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Brian Lehrer: It's The Brian Lehrer Show on WNYC. Happy Friday, everybody. Well, it's August 1st, President Trump's latest tariff deadline day. We'll talk in a little while with New Yorker economics writer John Cassidy about what's in, what's out, and what Cassidy thinks it means for prices, jobs, and interest rates in this country. The July jobs report also just came out this morning with a low number, lower than economists said they expected. 73,000 jobs created last month, and an uptick in the unemployment rate to over 4%. We'll talk about that, too, and get his take on Trump versus the Fed on interest rates as well.

We'll also get a take on the local impact of the tariffs and tariff chaos from New York City's deputy mayor for Housing and Economic development, Adolfo Carrion, and talk to him about other things, too. We'll get a musical preview of WNYC's free Public Song Project concert with the winners of Alison Stewart's annual musical competition. The free concert coming up in Brooklyn tomorrow. The sneak musical peek at the end of the show today. First, as much as President Trump wants the Jeffrey Epstein story to go away, he seems to only be deepening people's suspicion that he's hiding something with the way he's been behaving.

I'll admit, I first thought the idea of a client list that would expose prominent people as engaging in the kind of sexual abuse of minors that Epstein himself was convicted of and charged with, was a hoax being perpetrated by Trump to insinuate that Democrats were on the list and fuel the rage against elites in general, so-called liberal elites in particular, that has helped him so much politically. I thought the scandal in the announcement by Trump's Justice Department that, basically, there's nothing more to see here. The scandal in that was that Trump got exposed for having perpetrated something he knew was fake for political gain.

With all the things that have happened since, now I'm wondering if it's more complicated than that. As the process of lawsuits and congressional subpoenas around this continues to take dramatic turns, we thought this would be a good day to invite two journalists who have deeply covered Epstein's crimes, Epstein's death and the circles around them to explain what we actually know and what the legitimate questions are that remain to be answered are, and how they might be answered. This will be somewhere between Jeffrey Epstein 101 and Epstein World Advanced Horribleness Studies, if you know what I mean, which will include a chance for you to ask questions.

Our guests are Vicky Ward, an investigative journalist who first profiled Epstein in Vanity Fair way back in 2003. Some of you may have heard Vicky Ward on NPR's Morning Edition on Monday. She is also a visiting fellow at Oxford, writes a newsletter called Vicky Ward Investigates, and is the author of books, including a new one just out a few weeks ago about the 2022 killing of four University of Idaho students. The new book is called The Idaho Four: An American Tragedy.

Jacob Shamsian, legal correspondent for Business Insider, specializing in the intersection of law and politics. He covered the criminal trial of Esptein's accomplice Ghislaine Maxwell, among many other things, including the civil suit trial in which you'll remember Donald Trump was found by a jury to have committed sexual abuse on E. Jean Carroll. Jacob and Vicky, thanks very much for coming on today. Welcome to WNYC.

Vicky Ward: Thanks for having me [crosstalk]

Jacob Shamsian: Thanks so much for having me.

Brian Lehrer: Listeners, we welcome your questions about Jeffrey Epstein's grotesque crimes and any remaining mysteries surrounding who else was involved and if Epstein really died by suicide and the changing relationship of President Trump and his appointees to any investigation of it all. Your questions are welcome at 212-433-WNYC. Call or text 212-433-9692. Vicky, why did you profile Jeffrey Epstein for Vanity Fair in 2003?

Vicky Ward: The answer to that, ironically, is because the editor of Vanity Fair at the time thought it would be easy for me. I had a high-risk pregnancy with twins. I couldn't fly, and I lived in New York. Jeffrey Epstein lived in New York. He was a mysterious figure who was not out visibly, sort of on the rich social circuit in the city. His name popped up unusually in the New York Post in the fall of 2022. There was a small item in the gossip column of the New York Post saying that he had flown Bill Clinton on his plane to Africa. That was the hook that caused Graydon Carter to say to me, "You know what? I've always wondered who this guy is. He's kind of a Gatsby-like figure. Where the hell does all his money come from?"

