Transcription
The Epstein case has many details and open questions. Our timeline today focuses on the key facts and developments starting in March 2005 when local police in Palm Beach, Florida, began a probe into Epstein, investigating reports of abusing victims as young as 14.
The local case led to Epstein's indictment for a single count of soliciting prostitution in 2006, not the more serious alleged conduct. In fact, a lead detective in the Palm Beach office referred the case to the FBI to look at the more serious crimes, and those federal investigators began probing allegations.
In 2008, Epstein reached a deal with the Bush administration's federal prosecutors to take that local Florida conviction for soliciting prostitution with an adult and a minor. Epstein got a lenient short prison sentence and an unusual agreement that the Bush DOJ would not prosecute Epstein further or four of his co-conspirators or any others. Bush DOJ prosecutors also agreed to keep the deal secret and not inform Epstein's victims about it. A judge later found the Bush DOJ secrecy deal was illegal, violating those victims rights.
So the facts show from the start Epstein got this unusual protection from the government in this period a Republican administration Bush. And Epstein was a rich powerful figure. He had ties to people in business and politics. He hired a Republican connected lawyer, former independent counsel Ken Starr, and served just one year in that deal.
Now, another nine years went by, and then the Miami Herald reported an Epstein expose on the allegations of his conduct and that Bush era prosecutor who cut the sweetheart deal. That investigative report gained traction partly because of a tie to Trump who promoted the very prosecutor Alex Aosta to his cabinet. The headline at the time hammering how a now Trump official gave a serial sex abuser the deal of a lifetime. And that public pressure from the Herald drove a new federal probe.
Internal DOJ reviews would show Aosta had poor judgment in the case and that the blanket immunity offers for Epstein and others were just indefensible, leading to a fairly swift federal indictment of Epstein on far more serious sex trafficking charges. And the pressure drove the original prosecutor Trump had promoted Aosta to resign around this time. And in a key decision, a judge denied Epstein bail, forcing him to be incarcerated before any trial.
It was just over a month later, August 2019, when Epstein was found dead in his cell. Situation was suspicious. Officials there broke several protocols. Epstein was a high-profile detainee. He'd been placed on suicide watch, which was then quickly lifted. Guards failed to do required inspections the very night of his death. And a lot of questions were hanging over all of this.
So, let's go even further ahead all the way up to 2019 and what happened after that because key videos went missing. Trump Attorney General Bar even admitting the prison made mistakes then but claiming that he personally reviewed prison video which showed no one entering the cell. And with Epstein dead, prosecutors turned to a co-conspirator who might have benefited from that original Florida case being shut down. What I told you about, they went ahead and indicted Gelain Maxwell for helping Epstein sex trafficking. a case brought by a career prosecutor Moren Comey, daughter of former FBI Director Comey, and her work continued on when the Biden administration took over. She won Maxwell's conviction and this 20-year prison sentence.
Then during the 2024 campaign, the questions and theories about Epstein's crimes and special treatment were heating up on the right. It was a problem for Trump given that he promoted the original prosecutor, that he oversaw the DOJ, which failed to answer questions or have transparency about whatever happened in that prison cell. So Trump tried to go on office thawing to declassify and release Epstein's files, and his attorney general took over that message and advanced it in office. now infamously claiming that she had the client list on her desk, which she later contradicted because shortly after the DOJ released an alternate video from the prison, but the key video that shows Epstein's cell door is either lost or hidden. It's never been released. And Bondi released the now infamous memo that said they wouldn't provide any other Epstein documents. So Bondi went from saying there was a client list to there wasn't. She was lying then or lying now. The DOJ memo then said there was no other Epstein info that was going to be released which ignited that firestorm of criticism we all live through. And given the broken vows that couldn't hold. Trump soon contradicted his own DOJ's memo and saying he would try to get grand jury material released. But those are limited transcripts. A lot of the big Epstein information is in the Trump DOJ. they could release it any time. One judge has denied this. And as the Trump administration's contradicting claims drew more heat on its secrecy, the DOJ then sent this former Trump criminal defense attorney to interview Maxwell in prison and then transferred her to a better prison, an apparent reward for the one person doing any time for Epstein's indicted federal crimes.
