1,000 Victims and No Accountability: Julie K. Brown on the Epstein Files

Plus: Why Marjorie Taylor Greene and Other Members of Congress Are Walking Away

Dec 02, 2025

When if we never get the answers we’re looking for when it comes to Jeffrey Epstein? What if powerful people at the center of this story get away with it? What if the victims never get justice?

You don’t cover the Epstein story for as long as Julie K. Brown has without facing these questions plainly. I’m not interested in people treating this story as a political football - as so many are right now. However, I am interested in hearing from people like Julie K. Brown. People who want the truth but know it will be complicated. People who want justice but understand it might be long in coming.

Topics Discussed

Marjorie Taylor Greene Walks Away From Congress
What Everyone Gets Wrong about the Epstein Files with Julie K. Brown
Outside of Politics: Holiday Traditions for Big Kids

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Episode Resources

Episode Transcript

Sarah [00:00:10] This is Sarah Stewart Holland.

Beth [00:00:11] This is Beth Silvers. You’re listening to Pantsuit Politics. Today we’re going to talk about how Congress is pretty testy right now. And the House of Representatives, at least, seems to be just full on broken. Members are retiring. They’re mad about lots of things. And that list of things that they’re mad about includes the Epstein files. We are going to talk today with an expert. We’ve been trying to think about how to cover this story carefully, and we decided to just go to the person who knows the most. That is Julie Kay Brown, the Miami Herald investigative reporter, who literally wrote the book, Perversion of Justice, on Jeffrey Epstein. So she joins us to talk about her reporting and what she is and is not paying attention to right now. And then Outside of Politics, we’re going to talk about our holiday traditions and how they are changing, especially as our kids get older. We also wanted to just mention before we begin that we hope you’ll make Pantsuit Politics part of your holiday traditions.

Sarah [00:01:04] Or at least your gift giving tradition. We don’t need you to talk about us at the holiday dinner table-- unless you’re called to. If there’s somebody at the dinner table you’re dreading talking to, can we recommend our book? I Think You’re Wrong, but I’m Listening: A Guide to Grace-filled Political Conversations. We also have another book, Now What? How to Move Forward When We’re Divided About Basically Everything. In our turbulent times, we have written these books to be a friend through hard conversations. We’re particularly proud of our audiobooks. So if that’s the kind of book you can give to someone without it feeling like I’m trying to fix you because we don’t make people our projects, then give one of our two books this holiday season.

Beth [00:01:39] And if you have someone in your life who regularly says, Sarah and Beth said this, maybe they would like to hear from us directly. We love recording personal messages for listeners. We do that directly through our website. We’ll put the link in the notes. We have a little discount on those in the month of December, 10% off with the code HOLIDAYCHEER. We’ll put that in there too. You don’t have to remember. But we love being able to speak to people personally and directly, and it makes an excellent gift. Please just make sure that you order that gift by December 12th so that we record it and get it back to you in time. Next up, let’s talk about what’s going on with Congress. Well, Sarah, just as we were preparing to take time off for Thanksgiving, we get the news that Marjorie Taylor Greene is going to resign from Congress. Feels like an eternity ago today, but we haven’t had a chance to sit down and talk about it.

Sarah [00:02:37] Yeah, I’ve already fought with my husband about this like five times since it happened.

Beth [00:02:43] Well, tell me about that. What are the themes coming up in the fights with Nicholas about Marjorie Taylor Greene?

Sarah [00:02:47] He’s just unwilling to give her any grace around this. He thinks it’s all about her pension and it’s all about her this, and it’s all suspect and cynical. And I do not subscribe to that. And I’ve sent him multiple the Axios reporting’s that everyone in Congress is miserable, particularly Republican lawmakers, and said, like, I’m not saying we have to hold her up as some paragon of you know political values. That’s not what I’m saying, but I am saying that Marjorie Taylor Greene is a human being, not a robot, not a villain created in a lab, an actual human being who seems to be in the process of something very real. A very real transition, a very real struggle. Now, if she put this off to have her pension vest, sure that’s true. And I care not at all. Anyone would do that. I would do it. Anyone would do that. If you’re talking about a manner of weeks when you’re trying to exit a toxic work environment, then everyone would wait a small amount of time and for their pension to vest. That’s not cynical or suspect in my mind. That’s just a normal human calculus. Okay. So whatever aside, I understand she’s made a lot of money since she’s been in Congress. Fine. So is Nancy Pelosi. Who cares? I mean, I do care about that, but that’s a different show. And I just think that what she’s articulating, I’m trying to take it at face value that this is miserable. I’m not getting to do what I want to do. He’s going after me, especially since there’s so many other Republicans articulating the same thing. This is miserable. I want out. And that is a problem for everyone, not just Marjorie Taylor Greene.

Beth [00:04:22] Well, it hangs together with her whole story to me, and it hangs together with lots of other people’s stories and with the future. So you think about it, she gets to Congress and she attracts all this attention from the beginning because she just says what she thinks. Whether it is grounded in reality or not, whether it is a wise framework for policymaking or not, she just says what she thinks. And then she goes through I think another understandable metamorphosis. Okay, I’m in Congress now. I want to be able to do things in this job, which means I have to work and play well with others. And so she swallows a lot to get Kevin McCarthy to pay attention to her, to get herself on committees. She does the good rank and file member stuff, even though no one expected her to do that. And I can totally understand how somebody like Marjorie Taylor Greene-- I don’t know her personally, but everything we know about her in the public eye gets fed up with that and at some point wants to cash that check. And why not now? When Donald Trump is the president, she’s worked her butt off for him in Georgia. She thinks that her people have the reins and it’s go time. And it’s been nothing but stop time on everything she cares about. And she’s looking ahead at the future and recognizing we’re probably going to lose the majority, which means I have even less of an opportunity to get things done. And it probably feels good to her to stick it to Mike Johnson on her way out the door. I generally think if you sign up for a two-year commitment, you ought to fulfill it. But I totally understand having been kept out of session for what, seven weeks? Why House members would look at Mike Johnson and think, I owe you nothing. I owe you nothing. You are not letting me do what I came here to do. You’re constantly telling me to say things that sound objectively ridiculous to the American public. Donald Trump has forgotten every single person who gave him an ounce of credibility on his way to the top. What is the point in hanging for this?