This is a guy who, out of nowhere, bought or lived in the biggest private townhouse in New York City. He bought an island in the Caribbean. He had a ranch in New Mexico, he had his own plane, and he had an apartment in Paris, and nobody seemed to know what he actually did for a living. That is why I was assigned a piece to find out where the guy's money had come from. I wasn't expecting to also find the beginnings of details of a story of somebody who abused underage girls.

Brian Lehrer: Did you, at that time?

Vicky Ward: I got to two sisters, one of whom was of age, who was working for Jeffrey Epstein, and went on record about having a completely horrible experience trapped in a bedroom with him and Ghislaine Maxwell. Her younger sister, Annie Farmer, was a minor when she had, also, a terrible experience in Jeffrey Epstein's ranch in New Mexico. She'd flown there because her mother had thought that she would be safe, because Ghislaine Maxwell, this very worldly, sophisticated woman, was supposed to be there chaperoning her.

In fact, what happened, according to Annie Farmer, was that Ghislaine Maxwell gave her a topless massage. She felt deeply uncomfortable. Then the next morning, Jeffrey Epstein climbed into bed with her. Those two sisters went on record with me for this piece, but their allegations wound up being cut from the piece for reasons that were never satisfactorily explained to me.

Brian Lehrer: Jacob, I'll get to you in a minute. Vicky, let me stay with you for this, because right around the same time, came the reported birthday note to Epstein from Donald Trump, that The Wall Street Journal recently had its article about Trump is suing the Journal, claiming the story is false. The story says Trump wrote what they call a bawdy birthday note to Epstein that said, "Happy birthday, and may every day be another wonderful secret."

The Journal says the Trump note also included a drawing of a nude woman. Now, such a drawing, while referring to Epstein having secrets, is obviously provocative. Trump denies all of it and is suing. We will repeat. Vicky, where would that note, if real, fit into the puzzle of what Trump knew and when he knew it, or if he was personally involved with the sex trafficking or abuse of minor girls in any way?

Vicky Ward: The timing of that's deeply problematic. There were other notes that The Wall Street Journal reported making direct reference in a jocular fashion to the Vanity Fair piece that was coming out about Jeffrey Epstein, which he'd gone on the absolute warpath about once he discovered that I had these two sisters appearing in the Vanity Fair offices, himself. Going out of his way to provide all sorts of documentation, which, in his mind, he thought knocked down their claims. It's the same time. I didn't know this at the time, but the fall of 2002 and his birthday, his 50th birthday, is January 2003.

The Vanity Fair article was in the March edition of 2003, which meant it came out actually at the end of January, too. This is all happening at exactly the same time. Jeffrey Epstein had tried to micromanage my piece. He didn't put Donald Trump on the phone to me, interestingly, but he got a lot of other people who sent him similar-style notes for his birthday. He would say things to me like, "What are you hearing about the girls? Ghislaine doesn't go out and find girls for me, by the way." He would say things like that completely unprompted.

We now know that it was in the fall of 2002 where Virginia Roberts Giuffre, who had been recruited by Ghislaine Maxwell from the spa at Mar-a-Lago, Donald Trump's club, in 2000, something that Donald Trump has only just begun to talk about. The fall of 2002 is when Virginia Roberts does a runner. She goes to Thailand, supposedly to get an advanced degree in massage, and never comes back. She meets a guy and moves to Australia, and lives with him. Obviously, if I had known any of that, that would have been something I would have tried to put into the--

Brian Lehrer: [crosstalk] angle of the piece.

Speaker 1: Exactly. Right. 20 years later, I met another woman, Jennifer Rouse, who at the time was in school in New York. She was recruited, not by Ghislaine Maxwell, by somebody else, and was being molested by Jeffrey Epstein in that exact time frame. Unfortunately, all I had at that time were the Farmer sisters on record, and their allegations were scrubbed. In the context of all of that, this letter purporting to be from Trump, as you say, he denies it, is really troubling.

