Vicki Ward revisits Jeffrey Epstein’s 20-year cover-up, starting with her 2002 investigation—ignored after threats tied to her premature twins’ birth—until Virginia Giuffre’s 2015 revelations reignited scrutiny. She questions Bill Clinton’s repeated flights with Epstein despite "unusual optics," including young women on board and financial ties via the Clinton Global Initiative, while criticizing the Justice Department’s "botched" handling of FBI files allegedly linking Trump to 1980s assault claims, later obstructed by his administration. Global probes in England, France, and Norway contrast with U.S. inaction, as Epstein’s attorneys blocked subpoenas for hidden computers, and Les Wexner’s testimony rings hollow despite overseeing Victoria’s Secret events where Epstein recruited models. Clinton’s deposition may clarify how Epstein’s network evaded accountability, exposing systemic failures that protected him for decades. [Automatically generated summary]
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And we are back here this morning.
Joining us now is Vicki Ward, investigative journalist and a reporter who has looked into Jeffrey Epstein for years.
Vicki Ward, our viewers may recognize you from the Netflix documentary.
When did you first look into Jeffrey Epstein and why?
I first looked into Jeffrey Epstein, if you can believe it, in 2002.
It was the fall of 2002.
I was pregnant with twins.
It was a complicated pregnancy.
And Jeffrey Epstein was not a known person at that time, but his name popped up in the New York Post's gossip column because he had flown Bill Clinton and a group of celebrities on a philanthropic mission to Africa.
And that was the hook that caused my then editor at Vanity Fair magazine, Graydon Carter, to say to me, I know you can't fly.
I've wondered for years who this mysterious guy is.
I've wondered where his money came from.
He lives in New York.
You live in New York.
This should be easy for you.
Go find out where he got his money.
And that's how the whole thing began.
And obviously, as I was digging, I started to discover a lot more than discrepancies in Epstein's cover story as to how he had made his money, which turned out not to be true.
But I also came across two sisters, Maria and Annie Farmer, who talked to me about sexual abuse that had happened to each of them separately.
Maria worked for Jeffrey Epstein.
She was in her 20s and she described a horrific evening of abuse in Ohio on the estate of Les Wexner that had taken place.
Annie Farmer, her younger sister, described abuse that had taken place when she was by herself at Epstein's ranch in New Mexico with Gillen Maxwell and Angela Maxwell.
And she'd only been 16 at the time and she hadn't said anything because she hadn't wanted to jeopardize her older sister's job.
But both sisters, after Maria had been abused, did talk to their mother.
They talked to a businessman in New York.
Maria talked to an artist, Eric Fischel.
In other words, there was contemporaneous witnesses.
And tragically, at the 11th hour, their stories were cut from the article.
And that was after Jeffrey Epstein appeared in the offices of Vanity Fair.
I do not know what conversation was had between him and the editor, Graydon Carter.
But what I do know is that the farmer sisters were suddenly cut from the piece.
Did you continue to follow the sisters and the allegations?
And what did you find?
To be honest, immediately after I didn't because Jeffrey Epstein reporting this piece was a deeply, deeply stressful experience for me because you have to remember we had no idea who this guy was.
I wondered at times if he belonged to the mob.
And he had begun to threaten me as he started to realize that this piece might contain things he didn't like.
And he had started to threaten.
He'd said he would have a witch doctor place a curse on my unborn children.
He told me he knew where I was giving birth.
He knew all the doctors in the hospital.
And so before, after I knew that the pharma sisters had been taken out of the piece, but before the piece actually hit newsstands, I went into labor prematurely.
And I then had two very sick, tiny babies who were in the hospital for two months and then who had health issues for the next seven years.
So in all honesty, having lost that battle and having talked to the pharma sisters at the time, Maria Farmer, you know, back then had almost said to me, you know, maybe it's for maybe it's for the best.
And I think we all went home and tried to forget about it.
