Ghislaine Maxwell’s trial saw Jane, a 1994 victim, testify how Epstein groomed her at Interlocken Camp, offering $25K/month support while abusing her ages 14–16 with Maxwell present—yet defense exploited her delayed reporting and FBI interview inconsistencies, like a disputed $250K lawyer fee. Cross-examination revealed gaps in her memory of Maxwell’s role, with the prosecution framing her as credible despite trauma, while the defense painted her as unreliable. Epstein’s ties to Trump, Clinton, and Wallace loomed as the jury weighs whether Maxwell’s alleged facilitation of trafficking outweighs Jane’s shifting testimony. [Automatically generated summary]
Like, I don't think it's really, I don't think it's as punchy as you think it is.
You got a better idea?
Yeah.
This.
Well, speaking of punchy, a word that I think we've used every episode, since we uh, it feels like we've been doing this for longer than three days, but for the past three days uh, we are feeling once again even punchier.
Um, as the as uh yeah, Yeah, I'm now sick.
Yeah, Liz is sick.
And boy, sick of looking at you.
Yeah, and she has been staring at me all day.
It's been, I feel like, very disrespectful.
Oh.
And just frankly distracting.
But we are fresh out the box.
And that's why I'm calling the courthouse now.
They call it in law school the box.
And actually, let's introduce ourselves first.
My name is...
That's right.
The Barrister Brace.
I'm simply Liz.
We are, as always, joined by producer Young Chomsky.
You are listening to, of course, True and On, and this is our coverage of the Ghillain Maxwell trial.
Hello, welcome, everyone.
Hello.
And so most of the time since we last left you, Christ, just last night.
Well, we sort of left off with Vysaski there.
And then we mentioned that there was a victim that began testifying, minor victim number one.
And we get to her more today as her testimony rolls over.
Yes.
And it rolled almost into the end of the day today.
Yeah, it did.
We should say that we mentioned this last episode, but in case you're just tuning in or you were tuning out last episode, that she is wishing to not be identified.
So she's going under a pseudonym, Jane, which I guess is short for Jane Doe.
Kind of, but also, no, I don't think so, because I feel like that'd be uniform for all the ones going through pseudonyms.
I know it's odd because they're always like, the other ones have pseudonyms, but it's like Kate.
I know.
I feel like that's not usually a pseudonym.
Yeah, Kate and Carol or Carol.
Caroline.
Yeah.
Yeah.
So minor victim one, aka Jane.
I think we'll just call her Jane from here on out.
I guarantee I'll forget that I said that in two seconds and just refer to her.
Just don't use her real name.
Yeah, I won't.
She seems to me both in her placement in sort of the list of victims, which I'm not saying that that corresponds to whose case is strongest, but both being minor victim one there, she's also the earliest, but also having been the example that the prosecutors open their opening statement with.
So they sort of counterpose much.
A lot of hay was made around Bobby's.
Sure.
We yeah, we talked about it at length.
Opening her statement with, you know, the sort of talk about Eve and all of that.
The prosecutors open theirs talking about Jane.
Yeah, they use her story as kind of a framing device.
So they say, imagine that you're a 14-year-old girl at a camp, a summer camp, and you're approached by, you know, not young, but say mid-young, younger old.
Yeah, yes.
Middle-aged man and woman.
And that's kind of where Jane's story starts.
She first met Epstein and she alleges Ghelane, and this is a point of contention that we'll get to.
Oh, yeah.
At Interlocken Summer Camp in Michigan.
We've actually discussed this case on the show before.
Yeah, you know, I was actually trying to go back and look today because I mentioned that last night.
We definitely have.
Yes.
Because early on.
Very early on.
Because I knew a lot of the details around this.
And this was actually one of the less, like, less discussed in general cases for some reasons that become apparent as the testimony goes on.
Or as the testimony went on today.
But yeah, no, it's also one of the earliest cases that has been reported against Jeffrey Epstein and one of the only ones that was sort of non-started in Florida that got a lot of media attention in the early 2000s.
Right, right.
She wasn't one of the students recruited out of one of the Palm Beach high schools.
No, you're right.
Yeah.
She fits sort of a different mold in some ways, although there are some similarities too.
So she took the stand last night, or yeah, last afternoon.
I don't know, the days and nights are sort of flipping.
It gets dark early here.
Yeah, and I also there's you can't really, not a lot of sunlight in these rooms.