Brian Lehrer: We'll get to what Trump is saying now about Virginia Dufres. We'll play a clip of something that raises even more questions, that Trump said this week. Jacob Shamsian from Business Insider, let me bring you in here as the legal analyst in this conversation. Let me stay on The Wall Street Journal article for another minute, and the lawsuit that Trump filed against them over the story. You reported that Trump even punished the Journal, as he has punished other news organizations before, for stories he didn't like, by excluding the Journal from the press pool covering his recent trip to Scotland. About the lawsuit, would Trump have to testify or be deposed under oath about this reported birthday note?

Jacob Shamsian: That's a tricky question. I think that it would be if the lawsuit got far enough. We don't know how far the lawsuit's going to get. It could be dismissed on jurisdictional grounds, on evidentiary grounds, before it gets to the discovery process, which is where depositions happen, which is where people get to go rummaging through the file cabinets to find evidence to support one way or another, whether it happened. I think this is the first time that Trump has personally sued a media outlet while he was in office. He's sued outlets before, and he's been sued before while in office many times.

The presidency does have a way of letting you delay things. If News Corp wants to depose him, it could be dragged out for a bit. A lot of it is at the discretion of the judge, who decides, "What do we actually need to move this case forward?" The parties really decide, "Should we keep this alive? Is it worth it, or should we back off [inaudible 00:13:02]?"

Brian Lehrer: Settle in some way. If the lawsuit does go forward and the judge decides that the testimony of the accuser, Trump, is relevant to try to make him demonstrate that he did not write that note and he does have to be deposed, how much could that open Trump to general questions beyond about the reality of the note itself, about his knowledge of or involvement with Epstein's abusive act?

Jacob Shamsian: It's hard to tell. I think quite a bit. Depositions do have a way of being wide-ranging. Certainly, before the deposition, the lawyers can fight over what the scope of it will be, and the judge will make rulings. There are even situations where, in the middle of a deposition, if someone refused to answer a question, they'll get the judge on the phone and try to get a ruling right there and then. It could be quite wide-ranging. A lot will have to happen in the interim before we can find out exactly what the scope would be if it happens.

Brian Lehrer: Another of your articles on this says Trump wants to speed up Murdoch's deposition. Rupert Murdoch, the owner of The Wall Street Journal and Fox News, and the New York Post, speeded up because Murdoch is 94 and has had health problems. Do you see Murdoch himself being deposed under oath?

Jacob Shamsian: That's a great question. I think he will try very hard to not be deposed. You might recall the Dominion lawsuit, when Dominion sued Fox News, Rupert Murdoch's emails came out, and he didn't really love that. He was actually supposed to be the first witness or the second witness at the trial in Delaware. The case settled right after the jury was chosen and just before opening arguments began. I think that Rupert Murdoch does not really want to be in that spot. I think that the Trump team senses that this is maybe a pressure point for him, and maybe that's one reason why they're trying to speed it up, to put that sort of pressure on him.

Brian Lehrer: Investigative reporter, Vicky Ward, back to you about another development this week that is raising questions about how much Trump knew. It was even before your 2003 profile. One year earlier, in 2002, in a New York Magazine profile of Epstein, Trump was quoted calling Epstein a "terrific guy" and saying Epstein, "likes beautiful women, many of them on the younger side." That quote of Trump from 2002, would that have been before the alleged birthday note about his secrets? I imagine so.

Vicky Ward: Oh, 100%. 100%. One of the women, the victims, who testified at Ghislaine Maxwell's trial was someone who- I mean, this has been publicly reported. -was whisked off for a weekend with Donald Trump. The concentric circles here are very, very tight. Melania Trump belonged to a modeling agency run by a guy called Paolo Zampolli, who's now got a position in the Trump administration. Paolo Zampolli, I knew him in New York in 2002.