But in 2015, so over 10 years later, when Virginia Roberts Geoffrey started going public with her claims about what had happened at the hands of Jeffrey Epstein and Gillen Maxwell and started naming people like the former Prince Andrew,
then I phoned Annie Farmer and said, you know, shall we try and resurrect this?
I was no longer working at Vanity Fair magazine.
Do you want me to write a piece and sort of explain what happened?
And she spoke to Maria and she came back to me and she said, yes.
And so that is when, you know, 13 years later, I detailed for the first time what had happened.
Even so, there was no repercussions in the real world about that until four years later.
And that was obviously after Julie Brown had done her amazing reporting in the Miami Herald, which appeared in late 2018, which detailed the allegations and names of so many other Epstein victims in Palm Beach.
And that time, Congress and the Justice Department finally seemed to listen.
And so it was on the heels of that that Jeffrey Epstein was indicted and Annie Farmer appeared in the courtroom.
I saw her there when he went in and was faced the judge because of those charges.
Obviously, we know that a couple of weeks later he died.
But Annie Farmer was then one of the four key witnesses in Gillen Maxwell's criminal trial.
And as we know, Maria Farmer has been completely vindicated in the Epstein files that have now been released because her original complaint in 1996 to the FBI about what happened to her at the hands of Maxwell and Epstein is in there.
We're going to open up the phone lines here, Vicki Ward, for you.
We want to welcome our viewers to this conversation.
Vicki Ward will take your comments and your questions this morning.
Republicans 202-748-8001.
Democrats 202-748-8000.
Independents 202-748-8002.
You can text if you don't want to call at 202-748-8003.
Vicki Ward, I want to play for you what the former Secretary of State and First Lady Hillary Clinton had to say to reporters about her husband's deposition that will happen today in New York.
I think the chronology of the connection that he had with Epstein ended several years before anything about Epstein's criminal activities came to light and that he was charged and sadly given a sweetheart deal, which, as I said in my statement, had that not happened, perhaps his predatory behavior could have been stopped earlier.
But I think it is fair to say that the vast majority of people who had contact with him before his criminal pleas in 2008 were like most people.
They did not know what he was doing.
And I think that that is exactly what my husband will testify to tomorrow.
Vicky Ward, your reaction to hearing Hillary Clinton say that's what her husband will testify on today before the House Oversight Committee, that he was not aware of what Jeffrey Epstein was doing.
Yeah, well, I think that that probably is true.
Nonetheless, I think, you know, Bill Clinton, unlike Hillary Clinton, who never knew Epstein, and I think it was, you know, ridiculous having her go in and testify yesterday.
But Bill Clinton, I think, does have to answer some questions about judgment, because we know from the photographs that he was surrounded when he got on Epstein's plane by a large number of young women.
And you have to remember, this was two years after Bill Clinton had left office in the middle of the Monica Lewinsky scandal.
And, you know, I do know businessmen who went to Epstein's house for Clinton-related events, for the Clinton Global Initiative-related events in the early 2000s, and who immediately felt that something was wrong, that the optics of all these young women running around sort of proffering drinks felt unusual and wrong and inappropriate, and they left.
And I think the question that Bill Clinton will be asked is: why did you not only not leave, but why did you continue to get on that plane?
He went on the plane, I think, a total of four times.
Now, obviously, being surrounded by a bunch of young women is very different from knowing about the sexual abuse of minors.
So I think it's the difference between bad judgment and complicitness in criminal activity.
Those two things are very, very different.
Have you investigated any allegations or do you know of any allegations by any women associated with Jeffrey Epstein against the former president?
No.
Nobody I've spoken to has ever suggested that Bill Clinton took part in any sexual abuse.
Front page of the Washington Post this morning, the Justice Department said Thursday that it is examining whether it wrongfully, wrongly withheld FBI files that contain allegations against President Donald Trump in its release of millions of pages from the investigatory files related to convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.