Sarah [00:06:29] It does seem that they are finally getting the message that he is loyal to no one but himself. I don’t know why it took so long, because it has been shockingly obvious from the very beginning. I guess they thought the political capital they would earn through loyalty to him would be its own form of loyalty. Which look it does seem like she has earned a little bit with her constituents. There’s a lot of reporting that they still like her. They’re not mad at her for leaving. They’re upset that she’s leaving. And I take that sort of constituency-- I don’t know if it’s service, I don’t know if it’s loyalty, I don’t know if it’s just political skill, but I think it’s to be taken seriously. I think Marjorie Taylor Greene came to Congress as a crackpot. I don’t know what else to call it. She had crazy anti-Semitic views, she had crazy conspiracy theories, and she got into one of the elite spaces she had a lot of crackpot ideas about and learned that they weren’t all true. And learned that there was no QAnon coming to save the day, and learned that there was elite malfeasance, but not quite the type she had anticipated, and that she was not on the team of Avengers there to clear it in a neat and tidy plot line that would wrap up in two and a half hours. And I think that’s just dripping from everything she said. I mean, she ran a [inaudible], man. And then she went to Congress and was like, oh shit, this isn’t what I thought it was. Because that’s always the experience. I’m more concerned that Jared Golden is not running again than I am Marjorie Taylor Greene. I’m not surprised that she got there and was like ugh. I am concerned that somebody like Jared Golden from one of the few flip districts in the country gets there and is like, forget it. This is a smart educated guy who kind of knew what he was getting into, got there and was like, not worth it. That to me is more concerning than anything. I’m happy that a lot of older Democrats are retiring. I think we need a new generation of leadership. I’m not surprised that a bunch of Republicans are retiring because it’s a miserable existence, which it should not be in the ruling party, to follow in the shadow of Donald Trump and get jerked around with this Epstein stuff. No, I’m not going to release them. Yeah, just kidding. Go ahead and vote for it. Get jerked around with Ukraine, get jerked around with Gaza. I’m not surprised they’re miserable and they want to leave. And I think that I totally agree. What do these people owe Mike Johnson? He has just handed over congressional power on a silver platter. And what have we said from the beginning? I thought these people at least wanted to maintain their own power. And I don’t know what they thought was going to happen, but it does seem like they’re waking up and I’m like, oh, I would have liked to maintain my power. And if I can’t I guess I’ll just leave.

Beth [00:09:12] You can’t get anything done. And it is embarrassing. I’ve been watching Don Bacon, who’s one of the members not running for re-election. He’s a Republican from Nebraska. People tend to talk about him as a moderate. That is totally on the sliding scale that we’ve invented since Donald Trump came on the scene. But Don Bacon is upset about this administration’s handling of Ukraine. He is upset about these Wall Street Journal stories reporting that this is all transactional, that Trump is basically just open for business. Whoever can make him money in the long run is going to get his help on foreign policy. He is a serious lawmaker who I think not only wants to avoid the train wreck government funding fights the way that Mike Johnson handles them, but also just can’t swallow this anymore. Can’t go on the Sunday shows defending this. Can’t be asked again what about Steve Witkof and what about Rick Grinnell and what about this cast of characters surrounding the president? Every single one of them who seems to be in it for themselves at the end of the day. He just can’t handle it anymore and I don’t blame him.

Sarah [00:10:14] I do you think this is really important. To the Marjorie Taylor Green of it all. I’m not a Pollyanna. I understand that Marjorie Taylor Green has also made a great deal of money since she’s been in Congress. As they almost all do. They have access to power. They’re going to make more money. I don’t know what to tell y’all. I wish it was different. That’s a tough nut to crack. If you have an idea, I’m all ears. But I think so many of this new-- because this is what’s interesting, right? I think this is why she got our attention. It’s not like we haven’t witnessed in the first Trump administration a rash of moderate sleeve, right? Just step by step they were like forget it. I’m out. I can’t. And it was frustrating because you want to be like do something. Don’t just stand there and go, I’m not going to run again. That’s what you want. Like, fight. But whatever. I’m kind of numb to that at this point. I think that is so different than this new class of MAGA Republicans getting there thinking they’re going to stick it to the libs. And what everyone is witnessing that, particularly this moment in the second Trump administration, is the MAGA Republicans can control everything. Supreme Court, the House of Representatives, the Senate, the White House, and what they are doing is getting rich. I cannot get that Axios reporting out of my head where they shared a tweet from a big MAGA influencer on Twitter who went to DC and said, all anybody can talk about is the corruption. The just transparent quid pro quo. The pardons are out of control. The pardons are out of control. The lawyer who’s like, I usually cover one a year. I’ve got like 40 because people are like, oh, I can just pay and get out of jail. People who stole money, stole people’s everyday working people’s life savings, serve two hours and they’re out because they paid a lot of money to Donald Trump. The pardoning of this Honduran president who our government prosecuted for drug running while we’re blowing 80 people out of the water is out. What is happening? What the fuck is happening?

Beth [00:12:41] I’m so upset about this Honduran president being pardoned. As you said, we are assassinating without investigation, without warrants, without any kind of process whatsoever. We are asking members of the United States military to kill people on boats in the ocean because we are so concerned about drug trafficking.

Sarah [00:13:02] How about not even on boats? How about clinging to life rafts, barely surviving, and going, “Go take a sweep and wipe those out too.”

Beth [00:13:10] And yet this person who the American justice system considered tried, proved, convicted, allowed Colombian cocaine to come through to the United States tons, hundreds of tons of cocaine, and he gets a pardon this week. It’s outrageous. This is to me a reason if you are opposed to Donald Trump to not be shitty about Marjorie Taylor Greene. You don’t have to make her a hero. You don’t have to put her on a t-shirt. You don’t have to nominate her for some kind of award. But just don’t be ugly about it because she has more of an opportunity to speak to people about this than you or I ever will. She has an opportunity to say, I believed in this. I still believe in it. I am not a Democrat. I would still like to own the libs every day and twice on Sunday. I would still like to do that. My problem is we aren’t doing it. We’re not doing any of the things that we promised we would do because we are so busy helping lots and lots of people get super rich.

