Alan Dershowitz Thinks the Age of Consent Is Too High — and Other Epstein Creeps, in Their Own Words

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 Vapid Response Wednesday. Ah, I'm Thomas. That over there is real -life iMmigration attorney Matt Cameron. How you doing, Matt?

0:00:19 Matt: Right. Back from the Virgin Islands, back to two feet of snow, feeling good. Back to work.

0:00:24 Thomas: He had to go clear the evidence of him being in the files. I think he's done that.

0:00:30 Thomas: Oh man. Yeah. We're, we're talking more Epstein, but in a slightly different, well, yeah, we are going to go through some of the excuses and takes of people who are in the files, which is I think more fun.

0:00:44 Matt: And some of my favorite and worst and creepiest responses to having been outed in the files. We've got some real gems here and a couple of emails we've looked at too. But yeah, some fallout stuff, doing some fall out.

0:00:53 Thomas: Fantastic. All right. And of course, joined by producer Lydia Smith. How are you doing?

0:00:58 Lydia: Hello pretty good I was not expecting to have a unabomber connection as part of our discussions today but we are going to have an unabomer connection um so one of the victims we'll be talking about uh found himself in the epstein files gladly

0:01:12 Thomas: It'd be funny if it was the Unabomber was in the piles, like from prison, like, God, what can't these people do?

0:01:16 Lydia: I'm pretty sure I think someone like looked it up and he's like explicitly not in the files anywhere like not even his name I could could be wrong but I feel like I it was like you know all these horrible horrible people and yeah and it's like well ted kaczynski's not even in there so yeah

0:01:23 Thomas: I mean, it's, he was, he's been in prison for, wait he's still alive right yeah yeah

0:01:31 Matt: Unabomber cleared of sex trafficking. Okay. Good, good.

0:01:33 Thomas: Didn't take forever to catch I might be mixing up my my my unibombers but uh didn't it take forever to catch him it'd be funny if he was also gallivanting with epstein wait

0:01:41 Matt: It was his brother.

0:01:42 Lydia: Sacramento california right wasn't he based he was mailing stuff out of sacramento

0:01:44 Matt: His brother turned him in after after seeing the manifesto.

0:01:45 Thomas: What oh his brother that's right he was he was like a professor right or something or some sort of I don't know anyway every other every other person in the epstein files is apparently a professor of some kind like a lot of academics, a lot of people in government.

0:01:51 Matt: He was very well -educated. Yeah, he was, yeah. Anyway. Yes, a lot of these. That's right.

0:02:01 Thomas: Yeah, I can't wait to go through more of it. Why don't you give us a little more preview before we go to our first break?

0:02:06 Matt: Sure. We're going to start off with an amused douche from one of our favorite douches, Alan Dershowitz, speaking of law professors.

0:02:10 Lydia: Think

0:02:12 Thomas: Really, he's like the inaugural Amuse -Douche. It should be renamed the Alan Dershowitz Award for Amuse Douches.

0:02:14 Lydia: So yeah Yeah.

0:02:22 Thomas: The esteemed Alan Dershowitz Amuse Deuce chair.

0:02:20 Matt: Yeah our guide to, and I don't think anybody listening or watching needs to be reminded of the many connections that Dershowitz had to abstain, we'll talk about. But we're going to check out in particular a 1997 op -ed, which is, it's not aged well. It's aged about as badly as anything can age that they could have written. And it's also legally incorrect. So that's fun too.

0:02:43 Thomas: Have we mentioned to you, Matt, that when, when we went on God awful movies, we did, um, no safe spaces and Dershowitz was in that briefly. And he managed to say in three seconds, two of the funniest things that don't age well at all. He said, did we tell you this already? I forget. Oh yeah.

0:02:57 Lydia: My God. Yeah. I don't think so.

0:03:00 Thomas: He says, uh, one thing he just, again, offhanded remark, if you want pleasure, go get a massage is one of the things he said in response to like, these kids these days are too coddled at college, you know, in the ink saves vases.

0:03:09 Lydia: Needing safe spaces. Yeah yeah.

0:03:11 Matt: From an old Russian lady, of course. No one else.

0:03:14 Thomas: Keep, keep taking your underpants off.

0:03:15 Lydia: So good.

0:03:15 Thomas: And then the other thing was, and this was in 20, what, 18 or something, 19?

0:03:19 Lydia: 2018 was when it was filmed. Yeah it's

0:03:21 Thomas: And he was about the, about the yeah, Charlottesville marchers. He's like, I'm not worried about some, some people with tiki torches, a handful of Nazis. Why, I don't know. I'm, I, I I'm he so he's a constant source of horribly aged takes

0:03:25 Lydia: Charlottesville rally. A handful full of Nazis. Yeah. Yeah, I wonder

0:03:41 Matt: Prophet, Alan Dershowitz. All right. Fantastic. Of course, then we've got a number of other guys to take a look at. Of course they're men. This time, as most people.

0:03:49 Thomas: That's so weird yeah there

0:03:50 Matt: Yeah. Yeah, we did have a couple of ladies.

0:03:51 Lydia: Why. Yeah yeah.

0:03:51 Thomas: Was that one one woman who got oh by the way because I think we'll go ahead and claim credit because of the work done by lydia uh was was fired or had to leave at least step down yeah

0:04:00 Lydia: She stepped down. Kathy Rumler. We don't know you know the conversations that happened in the background but she's gone now from Goldman Sachs.

0:04:04 Thomas: There is justice in the world she probably is stepping down to a 20 million dollar payout for what you know but you know at least she had to step down that's something man what a weird world um okay well uh I'm excited to get to it we'll take our first break and we of course have to thank our hall of famers our patrons at patreon.com/law they make the show happen they get the lot awful movies which I keep I know I've I've previewed a lot but it is so funny I I can't wait till the next one but this one with uh uh what's her name's law show kim kardashian yeah Yeah. Kim Kardashian. I'm told people know who she is. Kim Kardashians

0:04:36 Lydia: Kim Kardashian. I

0:04:41 Thomas: Law show.

0:04:42 Lydia: Know it's a name that doesn't really stick with you yeah yeah you

0:04:44 Thomas: It doesn't. Um, it, but that show does, I will remember that show forever. The two slash three episodes that I watched of that show

0:04:48 Lydia: Know I I saw a patron say that they got sucked in and they just ended up watching almost the entire season and I'm like okay maybe I'm gonna do that too it's so dumb

0:04:58 Thomas: I mean, it's so bad. It's so bad that it does. And rarely does anything do this for me. It does almost get good. That's so bad. Like it's that I it's man, it's amazing.

0:05:08 Matt: Let me know, because I'm not watching.

0:05:09 Lydia: And a second season.

0:05:10 Matt: Yeah right. Yeah second season, exactly.

0:05:11 Thomas: Matt's got like, Matt's got like lawyer stuff to do. That's got like immigrants in detention to help. And we're like, no, do you take it? Take a load off. Watch this horrible Kim Kardashian show.

0:05:19 Lydia: Kick your feet up.

0:05:21 Thomas: Yeah, you don't have anything to do?

0:05:22 Lydia: Yeah,

0:05:22 Matt: I mean, we might have to watch episode one of season two, just to see. Just to see, we might need to revisit.

0:05:26 Lydia: To see where it goes.

0:05:26 Thomas: Man. Well, I can't watch that if I'm not gonna watch the whole first season.

0:05:30 Thomas: No, but it was so much fun. A lot of movies. That'S where where we make fun of law shows and TV and stuff at shows and law shows and movies. And sometimes we make a better one. You know, we craft a better One out of actual law just for fun, hypothetically. And that's, that's on patreon.com/law at that $2 level and above. We've got to thank our hall of famers though. This is the $5 level above for at least a month. These folks make the show happen. The show would not exist without these amazing folks and they give you a free shout out every single week. Uh, as long as we're doing Vavid Response video, which we do most weeks.

0:06:02 Thomas: So thank you too. My house is a mess, but I read a lot of books. Yeah. Dominic Gillespie, Matthew Cutler, autistic Twitch streamer, Vetinari for America 2028, one man, one vote.

0:06:01 Lydia: Most weeks, yeah exactly.

0:06:14 Thomas: Gotta get it right. Alec, unremarkable. Your mom fell in a hole. It's so funny. Amina,

0:06:14 Lydia: Oh, we have something good coming up regarding the hole.

0:06:22 Matt: Yes. The Hole Club. We love The Hole.

0:06:23 Thomas: Regarding the whole, we've got an update on our whole Donna Treadway, mother of inheritance, protect trans kids and document everything with ice. We'll want exhibits for the regular trials, but I'd still prefer show trials. Oh, this was the show trial. Yeah. Nice. I love it. Love the update. Well done patron Mike Lapinsky. No devil lived on. Wow.

0:06:45 Thomas: That's a, that's a that's as much of a palidrome as it is not true. Cyanitis, normalized bidirectional spooning, Grey Pouponderance of the Evidence. That is a new one.

0:06:45 Lydia: Philosophical that's

0:06:58 Thomas: That really stupid. I love it. Gray preponderence of the yeah that's awesome apprentice of adventure charlie kelly attorney at bird law probably a real person and nick fish love nick fish and that's just the first third so we get to have much more fun later on all right we'll take that first break and then we'll uh we'll get to the the esteemed alan dershowitz award for ms douche I'm right, we're back and here's yet another slideshow, more Epstein stuff, I guess. And

0:06:56 Matt: Awesome

0:06:58 Lydia: Good yep nice yeah yeah Olivia.

0:07:27 Thomas: Then what do you call those things? Emoticon type that what, but the old kind that's just tech

0:07:33 Lydia: That's an emoticon. Yeah.

0:07:28 Matt: You it's a classic that I still do those all the time colon slash I

0:07:38 Thomas: Oh okay I

0:07:35 Lydia: That's That's what it, those are emoticons. Yeah. Emoji is the image ones.

0:07:40 Thomas: I had a friend who did them and I I didn't like at all register them like I remember one day yeah I just didn't I don't look at I didn't care I was like oh whatever and one I remember One Day like years years into our friendship he was like do you even like pay attention I donno why like he just asked me I was like no I literally my brain my adhd brain is like that's part of punctuation I dono doesn't matter but uh but now that I think about it back then you know we used to have to walk uphill both ways and hand type out uh the faces I I say we I didn't but like people other people did type out like the yeah that's that's cool it's a better time you know

0:08:14 Matt: Did it all the time. Kids will never know.

0:08:16 Lydia: Helps to communicate tone. I think they serve a purpose.

0:08:19 Thomas: It does I actually agree but um yeah the fact that people had to type out and they got really complex too people started started drawing pictures of them oh

0:08:25 Lydia: They they did. Yeah.

0:08:19 Matt: But colon slash, that's a classic for just a little kind of not sure about this kind of face. That's what we got.

0:08:32 Thomas: Is that what that means all right I might need you to translate these oh yeah because there was like the winky face that's a good point there's like the winky face one that's because the yeah the semic semic oh yeah semicolon that does it okay what are we here to discuss this is our slide show today uh and then slide two I don't want to do this anymore but here we are oh I think someone's quitting live on air this

0:08:36 Lydia: Matt is translating for you. Oh my gosh. Oof. Semicolon and the parentheses. Yeah?

