Come Back With a Warrant
Episode 31: Epstein Files Series Ep. 1: The Palm Beach Case & The Sweetheart Plea Deal
Hosted by Brandon Dinetz and Monica Ishak
Intro
Brandon: Welcome back to Come Back With a Warrant podcast. I'm Brandon Dinetz.
Monica: And I'm Monica Ishak.
Monica: Before we kick-start this week's episode, this is your reminder that this podcast is not legal advice. It's real, unfiltered, and for entertainment purposes only. If you need to speak with a lawyer, call one. Or better yet, call us.
Brandon: Call us.
Episode
Brandon: So we had a bunch of requests at our networking event, which — plug in our networking event —
Monica: Yes. 'Cause it was awesome. So fun.
Brandon: We had a bunch of requests for some topics for episodes, and one of the ones that came up a few times was Epstein.
Monica: Mm-hmm.
Brandon: And talking all about Jeffrey Epstein and the Epstein files. So, what we are going to do, starting with this episode, is a three-part series all about Jeffrey Epstein and the Epstein files.
Monica: Yes.
Brandon: And we're gonna give you Come Back With a Warrant's take on the Epstein files in this three-part series. The first part, which is this episode, episode one of the series, is gonna be all about the 2008 case, and the deal that was reached, and the sentence that Jeffrey Epstein had.
Monica: Yeah.
Brandon: And everything that comes out of Palm Beach County.
Monica: Yes.
Brandon: Because we are, as everyone knows that listens to this show, in Palm Beach County. Our headquarters are West Palm Beach. And right across the island from us, you know, you and I were not in the game at that point —
Monica: No, we were not in the legal game —
Brandon: No, back then. We were both in high school, but —
Monica: Yeah.
Brandon: The office that I worked at, the state attorney's office, was very involved with the Epstein situation, and there's a lot of scandal and question about that deal that happened back in 2008. And there's a lot of things that have changed because of that situation. So, what we're gonna do is jump right into the 2008 Palm Beach case, how the plea deal happened, and really take it from there.
Monica: Yeah. I mean, so I guess for me, it really hits home because I grew up here. This is my hometown, and it started, I think — I don't know if it — I guess for everybody as just this situation that happened in Palm Beach County —
Brandon: Right.
Monica: And now has expanded. And it is now an international —
Brandon: So it's global.
Monica: Right, it is an international story.
Brandon: Yes. Because there's international players involved.
Monica: Exactly.
Brandon: And we will get into all of the actual files, the releases, the people that are involved, co-conspirators —
Monica: Yeah.
Brandon: Named and unnamed. We're gonna get into all that. Stay tuned for the series. But this episode is just gonna be about the 2008 —
Monica: Yeah.
Brandon: Case, which we have to take you back to 2005 —
Monica: Right.
Brandon: In order to start explaining it. So, we'll do the best job that we can giving it to you —
Monica: Yeah.
Brandon: From our perspective. Obviously, there's that Netflix documentary, I'm sure everybody knows already, which is Filthy Rich.
Monica: Correct, Filthy Rich, which a lot of the information that you'll hear that we discuss in this episode, you can learn about further in that documentary.
Brandon: Yeah. So, we take you back to 2005, Royal Palm Beach High School. There are some teenage girls that get into a fight because one girl calls another girl a prostitute.
Monica: Yeah.
Brandon: And that's where we first learn about this case and this situation. A stepmom for one of those girls calls the Palm Beach Police Department and makes the first complaint that this individual, Jeffrey Epstein, was giving teenage girls sums of cash in exchange for —
Monica: Massages.
Brandon: Massages. And what we know is it's a lot more than that, and the investigation starts at that point.
Monica: Yeah.
Brandon: The Palm Beach Police Department interviews at least 30 different —
Monica: Yeah.
Brandon: Individuals that they believe were victims in this situation, and they start to uncover a lot of information and start to learn about different people that are involved at all different levels. And it's important to note, because this comes into play with how the state attorney's office approaches this case, and becomes kind of a part of the controversy, is the fact that some of these girls would continue going back to seeing Jeffrey Epstein. It wasn't like a one-time —
Monica: Right.
Brandon: It wasn't like 30 one-time people that had this situation happen to them and they just never saw him again.
Monica: No, like, there was a situation that someone was sent a cab and they got back in the car, even though after they had experienced that and felt un — some people would say they claimed to feel uncomfortable. I think that it probably was uncomfortable, but these people came from places that they didn't have resources, and so they —
Brandon: True.
Monica: Felt like this was maybe an out of whatever situation they were in, and that's how they justified it in their 15- or 16-year-old, or even 14-year-old's mind.
Brandon: Right, and we know that there were victims globally, and in the big scheme of things, we believe there's victims that are even younger than that. But at least in terms of the Palm Beach County case, we know that —
Monica: And the investigation that we're talking about.
