'If You Can Keep It': What Should Accountability Look Like In The Epstein Case?

0:28This message comes from Kachava. NPR.com. Code NPR.

0:40The Trump administration is reaching out to Tehran's domestic opposition, the Kurdish minority leaders, to back an uprising against the regime. We'll have the latest on the war in Iran during the Friday News Roundup. Make sure you tune in tomorrow and follow NPR.org for the very latest. For now, the latest installment of our weekly series, If You Can Keep It, where we talk about the state of our democracy and the politics affecting it. It's been a month since the Justice Department released more than three million documents related to sex offender Jeffrey Epstein. And in that time, powerful people in several countries have faced repercussions for their close ties to Epstein, who died by suicide in prison in 2019.

1:20Among those named in the documents is President Donald Trump. Trump has long denied any crimes related to Epstein, and there's no public evidence that the FBI found any of the allegations against President Trump in the files to be credible. But an NPR investigation reveals that the Justice Department has withheld some Epstein files related to allegations that President Trump sexually abused a minor in the 1980s. We're going to hear more about that reporting a little later. The DOJ has also withdrawn some public documents that include accusations about the president and Epstein. And a Wall Street Journal investigation revealed this week that the Justice Department is now withholding more than 47 ,000 files that have been flagged for review.

2:02For today's installment of our weekly politics series, we ask what's in the documents that the DOJ removed or withheld? And what does accountability look like for those connected to Epstein's crimes? I'm Jen White. And I'm Todd Zwillick. You're listening to the 1A Podcast. We hear from a human trafficking specialist and survivor of abuse by Jeffrey Epstein and more in a moment. Stay with us.

2:29Let's jump right into our conversation. Liz Stein is a survivor advocate and human trafficking specialist. She's also a survivor of abuse by Jeffrey Epstein. Liz, thank you so much for joining us today. Thanks for having me. So after years of requests from Epstein survivors and the public and mounting pressure on the Justice Department, The agency has released more than 3 million documents on Epstein for the public to review. What did it feel like for you when those files finally came out after so many years? I think for us to see this amount of documentation really should say to everyone how big this case is.

3:11We keep hearing from this administration that there's nothing to see here. They didn't find anything. And what we're seeing in the release of these documents is that they have a lot of evidence. I have not looked through everything, but every page that I've looked at so far, there have been investigative leads. And so I think that we're just curious why these leads were never followed up on. it. Well, that leads to the question about what's left, Liz. I mean, from your perspective, how has the Justice Department handled the documents and the release so far? Is it complete in your view? I don't think that any of us think that this has been a complete and transparent release of documents.

3:57I think that they may be cherry-picking things that they want us to see and withholding things that they don't want us to see. I think that the way that these documents were released to the public in such a haphazard way was really intentional to confuse people. We're looking at documents that we don't have context for. It's hard to put them into a coherent narrative. And I think that it's really easy to just become overwhelmed and frustrated with trying to make sense of this, and it feels very intentional. Meanwhile, other countries have been different. Legal authorities in Britain, France, Norway, they've opened corruption investigations into some of the people named in the files.

4:47But here in the U.S., Justice Department officials say there's nothing more to see here. The investigation is closed. They do not plan to file any additional charges related to the Epstein files. What do you make of the DOJ's refusal to investigate further here? Well, I think that despite those assertions by the DOJ, I think that the American public knows that there is a lot more to be investigated in this case. And I think that what we saw in November was really remarkable. In November, we saw bipartisan support for the passage of the Epstein Files Transparency Act. And Americans spoke. They spoke to their lawmakers and they said, you know, this is really an important issue to us where we want to see transparency and we don't really care, you know, who is involved.