Three summaries of interviews the FBI conducted in 2019 with a woman who had accused Trump of sexually assaulting her are missing from the files.
Multiple news outlets have reported this.
The woman had accused Trump of sexually assaulting her decades earlier when she was a minor.
No evidence has emerged publicly to corroborate that accusation.
Vicki Ward, what do you make of this accusation and the missing files?
So I think that it's really troubling and it reiterates the continued incompetence at best and sort of seeming cover-up at worst by the Justice Department when it comes to releasing these Epstein files.
I mean, I think it's important to note that, you know, I've been reading the reports about these documents and certainly when I read them, this woman doesn't seem credible.
I mean, even The Guardian described her claims as outlandish.
And I will note that in the 1980s, which is when this woman claims this stuff happened, there is no known instance of Jeffrey Epstein abusing young girls in that time period.
It wasn't till much later in the early 1990s when he acquired all his money and his houses and the plane and the island that that's when, and he was with Gillen Maxwell, that he started the abuse.
So there are lots of problems with the story and the allegations against Trump.
But the bigger problem is why they're not in the files.
When Pam Bondi, Attorney General, has come out and said we've released all the documents.
Well, no, they haven't.
And I think Hillary Clinton was well within her rights when she said, I don't know what you're doing interviewing me.
You should be interviewing, you know, the person in the files who, one, is in office now, and two, there are actual allegations against because there were nothing like that about Hillary Clinton in there.
First phone call for Vicki Ward.
Rhonda in Napa, California, Democratic Caller.
Hi, good morning, and thank you for your good work.
As a survivor and as representing women in the Northern California area, I was wondering what it is that we can do or you or people such as you can do to help bring the pain and the hurt that we're all feeling as a sisterhood to bring it forward so that we can all heal.
I appreciate you.
Thank you.
Well, thank you so much.
I mean, I think that the honest answer to that is keep up the pressure.
I think the job of the media is to be relentless and to persevere and to keep going through these voluminous files and to try to connect the dots, which I think you've seen we have been doing.
I think the survivors are doing a fantastic job of keeping the pressure up in the media and keeping the pressure on Congress.
I mean, I think let's not lose sight of the fact that although this rollout of the Epstein files has been totally botched, nonetheless, these brave women have come a very, very long way.
And the fact that they got Congress almost unanimously to pass this Epstein Transparency Act is very, very meaningful.
Newly Surfaced Documents Revealed00:02:52
And I think they have the will of the people behind them.
And that's really important because the political tide will shift.
But Congress, hopefully, in the short term, will not forget and will not abandon these women and will keep going and not rest until there are answers.
Hannah Phillips, who reports for the Palm Beach Post, her piece is featured in USA Today, Vicki Ward.
Epstein hid computers in storage units in Palm Beach County and beyond.
And she reports that newly surfaced documents indicate that Epstein had private investigators remove the computers and lock them in storage units across Palm Beach County and beyond.
Epstein continued making monthly payments to one such facility until 2019, the year he died by suicide in that jail cell.
When asked on February 24th whether it had searched any of Epstein's storage units or recovered the computers hidden in 2005, the FBI referred all inquiries to the Department of Justice, which did not respond to a request for comment.
By 2007, Hannah Phillips reports a federal grand jury had issued subpoenas ordering the private investigators to appear before the grand jury and produce all computer equipment removed from Epstein's Palm Beach residence, any computers ever owned by Epstein, and records documenting the relationship between Epstein and the investigators.
And although the subpoenas were directed at the private investigators, Epstein's attorneys moved quickly to intervene.
They asked a federal judge to quash the subpoenas, arguing that forcing the investigators to turn over the computers would violate Epstein's constitutional rights and pierce the confidentiality of his legal defense.
Vicki Ward, what do you recall from these missing computers?
And what do you think needs to happen next?
Yeah, well, you know, when I read that story, I was not surprised because I know from my own reporting that a lot of the allegations against Jeffrey Epstein come from the 1990s and the early 2000s.
