Jeffrey Epstein's Past Threats, Intel Associations, and How He Really Got So Rich, with Vicky Ward | Ep. 1108

26:06You know, I've talked about this before, but in the ALS sexual harassment scandal at Fox News, we were told he gets to see your name. Like if you come forward against him, he's going to know you did. And then there was a time for choosing, right? Do we do that? Are we okay putting our names behind our allegations? I 100 % was because I was telling the truth and I knew he would know it. And frankly, in my case, I had contemporaneous journal entries. I had my office mate, Major Garrett, to whom I'd been regaling, you know, stories the entire time. When the phone would ring and say, Roger Ailes, I was a first year reporter.

26:42We were both like, holy shit. Anyway, my point is simply, when you're a truth teller, you're not afraid of disclosure like that. And I think they're – except in a case where it's clearly a minor like that, a minor is deserved to be protected. But there's a lot of folks who were not minors who were legal or like legal in the eyes of the law when it comes to a sexual interlude. And even older girls who – their names should be exposed. They don't have a right to lifetime anonymity on all of this. Okay. So now we move on to – oh, I actually have one sound, but I want to play a few before I move on to the question of whether he was an agent.

27:18And this is back to the question of how big is this story and who will cover it with integrity, given that the president clearly is asking people to move on. And yet it hasn't been resolved. So what should the press do? Joe Scarborough. This is the best Biden ever. Roll the tape. Roll the tape. I'm going to tell you the truth. The best Biden ever, Joe Scarborough, would like to weigh in on this scandal and Republicans who have accepted the president's request to move on. Listen here, Sat 5. Sometimes you get it wrong. Hey, as I've said here on this show, I get wrong every day. Most notably last year, after spending a lot of time with Joe Biden, I talked about Biden at his best.

28:08I got it wrong. sometimes you change your mind and you see some facts the facts change you change your mind with those facts that happen but i must say very rarely have i ever seen people going from a decade-long crusade against pedophilia against sex abuse against against child exploitation and making that almost a centerpiece of their existence, saying when we get in power, we're going to release the Epstein files. Charlie Kirk said 7 ,500 people outraged by this. The truth must come out. And then the next day, magic pixie dust is sprinkled over all of the all of the podcasters and voila this moral crisis of of of of a decade long about little children getting raped by the richest the most powerful men in the world.

29:23Goes away. Unbelievable. Maybe sit this one out, Joe Scarborough. The nerve of this man to lecture anyone on not covering a story aggressively out of an interest in protecting their favorite president. The absolute unmitigated gall. My least favorite part of that clip. if you come back and watch it on our YouTube show, you'd have to go about 27 minutes into the show, is Mika Brzezinski sitting next to him with the face of... I'm making my sad, concerned face. A sad, concerned face. Oh, the poor children. Who does she think she's kidding? Not only did this pair run cover for Joe Biden for his entire presidency and was telling us he could and should do a second term, that he was totally fine and better than ever.

30:19Oh, but then the facts evolved that showed him he was wrong. Bullshit. There isn't a human on earth that believes that spin from him. He knew, he lied, he ran cover for political purposes. But that same man was one of the few reporters in America to get Doug Emhoff sitting across from him after the allegations broke that he was a woman abuser, that he had beat the shit out of his girlfriend he had just prior to dating Kamala. He didn't ask him at all about it, at all. He gave some generic question on how like tabloids are terrible, aren't they? How do you handle the stress? He didn't ask him whether it was true, which by the way, I 100 % believe it was true.

31:07I've spoken with the accuser. I know her account forward and backward now. And Doug Emhoff, while he denied it on paper, it was public. This woman is a very well-respected lawyer. She had zero reason to lie. She was a Democrat, is a Democrat. Not to mention that he impregnated the nanny when he was married to wife number one. And that the nanny, according to the Daily Mail, lost her baby after a particularly volatile fight she had when Doug Emhoff, the baby's father, was visiting her. And an ambulance had to come. The woman has never spoken publicly. We don't know the story with the nanny. Emhoff has denied these allegations.

31:46My point is, you ask. If you have any journalistic integrity whatsoever, you ask. Even though it is uncomfortable, even though you don't want to hurt the guy, you ask. You're a disgusting political hack. The nerve, sit this one out. You have no right to lecture anyone on Epstein. And one other point, neither he nor Hakeem Jeffries nor Jamie Raskin nor any of these other Democrats that is now trying to make hay of the Epstein issue said anything about it over the past many years when Joe Biden was president. Nothing. They weren't demanding transparency. They weren't demanding answers in Epstein.

32:30So literally nobody wants to hear from them. None. OK, gotten on a tear. Deep breathing. Let's talk about whether Jeffrey Epstein was, in fact, an asset, okay, was some sort of intelligence asset for America, Israel, or some foreign government. And this many people believed that he might be because he didn't go to college. He was a high school graduate who somehow parlayed that into a job at the prestigious Dalton School in Manhattan and was hired by Bill Barr, former CIA, former attorney general now, by his dad, who was the headmaster there. And that guy was in Intel. And there was a question about whether he'd been potentially recruited by him or potentially brought into or in connection with the Mossad in Israel because Ghislaine Maxwell's father was believed to be connected with Mossad.

33:32And that guy I mentioned to you yesterday, Ari Ben-Minashe, said he was Ghislaine Maxwell's father's handler and that Jeffrey Epstein was connected to Israeli intelligence, the Mossad. And there were many Israeli politicians like heads of state and Mossad officials at Ghislaine Maxwell's father's funeral and on and on it went. So there had been speculation about whether Epstein was connected to American intel, Israeli intel, or some other country's intel. He was close with the Saudis. There were a bunch of possibilities because he got very, very rich in a very, very short amount of time, notwithstanding the fact that he wasn't very, very impressive on his academic resume, at least not in a way that you typically see of people who suddenly make hundreds of millions of dollars based on their smarts and their connection to powerful people.

34:26So that was a question that was buzzing around. And then it got even more furious when he copped that amazing plea deal in 2007, 2008. Now, because it looked like somebody stepped in to make it go away. That's how it looked. It was like these were very serious charges. The truth about him was coming out. The government said it knew of at least 30 victims who had been trafficked by Jeffrey Epstein, including underage girls. Who gets 13 months, basically, house arrest for that? And it gets it reduced to two misdemeanor solicitation of a prostitute accounts. I know Ellen is a great lawyer, but he's not that great.

35:03So what else was at play in making that very strong case get whittled down to nothing? People wanted to know. I want to know. And this is where Vicki Ward's reporting comes in. She reported, as I started off the show with, in 2019, that in 2016, she had spoken with a person on the Trump transition team about Alex Acosta, who had been nominated for labor secretary. And she knew the case very well because she'd been reporting on Epstein for years. And she could see, you know, that that was an interesting choice. Like, this is an interesting choice. Are you sure you're going to be OK with Alex Acosta?

