that he took her to comedy clubs on a weekly basis to alleviate her growing depression and so forth. And Jeffrey writes that without his help, she would have fallen into a deep depression. Jeffrey also writes that he gave her a loan to get her a financial foothold in the business world and so forth. And so on.

So Ghislaine, who was 29 years old, came into Jeffrey's life in 1991. There had been an incident that occurred through a civil lawsuit, an incident that of the woman who was running this hotel or house where Jeffrey was staying and that she had been sexually attacked by Jeffrey. However, she did not report it to her mother out of fear and so forth. So we have a, in the timeline, we have this one incident in the mid 80s that had been written about in a civil lawsuit involving what might have been Jeffrey's first sexual attack. He was born in 53, right? He was born in 53? Yes, that's correct. So in the 80s, he was in his 30s. He was in his 30s, yes. Previous to that, I report in my book that there had been a stalking incident over a girl that he was obsessed with in high school.

He had followed them to a movie theater and so forth. Her boyfriend at the time threatened to beat Jeffrey up and so forth. He was fixated on this one girl. But then again, he became a teacher at the Dalton School, where students found it very strange that Jeffrey, and he was 21 years old at the time, would show up at student parties. He was the only time, would show up at student parties. He was the only teacher who would show up at student parties. And he spent a lot of time around the female students. So we moved forward to Ghislaine, and it was three years into their relationship together in 1994, when, based on the timeline that I put together, where they, as a team, attempted to recruit their, call her their first victim. And she, in fact, was a minor victim, number one,

who is testified in, you know, in the trial when they approached her at a music camp in Michigan. That was crazy. Now we've talked about this on the show. So she's testified in the Ghislaine Maxwell trial that she was at summer camp as a 14 year old. I mean, she's a middle schooler. And these two come walking along in Michigan, Ghislaine with her little dog and approach her and start chatting her up and they bond. And lo and behold, they're all from Palm Beach originally and have homes there. And that's where this young girl, Jane, actually lived. And they followed up and that, you know, it was the old I can make you a star. I know everyone in the industry. I could be of great help to you, but you have to learn how to behave. And one thing led to another, according to Jane, and he started molesting her. However, the cross-examination is saying, you know, of, of Ghislaine's lawyers is pointing out you never raised that claim until there was a Jeffrey Epstein defense fund. I mean, you know, fund for potential victims. You,. You didn't make any of these allegations while he was still alive. Your story has changed over time about what Ghislaine may or may not have done. It's just so hard when that much time goes

by to try to hang a criminal case against him. I'm not saying Jane is making any of this up. In fact, there's every reason to believe he did it because he spent a lifetime doing it. Just saying it's almost impossible to prove criminally when it's what, you know, 30 years ago, almost. It's like that's one of the challenges. And that's actually one of my bigger questions for you is even in the Ghislaine Maxwell trial, all four of the victims who have come forward are from years ago, years and years ago. So where did he stop doing it? In the same way, I'm wondering, when did he start? Right.

When did he stop? Because we have not seen or heard from victims, as far as I know, in like the last decade of Jeffrey's life. Yeah. Well, I just want to go back on Jane quickly. And I did devote a lot of time in my book because to me, that incident in 1994 in Michigan, to me, that was the point when Ghislaine lost her moral compass if she ever had one. This, to me, was the turning point of when she went to the dark side, three years into her relationship with Jeffrey. A normal individual, if they found out that their boyfriend was obsessed with young girls, would have, despite

giving her money and finances and so forth, would have run in the opposite direction. This was the point when Elaine made a determination on her own that she was going to go down this dark road with Jeffrey. So I do find that incident instrumental in how she became his partner in crime. I call them in my book, The Predatory Bonnie and Clyde. She presented this cover that Jeffrey never had previously, where she was a big sister figure, where she was able to present herself to the mothers of these girls saying, we're interested in mentorship of your daughter. We're going to take care of her.

We're going to send her to college. We're going to make sure she gets to go to music school and things like that. She was the perfect foil for Jeffrey in this road that they were going to embark on. And she told many people that she was his wife. So if you're a young mom of a daughter who's trying to make it in modeling, she would tell people that she worked for Les Wexner. And he would tell people that he was like a casting agent for Victoria's Secret. And they're telling some of these young girls that they're married.

So these girls are thinking they're safe and they were anything. But just before we get a break in, but I just want to spend one minute on Ghislaine's background, because unlike Jeffrey, she did come from a lot of money. Her dad was he reminded me in reading the descriptions in some ways of Rupert Murdoch, a media mogul during his lifetime. Very well respected, very powerful, very colorful, very strong, kind of scary. She was the apple of his eye, the youngest of like nine children. I can't remember. Lots of children. Yes, that's true.

That he named his yacht the Lady Ghislaine after her. And then he died suddenly and weirdly while at sea on the yacht in like calm waters. And there was a real question about what really went down there. Was he a spy? Did he work for the Mossad what what really went down there was he a spy did he work for the massad was she a spy was jeffrey a spy i mean i've heard it all asked um but she had the proper breeding she went to oxford she had all the connections and that's another way in which she became the perfect bonnie to epstein's clyde yes that that is absolutely correct she was able to legitimize their relationship in the pursuit and the grooming of these young women.

And without her, I wrote that there's no way that the extent of the sex trafficking could have gone as far reaching as it did with hundreds of young women if Ghislaine had not been involved in his life. And there are darker conspiracies beyond that that are connected to, you know, Jeffrey always fancied himself as something of a spy, as a man of mystery. He would tell girls that. He would say, you know, I'm a spy and so forth. He enjoyed that time when he was an arms dealer, you know, flying overseas and having meetings on yachts and things like that. And we do know that there are connections between Jeffrey and Israel and links to the Mossad. And Robert Maxwell, Ghislaine's father, also fancied himself as a spy. He called himself James Bond. He had ties, direct ties to the

Mossad. He was not an agent, but they viewed him as an asset, according to investigators, one of my investigators who dug deeply in Israel on this and so forth. So there's also a thought that Robert Maxwell had set it up that if something happened to him, Ghislaine would go into the arms of Jeffrey Epstein in America and that he would take care of her financially. And so there is a darker story about this, whether or not the two of them were set to go together as part of this tradecraft honeypot operation to blackmail wealthy and powerful individuals. That is out there. And, you know, we may never know the extent of that because Jeffrey, of course, is dead and Ghislaine is not going to talk. And so we'll never truly know the extent of that. And of course, the intelligence community in Israel has buttoned up.