He was somebody who I would reach out to from time to time to talk to. His biggest client was Leslie Wexner, the owner of Victoria's Secret. A huge, huge modeling agency. Leslie Wexner in the 1990s was Jeffrey Epstein's chief financial benefactor. Jeffrey Epstein had power of attorney over Leslie Wexner's finances for reasons that have never been satisfactorily explained. The connections here are tight.

Brian Lehrer: Trump tells New York Magazine in 2002 that Epstein likes beautiful women, many of them on the younger side, without going into more detail about what younger side means. Then a few months later, he sends that note about Jeffrey Epstein secrets to-- Yes, about secrets, if the Wall Street Journal is accurate on Epstein's birthday. Jacob, again, for you as a legal correspondent. We'll remind people Epstein pleaded guilty to one relatively minor charge in Florida in 2008, but then he was arrested and charged again more than a decade later, 2019.

One of the accusers in the second case is back in the news this year as Vicky began to refer to Virginia Giuffre in the news, tragically, for taking her own life in April and then again this week when Trump said Epstein stole her and other workers from their jobs at the spa at Mar-a-Lago to go to work for him, Epstein. It looks like that would have happened in the year 2000, even before all of everything else we've been talking about. Would you remind us first of Ms. Giuffre's role in the second investigation or arrest of Epstein?

Jacob Shamsian: Yes. Ms. Giuffre, Virginia Giuffre, she didn't testify in Ghislaine Maxwell's trial, which stems from the second investigation into Epstein. She was at the center anyway. She was this woman who, in a way, went public with what happened. She talked about Prince Andrew. She spoke to the press. She filed a defamation lawsuit against Ghislaine Maxwell years later when she called her a liar. It's from that defamation lawsuit that we actually know quite a lot about what happened with Epstein and with Maxwell, because Ghislaine had to sit for two depositions, actually, which later became public.

There were all these filings and fact-finding and interviews with people who were in Epstein's world to talk about what was going on there. She is this core whistleblower, in a way, and victim, of course, that informed the public of what was going on. It's from all that material, all these news reports about it, all these filings that-- Then also, of course, Julie Brown at the Miami Herald's amazing reporting about this sweetheart deal back in 20 years ago that led the Southern District of New York in Manhattan to open a new criminal investigation into Jeffrey Epstein and ultimately Ghislaine Maxwell. It is her voice that brought all this roaring back a few years ago.

Brian Lehrer: Vicky, here's the part or a part of what Trump said this week that has put Ms. Giuffre at the center of the story again about Epstein hiring people away from Mar-a-Lago to work for him.

Vicky Ward: Right. Oh, I'm sorry, you have to play it first.

Brian Lehrer: Hang on, let me play the clip first. I apologize. Here's the clip of Trump.

Trump: Other people would come and complain. This guy is taking people from the spa. I didn't know that. Then, when I heard about it, I told him, I said, "Listen, we don't want you taking our people." Whether it was spa or not spa, I don't want him taking people. He was fine. Then, not too long after that, he did it again. I said, "Out of here."

Brian Lehrer: I know the windblown quality on that clip was not great, folks, but you could probably make most of it out. Trump also said, as part of that same answer, "When they steal people, I don't like it." Vicky, I see that family members of Ms. Giuffre are saying the President's language of stealing people makes them wonder anew about how much Trump knew what Epstein was up to. If he was, "stealing" young women from Trump's business. What does it suggest to you?

Vicky Ward: Well, the problem with his language is that it does sort of imply the manner of Virginia Roberts leaving Mar-a-Lago. She left Mar-a-Lago, very simple, because Ghislaine Maxwell popped into the spa, saw her reading a book on massage, and asked her if she'd be interested in coming with her to meet this guy, Jeffrey Epstein. That was the beginning of Virginia Roberts' nightmarish two-year apprenticeship, for want of a better word, when she was underage at the outset of that in the household of Jeffrey Epstein. If Donald Trump knew about that in real time, that is really, really problematic for many, many reasons. Trump has never, until this week, talked about that or put it that way.

