Um... Epstein might not have killed himself...

Transcript

This transcript was generated automatically and may contain errors — the audio is the record.

0:00:09 Thomas: Hello, and welcome to Opening Arguments. This is episode, oh, what was it? It's 1233. This is episode 1233, I'm your host Thomas Smith, and we're doing bonus video. This isn't the normal Friday episode slot, but this Epstein stuff is just, we got it, we gotta do it, we gotta address it. So we're going to do extra video, it's sort of like a double vapid response um and we got the the crews all here welcome matt immigration attorney of course

0:00:36 Matt: Yeah. Hey, a little happier to be doing this one. This is going to be a big one. We're going to talk about the Epstein plea negotiations in a little more detail. I am going to move away from last time where we talked about a lot of bad people and get more on familiar territories just talking about bad lawyers. I think that's more familiar to this show.

0:00:50 Thomas: Who aren't people we agree lawyers are not people yeah and of course lydia's back how you doing

0:00:53 Matt: I don't think we all understand that. No.

0:00:52 Lydia: Hello I am doing all right yes thanks for having me on a Friday this is not normal for me so happy to be here yeah yeah well

0:01:04 Matt: Good to see you.

0:01:04 Thomas: That's rare and last we spoke you left us with the teaser of the plea deal being even worse than it already was bad. And it was bad, uh, I am really curious to hear how it got even worse. Uh, do you want to give us any more teaser before we go to break?

0:01:13 Matt: Yeah just that I think it's worth reviewing the whole story because Because people keep hearing about the sweetheart deal. I think maybe people know some of the details. But really digging into it and not just looking at what the defense and prosecution were exchanging and how friendly they were, but looking at the enormous missteps and the disagreements between the prosecutors and how they were handling this. There's some new stuff that's come out. But most importantly, what we did not have before was the memo recommending the indictment and the federal indictment itself, the draft of what could have been if we had federally indicted Jeffrey Epstein. It is there.

0:01:49 Thomas: How did we not already have

0:01:50 Matt: Finally. They did not want to release that.

0:01:51 Thomas: That? You would think that would be FOIA -able like forever ago, right?

0:01:54 Matt: It's pretty embarrassing. Well, it's a draft indictment of somebody who's never federally indicted for these things. So it's the one I'd really been waiting for. So we can go through a little bit and talk about what's in there and how it got recommended. And we're going to see the emails about how this got derailed and how Dershowitz and Kenneth Starr and everybody else got this thing so far off track. So a lot to talk about today. And we've got a quick video up front today. I thought I'd save the master douche himself, himself, Jeffrey Epstein, we're going to be seeing for today's quick amuse douche on a Friday. We're just going to have him.

0:02:24 Thomas: He doesn't deserve the amuse douche. He don't even deserve that. He can't do, do.

0:02:28 Matt: That's Another category. Yeah.

0:02:30 Thomas: Here's our amuse -douche. It's Satan. Like, no, man, that's just, it's just an evil, it'S just Satan.

0:02:33 Lydia: A category of your own yeah

0:02:35 Matt: He will actually be asked in this clip.

0:02:37 Thomas: Yeah.

0:02:37 Matt: He'll be asked if he is Satan in this clip. We'll find out the answer.

0:02:39 Thomas: Okay. Let's hear some hissing noises and then a firm denial, I'm sure. All right. Uh, well that's going to be the show. We have so much to talk about, so much to dig through, uh, and I'm excited to do it. So thanks so much for tuning in. We'll go to our first break here, which you can avoid at patreon.com/law, support the show, get all the goodies lose the ads thanks so much to our supporters who make this happen all right we'll be right back one here we are with yet another another slideshow, a nicely put together slideshow. Um, yeah.

0:03:09 Matt: Thanks, Olivia, as always.

0:03:10 Thomas: And, uh, our first slide is just an apology for having to cover this. Uh, should I go to whatever the second slide is?

0:03:08 Lydia: Out olivia

0:03:18 Matt: Yeah, so this is going to Be Our Clip. I'm going to play a quick video clip. We haven't heard Jeffrey Epstein's voice. I had never actually really heard him talk before. I just want to remind everybody, we talked about this a few Epstein episodes ago, but Steve Bannon Lennon did a complete documentary recording. He did like 15 hours of video with Epstein.

0:03:33 Matt: None of this had come out before, and now we have it. This is part of the DOJ release. So I wanted to notice this. You can go and watch more of it if you want. I don't recommend it, but I want to watch just the end, just to skip to the end. I got to say, we've been seeing throughout, as we've talked about this story, and I'm sure people know that all these academics and all these people that wanted money from him said he was brilliant. Just like this witty, sparkling guy that you just couldn't get enough of.

0:03:35 Lydia: That's crazy yeah amazing

0:03:57 Thomas: When you know what the guy who has billions of dollars, who wants to give us money and flies us on a jet. Oh, he's so great. He's brilliant. What a brilliant scientist. Scientist.

0:04:00 Matt: And yeah, just can't get enough of the man, yeah.

0:04:05 Lydia: But we've all read his emails and his texts and we're like that guy

0:04:08 Matt: That's all I can think of.

0:04:09 Thomas: I can't. I was going to joke like watch. He talks like his text and it's just like the letters are all wrong and incomprehensible garbage.

0:04:19 Matt: I mean, we could probably do a whole video just on this video because there's just so much stuff. It's very hard to watch and listen to him knowing who he is and what he's up to. He does try to at one point answer questions because this whole thing, Steve Bannon was promising a redemption basically. It was supposed to be like his opportunity to talk about his philanthropy and about what a great guy he is and how these allegations are all misunderstandings or whatever. So it's pretty hard to watch. I don't want to give voice to this man.

0:04:38 Thomas: Then why does it say exposed then? What

0:04:41 Matt: This is what he twitched it over to. This is now that he's dead, it's Epstein exposed.

0:04:41 Thomas: Is that? So he tried to switch it to like I did that. God, what a piece of shit.

0:04:45 Lydia: Because this is yeah steve bannon typical yeah well

0:04:46 Matt: This has an edited cut. Yep. So

0:04:48 Thomas: Asshole.

0:04:49 Matt: We've got it marked. It should be marked at the end. And I wanted to play just kind of the last couple of minutes. You can hear him talking, first of all, starting out about ethics. Great topic for Jeffrey Epstein to be talking about. And then, And then, yeah, right.

0:04:58 Lydia: Dershowitz was his lawyer so there you go awesome

0:05:00 Thomas: Can't wait to get his thoughts.

0:05:03 Matt: Going to ask him some of the tough questions here, including the one I teased up front. So let's just play a bit of this.

0:05:07 Clip: Know in my case... Is your money dirty money? If you look at it... I'm just asking a question. Is your Money Dirty Money? No, it's not. So, in fact... Why is it not Dirty Money? Because I earned it. My heart... But you earned it through... We went back to this before. You earned it advising the worst people in the world, right, that do enormous bad things and just to make more money so if instead of asking me the question should you take the money because I think it's a legitimate question you think is a legitimate question yes in the Washington because what I because I think about I think you have ethics is always a complicated subject but I can tell you that with the money I gave to help try to eradicate polio in Pakistan and India, instead

0:05:23 Thomas: Blackmail. That

0:05:52 Matt: Thanks, Jeffrey Epstein.

0:06:00 Thomas: Solves it.

0:06:00 Clip: Of asking me whether that money should be given to these children for vaccines, I think you might want to ask their mothers who received the vaccine, who know their child now won't get polio, and ask them if Epstein should have helped these people with their money. If we walked in, you're a mathematician, we walked into that clinic where they're giving that money out to these people that are the most dire straits of poverty and in sickness and told them that the money was coming from a what are you class three sexual predator tier one your t was tier tier one's the highest and worst no the lowest I'm the lowest you're the lowest okay tier one you're the lowest um but a criminal yes that the money came from what what percentage of people do you estimate I understand you don't like probabilities do you underestimate would say I don't care I want the money for my children I would say everyone said, I want the money for my children. Did they know where the money came from? I think if you told them... 100%.

0:06:40 Thomas: Don't, don't besmirch him by being, oh this

0:07:01 Clip: If I told them the devil... 100%. The devil... Himself. The devil himself said, I'm going to exchange some dollars for your child's life. Do you think you're the devil himself?

0:07:01 Thomas: Is the what

0:07:12 Clip: No, but I do have a good mirror.

0:07:14 Matt: What does that mean?

0:07:15 Clip: It's a serious question. I'm sorry. Do you... Do you know the devil? You're a devil himself. I don't know. Why would you say that? Because you have all the attributes. You're incredibly smart. You remember the devil is... The devil's what? What the devil's brilliant you read Milton's you read Milton's Paradise Lost no the devil scares me this Satan is Satan is the is the he he is the he is at the number one or two archangel and the reason he goes to hell and leads the rebellion is because he can't be the top guy and his thing is I'd rather I'd Rather Reign in Hell Than Serve in Heaven I saw that in a movie once called the American Dharma I don't remember who said it okay you have to go

0:07:33 Thomas: Is happening what the fuck just happened

0:07:59 Matt: That was good. Steve Bannon closes with, that was good, because this is a rehabilitative project, right? Great answer to, are you the devil? I saw in a movie once that thing you just said from John Milton. Steve Bannen, much smarter than Jeffrey Epsteins, I got to say. No question.

0:08:11 Thomas: I will Yes yes also you could ask steve bannon if he's the devil himself like this is like this ist like the devil asking the other devil if he is him or something like I don't know which one's worse they're both so bad and I like what a thing I mean seeing that like you could like if if steve If Steve Bannon wanted to say this was all a trick on Epstein, like, I mean, I could almost believe it based on that. I don't know. I have to watch the rest of the two fucking hours it looked like it was. But that, I mean, that was weird. I don't know. First off, that's the worst. This guy is terrible on camera. It's almost a shame that this didn't get to air so everybody could be like, oh, this is the worst person. You know, like maybe they should have interviewed him a long time ago. Did he do any TV like before? Before you know

0:08:17 Matt: Get a better answer. Right. Yeah. No,

0:09:01 Thomas: Like before he was yeah

0:09:02 Matt: This was in preparation for an interview he was supposed to do, but never did. Probably. I'm guessing somebody told him.

0:09:05 Thomas: But even like before the convictions

0:09:07 Matt: No. I don't think so.

0:09:07 Thomas: Or anything he wasn't like yeah yeah he's terrible holy shit if your answer to like is your money dirty like well tell that to the people that I gave a little bit of it to okay that doesn't that

0:09:18 Lydia: People that would be

0:09:18 Matt: I basically cured polio with it.

0:09:19 Lydia: Held hostage by it because they're also tackling something that's like awful and horrible like what

0:09:21 Thomas: doesn'T it's not even good lying you're just like so I should ask the people you'd like if I give give $20 to a homeless person and my money is all like bribery money, blackmail money. Should I ask that person if I, if it's dirty money, that doesn't make any sense. They don't know.

0:09:39 Matt: Would you still like my money?

0:09:40 Thomas: You just get, yeah. It's like, you just gave them some of it. That is no bearing.

0:09:43 Lydia: Do you what do you think was going on in Epstein's head like when Bannon is asking him these crazy questions because like they were so they were such a me like via text and email and everything I

0:09:52 Thomas: I think Epstein might be an idiot. I thinking might be really dumb or something like he's, he

0:09:57 Matt: That's my conclusion so far.

0:09:55 Lydia: Just yeah because I'd be like are we friends or not like what's happening right now

0:10:01 Thomas: Seems like a clueless dummy.

0:10:03 Matt: I mean, my read is he was being a little mock confrontational, that he was trying to make it look like a hard-hitting documentary so that he could have a good rehabilitative, you know, kind of like, I survived this interview with Steve Bannon kind of thing. And I don't know. But obviously, the angle was to make him as philanthropic and smart as possible. But there's plenty of other places. And he also does like the old billionaire thing of like constantly dropping names, constantly bringing out people he knows and people who've been around. It's unwatchable. Obviously, I tried.

0:10:24 Thomas: I want, I want to watch the shit out of this. Cause it's just so fucking weird. Weird it's like ops mirror universe frost nixon you know it's like you got it's a frost nixon with two people who are both worse than nixon it's crazy I

0:10:29 Lydia: The next miniseries for our shows mm -hmm buckle

0:10:38 Matt: But gonna need some chemical assistance for that one. All right, so let's move on.

0:10:42 Thomas: Bet is so is that whole thing available in the files is the whole two hours

0:10:45 Matt: So yeah, that clip is a full two hours. I believe that there is supposed to be, I think, 15 hours of source material. I haven't found it all, but that's the two hours that was kind of edited down.

0:10:53 Lydia: Up buckle Buckle up, Thomas.

0:10:55 Thomas: I don't it's just man that was just fucking weird I don't just just just this guy I think he's an idiot I think he might be dumb I don' t know we'll see I mean his messages Messages have given us every indication that he's dumb, but the fact that I like, I guess he's good at blackmail or math. I don't know. My two skills are blackmail and math and pedophilia, I suppose.

0:11:08 Matt: It is. Yeah. It does seem like he might have been genuinely good at math, which as you know, is amazing to me, but I don't know specifically.

0:11:22 Thomas: I guess it explains your distrust of math. Yeah.

0:11:25 Matt: But no, it's interesting to hear his voice after all this. I mean, obviously we gave voice to the victims multiple times already on this show and I didn't want to have to play the clip again, but this did just come out as if it's a public interest. The documentary itself is an interesting thing. And I think Bannon is doing the Bannon thing and weaseling it into something negative. He's going to turn it into Something Else. But anyway, we should talk about the main subject today.

0:11:43 Thomas: That is wow. Yeah.

0:11:45 Matt: I've got quite a lot here. We're not going to read through all of it piece by piece, but I just want to show you a couple of things. In 2024, the FBI helpfully prepared this incredibly useful summary of the entire Epstein case, which we don't have time to review all of it, but there were problems from the beginning with the Miami investigation, with the New York investigation. Obviously, as everybody I think knows, what we're going to be talking about today are the events that happened in Florida. The case that Epstein was facing when he died was the 2019 charges on the the really big stuff that would have taken him down. Everything we're talking about today is about events from 2002 to 2005 or so involving, as noted here, 35 victims. The youngest was 14. And this really, when you look at the details, especially in the memo where they're recommending these charges, it blows apart the narrative that Ghislaine Maxwell was trying to set up in her interview with Todd. You might remember with Todd Blanche, he was tryingto say that he kind of drifted younger and younger as time went on. He was mostly into appropriately age or at least 18 you know, 18 to 21 or whatever. But this shows from the beginning, he was always into under 16, preferably, and he got mad if they would bring him anybody over 21. So that's not the new part. The new part's on the next page. I just want to show you where the document is coming from, so people know this is a credible document. This is the real thing. So if you go down to the next slide, you'll see a second from the second page of this document. Uh, this is for the summary of the post indictment things. And this is at the point at which he is indicted in the second time in 2019. So I also wasn't aware, on July 23rd, 2019, I wasn't aware that there was a prior suicide attempt. Did you worry

0:13:19 Thomas: We knew that we talked about prior suicide it's one of the main reasons that I don't buy the murder thing because he had a prior suicide attempt unless you want to say that that I yeah it's hard it's to square that with with a with a murder narrative but yeah Yeah.

