Why are the Epstein files revealing more about the victims than the villains?

0:02Amy Wallace:This is a Global Player original podcast.

0:05Emily:There is sadness, there is anger, there are scars that will never heal, ever. But to me, more than anything, it's a responsibility that I have. I implore the community to please stand next to me and help me bring down all these bad people. And if you've got somebody in your life that's doing this to you too, speak out, stand up. The times are changing, as they should be, and it's a good time to start holding these monsters accountable.

0:32Amy Wallace:That was the voice of Virginia Dufresne, one of Epstein's most vocal and courageous victims. She was the accuser of Prince Andrew. We won't call her a survivor because, in her tragic case, she didn't survive. She took her own life last April, a life of intense pain. Six months afterwards, her memoir, co-authored by the journalist Amy Wallace, was published. And this week, with the release of three million of the Epstein files, we've seen so much of what Virginia was campaigning for come to fruition. She wanted survivors, victims of sexual abuse to be heard, to be listened to. She wanted perpetrators brought to justice.

1:12Amy Wallace:So in the first interview since the release of the Epstein files so far, we speak to Amy Wallace on today's episode. What would Virginia Dufresne make of where we are today? Why are the redactors helping the perpetrators and not the victims? And will this bring us any closer to criminal prosecution? Welcome to the News Agents USA.

1:35Emily:The News Agents USA with Emily Maitlis and John Sopel.

1:40Amy Wallace:Well, joining me now is Amy Wallace, co-author of Virginia Dufresne's memoir, Nobody's Girl. You'll remember Amy came on to our show last autumn when the book first came out And she's speaking for the first time since the release of the Epstein files last Friday. And Amy, a lot of people have been saying to me in these recent days that if Virginia Dufresne had lived to see this, she would have understood the power that has come from her words and her bravery and the fact that she came forward to tell this story. because she has in many ways been absolutely central, pivotal to what we now have before us today, right?

2:28Emily:Absolutely. I mean, I think it's been amazing as somebody who worked so closely with her for so long, who loved her, who believes in the cause that she and the other Survivor sisters are trying to bring to the fore. it's been amazing to watch the impact of her telling her story and yeah I think that she would be very moved I also think that she would be very angry right now I wish she was here to be angry on her own behalf the way the Department of Justice has handled the release of these files the redactions of the men's names, the failed, in many cases, redactions of the survivors' names, and pictures, faces, addresses.

3:16Emily:I watched another of the survivors, Danielle Bensky, on an interview this morning. She said that when she typed in her name, only a few things came up, although she was hoping that none of them would. She's not supposed to be named. But in going through the documents, she has found other, so the search function doesn't even work. So once you start to go methodically through the 3 million documents, you're finding a lot of mistakes. And some of the victims believe they're intentional of outing these women who've bravely come forward. And then you get emails like this one. I wrote it down. March, 2014, sent to Jeffrey Epstein, thank you for a fun night.

3:58Emily:Your littlest girl was a little naughty. But they've redacted the sender of that email. And the question here is why? You know, Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche went public yesterday, I believe, and said there will be no prosecutions from this document dump. Because by the way, it is not illegal to party with Jeffrey Epstein. And it's not illegal to send emails to Jeffrey Epstein. If that's true, unredact that name.

4:29Amy Wallace:I saw the clip that you're talking about. And he said, obviously, we will be working through the material. And I think his words were never say never. But he didn't think it would lead to any criminal investigation. So that's what you're hearing now. This will not take us forward in criminal investigations.

4:48Emily:I mean, that's basically what he said. I did hear that caveat. But what he said, and this I find angering, is if anyone wants to come forward and bring us some evidence, we'll go after it. Okay, these women, hundreds of women, Virginia is only one of them, have come forward and given their accounts to the FBI. And another thing that Daniel Bensky said in this interview, which I found fascinating, is that she's been looking for other things that she's given to the FBI. They're not in there. She can't find them. So in other words, there's not a full accounting of the allegations in these documents.

5:25Emily:There are a bunch of mistakes that have put these women in danger, but there's not a full accounting. And I cannot claim as one single individual to have read all three million pages. I have not. I've been trying to keep track of what other hardworking journalists are trying to pull out of the file. So I cannot say definitively what I'm about to say. But I know things that Virginia told me that she told the FBI on two separate occasions that I'm not seeing. People are looking. I'm looking. I'm not finding them. So that raises the question, like a lot of people are calling, many are calling for all of the documents to be released.

6:03Emily:Don't give us half, give us all.