Brandon: Right. We know that in that high school girl range, girls were brought to Palm Beach Island, to Epstein's mansion, and they were asked to give him massages, or told to engage in sex acts with him, and the girls that would do that would then, in turn, become future recruiters for more girls.
Monica: Right.
Brandon: So they would tell a friend, that would then bring a friend, that would bring a friend, bring a friend, bring a friend, then it becomes this web of different people that are involved. And these recruiters really are, in certain circumstances, also victims themselves that were victims of the situation, but they brought in a lot —
Monica: Right.
Brandon: More victims into this world.
Monica: And so I think legally, from the legal aspect, I think maybe someone who doesn't understand the law may wonder, like, where do you draw the line? Who's a victim and who's not a victim? And I think Florida's law, at least, is clear, because if you're under 18, the law says you cannot consent. Even if you are in sound mind or whatever they wanna say about this individual, it's considered not consent, even if you are actually saying yes, if you are under the age of 18.
Brandon: Right.
Monica: So that's why these people are considered victims, even though they kind of enabled this behavior and participated in it, because they weren't — that's literally the law in Florida.
Brandon: So, Palm Beach Police Department — and this is not the sheriff's department. This is the Palm Beach, so on the island, the Palm Beach Police Department is the one that's running the investigation here. They interview all of these witnesses. They compile tons and tons and tons of evidence. And what they do with that evidence is what they do in any case — they take that evidence to the state attorney's office. And the state attorney's office then, in normal settings — and I say normal because this is an abnormal setting — in a normal setting, they decide whether or not to press charges, whether or not to set a grand jury, which is what happens here. Instead of the state attorney's office laying out a case and filing charges for the evidence that they had, which were the underage sex with these women, not sexual batteries that were occurring, they instead choose to give the case to a grand jury and let the grand jury decide what charges are gonna be brought against Jeffrey Epstein. And by doing that, a few things happen. And we have to also ask why that happens. But by doing that, prosecutors are in control of the grand jury proceeding. They call in witnesses, put these witnesses before a jury, and they are building the case before the jury. There's a very famous expression that a grand jury would indict a ham sandwich. And what that means —
Monica: And that's so easy.
Brandon: Is that it's very easy to get a grand jury to indict. So, that draws a lot of questions, because in this case, the grand jury comes back and they bring one count of solicitation of prostitution.
Monica: One count. Out of all of those witnesses?
Brandon: Right. But why is that? Well, we later learn that the grand jury didn't hear from all of those witnesses.
Monica: Yeah.
Brandon: The grand jury heard from one of those girls. And while the prosecutor was examining this witness in front of the jury, they are grilling the witness on their MySpace, and different social media and text messages, and things about their reputation, things about their behavior. And they're doing so in a way that completely undercuts the credibility of this witness, and makes it so it's difficult to believe. Now, if they would've brought in 30 different witnesses that were all telling the same story, the posts that they put on MySpace wouldn't have been as important, or the things about their personal credibility wouldn't have been as important because it would've been very clear to anybody, just like it is very clear now, that there was this pattern going on, there was this behavior going on, and it did exist. But —
Monica: And it's really important to note that he had the same MO every time. Every time he had a massage, he would ask the girl to undress and to do — it was the same exact thing every time. So if a jury heard that, despite the girl's background, despite the MySpace posts, all those things — those are things that need to be heard by the grand jury, but the state attorney's office didn't care enough to put it on. What is the reason behind that?
Brandon: So, I think the only reason that the state attorney's office doesn't either go after him with the charges that they're filing on their own without a grand jury, or, for what it looks like, basically tank their grand jury proceeding — the only reason they do that is because of information that they're given beforehand. And what I believe happened is, Epstein became aware that he was the subject of an investigation. He was a very wealthy man that paid off a lot of people, and there were a lot of people that would be giving him information. So if he's learning that he's under investigation, what does he do? He does what anyone that has resources does. They assemble a legal defense team, and that legal defense team tries to preempt whatever is going on.
Monica: Yeah.
Brandon: So that's what happened here.
Monica: Exactly.
Brandon: He assembled some of the top criminal defense minds in the country and had them start attacking this case before the case even existed.
Monica: Yeah. I mean —
Brandon: And yeah.
Monica: There was a point — sorry.
Brandon: No, no, no.
Monica: But there was a point during the investigation where his house was cleared out.
Brandon: Well, right, and we're gonna get to that. We're gonna get to that, because that's huge. And what Monica is talking about is — by the time that the — and this is something that I jumped over, because I talked about the grand jury proceedings. The police department developed enough of an investigation that they got search warrants for Jeffrey Epstein's home. And when they executed those search warrants, what did they find? They found missing computers, missing records. There was a lot of things that weren't there. And they —
Monica: That should have been there. And they knew that because there was a lot of printers and a lot of other things that would go with computers —
Brandon: Wires hanging —
Monica: Yeah. That were not attached to anything. No hard drive. It's just —
Brandon: Like, you know — the actual body of the computer was not there anymore.