No, and I didn't really sleep last night.
So it's all kind of kind of one thing.
And she, the prosecution put her up there, and she really, they started right at the beginning there, right where they started with the opening statement is, where did you meet Jeffrey Epstein?
And Ghelane Maxwell.
And that was in 1994, like we just said, at Interlocken Summer Camp.
And so what she said is that, and which makes sense to me, is that Ghelane Maxwell approached her with, and she was having ice cream with some friends.
And then Jeffrey Epstein came up and they, you know, sort of talked to her for a while.
T explained he was a benefactor of the camp, found out she lived in Palm Beach.
And then it sort of.
Yeah, he's she says that Jeffrey said, oh, I think I know your mother.
Yes.
And then asks for her mother's phone number.
And that later on, when she gets back in Florida, is when Epstein first contacted her family to come over and have tea.
Yes.
And Jane, Jane says that her father had recently died around this time, and that her family was, and this becomes another big point of contention with the defense, that her family was in a pretty tough situation.
They were living in a pool house.
She used the word homeless at one point, which gets brought up today.
And basically paints the picture, which is the impression that I had of this particular case, and frankly, most cases of girls that he dealt with in Florida, of a pretty tough living situation, and a man, Jeffrey Epstein, of incredible means who took advantage of those means to get this girl to do what he wanted.
Yeah.
The prosecution's questioning of Jane goes on to sort of talk about how her relationship with Epstein developed because after that sort of tea that she had with Epstein and her mother, she starts going over there alone.
And then she says once a week, once every two weeks for years, she go over there and she would have sexual contact with Jeffrey.
Yeah, she says that it started that she would start to get picked up by Jeffrey's driver once every two weeks.
And that went on from when she was 14, 15, 16.
Yes.
The relationship sort of like, I mean, it hinges on basically Jeffrey saying, you know, you're very talented.
I want to help you out.
I'm going to help sponsor you.
I'm going to pay for this.
I'm going to pay for that.
You know, do you need singing lessons?
Do you need acting lessons?
You know, whatever, what have you?
And kind of, you know, the kind of grooming of that kind of stemming from that sort of relationship.
Yeah.
And especially, I mean, obviously, you know, pertaining to this case here, Ghillane's role in that.
Yeah.
So the Jane starts, she says that she didn't fully understand or couldn't get a read on Ghillain and Jeffrey's relationship when they first met.
She's like, I don't know if they're married.
Maybe they're like best friends.
Maybe she actually works for him.
This is like a constant theme throughout this entire case.
Frankly, it was a mix of all three.
Yeah, it's complicated.
And she says that Ghillain, who was always present or always like a present figure, if not physically present.
Again, this becomes a point of contention.
Yes.
But that she describes Ghillain as odd and quirky, which I thought was very fun.
While you were saying that, I was looking at my notes that say odd, dot, dot, dot, quirky.
Yeah, yeah.
She says she was kind of like trying to be this like weird older sister to her.
Did you get the next quote down from that?
I did.
Yeah.
At one point, so she's saying, okay, Ghilane likes to be like this older sister.
And she would, you know, kind of try to talk to me like, oh, we go to the mall.
Oh, we go to the movies.
Oh, you know, we're going to talk about boys and all of this stuff.
And she said, you know, she would ask her about, do you have any boyfriends?
And like, have conversations like that.
And then apparently Ghilain decided to, you know, give her some advice, which I don't know if this is advice.
And she says, the thing to know about boyfriends is that once you fuck them, you could always fuck them again because they are grandfathered in.
You and I, I think, made some hard eye contact with that because I was, what?
Who?
What are they?
What rule are they grandfathered in under?
Is it not cheating?
Or like, you just always have a freeze.
I think she means numbers-wise.
I think she means it doesn't count as a number on the list.
Well, yeah, but once you fuck anyone, they don't count it again as a number.
Well, it doesn't, men don't have these sorts of like lists in the same way that women have them held against them.
Yeah.
So I think that's kind of what she meant.
Gotcha.
I was thinking that it's like you get to always, you can always go back.
Yeah.
Like there was always a little more rocky road in the jar.
Ghillain's Rocky Road00:15:12
Yeah, I don't know.
I'm interested to see, think of who Ghillain's talking about right there.
Well, she also talks about how Ghillain and Jeffrey took her to Victoria's Secret to buy underwear, which is a pretty like particularly kind of like, ooh, like everyone in the room kind of like crunched up a little bit when they heard that.