0:08:39 Matt: All right. Yes. Thanks as always to Olivia for throwing these together and my direction here.

0:08:57 Thomas: Is olivia's resignation letter okay guy.

0:09:00 Lydia: That's really what the slides are, yeah?

0:09:02 Matt: She's been in the sex sex trafficking minds, unfortunately, going through these horrible emails and other things for me, for all of us.

0:09:10 Thomas: All right. It was funny. And then you turned it dark, Matt.

0:09:12 Matt: So let's... Always appreciate it. But let's check out this little excerpt here. We didn't talk about this email. I just wanted to mention it before we get started. Yeah.

0:09:19 Thomas: Next one. Oh, okay.

0:09:20 Lydia: It's so good.

0:09:21 Matt: Yeah, this is Epstein writing to Larry Summers. Larry Summer's making a cameo here. Yeah?

0:09:26 Lydia: Trump, Trump. Yeah. Trump, borderline insane. Dersh, a few feet further from the border, but not by much.

0:09:33 Thomas: Oh my God. Can you imagine famous?

0:09:37 Lydia: Ouch.

0:09:38 Thomas: I mean, this happens every time, but it's funny to think about every time. World's most famous villain, pedophile, piece of shit that everybody actively hates talking shit on you and being like this guy.

0:09:46 Lydia: And also he's not wrong. That's

0:09:50 Thomas: No, that's the thing. He's not wrong.

0:09:50 Lydia: The other thing. Yeah yeah.

0:09:51 Thomas: I'm sure Dershowitz can be like, oh, you know, he could shake it off like that guy. You can't trust his opinion I don't know man when it comes to like knowing things about you I think I can trust his opinion oh

0:09:54 Lydia: Well he's a criminal you you know? So yeah. Yeah.

0:10:03 Matt: And this is 2018, about seven months before he's arrested. So yeah, we're good. Yeah. So let's check out a few feet from the border what that looks like in this 2015 interview with Dershowitz is revealed to have been on the flight logs. And I just wanted to remind everybody sort of, and of course, I remember just to remind anybody just catching up, Alan Dershouitz represented Jeffrey Epstein for many years, but he was also, and he admitted this in print, a close friend and spent a lot of time with him, but also denied a lot things. And so we'll talk about what he denies and everything else when we we get to the rest, but let's just watch this video and you can assess his demeanor and his mood as he's being asked these questions. It's really something.

0:10:08 Thomas: There's a few for further from the border yeah okay here's our moose do sure we go let's see oh

0:10:42 Clip: Gawker has analyzed the flight logs of Jeffrey Epstein. They say that whereas you've suggested you always travel in the company of your wife. I never said that. I said I generally travel. My wife loves to come with me. I love to travel with her. We're leaving tomorrow night for a trip to a foreign destination.

0:10:58 Thomas: To go to epstein island go right back there

0:11:00 Clip: She's with me when I speak. I like her to come mit me. She doesn't come with m on every trip. She was with me on two trips. Let me at least finish the question, because as they point out, They say that according to the manifests, your name appears but never does her name appear. On the same flights where Alan Dershowitz was flying, you get the likes of Hazel, Claire, and Tatiana.

0:11:08 Lydia: A gang sign. Oh,

0:11:09 Matt: What was that?

0:11:19 Lydia: Okay.

0:11:19 Clip: Do you know any of those three women? Yes, I know Tatiana, she was about 25 years old, she Was Jeffrey Epstein's girlfriend. She was a serious person. The other two names are unfamiliar, they're probably the stewardesses. I was never on the airplane with anybody who looked underage or even close to it. If I had ever been in the presence of Jeffrey Epstein with anybody who looked underage, I would have left immediately and never walked back in that house.

0:11:15 Thomas: That's very curious oh okay oh oh my god I

0:11:44 Clip: I don't do things like that. I brought my family to their house. I brought family to the island. I brought grandchildren to his house after these alleged acts occurred. Can you imagine me bringing my grandchildren to the scene of the crime where there would be witnesses who might say, oh, that's the man? It's ridiculous. It never happened. Did you ever fly on Jeffrey Epsteins' plane with former President Clinton? No, I didn't. But I flew with somebody, my nephew, going to see an astronaut launching. I flew avec my wife twice, my daughter twice, I can prove it, notwithstanding any manifests. I flew mit legal team. I flew to a dinner with Shimon Peres and Senator Glenn. But I never, ever flew with any young women, and I certainly didn't have sex on an airplane. I am not a member of the mile-high club. That's just not me

0:11:44 Thomas: I trust you here seems to not be in the flight logs oh

0:12:40 Matt: Very normal interview, just doing fine. Just totally normal responses to normal questions.

0:12:42 Lydia: Very intense. Wow.

0:12:47 Matt: Yeah, I just thought that was a particularly fun one, the franticism there. Some interesting things there.

0:12:51 Thomas: My God look his 25 year old girlfriend was a serious person the other two women who have names that very much sound kind of like stripper sex worker adjacent names James don't know him. They're probably also very serious people. I don't.

0:12:58 Lydia: Hazel, yeah no

0:13:01 Matt: Not serious. Well, I don't take 16 -year -olds seriously. So, yeah, right. Yeah. So again, I'm legally obligated to remind everybody that Virginia Jeffrey, and I'm actually reading her book right now. I finally have gotten to it. It's quite a read. It's really intense. I'd certainly recommend it, but it's a tough read. But Virginia Jeffrey did specifically say that she had been trafficked to Jeffrey Epstein, excuse me, to Ellen Dershowitz about six times from 2000 to 2002. Now she took that back after prolonged litigation in which which Dershowitz sued not only her, but sued David Boies, the lawyer who he hated.

0:13:09 Lydia: One looked underage yeah

0:13:19 Thomas: My bad.

0:13:39 Matt: And she was forced after some time to issue a statement in which she said she could have been mistaken and misidentified him as someone else, which seems unlikely.

0:13:45 Thomas: I don'T trust that whatsoever. We've seen the inside dirty work that he does of just constant haranguing, harangue, haranging. I mean, it'll wear anyone out.

0:13:54 Matt: And when you read about what he did, what the team did, to have people followed around and called and investigated, yes,

0:13:59 Thomas: If tell you this, if it even worked on a bunch of federal prosecutors who should have had all the power in that situation who should have no fear of whatever. Tell me it's not going to work on somebody who's facing down the threat of that much money. Just how much it costs. I can tell you from personal experience, how much It costs and how scary it is to be on the other end of the legal system. Uh, and on any end of it, I guess really, and that that wouldn't be able to wear someone down. Who's already kind of vulnerable. I mean, there's no way I just don't put any faith than that yeah

0:14:29 Lydia: A way to prolong her abuse by these men right like it's just very very clear and I don't blame anyone who just kind of reaches a point where they can't do it anymore yeah

0:14:39 Matt: And the fact that the statement was that I may have misidentified, I mean, imagine misidentifying Alan Dershowitz, especially if you have allegedly had an intimate contact with him. I actually went back and watched the Netflix documentary, rewatched a little bit, and he actually, in his interview on that, he says very carefully, yeah, Filthy Rich, we actually, while we were, we realized we were in the Virgin Islands, we just watched the episode about the island since we were a few miles away.

0:14:55 Lydia: Is this filthy rich is that one's yeah I never watched it yeah related

0:14:57 Thomas: Are we gonna watch we should watch that yeah

0:15:03 Matt: And he says in a very artfully crafted statement, and he says, I never had sex with anyone related to Jeffrey Epstein. That's a very lawyerly way to say related to him. That was not the allegation. He wasn't his cousin.

0:15:12 Thomas: Vis -a -vis jeffrey epstein and what related yeah yeah fucking guy boy the freeze frame is perfect too we should actually keep that up this is he is resting I definitely had sex with someone related to jeffree epstein face oh

0:15:16 Lydia: Blood relations yeah weird

0:15:20 Matt: I mean, I'm not

0:15:26 Lydia: That's the thumbnail yeah

0:15:35 Matt: Going to paraphrase too much more, but people should go back and watch that episode, The Island, because it also has a great summary of the plea deal and of the Filthy Rich documentary. There's a great juxtaposition of Dershowitz talking and then Virginia Jeffrey talking about him, where he's basically he's daring her to say the thing and then she says the thing. But, you know, again, I have to say officially, officially, she has signed the statement and she's now passed, unfortunately. But she said that she had misidentified that as the official legal outcome of those proceedings. So we cannot say that this actually happened. We can just show you a video of Alan Dershowitz very normally denying it. Um so

0:15:51 Thomas: We have to watch that shit yeah it could have been some other pierogi loving fucking dershowitz ass guy like who else is that gonna be yeah it's just it's

0:16:16 Lydia: Dershowitz.

0:16:17 Matt: He spent a lot of time with jeffrey epstein so that's at the very least we can we know that's true and he's acknowledged it so a lot time around his house a lot of time around us his properties knew what he was up to and of course defended him and of course got him a deal which included all future uh possible co -conspirators which may or may not include alan dershowitz again allegedly may or might not include so let's take a look at the next one here I got just a reminder he was in the flight logs 11 times that's what he he was being asked about. So just a quick excerpt there.

0:16:20 Thomas: Back

0:16:46 Matt: Little pointers there.

0:16:46 Lydia: A visual reminder. Mm hmm.

0:16:47 Thomas: See oh that's impossible to read okay uh zoom

0:16:51 Matt: But you can take it on faith that these arrows there are at least some examples of him on the flight logs. Pretty regular, frequent flyer.

0:16:52 Thomas: Zoom in a bunch 96 wow hmm

0:17:01 Matt: Yeah. He's known him a long time. He did know him a long time, so yeah. So yeah, that was our amused douche, though. That was Alan Dershowitz, again, just being normal about his Epstein connections and Epstein flights. And yeah, the flight logs are really something to look at. Yeah, I'd never looked at flight logs before this. Never had to think about it.

0:17:02 Thomas: Go in wow I'm out of that okay

0:17:25 Matt: So let's go on to the piece I really wanted to feature, which is Alan Dershowitz in 1997. That's on the next slide. And yeah, the title really speaks for itself.

0:17:36 Thomas: All right yikes okay yeah do we even need yeah how much more need be said justice

0:17:45 Matt: This is a 1997 editorial in the LA Times, and I think it's worth reading its entirety because, again, I am not a Harvard Law professor. It's not what I'm here for, but I think I've got a better handle on this subject because I don't have any interest in changing statutory rape laws.

0:18:03 Thomas: Why does it say is that the topic like the justice if a 16 year old can choose abortion she should be able to choose to have sex oh yeah sure Sure. That makes sense.

0:18:06 Matt: Yeah. It's just like this subject. She's maybe choosing to have an abortion because she did not choose to have sex. That seems very possible. Maybe we should reserve that right. Yeah, let's take a look at Alamna Dershowitz.

