The Megyn Kelly Show - Jeffrey Epstein's Past Threats, Intel Associations, and How He Really Got So Rich, with Vicky Ward | Ep. 1108

Episode Date: July 15, 2025

Megyn Kelly begins the show by discussing the possibility that the Trump administration will be releasing more on Jeffrey Epstein now, why the story really matters even if it isn't the most important story in the country or world, the need for journalists to stay on it and get to the truth, the nuances in the Epstein and Diddy story and why not all alleged victims are to be believed, the hypocrisy from some in the press who covered for Biden's cognitive decline now trying to spin Epstein to hurt Trump, and more. Then Vicky Ward, author of "The Idaho Four," joins to discuss the facts we know about whether Epstein was an intel asset or "belonged to intelligence," the significance of Ghislaine Maxwell's father Robert Maxwell, Alex Acosta's past non-answers, the details of Epstein's strange career path, how he supposedly got wealthy, the circles he ran in that included Ehud Barak and Bill Clinton, how he was able to get the cushy plea deal, how Epstein threatened her unborn children while she investigated his finances and real estate for Vanity Fair, how he infiltrated newsrooms to manipulate coverage, why his intimidation tactics went unchecked for years, new reporting about the roommate who was Bryan Kohberger’s main target, his behavior mirroring past killers, how investigators used DNA technology to crack what was nearly the perfect crime, and more. Ward- https://www.hachettebookgroup.com/titles/james-patterson/the-idaho-four/9780316572859/ Riverbend Ranch: Visit https://riverbendranch.com/ | Use promo code MEGYN for $20 off your first order.Just Thrive: Visit https://justthrivehealth.com/discount/Megyn and use code MEGYN to save 20% sitewideBirch Gold: Text MK to 989898 and get your free info kit on goldPique: Get 20% off your order plus a FREE frother & glass beaker with this exclusive link: https://piquelife.com/MEGYNFollow 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, live on SiriusXM Channel 111 every weekday at noon East. Hey everyone, I'm Megyn Kelly. Welcome to The Megyn Kelly Show. We are live from Vail, Colorado today where I'm out here on business, but I wanted to make sure I made time for all of you because there's a lot going on. And we're going to talk a bit about Epstein and we're going to speak in just a moment to reporter Vicki Ward. Her name is all over the news. You heard it all over our show yesterday.

She's the reporter who wrote for Vanity Fair back in the early aughts about Jeffrey Epstein. Her piece about his abuse of girls was removed from the piece, though she was quite heroic in trying to expose him back then. And then she updated her piece in 2019 when Alex Acosta, the US attorney who had been going after Epstein down in Florida in 2007, 2008, spiked the case, gave him a sweetheart deal and waltzed off into the sunset. She reported for Daily Beast in 2019 that she'd been told by a member of the Trump transition team

back in 1617 that Alex Acosta had said to the Trump transition team that he had been told that Jeffrey Epstein was part of intelligence. I want to quote it exactly. He had been told, quote, that's a quote, been told to back off that Epstein was above his pay grade, quote, I was told Epstein belonged to intelligence and to leave it alone. That's what he told his interviewers in the Trump transition.

That was what she reported. So we're going to have her on today to talk about where that came from, what she can say about it, and whether she stands by that reporting. There are many other people disputing Alex Acosta's alleged statement that suggests Epstein was a foreign agent, including Alan Dershowitz, which I'll play for you in a minute. He represented Jeffrey Epstein in that sweetheart plea deal. He's the one who got it for him. And he does not believe that Epstein was an agent for Israel or anyone else.

And I'll let you hear from him directly as he explains why that is. Meanwhile, here's where we stand in terms of the disclosures. I've been talking a lot about Riverbend Ranch steaks lately, and for good reason. The ranch is just a few miles from West Yellowstone, Montana, where we go in the wintertime, and their steaks are so flavorful and surprisingly tender. Even someone like me, who does not know how to cook,

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Let me know what you think. Riverbendrange.com promo code, Megan. We heard from Benny Johnson yesterday, who is an influencer on the right, who has been interviewing people on Epstein and knows some administration officials. And he said that powerful people inside the administration are now pushing for a special counsel and a full press briefing.

My own take on that is, there is no way we're having a special counsel. A special counsel is appointed by the attorney general and is needed when there's a conflict of interest by said attorney general. What is Pam Bondi's conflict of interest? She can investigate Epstein and what happened. Just because she screwed up in her messaging on Epstein over the past few months doesn't mean she's got a conflict of interest.

I mean, to the contrary, I think now she would want to be as transparent as ever since her own reputation has been dinged up. So I just don't think they want that. And even if they did appoint a special counsel, it would be kind of pointless because that person would obviously be under the control of Bondi and Trump. So it's just, I mean, okay, that to me is a red herring. It's like a head fake. Now, if they are actually thinking about having a presser

or Pam Bondi sitting down for an extensive interview or you know, snow holds barred and she'll answer any question, she and or anybody from the FBI or anybody else from DOJ are welcome to come on this show and do that. And as you guys know, I'll be totally fair. I don't dislike Pam Bondi. I don't have it out for Pam Bondi.

We've always had a good relationship. I just think she's botched this. You know, I mean, I think if there's sort of a fall guy on who's mishandled the Epstein messaging for the Trump administration, it's very clearly Pam Bondi. So in any event, one of those two things could happen according to Benny Johnson. I don't think they're not going to have any additional disclosures. I think they realize they just have to.

I mean, go back to my appearance at the Charlie Kirk Turning Point Student Action Summit on Friday. We sat together and I asked the audience about their level of interest in the Epstein case and here's what happened. Watch this. Let me just ask you, make some noise if you care about the Jeffrey Epstein scandal. Raise your hand if it matters a lot to you. Raise your hand. So every hand of 7,000 people. Everybody cares. It's interesting because there are some right wing pundits online now who are saying no

one cares about Jeffrey Epstein. And that's just not true. That's not true. And in fact, Rasmussen recently did a poll that showed only 21% of the American public believes that Epstein killed himself. So the vast majority of Americans actually think that there is a cover-up of some sort that he was murdered and would like more disclosure. This isn't exactly what Trump ran on.

It wasn't a big platform of Trump's, but all of Trump's surrogates pushed this. And anybody who says otherwise is misleading you. I mean, from his family members to his top surrogates to the vice president, demanding more transparency on Epstein. So that's why we are where we are. It's not the number one most important thing of the Trump administration. I think it's important to keep in mind,

Trump has been out there racking up wins. I mean, left and right. We talked about last week, he nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize with good reason. June, for the first time, we saw an economic surplus here in the United States when it comes to our economy, and a surplus. For the first time, we weren't spending into the deficit. We actually were in the black instead of in the red in the United States of America.

And you had even CNBC and the New York Times admitting it was because of Trump's tariffs, you know, the dreaded evil tariffs that everybody's supposed to hate that are so awful. Well guess what? They're actually bringing in real money. And that's before they've even really kicked in in earnest. We're still in the middle of his big pause on the tariffs. So that's another huge thing. Trump's just recently said he's going to open back up the spigot with Ukrainian arms.

He's going to go, that was in morning update, he's going to go through NATO and have, like provide the arms to them and have them give them to Ukraine. So that's a bit of a victory for the more neo-Khani wing of the Republican Party. But look, they've had a couple of victories lately, the Iranian nuclear strikes and now this. So Trump is sort of evaluating his landscape on the foreign policy front and making real-time assessments. And while he really did try to woo Putin with honey instead of vinegar, it clearly didn't work.

And I think he's realizing that Putin really can't be wooed, can't be manipulated by praise or flattery. And that he's kind of, you know, an asshole. Like, of course, he's doing terrible, awful things in Ukraine. But I mean, he's not a man of his word. That's what Trump is realizing. And he's coming to his own independent judgment on whether he can trust him. And honestly, the neocons should just be happy with that. No one wanted to give Trump time to come to his own conclusions. They just want to shove their purported foreign policy knowledge down his throat. It's like, you know what? Trump's the president.

