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Chapter 1: What are the implications of the newly released Epstein files?
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All these legal letters are privileged, and it's kind of by law that they can never be published, basically, without consent. It's really, really strong protection. But what happened in these Epstein files is Congress had a vote and have released them en masse. I mean, it's unprecedented.
So the people writing these letters would have just presumed that they would never, ever become public knowledge. I mean, it's just the way it is.
But they have. I'm Nicola Talent and this is Crime World, a podcast about criminals, drugs and the sins of the underworld. If you like this podcast and want to learn more about crime, go to our new website, www.crimeworld.com for stories, extras and podcast subscriber specials.
The avalanche of Epstein files released by the US government have ended high profile careers, cast suspicion on the rich and famous, caught up in the communications leak and had a ripple effect right across the Atlantic. From a celebrity lawyer to well-known famous stars, what Irish people have so far found themselves named in the document dump?
Today, I'm talking with Niall Donald about the biggest crime story in the world. You're listening to Crime World, a podcast from CrimeWorld.com. So now we're going to do a little bit of a roundup of some of the stuff that has come out about Jeffrey Epstein from this side of the pond, because, of course, these documents have been released by the Trump administration, interestingly enough.
Yeah, I mean, look... And there's nothing much bad about Trump in them, surprisingly. Well, there are actually plenty of things about Trump. I mean... They're all sort of... Are they not all press briefings on what is in the media about him?
There's been nothing really... No, there has been very specific allegations against them. Now, obviously, the Epstein files are literally millions of pages of documents. And they are collected by the FBI over... the whole period of which Jeffrey Epstein was, you know, every report that's ever been made about him. Yeah.
So there are allegations made against Trump, but they're unsubstantiated allegations. And clearly, you know, there are no criminal... charges were ever brought I mean it's been the biggest story in the world without a shadow of a doubt for you know the biggest crime story possibly ever in a way and it's affected it's you know it looks like it's going to bring down Keir Starmer for example and
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Chapter 2: Which Irish individuals are mentioned in the Epstein documents?
Exactly. Now he gets a very easy time in the courts and that becomes a source of controversy. Absolutely. But either way, no matter what, he becomes somebody who is a child sex offender. And he comes out of prison and you would think that that would be the end of his existence as a figure of influence and a figure of a socialite, but it doesn't.
This was argued, and we will be coming on to that, but the child sex offender thing, I mean, it was the paedophile label that didn't sit well with a particular person we're going to talk about here, but... Do we say child sex offender or it is the girls that are caught up in the Epstein world are teenagers? No, I mean, they're all sorts of girls.
I mean, they're underage girls. They're underage, but they're underage. There's young and there's women. I mean, there's so many of them that they cover all those categories. Yeah. Obviously his conviction related to somebody, I think she was, was she 17 or 18? Well, the claim was that she was 17 and three quarters.
Yes.
So obviously that would be, there's an age of consent that differs in different places in the US and in different countries. But like, that's irrelevant because he was also having sexual relations with underage girls at the same time.
And providing and procuring them for others, I mean, is really it. And absolutely, but just making that slight... Yeah, so there is a legal distinction. A legal distinction, but also probably we should accept that we don't need to be horrified that the victims that are groomed by Epstein and Co and used by them can be women and they can be older teenagers. They're not just...
children, they're not just totally vulnerable children plucked, you know, in the same way that pedophile rings from the Catholic Church and all the rest of it and children, small children have been abused. We should be equally horrified that teenagers coming of age
have been treated and abused in such a way and terrified and frightened and of course Ghislaine Maxwell is kind of I suppose pimp would be the simplest term for you know she particularly picked on sort of vulnerable girls really who maybe some of them on the streets some of them without exactly and family breakdowns and drug use and really targeted them because of course like the same thing happens with grooming in you know
kids being groomed into drug gangs and all the rest of it. That is seen as you're not forcing somebody to do something. No. It's easier to lure them, to tempt them with something. And the people, the girls that she targeted would have been tempted with money. They would have been tempted with... Opportunity. Exactly, opportunity, and been told that there was this opportunity.
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Chapter 3: What are the allegations against Jeffrey Epstein?
Well, a person who didn't actually, who wasn't part of the extracurricular services and who was within his realm, you'd imagine they could sort of go, I don't want anything to do with this guy. But a lot of those powerful people, as we now know, that were around Epstein, were around him because they wanted his services.
But it's not just that. And I totally agree with you because, of course, like Prince Andrew or whatever, he's not a prince anymore. But he ain't going to be horrified by that. No, he's not going to be because he's engaging in it. He's effectively a sex offender himself. I mean, he is a sex offender. He's horrified by that. the fact that it's crime.
That he's going to get caught or horrified that these women are kicking up. But there was also, I mean, Peter Mandelson, the former Labour Minister, former Secretary of State for Northern Ireland, who's really been the first really major scalp of this. I mean, Peter Mandelson's a gay man, so he wasn't engaging in sex with these women. So, you know, that's a fact. So it wasn't just for sex.