35:42and she reported, as I said at the top of the show, what she reported about how he was believed to be an intelligence asset, again, that he'd been told to back off, that Epstein was above his pay grade, quote, I was told Epstein belonged to intelligence and to leave it alone. And by the way, he also said on camera that DOJ had full vetting and approval of that settlement deal, of that plea deal. So there's no question that Alex Acosta wasn't making the ultimate decision on that settlement, on that plea deal. It was Maine Justice. Now, who was the attorney general at the time this deal was made?

36:16It was Alberto Gonzalez. The deal was made, it was right up to like the middle of November. I can't remember exactly what day in November it was cut, but it was November of 2007. And Alberto Gonzalez was the attorney general. Within a week, he resigned and Michael Mukasey came in. I mean, it's kind of interesting. Why did he resign again? Like, I'd love to go back and ask him. Like, what do we know about this case? I'm not suggesting he resigned because he was like disgusted or ashamed or guilty. But I'd love to know why the timing was so close. Anyway, Michael Mukasey stepped in. And there's no question Alberto Gonzalez would have had to.

36:55And Alex Acosta specifically says signed off on this plea deal. He didn't he didn't mention Gonzalez, but he said mean justice and something like this most likely would have gone all the way up. So that's what happened. Then, so Vicki Ward hits that reporting in 2019, and she dropped that report in the Daily Beast the day before Alex Acosta was forced, now he's Labor Secretary, to hold a presser about the fact that he's been embroiled in this controversy. And what's he going to do? Can he last as Labor Secretary, or is he going to be forced out? And that's when he issued that what I think is an absolutely pathetic non-denial denial.

37:39We'll play it here. It's sought nine, July 10th, 2019. Secretary, were you ever made aware at any point you're handling this case that Mr. Epstein was an intelligence asset of some sort? So so so there has there has been reporting to that effect. And let me say, there's been reporting to a lot of effects in this case, not just now, but over the years. And again, I would hesitate to take this reporting as fact. This was a case that was brought by our office. It was brought based on the facts. And I look at that reporting and others. I can't address it directly because of our guidelines. But I can tell you that that a lot of reporting is just going down rabbit holes.

38:37That is not a denial, people. That's not a denial that that I don't know whether he actually said that to Trump transition, but that is about as mealy mouth and wormy an answer to a direct question. Were you made aware that he was an intel asset as you could ever hope to hear? He did not say no, first of all. He did not deny the report. All he said was, I would hesitate to take as fact some of the reporting that's out there. Okay, by this point, why couldn't he say no? By this point, he could have said, no, I was not told that Jeffrey Epstein was an asset. That is a report that is out there that is not true.

39:23This case was settled based on perceived weaknesses in the government's case. while it was a very strong state case. This is what Alan Dershowitz has said, by the way. It was less of a strong federal case. I don't know if I believe that, but I'm just saying, if you wanted to find a way of justifying to the press in front of you why you walked away from the deal, it would be very easy to say, it had nothing to do with him being an intelligence asset. No, that was never told to me. We walked away for the following reasons. You know, it was a weak case, whatever. So that's what Alex Acosta said on camera.

39:56And then he sat with the Department of Justice's Office of Professional Responsibility, which looked into this whole matter. And this is what people who say he was not an asset. And again, I'm not arguing he was an asset. I have no idea. I'm just trying to do an honest investigation for you guys. I'm not somebody with a horse in this race. I don't discount the allegations he was or the allegations, the defenses that he wasn't in any event. So then he speaks to the OPR and reportedly he told OPR that no, he wasn't told that Epstein was an asset. Or at least that's what most reports that write about the OPR investigation say.

40:44Alex Acosta said, enter Mike Benz, former State Department employee, now heads up an open intel-type organization where they're demanding transparency from government, no matter the party, on all sorts of important issues. And he knows this case like the back of his hand. And he was making some very good points about this OPR report. I think this was yesterday, and it's SOT 7. They tried to put this story to bed by saying, oh, we did this OPR report and Alex Acosta walked back what he said to the Trump transition team or what he contradicted Vicky Ward's reporting. Well, we don't know that because we never got the transcript.

41:29We got a one line summary description buried in the 244th footnote. Now, that OPR investigation is totally sweeping. All of the audio files, all of the transcripts, all of the interviews can be made public. Now, OPR reported directly to Bill Barr. Bill Barr was the CIA's mop-up man for Iran-Contra. He started his career in the CIA. The Washington Post called him the CIA's fall guy because he blocked disclosures of CIA files. It's very possible that the intelligence angle could have been buried by Bill Barr himself. So interesting. Remember when you were a kid with an iron stomach, pizza, ice cream, PB &J, nothing seemed to faze you.

42:15These days, however, you might feel like your stomach can be a bit of a bear trap. One wrong bite and you're done. Here's the thing. Years ago, our ancestors ate lots of bitter plants daily that made their digestion work. Yes, bitter plants. But our modern diet has completely eliminated these essential compounds. You've heard me talk about Just Thrive probiotic before. I take it every morning. And now they have their newest product, digestive bitters. These tasteless capsules contain 12 bitter herbs they say help wake up your digestive system for results you can feel. No more bloat, burps, or belly aches after meals, just comfortable digestion like when you were younger.

42:52Just Thrive Digestive Bitters can help your cravings and keep you satisfied longer. Just try the Just Thrive probiotic and digestive bitters today, risk-free. And you will save 20 % If you use code Megan, when you check out at just thrive, health.com, see the difference for yourself or just get a full product refund. If it doesn't work out for you, no questions asked. That's just thrive, health.com code Megan, because your health is your greatest asset. Since president Trump was sworn in, his administration has made enormous progress at a breakneck pace, but don't forget while they're moving mountains for the good of the nation, you've got your own personal savings to worry about.

43:29And one of the best ways to look after your savings is through diversification, particularly with gold, like from Birch Gold Group. In the past 12 months, the value of gold has increased by 40%. OMG. Central banks continue to bolster demand for gold by buying in record quantities. Global instability and tension is high, and Birch Gold makes owning physical gold extremely easy. Easily convert an existing IRA or 401k into a tax-sheltered IRA in physical gold, or buy some to store in your home safe. Just text MK to the number 989898 and Birch Gold will send you a free info kit on gold. There's no obligation, just useful information.

44:11With an A-plus rating from the Better Business Bureau and tens of thousands of happy customers, take control of your savings today. Text MK to the number 989898. Watching football is a sacred tradition and Sling puts you in charge of how you want to watch it. Whether you want a quick day pass for nonstop college or pro action starting at just$4.99, a three-day or seven-day pass for game-packed weekends, a full monthly plan, or a full season pass, Sling gives you total control over how you watch. Get instant access to live football without paying for unwanted channels. Sling lets you do that. Visit sling.com to learn more.

