The following is a transcript of my conversation with investigative journalist and American Freakshow author Nina Burleigh. It has been edited for clarity and length.
Nina Burleigh
Today, we are going to talk about a subject that we know is on everybody's mind — except for maybe House Speaker Mike Johnson and the Republican congressman who he sent home early because they really don't want us to be thinking about this— Jeffrey Epstein, the Jeffrey Epstein case, or the conspiracy theory that their people were obsessed with; the notion that a pedophile elite would put an autocrat in power and and weaponize the government.
And they were worried that that was going to happen. And now here we are in a situation where we have a member of the elite in power, acting like an autocrat and weaponizing the government to — I believe, hide the elite's involvement in the still-mysterious Epstein case.
Both Camaron and I have been doing a lot of work on the various things that are going on in terms of the investigation — or the non-investigation — in Washington. And what I'd like to do is to start with is Camaron's work regarding what we know; that there's a cache of information at the DOJ.
Camaron Stevenson
Right.
Nina Burleigh
We know that there are — what, hundreds of thousands of pages of documents?
Camaron Stevenson
Yeah.
Nina Burleigh
And they have not denied that somebody at the top of the FBI ordered 1,000 agents working in 24-hour shifts to investigate, to look through these files, and eventually to start flagging mentions of Donald Trump. And that mobilization of 1,000 FBI agents in 24-hour shifts, it can only really be compared to things like after 9/11 or after January 6th.
It's an epic reaction to something. And, in this case, it was to protect the president from possible political embarrassment, or possible criminal investigations. So that's in the DOJ. Talk to me about what you have found out about what's going on with those documents, and will we ever see them, given that they've now flagged all this material?
Camaron Stevenson
Well, what I think is really interesting is that even though Sen. Durbin announced that this undertaking had been going on, where 1,000 FBI agents were sequestered into this New York office for weeks, pouring through documents, putting together a spreadsheet of every mention of not just Trump, but any other prominent, prolific figure related to the Epstein investigation.
This was actually reported on back in March. But it was in the framing and context of, ‘this is something that Bondi is doing to appeal to the far right, to the MAGA base. This is so incompetent. This is just a sign of the incompetent administration.’
And, while it was a very unsecure way for them to do this, its purpose wasn't just to appeal to the base: it was to protect Trump.
After they found his name everywhere, they cataloged it, they redacted his name, and shortly after this spreadsheet was put together of everyone who was mentioned, Todd Blanche — which, as you know, is currently one of the leaders of the US Department of Justice. Before that, he started his own law firm so that he could represent Donald Trump's criminal cases in, I believe, three of the cases.
Nina Burleigh
Yeah, he was a US attorney. He was a federal prosecutor, like many of these guys are. And then he became, a private attorney, and he, he actually defended Paul Manafort before he did this.
Camaron Stevenson
Right. So, this guy who's — I mean, he has his his MAGA bona fides — he was appointed as deputy at the Department of Justice. This spreadsheet with everyone's name was put together, and suddenly, he was sent to have a private meeting with Ghislane Maxwell in her maximum security prison.
They went over at least 100 names. Shortly after that, she said, ‘I don't have anything bad to say about Trump,’ she was put into a lower security prison, and now she's being given the opportunity to play with dogs, and there's the potential for work release. And she's been getting a cushy deal out of this.
Nina Burleigh
The playing with dogs thing is, as a side note, because she had a sex trafficking conviction, I think there was some rule that you couldn't actually play with dogs in the maximum in the prison that she was in before.
Camaron Stevenson
You’ve got to draw a line somewhere.
Nina Burleigh
So basically, what you're saying is that we think that they took this spreadsheet of Trump mentions, and this list of names was brought down to her Todd Blanche, to the prison in Tallahassee before Ghislane was moved into the Club Fed luxurious prison, or whatever you want to call it.
So that was one of the uses of this list that they put together. But this spreadsheet of of Trump mentions, what happens to that? What happens to those documents that are flagged? What do you think is going on with them right now?
Camaron Stevenson
Well, by all accounts that we have, they are incredibly unsecure. They didn't go through any level of confidentiality. There were people who had eyes on them and who had access to the files, who probably shouldn't have. They've also been tampered with to high heaven. So I don't know if there's a pure file, so to speak.
And then these other altered, updated, redacted ones, those are the ones that could get leaked. I don't know how much more information they would have. Or — not to say that this would happen, but it's the Trump administratio — that sort of a leak could also be weaponized.
We're already seeing it in the House Committee. Based on what has been found, they have subpoenaed Bill Clinton. They subpoenaed former Department of Justice officials. There's a few Republicans; Bill Barr, but they can they can throw him under the bus. He's familiar with the territory.
But those files seem like they can be weaponized and used to hurt Trump's political opponents, while insulating himself. Which is why I've been looking more into something that can't be as easily tampered with, which is financial documents.
Nina Burleigh
Tell us about that, because we're talking about two different caches of information that is right now controlled by the Trump regime, but is actually in two different areas of the government. So talk to us about these financial records.
Camaron Stevenson
So this is something really, really interesting. And I think this is where any potential justice can really be found. Epstein was very wealthy, and he worked with wealthy individuals; they weren't walking around giving each other sacks of cash. They use banks, they have accounts, they have shell corporations. And all of these have financial transactions that link them to each other, that link them to his victims, that link him to the Eastern European agencies where they were able to find women to traffic.
