Thousands of court documents tied to Jeffrey Epstein have been made public as part of a settled lawsuit involving one of his victims. The records detail Epstein’s sexual abuse and trafficking of underage girls and include the names of 150 people who were in contact with him. Geoff Bennett discussed more with Julie K. Brown, author of “Perversion of Justice: The Jeffrey Epstein Story.”
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Geoff Bennett: Thousands of pages of court documents tied to the late financier and convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein have been made public as part of a settled lawsuit involving one of his victims. The records detail Epstein's sexual abuse and trafficking of underage girls and include the names of 150 people who were in contact with him. The magnitude of his sex trafficking operation was first brought to light by Miami Herald investigative reporter Julie K. Brown, who joins us now. She is author of the book "Perversion of Justice: The Jeffrey Epstein Story." Thank you for being with us, Julie. And, as we mentioned, hundreds of documents have been released over the last two weeks which are part of this defamation lawsuit filed by Epstein victim Virginia Giuffre. And there are names of previously associated people, people associated with Epstein, such as Prince Andrew, former Presidents Donald Trump, Bill Clinton. They're mentioned in these court documents. But there's little new information outside of what was already known to the public. What should we make of what's been released?
Julie K. Brown, The Miami Herald: Well, remember, this has been a long process. We first sued for these records over five years ago. And they have been released on a rolling basis. And I think you have to look at the totality, total picture here of his sex trafficking operation. And that's what we were getting at. In the beginning, when we first started getting the documents, we knew very little, other than the fact that he had abused a lot of young girls in Palm Beach. Now, as a result of all these records being released, we know that his operation went far beyond Palm Beach, in fact, was an international sex trafficking operation.
Geoff Bennett: Well, to your point, the documents certainly confirm the scale, the magnitude of his sex trafficking ring and his powerful social network. How do the documents add new insights, more dimension to the reporting that you have been doing for years?
Julie K. Brown: Well, I think it also sheds more light on the criminal justice system. We know that this is an operation that he could not have run all by himself. And, as of right now, we only have one person paying the price for this crime. We know that there were other people. Although these documents don't implicate anyone directly, we know that some people have been identified as having sex with some of these girls. It certainly warrants more investigation by the federal authorities.
Geoff Bennett: You spoke recently with two of Epstein's victims, who said that anyone who would have visited any of his homes would certainly have been aware of his depravity. Tell me more about that and why that's significant.
Julie K. Brown: It's significant because these victims, they want justice. They know that this is a crime that a lot of people were involved in. And, for them, just having one person arrested isn't enough. They want the truth. They want the other people brought to justice. I mean, he had pilots. He had assistants. He had businesspeople who were helping him. And so the question for them is, why haven't some of those people been looked at or at least been asked to provide more information about his operation?
Geoff Bennett: I want to ask you about something else, in that a federal judge denied the motion by The Miami Herald to make public a master list of Epstein's so-called J. Does — these are people who have been connected to him — the names of those folks, accept the victims. What's the value in making those names public when the accusations in the documents are salacious, yet largely unproven?
Julie K. Brown: Well, we still need to know who some of these people are. The documents that we received still have redactions in them. For example, there is a deposition by one of the victims where she said she had — was forced to have sex with two high-profile politicians. And one of the politicians' name is completely redacted. We don't know why the judge is still redacting that particular Doe, because we don't know who that Doe is. So providing the list would also help us understand why she considers that person to still have anonymity.