44:51If you like YouTube, you'll love YouTube Premium. It's destroying athlete, creator, and YouTube Maxer. YouTube Premium enhances how I use YouTube with awesome features like offline downloads so I can download my favorite training videos before I hit the gym. So no Wi-Fi doesn't turn leg day into loading day. Plus, I get ad-free videos, background play, and so much more. YouTube Premium is like YouTube got some extra gains. Try YouTube Premium for two months free at youtube.com slash premium. Trial eligibility varies. Terms apply. Cancel anytime. I'm Megan Kelly, host of The Megan Kelly Show on SiriusXM.

45:26It's your home for open, honest, and provocative conversations with the most interesting and important political, legal, and cultural figures today. You can catch The Megyn Kelly Show on Triumph, a SiriusXM channel featuring lots of hosts you may know and probably love. Great people like Dr. Laura, Glenn Beck, Nancy Grace, Dave Ramsey, and yours truly, Megyn Kelly. You can stream The Megyn Kelly Show on SiriusXM at home or anywhere you are. No car required. I do it all the time. I love the SiriusXM app. It has ad-free music coverage of every major sport, comedy talk, podcast, and more. Subscribe now.

46:05Get your first three months for free. Go to SiriusXM.com slash MKShow to subscribe and get three months free. That's SiriusXM.com slash MKShow and get three months free. Offer details apply.

46:25What does Vicki Ward think now? She's the one who, you know, first got any actual reporting about his alleged intel ties going. She's an investigative reporter. She's worked for numerous outlets in the past. She now posts to her own sub stack, Vicki Ward Investigates. And she's actually also the author. We were booking Vicki for this week, irrespective of all this, because she's the author of a new book that's just hitting. She co-authored it with James Patterson called The Idaho Four, an American Tragedy. This is about, of course, those four souls out in Idaho who were murdered, we now know for sure, by Brian Kohlberger.

47:04And we're going to put it right to her. Vicki, first of all, thank you so much for being here. What do you make of all the back and forth now that's going on about your explosive 2019 Daily Beast report? Well, thank you for having me, Megan. And I have to say, that was the most detailed, comprehensive overview of Jeffrey Epstein's backstory that I've ever heard. Because it's a very complicated subject. And it's very hard to do it justice quickly. Because there are, as you say, so many questions. First of all, I 100 % stand by what I reported in the Daily Beast in 2019. I was told directly by someone in the Trump transition who had met with Alex Acosta in the transition and asked if the issue of Jeffrey Epstein would be a roadblock or a problem for his confirmation.

48:05And the answer came back, no. And, you know, I was told Epstein belonged to intelligence and they moved on. I obviously wasn't in the room in the Trump transition. I was told this anonymously, so I can't name my source. but nothing has happened since then to make me think that there was anything wrong with that person's memory or what they told me so does that clear that up for you Megan yes it does you stand by your reporting the person who said it to you has never gone back on it or called you to say I might have screwed that one up. Sorry to put you out on there, Vicky. And you were in no way confused or playing with the person's words or jumping to your own conclusions.

49:01You were reporting exactly what you'd been told. That's exactly right. It was a person who was in a position to know. Correct. Was a person who was in the position to have been in the room with Alex Acosta. Um, so, so, uh, you know, and I think that given, I also think the choice of wording is, is sort of interesting, you know, Epstein belonged to intelligence because that also runs a gamut, right, of possibilities. And I mean, here's what we know about Jeffrey Epstein, as opposed to what we don't know. We know that he knew a lot about Robert Maxwell, his one-time girlfriends and colleagues and convicted accomplice's father.

49:52Robert Maxwell, as you pointed out, Megan, was buried, given a hero's burial on the Mount of Olives. It's pretty well documented that Robert Maxwell definitely worked for Israeli intelligence. He also worked, by the way, for other governments. But so and Jeffrey Epstein knew a great deal about Ghislaine Maxwell's father. What we also know, to your point, is that this guy didn't have a college degree. he winds up teaching at the Dalton School. He then, after tutoring the child of the CEO of Bear Stearns, then an investment bank, winds up being the youngest ever partner there. And he leaves Bear Stearns in very, very strange circumstances, which later, I mean, I then go on and report, it turned out he was involved in a sort of insider trading allegations that were going on from the SEC.

51:10I'm not explaining it very well. And he sort of fell on his sword and he remained very, very tight with the people running Bear Stearns for a very long time. And people found that hard to explain. He then moved to Europe for a while. And according to Jeffrey Epstein, who was a complete con artist and master manipulator. He spent a few years hanging out with a British guy called Douglas Lees, who was certainly known to be in the arms business. And according to Jeffrey Epstein himself, he spent a few years going and recovering stolen money from wealthy Europeans in places like the Cayman Islands.

51:57He would tell people stories of sort of literally flying into places where people put money offshore and leaving quickly with suitcases of cash on private planes and depositing this cash in Switzerland. So, I mean, he himself propagated this myth that he was some sort of James Bond. Meanwhile, his circumstances in New York are humble. He lives in a one-bedroom apartment on E66 Street in New York. There's no evidence of any sex with underage girls in this time period. This is the 1980s. Fast forward to the 1990s. Things dramatically change for him. First of all, little-known piece of data, but an important one, He cooperates with the government in a criminal investigation against a businessman he had worked with very closely, a guy called Steve Hoffenberg, who's now dead, who was convicted of pulling off the biggest Ponzi scheme in American history prior to Bernie Madoff.

53:08Steve Hoffenberg wound up going to jail for 20 years. The money from the company, Taz Financial, disappeared. This was in the early 1990s. Jeffrey Epstein flipped on him. And in the 1990s is when you see Jeffrey Epstein suddenly amass a vast amount of money. And he buys the most valuable townhouse in New York. He buys an island. He buys a ranch in New Mexico. And it's at this point in his life that the underage girls first make an appearance. It's also, by the way, this is the decade that Ghislaine Maxwell, her father died and she became a fixture in his life. It's also in this decade that Leslie Wexner, the richest supporter of Israel in this country, becomes Jeffrey Epstein's benefactor.

54:10And it's at this moment, this is the decade when Jeffrey Epstein really immerses himself at Harvard. He becomes, on behalf of Wexner, a major philanthropic donor to all these scientific and cultural and educational institutions. We know that in 1992, he and Ghislaine Maxwell went into the Clinton White House. We also know that it's at this point that he becomes very tight with Ehud Barak, the Israeli former prime minister. And it's at this point that he starts to spend a lot of time with Prince Andrew. And he basically, through Ghislaine Maxwell, acquires the international Rolodex of her late father, which puts him in a very unique place in the world.

