Epstein Files Expose First Trump Admin For Shredding Jail Docs

21:12Julie K Brown:I think it should be, are we talking about it or not? Like, I think I'm not in the Senate. I'm not interested in playing the impeachment numbers game. You see, see, political operative. Political operative. Not taking the bait. Not taking the bait. But I think it's connected to Iran. It's connected to all these things. It's a cover up over corruption, corruption, self-enrichment at the expense of other people. And it's why you're seeing those favorability numbers where they are. He doesn't care. You know, he doesn't care. And what's ironic about this reporting is the only reason we know about it, because, by the way, he has his corruption extends to the bench.

21:42Julie K Brown:The reason we don't have report two from Jack Smith in his investigation is because his puppet, his federal federal district court puppet, Judge Aileen Cannon, basically shut down the release of that and said, that's never going to see the light of day. The reason we have this information is because the House Republican conference is tenacious in its desire to prosecute Jack Smith and inadvertently released information, this information in what is called a progress memo. I'm not a lawyer, but this was never supposed to see that they did not realize that which they were sitting upon, which is the motive for Trump's squirreling away documents down at Mar-a-Lago.

22:21Julie K Brown:This is why he didn't want he wanted to take away the good documents that were going to help him and his family get richer. And the fools in the House Republican conference inadvertently released it. And now it is up to Democrats in Congress to figure out what to do about it. No, and you're really taking people behind the scenes of wait. People sometimes are cynical. Oh, we're only learning about this because of somebody's agenda. No, sometimes in the same way that Trump got caught, there's a sloppiness to the effort. These are not all ace professional players. And we're seeing that's an understatement.

22:51I really enjoyed having both of you here.

22:53Julie K Brown:This is Morris' debut. Your beat debut. Your former boss in the campaign, now Mayor Mom Donnie, he recently put out his top five rappers. Very controversial list. Did you follow that? I followed it vaguely. Vaguely? Vaguely. You're busy. Yeah, that was not on the top of our... Without getting deep into it. I'm sure you... I'm sensing you have feelings. And? No, I'm going to call it like it is. And he was at this table during the campaign. We had an election eve interview. We talked about 50 Cent and other things. It was a very politically correct list. And it leaned towards socially conscious.

23:26Just leaned towards social.

23:27Julie K Brown:Are you going to name it? Yeah, it had like Common and Lupe Fiasco. And it was like, my point being, it was very socially conscious. It left off Tupac. It felt like. You're going to have to take this to the mayor. I didn't realize. It felt. No, I mean, I don't know if you followed it or not. I'm not going to put you on the spot. But it felt a little PC like, let me pick the safest artist. Does that make sense? Don't do that to Common. I think the mayor's... Don't do that. What would you like to say about Common? What's your top five list, Alex? Oh, my God. You can't ask me. No, but defend Common.

23:55I'm not putting her on the spot.

23:56Julie K Brown:Common Sense, as I call him, is like a decade multi-platinum, I believe. We love Common, yeah. We love Common. But very friendly. And Lupe Fiasco, someone who put him on the cover of the music magazine that I used to edit, has, you know, a lot to say. I like that he went outside the box. And maybe, just maybe, Ari, the world of rap and hip-hop needs lots of voices at the table. Oh, I like that. You get the final word. I'll just say, you know, the mayor's laser-focused on building out a rap list that satisfies you and driving down the cost of living in the city. There we go. Well, Hov said, what did he say?

24:32Julie K Brown:He said, truthfully, I want to rhyme like common sense. They gave me five mics. I ain't been rhyming like common sense. And that's a play on going more commercial than conscious. Well done. Thanks, both of you, for being here. We got that landmark verdict coming up against these big tech companies, some of them in bed with Trump. They're going to be paying a lot. This is a brand new story, so I know you haven't heard it yet. That's next. Or I should say that's coming up tonight. We also have the Epstein Fallout with Julie Kay Brown here. That's next. See you soon.

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25:26Julie K Brown:If you're a parent and want to help set up your child for success, then iExcel is right for your family. As an effective and affordable online learning program, iExcel covers math, language arts, science, and social studies using interactive practice problems for kids from pre-K to 12th grade. Listeners can get an exclusive 20 % off IXL membership when they sign up today at IXL.com slash 20. Visit IXL.com slash 20 to get the most effective learning program out there at the best price. Your phone is your lifeline. Calling your kid to say goodnight, waiting on a job callback, or just sending a meme to your best friend when it's been that kind of day.

