Accountability and Future Justice

Welcome to Pablo Tore, Finds out. I am Pablo Tore, and today we're going to find out What this sound is Hell no, I'm not going to party with Jeffrey Epstein rightight after the ad. I love that you're wearing the cardig picked it out especially for you. This is a procardigan journalistic institution. Pabaorei finds out. And Julie K Brown comes wearing, could you describe what you are adorned with today? Well, this is sort of like an old fashioned letterman sweater, but it is adorned with Phillies Philadelphia Phillies logo and scrolled across the back. It's very girly looking though. It has pink and Roses on it, but but underneath any cracked liberty bell insignia And the rose on the script P is of course the implicit threat of not fucking with the city of Philadelphia. Yes, I would say so. are not fucking with me. Which is a lesson all of us should heed, I think. But we are meeting because I've been a fan of yours for such a long time Thank you. And one of the great delights in my discovery of not just your reporting, but the person behind the reporting is that you're an actual unhinged Philadelphia sports fan. Yeah right. Well, we almost all are. It's not like I'm unique in that category. I mean, I'd say I cover a lot of tough news and subjects that are very sensitive and hard. And Philadelphia Sports just helps me just distract from you covering sexual assault and crimes and misconduct and corruption. And you know, although there is corruption in sports, as you know, which is why I appreciate your work. Thank you. It is a good distraction for the most part for me. I was gonna to say, if you want to know how dark the worlds that Julie K Brown has been investigating can be The Phillies And the Sixers can be a welcome respite. Yes. That's one way to look at. Hey, I look at every home run as like, wow, that's a happy moment for me. For people who don't know you, I just want to give the back of the baseball card summary here because you are the woman whose reporting led to the arrests of Jeffrey Epstein and Gleen Maxwell, the resignation of the U Secretary of Labor, the first arrest of a British royal in four hundred years It led to the Epstein files being released in the way that America has now been grappling with. It has turned politics, academia, media upside down, and it goes on And yet one of my favorite chapters in your sort of coverage came recently because You finally got the award that you deserved long ago. congrats on your pulitzer. Thank you. Thank you Yes, it was it was only seven years later or, eight years later. I mean, this story has had a lot of impact And that's a reward in of itself. I mean, where were you when they told you w want a Pullitzer I was at the airport coming back from Philly. I had just gotten off the plane I was just my plane had just landed and a friend that I know in high places He just sent me a text that had a big heart on it. That's all he sent. And at first I thought, I wonder what this means. And then I thought, well, it probably means I didn't get it And he's just like sending me a hug. So I sent him a note. I was getting off the plane. My son was picking me up, and I sent him a note. and I said, maybe better luck next year. And he said, donon't be so sure, my friend. So that's kind of when I started thinking. And then as soon as I got out where my son was standing to pick me up I got a call from my editor and she told me, you have to come to the office tomorrow because you're going to get a buulliser. I just started crying My son, you know my son was standing there and I just started crying. And he's like, Mom, M, are you okay? And I said I just found out I w a pulliser. said That's great mom Get in the car. let's go. You're reporting the Miami Herald, Pversion of Justice this series in twenty seventeen, twenty eighteen I do want to walk through some of that, but I also want to acknowledge that you winning the Pulitzer beyond being a thing us journalists love to talk about. It's also something that Alan Dershowitz explicitly campaigned against. Yeah I just want to read this for a second here. He wrote this post on gatestoneinstitute. org april third, twenty nineteen, ten AM Headline Oen letter to the Pzer Prize Committee Don't reward fake news And he goes on to say, shame on Julie K. Brown, shame on the Miami Herald, and shame on the Pulitzer commommittee if it fails to investigate Brown's reporting and encourages such fake news and shoddy journalism by rewarding it I mean, frame that. Yeah. I hope you also can just put that somewhere as proof of something as well. Also, the irony of that is now we have emails from Jeffrey Epstein that were written after the series was published. And Jeffrey Epstein, to his credit, recognized how serious this was So this is Jeffrey Epstein february twenty third, twenty nineteen, a couple months before Alan Dershowitz's post, we just quoted. And he says to Martin Weinberg Quote Should we share the Julie Brown text with Alen She is going to start trouble asking for victims etcet Yeah. It's hard to be this vindicated Well, I'll feel vindicated when they start arresting some more people or at least holding more people accountable because we know that this is so much bigger Well, I want to talk about how this started because Alan Dershwitz was a key member of Jeffrey Epstein's legal team and Part of what you uncover that you excavated, I just want to have you help us plainly walk through it Because what he helped arrange was a secret deal rightight Right. What did that deal entail? and How did that come to be They just wanted this case to go away. The prosecutors in Miami and Palm Beach was the southern District of Florida. and they just realized how Epstein hired this team of lawyers, Dershawoodz being one of them, Ken Starr was on the team, Roy Black was on the team. I mean, it was a dream team abbsolutely off the most powerful lawyers you could hire. And he hired private