She mentions that it was just like regular like a white, like, you know, like underwear you'd buy like a teenager or whatever.
But it was still like Victoria's Secret for like, you can just go to.
Yeah.
I thought I was with you on that.
Of course, Epstein's, you know, relationship with Leslie Wexner, Victoria's Secret too.
I don't know.
Yeah, she mentioned that they were constantly bragging about all of the big people they were friends with.
And this is where, you know, you get some names thrown out, a little crowd service.
You hear Trump, you hear Clinton.
Mike Wallace comes up, who's, I knew, I knew the second this name like entered the, entered the room that Bryce had no idea who this person is.
I knew who Mike Wallace is.
Oh, you looked at me and you went, what, Mike Wallace?
No, I was just like, I've never heard Mike Wallace connected to Epstein before.
I think he's too old.
I feel like even when he was a young man, he was an old man.
There is a picture of Wallace and Robert Maxwell and Trump and a few other people kind of gathered around.
Mike Wallace is a seriously fucked guy.
Yeah.
Is he really?
I mean, I watched his, so I watched a bunch of his nation's face documentary.
And so that was my first, he made one like in like the 50s.
That was my first introduction to him.
Not in the 1950s.
Is he still alive?
No, he is very dead.
Well, I would hope so, but I don't know.
Assume because they talk about going to his 80th birthday party in the 90s.
Unless he's, unless he's the 80th, he's doing, unless he's got the really good adrenaline, he's definitely dead.
I mean, people will be living long.
But he was mentioned a couple of times today.
Well, I think that's because there's a lot of foreshadowing that went on in the prosecutors.
Yeah, there was a lot of foreshadowing, but my wallace came up again today.
Yeah.
The other interesting thing that the prosecution asked her, and I really, I was like, oh, where are they going with this?
I hope we might get some pictures later on in the trial.
Yeah.
Is Pomerance, the AUSA, asked, you know, what was the decor like in the Palm Beach mansion?
Yes.
What was the artwork like?
And I was like, it's okay.
And just kidding.
No, but she was, she was basically like asking her to say, like, what did it make you feel uncomfortable?
Like, what was it about?
And she was like, and Jane said, you know, I found the artwork very creepy.
Yes.
Lots of, she said, weird animals.
Lots of like naked orgy scenes on the artwork, topless swimming.
This is all stuff that you and I have talked about.
And this is, she's talking about New York and my April.
No, yeah.
So first she mentions Palm Beach, and then when they talk about the New York property, she says the same thing.
And she says to you about the New York property, she says, it was really dark.
There was like a dark, heavy energy.
Like it was like a deep, dark place.
Yes, yeah, absolutely.
Yeah, well, there were, there were some.
So Ghelane's team, I think we might have talked about this in an earlier episode, or I might have just read this and we didn't talk about it.
But Ghelane's team has been fighting pretty hard to get any evidence collected from that initial police raid on Epstein's Palm Beach house dismissed because they have a lot of those kind of images.
And that's also, I believe, where the Twin Torpedoes sex toy is mentioned as well, or that's where that comes from.
That was collected from as well.
Because another thing, too, is that as we've talked about Epstein's massage room at his Palm Beach house, multiple testimony from multiple employees and victims saying that there was basically an armoire full of sex toys here.
And that, you know, sex toys do play a role in the abuse that was mentioned.
Yes.
She describes, so again, this case is, and I'm not to sound like the fucking judge or whatever, like this case is about Ghelane, not about Epstein.
Yes.
And so Ghelane's team is sort of ready to sometimes throw Epstein out there to the wolves.
And then, but in, or into service, Ghelane not being a part of it.
And so a lot of this specific, I mean, all of these specific charges relate to Ghelane's role in facilitating Epstein's sexual abuse.
And that was a big part of what was mentioned yesterday during Jane's testimony is that, well, where was Ghelane when this was all happening?
And, you know, she said that I think the second time she went over to the house, like after the tea party thing, either the second time or very early on, Ghelane was out by the pool with a bunch of other women, all either topless or nude.
Yes.
And that Ghelane, like she really painted actually a very convincing picture of Ghelane.
And this word came up a lot too.
And, you know, in most instances, I would be like, oh, I'm going to roll my heads at eyes at use of the word.
But in this, it made a lot of sense.