0:18:23 Lydia: All right. Although the most recent survey shows a slight decrease in teenage sex in the United States, it confirms the reality that the crime of statutory rape is rampant. According to the National Survey of Family Growth, nearly one quarter of the women surveyed said they had sex before their 15th birthday. An additional 16 .5 % said they were between 15 and 16, and another 16 .7 % said THEY WERE BETWEEN 16 AND 17.

0:18:48 Thomas: Wait, does that necessarily make it statutory if they're having sex with other people that age? Is that still?

0:18:53 Matt: Very good question, Thomas, because he's really going to dodge that. There's a big difference, and we'll talk about this when we get to the legal stuff here. But obviously, most states, including Massachusetts, chooses to make a distinction between people of similar ages engaging in activity and people older.

0:19:06 Thomas: Especially because who would be the statutory rapist in a consensual 15, 15 year old, 16, 16 year old.

0:19:11 Matt: It is possible in some states, unfortunately.

0:19:12 Thomas: Oh yeah. I mean, I'm sure it's possible. I'm just saying like, if we're talking about all the cases of that and he's trying to make the case that this proves there's a whole bunch of statutory rape. I don't doubt that there is a lot of statutory rate, but you couldn't take break this number and assume it's all that.

0:19:13 Lydia: Interesting.

0:19:27 Thomas: Like it, like the, like I would, I don't have a lot of faith in humanity, but given that, you know, I was in high school once I would assume the ratio of just high schoolers having sex with each other to people being statutorily raped. I would hope that ratio is more the first thing I would think it's like pretty, pretty wildly more the first thing just based on numbers and how people and how high school kids are, but geez, that

0:19:27 Lydia: Mm -hm. Yeah.

0:19:49 Matt: I think he's coming out the gate trying to say that because 16 % of women are sexually active before 15 or 17 or whatever, that maybe that's okay to change the law. I think that's what he's going for, allegedly.

0:20:00 Thomas: He He and Jeffrey can go ahead and, you know, have their turn.

0:20:02 Lydia: Oh, boy. It's Matt's job, allegedly. Every state makes it a serious crime for anyone to have sex with another person below a given age. The age of consent varies from state to state. In some, it is as high as 18.

0:20:16 Thomas: How and why do I know this? No reason to. Don't ask. I didn't realize he was the original statue, the knowing the statutory age or whatever. The age of consent in every state guy. This is originally.

0:20:19 Lydia: I've done a lot of research about this.

0:20:28 Thomas: Wow. Boy, there's a reason the Amuzdush is named in his honor.

0:20:28 Lydia: Yeah, yeah, he has a little spreadsheet. In some it is as high as 18, while in others it is as low as 14. Some jurisdictions mitigate the crime if the perpetrator is close in age.

0:20:41 Thomas: As high as 18 is just a whiz at it. That's an off -putting way to. It's as high as eight teams.

0:20:45 Matt: Can you believe it?

0:20:48 Thomas: Way up at 18.

0:20:47 Lydia: We have to wait so

0:20:49 Thomas: Dude. Jesus Christ, dude.

0:20:49 Lydia: Long god right

0:20:52 Matt: But this last point, though, the thing you just said is very important.

0:20:55 Thomas: Sorry.

0:20:55 Matt: He's tossing this off. Some jurisdictions mitigate the crime of the perpetrators close in age while others do not. Now, this is the solution to the entire problem that he's setting up here, right? The solution is to make sure that every state has an exception for people are close in age or at least, you know, mitigates it. But he's not saying that here. He's not saying that's what we should do.

0:20:55 Thomas: I go. Yeah. Oops. Sorry then.

0:21:08 Lydia: This is all theoretical of course since very few statutory rape charges actually are brought the laws yeah why

0:21:17 Matt: Oh, let's abolish it. Sure.

0:21:18 Thomas: Why are you? Yeah. Why are you re writing this?

0:21:20 Lydia: Are you writing about this at all the laws however remain on the books poised to be used poised be used selectively in certain kinds of high visibility cases recently for example an 18 year old wisconsin high school senior was prosecuted after he got his 15 -year -old girlfriend pregnant and then offered to marry her. He faces 40 years in prison and a lifetime requirement that he register as a sex offender.

0:21:41 Matt: So I looked this up just to check. I couldn't find this particular case, but that is not Wisconsin law. He potentially, and again, this isn't great either, but from what I can see, Wisconsin law on statutory rape hasn't changed since about 1994. He wrote this in 97. I found a law review article about Wisconsin statutory rape just to be sure. And it is actually urging reform and there should be reform from what what I've seen here, because I think every state should reform it to do the thing we're talking about, where you reflect the difference if it's a high schooler versus a Jeffrey Epstein. And so the case, though, he's talking about, that would actually have been 25 years, not 40 years. And I mean, again, that's too much. But from what I can tell, if it was over 13, but under, I think it was 16 or 17. I did find the actual statute, but just FYI,

0:21:43 Lydia: Good, yeah.

0:22:22 Thomas: Gotcha.

0:22:23 Matt: He seems to have had that wrong. So, yeah.

0:22:24 Thomas: Playing fast and loose. Why, why would he have to know the law, Matt? Like what, what world does he have to represent the law?

0:22:29 Matt: I mean, the alternative is that there are actually other charges, and maybe there was actually an assault or something else that was involved. And I don't know. I couldn't find the story. So I don' t know what he's talking about.

0:22:33 Thomas: That's a good point. Yeah, yeah.

0:22:36 Lydia: Interesting.

0:22:37 Matt: He didn't name it. He didn't...

0:22:37 Thomas: Maybe he could have like given us, you know, more information. I say us this is fucking 1996 but it's just like it's just a sign that these people have always been full of shit you know and I think it took a long time especially with their switch I think he was well respected until I mean I could be wrong matt correct me you're the lord but I feel like he's pretty well respected up until trump won when he just started really being famous for like defending these stupid things and isn't so weird to that why was he doing it why was it defending trump could it have been that you know he knew he was on a list this whole time and knew he was a piece of shit and And everyone who becomes a, everyone who is a problematic abuser of people and women tends to just like gravitate toward the party that's cool with that. You know, like it just seems to be how

0:22:39 Matt: Well, I mean, the names weren't out there, but yeah. Yeah. Yeah, yeah.

0:23:19 Thomas: It goes.

0:23:19 Lydia: They all have to protect each other, right? Because if he doesn't protect Trump, Trump could burn him. You know, I mean there's a lot at stake there. The high visibility case that has most recently put the statutory rape laws in the headlines is the allegation that Michael Kennedy, son of Robert and nephew of John, had an affair with his children's babysitter, who is now a 19 -year -old college student.

0:23:38 Matt: Let me stop you there. Who is now? Interesting little dodge there because she was 14 at the time.

0:23:39 Thomas: What? Yeah. Oh God.

0:23:47 Matt: Yep. Allegedly. I mean she was working, but allegedly this is what happened.

0:23:50 Thomas: Jesus Christ, dude.

0:23:51 Matt: And this case dragged on for quite a while, and this is another one where... And this arguably, I think based on my research here, it seems possible that he wrote this op -ed for the purpose of defending Michael Kennedy. He was on a tour at the time, he was doing a lot of media about Michael Kennedy around this time.

0:24:03 Thomas: Matt, I could have told you that just, I had, this is my first time reading this. It's obviously what he's doing. I'm so well and I'm so used to this bullshit maybe it's just because we've been doing this a long time but this fucking way of arguing that like the way they couch it to try to seem reasonable and like oh like this case for example oh yeah okay you mean the thing that you want to talk about yeah what are we doing here like why would you be why would this exist go ahead

0:24:10 Lydia: He's always going to do stuff that's protecting people with power, right? Mm -hmm.

0:24:23 Lydia: Yeah, yeah. The thing that brought you here, yeah,

0:24:27 Matt: And who is now a 19-year-old college student just took me out? I mean, that's factually correct in 1997, but that's not the question.

0:24:32 Thomas: That's yeah it's like writing out of all of Epstein's victims who are now it's not okay

0:24:41 Lydia: There is no hard evidence that there was a sexual encounter between Kennedy and the babysitter before her 16th birthday. Okay.

0:24:50 Thomas: What would the hard evidence yeah okay whatever

0:24:53 Lydia: In the absence of such evidence, there is no criminal case of statutory rape, and it seems unlikely that any such evidence will emerge, especially since neither neither the young woman nor her family seems eager to press charges. By its nature, sex tends to be a private matter engaged in outside of the view of witnesses. In the absence of physical evidence such as pregnancy or sexually transmitted disease, a charge of statutory rape generally requires testimony by the victim. But since the sex was consensual, why is he saying like assuming that it is rare that the victim will come forward if the sex is not consensuel as it often is not between older men and young girls, it is ordinary rape rather than statutory rape. Wait, what?

0:25:34 Thomas: Hold on just is this like a is this like just a legally thing is statutory rape like definitionally like supposedly consensual yeah because if it was not it would just be regular you'd just be like oh you right so this is like a separate category that's like allegedly you know consenting between those two people but but the age is the thing that makes it

0:25:42 Matt: Consent, right.

0:25:45 Lydia: I see, I See, I See.

0:25:54 Matt: Legally, 14 -year -olds cannot consent. They just can't.

0:25:54 Lydia: Non -consensual. Right, right.

0:25:56 Matt: So it doesn't matter, right?

0:25:57 Thomas: But I guess I'm just looking at the way the law treats it. Like the statutory would be a separate category versus.

0:26:00 Matt: That's what I'm saying. Yep, that is not the analysis.

0:26:05 Lydia: Gotcha.

0:26:06 Matt: And of course, Alan Dershowitz is kind of iffy on what he's calling here ordinary rape as well as statutory rape. So yeah, let's keep going.

0:26:15 Lydia: Thus, 99% of cases of statutory rape are not prosecuted. This raises a fundamental question about the continuing legitimacy of statutory rapes laws at a time when sex involving teenagers is so rampant and prosecution for statutory rape so so selective.

0:26:31 Thomas: Does it? I don't know. Like what? Didn't anyone at the, this fucking newspaper go like, why, why you, you took a lot of time to write this. Like why? Like what.

0:26:34 Matt: It's selective against apparently.

0:26:43 Thomas: Okay. We got a lot. It's 1990. What? Six. He said, there's a lot, there's, there's not a lot going on in the world. Okay.

0:26:45 Lydia: Seven. Yeah, it is obvious that there must be criminal sanctions against sex with very young children, but it is doubtful whether such sanctions should apply to teenagers above the age of puberty, since voluntary sex is so common in their age group. Any cutoff age will, of course, be somewhat arbitrary, and yet a line must be drawn, nor would it be practical to have have a cutoff based on individual maturity rather than age, since maturity is so subjective a criterion. Moreover, puberty is apparently arriving earlier, particularly among some ethnic groups. What?

0:27:19 Thomas: My god okay jesus christ yeah

0:27:23 Lydia: Interesting.

0:27:23 Matt: Has he been studying this himself? I don't want to know.

0:27:27 Lydia: Based on the demographic criteria, the age of consent should be lowered. It certainly should not be as high as 17 or 16. Sorry. It should be lower than 16?