0:13:21 Matt: About that? I think it, okay, all right. That's not the big thing, but right, because he did actually, right? Yeah. So there is a bombshell between the prior suicide attempt and the actual death. So if you go down from July 29th, the military, if you can do the honors.

0:13:40 Lydia: On July 29th, 2019, FBI and SDNY met with Epstein's attorneys who, in very general terms, discussed the possibility of a resolution of the case and the possibility of the defendant's cooperation.

0:13:53 Matt: Cooperation. Jeffrey Epstein was talking about cooperating in a case in which he was the main guy. Now, Glenn Maxwell was about to be facing her own charges, but he was the guy, right? He is Jeffrey Epstine. And it really makes you wonder who he was going to flip on because that really sets things up for any kind of conspiratorial thinking here because notice the next item, August 10th, 2019 is when he dies.

0:14:16 Matt: So, I mean, yeah, I'm not conspiratorially minded, but I'm just saying word gets around, he's cooperating, he dies. Again, I don't know. And if you've seen the latest autopsy stuff, and the prosecutor I happen to live with is saying it's pretty shocking actually the violence that was done to his hyoid bone, more than we realized.

0:14:16 Lydia: Approximately 730 a .m.

0:14:18 Thomas: That's like, that's almost two weeks later.

0:14:36 Lydia: Wait, really?

0:14:36 Matt: Yeah, the latest pictures from the neck bone, they're really... She said it would have to be a pretty hard drop or an actual strangulation. So again, I'm willing to believe the official narrative for now, and I think there's more maybe coming, but the timing on here is very interesting. And we did not know, as far as I know, it had never been reported and now is finally being reported that he had attempted to cooperate just before his death, which means that he was potentially going to be flipping on other people that knew things because they already had Ghislaine Maxwell.

0:14:36 Thomas: Really? The hell? So this is, so what's this document? Is this a continuation of the last one? So, this is actually prepared by the FBI?

0:15:09 Matt: Yeah, the second page, this is the FBI. This is their summary of everything that happened. And this is prepared in 2024, well after he's dead. So it's just kind of their rundown of everything.

0:15:17 Thomas: So it's the real FBI and not like the fucking Trump FBI?

0:15:20 Matt: The real FBI. Yeah.

0:15:22 Thomas: Wow.

0:15:21 Lydia: Yeah. It says approved by

0:15:22 Thomas: Wow. Not says, okay, so I didn't know this. When staff was able to revive Epstein, he couldn't recall what happened. What the fuck?

0:15:23 Lydia: Criminal investigative division on July 17th, 2024. Huh.

0:15:34 Matt: And he had, his cellmate said he didn't see anything. He's just sitting there with his earphones on. Yeah, I know. It's some weird stuff.

0:15:41 Thomas: This almost seems written to try to make it seem like something happened. Happened like this

0:15:48 Matt: I don't know. I really try to keep to what we know, but yeah.

0:15:50 Thomas: Is the like I

0:15:49 Lydia: But but it was written by real people like like this is not Kash Patel's FBI.

0:15:52 Thomas: Have yeah that's what I'm trying to figure

0:15:54 Lydia: I don't know.

0:15:55 Thomas: Out so this is there any reason why you would say that as a as like yeah is there Any reason as a prisoner in that situation why you Would need to like pretend you didn't do a suicide attempt or something like I would that maybe be to avoid the suicide watch but

0:16:15 Lydia: Well, yeah. I mean, I think that.

0:16:18 Thomas: He was on suicide watch wasn't he like it didn't work but I guess maybe even if like he could have still been trying to avoid that even if it didn'T work because otherwise I'd like couldn't recall what happened but it said wait with red marks on his neck so it's not even like a noose situation what

0:16:33 Lydia: Man.

0:16:31 Matt: And he was. Yeah. I mean, there was some talk about a cellmate I remember, and the cellmate is mentioned here, that he was a cop who'd killed four people. I think he buried some of them in his yard or something. And maybe that's a whole other thing. But yeah. But the July 29th.

0:16:47 Thomas: The fuck I mean and you also have to keep in mind the fact that it could have been a murder that wasn't related to this like people people like to kill pedophiles in prison that happens um wow I so I had just assumed is this news to you that the suicide I knew we knew about suicide attempt we talked about that that's one of the main reasons why I thought it wasn't a murder is that he had a prior suicide attempt but this is saying found unconscious in a cell with red marks on his neck that's much different that's I mean unless unless this is just like quick sloppy writing or something to be found with red remarks on your neck and no like nothing tied hide around your neck would suggest that somebody attacked you maybe well

0:16:58 Matt: They sure do. Yeah. But it doesn't seem like it. It would. I remember reading

0:17:37 Lydia: I mean all of this is like like technically you could request all that. Information, right? From Metropolitan Correctional Center, right,

0:17:43 Thomas: In there it says per sdny the washington post has made an inquiry of the incident and this would have been 2024 so it's like is there there's got to be more on this right is there anything else I mean millions of pages I guess but would

0:17:47 Lydia: 2024, right.

0:17:55 Matt: About the cellmate and the questions around that. But I just thought the timing here is very interesting. The six days later, he's talking about cooperating after this apparent suicide or assault. And then And then August 10th, he's

0:18:09 Thomas: That in itself is interesting because he wasn't scared into not doing that you know and then that would that would also mean that the first like this is I I think it's really Look, if you want to listen to the easy content of people who are going to just say, oh, he was murdered and not really dig into it. Fine. That's not me, though. I want to actually think through this. So that would mean that this first thing on July 23rd did not happen in response to him saying he was going to cooperate. So that would mean someone or this guy or like if it were an attack, it would be either unrelated or based on a person who likes to hurt pedophiles in prison, which I understand happens, you know, like from time to time. Or if you want to go the conspiracy route, is somebody trying to take him out before he even agrees to cooperate, which is also I mean, it's possible. Yeah, they might

0:18:11 Matt: Dead. Yeah,

0:19:06 Thomas: Have been just like not willing to not.

0:19:06 Matt: Maybe he's talking about it. Yeah,

0:19:08 Thomas: Yeah. Or someone's like, I'm not even going to chance it like I'm Not willing to whatever. Whatever. But then, so if that's the case though, I guess the point I would make is if it was already happening before he said he would cooperate, it doesn't make it any more like likely that it happened after he said He was going to cooperate. You know what I mean? So like that July 29th meeting, if there was already an attempt on his life, that doesn't really matter. If like, do you follow me? Like someone was already, if, if that first attack wasn't, if that first incident, July 23rd was an attack on him, then the July 29th thing almost doesn't matter because someone was already trying to kill him.

0:19:48 Lydia: Well, I think it could be interesting, though, because if it's something where, like, the possibility of the defendant's cooperation, like if, say, all of this stuff is someone trying to kill him, part of that conversation could be, like—and I want to be sure that I am in, you know, this particular space and, and, like, trying to negotiate, like safety. That could be part of that.

0:20:08 Thomas: Right. Well, but it just says in very general terms. Right? So he did, they didn't get that far. It sounds like it's weird to not get that far in that time. I don't know what the norm for that would be Matt, but like if, if FBI and SDNY meet with Epstein's attorneys who are like in general terms, discuss the possibility of a a resolution and cooperation, as in probably plead to something and also maybe he can inform on somebody else, then do we have any other record of any other conversation or anything that happened related to that?

0:20:12 Lydia: Yeah, yeah.

0:20:40 Matt: Yeah, there's only one other document where it says that the scope of what he's trying to cooperate with is not clear yet, basically. And that's around the same time. It's contemporary.

0:20:47 Thomas: What date? Oh, okay.

0:20:48 Matt: Yeah, just around the time. So that's as much as we know. We don't know what he was offering. And I'm sure they probably wouldn't have written it down anyway until we got a little further. So, yeah, I just, you

0:20:56 Lydia: They disclosed video.

0:20:58 Thomas: Interesting.

0:20:58 Lydia: I mean, part of the thing is that they're trying to say, no, this is officially, like a suicide, and here's the video proof because no one entered his cell, you know, for X number of hours. Is that the only date that they've offered video for from this have you noticed hmm interesting I don't know just

0:21:11 Matt: Know, I think you're right. Yeah, the actual death. Yeah.

0:21:16 Thomas: Sorry. As in what? I thought they

0:21:18 Lydia: Like there's there's no like video related to his entire stay it's just that particular day the day that he died

0:21:24 Thomas: Tried to release something on the first suicide attempt, didn't they? Didn't they didn't I thought.

0:21:28 Lydia: Really I'm not aware of that I

0:21:30 Thomas: And then did Did we ever reconcile the missing time? Is that something you've looked into, Matt? The missing time in the tape?

0:21:30 Lydia: You could be totally right and

0:21:34 Matt: I didn't look into that. It's not really my thing.

0:21:36 Thomas: Because to be honest, this hasn't really been a high priority because it seemed most likely a suicide based on the information. But this document is, yeah,

0:21:45 Lydia: Also he's gone who cares because he's a piece of shit so like I mean why but

0:21:48 Thomas: But I mean, it mainly is because it seems like it was, in terms of our priorities, not a priority. But this is definitely enough to be suspicious again for me, you know, because, like, yeah.

0:21:59 Matt: We do try to stick to the facts on this show, but this is a new fact. This is a completely new fact that was not known before. It does maybe potentially change things. So just putting it out there.

0:22:06 Thomas: And you just never know who's writing a memo, how much effort they're putting into specific wording of stuff. How am I? I don't who know. This is OK. Well, I'm you would think you would think.

0:22:13 Matt: FBI is usually pretty careful in their memos. They're usually pretty straightforward. Forward.

0:22:17 Thomas: So this is. Yeah. Wow. We'll keep an eye on any other developments on that. But that's that's interesting. Let

0:22:23 Lydia: Interesting

0:22:24 Matt: All right. So I want to go on to talk about the hero of today's story. That's a picture there.

0:22:27 Thomas: Me zoom back out.

0:22:28 Matt: Not very many pictures of prosecutors out there. So, I found one. It's Ana Maria Villafana.

0:22:34 Matt: She's a high -ranking prosecutor in Southern District of Florida. She was one of the people on the team. And as we're going to find, she was the only one talking sense on the prosecution team who was actually trying to federally indict Jeffrey Epstein. The only person taking her job seriously. And she's going to say that pretty much in the emails we're going to look at here. So I just wanted to, yeah, give a face to the name.

0:22:51 Thomas: I can't wait. Jeez.

0:22:53 Matt: So this memo had not previously come out before. This is a memo dated April 30th, 2007. This was from the entire team that is prosecuting. She signed off on it as well. And this part in bold. So, this is a memo seeking approval for the attached indictment, and this is where they attached the draft indictment. We'll take a look at it in a minute. And 60 count indictment—60 counts, because they it extensively.

0:23:15 Matt: We now know that the grand jury investigation in both Florida and the federal grand jury investigate was much more than we thought. There's still money laundering stuff that has not come out. We're still waiting. That's one of the things that needs to come out there's actually potentially a separate bill pending in Congress now to get the money laundered stuff out because DOJ is being so reluctant on all this. But check out in bold there, Lydia, the bold paragraph.

0:23:37 Lydia: The FBI has information regarding Epstein's whereabouts on May 16th and May 19th, and they would like to arrest him on one of those dates. Epstein is considered an extremely high flight risk, and from information we have received, a continued danger to the community based upon his continued enticement of underage girls. For these reasons, we would like to present a sealed indictment to the grand jury on May 15th, 2007, and we would like the presentation of that indictment and the status of the investigation to remain confidential.

0:24:06 Matt: So this is how it's supposed to work. This is how the federal government is supposed to prosecute people and they're supposed to identify a good time to get them. They know that he's got multiple vehicles. And actually, I looked up his sex offender registry.

0:24:17 Thomas: And a fucking island and

0:24:18 Lydia: And planes?

0:24:18 Matt: Yeah, in an island, right? Yeah. One of the things you have to do in a sex offending registry in the Virgin Islands is register all of your vehicles. They're all listed. I've never seen so many vehicles registered to one person, right.

0:24:19 Thomas: A helicopter oh

0:24:26 Matt: He's got boats and cars and planes and Bentley. But yeah, so these people are taking this seriously. Now they have inherited investigation. I just want to show you the Palm Beach investigation. There were a couple of dogged investigators on it, but that was also compromised. And at one point, the police chief wrote to the prosecutor, yeah, I just wanted to show you something here. This has been going back to 2006. We're going to get back to our main timeline here. But this is just to show you that from the beginning, that his very expensive attorneys, including Alan Dershowitz, have always been interfering in this case and have been pushing and pushing and trying to keep this. Now, the grand jury was derailed, I should say, because Dershouitz found a MySpace page for one of the girls where she admits to smoking weed and talks about her boyfriend. It's completely normal teenage stuff, but they were going to rip her part. At

0:24:26 Thomas: My god wow is this this next one here oops

0:25:12 Matt: One point in the grand jury, they actually asked them, are you aware that you're committing prostitution? You could be charged with a crime. Yeah. Right. Like 16 -year -olds. Yeah.

0:25:21 Lydia: Gross.

0:25:21 Matt: The prosecution did. And I think that was in the federal grand jury. But this whole thing has been so corrupt. But I just wanted to read you, this is from one of the good investigators in this case. This is dated July, was it 26th? You see that there?

0:25:36 Lydia: July 25th, 2006?

0:25:37 Matt: 25th. Yeah, so if you look at I can summarize the top there, that there's an offer. This is back in 2006. So this is before we're getting to the non -prosecution agreement, before getting to final offer. It's years and years of work here. But this is one of the initial offers. And Epstein and his attorneys are desperate to avoid a record. They're desperate to avoid jail time. They have him on so many things at this point. And Villafane is convinced that there is child pornography that they could get him on. And so we find out that Dershowitz and Guy Fransten have made an offer, and that the the state's attorney is thinking of taking it. And so check out. And now again, this is one of the investigators who's been in constant contact with the parents. The original person who came forward was 14 years old to start this entire Epstein investigation. And I'm not sure if this is the one that he's talking to, but just keep that in mind as we're looking. So on the right there, the paragraph, yeah, you

0:26:24 Lydia: On the right? Okay. OK. I checked my voicemail messages and discovered a message from blank stepmother for the victim blank. She was calling because the state attorney's office still had not returned any of her calls as to when they are needed for this case. I then called ASA Belalovic's office and left messages for her to call the victims on this case and explain to them what the state Attorney's Office had done. On April 17, 2006, at approximately 4 .30 p .m., State Attorney Investigator Tim Valentine called to officially notify me of the cancellation of the grand jury. He requested I contact the victims that had been served to appear to notify them of the cancelation. I advise Valentine that as this grand jury session was called based on the state attorney's office decision to have the victims heard by the grand jury, that I felt it was the state state's attorney's officer's responsibility to contact the victims and advise them of the reason they were no longer needed.

