not only wasn't fully investigated, but the way that it was investigated was so incredibly slipshot that you have to wonder if they really were already convinced it was a suicide in their mind. So there was no need to investigate that the possibility of anything else. Hey everybody. With all of this Epstein stuff that's been coming out over the holidays, um you it's been kind of tough to process everything and like understand what's really going on. And I assume for some of y'all like uh you've been relatively new to the story and and not been following it minute by minute over the past decade and and so it's a little bit headswirling. So, I want to bring on Julie Brown, who has been covering the Epstein case from the jump, um, having written the critical story, uh, that led to his second uh, indictment. Uh, and so I want to grab her to talk about these recent files, but also just kind of take the lens back for everybody and kind of uh rewind back to that period uh from 2015, 16, 17, 18 uh when you know the attention started to come back onto Epstein. He had been first he was first friends with friends of the 90s and then it he first got that sweetheart deal and the as uh and then the story comes back into focus thanks to Julie Brown and the teens. So I wanted to kind of start there and uh and give everybody a little bit of a timeline a little bit large longer lens perspective on this uh and then we get into the news on uh as well. So so much has been happening for Julie. Uh she's so busy right now. I appreciate her taking the time to talk with all of us about that. Hope you enjoy it. Uh, up next, Julie K. Brown. Hello and welcome to the Bull Work Podcast. I'm your host, Tim Miller. Could not be more delighted to welcome to the show, uh, someone I've got to know a little bit over the past few years. Uh, she is a writer for the Miami Herald. She wrote the Perversion of Justice series and a book on all the things related to Jeffrey Epstein. It's Julie K. Brown. How you doing, Julie? >> Hi there. I'm doing good. >> You know, sometimes in podcast land, you you glaze the guest a little bit. You know, you want to make them feel important and seem important to the audience, so you kind of talk about their highlights. I I don't know that that's necessary here for you and and your role in the Epstein Files uh was just so significant. And uh I was as we were kind of looking through various things that came out uh there's this one email that caught a couple people's eye that I wanted to read about the significance of your work at the in that perversion of justice series at the daily at the at the Miami Herald. Uh and this is they're we'll get into all the redactings. They're redacting who these emails are from and two for some reason. But it's an internal DOJ email and one person emails to someone else. Are we open on this? Can we be like are we open on investigating Epstein? and uh the per and then it has a link to your story and then the person replies, "Yes, we're open as of today. It's on the DL for now." And so, you know, this is a guy that had been investigated many years prior uh got out, was dormant for a decade, and then you begin this series, and it it kind of starts this cascade, including the investigation that ends up getting him arrested. And that's I I assume you knew all that at some level, but that was pretty remarkable to see. And I'm just wondering if you could kind of take our listeners back before we kind of get into the new stuff to that period and like what was happening at that time that got you back into the story. >> Well, there were a lot of things. Uh Donald Trump was running for president for the first time. Um and I saw an article that had been written about this woman who had filed a lawsuit against him and Epstein accusing him of, you know, raping her essentially. >> This was Katie Johnson. >> This is Katie Johnson's case. Yes. It sort of just brought it up again in my head. It wasn't like I said, "Oh, I'm going to investigate the Gaty Johnson story." I sort of thought, I remember reading about this guy and that he had sexually assaulted all these underage girls in Palm Beach and what ever happened to this guy. I mean, it seems like he's still out there. And so, I just started sort of looking into, you know, what had happened. And it just seemed, you know, like why did this guy get away with this if he raped all these girls and there seemed to be uh just tons of of information, court records that showed that they had a lot lot of evidence to convict him. So I thought, well, the only way I'm going to really understand this if as an investigative reporter, instead of reading what everybody else has written about him, I wanted to look at all the raw material that they had from the very beginning and evaluate it from that perspective rather than just writing what other people had written or taking everything that had been written as being a complete record of why he got away with it or how the crimes were committed. So it essentially was sort of a factf finding mission. You know, it to me it seemed like a cold case. Nobody was really looking at it at this period of time, even though there now was a woman that was accusing him and the soon-to-be president of sexual assault. And it was pretty graphic uh lawsuit that she had filed about what had happened. So I thought, I'm just going to start at the beginning and find out who this guy is and how he got away with his crimes. And so if that's 2016 and this article comes out in 2018, uh, you know, then there's a period of time that you and also it's rel with Alex Acasta as the person that's referenced in this initial story about who who was the prosecutor. Miami gets appointed to the Department of Labor. So it's Trump an Aosta. >> So as I was working on this, coincidentally, he nominated Alex Aosta as his labor secretary. And by that time, of course, I knew that Alex Aosta was the US attorney in Miami who approved of his uh so-called sweetheart deal. And I thought at the time that