The Pour Over Today - BONUS: TPO Explains Epstein Files | 09.27.25

Episode Date: September 27, 2025

Readers of The Pour Over pick a topic to have explained, and Jason and Kathleen have to get Joe to understand it in less than 20 minutes… This week, they’re explaining the Epstein Files. Join over 1 million readers with our free newsletter ⁠⁠here⁠⁠ Looking to support us? You can choose to pay ⁠⁠here⁠⁠ Check out our sponsors! We actually use and enjoy every single one. ⁠⁠Cru⁠⁠ ⁠⁠Surfshark⁠⁠ ⁠⁠Holy Post⁠⁠ ⁠⁠CCCU⁠⁠ ⁠⁠Upside⁠⁠ ⁠⁠HelloFresh⁠⁠ ⁠⁠Mosh⁠⁠ ⁠⁠LMNT⁠⁠ ⁠⁠Theology in the Raw⁠⁠ ⁠⁠Safe House Project⁠⁠ ⁠⁠Student Life Application Study Bible⁠⁠ ⁠⁠A Place For You⁠⁠ ⁠⁠Practicing Life Together⁠⁠ ⁠⁠Not Just Sunday Podcast

Today's episode is brought to you by our lead sponsor, Safe House Project. Kathleen, you recently sent a photo to the staff that you got six vials of blood drawn. That's what we're going with. The best part was she was saying Todd, Mr. Military Man, had his, had like a thumbtack of blood drawn a couple years ago. was like, I haven't had blood drawn forever. Like, do I need to, like, take the day off or rest? It's like, dude, what is this? Like, G.I. Joe.

What did you straight your knee? Yeah, I thought he was tough. Not being it. Why not? He did ask me if I needed, if I could drive after my blood taken. And you listened to last week's podcast. I was like, I got my name dropped when I was talking about how much you drink LeCroix excessively.

Yeah. Well, it's something. Six miles is a lot, but Todd, I believe in you. You can drive home after you get your blood run. Hello and welcome to another episode of TPO Explains. I'm Joe, podcast producer here at The Pourover, and I'm here with Jason, our founder and editor-in-chief, and Kathleen, our managing editor.

So here's the idea behind the show. Our readers share which topics they want us to explore, and then we bring that to the podcast. Today's winner, Epstein Files. We'll see how this one goes. Yeah, here we go. Winner. Winner, yes, yes, in quotes. You guys voted.

We didn't choose this. Yes. So, yeah, so thank you guys. So here's what I understand the Epstein files to be. It's surrounding Jeffrey Epstein, who was this individual who had. some shady things going on with assault and trafficking. And he was sentenced to jail. And even that he died while in jail.

So there's some controversy on what happened there. And I think the public wants the so-called Epstein files released because there's an idea or a hypothesis that he was involved with trafficking underage girls to big name, powerful, rich people. So I think that's why we are seeing the Epstein files title in the news because people want to know if there are other public figures involved. Yeah, pretty good. I think, so for the sake of this episode and to keep it short because there are entire websites dedicated to the rabbit trails that this can go down, we're really focused on like what are the Epstein files? When you, when you see that in the news, what like are we looking for a missing envelope or what, what is?

That's really what I thought. Yeah. So. I thought it was a manila envelope specifically. Sure. That seems right. Yeah. Yeah.

Very briefly, I'll give some background on who Epstein was. He was a financier and kind of went up through Wall Street and ended up starting his own very mysterious firm that only accepted like secretive clients that had a billion dollars or more to invest. And part of the mystique was, hey, you don't. know what I'm doing. You don't even know who my clients are. But he then, you know, has the biggest house in Manhattan and a private island and starts throwing these parties where, you know, politicians and British royalty and all these things. So he's this like shadow figure that is clearly has lots of money to spend, but it's not even totally clear where it comes from. Lots of influence. Yes. And all behind the scenes pretty much. Yes. His, his name

is known but he's right yeah there's like no real footprint of his investments there's no there's only one publicly known like client that he took a big business guy so just yeah enigmatic so uh the files um not a manila folder some are probably in manila folders but what what uh what are there kathleen yeah so epstein did have i mean we we know him for his crimes at this point in time and And so the investigations into those crimes are really what the files are. So starting in 1996, he was accused of sexual assault, and that was reported to the police. It didn't go anywhere. So that's, you know, where are the files on that?