0:26:28 Thomas: Sorry sorry

0:27:19 Matt: Do it, is what he's saying, right? I'm not calling these people. This is not my idea. Because normally it would be in the course of business that maybe when the investigators would call and tell them, don't bother to show up, it's been canceled. Counseled. But he's clearly, yeah.

0:27:31 Thomas: I was messing with tech for part of that to get this in better can you uh uh so who is this um the basics again on this hmm

0:27:36 Matt: This is one of the, I don't have the name here, but it's one of the investigators in Florida on the state level who took this seriously. And I'm just taking you back to show you how the state did things. And he is clearly upset. You can tell from the tone, I've read a lot of police reports. Even when he says, in the other paragraph that's blacked out there, he's talking about arguing with the state's attorney. And, you know, he leaves immediately and goes back to brief the chief of police because they're so concerned about how compromised. And this chief of police at this point writes a letter, a really strange letter, to the state's attorney saying, we think that you are conflicted out of this. You are clearly compromised. Something is going on here. But this part on the right here is when the state attorney is saying, can you do my dirty work? Call up the survivors and tell them they don't have to come to the grand jury because it's been canceled because we're going to get a deal. And he's like, you do it. I'm not doing it. That's not my plan.

0:28:09 Thomas: What

0:28:22 Lydia: It's trying to delegate the

0:28:25 Matt: Yeah, the bad, yeah, yeah. Yeah.

0:28:25 Lydia: Hard work. Yeah.

0:28:28 Matt: So that's just a little background. And there's some way we could do five episodes probably on the history of the Palm Beach prosecution and how that all went awry. But remember, the entire purpose of the plea agreement is to keep him from having a plea agreement. I want to really emphasize that. It's to keep them out of federal court, and that's going to become very relevant as we go here. So let's go to the next page and take a look at the indictment. So this is the grand jury. Now, this was never actually presented to the grand jury. But this is what was attached to the memo that we just saw in which the entire prosecution team is saying, we've got this ready to go. Here's the draft indictment. We want to arrest him on these dates because we know where he's going to be and he's got a plane. So let's just get him now.

0:29:05 Matt: And 60 count indictment, and it just goes on. There's so much to it. But I wanted to show you the main charge. Now, this is kind of interesting. This is what they would have charged Matt Gaetz with if Matt Gaatz had been brought to justice on the things he was doing. Because at this point, they did not believe they could prove that Epstein was providing these girls to anyone else. They believed that he was traffickingking them for his own purposes. But of course, he was traffic them across state lines. He was taking them to the Virgin Islands, right? So this is easy federal case because it's the Mann Act, the very old Mann Act. I wanted to show you that on the next page. I've got the code there.

0:29:38 Matt: So this was the main thing that they would have charged him with. They also had the co-conspirators that are blacked out. We know those are his assistants. It actually says specifically on the first page that he's assistants. But this is the main charge. There's quite a few other charges. And I could do a whole other episode breaking down the indictment. It's pretty interesting, but it is pretty much what we expected, that it is primarily brought under the Mann Act and a whole bunch of other conspiracy charges. And it just breaks down in exhausting detail every one of these girls and what happened and the very clear, obvious evidence they have that he was transporting for the purpose of sex and that they were underage and that he had reason to know they were underway. And I mean, just the research that went into this, the amount of detail that's in this indictment, and it's very long. It's very, very complex. And Alex Acosta tried to backpedal later and say that he had actually never seen the memo, which is ridiculous. Alex Acasta is the US attorney, right? And this is a major case in his district. He says he never saw

0:30:30 Matt: The memo. The memo that we saw before, the one where they're recommending. We just showed you the cover page.

0:30:34 Lydia: That via via Fano drafted

0:30:36 Matt: And she stood behind it and the others didn't.

0:30:30 Thomas: Memo I'm

0:30:36 Lydia: Initially. Right. Like she had drafted specifically the memo. Yeah. To highlight here while we're on the Mann Act, the situation that we would be looking at if this was actually pursued. Right. Shall be fined under this title and imprisoned not less than 10 years or for life. And then that's

0:30:53 Thomas: Sure you had like a bunch of counts of that right it's

0:30:55 Lydia: Transportation with intent to engage in criminal sexual activity then there's also item b travel with intent to engage an illicit sexual conduct and then that one says shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than 30 years or both so like keep that in mind when we talk about what happened with the plea deal right which we have talked about before but like dear Dear

0:31:11 Matt: Yeah. And he had so many counts, so much detail. Yeah. But we are, we're going to get into a little bit more because this is painful. It is really hard to look at.

0:31:20 Thomas: So bad to be clear we so we're not going through the indictment but you just showed us the top of it or something and you're just saying there's tons of detail about and and that's and we've never seen this before this has never come out before

0:31:29 Matt: And the memo that we'll link to both. Nope, nope. But I'm more interested in the communications around it, you know, for the purpose of our show.

0:31:40 Thomas: Well we'll take your word for it that the the indictments really really bad and detailed detailed and thorough, right?

0:31:43 Matt: But it is and all kinds of details and we could just scroll through it, but we'll link to it, you can take a look.

0:31:48 Thomas: So there wasn't any weakness of the case that would lead to a deal, I guess is the point I'm making. Oh,

0:31:52 Matt: Well, that's an interesting question because you might remember from our last look at the defense emails when they're going back and forth, the defense was chipping away at every possible thing and they're saying, you can't possibly sustain this case. And the US Attorney's Office was entertaining the idea that this might not be a strong case, even though they had him dead on this stuff. They had so many counts, they had so women and girls at this point, they did so many things. So check out the way this goes. So I want to keep this on track. Here's Matthew Menchel, I think at this this point, he's the head criminal prosecutor for the district. And he's writing to Anne-Marie Villafano, the only person who's going to take this seriously. And this is May 14th. Now the draft indictment and the memo that we looked at, so the memo was basically summarizing why they think they can get to this indictment. It's incredibly detailed, explains the exact theory of the law, cites all kinds of stuff. So it's like 85 pages, very, very long and detailed memo. And so she's pushing, she's saying, look, we got it. We got these dates. Now check out the bottom him here, the bottom message from her before we get to his message.

0:32:48 Lydia: Yep.

0:32:50 Thomas: Sorry.

0:32:50 Lydia: Good morning. I just received a call that Epstein's plane is flying from the Virgin Islands to Newark now, so it looks like Epstein is going to show up for his court appearance tomorrow. Can you let me know if the indictment is going tomorrow or, if not, whether we are authorized to proceed by complaint? Thank you.

0:33:04 Matt: So they know he's going to be in the area. They know they can get him. And she's saying, come on, we've got it. You've seen this memo. You're seeing the indictment. Can we go forward on this? And here's the response she gets from Matthew Menchel, and it's especially important that it's from Matthew Manchel as we'll talk about.

0:33:17 Lydia: Right? Marie, you will not have approval to go forward tomorrow with an indictment or to proceed by complaint. Alex has your memo and left court's letter, but he is out of the district at the U.S. Attorney's Conference for the next several days. Oh, yeah, that's priority, of course, right?

0:33:33 Thomas: Fucking conference.

0:33:34 Lydia: I'm having trouble understanding, given how long this case has been pending, what the rush is. This is obviously a very significant case, and Alex wants to take his time making sure he is comfortable before proceeding. Oh you know, just a bunch of other girls are going to be victimized and abused

0:33:39 Thomas: Jesus.

0:33:47 Matt: She says that in bold, it's in bold that he's gonna keep doing it as the clock is ticking. And yeah, no, I mean, this is, it makes me so angry. It's so gross. Yeah. Yeah, this is, yeah, there's more to come. And it's going to get worse. This web is going to get worse, trust me. There's more to come here. So Vilafanya, again, remember, is our hero. So we can get on to the next one.

0:33:51 Lydia: That's disgusting yeah

0:34:08 Matt: And we're not going to read all of this, but I just wanted to show you what she was putting up with. Here's May 22nd. Now this is, remember that last email was May 14th. They sent around the draft indictment at the very beginning of May. And so just check out the tone of this. I'm not going to read the whole email, but just see how it starts. And notice who he's sending it to. It says, gentlemen, comma.

0:33:57 Thomas: Unbelievable. Wow. All right. Yeah

0:34:29 Matt: And he's sending it.

0:34:29 Thomas: Because she's CC'd.

0:34:29 Lydia: And she cc'd the one woman is cc 'ed

0:34:32 Matt: Yep, gentlemen. So that's what she's dealing with. That's the office she's working in. Yep.

0:34:34 Lydia: Assholes gentlemen marie and I have already met with left court which is oh sorry go ahead

0:34:38 Thomas: Well so well okay to be fair he's addressing the gentleman and saying marie and I have already met so okay so

0:34:45 Matt: But she's on the team. And she's like, you know, I just feel like, I don't know. Anyway, but I just thought it was a weird detail. But yeah, we can actually, I'm sorry, we Can skip the email. But the last part, though, is at the bottom. Yeah? Check out the actually read the last paragraph, that's really something. Because it's a left court is the one of the main attorneys at this point for Epstein. He has sent a letter explaining why he thinks that Epstein should not be prosecuted. And they're dithering. They're actually taking this seriously when they should just go to the grand jury.

0:35:10 Lydia: In any event I am forwarding this letter to you I'm going to suggest to left court the same thing that I suggested to tain I assume you would grant his attorneys a chance to make whatever presentation they desire it would probably be helpful to us in any event to hear their legal arguments in case we have missed something whether alex would be present or grant them another meeting after that is his call andy like

0:35:29 Matt: Imagine you just read an 85 -page memo and drafted an indictment. Excuse me, 45 -page memorandum, whatever. Lengthy memo, lengthy indictment, you have done the work, you've sealed this thing up, and they're asking for another meeting?

0:35:40 Lydia: Well that's their side let's let's hear their side like let's

0:35:42 Matt: Let's make sure we didn't miss anything.

0:35:44 Lydia: Give them a chance to

0:35:44 Matt: When does this happen? Who does this? But

0:35:45 Lydia: Yeah

0:35:48 Thomas: Uh I could imagine being like well like the part they said you know we can hear their legal arguments ahead of time and kind of prepare I could imagine that being a justification for it

0:35:57 Matt: Again, you've got what you need to get to the grand jury. I can't imagine this happening in any other kind of federal case.

0:36:01 Thomas: So it's just wasting time you

0:36:05 Matt: And there's so much time wasting.

0:36:05 Thomas: Could you could also do this after you already charge him right I mean it's because

0:36:09 Matt: You could argue about dropping a few of them.

0:36:10 Lydia: I mean negotiations right like in terms of this

0:36:13 Thomas: This is all like slowing down the actual even indictment right yeah

0:36:16 Matt: And I am certain that if I tried to pull this, they'd say, well, that's what motions to dismiss are for. Go ahead, file a motion to dismiss and see how it goes. We stand by our charges. And Alex, again, is absent. Alex is not cc'd. Alex Acosta is not participating. Participating, yeah, we're just going to keep stretching this out.

0:36:23 Thomas: This is nuts whether Alex would be present or grant them another meeting after that is his call wow

0:36:37 Matt: And he says under oath in the transcript that we'll show a little bit of later, but when he was investigated about all this, he said he'd never saw the memo that she wrote. And so he wasn't, yeah. Before deciding to go with a non -prosecution agreement, he never saw them explaining why he should be indicted. So yeah, absolutely.

0:36:35 Lydia: Is so weird zero Zero accountability.

0:36:56 Matt: So bad. It's going to get worse.

0:36:48 Thomas: Acosta unbelievable this is crazy it's

0:36:58 Matt: Let's keep going.

0:36:59 Thomas: Still gonna get worse Matt we're gonna run run out of worse right

0:37:00 Matt: Yeah. All right. So this is Matthew Menchel again. We don't have to read the whole thing, but I want to give you a taste. This is in response to an email that I don't believe we have from her, but you can get the idea of what she wrote based on what he's writing. This was July 5th, 2007, so we're getting pretty close. The non -prosecution agreement is going to be signed in September 2007, and then they're going to argue about it for another eight or nine months about what it actually means. So let's see what Matthew MenChel has to say to Vilfania.

0:37:22 Thomas: Go

0:37:25 Lydia: Marie, both the tone and substance of your email are totally inappropriate, and in combination with other matters in the past, it seriously calls your judgment into question. You well know, the U.S. attorney has not even decided whether to go forward with a prosecution in this matter, thus you should have respected his position before engaging in plea negotiations. Along that same line, despite whatever contrary representations you made to the agents in this matter, it was made clear to you by the U .S. attorney and the first assistant from the time when you were first authorized to investigate Mr. Epstein that the office had concerns about taking this case because of Pettit policy and a number of legal issues. Despite being told these things, you prepared a prose memo and indictment that included a definitive date for indictment. It has come to my attention that you led

0:37:29 Thomas: Fuck yourself says the fuck jesus

0:38:11 Lydia: The agents to to believe that

0:38:13 Thomas: It fuck are you you jack off who's

0:38:14 Matt: Well, he's kind of a boss, not really, but kind of. But they're working together, and I believe his name was also on the memo. It's it's redacted. It's very important to remember, just to continue the theme of redacting U .S. attorneys. In the previous memo that we saw, the one with the bold language, her name is, and we know her name was on it, we know she helped to write it, but the entire team signed off on it to Alex Acosta. But this is, he's dressing her down and saying, you know, you made people think he was going to be indicted. You got the agents all worked up and excited about this. But we can skip down here. And the tone of this, obviously, is just dressing her down. And then Lily Sanchez, this is an important note here. Just look at the paragraph starting with Lily Sanquez.

0:38:30 Lydia: The, yeah, mm -hmm, yeah. Lily Sanchez called me before, not after the June 26th meeting. It was an informal discussion and not in the nature of an official plea offer, but rather a feeling out by both sides as to what it might take to resolve the matter.

0:38:57 Matt: So hold on to that thought for just a minute. I'm not going to do the big revealing.

0:39:00 Thomas: Sorry who's the least anxious

0:39:01 Matt: So, Lily Sanchez is on, yes. Well, I'm not going to do the full reveal yet, but she is a defense attorney for Jeffrey Epstein. And she and Matthew Mandel have been kind of in side communications for their own reasons. And he, she's basically saying, you're making a side deal with Lily Sanquez. You've been talking to her behind our backs. And, he's like, no, that was after. It's, you know, it was before rather, before the meeting.