55:17It puts him at the center of international soft power. the question that I think you want to know and I think everybody wants to know and wants to get some answers to is what did he do with that soft power and what did it ultimately um you know how did that help him if it helped him in 2008 um get out of the federal charges get that cushy plea deal You know, how exactly did that happen? And I think people are also wanting to know, you know, without the money, he could not have committed the sexual crimes. So where did the money come from? And who are the people who propped him up financially? And why have they not been held to account?

56:21That, I think, is what people understandably want the answers to. And I don't quite understand. So you heard it here from Vicki Ward. Julie K. Brown, who's been covering him for years, too, said the same thing. Everyone who's really been following this case closely says the same thing. Follow the money. Where did it come from? That alone is worth more disclosure. And someone needs to answer that question. I mean, that's knowable. through a forensic accounting of Jeffrey Epstein's documents, of his contacts, of who paid him the money. Like, where did it come from when it went into the bank accounts?

56:58Where did it go out, if at all, by Jeffrey? Like, we've never received the answers on that. No. And I mean, one thing that struck me, Megan, when I was sitting through Ghislaine Maxwell's trial were that, you know, I mean, you're a trained lawyer, you know this, that they kept that prosecution so tight, tightly focused on her and the sexual crimes, it was deeply frustrating to sit there and sort of see names of famous wealthy people. Yes, they were on planes, they knew Jeffrey Epstein, but you kept wondering, well, what else did they know? And did they fund Jeffrey Epstein? And by the way, did Jeffrey Epstein then steal from them?

57:43because that was the other thing that Epstein used to say to me back in 2002, was that, you know, one of the reasons he was able to come in and, as he described it, be James Bond for all these wealthy Europeans and go and find their money for them, was they came to him because rich people, when they lose their money, he said, they don't go to the authorities because it's too embarrassing. Well, you know, look how history turned full circle when, after Jeffrey Epstein died, Leslie Wexner, his benefactor, suddenly admitted, because he was sort of caught in a public crosshair, that Jeffrey Epstein had in fact stolen$47 million from him.

58:24But it's not something that Leslie Wexner, you'll note, went to the authorities over. And what I did wonder... I mean, that just makes you ask more, like, what does Leslie Wexner have to hide? Exactly. And I sat there. I mean, when federal prosecutors bring criminal cases, they tend to bring them wanting to win them. And the problem with Jeffrey Epstein's money is it's difficult. It doesn't mean it shouldn't be pursued just because it's difficult. But Jeffrey Epstein definitely knew how to steal from people and how to put money offshore. And it would be difficult for the American feds to trace that money.

59:10Does that mean they shouldn't try? I think that's one of the questions that we're now probably asking, whether we know it or not. Let me play what Alan Dershowitz said, who represented him in getting that sweetheart deal. I don't hold this against Alan. That's what lawyers do. I hold it against the government. It's their job to get the best deal for the people possible. It's their job to put bad guys in jail. So but Alan yesterday said and I will say Alan's very, very, very close with Israel. It's the subject of his podcast 80 percent of the time. So I do take it with a grain of salt. But I think he's an honest broker.

59:47Generally speaking, here's what he said. Then there's the Tucker Carlson allegation, which is the most absurd of all. He worked for the Mossad. He worked for the Jews. He worked for Israel. And don't call me an anti-Semite just because I say he worked for Israel. No, no, you're just wrong. You're just dead wrong. He didn't work for Israel. Let me tell you how I know. I was his lawyer, along with four or five other lawyers. If he had worked for any intelligence agency, the Mossad, the Shin Bet, the CIA, anything, any intelligence agency, the first person he would tell would be me and the other lawyers and say, hey, get me a better deal.

1:00:29I don't like this deal. I'm going to jail for a year and a half. I have to register a sex offender. I worked as an intelligence source. So get me a better deal. He didn't tell us that. We asked him everything. We asked him what information is there conceivably that could help you. We asked him whether people he could testify against. That's what lawyers do. I'd love to know your reaction to that. I mean, when I watched it, I thought, okay, I'm not sure Epstein would have disclosed that to his defense attorneys. I actually think there'd be a different way of getting to Alex Acosta on it. But what do you think?

1:01:07well you know i know alan obviously very well by now i mean i think you're right megan in that jeffrey epstein wouldn't have needed to say anything to alan alan would have been more aware than anybody else um that jeffrey epstein's money which was in turn paying for this dream team of lawyers was coming from the richest supporter of israel in this country um so you know some Things are just out there in plain sight. And you have to be careful. You know, I've never, I don't, you know, speculated that Jeffrey Epstein was a, quote, you know, Mossad agent. I'm pretty sure he wasn't in that, you know, he operated at a level where, you know, not on a government payroll.

1:01:51He didn't need to be on anybody's payroll. I mean, people have different roles in quote unquote intelligence. And there are people, and I reported this in Chasing Ghislaine, the podcast series that I made about the sort of the men and the money around Epstein. There are people who the intelligence community call hyper connectors. And Jeffrey Epstein, particularly actually in the last decade of his life, was unusual in that he was very close to Israeli leadership and prominent, the prominent Jewish community in this country and to presidents. but he was also you know he had Mohammed bin Salman now the crown prince of Saudi Arabia to his house he knew NBC he was he talked about um his close relationship to the leaders of various African dictatorships he even I mean he bragged and you never know whether to believe what Jeffrey Epstein tells you that he was close to Putin so somebody like that which is not by the way dissimilar from the kind of networking that Robert Maxwell had.

1:02:58Somebody like that is useful, frankly, to everybody. And they don't need to be specifically on a government's payroll. That's a very good point. That's an important nuance. He could have been effectively benefiting from those relationships with a number of countries providing compromise or information or any number of things in exchange for protection or regulatory approvals or them not bothering him on his offshore accounts. I mean, yeah, we don't know. Yeah. Actual hold hard cash that he may have been getting from a various array of countries and governments and related groups. Now, can we spend a minute on whether he killed himself?

1:03:49I realize this is sort of at the heart of the so-called conspiracy, and people have strong feelings on it. But I do think it's interesting only 21 % of Americans think he did. Well, another piece of this is Brian Enten of News Nation, who's been doing a great job on this case and Kohlberger. He interviewed Michael Franzese. He's been on this show, too. Love this guy. and a former mob guy who has served time and he served time in this prison. And he had some thoughts on the suicide theory. I spent seven months on that tear and in those cells. And the first thing I have to say, there's just, there's no way you are able to commit suicide.

1:04:28There's just no way. There's no way to hang yourself. There's nothing from the ceiling. There's nothing from the bed. You'd have to be a midget and work really hard to try to hang yourself. And I don't think you can accomplish it at that point. You know, as far as the cameras being off, I have an experience that I did eight years in prison. And I haven't experienced cameras being broken in the perfect storm of correctional officers not walking those cells. They walk in and they look in on you all the time. As a matter of fact, you know, sometimes it's embarrassing to go to the toilet because they're walking past you and looking in the cell constantly.