Ghelane normalized sex around this 14-year-old girl.
Right.
And so she described what Epstein, how Epstein would touch her, which don't really need to get into here, but obviously, you know, we are familiar with his crimes.
And that Ghelane would like be there and basically act normal.
Right.
And I think that's pretty important because to be a young girl with another, a woman in the room, like an older woman, older sister type of person who's like acting like what's happening to you is like no big deal.
That literally, I mean, that would normalize it.
Yeah.
I mean, I think it was at this point in the testimony that, you know, like whatever, we make a lot of jokes in this show and we make light of a lot of things, but we also know when to not make light of a lot of things.
This is one of those times.
Like this was really difficult to watch and listen to and it's not meant to be easy to listen to.
And what this woman, Jane, what was she saying?
And, you know, she's like a grown woman at this point.
She was 14 years old in 1994.
She's a grown woman now.
And she was crying.
It was very difficult for her.
And she was still, you could tell, like, I mean, it felt like she was still very deeply embarrassed.
And this is a word that she used.
Yeah.
And often, yeah.
Yeah.
To kind of, you know, admit or even just like be honest about, you know, what happened to her.
And I think that that is like a very understandable and like, you know, easy to relate to reaction.
But it was very difficult to watch.
And I do want to say, like, you know, what she said was that she had been spending time at Epstein's house.
Ghelain was there as well at the house.
And the first time that the sexual contact started, that he and her were talking about her dreams and like what she wanted to achieve.
She wanted to be a singer.
She wanted to, she's 14 years old.
She's had dreams of being an actress, of being on Broadway, of being a singer, of being famous, of being, you know, a famous actress.
And, you know, he basically said to her, I know, I know everyone.
You just have to be ready for it.
You just have to be ready for it.
I can show you everything.
And then he grabbed her.
This is again her testimony, said, follow me, took her to a pool house, sat her on the couch, and then pulled his pants down and masturbated onto her.
Yeah.
This is when she's 14 years old.
And she said she was frozen.
She didn't know what to do.
Then he left.
And at that point, it just kind of kept happening.
That opened the door and then it kept happening.
And then at a certain point, Ghillain, like you say, was more and more like present in these encounters, normalizing it, making it feel like what she was experiencing with Jeffrey was nothing weird, nothing to be ashamed or embarrassed about, nothing untoward or nothing out of the ordinary.
Yeah.
Look, here's a woman who was taking you to the movies, who was taking you to the mall.
She was being your girlfriend, being your sister, asking about boyfriends, talking to you about whatever.
She doesn't think anything's weird with it.
In fact, she thinks it's fine.
In fact, here, let me help you out.
Yeah.
Let me help you get undressed.
Let me show you what he likes.
Yeah.
That was another thing too, is that, is that, you know, Jane talked about how Ghelane would sort of literally model this for her and like show her what Jeffrey liked.
And, you know, she just described it in detail.
And, you know, this, this was, like you're saying, like this went on for a little while and it was, it was, it was difficult to watch.
I mean, not, you know, obviously what she's saying is horrific, but she was, she was so uncomfortable.
And, and, and she was crying, yes, but like you could tell that like she really did feel, you know, I don't think I'm out of out of place saying this, but she felt ashamed talking about it, like really deeply ashamed, which really tracks a lot of other things that she said yesterday and today as well.
You know, she described Jeffrey basically putting her in group situations with, or, you know, what she called orgies, in situations with just Jeffrey and Maxwell, just Jeffrey.
And that's the thing is, Ghelane wasn't there every time, but Ghillaine was part of the machinery that kept this going.
And Ghelane was also present.
I mean, she explicitly said that Ghelane did touch her, you know, not in her genitals or anything, but on her breasts.
And another thing that she mentioned, too, is that Ghelane also assisted with travel arrangements.
Yes.
And that is a pretty important point here because, you know, she traveled with Epstein.
Yeah, I mean, there was, she went on a bunch of trips with Epstein to New York, to New Mexico, quite often, it seems.
Yeah.
And that becomes quite a big part of this story as well, because you're dealing with obviously moving someone from one state to another, which is, you know, a whole nother set of charges.
So, yeah, that.
becomes a key part of the story as well.
Yeah, and that was, that was mentioned when Vysowski was on the stand, I guess maybe earlier yesterday, or maybe the, yeah, it was, I guess it would be earlier yesterday, when he was sort of acting like he didn't know which person, because as we mentioned in yesterday's episode, Epstein also had an assistant with the same name as this girl.