investigators too, by the way, to follow these victims and to get dirt on their families He pulled out all the stops And part of that was negotiating a deal There was so much going on with the victims. They were trying to portray them as prostitutes for one thing, even though they were, you know, thirteen, fourteen years old And I just think the prosecutors were so asssle by these lawyers And they just realized this was going to be a tough case And they just basically rolled over. His lawyers actually dictated the terms of this deal that it was made. They dictated every aspect of a deal. to the prosecutors. You know, at the time, they were putting men away for fififteen, twenty years for just having child porn on their computers And so it' it's crazy that they made a deal like this and they kept a secret. They purposely sealed it so that no one would know about it. I mean, this deal, which comes after Girls had gone to Palm Beach Police starting in two thousand five, leading the police to investigate It makes its way as you put it to The U.S. attorney in the Southern District of Florida. Alex Acosta we will return to in a second here What this agreement was was a federal non prosecution agreement also enabled punishment That is remarkable. It wasn't much of a punishment at all. I mean, he got work release and essentially what that meant was he hired all these pompey sheriffs you know, three thousand, forty dollars an hour to basically follow him in a separate car because he had his V pick him up at the jail every morning. take him to a beautiful waterfront office, which was essentially in one of his lawyers' suites in Palm Beach, and he set up this, you know pseudo company called the Florida Science Foundation and he would spend All day, twelve hours a day, pretty much every single day. So he wasn't in jail at all. He just went there to sleep. You know, it was a joke. He had visitors coming in. He had women coming in. Afterward we found out he was having sex with the women So you know, it was more of him manipulating his system. F, he gets the deal, gets it kept quiet. thenen the next part is we want work released. so he's not in jail. He was on community control after that. You're not supposed to go anywhere. It's sort of house of arrest. He's going all over the place, traveling to New York Palby Chur's office let him just basically walk all over them too He was getting access to a room where there was a TV that was. Yeah, while he was for the short time before he got the work release, he was in his own special area of the prison. And Sarah Kellen just testified last week that she had to undress and strip on camera for him while he had this monitor where he could see her. This was why he was in the Palt Beach Jail. I mean, it's an eighteen month sentence. He serves less than thirteen months and he's also granted immunity for himself and for his for assistance for any related charges. That's right an unknown number of others because the way that it was phrased, it said and any others I don't remember the exact words, but Nobody knew what that meant. We thought that it's possible that Kab mean everybody that ever, you know, was you, part of his sex trafficking could have gotten immunity because of the way they phrased it And so The guy who is the U.S attorney at the time in the Southern District of Florida is Alex Acosta And just to walk you through the timeline, so Something fascinating happens in February of twenty seventeen. I just wanted to begin by mentioning that The nominee for Secretary of the deepartment of labor will be Mr. Alex Costa He has a law degree from Harvard Law School It's a great student. Former Cerk for Justice Samuel Alito And he has had a tremendous career And for those who don't know One of the responsibilities of the Secretary of Labor of the United States would be what? Osight of human trafficking and child labor laws. And so the idea that this same guy ends up getting that job right This feels like something that America should probably know about Yes, and the other sad part about it is There had been many stories written about Jeffrey Epstein. I mean, I didn't break this story. It was known that he had committed serious crimes against young girls. and so on I thought when they nominated Alex Acosta that the confirmation hearing these senators would grill him on this. It was the biggest case. of his career And they hardly asked any questions of him So that made me even dig in more because I'm thinking, everybody must have forgotten these poor victims. They must have completely forgotten who they were and how they were sexually abused And I want to make something clear too, which is that your way in as a matter of reporting here was to pour over all of these documents, all these Jane Doe's, one, two, three, four down the line. Jane Doe one hundred forty three You know And when you're doing this and you're going through that approach It's worth noting that you are also requesting comment from Jeffrey Epstein, from his attorneys and How to characterize their response to you as you're now huot on a trail that Maybe they don't fully understand I kept it pretty close to the vests when I first started tracking down the women. I did not want them to know because they had as I mentioned, they had hired private investigators to really stalk these women and their families. And by now, of course, these women are older. They're in their late twenties, they have children, they have their own families. And I did not want to let Jeffrey Epstein send more private investigators after them So I kept it pretty close to the vest until I had pretty much buttoned up the story. and then you know, I would say three to six months before it published was when I started reaching out to all his lawyers and to Alan Dershowitz and sending certified letters to all his residences and all of Dershowitz's residences and all of Maxwell's residences and all their lawyers. I mean, we