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Brian Lehrer: It's The Brian Lehrer Show on WNYC. Good morning, everyone. Later, we'll do part two of our Black History Month series, the history of acknowledging black history as the attempt to decenter it continues in Washington. We'll also have our Transportation Reporter, Stephen Nessen, with his reporting on the BQE, and to preview his upcoming Green Space event about the BQE and other things called the Big Dig. The event is next Tuesday, but we start here.

Journalists and others are still learning things worth knowing from the thousands of pages in the recent Epstein files releases. We will focus, in this conversation, on three main questions. One, why does information from the Epstein files seem to be having more political repercussions in Europe than it is here? Two, what consequences are any Americans experiencing based on various kinds of association with Epstein that have been revealed in the files?

This will include naming some names who have had more revealed about them than we knew during our last segment on this last week. Are the redactions in the files protecting anyone who may have actually committed pedophilia crimes who law enforcement hasn't pursued? Three, how much are we learning about Epstein trying to use his influence not just to lure women and underage girls for sex, but to shape global politics, and does that intersect with his sexual crimes?

Back with me for this is Vicky Ward, who did some of the earliest investigative reporting on Epstein, more than 20 years ago. Now writes the Substack newsletter Vicky Ward Investigates and is author of books including Kushner, Inc.: Greed. Ambition. Corruption, The Devil's Casino: Friendship, Betrayal, and the High Stakes Games Played Inside Lehman Brothers, and her latest and instant bestseller that came out last summer, The Idaho Four: An American Tragedy. That one's about the murders in 2022 of those four University of Idaho students. Also with us, David Enrich, deputy investigations editor for The New York Times, who's been covering the Epstein files. Vicky, welcome back. David, welcome to WNYC.

David Enrich: Thanks for having me.

Vicky Ward: Thanks for having me.

Brian Lehrer: David, let me start with an article by some of your New York Times colleagues called Despite Epstein’s Toxicity, Steve Bannon Stood by Him, Texts Indicate. It says Mr. Bannon, a leader in the MAGA movement and a former top aide to President Trump, had been advising Mr. Epstein on how to handle resurrected allegations that he was a serial pedophile. He scheduled what the two men called media training. That was five months after a Miami Herald series exposed how prosecutors had ignored evidence of Mr. Epstein's crimes, unquote, from that article.

David, that revelation is stunning because of the timeline. Right after the 2018 Miami Herald revelations about the extent of Epstein's pedophilia. Can you say anything more about the extent of the Epstein-Bannon relationship?

David Enrich: Well, the article you referenced really covered it quite well, I think. Bannon was one of the last hangers-on to Epstein. He was there until the bitter end, meeting with him, training him, texting him, and really strategizing with him about how best Epstein could blunt the public relations disaster he was facing, which is obviously becoming a legal and financial disaster for him as well.

Bannon, who on the surface level wouldn't have seemed to have a whole lot in common with Epstein, obviously found great common ground with him, commiserating about his treatment in the media. I think his treatment at the hand of federal prosecutors and federal investigators, and really just decided that he was going to essentially cozy up to Epstein and associate with him until really the very end. He's one of a small group of powerful men and an even smaller group of powerful women who made that decision that they were not only not concerned about Epstein's conviction of sex crimes a decade earlier, but were not particularly troubled by the allegations that Miami Herald and other news organizations were publishing at the end of 2018 and into early 2019.

Brian Lehrer: One quote from that text thread, Bannon wrote, "First we need to push back on the lies, then crush the pedo trafficking narrative, then rebuild your image as a philanthropist." As a philanthropist. That was from April 2019. Vicky, many of the Epstein revelations that are getting people in trouble are from the times between his conviction for prostitution with a minor and having to register as a sex offender for that in 2008.

Epstein had claimed he didn't know the prostitute was underage. It was just one time, and people could maybe rationalize it away like that if they wanted to keep having relations with him for whatever reason. After the Miami Herald reporter Julie K. Brown really blew the lid off Epstein's secret life in 2018, 10 years later, for Bannon to be offering him media training after that, how unusual is that revelation from the Epstein files?

Vicky Ward: Well, I will tell you this, Brian. I know Steve Bannon, and I was talking to him in that period, and I heard on the grapevine that he was hanging out with Jeffrey Epstein. I didn't know that he was giving him media advice and filming him, but I heard they were considering going on a trip to the Middle East. I remember saying to Steve Bannon, "This is a really bad idea. You should stay far, far, far away from this man." He smiled cryptically to himself.