And on the flight log, sometimes it would just be this first name.
And so the pilot was like, well, I didn't see, I know, I thought it was her, but I actually didn't see her back there.
So it could be this assistant too.
I, I mean, I obviously voiced, we both voiced skepticism at that yesterday, but I was like, what the, like, this is ridiculous.
And I like quadruple check today.
There's no way it could be the same person, especially with not with the years that they listed, which was 96, 97, 98.
I think one last thing before we move on to the cross-examination was that her relationship with her mother was brought up and it's pretty upsetting to hear about.
She said that her mother basically, you know, that she grew up in a house where you mentioned that her father had recently passed away and that's a part of the story.
She said that she was never kind of allowed to grieve her father's death properly and that she lived in kind of a house and a culture that was very much like, don't talk about anything.
Don't let anyone know that you're going through anything.
You know, you can, we can talk about stuff inside the house or you can say something, but you never let anyone outside the house know anything.
Yeah.
You know?
And so at one point during the kind of years of abuse that she was enduring, but from Epstein and Gillane, she had mentioned that something was going on to a guidance counselor that she had kind of developed a relationship with at her school.
And the guidance counselor reached out to her mother to tell her, like, something is not, something bad is going on here.
And like, you need to step in or check in with your daughter or, you know, what have you.
And from what Jane says, the mother basically shut the guidance counselor down and got upset with Jane and said, like, you know, shut your mouth.
Don't tell anyone about this.
They're very generous.
You know, these people are changing our lives.
You know, basically sit down and take it.
Because at this point, Epstein was not just giving money to Jane, but also giving, it seems, giving money to Jane's mother, paying for summer camps, paying for education, paying for courses, classes, specialized tutoring, whatever, voice lessons.
That dynamic is really difficult to hear.
Yeah.
Like really, really difficult to hear.
I don't know.
And, you know, she, she, she kind of ended her testimony basically answering the question, like, why did it take you so long to come out and talk about this?
You know, why didn't you say anything to anyone about the sexual abuse?
And she says that, you know, like we said, she said she felt ashamed.
She felt disgusted.
You know, she was confused.
But she says, you know, how do you tell, how do you describe any of this to any of your friends or your peers when you feel so much shame and disgust with yourself?
Yeah.
And just hearing this grown woman say this, I mean, it's really, I know it sounds cheesy, like to say this, but like hearing this woman testify this stuff in court is really powerful.
Yeah.
It really is.
You know, we've been following this case for a long time and seeing these girls like standing up, sitting there and saying this into record is, I don't know.
It's something to see.
I feel very, you know, I don't take it lightly that we're sitting there listening to this.
No, no, absolutely not.
One thing about Jane, too, is that, because this definitely comes up with the defense, is that she has a career and is in fact like, I'm not going to say a public figure.
Hearing This Woman Testify00:02:47
She's not a public, I don't know.
I don't know actually how to describe it because this isn't really my world that the world that she's in.
But she's well known.
Like, you know, she is a, I guess she's famous.
She's an actress.
Yes.
And she is really adamant about like, she didn't want to be basically identified as one of Epstein's victims because that would affect like she just didn't want that in her life, which makes sense because that would be more than almost anyone else involved in this case, tabloid fodder like you wouldn't believe.
Yeah.
And well, and it becomes difficult for casting.
Yeah, I'm sure.
Exactly.
Yeah, that would, that's it.
Also, he had no shortage of Brentson Hollywood.
Well, especially even after there's that conviction as well.
But, you know, right out the gate, Laura Menninger on the defense, she came up and she just, the first question she asked, I don't even think she said like, you know, good hello, you know, or what anything.
Thank you for being here.
She just said, you waited 20 years to report to law enforcement.
And that really set the tone for, I mean, today's, I feel like she approached it a little differently, but last night she was really well, that's what's interesting.
We were talking to Julie K. Brown about this today.
Little, not at Cafe Lorenzo.
No.
Although we had grabbed coffees at Cafe Lorenzo.
And we were standing right above Cafe Lorenzo.
Yes.
But we were talking about that and we were saying that her, that, how do you say her name?
Menager?
Menager.
Yeah.
Will Menaker?
No, it was not.
No.
It's, I, I keep saying that.
She's not getting called up for a few more days.