0:39:01 Lydia: That's a great question. Okay, it's informal.

0:39:22 Matt: It was informal.

0:39:21 Thomas: Wait wait who's saying that so so so our hero was alleging that okay

0:39:24 Lydia: Vilafanya, yeah?

0:39:25 Matt: Yeah, yeah. And you know as you're well aware, the only reason why this office didn't agreed to look into the Epstein matter is because of concerns the state had not done adequate job in vindicating the victim's rights. Of course, we're here to do that with this ridiculous deal we're going to make. So let's keep going. You should also know my discussion with Lula Sanchez was made, and you can go to the next page.

0:39:44 Lydia: Okay, next slide.

0:39:47 Matt: Yeah, next slide.

0:39:48 Thomas: Sorry, I'm very interested in this. Where did we stop? Even agreed

0:39:52 Lydia: I'll pick up where we left off.

0:39:53 Thomas: To look into the matter. Okay. Had not done an adequate job in vindicating the victim's rights. That's a good point. What did the state do? Well, whatever. As you and the agents conceded, had Epstein been convicted of a felony that resulted in jail sentence and sex offender status, neither the FBI nor our office ever would have interceded. Oh, okay. So they're saying had the state done that.

0:40:12 Matt: Because he could have been nailed hard on state charges.

0:40:16 Thomas: Why wasn't he?

0:40:18 Matt: That's a whole other story. But they could have, though. They had a pretty solid indictment going, and the federal government, I mean, there's a lot of dispute about this. The federal government definitely stepped in to swoop in to say, we are going to go harder on him, and the state said, okay, as long as you go harder on him, and of course we know what happened.

0:40:20 Thomas: Jesus.

0:40:34 Matt: The other Lily Sanchez part, except

0:40:33 Thomas: All right. Continuing.

0:40:35 Lydia: So, yeah, you should also know that my discussion with Lily Sanchez was made with the U .S. attorney's full knowledge. Had Lily Sanquez expressed interest in pursuing this avenue further, I certainly would have raised it with all the interested individuals in this case, including you and the agents. In any event, I fail to see how a discussion that went nowhere has hurt our bargaining position. I am also quite confident that no one on the defense team believes that the federal investigation in this matter has been for show. Nor are

0:40:59 Matt: For the person who's writing it too, she believes that rightfully. Yeah,

0:41:04 Lydia: Your arguments that I have violated the Ashcroft memo, the USAM, or any other policy well taken. As chief of the criminal division, I am the person designated by the U .S. attorney to exercise appropriate discretion in deciding whether certain pleas are appropriate and consistent with the Ashcraft memo and the US AM, not you. You.

0:41:21 Thomas: To be clear, is the U .S. attorney Acosta or is that somebody else? Okay.

0:41:23 Matt: For our purposes.

0:41:28 Lydia: For your statement that my concerns about this case hurting Project Safe Childhood are unfounded, I made it clear to you that those concerns were voiced by the U .S. attorney. Whether or not you are correct, matters of policy are always within his purview and any decisions in that area ultimately rest with him. Finally, you may not dictate the dates and people you will meet with about this or any other case. If the U。S. Attorney or the First Assistant desire to meet with you, they will let you know. Nor will I direct Epstein's lawyers to communicate only only with you. If you want to work major cases in the district, you must understand and accept the fact that there is a chain of command, something you disregard with great regularity.

0:42:02 Thomas: Jesus Christ. This person's an absolute hero.

0:42:04 Matt: And she is again morally and legally correct. Yes,

0:42:08 Thomas: Yeah. This is the kind of thing they have the male protagonists do in movies where they're like, fuck, fuck this chain of command. Let's put put this child molester in jail. And yet, all right.

0:42:22 Matt: Exactly. So let's see her response a bit of this.

0:42:23 Lydia: Yeah, it's crazy.

0:42:24 Thomas: Oh, this is her response. Jesus. I'm on the edge of my goddamn seat with this.

0:42:27 Matt: Good stuff.

0:42:27 Thomas: Has anyone talked to her? Like, is it, do you know where she is? Is she like, okay, okay. Okay. Sorry. I'll jump in the gun. All right.

0:42:31 Matt: We'll get to where she is now. Personally,

0:42:35 Lydia: Hi, Matt. My trial is over. Oh, and actually, I just want to note, so when he emailed her, he emailed Her, Jeff Sloman, and then cc'd Andrew Laurie, and she emails him directly.

0:42:48 Matt: That's a great point. Yeah, good catch. This is July 13th, so it's not much later.

0:42:52 Lydia: Hi, Matt. My trial is over, so now I have time to focus back on this case and our email exchange. There are several points in your email that I would like to address, and I also would like to address where we are in the case. First, I wanted to address the comment about jumping the chain of command. After that concern was brought to my attention several months ago, I've tried very hard to be cognizant of the chain -of -command, and as was evident at at the meeting with Epstein's attorneys, Andy and I have discussed the case extensively. My original email asking for everyone's input was addressed to Andy, you, and Jeff, and Karen Atkinson was cc'd. Karen and I also have discussed the case in great detail. The response to your email was addressed only to you because I thought you would want to discuss privately our disagreement. It was addressed as well because you said that you had Jeff's Blackberry and it was a holiday when you would be out of the office. If there is a particular instance of violating the chain of command man that you would like to discuss, I would be happy to discuss it with you. Second, the reason why I sent the original email to everyone was to see if anyone had any objections to the proposed language. I waited several days to send out the email to Lily to get everyone's response. In your response, you did not raise any concerns, nor did anyone else. Given your indication that the U .S. attorney would be satisfied with an agreement involving no federal prosecution, I certainly didn't think that an agreement involved some federal component would be objectionable. Andy, Jeff, you, and I all have discussed the greater flexibility of a pre -indictment plea.

0:44:13 Matt: Remember a plea was not on the table right now. They're pushing a non -prosecution agreement where he will not be prosecuted or charged federally at all. And I

0:44:20 Thomas: Wait, given your indication that the U S attorney would be satisfied with an agreement involving no federal prosecution, prosecution, I certainly didn't think that an agreement involving some federal component would be objective. Does she mean maybe she left out a not, given your indication that the U .S. attorney would not be satisfied?

0:44:30 Lydia: I'm not following that sentence either.

0:44:38 Matt: Know and I think from other things that she is proposing something where there would be a concurrent state and federal punishment would be pretty light federal, but I think I'm not not sure exactly what would... I know, it's a little unclear.

0:44:46 Thomas: But if she's saying, so basically that sentence is, given that, I wonder if there's a missing word there, which happens all the time with this kind of thing, given your implication that the US attorney, meaning Wada Kosta, would be satisfied with with an agreement involving no federal prosecution, I, yeah, there must be, it must be would not be satisfied. Otherwise it doesn't make sense.

0:44:52 Matt: It might be. Yeah. Oh, yeah, it probably should be the no is probably, yeah. Or with

0:45:07 Thomas: So to continue, what?

0:45:07 Matt: An agreement involving federal prosecution, that might be the other thing. So either, who knows? Sorry. Oh it might be that he might be satisfied with the agreement involving a federal prosecution. So instead of involving no federal prosecution, it could be that the no would

0:45:17 Thomas: I think it's more plausible that she left out a word rather than typed a no in a place that she didn't mean to, uh, involving no federal prosecution. I certainly didn't think that an agreement evolving some federal component, some federal components would be objectionable. So the sentence would only make sense if it was, well, he was fined. He essentially indicated he would not be satisfied with an agreement involving no federal prosecution. So I didn't think an agreement involving some federal prosecution would be objectionable. That's the only way it makes sense. So I hope that's a word that was left out. Andy, Jeff, you and I have all discussed the greater flexibility of a pre -indictment plea.

0:45:18 Lydia: Like she, right?

0:45:19 Matt: Not be. That's true. Yeah, but either way, that's true, Sure. Federal

0:45:54 Thomas: Okay.

0:45:54 Matt: Play.

0:45:54 Thomas: Is it continue or?

0:45:55 Matt: Yeah, let's keep going. I think there's a little more here.

0:45:57 Lydia: The statement that I have not respected Alex's position regarding the prosecution of the case demonstrates why you hear the frustration in the tone of my email. For two and a half months, I have been asking about what that position is.

0:46:09 Thomas: Jesus.

0:46:09 Lydia: I have asked for direction on whether to revise the indictment, whether there are other issues that Alex wants addressed prior to deciding whether there's additional investigation that needs to be done, etc. None of that direction has been forthcoming, so I am left with a grand jury, victims, and agents all demanding to know why we aren't presenting an indictment. Perhaps that lack of direction is through no fault of yours, but I have been dealing with a black box, so I do not know to whom I should address my frustration. My recollection of the original meeting with Alex and Jeff is quite different than your summary. In that meeting, I summarized the case and the state attorney's office's handling of it. I acknowledged that we needed to do work to collect the evidence establishing a federal nexus, and I noted the time and money that would be required for an investigation. I said that I was willing to invest that time and the FBI was willingto invest the money, but I didn't want to get to the end and then have the office be intimidated by the high -powered lawyers.

0:46:20 Thomas: Jesus Christ.

0:47:01 Lydia: I was assured that that would not happen. Now I feel like there is a glass ceiling that prevents me from moving forward while evidence suggests that Epstein is continuing to engage in this criminal behavior. Behavior. Additionally, the FBI has identified two more victims. If the case is not going to go forward, I think it is unfair to give hope to more girls.

0:47:07 Matt: Interesting choice of words.

0:47:23 Lydia: And that sentence, that like really got me.

0:47:21 Thomas: Jesus, this fucking thing. Holy shit.

0:47:28 Matt: Yeah me too.

0:47:30 Lydia: As far as promising the FBI that an indictment was a foregone conclusion, I don't know of any cases in the office where an investigation has been opened with the plan not to indict, and I have never presented an indictments package that has resulted in a declination. I didn't treat this case any differently. I worked with the

0:47:44 Matt: It's a funny way to say I always win. I've never presented an indictment package that never resulted in declination. Yeah I get everything through.

0:47:48 Thomas: Jesus

0:47:49 Lydia: Agents to gather the evidence, and I prepared an indictment package that I believe establishes probable cause that a series of crimes have been committed. More importantly, I believe there is proof beyond a reasonable doubt of Epstein's criminal culpability.

0:48:07 Lydia: Lastly, I was not trying to, quote, dictate a meeting with the U .S. attorney or anyone else. I stated that I, quote, would like to schedule a meeting, asking to have the same courtesy that was extended to the defense attorneys, extended to FBI, and an assistant in the office. With respect to your questions regarding my judgment, I will simply say that disagreements about strategy and raising concerns about the forgotten voices of the victims in this case should not be classified as a lapse in judgment. This office should seek to foster spirited debate about the law and the use of prosecutorial discretion, and I think that those debates do occur with other AUSAs. I know of past instances where disagreements about the application of the law to different defendants and defense attorneys has resulted in a call for the resignation of the AUSA who dared to challenge the executive office's conclusions. I found that very disheartening and hoped that this administration would be different. However, my first and only concern in this case and my other child exploitation cases is the victims. If our personality differences threaten their access to justice, then please put someone someone on the case whom you trust more and who will also protect their rights.

0:49:13 Thomas: Christ, I'm sorry.

0:49:14 Matt: Good for you.

0:49:18 Thomas: I wasn't there.

0:49:16 Lydia: And then finishing up, in the meantime, I will be meeting with the agents on Monday to begin preparing a revised indictment package containing your suggestions on the indictment and responding to the issues raised by Epstein's attorneys. Andy and I have discussed the most recent letter and noted the disingenuousness of their arguments. For example, they would like to use a linguist to establish the plain meaning of quote using in connection with quote knowingly persuading, but they want us to disregard the plain meaning of, quote, mail or any facility or means of interstate or foreign commerce, and instead treat that language as though it says only, quote, the internet. They have simply ignored binding precedent from the 11th Circuit and the Supreme Court in making their arguments about the Commerce Clause and the interpretation of 2242b. If there are any specific issues that you or the U .S. attorney would like to see addressed, please let me know. Again, this email has been addressed only to you, but if you would like like to share it with anyone else in Miami or here, please feel free. I hope that you have a nice weekend.

0:50:11 Thomas: Jesus christ.

0:50:12 Matt: Yeah she's really restraining herself here. And the fact that she's saying I don't know what the US attorney's position is months into this, months and months.

0:50:16 Thomas: This is brutal. This is fucking brutal. Brutal this is a highly competent woman who cares who is trying to get through and doesn't know what the fuck this hold up is and

0:50:32 Lydia: Trying to get through a wall of men who are protecting bad men.

0:50:34 Thomas: Then just got lectured yeah this

0:50:38 Matt: Yes. Someone who specializes in child exploitation. Yeah, no.

0:50:38 Thomas: Is unbelievable this is this is the kind of shit like they made the movie spotlight that should be this like what

0:50:46 Matt: That's why I wanted to put it down. Yep. Oh, it's going to get worse, Thomas. Get ready.

0:50:46 Thomas: Is happening unbelievable how is it still gonna get worse Matt

0:50:52 Matt: Oh it's gonna get worse. I bet he already knows, but I don't want to spoil it yet. So look at the second paragraph here. Now this is from Matt Mitchell again. He calls himself Matt. I guess I'll call him Matt. I'm just reluctant to.

0:50:54 Thomas: My god wait

0:51:05 Matt: Too many Matts.

0:51:04 Thomas: This is June so is this before back

0:51:06 Matt: We're jumping back. I want to show you something. Thing. There's a pattern here. So check out paragraph two.

0:51:11 Lydia: Okay, Lily told me that they wanted to present something in writing before the meeting which was why she was pushing us for the statutes. I've, yeah,

0:51:16 Matt: Lily Sanchez on the defense team, just to remind you.

0:51:19 Lydia: I view the meeting more as us listening and them presenting their position, so I would say that you don't need to prepare anything. You're quite knowledgeable on the law in any event, but if you disagree, we can discuss on Monday. As for the documents that they have yet to produce, I'll mention it to Lily if you like, or we can raise it with them at the Tuesday meeting.

0:51:34 Matt: So notice the way he's just like, I'm talking to Lily. I can check in with Lily if you want me to, right?

0:51:37 Thomas: I

0:51:38 Lydia: Lily and I were informally discussing this. Yada, yada, ya da.

0:51:41 Matt: We're feeling each other out, as it were. You can see where this is going. So yeah. Right, so we're gonna pick it back up here with more of the relationship between Lily and Matt. And this is a little weird because it's being sent from Jeff Sloman's BlackBerry, and Jeff is one of the lead prosecutors on this. And so you're gonna be hearing Matt Mitchell writing from Jeff Sloman BlackBery. And I have to believe this is user error because BlackBerries can't really give you that much trouble. But have

0:52:12 Lydia: Yeah, you would know.