He's got tons of advisors more informed than you, telling him what the competing interests are. And at some point, the guy who's actually going to have to supply weapons that are going to kill people, people has to have his own independent experience that leads him to his own independent judgment. And that's what he's doing. So anyway, he's doing well on it and he's winning court battle after court battle. The Supreme Court continues to step in to slap down these federal district court judges

that are trying still to enjoin the Trump agenda. So far, he's doing very well with the law fair against him. It takes a little time to undo the rogue federal district court judges, but he's doing it. So look, he's focused on a lot of important things, and I agree and accept that Epstein is nowhere near even the top 20. The problem for him is this has been an ongoing issue for millions in the country, and especially among the Republican base. And it's been a fire-flamed fan by his top emissaries,

including the two guys he has running the FBI. I mean, totally those guys. And I don't think that they would try to deny that. I think Bongino and Patel would be really clear about that. Okay, so you now have some MAGA influencers clearly on direction of the White House saying, okay, I'm done. You had Laura Ingraham go on her show on Fox News

on last night being like, oh, well, you know, after there was the pile on at Charlie Kirk's oh, well, you know, after there was the pile on at Charlie Kirk's turning point event, you know, where all this Republican infighting and then kind of suggested she's moving off from Epstein. Okay. She was part of it. I like Laura, but she 100% stood up there and fanned this flame. I 100% talked about Pam Bonney and Epstein.

I was on the receiving end of a Q&A. Charlie Kirk was asking those questions. This is not Megyn Kelly's choice for the questions of the evening. The interviewer sets the tone and chooses the subject, with which I was 100% fine and remained fine. But let's not pretend that, you know, some of the president's most loyal advocates aren't very, very interested in Epstein. They are. All right. However, some in the media let their loyalty to the president trump their journalistic

obligation. Now, Charlie, I don't think considers himself a journalist, and so he has no such obligation and he's never made any secret of that. So kudos to him. Here's what he's saying. And, well, I'll talk about it on the back end. Sat one. Plenty was said this last weekend at our event about Epstein.

Honestly, I'm done talking about Epstein for the time being. I'm going to trust my friends in the administration. I'm going to trust my friends in the government to do what needs to be done, solve it, balls in their hands. But let me just say this again, everyone knows my opinion about the Epstein thing, the messaging fumble. I would love to see the DOJ move to unseal the grand jury testimony. I think that would be a big win. I would love to see that. And I'm going to trust

my friends, Cash Patel, Dan Bongino, my friend, Pam Bondi, all these guys. I'm going to, Todd Blanch, I'm going to trust them to solve it. Ball's in their court. I think that there was plenty of, let's say, speeches that were directed towards this topic this last weekend. And there were, I mean, up and down the roster, it was the dominant topic of conversation amongst virtually all the speakers that I heard. So Charlie says he's going to trust his friends inside the administration. You heard Ben Shapiro say that on this show yesterday. I will state for the record, I have lots of friends inside the administration. You heard Ben Shapiro say that on this show yesterday. I will state for the record, I have lots of friends inside the administration.

I have nothing but respect and admiration for this president, but I'm in a different business. I am in the journalism business. And my position is you can trust, but you must verify. And I refuse, refuse to be the CNN of Trump 2.0 where they just trusted the administration refuse to be the CNN of Trump 2.0, where they just trusted the administration on Biden's mental acuity, and willingly, by doing so, ignored the biggest crisis and controversy and scandal

in modern presidential history. That's not what's happening under Trump, but I'm just saying journalists, people like me, who do consider themselves as journalists, you have an obligation not to just trust. You kick the tires. That's your job. You approach all stories and everything fed to you by an administration official, like them, love them, respect them, trust them or not, with a hefty dose of skepticism. And you drill down and drill down and drill down until you think you've actually captured the story.

That's what we're going to do. I'm not obsessed with Epstein. Everyone who listens to this show knows if you wanted to hear the in-depth Epstein discussions over the past five, six years, this is not the place you came. But we are going to try to get to the bottom of what's knowable now that they're telling us there's no there there. I mean, for me, that's just a red cape in front of a bull. Like just, I understand some people like don't do it,

you don't wanna hurt Trump. I don't think this will hurt Trump. I think non-disclosure and non-transparency is hurting Trump, but I'm also not in the business of protecting Donald Trump. Again, like that's what the New York Times does for a Democrat, that's not me. That's not any honest journalist.

I am not going on some media tour in four years with Alex Thompson trying to have to explain how I'm shocked, shocked that there wasn't full disclosure under Trump on Epstein. I guess I was just too naive. I believe them. This is humiliating. This scandal is nowhere near, nowhere near what the Biden mental acuity scandal was. But I'm just saying it's a time for choosing for people who consider themselves honest journalists. And you don't back off a story just because a politician asks you to. Okay. That's just a statement of core

principles. At least you're on the MK show. That's that's that. However, having said all that, you know, I don't have TDS. I'm not looking to hurt him, sink him. And I actually don't believe Trump has anything to hide. I believe Trump's in the Epstein files insofar as he was friends with Epstein for 15 years. He knew Epstein. And there are people who hate Trump who probably threw some scurrilous allegations in there. But nobody believes Trump had an affinity for the underage girl. That's just

such bullshit. Maybe he was at some Epstein party. Trump says he never went to Epstein Island, and I believe that too. That would be something to extraordinary lie about. It'd be very easily disproven. So maybe Trump feels uncomfortable with releasing everything because he's been falsely accused by a lot of people, and he doesn't want to just throw a bunch of guys whose names are in these files under the bus in the way happened to him. That would make perfect sense to me. Maybe he sees something about his own name in there that he thinks is utter bullshit, and he's not looking to create more attention around that issue.

And so it's just easier to be like, you know, we're done. You know, the guy's dead, move on. I get that, but Trump doesn't have his finger on the pulse of how important this is, I think, to his base and to many. And maybe it's a question as Pam Bondi has said, well, sort of, in her memo, she's intimated, that look, there's really not anything that can be disclosed that we've got sealed grand jury testimony, that we've got heavily redacted

FBI files that protect the names of victims or alleged victims. All that's possible. Then you've got Alan Dershowitz out there. This is not the sound that I was referring to, but you've got Alan Dershowitz out there who represented Epstein saying, okay, there's no client list. That's sort of a short form for like who was in Epstein's orbit, who went to the island, who was on the plane, who has been accused by these young girls of using them, of having sexual interludes with them.

If it's a 17-year-old, that's one thing. If it's a 14-year-old, that's what we call a crime. So there's interest. And he is saying he's seen all the names He says what he thinks is all the other names. I have doubts about whether he's seen every name But he's definitely seen a lot of names He did say he does not believe anyone on that quote unquote list is a current sitting politician So he's ruling out Trump He previously told me as I mentioned to you guys yesterday in episode 10 of this show

There are names that you would recognize in there. He mentioned Bill Richardson as one. This Lex Wexner, the guy who owned Victoria's Secret and The Limited, is all over Jeffrey Epstein's life. He and his financial advisor are the ones who are responsible for making him hundreds of millions of dollars. The questions about him have never been fully resolved. But there are others too. Bill Clinton, obviously, is somebody who was very close with Epstein.

He was close with everybody. And I think this is something Vicky's going to talk about is how he knew everyone. He knew princes. He knew presidents, not just of countries, but of MIT, of Harvard. He operated at the highest levels of both culture and government and law in this country, and he was extremely charming and a very, very effective manipulator. And he was also a prolific, deviant sexual predator, okay? So it was kept quiet for far too long

because people like Vicki Ward, who tried, who tried got their story spiked. That story was spiked by Graydon Carter back in 2003. I'll ask her what she thinks about Graydon Carter doing that. I don't think the man had a real Jones for covering up for sexual predators, but the big reveal in Epstein happened slowly and then quickly. Now let's not forget after he was

indicted in 07 and then he settled his case, copped a plea, and it was put to bed by 2008. All these famous people went to his mansion in New York and continued hobnobbing with him. Prince Andrew, that's really why he got effectively canceled. Yes, because he was in a picture with Virginia Dufray when she was 17, but also because they accepted him after he had copped a plea. It was two counts of prostitution. These were underage girls.

14-year-olds are not prostitutes. That's statutory rape. This was effectively negotiated down by skilled lawyers. But they knew, they knew, everybody knew by that point what had happened in that case. It wasn't a secret how he had negotiated down what he'd actually done to these two slap on the wrist counts and had a year of house arrest slash jail and

Katie Couric and George Stephanopoulos Still went over to the mansion and hobnobbed with him Even our pal Steve Bannon spent a lot of time with him in 2019 after Bannon was ousted from Trump 1.0 And we're gonna have a lot more on that later. We're talking to Steve, and we love Steve and we respect Steve. And unlike everybody else who just wants to crap all over him, we're just going to him and he's talking to us and we're going to get to the bottom of exactly what happened.

What does he know? Wouldn't it be fascinating to talk to him about it? I think he's actually going to talk to us about it. So there are a lot of questions still to be answered. Now, on the subject of what we're going to get, Lara Trump, daughter-in-law of the president, she's married to the son, Eric Trump, as you know, she went on with Benny Johnson yesterday and she actually made news saying we are about to get more disclosures from Team Trump that they actually have had a change of heart when it comes to transparency and what they think we're entitled to.