And that timeframe, a lot of the documentation from that time period is just not in these files.
Most of the files actually are from 2008, which is when he went to prison for that sweetheart deal, and later.
And a lot of the mystery around Epstein is from the earlier years because we still really don't have a very good explanation as to why Les Wexner gave him complete power of attorney, complete control over all his finances.
Mysteries Of Epstein's Early Years00:17:18
I didn't think that Wexner's testimony to Congress remotely began to answer that, actually.
And all the stories that I came across in detail, I mean, I know that Epstein sent me a bunch of documentation about the pharmacists that he claimed disputed their accounts.
And I've noticed that's not in these files.
So I'm assuming that's in a storage facility somewhere.
So I think it's really important we find these.
Bernard in California, Independent.
Your question or comment here for Vicki Ward?
When is things going to get done?
Well, unfortunately, I don't have a crystal ball on this, right?
I think, you know, I mean, you have seen, it's been fairly remarkable.
It's like, you know, I feel like a domino drops every day that the accountability that has happened globally on this is incredibly extensive and around the world.
I mean, in the country I grew up in, obviously in England, you've got two police investigations that are going on, one of the former Prince Andrew and one of the politician Peter Mandelson, who are alleged to have possibly handed Epstein government secrets.
There are investigations going on in France, investigations going on in Norway.
And, you know, yes, the question is: why are there no investigations going on in the United States?
I think, let's hold on.
I think that these investigations that are going on around the world are interestingly to do with financial secrets, financial issues, more than they are to do with sex.
And I think it takes a while sometimes to piece together money trails.
And so I think there may be breadcrumbs in these files that we just need to follow.
And it will take a while to put them together.
But I am confident that the media is doing a great job of not giving up on this.
Kathy's next.
She's in Michigan, on our line for Democrats.
Good morning, Cease Ben, Greta, and Ms. Ward.
I want to say, first of all, that the victims that have come forward are extremely brave.
That's not an easy thing to do.
I had an experience as a young woman when I was 21.
I was running, and this man drove by me, and I knew immediately he was dangerous.
I went around the corner, had my plan in place.
He had the hood of his car up, car was running, and he was doing something very appropriate in the middle of the street.
I ran around the block, went in someone's backyard, then went to my parents' house about a mile away.
Exactly a week later, I'm cycling to my parents' house, and I'm a block away.
I look up because I'm leaning down.
There he is.
He chased me.
I got into my parents' yard, hopped off the bike, ran into the house, ran to the junk drawer, got a pencil and a piece of paper, wrote down his plate number.
I did think to do that.
He was a rapist out of parole for rape.
I was the only woman who would go to court.
The women would make their reports.
He had been doing this in a certain section of Flint.
This man was white.
It was a predominantly white neighborhood.
And I testified, and I left about five months later.
Women need to be believed.
People should be safe.
We don't need people hurting other people in any form.
Now, Mr. Clinton should have known what he was dealing with with Mr. Epstein.
He is a college-educated individual, and he should have known.
I'm not going to make excuses for people because they were the president.
I really hope that this investigation helps the people.
And I'm not just talking about women.
I'm talking about children.
I'm talking about all peoples who are abused by others.
Mr. Epstein got away with it because they have a lot of money.
And that's the defining difference between the man who tried to hurt me and Mr. Epstein.
Kathy's thoughts there.
Vicki Ward.
Well, you know, I'm so sorry that that happened to you and kudos to you for writing down that plate and testifying because that is not easy.
I think that what you say about the difference being in the money is right on the money.
I think it's even a little bit more than that.
Why did Bill Clinton get on that plane regardless of the optics of all these young women who, you know, I don't know if they were minors or if they were of age, but they were young women.
Well, not just because it was a free plane ride, but because Epstein was also giving money to, or would go on to give money to the Clinton Global Initiative.
And so, you know, I think that what we've really seen in the Epstein files is just how transactional the world of the global elite really is.