Sarah [00:14:10] I’m coming to a unifying theory here, which is why are we going to invade Venezuela? Because somebody is writing a check. Somebody’s got some money to be made. Somebody wants to build some shit in Venezuela.

Beth [00:14:22] Oil. There’s Oil.

Sarah [00:14:22] Oil, whatever. That’s my new-- why is this crazy pardon? Because somebody wrote a check. Why are we betraying Ukraine? Because we want to make some money. Why are we screwing Congress six ways to Sunday? Money to be made. We don’t give a shit about them. Like, he’s not doing. I mean, this is this clearly is his lame duck strategy. I’m not going to do rallies anymore. I don’t give a shit about MAGA. I don’t care about JD Vance and whoever’s going to come next. I want to make as much money as humanly possible in the most corrupt way. And also, I guess, I am at the end of the day a builder and I would like to build some testaments to myself. Oh, goody, goody this is a new way for corruption too because these people can write me checks to build the East Wing or to build Trump arc over by the Lincoln or whatever the case it is. It’s a joke. The cover of the Economist this week is a MAGA hat upside down, overflowing with money and jewels and pearls. And it’s like I guess this is it now. It’s just the take what you can get. Corruption, make as much money as you can through the power invested in you by the people of the United States of America. Who cares what you fuck up in the process? It’s crazy making.

Beth [00:15:44] And people like Marjorie Taylor Greene got elected saying that’s what it was. They got elected saying this is a swamp. It is a disaster. It is people are only in it for themselves. We want to be there for the people. We have got to play so that everyone can hear this video from Republican Tim Burchett of Tennessee, where he just lays it all out on the line as he’s advocating for a ban on members of Congress being able to trade individual stocks. And he’s so frustrated that this is not going to happen. And you just have to hear it in his words.

Tim Burchett [00:16:17] Yeah, everybody talks about this place being a dadgum swamp. It’s not a swamp. A swamp is something cool God created. It filters water, animal life lives and flourishes around it. This is a sewer. This is created by men and it needs to stop. For years Congress has been using hard working American taxpayers’ money to get rich. Dadgum, it’s got to stop. America knows what the heck’s going on. Everybody wants to knock Pelosi. Heck, she’s not even in the top 10. Get on that unusual well site. This is pathetic, folks. We all know what’s going on. Congress knows what the hell’s going on and it needs to stop. This body has been enriching itself on the taxpayers’ dime for too dadgum long, and it’s got to stop. This place is crooked and is as crooked as a dog’s leg. That’s an old East Tennessee saying, but it’s the truth. And it needs to stop. America knows what’s going on. We’re in committee meetings; we hear things before y’all do. We can make those connections. When you see a member of this body making four or five 600 trades a year, you know something’s wrong. Everybody ought to do like I do. I got my buddy Tommy Siler who invested in my mutual fund. End up having to cash it out because my daughter’s going to school. I’m not a wealthy man. But look, this thing is broken and it needs to be fixed. And this is the right avenue to do it. And I want to say something, I’m going to get these guys mad at me, but I really don’t care because they can’t vote in my district. This thing ain’t going to pass. If we’re going to pass something in the House, and then guess what, the Senate will either not take it up, or they’ll come back in righteous indignation and say, “We need to make this stronger,” something totally ridiculous, and they’ll send it back to us. This is a scam that’s being played on the American public, and it needs to stop. Let’s quit with this nonsense. Let’s give America reason to trust Congress for once in our miserable lives.

Sarah [00:18:16] Wow. That’s incredible. More people talking like that. I mean I just think this is it. I mean, we’re going to have somebody on Friday to talk about the democratic strategy. To me, this is starting to become a bipartisan political moment. We are heading into I think could be another progressive era because the corruption is so overt. I never subscribed to the DC as a swamp. And I think it was a great place. I did think it was a great place. I lived there. And it’s not that I’m, again, a fool and think there was no corruption, but it’s off the rails. And it is going to fundamentally undermine any future prospects for our republic if people see it as this corrupt-- which it has been in the past, and we have addressed processes like Griffin and I got in this big on the back end of Nicholas and I was fighting. He was like, I just have people in my class, and they’ll say, “Can he do this? Is he going to get away with it?” And we were talking about like are we going to put people in jail? Because that didn’t work. He’s back. We tried to put him in jail. That’s another thing that happened while we were gone. They threw out the Georgia prosecution. And I’m like, it didn’t work. And he came back. And so I’m just trying to ask myself. And I told him, I was like, “Griffin, I think the answer is to say he might, but the next person won’t.” We have to fix these processes. Tim Burch is right. This is unacceptable. This is an easy fix. Easy fix. I mean, this is how they fix the Senate. This is how they fix the State legislators electing this United States senators, right? It was a voting bloc. I don’t care what else you stand for. And this gets hard. I don’t care if you’re pro-choice or pro-life. I don’t care if you are like any other issue, just line them up the most important things. If you do not support this fundamental process change, I will not vote for you. Full stop. That’s it. That’s the one. This is my line in the sand. And I don’t think that’s a bad one. I don’t think some of these like corruption-- that’s what I told Griffin. I’m like, I’m about to be like, if you don’t want to uncap the house, I’m not voting for you. I don’t care. But we have to find some fundamental process issues to put some trust back in our form of government that we think will prevent this from happening again, and say, this line in the sand and no further.

Beth [00:20:50] We’re going to have to lose some of the footnotes about it. And I say this as a person who loves footnotes. I can make a really compelling argument against term limits. It’s time to just do it. We are never going to get to these kinds of corruption issues if these are lifetime jobs. And the American public is there. The public is there.

Sarah [00:21:14] Yeah, they don’t have to be like two years. We could do four terms. I don’t know four is a lot, but reasonable.

