Pushed Into the Shadows: The Truth Behind the Democrats’ New Epstein Hearing

0:00 Uh, Tara's going to be here too, is my friend Tara Paulmary.

0:02 Uh, she is the host of the Red Letter on Substack.

0:06 Of course, she's on YouTube.

0:07 She's everywhere.

0:08 Uh, she's been following Epstein uh, doggedly for years now.

0:12 Uh, Tara, great to see you.

0:13 Thanks for having me, Jim.

0:15 Um, yeah.

0:16 Excited to see you tomorrow.

0:17 I know.

0:18 We'll see each other in person.

0:19 Although, we saw each other a few nights ago,

0:21 or I guess a few weeks ago, I should say around the correspondents.

0:24 We'll talk about that in a in a bit.

0:26 Um, but I guess what do you think about this?

0:28 I think this is the first time they've

0:29 done something like this, the House Oversight Committee Democrats,

0:33 um, holding this field hearing in Palm Beach.

0:36 They're going to be Epstein survivors, uh, speaking at this hearing, uh,

0:40 victims advocates, uh,

0:42 obviously members of the committee on the Democratic side.

0:45 And this is a big deal.

0:46 This is going to be big.

0:47 Yeah.

0:48 Yeah, I it is a big deal.

0:50 And it's important that they're being called for the first time.

0:53 Though, we have to note that it is the Democrats that are calling.

0:57 So, it is a shadow hearing, and in a lot of ways,

1:00 it's that word shadow seems to signify exactly how

1:03 the the victims have been treated throughout all of this.

1:07 They've been in the shadows.

1:08 No one's ever really taken their testimonies, their sworn sworn um,

1:13 their sworn depositions, their 302s that they gave to the FBI, seriously enough.

1:19 Um, and here we only have one party willing to acknowledge them.

1:23 Um, some of the victims I've spoken to are disappointed.

1:26 They say it feels performative because there's only one party involved in it.

1:30 Right.

1:31 That they should really be going to the halls of Congress.

1:33 And I 100% agree with them,

1:34 and said they sadly have to return to the scene of the crime, West Palm Beach.

1:39 Yeah, and I I I will Yeah, no,

1:43 this is the home of of I mean, Jeffrey Epstein had one of his homes here.

1:46 As a matter of fact, we uh,

1:47 we went over by his old property earlier today, just to see what it looked like.

1:51 I had never seen it in person on the ground before.

1:54 And apparently, it was it's been demolished.

1:56 It was bulldozed, I guess,

1:57 four or five years ago and the the new purchaser wanted nothing

2:01 to do with the new owner wanted nothing to do with the old property.

2:04 So, they demolished it, rebuilt it.

2:06 There's we could just show you just a tiny

2:07 bit of little I I don't want to expose

2:09 this person or anything like that, but uh we went

2:11 to the end of this public street and just okay,

2:13 this is what the property looks like.

2:16 But, I mean that that just goes to show you how much

2:18 of a just a horrendous scar that Jeffrey

2:21 Epstein has left on this community here.

2:24 Um but know.

2:25 I mean, I've I've got my own thoughts on the Palm Beach community

2:28 and how they dealt with this because it was always behind the hedges,

2:32 you know, Jeffrey Epstein what was happening.

2:35 Although, a lot of the locals noticed that there were

2:37 girls constantly coming over in yellow taxis across the bridge,

2:41 which you would notice in a town like

2:42 Palm Beach when everyone's driving a Bentley, right?

2:46 True.

2:46 So, this is a town that I think many did know about it.

2:52 I mean, when the it was they were reporting on it in the local papers in 2004,

2:56 2005 about this horrific neighbor that they had,

2:59 but yet he still lived there for many years afterwards.

3:03 And it wasn't really until the parents

3:05 of some of these girls that came from towns

3:07 outside of Palm Beach came forward to the police that they saw a you know,

3:12 some sort of action.

3:14 Um excuse me.

3:14 Sorry about that.