Watch. I do think that there needs to be more transparency on this. And I think that that will happen. I mean, look, I don't know what truly exists there, but I know that this is something that's important to the president as well. He doesn't want transparency on all these fronts. That everything we're talking about, because it's frustrated him as well.

As it relates to the president, I know that this is probably not his number one thing he's focused on, but he hears all the noise and he hears all of the consternation out there. And I think he's gonna wanna set things right as well. So I believe that there will probably be more coming on this. And I believe anything that they are able to release that doesn't damage any witnesses or anyone underage or

anything like that, I believe they'll probably try to get out sooner rather than later, because they hear it and they understand it. To everybody out there who's all worked up about it, there's no great plot to keep this information away that I'm aware of. I do just believe that maybe it's been slow rolled for reasons that hopefully we understand down the line. Now she's a great spokesperson for the administration. I mean, she should, she really should run for that Senate seat. I don't know if she can in North Carolina, it's just she doesn't actually live there now. But in any event, she's got an amazing career ahead of

her, no matter what she chooses to do, and very, very effective communicator. And I believe her when she says Moore is coming. She wouldn't say that if it weren't true. She's been very credible thus far, even though she's a relative of the president, and obviously has motive to run cover for him. Why would she say Moore is coming on the hottest button issue in the country right now

if it's not? So maybe we're gonna get a presser, maybe we're gonna get declassified information from the FBI. I do believe there's a lot that's being withheld. I do not believe that they've given us everything at all. I believe Julie K. Brown, the reporter for the Miami Herald, who's been really owning this story, when she talks about the volumes and volumes of materials that are still with the FBI, that are still with the Southern District of New York, that are sitting there redacted,

provided like one big form that's been blacked out in every line, redacted. And I agree with Alan Dershowitz who said he really thinks that these other men who may be in this file should have to defend themselves the same as Alan did. The only reason Alan got outed and all these other people didn't who may have been accused is because Virginia Dufray was talked into mentioning Alan by others who thought it would really help Virginia sell her book. And Alan was the most preeminent attorney in the country at the time and he got put on the list. She later moved away.

She dropped her lawsuit against him and said she may have been confused about who it was she actually was with. But that was after Alan produced all this proof it was never, he'd never been with her. He's never been with, is it so hard to believe? It wasn't Alan, it wasn't Alan, okay? Again, go back and look at our reporting on it.

Poor Alan has been haunted by this allegation for a long, long time, but he still thinks we have a right to transparency. He still thinks that the other men who were accused should have to speak to it the same as he did. And Alan's been making the other point, which is valid too. There are probably a lot of accusers in there who are bullshit, who let's not forget once Epstein was outed back in 07, 08, there was a pile on.

They created this fund, hundreds of millions of dollars. He became like the number one funder of the litigation bar in Florida. All these lawyers were like, holy crap, you can get money from Epstein's fund? If you find some victim who says she was groomed by him or forced into giving him a so-called happy ending at his mansion, great, let's do that. Some are real and some are bullshit. It's kind of like what we saw in the Diddy case. There's no question that Cassie Ventura is telling the truth about what happened between her and Diddy. The jury may not have thought it was sex trafficking, but even the cross-examination didn't try to combat her allegations of abuse or getting her hooked on drugs or allegations about the freak-offs.

Same for Jane. That doesn't make every accuser he came forth against Diddy real. And we exposed one of them on this show as we delved into the one woman who said his guard picked her up after a music award show and brought her to Diddy for some night of debauchery. And it was all untrue. music award show and brought her to Diddy for some night of debauchery. And it was all untrue. It was very clear that she wasn't in the right city.

She was making all the wrong allegations. There was no house, as she described and so on. So anyway, keep that in mind that there's another reason, I think, that favors disclosure, which is why do these accusers have the right to stay anonymous forever? What is the rule that says you get to do that? You know, I've talked about this before, but in the Ailes sexual harassment scandal at Fox News, we were told he gets to see your name. Like, if you come forward against him, he's going to know you did.

And then there was a time for choosing, right? Do we do that? Are we okay putting our names behind our allegations? I 100% was because I was telling the truth and I knew he would know it. And frankly, in my case, I had contemporaneous journal entries. I had my office mate, Major Garrett, to whom I'd been regaling, you know, stories the entire time when the phone would ring and say, Roger Ailes, I was a first year reporter. We were both like, holy shit. Anyway, my point is simply, when you're a truth teller, you're not afraid of disclosure

like that. And I think they're, except in a case where it's clearly a minor like that, a minor is deserved to be protected. But there's a lot of folks who were not minors who were legal or like legal in the eyes of the law when it comes to a sexual interlude, and even older girls who, their names should be exposed. They don't have a right to lifetime anonymity on all of this. Okay. So now we move on to, oh, I actually have one sound, but I want to play for you before

I move on to the question of whether he was an agent. And this is back to the question of how big is this story and who will cover it with integrity given that the president clearly is asking people to move on and yet it hasn't been resolved. So what should the press do? Joe Scarborough. This is the best Biden ever. Roll the tape. Roll the tape. I'm going to tell you the truth. The best Biden ever, Joe Scarborough, would like to weigh in on this scandal and Republicans who have accepted the president's request to move on.

Listen here, Sat5. Sometimes you get it wrong. Hey, as I've said here on this show, I get wrong every day. Most notably last year, after spending a lot of time with Joe Biden, I talked about Biden at his best. I get it wrong. Sometimes you change your mind and you see some facts, the facts change, you change your

mind with those facts that happened. But I must say, very rarely have I ever seen people going from a decade long crusade against pedophilia, against sex abuse, against child exploitation, and making that almost a centerpiece of their existence, saying, when we get in power, we're going to release the Epstein files. Charlie Kirk said, 7,500 people outraged by this. The truth must come out. And then the next day, magic pixie dust is sprinkled over all of the podcasters. And voila, this moral crisis of a decade long about little children getting raped by the richest and most powerful men in the world goes away. Unbelievable. Maybe sit this one out, Joe Scarborough. The nerve of this man to lecture

anyone on not covering a story aggressively out of an interest in protecting their favorite president, the absolute unmitigated gall. My least favorite part of that clip, if you come back and watch it on our YouTube show, you'd have to go about 27 minutes into the show, is Mika Brzezinski sitting next to him with the face of... I'm making my sad concern face, a sad concern face. Oh, the poor children.

Who does she think she's kidding? Not only did this pair run cover for Joe Biden for his entire presidency and was telling us he could and should do a second term, that he was totally fine and better than ever. Oh, but then the facts evolved that showed him he was wrong? Bullshit! There isn't a human on earth that believes that spin from him.

He knew he lied. He ran cover for political purposes. But that same man was one of the few reporters in America to get Doug Emhoff sitting across from him after the allegations broke that he was a woman abuser, that he had beat the shit out of his girlfriend he had just prior to dating Kamala. He didn't ask him at all about it, at all. He gave some generic question on how like,

tabloids are terrible, aren't they? How do you handle the stress? He didn't ask him whether it was true, which by the way, I 100% believe it was true. I've spoken with the accuser. I know her account forward and backward now. And Doug Emhoff, well, he denied it on paper. It was public.

This woman is a very well-respected lawyer. She had zero reason to lie. She was a Democrat, is a Democrat. Not to mention that he impregnated the nanny when he was married to wife number one, and that the nanny, according to the Daily Mail, lost her baby after a particularly volatile fight she had when Doug Emhoff, the baby's father, was visiting her

and an ambulance had to come. The woman has never spoken publicly. We don't know the story with the nanny. Emhoff has denied these allegations. My point is you ask. If you have any journalistic integrity whatsoever, you ask. Even though it is uncomfortable, even though you don't want to hurt the guy, you ask. You're a disgusting political hack. The nerve, sit this one out. You have no right to lecture anyone on Epstein. And one other point, neither he nor Hakeem Jeffries

nor Jamie Raskin nor any of these other Democrats that is now trying to make hay of the Epstein issue said anything about it over the past many years when Joe Biden was president. Nothing. They weren't demanding transparency. They weren't demanding answers in Epstein. So literally nobody wants to hear from them. None. Okay. Gotten on a tear. Deep breathing. Let's talk about whether Jeffrey Epstein was in fact an asset, okay, was some sort of intelligence asset for America, Israel, or some foreign government. Many people believed that he might be because he didn't go to college.