Beth [00:21:18] But we’re not going to get out of the way that campaign finance keeps coming back around. We are going to have to just change some things. And you’re right. I think it’s going to be bipartisan because you are starting to see Republicans and Democrats coming out and saying it’s both parties. It’s both parties. There’s a pox in your house and mine too. And some of us are here wanting to clean that up and some of us aren’t. And so I hope that Marjorie Taylor Greene gets whatever movement it is she’s looking for. She doesn’t have to be my leader, but you know what, consolidate some support around some of these fixes and get to it.

Sarah [00:22:00] I think term limits and individual stock trades. Fine. Those are good. Those are two ones that do we do not need to explain to everyone that have an enormous amount of polling support. So just do those. Uncap the house is hard. People struggle with it. Fine. Just start with those two. I don’t even care. Just do something. Again, I’ve always been sort of like meh on term limits, but I think that’s a great place to start. I do think it’s like, good lord, let’s just start throwing something at the wall. Congress is not going to last like this.

Beth [00:22:30] It’s not going to last. And the other thing, the other lesson I hope that we put in ourselves from this period of our history that we’re living is that there aren’t rules if everybody folds. There aren’t rules that save you if everybody folds everywhere along the way. Like we are starting to see the result of people being told at every turn, just do what the leader wants. And that’s a lot of leaders, right? That’s not just Trump. He supercharged it. But a lot of congressional leadership, the house is broken a lot because leadership has been too powerful. It’s squashed people’s ability to get a vote on their bills. It has manipulated processes. It has forced people to say things that are so dumb, which I think is a good transition to our next conversation. I do think that the Epstein story is part of what has broken people in the broken House. Because being asked to vote against releasing those files for people who got to office on this extremely simple thing that the public absolutely understands. I think that’s part of why we’re seeing this just eruption of like I cannot fucking do it anymore. I cannot.

Sarah [00:23:44] Yeah.

Beth [00:23:46] So let’s talk about the Epstein files, but let’s try to talk about them in a not gross way, which has also been really tricky for everyone in Congress and for everyone in the podcasting sector. We’ll be truthful about that. We wanted to do this respectfully. And the person who has done that most successfully, the person who I think has always kept the main thing with the Jeffrey Epstein story is Julie Kay Brown, the Miami Herald reporter who broke this story open eight years ago and who continues to be, I think, the most trustworthy voice on this topic. And we’re thrilled that she joined us today. Julie, I am so grateful that you’re joining us today. I was blown away by your book. You have been reporting on Jeffrey Epstein for eight years at enormous cost personally into your newspaper. So thank you for coming in as the expert to help us sort out what’s going on right now.

Julie K. Brown [00:24:48] Sure. I’m happy to be here.

Beth [00:24:50] There are lots of arguments about the importance of the Epstein story today. It seems to me like it matters what question you’re asking. If you’re trying to track down who slept with minors, that’s a different kind of story than has the justice system failed overall? I wonder what you think are the questions, especially the open questions right now. What do we not know about Jeffrey Epstein that is still of public importance?

Julie K. Brown [00:25:17] Well, first of all, I think that it’s always important that we have some checks and balances on our government. And in this particular case, it’s still really a mystery on how someone could commit such a substantial crime against children and essentially get away with it and go on to live a pretty life full of more crimes. In other words, he was allowed because they failed in the beginning when they first realized what he was doing, and failed repeatedly thereafter. He was allowed to continue to commit crimes against young women and children, essentially. So I think regardless of what you think about this, this has a lot of conspiracy theories attached to it. And I think a lot of people kind of fall down those rabbit holes without understanding that this is really about our government and whether it’s doing its job properly. And when you have so many victims, by the way, now the government has put this at 1000 victims. I think that this is a valid case to really examine and take a look at. By the way, the whole reason I started this project was because I felt like now these same questions are coming up again. I felt at the time that there was too much focus on the celebrity of this, on the Lolita Express, on the conspiracy theories. On all these other things that kind of grab headlines. And in my mind, this was a crime and it was someone who got away with the crime. And then no one had really examined how the criminal justice system failed these women and these young girls. So in my mind, that piece of the story had never been told. And that’s exactly why I examined it to begin with.

Sarah [00:27:14] That makes sense to me. I want to tease apart a couple of things you talked about there. Because I think there’s just so many levels to this. I think what you’re saying is we need to be less consumed about him and more consumed about us. What does this say about us? What does this say about our systems? And I think it’s really important that you came in and said, wait a second, he got charged and got to hang out and leave prison? And what and I think you’re right. To the overall story of this, we don’t really know why. Why was he able to get away with this plea deal? But I think to the overarching sort of societal question, Jeffrey Epstein is such an excellent sort of stand-in for how was he able to get away with it up and even to that charge? What we learn more and more in these files is that a lot of people at the upper echelons of society knew who he was, what he was doing, and what he was about. There are so many mirrors of this and other Me Too stories and other predatory stories, Michael Jackson, Harvey Weinstein, like so many moments where you hear these stories that come to fruition, this victimization, this predatory behavior and it’s like an open secret. And so I think that’s what’s so hard is I think we get caught up in the open secret up until where he gets charged. And then I think the question you’re asking is, okay, well, if it was an open secret and then he finally got charged, how was he able to walk away with it? And I wonder how much the answer to all of that is the same answer. And I think that’s where you get the elite conspiracies. Well, it’s just because rich people get away with it. So how do you tease all that apart in your work and in your mind?