1:05:02So I've said this from day one. I do not believe it was suicide because you just couldn't physically do it. It's almost it would be almost impossible. You have to hang yourself from something. There's nothing on the ceiling that you can hang a bed sheet on. The bed is not that high. I mean, you have to try to lay down on the floor in some way because Jeffrey Epstein was a fairly big guy. This makes a lot of sense to some of us because you do have to wonder how one hangs oneself from the top bunk, even though he was provided with the extra bed linen and so on. So what are your thoughts on this question?

1:05:37Well, look, I mean, it's maddening, right? I mean, Jeffrey Epstein dies with as many question marks over the manner of his death as the manner of his life. And I spent a lot of time talking to Reid Weingarten, who was Jeffrey Epstein's attorney at that time. and Reid struggled with this for a long time. You know, he, for reasons actually different than the manner of the death, it was that the day before he had met with Jeffrey Epstein and he had said to him, I really think we have a good shot of getting you out of here, that the non-prosecution agreement that they had struck in 2008, he believed would hold in front of a court of law.

1:06:27And according to Reid Weingarten, Jeffrey Epstein was upbeat and agreed with him. And that's why his own attorney sort of couldn't believe it the next day when he was told Epstein he committed suicide. Because on top of that, there were all the reasons you've just pointed out. It was so difficult to do and all the extraordinary things that had to happen for the cameras not to work, for the security guards to vanish. I mean, it all just seemed remarkable. I've tried since then to find those two missing guards, and they definitely don't want to be found easily. I normally find most people, and it's very difficult, very difficult to get hold of them.

1:07:15Um, so I've heard, I guess, so we're never going to know that's let's really, we're, we're left on it, but I've heard you also speak to, uh, Michael Wolff and others on what, what was Jeffrey Epstein's relationship with Trump? Because immediately Trump's detractors have gone to, and Elon Musk's at Trump's in the Epstein files, but in that's ambiguous. What does that mean? Most of us believe if there was something really bad on Trump, the Biden administration would have used it. They They were running against him for president, Kamala, Joe, and just in the course of the four years where they loathe Trump.

1:07:50So it's very hard to believe there's some smoking gun in there about aha. But you know a lot about the relationship between those two guys or have learned a lot. What do you how would you describe their relationship? Well, you know, there's no question that they were, you know, they knew each other well and palled around. And, you know, I mean, again, if you think back to the timeline, Megan, you know, the 1990s, which when Jeffrey Epstein begins, you know, acquires all his money and wealth. I mean, it's the beginning, right, of the Trump, you know, friendship with Melania, who was, as we know, a model.

1:08:29So, you know, they're all hanging out in similar circles. You know, that's, I don't think, so problematic, really, for Trump. Trump was hanging out. Epstein, you know, as I've said, had an extraordinary international Rolodex. So the fact that Trump, it would be more surprising if he hadn't known Donald Trump. What I don't quite understand is that given that Trump and Epstein did fall out and, you know, you're right, Michael Wolfe and I have talked about whether it was over this piece of property in Florida that both that both men wanted to get out of bankruptcy. you know again that's a question that's up in the air and I don't quite understand why Donald Trump wouldn't actually come out and talk about why he and Jeffrey Epstein fell out given that actually in this instance it puts him on the right side of history.

1:09:30They did have a falling out. Trump's admitted it. The story that you and Michael discussed was there was a piece of property. Epstein brought Trump over to say can you look at it and tell me how to move the pool Trump went with him. And instead of doing that, he found out that Epstein had built had bid 35 million for it. And Trump instead behind his back bill bid 40. And so, yeah, that's one possible way. Yes, except that. So here's where I question that. And I've talked to at length to Sam Nunberg, who was, you know, as you know, Trump's first political adviser. And he and he and Trump back in the day did talk about this and that the problem with that, theory is that at the end of the day, there was a bankruptcy auction, a public auction to sell that house.

1:10:20And so, you know, either of them could have just outbid the other. So that's why I have questions about that particular theory. Because your understanding is that, in fact, what began the snowballing against Jeffrey Epstein was a young woman actually coming forward through her mom to say this happened to me. I think, well, and Trump, I think, told Sam Nunberg that he was furious with Epstein because I think he was harassing the daughter of a member of Mar-a-Lago. And, you know, I don't know. I mean, back in the day, 2014, there's no reason for Trump to have made that up. So to me, that actually makes a lot of sense.

1:11:09yes so do you think I want to talk about your personal experience because you you had a sort of a frightening exchange with Jeffrey but do you just quickly do you think there really are files that could be released I mean were you surprised by the memo saying that's it there's nothing more to reveal well I was very surprised when Pam Bondi first said you know I've got this list on my desk because I very much doubt that there's a there's a spreadsheet of Jeffrey he He just wasn't that kind of guy. I mean, the way he operated, I mean, I don't know if you've read any of the Discovery and the Jess Daly litigation, but he always appeared to do almost no work.

1:11:48And he wouldn't have needed to have kept a list, let's say, for the sake of argument. He was, he had compromat on, you know, wealthy guys. He wouldn't have need to keep a list to remind himself of who they were. um so I never thought that I uh and that's just not his style and you know people are fixated on the black book the black book was not Jeffrey Epstein the black book was Ghislaine Maxwell's um a dress book and obviously they shared it I mean she worked for him um she she organized his life um but uh you know what was I think you know you were asking me what what was he you know what do I make of the whole thing in the files?

1:12:36I'm in the files. Do you think that there's more to be revealed? Well, I think that, of course, there's got to be more documentation around all the lawsuits that would answer some of the questions that we have. There's, you know, there's somewhere somebody knows why in 2008 um he was able to get away with that plea deal and and you know maybe it's not written out in black and white but there is certainly in amidst all the discovery and and and in the redacted material there are there are some answers to the questions we want to know and so I don't know why they just don't do a document dump and say here's absolutely everything yeah okay going back to 2003 when you were trying to break this story you were doing a profile of Jeffrey for Vanity Fair and this was going to be a part of your profile on these two sisters that he had hurt.

1:13:52And same thing as we've seen with so many other girls' promises of like, I'll make your modeling career or I'll help you get into a prestigious university. All things you would believe he'd have the power to do given his connections to Wexner, given his connections to MIT and Harvard and all these other places. And as I mentioned in the intro, Graydon Carter ultimately said, we're taking this out. You talked about how you were devastated. You were in tears. You were very proud of this family for actually revealing this to you and being willing to come forward because he was not outed yet. He was at the apex of his power and to have made these allegations would have been very courageous at that time and thereafter, but especially at that time.