0:52:12 Thomas: For those of us who aren't a thousand, is this a common thing where you would lend each other your ancient devices

0:52:17 Matt: I shown you guys my new phone? This is a retrofit. Yeah, the Q25. It's a 2010 BlackBerg with nude guts.

0:52:19 Thomas: Oh wow

0:52:20 Lydia: What?

0:52:28 Matt: Anyway, I love it. Yes.

0:52:29 Thomas: Okay so oh

0:52:31 Lydia: All right, so Matt stole Jeff's phone and said, Marie, my BlackBerry is giving me trouble, so I'm using Jeff's. I told Lily that a state plea with jail time and sex offender status may satisfy the USA. It was a non -starter for them. Matt. Mm -hm.

0:52:46 Thomas: Non -starter okay okay

0:52:47 Matt: So, another off -the -record, one -on -one conversation with Lily.

0:52:51 Thomas: I guess that's where you say well see you in court yeah

0:52:55 Matt: Yeah, let's take it to trial because we've got a lot of evidence and a lot of people ready to testify against Jeffrey Epstein. So let's go on to the next slide.

0:53:01 Lydia: It is crazy to me. Yeah. Like the defense is like, like making the decisions. This is just bonkers.

0:53:07 Thomas: I mean it's fine if they want to turn down a deal I guess but then I don't I don'T get this feeling where it's like continued conversation after that like they don't treat any other criminal like that right

0:53:20 Matt: And remember what Vilafanya said about how I was told the high -powered attorneys would not overpower us, that we would be able to have an actual case. And this is exactly what she was afraid of. So we can check out the next slide and we'll get a big reveal here, I think. Right, so this isn't the interview with Alex Acosta. This is from his debrief, basically, once around 2018, around the time he had to resign, I believe, when the Congress is trying to figure out what happened with this plea deal. And so here's a little breakdown here.

0:53:48 Lydia: Right. Question. The minority touched on it a little bit. The former criminal chief, Menchel, and his relationship with the Lee Sanchez, who became one of Epstein's counsels. And you said you were aware of that after the fact, not concurrently? Answer, I became aware of that when I was asked about it by the Office of Professional Responsibility. My first assistant became aware OF it when he was asked ABOUT it at the Office of Professional Responsibility Question, did, and just pardon me for not remembering if it was already touched on, did Mr. Menchel recuse himself because of that relationship? Answer, he did not. Question, should he have? Answer, I should have known about it, or my first assistant should have known about it, and we should have had a fulsome discussion. How long ago was the relationship? What was the nature of the relationship? They dated.

0:54:32 Matt: Yeah, they were

0:54:35 Thomas: Actually dated during that time

0:54:37 Matt: Were a thing before that time, but they were pretty close.

0:54:38 Lydia: Previously dated. Previously dated, mm

0:54:41 Matt: And so the Office of Professional Responsibility did a very complete report in which they found that nothing strictly unethical was done. There's just a lot of poor judgment. And here's their conclusion about this relationship from the OPR on the next slide.

0:54:53 Lydia: Menchel told OPR that when he and Sanchez were in the USAO, they had a social relationship, which included, in 2003, quote, a handful of dates over a period of two to three weeks. We decided that this was probably best not to pursue, and we mutually agreed to not do that. Apart from that, he stated they were, quote. Close and, quote., hung out, and he asserted that this was known in the office at the time. Menchel said that his relationship with Sanchez, quote, changed dramatically when she left the office for private practice and that by the time he became involved in the Epstein investigation, he had dated and married his wife and his contact with Sanches would, quote most likely have been at office events and when she attended his wedding. Mench, Menchal added, quote that was three and a half years prior for a very brief period of time and I don't think I gave it a moment's thought.

0:55:32 Matt: Attended his wedding. Just want to point that out. So again, I'm not saying anything improper was happening during the time of the representation, but they totally hooked up and they knew each other very well. And

0:55:47 Lydia: Why not say it either? Like like you know that you dated this person you're having conversations with them in in a very like high profile contentious sensitive issue why not just come out with it and say it

0:56:03 Matt: In a one -on -one informal kind of way. And you're making decisions for the case together, right? And she went to his wedding, which again, it's not unusual for former prosecutors and defense attorneys to be friends. That's pretty normal. They work together in the same office. This happens all the time. And Acosta says in the transcript and other places that he was annoyed that the defense team purposely hired people from his office who knew his office and in fact, might've actually overheard conversations about this case at the time, like they purposely did that, just in a very intentional kind of way. But this was a pretty bad breach, and OPR couldn't find...

0:56:36 Lydia: To me like like if this is disclosed I would kind of feel like it's a nothing burger like I would be like you now it was for two to three weeks years and years ago I guess four four years ago or whatever at that time, five years. No. Yeah. Five years ago at that time, I probably would have been like, you know, not a huge deal as long as everything seemed, you Know, perfectly fine and standard going through the process. But the fact that it wasn't disclosed makes it worse to me. I don't know.

0:57:07 Matt: Well, especially because... I

0:57:08 Thomas: It definitely does does this explain I guess I'm trying to think like how I mean on the scale of everything happening here two three dates do we do we have any reason to believe he's lying or whatever because if it's like three and a half years prior a couple of dates and then he's moved on and gotten married and all that I separate from just pretend we're just normal case stuff like you're working a case you're a defense attorney or something um know maximum fairness here, if they might've dated a couple of times, three and a half years prior, um, and then he's, you know, subsequently married and all that. And he, you know I, I assume that there's a lot of relationships among lawyers who went to law school or war and or work together and whatever. I'm sure there's plenty. Um, is it something now, if he's saying that it was known at the office, that's his version of it um and honestly if it's between him and Alex Acosta who wasn't there apparently and didn't fucking pay attention or do anything I

0:58:07 Lydia: He was too busy with all the conferences he was going to, apparently.

0:58:08 Thomas: I know I might I might trust this guy um I at that same time I don't like I it seems like Menchel was being a piece of shit toward you know our hero of the story but but does this really explain that I donno what what do you think Take it all together.

0:58:25 Matt: I mean it kind of colors it when you look back on the way on his tone and the way he's like basically lily and I have this figured out like we've been talking it out you know and he's very defensive about the fact that they've been taking a lot of time to when she points it out because she must know it sounds like the office knew that they had a thing um and I've had the experience of being on the other side from somebody I've dated before before. It's very, very briefly, just once, but not quite that much. And if we'd actually gone to trial, I think I would have made sure that that wasn't... I don't think she would have stayed on if we would actually go to trial for that case. But Massachusetts is a small place. There's a lot of lawyers here, and it's not that hard to end up on the other side of a case from somebody whose wedding you've gone to, as is this case here. And you think about back in the Christmas episode, we were talking about Dershowitz and the unnamed prosecutor that he's very chummy with, right? That he's having drinks with and he's hanging out with and they know each other and he is trying to be friendly. That's a little different. It's not an intimate dating relationship, but this stuff happens. You do have to use your best judgment. I don't think they had any idea this case was going to blow up to become internationally famous, something that

0:59:30 Lydia: Don't know. I mean,

0:59:30 Matt: It is now.

0:59:31 Thomas: Yeah, how many?

0:59:31 Lydia: Like the kinds of things that they're talking about that were alleged to have occurred, like that's pretty terrible. I don

0:59:40 Thomas: How many cases like this are they dealing with? You know, did they? Yeah, I don't know. This is I mean, the whole thing sucks. It strikes me as like, they got pushed over by the lawyers that don't even seem particularly impressive. I wish we need a full 911 style investigation into this fucking thing. I don'T understand it none of it makes sense okay

1:00:03 Matt: The OPR report doesn't to next slide here. There's a little bit more on the OPR.

1:00:06 Thomas: Let's check that out yeah

1:00:08 Matt: We don't have to read the whole thing, but basically the entire prosecution team says they weren't aware, even though it says other people in the office were aware that they had dated. He felt that it wasn't enough that he needed to raise the issue with Acosta because he didn't think it was very long and whatever else. He said if it was more than a handful of dates, he would have advised the supervisors, but he didn'T think that it really influenced. And OPR doesn'T think it did, but he says OPR does think it would have been prudent for him to have informed his supervisors. And then there's a note at the bottom here that they did have lunch after she left before the Epstein stuff got going. So again, there's that fine line between your close friends or somebody who you used to work with who's now on the other side of a case. That can happen. It's inevitable in the legal world.

1:00:51 Matt: But I thought it was interesting, especially because of those emails, which I know we were all very affected by, that we just read, where they're exchanging these very sharp opinions opinions about the case, and he's very defensive about his relationship with Lily.

1:01:03 Lydia: It was the only woman on Epstein's defense team as well, which is kind of interesting.

1:01:07 Matt: Yeah, I think it is.

1:01:10 Thomas: Like you say it makes it make sense where he's like oh yeah we you know it did seem like he was overreacting to whatever um what's it yeah vilafanya said about you know about lily it didn't see it does seem like defensiveness like you saying um but again it's it's almost in a weird way it's like well was did this affect the case? I don't know. Cause it was being botched for so many other reasons. You know, you're like, I don'T know if this is like that significant, but it's definitely, definitely not good.

1:01:17 Lydia: Filifonia right

1:01:42 Matt: Yeah. It's interesting that when he's writing from Jeff's blank, that one note there where he's saying, well, she's saying that this is completely off the table, and we're not going to talk about it anymore. Maybe the two of them shouldn't have been talking about it. Maybe that should have been more of a whole group discussion. But anyway, we can see there's another interesting little point. I'm just going to gloss over this very quickly in the next thing. I just, I'm not sure what to make of this, but a bunch of Alex Acosta's emails from a very very critical period, have disappeared.

1:02:05 Matt: Yeah, very convenient. From May 2007, and of course, the agreement was in September 2007 through November 2008. And all the way through that time, from September of 2007 all theway through the end of 2008, the defense team is just whining about the agreement that he has just signed in September and saying, well, that's not what it actually meant. You can't actually make us do any of this. It just like, there's a whole lot of like six or seven months. And this is during the time, very critically, this is very during the time when the U S attorney's office actually, and I'm not exaggerating lies to the victims, sends out a letter basically saying, we're still working on this when they'd already signed the non -prosecution agreement does not

1:02:10 Thomas: Come on.

1:02:32 Lydia: What

1:02:47 Thomas: Right.

1:02:47 Matt: Tell them what's in the national non -preservation.

1:02:48 Thomas: Did we cover that last time?

1:02:49 Matt: We did talk shut down. I'm gonna talk a little bit more here, but I'd love to do a whole episode on just the victim's rights aspect of this case, because it is really a disaster. And it's really bad. Bad

1:02:59 Thomas: I mean, if there are no victims rights in this, I DON'T even know what to let's

1:03:01 Matt: Not there there should have been but there were not

1:03:03 Thomas: Talk about. About oh there's nothing there okay they got no rights yeah this is interesting too because it says yeah are you gonna read it huh for our listeners sent

1:03:05 Matt: Yeah there's a whole statute and pretty

1:03:07 Lydia: What a weird thing yeah yeah yeah um yeah I'll read this for the listeners uh after reviewing the emails opr identified a data gap in acosta's email records his inbox contained no emails from may 26 2007 through november 2nd 2008 this gap however was was not present with respect to Acosta's sent email.

1:03:26 Thomas: Email that's a big fucking tell so he just went and deleted it out of his inbox but

1:03:28 Matt: Weird right

1:03:31 Lydia: Yeah, OPR requested that EOUSA investigate. I'm guessing it's like the IT team for, yeah. During its investigation, EO USA discovered a data association error that incorrectly associated Acosta data with an unrelated employee who had a similar name. But why that particular period of time? Once the data was properly associated, Eo USA found and produced 11 ,248 Acosta emails from April 3rd, 2008 through the end of his tenure at the USAO.

1:03:37 Matt: Probably still

1:03:48 Thomas: Not the sent email yeah that's

1:04:02 Matt: A big gap that's almost a year gap

1:04:02 Thomas: Also not all of them yeah it's

1:04:04 Lydia: It's not all, yeah, 11 months, almost just about 11 months. Yeah.

1:04:05 Thomas: May yeah that'S most of the gap that

1:04:10 Lydia: However, with respect to the remaining emails, EOUSA concluded that the emails were not transferred from the USA when in 2008 and 2009, Outlook data for all U .S. attorneys' offices was migrated to EO USA's centralized system to be be maintained. Ah, government technology changes. The USAO's data was migrated between March and June 2008.

1:04:31 Matt: Word on anybody else's email is just mysteriously disappearing just is yeah as

1:04:34 Lydia: Weird.

1:04:35 Thomas: Is and the fact that it's the sent the the inbox, but not the scent doesn't. That's just not possible. Sorry. That doesn't, you can't, you can'T have it something associate with the wrong name, but only for the inbox and not for the scent. There's no, that's doesn't exist. Sorry, that'S not real. I don'T, I mean, IT people can and always do write in. I do appreciate it because I, you know, I know a little something about IT, but I'm not like a professional. That strikes me as impossible. I, I don't even, I don' t know how you would explain that. I mean maybe, maybe someone will tell me there's some arcane, you know, tech explanation for that. Oh, a different server handles the inbox. And now I doubt it. I don't know. That is fucking this thing. Wow. Okay.

1:05:15 Matt: Always just putting the information out there and letting you decide All right. So here is the non -prosecution agreement.

1:05:15 Lydia: Bizarre.

1:05:18 Thomas: Well, we've already decided this fucking sucks, Matt. This is sucks. And it was bad.

1:05:21 Matt: It all sucks.

1:05:23 Thomas: And everybody involved is suspect, except our hero.

1:05:23 Lydia: Alex Acosta sucks. Yeah yeah.

1:05:23 Matt: Well, here's the thing. I just want to remind everybody. Yes. And she's going to be coming back. But I want to reminder everybody of the non prosecution agreement itself, because just for those just catching up and in case you're not aware of what the sweetheart deal actually was, since everybody calls it that. The deal was that he would not be prosecuted in federal court as long as he would take a plea in state court to nothing charges, to solicitation of a minor, essentially. And so this is the title. This is the cover page of the non -prosecution agreement.

1:05:49 Lydia: And there were 35 victims, victims, alleged victims during this time.

1:05:54 Thomas: I thought it was weird when the language was like Jeffrey Epstein, uh hereafter known as sweetheart in the you know in the sweetheart will be receiving the yeah

1:06:03 Lydia: Darling.

1:05:54 Matt: And he pleads to two. Yeah, right. Yeah. On the next page, next slide, you can see the actual, the very famous language, the best deal ever given to any defendant ever in the history of the United States. You can read the first few sentences there because

1:06:09 Thomas: Oh we're not reading this one oh

1:06:16 Lydia: In consideration of Epstein's agreement to plead guilty and to provide compensation in the manner described above, if Epstein successfully fulfills all of the terms and conditions of this agreement, the United States also agrees that it will not institute any criminal charges against any potential co -conspirators of Epstein, including, but not limited to, Sarah Kellen, Adriana Ross, Leslie Groff, or Nadia Markenkova. Further, upon execution of this agreement and a plea agreement with the state attorney's office, the federal grand jury investigation will be suspended and all pending federal grand juries subpoenas will be held in abeyance unless and until the defendant violates any term of this arrangement.