There's all these other men hanging around for money, contacts, Peter Mandelson, you know, may end up in prison for basically taking money off of Epstein.
So it wasn't just Sextor, there's also... The financial sort of plans of the Gordon Brown government. He was feeding him information.
He was feeding Epstein information but he also was getting money.
He was getting money and his husband had a course paid for in whatever. everybody has spoken about Mandelson being a cheap date because the kind of money was small. But actually, and that really brings us on to the reason we're talking about this because we could, you know, you can meander around this Epstein story forever.
But we were really wanting to talk about and just discuss the kind of stories that are closer to home when it comes to the Epstein files. And there has been some pretty good reporting here in this country Why don't you start with what our colleagues in the Sunday Independent broke this week in relation to this story.
There's a girl, I think a woman who is here in Ireland who claimed that Epstein was here.
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Chapter 4: How are powerful people linked to Epstein's activities?
This is in 2002. Before Epstein's conviction. His conviction, yeah. Where people wouldn't, you know, they'd have no reason not to meet Epstein, let's put it that way. But it does show the circles that he's moving in. And it was at a summit in the Four Seasons Hotel on Balls Bridge. It was organized by the Washington Academy of Achievement.
And the guest list included people like Bono, Enya, Frank McCourt, the author, Jeremy Irons, and then many others. Mostly the political figures, some of them that have a long association with Epstein, including Bill Clinton, Gorbachev, and of course, US Senator George Mitchell.
George Mitchell would have been somebody really fated in this country because of his role in the Belfast Agreement, very much seen almost as... you know, this whiter than white heroic character. Yeah, for sure. But of course, his reputation has been absolutely destroyed. Disappointing. Yeah, by his ongoing interactions with Epstein over many, many, many years. And so he was also there.
And, you know, he flew into this. Ghislaine Maxwell was also here. And yeah, so it just shows you this is the circles he's moving in.
Yeah, so there's stuff to investigate really here, given what we now know about Epstein and what was going on. The fact that he was here and he was mixing, there is definitely, you know, keep an open mind about what may or may not have happened here. I think there's a really interesting story that was broken in our sister publication, The Belfast Telegraph, over the weekend.
And it was a story by Sam McBride. Now, I have spent, you know, having read this, my time talking about this story to other journalists and to lawyers. And I mean, you'd stop on a corridor if you met either a lawyer or a journalist to talk about this. Yes. And I hope it's not just a little train spotting thing that just interests us. There's a bit of it.
But I'll try and explain maybe why I think this is a story in the public interest. So there's a lawyer called Paul Tweed who would be a pretty famous, almost celebrity lawyer. He's from Northern Ireland, yeah? He's from Northern Ireland.
He's one of the few lawyers that is interviewed as himself.
He's got this sort of celebrity status because he had very high profile clients, celebrity clients. And there was a kind of a sense, certainly over a period of time, that anybody who had felt they had been either hard done by or libeled by the media, they would go to tweet. So anybody famous and there's a list the length of your arm about who he represented. And he was somebody who...
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Chapter 5: What role does Ghislaine Maxwell play in the Epstein scandal?
They were guys dressed as them. But Alan was telling me this. There was talk of these guards. And then, obviously, there was... you know, the crowd fleeing from the scene. So it was all confusing. But as you said, Ernie had taken a picture of the back of his camera. People will know what the photographer's cameras look like. And they have a little digital screen.
So you don't see it in great detail. But we knew this is a once in a lifetime photograph has been gotten.
Yeah, as soon as it came in. And of course, you know, look, the newsroom... Newsrooms aren't as busy as they used to be. They used to be very busy, buzzy places with phones ringing everywhere. And it felt like a proper newsroom that day. I remember everybody's phone was going. People were hearing little bits about it. It was the news was starting to break about it.
And of course, we were there sitting in the office with this photo. There is that sort of news sense in you that you want to run this. Yes. And at the time, we weren't putting stuff up online. This would have been held for the paper on the Sunday. And this is a Friday afternoon. We had something really special here.
But we also, I think, knew the guards were going to be desperate for that picture because they were two gunmen running from a scene of a crime. So it was a very compromised situation. And there was a bit of arguments going on. And there was a, you know, voices were raised. Totally.
I mean, because it is complex. I mean, normally the journalism likes to keep itself separate from the Garda investigations. So Garda investigations go on and journalism reports on them. But obviously then you're put in this compromising position because you have guys running out visibly with handguns in their hands. And, you know, they're obviously then disappeared into the ether and you have...
Certainly you have to have a discussion about what is your civic responsibility in terms of do you help the guards? You don't want these armed gunmen to run down the street and kill another few people. So it was a complex one and people were aware straight away that the guards are going to want these pictures and want to use it for their purposes.
And we also have our purposes, which is to tell what happened and to report on the news. So there was a conflict straight away.
From my memory, as the afternoon went on and, you know, I was talking to contacts and to other people who were involved in crime journalism, etc. It became apparent that there were no guards at the weigh-in. That in actual fact, the guards didn't seem to be there at all. They were called literally by the hotel and had arrived in response to what had already gone on.
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