Monica: Yeah, the equipment wasn't there.
Brandon: Right, and it was all removed because he and his team were tipped off about this.
Monica: Exactly.
Brandon: Now, you say, who tipped off Jeffrey Epstein and his team? Well, other than the Palm Beach Police Department, the only —
Monica: The only other people that knew about —
Brandon: The only way the investigation, and that there were search warrants, were the Palm Beach Sheriff's Office and the Palm Beach State Attorney's Office. That's the only people that knew, allegedly —
Monica: And the witnesses.
Brandon: Allegedly. And the witnesses. So, someone in that group tips off Epstein that these searches are coming, and they're able to clean his house out of a lot of evidence beforehand.
Monica: Thinking of it practically, though, it is pretty — I mean, I don't find it hard to believe that his counsel would have known about a warrant beforehand.
Brandon: No, I don't either. I think that there's ways to find out, but I think in this situation, the amount of coincidences and being tipped off —
Monica: Yeah, exactly.
Brandon: Is far too much.
Monica: Too many.
Brandon: Right. Exactly. It's not this one-off thing.
Monica: It's happened way too many times. I mean, up till now, after this case —
Brandon: Right.
Monica: That now that we know —
Brandon: Well, it's still —
Monica: What we know —
Brandon: It's still happening.
Monica: Yeah. Exactly.
Brandon: It's still happening with this case —
Monica: Exactly.
Brandon: Because of what's involved —
Monica: Right.
Brandon: Because of how high-profile this situation is.
Monica: Right.
Brandon: And we could deep dive into who Epstein himself was, but everything about him is shrouded in mystery, and it's all sort of different circumstances that got him to where he was. He, by all accounts, was not a brilliant guy. He did not graduate college. He was hand given a job at the Dalton School. He then got a job from the Dalton School. He transitioned to Bear Stearns. Bear Stearns found out that his credentials were bullshit —
Monica: Yeah, he wasn't even qualified.
Brandon: And didn't fire him.
Monica: Yeah. Right, he wasn't qualified for any of this shit.
Brandon: Yeah. And was not fired —
Monica: No.
Brandon: Was not let go, was not terminated, was, in fact —
Monica: Promoted.
Brandon: Given more opportunities. Until he does something to get himself in trouble in the financial world, he is given, you know —
Monica: Because he's —
Brandon: Unlimited opportunities.
Monica: Him, he's getting all his friends rich.
Brandon: Right, because he's getting —
Monica: They keep getting richer.
Brandon: Other people — exactly right. So, what incentive do they have to get him out of the equation?
Monica: Exactly.
Brandon: Exactly right. He made a lot of people —
Monica: He benefits them too much.
Brandon: He made a lot of people money, and he had a lot of compromising information on people, and that's why he was able to wield —
Monica: Power.
Brandon: So much power. He was a powerful person.
Monica: Correct.
Brandon: Exactly. Correct, because of that, that he built and grew.
Monica: But back to good old Palm Beach.
Brandon: But back to Palm Beach. So, the grand jury returns one count of solicitation of prostitution, and the Palm Beach Police Department is justifiably upset that that's all that is coming out of their investigation and all of what they uncovered.
Monica: It was, like, a year long.
Brandon: More than that —
Monica: Yeah.
Brandon: Because the first tip is in 2005.
Monica: Oh, yeah.
Brandon: So, after they see that nothing is happening — or really, to their, what they're saying is nothing is happening, because he's just being charged with this one at that point misdemeanor count of solicitation of prostitution —
Monica: Crazy.
Brandon: They contact the victims and let the victims know that they are sending the case to the FBI. And the investigation that the Palm Beach Police Department did goes to the FBI, and specifically to the Southern District of Florida, which would be the United States Attorney General's office for the Southern District of Florida.
Monica: Yeah.
Brandon: That's where the case goes. And they're given all this evidence, and they work up the case, and they get to a point where they put together a huge indictment against Epstein, and they're ready to put, you know, this guy away forever. But something happens. Again, we talked about, and we've talked about on this show in other episodes, what money is able to afford you —
Monica: When resources — mm-hmm.
Brandon: What resources are able to afford you, and for this person with his resources, what he did was he built a super legal team. And that legal team sat down with Alex Acosta's office, specifically Alex Acosta being involved.
Monica: Who is my former law school dean.
Brandon: Sorry.
Monica: Crazy. I'm like, oh, my God, it's all connected.
Brandon: Sits down — and what comes out of that meeting where Alan Dershowitz is — who is one of the top criminal defense minds in the country — puts on a presentation for Alex Acosta that results in Alex Acosta's office saying that they are not going to prosecute Epstein. And they create this non-prosecution agreement, where Epstein will agree to plead guilty to two state charges and be sentenced as a sex offender and serve jail time, and they agree that Epstein and all of his co-conspirators, named and unnamed, would be protected from federal prosecution on the matter, and that would be the way that the case ends.