Sen. Wyden's been working on that. He's actually been working on it since shortly after Epstein was arrested. It's something that has recently been in the news because there's a lot of scrutiny around the Trump administration and Epstein right now, but Sen. Wyden and the Finance Committee have been looking into Epstein's finances for years.
He's found thousands of wire transfer transactions between Epstein’s bank accounts, and Eastern European banks that have been sanctioned because they deal with trafficking, and they go to other clients. These are documents that are being held at the US Treasury that Wyden was working on obtaining access to from the Biden administration.
Biden was very procedural. He wanted them to issue a subpoena to access those documents. The Senate has been controlled by Republicans since this investigation got to the point where it needed a subpoena, and Republicans have been blocking that ever since. And now the Trump administration has taken that even further.
Nina Burleigh
You wrote that ‘this was a four-year congressional investigation into the assets of Jeffrey Epstein, and that it's been stalled indefinitely by the Trump administration, which has revoked access to these documents’ that the Biden administration had actually been allowing the committee to look at.
Camaron Stevenson
Yes.
Nina Burleigh
And that's the status right now: because the Republicans control these committees and the Republicans control these executive agencies, they can just lock it all down.
Camaron Stevenson
They are using this very effectively to control the narrative on it. You'll notice that that the Senate committee isn't allowing Wyden to issue subpoenas for his investigation because that could implicate other Republicans or wealthy donors or the billionaire class, whereas the House is able to use the tampered-with Department of Justice files to issue subpoenas against Trump's political opponents or people who seek retribution against.
And because that's allowed to go forward, that's given legitimacy. Whereas the other one [in the Senate], it's legitimate, but it's not being given the weight of a congressional investigation that it deserves.
Nina Burleigh
There's a question that came in that's sort of interesting; I have not thought about it. Is it possible that anybody at the Supreme Court would have been in some way implicated in the Epstein situation, and that that's the ultimate backstop to opening up this material if it ever gets back into Democratic control?
Camaron Stevenson
I personally haven't seen — actually, I take that back. There is one connection to the Supreme Court that I've seen, and that is one of the previous Supreme Court justices. His son worked at Deutsche Bank
Nina Burleigh
It was [retired Justice Anthony] Kennedy, yeah.
Camaron Stevenson
Yes, Kennedy, his son worked at Deutsche Bank; that's the only direct connection. I haven't seen anything where any sitting Supreme Court justices were involved with Epstein, per se. But that's that's not to say that they aren't involved tangentially through donors or through wealthy contributors.
We all know that Clarence Thomas loves his gifts from billionaires. And if they need something in return, I'm sure they know how to get a hold of him.
Nina Burleigh
Speaking of, billionaires and people loving their gifts, talk to me a little bit about Leon Black and the connection to Epstein.
Who is Leon Black in terms of this — the US Virgin Islands, Epstein Island financing?
Camaron Stevenson
Leon Black’s a really interesting figure because most people have never heard of him. He's a Wall Street executive, a billionaire who made tons of money on Wall Street. And as such, most of the reporting about him, even in relation to Epstein, is from financial reporters. And so it's very bogged down in financial jargon, which I feel kind of buries the lead with him, which is that he gave hundreds of millions of dollars to Epstein over the years.
He overpaid Epstein for tax and estate planning services — like, vastly overpaid Epstein. Despite his reputation as a financier, he was a college dropout, a failed substitute teacher. He wasn't an accountant, he wasn't accredited or had anything that made him special. And in fact, Leon Black's attorneys have later said that the things Epstein did, they had they had to have actual tax accountants go in and fix it because it was so shoddy.
But despite that, Leon Black paid Epstein $100 million-plus dollars for these services. What Sen. Ron Wyden is looking at is that, because those services weren't actually rendered, this could be tax fraud. That they were committing tax fraud because Black was lying about what he was paying Epstein for.
And, in fact, Leon Black has since settled a lawsuit against him by the US Virgin Islands because of his relationship with Jeffrey Epstein. He settled out of court and gave the island $62.5 million. And in this lawsuit, he admitted that he knew that his money went to fund Epstein's island in the Virgin Islands, where all the sex trafficking flowed in and out of.
He admitted this. He paid money for it. But it didn’t go to court, so it didn't do anything in terms of tangible, criminal consequences. But that's another avenue where we can see that these wealthy people who were associated with Epstein knew what was going on, helped facilitate it, found ways in the tax code to make it seem like they were paying for other things, and because it's a white collar crime and they're rich, they got away with it so far.
Nina Burleigh
So far, they've gotten away with it. I think that Wyden has asked the IRS to investigate Epstein, or that the Democrats have previously asked the IRS to look into Black, and look into this potential fraud. And the IRS is ignoring that, am I right?
Camaron Stevenson
Yeah. I mean, they ignored it during Epstein's entire life. They ignored it when the banks finally, very, very late, reported that Epstein had a lot of suspicious transactions —
Nina Burleigh
—After Epstein's death is when they started forking that over. ‘Oh, we forgot to file a SAR (suspicious activity report), and we forgot to file hundreds of SARS.’ There were billions of dollars being moved to other banks, right?
Camaron Stevenson
Yeah.
Nina Burleigh
But they waited until the spotlight was on them.
Camaron Stevenson
It didn't matter because it was making them money. They didn't care. And when they filed it. There's been no investigation. Wyden asked again for an investigation by the IRS to audit these finances, and two weeks after he did, Trump fired the IRS chief.
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