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26:32Congress is considering moving forward on many aspects of the Epstein probe, and that includes these questions around his death and the aftermath. There are reports about suspicious activities in the Trump DOJ overseen jail where Epstein was found. Congress now wants a key prison guard who was once indicted, Tova Knoll, and is considered the last person known to see Epstein to have a private interview. Now, they asked her to come in as soon as tomorrow. We're now told the interview is postponed, but the panel wants to work with her attorney to get her testimony. All of this comes amid a bombshell report based on Epstein Files documentation from the Miami Herald's Julie K.

27:11Brown and her team that revealed bags of documents which were suspiciously shredded and discarded of out of the Epstein jail days after he died. This was so concerning that there were immediate tips and sort of watchdog warnings, including a corrections officer calling the FBI saying they'd never seen that amount of bags shredded. Days later, another officer wrote to investigators raising a similar alarm. Now, we've been tracking all this for you. We have our detailed timeline, which shows, of course, many different developments. But you can see it highlighted here, the shredded document activity and a whistleblower alerting the FBI about it coming right there just days after he died.

27:50None of this, I want you to know, and we checked this, actually appears where it should in the DOJ's watchdog inspector general report. That is a problem for the DOJ because as Brown's reporting shows, they interviewed people about this. They were on notice of it and whether they deemed it a crime, a problem, or okay, it should have fallen somewhere in that voluminous report. I'm joined now by the reporter who broke the story, Julie Kay Brown from the Miami Herald. Welcome back.

28:19Julie K Brown:Thank you. I want to get to the conspicuous absence of that information in what was supposed to be a watchdog report. But first, tell us what your reporting found and any developments since then, since you broke the story. Well, these were documents. We really don't know exactly what they were, but they were documents that were being examined by what they call this rapid response or after incident team that was put together by the Bureau of Prisons. So these were Bureau of Prisons personnel. We later, in the wake of this report, found a list of the people that were on that particular action team that came into MCC and did, you know, presumably try to gather evidence.

29:06Julie K Brown:But what we're hearing is what they were doing was compiling papers that they were putting into a shredder. In fact, one of the guards reported that an orderly told him that the orderly was asked to help shred the documents and then take those bags outside to a dumpster by the rear gate where a corrections officer also noted that this was kind of strange. There were so many bags at the time they had never one of them commented that this was a mount that they had never seen dumped out there before. Yeah. And so then you go to the DOJ has systems for this and your reporting and the files, which we reviewed here ourselves, show those alarms I mentioned, the reporting of this in.

29:49Someone also wrote a judge about it. There was a concern that the problem was coming from within the government. So what do you do? Well, you're supposed to go to the independent watchdogs. And that's one of the ways. And so is it a problem that the inspector general's office spent years looking at this? We know they interviewed people about it, so they were aware of it. And they didn't mention it at all in their report.

30:11Julie K Brown:Yeah, they pretty much discounted it. And another reason why it's curious that they did discount it wasn't just it wasn't just the reports of the shredding. The Southern District of New York prosecutors had found evidence that there were things that were missing. They were missing all the inmate counts in the days up to Epstein's death. Now, we don't know. We only have what's in the file. It's possible they found these documents. But they were saying that they that they were missing documents. In fact, their response when they heard about this shredding was, can we go out to the dumpster and see what this stuff is?

30:48Julie K Brown:But unfortunately, they didn't act swiftly enough so they couldn't do anything about it. Let me just slow you down on that point because it's so important. You're referring to the fact that people who were on site, people at the SDNY U.S. Attorney's Office, viewers will remember that's a very independent shop. Even in the first term, it was clashing with Trump over various things that they said, wait, shredding bad, let's go get the material. And so what do you view as what's happening there when now we have the greater transparency than we ever normally get. I mean, you and I, on most cases, we never get internal U.S.

31:23attorney emails about gathering evidence. I'm curious, as an investigative reporter, what do you see happening there? That tension between the folks on the ground potentially doing a cover-up, evidence destruction, and then the U.S. attorney's folks saying, wait, can we stop that?

31:38Julie K Brown:Well, to the U.S. attorney's office credit, they created a file, a case number for this particular incident, And they did do some interviews on this, but the FBI conducted the interviews. And when you read the interview that was conducted of the orderly, who allegedly was the first to report this, it's a very strange interview. They don't say to him, look, tell us what happened. They just give him yes and no questions. And you can tell he's very uncomfortable. In fact, it notes that one of the lieutenants who probably oversees him at the prison was president at this FBI interview. And he says at the end, look, I don't want any problems.