What I've always reported is what he said when Virginia Roberts came public about her claims about Jeffrey Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell, which was late 2014 when she joined a victims' class action suit. What Jacob said earlier is entirely right. She is the catalyst for much of what subsequently happened. The reason she generated more headlines than anyone else was that she had this photograph of herself at the age of 17 with Prince Andrew with his army around her waist.

Immediately, that made headlines around the world. She had all these allegations. At that time, Donald Trump reportedly said to his first campaign advisor, Sam Nunberg, "Oh, yes, Jeffrey Epstein, I remember. I don't speak to him anymore because he was hitting on the daughter of a member of Mar-a-Lago." That was what has been out there, not until this week, this idea that Jeffrey Epstein was stealing not just Virginia Giuffre, but other employees from Mar-a-Lago. That's really problematic, Brian.

Brian Lehrer: Well, I think Virginia Giuffre was in high school at the time that she worked at Mar-a-Lago. Correct me if I'm wrong. We have a text from a listener that asks, "Will anyone ask why Trump employed young girls in his spa?" It's a fair question, right? Spas involve nudity and pretty intimate private contact with often powerful clients, in this case. Why did Trump employ teenage girls in the spa? Speechless.

Vicky Ward: Well, I agree with your listener. It's a really good question. I guess I have to believe that President Trump will be asked that in the coming days.

Jacob Shamsian: I will say one of the things about Virginia in particular is that her father worked at Mar-a-Lago, so I imagine she got the job through there. Also, there was this whole thing where, if I remember correctly, she had actually lied about her age at the time. She was in a difficult period in her life, quite frankly. This is a thing where Jeffrey Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell would prey on a young woman who actually came from quite difficult backgrounds and were not exactly in a good place and who perhaps wouldn't necessarily call the police or be believed. As I remember correctly, she didn't tell the truth about her age.

This actually became an issue when she made her accusations, when she sort of like went to the police. Some of Jeffrey Epstein's lawyers tried to discredit her. Ghislaine Maxwell's lawyers discredited her by talking about how much she didn't tell the truth about her age and stuff like that. It's hard to go back in time and understand exactly what happened there. I think it's important to remember that a lot of these victims were in places in their life where they were looking for stability.

Brian Lehrer: We'll continue in a minute with Jacob Shamsian, legal correspondent for Business Insider, and investigative reporter Vicky Ward, who's been reporting on Jeffrey Epstein since 2003. More of your questions via phone calls and texts at 212-433-WNYC. As the story continues to develop, we'll talk in more detail when we come back about Ghislaine Maxwell and the push for her to testify before Congress about this and her related attempt to get off the hook from her charges with relation to that. Focusing mostly on what we can learn from Maxwell and the politics around that by a lot of Republicans, not just Democrats. Stay with us.

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Brian Lehrer on WNYC. As much as President Trump wants the Jeffrey Epstein story to go away, he seems to only be deepening people's suspicion that he's hiding something with the way he's been behaving and the way it connects to things that have been published in the past and things that he said in the past. We're talking about the latest with Vicky Ward, an investigative journalist who first profiled Epstein in Vanity Fair way back in 2003. Some of you may have heard Vicky Ward on NPR's Morning Edition on Monday.

She is also a visiting fellow at Oxford, writes a newsletter called Vicky Ward Investigates, and is the author of books, including a brand new one just out a couple of weeks ago about the 2022 killing of four University of Idaho students, the book called The Idaho Four: An American Tragedy. Jacob Shamsian, legal correspondent for Business Insider, specializing in the intersection of law and politics. He covered the criminal trial of Epstein's accomplice, Ghislaine Maxwell, among other things. Jeffrey, on that, I read a quote from Virginia Giuffre's 2016 deposition that referred to her being approached by Epstein's convicted accomplice, Ghislaine Maxwell.