But there's no question that it was more than just coincidence that brought them together. And as Jeffrey writes in his biography, that he was this helping hand to get her out of her depression and so forth. I don't believe that for a second. I do believe that there was much more there in terms of how as quickly after her father's death that she ended up with Jeffrey. That is intriguing and a good point at which to pause, squeeze in a break, and then we'll pick it up with their scheme on the other side of this. Much more ahead on the disturbing story of Jeffrey Epstein, his life, his death. And do we think he killed himself?

Or was there plenty of reason to have him killed? Stay with us. And remember, you can find The Megyn Kelly Show live on Sirius XM Triumph Channel, 111, every weekday at noon east. And the full video show and clips

by subscribing to our YouTube channel, youtube.com slash Megyn Kelly. If you prefer an audio podcast, you can have that too. Subscribe and download for free on Apple, Spotify, Pandora, Stitcher, or wherever you get your podcasts. There you will find our full archives, more than 220 shows now. Be right back. One of the questions I had before I knew much about the case was, why didn't anybody go to the police? Why didn't any of these young girls go tell their moms, go to the cops?

The older girls, you know, once they hit their 20s, realize what's going on, go to the cops. And what I've since learned, and you can fill it in, is they did. Some did. And it was ridiculously hard to get anyone's attention for far too many years. And this goes back prior to his 2008 arrest and like the diminished charges there. So I'm talking about like there were women who stood up and tried to call the cops and get them involved, but no action was ever taken. That's correct, Megan. I mean, the Maria Farmer case, for instance, the incident in which she was held against her will on Les Wexner's property in Ohio. After that incident and the incident involving her sister, Annie, she went to the NYPD. She contacted the FBI.

It went absolutely nowhere. It wasn't until 10 years later during the Ford investigation that began in 2005 that the FBI circled back and contacted Maria Farmer again. There was a woman, Jeffrey had attacked a woman at a hotel in Santa Monica, California, passing himself off as a Victoria's Secret model. She went to the, I looked at the police reports, she went to the police in Santa Monica after she was attacked by Jeffrey. I heard her testimonial. Yeah. He said he was a scout and these women who want to get in the Victoria's Secret catalog, they know that they may have to strip down to a bikini or even a bra and underwear. But he, of course, took it further than that and then wanted to lay hands

on women and then did sexually assault this woman, which she has now said, and she went to the cops and they did nothing. So the question is, with all that doing nothing over the years, like, why was it just like these are prostitutes? Was it one of those things? Was it because he was connected? And these women weren't prostitutes. I want to make that clear. But it was it was that the attitude of the police is what I'm asking. Well, the police didn't. Again, these isolated incidents that took place in Ohio and then in California, they went absolutely nowhere. school in 2005 was found by a family member with a couple hundred dollar bills in her pocket. And they forced that girl to say where the money came from. And it came from this rich guy on Palm Beach who was paying young girls for massages and so forth. And that's when the Palm Beach police first began their investigation when this information came to them around 2004. For the you know, building this, just this horrific life of sexual abuse

of these girls. The problem was, is that these girls were young. A lot of them were, there were a couple, like the first victim, Jane, who testified, who ended up becoming an actress and so forth, and had a music career ahead of her and so forth. But for the most part, they targeted girls from the other side of the tracks in West Palm Beach. Maria Farmer talks about repeated threats that had been made in the years since, you know, against her. They would turn on these girls if they thought that these girls wouldn't continue as part of this pyramid sex trafficking operation. Well, that's right. So it was a pyramid scheme in a way because what they did, and by the way, I should say, we didn't get to this, but early in Jeffrey's career in the 1980s, he was accused of being part of a Ponzi scheme while at this one investment firm. He was accused of being the mastermind of it. And in a way, that's what he was running with the girls because what he's accused

of doing is you get a young girl in and the women have now and now they're women and they'll explain how it worked. They call you in. Okay, he wants a massage. You're going to get 300 bucks. You know, it's like a 15 year old girl. She's like, okay, fine. I don't know how to massage. Ghislaine will show you. Don't worry. It's nothing. They go in there and massaging him. And then before you know it, he had his clothes off and he's asking for oral sex or he's just, he's, or, you know, doing any one of a number of things to them. Ghislaine was allegedly in on the actual sexual behavior and with a number of these girls and then he would turn to this girl or she would and would say now go get me another girl and for every girl you

bring in you get another 200 and so on i mean it really was like a like a sex pyramid scheme a sexual abuse pyramid scheme yes and in fact um, one of the girls, now an adult named Haley Robson, was kind of the linchpin in the Palm Beach police investigation in 2005. The police put surveillance on her. Haley had told me that, you know, she was a young girl there, had been brought in for a massage, had a terrible life before then, had been raped at a party, came from a very dark place, and ended up at Jeffrey Epstein's house. She wouldn't go through with the massage. However, against, she said, her better judgment, she went and brought

35 girls that she knew in the local community there to come to Jeffrey Epstein's house. Every time she would bring a girl, she would receive $200. She has to live now with this for the rest of her life that she, you know, brought these, brought these girls in. But the police put surveillance on her and then threatened to charge her. In fact, her father was a local police officer there. And the toughest thing she said was having to tell her dad that she, you know, had been caught in the middle of this. The Palm Beach police detectives, had the prosecution been done properly, they could have sent Jeffrey Epstein away. I mean, they had the goods on him. This was in 2005, the memories of the girls, these incidents had just happened in the past couple of years.