My take on it is that if you go back in time, you have to remember where Steve Bannon was in his career. He had just left the Trump White House and was in the middle of trying to reinvent himself a bit. In the same way, yes, sure, he might have been helpful to Jeffrey Epstein, ostensibly trying to rehabilitate him, but Epstein was helpful to Steve Bannon with that enormous global Rolodex of rich and powerful people.

What Bannon really needed then was money and financial backers and global, not just American clout. He needed to cement his role, as you will, as a MAGA leader outside of the White House. In his mind, I think Epstein, with all his contacts around the world and planes at his disposal, et cetera, could be very useful. He was quite prepared, I think, to exercise willful blindness as to the gravity of the allegations and stories that were in Julie Brown's series in The Miami Herald.

Brian Lehrer: Interesting. Later, we're going to hear Bannon's name pop up again when we talk about the third question that I framed in the intro. How much are we learning about Epstein trying to use his influence not just to lure women and underage girls for sex, but to shape global politics? David, The Times article continues. "Mr. Bannon recommended which lawyers to hire, his own, when to lie low, and when Epstein should jump on an opening to push his narrative."

This also prompts a question, I guess, about President Trump. Vicky just said that the context for Bannon was that he had just departed the Trump White House, which maybe he didn't want to do. Some of the speculation about why Trump was so set on covering up the Epstein files was about him protecting friends and associates, not necessarily himself, if he wasn't in there in a really incriminating way. What do you all at The Times think about that theory or any other reason, based on the files, that Trump didn't want these out?

David Enrich: That remains to me a pretty open question. It's worth remembering, just as a starting point, that it was the first Trump administration that initially pursued Jeffrey Epstein and criminally charged him, and he died on their watch. It is not as if Trump has been sitting on his hands altogether on this. Obviously, in the second Trump administration, he and his associates campaigned in part on a pledge to be really transparent about these files. They then very rapidly backtracked and only caved in and agreed to release all these files under intense political pressure when it was quite clear that they just didn't have the votes in Congress to resist this anymore.

One of the questions that I still have not found a satisfying answer to is just why was Trump so dead set against the full release of these files? I think part of it probably is explained by the fact that Trump's name comes up quite a bit in these files. This has been reported on extensively at this point, but there are a lot of references to tips that came in in FBI interviews that took place, where Epstein's accusers or victims also had things to say about the president. I think that's one possible reason why Trump was so resistant to this. I'm struggling. My gut tells me that there's something else going on, and I'm just not sure what that is.

Brian Lehrer: Vicky, is Trump getting a pass, in your opinion, in media coverage of the files, or is there just nothing so bad to see there in terms of Trump's own behavior or the relatively early date when he dissociated himself from Epstein world? As David just pointed out, it was under the Trump administration's watch, Trump one, that it was a federal indictment of Epstein that blew so much more of this out of the water, with who knows what evidence was going to come up.

Vicky Ward: My thought about Trump's relationship to all of this is that what he objects to most about the Epstein files is that he has no control here. Trump, as we know, is very talented at creating and controlling the narrative. He likes to be the one keeping the media on its toes. This story has ballooned to the point that it's the runaway train. It's bigger than him.

I think he hates the fact, I've been told this by people around him that to your point, he was the one who indicted Jeffrey Epstein. It was under his presidency. Then the Democrats, in his view, did nothing under Joe Biden about all of this. He is the one whose administration the Justice Department is releasing the files. Yet the Democrats have suddenly, in his mind, turned around and tried to politicize it. That's a reason he absolutely hates it.

I think the other problem is that even though there are documents in here that actually paint Donald Trump in a very good light, there's one document that Julie Brown at The Miami Herald found and reported on, in which we have Trump in 2006 phoning the Palm Beach police chief and saying, "Yes, you need to get Jeffrey Epstein. He's been doing this for years." He described Ghislaine Maxwell as "evil."

Well, on the one hand, that puts Trump in a great light. On the other hand, it clashes with other things he's said since then, including the very clear statement that he said he had no idea what Jeffrey Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell were doing. The inconsistencies in his story do, of course, raise questions, just as the inconsistencies in Howard Lutnick, his commerce secretary, raise questions. I think that's a question here for him.