Monica: So, I saw something on that.
Brandon: Sure.
Monica: Where the attorney, I'm assuming Alex Acosta, sent an email to his attorney saying, like, whatever suggestions you wanna add, feel free. And attached it to him.
Brandon: What do you mean?
Monica: Like, basically, sent him the non-pros agreement —
Brandon: Oh.
Monica: And said, feel free to include whatever you want, and his defense attorneys probably included the named and unnamed section.
Brandon: I'm sure that was there —
Monica: Correct.
Brandon: I get what you're saying.
Monica: They're working on this document like it's a collaborative effort to —
Brandon: Yeah, like it's jury instructions.
Monica: Correct.
Brandon: Like, what?
Monica: Correct.
Brandon: And this is a huge document that basically shields Epstein and all of his friends and co-conspirators. And remember, some of the people that are named as co-conspirators, at least at this stage, are other recruiters of women. So, some of them are people that were victimized themselves at a point, and then they were there to recruit other women for Epstein.
Monica: Yeah, that became their career.
Brandon: Correct.
Monica: He basically gave them a way to be very wealthy and be surrounded by very powerful people if they were to do stuff like this. They were incentivized.
Brandon: Right. And they're entering adulthood doing this. And remember, the people that he picked out — and we're talking about the people that he, specifically the ones that were picked out from Palm Beach County — he didn't go to the top private —
Monica: Yeah.
Brandon: Schools in Palm Beach County —
Monica: Yeah.
Brandon: And pull kids. He was taking people from lower economic backgrounds or girls —
Monica: People in and out of foster homes.
Brandon: That had trauma.
Monica: Right.
Brandon: Girls that didn't have easy lives growing up were the ones that he preyed on.
Monica: Yeah.
Brandon: And you see different examples of these women, and girls at the time, certainly in the Netflix documentary. But as you read and learn more about these people —
Monica: There's so many more that came forward.
Brandon: Tons of women that come forward. Hundreds of people come forward. And the ones that he was preying on were —
Monica: They were more vulnerable.
Brandon: He picked his victims.
Monica: Yeah.
Brandon: Right. For sure. Exactly right. They were the more vulnerable. They had more issues. There were problems in their lives.
Monica: Imagine telling a rich kid that goes to a really nice private school, here, come give an old man a massage for $200. They would be like, parents just bought me a brand new fucking car.
Brandon: Right. Well, those kids —
Monica: Like, what the fuck are you talking about?
Brandon: Right. Those kids would go back to their parents and tell their parents, and their parents would then do something —
Monica: Exactly.
Brandon: About it, 'cause they come from money also.
Monica: Exactly. Whereas with these other girls who —
Brandon: They don't have that.
Monica: Some of them were victims of sexual assault before they ever met Jeffrey Epstein. The level of trauma that some of these girls had before they even got to know him was already there, was already terrible. And now they're meeting this guy and he's taking — it's a whole nother level, and they don't have the ability to consent.
Brandon: They don't have the ability to say no. They're trapped on, you know, in this guy's mansion. They don't know if they say no to this guy, if he's got a gun. They don't know if they are gonna get out of the situation, they don't know if they'll make it home. It's horrible —
Monica: Yeah.
Brandon: What he was doing.
Monica: It's very scary. And to think that this is something that was — again, this is kind of like where I was like, oh, this hits home, because it starts out as my home. I'm like —
Brandon: Right.
Monica: What the heck? That's crazy.
Brandon: Right. And it's just the tip of the iceberg —
Monica: Yeah, exactly.
Brandon: Is what we learn about in Palm Beach. Now, after the non-prosecution agreement is signed, people will ask, how does something like that happen with so many victims involved? And the answer is that it shouldn't. There are federal laws in place to protect victims.
Monica: Yeah.
Brandon: And that federal law that is in place, the Crime Victims' Rights Act — at minimum, they need to be apprised —
Monica: Notified.
Brandon: Of the situation —
Monica: Right.
Brandon: That's going on, and apprised that there are these negotiations going on.
Monica: Yeah.
Brandon: None of them were contacted. And not only were none of them contacted, but some of them find out that this stuff is going on because Jeffrey Epstein is in a courtroom in Palm Beach County accepting a plea to one count of solicitation of a prostitute and one count of procurement of a minor for prostitution.
Monica: Yeah.
Brandon: Those were the two counts that he actually pleads guilty to.
Monica: Which we'll talk about —
Brandon: Right.
Monica: That part of it.
Brandon: Yeah, we could talk about that. But no, let's stay on topic, because you're talking about — this is important.
Monica: Yeah.
Brandon: The rights —
Monica: The rights of the victims —
Brandon: Yes.
Monica: Was completely trampled.
Brandon: And —
Monica: Which I wanna comment on, because —
Brandon: Sure.