spent probably maybe three hundred dollars or more just on certified letters. Pre publication. Pre publication, yeah. whichich is to say that they have an opportunity you super seriously. Right Well, Dershwoods did because Dershwoods just became a attack do And he really did with our lawyers, with me, with my editors. The emails were so crazy that I just were I was forwarding them to our lawyer. because it was just too crazy. It was like I can't get the story published if I'm dealing with All the Dershowitz nonsense. I right I was willing to you know, listen to his side of the story about it. and we did. we ended up before publication, he never would meet with us. He said he had all this evidence, but he never showed it to us. So after publication, he said, okay, you can come to my Miami Beach condo and I'm going to show you piles of evidence So the first time I had ever in my career Tld my editor, you gotta come with me So my editor and I went there and I swear we were there for a hundred hours. It felt like it was forever And he had piles of his schedules for the past like twenty years piles of paper. and he said, if you look through these schedules you'll know that there's no way this could have happened. And here they are. sit here and you can look at them and we're like, we're not going to look through your schedules. Show us the pieces of this And he just didn't do that. He wanted to make it so that it was impossible for us to really figure it out because it was just such a massive undertaking and look at his schedules for, you know, a five year time frame or even a three year time frame So You know, we tried, I would say, to try to confirm what he was saying. I mean, one of the things he was trying to do there was course attack the credibility of the victims. Right. And Virginia Jeouffreay is somebody who has been in the spotlight as a credibility question. He also was just memorialized recently. Right. And so one of the things that I want to understand is in your reach and your vetting and your analysis of Epstein's accusers. How do you explain to people who don't know this story, what the degree of difficulty is on trying to triangulate among more than a hundred victims what is true Well, there's a couple things. Their stories all followed sort of a similar pattern. Epstein had a way that he operated, and a lot of these victims never even knew each other But yet they told the same consistent story about how one of his assistants would call them. they would go in the back door. anotherother assistant would come, walk them up and they would describe, you know, this stairway that was circular, pictures on the wall, a pink boutdoire, basically. He would be laying there. I mean, it was the same story over and over. So that's one thing. The other thing is the time the police were investigating, they collected some evidence. They had a search warrant. and there were message pads, hundreds and hundreds of these were the pads that you were write on. and there would be a copy of it behind you back in the old days when you took a phone message would be like Melissa can come at six. She has piano lessons before that or so and so can't come tonight. come at two o'clock tom morrow, tons of these messages from A these girls So there were there was corroborating evidence the police also could see that these girls were he was calling these girls. Sometimes he called them himself to comea over. They did have croborating evidence to some degree. And with Virginia, they were able to cooborate some of her stories about where she was and when she was there And I have to say, I got to know Virginia very well. for many years And there were things that maybe she misremembered But she wasn't a liar. She just wasn't. You know, I believe her. I believed her then and I believe her now So You have to get to a point, I think, as journalist. and you know when you interview somebody, you can tell when somebody's usually making something up you know And the other thing I learned, I did a lot of research about sexual assault victims. And the other thing that's common is for them to misremember things about their abuse because it just gets buried in their head. they've been traumatized thing that you have to really pay attention to is if there're almost rehearsse. and none of these women that I interviewed were rehearsed. It was clear that this, you know, the emotion, the crying, it hits it in the gut. You know they're telling the truth Hello, it's me Pablo We have been very interested in what you guys actually like about this show And so in the show notes, there is a survey. You'll find it magically as a link somewhere down there And you can tell us what you want more of, what you want less of, what annoys you about me. potentially all of my friends We will use this to improve the show. It takes like thirty seconds. so please fill it out And we will make this better your background in terms of being the right person to persuade these women This is a story full of high powered people who come from the most ivory towers and this unimaginable wealth and these secret networks that are global And then there's Julie K Brow justust as a matter of your background How would you explain your upbringing in Philly Well, first of all, I spent a lot of time in Philly because my mother was a single mother and I spent we spent a lot of time with her grandparents that lived in Philadelphia. but we technically lived outside the city in the suburbs. And nevertheless, I mean, back then for a woman to be divorced with three children, I know it's hard to even imagine now, but that then we were bullied because of that, you know? and We didn't have money. and, you know, I just remember, for example, in Halloween, the neighbor kids throwing dirt bombs at our house on Halloween. One of them breaking the front window. You know, so we would be crouched with her mother instead of going out Halloweening, Like all the other