Jeffrey said, "And I started to have a chit chat with her." This is about when she was recruited, allegedly, at Mar-a-Lago, around the year 2000. "I started to have a chit chat with her just about the body and the anatomy and how I was interested in it." "She told me she knew somebody who was looking for a traveling masseuse." "If the guy likes you, then you know it will work out for you. You'll travel, you make good money." Virginia Giuffre, quoting Ghislaine Maxwell. How central was Virginia Giuffre to Maxwell's 2022 conviction on sex trafficking on behalf of Jeffrey Epstein?

Jacob Shamsian: She didn't testify, but her story was absolutely central. Her name kept coming up over and over again by some of the other people who testified, including people who worked in Jeffrey Epstein's Palm Beach home, and actually one Mar-a-Lago employee who testified about her employments there. Actually, this anecdote that comes up in this deposition about Maxwell approaching her and talking about body parts, this turned out to be Maxwell's MO, as other victims testified. She would talk to these young girls, these teenage girls. She'd make them comfortable around Epstein.

She [unintelligible 00:29:25] a touchy-feely talk about this kind of stuff. Ask, "Hey, do you want to give him a massage?" They would get hundreds of dollars for each massage. It was from this grooming, frankly, that Jeffrey Epstein would rape these girls. She said this whole thing was really important to the operation. Virginia spelled it out right there in that deposition.

Brian Lehrer: We have a text from a listener who questions the timeline of Trump breaking up his friendship with Jeffrey Epstein in 2000, around the time that Giuffre and other workers at the spa were allegedly poached away to work for Jeffrey Epstein. A listener says he would have recruited Giuffre in 2000. Trump remained friends with Epstein for several more years. Trump is lying about when he cut off his ties with Epstein over that incident. Vicky, maybe this is for you as an investigative reporter on all of this.

Vicky Ward: Well, that is correct. I mean, obviously, what we don't know yet from Donald Trump is when he says it happened again, we don't know the date of this--

Brian Lehrer: That could have been after that birthday card in 2003.

Vicky Ward: Oh, for sure. The conventional wisdom is that it's 2004, when Trump and Jeffrey Epstein stopped hanging out. There is another factor that has been out there in the ether, not publicly confirmed by Trump. There was this house, this big mansion, that was in bankruptcy close to Palm Beach. This has been reported that Jeffrey Epstein showed to Trump because he wanted his advice on how to move the swimming pool, and that Trump decided he also wanted to bid for it.

Trump wound up with the property, getting it at auction, and then a few years later, flipped it to a guy I've actually met, a Ukrainian-Russian mogul called Dmitry Rybolovlev. Trump made a lot of money on it. Reportedly, the two men fell out over that. That is not something that Trump has talked about publicly.

Brian Lehrer: Jacob, now Ghislaine Maxwell, too, is back at the center of the case as she is asking the Supreme Court to drop her conviction on the basis of Epstein's original plea agreement, excluding such a prosecution of somebody involved with him. That's a legal question that we'll leave to the side for the moment. Members of Congress want Maxwell to testify, and she wants immunity or pardon in conjunction with that. Who in Congress thinks they can learn what from Ghislaine Maxwell now?

Jacob Shamsian: This is a great question, and I think it gets to the center of why we're talking about this. I think your listeners will probably remember the reason that we've been talking about Ghislaine Maxwell and Jeffrey Epstein is because prior to Trump's election, during his campaign, he and also these people who are now serving and the Justice Department and FBI said they would release these Epstein files, all this stuff that the DoJ and other government agencies have about Jeffrey Epstein. They raided his home in Florida and Manhattan, and the US Virgin Islands, and they have all this stuff, and they promised to release it.