Monica: Florida's, I guess, law that's parallel to that is new compared to what happened — like, when this happened, that law came out 2018, 2017. Marsy's Law is new.
Brandon: Marsy's Law —
Monica: Correct. Which we talked about —
Brandon: Yeah.
Monica: We've talked about on other episodes.
Brandon: And there is something similar in federal court, where the prosecutors are required to notify, or victims are required to be notified by the prosecutors and at least have some sort of conversation about what's going on.
Monica: Right. They weren't even allowed to be heard. And so this was challenged in federal court.
Brandon: It was. There were local attorneys and victims' rights attorneys that challenged the government and said that there was a violation of this act, and a federal judge did find that that is correct, that the federal government basically conspired with Epstein's attorneys to violate the rights of the victims —
Monica: Yeah.
Brandon: By entering into this non-prosecution agreement.
Monica: Right, and effectively made that agreement null and void.
Brandon: Which is what it did.
Monica: Yeah.
Brandon: It made that agreement null and void. So —
Monica: Years, years and years later —
Brandon: Right.
Monica: After, years and years later, this all happens. So —
Brandon: Right.
Monica: That's not happening in the moment, so it's not like it derailed anything.
Brandon: No. And what they did — you know, you can say his defense attorneys were smart —
Monica: Absolutely.
Brandon: They got him into court immediately —
Monica: Immediately.
Brandon: And had him plea right away and get the case as close to closed as possible at that point.
Monica: Yeah. So, talking about resources and differences with people in the system, this is such a good example of —
Brandon: Of course.
Monica: How the whole entire system handles it. And to ever think that, you know, in the situations where you think, even just in general, when something bad happens, you're like, that would never happen to me, or, that doesn't happen in my town. No, this shit happened right here in Palm Beach County.
Brandon: That's right.
Monica: So I'm like, fuck.
Brandon: That's right.
Monica: But the reason why I say that is because he, yes, he becomes a labeled sex offender, clearly doesn't matter. But he takes an 18-month sentence, is granted work release by PBSO, and is out of his home for 12 hours a day, and is caught violating his probation on numerous days where he's in New York, he's in Miami.
Brandon: Yep.
Monica: He's literally living his best life doing whatever he wants to do, and the probation office knew about it and they're like, what are we supposed to do? He's a celebrity.
Brandon: That's right. I mean, you have to think about this. He's sentenced to 18 months in jail, and immediately is given special privileges that are unheard of. So, first special privilege, he's basically given his own wing, the T-Block at the Palm Beach stockade. That's where he is gonna be housed. He's housed where the cell door is not locked. He is allowed to leave for 12 hours a day, six days a week, because that's the work release program that he gets out on. He makes an arrangement where he will pay for the salary of deputies —
Monica: Oh, yeah.
Brandon: So that they can go to his office every day for those 12 hours. And he winds up giving hundreds of thousands of dollars to the Palm Beach Sheriff's Office as part of that, to pay the salaries of these officers that are monitoring him. He is in an office in West Palm, meeting with whomever, doing whatever, having women visit —
Monica: That's if he's even in —
Brandon: Doing all these things.
Monica: The West Palm office.
Brandon: Right, right. Even if he's there.
Monica: He's doing whatever the fuck he wants.
Brandon: When he's at the jail, he's allowed to be visited at all hours and all times, so he had lawyers there all the time, he had people there all the time visiting him.
Monica: Which is normal. To an extent, you're —
Brandon: You're legally allowed to have your attorneys there.
Monica: Sure, sure. But —
Brandon: But this setup —
Monica: Yes, yes. This whole setup is not normal at all.
Brandon: This setup of a visit, yes, exactly. And then when he is done with his sentence, he is on probation. He's a sex offender, he's on sex offender probation, so he's supposed to be monitored even tighter. There are restrictions on travel.
Monica: Oh, my God. There are restrictions on all these things. When I tell y'all —
Brandon: And he's going —
Monica: Yeah, wherever.
Brandon: He's going all over the place. No problem at all. No problems.
Monica: And — but I think that because we understand it, 'cause we're in it, how restrictive it is for sex offenders to be out in the community. My clients who have been sex offenders are people who have trouble finding a stable permanent residence because of the amount of restrictions there are. You cannot live just anywhere. You cannot be around certain community places. You cannot be around schools. And there are schools everywhere. You cannot be within a certain distance. You will violate just being — that could result in new felony charges.
Brandon: Right.
Monica: Not registering your email, not registering your — there are — they are on you for the rest of your life. That's the whole point of having a sex offender label. And to think that he was labeled as this and that was his punishment and there was no consequences, not just while he was on probation, but even after — until literally 2019 when he got —
Brandon: Yeah.
Monica: Federally prosecuted. Nothing.
Brandon: Well, and like I said, we're gonna really get into it, but the level of enabling and the people that stayed in his orbit after this.
Monica: Yeah.