he was maybe not even going to get confirmed because this was a pretty serious blight on his uh record. And so I thought it was possible, but it just seemed like they kind of smoothed over it. He sort of had used the same lines he had always used like, you know, we didn't know there were so many victims. A lot of the victims didn't want to cooperate. I mean, there was this whole line that he had over the years about why he decided to give him this deal. And so, once again, I thought, well, wait a minute. I've just gotten by that time, I had gotten the police report and the state attorney files. And to me, it didn't look like that at all. It looked like they had a lot of young girls that were ready to cooperate. I still had my day job, so to speak, cuz uh, you know, we had the Parkland shooting in in the midst of this. I remember taking a break to help with that coverage. Uh, and as you know, Miami is, you know, always full of crazy news. So, I'd be doing other stuff in the middle of it, but I just kept coming back to this case. >> And so, you mentioned how you knew that there had been the other young girls had accused Epstein and and and had been victimized by him. So, then part part of that like period is you're cultivating relationships with them, right? Or with some of them. >> Well, that took a long time. That was a really long process because all their names were redacted from all the files. So I didn't know who they were. Um so I sort of came at it about three different ways. One one I tried to contact the uh lawyers who represented some of them who who by now were filing um civil lawsuits against Epstein. Uh, number two, I, you know, just did an old-fashioned spreadsheet and started finding their names just organically in the files. You know, whenever they were talking about redactions with the Epstein files, as you know, a lot of the victim's names weren't redacted from this batch that we just got over the past uh week and a half or so. So, it was the same thing back then. There were mistakes that were made with the redaction. So, I did get some names from the records themselves. And then once I got maybe five, six, seven names, I was able to figure out who their friends were uh through social media. And Epstein had a strange sort of obsession with girls that looked very, very young, blondhaired, petite, often blue-eyed. I mean, he had a type, so it wasn't hard to figure out when you look at who their friends were who possibly else could have been a victim. So, it was a big puzzle that I sort of had to put together. >> Yeah. I remember the last time we talked about this a couple years ago, you said that like you were you literally wrote some of them letters to try to get them to talk like like >> Yeah. I wrote snail mail letters. Yep. I got addresses and I wrote about 80 letters and I only got >> like two responses, but they were key. One of the girls was in my series and she was she was she she was a wonderful uh young woman who very articulate and who was key to my to my series. >> And so I'm wondering then as you start talk to all those I want to get to kind of present day and what we've learned in this latest batch. But but but I I'm just curious about their perspective in all this. I assume that many of them you still talk to and communicate with and hear from. Like I I I could imagine a bunch of different things like being sick of it, being passionate about wanting justice, like not trusting anybody, feeling like it's all political. I I like what is your your experience with the victims? Like what are they thinking right now? Is this all back in there? >> You know, most of the ones that are pretty that I'm in contact regularly, they want justice. That's why they contact me regularly. They point things out to me that they see in the files or, you know, they just want to vent. You know, it's almost like I have another source who was involved in this story from the very beginning uh of this case, a law enforcement source, and we talk all the time because it's almost like we were there from the beginning. And this remember now it's been eight years. So, it it's sort of like we're in a club, you know, that we never really asked to join, but we're in this Epstein club. And there's very few people uh really that know this story like every single document or or most of the documents like I do. So there isn't a whole lot of people that are in this group that see something and will say, "Oh my god, did you see this?" And it will be a, you know, something new or unnerving. >> Uh that's interesting. So some of the victims are like going through this like researchers like reading stuff and looking for clues or looking There's a couple of them that are really good um investigators who spend time on the computer and look these people up and find out who who's this person and oh yeah quite quite a number of them are like that uh really invested for obvious reasons. I mean >> uh to some of them I'm sure it's somewhat of a it's somewhat therapeutic. >> Yeah. Um so I want to get through what we've learned in this latest patch. first. Uh you're uh central in part of it, uh though. So I guess I I guess we should just cover that ground first. Uh because this was a weird one. Um one of the things in this latest batch of files was a American Airlines flight record from 2019 with your name on it. Uh included your maiden name. Uh so you're sure that that's your flight, not not another Julie Brown? >> It actually wasn't my flight. It was itinerary. It was a flight that I had booked. >> Okay. But it was a flight for one of the victims that I was supposed to interview. Ironically, the day that Jeffrey Epstein or the day after Jeffrey Epstein would have was arrested. This this whole interview was planned well before. I mean, we I actually booked the record I think in June, but the flight was for July and it was for an interviewee, one of the victims. Uh, you know, I could say her name because she's been out there publicly. It was for Annie Farmer who I