Brian Lehrer: Now, listeners, we can take your questions and comments as we continue to parse the Epstein files with Vicky Ward, author of the Vicky Ward Investigates newsletter and the book The Idaho Four, and New York Times deputy Investigations editor David Enrich, who, among other things, was profiled in Slate with the headline, He Reads the Epstein File So You Don't Have To. 212-433-WNYC call or text 212-433-9692.

Let's go on to the next of the three big questions that I'm framing here for today. David, can you talk about the general idea that I've seen written about, that the Epstein files are causing more consequences, including political ones, in Europe, than the US? Have you been following the UK part of this or anything else?

David Enrich: Yes, I have. I've been following as much of this as I can. It's a little head-spinning to try and keep track of everything, everything. Look, it's definitely true that, especially in the UK, the political consequences of this have been severe and relatively wide-ranging, whereas in the US and the political consequences at least have been quite limited. Obviously, Trump had his well-known association with Epstein years ago, but we have people like the one you alluded to earlier, Howard Lutnick, who not only was associated with Epstein after his 2008 conviction, but also was lying about the circumstances of his relationship with Epstein. There seems to be little or no serious career-jeopardizing blowback on Lutnick for that.

I will say two things. One is that there are a bunch of other people in the US private sector who have faced consequences, and a number of very high-profile lawyers have lost their jobs or resigned. There's been fallout in the entertainment and industry and in academia. That's the one thing. Two, is I think it's really important to remember here that there were 3 million pages of files released. It is hard to overstate just how big a number that is.

I can tell you from my own personal experience and that of my colleagues who are working more or less around the clock to read as many of these as we can, we have just scratched the surface. On virtually, an hourly basis, we are finding new stuff that has never been in the public domain. We're trying to assess its merit, its importance, its context. There is a lot more stuff to come here. I think it would be premature for anyone to say that we know everything about Trump in the files, we know everything about Howard Lutnick in the files. We definitely do not. I think there's going to be a pretty considerable continuing flow of information that may yet have political and social, and economic consequences.

Brian Lehrer: I see there's a Times article that was just updated last night called Tracking the Fallout from the Epstein Files. Here's who has resigned, is being investigated, or has faced some other repercussions. It lists 21 people with little headshots of each, by the way. The biggest category is foreign politics, seven people. Then academia, six people, business, five people, law, two people, and US politics, one person, the former Trump one, Commerce Secretary Acosta, who was a US attorney, who maybe took a dive on Epstein in the early days.

Some of these foreign politics names not well known in the United States, which is maybe why these stories are not getting a lot of press here. Thorbjørn Jagland, former prime minister of Norway, criminally charged with gross corruption, as they call it there, in connection with his ties to Mr. Epstein. Mona Jewell, Norway's minister of foreign affairs, resigned February 8th after disclosures of financial dealings between her and her husband, and Epstein. Jack Lang, who once served as France's culture minister.

The one that people here may have heard of, Peter Mandelson, who was fired from his job as British ambassador to the United States when the depth of his friendship with Mr. Epstein started to be clear. Vicky Ward, as people may be able to tell from your voice, you may have even extra insight into the UK politics of this. Can you take on that question of why there seem to be more repercussions in Europe politics than US?

Vicky Ward: Yes, sure. I've met Peter Mandelson. I know him a bit. I've met the other well-known figure in England who's also being investigated by police now is the former Prince Andrew Mountbatten Windsor. I think what is important to remember in the case of Mandelson and Andrew, both of whom are now facing criminal investigations, is that in their case, in this instance, it's not about sex. It's about money. The allegations in both cases have to do with the abuse of government or official positions.

Mandelson, it seems from the emails, handed Jeffrey Epstein market-sensitive information when Mandelson was in government in 2008. That is illegal. Obviously, Epstein then benefited financially as could people he passed that information onto. In fact, I think there are two instances where Mandelson gave Epstein an insight into things he shouldn't have had.

Andrew, similarly, people forget that long time ago, Andrew held the position of Ambassador of British Trade, which was a job that actually got him in the room with a lot of finance ministers around the world. It now seems that the minute Andrew left those meetings or those rooms, who did he email and hand over the information to? Jeffrey Epstein. It seems he was possibly they were doing some financial deal. Again, when you're a member of the British Royal family, you're being funded by taxpayer money, you can't do this.