And so these men were getting something from Epstein.
Sometimes it was money.
Sometimes it was insider information.
Sometimes it was introductions to useful billionaires.
And in return, Epstein got protection.
They may not have even realized they were giving it, but he got the veneer of respectability and their protection.
And I think we have learnt in black and white through these files that there are two tiers of justice in this country, as you so vividly pointed out, and that there is one rule of law for most people and almost no rule of law for the global elite.
From the USA Today, follow from Epstein Files widens to include Larry Summers, former Treasury Secretary, who announced he would resign from Harvard University.
The story, Vicki Ward, goes on to note that Bill Gates, the Microsoft founder, discussed the Epstein records this week on February 24th during a Gates Foundation town hall.
And in the town hall, Bill spoke candidly, addressing several questions in detail and took responsibility for his actions, the foundation said.
What do you make of that?
Well, I think kudos to Bill Gates because he didn't do anything criminal.
But nonetheless, going back to the optics of Bill Clinton getting on that plane, the optics of Bill Gates in these files is pretty bad.
And, you know, the draft letter that Epstein wrote that I don't think he sent, there's no evidence that he sent it to Bill Gates.
Very lurid allegations in that of sort of SDDs and cover-ups behind Bill Gates's wife's back, all sorts of things.
And I mean, let's not forget when Epstein died, he made the executor of his will was a guy called Boris Nikolic, who had been Bill Gates' right-hand man at one point.
I mean, Nikolic was so stunned that he fainted.
So I think that Bill Gates is obviously not a man in public office, but he is an extraordinarily powerful global figure.
And I think he understood clearly that if he was going to continue to have the influence and the clout, he needed to come clean.
And he needed to say, this is what happened.
I'm not proud of it.
It's not illegal, but I'm not proud of it.
I wish I exercised poor judgment.
He needed to do a mayor culpa.
And I think, you know, there are many other businessmen who should perhaps follow his lead on this.
Wayne City, Illinois, Carla is a Republican, and it's your turn.
Yeah, thanks for having me on.
I just would like to ask, now when Chelsea Clinton got married, there had to be a wedding list, right?
And as Elaine Maxwell was a guest of a guest, how come they won't publish who the ghost watch?
I mean, that's kind of a good question.
I can tell you who the guest is.
I know who exactly who the guest is.
The guest was Ted Waite, who Is a billionaire, a tech billionaire who lived on the west coast of the United States.
And he was Gillene Maxwell's boyfriend.
He was also, I mean, I met him.
He's a nice guy.
And he was a big Clinton donor.
And Gillenne Maxwell was at the time his girlfriend and came as his plus one.
And it's probably important to remember that 2010 is the year before Virginia Geoffrey first went public with her allegations about Gillenne Maxwell being involved with Jeffrey Epstein.
So as far as the world knew, they knew that Jeffrey Epstein was a convicted sex offender in 2010.
And we obviously know that Bill Clinton would have known how tight Gillenne Maxwell had once been with Jeffrey Epstein.
But the world hadn't at that point pointed a finger at Gillen Maxwell.
I had tried to in my Vanity Fair piece eight years prior, but those allegations had been cut.
So, you know, that is why Gillenne Maxwell showed up at Chelsea Clinton's wedding.
And it was shortly after that when Virginia Geoffrey went public and, you know, Ted Waite started getting phone calls, I think, from lawyers of some of the survivors from Palm Beach that he first became aware of what his girlfriend had been tied up in.
And they broke up soon after.
A caller earlier said, as a former president, would there not have been vetting of the guest list for Chelsea's wedding?
Would they have not done their due diligence about Ms. Maxwell showing up at this wedding, even if she was a guest of a guest?
Of course they would.
And this is where, unfortunately, money talks and global influence talks, of course, they knew she'd been involved with Geoffrey Epstein.
But Ghillenne Maxwell was somebody who was very, very visible at a lot of Clinton Global Initiative events.