Julie K. Brown [00:29:01] I think the way that you do that is just to get at the truth. There are a lot of things that broke down in the system here. For one piece of it is these girls from the very beginning were treated like prostitutes. In the minds of some of the prosecutors-- not the police, by the way, the police did a great job with this case. But in the minds of some of these state attorneys, it’s sort of like this feeling that, well, the jury’s going to think this. Well, your job as a prosecutor is to get the jury to understand the case. Right. For example, just imagine for a second, and I hope your listeners do this too. Imagine if you had a 13-year-old daughter, okay. And especially nowadays, even more so than back in 2005 when this happened. You don’t know what your kids are doing online most of the time. And you certainly don’t know when they’re walking to school who they’re talking to and who they’re getting involved in. This could theoretically happen to anybody where their daughter would get mixed up with a man who, by the way, says, I’m going to make a star out of you, or I’m going to make sure that you go to the Fashion Institute of Technology. You have such a flair with fashion. I mean, telling them anything. Come over to me, I’ll help you build a portfolio. We have to take pictures of you. And you could see where this is leading. And essentially these girls were even in more dire situations because he preyed upon the ones that were most vulnerable. Some of them were homeless, or they were foster kids, or they were what we used to call latchkey kids who had parents working job after job and they weren’t around a lot. So he preyed on these girls. Yes, they got money from him, but here’s the thing: if you use fraud coercion to get what you want, in this case it was sex, that is a crime. That is trafficking. You cannot say promise them I’m going to help you with your life. I’m going to send you to college. I’m going to get you an interview at the Fashion Institute of Technology and dangle that in front of them and use that to get-- it’s called fraud, force, and coercion. And that’s what happened here. These were not prostitutes, but the prosecutors back then treated these girls because they accepted money from Epstein as prostitutes. And they thought that the jury wouldn’t believe them. And that’s not your job when you’re a prosecutor. If you’re a good prosecutor, you know how to say what I just said. You know how to lay it out about how he tricked them. And then once he got them in, he would threaten them. He would say things like I know where your little brother goes to school. Or I know your father got in trouble for whatever drugs. Or I’m going to plant drugs on your father. And that’s how he controlled them.

Beth [00:32:16] You’re telling us that there have been multiple investigations, right? And Sarah referenced the Epstein files. That phrase seems to be doing a lot of work in Congress right now because you’ve reviewed thousands of pages of documents over the past eight years. Can you help us understand what the Epstein files in its current context means? What are the victims still interested in coming out? What does the public still need to see?

Julie K. Brown [00:32:42] What Congress is referring to most of the time when they use the phrase the Epstein files or the DOJ, the Department of Justice and the FBI files, those are the investigative files from way back in 2005 when the police started investigating this case, all the way through Epstein’s arrest in 2019, because there were several other investigations of him over the years. They never went anywhere. There were victims that came forward in these ensuing years after he got that sweetheart deal. Victims came forward to the FBI and said, again, look, he raped me. And so presumably we have all that, all those records. And then all the way through, of course, after my series ran in 2018, they opened another case against him in New York. They arrested him, he ended up dead. Then they continued the prosecution with Maxwell, so they would it presumably include all those files as well, all the way up to when her prosecution, when the Supreme Court actually just a couple of months ago declined to review her case. So it’s a lot of material to go through. And just from my experience of some of the files, we have received files mostly as a result of filing motions to unseal civil cases. There’s a whole pile, dozens of civil cases that were filed in court by Epstein’s victims and others against him, against his estate. So that’s another whole bucket. We have the DOJ government files bucket. You have the civil case bucket and now you have his estate bucket. His estate is now turning over documents to the House Oversight Committee. So that’s another bucket. There’s about six different buckets of files, but mostly when people talk about “the Epstein files” it refers to the government files.

Sarah [00:34:57] Do you think the government files will contain information that will illuminate the question we started with? How did he get the sweetheart deal? How did he avoid prosecution for so long? Do you think there’s information missing that would help fill in some of those blanks?

Julie K. Brown [00:35:13] I’m skeptical that the government files are going to really be revelatory. We haven’t covered a lot of what’s in those files. My series was really based on a lot of material that came from those files as a result of a civil lawsuit that was filed back in 2008. And so, fortunately, there was a lot of government material in that case. So I’m skeptical because I don’t think, quite frankly, that the government it’s job.

Sarah [00:35:46] They didn’t investigate enough, so there’s not going to be anything in the investigation files. Okay.

Julie K. Brown [00:35:52] Yes. That’s what I think. I think there may be some surprises. Obviously, there’s something in there that Trump doesn’t want America to see. And that’s kind of been my biggest surprise, quite frankly, because I didn’t hear that there was really he had a whole lot of affiliation with Epstein’s crimes, if any affiliation, I guess I should say. So to hear that he was fighting so hard not to make them public makes me think that either he’s implicated. We know he’s in the files, but we don’t know how he’s mentioned. Either he’s somehow implicated, or there are big, big people who are implicated and he is fighting to protect them- donors maybe perhaps.

Beth [00:36:41] I have really struggled with how to think about the information that is kind of dripping out right now because I’m aware that there are multiple buckets. I’m also aware that sometimes a document seems to come out of the ether. Like I can’t quite place why is this in front of us right now? And is there context missing around it that we need to understand to put this into perspective? The issues are so serious. I don’t want to just go around accusing people of things. So how can you counsel us as a news consuming public on taking this in?

Julie K. Brown [00:37:14] Listen, right now this is probably my biggest challenge personally and professionally because I see stuff on the internet all over the place where they’re pulling an email that they got out of something and they’re saying it means this. And I’m looking at it and I’m thinking, oh no, it doesn’t mean that to me. So this is this is a real issue. It’s a real problem because we don’t know what these emails really mean. We can’t know. They’re not spelled out most of the time in these emails. Epstein is talking in code. He’s so full of himself. Well, he’s known to be sort of this guy that brags. So we don’t even know if he does say something whether it’s true even. So it’s enlightening, it’s interesting, but it doesn’t prove anything. None of these emails really prove a whole lot. And they’re all jumbled. They’re not organized. Even the people who are smart enough to somewhat organize them and have come up with these platforms or these ways of organizing them through AI, it still takes a human brain to understand whether there’s any significance in some of them. Now, I happen to catch something that I just happen to know because I know the case so well. In a couple of his calendars, he was having dinner meetings with a guy named Matthew Menchell. All it would say is dinner, Matthew Menchel, and then it would say something like no shellfish. So he’s obviously having dinner with this guy named Matthew Menchel. He’s on a bunch of his calendars. And Matthew Menchell was one of the prosecutors in Florida who was an architect to his sweetheart deal. So the fact that in later years he’s actually having dinner with one of the prosecutors on the case to me seems highly suspicious. But I just happen to know who Matthew Menchell was, so I was able to get a story from that. But you have to be really careful. And in this day and age, even people on the internet are getting sued for things that they say about people. So you have to be really careful on how you present some of this information that we’re getting.