Now, Trump has said, "Never mind, I'm not going to release it." We still don't exactly understand why the Justice Department is making this decision. Now the focus has shifted to Ghislaine Maxwell with this, in my opinion, strange idea that she's going to be this person to tell the truth. That's obviously very difficult. It's certainly possible. It requires a lot of corroboration. I'm not very confident that having her testify before Congress is the best vehicle for truth in this kind of situation. As a journalist, I would love to hear what she has to say. I reached out to her, myself, for an interview. No luck.

We still have the core Epstein files that have yet to be released. It's important, even more so if she testifies, because it's those files that will really contextualize whatever she says and that allow us to understand whatever she says. That will also allow us to fact-check whatever she says. We already have a lot of information from her trial and from civil lawsuits. The whole focus on Maxwell is, I think, certainly fascinating is a bit of distraction from this promise to release Epstein files that the Trump administration has now gone back on.

Brian Lehrer: Further to this point, Vicky, I said in the intro that I first thought the scandal here was Trump promoting a fake Epstein client list as part of his strategy to get elected president by discrediting elite Democrats over things that he made up. Now he's been caught in that fraud by his Justice Department, saying there is nothing left to see, but now I don't know. Maybe there's more than just that. Here's what Jacob was just referring to. The famous quote by Pam Bondi, Trump's attorney general, early this year.

Reporter: The DoJ may be releasing the list of Jeffrey Epstein's clients. Will that really happen?

Pam Bondi: It's sitting on my desk right now to review.

Brian Lehrer: Sitting on my desk right now, the client list. Pam Bondi early in the year on Fox, and then when she walked it back after releasing the nothing-to-see-here conclusion.

Pam Bondi: In February, I did an interview on Fox. It's been getting a lot of attention because I was asked a question about the client list, and my response was, "It's sitting on my desk to be reviewed," meaning the file, along with the JFK, MLK files as well. That's what I meant by that.

Brian Lehrer: Her answer at first, Vicky, was explicitly about a client list, and then she said she was really referring to something much more general than that. What do you think might be left to see, including anything you can call a client list or anything else?

Vicky Ward: I definitely don't think there's a client list. That's not how Jeffrey Epstein operated. People focus in on what they call the black book that came up again and again at Ghislaine Maxwell's criminal trial. That black book was her Rolodex and address book that he used. If you've even looked at the discovery that came up in the litigation around Jes Staley, the former JP Morgan banker who knew Epstein well and ended up having to step down from running Barclays because of his association with Jeffrey Epstein, Jeffrey Epstein could barely spell and tossed off emails very carelessly.

This is not a guy who's going to keep a spreadsheet of men he's had in his house for whatever reason. Jacob is right when he says that there's certainly stuff that was collected by the feds and the raids of Jeffrey Epstein's homes and their stuff that was collected back in Florida in 2006. What that there isn't likely to be, and what Ghislaine Maxwell can probably alone answer, is how Jeffrey Epstein used, what I call, soft power, to evade justice for so long.

I think that the fascination with Jeffrey Epstein has to do, at this point, with how he used his money, where that money came from, and how he used his connections to so spectacularly avoid federal charges in 2008, come back in the following 10 years and have all sorts of luminaries, including Bill Gates, the now crown prince of Saudi Arabia, many others sort of often in his house. How somebody like Leon Black, one of the richest men in this country, would turn to this man and pay him $160 million more for tax advice. I think that part of the fascination at this point, what people want answers to, around Jeffrey Epstein, have to do with systems of power that may be invisible.

This fear on the right of the deep state. I suspect the answers to that are not in the Epstein files. Ghislaine Maxwell knows a lot about how Jeffrey Epstein used power because she was crucial to how he did it. The question that you then have, the really problematic question, is why should we give any airtime to a woman who has done the unspeakable things to underage women herself?

Brian Lehrer: In fact, we have a text that says, "Maxwell is a sex trafficker and a known liar. She was charged with perjury and ruined hundreds of girls' lives. Why would they talk to her now, other than to cover Trump's butt after all this time they've had to do it, and yet they push to get her to testify. Seems to be the opposite." Vicky, of covering up for Trump. No?