And they knew that she knew a lot of famous, well-connected, very successful people.
And they knew that, in fact, it was her, is my understanding, who had sort of prodded Jeffrey Epstein to give money to their philanthropic organization.
I think she had done a very good job, as I understand it, of sucking up to Chelsea Clinton.
Chelsea Clinton invited her on various vacations.
And Gillenne Maxwell, as I know, you know, I knew her, was often out and about in New York by herself.
I mean, most of us had no idea that this man, Jeffrey Epstein, even existed.
And when Ghillenne Maxwell wanted to be, she was very, very charming and very skillful at name-dropping.
And we all thought, you know, before we'd ever heard of Geoffrey Epstein, that she had an incredibly glamorous and exotic and important sounding life.
Weren't quite sure exactly what she did.
But, you know, she could, she was very good at pulling the wool over people's eyes.
And I think that they would have vetted her, yes, but they wouldn't have necessarily known at that point what to look for.
What did you make of her deposition to the House Oversight Committee?
Of Gillen Maxwell's defense.
Well, she pleaded that, I mean, she didn't say anything, right?
So, because she's got, at this point, everything to lose.
I mean, she's filed an appeal.
She wants clemency.
She asked for clemency from President Trump.
And so she's not going.
And she said, you know, obviously, she would, if she was granted clemency or she was granted immunity, then she'd be prepared to tell everything she knows.
But I mean, her, I mean, I think it became quite clear.
Her goal is to get out of prison.
And she'll say whatever she needs to to do that.
I mean, I listened to her testimony to Todd Blanche, the Deputy Attorney General in the summer, and I know from my own reporting that a lot of the things she said to Todd Blanche were just not true.
And you have to remember, she is convicted not just of sex trafficking and sex crimes, but of perjury.
And so she's a very problematic witness.
You mentioned Les Wexner's testimony to the House Oversight Committee, his deposition.
What questions would you have asked?
Well, I would have pushed, I would have refused to have given up on this point of handing over power of attorney to a guy who didn't even have a college degree.
And I would have pointed out, because I have the reporting, all the people around Les Wexner, senior lawyers, accountants, and close friends of Les Wexner, other billionaires, who said to him, What are you doing?
Jeffrey Epstein is incompetent and he's dangerous.
Why would you have this man around me?
And nobody really pushed him on that because his story just doesn't add up.
I would have asked him, what do you think?
Did Jeffrey Epstein have some sort of leverage over you?
And, you know, I wrote in Vanity Fair that Alfred Tallman, who's now dead, who was another retail billionaire, at one point went to Wexner and said, I think I've got evidence of Jeffrey Epstein trying to take you for a ride.
It was over a property that was up for auction.
Les Wexner did not want to know.
And I think he's really got to be held to account for that.
And he claims that he didn't know anything about the women.
Les Wexner owned Victoria's Secret, the modelling agency that Epstein used as bait for all these young women.
He said, oh, come to me and I'll help your modeling careers.
Wexner was there at the Victoria Secret fashion shows.
He would have seen Epstein preening around.
There is no way that Epstein knew, that Wexner knew as little as he says he does.
And I do remember when Maria Farmer talked to me that she felt that Wexner's security staff, when she was trying to run away that awful night from Epstein and Gillen Maxwell in the house that Epstein owned on Wexner's estate, that Wexner's security actually intimidated her.
So the idea he knew nothing about that justifies credibility in my view.
White Binders Controversy00:05:22
Carol, Eldon, Texas, Democratic caller, you're next for Vicki Ward.
Good morning, Ms. Ward.
Good morning, Greta and C-SPAN.
Thank you for taking my call.
I wanted to talk about everybody's selective memory and see how much you trust the current Attorney General of the United States because she came out and said, Oh, I've got these white binders early on in President Trump's second term.
I got these white binders.
It's got all the Jeffrey Epstein information in it.