planned to interview. I had never interviewed her or her sister Maria who was the first to report Epstein way back in 1996. So, you know, it was hard to see because, you know, like everything with this document reveal by the DOJ. It is like they put everything in a salad bowl and just threw it online. So, it's hard. We still don't have the grand jury subpoena that pertains to this record that they obtained from American Airlines. The record is heavily redacted except for of course my name. And so it is a little unnerving when you see your name, especially when they have your maid name, which you don't even use publicly attached to a grand jury subpoena. So it it but it appears that they sort of just sloppily did this subpoena uh pertaining to some victims I suppose and it doesn't you know the date of this grand jury uh is 2010. This was a record that they were signing in 2020 which was 10 years later. So you sort of look at it and say what the heck were they doing here? >> What and do you have any sense what the heck they were doing there? I I've been talking to prosecutors today and they said that they think that it was, you know, that they made a mistake with saying it was from a grand jury in 2010. But what they were probably trying to do, and we don't know for sure, was that they had requested all the flight records probably for Maxwell, who we could see in there as part of these records, and some of his victims, which probably one of them was Annie. So that her record came up and my name was attached to it because we we booked the flight. We paid for the flight for her to for us to meet up with her and interview her. I mean, we really don't know for sure, but that seems to be what it is. But again, this is uh a product of the fact that they are throwing stuff out there. I mean, surely this was part of a file that had the grand jury subpoena next to it, right? had here's this grand jury. You know, when you do a file, when you're doing something, you you put a file and you say, "Here are all my whatever it is, and then you have everything in the file there." They seem to not be doing that. They're throwing out the returns of the grand jury. Who knows? It could be weeks before we get that actual subpoena because they have it somewhere else. They're throwing things online without, you know, there's been so many uh strange things. I mean, we saw that letter that he, you know, may have written to Larry Nasser and they just put that online and you don't think that that was part of a file of things that they had >> on his death, you know, that they found in his cell, you know, but they didn't put it online like that. So, you don't know whether they even investigated who wrote that letter. >> Yeah. And then they come out and say it's not a real letter, but it's like that's the one thing that they're denying is real. And it's not it's it's not an orderly process uh to say the least. And it seems like one of your takeaways is that it's a total mess. But uh what other takeaways do you have for what we've seen so far in the latest batch of of >> Well, the question is why is it such a mess? You could just say, well, you know, they had to do it fast or you can make all these excuses that would provide some kind of idea why they're doing it this way. Or you could say, which a lot of the victims believe that they're doing this on purpose, that >> you know, one one of the ways you be transparent is you actually release the files and then when you have something like a tip, an FBI tip, you have the paperwork that says right behind it, we verified that this is not Epstein's handwriting and this is where it was mailed and here's what we did about this tip. But they're not doing that. They're throwing stuff out there and they're they're doing it in such a disorganized manner that it does distract from what the real story should be. And in this case, the real story should be whether this was a corrupt deal and whether this is is a cover up. And when you're focusing on the shiny objects such as a Larry Nasser letter or there's like a million other examples I can give you, you're spending your time looking at that rather than what the prosecutors were doing behind the scenes to make sure that Epstein got a better deal than any other pedophile who ever committed this kind of crime has ever um been given. >> The cover up element of it is just well and there's the original cover up of why he got that deal, right? And then now we have kind of this ongoing rolling cover up. It's like a reluctant one because they passed the the legislation now. But you know, you look at the files and in addition to kind of what you're talking about, there's also strange redactions uh very favorable to Trump redactions like we're redacting the picture of him and going Maxwell on Steve Bannon's phone for example. There's another you I guess a report from some woman put forward about Trump and touching her nipples or whatever. and like it it Trump's name is redacted but it wasn't in a separate file so you can figure out who it is and and so that is part of this and there's a bunch of stuff that hasn't been released. So like how do you assess that like what um you know like the the the ongoing cover up element of this? >> That's all you can say that it is a cover up because they're not providing the information in a in a way that the public can really understand it. Look, if I'm having trouble understanding what it is, the the public sure as hell isn't going to be able to understand a lot of what it is. I see stuff all over the place with them saying, "Look at this." And they're explaining a document. I know the document isn't what they're saying it is, but it's not their fault. They don't really understand um this all the you know details of this case and the government is making it almost impossible to do that. >> So, what are some things we've seen that have been noteworthy? One thing that jumped to my eye, but again is maybe maybe not understanding exactly what is there, um was uh one