5:44We just want to get to the bottom of this. And so I think that, you know, As survivors, we are really hopeful that we're going to see that kind of energy again, because I don't think that anyone who is looking at this with any kind of objectivity could say that there's nothing to see here. Soon after the files were released, several lawyers representing Epstein survivors called the Justice Department out for thousands of redaction failures to photos and names that allowed sensitive information about survivors to become public. And in response to that complaint, the DOJ removed thousands of documents related to Epstein from their site.

6:20Liz, what, if anything, do you wish more people knew about the challenges some survivors face as these files continue to garner more public attention? I think that it's important to remember that we are victims of a crime. And for many people, it's difficult to be in the public spotlight. Like, it's a choice that none of us have made lightly. And it's a choice that some survivors have made to stay out of the public eye. And so for our government to release personal identifying information of survivors who have remained anonymous for decades is incredibly damaging. And not only is it damaging to those survivors who are directly impacted by those omissions, but it's sending a really maybe scary message to other victims of crime about coming forward that your information is not going to be protected and that you're not going to be safe.

7:31Liz, meanwhile, on Capitol Hill, the House Oversight Committee is conducting an investigation into Jeffrey Epstein and also how the documents in the case are being handled, as we're talking about right now. What do you know about that? What do you think of it? Is this, in your view, an exercise in House lawmakers kind of covering their own rear ends in a scandal? What do you hope comes out of this investigation that might be good? well i think what we hope comes out of this is some transparency and some answers again i think that it's important for us to refocus and really be intentional about what we're looking at this is an issue that has been so highly politicized but what we're actually looking at is a crime and this is a crime of sex trafficking the people involved are potentially on both sides of the aisle Yet this is being politicized in a way that it really, really shouldn't be.

8:30And so I hope that we refocus as a nation and that our Department of Justice does the job that they are supposed to do in seeking justice for citizens of this country. I think that that's really the path forward is looking at this for what it is, and it is a crime. So, Liz, from your perspective, what would accountability look like for those who have potentially committed crimes against young women? That's a difficult question for us to answer. You know, accountability can come in a lot of different ways. As you mentioned earlier, we're seeing accountability happen in countries across Europe already, and that's a good start.

9:14I think that any leads that could lead to prosecutions are important. And I think that also, you know, how we view some of these men in society is important. And so it's important for them to step down from their positions of power and to face social repercussions of their involvement with Jeffrey Epstein. And I want to just correct something I said there. I said, what would accountability look like for those who have committed crimes against young women? and I should have said young women and girls because some of these allegations are also against children. Liz, what do your co-victims talk about when they talk about accountability in Europe, for instance, versus the United States?

9:59I mean, we've seen powerful people like the former Prince Andrew, several others held to account. It's different here. What do people attribute the difference to? What is going on in this country that we haven't seen the accountability when you talk to your sisters? I think that because of the powerful people that are potentially involved in this case, it is difficult to think about exposing them because it would upend a lot of how we view people in society. And so I think that what we really need to do to kind of bring that accountability in the United States is to press the Department of Justice to do what they are supposed to do and investigate the leads that they have in these files.

11:02And I think that we're starting to see depositions of people and we're hoping to find more information about what happened. And briefly, Liz, for lawmakers and others in positions of power hearing this conversation, what is your message to them? That nobody should be above the law, and anyone who committed a crime against girls and young women should be held accountable, regardless of their position of power. That's Liz Stein. She's a survivor advocate, human trafficking specialist, and a survivor of Epstein's abuse. Liz, thank you so much for speaking with us. We appreciate it. Thanks. Coming up, what we know about why the Justice Department withheld some of the Epstein files about President Trump.

11:52More from our guests and from you after this short break. We'll be right back.

12:15to eligible accounts. Go to Wealthfront.com. Cash account offered by Wealthfront Brokerage, LLC. Member FINRA SIPC, not a bank. Funds are swept to program banks where they earn the variable annual percentage yield. Welcome back. We're talking about the Justice Department's handling of the Epstein files, and let's bring two new voices to the conversation. Joining us from Atlanta is Stephen Fowler. He's a political reporter with NPR's Washington Desk. Stephen, thanks for joining us. Hey there. And with us from Brooklyn is Anand Giridharadas. He's a writer and publisher of the newsletter The Inc.