0:27:35 Thomas: As high as what it shouldn't be as high as 17 or 16 there's not that many numbers like below you know what I mean like you don't just be like shouldn't as high as 17 16 or 15 there's like not that many fucking numbers dude like you can't if we're talking about like one to ten thousand be like you shouldn't going to be as high as like 9 ,000, 997 or, you know, it's the dude is

0:27:41 Matt: Phrasing, yeah. But as high as, I mean, as you pointed out before, that's so creepy. The next sentence is way creepier.

0:28:03 Thomas: 17 or 16.

0:28:07 Lydia: Reasonable people can disagree over whether it should be as low as 14.

0:28:11 Matt: Hey, we got some reasonable people here. Do we disagree on that one?

0:28:12 Thomas: Can they, can they, could,

0:28:16 Matt: They could.

0:28:16 Lydia: That is so crazy.

0:28:17 Matt: They could disagree.

0:28:18 Thomas: Would they be reasonable if they were disagreeing? I guess one of them could be, I guess. One of them can be reasonable. And the other one's reasonable. People who are reasonable can disagree with me, whether it should be 14, basically.

0:28:20 Matt: No, I don't think so. I mean, reasonable

0:28:30 Lydia: This is so freaking disturbing. Sorry, I'm like, I can't get out of my head right now like that. I was just thinking back to when I was 14.

0:28:32 Matt: People in 1626 maybe, but not 2026.

0:28:35 Thomas: Jesus. Well, for sure. For sure. And it already was bad. Like when we thought this was just a statutory rape thing, that was whatever, it was already bad. And then you get to this sentence and you're like, sorry, the age of consent should be lowered. It shouldn't be as high as 17 or 16. Wow, dude. Okay. Maybe that should be the title of your thing. I think I should be, the title should be Alan Dershowitz. I Think I Should Be Able to Have Sex with People Who Are 14. That should be the title of it. And then see like, oh,

0:29:04 Matt: He's gonna compromise.

0:29:03 Lydia: Yeah, truly. And then, okay, all right, here we go. Here we go, 15 would seem like an appropriate compromise.

0:29:05 Matt: He's about to compromise in the next sentence. Why are we compromising? What's this negotiation?

0:29:11 Thomas: Yeah, you got to haggle a little bit. Well, I say 20. You say 12. Compromise.

0:29:18 Lydia: Let's meet somewhere in the middle there. Perhaps there should be staircasing below 15 with the penalty increasing inversely with the age of the victim.

0:29:19 Thomas: Jesus, dude. How is this just put out? Okay.

0:29:23 Matt: Yeah, with his name on it.

0:29:32 Thomas: Okay.

0:29:33 Lydia: There may even be constitutional limitations on making the age-of-consent too high. The Supreme Court has suggested in the abortion context that young women do have reproductive rights at a certain unspecified age.

0:29:44 Matt: Good news, they no longer have reproductive rights, if

0:29:44 Thomas: Yeah, man. Yeah. We solved that.

0:29:47 Lydia: There you go. There are obvious differences between the right to choose whether to terminate an unwanted pregnancy and the right -to -have -sex at all.

0:29:55 Thomas: Okay. Glad you got there. Then don't make that point.

0:29:58 Lydia: The former requires a tragic choice between two difficult outcomes for a teenager, whereas the latter includes the preferred option, at least for young teenagers, of abstinence. But the Supreme Court's recognition Alan!

0:30:24 Thomas: I don't know why, but my mind read this, like the thing at the bottom is like an insult. Alan Helen M. Dershowitz teaches at Harvard Law School and writes a syndicated column.

0:30:27 Matt: You can believe that, for

0:30:35 Thomas: That's the tone I read it with.

0:30:35 Matt: Money.

0:30:35 Lydia: You might not want to apply there.

0:30:38 Thomas: Everybody, what are we doing here?

0:30:40 Matt: He gets paid in multiple ways to talk about the law, including the column you just read. He got paid to do that, apparently, this little hobby project.

0:30:48 Thomas: I think the truth

0:30:48 Lydia: That is so crazy.

0:30:49 Thomas: Is no one reads and no one ever has. I think that's the problem with our society. No one does the reading except for Matt and Lydia. And if it's an audio book, then I do too.

0:30:53 Matt: So, we try, we do try. But yeah,

0:31:01 Thomas: God, that's amazing.

0:31:01 Matt: The idea that because you can have an abortion. I mean, obviously, the reason that we have reproductive rights preserved or we're supposed to at this age is so they can choose to terminate a pregnancy for sex they didn't consent to. I don't think that's even mentioned here.

0:31:17 Lydia: Well and I mean honestly like kids make stupid choices and so like like it's even if they consented to sex and it resulted in pregnancy like kids are no good at at engaging in behavior and understanding long -term consequences of things and making decisions based off of those long -term consequences this is a way to continue yeah exactly this is that that's a way to continue to to help protect them in their future and so they can try to make choices that are best for them and their growing families or or non -growing families if that's what they choose but like just thinking back about like being 14 years old I mean like you guys know you know you were once 14 too but being a 14 year old girl and just the amalgamation of things like peer pressure, people sexually harassing you on the street, and then thinking it was cool to be sexually harassed because, oh, there's this older man who seems interested in you. I must look really good. It gets so incredibly confusing what you actually want to do and what you think you have to do in those situations that I just I can't even move beyond that, like to even discuss the law here. I think that is just

0:31:21 Thomas: I'm trying to think. Yeah. Aren't even good at that yeah man

0:32:28 Lydia: So disgusting.

0:32:32 Thomas: All I could think of yeah all I can think about is uh the play on the um yeah John Proctor is the oh my god if you get a chance well it's not up anymore but they're gonna make a movie out of it everybody should see it there's a really good scene incredible scene I'll try to say without like tearing up but that so the that's it's about high school girls who are studying the crucible and um you know realizing that John Proctor is actually the the villain you know and yeah

0:32:37 Lydia: John Proctor. John Proctor's the villain. Great play. Yeah.

0:33:00 Lydia: This is during, like, Me Too and stuff, but in, like a small town in Georgia.

0:33:02 Thomas: And they talk about their teacher who uh I mean I don't want to spoil stuff but I mean it's probably pretty pretty uh predictable sort of but basically one of them they're joking about being attracted to their teacher their male teacher you know High school girls joking like, ooh, he's good looking. Oh, I bet. And they're joking about even his penis and stuff. They're making jokes. And then one of them, they find out or it's revealed that she's texting with him. And they're like, I don't think that's okay. And she's like, you guys were just joking about his dick. And it's this perfect scene of like, yeah, that's normal high school kid behavior to be making jokes, ooh. They teach you whatever, like you might have a little crush, you might've a whatever. But the behavior that's like no the teacher's actually texting you like after that behavior is and it's such a brilliant scene because it like that girl's like what I was that's normal and the thing you're doing is weird because you're like talking about sex with them and stuff and so brilliant because they're exactly right like no like that's the abnormal thing here and it's

0:33:42 Lydia: He's the hot teacher. Yeah yeah mm -hmm.

0:34:05 Thomas: Just oh it's so good and it just exactly all I could think about during this is like there's a difference between what kids might think is a good idea and what's a good idea. And this is just, this is just insane. I was trying to think of an analogy.

0:34:13 Lydia: This is not a good idea.

0:34:18 Thomas: Yeah. The analogy, uh, well, first off, no one should have sex without endorsements period. That should be the law. But, um, I was trying to think of analogy. I don't know if this is a good one, but it's like, okay, if, if kids have the right rights to, to Narcan, then they should have the right do heroin or whatever do the, do the drug that, you know, it's not, I don't have, it's a perfect analogy, but but it's like, yeah, it's not really connected. It's not connected to have the right to like control your body and get an abortion is not connected to somebody else having the right to have sex with you, you know?

0:34:46 Lydia: Well, like this is the whole idea of harm reduction, right? Right. And having things that help to reduce harm, even after it might be that you've engaged in the harmful activity and abortion is one of those things.

0:34:58 Thomas: Yeah. Well, shoot, I think we need to take a break probably before.

0:35:02 Lydia: That's all right. We kept our Alan stuff together. So now we can take a break after Alan.

0:35:03 Matt: That's That's right. I just wanted to wrap up very quickly and just say that the entire problem, because there is a problem here. He's not wrong that fundamentally that we need to reform in some states. I did actually went, I have some Google history, which I didn't have now about researching all of this, but in some states, we really should make that distinction that he talks about in the second paragraph. If the entire article had been, we should reform it. As a law professor, I think it'd be better to have a reform in which we distinguish between people of the same age and people of very different ages, we wouldn't be reading this. But here we are. This is very creepy.

0:35:34 Thomas: I would say, Matt, you're now on a list for having searched the age of consent in different states, but that list is actually prospectively the government wants to hire you now. They're like, oh, there's somebody. Hey, do you want a job in DOJ? Okay yeah oh boy sad but true that

0:35:46 Lydia: One of us. Oneofus. Yeah. Professor of ethics, folks, by the way. Alan Dershowitz.

0:35:54 Thomas: Is I just love the idea that that last sentence is like can you guys the newspaper put that in like can you fucking believe this guy teaches at harvard uh well we'll take a a break here and we're gonna thank our second round of patrons uh and I hope it was as delightful as I hope it will be as delightful als the first one was thank you to Two, unfrozen caveman lawyer. Fantastic SNL classic sketch. A negative phenomenon. Your mother's a hamster and your father smells of elderberries. Classic, what's the face?

0:36:23 Lydia: Yep. Monty Python.

0:36:24 Thomas: Monty Python. You got to fight for your right to ex parte. Jay Sank, David Souther. Vehicular man's laughter reluctantly changing his blinker fluid. All time should be in UTC. That's an interesting thought. I thought about that before as a kid. I was like, why don't they just keep one time zone? But then like for you, nighttime is like, you know, if 10 a .m. or whatever, like, you know. It's just like you get used to when nighttime is. But it wouldn't work. It would not at all work. The blind squirrel has been crushed by these chunks. Today's episode is brought to you by the letter something I can't read. It's a great prank. Cavalry or Cavalery. I don't know which. Thomas Freeman. Cajun Killa. Fraud Fish. He hates everything. Chris Simpson. Gavelhead chucking away. Anonymous Akilah. Mark Schultz. And a ball of shice.

0:36:43 Lydia: UTC minus whatever or plus or yeah. Oh, I see. Oh.

0:37:12 Thomas: A ball of shice always good. Thanks so much patrons, hall of famers. And, uh, we'll take a break and get to, did we miss a break? Are we getting the last third? Are We, where are we? I don't know. We'll get to the rest of the show.

0:37:12 Lydia: Abolish ice.

0:37:24 Matt: We'll figure it out.

0:37:27 Thomas: Right. Back to our slideshow as our guide. Uh, what's next?

0:37:26 Lydia: Let

0:37:31 Matt: Right. Well, there, as you know, as we've mentioned, a lot of academics exposed in the Epstein's files. This was David Galanter from Yale. I was just appalled.