3:16 Um some sort of action and uh I

3:19 I just think perhaps this whole behind the hedges,

3:23 keep to yourself, privacy mentality Yeah,

3:29 that's part of the reason that was part of the problem to begin with.

3:32 The the code of silence.

3:34 Yeah, and you know, the house was hideous if you saw it before.

3:38 It was this like white block of a house,

3:40 very kind of almost like how to almost like a West Hollywood style,

3:45 but it was it's on the bay, so it is waterfront, you could say.

3:49 And obviously, no one could resist it for too long,

3:52 but that should There should be like a some sort of monument there

3:55 and another person who's buying the property to build another monstrosity on it.

3:59 I find the whole thing disgusting, honestly.

4:01 It It is It is a little gross.

4:02 I'll be I'll be really honest with you.

4:04 The house that they built there It looks like another compound of sorts.

4:09 But I obviously we can't, you know,

4:11 say anything about the person who lives there.

4:12 They They They chose to buy that piece of property.

4:15 I I can't imagine I would make the same decision.

4:18 But, you know, Tara,

4:19 the other thing too is is that and you alluded to this and I

4:22 I'm sure you've had conversations about this sort and by the way,

4:26 we're showing video that police took inside the Epstein home years ago.

4:30 I believe this is the Palm Beach

4:32 County uh Sheriff's Department that took this video.

4:36 And this is from back in 2005.

4:38 But you're so right in that there were

4:41 so many people who knew what was going on.

4:44 Donald Trump apparently knew what was going on.

4:45 I mean, you know, he's told various

4:47 different stories about what Jeffrey Epstein was doing.

4:50 You know, first he says people say he kicked him out

4:52 of the club because of Mar-a-Lago club because he was a creep.

4:55 And then Trump made those crazy comments

4:57 to reporters recently where he said, "Well,

4:59 I I kicked him out because he was stealing the people

5:01 who were who were working for him in his spa." So,

5:04 that story has never added up.

5:06 But I I think it's important that Robert Garcia,

5:08 the leading Democrat on that committee,

5:11 I think that they're having this is is very important because you know,

5:14 I think what's taking place right now over the Department of Justice,

5:17 Tara, is is pretty um unconscionable.

5:21 The way Todd Blanche has shut this down,

5:23 he is saying no more files are coming out.

5:26 Uh he's reluctant to talk to reporters as you found.

5:29 Um and so I think this is important that they're doing this.

5:33 Yeah, I I mean, it's important,

5:35 but I I still think we have to be clear-eyed about like how

5:38 far we've come and how it feels a little bit like too little,

5:42 too late for a lot of the survivors.

5:45 And I hope that mixed feelings.

5:47 Yeah.

5:48 Yeah, they do.

5:49 And it's it's like they they feel like they're constantly putting

5:51 themselves out there and they're ignored and they always have been.

5:56 And, you know, it's it's a very frustrating part of the story.

6:00 And that's why I think, you know,

6:02 if they actually listen to the survivors because,

6:04 you know, they always they said case closed, there are no other men involved.

6:07 They actually listened to them, they keep saying that there are.

6:10 Yeah.

6:11 And and and and nobody cares.

6:13 Well, and I want to get to Todd Blanche because you and I bumped

6:17 into each other at a at one

6:18 of the parties around the White House Correspondents Center.

6:21 They have those pre-parties and we ran into one each

6:23 other one another at one of those parties and Todd Blanche,

6:27 the acting attorney general,

6:29 was also at one of these parties and you went up to him to try to get

6:32 some answers from him on all of this and he did not want to have it.

6:36 No, he didn't.

6:37 In fact, um and I wasn't being like aggressive at all.

6:41 I think I just, you know, I introduced myself as a journalist.

6:43 I started with a simple conflict of interest question about how Jay Clayton,

6:48 who is the US attorney in the Southern District of New York in charge of handing

6:51 over much of the Epstein files

6:52 and in future prosecutions cuz remember President Trump said,

6:55 "You have to go after Democrats in this uh Epstein investigation." How he could

7:00 be seen as someone who could reliably

7:02 lead an independent investigation when Leon Black,

7:06 who in an FBI presentation was named as a potential co-conspirator

7:09 and was accused by three women of assault in connection to Jeffrey Epstein.

