Epstein Survivor Files Bombshell Declaration Demanding Special Monitor

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1:17Michael Popok:We got some breaking Epstein file news. If the Department of Justice and its ethical conflicts and its corruption are not going to do the job to produce all of the Epstein files, then get out of the way and let the survivors and their leaders like Lisa Phillips do the job for you. We now have a new filing by Lisa Phillips, a survivor, a victim of the Epstein child sex trafficking ring, who's filed a new declaration in federal court imploring federal judge Paul Engelmeyer to take the Department of Justice out of the process and to appoint a special officer of the court, an independent monitor, a special master to take over the continued production of the Epstein files.

2:06Michael Popok:So when I say continued production, that phrase is doing a heavy lift. I mean, we are a month and a half out from the deadline, which means we are almost two months out from the actual law being signed. And yet there's only 125 ,000 pages out of three to five million total. I mean, I didn't major in math, but I know that's an anemic percentage. Now Lisa Phillips has filed her declaration, an invitation, I would suggest, that came from Judge Engelmeyer himself. And there's an involvement. I have my involvement. And, of course, we support all sex abuse victims and survivors on Legal AF and on the Midas Touch Network on Michael Popak.

2:49Michael Popok:My law firm filed that declaration on behalf of Lisa Phillips with the court. You're on Legal AF and the Midas Touch Network. Let's get to the new reporting. How did we get here? Well, Representatives Massey and Kana, that bipartisan dynamic duo who led the charge, starting with collecting the 218 votes, ended up being 434 votes from the House to support the Epstein files being ordered to be turned over by the executive branch. Let me make this clear. The executive branch and its Department of Justice and FBI and other agencies always had its own sole ability without court oversight, without judicial oversight, to release the files to the American public.

3:37Michael Popok:Let me repeat that. They never needed court approval. They never needed legislative approval. It's always been in the executive branch. In fact, you would see them, the Department of Justice, arguing in other cases, separation of powers. This is a presidential power. These are our agencies. These are our executive heads. We get to fire them, even if Congress created them. Now they're saying, well, we would love to produce everything, but we need federal judges and we need congressional approval. They never needed that at all. But if we're going to play that game, you know, don't blame the player, blame the game.

4:09Michael Popok:We're going to play the game. They're going to play it right. So Congress did its part through Massey and Kana and the federal courts got involved, not because the survivors ran there initially, but the Trump Department of Justice ran there. They ran a Judge Engelmeyer, Judge Berman, Judge King, Judge Rosenberg, and said, oh, we'd love to produce the Epstein files, but what about the grand jury material? What about your cases? We need to have it all. We'll have it all. They've had it all for over a year. They're just now getting around to 500 attorneys working around the clock in order to produce the documents.

4:47Michael Popok:Nobody believes that. Certainly not Judge Engelmeyer. So Roe, Kanna, Representative Kanna, M. Massey, they sent in a letter on the 13th, and they said in their letter to Judge Engelmeyer that he should use his inherent authority as a judge to oversee the production and take the Department of Justice out of the mix and appoint a special master, independent monitor, federal judge to take over the process. They say on page three of their letter, simply put, put simply, the Department of Justice can't be trusted with making mandatory disclosures under the act. They keep changing the numbers. Is it 1 million?

5:26Michael Popok:Is it 3.2 million? Is it 5 million? What is the number of documents? And that's why they said they got to be taken out of the mix. Now, to the complaining that happened after that filing, you heard the Department of Justice say, oh, they shouldn't be allowed into this case under Friends of the Court to argue about relief or remedies. Judge, your relief and remedies are limited, and there shouldn't be an independent master or special monitor or anything like that. I think I got it backwards. It shouldn't be an independent monitor or special master or anything like that. But we're producing as fast as we can, even though we're a month and a half late.

6:06Michael Popok:And they have no right to be in this case. And you have no remedy or powers to order us to do anything. And I beg to differ because it's the Trump administration and DOJ that ran to federal judges over the summer and ran to them again two months ago to demand and beg for their involvement. Once in, federal judges have the power to supervise activities and events and processes that are in front of them. who gave them that power, who gave them that jurisdiction. I suggest the Department of Justice and Donald Trump gave it to them. And I think they waived any argument that now that, because they don't like where Judge Engelmeyer is going with remedy.