Brandon: That's really telling. And you see that in all the files. The people that were still around him, that still interacted with him after all of this, is shocking, because it was public knowledge now.
Monica: Yeah.
Brandon: And even if they all knew it in secret, as famous rich people, they all knew about this — this is now completely public. And there is, you know, not just the criminal case, there's all the civil lawsuits against him. This is all public information, and everybody is claiming and alleging the same things, that he's doing the same exact thing. So, the people that stuck around him after, that's really fucked up. Those people —
Monica: Yeah.
Brandon: That's the, you know? And we're gonna —
Monica: Stay tuned for episode two.
Brandon: Yeah, stay tuned for episode two and three on that one.
Monica: But that's to say that his sentence was definitely, obviously, very lenient compared to what many other people deal with and face in the system every day who are not Jeffrey Epstein.
Brandon: Well, right. And he was not charged and didn't take the charges that were appropriate —
Monica: Right.
Brandon: In his situation.
Monica: Yeah.
Brandon: There should've been felony sexual battery on a minor charges. It shouldn't have been in state court, period. This should have been — but you know what, if you're gonna do it in state court —
Monica: Yeah.
Brandon: Then do it right.
Monica: Yeah.
Brandon: And why didn't the state attorney's office do it?
Monica: Yeah.
Brandon: What was their concern? Was the argument from his defense attorneys so compelling that it just made you blind to what the investigation was that was done by the police department?
Monica: You know what's funny? Every single — that's how I feel about every player around Jeffrey Epstein, not just the state attorney's office in this case. I feel that, and every time I hear something, I'm like, what the fuck?
Brandon: Yeah.
Monica: Like, there is no way that they have this type of, like, power and manipulative control over someone that you are so willing. They have to be either, like — they have to have some sort of personal interest. There has to be something, or he has something on them. Something.
Brandon: Well, they're —
Monica: It's gotta be something.
Brandon: It doesn't make sense that the state attorney's office kicks the issue and decides they're gonna send it to a grand jury instead of them filing charges.
Monica: Because nobody wants to take personal responsibility for it. Because they don't wanna have their name on the — they don't wanna sign the information that charges them.
Brandon: Because of the blowback, potentially.
Monica: But, like, what do they know? You know what I mean?
Brandon: Well, right. That's exactly right.
Monica: Like, what are they scared of?
Brandon: That's right.
Monica: Like, for me — in my opinion, it's like, okay, at that point, if you really think this is just this old man off Palm Beach. You know what I mean?
Brandon: Right.
Monica: Doing weird shit. Then you wouldn't really — if — I don't know. If you really are prosecuting, you would prosecute appropriately. And the thing is that once it's clear that the state is not handling it correctly, the federal government should've done it and said —
Brandon: Hence —
Monica: Okay, we're doing it.
Brandon: And the investigation that they did —
Monica: Began. Hence why it started.
Brandon: Yeah, the investigation they did was good enough.
Monica: Yeah.
Brandon: And by all accounts, they had a 35-page or 53-page indictment that they had against Epstein, would've put him away for the rest of his life, by all accounts. But the meeting that Acosta has with Epstein's lawyers is enough for that to just all go away.
Monica: Exactly.
Brandon: All this massive indictment all go away. And it starts to beg the question, what is the real reason?
Monica: Exactly.
Brandon: And who is the one that's pulling the strings? Because nobody on either political aisle can sit there and say their party is absolved of this.
Monica: Oh, no.
Brandon: No.
Monica: Or they're not involved.
Brandon: It's not even about that anymore. This spanned for multiple administrations in the White House. The behavior and what he was doing can be tracked back to at least the '90s.
Monica: Right. But we're talking — oh. We're talking the '90s.
Brandon: Yeah.
Monica: Yeah, you're right.
Brandon: You know, he was in the Clinton White House. I'm just thinking of —
Monica: Right.
Brandon: I mean, you can see —
Monica: Yeah.
Brandon: His behavior and his influence —
Monica: Yeah.
Brandon: As far back as that. And the people that he intertwined himself with and that he developed this kompromat — which is the compromising material, because that's what assets do, that's what spies do — this is what this guy was doing. And he had enough dirt on people and enough money to make things like this go away. And somehow, that's what he was able to do. Now, one of the questions can easily be, well, maybe because he was a spy for the US government, that's why they didn't want this to go any further. We don't know.
Monica: Yeah.
Brandon: The information that comes out later down the line, there's a lot of people that are claiming that he says that he's tied to the CIA, and we also know there's a lot of ties that he has to the DOJ based on things that we see in the files.
Monica: Oh.
Brandon: Yeah. Again —
Monica: Yeah.
Brandon: Stay tuned to episode two.
Monica: Yeah.
Brandon: What we know is, we know what happens in Palm Beach. Something happens to make it so the state attorney's office is afraid to go forward on their own with charges. But you know what's important to note here?
Monica: Sure.