He was a high school graduate who somehow parlayed that into a job at the prestigious Dalton School in Manhattan and was hired by Bill Barr, former CIA, former attorney general now, by his dad who was the headmaster there. And that guy was in Intel. And there was a question about whether he'd been potentially recruited by him or potentially brought into or in connection with the Mossad in Israel because Ghulain Maxwell's father was believed to be connected with Mossad and that guy I mentioned to you yesterday, Ari Ben-Manash, said he was Ghulain Maxwell's father's handler and that Jeffrey Epstein was connected

to Israeli intelligence, the Mossad. And there were many Israeli politicians like heads of state and Mossad officials at Galen Maxwell's father's funeral and on and on it went. So there had been speculation about whether Epstein was connected to American intel, Israeli intel or some other country's intel. He was close with the Saudis. There were a bunch of possibilities because he got very, very rich in a very, very short amount of time, notwithstanding the fact that he wasn't very, very impressive on his academic

resume, at least not in a way that you typically see of people who suddenly make hundreds of millions of dollars based on their smarts and their connection to powerful people. So that was a question that was buzzing around. And then it got even more furious when he copped that amazing plea deal in 2007 to 2008. Because it looked like somebody stepped in to make it go away. That's how it looked. It was like these were very serious charges. The truth about him was coming out.

The government said it knew of at least 30 victims who had been trafficked by Jeffrey Epstein, including underage girls. Who gets 13 months, basically house arrest for that? And it gets it reduced to two misdemeanor solicitation of a prostitute accounts. I know Alan is a great lawyer, but he's not that great. So what else was at play in making that very strong case get whittled down to nothing?

People wanted to know. I want to know. And this is where Vicki Ward's reporting comes in. She reported, as I started off the show with, in 2019, that in 2016, she'd spoken with a person on the Trump transition team about Alex Acosta, who had been nominated for Labor Secretary. And she knew the case very well, because she'd been reporting on Epstein for years.

And she could see, you know, that was an interesting choice. Like, this is an interesting choice. Are you sure you're gonna be okay with Alex Acosta? And she reported, as I said at the top of the show, what she reported about how he was believed to be an intelligence asset, again, that he'd been told to back off, that Epstein was above his pay grade. Quote, I was told Epstein belonged to intelligence and to leave it alone. And by the way, he also said on camera that DOJ had full vetting and approval

of that settlement deal, of that plea deal. So there's no question that Alex Acosta wasn't making the ultimate decision on that settlement, on that plea deal. It was May injustice. Now, who was the attorney general at the time this deal was made? It was Alberto Gonzalez.

The deal was made, it was right up to like the middle of November. I can't remember exactly what day in November it was cut, but it was November of 2007. And Alberto Gonzalez was the attorney general. Within a week, he resigned and Michael Mukase came in. I mean, it's kind of interesting. Why did he resign again? Like, I'd love to go back and ask him, like, what did we know about this case?

I'm not suggesting he resigned because he was disgusted or ashamed or guilty, but I'd love to know why the timing was so close. Anyway, Michael Mukasey stepped in, and there's no question Alberto Gonzalez would have had to and Alex Acosta specifically says, signed off on this pleadia. He didn't mention Gonzalez, but he said main justice. And something like this most likely would have gone all the way up. So that's what happened.

Then, so Vicki Ward hits that reporting in 2019, and she dropped that report in the Daily Beast the day before Alex Acosta was forced, now he's Labor Secretary, to hold a presser about the fact that he's been embroiled in this controversy and what's he going to do? Can he last as labor secretary or is he going to be forced out? That's when he issued that what I think is an absolutely pathetic non-denial denial will play here.

It's sought 9, July 10th 2019. Mr. Secretary, were you ever made aware at any point you're handling this case if Mr. Epstein was an intelligence asset of some sort? So, so, so there has there has been reporting to that effect. And let me say, there's been reporting to a lot of effects in this case, not just now, but over the years. And again, I would hesitate to take this reporting as fact. This was a case that was brought by our office. It was brought based on the facts.

And I look at that reporting and others, I can't address it directly because of our guidelines, but I can tell you that a lot of reporting is just going down rabbit holes. That is not a denial, people. That's not a denial. I don't know whether he actually said that to Trump transition,

but that is about his mealy mouth and wormy an answer to a direct question, were you made aware that he was an Intel asset, as you could ever hope to hear. He did not say no, first of all. He did not deny the report. All he said was, I would hesitate to take as fact some of the reporting that's out there. Okay.

By this point, why couldn't he say no? By this point, he could have said no, I was not told that Jeffrey Epstein was an asset. That is a report that is out there that is not true. This case was settled based on perceived weaknesses in the government's case. While it was a very strong state case, this is what Alan Dushawitz has said, by the way, it was less of a strong federal case.

I don't know if I believe that, but I'm just saying, if you wanted to find a way of justifying to the press in front of you why you walked away from the deal, it would be very easy to say it had nothing to do with him being an intelligence asset. No, that was never told to me. We walked away for the following reasons. It was a weak case, whatever.

So that's what Alex Acosta said on camera. And then he sat with the Department of Justice's Office of Professional Responsibility, which looked into this whole matter. And this is what people who say he was not an asset, and again, I'm not arguing he was an asset. I have no idea. I'm just trying to do an honest investigation for you guys. I'm not somebody with a horse in this race.

I don't discount the allegations he was or the defenses that he wasn't in any event. So then he speaks to the OPR and reportedly he told OPR that no, he wasn't told that Epstein was an asset. Or at least that's what most reports that write about the OPR investigation say, Alex Acosta said. Enter Mike Benz, former State Department employee, now heads up an open Intel type organization where they're demanding transparency from government, no matter the party, and all sorts of important issues.

And he knows this case like the back of his hand. And he was making some very good points about this OPR report. I think this was yesterday and it's sat seven. They tried to put this story to bed by saying, oh, we did this OPR report in Al Gzaikasta, walk back what he said to the Trump transition team or what he contradicted Vicki Ward's reporting.

Well, we don't know that because we never got the transcript. We got a one line summary description buried in the 244th footnote. Now that OPR investigation is totally sweeping. All of the audio files, all of the transcripts, all of the interviews can be made public. Now, OPR reported directly to Bill Barr. Bill Barr was the CIA's mop-up man for Iran-Contra. He started his career in the CIA. The Washington Post called him the CIA's fall guy because he blocked disclosures of CIA

files. his fall guy because he blocked disclosures of CIA files, it's very possible that the intelligence angle could have been buried by Bill Barr himself. So interesting. Remember when you were a kid with an iron stomach, pizza, ice cream, PB&J, nothing seemed to phase you. These days, however, you might feel like your stomach can be a bit of a bear trap, one wrong bite, and you're done. Here's the thing, years ago,

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Subscribe now, get your first three months for free. Go to SiriusXM.com slash MKShow to subscribe and get three months free. That's SiriusXM.com slash MKShow and get three months free. Offer details apply. What does Vicki Ward think now? She's the one who first got any actual reporting about his alleged intel ties going. She's an investigative reporter. She's worked for numerous outlets in the past.

She now posts her own sub stack, Vicki Ward Investigates. And she's actually also the author. We were booking Vicki for this week, irrespective of all this, because she's the author of a new book that's just hitting. She co-authored it with James Patterson called The Idaho for an American Tragedy. This is about, of course, those poor souls out in Idaho who were murdered, we now know for sure, by Brian Kohlberger.

And we're going to put it right to her. Vicki, first of all, thank you so much for being here. What do you make of all the back and forth now that's going on about your explosive 2019 Daily Beast report? Well, thank you for having me, Megan. And I have to say, that was the most detailed, comprehensive overview of Jeffrey Epstein's backstory that I've ever heard. Because it's a very complicated subject. And it's very hard to do it justice quickly. Because there are, as you say, so many questions. First of all, I 100% stand by what I reported in the Daily Beast in 2019.

I was told directly by someone in the Trump transition who had met with Alex Acosta in the transition and asked if the issue of Jeffrey Epstein would be a roadblock or a problem for his confirmation. And the answer came back. No. And, you know, I was told Epstein belonged to intelligence and they moved on. I obviously wasn't in the room in the Trump transition. I was told this anonymously, so I can't name my source. But nothing has happened since then to make me think that there was anything wrong with that person's memory or what they told me. So does that clear that up for you, Megan?

Yes, it does. You stand by your reporting. The person who said it to you has never gone back on it or called you to say, gee, I might have screwed that one up. Sorry, I put you out in the limelight there, Vicki. No. And you were in no way confused or playing with the person's words or jumping to your own conclusions.