your reaction to this reporting about the apparent unusual or special treatment for Maxwell? >> It's offensive to the survivors. You know, the survivors are at the center of this and they often get forgotten. They were in the front of the steps of the capital. They talked about being abused and raped at the age of 13 or 14, about having to go recruit other junior high girls knowing that they would get abused by Maxwell and Epstein. And they found it so outrageous that there was any talk of giving Maxwell lenient treatment given what she had done uh to those uh women. And so I just on an emotional level I'm outraged by this and I don't understand how this has become a partisan issue. You have survivors who are saying that they want justice. the administration doesn't seem to care about the substance, the ethics as you've put it, or a term they they throw around a lot in in Washington, the quote optics. Uh because as we reported, they rushed uh to respond to that unusual interview with this special treatment transfer. Uh can the Congress do anything about that? >> We absolutely can. And the first thing we need to do is to have the full release of the Epstein files. And here's the state of play on that. We have 217 signatures. We need one more signature to force a vote in the House of Representatives. It's an open secret that if we get that vote in the House of Representatives, you will have 50 60 more Republicans defect because they're not going to vote uh against the release of the file.
>> What do they call that log rolling or something where in the Congress it's like everyone's ducking it and then if it happens, everyone jumps on it. >> Exactly. You know the you know the terminology, but you have so you we've got Adalita Grahova who a few weeks ago wins her election in Arizona. It's not close 70 to 30. It's a blowout election and for the past two and a half weeks since September 23rd the Congress has literally been shut down. We didn't come back to vote on the pay for troops for which is ending on Wednesday, but the president had to rearrange money at the DoD just to pay the troops. Why are we shut down during the Congress? For one simple reason. Mike Johnson does knows that the day we have votes, Adalita Grahova gets sworn in and then we have a 218 signature and we get the vote in the Epstein files. So, we're going to get this uh done.
>> Yeah, just to slow you down. You're saying once once that's sworn in and you're back in regular order post presumably post shutdown, then you all but have the votes. Once we once we have votes whether it's during the shutdown or after the shutdown that day at leva becomes the 218 signatory and then seven legislative days after that we can force a vote uh in the congress and the and we will have the votes on the files. But they want what they're hoping and they've hope hoped this time and again when they shut down the congress during the recess is they're hoping if they just delay this maybe this issue goes away.
>> Yeah. And you said I said log rolling. You said seven legislative days, a type of day. So, we're both we both get one strike on jargon, sir. Uh, let me turn your attention to the CBS report, which was pretty astounding from an investigative view. Uh, no indication that when the Trump, BOP, and DOJ went in there, when Epstein was first found dead, that they ran fingerprints or DNA tests inside the cell. Um, so that's the evidence response team. They didn't uh according to the documents reviewed by CBS ever run those tests. Is that suspicious? Uh and when we look at this misconduct, I want to be very clear with viewers. There could be mistakes and failures by the then Trump uh Bureau of Prisons that don't involve Epstein being killed. That's one of the questions under investigation. Um but could have just involved other failures that they didn't have a lot of interest in getting into. So they didn't really do a thorough probe. That's the implication of CBS. At the same time, as you know, the DOJ then was under Democratic control for four years. The Inspector General report, as I understand it, was ultimately finished uh under the Biden era. Uh and it doesn't seem, from what we can tell, that either uh either party running the DOJ at the time has been very thorough about this, been, shall I say, interested in whether it ultimately uh found errors of any kind by the government, which is why we don't usually trust the government to in uh investigate itself. uh your response on that and specifically on the Biden DOJ part?
>> Well, there obviously questions and I don't think anyone is saying the DOJ under Biden, under Trump or frankly uh for decades since these women haven't had justice has done a good job. That's why people are saying, "Let's have the release of the files." I mean, the the survivors who I've gotten to know now personally have been denied justice from the first time that Jeffrey Epstein got a slap on the wrist plea deal. and they they've not been consulted by Justice Department lawyers. They are asking for these files to be released. Some of
>> Why is that as compared to other other important crimes that get prosecuted? Do you have a a core answer of why? >> I I think they're rich and powerful people who were involved and uh they they think that they basically had one system of justice and didn't get get care about these women's stories. So, you're saying it's it's as bad as it looks and