of the DOJ docs references 10 co-conspirators that they were looking into, right? >> Uh Massie has said that the survivors have given the names of 20 men. So I don't know. I guess men might not be necessarily co-conspirators. I don't know. How did what what did you make of that? Well, we know that one of the men in that that document because that document by the way elsewhere in the record is not fully redacted and the name in the document that is exactly the virtual is the same um reveals that one of the co-conspirators listed in that document is less Wexner who is um as we know Jeffrey Epstein's longtime client I when I say client I mean business he he he was his only client for he claimed for a long time. So, uh, we know that one of them is Wexner. I I believe a couple of them could be people who worked for Epste in the sense that they flew his planes, so they were, you know, furrying these girls. Uh, and they could have also been a couple of the assistants who were scheduling and recruiting girls. Those assistants names are now redacted because in, you know, in recent years after they've been interviewed, I believe by authorities by the um SDNY, they come to conclude that those assistants were in essence victims. You know, this was his MMO. He would recruit these girls and then use them as sex objects. And when they got to be too old, as in 24, uh, you know, a lot of these girls came from nothing. And so they had nowhere to go. So he hired them as assistants. >> So that's who I think some of the people are that are listed as co-conspirators. You know, there were other names, a lot of names in here that were redacted. So it's hard to know whether any of them were men who were involved with um Epstein in any nefarious way. The one thing that I that really strikes me from all this is that okay, so especially if it's true the 10 co-conspirators aren't necessarily men. Um, you know, we we have had accusations and and allegations and reports that Epstein traffked these girls to other men or shared them with other men at various parties or other things like of that nature. And you know, as I mentioned, Massie said he has the survivors have given him the names of 20 men. What is the holdup in that? You know, like do do we think that is DOJ protecting people? Are do survivors not want to name folks because they're worried about legal ramifications? Like like what are there not as many men as people think? Like what what do you think is happening with why there have been so besides like formerly Prince Andrew and Les Wexner, like there really aren't a lot of men's names being named at this point? Well, there they've named them to me, so I know who who a lot of them are. Um, but they won't tell me it on the record, only off the record because they are afraid. I mean, think about it. Um, Epstein got away with this pretty almost cleanly the first time. Okay? In subsequent years after the Sweetheart deal, there were more victims coming forward. He still was out there continuing to abuse women for for, you know, a decade later. And in their mind, the fact that then he got arrested and he ended up dead. Um, to be honest with you, a lot of them don't don't believe that he committed suicide. And they think that this is all one big government cover up. And so why would you put your neck on the line then and name all these men when you feel like there is a government cover up protecting the men? So I think that there is a understandable reluctance for them to trust um the government in revealing these names because they don't feel they feel like Epstein has been getting away with this and and all these men now have been getting away with this for quite a long time. >> Okay. So, I understand the reluctance, but at this point, I guess you've got um I don't know, the House like over the oversight, they have some of these names, right? Uh you know, people members of Congress, some of you know, there there could be some of them could go to journalists. I don't I I don't know. I I don't I certainly don't think anyone's going to feel satisfied. Certainly, I would assume not the victims, but I think the public, you know, if this release ends without other perpetrators being named, and I guess you're unless you unless there aren't any other perpetrators, which which you're saying is not the case, obviously. >> No, it's not the case. There are uh I don't know what the answer is. I don't think that they're going to reveal a whole lot because I think that the way that they are handling this so far shows that they've been, you know, reluctant, if not refusing to provide even basic information. I mean, they're redacting uh photographs of men in in some of these files. So, you know, >> we could tell that some of these pictures that they've redacted include pictures of men. I mean, you could just tell they are, you know, whether you'd see a suit jacket, you know, below and the face has big block black over it. Um, I mean, there are people that have been redacted from these files. So, uh, and we know that they removed one of Trump's photos and then when they were called on it, they had to put it back in. So, you know, we can't trust these files are going to really reveal the story here or the truth, I guess, is what we really want. And the way that they're doing it almost hides the truth. >> One of the interesting things uh that came out, there's a really long Marjorie Taylor Green profile by Robert Draper that came out in the New York Times on Monday, and there's an interesting passage where uh Green says that Trump was calling her. This was before that they had passed the bill trying to berate her to not be on board with the um Epstein file release act. And she um she said that Trump said to her, "My friends will get hurt if abusers were named." Um and then Green said she told him to bring the victims to the Oval Office then and let let them have a chance to say their peace. And Trump said to her that they had done nothing to merit the honor of coming there. And then she