And then in 2005, he was accused of assault again. And that did go somewhere, but it ended with a, like, very lenient sweetheart deal. So that, that's actually going to be this. starting point for when people want to know about the files because he is accused of of sexually assaulting a 14-year-old girl and through the investigation into that at least 34 other victims come about and so there's there's a lot of files there but he ends up pleading guilty to just a state charge something very lower level instead of federal charges and gets a crazy deal yeah it's so

He pleads guilty to these, like, two state charges, and as part of that, he gets, like, immunity for any federal charges ever related to any of these things that happened. Wow. For him and, like, also, like, any unnamed co-conspirator, I think there were a few that were named. There were four people. And anyone else. Yeah, and anyone else. And then also just the sentence is like, okay, so he's sentenced to 13 months in, uh, in, uh, in. prison. Sentenced 18 serves 13. Okay. And it's at this county jail that he serves. He has a

private wing of the jail. He has this crazy generous work release program where he only has to actually be in the cell for 12 hours a day. Six days a week. He gets to go out 12 hours a day, six days a week. And so then he just goes and like works from his mansions and buildings and just very, very lenient. Yeah. So when I think jail, this is was totally not traditionally what a jail sentence would be. No, like the door, at some point in his time there, the door stayed open like he wasn't in a cell. He had a TV that he may or may not have paid for himself to have there. Like the company that he started to work from during his work release program, paid some money to the sheriff's office.

The whole, yes. The point is this was the sweetheart deal of all sweetheart deals. And with the deal, it meant that they couldn't, the FBI couldn't investigate anymore. Because there's going to be no more charges, so why investigate? So 34 victims could be more. Let's not investigate it. Wow. So he then leaves prison.

And but again, with the, what are the files? There's court records of. How did we get to this deal? Yes. Like, who's idea was that? Exactly. What, what written documentation of like, hey, stop investigating this because there's this, you know, this plea agreement. And also what documentation of telling the victims about.

the deal. None, which is important and comes back up. So they signed this plea deal and didn't inform the victims. And that becomes really significant. It's illegal. Right. It's illegal. And that's part of what, if we fast forward to kind of the modern era of Epstein files, starts in 2018. You want to just explain that? So after he leaves prison and goes back to doing shadowy money stuff, the Miami Herald a reporter there kind of didn't let it go and she really did some like incredible investigative work and published some reports in 2018 of just what happened how did how did in her opinion the criminal justice system fail with this Epstein case which really renewed public interest in it and kind of reignited like victims saying that they didn't feel justice was

served and people were wondering like what are we not being told and and ultimately led to him being arrested again and so he was arrested in july of 2019 yeah and then uh was awaiting trial he was denied bail uh was awaiting trial and a month later was found dead in his cell and then there's also more of the files that like the video was missing and then it came out and then there was a missing minute and now we found the missing minute And so it just feels like, hey, there was so much time and things were bungled that it, it like creates this air of. Exactly. Like, well, was this the footage or did they recreate it or all that stuff?

Yeah. Now, let's fast forward. There are other trials. Galane Maxwell was eventually after Epstein's death. She was charged. co-conspirator. Yes. And she was charged and is currently serving prison time for sex trafficking and basically running the operation of getting these underage girls to where Epstein was. And then in 2025, the Trump administration starts releasing files. And you get different batches

of files this summer. The big batch was 33,000 files. And it's, you get court records, investigative documents. Victim and witness interviews, flight logs, and a bunch of things. Importantly, we'll go ahead. I was going to say, didn't somebody say there was only like 3% of new information? Right. Well, because some of this was already public. Like, some court documents are filed publicly. One of the things was like his will.

It had to go to probate court. And so that's like filed. And so you see things that are. So a lot of this, this 33,000 document was like just, hey, we could have found it somewhere else. We've gathered it all together, but there's also... One big manila. Right. One big, big manila envelope.

And here, there is some new info. Importantly, there are things that are not released. So identities have been redacted. Some of victims which, like, haven't come forward and everyone is supportive of like, hey, don't, don't share that, yeah, especially this was an underage. 14. Yes. Yeah, that makes sense.