I think you have to remember that the context of those two cases it's about money. When you're a public figure in public office, you can't go around doing private deals, particularly, obviously, with a convicted pedophile, but you can't go around doing those sorts of deals with anybody. I think that explains the fallout to some degree in England. Obviously, at one point last week, it looked as if it wasn't just Peter Mandelson who stepped down, it was another guy, an old friend of mine, Tim Allen, who had just joined the British Prime Minister's office as Communications Secretary. He stepped down after only two months in the job.

It looked as if the Prime Minister, Keir Starmer, might be vulnerable because it was Keir Starmer who ultimately had appointed Mandelson to the job of British Ambassador in Washington. Even Keir Starmer had had no knowledge, obviously, of any of these financial dealings. It looks for now as if Keir Starmer is safe in the near term. It has rocked Britain, absolutely rocked Britain. I've been in touch with people in Norway. The fallout in Norway has been enormous. Again, I think it's because in those Jeffrey Epstein here wasn't doing these transactional inside trading deals, if you will, with people actually in government while holding government office. In the foreign countries, he was, and that's a problem.

Brian Lehrer: Rich in The Bronx has a theory about why the political repercussions seem more serious in Europe than here. Rich, you're on WNYC. Hello.

Rich: Hi, good morning. Thom Yorke, the lead singer of Radiohead, did an interview years ago where he said, in America, it seems like celebrities and wealthy people walk on air to Americans, but in the UK, the wealthy and celebrities are seen as corrupt, or at least the wealthy. It's assumed that they've done something corrupt in order to get their wealth. It seems like in America, people tend to worship wealthy people and celebrities as if they're gods, as if they can get away with things that normal people can't get away with. There's so many people who I spoke to before Trump was elected the second time that said he's a businessman just because he's rich. It's not even true that he's a good businessman.

I also just think that the way the media, just people, afford Donald Trump any respect, I know I'm being passionate, but I mean, he is worthy of no respect. He's a sexual assaulter. He is a blatant racist during Black History Month. Just the fact that we call him president just irks me. I know he was elected, but I really think people need to, especially in the media, just refer to him or treat him with the contempt, the absolute contempt that he deserves.

Brian Lehrer: Rich, I hear your opinion, and thanks for that cross-cultural comparison and for mentioning Thom Yorke from Radiohead, which by itself makes this a better day. Thank you for your call. Well, Vicky, for you, I'll throw this right back to you with a foot on each continent. What do you think about what Rich said regarding how Americans versus Brits view people who are rich or powerful, or famous?

Vicky Ward: I think there's a kernel of truth in that, in that America is famously based on a proudly capitalistic ideal. I think Britain is not in the same degree. Yes, I think there is a kernel of truth in it. I think the people in this country, I'm thinking of the general counsel of Goldman Sachs and Brad Karp, who's had to step down as the chair of Paul, Weiss, one of the biggest law firms, I think the people who are in high-profile positions who have to be accountable to shareholders and things like that, they have had to step down.

I think where it gets tricky is when you get into the realm of very rich private business people, because what are they going to do? Fire themselves? That's just a structural thing. Yes, I think there is something to this idea that in England, I think there is a skepticism actually of people with enormous power and money, and there is a little bit.

Brian Lehrer: I wonder what would happen to Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick if he served in the British government. We can't answer this question, but he's facing some calls to resign here but he's still in with President Trump, even though Lutnick lied about when he dissociated himself from Epstein, according to what the files show. Vicky in Tudor City, you're on WNYC.

Vicky: Hello, Vicky. Good morning. My question, my question for the experts, is what do they think about Pam Bondi's performance in hearings last week? She disgraced herself. She disgraced this country. It doesn't seem the Department of Justice has any interest in prosecuting the crimes against these victim survivors because she has not interviewed or helped one of them. It came forward in the hearing. She hasn't interviewed anyone. Further to that, Kash Patel talking in his hearings about how there was no credible evidence, they didn't talk to the survivors. He disputed their experience by saying that when he hadn't even taken any evidence from them.

Brian Lehrer: David, you want to take that?