1:06:53 Matt: That's pretty much the rest of it but I thought it was interesting too that Glenn Maxwell is not mentioned because she's the number one co -conspirator but again it is including but not limited to so obviously

1:07:03 Lydia: Including, but but not limited to.

1:07:04 Thomas: Why would they agree to that I I don't even I don'T understand this what

1:07:04 Matt: That can include it's insane nothing like this happens this doesn't happen like anybody in the world in the universe ever who might have ever conspired with you we don't know their names right now

1:07:17 Thomas: It's it's like it's just these are normally such one -sided negotiations I mean this is normally it's everything we hate where prosecutors have have way too much power. They're overcharging people. They'RE doing, you know, negotiations where the defendant usually has no leverage whatsoever and often is agreeing to stuff that's not even real, like they're not even guilty of. And yet, like, what would be the thing where they're like bargaining for just like what would Epstein do? What was his side say when they're Like, OK, we're not going to agree to, you Know, not instituting criminal charges is against co -conspirators. And they're like, ah, no can do. Like what, what is that part of the negotiation? I don't, I don'T understand it. I've never seen anything like this.

1:07:18 Lydia: It's crazy. Yeah,

1:08:06 Matt: Want

1:08:06 Thomas: I'm in all my no experience. I DON'T understand this.

1:08:06 Matt: To say that's the the Dershowitz part, because he was very instrumental in this and may or may not have been a co -conspirator, allegedly.

1:08:15 Lydia: Yeah no he is the including but not limited to like it's Ghislaine Maxwell, Alan Dershowitz.

1:08:19 Thomas: But what's the bargaining? What is the reason for the prosecutors, for the attorneys to, yeah, to do any of that? I mean, it just, it's, It's unbelievable.

1:08:23 Lydia: To say okay. Yeah yeah.

1:08:30 Thomas: It doesn't make any sense.

1:08:30 Matt: Just to remind everybody, Acosta tried to take it back in his interview, but he said at the time to Julie Brown of the Miami Herald that Epstein belonged to intelligence and this was above his pay grade. And also, I will point out that Villafana was forced to negotiate or to basically finalize the deal. That was her job. It was very unfortunate for her. Again, chain of command just had to do with what she was told.

1:08:54 Thomas: I want to know, even if he were some sort of intelligence asset, what's the process of that? Like they come and get, okay, we got a pedophile here. Oh, that's our pedophile. And then they're like, okay. Give him a sweetheart deal. How does that work? That doesn't even, that doesn't makes sense. None of this makes sense yet.

1:09:14 Matt: He ends up doing basically 13 months of very easy prison time where he gets to spend most of his time in house arrest. He gets to pay deputies

1:09:22 Lydia: Well, 12 hours a day, right? Like he isn't even there.

1:09:25 Matt: In suits to stand outside, to act like bodyguards. Nobody even knows he's under house arrest. And of course, just to remind everybody, this period of time, he's just getting his empire empire going, and he's really going to get going on international trafficking after that. And Acosta claims in his interview that he thought that he was going to lose this case potentially. And he also emphasizes over and over again, and seeing the indictment really gives light to this. He emphasizes many times, this is a state case. It would have been very hard to prove federally. Epstein's flying people between New York and Florida and the Virgin Islands in Florida and New York. This is international. This isn't international. This is a national case. It's a federal case. Not that hard to proof.

1:10:03 Thomas: Looking at the law of that, I know it might be a little more complicated than, than what I'm about to say. But when it comes to this, it seems like the only difference in like, okay, can the state prove it easier than the get the federal government, whatever. The difference just like the jurisdiction questions where you have to establish that like, he did, you now, interstate commerce or something, whatever, like in terms of the actual facts of the things he did. Those would be the same for both, wouldn't they? Or at least there'd be a lot of overlap in terms of the proof that you'd have for the state versus the proof you'd need for the federal charges. Like how different would they be?

1:10:38 Matt: For the federal charges, you have to emphasize the interstate nature of it. But I mean, again, there's a lot of

1:10:43 Thomas: That's it. That's the only, isn't that pretty much the only thing? Well, that doesn't seem hard.

1:10:46 Matt: It in there. And they prominently mentioned his jet and how many people he was flying around. So yeah, it's not hard at all. And he

1:10:51 Lydia: Well, and again, if he had those concerns, then why didn't he ever raise those with Vilafanya when she drafted the indictment, when she crafted that memo and said, hey, I think we have some gaps here that we need to shore up before we move on. But he just didn't say anything at all. He allegedly didn't even read it. So so what's going on here truly?

1:11:09 Matt: Didn't read it, allegedly, according to his interview. Rich is bad.

1:11:15 Thomas: Didn't even read it.

1:11:16 Matt: That's what he says.

1:11:17 Thomas: That's worse than any, it makes it worse, man. Not better.

1:11:20 Matt: He's just a bad manager. Yeah,

1:11:21 Lydia: And And the other the other piece of this that really drives me crazy, if Epstein is intelligence and like above his pay grade or whatever, then what you're saying is like the, you know, decade that followed was just he got to do whatever he wanted, like and continue to abuse up to a third.

1:11:37 Thomas: That is, that's what I'm saying. I don't understand what that

1:11:39 Lydia: Thousand people what in the world and in what yeah there's no way because like because then we have we have an even bigger issue then like if someone has like carte blanche to do whatever they want as long as they're an asset for the intelligence community for the united states that seems insane just

1:11:40 Thomas: Even means. I think that's just a lie. Lie. Yeah. I truly don't get how that mechanically would work, Matt. Correct me if I'm wrong, but I, look, why would that do anything? That strikes me, especially if he said it and kind of took it back, that strikes me as maybe a lie he went to or something or that he tried to pull off. Yeah, because even if he were intelligence, you don't get to just be a pedophile and break the law. At what point, how would that work in terms of the deal? Like you, you would, it would be if, if they're like in the best case scenario or something, or like if this were at all legitimate and they could say, oh no, he did some crimes, but it was because the government was put them up to it. That, I mean, then you just wouldn't even be prosecuting him. Right. Wouldn't you just be like, oh, okay. This was all for the government or something. You

1:12:10 Lydia: Like trying something yeah right

1:12:44 Thomas: Wouldn't do a thing where you're like, well, we'll do a deal with them, but there'll be a little softer. That'd be a softer deal. That doesn't. What is that? I don't know.

1:12:44 Matt: I mean, there's so much evidence, I think they have to do something. And I think there would have been some pretty serious whistleblowing if they just completely dropped it, especially because they've been telling the state at this point, this

1:12:59 Thomas: To, well, this pretty much was them completely dropping it, man. This was the, can

1:13:01 Matt: Was, no. And the state let them have the case on the condition that they would federally prosecute it the right way. And this is what they end up with. There's a non -prosecution agreement that kicks it back to the state on the conditions that he take these dinky charges. And that's it.

1:13:14 Thomas: I get an answer from you as to whether you buy into any of this intelligence asset thing or how would that work? Like, how would the, how Would that make this happen? Is what I'm saying?

1:13:24 Matt: If he really is an to keep running it just again if if if right it's speculative if they need him to keep running this operation so he can get dirt on people but they need to slap him on the wrist so it looks like he's gotten some consequences um and he was completely allowed to continue and to expand his operations after this so it does make you wonder um you know he only got worse so yeah I mean I don't know I I don' know how this stuff works I've never had a client who's an asset of intelligence services so uh hypothetically though I could could see it.

1:13:49 Lydia: Then but then also then why Then why would it have ended the way that it did in 2018, 2019 when he, you know, was charged? Like, why would It have ended it up back there at all?

1:14:03 Matt: Well,

1:14:03 Thomas: I'm pretty sure you have to have some sort of paperwork. If you're having somebody commit crimes on the government's behalf, like when they do undercover cop stuff, they're not just like, like, all right, nobody even knows about this. No one knows you exist. Go be a, go be a drug dealer or something. Like somebody has to know.

1:14:17 Matt: I mean, by 2018, though, Julie K. Brown had done this amazing work for the Herald that we've talked about. Alex Acosta had to resign because it came out. Nobody really even understood how bad this deal was until that point, right? There's the people that knew the case, right, but the world didn't know. And at the point at which the world knew, they pretty much had to prosecute him. And I think he probably served his use. Again, if you're looking at the intelligence thing, he's probably run his course of what they can do with him. But, you know, Again,

1:14:33 Thomas: Which is what

1:14:42 Lydia: Which is what?

1:14:42 Thomas: We'll never know.

1:14:43 Lydia: Because nothing's happened either. Like, all these people that are named and some of which we don't know because they're still protecting their identities, apparently. What? What? Like, okay.

1:14:53 Thomas: To help them get away with being pedophiles more, because that's what's happened.

1:14:56 Lydia: They're going to just die with nothing having happened.

1:15:00 Thomas: This is a joke. I don't understand it.

1:15:00 Matt: This is a little beyond my jurisdiction, but if we're talking about what we're talking about, then you would have things on these men, almost all men, that you could use for the rest of their lives and control them. So there certainly is value to it if you are an intelligence service. And there's certainly the Russian stuff we haven't gotten into yet. The Russian connections, I think, still have not been explored enough where the money was going. It needs to be coming out more. More. There's a lot that I don't feel comfortable just because I try to work in facts. I know it's what we do here. But if I had to speculate, these

1:15:03 Thomas: I, I, yeah, but I'm, I'm I get it, but I'm trying to to understand like what even the realm of possibilities is, you know? And so who would even be the people, okay. Of the people we've seen in these files, who would be the people that would be valuable to have stuff on? I mean, I know there's probably some, but like a lot of them, it's not right. A lot of it was just like, oh, this is a lawyer he knew, or there's a banker he knew. Like would the, would intelligence want, yeah.

1:15:55 Matt: Weren't just bankers. I mean, Leon Black's one of those incredibly influential, very, very wealthy banker. And you've got Clinton, you've Got Prince Andrew, you have got Ehud Barak from Israel. You've got all these other people that he was socializing with. And who knows what other kinds of names and people and whatever kinds of Russians or anybody else we've got involved here. I really, Again, it's a little beyond what I want to speculate about, but I could see it. And I understand, you know, I'm not a conspiratorial person usually, but I can understand where people come from on this and why they get there.

1:16:27 Matt: But that's about as much as I can say.

1:16:28 Thomas: I just think it would have come out. I mean, like Lydia said, what changes in 2018? You can just, all of a sudden, none of that mattered? Okay, cool. I don't know. All right, we can move on, I guess.

1:16:40 Matt: Too much pressure? Yeah, we can move on. Here's a Little Nugget from the Acosta interview.

1:16:45 Thomas: When's it going to stop getting worse? Are we still in the get worse territory?

1:16:49 Matt: There's some cleanup as it gets worse afterward, but let's take a look at this Little Nogget here from the Accosta transcript, early

1:16:57 Lydia: Right. Question. Are you, were you aware then of photographs of Menchel with Epstein in Aspen, Colorado, skiing?

1:17:04 Thomas: Oh, my God. Okay.

1:17:05 Lydia: Answer. I was not, and I wasn't aware of it till this minute. Question. If you were aware of that, would that raise some concerns? Answer, yes, it would. When were the pictures? Mr. Redacted. Do you know when, Mr. redacted? I think it was early 2000s. All

1:17:08 Thomas: Till this minute? Oh

1:17:22 Matt: 2000s. Skiing with Epstein well before this case. So just throw that in.

1:17:24 Thomas: I mean that's kind of what I meant when I said like I don' t think the relationship with Lily mattered. Like there's something else going on. That is that that's such a small part of it. This seems like something. What do we have any more on this?

1:17:35 Matt: But well, there's more coming about Menschel. So yeah, here we go. The next one. This is now 2012.

1:17:50 Lydia: Right, let's see. Starting from the bottom. Matt Menchil will come see you for dinner on on Friday, June 1st at 730. Matt is in court all week, FYI. And hello, Reed, you and Jeffrey are confirmed to have lunch tomorrow with Matt Menchel at the Chop House. It is within walking distance to Roy's office. God, what?

1:18:12 Matt: There's a little collection here. And then December.

1:18:14 Lydia: Sorry. And yeah, and then there's the December 8th. Oh, I see.

1:18:18 Thomas: These are a bunch of

1:18:18 Lydia: I see, okay.

1:18:18 Thomas: Different things. OK.

1:18:19 Lydia: I thought it was an email thread.

1:18:19 Matt: Yeah, just little clips.

1:18:20 Thomas: Breakfast with Matt Mitchell. And this is all OK. This is all a bit after.

1:18:24 Lydia: This is all after.

1:18:24 Matt: Many years after. Yep.

1:18:26 Lydia: How gross. Like, Like, the stuff that you probably saw working on this case, and now you're going to start a relationship with this person?

1:18:37 Matt: Yep?

1:18:38 Thomas: Well, apparently they already skied together before that, so they're

1:18:40 Lydia: I know. Well, I mean, but, like, I

1:18:42 Thomas: Not starting a relationship, but yeah.

1:18:43 Lydia: Guess, well, continue, I Guess, beyond that one ski, you know, event. I guess we don't know how extensive it was. But I cannot imagine, after learning everything you learn in that kind of a situation, wanting to continue this.

1:18:55 Matt: Yeah." If I knew that about my neighbor, I'd never talk to him again. I mean, it's just, come on. And his official statement to the Miami Herald was, was we have no, we never had any business relationship. That's not the question, man. Like, yeah, you hung out, right?

1:19:03 Thomas: I don't care. Yeah, what? Oh, we didn't do a startup together. Okay, I know. What does that have to do with anything?

1:19:18 Matt: Yeah.

1:19:19 Thomas: Unbelievable.

1:19:18 Lydia: Yeah

1:19:20 Matt: Yep. Yeah. Let's, let's see what's next.

1:19:23 Thomas: Okay. It's going to keep going.

1:19:25 Matt: All right. This is kind of funny at the bottom here. So this is a little fully followed from Louis Sanchez.

1:19:28 Thomas: Bottom. Okay what

1:19:30 Lydia: Okay lily sanchez is asking me for the dial -in details she wants to be on call tomorrow is this okay jeffrey epstein says no oh

1:19:38 Thomas: The hell? This is 2011.

1:19:40 Matt: Yeah. Years later. And then up top is funny too, what he says.

1:19:42 Lydia: Interesting uh fyi I'm not going to answer her oh wouldn't

1:19:48 Matt: So Jeffrey Epstein is not taking your calls after everything you did for him. I just think it's funny. There's, but there is a more cordial, I don't even know, But I mean, she's still working with him.