12:51He's also the author of several books, including Winners Take All, The Elite Charade of Changing the World. Anand, thanks for joining us. Thank you so much for having me. So, Stephen, your investigation revealed that the Justice Department withheld some of the Epstein files that included allegations that President Trump sexually abused a minor. Now, the DOJ also removed some documents that mentioned the president from the public database of files. What are those missing documents as far as we can tell? We don't really know exactly what is in these missing documents. All we know based on other files that were released on the public Epstein files database, what they refer to and relate to.

13:32It's a little confusing and it's like many things with the Epstein files that is confusing because there is no context, there is no table of contents, there's no sort of order and explanation. But as far as we can tell, based on other records within the Epstein files, there are multiple interviews and notes from the interviews with a woman who made allegations about Jeffrey Epstein and about President Trump when she was a teenager more than four decades ago. Now, we did reach out to the Department of Justice for comment on these missing documents that Stephen's describing. The DOJ spokesperson responded with a link to a statement on X that reads in part, as with all documents that have been flagged by the public, the department is currently reviewing files.

14:18Should any document be found to have been improperly tagged in the review process and is responsive to the Epstein Files Transparency Act, the department will, of course, publish it consistent with the law. Stephen, now the independent journalist Roger Sollenberger sort of broke this story before you got onto it, comparing serial numbers of files and saying that these interview notes appear to have been withheld in the files. Can you give us a little bit of a window into the opacity and the process, how you discovered these documents outlining accusations against President Trump, the fact that they were missing and what they might contain?

15:00Well, first, it's important to note that there were two documents where the specific allegations were mentioned. One was an email from the FBI kind of wrapping up all of the different allegations made that mentioned the president. And there was a column detailing the claim. There was a column sort of detailing any sort of investigatory steps that they took or what the disposition was. and another column with any sort of further vetting of the person that made the claim. And the second was a PowerPoint from the Justice Department talking about the case against Epstein and Maxwell and kind of high-level summaries of the timeline and how they got there.

15:41And there was a slide that mentioned prominent names. Donald Trump was at the top of that. There were two allegations or references to the president on there. And what was unusual was these allegations that were mentioned for the one claiming sexual abuse, there were no other references to that allegation in the files anywhere that we could find, you know, searching for misspellings or other things. And so you have the situation where there's a very inflammatory, salacious claim. You have evidence that it was sent to a field office for further investigation and communications. You have sort of a conclusory point that it was mentioned in this Justice Department PowerPoint, but nothing in between.

16:27There was no context. There was no information about what the investigation found, what the interviews revealed, whether they thought it was credible, whether it was a PowerPoint slide of non-credible things of important people. And so it just raised a bunch of questions and red flags that led to searching and piecing together and finding these documents. And that's where we found records of the FBI serial report showing kind of the documents in their case files and testimony and non-testifying witness testimony and testifying witness documents related to Ghislaine Maxwell's criminal case that shows kind of a table of contents that there were four interviews that took place with this person, and only one of them was found in the files.

17:12So it was a situation where we knew there was information. We didn't know how that information got there or what significance it meant, and that's where it led to just the further questions. And to the point about the serial numbers, there are basically these serial number stamps on the documents in everything in the Epstein files database. That's kind of a sequential tracking of how many pages of documents that are in there. There were two additional sets of serial numbers on the one interview that was made public. And when the bottom number went up by one, there was a top serial number showing documents related to these interviews that went up by six.