7:13 Um although, you know, those cases some of them were settled or dropped.

7:17 Uh how this man, who, you know, lost his job at the firm he founded, Apollo,

7:23 for giving Jeffrey Epstein $150 million for a state planning and we find

7:27 out from the New York Times it was really to pay off women.

7:30 You know, when he left,

7:31 the person that he appointed to take his position was Jay Clayton.

7:35 He appointed him himself.

7:36 Mm.

7:37 Now, it's Jay Clayton,

7:39 who left that posting to join the Justice Department with more than

7:42 $1.5 million in holdings just from Apollo according to his financial documents.

7:48 How is he running an independent investigation?

7:51 And if so, why haven't we seen any sort of scrutiny at all?

7:54 I mean, Leon Black is a big fat target in my opinion.

7:57 Yeah.

7:58 No question about it.

7:59 And and we haven't had any major arrests since this whole thing spilled out

8:04 into the open about a year ago in July when all of the you know,

8:07 when all the reporting started to kick back up again when

8:10 they tried to shut down uh the release of the Epstein files.

8:12 We know so much more now than we did back then.

8:15 I mean, Britain has gone and and they've arrested former Prince Andrew.

8:18 And we have nothing even remotely close

8:20 to that in scale uh or significance in this country.

8:24 And you know, it's just insanity.

8:26 Right.

8:27 The other thing we should note,

8:28 and this goes to a little bit what you were saying earlier,

8:30 Tara, and you and I've talked about this.

8:31 You and I are not uh coming at this from a partisan lens.

8:36 Uh you know, I think you and I both said, "Wherever the chips fall, you know,

8:39 let the chips fall where they may

8:40 in this investigation." If Democrats get pinched, they get pinched.

8:43 If Republicans uh somehow get swept into this, they get swept into this.

8:47 If Donald Trump gets swept into this, they do.

8:49 And you have stumbled upon some reporting.

8:51 You've done some very good reporting and found

8:53 that former Secretary of State John Kerry's name has

8:56 come up in this uh Epstein saga and enough

9:00 that uh a major Democrat in the House, Ro Khanna, wants an investigation.

9:04 He wants a hearing on this.

9:05 And he should, and he's right to.

9:07 I mean, uh so with this story about John Kerry,

9:12 I first came across John Kerry and the fact that he

9:16 was in Epstein's orbit before he ran for president through Virginia Giuffre,

9:19 who I knew very well.

9:21 We worked on a podcast together.

9:23 We traveled around the country together looking

9:25 for vic- uh witnesses to her crimes.

9:28 Like, we literally knocked on doors trying to find

9:30 people who could corroborate the story of her horrific abuse.

9:33 And I remember that she told me that she encountered John

9:36 Kerry around Jeffrey Epstein at the height of his sex trafficking operation.

9:41 You know, John Kerry has long maintained

9:44 his team 2019 said he didn't know him personally.

9:46 Now we have a you know,

9:47 we have a photo of him in Epstein's home with Epstein's housekeeper.

9:51 We have witness testimony from Epstein's former chef

9:56 now that we didn't have before that the Epstein

9:58 files have been released and he said that he saw John Kerry on the plane.

10:04 You know, we have other survivors saying that she recalls Epstein talking

10:08 about Kerry and now crucially we also see John Jeffrey Epstein offering access

10:15 to various shadowy figures offering access to Kerry to various shadowy figures

10:21 to people like Steve Bannon as late as 2018 offering saying you know,

10:25 Kerry's coming to town.

10:26 Do you want to meet him?

10:28 You know, this Emirati shipping billionaire who he sent the I love

10:34 the torture video to Epstein who had to step down from his role.

10:38 He asked Epstein to help connect him with John Kerry when he was Secretary

10:42 of State because he knew that he was going to be in town in the UAE.