David Enrich: I'm happy to. I think there's some truth to what you said. I do think it is also the case that FBI agents and federal prosecutors spent years trying to build cases against Epstein and his associates. They did interview dozens of Epstein's victims. I do think one of the great mysteries here, which is something that we are trying at The New York Times right now to answer authoritatively, is why on earth only two people were ever charged. We know from some of the files that have been released that prosecutors were looking at a number of other people whom they viewed as potential co-conspirators. None of them, with the exception of Ghislaine Maxwell, were charged. Why? We don't know.

Why has there seemingly been not much legal scrutiny of some of the very high-profile people on Wall Street who were enabling him financially over the years? We don't know the answer to that, and it's a very important question. The lack of criminal charges and the seeming lack of intensive investigative firepower aimed at some of the most powerful people whom Epstein associated with, I think, it's wet people's appetite for more action. I think it has left a lot of people, including Epstein's victims and including members of Congress, feeling like there has just not been justice has not been achieved yet.

I think one of the things we are likely to see in the weeks and months ahead is that, especially as people get more information out of these files and digest what's in here, I think there is going to be increasing pressure on prosecutors at both the state and federal levels to see what they can do to resume some of these investigations into some of the people whom Epstein was associated with. I don't know if that will fully satisfy the victims, but I think that some of the scrutiny may be warranted based on what we've seen in the files so far.

Brian Lehrer: David, as you read through the files, are the redactions in the files or do the redactions in the files appear to potentially be protecting anyone who may have actually committed pedophilia crimes, who law enforcement hasn't pursued?

David Enrich: The redactions in some cases are so vast that it is really hard to tell what's under them. Under the Epstein Files Transparency Act, which Congress passed late last year, there were supposed to be redactions to protect things involving ongoing investigations and to protect victims' privacy, essentially. It's very clear that the Justice Department has gone way above and beyond what was called for under the law and shielded a huge quantity of information from public view.

Again, we don't have X-ray vision or subpoena power, so we cannot actually see what's beneath these redactions, but it certainly appears to us that a huge amount of information, including about men who may have been participating in some of Epstein's criminal activity, is invisible to us. Now, again, we do not know what's beneath these things. I will also say that there is not evidence that we have seen so far that other men were participating in pedophilia. We think more likely Epstein was connecting powerful men with young women with whom these powerful men were then engaging in other forms of sexual abuse or misconduct, but not pedophilia.

Brian Lehrer: After the break, we'll get to the third major Epstein files question we're asking today. How much are we learning about Epstein trying to use his influence not just to lure women and underage girls for sex, but to shape global politics, and does that intersect with his sexual crimes? Plus, more of your calls and texts, if you have anything on that. Stay with us.

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Brian Lehrer on WNYC. We continue with more Epstein files revelations now, as journalists have had more time to look more closely at so many thousands of pages. Actually, our guest David Enrich from The Times just said it's millions of pages, and he still feels like he's just scratching the surface. Our guests are New York Times Deputy Investigations Editor David Enrich and Vicky Ward, author of The Vicky Ward Investigates newsletter and the book The Idaho Four. With you at 212-433-WNYC, call or text.

Now, how much are we learning about Epstein trying to use his influence not just to lure women and underage girls for sex, but to shape global politics, and does that intersect at all with his sexual crimes? There's been reporting on this in The Nation and on Drop Site News and Jacobin, and elsewhere. Give me a minute, David and Vicky, and all the listeners, because I'm going to read some stretches how Jacobin describes some of this.

It says, "New revelations show that Jeffrey Epstein's interests extended far beyond money and sex with underage girls. Epstein used his influence to push aggressive solutions to geopolitical problems, particularly against America's and Israel's traditional adversaries. In 2013, for instance," it says, "as the escalating Syrian civil war threatened its Iran-friendly strongman's continued grip on power, Epstein encouraged former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak, a close associate and friend with whom he had been working to sell and develop Israeli weapons, to add to the mounting pressure on then-President Barack Obama to militarily involve the United States.

Epstein went on to advise Ehud Barak on what an op-ed might look like, and he gave him some language for an op-ed intended to press Obama to intervene militarily in Syria." It says, years later, with Trump as president, Epstein expressed unease about possible US-Iranian rapprochement. Epstein emailed this. "I told you this would happen. It's going to get a lot worse before it gets better." That was in response to an extract from a May 2017 New York Times report about how the Iranian election victory of a pro-diplomacy reformist would bolster Iranian outreach efforts to the West. Epstein was skeptical of that.