Sarah [00:39:48] Is that where you’re at right now? Are you sorting through the estate files?

Julie K. Brown [00:39:53] Yeah. It’s exhausting. It’s crazy. And it’s so jumbled. And on top of all this, there’s another bucket of information that hackers now are somehow getting Epstein emails. And so now the media is being contacted by these groups of hackers that are sending us stuff. And how do you know it’s real? This is why you need a government to do its job. This is why you need the FBI and the Justice Department because they have the ability. I see these critiques on social media all the time. Well, the mainstream media isn’t reporting this. Well, the reason mainstream media isn’t reporting this is because we don’t know if it’s valid. We don’t know if it’s real. We don’t know what this means. You are taking the step to assume this is what this means. And, yes, it looks bad that certain people are associating with Epstein, and you can write a story that so-and-so associated with Epstein, but that’s not really moving the needle to where we need to go, which is holding people accountable for not doing their jobs or for letting Epstein go, or for helping Epstein, or participating in his crimes. So you’re not moving the needle. All you’re doing is running a piece saying he was friends with so-and-so. And whoa this is really horrible. I think the mainstream media has to hold itself to a higher standard. And we can’t just go out and write these stories. I was working on a story about one of the people that was in Epstein’s orbit who I have some information on and was a high profile person. And we got a hold of the person. We were sort of working on the story, and the person said, “Well, here’s why your premise on this is wrong.” And he pointed to a couple of things that didn’t add up. So then we have to go back and we have to look at what this person said and see if that’s accurate. It is a very tedious but necessary process to make sure that we get the information accurate. So even I myself when I read something on the internet and it I think, oh my God, I always go and look if the New York Times wrote about it, or the Wall Street Journal or some major publication, or better yet, I try to find the document that they’re referring to and look up the document myself to see if it says what it does. Nine times out of 10, some of these outrageous stories that we see online are absolutely not true.

Beth [00:42:48] I’m going to hold on to that. If you are looking at these emails dripping out and thinking, I don’t think this says much, that’s just the category I’m going to put it in now because I trust this process that you’re describing. And I don’t want to just chase this like it’s a basketball game. It feels really gross to me and really disrespectful to the victims the way that the president has become such a central character for so many people.

Julie K. Brown [00:43:14] Yeah, it is because there are so many more important aspects in a lot of ways. I think he’s just such a touch point. And right now I know that a lot of victims are extremely angry at the way that he’s handled this. I’ve never really understood it. It doesn’t make any sense to me how he’s handled it because it’s with such a lack of empathy and a disdain almost for the fact that there were so many girls who were abused. I mean, that’s indisputable. You can argue this person’s story doesn’t add up, or maybe that person’s story doesn’t add up. But when you have hundreds and hundreds of women basically all telling the same story, it’s true. This guy was a sex trafficker of very young women and girls. So that’s not a disputed fact here. That’s absolutely happened. And so anyone that’s trying to diminish the horror of what they have been through really needs to rethink their moral or what they think is right and wrong, because that’s wrong.

Sarah [00:44:32] I mean, you have Maxwell convicted, and then you have her meeting with his former personal lawyer, now deputy attorney general, and getting basically a transfer to a sweetheart prison. I mean, what do you make of all that? To me, whatever you think about the Epstein, the files, what they say and what they don’t about Trump or otherwise, this is highly suspicious. It’s highly disrespectful of the victims. She was convicted in a court of law. Not that that stops him from pardoning anybody, but that to me is a standout moment in the last few months.

Julie K. Brown [00:45:06] She absolutely knows everything. I personally think that she has leaked some of this stuff out through her family. We are pretty sure she leaked out the stuff in London that led to the prince basically relinquishing all his titles. There was more information that was leaked out in Britain about Prince Andrew how much of a friendship he had. It extended past the time Andrew had previously led people to believe he had broken things off, and it turns out he didn’t. We believe that that was leaked from Maxwell’s camp. And think about what does that mean? That means that she’s sending a message that she has stuff. I think the birthday book was also a leak showing this is what is out there, folks. And so I do think that she has some stuff on Trump. Do I think Trump was involved? I don’t know, but I think that she has led him to have some concerns and that that’s why she is now in a nicer prison. And not only at a nicer prison, but getting all kinds of amenities and being treated having her free time in the gym and you she’s getting all kinds of perks now and I think it’s because she has sent a message that keep me happy, get me out of here. And the way things look now, I think she will get a pardon. I really do.

Beth [00:46:51] How? I guess. I understand that he has the pardon power and he gets to use it how he wants and there’s really no check on it. Politically, I’m just curious, do you think that Congress is serious about oversight here beyond just getting these files released? Do you think there are members of Congress who are interested in accountability within the Department of Justice around this, who could exert pressure on the president? Where are we in terms of a functioning government trying to take responsibility for past mistakes?

Julie K. Brown [00:47:26] I don’t think there’s anybody that really is looking for that. It’s sad to say. But I think that they’re all using this on both sides, Republicans, Democrats, everybody. I think they’re just using this for their own-- it’s become a political football. And it shouldn’t be because this is a crime. It’s a crime against children, and it’s being used in the wrong way. I’m sure there’s some people who in their hearts have good intentions, but just the way that they it’s just...

Sarah [00:48:04] It’s just the timing of it all. You’re concerned now? We’ve known about this for years. If you’d been on this tip for five, eight years, then maybe I could I would have more respect for this pursuit. But it just feels...