10:45 You have the Terry Rod Larson this Norwegian diplomat who by the way is being

10:49 investigated by their crimes unit Norway's crimes

10:52 unit because they're actually following up on anything.

10:54 He get in touch with Kerry through Jeffrey Epstein and then

10:58 Jeffrey Epstein was actively trying to court Kerry's deputy Bill Burns.

11:03 Bill Burns was when when on to be the CIA director

11:06 and if you know anything about the CIA and the State Department,

11:09 they work very closely together because a lot

11:12 of diplomats are running CIA assets for them.

11:14 The you know, the embassy is the posting for a lot

11:17 of these assets and these people to come forward and you know,

11:21 he he literally was trying to help Bill Burns get a job

11:24 while Bill Burns was working for the State Department on the Iran deal.

11:30 You know, he invited him to the island.

11:32 He invited him to his island.

11:33 He invited him to his but he went

11:35 to his house twice and he connected him with Peter Thiel.

11:39 It's it's amazing.

11:42 And so I guess and there isn't any evidence

11:45 that shows that Kerry did anything untoward or wrong, right?

11:49 We don't know that that that's the case.

11:51 What has John Kerry said if you reached out to him

11:54 to try to reach out to his office about these ties, these these you know,

11:58 I mean it it it doesn't seem like we

12:01 know everything that we need to know at this point.

12:03 Yeah, there's still a lot more to be verified, but his team was very tone deaf.

12:11 When I asked them about the meeting

12:12 with about a meeting with Steve Bannon in 2018,

12:15 they said blank like just flatly that he was never in Washington in 2018,

12:21 which I find really hard to believe.

12:23 They have no problem lying as we know from the first time when

12:26 they said that he did not personally know John Kerry back in 2019.

12:30 That he did not know Jeffrey Epstein back in 2019.

12:33 And they just had like a sort of mocking

12:37 way of handling what is a very serious story.

12:40 I mean, he's essentially lying about his he

12:42 was essentially lying about his connection to Jeffrey Epstein.

12:45 By the way, Jeffrey Epstein like gave

12:47 him money when he started his leadership pack.

12:49 Well, not well, he sent him a package

12:50 with his leadership address shortly after he founded it.

12:54 There's a lot of connections.

12:55 It's not more than I've even talked about, which is why go to the red letter.

12:59 If you go there, you can subscribe and you can read this reporting.

13:02 It took me about like 10 months to go

13:04 through all of the files because he's mentioned so frequently.

13:07 And they just seem to brush it off in such

13:10 a way and and you see our commerce secretary Howard Lutnick,

13:13 so many men like him saying I didn't know anything about Jeffrey Epstein.

13:17 I didn't know anything.

13:17 And then suddenly the story always changes.

13:19 Isn't it weird, Jim?

13:21 It always changes as more information comes out.

13:24 And then they say I did go to the island.

13:26 Okay, I did do this.

13:27 And the thing I want to remind you

13:29 from the way that I started this conversation,

13:31 it was a survivor who told me to look out for John Kerry.

13:34 Wow.

13:35 And you're right, Howard Lutnick.

13:36 I mean, he had that hearing last week.

13:38 Uh it wasn't even a hearing,

13:39 it was sort of a behind closed doors Q&A session with no videotaping.

13:43 I mean, the way they the Commerce Secretary,

13:45 the way they they uh closed the lid on that was pretty extraordinary.

13:49 And afterwards, Ro Khanna,

13:50 the California Democratic Congressman, came out and said,

13:54 "If Donald Trump had heard what Howard Lutnick

13:56 said behind closed doors during that Q&A session,

13:58 he would fire Howard Lutnick." And because we're

14:01 sipping from a fire hose of news these days,

14:03 you know, that story comes and goes.

14:05 Right.

14:06 But you know, to me, you know,

14:08 I think that's why this hearing tomorrow morning is so important.