1:14:35And I wonder if you can just tell us what happened. So it got spiked. You had dealt with Jeffrey, you had interviewed him, And then you write about how you had your babies and you actually got yourself spun up into like, I don't know what this guy's capable of. This is before. This is well before he was outed. Well, because so during I was pregnant with my sons when I began reporting on Jeffrey Epstein. And the irony of this is that I had a high risk pregnancy, so I wasn't allowed fly. and so I was assigned to write about Jeffrey Epstein and I was assigned to find out where his money had come from because for the first time in forever, he had appeared in the press.

1:15:22He was very press shy ordinarily, but there was a little item in page six in the New York Post saying that he had flown Bill Clinton on his plane to Africa. So I was assigned to go and find out who was this enigma who lived in this enormous house in New York and where'd the money come from? And the idea actually was that for me, it would be a very easy piece because I lived in New York too. And it became a nightmare because Jeffrey Epstein would get on the phone to me every day. He would phone me up pretty much to find out how I was getting on in my reporting. And he began to say things that I didn't know what to do with and the lawyers at Vanity Fair didn't know what to do with.

1:16:08sort of like, well, if I don't like the direction this story goes in, I'll have a witch doctor place a curse on your unborn children. I mean, that was creepy. And then he would say, and by the way, that's off the record. And then he would say some really stupid things like, you know, I'll make sure your children never get into school in New York. And I'll make sure your husband gets fired from his job, which are not really things you want to hear when you're pregnant. No, witch doctor, no academic career, and my husband's fired. And then, and by the way, this is all, you know, off the record. And then what was really, that unnerved me, you know, where he very persistently wanting to know which hospital I was going to be giving birth at and who my doctors were.

1:16:51And he went into some graphic description for me of what would happen to my hormones as I was giving birth. And I just was like, you know, this conversation has really crossed all propriety and normal boundaries. And it was, you know, the lawyers, that is why the lawyers at Vanity Fair said to me, you know, we don't know who we're dealing with here. So I think you better start taping him because we just had no idea what he was capable of. And, you know, I didn't tell him about the two farmer sisters until the 11th hour, quite deliberately. I, you know, I slowly explained to him that I was, I was, I did have reporting about working with the guy I mentioned earlier, Steve Hoffenberg.

1:17:44I did have, I did, I was able to go and find depositions he'd given, he'd given admitting to financial shenanigans, both on Towers Financial and at Bear Stearns, all of which he was indignant about. But when I got, it was when I finally got to the subject of the sisters and one of them made claims really actually against him and against Ghislaine Maxwell and she, one of them had been underage. That was when he went into hyperdrive. And he not only then faxed over these copies of letters, thank you letters, he said had been written by one of them as if this was sort of proof of anything. but he then found a way to actually physically go into the offices of Vanity Fair while the piece was sort of going through the machine the editing machine and the fact-checking machine and I know this because one of the fact checkers sent me an email saying you're not going to believe it but Jeffrey Epstein is actually here in the office and he's sitting in Carter's office and I was you know completely appalled and I was told that he had somehow bypassed security and he just Graydon Carter showed up for work and there was Epstein sitting there and the next thing that I knew was when I when I actually just read the finals of the piece that the all mention of the sisters had been taken out and you know I was you know Graydon said to me really sensitive about the girls and I'm like well of course he's sensitive about the girls um and yes I was very very very very um upset about it and then um you know the piece came out right after I gave birth and I I I was and my I was my children unfortunately were born at 30 week so they were very premature and I was absolutely terrified that Jeffrey Epstein would sort of find a way to get inside the hospital in the same way he'd got inside the offices of Vanity Fair so you know one of the reasons I've always wondered who the hell he really was and who you know was C part of intelligence there aren't that many people who could have bypassed security at Condé Nast back then in the middle of Times Square I think we had a major law firm who we shared an elevator bank with.

1:20:28It would have been very, very difficult to do that. So, you know, how he did that, I don't know. I, you know, I was reading actually Tina Brown, who's another former great friend of mine, former colleague. She wrote in her newsletter this week that when she was editing, I think the Daily Beast, she also found Jeffrey Epstein. She came back from lunch or somewhere and there he was sitting in her office. I mean, normal people don't behave like this, Megan. No, no. He's obviously looking to intimidate you. Yeah, that's exactly right. And obviously back then, the same system of soft power, soft male power that we were talking about earlier worked very effectively for him because the sisters were cut from the piece.

1:21:14Oh, have you ever talked to Graydon Carter about, and I know editors make these decisions and so on, But with the benefit of hindsight, how he feels about that decision. Yeah, so Graydon Carter, you know, rather, you know, predictably, you know, came out and just, you know, made all sorts of allegations about my reporting and, you know, how I'm a terrible journalist. But the problem with that argument is that I then worked at Fantasy Fair and wrote a large number of their significant pieces for a further decade or four. So I can't have been that terrible a reporter. Wow. God, that's so annoying.

1:21:56I mean, you had him, you had him. And you think about the number of girls who were abused from 2003 forward. I mean, the government in their disclosure last Monday is saying over a thousand victims in 2007. And that plea deal, they put it at 30. So, I mean, it just, you wonder if, if, if there had been more courage like you had, how many girls could have been saved? All right. Let me switch gears with you because I do want to talk about Kohlberger and I know you don't have all day. So you've written this book with the very famous James Patterson and it's called, hold on a second. I want to make sure I have it here.

1:22:32It's called the Idaho four and American tragedy. Okay. Again, by Vicki Ward, my guest today, Vicki Ward and James Patterson, everybody knows. And you've interviewed, my understanding is over 300 people to try to get to the bottom of some new facts around these horrific murders. and one of the things you've managed to confirm you tell me what the big news items are but is that you do believe that maddie mogan was the target that's the target yes and you know i went and traced coberger's footsteps and you know um the the routes he drove that the police know about And the only, you know, there's only one place you could park behind the house where they all lived on King Road in Moscow.

1:23:23And when you park your car there at this cul-de-sac at the back, the house is no longer there. But when it was there, you had a direct view really onto one person's bedroom. And that was Maddie Morgan. And in fact, I went there one time with a young woman and friend of theirs who lived next door, a woman called Lexi Pattinson. And she would say that she would come out to her car most evenings, because that's where she parked, her car. and they all had the lights on, glaring brightly, never thinking that anyone would be watching from the road and that she would see most evenings Maddie in the window at her vanity, curling her hair, doing her makeup and it used to make this young friend of theirs smile.

1:24:15Of course, she no longer was smiling when she thought that it appeared from the police report that Brian Koberger would have been sitting in his car watching the house at least 12 times prior to the night of the murders in November the 13th, 2022. So that was exactly what room she was in and where to go when he entered. Yes. And then it seemed from the social media digital footprint that he had, you know, he'd slipped into the DMs of all three of the women, but the only one of them who he really liked the photos and all the rest of it of by herself was Maddie. If he liked pictures of Kaylee. Oh, wait, so that's new.