And she released all these white binders to MAGA people who were all interested in this, and it turned out to be nothing.
And we went from that in about nine months to 3 million documents.
And so, and you saw her testimony in front of the, I think it was the House or the Senate, but you saw her testimony where she's screaming about how transparent they are.
And I just wondered what you thought about that initial release of those white binders and how it looks like this has been slow walked by the second Trump administration.
And I'll take my answers off the air.
Thank you very much.
So, look, it's a great question.
I mean, Pam Bondi's handling of the Epstein files has been appalling right from the get-go.
You know, the charade of putting those white binders out and saying, you know, here they are, was absurd.
There was absolutely nothing new in them, as you rightly point out.
She also made this astonishing declaration early in the year, early last year, when she said, I've got the Epstein files on my desk.
Well, we know that's just could not have been true because the Epstein files are millions and millions and millions of pieces of paper.
There was no way they were on her desk.
And I think what we saw when she testified to Congress was just how disinterested she is in getting to the truth.
She's very much sort of echoing the attitude of her boss, President Trump, on this, who we know hates the emphasis that people are putting on the Epstein files.
It's a runaway train for him.
He likes to control the narrative.
He can't control this narrative.
And he doesn't like the fact that the Democrats, in his view, have politicized this when, in his view, they sat on this for four years.
What I can't get my head around is why this sort of he and Pam Bondi have turned this into an own goal, so to speak, because the crime here is bipartisan.
Both Republican and Democrat administrations sat on Epstein, didn't hold Epstein to account.
This has gone on for over 20 years.
And it wouldn't cost Pam Bondi or Trump anything politically to say, look, we're the administration that's released these files.
It wouldn't have cost Pam Bondi anything to have turned around to the Epstein survivors sitting behind her and have said, I see you.
I hear you.
We're releasing these files.
May not have been perfect, but we're going to make sure this, you get justice.
This never happens to anyone ever again.
But that's not what you saw.
You saw her go on offense, not acknowledge these women, these brave women sitting behind her, and just go on offense with sort of petty personal allegations about various Democrat politicians who were interviewing her.
I thought it was a shameful, shameful performance, frankly.
On the release of these files, the New York Times today talks about the effort put into traversing the files online in their front, the backside of their front page.
This is what they said: that they weren't ready for the curveballs.
Way they showed up online required us to do a lot of improvising.
We never imagined, for example, that they'd release files in a way that you'd have to click through more than 25,000 pages on justice.gov just to find them all, or that there'd be broken links to sift through and files constantly disappearing and reappearing.
Vicki Ward?
Yeah, well, they're right.
I mean, searching these files is cumbersome and maddening.
And I found it's even worse than clicking through 25 because, you know, you'll go through a page and there are lots and lots of repeats by them.
I mean, there are tons of duplicates.
And then you'll get to the bottom and then you have to click on an arrow and it says next.
And what I find is sometimes it gets stuck and it sends you all the way back to the beginning, or you get to the bottom of page eight and then it leaps you over to page 11 when you it.
They have made it so hard to search these files and you know again.
You have to wonder why June is in New York independent yes.
Question or comment.
Thank you for taking my call, C-SPAN.
Why The Delay?00:06:47
I just am very confused about this Epstein file, why these women are complaining now, when Biden was there for four years.
Why didn't they complain then?
Because Trump is president?
The truth is that they hate him.
Well, let's take that question, John.
Well June, we'll take that question.
Vicki Ward.
Yeah, so look it's.
It's.
A totally reasonable question.
The answer is is that the survivors have been very vocal all along, I mean ever since 2019, and you know four of them were these witnesses in the Gillen Maxwell trial, and this is, you know, when I talked about earlier.
It's a mystery to me why Trump and Bondi have made this a known goal.
You know, the difference between the Biden administration and this Trump administration is that the Trump and Kash Patel and Dan Bongino campaigned on this issue.
Biden didn't campaign on it.
They actually campaigned on this issue.