At one point, 12. The, there are other names that are redacted. that are more controversial of like flight logs who was flying on his plane and understandably people these people may have been doing legitimate business or something and just do not want to be associated yeah but also the public is like hey maybe you were yeah privy to these crimes or engaged in these crimes and you know we that's what we want to know yeah and that comes to like the big missing thing is the client list and the allegation the hypothesis is that um that Jeffrey Epstein was accepting money and trafficking women for other powerful influential men and kept

documentation of this and that these people committed crimes and then were blackmailed by Epstein to get a great prison sentence and other things. And so it's where is that client list? Where is that black book? And officially, the DOJ and I think every official organization says that just doesn't exist. But does it not exist or do the rich and powerful people named in it say that it doesn't exist? And that I think is really the crux of like. Yeah.

Yeah. I mean, most like commentators even, not just like official entities of the U.S. government will say like that's just not going to be found, but. Yeah, the most compelling argument I've heard for it to not be found is like people don't keep great documentation of their crimes. Like that would, you wouldn't want to have that book because you would be implicated. Right. But. Yeah. Human trafficking isn't just an over their problem. it's happening right here in the U.S.

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Go to safehouseproject.org slash TPO or check the link in the show notes to give now. So how do you feel, do you feel like you get it? Yeah, so I just had a vague idea of what this was all about, but you guys helped fill in some important details. So something I learned as you guys were talking is what kind of got the ball rolling was this plea deal that was illegal because in 2008, in sweetheart deal that was taken, the victims that were involved in this case were not even told.

that the plea deal was accepted and taken. So that got the ball rolling. But then poor gasoline on the fire, the 2018 Miami Herald. Ten years later. Ten years later, the investigative report that came out really incorporated the public's outcry and outrage on this and put a lot more of a shining spotlight on Jeffrey Epstein. So when we fast forward to the Epstein files,

you know, he mysteriously, some would say, passed a died while he was serving his sentence um while he was waiting to be sentenced while he was waiting to be sentenced people just will take any bits of information and we don't have all information so they can just try and connect whatever dots they want to um i think the conspiracy surrounds this idea that there were um big names of rich high profile people that that Epstein may or may not have been involved with trafficking underage girls with. And there's this idea that there's this client list that has not been released and what we call the Epstein files.

People want to know who was involved in this whole operations. And over the last year, there have been a lot of files, pages released, some a lot of it's old information that's already public only a little bit's new but none of it has contained the so-called what people theorize exists the client list yeah I mean at this point I don't know they could release 100,000 pages and I feel like people are still going to say there's more that you're not telling us I just don't know I think too much time has passed and too many things have been a little bit shady for people to be satisfied with anything other than an explicit client list, honestly.

Yeah. Yeah. Well, and I think, I think that leads into how we should respond as Christians, which is just, it's tough to wrestle with. I think part of what resonates with me or I feel like I need to hear is we, justice has been miscarried. And we, as much as we should pursue, trying to make as much right as we can, it cannot be, like, this cannot, justice cannot be served in this situation. And we just won't ever have all the information that we want to be able to carry out that justice. But we can, as Christians, uniquely take hope and comfort in the fact that when we zoom out, like, justice will be served.

And I think that's, that is really the only way to get peace from this in my mind is saying we have a God who knows what happened and is able to to make things right. And yeah, it feels like that's as much as I can can hope in. Yeah. I mean, I could use all the Christian perspectives on this. like um if you even take one step further than we did it's just very heavy um yeah and so um i don't want to gloss over that i'm thinking through what do i need personally and that's just like guarding my heart and being discerning about how i do you know how do i pray and in reaction to thinking about this the Epstein files you know um and i think it's just knowing that like

God has promised us heaven and he has promised us justice and he has promised us that what happens in the dark will come to light but and he doesn't delay his promises as some understand delays like second peter says but his timing is not our timing and his ways are not our ways so um just being able to kind of give that to him and to guard my heart with the things of him is is how I'm going to have to personally react to this amen thank you guys that's such a good word uh especially in a kind of a darker topic. Well, folks, thank you for tuning in to another episode of TPO Explaners. As a reminder, we do have video available on YouTube and on Spotify,

so please make sure to check us out on those platforms. Thanks for tuning in. Until next time. Bye. world. But Jesus offers a better way to live. Each week on the Not Just Sunday podcast, pastors Keith Simon and Patrick Miller help you quit part-time Christianity and follow Jesus with every part of your life so that even in the chaos, you can experience the beautiful life he offers every day, not just Sundays. Listen to Not Just Sunday wherever you get your podcasts.