Vicky Ward: [chuckles] We come back to this question of what Ghislaine Maxwell is likely to say. To your point, her lawyers are saying she wants immunity, possibly a pardon, so you can guarantee. This is a woman who, when she went on trial for sex trafficking, perjury was thrown in there. You can be sure that whatever she's going to say, it's not in her interest to talk about one name, which is Donald Trump. This is a really, really difficult problem for Donald Trump to solve right now.

Brian Lehrer: Jacob, politically, do you see Democrats or MAGA Republicans or maybe some other group within Congress or professional political Washington being the most interested in pushing this story?

Jacob Shamsian: That's a good question. I think it's certainly in Democrats' interest because they've finally found this wedge issue in the MAGA base. I also think so much of this is self-inflicted from the Trump administration. I think that's important to pay attention to. One of the odd things we talked a lot about here about Donald Trump and his friendship with Jeffrey Epstein. Certainly, they were friends for a while, and they had this falling out. I think it's also important to note that no one has really made any credible accusations against Trump in connection with Jeffrey Epstein, with underage girls. Trump has made this about himself in the past few weeks. We talked to Virginia before.

She's actually asked, in the deposition, "Was Donald Trump involved in Jeffrey Epstein's sex trafficking operation?" She said, "No." For a long time, Brad Edwards, her lawyer, who also represents something like more than 50 or 60 Jeffrey Epstein accusers, also said that Donald Trump, for his president's time, was very helpful. One of the odd things about this is there's plenty of room for Donald Trump to seize this distance and take it and use it for himself, but he's somehow decided to do all these things that have now created this backlash and made it about himself as well. That's one of the more puzzling and intriguing things about this whole issue.

Brian Lehrer: A follow-up on that, and then we're out of time. A listener writes, "Perhaps I'm naive, but I can't understand why Trump would use the carrot of releasing the Epstein files as part of his campaign last year, knowing his name had to be in the files, not once, but clearly many times," writes the listener. "Even if he were just dangling the Epstein file release promise to garner votes, he certainly had to be aware of the maelstrom it would generate when he fails to honor that promise." A good question from a listener. Vicky, the other side of that, to what Jacob was just saying, is why would Trump be working so hard now to stop this story in its tracks if there was nothing to see there about him?

Vicky Ward: I agree with everything Jacob just said. I'm in the Epstein files. That's just because of the Vanity Fair story, et cetera. The fact that Donald Trump, his name is in the Epstein files, by itself, is completely meaningless. I will add that, actually, in all my time spent reporting on this, nobody has ever suggested to me that Donald Trump was one of the men among the names that Virginia Roberts and other of the victims have mentioned as being people that Jeffrey Epstein farmed them out to.

Brian Lehrer: Why don't they just release everything? Why is Trump trying so hard to stop people from talking about this?

Vicky Ward: That is the question of the moment. I have said for years and years and years that Jeffrey Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell didn't do this alone. There's no evidence Jeffrey Epstein committed any sex crimes with underage girls until he had suddenly acquired all this money. The money enabled him to do all of this. There are names of other men who either mysteriously, for reasons we don't understand, wanted to pay him a lot of money, wanted to invest with a guy who had no footprint in the markets.

There are other guys before, whom he almost flaunted his sexual predilections for underage women. I think the question this comes back to is whose names are in there in a way that might be more damning than Donald Trump's. I guess this is why there is a call for Ghislaine Maxwell, problematic as that is, to come and talk to Congress.

Brian Lehrer: Vicky Ward writes the newsletter Vicky Ward Investigates. She's also got the new book about the murders of the four University of Idaho students called The Idaho Four: An American Tragedy. Jacob Shamsian, legal correspondent for Business Insider, specializing in the intersection of law and politics. Thank you both very much for coming on.

Jacob Shamsian: Thanks so much for having us, Brian.

Brian Lehrer: Brian Lehrer on WNYC. More in a minute.

 

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