So then, of course, the survivors and I think voters of both parties, you know, wanted to see the files relieved because that's what was promised.
And so I think it's the sort of reversal from that that has caused the political outcry.
And part of me is really bewildered because I know that, again, like Bill Clinton, the optics of Trump palling around with Epstein.
all sorts of models in the room, it's, it's that's not helpful to him politically, but in the files there are documents that put him on the right side of history on this.
You know.
There Is this document that shows him speaking to the Palm Beach police chief in 2005, saying, yeah, go get Epstein?
And Glenn Max, well, he calls her evil.
So that puts him on the right side of history.
Where it's problematic for him is it doesn't dovetail with his subsequent accounts saying that he had no idea of what Epstein was up to.
But broadly, it puts him on the right side of history.
So that's why, you know, I sometimes wonder if it's just gross incompetence as opposed to anything more sinister.
But I don't know.
Remind our viewers what you said at the top of this interview this morning about these missing documents and the allegations against President Trump, the Justice Department saying Thursday they're looking into wrongfully withholding them.
But what about the allegations itself and in the investigating that you've done?
So the allegations against President Trump, you mean, that have been withheld.
Yeah, so I mean, look, they don't make any sense, the allegations against President Trump.
They're very outlandish, and they date back to the 1980s.
And what I said earlier, based on my reporting, is there is no evidence that Jeffrey Epstein was abusing underage girls or anyone, actually, in the 1980s.
He didn't have any meaningful money.
He lived in a studio apartment on the East 60s.
He spent a lot of that time actually out of the country, a lot of time in England and Europe in that decade.
So, you know, he and Trump, based on my reporting, really only began to pall around together in the early 90s.
So, I mean, it's not to say they never met in the 1980s.
I'm not sure of that.
But for all sorts of reasons, these allegations seem far-fetched.
And you'll note that they went away.
The FBI didn't pursue it.
The woman didn't want to go any further with them.
But the question remains, then, why doesn't the FBI, why aren't the records released in the files?
That's really the problematic issue here.
Bill Clinton will be testifying today.
The former president deposed by the House Oversight Committee, Vicki Ward, what are you watching for from his deposition?
Well, this one I am, unlike yesterday, which I thought was a farce, I am going to be very interested in, you know, Bill Clinton's story of his impression of Epstein.
I want to know if Epstein, if he ever thought Epstein was trying to influence policy when he and Maxwell appeared in the White House quite a number of times when Bill Clinton was president.
And I asked that because of his connection to Les Wexner, who we know is the biggest donor to Jewish and Israeli causes in this country.
And Clinton, you know, it was unclear at the start of the Clinton presidency what his policy was going to be in the Middle East.
So I think that would be one huge thing.
And I think, you know, again, people will want to know, well, why did you accept a ride from Jeffrey Epstein?
What was Gillene Maxwell's role in all of this?
Tell us about her.
What did you think when you got on that plane and there were all these young women?
You know, were there any red flags to you?
You know, obviously, people are going to ask him about those embarrassing photographs of him in a hot tub.
And with Ghillen Maxwell swimming in a pool.
I mean, he's a former president.
You know, did he know that those photographs were being taken?
Did he, once he went on that plane for the first time with Jeffrey Epstein and he saw all the young women around, did he then go and try and do a deeper due diligence into this man?
Why ultimately did he cut off ties from Jeffrey Epstein before Jeffrey Epstein was publicly indicted?
What did he see?
Those are the kinds of questions I would want to know from Bill Clinton.
I mean, at the end of the day, we know that this is a story about how power and money protected a really devious, deviant criminal from a, you know, from facing justice for hideous crimes.
Bill Clinton's Powerful Network00:00:24
And from Bill Clinton, we want to really understand vividly how that powerful, rich network worked.
And that's what we need him to tell us.
Bill Clinton will be testifying today, expected to be for hours, happening this morning in New York, right there at the Performing Arts Center in Chappaqua, New York.