6:05Amy Wallace:And it sounds like, to go back a step to what you just said, you worry that they are redacting the perpetrators and exposing the victims because they want to scare them, want to stop them coming forward? I mean, it sounds like their lives could now be in danger through this.

6:26Emily:I think absolutely lives are in danger and definitely impacted. At the very least, these women are being put through hell one more time. I can't know what the goals or intentions of the people who did the redacting are. And I'm sure there is a possible explanation. These are just honest mistakes. But if you're going to take as long as they've taken past the deadline of bringing these documents forward, then be careful. And if you're going to say you're going to protect the victims, protect them. And they haven't done that. And they are protecting men who send, you know, vile emails to Jeffrey Epstein.

7:09I think the key thing here for me is when Deputy Attorney General

7:14Emily:Todd Blanche says there will be no prosecutions, here's what I want to know. Have you contacted these men that you've redacted and asked them, have you interviewed them? Have you said, what did you see on the island, in the mansions, on the plains? Okay, stipulated. Just like with Prince Andrew, former Prince Andrew. Stipulated. You say you didn't meet her. You weren't there. Okay, we just saw a picture of the prince, former prince, on all fours over a young woman in the files. So, okay, stipulated you didn't commit a crime. We can table that for a second. Come forward and talk about what you saw.

7:49Emily:Are the perpetrators, are the jokesters, are the people sending these disgusting emails to Jeffrey Epstein being asked questions? And it's not enough to just say there are no prosecutions here because it's not illegal to send an email, in my view.

8:02Amy Wallace:There are lots of men mentioned in these files by name. Obviously, it doesn't mean criminality if their names are there. But there, as you will know, have seen copious mentions, for example, of Ehud Barak, of Alan Dershowitz, of Trump, of George Mitchell. Are you hearing any focus now on a police investigation into the ones who were actually named there?

8:28Emily:I'm not hearing any police investigation or Justice Department investigation. I know George Mitchell, yesterday, I believe I read that he's been dropped from a couple of scholarships in Ireland that he was involved in. Others have paid price. There's a doctor, Dr. Peter Atiyah, who has lost his CBS News new appointment and he's no longer on a board. But, you know, a member of Donald Trump's camp cabinet is in these. It's easy to interview him.

8:57Amy Wallace:You're talking about Howard Lutnick, the Commerce Secretary. Yeah. I mean, we should say these men deny all criminality and they deny the allegations in there. But do you have faith, Amy, that justice ultimately will be done by these documents?

9:14Emily:I'm not seeing it be done. I would like it to be done and I think there's still opportunity for it to be done. But the partial release is a problem. The way the redactions or lack of redactions have been handled and who they redact and who they don't is a problem and is in itself an injustice. So and then the question becomes what do you do with the information that's there? And I do understand, of course, all of these men that they've denied, as was true throughout Virginia's lifetime. Everyone denied when she accused. But I've never heard that these people were interviewed or interrogated. And so, again, we've talked about this before.

9:57Emily:These often rich, always powerful men have more access to justice than the often poor, not powerful at all victims. And the only way that the Survivor sisters have had any kind of justice is that they've banded together and not shut up. They've continued to be loud about this. But I don't have any faith from what I'm seeing here that justice will be done.

10:23Amy Wallace:President Trump said yesterday that America should move on from the Epstein files and his words, get on to something else. He said he hadn't read the files that he thought Elon Musk and Howard Lutnik were fine. I want to just play you Caitlin Collins from CNN asking him about the victims and his response.

10:43Emily:What did you say? Go ahead. What would you say to the survivors? You are the worst reporter. No wonder CNN has no ratings because of people like you. You know, she's a young woman. I don't think I've ever seen you smile. I've known you for 10 years. I don't think I've ever seen a smile on your face. You know why? You know why you're not smiling? Because you know you're not telling the truth. And you're a very dishonest organization. And they should be ashamed of you. Your thoughts, Amy? I watched that this morning and I actually retweeted it because I'm very impressed by Caitlin Collins always.

11:20Emily:His feigned disinterest in this topic is offensive. The fact that he doesn't know what's being reported or claims that he does not know is offensive. his telling a professional woman that it is her job to smile at him more often I think it gets to the underlying issue that we have going on not just in this administration but in this culture she's a professional she's doing her job and she's asking him very reasonable questions and he is telling her to be prettier it boggles the mind and it clearly yes, he wants to change the subject. I think he's being honest about that. He wants people to pay attention to other things.

12:06Emily:But thankfully, a lot of people around the world, not just Americans, are not willing to pay attention to other things. They are seeing evidence in these files of how people like them are treated by people with more power.