0:37:38 Thomas: Whoever clicked that, I can see you.

0:37:40 Matt: Oh, let me stay out of it. Oh wow, I'm interfering. So yeah, Yale computer Computer science professor David Galanter has, well, I'm not going to spoil it yet, but the best response, I think, to having been outed. Really fantastic.

0:37:44 Thomas: That's funny yeah wow

0:37:52 Lydia: Let me give like a quick little thing because yes, he's in the Epstein files, but I think it's really interesting to talk about how he ended up there. It's actually through John Brockman, who is a literary agent and scientific author. He ended up being a connector to Epstein for a lot of scientists. A lot was through John Brockman. And in the files, you have the email where he's basically pitching to Epstein, you should talk to this guy. And he says, he's absolutely brilliant. And indeed, I just invited him to be the American on a panel with me at DLD in Munich with the two leading German cultural journalists. While he's still a very good friend, I had to stop representing him because he's become seriously religious, culturally very far right. He still had serious medical issues and needs to travel with someone worth talking to? Absolutely. To know what's up with him, you need to know about the bombing. Bombing and the bombing, of course, that I teased at the beginning. He was a victim of the Unabomber and it was June 24th, 1993. Apparently he had just completed a vacation, opened up a package. It had the Sacramento, California return address, not from Thomas and myself. It

0:39:02 Lydia: Was from Ted Kaczynski.

0:39:01 Thomas: I didn't live there at the time we were we were I was seven yeah

0:39:04 Lydia: Yeah, I was five. And he said it was a package like millions of packages I've opened in in the past. But of course, in it was a bomb, and it detonated in his hands. He...

0:39:16 Thomas: I don't really need that quote it was a it was I've opened millions of these things I've open so many yeah man we it was uh yeah there's a letter uh you know yeah that's bad like I don' t nobody's like why did you open a package you idiot

0:39:20 Lydia: Yeah, I've opened so many packages. So his... He obviously got injured very, very badly. His office caught on fire. He was able to escape the flames in his office, walked down five flights of stairs, and then walked across the parking lot, walked up a hill to get to the clinic at Yale. And when he was inside the clinic, he collapsed immediately.

0:39:51 Thomas: I actually just noticed his hand is that a I don''t know if it's a prosthetic or a something but yeah

0:39:55 Lydia: And then he was told that had he dialed 911 in his office and waited for help there, he would have died. Like him making the trek across campus saved his life. Lots of operations, almost lost all the vision in his right eye, his right ear required surgical repair, his lungs were damaged, just like really, really awful. But I thought it was interesting that we have John Brockman being like, okay, but before you meet this guy, in order to understand him, you need to know this was something that he encountered because it shapes who you are as a person absolutely um and then

0:40:29 Thomas: So I'm getting confused as the who's who so john brought whose

0:40:35 Lydia: So yeah john brockman is throughout the epstein files because he he has known epstein for a long long time

0:40:40 Thomas: Voice were you saying that who was writing that that was john brockman saying epstein meet this this guy okay gotcha

0:40:43 Lydia: And it was yes that was an email and then I read an excerpt from a news article regarding the bombing yes

0:40:47 Matt: But, beautiful

0:40:51 Thomas: So so this guy who was bombed is allegedly in in at this time turning right wing and christian or something okay what

0:40:59 Lydia: Uh and then david agreed to meet him he said john I've heard of jeffrey epstein only as a sort of brooding mystical presence. I wouldn't have sworn he actually existed, but I'm more than happy to talk to him. Let's see, Saturday during the day is no good, but be around the Saturday PM and all day Sunday, or would be happy to call him if that's more convenient. And then John Brockman forwarded that over to Epstein and said, J.E., over to you. And thus began a six-year-long email relationship.

0:41:27 Matt: Friendship. Yeah.

0:41:29 Lydia: They, yeah, communicated a lot via email. There were a lot of conversations conversations in person as well. Um, his son went to Jeffrey Epstein to pitch, you know, for investment for his, uh, computer company that a lot of stuff going on between these guys. So

0:41:43 Matt: And we'll get to the creepiest of the emails. But the next slide, just so we can see a very quick clip of him and his enthusiastic support for Donald Trump. I

0:41:52 Clip: Personal story segments and I common a Wall Street Journal recently caught my eye I was written by a Yale professor David Galanter who Says who says he's voting for Trump Even though he's not very happy about it professor joins us now here in New York City down from New Haven so I mean if you You came out of the closet you and and so I can't imagine at Yale What do they say to you? You're voting for Trump. What are they saying? Well, they're used to it. I've been out of this closet. I'd been a Republican for a long time. But it's different with Trump. But it is true.

0:41:54 Thomas: Bill O 'Reilly. Wow, what a coincidence.

0:42:24 Clip: It's true. Even the 1%,

0:42:24 Thomas: So that kind of blows the entire segment we're doing here.

0:42:26 Matt: A Republican voted for Trump. All

0:42:28 Clip: Half of 1 % of Republicans at Yale are scared to death of Trump. So yeah, it's a different thing. So you say it's about 99 % liberal Democrat at Yale? I would say 99, 99.5%. Not just liberal leftists. Wouldn't they do better up there if they had a few, you know, they all speak about diversity, wouldn't it be a little diversity to get somebody in there? Now, why, you're not a big Trump fan, but you're casting your ballot for him, why?

0:42:56 Clip: I have no choice, it's my duty as a citizen to look at the big picture. Trump is a bum with respect to his dealings with women. I'm not proud of what he's done, and he's not proud at what he has done. But I have a responsibility to look what kind of president Hillary Clinton would make. And a woman who has been a career lawyer, who spent her career selling out the United States, making a principle and a practice of doing that, I have no reason to doubt that she's going to continue on.

0:42:56 Thomas: Just ever since we got on that plane and went to that island. I think he is proud of Lisa. She's a woman.

0:43:20 Matt: You get the idea. Yeah

0:43:20 Thomas: I don't think that's true, man.

0:43:25 Clip: All right, so your vote is basic.

0:43:25 Matt: I just thought it was funny the way that he leads with his about the way that Trump feels about women because we're going to see about how Gleiter treats women in this email. Here's a little excerpt. So this is David Gleiner writing to Epstein and offering him a woman.

0:43:31 Thomas: Here we go, yeah.

0:43:36 Lydia: Yeah. Software to be built by two people. One is a first rate local freelancer. I have a perfect editoress in mind. Yale.

0:43:43 Matt: It's actually Ed Hittrick's technically but sorry go ahead.

0:43:45 Lydia: OK. Yale senior worked at Vogue last summer, runs her own campus mag, art major, completely connected, very small, good looking blonde. Mm hmm.

0:43:54 Matt: It's that part, the V small part, V small, good looking blonde. Like, why did you say V small to Jeffrey Epstein? You're assuring him that she's a senior at Yale, but I promise she's small.

0:44:00 Lydia: Mm hmm, yeah.

0:44:07 Matt: So that's creepy.

0:44:08 Lydia: It's quite creepy.

0:44:10 Matt: You're pimping out one of your students to Jeffrey epstein.

0:44:14 Lydia: Yeah, and so obviously when the files come out, and Yale has a really dedicated journalism area of their campus, and they wrote about it, of course, and the article comes out. Now, David decides.

0:44:34 Thomas: Am I next slide yet or?

0:44:35 Matt: Yes.

0:44:36 Lydia: Yeah, one second. So David sees this article come out. And then the way that he responds is an unprompted email to a bunch of administrators.

0:44:47 Matt: Legend.

0:44:47 Lydia: And we get a second email or a second article, rather, from Yale Daily News talking about what that email said. Said. Now, I haven't seen screenshots of it anywhere. The administration has declined to produce it to other news outlets, but Yale Daily News did see it directly, and they just don't have images there. So, yeah, if we go to the next slide now, we'll kind of talk about...

0:44:48 Matt: Legend. They got the scoop. This is within the last couple of weeks. Yeah. Yeah. So here's the headline from Yale Daily News is dated February 5th. And let's just, this is unbelievable. You have to see it to believe it, the way this goes.

0:45:17 Lydia: Gerlanter tells Dean he stands by praising students' looks to Epstein. He defends his 2011 message to Jeffrey Epstein describing an undergraduate's appearance in in a Wednesday email to Yale's engineering school dean.

0:45:28 Thomas: Oh do I need to open this up or?

0:45:30 Lydia: Galanter told the news he

0:45:31 Matt: No. Go to the next one.

0:45:32 Thomas: Okay. Ow.

0:45:32 Matt: Sorry.

0:45:32 Lydia: Had no regrets about his contact with Epstein. No regrets.

0:45:35 Matt: All right. So we've got the relevant excerpt here. It's a long story. It's worth reading.

0:45:38 Thomas: Gotcha.

0:45:38 Matt: We'll look to it.

0:45:39 Lydia: Computer science professor David Galanter, 76, blah, blah. Defended his 2011 description of an undergraduate's appearance as fitting for its recipient, the convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, in a lengthy Wednesday afternoon email to the dean of Yale's Engineering School. Asked whether he regretted any part of his association with Epstein, which included newly released emails they exchanged between 2009 to 2015, Gerlanter wrote in a separate email to the news on Wednesday morning, nothing.

0:46:05 Thomas: It's just such a coincidence that this guy decided to vote for Trump and was coming out of the clauses of the Republican vote.

0:46:10 Lydia: I know.

0:46:11 Thomas: It was just so weird.

0:46:05 Matt: Nothing. Who would have known?

0:46:12 Lydia: Yeah.

0:46:12 Matt: Who would have known. And I think this is the first person, maybe the only person I'm aware of, who's just like flat out categorically said, I have no regrets.

0:46:13 Thomas: I wish there was some connection.

0:46:20 Matt: It'S incredible.

0:46:15 Lydia: I know, I know.

0:46:21 Matt: Incredible.

0:46:21 Lydia: It's so funny, too, because like if you've heard him speak about his experience with like the Unabomber and like his idea of like morality and stuff as a result of that, and then this idea that, you know, that he despises the way that Trump has treated women and that Trump also, so you know, like, like isn't very fond of it either, blah, blah. You would expect at the very least, the way he would come out is like, I regret ever having a relationship with Epstein, like all these non responses that we've gotten from plenty of other people. But he's just doubled down. He's like, No, this perfect. Why?

0:46:52 Matt: It gets worse. It's about to get worse.

0:46:53 Lydia: It gets worse. It gets worse and I have a little surprise for you, Matt, that I don't think you've seen related to this. So yeah.

0:46:57 Matt: I love Espresso. All right. Let's

0:46:59 Lydia: So this next slide here.

0:47:00 Thomas: Next slide. Okay. All

0:46:59 Matt: Check the next one. Another excerpt from the same story.

0:47:04 Lydia: I was recommending her for a job I thought she'd like when you do that when you actually care about a rec letter.

0:47:08 Thomas: Oh God. Let's keep, yeah, let's explain this more. I bet it'll get better as you explain it more.

0:47:13 Lydia: You keep the potential boss's habits in mind.

0:47:16 Matt: His habits.