said she has never Trump talked to Trump since. I thought that was pretty noteworthy. again, you know, who the hell knows Trump's a liar. But like for him to say, "My friends will get hurt if abusers are named," >> felt pretty telling. Um uh whether that's a cover or of of himself being one of the friends or or not, it definitely indicates that that he is conscious of and they are conscious of protecting people who are perpetrators in this release. Look, those men who know who they are, so it wouldn't surprise me if they were reaching out to Trump and saying, you know, you better you got to stop this, you know, and who knows what they what else they know besides their own activity. They might know of other men's activity. So, this is one big possible snowball here. And uh you know it it it could be you know that they reached out to him and asked him to to just not do this because it's going to lead uh not only to you know embarrassment but possible criminal allegations against people that he knows or gets money from donors. I was told that possible are in here. Some of uh his MAGA or Republican donors might be named in these files, which is kind of ironic because he at one point he said, "We're going to investigate all the Democrats that are in these files." Well, there aren't all Democrats in these files. So, uh I always said that these this is not a, you know, right versus left or Republican versus Democrat issue. This is sexual assault and it doesn't discriminate based on your political party. There are bad people on both sides of the aisle involved in this. >> There's a couple more things on the Trump of this I'm curious your take on. I mean there's just like some of his obvious lies like in 2024 he posted that he'd never been on Epste's plane. This release is showing that he's been on the plane maybe eight times. Um one of the on the manifest for one of the planes the document says it was Epstein Trump and then 20year-old redaction. So, we assume it's a 20-year-old girl, young woman, um that was on the plane, and it was just the three of them at one point. Um and uh and then there's, you know, Trump and Maxwell stuff as well. You know, their picture being together and Bannon's phone. You wrote a Substack on your Substack um recently about Trump and Maxwell's relationship. So like is what is there anything in the and then what we've seen that at all informs your view on the extent of Trump's relationship the extent of his exposure with Epstein and Maxwell? >> Well I think the biggest um reveal so to speak is where Maxwell is sitting right now and that is in a much cozier prison than she was in before. Um and she was moved there without really any explanation for the longest time. Uh Todd Blanch just recently in a couple of days ago said that it was for her safety. If it really was for her safety, why didn't they announce that when they moved her? I mean, it seems odd to me that it took them, you know, how many months before they came up with that and and when they could have said that, you know, when they moved her in the first place, which they didn't. So, you know, I just think that that the that Maxwell is the key to this whole thing and the fact that she's now aiming for a pardon and that Trump hasn't, you know, I I would think almost any other president or lawmaker who was asked that question would say, you know, no way is she getting a pardon. She was convicted as abusing girls. I mean, she wasn't just his recruiter. she participated according to her conviction and the testimony in court. She participated in the abuse. >> So I do think that that is the key and it's sort of, you know, these files being um released like this, hundreds and thousands of them, you know, and in the back of my mind I'm thinking, what does Baxwell know? How did she get to where she is? Is she lining something up here? you know, her her habius corpus petition was interesting by the way that she filed because she alleged, you know, that she had an unfair trial and on new evidence is being um released now with these files that show even more that she her trial was unfair um and that there were constitutional violations. And one of the things she says is that there were settlements with, I think, don't quote me on the number, but it was around 25 men made out of court settlements, secret settlements in connection with Epstein. So, which I always thought that was what was happening. A lot of the men whose names I've been told were involved, who haven't been made public, I were likely making out of court settlements with their victims. Let me add another thing. Um, as I understand it, I'm not a lawyer, but as I understand it, even if you make a out of court settlement, you know, with a NDA, if it involves criminal activity, you're still allowed to talk about it. So, I just wanted to add that. So, if it if they have criminal information, they they shouldn't be bound by the NDA. >> But there were also like the non-prosecution agreements, right, too, in that first that was >> I I don't think any of them signed nonprosecution agreements. the victims? I don't think so. >> Right. Because so that was just a deal between, you know, the government and >> Yeah. Epstein. No, they didn't. Um I mean, they they subsequently talked to me even for my series. So um even after receiving the settlements. >> Speaking of some of those victims, you did uh you you did post a enticing social media post I must ask you about which uh you said that you've received a lot of new information about girls and young women who were sexually traffked. um in the in the wake of these files. Uh obviously, you know, this is you're in the middle of reporting. I'm not asking you to break any news. I'm just curious, will you reference saying like this case in particular or just like the the broader >> No, I'm talking to victim >> of powerful men going after >> I'm talking to victims who before had either, believe it or not, there are some victims around the world, for example, who don't live in our country