All the information was fresh. They had evidence, Jeffrey buying slave servitude books through Amazon. They had the case nailed. And as we know, the Florida case fell apart because it ended up being put in the hands of the local Florida attorney there. The police chief was furious that this guy ended up convening a grand jury, a very rare instance. They are only bringing two victims forward in the grand jury. The police chief said, this is awful. This man has to go away to jail. He's abusing these girls. Police chief went to the FBI. The FBI began an investigation, a more wide-ranging investigation of not only what was

going on in Florida, but also what was going on in New York at the time. And they were compiling a very, very strong case. And then as we know, it ended up in the hands of Alex Acosta, at that time, in charge of the Southern District, in charge of the Southern Florida District. This is the federal prosecutor, the U.S. attorney at the federal level, that he would oversee the FBI's investigation. He's the one who'd have to bring charges. Yeah, so they brought it to him. Go ahead. And it was a he was a Harvard man.

Jeffrey Epstein's main lead attorney, Alan Dershowitz, of course, was a Harvard man. Experts say today that, you know, that some type of deal was struck jeffrey uh ended up um being charged with uh two counts of prostitution he did uh well just just to stop you for a second so what happened was as i understand it alex acosta and for our listening audience this is the guy who trump would later later nominate as secretary of labor and he had to bail because this became such a big deal the episode yeah so he but and it was all because of this moment we're talking about so Acosta rather than saying what do you mean the Florida case they're gonna charge him with with it was some BS it's like a solicitation of prostitution of a minor was basically this video solicitation of prostitution of a minor okay a minor cannot be a prostitute if a minor was basically the solicitation of prostitution of a minor okay a minor cannot be

a prostitute if a minor is being prostituted she's being trafficked and it's rape what's happening to her so that's one of the indignities for these victims um but it's only one count it's a slap in the wrist yes he would have to register as a sex offender but it's like it's nothing compared to what they could have done so you think the feds are going to swoop in and say well that that's bullshit we're not going to allow that. It was exactly the opposite. He cuts a deal to say, why don't we just let it be a state matter? The state is only about to slap him on the wrist. We can just defer to the state and they'll wrap it up nice and tidy down there in Florida. And Dershowitz, who is a friend of mine and who I really admire, I have to tell you, maybe you

know something different, Barry, but I don't blame him for this because defense attorneys jobs are to get you the best job possible. It was Acosta who was supposed to be representing us and the girls. He got, listen, Alan Dershowitz did his job. Alan Dershowitz got Jeffrey Epstein off. I mean, it was a dream team. Jeffrey Epstein spent a lot of money. He brought together a group of high profile lawyers that we had not seen since, you know, that we would see the O.J. Simpson case. also added a veiled reference that there was a higher authority involving Jeffrey Epstein, that he might have been a part of intelligence and it was above Acosta's head. And so you had this, you know, slap on the wrist, NPA, non-prosecution agreement. Epstein ended up serving 14 months, most of it on work release. So he was able to fly to his house in the Virgin Islands. He was able to fly to New York. He had an ankle monitoring bracelet, and he had sexual relations

with a young girl we know from a private investigator's report during this period of time. It was a joke. It was a joke. It was interesting to note is that- He was apparently 16 hours a day during his incarceration. He was out of the jail and it wasn't even the real jail. It was something called the stockade down in Palm Beach. But wait a minute. That's, you know, you mentioned, okay, so why?

Why did they give him, that's the big, that's the $64,000 question. What was the real reason? I don't buy Acosta knew Dershowitz from Harvard and they struck a deal. I don't buy that because it was bubbling up that there was more than just these victims. This was a massive. And that's the question whether because there's reporting that the young there's the U.S. attorney, that was Acosta, but there was a woman coupled down from him, an assistant U.S. attorney, who was very angry about this being swept under the rug. She's never been allowed to talk. And I'm sure she knows what was going on. But there are too many people too close to that deal who haven't been allowed to talk, who haven't been able to tell us what they think Acosta was really doing or who was ordering? Like, why would they be so interested in protecting Jeffrey Epstein? Yeah, it's it's it goes back to, as I said, the coupling of Jeffrey and Elaine, who may have been brought together by, you know, through intelligence. We do know that Jeffrey Epstein gave up some information to the FBI at the time

of this. We believe it was dealing with financial matters on Wall Street, that he wasn't ratting out any men as part of his trafficking operation. But there's so much more mystery to this. And that's what's so frustrating to me about the about the trial itself. Let me let me stand you by there because that's a whole other ball of wax, which we will tackle right after this. Don't go away. Well, one of the problems with the deal he struck with the prosecutors back, I thought it was 2008 that the deal was struck. Was it 2005? No, no. The Palm Beach detectives investigation began in 2005. The deal came together in 2008. made. So once that was struck, one of the two, the two most controversial, maybe not most, it's so hard to pick what's most controversial, but a couple of the controversial things about it, in addition to what a slap on the wrist it was, were number one, the feds are required,

the prosecutors are required to advise the victims before they enter into an agreement like this. And not only did they not advise the many victims that they're about to do it, they lied to them. They had to admit it later in court. They told the victims, oh, we'll let you know it's proceeding. We're negotiating. And the deal had already been signed. So there was dishonesty within the U.S. attorney's office, which is extraordinary. And we still don't have a full accounting for it but for why and how it went down and who told you to do that very frustrating and very suspicious very sus as my daughter would say um and uh the other piece of it is um oh that that immunity was

basically crafted for jeffrey's co-conspirators he specifically named four women in the deal he struck saying you can't go after them you can't charge them which is like unheard of right it's so weird in a deal like this for the feds to agree to such a thing and um and then they broadened it it broadened it it was like these four people and any other co-conspirators. So this that's a nightmare for the young women who are trying to go after him or see civil or criminal penalties against them. But weirdly, Barry, let's start with this. Do you know why Ghislaine Maxwell was not one of the four women specifically protected by name in that deal? Well, she was assumed to be part of this immunity deal for others. Jeffrey did not want her named at the time.