Uh, yeah.
No, Menager, um, one of the defense attorneys that she, like you said, last night, she was so like, boom, attacking.
She is like, okay, also, description time, ice blonde.
Ice blonde.
Like, cartoon.
Okay, so Bobby is cartoon defense attorney of a different kind, where she is the like bombastic.
She kind of looks like a far side comic.
You know what I'm talking about?
Definitely looks like a far side.
That's a really apt description.
But Menager is like a typical defense attorney, but from like The Good Wife or Law and Order.
Yeah, okay, that's a little bit.
Or like Allie McBeal, but not a comedy episode one.
One out of three eight bad.
So like ice blonde, little skirt suit, like very thin.
Like she would never call herself a girl boss because she's too old.
Memory Issues and Inconsistencies00:15:26
She's like became professional before that was a thing.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
But you know, she was like probably top of her class at Stanford Law.
Her first search on Magellan search engine was power suit.
Yes.
No, she's like, yeah, she is a boss bitch.
But so she got up there and she was like, why did it take you so long?
Like you said, but da-da-da, but da-da-da, but like trying to poke holes, but it was like really aggressive in a way that just was like, lady, you're laying it on too thick.
And clearly someone told her that because this morning, man, she was so much softer.
It was almost surprising.
Well, I feel like she was kind of treating, she was also, I think part of the softer tone is that she wanted us to think that, I don't know, it felt not, I mean, it was condescending, but, but what I'm searching for is to describe, like, she was basically kind of being like, well, you know, you seem to have forgotten this or did your memory change?
You know, that, that sort of tone.
I actually wrote in my notes yesterday, she is no Bobby.
But I do think it was actually, I think this was probably on purpose.
So, I mean, you know, she, she went into her last night, but the testimony only lasted for, I think, less than an hour before court adjourned.
And which, by the way, no gavel.
Yeah.
Do they only do that?
No, they do it.
I haven't, I don't think I've seen one smack of a gavel.
The thing is, they break for lunch and they do like afternoon breaks, and I don't think they gavel then.
No, but they don't even gavel.
I guess they haven't had to call a court to order, but they will.
But this morning when we got there, because we sit in the, we're sitting there for a while before the trial actually starts.
And defense is actually, we get there and we can hear her arguing, the defense, sort of not arguing, but having this kind of back and forth with the judge and the prosecution over the definition of homelessness.
Oh, yeah.
And that becomes basically a vital part of, not a vital, but a important piece of the tapestry they were trying to weave today.
Yeah.
So basically the defense, the classic defense strategy is now, okay, you gave this testimony, every single thing that you just testified to.
I'm going to like bit by bit try to see what I can break apart, break open, say, oh, that's a lie.
Oh, you changed your story.
Oh, is that really what you, you know what I mean?
And for her, she, you know, Jane had described herself as homeless after the death of her father and her family's ensuing bankruptcy.
She said they lost their homes and that she was, that she was homeless.
So they were arguing over whether or not the fact that she lived in a pool house constituted her being homeless, which, you know, fair enough.
But what they were trying to do was basically then use it as a way to say the witness should be impeached.
Yes.
So they were essentially trying to, I mean, here's the thing.
All Ghelane's team needs to do is to make it so that it's not beyond a reasonable doubt that Ghelane's guilty, right?
That there is reasonable doubt.
I don't know why I just said that in that insanely roundabout way.
Okay.
Yes.
But that they need to be like, well, maybe she is innocent.
You know, that's all they need to convince the jury to say.
I don't think that necessarily, I don't know.
I felt different things about this testimony through different parts of today.
But I kind of harken back to the harken.
What the fuck am I saying?
Now what?
No, I'm harkening back to the defense's opening statement where they talk about, they kind of lay out their roadmap, which is they're going to accuse these girls of essentially testifying because of memory, as in memory issues, manipulation, although that was pretty much absent.
No, it wasn't.
It wasn't.
And money, which is really tied in with manipulation there.
Yeah.
And so they first they go hard on her memory because we can't, so all of the evidence here, like we said yesterday, is under seal, meaning that only the jury, the defense and prosecution witness and the judge get to see it.
Yes.
Because it has identifying information.
Yeah.
And she wishes to remain anonymous.
And so things like anything that refers to her address growing up or jobs that she's had in the past or things that could be identifying information.