Here's where Steve Bannon's name comes up again. The article says, "When Steve Bannon informed Epstein a year later," so that would be 2018, "that Trump's eldest son had been summoned to a meeting with the Senate Intelligence Committee over potential perjury charges, Epstein dismissed the story's importance. 'Focus on Iran,' he wrote to Steve Bannon." The Jacobin article continues, "There was one policy area where Epstein dissented from the Israeli government at the time, the two-state solution."

It says, "Epstein appeared concerned that the increasingly right-wing Netanyahu government's abandonment of the two-state solution was imperiling Israel. He emailed Noam Chomsky in December 25, 2015. It seems few people paying attention to Palestinians. Maybe next generation. Israel going further right, it appears." From Epstein. "The real big threat to the Zionist project," he wrote, "is not the two-state solution, but rather the one-state solution which will lead inevitably to either a non-Jewish or non democratic, potentially ever-bleeding state. Still, this is the vision the Israeli extreme right shares unknowingly with HAMAS."

Finally, it says, "But the country that featured most heavily in Epstein's private discussions contained in the files wasn't Israel, it was China. It was in his private chats with the virulently anti-China Bannon that the country most often came up with Epstein often framing China as a serious threat that had to be defeated." I'm going to leave those excerpts there from an extensive article on the topic in Jacobin. I guess my question is, and David, I'll start with you, is this just a well-connected guy expressing his views, or was he actually amassing power in world affairs beyond things like advising on some op-ed language?

David Enrich: To be honest, Brian, I have not seen any evidence at all that suggests he was wielding real power on the international stage. I know that this is something that some news outlets have been writing about and connecting the dots. The truth is that Epstein was offering his opinions and his advice at times to a handful of people who were not themselves in political power. Look, it's also possible there may be other stuff in the files that comes out that challenges this view.

Based on my reporting, what I've seen in the files and the extensive reporting that we have done over the years, Epstein his most defining important trait is that he was a con man. He was exceptionally good at cultivating individuals who he thought would give him something of value in return, whether that was money, sex, other connections, credibility, legitimacy. Based on the excerpts you just read, it appears to me that he is telling people like Barak and like Bannon, and like Chomsky versions of what they either want to hear or making himself, Epstein, seem like he is worldly and knowledgeable and indispensable, when in reality this is just a guy who happens to know a lot of people and is just giving at times contradictory analyses of geopolitical affairs.

I think it is really dangerous and a mistake to read into Epstein's musings and at times ravings to these people like Bannon, because there's very limited evidence that I've seen so far that suggests that anyone in positions of power was taking this stuff seriously or was actually changing policy or changing anyone's views in a meaningful way.

Brian Lehrer: Vicky, any different take?

Vicky Ward: No, I think I agree 100% with David on that. What I was struck by in what I've read in these files is actually Epstein's chutzpah. I'm thinking of a different country you haven't mentioned, Russia, because when Trump was elected president in 2016, we see emails from Epstein to Vitaly Churkin, who was the Russian ambassador to the UN suggesting that Churkin goes back to Lavrov, Putin's head of communication, and relay to Lavrov and in turn Putin, that Epstein could be very helpful in helping them understand and deal with Trump.

Well, when you think about that, this is a man we know hasn't spoken to Trump since 2004. The idea that he thinks he would be in a great position to advise Vladimir Putin on how to deal with Donald Trump is extraordinary. I think it goes to what David said, and something I've reported on for years, that never underestimate what a superb con man Jeffrey Epstein was. He was as good at manipulating the very rich and the very powerful around the world as he was at manipulating and abusing vulnerable women.

Does this put him in a position of changing global policy? No, but what it did do was I called it-- I made a podcast series called Chasing Ghislaine. One name I gave him was a hyperfixer because he was able to talk to people in high-level positions in countries. For example, in the Middle East, he was talking to Ehud Barak and other senior Israelis. He was also hosting MBS, now the Crown Prince of Saudi Arabia, and other Gulf leaders at a time when those countries were not speaking to each other. There is a use in that. But I think it would be a great stretch to say that he was shaping global policy.

Brian Lehrer: One more call, Wendy in Springfield, New Jersey. You're on WNYC. Hi, Wendy.