He wanted to protect her name by not attaching her as one of the four potential co-conspirators. She was in the umbrella. was initially arrested, her lawyers were fighting back that, hey, you can't do this because, you know, she was technically part of the other, given immunity as part of this broad deal in 2008. So, you know, the feds can't go after her. However, that, of course, you know, completely fell apart as part of her prosecution by the Southern District, by Jeffrey Berman here in New York at the time. But she wasn't named because she did not want to be attached and have that, you know, in Google history as being one of the co-conspirators now after he gets out of his bs quote jail term uh which is more than nicer than how most people spend any given year um there's a there's a celebratory party for him this this is the night that we've seen a fair amount of reporting on at the e71st street mansion in new york He goes up to New York and it's like a who's who of American media, Hollywood. It just to me shows you how disgusting

and chummy my industry is media with, you know, the Hollywood crowd, the it crowd, they think whatever what they think is the it crowd on on wall street and rubbing the elbows because they knew he just got out of jail for solicitation of sex or prostitution with a minor he was a registered sex offender at that point and you got well why don't you tell us who was there and just fine with celebrating that night with jeffrey epstein well there were there were many uh celebrities i recall that I believe Katie Couric might have been. Yep.

Might have been. Stephanopoulos, Charlie Rose. Charlie Rose, Stephanopoulos was there. I mean, it was... Chelsea Handler. Oh, and also Woody Allen. What a shock.

Well, Woody, I have a picture in my book of Woody and Soon-Yi walking with Jeffrey outside of Jeffrey's house Yee walking, you know, with Jeffrey outside of Jeffrey's house. I mean, they were, of course, pals. Of course. Woody was Jeffrey's hero. Wonder why.

But Jeffrey, you know, he hired a publicist in New York, as you do. And he attempted to basically pass off what happened in Florida as nothing. There's a direct quote from him where he said, he said, I am not a sexual predator. I'm an offender. It's the difference between a murderer and a person who steals a bagel. That's how he explained what happened down in Florida to his high society media pals who were invited to New York. And he later, you know, he basically put off in an off-the-record conversation with a New York reporter, George Rush, for the Daily News. Rush has since put it on record after Jeffrey Epstein's death. Jeffrey passed off what had happened to him

in Florida. He said these girls were, quote, like experienced sex workers. He said the statutory aspect of his prosecution was unfair because he said if I had done the same thing in a different state, there'd be no cause to arrest him. Jeffrey was making excuses about his dark side right up until the time he ended up behind bars, where he was, where I quote him telling an inmate, one of the in-jail companions, by basically saying, hey, listen, it wasn't a big deal. These girls were 15 and 16, 17. It wasn't like they were five or six. Jeffrey was always trying to justify his actions, but it bothered him, bothered him deep down. And he told, he told one publicist, he said, you know, he said, I don't want to go to my,

I don't want my obituary to read in the first paragraph that I was a billionaire pervert. So, you know, he would, he would, he would tell people what he was doing was was was nothing. But at the same time, I do think he was, the better, the younger, the better. He wanted even prepubescent girls, though I haven't seen any of them come forward. 14 is the youngest I've heard directly. I mean, Haley Robson, who I who wrote for me because she was a journalism student. I want to give her the opportunity to write something at the end of my book. I mean, she wrote that Jeffrey specifically told her the younger, the better. That's where that quote came from. That came from Haley. Can I just round back though, Barry, because that leads me to, when did he stop? Why does the trail seem to go cold later in his life?

Well, after Florida, after the 2008 case, at that time, first of all, Ghislaine made the decision to end things with him. After the Florida case, she had been advised, listen, you know, you need to leave Jeffrey behind. He attempted to recruit some girls directly on his own. He did not stop. However, it wasn't this feeding frenzy of girls that Ghislaine, you know, where they recruit girls and one girl would bring another. That went by the wayside. He was relying on international contacts to bring girls over from Soviet countries, from Europe,

from Brazil. He had a fixer in Paris. You know, Jeffrey had an apartment in, a swanky apartment in Paris. He would abuse girls there. He tried to do it away from U.S. authorities. A lot of activities took place at his island in Little St. James in the Virgin Islands, where the district attorney down there has got an ongoing investigation and has interviewed airport workers who saw girls as young as 11 years old getting off of private planes to be taken to be ferried over to Jeffrey's Island. So Jeffrey was bringing girls in from overseas to continue his abuse at his house in the Virgin Islands, away from Florida and for the most part away from New York where authorities could see him. This reminds me of, let's just keep in mind what we now know, just to fill in some of those blanks. As you point out, yes, the island totally secluded.

It was his island. So once he gets a girl down there, God only knows. And that the women who have worked for him have testified. He had those little pinhole cameras all over his facilities. He he was filming everything, even in the bathroom. He had he was filming people. And when the U.S. attorney's office finally arrested him for real, not the B.S. 2008 thing, but the 2019 right after they raided arrested him on at the airport, the private airport, they raided his home in Manhattan. And they found this is according to the U.S. attorney's office in Manhattan, revealing some of the objects they found. A couple of examples, hundreds of nude photos of girls and young women, CDs labeled miscellaneous nudes. One girl picks nude or individual names of girls, notes and messages that allegedly back up new sex trafficking charges against him. A massage table, sex toys. A lot of the staffers talk about the sex toys all over the place, everywhere. The massage tables, lubricant, a safe containing cash and diamonds and an expired passport with Epstein's picture and a fake name issued in the early 1980s in a foreign country listing Saudi Arabia as his country of residence. Sure, that's what everyone's safe looks like. It's like straight out of a

novel of what a bad guy would be storing inside of his safe. So, okay, they're all over the place. Can I just stop on this? One of the people, and it wasn't just Stephanopoulos and Woody Allen, by the way, Stephanopoulos has said he regrets going to that party. Yeah, they all do. They all say on the record that they regret having been brought there and they you know so forth naturally but you know what do your homework he was a convicted felon convicted of hurting little girls sex offender uh secondly one of the people who had no problem with his imprisonment and those charges was prince andrew you hear so much about this today uh he's he's one of the ones still on the hot seat. And

he did. He went and visited Jeffrey Epstein at the New York mansion after Epstein got out of prison in the 2008 thing, jail, and is accused of a woman whose name we should spend some time on. And that's Virginia Roberts Giuffre. Virginia Roberts when she was younger than that and she got married. And I'll tell you this. I want to know your take on her, Barry. But I looked into her before I did a long interview with Alan Dershowitz. She's accused him among others. She's accused a lot of guys, a lot. And I don't doubt her for a minute with respect to the Epstein story. I believe Epstein did abuse her and did probably traffic her as alleged. However, I don't believe her with respect to all the men she accuses. And Alan happens to be one of them, not just because I'm friendly with the guy. I took a hard look at

