Chapter 1: What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
This is Fresh Air. I'm Tanya Mosley.
Chapter 2: What recent developments have occurred in the Epstein case?
Two days ago, Ghislaine Maxwell, Jeffrey Epstein's longtime associate and the woman convicted of helping him recruit, sexually abuse, and traffic teenage girls, appeared on a screen from a federal prison camp in Texas before the House Oversight Committee. She said nothing at the closed-door session, invoking the Fifth Amendment. But through her attorney, she made an offer.
Give me clemency, and I'll talk. Maxwell isn't the only witness being called before the committee. In the coming weeks, they plan to hear from Les Wexner, the billionaire who gave Epstein control of his fortune, former President Bill Clinton, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, as well as Epstein's accountant and his lawyer.
And for the first time, members of Congress have access to a secure room at the Department of Justice to read the unredacted Epstein files. Those documents, totaling more than 3 million pages, are the largest release of Epstein-related files to date.
They include private emails, a draft indictment that was never filed, an FBI diagram mapping his network, photographs, and the unredacted names of victims, including minors. And yet the Justice Department says its review is complete. No further prosecutions are expected. My guest today is investigative journalist and author Vicki Ward.
She was one of the first reporters to investigate Jeffrey Epstein's world in 2003 for Vanity Fair. She later said the most disturbing allegations she uncovered were never published because they were cut by her editor. In those newly released government files, Ward also found a document of Epstein trying to discredit her, confirming what she's been saying for 23 years.
Our interview was recorded yesterday. And Vicki Ward, welcome to Fresh Air.
Thank you so much for having me.
Well, thank you for being here.
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Chapter 3: How did Ghislaine Maxwell's testimony impact the investigation?
And I want to actually start with what happened on Monday. So Ghislaine Maxwell, as expected, invoked the Fifth Amendment. But her attorney made, I think, what would be called a striking play. He said that Maxwell would testify in public if granted clemency by President Trump. And he went even further, saying that both the president and former President Bill Clinton are, in his words,
innocent of any wrongdoing. You've actually studied how she thinks, so I would love to know what you make of this, this offer.
Well, I wasn't surprised. I mean, Ghislaine Maxwell at this point has absolutely nothing to lose. And she's probably heard that last week President Trump said it was a shame, in his opinion, that the Clintons were being hauled in front of Congress.
Now, possibly that's because, you know, a precedent is being set here and, you know, Congress may well haul President Trump in front of it, you know, once he's left office. If they can do this to the Clintons, they can do this to him. I think that the evidence shows that whatever Glenn Maxwell says, unfortunately...
is meaningless and I say that because I read the transcripts of her interview with Todd Blanche in the summer very carefully and they were packed with untruths. I sat through her criminal trial in which she was convicted and let's not forget one of the counts was for perjury. I think that the survivors have said that they feel
that were she to be given any credibility at this point, that would be a real slap in the face to them. The tragedy of all this is that if Ghislaine Maxwell were to be able to step outside of herself, as it were, if she were to be able to tell the truth, she knows everything. And that's the tragedy here.
And you mentioned Todd Blanche. He's the deputy attorney general who interviewed Maxwell last summer after which she was moved to a more comfortable prison. I want to unpack a little bit of what you're saying about the untruths that she gave over the summer because you have been following this for so long.
Maxwell actually inserted herself in your reporting early on when you were working on that Vanity Fair story about Epstein. Is that right? Yes. Describe who she is because, I mean, she's kind of like a social gatekeeper. She was his recruiter. She trafficked girls as young as 14.
So Ghislaine Maxwell is actually the key to the entire Epstein scheme. There's no evidence that he abused underage girls or trafficked them before he met Ghislaine Maxwell. So her importance is critical on two different levels. Regarding the vulnerable teenagers and young women who were recruited by her, she played a critical role because they looked up to her.
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Chapter 4: What role did Vicky Ward play in uncovering Epstein's activities?
So she would find these young girls, often women, children who looked up to her greatly. Because she was so sophisticated and knew so many rich and important people. And so then she would bring them in. And you heard this again and again at her trial. She would bring these young girls. She would introduce them to Jeffrey Epstein.