One of the biggest and most annoying fights that the lawyers are having is over what constitutes identifying information, which is fair enough, because there's only so many questions you can ask someone about: do you remember this?
Do you remember that?
That doesn't involve any kind of information that could possibly be identifying.
Yes.
You know, and today, today was, there was obviously like, you know, with day three of the trial, much smaller contingent of, you know, journalists and actually attending today.
But we did have Bradley Edwards there, who's Virginia Jeffries lawyer and lawyer for a bunch of the girls in Florida.
Him and I can't remember the woman's name, but Brittany, I think the woman you wrote the book with, who's like his legal assistant.
And then a couple other people.
And Marlon, a friend of the pod and former guest, Marlon Ettinger, was sitting by them, which was a sort of funny sight because they were all in suits and power suits and he was wearing a flannel.
But I guess Bradley Edwards was getting like pissed off during the defense questioning of Jane.
And I got to say, they were being, you know, like we said, not as mean as last night, but they were being tough with her.
Yeah, so they basically brought up three instances of Jane talking to the government.
They always refer to it as the government, which I really liked.
But then I realized you can call the FBI and the U.S. attorney.
I mean, it's all the same thing.
Yeah, exactly.
I think in total, there were five interviews, but there were three main ones that they referenced.
Yeah, December 2019, February 2020, and November 2021.
Although they also refer to interviews as recent as two months ago.
Yeah, and in September, I don't know.
Did you say whenever you said in 2019, September and December 2019, too?
So she says in her interview with the government in December 2019, this is what the defense attorneys are reading back to her.
Kind of.
It's a little more complicated than that, but they're basically in party.
This is, you know, this is the information that the government has from the interview that you gave in December 2019 too, Jane.
That she was not sure if Maxwell ever touched her during these encounters.
She was not sure if Maxwell ever kissed her.
That Maxwell never used vibrators or sex toys on her, that she never gave her a talk about how to massage Epstein.
That Gillain never saw her give Epstein oral sex or hand jobs or like masturbate, and that she never saw her have sex with Epstein.
And that she has no memory of Ghillain being present when she claimed Epstein engaged in sexual contact with her.
Now, this, like, you know, when hearing this, we were both kind of like, whoa.
Yeah, because, yeah, exactly.
Because they ended on, and I was, I was sort of so like taken aback by this, although I later reconsidered that, but it says, you weren't sure that you plus Jeff plus Ghillain were alone in the room together, which meaning massage room and I think the subsex.
And that was from a separate interview.
Yeah.
Later in interview in 2020.
Exactly.
And she says, I don't recall.
She said, I don't recall to a lot of this stuff, which is a very fair response.
Well, yeah, that's the legal.
That's yeah, yeah, exactly.
That's what you got to say.
Yes.
But, you know, these were, these were interviews she took with the FBI.
And I, she, she mentions a few things that she's like, I know that's wrong.
And she says that they're either typos.
And I guess that these interviews aren't recorded, which I'm a little surprised by.
Yeah, so she, that's the other thing.
She said the interviews were not recorded, that they were just based on notes that FBI agents had taken.
Yeah.
And so she said that there were lots of inconsistencies.
Now, the defense made light of her consistent responses to these.
Yeah.
Where the first couple of times she was like, oh, that's a typo.
That must be a, I don't know what that is.
That's a typo.
And she was being a little bit, I think she's being a little flippant in her response at first.
I mean, understandably, she's under cross-examination.
And as she went on, you know, then the defense would say, oh, is it another typo?
Kind of like digging at her a little bit.
And she was like, yes, it was.
Well, she didn't say that, but yeah.
And then later on, it was, it was interesting because I remember I was watching that and I was like, damn, they kind of got her on that.
Like, it sounds ridiculous that there would be typos and blah, blah, blah.
But then it was so funny.
It seems like there actually was a typo.
Yeah, yeah, that's what I'm saying.
Like, I think there really were.
Well, these were like, that was some of these.
Yeah, yeah.
That's literally like changing notes, maybe.
Oh, no, I'm not talking about the, I'm not talking about the, uh, like her memories of some of this stuff.
But yeah, no, go on about the, about that.
I know what you're about to say.
Yeah.
So at one point, the, um, the defense accuses her of retaining a $250,000 a month personal injury lawyer for when she first filed her suit against Ghillain.
And she kind of like looked shocked and she was like, no, that's wrong.
And the defense says, well, I have it right here in the notes.
