Vicki Ward

I mean, it's a great irony in a way that the populist wave that put Trump in the White House twice is tied up with great suspicion of what is called the deep state issue.

And the Epstein story confirms that suspicion.

It legitimizes this idea that terrible things get hidden.

up at the highest levels of government and power.

It exposes the idea that there's one sort of justice for most people and a completely different sort of justice, as in no justice at all, for the very powerful and the very rich.

And the fact that this is a global phenomenon just puts the whole thing off.

on steroids.

And I think that the Epstein story is sort of at the heart of all of it.

It gives people a reason to totally mistrust the establishment, whatever that establishment looks like in whichever country it is.

What do you mean?

Because he's trashing me.

He's trashing me.

He sends my boss at the time, Graydon Carter, then the editor of Vanity Fair, a note trashing me and my reporting.

And he says it's defamatory.

And he writes me a long, long fax, which I remember receiving, telling me what a dreadful journalist I am.

And both of these missives are on the topic of Annie and Maria Farmer, two sisters who I'd spoken to back then on the record and who had told me about the abuse they had suffered at the hands, in Maria's case, at the hands of both, Geoffrey and Ghislaine Maxwell.

Annie Farmer...

was more focused on Ghislaine Maxwell at the time, but she also had a horrible experience with Jeffrey.

Annie had been underage at the time of the abuse.

And they were very brave.