0:47:17 Thomas: Like if you're going to represent, if you can recommend a student of yours, a female student of hers to a pedophile, you got to like, no, like, yeah.

0:47:23 Lydia: You gotta pitch it, you know?

0:47:24 Thomas: Write the resume like in such a way. Jesus Christ.

0:47:28 Lydia: This one was obsessed with girls, like every other unmarried billionaire in Manhattan, in fact, like Every Other Heterosex Male. And if I hadn't said what I did in that letter ten -odd years ago, he would certainly have called me and asked for a lot more aesthetic detail. Tale.

0:47:42 Thomas: His hands are tied. This is how men behave. Behave really wow

0:47:47 Lydia: Mm -hmm.

0:47:47 Matt: He's mansplaining men.

0:47:49 Lydia: So long as I said nothing that dishonored her in any conceivable way, I'd have told him more or less what he wanted. She was smart, charming, and gorgeous. Ought I to have suppressed that info? Never, he continued, italicizing the last word. I'm very glad I wrote the note yeah

0:47:50 Thomas: Hey

0:48:05 Matt: Very good. This is a Trumpy response, isn't it? I like to just lean in. But I've had some great recommendations from other people, other lawyers, other people who've hired people and said, hey, you're going to love this person's sense of humor. They're a hard worker. Here's some of their work.

0:48:19 Thomas: Matt if you were say you were recommending someone maybe I'm like hey matt do you have any students I could hire to do my thing and you're like oh yeah I got one I was like what's your cup size would you be like we're not friends anymore like like not only am I not recommending this student to you I don't think I want to talk to you anymore is what my response would probably be.

0:48:31 Lydia: So weird yeah yeah

0:48:31 Matt: But yeah, no, that's right. Right. Yeah, no. And this is at a time when he should have known anyway, 2011. And the fact that he knows, he's saying your potential boss's habits. And to me, it's the creepiest thing, as I said, is the v -small, right? That you're tailoring this, not just saying, you know, she's pretty blonde, but she looks smaller and younger than she is, and I know you like that.

0:48:56 Thomas: Yeah, yeah, yeah.

0:49:04 Matt: But good news, though, for this man is that he has just been suspended from his class. He's still at Yale, but he's not teaching his computer science class as of now.

0:49:10 Lydia: Now I want to call out though when he's like if I didn't tell him that he just would have asked for a lot more aesthetic detail that's freaking weird first of all and yeah that's very strange and also you can see the response from Epstein in these email threads he doesn't even talk about this person anymore like Like, like they're, yeah,

0:49:19 Thomas: That makes it worse dude.

0:49:20 Matt: He doesn't care.

0:49:30 Thomas: Epstein's like the perfect gentleman in this situation.

0:49:32 Lydia: Well, he, he like asks that they have another thing as part of this conversation.

0:49:34 Thomas: He's like it's kind of weird that you told me that actually. It's I think you're being kind of problematic if you ask me Jeffrey Epstein.

0:49:38 Matt: Well, also, you lost me at college senior, so moving on.

0:49:45 Lydia: Yeah. And so like, he didn't really engage with him. Now, now who's to say if they talked on the phone or in person about her specifically or anything like that, but at least via email, like, I don't, I don't know why David went this route, but he went this route. So now you mentioned, Matt, that he was relieved of his duties. Um, when that happened, when Yale has, has decided to investigate this and put him on leave, um, he posted to Canvas, uh, you know, where he's informing the students that he will no longer be, um... be serving as their professor.

0:50:16 Matt: Ah, I haven't seen this.

0:50:17 Lydia: Yeah. Uh, and let me read it to you. So, this was February 10th, 10 .35 a .m. Uh, I've been relieved. The subject is important, by the way. I've Been Relieved. For now on, I no longer teach CPSC 4500. I have no idea who my successor will be. I'm accused of describing a student in email as, quote, worked for Forbes last year, runs her own campus newspaper, knows everyone, is perfectly informed.

0:50:20 Matt: Please.

0:50:42 Thomas: Not not important. Those aren't, those aren't the,

0:50:45 Lydia: Those aren't the words.

0:50:45 Thomas: Those are the operative facts.

0:50:47 Lydia: Those also aren'tthe words. So you're quoting something and you're just wrong about what you said.

0:50:48 Thomas: Did you keep, keep going? Was there, Oh,

0:50:49 Matt: And he's also already acknowledged that he sent the email.

0:50:52 Thomas: He stopped there. He stopped there

0:50:55 Lydia: Yes. Oh, he did. This yeah

0:50:57 Matt: He's not accused of sending the email, that's okay. All right. He's admitted it.

0:50:58 Thomas: Having,

0:50:59 Lydia: This sounds like a serious offense to the yale administrators that that particular thing but then again one yep

0:51:09 Thomas: I'm so sorry. I know I say it all the time. The reason we started where there's woke is that this is every single story about the wokest. This is every single one. Every time there's those crazy college students. I'm, I're being crucified. You know what I did? I wrote an email where I said, she's very intelligent she's excellent at her at what she does and they and they're I'm a fired I'm fired for it because the woke left that's every single time it's that the whole ecosystem is a bunch of these stories and there's so many of them that they coalesced into this narrative about how the woke laughter so crazy and they get all upset about it every one of them is this and you can only fact check so many but you see it right here like right here you see the proof This is a college professor who is willing to lie to this level and people will believe it. And maybe not on this one because it's so bad, but everything up until then, like when he's telling Bill O 'Reilly, 99 .5 % of them, they're just so hardcore. Yeah, same thing. He's a liar.

0:51:50 Matt: Got,

0:52:11 Thomas: God, drives me nuts.

0:52:10 Matt: Yeah, no, it's just trying to help a student out. Look at what happens.

0:52:15 Lydia: Yeah so well it continues oh guys buckle up but then Then again, one, this person had become a family friend, friends with me and my wife, had stayed over at our place at least twice.

0:52:15 Thomas: Sorry, keep going. Jeez. Hey, sorry. Again, I know I used the example before. If if I were recommending a student to anyone and this was what they that person wanted hey how it was she looked like which by the way as you say it doesn't even seem like it seemed like this guy this professor was just offering it but like let's say it was Epstein driving that there's no way who in the right mind wouldn't be like hey don't you don't want this job don't never mind never mind do not yeah yeah don't take this job this guy's a fucking creep like he's asking all these detailed questions about your looks like you do not want to do this yeah

0:52:52 Matt: I'm not giving him the name at that point. I'm like, yeah we're not doing this. Yeah,

0:53:01 Lydia: Well, it's the same thing like the Kavanaugh clerkships out of Yale and like, you know, picking women like this is the kind of clerk Kavanaagh likes. It's, God, it's just, it's so sick, this entire ecosystem.

0:53:10 Matt: He's got a look. Yep, yep, yep

0:53:13 Lydia: System. Two, of course I didn't know before or during our conversations that he was a convicted felon. Few people are eager to announce such information.

0:53:14 Matt: To grooming, yep too. Too. I knew he's a creep, but...

0:53:26 Thomas: That's not even yeah like what the thing he's doing in your conversation allegedly is already enough to put you off like you don't oh I didn't know he also like stole a car or something you know it doesn't even matter like this is already the creepy behavior you're seeing right there you know what I mean

0:53:41 Lydia: Well, yeah. Yeah. Yeah,

0:53:40 Matt: And we can get into more of the emails we don't want to right now, but they talk about, quote-unquote, girls plenty. And there's plenty of misogynist, awful stuff in these emails. Like, he knows what Epstein's into, and he said he knows what Epstein is into, in the quote to the other professor.

0:53:53 Lydia: Right. Three, the university smoking gun, capitalized smoking gun is a personal private email dug out of the dump of Epstein files. And in parentheses, if someone handed you a stack of other people's private correspondence, would you dive in and read them? Of course not. Gentlemen and ladies don't read each other's mail. Courtesy 101.

0:54:13 Matt: Man. Oh. I feel so bad now for reading the Epstein files. I'm sorry.

0:54:19 Thomas: It's the weirdest defense that's a new one on me yeah I can't it is very untoward as you are reading my correspondence so

0:54:20 Matt: Private communication? Yeah.

0:54:20 Lydia: Four. It's so strange. Four, this person wanted to be recommended to Epp instead of Epstein, for a summer job, strictly on the financial side of his private bank. She knew just who he was, though not that he was a felon and a sex criminal. She also knew he paid well and hadn't made a move on anyone.

0:54:41 Thomas: She knew his name

0:54:38 Matt: And that he was a billionaire and he had a job. If

0:54:45 Thomas: What

0:54:46 Lydia: And hadn't make a move on anyone since moving to New York. I don't know how she would have known that, but then also didn't know that he wasn't a felon and sex criminal anyway. If Yale had treated her like like the adult she was, and not like a ward and chattel belonging to the engineering dean, none of this would have happened. I don't know. This guy, yeah,

0:55:03 Thomas: What the fuck does that even mean what can that possibly mean like if if she had gotten a job before like so he didn't have to do this that doesn't yeah

0:55:07 Matt: You hadn't written a creepy email to Jeffrey Epstein, none of this would have happened. But yeah, it's

0:55:18 Thomas: It's like okay yeah if she'd never been born then you wouldn't have caught me talking creepy about, I guess, what the fuck does that have to do with anything?

0:55:25 Lydia: -hmm.

0:55:26 Thomas: Okay. This guy's a colossal piece of shit. Like, wow.

0:55:26 Lydia: But after all, what did? Yeah. You've been a marvelous class, and not only on intellectual terms. You're way out of the ordinary, and I'll always remember that. If my very last class at Yale turns out to be CPSC 450 or a piece of it, then a thousand thanks, Thanks a million. You know what I mean? The topic is closed for comments is like this little thing.

0:55:29 Matt: Amazing. Yeah, truly, I'm

0:55:47 Lydia: I guess he turned off comments. But you

0:55:49 Matt: Sure. Here's hoping that's his last class at Yale.

0:55:49 Thomas: Jeez. What a piece of s**t.

0:55:52 Lydia: Guys, I just like it's it's so it's so ridiculous. This is a person who actually like was thought of to be sort of like a like a had prophesized the World Wide Web, had prophesy social media. He wrote books a long time ago, kind of like envisioning what that landscape would look like. He's like really into art. So like, you know, he has all these intellectual conversations with Jeffrey Epstein over email. And then I found this article with a tablet from 2017. Again, just to kind of give a little more color to this guy. The interviewer says, we moved from Jews and Christians to sex. In the early 1980s, Gerlanter called a computer language he invented Linda after Linda Lovelace. And he told one interviewer, quote, I am obsessed with sex and sexuality as much as anyone I've ever met. Anyway, there's more to that quote, but I just wanted to end on that. You

0:55:53 Thomas: That's his last class everywhere.

0:55:56 Matt: Thank

0:56:46 Lydia: Know, that's how powerful the sex drive is.

0:56:46 Matt: You for your candor, David. Thank you for being so honest. I really appreciate.