17:52And then the middle one that went up by way more than that. So we knew that there were documents somewhere, just not in the public files. Well, ranking member of the House Oversight Committee and California Democratic Representative Robert Garcia said in a statement that, quote, the DOJ appears to have illegally withheld FBI interviews with the survivor who accused President Trump of heinous crimes. Anand, who gets to decide whether the DOJ acted illegally or not? Well, I mean, this Department of Justice has been treated, turned into a kind of personalist authoritarian lawyer. Donald Trump has hired a lot of his own personal lawyers to be the lawyers for the United States of America.

18:33So I wouldn't trust anything from this Department of Justice. But I will say that the revelation of this kind of concealment, while the concealment that we might be finding around Donald Trump is one flavor represented by the fact that he has this very powerful arm. It is not out of keeping with the concealment we see from this entire group of people, Republicans, Democrats, and others, corporate people, academics, and others. This is an enormous, enormous group of people. This is an enormous group of men. And it bears repeating that if Jeffrey Epstein had been one creep, a middle-class creep in Florida, very little of this could have gone down.

19:21The fact that he was wealthy, the fact that he made and cultivated and maintained so many wealthy and powerful friends, the fact that so much of our elite in the United States and around the world did not find his conduct a deal breaker well years into his being a convicted pedophile, years into their being reported around him. It is an incredible portrait we are getting, not just of one cover-up by this person or that person. Democrats want to make this a Donald Trump cover-up. Republicans want to make this a Clinton's cover-up. I'm sorry to everybody. This is a cover-up of an entire powerful network of people, all of whom shared a basic foundational thing.

20:08being friends with a convicted pedophile was not a problem. I want to get to this question we got from Susan who asks, what are your thoughts about why all this focus on the Epstein scandal is happening now? What was the Justice Department, FBI, and Congress doing between 2019 and 2026? And Anand, I'd love your thoughts on that. I mean, not just 2019. I share that question and you shouldn't just start at 2019. You should start at in the 80s and the 90s and the 2000s and onward. This has gone on for years and years and years. And, you know, I think it's not just about did the Biden administration not deal with this, which they should have.

20:52This is about the fact that there was essentially a quiet, unspoken consensus in successive White Houses, but also in many of the banks where people listening to this keep their money, your life savings is in banks where people who work executives in those banks were engaged in the sexual ex escapades that Jeffrey Epstein was orchestrating and were lending him money. JPMorgan Chase flagged a billion dollars of suspicious transactions, according to the New York Times, that Jeffrey Epstein engaged in with it and still didn't kick him out. In fact, the people who had problems with it were sidelined.

21:30So, you know, you have to ask yourself after a while when you had a convicted pedophile who was then trafficking women to other powerful people, some underage, some overage. And this trafficking and this larger network took you into the most powerful universities, banks, governments, et cetera. What does it tell you about the class of people who leads us? because these are people, by the way, you see this in the emails very clearly. It's important people to understand. These are people who like one minute we're sending an email to Jeffrey Epstein about cute girls, quote unquote. And then another moment we're sending emails about tax policy.

22:09And another moment we're sending emails about trying to interpret Brexit. So the people, I want people to understand this, listen to this. The people deciding about your kid's school funding, this is them. The people deciding whether your mortgage is regulated in a certain way and therefore goes underwater, not in a crisis, is them. The people who decide what kinds of economic ideas new administrations embrace is them. But to get to the listener's question, when we ask this question of why now, and we should acknowledge here that President Trump talked about the Epstein client list when he was on the campaign trail.

22:50What is driving the energy around the investigation in this moment when you've laid out this history and this connection of powerful people to Jeffrey Epstein? There's several factors that gave it more life recently. Julie Brown at the Miami Herald, who's a hero, deserves a Pulitzer Prize that she has not gotten, broke open a lot of the kind of quiet conspiracy around this in 2018. which gave the story new life. You know, I think you've also had survivors who have had to make, you know, like Liz Stein, who I salute, who had to make personal private decisions over these years, whether to go public.