it. And this is I was going to do a long interview with him. And I was going to if it went the wrong way for him, it wasn't going to be a pleasant interview. But I saw the number of inconsistencies in the story she was telling about him. I saw a reporter egging her on to name him because he was famous and it would get more attention, even though she hadn't named him yet and hadn't even remembered him. And many other pieces of evidence that led me to believe Virginia, I do believe, was a victim, but I do not believe she was a victim of Alan Dershowitz, among many other pieces of evidence. However, she's important because, among other guys, she's pointing the finger at Prince Andrew in a litigation that's heating up right now. He's been forced to answer it. He could be forced to testify. He's in potentially some trouble. So tell us what we know about Virginia Roberts, her credibility and those claims? Well, listen, I mean, there's no question that, you know, we've conducted interviews with family members. Her father was a maintenance man at Mar-a-Lago. Ghislaine Maxwell recruited her right out of Mar-a-Lago when she was,

she had remembered that she was 15 at the time. It turns out she was 16 at the time. The fact is, she was recruited into their world. She traveled with them. She's listed on the flight manifests, many, many dozens and dozens of trips. I mean, they went around the world and so forth. There's no question that she was abused. She was the first victim to come forward and make the allegation that she was trafficked out to a- Prince Andrew. At least a half dozen rich and powerful friends of- And this is the one, just to pause you know, at least a half dozen rich and powerful friends.

And this is, this is the one just to pause you there. This is the one that Amy Rohrbach was complaining about in that now infamous tape on ABC, the satellite feed was going out when she was ripping on her staff and her, her superiors, I should say for not, she's like, I had this whole story. I had Virginia Roberts, I had it all. And they wouldn't let me air it. That was all about Virginia. Sorry. Go ahead. if she was able to be examined by prosecution specifically on that, because she fits into the, fits perfectly into the, you know, into that pattern. And she, you know, horrendous, horrible stuff, horrific stuff happened to her. However, the prosecution made the decision not to bring her in as one of

the minor victims, one through four, or as a fifth because of these, and you addressed it with Dershowitz, because of these credibility issues. And they were very fearful of, you know, while she could certainly testify to the grooming and the abuse, the prosecution was fearful that Ghislaine's defense would take it in a completely other direction, muddy it with the discrepancies, you know, in her story and some of the allegations involving these other men, and it would become very complicated, very muddy, and it would take away from the direct testimonies of the four accusers that they decided that they thought were relatively as best as they could determine airtight cases to present in a very clean cut fashion to the jury. So Virginia, who is, you know, without question,

the most famous accuser because of her accusations against Prince Andrew and others is not testifying. She's off in Australia. She has not been, she's, you know, she's not been coming forward as part of the case. It is troubling, however, because she has been referenced in the case. And the jurors may be asking, well, why are we not going to hear from her? But the reason why they're not hearing from her is because of the discrepancies over the course of the years. I mean, there's been other discrepancies with some of these accusers. You're talking about asking these girls who made some initial comments, some of them to law enforcement, many of them in various civil depositions and so forth, you know, they're remembering things that happened to them, traumatic events that happened to them when they were 14 and

15 years old. There's no question that there would be inconsistencies. Because they're now in their 40s. They're testimony. Yeah. But the prosecution decided that Virginia was too much of a risk and it would take the it could take the trial in a different direction. However, she is continuing now to pursue Prince Andrew. And that is is moving forward here in New York. And, you know, I mean, I think with Prince Andrew, we have the photograph of the two of them together, taken at, that Jeffrey Epstein took a photo of Prince Andrew and Virginia together with Ghislaine in the background at Ghislaine's house in London. I mean, there is some tremendous evidence and proof of that relationship. He says he doesn't remember ever meeting her. D'Angelo has done everything he can to put his foot in his mouth in interviews he's done overseas

and so forth. He comes across as an absolutely terrible witness. Yes. This is why he got booted from Royal Duties, because he made the mistake of giving an interview that was an absolute disaster. And before you knew it, he lost his Royal Duties. But he does, for the record, deny her allegations. He doesn't remember her. Her side's pointing out when he got sued by her, his response didn't seem all that surprised. He texted, I think, Ghislaine or Jeffrey saying, we need to talk about Virginia Roberts.

It didn't sound, you know, it could have been just the name of this woman who mysteriously sued me. Or it could be the way he said it made one believe he knew and he wanted to have a conversation about her. We'll see. That'll play out. But she does have credibility issues, as do a lot of accusers. And, you know, it's hard to pick up. But I'm saying, to your point earlier, that they picked women who did have certain issues. They were very clever in their general approach. Now, he went through hundreds of women, so he wasn't that clever with everybody. But certainly with the ones that he made his constant, you know, concubines or whatever you want to call someone like Virginia Roberts, his victim, they're going to have some issues. And that's not to excuse the inconsistencies. It's just one of the challenges prosecutors are up against.

I'll give you the last word before I go to break. No, Virginia, I mean, I view her and all the accusers who have come forward as courageous women. And they had their childhoods taken away. They have suffered. Like, you know, I have a teenage daughter. I can't think about what they went through at the hands of Killian and Jeffrey Epstein. So she's courageous along with all of these other- Well, think about it. I mean, it's hard to go up against anybody and make this kind of an accusation. And you're talking about somebody who's who hangs out with former presidents and princes and heads of industry and universities. Good God. You can understand why they were like, this is not it's not worth it.

And then the women who came before me, by the way, were either ignored by the police or diminished by the FBI or lied to by the feds. OK, next, we got to get to Jeffrey Epstein's famous friends, including Trump and his mysterious death. Don't go away. Before we finish off with the royals, Virginia has alleged that in that picture where she looks very young, he's got his arm around her at Ghislaine's house in London. She said that night she she let me get it in front of me. He asked her how old she was. She said, how old do I look? He guessed 17.