1:25:01I did not know that. He actually did slip into the DMs of the other, of who? Yes, no, that is in there. That is in the court record. But my understanding from some of the families is that, so, for example, while he might have liked pictures of Kayleigh, Maddie's best friend, it was always when Kayleigh was in pictures with Maddie. Maddie was, I think, the only one who he, you know, there were pictures of her solo that he clearly had an internet relationship with. Whether or not he had met her in person, the close friends, I say this in the book, the very close friends, including the young woman and her boyfriend who actually found the bodies inside the house the next day.

1:25:57it's their belief um and obviously that's their best guess at this point it's their belief given that none of them recognized co-burger um but they they figured that he was a vegan that maddie had worked um at this restaurant the mad greek in moscow where they served a lot of vegan um food and she was you know she was devastatingly pretty blonde um and that's their it's their best guess that she probably people were always asking her out and she was always sort of flicking her hair and saying no I mean she had a serious boyfriend and but that is their best guess that that's what happened I do also detail in the book how Koberger because he was a criminology PhD student he had studied serial killers and spree killers and he'd studied Ted Bundy but he'd also studied when he was a psychology major as an undergrad at DeSales University.

1:27:00He'd studied a guy called Elliot Roger, who was sort of hero of the incel movement, the involuntary celibate movement. And Elliot Roger had been a college student out in California, going between two college towns in the same way that Coburger years later was going between Pullman and Washington State where he was in college and Moscow, which is where the University of Idaho is. These two college towns are just a 10 mile drive apart. Back in 2014, this guy, Elliot Roger, was a college student out in Santa Barbara. And he made all these videos and wrote a manifesto of how he was going to go out and murder the sorority girls who had rejected him.

1:27:48He had also, he wrote that he was going to take revenge on his childhood best friend called Maddie. And there were, you know, there are a lot of striking similarities between what Elliot Roger went and did and Elliot Roger's misogynistic views of women. And Brian Coburg, I mean, the other thing, the book details. We talked about that a bit. Yeah, well, it shows. It shows, I think, how when Koberger got to Washington State University, I mean, this is a guy who'd overcome heroin addiction and he'd come from, you know, extreme poverty. So you would think that to overcome all of that and arrive at a prestigious university to get a PhD in criminology, that this ought to be the apex of your career.

1:28:45But it all very quickly goes really wrong for Brian Coburg because he is unable to keep his heinous views of women to himself, both in the classroom and outside of him. And I, you know, I sort of show in the book how his tenure there, his, you know, completely unravels as he gets pulled in front of the administration again and again and again. And it's very clear that by the time he commits the murders, he knows it's game over at Washington State University. He's lost his teaching position and therefore his funding. He's basically not going to be welcome back there. And nothing left to lose. He's got nothing left to lose.

1:29:34He's exactly right. Except to try and commit in his twisted mind the perfect crime. And I think the book explains also how the investigators, it almost was the perfect crime. this one mistake was leaving the knife sheath by Maddie Morgan's bed with the DNA on it but you you really can tell the way I tell the tick tock tick tock of the investigation that the police really had nothing for weeks and weeks and weeks they couldn't put the jigsaw puzzle together until the labs finally came back and they were able to use this quite new technique called Investigative Genetic Genealogy, where they're able to use these websites like 23andMe, and they can construct a family tree from the tiniest speck of DNA.

1:30:27And once they were able to do that, then all the other pieces, then they were able to match the car and find the driver's license. And then they were able to look at the security cameras. But it all helped. We've talked on the show before to CeCe Moore, who's really the godmother of genetic genealogy. And she really was kind of saying, it's not possible to be a serial killer and get away with it in modern day America because of this. Because one speck of touch DNA can be tracked down through these genetic genealogists. They're only supposed to go through the public databases, but it came out in this case that they did go through the private ones.

1:31:08They did. And they nailed Kohlberger's father as having some link to this speck of DNA. They could tell this was the father of the killer, basically the hit that they found in their genetic genealogy. And then it was just a matter of time before they got Brian Kohlberger's actual cheek swab and said, no, this is actually the perfect match for the DNA that's on this knife sheath. She's like, it's not like it was during the 70s where you can have a Ted Bundy or you can have a son of Sam. You can have somebody, you know, going weeks or months or longer with lots of DNA left on the scene, but just no way to pin it down unless you already had the perp in the system.

1:31:45It's different today. Right. But he knew that. I mean, you know, he knew that, which is why that was his only mistake. They didn't get DNA in his car. They didn't even when they went to stake out the house in Pennsylvania, they they such a huge one. It's such a huge mistake. Like, Vicki, did you were you able to figure that out? Like how how did this guy committing the perfect crime make such a stupid mistake? Well, I think, you know, and this now is a little bit speculative. But if one does operate on the assumption that he went in targeting Maddie and not the others, it was, I mean, it was complete random chance that Kaylee Gonzalez was there.

1:32:30She had moved out of that house. There were none of her belongings in it. She was living at home. She was ready to go and start a new job in Texas. So the fact that he found her in the bed with Maddie, I think one has to think was a surprise. And it was also a little bit random that he then bumped into Zanna Kurnodal coming down the stairs. You know, yes, she often ordered food after a big night out, but I'm sure he thought that they would be asleep. But Zanna tragically was up. She had just received a DoorDash delivery. And that's why I think, you know, when her friends found her, she was lying on, she wasn't in bed.

1:33:14She had fallen back into the room. and sort of clearly put up a struggle. Ethan, meanwhile, had just been asleep in the bed behind her. So I think, you know, mistakes happen when people encounter things they're not expecting. And I think one has to assume that Kobo wasn't expecting to deal with three other people that night. Mm-hmm. Wow. The other thing is that Papa Roger, who was posting online, So, yeah. Same last name as the serial killer that you think that we know he studied at DeSales. Right. And may have been obsessed with who killed both by knife and by gun, but was obsessed with Alpha Phi, which is the sorority that Kaylee was in.

1:33:58In any event, somebody was posting under the name Papa Roger for weeks after the murders, but before his arrest. And this is one of the things that is so infuriating about how the plea bargain, you know, hearing was handled. where the district attorney stood up and said there was no sexual motive whatsoever. It didn't play any role. If you look at those Papa Roger posts, which is clearly Cole Berger, I mean, it's clearly him. He says, he speculates there was a sexual motive behind these crimes and speaks to the killer's sexual dysfunction. I mean, it's clearly him. It's just so infuriating the way the whole thing was handled.

1:34:37The DA had no right to say that. He didn't know. At a bare minimum, he didn't know what was in Kohlberger's head and what sort of enjoyment he got committing those murders or didn't. So he was not in a position to say that. And secondly, if you believe he's Papa Roger, which I 100 percent do, he is suggesting that there was a sexual motive and some gratification that happened on the spot. Right. Well, I think one of the families I know of the victims had hoped to get some answers, particularly from Washington State University. had this thing gone to trial. Because, you know, yes, questions about Papa Roger, but also questions, Megan, about the First Amendment on college campuses.