23:28It takes time to find other people. It takes time to find your courage. It takes time to find lawyers. It takes time to get depositions done. It takes time to raise money to make sure you're safe. All these things take time. And you're right that, you know, irony of ironies, President Trump ran and movements allied with him ran on this, A, talking about Epstein, but B, talking about a kind of larger QAnon and these larger conspiracies of pedophilia. And as has often been the case with Trump, he runs on a thing, correctly identifies that that thing is a thing that has salience in the public imagination.

24:05And then once in power, becomes the living incarnation of the thing he ran against. And so part of why at my newsletter, The Inc., we're running this series called The Epstein Class, and I understand that may feel like a strong term. Congressman Ro Khanna coined it. I deeply believe you cannot understand what happened to any one survivor in this story without understanding the entire class of people, its mores, its values, what it believes about itself, what it believes about us. If you don't understand that class, I don't think you can understand these crimes. We got this question from Mia who says, please ask Stephen Fowler when the missing documents were dated.

24:46In other words, when did this happen? Stephen. The documents refer to some interviews that took place in 2019. We don't know when these documents or when the decision to not publish these documents were made during the process of collating the files. I mean, this does get to, I think, some of the previous question of for the longest time, there were multiple ongoing criminal cases against Epstein. There's still an ongoing case against Ghislaine Maxwell, his accomplice. And the policy decisions or rather the like investigatory decisions are why a lot of these things and these documents were not made public.

25:30It also is worth pointing out that with the Epstein Files Transparency Act that was signed into law by President Trump and passed by Congress, the release of all of these files in all of this manner is highly unusual. And it's not something that you see with criminal investigations because what we're seeing is kind of the raw ingredients that went into allegations that span decades and unverified tips. There are a lot of information in the files that were looked into by the FBI and other investigators that were just found to be not credible. And so there's very muddy waters around what investigators looked into, what their conclusions were, what made it into criminal cases or not.

26:17And just, you know, it is impossible to truly know the big, full, complete picture of what happened with the multiple investigations into Epstein and others around them. and releasing the files only ensures that there is never going to be a finite period end of the sentence to what happened. We got this email from Charles in Atlanta who says, we do not have a Department of Justice. Instead, the law firm of Pam Bondi, Todd Blanche, and D. John Sauer is there to protect Donald Trump at all costs. You know, when we do, if you can keep it, it's really with a focus on the strength and health of our democracy.

26:55Anand, how do you think the DOJ's handling of the Epstein files might affect Americans' faith in our justice system? I mean, the question almost feels quaint after the last 14 months we have lived through. I think the notion that we even have at this moment in our national life, a Department of justice that is, it almost feels like we're going through the motions talking about it as a department of justice. It is really, as your commenter said, a functioning as a personal law firm of the president right now. And everything that has come out of it is to punish his enemies, protect his friends. But again, I really think when you talk about if you can keep it, I do think there's been a mistake in the Trump era, both Trump terms, of thinking about this threat to democracy that Trump represents, which he deeply represents, as somehow coming out of the blue.

27:57And the reality is he is an unsubtle sort of ugly figure who just turns the volume up on a lot of things that have been going on. The reality that rich and powerful people in this country do not arrive at the doors of the criminal justice system the same way everybody else does has been true for some time. Donald Trump has neither the capacity nor the insight or the foresight to develop that from scratch. He's just taken that and turned it up to a 10. The fact that people who, you know, once made a mistake of selling a little bit of marijuana are in prison for years, while people who raped and trafficked women and participate in this network are running major institutions.

28:42Donald Trump is protecting that now, but he didn't start that. We have a top-to-bottom reassessment of our society we need to make if we want anything like justice, let alone a Department of Justice. Kit emails, it seems pretty clear that the Pam Bondi, quote-unquote, Justice Department is poring over the files and redacting anything that might implicate Trump and probably other political figures. His credibility has been badly damaged, but Trump will never be held accountable for anything. Still to come, the global repercussions of the Epstein files and the prominent figures in the fallout. Stay with us.