14:11 That's why we're going to cover it live because I think it's important

14:13 that we continue to hear from these survivors

14:16 and hear from these these victims because,

14:19 you know, I think that Todd Blanche is just

14:21 they're just trying to sweep this under the rug.

14:22 We still don't understand why fully why Pam Bondi was fired.

14:26 She has not come in as far as right, she is she still has not come in yet.

14:31 Yeah.

14:31 Um and so, you know,

14:34 for the Democrats to have to come down to Mar-a-Lago, come down to Palm Beach,

14:38 and have this hearing to keep shining a light

14:40 on this is is as you were saying earlier,

14:43 pretty sad, kind of a sad statement for where we are.

14:45 It is really sad.

14:46 And I want to note that the end that that evening in which

14:49 I spoke to Todd Blanche on French soil at the US Ambassador's residence, Yeah.

14:54 where I saw you last, he ended our conversation by getting his security detail,

14:59 someone that's paid for by US taxpayers,

15:02 to step in between us and tell me that I

15:04 would be removed for trespassing if I asked a question.

15:07 And his wife said I ruined their beautiful evening.

15:09 So, I think that tells you a little bit about how

15:11 he really feels Todd Blanche threatened to have you thrown out.

15:15 Exactly.

15:15 Of the French off off of French soil.

15:18 Like it was insane.

15:19 I I I really feel like that just that it was

15:22 the way he spoke to me like you don't know anything.

15:24 You don't you you don't you've never seen the files.

15:26 I've read the files and I said well aren't they public?

15:28 Hasn't everyone seen them?

15:30 Yeah.

15:31 I see maybe he's read the files that haven't been released.

15:34 I mean that's 2.5 million we haven't seen, the 40 terabytes we haven't watched.

15:38 So yeah, thanks Ted Todd Blanche.

15:40 Maybe we should see that.

15:41 Maybe it would give us a little bit more understanding about Leon Black.

15:46 Yeah, I mean I think Todd Blanche needs to be brought in to testify too.

15:49 I think that the the fact that he has not done that at this point,

15:53 you know you they they haul in the Clintons

15:55 but they're not hauling in Donald and Melania Trump.

15:58 Uh they you know they they bring in Howard Lutnick but it's behind closed doors.

16:02 There's not even a there's no video taping.

16:04 Even though when Hillary Clinton testified she they had what was it?

16:07 Lauren Boebert was taking pictures of her and post

16:10 and sending them to Benny Johnson or something like that.

16:12 This whole thing has been I don't know why all why all all be on camera.

16:16 Exactly.

16:17 Like this hearing tomorrow.

16:18 Yeah and in fact if I were a Democrat,

16:21 I would literally call them all back and do another round of hearings.

16:26 Every single one of them.

16:27 Like this cannot be partisan.

16:29 It really kind of like it bothers me because I know that a lot of Democrats have

16:33 like grabbed onto it because it goes all the way to the top to Trump as they

16:36 should but this has always been one

16:38 of the biggest corruption stories of our time

16:40 and the survivors have been screaming this from the rooftops

16:43 like since 2019 and Democrats didn't care then.

16:47 And they've been trying to say the survivors have

16:48 been trying to say this is not partisan for us.

16:51 We just want to get to the bottom of this.

16:53 They're they're not political.

16:55 They're getting annoyed honestly.

16:56 They are and it's it's really sad and I saw one

17:00 of the lawyers that he's not going cuz he's just tired of it.

17:02 They're just they're they really they deserve more than what

17:05 we've given them and a shadow hearing is just the right

17:08 like is sadly the the terminology for this hearing and it

17:11 it kind of represents exactly where they've been the entire time.

17:15 Yeah and the shadow of Jeffrey Epstein hangs

17:17 over where we are right now in Palm Beach.

17:19 Tara, great to see you.

17:20 Thank you so much.

17:21 Let's do this tomorrow morning with the hearing.

17:23 And you might think you might be coming up.

17:25 So, looking forward to seeing you in person and we'll talk about this tomorrow.

17:27 you tomorrow.

17:28 Okay.

17:29 Okay.

17:29 Thanks.