Wendy: Hi. Now, I heard what you just said, and I'll see what you think about this. If you're a politician and you are either filmed or rumored or connected with Epstein, that seems to me to be the honey pot. All right? I've got something on you that I can use against you. Think of it in this context. Thom Hartmann has written an article called Manchurian Billionaire, and he cites investigative reporting from The Daily Mail in London. He's putting the dots together, saying that the person in the White House has opened himself up to blackmail. Maybe that explains his favoritism towards Putin and Russia. Ms. Ward, I particularly want to know what you think about that.

Vicky Ward: Just so I've understood. Who in this scenario is blackmailing whom?

Wendy: That Epstein has either videos or information about the person in the White House, connection with him. I've got this information on it. This is the honey pot. I've got blackmail information on you. Now I say to you, "You know what? You really should do X, Y, and Z." I haven't looked at these documents. You have.

Vicky Ward: Here's my knee-jerk response to that. I'll be curious because I know David's spending night and day pouring over these documents. I've not seen anything yet that references videos or photos or direct mentions of blackmail. It's actually a big hole, I think, in the files. It's very interesting because this has been a theory out there. Did he have all these videos, and if so, where are they? There isn't mention that I've come across of videos and that blackmailing material in the files that I've seen.

Brian Lehrer: David, I'm going to throw this to you for a thought, and then we're out of time for today. Your Times colleague Steve Eater said in a Times article on how the paper is reporting on the Epstein files, "One of the big theories out there is that Epstein was collecting the secrets of powerful or wealthy contacts for blackmail or to gain other leverage. This has been hard to pin down over the years. It is an inherently tricky thing to prove or disprove."

He continues, "While they have not unearthed clear proof of blackmail, at least not from what we've seen, they give us a fuller picture of how Epstein interacted with powerful people and how he seemed to see value in claiming to know things about them. It remains a priority to bring as much clarity to this question as we could." Anything to add to your colleague Steve's take on that?

David Enrich: Well, that's very well said by Steve, who has been neck deep in the stuff right by my side. I would take it a little bit further, which is that we have seen what appears to be indications that Epstein he was happy to wield the information he had gleaned from his experiences with powerful men to try and get what he wanted out of those men. At least based on what we can see in the files, it does not appear to be based on videos or photos or things like that. He alludes in emails that he writes at times to the things he knows about people.

I just can't go beyond that because that's all we know. I will say that, as it pertains to Trump and what information Epstein may or may not have on Trump, there is no indication that I've seen in the files that that is true. The big caveat is that Trump was not someone who was using email. Most of these files are starting after the period at which Epstein had ended, or Trump had ended his relationship with Epstein. It is definitely possible that there is stuff that predates all of this. Again, we just haven't seen that. I understand the desire among many people to speculate and connect dots.

The thing that's great about all the transparency we have right now, as we swim in this huge pool of information, is that we are getting a lot of our questions answered. I think it's going to be reasonable at the end of this process for some people to give up on the conspiracy theories that they've had, because there is plenty of truth here that is scandalizing and damaging and alarming and shows powerful people doing bad things. To the extent that that evidence doesn't exist, to me, the most likely scenario is not that we haven't found it yet, it's just that it might not be true.

Brian Lehrer: As he collected information on powerful people, does this relate either potentially or from anything that there's evidence of that it related to his pedophilia or other sexual activities, accessing more in some way through information he had on other people, I don't know, or only to business or politics.

David Enrich: What we have seen in the files, and I want to be a little bit careful in how I frame this because we've been very careful in how we've written this, but it appears that Epstein had knowledge of some people's lives, and or at least he wanted to present the idea that he had knowledge of people's lives and would use that as a subtle reminder to people as he tried to cement or solidify, or revitalize relationships that he had with those people. It most often appears to be in the form of him trying to wring money out of men.

Again, I don't think we fully understand the exact scope of this, but what we've seen. This pertains to the business and financial context he had, not people who are in politics. Again, that's not to say it does not exist. I would say we're maybe 8% or 10% of our way through going through these files, so there's a tremendous amount more to go. As of right now, we're not seeing anything that suggests Epstein was blackmailing people or collecting kompromat on them if they were in positions of political power.

Brian Lehrer: Only 8% or 10% through the Epstein file so far. I have a feeling we may reconvene this group at a later date. New York Times Deputy Investigations Editor David Enrich and Vicky Ward, author of the Vicky Ward Investigates newsletter and the book, The Idaho Four, thank you both so much for today.

David Enrich: Thanks for having me.

Vicky Ward: Thank you.

 

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