1:19:52 Thomas: Yeah what would this be about?

1:19:57 Lydia: This yeah oh okay interesting so whoever this is the the conversation between Jeffrey Epstein and redacted here is then forwarded to Endyke, Epstein's attorney. Yeah. Okay.

1:20:09 Matt: He's an attorney. Yeah.

1:20:12 Thomas: Oh just to be clear this doesn't have anything to do you with the other guy my man my man munchausen

1:20:16 Matt: This is just a little follow -up on Lili Sanchez. Just, where are they now kind of thing.

1:20:20 Lydia: Mental.

1:20:20 Matt: Yeah yeah, that's right. And then there's another funny one about Lili Sánchez, the next. This is funny.

1:20:19 Thomas: Was mental oh

1:20:26 Lydia: Oh, so this is from Lily to Epstein. Hi, Jeffrey. I hope this email finds you well. I wanted to write to you and say happy anniversary. Anniversary. 10 years ago, you gave me the beautiful Mercedes -Benz S550. Wow. And I just wanted to tell you that I drive it to this day. And as the picture attached shows, it recently hit 100 ,000 miles. I can say that it is the most valued and used gift I have ever received. It makes me think of you often with much affection.

1:20:28 Matt: 2017. Yeah personal

1:20:44 Thomas: Jesus christ yeah

1:20:59 Lydia: On another note, my son graduated. Yeah, my my son graduated in May. Oh, okay. I see. You're just saying it doesn't matter. Got it.

1:21:01 Matt: Stuff. But the Mercedes -Benz is the important part. But again, 10 years ago, July 2007, seven, she's negotiating a non -prosecution agreement with her ex, Mr. Mantle. So just that time before the thing's finished. And she's writing, and again, I appreciate the loyalty, I guess, the gratitude of following up and saying, hey, still driving the car, still think of you all the time. You might be my pedophile friend.

1:21:14 Lydia: And he rewards her with a Benz.

1:21:28 Thomas: If it were like a business dispute and this weren't the worst pedophile known then maybe you'd be like all right whatever you gave a bonus essentially to your lawyer this is 10 this is ten years later her being like man you know I fucking love that horrible pedophile I think of you every day as I drive my blood fucking car my built on the victims like

1:21:28 Lydia: Gross. A, yeah. Like how, how disgusting. I mean, if I ever rode in a car that the person was like, oh yeah, this pedophile, like this, you know, human trafficker bought this for me. Isn't it nice? I'd be like, get me out of here. I don't want to be in this car it's disgusting you're disgusting and

1:22:08 Matt: And you mark the 10 -year anniversary of when Jeffrey Epstein gave you a car.

1:22:11 Thomas: I mean it's the levels of bad where it's like okay even if she just like took that money for a client and was like all right Right. And then just never said it like, you know, lawyers

1:22:22 Lydia: Then spent it on like like purchasing a car even like whatever but

1:22:24 Thomas: Got a lawyer, I guess. But like this is like so much deeper than that, where you're like actively, you know, who's such a sweetheart who I need to write an email to the world's worst pedophile. That's what I need. I need it to do.

1:22:37 Lydia: And and what kills me too is like and then she starts talking about her kid I don't know if she has multiple children or just a son but like theoretically they could have ridden in this car too and so now you have like your child running riding in a car yeah it's

1:22:48 Thomas: How do people do this with their brains? She had to have seen something. Did she see that indictment or no? She wouldn't. They wouldn't, yeah, you

1:22:57 Matt: No, she would have known all the details. I mean, she would have certainly been familiar with the witness interviews. And I'm sure maybe she might have seen the draft. They would have talked about what was going into it, at least.

1:23:05 Thomas: Would think, you you would think.

1:23:06 Matt: They'd know how many victims there were. So let's see where she is now. Where are they now? Catch up on the next slide.

1:23:08 Lydia: So gross Oh, the name like flashes at me here. Governor DeSantis reappoints lawyer who helps secure sweetheart deal for Jeffrey Epstein to judicial nominating commission.

1:23:22 Thomas: Come on.

1:23:23 Matt: Yep. She gets to pick judges in Florida. That's her job.

1:23:26 Thomas: We want her in charge of picking judges.

1:23:29 Matt: Yeah, And she was first appointed basically right after Jeffrey Epstein was arrested in 2019. Not that there's any connection, but I'm just saying it's just a weird thing. And also a very weird coincidence I just want to mention before we move on. And this has to be a coincidence, but if I was more conspiratorial in mind, I'd say it wasn't. Ana Villafana resigned from the U.S. Attorney's Office the day before Jeffrey Epstein died. Just, you know, one of those things. I don't know. August 9th, 2019.

1:23:57 Lydia: Would be so funny. That would be like, like the best movie ending.

1:23:59 Thomas: I want him to know it was me.

1:24:02 Lydia: I would love that so much. She would be more of a hero in my mind.

1:24:02 Matt: Yeah. That's right. She's Daredevil. Just...

1:24:04 Thomas: That'd be fucking awesome. Tell Lily, I want Lily to know it was me that would be the only yeah like I

1:24:10 Lydia: Perfect oh my god that would be amazing hollywood moment cinema cinema

1:24:14 Thomas: I mean like it's not crazy to me that like the it's funny how many different levels of thing and we talked about the conspiracy theories and and obviously like I am I don't know what to think after that you know first slide you showed us way back when um but it's also that he could have been killed for completely non -conspiratorial reasons.

1:24:38 Thomas: Like it just could have been revenge. It could have been, you know, when you have that many victims who have that many families, God knows, you know, could have been revenge could have been just somebody not liking pedophiles could have, you know, so there's like all kinds of levels. Even if you want to talk about like, maybe this wasn't a suicide and maybe it wasn't now that we read that. I don't know. It still wouldn't take you to therefore like Donald Trump had him killed or something. I mean that you'd need a whole lot of more evidence to tie it to that. And I don't see anything that indicates that at all. But we'll see what happens in the next three or four releases. The next several million files that we get. God.

1:25:18 Lydia: It's so crazy

1:25:20 Matt: So I just want to acknowledge the 11th Circuit case. This is a really good subject for another time. But this case, I just went back and read it today. I hadn't read it in a while. And this really jumped out at me, this one line as they're getting into it. So this was the victims, when they came forward to sue, to say that they had been denied their rights under the Crime Victims' Rights Act because they were not notified. And the court found, after the sentence we're about to read, had to find that they, in fact, did not have to be notified because there was no federal prosecution. But that was the whole point. It's a very circular thing, right? The whole point was to keep it out of federal court so that they wouldn't be notified. They weren't notified because it wasn't in federal court. And so you can see, here's what the court has to say about the case itself.

1:25:28 Thomas: Oops. Hmm.

1:25:56 Lydia: The facts underlying this case as we understand them are beyond scandalous they tell a tale of national disgrace okay

1:26:08 Matt: And that's the 11th Circuit speaking, and I think that's appropriate. The dissent in this case is well worth a read another time, but I think the dissent is absolutely correct. They say that there's no reason at all that the investigation stage that they should not be notifying victims about an intent to not prosecute or to kick it back to state. It's a really long decision, and I'd love to have an expert on victims' rights sometime to talk about it because there's just a lot here. But I just want to acknowledge that this case happened and that they got shorted again. They just got yet another bad deal here. So there is something being pursued right now, as of now, like literally now in New York, that might go a little further. But this was what happened in the 11th Circuit in New York. So yeah. So let's move on to our last piece here, and we can close it out. Is from Jeffrey Sloman. Jeff, whose BlackBerry mantle was using way back there.

1:26:59 Lydia: Man we get we get an op -ed from from Alan Dershowitz being like, there's no there there, you know, with Epstein files. Now we have to hear from another freaking guy on this defense team.

1:27:03 Thomas: Why? I think if it

1:27:10 Lydia: Tired of it. Or I guess, no, this is the prosecution.

1:27:10 Thomas: Were the 40s, we would

1:27:12 Matt: Prosecution.

1:27:12 Lydia: Sorry.

1:27:13 Thomas: Get op -eds by people running the camps. Like we would get, they'd be like, I'm a, you know, like this is by somebody who, uh, you know, works the door of Auschwitz. It's not as bad as they're making it out to be. What do you mean? Why would this be an op-ed that we would, oh my

1:27:23 Lydia: A day in the life. Day in the Life. No one wants this. No

1:27:31 Matt: I eat the food there all the time. Food's good. Yeah, Yeah, basically.

1:27:32 Lydia: One Wants this. Yeah it's

1:27:34 Thomas: Like what?

1:27:35 Matt: But we should take a quick look at this piece. Now, there's also a New York Times piece we don't have time to link to, but there's a New Yorke Times letter to the editor where his defense team writes in very indignantly to say when the New York times was pointing out that Alex Acosta gave them a very good deal saying what a terrible deal it was, really. It wasn't that good for him at all. But let's just take a click, click, quick look, click at this. I linked over to it on the Miami Herald piece. We can close that now that we've seen just how bad this deal was. I think it's worth taking a look at what Sloman says about it because he needs to defend himself. He knows that this is his reputation on the line and Alex Acosta's. 2019. So this is before Jeffrey Epstein is charged in the New York case, but they know things are building. They know that it's back in the news. Acosta said to resign. So, this is the official statement more or less.

1:28:14 Thomas: This is truly vapid response stuff here.

1:28:17 Lydia: Yeah by now you have probably formed some views on the Jeffrey Epstein case. Okay.

1:28:24 Thomas: Yeah, I have.

1:28:26 Lydia: You are, like me, repulsed by Epstein's conduct.

1:28:28 Thomas: Shut up.

1:28:29 Lydia: You probably also believe, as I do now, that more facts have emerged as I don't.

1:28:32 Matt: Sure have. More facts.

1:28:34 Thomas: As I do now that more facts have have emerged yeah

1:28:36 Matt: You knew the facts better than anybody.

1:28:38 Thomas: Remind me what was yeah what what was the okay

1:28:41 Matt: Sleiman, he was one of the main prosecutors. I think he was actually above Fofania. So he saw this.

1:28:44 Thomas: What about so what's the relation of him to that to the main guy with the relationship with lily sorry I'm losing track of I'm not gonna lily

1:28:54 Matt: They're all on the same team.

1:28:54 Thomas: Lydia

1:28:54 Lydia: Same team. Same team.

1:28:55 Thomas: Helps me same team okay are they the same level of thing or what

1:28:58 Matt: Menchel was the head of the criminal division, I believe, in Southern District of Florida at that point. But Sleimen was up there too.

1:28:58 Lydia: Not necessarily lend

1:29:03 Thomas: Did sloman do that we've seen oh

1:29:05 Matt: He was CC'd in all these.

1:29:06 Lydia: Matt's the Blackberry.

1:29:08 Matt: And he landed the Blackberry.

1:29:07 Thomas: Just lend the blackberry okay so there's nothing specific that we saw from him that was like bad shit or what okay

1:29:16 Lydia: Nothing that we've pulled for this. There could be something.

1:29:17 Thomas: Sorry I'm just so bad with names

1:29:19 Lydia: I don't know. But

1:29:19 Thomas: I mix them around

1:29:19 Matt: Definitely in here but but he was as familiar with the case as vilafani or anybody else so he's no excuse yeah

1:29:21 Thomas: So point is he could have just walked away slowly like this but he's gonna write op -eds defending how they was handled okay

1:29:31 Matt: Well he knows his name is associated with this case forever so he'S got to put something on the record I guess

1:29:35 Thomas: That's fair okay then

1:29:36 Lydia: You probably also believe, as I do now that more facts have emerged, that Epstein deserved harsher punishment than he ended up getting. Yeah than the zero. No one will argue seriously against these views. But based on the Miami Herald's perversion of justice series and the ensuing news coverage, you may also believe that well-connected lawyers corrupted now Secretary of Labor and then U .S. Attorney Alex Acosta and his team into giving Epstein a sweetheart deal. They did not. I would know. I was there.

1:29:43 Thomas: The nun but they also corrupted interrupted me into it. It wasn't just them. I don't, yeah. What is this going to be?

1:30:13 Lydia: It's just like so oblivious.

1:30:13 Matt: Jokes on you we were already corrupt it was fine don't worry only

1:30:17 Thomas: I, I, what is it? I have to continue this. Like I need to know what this argument is going to be.

1:30:20 Lydia: In the late 2000s, I worked as Alex's second in command at the U. S. Attorney's office.

1:30:25 Thomas: Are you familiar with a mind control ray? It's been developed. They had, they don't tell you about it, but they have one and it, we, that's, that'S it. That's the only thing.

1:30:31 Lydia: Turns out

1:30:34 Matt: In in florida

1:30:34 Lydia: He's like actually the alien guy from From the History Channel, like from the meme, like that's that's Jeff Slumman.

1:30:39 Thomas: That's The only thing that could come after this. There's nothing else that could kind of, uh, have

1:30:42 Lydia: The Epstein case came to our attention in 2006. The local authority with primary jurisdiction to hold Epstein accountable for his crimes, the Palm Beach County State Attorney's Office, was going to allow him to plead guilty to a misdemeanor and merely pay a fine.

1:30:55 Thomas: Wait, what?

1:30:55 Lydia: The local police rightly were outraged and brought the facts to us.

1:30:59 Matt: We briefly touched on this but there was It was.

1:31:01 Matt: Yeah, yeah. But that's a whole other story.

1:31:01 Lydia: After

1:31:02 Thomas: That's right. But you just said a second ago, they only turned it over. The state only turned It over on the theory that they were actually going to prosecute. So is that not true?

1:31:10 Matt: Yeah. These two officers, the investigators that were so incensed about this, they really believed that it was going to be federally prosecuted.

1:31:20 Lydia: Reviewing the case we were appalled stunningly the local prosecutor's resolution had not even acknowledged that epstein engaged in abhorrent sex acts with scores of children despite our shock we approached this case as federal prosecutors should approach every case with a steadfast commitment to truth

1:31:36 Thomas: Okay, to customer service, and making sure the person were prosecuting felt comfortable at all times yeah to

1:31:40 Matt: And good manners, yes.

1:31:41 Lydia: With a stedfast commitment to truth and a deep and abiding respect for the rights that our constitution and our laws afford to both victims and the accused

1:31:49 Thomas: Only perpetrators and not victims yeah yeah

1:31:52 Lydia: This is jack off motion you guys our priorities were to make sure epstein could not hurt anyone else while you failed abysmally and

1:31:53 Matt: That shock wore off pretty quick, huh?

1:32:02 Thomas: How

1:32:02 Matt: Yeah. That's why we stretch it out for another year.

1:32:06 Lydia: To compensate epstein's victims without re-traumatizing them failed again fail

1:32:10 Matt: No, well, that's why we didn't tell them.