who don't get Epstein news around the clock like we are. So they weren't really aware of this story as much as we are here in the US. So I've heard from some victims in other countries who now are getting this information and they are coming forward and saying, "Yeah, I was one of those models, for example, who he brought from XYZ country and put me up in this uh you know uh apartment home in in Manhattan and promised to make me the next Victoria's Secret model." and instead he just abused me. So I'm hearing from new people, you know, I would say at least once a week. And you know, they don't want to go public. They're afraid, you know, they look at what, for example, what happened with Marjorie Taylor Green, um, and how she sort of got attacked, especially, you know, by Trump people and, you know, and she claimed she was threatened. And these girls were already really afraid to say anything to begin with because Epstein often said, you know, I'm going to make your life hell if you tell anybody about this. So, I mean, one woman said that he he really investigated them, too. I mean, he found out one woman had a mother that had cancer and they were poor. They didn't have access to great medical care. So, he promised to get her mother the care that she deserved. So she went through with the abuse and you know and then she felt horrible about it and he said well that's fine. I don't have to give your continue paying for your mother's medical care. You know that's the kind of thing he did. >> And the scale of this stuff is so it's like hard to even wrap your head around. It's unfathomable. I guess you must have felt that way reporting this out like feeling like there you think there must be some end to the amount of victims at some point. But it's like uh you know I mean the the numbers are so so vast and just I was when I was watching the documentary on this and then like the local Palm Beach police trying to figure out all the girls you know who are at some point were brought to his house and then now for you to say after all these years there to be women who are over like are overseas who are still reporting him. I I mean it's just truly like hard to kind of wrap your head around the scope of you have no idea the the number of calls I'm getting on a daily basis now. It's incredible. I I mean tips that I would have jumped at and written, you know, before all this happened because it they are good stories that I can't I'm like trying to uh prioritize it. It's completely overwhelming. Uh it's I can't even describe for you how overwhelming it. It's my whole, you know, I wake, I fall asleep with my laptop beside me on the bed and I wake up and pick it up as soon as I wake up in the morning and I'm still, you know, answering emails and trying to follow up on all these tips. Now also I get uh the benefit which I'm not complaining about at all of some people who are really good with computers who are able to decipher some of the these documents that have attachments that I haven't been able to open and they're able to figure out a way with whatever technology that they have that they're able to figure out. So I'm also getting tech people that are sending me stuff. >> So it's so much material. It's it's mindboggling. Is there anything in all of that that like you've learned recently or from these files or from those tips that has like surprised you or that has made you feel like there's a new perspective on this that you haven't had? You've been doing this for so long now? Um or is it just all just incremental stuff that we already kind of knew? I I would say most of it is is the stuff that I'm getting is just more like, "Oh my god, this is worse than I thought." That's what I think every day. That's really what I think every day. This is worse than I thought. You know, this is like, wow, there are big people involved. And and I you know and then like I said when you see your name in the files like the way I did you know people can fault me for like being an alarmist I suppose and that they're being a logical explanation for me given the fact that I bought that ticket. But look I I'm absorbed in this for eight years and I've seen a lot. And so when you see something like that I think it's just human nature to think what is this now? you know, why why is this, you know, so I, you know, I'm human, you know, and I just I'm trying to cope with all of this as best I can, you know, is all I can say. >> And I think that speaks volumes just in itself, right? Like that you and you've talked to these victims, you've read the reports, you've heard firsthand about the just unbelievable abuse they went through as young girls. And for you to now say after all of that, after years of consuming all that, that you still like think the bottom might be lower than you thought, that it might be worse than you realized. And that's pretty >> it's pretty striking. >> Yeah. No, there's and there's so much like I get faulted a lot because oh, you know, everybody's a critic, right? No matter how hard you try. And you know, I get faulted for not examining his alleged intelligence ties. It's just another whole big giant pocket of stuff. You know, I've got a million different rabbit holes and that's just another whole pocket of stuff that I quite frankly just haven't been able to have the time with working a full-time journalism job uh to dig into. This is taking me just focusing on the victims is is taking all my time. Well, it requires that amount of work, right? And so, I mean, I think it's obviously this is just was unbelievably important to work on the victims. It's it's how this process start started that got him arrested again and and and refocused people on on this heinous decadesl long crime. It is I I think it's legitimate for people to cuz I was going to ask you, it's legitimate for people to ask about the other stuff that's out there. Like I I mean, you don't you don't rule out the intel stuff. >> I just think there's, you know, there's plenty of reporters. This is