This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.<\/p>\n
AMY<\/span> GOODMAN<\/span>:<\/strong> This is Democracy Now!<\/em>, democracynow.org. I\u2019m Amy Goodman, with Juan Gonz\u00e1lez.<\/p>\n Friday is the deadline for the Department of Justice to release its investigative files into the dead financier and serial sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein. The deadline was set with the passage of the Epstein Transparency Act last month. One of the questions that\u2019s remained largely unanswered until now is: How did Jeffrey Epstein become so extravagantly wealthy, wealth that both enabled his crimes and shielded him from scrutiny and accountability for so many years?<\/p>\n Well, a new investigation<\/a> by The New York Times<\/em> uncovered details about Epstein\u2019s rise, previously unreported, and provides an answer. The investigation is headlined \u201cScams, Schemes, Ruthless Cons: The Untold Story of How Jeffrey Epstein Got Rich.\u201d This is a video clip featuring some of the reporters. It begins with business reporter Jessica Silver-Greenberg.<\/p>\n JESSICA<\/span> SILVER<\/span>–GREENBERG<\/span>:<\/strong> How did Jeffrey Epstein have the financial backing to abuse what turns out to be hundreds of young women and girls?<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n DAVID<\/span> ENRICH<\/span>:<\/strong> The hundreds of millions of dollars that Epstein amassed, the palatial estates and aircraft.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n JESSICA<\/span> SILVER<\/span>–GREENBERG<\/span>:<\/strong> Connections to some of the wealthiest, most established people all over the world. There\u2019s been a tremendous number of conspiracy theories and myths.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n DAVID<\/span> ENRICH<\/span>:<\/strong> From he was running a huge blackmail operation to he was affiliated with spy agencies.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n JESSICA<\/span> SILVER<\/span>–GREENBERG<\/span>:<\/strong> Through months of reporting and digging through documents.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n DAVID<\/span> ENRICH<\/span>:<\/strong> People\u2019s diaries, letters, old photo albums.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n JESSICA<\/span> SILVER<\/span>–GREENBERG<\/span>:<\/strong> The answer is: He stole it.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n AMY<\/span> GOODMAN<\/span>:<\/strong> \u201cHe stole it.\u201d The New York Times<\/em> investigation<\/a> begins with Epstein in his early twenties, a college dropout, teaching math at the prestigious Dalton High School here in New York. He\u2019s introduced by a student\u2019s father to Ace Greenberg, the future chief executive of Bear Stearns, an introduction that changed Epstein\u2019s life.<\/p>\n For more, we\u2019re joined by New York Times<\/em> deputy investigations editor David Enrich, who co-wrote the new piece.<\/p>\n We thank you so much for being with us, joining us from Dobbs Ferry. Can you name names? Lay out Jeffrey Epstein\u2019s rise, the critical importance of the people he connected with, and the lies, the thievery, all that you lay out, after, what, months, years of this investigation.<\/p>\n DAVID<\/span> ENRICH<\/span>:<\/strong> Yeah, we\u2019ve spent a long time on this one. And it really starts at Bear Stearns, where Epstein is introduced to a guy named Ace Greenberg, who was a top executive at the investment firm. And Greenberg and another of his colleagues, Jimmy Cayne, who\u2019s also a top executive there, took Epstein under their wings and made him their prot\u00e9g\u00e9.<\/p>\n And Epstein proceeded to go on kind of this spree of wrongdoing at Bear Stearns, everything from abusing his expense account, lying on his r\u00e9sum\u00e9, giving a girlfriend early access to kind of hot investment deals. And time and time again, Epstein\u2019s protectors at the bank went to bat for him and basically got him out of trouble. And this basically \u2014\u00a0this was the start of a lifelong pattern for Epstein, where he would push the envelope, cross ethical, moral, sometimes legal lines, and basically escape with impunity because of his really astounding ability to charm people in positions of power and to use his leverage over people in positions of power.<\/p>\n And one of the things we heard about Bear Stearns was that he was \u2014\u00a0and this was a time in the late ’70s and early \u201980s where there was a lot of drugs and sex going on within the firm itself, and Epstein, it sounds like, was providing some of the top executives with drugs and with access to women. And so, you know, he had leverage, and he was not afraid to use the leverage. And again, we see this over and over and over again in the ensuing decades of Epstein’s life and career.<\/p>\n JUAN<\/span> GONZ\u00c1LEZ:<\/strong> And, David, one of the \u2014\u00a0one of the key figures that he cultivated was the Harvard law professor Alan Dershowitz. Could you talk about how they got together and the importance of Dershowitz in his rise?<\/p>\n DAVID<\/span> ENRICH<\/span>:<\/strong> Yeah, and Dershowitz is interesting, because he is both \u2014\u00a0he goes on to become Epstein\u2019s kind of leading defender and leading protector, but Epstein connects with him through \u2014\u00a0by doing this thing that he does all the time, which is he leverages one connection to form another to form another.