You were reporting exactly what you'd been told. That's exactly right. That's exactly right. It was a person who was in a position to know. Correct. Was a person who was in the position to have been in the room with Alex Acosta. And I think that given,

I also think the choice of wording is interesting. Epstein belonged to intelligence because that also runs a gamut right of possibilities. Here's what we know about Jeffrey Epstein as opposed to what we don't know. We know that he knew a lot about Robert Maxwell, his one-time girlfriends and colleagues and convicted accomplices. Father Robert Maxwell, as you pointed out, Megan, was buried, given a hero's burial on the Mount of Olives, it's pretty well documented that Robert Maxwell definitely worked for Israeli intelligence. He also worked, by the way, for other governments. But so, and Jeffrey Epstein knew a great deal about Gilen Maxwell's father. What we also know, to your point, is that this guy didn't have a college degree. He winds up teaching at the Dalton School. He then, after tutoring the child of the CEO of Bear Stearns, then an investment bank, winds up being the youngest ever partner

there. And he leaves Bear Stearns in very, very strange circumstances, which later, I mean, I then go on and report. It turned out he was involved in a sort of insider trading allegations that were going on from the SEC. I'm not explaining it very well. And he sort of fell on his sword and he remained very, very tight with the people running bear stands for a very long time. And people found that hard to explain. He then moved to Europe for a while and according to Jeffrey Epstein who was an complete con artist and master manipulator, he spent a few years hanging out with a guy called a British guy called Douglas Lees who was certainly known to be in the arms business. And according to Jeffrey Epstein himself,

he spent a few years going and recovering stolen money from wealthy Europeans in places like the Cayman Islands. He would tell people stories of sort of literally flying into places where people put money offshore and leaving quickly with suitcases of cash on private planes and depositing this cash in Switzerland. So I mean, he himself propagated this myth that he was some sort of James Bond. Meanwhile, his circumstances in New York are humble. He lives in a one-bedroom apartment on E 66 Street

in New York. There's no evidence of any sex with underage girls in this time period. This is the 1980s. Fast forward to the 1990s, things dramatically change for him. First of all, little known piece of data, but an important one, he cooperates with the government in a criminal investigation against a businessman he had worked with very closely, guy called Steve Hoffenberg, who's now dead, who was convicted of pulling off the biggest Ponzi scheme in American history prior to Bernie Madoff. Steve Hoffenberg wound up going to jail for 20 years. The money from the company, Towers Financial, disappeared.

This was in the early 1990s. Jeffrey Epstein flipped on him. And in the 1990s is when you see Jeffrey Epstein suddenly amass a vast amount of money and he buys the most valuable townhouse in New York, he buys an island, he buys a ranch in New Mexico. And it's at this point in his life that the underage girls first make an appearance. It's also, by the way, this is the decade that Ghislaine Maxwell, her father died and she became a fixture in his life.

It's also in this decade that Lesley Wexner, the richest supporter of Israel in this country, becomes Jeffrey Epstein's benefactor. And it's at this moment, this is the decade when Jeffrey Epstein really immerses himself in, at Harvard, he becomes on behalf of Wexner a major philanthropic donor to all these scientific and cultural and educational institutions. We know that in 1992, he and Gillen Maxwell went into the Clinton White House. We also know that it's at this point that he becomes very tight with Ehud Barak, the Israeli former prime minister, and it's at this point that he starts to spend a lot of time with Prince Andrew. Andrew, and he basically, through Ghislaine Maxwell, acquires the international rolodex of her late father, which puts him in a very unique place in the world. It puts him at

the centre of international soft power. The question that I think you want to know and I think everybody wants to know and wants to get some answers to is, what did he do with that soft power? How did that help him? If it helped him in 2008, get out of the federal charges, get that cushy plea deal, he could not have committed the sexual crimes. So where did the money come from? And who are the people who propped him up

financially? And why have they not been held to account? That, I think, is what people understandably want the answers to. And I don't quite understand. So you heard it here from Vicki Ward, Julie K. Brown, who's been covering him for years too, said the same thing. Everyone who's really been following this case closely says the same thing, follow the money.

Where did it come from? That alone is worth more disclosure and someone needs to answer that question. I mean, that's knowable through a forensic accounting of Jeffrey Epstein's documents, of his contacts, of who paid him the money. Like, where did it come from when it went into the bank accounts? Where did it go out, if at all, by Jeffrey? We've never received the answers on that. No. And I mean, one thing that struck me, Megan, when I was sitting through the Gillen-Maxwell's trial were that, you know, I mean, you're a trained lawyer, you know this, that they

kept that prosecution so tight, tightly focused on her and the sexual crimes. It was deeply frustrating to sit there and sort of see names of famous wealthy people. Yes, they were on planes, they knew Jeffrey Epstein, but you kept wondering, well, what else did they know? And did they fund Jeffrey Epstein? And by the way, did Jeffrey Epstein then steal from them? Because that was the other thing that Epstein used to say to me back in 2002, was that, you know,

one of the reasons he was able to come in and as he described it, be James Bond for all these wealthy Europeans and go and find their money for them, was they came to him because rich people, when they lose their money, he said they don't go to the authorities because it's too embarrassing. Well, you know, look how, look how history turned full circle

when after Jeffrey Epstein died, Leslie Wexner, his benefactor suddenly admitted, because he was sort of caught in a public crosshair, that that Jeffrey Epstein had in fact stolen 47 million dollars from him. But it's not something that Leslie Wexner, you'll know, went to the authorities over. And what I did wonder- I mean, that just makes you ask more. Like, what does Leslie Wexner have to hide?

Exactly. And I sat there. I mean, when federal prosecutors bring criminal cases, they tend to bring them wanting to win them. And the problem with Jeffrey Epstein's money is it's difficult. It doesn't mean it shouldn't be pursued just because it's difficult, but Jeffrey Epstein definitely knew how to steal from people and how to put money offshore. And it would be difficult for the American feds to trace that money.

Does that mean they shouldn't try? I think that's one of the questions that we're now probably asking, whether we know it or not. Let me play what Alan Dershowitz said who represented him in getting that sweetheart deal. I don't hold this against Alan. That's what lawyers do. I hold it against the government.

It's their job to get the best deal for the people possible. It's their job to put bad guys in jail. But Alan yesterday said, and I will say Alan's very, very, very close with Israel. It's the subject of his podcast 80% of the time. So I do take it with a grain of salt, but I think he's an honest broker, generally speaking. Here's what he said. Then there's the Tucker Carlson allegation, which is the most absurd of all. He worked for the Mossad.

He worked for the Jews. He worked for Israel. And don't call me an anti-Semite just because I say he worked for Israel. No, no. You're just wrong. You're just dead wrong. He didn't work for Israel.

Let me tell you how I know. I was his lawyer along with four or five other lawyers. If he had worked for any intelligence agency, the Mossad, the Shin Bet, the CIA, anything, any intelligence agency, the first person he would tell would be me and the other lawyers and say, hey, get me a better deal. I don't like this deal. I'm going to jail for a year and a half. I have to register as sex offender.

I worked as an intelligence source, so get me a better deal. He didn't tell us that. We asked him everything. We asked him what information is there conceivably that could help you. We asked him whether people he could testify against. That's what lawyers do. I'd love to know your reaction to that. When I watched it, I thought, okay.

I'm not sure Epstein would have disclosed that to his defense attorneys. I actually think there'd be a different way of getting to Alex Acosta on it. But what do you think? Well, I know Alan obviously very well by now. I think you're right, Megan, in that Jeffrey Epstein wouldn't have needed to say anything to Alan. Alan would have been more aware than anybody else that Jeffrey Epstein's money, which was in turn paying for this dream team of lawyers, was coming from the richest supporter of Israel

in this country. So, you know, some things are just out there in plain sight. And you have to be careful. You know, I've never, I don't, you know, speculated that Jeffrey Epstein was a quote, you know, Mossad agent. I'm pretty sure he wasn't in that he operated at a level where, not on a government payroll, he didn't need to be on anybody's payroll. I mean, people have different roles in quote unquote intelligence,

and there are people. I reported this in Chasing Gilem, the podcast series that I made about the sort of the men and the money around Epstein. There are people who the intelligence community call hyper connectors. And Jeffrey Epstein, particularly actually in the last decade of his life, was unusual

in that he was very close to Israeli leadership and prominent, the prominent Jewish community in this country and presidents. But he was also, you know, he had Mohammed bin Salman, now the Crown Prince of Saudi Arabia to his house. He knew NBC. He was, he talked about his close relationship to the leaders of various African dictatorships. He even, I mean, he bragged, and you never know whether

to believe what Jeffrey Epstein tells you, that he was close to Putin. So somebody like that, which is not, by the way, dissimilar from the kind of networking that Robert Maxwell had, somebody like that is useful, frankly, to everybody. And they don't need to be specifically on a government's payroll. That's a very good point. That's an important nuance. He could have been effectively benefiting from those relationships with a number of countries providing compromise or information or any number of things in exchange for protection or regulatory approvals or them not bothering him on his offshore accounts. Money.