32:20Julie K Brown:I didn't see anything. I like my job here. And it's so very clear that the way that this whole thing was set up for this interview was to sort of make the problem go away. Right. I think that's a clear inference. And that's why I mentioned that you see that in sort of a covering up of the cover up. They got caught to some degree shredding the docks, but they still and this is what people get frustrated with. Government cover ups seem to get out from under it. And then the inspector general says, well, if you mention this, it looks bad. So we're not going to mention it at all. You know, that's Michael Horowitz, the current DOJ inspector general.

32:55Trump ousted many of them, but held on to him. People can make up their own mind whether that what that implies. But it doesn't seem like it was a thorough, honest, independent report. It was also the report that minimized the so-called flash of orange that the FBI saw of a potential inmate on the loose the night before his death. Doesn't mean we know whether it was foul play. Could have been other problems. But I mentioned all that. And then the final question to you is this corrections officer who was indicted but then the case dismissed. Now Congress says maybe they want to learn more from her.

33:27She appears in your reporting as someone who was depositing multi-thousand dollar cash deposits at a bank, was flagged 12 times for suspicious activity reports. What can you tell us about that?

33:39Julie K Brown:Well, I just filed a story, actually, a new story about her. I dug into the files more about her. And she's actually a very interesting person. She is quite educated and she comes from a very educated family. And she served in the U.S. Army Reserves, was in active duty in Kuwait. And then she came back, you know, after her assignment ended and decided to become a corrections officer. But again, you know, when we're looking at these files, we see these things like her financial records and a notation that her bank had flagged some of the cash deposits in her in her checking accounts. So it raises questions about, OK, well, where was the cash coming from?

34:24Has that been accounted for in any valid way? I'm sorry? Has that been accounted for in a valid way? She puts$5 ,000 cash in.

34:34Julie K Brown:Right. Right. We don't know because they did a six hour interview of her in the OIG, the Office of the Inspector General, did a six hour interview with her. But it was in 2021, which was two years after Epstein's death. And they did not ask her about any of her financial transactions. Right. Which, again, is odd because now we know they were on notice. Some part of the government was on notice and you have the SAA report. So again, you've been leading this from the jump, which is why we're happy to have you back. Julia K. Brown will be checking in with you again. I'm going to fit in a break. When we come back, Zuckerberg losing that verdict.

35:12Next.

35:19Landmark ruling on social media today, a California jury found Google and Facebook's parent companies liable over social media addiction. Lawyers had presented that these type of platforms were designed to stoke addiction, that the companies knew they were doing this and hurting young people. They'll have to pay millions in damages. Zuckerberg was forced to testify in this very trial.

35:42Julie K Brown:The man in charge of Facebook and Instagram will face questions under oath about whether his social media platform deliberately targets children with addictive design features. Features like infinite scroll, personally tailored algorithms, and push notifications. Very combative in terms of the line of questioning between Mark Zuckerberg and the plaintiff's attorney. Within five minutes of being in there, I had counted 12 lies. They have just made choices to take profits over our children's safety. They were choices that he made. A reminder that even a powerful MAGA-aligned billionaire like Zuckerberg was forced under oath to answer for what his company does, including the Facebook parent company that controls Instagram as well as Google.

36:24They say they're evaluating the verdict. It's a day after Zuckerberg's company was found liable for a whopping$400 million in damages for failing to protect miners from predators. These cases are creating new precedents before our eyes. And remember, all of this is new and fast-moving. The big, rich tech billionaires have had a lot more of a jump because they know what they're doing and they're way ahead of Congress regulation and perhaps the rest of us. But these cases, these court cases, could create new lines and precedents. Meanwhile, you have some in Congress who are pushing for stronger rules.

37:00Take Bernie Sanders, who has a brand new bill to try to deal with the AI data centers until there's better regulation, including protecting people, labor rights, long-term concerns of his. And I want to show you something interesting. Sanders recently sat down with a robot, an AI agent, Claude, and used that as a kind of way to dramatize and show what he sees as the risks.

37:25Julie K Brown:Just how much of the information that AI collects is being used? And what would surprise the American people? Companies are collecting data from everywhere. You're browsing history, your location, what you buy, what you search for, even how long you pause on a web page. What would surprise people is how little they actually consented to. Why is all of this information being collected? What's the goal here? Money, Senator. It's fundamentally about profit. Money, Senator. That's a bit of a version of HAL, for those who get the Space Odyssey reference, but in our current runaway capitalism era. And yet this comes amidst these victories in court new today.

38:16I have a special guest, and I'm going to show you Melania's robot problem at the White House. Next.

38:27Julie K Brown:Thank you, First Lady Melania Trump, for inviting me to the White House. fair to state you're my first American-made humanoid guest in the White House through the this was the scene today at the White House, you're watching Melania Trump, you just heard her welcome what she called her first American-made humanoid guest at the White House this is not the future this is now, your government your tax dollars a little eerie, you'll see her allow the robot to go first here.