12:23Amy Wallace:His name is in those files tens of thousands of times. He denies all wrongdoing. Are you seeing an appetite in the American media to cover this story and any potential wrongdoing that would take us to the heart of the Trump administration?

12:39Emily:I mean, I think there are a lot of hardworking journalists out there who are trying. Julie K. Brown from the Miami Herald, who is one of the preeminent people who made this story a story again, is working hard. Everybody's digging through it. But what everyone has noted is that the documents are very hard to search. it is very difficult to find the information as daniel bensky one of the survivors said on tv yesterday nothing is organized in a way that you can put everything together easily it's like a it's like a puzzle that's been exploded and the pieces are all over the room and so it seems designed to make it very hard to piece things together let alone the redactions of various men's, presumably men's names.

13:27Emily:I don't know that they're all men. So to hear Deputy Attorney General Blanche say there will be no prosecutions in all likelihood says to me that he's following exactly what Donald Trump said to Caitlin Collins yesterday, which is, let's move on. Nothing to see here.

13:44Amy Wallace:Well, let's not move on. And let's dig into some of the allegations in the files, some of the stuff that we're reading, Ghislaine Maxwell's emails try to paint Virginia Dufresne as a disturbed teenager who was into witchcraft.

14:00Emily:Yes, I've looked at that document. That is actually, in Virginia's book, we talk about that juvenile record that was released illegally about a rape of Virginia by two young boys when she was a young teen. And they did not pursue charges. And at one point, someone, I think I know who it is, released that juvenile investigation record that should not have been public. In it, there is a reference to Virginia's mother, and I don't know that this is an accurate reference, saying she thinks her daughter was into witchcraft and satanic rituals. So, you know, somebody seized on that and released it. It was very interesting to see that Maxwell had a copy of that, clearly.

14:50Emily:That's what she's referring to in that document. And it's more evidence, and we've had plenty, that there was a real effort to smear Virginia as she made allegations. I mean, that effort continued for years. But Ghislaine and Geoffrey were at the forefront of urging people to discredit her. And we have now from the files more evidence of that. We'll hear more from Amy Wallace in a moment.

15:30Emily:The News Agents USA.

15:32Amy Wallace:I remember at the time talking to you last October, I think it was, we know that Jeffrey Epstein was obsessed with incubation. There were questions around whether he would become a father. And Virginia Dufresne, you wrote about the request, this bizarre request that Ghislaine Maxwell and Jeffrey Epstein made of Virginia to essentially carry their baby and then hand it over to them. It was the reason that she then escaped. She ran away to Thailand where she met her future husband. But we've been looking in these files and there is a diary entry from 2002 authored by an Epstein victim where she alleges that she gave birth to a baby girl at the age of 16 or 17.

16:19Amy Wallace:That child, born in 2002, would now be around, what, 23, 24 years old. And she describes the child having been taken from her 10 minutes after birth. This woman, the survivor, alleges that was done under the supervision of Ghislaine Maxwell. And she says she was born. I heard her cries. I saw this tiny head and body in between the doctor's hands. Ghislaine said she was beautiful. Where is she? I don't know if that is something that you've heard or read or whether you can shed any light onto whether this stolen child, this Epstein child is around, exists.

17:04Emily:I mean, I have read that document. I also read an email from Sarah Ferguson saying, congratulations on your new baby boy to Epstein. I read something yesterday, and I don't have independent confirmation of this, but that Jeffrey's brother has said, no, no, there were no children. But his desire to seed the population with his superior DNA is well documented. Not only from Virginia's account of being asked to bear a child for them and then give it to them. That was very clear. But there's been numerous, there's a particular New York Times investigation into the whole idea. And it's this sort of master race idea, which is I am superior in my makeup.

17:53Emily:And so it's my responsibility, Jeffrey Epstein, you know, I want to make the world more like me.

18:00Amy Wallace:I mean, the victim describes how she was a talented pianist and that Epstein found her musical talent, a reason that he would want to impregnate her, essentially.

18:10Emily:Right. It's a sort of a genetic, oh, you have a genetic trait that would be good to pass along in this new master race that I'm creating with my seed. I mean, that's really, you know, this is sort of part of a broader worldview that many men have had over the years, often very powerful men. But do you think there is a child out there? Do you think there is an Epstein child out there? I don't know. I hope not. But I know that he, Virginia was not the only one he tried to get to do this. And I think that we don't know. I think a lot of, so many of the women haven't come forward for understandable reasons.