Yeah. Yeah, we don't know. Yeah, actual hard cash that he may have been getting from a various array of countries and governments and related groups. Now, can we spend a minute on whether he killed himself? I realize this is sort of at the heart of the so-called conspiracy and people have strong feelings on it, but I do think it's interesting only 21% of Americans think he did.

Well, another piece of this is Brian Enton of News Nation, who's been doing a great job on this case and Kohlberger. He interviewed Michael Franzese. He's been on this show too. Love this guy and former mob guy who has served time and he served time in this prison. And he had some thoughts on the suicide theory. I spent seven months on that tear and in those cells. And the first thing I have to say, there's just, there's no way you are able to commit suicide. There's just no way. There's no way to hang yourself. There's nothing from the ceiling.

There's nothing from the bed. You'd have to be a midget and work really hard to try to hang yourself. And I don't think you can accomplish it at that point. You know, as far as the cameras being off, I haven't experienced that. I did eight years in prison and I haven't experienced cameras being broken and the perfect storm of correctional officers not walking those cells.

They walk in and they look in on you all the time. As a matter of fact, you know, sometimes it's embarrassing to go to the toilet because they're walking past you and looking in the cell constantly. So I've said this from day one, I do not believe it was suicide because you just couldn't physically do it. It's almost, it would be almost impossible. You have to hang yourself from something. There's nothing on the ceiling that you can hang a bed sheet on. The bed is not that high.

I mean, you have to try to lay down on the floor in some way because Jeffrey Epstein was a fairly big guy. This makes a lot of sense to some of us because you do have to wonder how one hangs oneself from the top bunk, even though he was provided with the extra bed linen and so on. So what are your thoughts on this question? Well, look, I mean, it's maddening, right? I mean, Jeffrey Epstein dies with as many question marks over the manner of his death

as the manner of his life. I spent a lot of time talking to Reid Weingarten, who was Jeffrey Epstein's attorney at that time, and Reid struggled with this for a long time, for reasons actually different than the manner of the death. It was that the day before he had met with Jeffrey Epstein and he had said to him, I really think we have a good shot of getting you out of here. That the non-prosecution agreement that they had struck in 2008, he believed would hold in front of the Court of Law. And according to Reid Weingarten, Jeffrey Epstein was upbeat and agreed with him. And that's why his own attorney sort of couldn't believe it the next day when

he was told Epstein had committed suicide, because on top of that, there were all the reasons you've just pointed out. It was so difficult to do and all the extraordinary things that had to happen for the cameras not to work, for the security guards to vanish. I mean, it all just seemed remarkable. I've tried since then to find those two missing guards, and they definitely don't want to be found easily. I normally find most people, and it's very difficult to get hold of them. I guess we're never going to know.

That's really where we're left on it. But I've heard you also speak to Michael Wolff and others on what was Jeffrey Epstein's relationship with Trump? Because immediately Trump's detractors have gone to, and Elon Musk's at Trump's in the Epstein files, but in, that's ambiguous, what does that mean? Most of us believe if there was something really bad on Trump, the Biden administration would have used it. They were running against him for president that Kamala, Joe, and just in the course of the four years where

they loathe Trump. So it's very hard to believe there's some smoking gun in there about aha. But you know a lot about the relationship between those two guys or have learned a lot. What what do you how would you describe their relationship? Well, that you know, there's no question that they were, they knew each other well and paled around. And, I mean, again, if you think back to the timeline, Megan, the 1990s, which when Jeffrey Epstein begins,

but acquires all his money and wealth, I mean, it's the beginning, right? And of the friendship with Melania, who was, as we know, a model. So they're all hanging out in similar circles. That's I don't think so problematic really for Trump. Trump was hanging out, and Epstein, as I've said, had an extraordinary international Rolodex. So the fact that Trump, it would be more surprising if he hadn't known Donald Trump. What I don't quite understand is that given that Trump

and Epstein did fall out, and you're right, Michael Wolfe and I have talked about whether it was over this piece of property in Florida that both men wanted to get out of bankruptcy. You know, again, that's a question that's up in the air. And I don't quite understand why Donald Trump wouldn't actually come out and talk about why he and Jeffrey Epstein fell out, given that actually in this instance, it puts him on the right side of history. Yeah, they did have a falling out. Trump's admitted it. The story that you and Michael discussed was

there was a piece of property, Epstein brought Trump over to say, can you look at it and tell me how to move the pool? Trump went with him and instead of doing that, he found out that Epstein had bid 35 million for it and Trump instead behind his back, billed bid 40 and so that's one possible way. Yes, accept that. So here's where I question that and I've talked at length to Sam Numburg

who was, as you know, Trump's first political advisor and he and Trump back in the day did talk about this. The problem with that theory is that at the end of the day, there was a bankruptcy auction, a public auction to sell that house. So either of them could have just outbid the other. So that's why I have questions about that particular theory. Because your understanding is that in fact,

what began the snowballing against Jeffrey Epstein was a young woman actually coming forward through her mom to say this happened to me. I think well, and Trump, I think told Sam Numburg that he was furious with Epstein because I think he was harassing the daughter of a member of Mar-a-Lago. And, you know, I don't know, I mean, back in the day 2014, there's no reason for Trump to have made that up. So to me, that actually makes a lot of sense.

Yes. So do you think, I want to talk about your personal experience because you had a sort of a frightening exchange with Jeffrey Epstein, but do you, just quickly, do you think there really are files that could be released? I mean, were you surprised by the memo saying, that's it, there's nothing more to reveal? Well, I was very surprised when Pam Bondi first said, you know, I've got this list on my desk, because I very much doubt that there's a spreadsheet of Jeffrey, he just wasn't that kind of guy. I mean, the way he operated, I mean, I don't know if you've read any of

the discovery in the Jess Daly litigation, but he always appeared to do almost no work. And he wouldn't have needed to have kept a list, let's say for the sake of argument, he was, he had compromise on wealthy guys. He wouldn't have need to keep a list to remind himself of who they were. So I never thought that.

And that's just not his style. And people are fixated on the black book. The black book was not Jeffrey Epstein. The black book was Gillian Maxwell's address book. And obviously they shared it. I mean, she worked for him. She organized his life. But I think you were asking me, what do I make of the whole thing in the files?

I'm in the files. Do you think that there's more to be revealed? Well, I think that, of course, there's got to be more documentation around all the lawsuits that would answer some of the questions that we have. There's somewhere, somebody knows somebody knows why in 2008 he was able to get away with that plea deal. And maybe it's not written out in black and white, but there is certainly in amidst all the discovery and in the redacted material, there are some answers to the questions we want to know.

And so I don't know why they just don't do a document dump and say, here's absolutely everything. Yeah. Okay. Going back to 2003, when you were trying to break this story, you were doing a profile of Jeffrey for Vanity Fair and this was going to be a part of your profile on these two sisters that he had hurt. And same thing as we've seen with so many other girls' promises of like, I'll make your modeling career or I'll help you get into a prestigious university.

All things you would believe he'd have the power to do, given his connections to Wexner, given his connections to MIT and Harvard and all these other places. And as I mentioned in the intro, Graydon Carter ultimately said, we're taking this out. You talked about how you were devastated, you were in tears, you would work so hard. You were very proud of this family

for actually revealing this to you and being willing to come forward because he was not outed yet. He was at the apex of his power and to have made these allegations would have been very courageous at that time and thereafter, but especially at that time. And I wonder if you can just tell us what happened. So it got spiked. You had dealt with Jeffrey.

You had interviewed him, and then you write about how you had your babies and you actually got yourself spun up into like, I don't know what this guy's capable of. This is before, this is well before he was outed. Well, because so during, I was pregnant with my sons when I began reporting on Jeffrey Epstein. The irony of this is that I had a high risk pregnancy, so I wasn't allowed fly. So I was assigned to write about Jeffrey Epstein, and I was assigned to find out where his money had come from. Because for the first time in forever,

he had appeared in the press. He was very press shy ordinarily, but there was a little item in Page Six in the New York Post saying that he had flown Bill Clinton on his plane to Africa. I was assigned to go and find out who was this enigma, who lived in this enormous house in New York, and where the money come from.