a story that's big enough uh for a lot of reporters, you know, and I think that there are some people doing good work on his money picture. The New York Times has been doing um Matthew Goldstein has been doing some great work on uh his finances and that so I try to focus on things that I know I can >> is more in my wheelhouse because it's just too big of a story for me to do everything. The finance story I did find interesting that Times finance story you said. I'll put a link in the show notes for people that want to read it because it does paint a picture of him as like a just a real scam artist, you know, like there's like that was I think the last time we talked or two times ago, one of the questions I asked you was like what do we know about where he got his money? And it's still and it's still like uncertain, right? Like and and it does feel like he was shaking a lot of rich people down. And and some of it like may have been related to the girls, but some of it I think was related to embarrassment. Like if you're a rich person and you get h, you know, and a hu comes in and takes your money. Um, you know, I think both of those things could be true, right? That like some of the people he was working with also were abusers and some of them were just embarrassed that they were they were so easily scammed by him. That was kind of one of my takeaways, >> right? Leon Black uh you know he he gave Epstein an awful lot of money that that authorities right now are really quite frankly it's public that they're investigating why he gave Epstein so much money. So there's a million different as I said rabbit holes you could jump down with this case. There's the modeling interest part of it. Epstein had a modeling agency that he said that he was mo that he was sort of modeling after Trump's agency trying to do >> I was going to say that ties into Trump. Yeah. >> Yeah. And you know and then there's the intelligence part of it. There's the uh money laundering slash whatever you know fraud he was doing. Um he had his hands in so many different things. I mean he was getting ballerinas. He was uh you know he had got a couple of girls from Interlock in the the camp in Michigan for uh musical proteges. You know he had a home there. I'm told right next to the lodge where all the young girls uh were housed. Um you know he had ties to Hollywood. You know he there's message pads there from from Harvey Weinstein. Um there are actors I'm hearing that you know that Epstein you know were associated with him. Yeah. >> So, it's it's big. >> And he was such a connector in that way. Like also, you know, like the thing I keep coming back to is that email between I was I was reading the full exchange of an email between him and Peter Teal. And it's like he's trying to get Peter Teal. He's like, "Come to dinner with Woody Allen." And Peter Teal is like, "That sounds interesting. I I guess maybe I can do that sometime. I don't know." But it's like, "Well, what was happening there?" And Peter, he was investing with Peter Teal. Peter Teal obviously isn't interested in young girls. >> Well, there's pictures. There's pictures of those some of those dinners in the files with Woody Allen and other uh famous men um that are in the same pictures. So at a table like you know that like that's exactly what he was doing. He was gathering all these people together. >> Uh just two more things before I lose you. Just kind of circling back in the Trump part of it because I know it's what a lot of folks that are listening are interested in and and it's the big question right now is like why the extent of the cover up on this from him. Um, we started, you mentioned the Katie Johnson accusations. Uh, you know, when people talk about the Trump cover up, like it's maybe he is just like sympathetic to other rich guys and and who and and who are have me too accusations and him and Epste were just pals running around. Maybe it is worse than that. Like maybe, you know, like these direct accusations about Trump have merit. Uh maybe there's intel elements to it. like what do you like obviously you don't know and and you're not going to you know be the jury on this but like what do you make of the extent of the Trump potential exposure here? >> Well, let me just start by saying I don't have any evidence and I haven't seen any concrete evidence, you know, as in on paper with photographs, you know, uh scheduling books or whatever. I haven't seen any evidence that Trump, you know, was involved with his sex trafficking network. I haven't seen any hard evidence. >> U but I I think that that the way that this has been handled by him and the Justice Department really should raise uh questions on the part of Congress as to why he was um you know really browbeating you know members of Congress not to approve this and saying things like you mentioned that that Marjgery Taylor Green said that it's going to hurt a lot of his friends. That should be investigated. You know, all this should be investigated. And I don't think it should be a partisan thing. I think that the Republicans should want to investigate it, too. I mean, why why did they release a couple of binders full of stuff when Pam Bondi said they were going to release, you know, everything and it was on her desk? I mean, there's some serious questions that I think need to be answered. >> Yeah. And now we have a million more files. they said, you know, like doing that. >> Yeah. And and and also the the question should be raised about why did they say that there wasn't any anything here, you know, there definitely is stuff there. We're seeing some of the memos. We're seeing that there were 10 co-conspirators, you know, and there might even be more that we don't know that because we don't have the files. But there's stuff there that shows that this was a massive crime and that there were a lot of, you know, uh, people that were involved. And, you know, it doesn't seem like the government completely finished their investigation. It feels like they got Maxwell