1:32:10 Thomas: Could you say that with a how

1:32:11 Matt: We didn't want to traumatize them .We just didn'ttell them anything.

1:32:11 Lydia: Fail fail unbelievable scores

1:32:12 Thomas: Could You say that was a straight face because we know that he hurt probably more people after this right like like more than he had done heretofore yeah what okay by

1:32:20 Matt: Yeah, many more. And more internationally. And then

1:32:20 Lydia: Like Like, yeah. Our team worked diligently to build a federal case against Epstein.

1:32:31 Matt: We dropped it.

1:32:31 Thomas: Our team we mean the one person who actually gave a shit yeah we had one we had one on it we

1:32:32 Lydia: We mean the woman, yeah, that we then ignored. Throughout the investigation, we took care to be respectful of the pain Epstein's victims had endured. As we continued, however, it became clear that most of Epstein'S victims were terrified to cooperate against him.

1:32:49 Thomas: Didn't ask him but we just we got a vibe hey

1:32:51 Matt: And I can

1:32:52 Lydia: And instead of, like, offering protection or anything like that, we just said, oh, you're too scared. Okay, never mind. We'll just drop it. Cool.

1:32:59 Matt: Say this because this is all completely verifiable, but they were terrified because Alan Dershowitz hired people to follow them around and scare them and threaten them. That's all in the reports and the indictment. Yep, it's pretty bad.

1:33:08 Thomas: Isn't that like a like a crime that

1:33:09 Lydia: Like a crime? Yeah.

1:33:11 Matt: Yeah, you'd think.

1:33:12 Lydia: Some hired lawyers to avoid appearing before a grand jury. One of the key witnesses moved to Australia and refused to return calls from us. We also researched and discussed significant legal impediments to prosecuting what was, at heart, a local sex abuse case.

1:33:25 Matt: Local, local. He's interstate local.

1:33:27 Thomas: That I love that phrasing we also did research on our own defined like impediments um to track down any impediment we could to to make sure we did some great research on that yeah we found so so many to

1:33:37 Lydia: Put it in the report. Put it on the report! Given the obstacles we faced in fashioning a robust federal prosecution, we decided to negotiate a resolution. The only way a resolution could ever be palatable, though, was if we met our two objectives, to protect others from Epstein and

1:33:53 Thomas: Do fucking nothing and to suck those are that's it

1:33:56 Lydia: To compensate Epstein's victims without subjecting them to additional trauma.

1:34:02 Matt: Again, we didn't tell them anything, thing. So it's perfect. No trauma.

1:34:05 Lydia: To those ends, we demanded that Epstein, one, plead guilty to a felony in state court that reflected his true conduct, two, agree to incarceration for up to 18 months, three, register as a sex offender, and four pay each known victim between $150 ,000 and $250 ,000 through a streamlined mechanism designed to avoid re -victimization.

1:34:10 Matt: His true conduct, his true conduct. Oh, they spent eight months trying to get out of that too. Yeah.

1:34:29 Thomas: Jesus he

1:34:30 Lydia: We genuinely felt that these conditions met our two objectives. We told Epstein that unless he and the local authorities accepted our demands, we would indict and try him on federal charges. They agreed and we did not pursue a federal case.

1:34:41 Thomas: And the local authorities okay

1:34:45 Matt: That's true. They didn't.

1:34:46 Lydia: Many feel that this was not a harsh enough punishment. Make no mistake, I know that our resolution was not perfect.

1:34:50 Thomas: But they had us by the balls you know they just really they just really had us

1:34:58 Lydia: Matt had a ski trip he had to get to with Epstein in about a year and a half, so we needed to make sure that happened, and that Epstein was able to use the resources at his disposal to exploit its weaknesses. That said, some have mistakenly suggested that our office kowtowed to Epstein's high -priced defense lawyers, or worse, that his lawyers intimidated us into submission. The Herald's Perversion of Justice series made a strong case that he should have gone to jail for much longer, but never explained or substantiated its accusation that we schemed with Epstein's lawyers to avoid that result. The team...

1:35:29 Matt: So he didn't go to, I'm sorry. That sentence is really funny to me.

1:35:32 Lydia: Please.

1:35:35 Matt: They're right. He should have gone to jail for much longer. It's not that we schemed with the lawyers to avoid the result. We just didn't get that result. What?

1:35:41 Thomas: What is it then tell me what it is I want to know I want to know what it I take

1:35:42 Matt: How did that happen?

1:35:44 Lydia: The... The team that worked the case was clear -eyed and dedicated. I have not reviewed the case file in more than 12 years, but I...

1:35:52 Matt: It's a good dodge.

1:35:53 Thomas: My word for it I

1:35:54 Matt: I've forgotten about most of this.

1:35:55 Thomas: Remember the vibe of it being like we We did great.

1:35:57 Lydia: I'm going to go ahead and say that Miami Herald has reviewed things like more recently than you have at this point.

1:36:01 Matt: And talked to a lot of people, in

1:36:03 Lydia: But I know in my heart that we based our actions solely on our independent interpretation of the facts and the law. You can disagree with the result we reached, but our whole team, from Alex on down the chain of command, always acted with integrity and in good faith. I feel a special obligation to defend Alex from the unfair criticism he has received after the Herald published perversion of justice. There was no public outcry for Alex to withdraw his candidacy for Secretary of Labor when, a month before his Senate confirmation hearing, the Herald featured an earlier article about the Epstein case. To the contrary, Senators

1:36:09 Matt: My heart.

1:36:38 Thomas: What does that have to do? Go ahead.

1:36:40 Lydia: Barely gave Alex the opportunity to discuss the case during his testimony and went on to confirm him by a relatively wide margin.

1:36:46 Thomas: So because senators didn't do their fucking job either, that's great. So that means we can't be mad.

1:36:51 Matt: He's blaming Julie K. Brown for her incredible work on this, for her many years of reporting. He said, she did too good a job. Nobody noticed when we published one article and then you guys had to publish a series and look what happens. What?

1:36:56 Lydia: Again, blaming a woman. Cool. Yeah, I'm

1:37:05 Matt: That's journalism.

1:37:04 Thomas: Yeah, this just means the Senate didn't do their job. That has neither here nor there.

1:37:10 Lydia: Sorry. Sorry, the way that this is set up too, that they barely gave Alex the opportunity, like that he was like chomping at the bit.

1:37:10 Matt: It's still true.

1:37:16 Lydia: He was going to tell everything. He Was going to share his perspective. No, he was not. Absolutely not. Unless they grilled him and they didn't. Now with the Herald's series serving as kindling, an outstanding public servant is at risk of becoming collateral damage in Washington's latest polarized convocation.

1:37:15 Thomas: He was gonna talk about it. Yeah.

1:37:29 Matt: Kindling.

1:37:36 Thomas: I don't think this is polarized. I think pretty much everybody is like, fuck this guy that knows about it, yeah

1:37:42 Matt: What's the other poll here?

1:37:43 Lydia: I won't let that happen without first being heard. Okay.

1:37:48 Matt: I'm sorry, just blaming journalism.

1:37:50 Lydia: Old white man.

1:37:51 Matt: Yeah. Thomas, you mentioned the Spotlight series that brought down obviously a bunch of priests and Catholic church from the Boston Globe. And I can imagine a similar kind of thing of like, everything was fine until you guys noticed what we were doing doing with kids like they went to fire a bunch of priests it's really inconvenient right

1:38:02 Lydia: Yeah, man.

1:38:01 Thomas: Like the pathetic argument there's one article and the senators didn't care so this is unfair so what I don't like what is that argument trace the logic of that argument for me please mr whatever his name is

1:38:09 Matt: And and then you ran a series and there's yeah no it's it's so bad they just

1:38:18 Lydia: Jeff Sloman. Yeah and we have to close it out with, of course, this piece. I am a lifelong Democrat.

1:38:23 Thomas: Here we go I don'

1:38:26 Lydia: My personal political views do not align with With Alex's views, and I did not vote for the president for whom Alex now serves as secretary of labor, but I know the leader and the person that Alex is. He is an honorable and decent man. Nothing about the Epstein case changes my view of his character. I hope that our leaders take my experiences into account as his stellar career and reputation hang in the balance. And if you scroll down, you can see a little picture of Mr. Sloman, Mr. Old White Guy.

1:38:26 Thomas: T care okay

1:38:53 Matt: Yeah looking yeah like a tv lawyer I gotta say that

1:38:56 Thomas: Looks like someone you'd borrow of blackberry from he's resting I have an extra blackberry face he's

1:39:01 Lydia: Fully charged to. Yeah. Like.

1:39:04 Matt: Guy doesn't deserve a blackberry

1:39:05 Thomas: Got like two blackberries of the photo like in his pockets like god so dumb

1:39:10 Matt: And I mean at minimum at minimum alex acosta was a terrible manager who did not review anything in front of him and just kind of let people do what they were going to do. He says in his transcript, in his interview, he says he just never reviewed any of it. That's the best he can do.

1:39:18 Thomas: Hey man I'll believe it I'll believe it yeah I like honestly that is slightly more comforting than whatever else was going on if you're just like hey man I suck at my job I didn't care wasn't too I mostly I was was watching shows at my desk to be honest with you I was just kind of you know they had just invented twitter or whatever 2007 yeah then then they came out with youtube like what am I gonna work come on this is right around that key time you know I started getting bored with facebook a little bit so you know because that's three years old at this point but

1:39:36 Lydia: I was more interested in going to conferences. Is. Yeah. Yeah, I was hooked. Yeah yeah I

1:39:57 Matt: It's not like we're ever going to hear the name Jeffrey Epstein again.

1:39:58 Lydia: Got sucked into social media.

1:39:58 Thomas: Like yeah yeah but like I I could I I feel like that's plausible like that'S the most plausible thing but then he's, he makes it worse with all the lies he told, you know, with all the bullshit about the, the intelligence, which is it like pick a thing. You got to pick one reason. Otherwise I don't trust you. If you pick seven different reasons for why you sucked and they're all like conflicting, then you're just lying. I don't like, you know, which isn't.

1:40:17 Matt: The interview is pretty bad. After they signed the non -prosecution agreement, they all went out to breakfast. They had a like at breakfast. And he claims he doesn't remember it. And Volofania clearly remembers this happening because of course you'd remember it after all this work you did. The defense attorneys take the US attorney out to breakfast after this ridiculous deal. He says it just happened to be because he was speaking at some event and they just grabbed him and went out to breakfast. But stuff like that. He just doesn't Remember having breakfast. I mean, maybe I'd want to forget having breakfast with Alan Dershowitz too. I don't know. But just, yeah.

1:40:54 Thomas: I just say no, just, you can just be like, no, thank you. Pedophile and pedophiles advocate.

1:40:58 Matt: I'm going

1:41:01 Lydia: Man I

1:41:01 Matt: To to take this muffin to go. I'm good. Yeah.

1:41:04 Thomas: This is, man, there's got to be more, right? I mean, because I still feel like I don't properly understand it. Well, okay, Matt, everything you've taken in, what is your current theory of why this prosecution sucked so bad? Like, what do you think it is?

1:41:07 Matt: Oh, there's so much more. I think it's because he paid a lot of people a lot money, some of the best attorneys in the country, who had a lot of pull. And also, I mean, we saw those emails before. And I think, it's very interesting to go back to the last Major Epstein episode we did in December, and to kind of match it up against this, where you see the relentlessness. And that was just a sample of the relentlessness of just the constant wearing down of like, every little word of non -prosecution agreement, of the constant follow -ups and the constant calls. And they reference some of these emails here. But I think that at some point, you've got other stuff to do, other people to deal with. That, again, is one of the more charitable explanations of all of this, but I also think that you've just got a guy with a lot of money and power, and it's much easier to get this kind of a deal in America.

1:42:03 Lydia: Am on J mail by the way because they they said that they did update with with the new volume of that's

1:42:10 Thomas: Is that the thing that I found that was like, be logged into Epstein's email? Yeah.

1:42:12 Lydia: It's the Gmail kind of thing. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

1:42:12 Matt: Of course, the only update after this weekend when I've already done all this work, but all right. Thanks, guys.

1:42:19 Thomas: Well, we have more to do, Matt. We have more to do.

1:42:20 Lydia: So, oh, yeah? I'm sure there's so much more we're going to do. I just searched Matthew Menchel. There's so many emails with him going through 2017, you know, that there's an email from Leslie Groff saying, do you want Darren and Dyke at meeting with Menchil today? So now we have, you now, like, that and that was in 2017. it's just it's so many there was one I searched sloman because I was like oh I wonder if he's in here too somehow and epstein emailed um menschel this is in 2012 and it just says sloman for dessert and I don't know what that means I'm still kind of poking around there's so much here But man, yeah.

1:42:37 Thomas: It sounds like it was related to that one that we saw, kind of.

1:43:01 Thomas: Yeah, there's a lot. Well this is horrible. It's horrible. We're going to keep tuning. I'm left with more questions, you know. And we even touch on Trump in this one, really. I mean a little bit, but like there's plenty more to talk about regarding that, I'm sure. Are we scheduled for any more file dumps or are they claiming this is it?

1:43:23 Matt: So they are reassessing. Potentially, there could be more. They had to pull back a bunch and that was about half of what was supposed to be remaining. I think Congress is going to keep hammering on it. As I said, there's a bill drafted to only address the financial releases. And that's going to be a lot harder to go through, but forensically to try to figure out the money, try to follow that. But yeah, there is definitely more.

1:43:28 Thomas: Pull back a bit. Yeah. Oh yeah. It involves math. Okay. I

1:43:44 Matt: And it's only been about a week as the time we're recording this, and there's 3 million documents and thousands of hours of everything else.

1:43:44 Thomas: Can help you with that. Yeah, there's going to be more to come. This is not meant to be a, yeah.

1:43:52 Matt: And I'm just kind of in the dark, just randomly searching things. I didn't have the benefit of the Gmail thing, which I'll start playing with now. Because the Epstein Library DOJ site is very hard to use. It's very clunky in government fashion. But the Gmail thing is a beautiful little Gmail type layout, so you can see what his inbox looked like. So worth a look.

1:44:11 Thomas: Oh boy. All right. Well, thanks so much, Matt, for that hard work. Lydia as well. Thanks everyone for listening. Uh, thanks most of all to the patrons making this happen. patreon.com/law. If you appreciate, uh, all the hard work that's being put into this, you know, maybe go throw us a buck or two over there at patreon .com slash law. And thanks for listening and we'll see you next time.

1:44:37 Clip: This has been Opening Arguments, produced by Thomas and Lydia Smith, with editing help from Peter Baird. The intro is by Thomas Smith. This outro is by Matt Cameron. Support the show at patreon .com slash law. Contact us through Patreon or openarguments at gmail .com. Make sure to follow our blue sky at OpenArgs. But most of all, please share the show. Thanks for listening.