And she reads back from these FBI notes, $250,000.
She's like, no, that's wrong.
One, because I don't have $250,000 to spend a month on a lawyer.
And two, because it was $25,000.
Yeah.
So that literally was a typo.
Yeah, yeah, it was, it was one zero.
I gotta say, they went through, I mean, so they, they basically, I could tell where this was going from, from really before the, the court actually like started today when they were talking about the homelessness thing, is that they were trying to make it seem that like, oh, well, you weren't actually so poor.
You lived in a gated community near a country club.
And it was, it went on from there.
They essentially just like, I mean, what they're doing is they're trying to make her seem like she is has a corrupted memory, you know?
I don't think they're trying to be like, I mean, that's a little too extreme and I think wouldn't necessarily play with juries.
They're not trying to say like, you're fucking lying, but like, you know, you maybe constructed this story for yourself that isn't exactly like coherent or like doesn't really have to do with reality.
Or you've changed your story so many times because you're not remembering things.
One time you remembered it this way, then you remembered it that way.
You know, I think they kind of vacillate between, you know, maybe you're remembering it wrong because so much time has passed and you've kind of made things up, but also now that Epstein's dead, you need a placeholder for Epstein, who has now become Ghillain.
Yeah, exactly.
That was that was a, that was a big part of it too, is that like, well, you know, it looks like you mentioned Epstein a bunch, but it's like, well, Ghulane's not on trial for what Epstein did.
Ghillain's on trial for facilitating what Epstein did and partaking in it too.
Well, only somewhat partaking in it, but like, she's really like the charges are about like trafficking a minor, you know what I mean?
And like transporting a minor and this sort of stuff.
And so a lot of that doesn't even really like necessarily, I don't know.
The thing is too, about memory.
And this is why there's going to be, I'm calling it now, long fight between both trying to get different experts disqualified, but also between the experts themselves about memory.
The thing about memory is, is, I mean, everybody listening to this probably can think of some time in their own life when something like, not like this has happened, but, you know, maybe when you've kind of like, you know, you tell a story a couple different times or you don't feel like, you know, you're telling it to some people because she was really reluctant.
Again, I want to repeat, really reluctant to get involved in any of this.
Yeah.
And, you know, for very, you know, numerous reasons, all very good.
And so you can tell, like, you know, she was probably pretty hesitant talking to the FBI during some of this.
And frankly, too, it's like, this happened a long time ago.
This happened in the early 1990s.
You know, like she, she's no doubt, these were pretty traumatic things that have happened to her.
And she's no doubt tried to like, I mean, she literally has.
She tried to distance herself from these things.
But she has spent a while thinking about these, or the defense said that she was coming up with memories, which I think that language was chosen very much on purpose.
But, you know, it's memory can be this sort of fluid thing like that.
And I have no doubt that she is telling the truth about this.
I mean, she is accusing Ghelane not only of nothing that is not totally congruent with what we have heard from numerous people Ghelane did, but it's also like, I mean, she's, she does not, she wanted to exaggerate about Ghelane's behavior and make her seem like she did, you know, way more heinous things than she did.
She could, and she's definitely not doing that.
Yeah, totally, totally.
You know, she is, she is, the prosecutor asked like sort of the descending order of what kind of sexual encounters you had with Epstein.
Number one was Epstein alone.
Number two was Epstein plus other women.
And then number three was Epstein and Ghelane.
You know, that's from the prosecutor.
That's her.
Like she, you know, she could, that's a, that's a perfect place where if you wanted to exaggerate or not lie, but like fib or whatever, fudge it a little bit.
Easy place to do that.
And she clearly did not, even though that would help her case.
But but yeah, it's, I don't know, memories, memory is, she said herself, like memory is not only, I wrote this down, memory is not always linear.
And I do think that's true with this kind of stuff is that like, you know, traumatic things happen to you and you, you can, you know, sometimes they're very sharp.
And then sometimes for, you know, for her, she obviously tried to run from this from a really long time for, you know, totally understandable reasons.
But she has been thinking about this.
And, you know, I think that the defense is trying to sort of throw sand on that.
But I, and I don't, honestly, for the jury, I don't think that what happened today is going to be that big of a problem.
Well, day three in the books.
Day four, not in the books.
Until tomorrow.
I'm Liz.
My name is Brace.
We are, of course, joined by producer Young Chomsky.
This has been Trunan, and we will see you next time.