and then they said, you know, that's it. Uh, we're done here. We got her. I mean, the only thing I can say in their defense is that it's very hard to convict people based on crimes that were convicted that long ago, if they were long ago. Um, I think that they probably continued up until his arrest. But, uh, some of them certainly were from young girls from a very long time ago, and those cases are very hard to make. Um, but there's other ways to make them. You know, Widen is trying to get more of his financial information showing he was making these big payments and he's hit a brick wall with the Trump administration over that. So that, you know, as they say, follow the money. So they should be looking at that and giving widen the room to get some of those records. >> And again, this stuff's a long time ago. And and so you know, there is legal ramifications, but then there's also political and other reputational ramifications. I mean, I you know, it's like Trump says he wasn't on the plane with Epstein. He was on the plane with Epstein and a 20-year-old girl. Like, why? What were they doing? Who is you know what I mean? Like, to me, it's like, you know, if there was specific allegations or instances or accusations of of rape or sexual ass abuse, like that's important in its own right, but also it's like you knew it was happening. What did you think it was happening when you were on a plane with a 20-year-old girl? What did you think she was there for? You know what I mean? Like, you knew at some level it was happening. >> Um. >> Right. And uh all right, the last thing on Trump just really quick because I've seen you pop off a little bit on this is like the other thing was that Trump that Epstein's death happened, you know, during the Trump admin first Trump administration. I know that on the right they try to make this into a Hillary conspiracy theory, but Trump and Bill Barr were in charge when when he died. His brother, Epstein's brother, now in this latest batch of files claimed that that he doesn't think it was a suicide and that Epste was about to name names. Epstein. Another thing from the files is I guess said that he that his roommate or his cellmate or whatever was trying to kill him 18 days before he died, which is kind of a weird thing to say if you're planning to kill yourself. What do you make of all that? I at the at the least it feels like it hasn't been fully investigated. >> No, it not only wasn't fully investigated, but the way that it was investigated was so incredibly slipshot that you have to wonder if they really were already convinced it was a suicide in their mind. So there was no need to investigate that the possibility of anything else. And I've interviewed the forensic pathologist that was at the autopsy, the one that his brother hired, um, who I've done a lot of work with in my previous reporting about I, you know, I covered Florida prisons for many, many years. So I know the way that, uh, deaths happen in prison, deaths as in murders happen in prison. And he has quite a a lot of experience in those kinds of cases, too. and he doesn't believe a lot of reasons that that it was a suicide. Um, and I actually don't believe it was a suicide because it was too soon for I think Epstein to give up. He had been only in jail for a month, you know, and and he had a good chance of I think he had a shot anyway at getting out because the information that the um SDNY had at that time were from victims in Florida and his lawyers were going to argue that they would have been covered by that uh immunity deal that he made in Florida. So they had a good they had a good, >> you know, platform there to start with to get him off. You know, he was also, you know, be right before his arrest talking to Bannon and to other people about how to kind of smooth this story over um that I had written to sort of make it, you know, at one point I think they were trying to figure out a way to discredit me. you know, he had been through this ammo, you know, uh stuff before, hiring private investigators and um you know, really digging into people. So, um you know, I I just think that it was too soon for him to just throw in the towel unless he was sick or something else was going on. Uh his brother doesn't believe it. Neither does Maxwell, by the way. Maxwell doesn't think he committed suicide either. So, those are the two people that presumably would know more about this, you whether he was capable of it than anybody else. Um, but I just think it's it the whole thing was done really messy and it just raises questions. The two guards that they charged and they gave them sort of a deal, the whole thing just doesn't sit well. And the American public is pretty smart. They've probably read some of this stuff, too. And I think most people don't believe the suicide angle. >> Oh man, Julie Brown. Well, thank you for working through Christmas and all this, reading these files, taking these new tips. Um, we appreciate you. I look forward to continue reading your work on your Substack, which people should sign up for, and uh, and at the Miami Herald. You've been on this for like almost a decade now, but I think you might have another decade ahead of you. I don't I don't think that this is going anywhere anytime soon. >> I'm going to be I know I want to retire at some point, but I I think you're right. It actually this story is going to outlive me. You know, it's going to be like the JFK assassination and it's definitely going to outlive me. >> Well, happy new year. Uh try to get a try to get an evening of champagne and enjoyment and uh then get back to work. All right. >> Okay. Thank you. >> Thanks so much to Julie K. Brown for her time today. Uh tomorrow we will have a yearend pod uh with one of my faves. Hasn't been on in way too long. So, I'm excited to get them back and uh we will take you into the new year tomorrow. Uh and then give you a couple days off and we'll be back to the grind next week. So, appreciate you all very much. See you tomorrow. Peace.