Brandon: The Palm Beach Police Department sent the case file to the FBI kind of over the state attorney's head, pretty much. They were like, oh —
Monica: Not kind of. Absolutely over this. They were like, you're not gonna handle this appropriately —
Brandon: You can't do this.
Monica: Right. Appropriately. We're gonna send this to the feds.
Brandon: So, that was pretty much the only entity at that point that was seeing a major problem with what was going on, which is crazy because usually what we see every day is — I don't wanna say the opposite, but usually it's like the state is kind of making more of the appropriate decisions in terms of charges than the police.
Monica: You know what I mean?
Brandon: Well, that's correct. Because they are the lawyers.
Monica: Right. So, it's just crazy. But that's also because they're not afraid to charge, you know, my client —
Brandon: Yeah.
Monica: With the DUI that this person was arrested for, or —
Brandon: Yeah, your average Joe.
Monica: Right.
Brandon: There's no concern to doing that.
Monica: Yeah, they're not worried.
Brandon: And it's interesting because, by the time I worked in the office, it was probably almost 10 years after all this happens — by the time I'm — oh, no, actually less, a little bit less than that. But different administrations had changed at —
Monica: Right.
Brandon: The state attorney's office. There was turnover. And by the time I was working under my boss, to my knowledge, there was no overlap with him having anything to do with the Epstein case, and a lot of the people that were there were not there anymore that were there at that time. But, you know, the police officers at the Palm Beach Police Department, they were still there.
Monica: Yeah.
Brandon: And those people, you know, still to this day —
Monica: Some people on the bench that were at the state's office at the time.
Brandon: Correct.
Monica: Which is crazy. I kinda wanna be like, what do you remember?
Brandon: Yeah.
Monica: Like, interview them.
Brandon: Yeah. That's right. Let's ask local judges who used to be prosecutors.
Monica: What they remember —
Brandon: About the Epstein case.
Monica: You know?
Brandon: They're gonna be like, I prefer not to comment. But basically, what you have is you have a Palm Beach billionaire that is able to use his resources to skirt the system, and what he does by having this large defense team pre-fight his case isn't a novel concept. It's something that we do for our clients.
Monica: Yeah, yeah.
Brandon: We reach out to the state attorney's office. We reach out to police departments.
Monica: All the time.
Brandon: All the time. The difference is —
Monica: Damage control, okay?
Brandon: Right. That's what we're doing. The difference is that if a search warrant is executed on our clients, we were not tipped off about it ahead of time.
Monica: No, no.
Brandon: And we're not hiding evidence from the police department and evidence that, to this day, still could exist. We don't know if a lot of that evidence exists because somebody removed the evidence from Epstein's house on Palm Beach island, and, you know, later down the road, we see in the emails kind of where some of that evidence went.
Monica: Yeah.
Brandon: You know, Roy Black's office and the investigators that they hired straight out copped to taking some of this evidence —
Monica: No, yeah.
Brandon: And putting this evidence in storage units, and, you know, Roy Black —
Monica: All over.
Brandon: Wanted the hard drives cloned and all of this stuff, so —
Monica: There's duplicates of it.
Brandon: That evidence should be out there. It's somewhere.
Monica: It should be somewhere.
Brandon: Yeah. Whether it's in storage lockers scattered throughout the country or whether it's in some lawyer's office somewhere, this information does exist. And they hid this information from the police. They hid this information from the feds. They made it so that nobody would be able to use this evidence against Epstein.
Monica: Yeah, and they also — sorry, I got distracted.
Brandon: You're okay.
Monica: I was gonna say something, and I lost my train of thought. Units. Yeah, I don't know. I don't know where you were going. It's okay. I don't remember.
Brandon: All right. So, ultimately, the Palm Beach case is the very beginning of this story.
Monica: Yeah.
Brandon: And that's kind of where everybody first gets introduced on a large scale. The public gets introduced to Epstein and to his scheme. And there is media attention and large public outcry over the way that this is handled. It gets to the point where, when Alex Acosta was named into —
Monica: Cabinet.
Brandon: President Trump's first term —
Monica: 2016.
Brandon: He had to step down because —
Monica: Right.
Brandon: This was all coming out. And this followed him.
Monica: Yeah.
Brandon: And he should've. He should've stepped down, and he never should've let this deal go through, but —
Monica: He stands on it.
Brandon: But the truth is, who was he answering to at the time? Who was his boss back then?
Monica: Well, that's what the defense is saying. That's what they're saying. They're saying, you don't understand. It's not just Alex Acosta that had to approve this. It was his superiors in the office, and we had to go through all of these loopholes. But then you see these email exchanges that are like, oh, make whatever edits you want.
Brandon: Well, right, because you see — exactly right, and that's the craziest — I would love for a prosecutor to send me that. I would love a prosecutor to send me a document and say, you just edit it the way that you would like. That's — you edit this plea deal, you edit this — or how about the idea of getting a non-prosecution agreement?