6:43Michael Popok:Oh, judge, what are you doing? We only wanted you for a limited purpose. That's not how federal court works. That's not how inherent authority works. Hey, everybody. Ben Micellis here from the Midas Touch Network. I wanted to let you know about my podcast partner, Michael Popak's new law firm. It's called the Popak firm. Michael Popak's pursuing his dream of starting his own law firm, really based on the popular demand by all the Midas, Mighty, and Legal AFers who were approaching Michael Popak with their cases and saying, can you help us? And at that time, Popak was not able to. So he went out on his own.

7:21He started the Popak firm, where he is now handling catastrophic injury cases like car accident cases, trucking cases, malpractice cases, big negligence cases, wrongful death cases. So if you or someone you know have a case like this, the consultation with Popak's firm is free. Give them a call. See if you have a case. It's thepopakfirm.com, thepopokfirm.com, or you can call 877-POPOKAF, P-O-P-O-K-A-F. So 1-877-P-O-P-O-K-A-F. Give Michael Popok a call. And I'm really proud of you, Popok. Thanks for all the hard work you're putting in.

8:05Michael Popok:After the letter came in from Representatives Kana and Massey, then we had the judge. And the judge issued his ruling, which I suggest to you was an invitation for a survivor like Lisa Phillips to come forward and file a declaration. He said that he wanted the government to respond about whether the Massey and Kana had standing to participate in the criminal case, even as Amici, as friends of the court, and also concerning the compliance in this matter, considering that at that moment, on the 13th of January, the judge noted that that issue about noncompliance by the Department of Justice had not been raised by any party in the matter, which would be Ghislaine Maxwell, and she's not in a position to be raising that issue, or victim.

9:03Michael Popok:In other words, that issue about the Department of Justice having disqualified itself from running this process, and it should be replaced by a judge-supervised process, has not been raised by a victim. It has now, with the new filing, proud to also inform you that I represent Lisa Phillips in this matter. And she filed her declaration just on Martin Luther King Junior Day, which I think is completely appropriate, here's what Lisa Phillips had to say. I am a survivor of the sex trafficking criminal enterprise led by Jeffrey Epstein and defendant Ghislaine Maxwell. She files this in support of Representative Massey and Connors' request to participate in these proceedings as Amici Curai and to seek the court's oversight and appointment of an independent monitor or special master.

9:52Michael Popok:She says, I have no confidence that the Department of Justice, already 30 days late, now more, in complying with the act with no end in sight, with its constantly shifting public pronouncements about the volume of documents, will produce the Epstein files it has represented to this course it would release, nor the files it is legally required to produce pursuant to the act. She says the continued failure by the DOJ has caused significant emotional distress and re-traumatization for her and others. The Department of Justice's conduct constitutes a willful violation of the act and undermines the survivor's trust in the integrity of the process.

10:32Michael Popok:She also talks about Annie Farmer, one of her fellow survivors, who expressed in a letter to the court her fears that the Department of Justice would not fully comply with the act. Instead, as found by this court, Judge Engelmeyer, in a prior ruling about this matter, and this is what Lisa Phillips is referring to, the court, Judge Engelmeyer, said that the Department of Justice has merely paid lip service to the victims and has failed to treat us, the victims, with the solicitude we deserve, Lisa Phillips writes, and continues in their mishandling of the production. She says that the appointment of an independent monitor or special master would provide needed compliance with the law and protection of the rights and dignity of the survivors who have already suffered profound harm, and that without independent oversight, the survivors remain at risk of continued delay, obfuscation, and trauma caused by uncertainty and broken assurances.

11:35Michael Popok:That's signed on the 14th of January by Lisa Phillips, and it's now part of the public docket. This answers the question raised by Judge Engelmeyer. Will a victim step forward and tell me their position about Representatives Kana and Massey stepping forward? You just heard from Lisa Phillips there in her filing, which I handled for her. As you know, we support survivors and child abuse survivors through the Popak firm, through Legal AF. And certainly it was my proud honor to support Lisa on this. For those that don't know Lisa Phillips, let me show you Lisa Phillips along with other survivors on Capitol Hill and then a clip from an interview that I had with her recently.