She said he later would grope me, touch my breasts, my behind, licked my toes, the arches of my feet. I mean, these are specific details, made love to me without a condom, and that the next day Jeffrey Epstein paid me $10,000. She alleges she was, quote, forced to have sex with Prince Andrew many times in London, New York, and the Virgin Islands, I think are the places. She says he knew I was a minor, and he says he had zero recollection of ever meeting her and that the photo may be fake. Epstein, I've read two different things about him and the royals. I've read that he was actually invited to a party. It was Prince Andrew's 40th and Prince Charles's 50th and Prince William's

18th birthday. And that even the Queen and Prince Philip may have been there, and that Geoffrey and Ghislaine were invited. And then there was a separate party for Princess Beatrice, that's Andrew's daughter, her 18th birthday that he had. I mean, did Geoffrey Epstein party with the Queen? We have never seen any actual photos of the two of them together. In fact, at the trial, prosecution released an image of the two of them together. In fact, at the trial, prosecution released an image of the two of them at the Queen's personal cabin at Balmoral. This shows you

what incredible access they had to literally being inches away from the queen. Prince Andrew, there's no question, opened the doors to the royal kingdom for Geoffrey and Ghislaine. There's an image of Ghislaine and one of her friends, Kevin Spacey, sitting on what had been, I think, the official royal throne for photo opportunities and so forth. Prince Andrew was in deep with Geoffrey and Ghislaine, and of course he regrets that association now, because it's destroying his life. He's having, as you pointed out, all his royal duties taken away from him. by uh jeffrey uh and jeffrey had the goods on him as jeffrey has the goods or had the goods on many other um famous and powerful people well that's that's what people wonder you know did in elsewhere in that safe because when they raided his uh florida place and they arrested him in 2008 he had clearly just disconnected hard drives before they got somebody clearly tipped him off

and he he had moved and hidden hard drives and then something similar happened when he was arrested in 2019 they had hard drives that they found or cds and then they left them there because they weren't within the scope of the search warrant to actually look at them and then they were gone when they went back so that's one of the big questions like what was on those what was on them what do we did we see prince andrew with with a young girl did we see bill clinton donald trump i mean these are these are some of the massive questions that loom over did jeffrey epstein really kill himself right that's one of the the things um so that's that's prince andrew and who knows what we're going to learn if that trial goes forward um then there's bill clinton by the way is it why why are there so

many people who have been you know accused credibly of sexual misconduct, you know, from Charlie Rose to Woody Allen to Bill Clinton to Kevin Spacey to, you know, it's like there's a lot of questionable people that surround him. I mean, you know, I've in the book the photo from, I think it was Beatrice's party, where Jeffrey and Ghislaine have their arms around Harvey Weinstein. The three of them are all photographed together there. I mean, this was the circle of friends that Jeffrey had, men with similar dark lifestyles. Well, you talk in the book about, I mean, Bill Clinton was on Jeffrey's Lolita Express, which was the nickname for his aircraft, at least four times, overseas to Africa a couple of times.

Now, I will say it was Epstein's, quote, personal massage therapist on board with them who she said I heard her say in an interview, nothing untoward happened when Bill Clinton was there. So take it for what it's worth. With respect to Donald Trump, you've done some reporting of your own about their relationship and some of those sources in Florida that where I began to see this much deeper connection. died behind bars that the my book editor said, you know, you got to go now focus on, on, on Jeffrey Epstein. So that kind of led me to the the Epstein book. But as I point out in the book, Jeffrey Epstein said to a very, very close source. And I can't give up the person's name, but incredibly connected to Jeffrey Epstein and extremely close. And Jeffrey Epstein said, if the public knew what I know about the Trumps and the Clintons, there wouldn't be a 2016 election.

Wow. Jeffrey claims he had the goods on both of those men. Of course, Donald Trump, like Bill Clinton, denies any wrongdoing. However, there's a lot of material there showing Trump and particularly Epstein partying together. They once attended a party in Mar-a-Lago. Just the two of them, Trump and Epstein with, I think it was more than a dozen. Yeah, your book says 28. Yeah. I mean, they were caught up in, I mean, there's deeper allegations that I put forward

in both books about one lawsuit from a girl who claims she was 13 that was filed at the time of the, in 2016, but then withdrawn involving both Epstein and Trump. Of course, you know, there's been complete denials all around, but there's no question that there was a true friendship and the two of them partying together. And they knew a lot of the same people. I mean, there was, you know, when Donald Trump had his modeling agency, You know, there were modeling agents and heads of fashion companies and so forth that Epstein were all, you know, where the two of them were part of this much larger world involving young women. I mean, I make several allegations in the Trump the trump book uh involving trump and uh and younger women um of course trump issued this statement saying um well it was a comment i think to a magazine about his relationship with epstein saying that they they did know each other um by the way i

should mention that clinton denies anything untoward so does trump but uh i want to get the i'm looking for the for the quote um that's that trump said specifically okay here it is uh donald trump in 2002 to new york magazine he's a terrific guy epstein's a terrific guy it is even said that he likes beautiful women as much as i do and many of them are on the younger side that is so classic trump i mean this is classic don Donald Trump has said since then that those words were manufactured for him, that they were created for that particular article that he denies that, you know, that he actually said that. But we do know of a very close friendship between the two of them, particularly in the early years. And Ghislaine

was- And this is before his 2008 arrest, I should point out. Oh, yes. Yeah. I mean, and in fact, Jeffrey Epstein has told people, goes against the official Trump story, but Jeffrey Epstein claims that he introduced Melania to Donald Trump. Oh, gosh. That's not something you want to put in a wedding toast. So, okay. So now, finally, to their credit, I mean, I will say there was one girl, Courtney, who was recruited by him as she was a victim. And then she was made sort of a helper, for lack of a better term, to go recruit other girls. She recruited a lot of them. And she was one of the ones really angry when that 2008 sweetheart deal was cut and she hadn't been consulted.