0:56:50 Thomas: Well, and I don't want to, I don'T want to even besmirch people who are into sex and sexuality with the idea that like that, like, yeah, you can be into sex and sexuality without that'll be in the fucking creep. I think, I hope like this is unbelievable. Like it, you know, it really reminds me of the locker room talk thing. When Trump said locker room, talk like it is absolutely true. Like, you Know, there's a, there'S a spectrum of behavior of men talking about women from fine to gross. And, and, but there is a line where like, there'll be people who talk about women in certain ways. I just want to get out of this fucking conversation, conversation but there's a line where it's like oh no this is like this guy's like like a like a danger and like if someone is demanding to know what the college student you're recommending them looks like it's so far over that line

0:57:03 Lydia: I hope so. Jeez.

0:57:03 Matt: It's possible. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

0:57:32 Lydia: Mm-hmm. Yeah,

0:57:40 Thomas: It's not even close like so that but what's what's really horrifying and scary is that people like this Guy I don't know if like the fact that there's people There's dudes out there that write off their insane predatory thoughts and behaviors as part of being one of the guys. That's something that men really need to try to fix. It's really not easy. It is not at all easy when you're a dude in these situations, especially because it always feels like you're outnumbered or you always feel like if you're going to say anything, you're gonna be the damper on the conversation.

0:57:41 Matt: There's no excuse.

0:58:19 Thomas: Conversation you're gonna be like the killjoy you know it's really tricky but like man we got to find a way to make clear like no that's at the very least this is way over that fucking line like come on yeah

0:58:19 Lydia: Or like like ostracized. Yeah. And I think it's just gross. He's like trying to have it both ways, right? Where he's like, he's Like, well, of course, I didn't know that he was a convicted felon. Well, you do now. But you also say that you don't regret sending that email. You say that you don'T regret explaining her looks to Jeffrey Epstein. Yeah, if had

0:58:43 Thomas: That's a good catch yeah it would be like oh fuck I didn't know I just recommended my student to a pedophile I just had no idea yeah it can't be both you're

0:58:47 Lydia: I known, exactly. Exactly. Had I known I wouldn't have gone that direction at all. Like, yeah.

0:58:54 Thomas: Right to call that up as very trumpian where it's like just admit no mistake ever fucking sociopath

0:58:59 Matt: This is one guy who actually could have used a PR consultant, unlike all that Baldoni lively stuff you've been looking at. Just five minutes.

0:59:03 Lydia: Truly.

0:59:06 Matt: Should I send this email?

0:59:00 Thomas: Jesus. I think he could use another package from the Unabomber personally. Jesus, a piece of shit.

0:59:11 Matt: Great time for a break, Hedda.

0:59:13 Thomas: Yeah, let's take, as Matt convinces me to edit that out, let us go to break.

0:59:18 Matt: Hey, it's on you.

0:59:18 Lydia: Allegedly, allegedly.

0:59:19 Thomas: Yeah, the thing you did

0:59:21 Lydia: That fixes it, right, Matt?

0:59:21 Thomas: Not hear that was totally cool that Matt Killjoy made me cut out of the show. Let us take our break and thank our final third of patrons at patreon.com. These are Hall of Famers, and we go, of course, in order of Hall of Fame accomplishment. So, Cincinnati Kid. Sorry, I should say it right. The Cincinnati Kid, Bob Loblaw's Law Podcast, Philly Basement Bar will be getting a new house rep in the midterms. Nice. I think. Elect Thomas Smith, President of American Honky Tonk Bar Association, Baltic Ate, Philip Kaiser, Abraham Lincoln called the Melania documentary the worst experience he'd ever had in a theater. Corn land a string of unpronounceable characters malika chandler RhondaTheDork.com Milo Meadsong is fighting petty tyrants hors d'oeuvres in the court before we report big easy blasphemy Chris Waltrip FRED R GROOTHUIS oh and fred upped his pledge recently I wanted I meant to respond to his message fred if you're hearing this I did one of those things where I opened it got interrupted by the kids and I'm just now remembering they didn't respond thank you so much for upping your your support. Uh, you're amazing.

1:00:24 Lydia: You're the best.

1:00:24 Thomas: Yeah. Love you, Fred. Sam Denao, classic libtard and Mitchell, our champion. Thanks so much. Hall of fame patrons. Uh you're the reason that, uh, I have the, uh legal defense fund to defend against the thing I just said earlier that we don't know if it's in the show or not.

1:00:25 Matt: I appreciate it, which

1:00:39 Lydia: That you may or may not have heard.

1:00:42 Matt: I had nothing to do with.

1:00:45 Thomas: All right. We'll take our break. Right uh looks like we oh this is like an award show I guess creepiest response oh I meant to say I had an idea earlier it would be a fun game show to do like person in the Epstein files are they in there for creep reasons or just like random reasons, you know, like profile a person, like, here's the guy you give them like increasing facts. You're like, Oh, he's a, this he's, Oh. He's a Republican. Oh, he's whatever. And then you guess like, is he a creep or was he just mentioned in an email or like something else? That'd be a fun game show someday.

1:01:03 Lydia: I yeah or like news article yeah yeah oh okay yeah Yeah. Yeah. He worked

1:01:17 Thomas: Someone put that together.

1:01:17 Lydia: For a university and was in charge of trying to fundraise for their specific lab.

1:01:21 Thomas: My God. Yeah, that's true. You'd have to do like, okay. Fundraising. Maybe he was just talking about money, you Know, like and then you could, everyone could make their guess. That could be a bonus someone

1:01:31 Lydia: That's a good idea.

1:01:31 Matt: A lot of names. A lot to choose from.

1:01:32 Thomas: Work on that yeah there's a lot yeah but my my worry is that are there enough that are in there for innocent reasons probably maybe

1:01:39 Matt: Sure. All Oh, yeah. Well,

1:01:39 Lydia: That would be part of our work. Yeah,

1:01:39 Matt: Not this guy. Not this one.

1:01:42 Thomas: We don't show pictures and then they could be like michael marshall you know like we'll give facts that like seem innocent or seem guilty but they're innocent all right who we got robert trivers but there he is giving something that looks like a TED talk he must be so brilliant

1:01:44 Lydia: Creepiest response. Here we go.

1:01:58 Matt: He's an academic, of course. He is a professor.

1:01:59 Lydia: Of course.

1:02:02 Matt: He had a lot of communication with Epstein, but let's take a look at one example of Bob Trivers, evolutionary biologist, talking to Jeffrey Epstein.

1:02:09 Thomas: That that's that's on that's a main red flag in my game show evolutionary yeah yeah

1:02:14 Lydia: Yeah there's a lot of evolutionary biologists that were in the Epstein files.

1:02:18 Thomas: Or you know I'll admit I was thinking evolutionary psychologist that's a hundred percent but uh but you know evolutionary for some reason I don't know why all right that

1:02:28 Lydia: This is July 31st, 2016.

1:02:30 Matt: Yeah, so just a note at July 30th that Jeffrey asked him where he is. So this is his response to, where are you?

1:02:31 Thomas: One on my 30th birthday

1:02:36 Lydia: Yeah. Oh yeah. Good times. And Robert responds, I'm in New Jersey now doing my foundation taxes and moving North to New Brunswick for a couple of days and then NYC to see my latest grandson. I will be in FLL Monday until Wednesday back to Jamaica. Would love to spend some time with you alone among my friends. You have gone through as much as I or worse but we have rarely discussed the details okay so you know what he went through was very low for a couple of weeks in jamaica suicidal that is to say homicidal making a rank ordered list of whom I would kill or first okay couldn't imagine anyone on your list besides perhaps a lawyer one on my list but then I don't really know you spend some time dealing with jobs and job opportunities see you and why perhaps you have kentucky at Lexington Washington Oklahoma and Stillwater kind of hard to imagine although it is a completely open carry state so you'd be armed against them all best to you what about that island of yours yeah

1:03:08 Thomas: Those are different things jesus christ so what's the story here matt holy shit

1:03:35 Matt: What about that island of yours? Yeah, well, so Trivers at this point, now this is 2016, so everybody knows what the deal with Jeffrey Epsteins is, no doubt. Trivers

1:03:42 Thomas: But forget that like he's describing like oh yeah I also so something, something like what happened? Jesus.

1:03:48 Lydia: And I have a hit list

1:03:48 Matt: Well, a part of it was that he was outed for his association. Now, this again, this is kind of a throwback. This is back to 2015. Reuters, and we're going to see what he told Reuters because this is another creepy response, the way that he defended Epstein to Reuters. And he went through some things, I think, after that. He also was suspended from Rutgers for refusing to teach a class called human aggression. Yeah, I don't know much about that. What I do appreciate though is, and I just want to throw this out there, he once described himself as one of the greatest social theorists in evolutionary biology alive, period. So one

1:04:07 Thomas: Rough grow. Sorry.

1:04:18 Lydia: He described himself

1:04:17 Thomas: Oh yeah. Social theorist. There we go. That's right on the fucking top of the list. Let me know when, when to change slides.

1:04:20 Matt: Of those guys, one of those guys. Absolutely brilliant. Now

1:04:23 Thomas: I don't want to spoil or anything.

1:04:23 Matt: Let's go forward so we can see what he told Reuters.

1:04:26 Lydia: The evolutionary biologist Robert Trivers is also mentioned in the new tranche of emails in 2015 he told Reuters that Mr. Epstein had given him about $40,000 for his research, and he defended Mr. Epstein, saying, girls mature sooner than they used to. Oh, like Alan Dershowitz is talking about puberty in that first thing.

1:04:42 Thomas: All In fact, I read this time column in the LA times 20 years ago.

1:04:44 Lydia: Back in the 90s, yeah. Quote, oh my god.

1:04:46 Matt: Got it hanging on the wall here. Yeah, because

1:04:48 Thomas: Uh, framed it.

1:04:50 Lydia: Quot, by the time they're 14 or 15, they're like, grown women were 60 years ago, so I don't see these acts as so heinous, he said to Reuters.

1:04:59 Matt: You could marry them off if they're 14 and 60, I guess, 60 years ago. Yeah I mean in the 16th century the age of consent was 10. Nobody cares, man. Like, what are you doing? What are you doing?

1:05:03 Thomas: My God. Jesus Christ. You're just saying, of course I ordered the code red. Am I being accused of a crime? This is like, this is just you saying, yes, I am also Jeffrey Epstein. Like what? This Is not, you can't even separate this from, from what he is. Wow.

1:05:12 Matt: Yes. Right. This is me. This is who I am. Yeah.

1:05:25 Thomas: 14 or 15

1:05:24 Matt: Yeah. So let's move on to another Werther's Woke favorite. Everybody loves Steven Pinker.

1:05:28 Thomas: So it says still creep I I've I've never I haven't seen though I'm awaiting any direct evidence of creep hood of steven pinker ever um I haven'T seen it I'm not denying it exists but yeah he sucks what

1:05:39 Matt: Oh, just his yeah, I will say the Epstein, I mean, certainly he had Epstein associations like a lot of academics. I'm not going to impugn anything else about his association with Epstein. But I just want to know, he certainly did have of his associations. He knew things, took money, all the usual. But I just wanted to note just sort of because this person's in his orbit, because we're kind of talking about people in the orbit, check out the next thing here. This came out of the Epstein files recently. So this is an email, and I'll link to this for everybody, but he wrote an extensive, there's a Word doc attached to one of the emails. He did an expert witness linguistic analysis analysis of a statute.