She would playfully suggest they all massage Jeffrey Epstein's feet. She would then... get undressed whilst giving Jeffrey Epstein a massage. She would normalize this sexual behavior in front of them. And so because of her, they trusted what was going on and then took part in it.
Chapter 5: What disturbing allegations did Vicky Ward discover while reporting on Epstein?
And so I think her role was absolutely phenomenal. critical in the recruiting and grooming of these young girls and she was also critical in expanding Jeffrey Epstein's rolodex amongst the powerful people around the world.
And the two things are related because until Jeffrey Epstein had this huge amount of money and the protection of all these powerful people that he knew, there's no evidence that he ever abused an underage girl.
Let's get into the millions of files the Justice Department released. Over 3 million pages, 2,000 videos. 180,000 images, and they are not in chronological order. President Trump's name appears thousands of times in these files. The New York Times counted more than 38,000 mentions across 5,000 documents. What do you actually know about the Trump-Epstein relationship?
What your reporting has shown you over the years?
Well, it's an interesting one. We know that they hung out together. I mean, we've got, you know, photos of them. And none of the survivors I've ever spoken to have ever suggested that Donald Trump abused them. They haven't. So I just want to be very clear about that.
I have, in the course of my reporting, talked to Sam Nunberg, who was Trump's first ever actual political campaign operative back in 2015, which is when Virginia Jafray really came forward and
sort of more strongly, she'd originally surfaced in 2011, but Virginia Roberts, Virginia Giuffre was her married name, in 2015 came out and said that she had been Epstein's sex slave and she'd been pimped to all these high-profile names.
And Sam Numburg told me that he was working for Trump, who was obviously running for the presidency for the first time, and asked him about Epstein because I think he knew that the two men had been friends. And Trump was actually very dismissive. according to Numburg back then of Epstein, and said, I chucked him out of Mar-a-Lago. And that turns out to be true.
But we do know that Jeffrey Epstein, you know, once Trump became president, was clearly obsessed with the fact that Trump had become president. And it seems clear from the emails that Jeffrey Epstein believed that the information he had on Trump could be invaluable if he wanted to bring Trump down.
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Chapter 6: How did Ghislaine Maxwell recruit young girls for Epstein?
And, you know, for all the people who say, oh, well, I went to see Jeffrey Epstein, I didn't see the girls. There are also people I've spoken to who did walk into his house once, took one look around and looked at all these young women and did immediately leave. And I think that what you see is that people like Melinda Gates clearly got that same vibe.
You know, what Bill Gates wanted from Jeffrey Epstein is something that does make sense. You know, Epstein had a Rolodex of other billionaires around the world, and Bill Gates wanted to scale up his philanthropy. And so did Warren Buffett. And Epstein told him that he could put together a fund using J.P. Morgan and he could bring all these other people in his Rolodex together.
And that was very appealing.
It still is for many people. It still doesn't make sense. This is Bill Gates. He has access to above board financial advisers. one would assume, the best in the world.
Well, again, but this is what's so interesting and what Epstein understood, which is so clever, that the global elite, I mean the real elite, the 0.001% of the world, they have gatekeepers, but once you're through the gate, you're in, and they stop asking questions that they probably otherwise should. And let us not forget that when Bill Gates met Epstein,
Jeffrey Epstein, Larry Summers, the former president of Harvard, was in the room. So was Jess Staley, the number two banker at J.P. Morgan. And remember all the scientists who Epstein cultivated. Following, by the way, a business model that Glenn Maxwell's father had done, it gives him a veneer of respectability.
And I think it makes people like Bill Gates stop and Larry Summers and Jess Daly, they stop using their judgment because it looks like this is going to work out very well for them. I mean, it's all about transactionality.
I want to ask you about a few other people. So these emails in the files show Elon Musk corresponding with Epstein as late as 2014, asking about his parties, writing about how he wanted to let loose. I think the quote is, a peaceful island experience is the opposite of what I'm looking for. This is contradictory to Musk's public statements about their correspondence. Right.
For me, it just begs this larger question, what do those emails actually show us about how Epstein cultivated people at that level? Not just in the financial sphere with someone like Gates, but just in the social sphere.
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