And she was a woman on a mission from 2008 to 2019. She wasn't the only one to get some accountability and stayed on this case like a dog with a bone. Like, I just don't care. I'm just I will devote the rest of my life to getting some accountability from this guy. And that's really, you know, the women not just refusing to give this up is what finally led, I think, to the 2019 arrest. It was a different climate, right? We had Trump as president, the Me Too movement was, you know, underway or had already started at least. And it was a different climate in the country. So they, he did get arrested. He did find a US attorney who took

this more seriously. He gets arrested unexpectedly to him, which was important. And the biggest decision then was, do we give him bail? And the women were hardcore against bail because they knew from experience how connected he was. And if he got out, he'd hide everything. He'd work every connection. He'd have it managed such that they were dead in the water again. And at that bail hearing, the judge did something extraordinary. He let some of the women who showed up just to see him get sentenced to jail while pending, they are hoping, he let them speak.

And those to this day are the only women who have gotten to confront him face to face with what he did. It's incredibly dramatic. And then good for them for finding the nerve to stand up and do it. Because usually your lawyer would be like, don't say anything unless I'm there. We'll do it in the civil case when we're suing for millions of dollars. But they did get up there and he did not get bail. And that was a big decision. He had to be remanded. And then there begins probably the biggest of the mystery of them all. You know, so many men.

Where are the hard drives? You know what? Why did the feds give him the sweetheart deal? Like, what was the motivation? And what what happened to him in that jail? The New York Times just did a FOIA request to the jail trying to find out what happened. They were denied. They got their legal team involved. They won the access to the documents just this week.

They reported that there were anomalies right upon check in. I don't know what you call booking, I guess. It's not check in. It's not a hotel. They said he was a black man um they had a couple of other weird things about him they said he wasn't a person who was a public figure you know he was of course they put him in gen pop originally that wasn't supposed to happen then they rectified it about a day later and put him in a cell then then there was one attempted suicide which i'd like to ask you about whether it really was and what kind of thing happened. And then he was supposed to be kind of on suicide watch.

He had told all the doctors he wasn't suicidal. It's absurd. I have so much to live for. Why would I kill myself? And then they were supposed to put a roommate in with him, a cellmate. Again, I'm talking about a dorm cellmate. And they didn't. And then those two guards that night, the cameras were off.

They were supposed to be patrolling. They weren't. And then those two guards that night, the cameras were off. They were supposed to be patrolling. They weren't. They found from the records that they had been searching the Internet for shopping and sports. But there's just so much of a smell around the whole thing. And given the history you and I've been discussing for two hours, people have real questions. So your take on it. Yeah. I just want to add that because of the reporting done by the Miami Herald, going to the Acosta deal and so forth, that really ignited public interest again in basically pushing the feds into, I think, acting on material that they've had in their files all those years from the original FBI investigation that began, you know, in the mid-2000s. But it was that Harold story that really, I think, in the Me Too era, really pushed them forward to Jeffrey Berman's office here in New York, the Southern District, to really go after Epstein. And I write in the book how dramatic it was that they were fearful that when his plane was returning to Teterboro, that he would have been passed on the information that leaked to him and that he would pull Roman Polanski and divert the

plane, you know, to another country and so forth. But he did land and they were able to apprehend him and put him in handcuffs. Huge, huge. So when he went into the jail, do you believe how do you know how he allegedly attempted to take his own life the first time? Well, we we part of the book, I was working with Philip Messing, who had been the legendary crime reporter for The New York Post for decades. And Phil and I worked together and we spent a year investigating what went on behind bars. We had a lot of the information in the book long before the New York Times sued Bureau of Prisons for that report. We interviewed two of Epstein's inmate companions who were the only real people who actually talked to him in the days leading up to his, uh, his death. And, uh, Epstein reporting the book, uh, that there were actually, um, um, we believe two suicide attempts before, um, he ended up taking

his life. Uh, one was, um, uh, only reported, uh, but the incompetency in that jail, the MCC, uh, there's a reason why that jail's been shut down. It's because it was just run horrifically, as you pointed out. They put him in gen pop. He was surrounded by gang members. They were trying to shake him down. Epstein was, I can tell you this, and write about this extensively in the book, Epstein fell apart behind bars. Unlike Ghislaine Maxwell, who I actually think is made from tougher stock, who has been willing to put up with the many, many months she's been held awaiting trial, Epstein was a basket case. This was a guy who I said needed to have things, he needed the temperature in his bedroom set one way, he needed all these things. And when he was behind bars, he had no control over anything. And he was also terrorized, as he told these gentlemen, that he was going to be bullied, like he had been bullied

as a boy back in Coney Island. And I do believe, based on the reporting we did, that despite crazy circumstances, the guards at night falling asleep and so forth, I do believe that he took his life. Because for someone to enter that cell, it would have had to have been a massive conspiracy. There were safeguards in terms of the main door locks were controlled by the central jail's office that had nothing to do with the guards who were in the shoe that particular night. To have placed someone in there to take his life would have been an absolute massive conspiracy. But we don't know the specifics of the secret suicide attempt in which he was then put behind suicide watch. We know in the second case that he had a cellmate.

Jeffrey Epstein told two different stories. He said he, you know, the cellmate found him on the floor. There were marks on Jeffrey Epstein's neck and so forth. We don't know. You know, he was telling different people different accounts of what was happening. What we do know is that he should have never, ever been left alone in the cell by himself. And the night he decided, if he did, take his life was the one night when the other cellmate that he had had just been transferred out and another one was supposed to come the next day. And so Jeffrey Epstein had this one specific window if he was going to hang himself. And it appears, you know, that's what he did

because he wasn't going to live a life behind bars. He knew he was going to be convicted. And he wasn't, as he's told, he's indicated to these cellmates that this was not the type of life that he would be able to live. Could he have paid off the guards to look the other way? You know, the guards have been through a full investigation. There's been no indication that they received any money. We do know that Jeffrey Epstein had paid off, had been extorted by some other guys in jail early on for out of fear, out of safety and so forth. But there's nothing concrete that shows that he had paid off any officials in the jail. Wow. Leaving us all to wonder whether his many secrets died with him or whether Ghislaine Maxwell knows more than she's letting on. A little more on that when we come back right after this break. Back with me now, Barry Levine, author of The Spider, inside the criminal web of Jeffrey Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell.