Julie K. Brown [00:48:16] My series came out; there were congressmen at the time who did the same thing they’re doing now. Making all these statements, we’re going to open an investigation, writing letters to the Justice Department. Oh my god, what happened? How did this guy get away with it? There was all this movement back then. And then, of course, other things came into the picture that were brighter and shinier to stand up and talk about. So this all quieted down for a while. And then Maxwell was prosecuted, and then it got a lot of play again and then her prosecution got convicted and then it went away again. And it’s like this story that I’ll never die because people still believe rightly or wrongly. We call these conspiracies, but we don’t know. Maybe there was some kind of a deal quid pro quo that was struck that allowed him to get away with these crimes. But this wave of depending on which way the wind blows, Congress people who are riding these waves, and it’s disheartening to people, for example, like the chief of police in Palm Beach, who has fought for Epstein and for justice for the victims for over 20 years. He’s not out there in the media demanding anything. He’s just quietly doing what the Justice Department has asked him to do and has been contributing in any way he can. He has no ulterior motives. And there are people out there who have followed this case for a very long time who I think feel that this latest effort to release the Epstein file is somewhat of a red herring because they don’t feel like the Justice Department really ever did it the job that they were supposed to do to begin with.

Sarah [00:50:24] Isn’t this just one long story of ulterior motives? Like, isn’t that just that’s why I think it’s such fertile ground for conspiracy theories? I think that’s why it is difficult. He was the king of manipulating people’s ulterior motives to me. Like the prosecutors, the politicians, the law enforcement, it’s just one long big mess of ulterior motives, which is why you get conspiracy theories because people just want an easy villain. Not that Jeffrey Epstein isn’t, he is, but once you sweep up this whole world of very rich people, very influential people, and this sort of elite circle, you got a lot of ulterior motives. We’ve all watched Succession. We know how this works. You know what I’m saying? I think that’s the curtain of-- it’s like it drops this this see-through curtain where you think you can see what’s happening, but it masks everything. And that’s why it’s such fertile ground for all these conspiracy theories. Meanwhile, the girls, now women, are still out there with no ulterior motives except wanting justice.

Julie K. Brown [00:51:28] Right. That’s the thing people keep forgetting about that. And it’s painful for me to even watch because they were the reason why my series was so eye-opening because they finally gave voice. I had written all of them that I could find a letter at the time, a real snail mail letter saying perhaps one of the reasons why he was able to get away with this is because the most important piece of this story was always missing. And that piece was you, your voice. And that’s how I finally got a handful of women to finally go public with their trauma and their pain. And it takes so much courage, even some of the ones that-- look at Virginia Jeffrey. She was put through the wringer with accusing some of these men. She was the only woman that really named names, and she’s gone. And part of that was that they went after her. So these women, everybody says, well, why don’t they name names? It sort of seems like crazy to me that people in the general public don’t understand that these women have been threatened. They’ve been told to be quiet. They’ve been followed early in this case. Epstein hired henchmen to not only follow the girls, but to follow their family members, to send messages to them. They went through their trash. They told them, look, if you say anything, I know where your parents are. I know this about your family. I will make it so that you will suffer or your family will suffer. And now these women have children of their own, and they’re very mindful of how this is going to impact their own kids. So this is why they will be sued to oblivion at the very least. And who knows whether they would be harmed. God forbid.

Beth [00:53:51] I know that you spent a lot of your career on the failures of the justice system and the rights of prisoners being violated. Stories that are hard to get people’s attention framed up around them. What have you learned seeing the Epstein story just capture the zeitgeist in waves, as you said, about getting people to pay attention to smaller stories, but stories that have the same elements of manipulation and power and ulterior motives as Sarah was saying?

Julie K. Brown [00:54:26] I think for most journalists the key really is to tell a really good, engaging story. Storytelling writing is a very important part of what I’ve tried to do. In other words, not just to tell about a story about the criminal justice system, but how the criminal justice system allowed a man to be arrested 163 times at a store where he worked because he was black and the cops just kept harassing him. He worked there, but they kept arresting him. When you tell the story from that man’s eyes, I think it just captures people’s attention. The same thing with the Epstein story telling it through the voice. One of the most powerful aspects of my story was the mini documentaries (I call them that) my reporting partner Emily Michaud put together. They’re extremely chilling. They’re on YouTube and you can find them. But I think they really told a story because we managed to get these women and their actual voices and them again showing photographs of them when they were quite young so you can see who they were back then. And so it’s hard with social media now because they’re just little Twitter feeds and you can’t tell a story. It’s very hard to put someone’s voice in a tweet to really make it compelling. Even with the other platforms, I think you get just such a limited amount of time to really tell a story. So we’ve come away from reading newspapers and reading stories because our attention spans are so short now. And it’s unfortunate. It’s just unfortunate. I don’t know the fix. I wish I did.

Beth [00:56:22] It seems to me that you continue to use those channels in a way that at least turns people’s attention to the actual facts and that pursuit of the truth that you talked about. So I am super grateful for your work and really appreciate you spending time with us today.

Julie K. Brown [00:56:37] Thank you for having me.

Beth [00:56:48] Sarah, I don’t know about you, but I need Outside of Politics more than ever. I’m really struggling with the politics of everything, so I’m happy to just to chat about Christmas with you for a while.

Sarah [00:56:59] I do feel like all these stories, like political, economic stories about people shaking off their economic woes and spending a lot this Christmas, I just want to yell back like, no, no, no, that’s a copy technique.

Beth [00:57:12] That’s right.

Sarah [00:57:14] They are coping with their economic and political woes with Christmas and the holiday season and just generally leaning in because we need a little Christmas right this very minute.

Beth [00:57:23] That’s what I’m doing. That’s definitely what I’m doing. I am coping and avoiding by using shopping and gift wrapping and crafting Christmas movies, et cetera.

Sarah [00:57:35] Yeah, I support you and then I don’t think there’s anything wrong with that.

Beth [00:57:38] Thank you. It feels like the healthiest outlet I have right now.

Sarah [00:57:41] Yeah, I agree with that.

Beth [00:57:43] So our kids are older.

Sarah [00:57:45] Shut up.

Beth [00:57:47] I know.

Sarah [00:57:47] Don’t attack me.

Beth [00:57:48] It changes things. It just it just changes things. This is the first December first that Santa’s helper Snowball has not appeared in our house.