The idea actually was that for me, it would be a very easy piece because I lived in New York and where'd the money come from. And the idea actually was that for me, it would be a very easy piece because I lived in New York too. And it became a nightmare because Jeffrey Epstein would get on the phone to me every day. He would phone me up pretty much to find out how I was getting on in my reporting. And he began to say things that, you know, I didn't know what to do with. And the lawyers at Van that I didn't know what to do with and the lawyers

at Vanity Fair didn't know what to do with. Sort of like, well, if I don't like the direction this story goes in, I'll have a witch doctor place a curse on your unborn children. And that was creepy. And then he would say, by the way, that's off the record. And then he would say some really stupid things like, I'll make sure your children never get into school in New York and I'll make sure your husband gets fired from his job, which are not really things you want to hear when you're pregnant. Which doctor, no academic career and my husband's fired. And then, and by the way, this is all, you record. And then what was really the unnerved me, where

very persistently wanting to know which hospital I was going to be giving birth at, and who my doctors were. And he went into some graphic description for me of what would happen to my hormones as I was giving birth. And I just was like, you know, this conversation has really crossed all propriety and normal boundaries. And it was, you know, the lawyers, that is why the lawyers at Vanity Fair said to me, you know, we just, we don't know who we're dealing with here. So I think you better start taping him because we just had no idea what he was capable of.

I didn't tell him about the two pharmacists until the 11th hour quite deliberately. I slowly explained him that I did have reporting about working with the guy I mentioned earlier, Steve Hoffenberg. I was able to go and find depositions he'd given admitting to financial shenanigans, both on Tower's Financial and at Bear Stearns, all of which he was indignant about. But when I got, it was when I finally got to the subject of the sisters,

and one of them made claims really actually against him and against Gillen, Maxwell, and Sheep, one of them had been underage. That was when he went into hyperdrive and he not only then faxed over these copies of letters, thank you letters, he said had been written by one of them as if this was sort of proof of anything, but he then found a way to actually physically go into the offices of Vanity Fair while the piece was going through the machine,

the editing machine and the fact-checking machine. I know this because one of the fact-checkers sent me an email saying, you're not going to believe it, but Jeffrey Epstein is actually here in the office. He's sitting in Graydon Carter's office. I was completely appalled and I was told that he had somehow bypassed security. Graydon Carter showed up for work and there was Epstein sitting there. The next thing that I knew was when I actually just read the finals of the

piece that all mention of the sisters had been taken out. And I was great and said to me, will he be sensitive about the girls? And I'm like, well, of course he's sensitive about the girls. about the girls. And yes, I was very, very, very, very upset about it. And then the piece came out right after I gave birth. And I was, and my children, unfortunately, were born at 30 weeks, so they were very premature. And I was absolutely terrified that Jeffrey Epstein would sort of find a way to get

inside the hospital in the same way he'd got inside the offices of Vanity Fair. So, you know, one of the reasons I've always wondered who the hell he really was and who, you know, was he part of intelligence? There aren't that many people who could have bypassed security at Condé-NAS back then in the middle of Times Square. I think we had a major law firm who we shared an elevator bank with. It would have been very, very difficult to do that. How he did that, I don't know. I was reading actually Tina Brown, who's another great friend of mine, former colleague. She wrote in her newsletter this week that when she was editing, I think, The Daily Beast, she also found Jeffrey Epstein. She came back from lunch or somewhere, and there he was sitting in her office. I mean, normal people don't behave like this, Megan.

No, no. I mean, obviously looking to intimidate you. Yeah, that's exactly right. And obviously, back then, the same system of soft power, soft male power that we were talking about earlier worked very effectively for him because the sisters were cut from the piece. Oh, have you ever talked to Graydon Carter about, and I know editors make these decisions and so on, but with the benefit of hindsight,

how he feels about that decision. Yeah, no, so Graydon Carter, you know, rather, you know, predictably, you know, came out and just, you know, made all sorts of allegations about my reporting and, you know, how I'm a terrible journalist. But the problem with that argument is that I then worked at Fancy Fair

and wrote a large number of their significant pieces for a further decade or so. I can't have been that terrible a reporter. Wow. God, that's so annoying. I mean, you had him. You had him. And you think about the number of girls who were abused from 2003 forward. I mean the government in their disclosure last Monday is saying over a thousand victims in 2007 in that plea deal they put it at 30. So I mean it just you wonder if there had been more courage like you had, how many girls could have been saved?

All right, let me switch gears with you because I do want to talk about Kohlberger and I know you don't have been saved. All right, let me switch gears with you because I do want to talk about Kohlberger and I know you don't have all day. So you've written this book with the very famous James Patterson. And it's called, hold on a second, I want to make sure I have it here. It's called The Idaho Four, an American Tragedy. Okay, again, by Vicki Ward, my guest today, Vicki Ward

and James Patterson, everybody knows. And you've interviewed, my understanding is, over 300 people to try to get to the bottom of some new facts around these horrific murders. And one of the things you've managed to confirm, you tell me what the big news items are, but is that you do believe that Maddie Mogan was the target. That's the target. Yes. And I went and traced Koberger's footsteps and the routes he drove that the police know

about. And there's only one place you could park behind the house where they all lived on King Road in Moscow. And when you park your car there at this cul-de-sac at the back, the house is no longer there. But when it was there, you had a direct view really onto one person's bedroom. And that was Maddie Morgan.

And in fact, I went there one time with a young woman in front of there who lived next door, a woman called Lexi Patterson, and she would say that she would come out to her car most evenings, that's where she parked her car, and they all had the lights on glaring brightly, never thinking that anyone would be watching from the road and that she would see most evenings Maddie in the window at her vanity, curling her hair, doing her makeup. And it used to make this young friend of theirs smile. Of course, she no longer was smiling when she thought

that it appeared from the police report that Brian Koburger would have been sitting in his car watching the house at least 12 times prior to the night of the murders in November the 13th, 2022. So that was a thing. We don't know exactly what room she was in and where to go when he entered. Yes, and then it seemed from the social media

digital footprint that he had, social media, digital footprint, that he had, you know, he'd slipped into the DMs of all three of the women, but the only one of them who he really liked the photos and all the rest of it off by herself was Maddie. If he liked pictures of Kayleigh. Oh wait, so that's new. I did not know that. He actually did slip into the DMs of the other... Yes.

Of who? Yes, no, that is in there. That is in the court record. But my understanding from some of the families is that, so for example, while he might have liked pictures of Kayleigh, Maddie's best friend, it was always when Kayleigh was in pictures with Maddie. Maddie was, I think, the only one who he, you know, there were pictures of her solo that he clearly had an internet relationship with. Whether or not he had met her in person. The close friends, I say this in the book, the very close friends, including the young

woman and her boyfriend who actually found the bodies inside the house the next day. It's their belief, and obviously it's their best guess at this point, it's their belief given that none of them recognized Koberger, but they figured that he was a vegan that Maddie had worked at this restaurant, the Mad Greek in Moscow, where they served a lot of vegan food. And she was, you know, she was devastatingly pretty, blonde. That's their best guess that people were always asking her out, and she was always flicking her hair and saying no.

I mean, she had a serious boyfriend. But that is their best guess that that's what happened. I do also detail in the book how Coburger, because he was a criminology PhD student, he had studied serial killers and spree killers. And he'd studied Ted Bundy, but he'd also studied when he was a psychology major as an undergrad at DeSales University, he'd studied a guy called Elliot Roger, who was sort of hero of the incel movement, the involuntary celibate movement. And Elliot Roger had been a college student out in California going between two college towns in the same way

that Koberger years later was going between Pullman and Washington State where he was in college and Moscow, which is where the University of Idaho is. These two college towns are just a 10-mile drive apart. Back in 2014, this guy, Elliot Roger, was a college student out in Santa Barbara. He made all these videos and wrote a manifesto of how he was going to go out and murder the sorority girls who had rejected him. He had also, he wrote that he was going to take revenge on his childhood best friend called Maddie. And there were, you know,

there are a lot of striking similarities between what Elliot Roger went and did and Elliot Roger's misogynistic views of women and Brian Coburger's. The other thing the book details- We talked about that a bit. Yeah. Well, it shows, I think, how when Coburger got to Washington State University, I mean, this is a guy who'd overcome heroin addiction and he'd come from extreme poverty.

So you would think that to overcome all of that and arrive at a prestigious university to get a PhD in criminology, that this ought to be the apex of your career. But it all very quickly goes really wrong for Brian Coburn because he is unable to keep his heinous views of women to himself, both in the classroom and outside of him. I show in the book how his tenure there completely unravels as he gets

pulled in front of the administration again and again and again. And it's very clear that by the time that he commits the murders, he knows it's game over at Washington State University. He's lost his teaching position and therefore his funding. He's basically not going to be welcome back there. Nothing left to lose. He's got nothing left to lose. It's exactly right, except to try and commit in his twisted mind the perfect crime.