<\/p>\n And so, in the case of Dershowitz, Epstein, in the early ’90s, had become close with a woman named Lynn Forester, who was this successful telecom executive who was very close to Bill Clinton and the Clinton White House. Epstein befriends her. She is friends with Dershowitz, and Forester asks Epstein if \u2014 or, I’m sorry, asks Dershowitz if Epstein can come over and visit him. So, Epstein and Dershowitz get together on Martha\u2019s Vineyard, and Epstein convinces Dershowitz to fly out to Ohio with Epstein for a birthday party for Les Wexner, who is the billionaire retail tycoon who owns brands like Victoria\u2019s Secret. And this is the start of a yearslong and very fruitful relationship for both Epstein and Dershowitz.<\/p>\n And Dershowitz gets a lot of notoriety and, I think, from his perspective, probably fame from his representation of Epstein. And Epstein, for his part, gets this access to a world-class lawyer, who engineers a sweetheart deal for him in around 2007 that gets him, basically, out of trouble when he was facing a sex trafficking and money laundering investigation in Florida. And Dershowitz, I mean, to this day, is one of Epstein\u2019s leading public defenders. And so, it was an investment that Epstein made in this man in a very kind of prescient way early on. And that entailed not just introducing him to people, but also getting him access to invest in very exclusive hedge funds, and, when those investments didn\u2019t work out, getting Dershowitz bailed out of those investments.<\/p>\n So, Epstein was just absolutely masterful at leveraging one connection to benefit another. And, you know, it\u2019s often been said that Epstein is this math genius and this super sophisticated financier. What we found in our reporting is much simpler, which is that he may have been those things, but the evidence shows that what made a difference for him in the long run was his ability to charm and entrance and leverage powerful people off of one another.<\/p>\n AMY<\/span> GOODMAN<\/span>:<\/strong> And if you can talk about the connections, as we\u2019re about to see the documents released, if we are, Friday, December 19th, the connections to Trump, to Robert Maxwell, the father of Ghislaine Maxwell, to Ghislaine Maxwell herself, serving a 20-year sentence for \u2014\u00a0<\/p>\n DAVID<\/span> ENRICH<\/span>:<\/strong> Yeah.<\/p>\n AMY<\/span> GOODMAN<\/span>:<\/strong> \u2014\u00a0sex trafficking? Go ahead, David.<\/p>\n DAVID<\/span> ENRICH<\/span>:<\/strong> Well, and we don\u2019t know what\u2019s going to be in these files, if indeed there are files released by Friday. And I think it is much more likely \u2014\u00a0I don\u2019t think it\u2019s very likely that we\u2019re going to see a lot of stuff that kind of plumbs through Epstein\u2019s ancient history, the way we did in this article. That\u2019s part of the reason we wanted to do this reporting, was to provide \u2014\u00a0kind of shine a light on a phase in his life that has not undergone quite as much scrutiny as his later years.<\/p>\n And I think what we\u2019re likely to see in these files is quite a bit about him in the 2000s, essentially, and in the 2010s. And that happens to be a period where he certainly overlapped with Donald Trump for a period, he overlapped with Bill Clinton for a period, and that there are a lot of powerful, important figures kind of darting in and out of his life. And, obviously, there is an enormous amount of interest, rightly so, in what these files show, if anything, about how Epstein\u2019s sex trafficking operation ensnared some of these kind of boldfaced names.<\/p>\n The truth is \u2014 and I\u2019m not trying to be coy or evade the question \u2014 we just really have no idea what is in these files and what is going to actually be released in a way that is legible. And I think there is an expectation or a concern that these might be very, very heavily redacted, if they get released at all. And hopefully I\u2019m wrong about that, because I think the whole world is clamoring for some transparency here. And just as someone who\u2019s been covering this for like six years, six-plus years now, with my colleagues at the Times<\/em>, we are really eager to see what\u2019s in these files.<\/p>\n AMY<\/span> GOODMAN<\/span>:<\/strong> And finally, what surprised you most as you investigated him for all of these years? We just have 30 seconds.<\/p>\n DAVID<\/span> ENRICH<\/span>:<\/strong> I think what surprised me the most was just how pedestrian some of his scams were. This is not someone who was hatching this, like, extremely elaborate plot to con sophisticated people through all these, like, bells and whistles. He was just grabbing people\u2019s money and running with it. And for all of the attention that\u2019s been paid to the possibility of Epstein being part of spy services or running this really sophisticated blackmail operation, the truth that we found \u2014\u00a0and there may be more to it, but what we found \u2014\u00a0was much more run-of-the-mill and kind of low-level than that.<\/p>\n AMY<\/span> GOODMAN<\/span>:<\/strong> David Enrich, we want to thank you for being with us, deputy investigations editor for The New York Times<\/em>. We\u2019ll link to your new investigation<\/a>, \u201cScams, Schemes, Ruthless Cons: The Untold Story of How Jeffrey Epstein Got Rich.\u201d<\/p>\n Happy birthday to Jeff Stauch! And happy belated birthday to Ren\u00e9e Feltz! I\u2019m Amy Goodman, with Juan Gonz\u00e1lez. Thanks for joining us.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n The original content of this program is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License<\/a>. Please attribute legal copies of this work to democracynow.org. Some of the work(s) that this program incorporates, however, may be separately licensed. For further information or additional permissions, contact us.<\/p>\n\n
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