39:06Humanoid walks out, breaks right. First lady continues down the path. They could not have predicted or known that this would come on the very day that folks who are more concerned and critical of this same big tech, highly profitable technology would win a big judgment against Google and the Facebook company Meta. I'm joined now by Rene DiResta, Georgetown professor focuses on tech and disinfo. The author of Invisible Rulers, People Who Turn Lies Into Reality, a factual warning about some of what's happening in social media. Welcome.

39:40Julie K Brown:Thanks for having me. We'll get to the ruling, but first I'm going to put that video back up. Any thoughts on this? This is today. This is now, this White House shot. I was watching it when I was waiting for you to bring me on, And it reminded me of, I had a Sony robot dog when I was in college, you know, the AIBO. I don't know how many people remember that, but it used to chase a little pink ball around. It was sort of the early days of robotics. It's kind of remarkable to see the, you know, the acceleration to watch one sort of walk into the White House here. I think the question of, you know, what is going to be put to use for, what the value that it delivers to people is, really, that's ultimately the main question whenever you're dealing with a product like this.

40:20And so we go from this sort of futuristic now event at the White House to the news coincidence of a rare ruling that could really put a precedent on accountability for these companies. Your response to the verdict?

40:37Julie K Brown:Yeah, it was very interesting to see. It really moved away from the idea of social media as a neutral library and into the idea of it as a defective product. The two cases, both the one in New Mexico and then the one in Los Angeles, both emphasized safety, safety for children in particular, but the idea that product design was the thing that needed to be focused on. A lot of the prior cases have focused on content, you know, should a platform show you this or that, whereas this is much more getting into it almost in a model of, you know, you have a car with defective brakes. That was the metaphor that I was thinking of as I was looking at some of these things.

41:11Julie K Brown:The idea that product design is actually a very key component to thinking about how we engage with social media. you're saying something very clear uh and that seems incisive that the misuse or spread of social media is is sort of over here but the defective product which people understand in consumer life and the law understands you buy a lawnmower to cut grass but then it's really hard to turn it off and then it overheats and then it ruins other things in your garage and you say that's not a good lawnmower and people parents especially are having that concern does this mean these companies could lose future cases.

41:51Julie K Brown:Yes, it does. These two will obviously be appealed, but what you're seeing is an emphasis on specific features. In one of the cases, they were talking about things like infinite scroll. So when you're on your phone and it's pushing you, and when you're in your app, it's pushing you post after post after post. Is that a healthy thing for people to be engaging with? The idea of autoplay, things that just turn on when you're, in this case, child goes to a platform, right? Is that a good design decision? Is that a healthy design decision? That has nothing to do with what content. It could be pushing you Disney videos all day long.

42:20Julie K Brown:It could be pushing you anything, you know, misracial, healthy things, good things. But ultimately, that idea of addiction and keeping you there is the thing that they're actually interrogating. There's a difference here that they're getting at between publishing activities, right, which is the platform doing the hosting, and then platform conduct, which is the engineering of the app and the design of the features themselves. And that's what I think you're going to see many more of these cases in the latter side. I got about one minute left for you. One big tech company talked about how they view sleep as their competitor because they want to keep people up.

42:52How important is it that the public and parents understand what the business model is here?

42:58Julie K Brown:Yeah, I'm a mom of three. My oldest is 12. I don't let him on social media at all. I fight with him to get him off of YouTube as often as I can by monitoring how much time he uses it, trying to tell him, make good decisions, make good decisions. But sleep really is the competition because sometimes, you know, you find the iPad under the pillow and you're recognizing as a parent that these are the things that you have to, that you are being asked to compete with. You're being asked to teach your children to make good decisions when in actuality it would be much more helpful for us to be given better tools, better ways to sort of mitigate some of the harms of ourselves.

43:31Yeah, and a lot of people do feel concerned, discouraged, even hopeless. This ruling today shows one avenue of accountability. You've been thinking about these issues deeply, Renee. Diresta, thanks for being here. Thanks for having me. Yeah, we'll be right back.

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45:07Julie K Brown:Men need to be perp walked in handcuffs to the jail. And until we see that here in this country, we've seen some of that in other countries. But until we see that here in this country, we don't have a system of justice that's working. At some point, somebody got to Pam Bondi and said, it's your job to cover this up. New remarks from Republican Congressman Massey. He gets the last word tonight talking about what the U.S. could learn from the U.K. Every wireless service comes with a cost, right? Wrong. The TextNow app lets you do your thing for free. Get real talk, real text, and 5G data for must-have apps with no monthly bill.

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