12:19Michael Popok:Let's play the let's play first the Capitol Hill and then we'll go to her interview with me. In the year 2000, I was taken to Jeffrey Epstein's island while on a photo shoot on a nearby island. Who I saw and what I experienced there was a glimpse into a very dark and disturbing world. For years after, I tried to avoid Jeffrey, but he had introduced me to Katie Ford, the owner of the Ford Modeling Agency. Epstein's reach went to the very top of fashion, arts, and entertainment. This did not just happen to underage girls in Florida. In New York City, hundreds of young ambitious women were abused by him.

13:05Epstein was not just a serial predator. He was an international human trafficker. And many around him knew, many participated, and many profited. And yet, he was protected. So I stand here today for every woman who has been silenced, exploited, and dismissed. We are not asking for pity. We are here demanding accountability, and I'm demanding justice. Congress must choose. Will you continue to protect predators, or will you finally protect survivors? And also, I would like to announce here today, us Epstein survivors have been discussing creating our own list. We know the names. Many of us were abused by them.

13:53Now together as survivors, we will confidentially compile the names we all know, who are regularly in the Epstein world. And it will be done by survivors and for survivors. No one else is involved. Stay tuned for more details. So when I spoke out at Capitol Hill and I said, you know, speaking to survivors that I want survivors to come forward and connect the dots. and when I said we can release our own names or information with the proper authorities, that's what I started doing. So as survivors started coming forward, there was a handful of us that started noticing that, wait a minute, you know, did he send you to NYU too?

14:42Did you take classes at NYU? Oh, you went to NYU too? And then another was like, well, I didn't go to NYU, but I went to Columbia. I didn't even know about Columbia. My father went to Columbia. So like you, I have ties as well to these universities. And these other women were saying, yeah, I went. And they had crazy stories attached to Jeffrey sending them to these universities. And they weren't really able to get out of it, even if they tried to pay themselves or get a scholarship or get a loan. So we were kind of tied into this. And then there was another survivor that said, not only did I go to NYU, I kind of didn't finish up my last classes and I still got a degree, you know, and she didn't feel good about, you know, she obviously didn't feel good about that.

15:31Even though she did the majority of her classes, she, she got her degree. So we kept thinking, well, what's going on here? So that's why after doing that research and as I promised on September 2nd that I was going to start connecting the dots with other survivors that came forward, that we would sit down with certain people and higher authorities and discuss our findings. So that's how it all came about.

15:58Michael Popok:You're doing the sleuthing as a survivor that the Department of Justice and the FBI and law enforcement should have been doing to try to connect these dots. We will continue to report and do commentary at the intersection of law and politics, but we're needed. We will run into the burning building together. We will support survivors, people who have been, had their civil liberties and civil rights abused, denied by this administration whenever we can, wherever we think it's necessary. We got to get off the sidelines at some point and for certain good causes. And we certainly have decided that this meets that test.

16:39Michael Popok:I'm glad you're here. Take a moment. Hit the free subscribe button for Midas Touch. Come over to Legal AF YouTube channel and do the exact same thing. And if you're looking for a way to help support and provide resources to Legal AF for matters like this, you can come over to Legal AF Substack. I'm running a sale 25 % off in honor of Dr. King in a way that, of course, the Trump administration won't even make a proclamation over on Legal AF Substack for annual paid membership. So until my next report, I'm Michael Popak. Can't get your fill of Legal AF? Me neither. That's why we formed the Legal AF Substack.

17:14Michael Popok:Every time we mention something in a hot take, whether it's a court filing or a oral argument, come over to the Substack. You'll find the court filing and the oral argument there, including a daily roundup that I do call, wait for it, Morning AF. What else? All the other contributors from Legal AF We got some new reporting. We got interviews. We got ad-free versions of the podcast and hot takes. Wear Legal AF on Substack. Come over now to free subscribe.

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