Monica: Exactly.
Brandon: You know, that's not a thing.
Monica: No.
Brandon: Especially when you have a 53-page indictment in federal court.
Monica: Correct. It's just not a thing. It was literally a magic wand trick that they did.
Brandon: And it's because —
Monica: Whatever it was.
Brandon: Alan Dershowitz put on some sort of presentation in front of this panel at the —
Monica: US Attorney's Office.
Brandon: US Attorney's Office, and it was so compelling that they turned their back on this indictment and turned their back on these victims.
Monica: It's just so — oh my gosh. It's just so crazy to me.
Brandon: Yeah.
Monica: But like you were saying, the way you described it, it really is just the tip of the iceberg —
Brandon: Correct.
Monica: Because, most recently, obviously we're talking about this because of the latest dumps that have been coming out. We're not talking about it for fun.
Brandon: Right.
Monica: Right? I mean, it is kind of fun.
Brandon: Well, it is kind of for fun.
Monica: It is fun at this point, but it's relevant, that's the whole point —
Brandon: Right.
Monica: Of me saying that. So we have still so much more to talk about, and this concludes — this part.
Brandon: Yeah, this wraps up the first of the series.
Monica: Yeah.
Brandon: So we give you a glimpse of the 2008 case, kind of what happened, how the world starts to first know about this scandal and what this monster was doing. We start to learn about the fact that there are a lot of other people involved, a lot of co-conspirators. We learn that he's got an unbelievable amount of influence and power that is seemingly oddly placed in a person that didn't have the credentials ultimately to get to where they were.
Monica: Yeah.
Brandon: But what we learn later through the emails, through the other cases that come out, the civil cases, the depositions, the statements from the victims, what we start to learn is about how much bigger this whole thing is.
Monica: So big.
Brandon: And how involved so many high-profile people are from all different sectors, and how Epstein had reach to the top people in, you know, the highest —
Monica: In the country.
Brandon: Points —
Monica: And in the world.
Brandon: Business, political — there is no sector that's left kind of unscathed by what comes out.
Monica: Yeah.
Brandon: And in episode two of this series, we're gonna be talking a lot about the Epstein files, the co-conspirators, and not just the co-conspirators, but a lot of the people that were named and some of the prominent people, and the fallout that's happening, because we see fallout right now happening to a bunch of different people, and we'll hit on all of those people.
Monica: Yeah. But — well, speaking of the —
Brandon: Sure.
Monica: Conspirators, because we started talking about this and we stopped, is that federal suit that was with the victims.
Brandon: Right.
Monica: And so the reason why — and I just wanna explain kind of procedurally, 'cause I know I'm going kind of off-topic — but I just wanna talk about how when that agreement, that non-prosecution between Acosta and Epstein, was considered null and void — that's what prompted another case to be opened in federal court.
Brandon: Right, and that's where the New York investigation begins.
Monica: Right. And that's —
Brandon: So there are so many more —
Monica: Yeah.
Brandon: Things that came out, and that's what these Epstein files are.
Monica: And this is just for people who maybe are hearing Epstein, Epstein, Epstein everywhere, and they're like, what is going on? 'Cause, you know, we have both looked into Epstein stuff and we both saw some overlap. I mean, yeah. But there's also so much shit that's out there.
Brandon: It's like there's so much.
Monica: Right.
Brandon: And that's, you know, one thing that everybody needs to be very careful about — the rabbit holes that you can go down, where the information comes from.
Monica: Yeah, what information you're getting.
Brandon: Because with the way things are now, some of the information that's coming out is bullshit. And what I mean specifically — because I wanna try to stick to specifics when we're in this series — the photos of Ghislaine Maxwell still out and about in public, some of that shit is AI.
Monica: Yeah.
Brandon: And it's just completely fake. Like, there was a video that came out this week that we're recording this, of Ghislaine Maxwell in Canada.
Monica: Canada.
Brandon: And some guy walks by and he says, oh, Ghislaine, and she, like, turns and looks.
Monica: So much for sure.
Brandon: And when they analyze the photo, the teeth match, the eyes match, the nose matches, and nothing matches what the person that did the deposition in jail — that doesn't look exactly like her. None of this shit matches. It turns out that that was AI, it was a fake, and the guy —
Monica: Oh my God, was it really?
Brandon: The video, the video of this woman —
Monica: I believe that shit.
Brandon: In Canada apparently is a fake.
Monica: So I was like, Ghislaine Maxwell is not in prison, y'all.
Brandon: She very well may not be in prison, and we're gonna talk about in episode three —
Monica: All the conspiracies.
Brandon: All the conspiracies, but for now —
Monica: But for now.
Wrap-Up
Monica: If you like listening to us, make sure you like, comment, and subscribe. We are on all platforms. Give us a five-star review. Make sure you subscribe to our weekly newsletter. And if you didn't like listening to us —
Brandon: Come back with a warrant.