1:35:25Because, you know, when does free speech become dangerous? And when should colleges do something about it? I think there were clearly red flags that Coburger showed on that campus. And I think the victims' families wanted to know more and wanted to know if there was some culpability on the part of the college. They'll never get the answers to that now, and they'll never get the answers to Papa Roger. I do know that the police were following the Papa Roger digital footprint. They definitely were looking at it. I don't know what their findings were. Well, hopefully when they raise the gag order, lift the gag order and we start to get everything in the case, we'll see that because there's just no way they wouldn't know.

1:36:07You can trace that. The URL is traceable. Although he was clever in other ways. So I'm wary whether he was smart enough never to do it at his own computer. And I don't know. But the other thing I wanted to mention is you have an extraordinary new detail about the roommate who saw Kohlberger in the murder house the night of the murders, Dylan Mortensen, who this is the first time I've read her more full description of what she saw. Can you speak to that a bit? Yeah, no, so she, you know, and this is a young woman who actually I felt very sorry for her when I sort of really understood what had happened.

1:36:51Because, you know, she's a college student. It had been a massive party day on that campus. It had been a football game day. And they'd all had a huge amount to drink. And this is a house where people come and go all the time. They had this big deck at the back. So it was definitely a destination where a lot of people came in and out and liked to go to party. So when she initially sort of hears this noise and she pops out of her bedroom and looks around, she actually goes in and out two or three times. But the third time she sees this guy and she thinks he must be a firefighter. And he's dressed in black.

1:37:34He's got this black mask on, but he's holding something that looks like a black vacuum. and you know she's she's like is there a fire what's going on and she you know she she was frightened enough to go back into her room and look for her taser which was which was uh flat um and then event and then she texts you know she texted around with the others and she texted with bethany funk that the other roommate who was in the basement and when you know when i again when I went to look at that house, the basement, Bethany Funk wouldn't have heard a thing. And eventually she sprints down to Bethany Funk, but she thinks she's just had a lot to drink and that she's hallucinating and that she's gone mad.

1:38:24And that's why there was this delay. And it's not then till sort of 10, 11 o 'clock the next morning where she reaches out to this great friend of hers, Emily. and even Emily when Dylan says can you come over I think maybe someone was here I saw something completely strange last night Emily doesn't take us seriously because it's not the first time that Dylan Mortensen has sort of hallucinated or you know seen things after a big party day so you know I think that one of the themes in the book is the sort of the cruelty and the harm that happened as a result of the sort of true crime mania that a lot of these kids who were already dealing with shock and loss and fear in that first six weeks because they wondered if whoever had killed their friends was now coming for them.

1:39:16They then looked at their social media accounts and they were now being accused of being the murderers themselves on top of it. So real harm that was done. Wow. We have never had this greater window into Dylan Mortensen, the mysterious roommate who laid eyes on Brian Kohlberger's moments after he committed these four murders. This is great and stunning new information. The book, again, is called The Idaho Four, An American Tragedy. The Idaho Four, An American Tragedy. It's by Vicki Ward, my guest today, and James Patterson. Vicki, you are just a wealth of information. Thank you so much for being our guest today.

1:39:57Please come back. I would love to. Thank you so much for having me, Megan. Wow. Great job on all the stories that you've been recovering. These are both very impressive pieces of journalism. All the best to you. No, well, thank you. Thank you for having me. Take care. Incredible, right? So again, don't forget to buy it. It's called The Idaho Four and American Tragedy. I have to say, I haven't yet read Vicki's book, but I want to read this. I would like to read a cover. I feel like I need a settling. Do you know what I mean? I feel like I need a settling after that whole thing. You know, I said to you guys, I was the one advantage of it pleading out was I was glad I didn't have to keep talking about it because it's just so dark.

1:40:37Brian Kohlberger is such a dark, dark figure. But as a human on this earth, there's a desire to understand the dangers that are out there and better understand how to stop them. Like that detail, we speculated about this, of him possibly first seeing Maddie in the vegan restaurant, which we had basically deduced, but Vicky's got it a little closer. He's a vegan. She worked at a vegan restaurant. That would make perfect sense. And I think back to the comment of Steve Gonsalves, who was angry about the DA settling this without a requirement that Brian Kohlberger copped to motive cop to some of the facts behind how he met them or how he first started thinking about the one Maddie or other that made him walk in there that night.

1:41:21And he said, I want to know what was the beginning of the end. Oh, just gives me chills just saying it. And maybe, maybe that was how, maybe it's going to be reporters like Vicki that help us really know those things. Um, she's a great writer and you can see she, she's done some in-depth reporter reporting on some very well-known figures. So thanks to all of you for listening today and every day. And thanks to Vicki and, uh, We will be back tomorrow with more. Thanks for listening to The Megyn Kelly Show. No BS, no agenda, and no fear.

1:42:18bad night's sleep. Peaks Sun Goddess Matcha is another option. It can give steady energy and help you focus without the ups and downs. This isn't just any matcha. It's organic, ceremonial grade, and grown in Japan's pure volcanic soil, far away from pollution. It's harvested by tea masters and screened for toxins not once, but four times. That's how serious they are about quality. The taste is smooth, creamy, and rich, not bitter like lower quality matcha. It's packed with antioxidants to keep you sharp and steady. Whether it's how the day starts or how it gets back on track, this matcha is not just a drink.

1:42:55It can be a better daily habit. Right now, you can get up to 20 % off for life, plus a free rechargeable frother and glass beaker. That's nice. It's backed by a 90-day money-back guarantee. So go to peaklife.com slash Megan. That's spelled P-I-Q-U-E life.com slash Megan to try it for yourself. Again, that's P-I-Q-U-E life.com slash Megan. Hi, I'm Angie Hicks, co-founder of Angie. When you use Angie for your home projects, you know all your jobs will be done well. Roof repair, done well. Kitchen sink install, done well. Deck upgrades, done well. Electrical upgrade, done well. Angie's been connecting homeowners with skilled pros for nearly 30 years, so we know the difference between done and done well.

1:43:45Angie, the one you trust to find the ones you trust. Find a pro for your project at Angie.com. Traditional home security only alerts you after a break-in, and that's too late. SimpliSafe is changing that. Stop. This is SimpliSafe. Police are on the way. We don't just alert. We stop crime before it starts. SimpliSafe, plan starting around a dollar a day. Save 60 % on a new system with professional monitoring during our 20th anniversary sale at simplisafe.com slash sxm. Outdoor deterrence requires a SimpliSafe Active Guard outdoor protection plan starting at$49.99 a month. Visit simplisafe.com slash licenses for alarm license information.

1:44:20Tennessee 2012.