And speaking of Ghislaine Maxwell, Barry, do we think she knows the answer to all of these questions? What what did Bill Clinton do? What did Donald Trump do? What did Prince Andrew do? You know, did his secrets die with him or do you think she knows the answers? Oh, I think I think she knows she knows a lot. I mean, I was early on. I thought that possibly on her arrest, that there might be a deal with the government. I mean, you know, this is someone who is turning 60. She's 59 right now. She turned 60 on Christmas Day. The difference of doing 10 years behind bars and still having something

left of her life, as opposed to, you know, the 70 years that she's facing on this particular trial. And she's also facing 10 additional years in a separate trial, perjury trial for statements she's made and lying in depositions. I thought that she would do a deal. I thought that she might give up some names to the government and get some type of sentence because at this point, Jeffrey is dead. And what does she have to lose? But she has remained tight lipped. She denies any wrongdoing. And I think that she's going to take their secrets to her grave. There's no question about that. What about secret option number two, which is Epstein was a pervert. He was a bad guy. He was a criminal. But I don't want to say he was the only one, but that Prince Andrew and Bill Clinton

and Donald Trump didn't do anything to those young women. And she doesn't actually have the secrets to tell. I mean, her lawyers say that she wasn't ever offered a deal, that they were not offered a deal. I do believe that she knows a great deal about very, you know, about their powerful, from scientists to world leaders, the people that they associated with. Jeffrey Epstein had, in fact, he had asked the Palm Beach police, this is how tight the cops were down there in 2005 with the millionaires who lived in Palm Beach. He said that people were stealing from him. So the police helped him install a surveillance system at the Palm Beach mansion. Of course, he was using that surveillance system to capture his famous,

I believe his famous guests with some of these girls. I do believe that Jeffrey, and it shows the history, the pattern of how he made money. Jeffrey was about collecting people, about having goods on people, and I believe it carried through all the way to his final days of abuse at his home in the Virgin Islands. They were tipped off in Florida before it was raided there. And in fact, one of the four co-conspirators has been alleged to have removed all the hard drives. So when the search warrant was issued, they didn't have the hard drives. Where they are now remains a mystery. That's the question. Where is this blackmail material that he had possibly over all these

people? Where are those hard drives? Why in that list that we got from the U.S. attorney in Manhattan, it says CDs labeled nudes and girls and so on, but there's not an allegation of videotape with Prince Andrew. You know what I mean? If that happened, you know, Jeffrey Epstein had a picture of it. So where's that stuff if it existed? Well, I write in the book that there is a it's a crazy spy story. There's a gentleman in Russia who was affiliated with one of the lead detectives on the case. Don't tell me his name is Christopher Steele. No, not Christopher Steele.

The lead detective, as the story goes, was so sickened by the slap on the wrist that Jeffrey Epstein was given that he turned over to this man, allegedly, copies of some incriminating material that they had that, you know, that the FBI didn't want or wouldn't look at. And this man ended up in Russia and tells a story there that has been corroborated by some other journalists that, you know, the Russian government may have the goods on on some of this blackmail material that they may be sitting on material related to powerful people connected to Jeffrey Epstein. I forgot to mention Bill Gates. He was one of the guys who was connected with Epstein and on the plane.

I mean, all these people deny knowing anything about him and his sketchy history. And that could very well be true. You know, we don't know. But man, there were a lot of sketchy people who love to hang out with him. So that leads me to this. The Epstein fund. Is it gone? My understanding is he was worth someplace between $500 and $600 million when he died, or at least that's what I read, that they paid out $121 million to 135 people. They'd only expected about 100 claim taxes. By my calculations, that's about $320 million.

There should be between $200 and $300 million left. Where is it? Can people still get money? What's the status of that? Well, the compensation fund, which was actually directed by some individuals who were actually connected to the 9-11 compensation fund. It was a very well-run, separate entity that had nothing to do with Jeffrey Epstein's lawyers and so forth. We do know that the four victims who were testifying for the government, each of them received between $1.5 million and $5 million

from the compensation fund. And everything has been sold. His house in Palm Beach has been sold. His jets have been sold. His cars have been sold. The New York mansion is being renovated right now. Someone, a wealthy individual, has purchased that. So his estate has been liquidated. And the house in Palm Beach has been actually destroyed. It's been, you know,

knocked down, which is a good thing. Yeah. I mean, I feel like that's what should happen to all of them. I realize Manhattan real estate is what it is. Now, who would live in such a place? Come on. Like, come on. Where's your moral compass? Well, maybe they'll find something when they're renovating. Maybe there's something buried away that the FBI didn't find. So who knows? Good point. Well, listen, we're taping this before the Maxwell trial wraps up. You want to make any predictions? By the time it airs, we may know the answer. What do you think? Well, this was certainly not a slam dunk case for the prosecution. I mean, I, of course, in my gut, am hoping that justice will be served here and that Ghislaine will be spending a considerable amount of time of the remainder of her life behind bars. I think she absolutely deserves it. I think she was his partner in crime. I quote in the book, not an interview, but a conversation she had with a close friend in 1997, in which she said that she couldn't fulfill Jeffrey's insatiable sexual

appetite. It was impossible to meet, and she felt obliged to bring him young girls to fulfill his sexual needs. And this woman was completely horrified with what Ghislaine was telling her. And Ghislaine went on to say, this is a direct quote, they're nothing, these girls, they are trash. And to me, that sums up the only way she could justify in her mind to go down this dark road with Jeffrey Epstein is to not have a feeling whatsoever for any of these girls. In her mind, she didn't feel anything for them. They were, in her words, trash. And I think that's the only way that she was able to get through this.

Wow. What a note on which to leave it. Barry Levine, again, the book is called The Spider. Check it out. So appreciate you coming on. Hope we can talk again. Thank you. Well, our true crime Christmas week continues all week. Nothing says Christmas like a week of crime. But let's face it, we love talking about these cases because they're fascinating and they're kind of case studies in human nature too. Don't miss any of it. You can download The Megyn Kelly Show right now on Apple, Pandora, Spotify, and Stitcher so that you get a little tap on the shoulder when the new shows drop. And also check us out on youtube.com slash Megyn Kelly. Thank you all so much for listening. Thanks for listening to The Megyn kelly show no bs no agenda

and no fear