1:06:02 Thomas: Is this hmm

1:06:18 Matt: And so, there's this long analysis about it. And this is part of the defense. You might remember we were talking about how Dershowitz and everybody else in the defense team were aggressively hounding the prosecution to say that one of these statutes didn't apply. And so they got this expert thing.

1:06:12 Thomas: Oh yeah yeah oh the the word bullshit so they had steven even Pinker be the expert for that? Oh, wow.

1:06:35 Matt: Three -page letter, three page analysis. Yeah. Yeah. So, I mean, you can, yeah.

1:06:39 Thomas: Wow, now, I'm curious, this was for getting, was this just for the purpose of getting the plea deal? So, like, did Pinker think, like oh, it's not like he's gonna have to testify in court, it's like, you know, maybe he thought, yeah, I mean, I've just asking you, like if he, if this was just, hey, you, know, this is just for the purposes of getting a plea deal, this won't see the light of day kind of thing, do you you think that would have been the assumption okay possible yeah

1:06:51 Matt: Maybe, I don't know. Maybe. That's a good point. Yeah.

1:07:01 Matt: That's very possible. Yeah, because I think they knew it was coming. But yeah, they were really trying to badger the prosecution down. Lydia, if you just want to give us a taste of this brilliant analysis.

1:07:07 Lydia: Question is, does this statute apply, one, to someone who uses the mail or internet or phone and subsequently persuades a minor in person to engage in sex, or does it apply only to two, someone who persuades a minor over the phone, et cetera, to engage in sex. That is, if John phones a woman asking her only to have dinner and then at dinner persuades her to engage in illegal sex, does his behavior fall under the language of the statute? Linguistically, this boils down to how the appositive gerund of phrase, quote, using the male, relates to the causative main verb, quote, persuades.

1:07:39 Thomas: Gerunds yeah yeah if you use a that's using clearly just a bunch of words to sound smart just it's just like it boils down to how these two phrases relate it doesn't if you're using fancy a positive gerund of phrase using the male relates to the causative main verb persuades oh

1:07:56 Matt: And he's got three pages.

1:08:02 Lydia: The gerund of phrase is playing the semantic role.

1:08:03 Matt: Three pages.

1:08:06 Thomas: I think that's cut off probably I want to read all this bullshit I can't wait I want to do a lot awful expert testimony defending fending a fucking pedophile yeah because that is that's so that so that's what they're doing so if you only persuade them I don't know what the law wording was but it's like oh no I only got them over to me on false pretenses using the internet or a phone or whatever then the whole convincing them to have sex or whatever was over in person I guess that's something I don'T

1:08:08 Matt: No, that's enough. Yeah! We'll link to it. It's really something. Yeah... Pinkers.

1:08:34 Matt: Yeah, I don't want to get into the legal analysis of this one. But just to

1:08:38 Thomas: That's not the point of the show here is

1:08:39 Matt: Close the loop, this is to Alan Dershowitz. He's writing this memo. He sent it to him, and his defense was he didn't send it to Epstein. He was sending it to Dershouitz at his request because he's part of this network for some reason. So next page, I just wanted to show you.

1:08:46 Thomas: He pretending he didn't know it was for epstein or is he just leaving that part out yeah all

1:08:53 Matt: I think he's just leaving that out. But this was 2007 that he wrote this. The next one, I Just Want to Give You a Little Taste of This footnote is a fun footnote from an article that Olivia found.

1:09:01 Lydia: Of course.

1:08:58 Thomas: And what oh cape man wait this is from cape man I love cape man you want

1:09:06 Matt: I know. It's a great piece. That he's writing about women and about sexual violence is so alien to any kind of decency.

1:09:16 Thomas: What is this a footnote two like what book is this or what oh

1:09:19 Matt: And this is a lengthy footnote from her book on misogyny in which she gets into these remarks. And I just had to feature a footnote for you. This is the latter half of that. If you look at the... Starting with the word progress, Lydia, yeah.

1:09:30 Lydia: Progress was also made thanks to the men in power growing wise to the nuances of female sexuality, such as women's hitherto puzzling tendency, quote to find the prospect of abrupt unsolicited sex with a stranger to be repugnant rather than appealing. Although, quote, rape is not exactly a normal part of male sexuality, it is not too far off either. And then this

1:09:50 Matt: And then the quote from Pinker, if you want to read that.

1:09:53 Lydia: Is a quote from Pinker. If I may be permitted an ad feminem suggestion, the theory that the theory that rape has nothing to do with sex may be more plausible to a gender to whom a desire for impersonal sex with an unwilling stranger is too bizarre to contemplate. Common sense never gets in the way of a sacred custom that has accompanied a decline of violence. And today rape centers unanimously insist that, quote, rape or sexual assault is not an act of sex or lust. It's about aggression, power, and humiliation using sex as a weapon. And then it continues.

1:09:56 Matt: Get it? Ad Feminum. Yeah, and there's a reason she posted this and highlighted it, I think. It's pretty gross. This kind of... Yeah, yeah, yeah to show like just... Again, in case you think that Pinker might be absolved from the stuff we're learning. Here's who he is. Just a certain kind of person in this orbit.

1:10:27 Thomas: She tweeted this oh yeah I got you yeah yeah

1:10:37 Matt: Nothing we really know of too bad about this, but I just wanted to mention him because I know you're a fan. Yeah. Next, I just want to mention Les Wexner very quickly. We're going to go soon here. But we haven't really talked about Les Weixner. But of course, the Victoria's Secret billionaire, billionaire, the person who made Jeffrey Epstein who he became by letting him manage his money for some reason, never really explained. And I just want to note that one thing we learned in the most recent drop is that Les Wexner was named briefly by the FBI as a very likely co-conspirator of Epstein that was never really pursued. And he

1:10:40 Thomas: Can't stand him oh

1:10:57 Lydia: But here's

1:11:06 Thomas: Wow huh sure

1:11:10 Matt: Wrote a very lengthy apology in 2019 where he said he really didn't know what he was getting up to, even though he spent a lot of time with him and he managed his money. And they had a falling out. They did have a falling out. He had a following with a lot of people, but just wanted to note that.

1:11:17 Thomas: Well I think because I think epstein probably stole his epstein scammed like everybody it's crazy

1:11:25 Matt: Yeah. I'm sure. Yeah, I feel like we can slander him.

1:11:27 Lydia: The thing. Les Wexner is so closely connected to so many different allegations of abuse and sexual harassment and sexual assault. At a certain point, it's like, I don't know, man. I just don't Know that I buy any of what you're saying right now. But yeah, Les Wexner, he's also testifying to the House Wednesday, February 18th. So coming right up.

1:11:54 Lydia: We'll see if he has anything to say at all or if he'll just...

1:11:57 Matt: The House is coming to him. Did you see this? They're going to Ohio.

1:11:59 Lydia: I didn't see that.

1:12:00 Matt: They're sending members of the House because he's a billionaire. He doesn't have to come to Congress, apparently. Lydia actually found this. I wanted to play this quick clip here of Wexner talking because this is a man who made his money selling lingerie. So if we heard him talk before, but just to kind of take you on this.

1:12:09 Thomas: Next one oh

1:12:17 Matt: Here we go. How did you know what, yeah, he's

1:12:16 Lydia: It says, how did you know what young women wanted to buy? And

1:12:20 Matt: An expert on young women.

1:12:21 Clip: Knew the young women I knew, and I knew what kind of clothes they bought, so I thought I would just buy clothes like I thought they would buy, and then they did. Now, as I got older, you know, still focusing on young women, I had to pay attention to what young women were buying and make guesses about what they would do. But I think the question about purpose, I get back to that, is to say, okay, you made a million dollars, or you've made 10 million, or maybe you could make 100 million, and I'd say, well, why? I'm just, like, I'm running this business, I started this business. It's a ton of fun, tons of fun for me. I really love what I do, and I'm kind of racking up a financial score, and it's kind of, but why?

1:13:07 Thomas: Was that the clip oh

1:13:10 Matt: That's him knowing about young women and what they want to wear. I just, I'd never really thought about what the guy who started Victoria's Secret might be like and what kind of creepy he was.

1:13:15 Thomas: Why

1:13:16 Lydia: It's not even just Victoria's Secret. I mean, like, as a millennial woman, like this was such a huge part of our upbringing mall culture, right? It was Victoria's secret it was pink it was um the limited it was Abercrombie & Fitch it was Hollister like all of these brands Bath & Body Works and it was all created like what kind of young woman what kind of teenager are we trying to present ourselves to be and then you realize oh the people who are deciding this are these old disgusting predators that are creating the vision of what they want these young girls to look like, to smell like, to act like, and it is dark and gross. And I know a lot of other millennial women have been posting about this. You know, America's Next Top Model documentary just came out too.

1:14:06 Lydia: Like this is a reckoning, honestly, for people of my generation, I think. So yeah,

1:14:05 Matt: I hope so.

1:14:11 Thomas: Are you had more matt but we're actually out out of time. There's always more. That think it should be a lesson, like how much they did tell on themselves, you know, some, some of the stuff it's, like, okay, maybe there could be an innocent explanation for some of this stuff. And you don't necessarily have to think that, you know, okay, anyone who said something like this means they're a secret Epstein predator, but like some of those stuff, you're like, maybe that should have been a sign. This guy was a secret Epstein Island predator, you know?

1:14:13 Matt: Always more yeah

1:14:35 Lydia: Well, yeah, yeah. I mean, just the Abercrombie and Fitch connection there too. Mike Jeffries is currently under criminal criminal investigation. And there's a criminal lawsuit and also a civil lawsuit that he is facing. He was found incompetent to stand trial on the criminal charges, but they're going to reassess that next month. And it's 180, 200 young men that are now much older.

1:15:00 Thomas: Yeah. I don't. Yeah.

1:15:01 Lydia: But Les Wexner hired him.

1:15:01 Thomas: What's, what is that? Sorry. I Don't know what, Oh

1:15:03 Lydia: That was the CEO of Abercrombie & Fitch, and he reported to Les Weixner. It's just, yeah, Yeah.

1:15:05 Matt: That's fine that's fun all

1:15:09 Lydia: I don't know.

1:15:10 Thomas: So I was just talking about like the, the, what's his name? Column, you Know, from 1997 or whatever. It's like, like the stuff they've said, you're like, yeah, man, maybe there's a, there's been a red flag for people when they're like as high as 17 or 16. Oh boy. Oh man. All right. Well, Well, thanks so much for preparing this, especially thanks to Olivia for the slideshow, as always. A lot of fun. Thanks, Matt. Thanks, Lydia. And thanks most of all to our listeners and patrons. We'll see you next time. Thanks for listening and watching.

1:15:15 Lydia: Right, Ellen. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. Yeah

1:15:37 Matt: Thanks

1:15:42 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.