I think the book explains also how the investigators, it almost was the perfect crime. And I think the book explains also how the investigators, it almost was the perfect crime. There's one mistake was leaving the knife sheath by Maddie Morgan's bed with the DNA on it. But you really can tell the way I tell the tick tock tick tock of the investigation, that the police really had nothing for weeks and weeks and weeks. They couldn't put the jigsaw puzzle together until the labs finally came back and they were able to use this quite new technique called investigative genetic genealogy, where they're able to use these websites like 23andMe and they can construct a family tree from the tiniest spec of DNA.

And once they were able to do that, then all the other pieces, then they were able to match the car and find the driver's license and then they were able to look at the security cameras. But it all happened. We've talked on the show before to Cece Moore, who's really the godmother of genetic genealogy, and she really was kind of saying, it's not possible to be a serial killer and get away with it in modern day America because of this. Because one speck of touched DNA can be tracked down through these genetic genealogists through

it's supposed to, they're only supposed to go through the public databases, but it came out in this case that they did go through the private ones. They did. And they nailed Colberger's father as having some link to this spec of DNA. They could tell this was the father of the killer, basically, the hit that they found in their genetic genealogy. And then it was just a matter of time before they got Brian Kohlberger's actual cheek swab and said, no, this is actually the perfect match for the DNA that's on this knife sheath. She's like, it's not like it was during the 70s when you can have a Ted Bundy or you can

have a son of Sam, you can have somebody going weeks or months or longer with lots of DNA left on the scene, but just no way to pin it down unless you already had the perp in the system. It's different today. Right, but he knew that. I mean, you know, he knew that, which is why that was his only mistake. They didn't get DNA in his car.

They didn't even, when they went to stake out the house in Pennsylvania, they only- It's such a huge one. It's such a huge mistake. Like Vicki, were you able to figure that out? How did this guy committing the perfect crime make such a stupid mistake? Well, I think, and this now is a little bit speculative, but if one does operate on the assumption that he went in there targeting Maddie and not the others. It was, I mean, it was complete random chance that Kayleigh Gonzalves was there. She had

moved out of that house. There were none of her belongings in it. She was living at home. She was ready to go and start a new job in Texas. So the fact that he found her in the bed with Maddie, I think one has to think was a surprise. And it was also a little bit random that he then bumped into Zana Curnodle coming down the stairs. Yes, she often ordered food after a big night out, but I'm sure he thought that they would be asleep. But Zana tragically was up.

She had just received a door dash delivery. And that's why, I think, when her friends found her, she was lying on... She wasn't in bed. She had fallen back into the room and sort of clearly put up a struggle. Ethan being well, had just been asleep in the bed behind her. So I think mistakes happen when people encounter things they're not expecting. And I think one has to assume that Koba wasn't expecting to deal with three other people that night. Mm-hmm, wow.

The other thing is that Papa Roger, who was posting online, same last name as the serial killer that we know he studied at DeSales and may have been obsessed with, who killed both by knife and by gun, but was obsessed with Alpha Phi, which is the sorority that Kaylee was in, in any event. Somebody was posting under the name Papa Roger for weeks after the murders, but before his arrest. And this is one of the things that is so infuriating about how the plea bargain hearing was handled where the district attorney stood up and said there was no sexual motive whatsoever.

It didn't play any role. If you look at those Papa Roger posts, which is clearly Kohlberger, I mean, it's clearly him, he says, he speculates there was a sexual motive behind these crimes and speaks to the killer's sexual dysfunction. I mean, it's clearly just so infuriating the way the whole thing was handled. The DA had no right to say that. He didn't know, at a bare minimum, he didn't know what was in Kohlberger's head and what sort of enjoyment he got committing those murders or didn't. So he was not in a position to say that. And secondly, if you believe he's Papa Roger, which I 100% do,

he is suggesting that there was a sexual motive and some gratification that happened on the spot. happened on the spot. Right. Well, I think one of the families I know of the victims had hoped to get some answers, particularly from Washington State University, had this thing gone to trial. Because yes, questions about Papa Roger, but also questions, Megan, about the First Amendment on college campuses, because, you know, when does free speech become dangerous? And when should

colleges do something about it? I think there were clearly red flags that Koberger showed on that campus. And I think the victims' families wanted to know more and wanted to know if there was some culpability on the part of the college. They'll never get the answers to that now and they'll never get the answers to Papa Roger. I do know that the police were following the Papa Roger digital footprint.

They definitely were looking at him. I don't know what their findings were. Well, hopefully when they raise the gag order, lift the gag order and we start to get everything in the case, we'll see that because there's just no way they wouldn't know. You can trace that. The URL is traceable. Although he was clever in other ways.

So I'm query whether he was smart enough never to do it at his own computer. And I don't know. But the other thing I wanted to mention is you have an extraordinary new detail about the roommate who saw Kohlberger in the murder house the night of the murders, Dylan Mortenson. This is the first time I've read her more full description of what she saw. Can you speak to that a bit? Yeah. This is a young woman who actually, I felt very sorry for her when I really understood what had happened. Because she's a college student, it had been a massive party day on that campus.

It had been a football game day, and they'd all had a huge amount to drink. And so when she, and this is a house where people come and go all the time. They had this big deck at the back. So it was definitely a destination where a lot of people came in and out and liked to go to party. So when she initially sort of hears this noise, and she pops out of her bedroom and looks around. She actually goes in and out two or three times but it's the third time she sees this guy and she thinks he must be a firefighter and he's dressed in black, he's got this black mask on but he's holding something that looks like a

black vacuum. And she's like, is there a fire? What's going on? And she was frightened enough to go back into her room and look for her taser, which was flat. And then she texted around with the others and she texted with Bethany Funk, the other roommate who was in the basement.

And again, when I went to look at that house, the basement Bethany Funk wouldn't have heard a thing. And eventually she sprints down to Bethany Funk, but she thinks she's just had a lot to drink and that she's hallucinating and that she's just had a lot to drink and that she's hallucinating and that she's gone mad and that's why there was this delay. And it's not then until sort of 10, 11 o'clock the next morning where she reaches out to this great friend of hers, Emily.

And even Emily, when Dylan says, can you come over? I think maybe someone was here. I saw something completely strange last night. Emily doesn't take us seriously because it's not the first time that Dylan Mortenson has sort of hallucinated or seen things after a big party day. So, you know, I think that one of the themes in the book is the sort of the cruelty and the harm that happened as a result of the sort of true crime mania that a lot of these kids who were already dealing with shock and loss and fear in that first six weeks, because they wondered if whoever had killed their friends was now coming for them.

They then looked at their social media accounts and they were now being accused of being the murderers themselves on top of it. So real harm that was done. Wow, we have never had this greater window into Dylan Mortenson, the mysterious roommate who laid eyes on Brian Kohlberger's, but moments after he committed these four murders. This is great and stunning new information. The book again is called The Idaho Four, An American Tragedy at The Idaho Four,

An American Tragedy. It's by Vicki Ward, my guest today, and James Patterson. Vicki, you are just a wealth of information. Thank you so much for being our guest today. Please come back. I would love to. Thank you so much for having me, Megan. Wow. Great job on all the stories that you've been covering. These are both very impressive pieces of journalism. All the best to you. No, well, thank you. Thank you for having me. Take care. Incredible, right? So again, don't forget to buy it.

It's called The Idaho Foreign American Tragedy. I have to say, I haven't yet read Vicki's book, but I want to read this. I would like to read a cover, a cover. I feel like I need a settling. Do you know what I mean? Like I feel like I need a settling after that whole thing. You know, I said to you guys, I was the one advantage of it, playing out was I was glad I didn't have to keep talking about it because it's just so dark.

Brian Kohlberger is such a dark, dark figure. But as a human on this earth, there's a desire to understand the dangers that are out there and better understand how to stop them. Like that detail, we speculated about this of him possibly first seeing Maddie in the vegan restaurant, which we had basically deduced, but Vicki's got it a little closer. He's a vegan. She worked at a vegan restaurant. That would make perfect sense.

And I think back to the comment of Steve Goncalves, who was angry about the DA settling this without a requirement that Brian Kohlberger, a motive cop to, some of the facts behind like how he met them or how he first started thinking about the one, Maddie or other, that made him walk in there that night. And he said, I want to know what was the beginning of the end. Oh, just gives me chills just saying it. And maybe that was how. Maybe it's going to be reporters like Vicki that help us really know those things.

She's a great writer and you can see she's done some in-depth reporting on some very well-known figures. So thanks to all of you for listening today and every day. And thanks to Vicki. And we will be back tomorrow with more. Thanks for listening to The Megyn Kelly Show. No BS, no agenda, and no fear. Afternoons can be rough. Energy fades, cravings kick in, and focus goes out the window.

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