Sarah [00:57:57] Sad. Sad. Snowball. Poor one out for Snowball. Yeah, we went to the advent walk last night and Griffin left early in his own car to go home and do SAT tests. Nicholas was like, what is happening? And I said, well... And then our tradition of decorating the tree kind of got everybody was in different places. We had to do it in pieces and parts. We don’t go see Santa anymore, obviously. I still do make them trace their hands on the back of the Christmas tree skirt. Their big old man hands. But yeah, it’s way different when you don’t have any Santa fans in the house any longer. Trying to phase it carefully. But I’m trying to find some new traditions, but it does feel like some of the like more kid ones are falling away. Nicholas was like, “Man, you used to have something for us to do every single day.” Like we would have advent calendars with an activity or a craft every single day, but obviously we don’t do that anymore and it’s hard.

Beth [01:00:00] And we always go with another family and eat at this Mexican restaurant that’s like the only place near the Ark to have dinner. And Ellen was like, “I want to go have Mexican food and go to the Ark.” And I’m like, great. Top of the priority list then. But I’m looking for things like that that they still really enjoy or that could be new traditions for us that that are going to capture their attention, that will be worth not doing something with their friends that night. Because that’s really the stage we’re getting into; being with my friends is more important than hanging out with my family. And how do we still get in here a little bit around Christmas?

Sarah [01:00:35] Well, I will say I have raised some real traditionalists. I didn’t do this with a goal in mind, but I am very proud of myself. We have an enormous amount of holiday traditions. Like last night we watched a Christmas Story. Nicholas and I, the very first Christmas we ever got together in the year of our Lord 2000, watched a Christmas Story. We ate pizza and we decorated my little Christmas tree in my dorm room. And so we have done that every single year for 25 years. We watch a Christmas Story, we eat pizza, we decorate the tree. So they want to do that. We’ll go see the Christmas lights at Noble Park. I mean, my friend Dylan comes over, we’ll still do the Christmas cookies. I’m trying to think. God, we have so many, it’s hard to keep up with. I did order holiday pajamas for the first time in a couple years. Because I did for a long time, but then they were not getting bigger. And last year we did repeats. I was like, just go pick your favorite one that still fits. We’re going to do a repeat year. They’re pretty into it. They’re still pretty devoted to the ones that aren’t like the elf. We also don’t do the elf anymore. Or like they’re not going to sit in Santa’s lab, obviously. But otherwise, I would like to get more traditions with them around gift giving. They always do give their brothers a gift, but I think there’s a little room to build on that gift giving skill now that they’re getting a little older. But my kids I have poured it into their forming souls and spirit that Christmas traditions. All of them we have a million for every holiday. I just I’m into it. They love it. I mean they didn’t cheer when I told them we were going to the Advent walk because that’s the one I really like. But we have a lot of church ones at church and then they start helping with them instead of participating in them which is nice. But this year’s like the last Clark elementary school Christmas program I will go to. I told Nicholas I was like maybe I’ll just go to one when I don’t have a kid and he’s like that’s weird. I’m like I don’t [inaudible] love it so much and the little children singing their little sweet angel like voices. But it’s just hard as they get older even when they’re like still into it. And right now I’m very much in a space like this is the next to last Christmas Griffin will be home for like [inaudible]. I’m going to be a mess next Christmas. Y’all just get ready for that

Beth [01:03:06] We’re in a very unenthusiastic phase for both of my daughters. So if I say, “Hey, you want to do this?” They’re like, I mean, I guess, whatever. So I’m experimenting and finding some success with just doing things myself and then they want to join in. Like I said, “Do you want to decorate the Christmas tree?” “No.” Okay. And I start doing it and then they come down and do it with me.

Sarah [01:03:27] Okay.

Beth [01:03:28] Would you like to make this paper chain with me? Not really. But then I start doing it and then suddenly they’re at the table with me doing it too. You know what I mean? So I’m trying to just ask less, do more and make space to be joined.

Sarah [01:03:43] Okay. I like that.

Beth [01:03:44] It’s a weird time and I’m trying to figure it out. I tell them all the time, I’ve never had daughters your age, so you’re going to have to bear with me.

Sarah [01:03:52] I did see a reel the other day where the guy was like, I love that everyone’s so sappy about that this is also your parents’ first trip through life. And he goes, “Yeah, it shows.”

Beth [01:04:04] Listen, it’s the truth about me. It’s the truth. I’m fumbling my way through over here.

Sarah [01:04:08] I love it. I love it so much. I love it so much.

Beth [01:04:12] Well, I know that many of you have lots of good things that you do with older kids. So I’d love to hear about that or just traditions that you enjoy yourself because like you said, they’re not going to be in our [crosstalk].

Sarah [01:04:22] That’s the thing, maybe we need to start inventing more couple traditions.

Beth [01:04:26] Yeah, I’m here for that. That’s a good idea. Force some enthusiasm in Chad Silvers. So let us know. You can email us. We read every message that comes to us, or you can comment on our episodes over on Substack. And we so enjoy hearing from you. Thank you for spending time with us today. Thank you to Julie K. Brown for being here and for her recording. And we’ll be back with you on Friday. Until then, we hope you have the best week available to you.

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Liz K

It's me, your Emotional Support Listener with kids in their 20s and I promise you, nothing is ending; it is just changing. Our "traditions" over the years ebb and flow, and it is really ok for things to fade out and new things to arise. Releasing your attachment to your family traditions is a gift to your children as they age because it frees them from any resentment that comes with feeling obligated. Also, it gives you space to decide how *you* want to observe the holiday season in your new chapter without feeling the pressure of making it magical or passing on traditions to your kids. You might find it hard to believe, but your relationship to all these traditions might change as your own season of life shifts. So now, all I care about is time spent together. I don't really care when or how it happens.

With that said, my favorite thing is Tuba Christmas! Imagine hundreds of amateur/professional musicians form a big-ass brass orchestra and play the jolliest tunes of their giant instruments. It's a delight! We attend every year in Center City Philadelphia, but there are Tuba Christmas events all over the country.

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Jill

A tradition in our family that started when they were little that my kids do still seem to enjoy is picking a house in our town that has a Christmas or holiday lights/display that delights you. And we each write a letter to that family thanking them for the time and effort it took for them to create that display for us to enjoy. And then we drive around together and drop off our letters.

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