kids, we would be home scared to death. So I just remember things like that and I felt, I think that in part that drove me into journalism because I wanted to tell the stories of other vulnerable people who really didn't have a voice. My mother certainly had things happen that I felt shouldn't have happened. all the furniture being taken from our house because she couldn't pay the electric bill could have been in the same kind of spot that they were in and that they felt like there was no way for them to get out from underneath either the poverty or in some cases, they were homeless and other cases, you know, they just were all alone. and I for some reason. didn't end up in that same, but I sympathized with it Well look at eightge sixteen, you become an emancipated miner. Yeah Yeah. And you go to work where Well at first I worked at this place called Jamesway, which was like a precursor to like a Walmart or those kinds of places. That was my first job. But then you know, I did a whole bunch of things because I was living on my own and I had to buy food. So I worked delivering flowers, I worked in a lampshade factory. I worked a lot of different jobs thinking you know, I never thought I would be able to afford college. So it was, you know, at some point, I just I thought, let me see if I can get a scholarship or a grant to go to school because I didn't want to work in James Way the rest of my life. I read somewhere that you worked at an actual bell factory. Yeah, I did. I didn't make the bells, but I worked in the factory. I was sort of like a clerk I'm just saying, a bell factory in Pennsylvania in the Philadelphia area feels very on the nose. Yeah for what a Pilly job might be exxactly emancipated miner. Yeah, the Liberty Bell Right But the idea of you end up getting into journalism I know you work at the Philadelphia Daily News. the tabloid in Philly and the best job I ever had. Why Well, first of all It was the best sports tabloid in the country. I will always stand by that. winning tons of awards for sports coverage. I just think that again, it was its nickname was the people paper And we got into the neighborhoods and we just did those stories about average Joes who, whatever their plight was, whether they, you know, had their wheelchair stolen. The crime at the time was a lot higher than it is now. So there were tons of crime stories of drug deal, you know, gone bad. You have to really do journalism fast when you work for a tabboy So I could put together a story very fast And then I segued into doing more investigative pieces than I did a piece about the Philadelphia firefighters who were all getting hepatitis C and dying. and the city wasn't doing anything about it And I did a big expose and here, you know, because they were getting it on the job, but the city didn't want to admit it And eventually they were able to get benefits from the city because of the stories that I wrote And that was really rewarding for me. and I was sort of my first foray in investigative journalism Did you ever use your journalistic doggedness to cover sports Yes, I did doing sports every now and then I covered a couple of things at The Daily News, Alan Iverson And you know every time our sports were in the playoffs, I was always, I'm on the team, I'm on the team, send me. But at the Herald, I actually covered Aod's steroid use.. That story, which really came out of Miami because the doctor that was giving him the steroids was based in Miami. And the way that I got that story was that the whistleblower actually called the Miami Herald, he got sent to the sports department and the sports department, this is what makes me think of you. the sports department didn't do anything with the story. I don't know if they didn't know what to do with it or what the deal was, but you know, it's an investigative story. So The whistleblower went to the Miami New Times inststead gave them the story. they broke it's a huge biogenesis. Yes Biogenesis. Tony Bosch. Yes. theide dealer in quest. So we got beat because the Harold got the tip first. So So of course, my editor comes to me and say, we need you to do this biogenesis story. And I said What? I mean, we already got beat on. He said, No, we need you to do it. And I said, Well, what about the sports department? He said, We need you to do it. That's why we need I said, I don't really know that much about steroids. I mean, I know I watch basebook and he said, That's why we want you to do this story. There's one thing I read and you let me know if this is accurate or not Did you sneak into a hospital to interview Joe Frasier at one point? Yes, I did. What happened We didn't know what happened I just said, well Let me just go see if I can talk to him And you know, you're not really supposed to do that, but I nobody stopped me. I didn't I put my, you know, I put my notepad in the in my pocketbook and I don't know how, but I got right up into his room. What prompted this? What was the reason why? The rumor was it was a drunk driving thing. And what he claimed th, however, it was like medication gone awry or some other thing that he was taking for his ailments caused him to I can't remember if he had a car accident or not, to be honest with you. This is in Pilly though obviously. for theaily news. Yeah, for the Daily news Yeah. It was fun. It was fun. Journalism was so much fun then I'm so blessed that I lived during that time. Well, you know, what I love about journalists like you is that you can feel like this is a dream job. Yeah. And yet If you're looking through your own financial records. Yeah, even at the hererald. and again, you make your way to the Miami Herald and you're You're you're getting increasingly bigger and bigger stories What does the sort of economic picture look like for you as you're doing even the Epstein reporting It's like robbing Peter to Pay Pul the whole time, practically I mean, I had my car. I was out on a story covering prisons all over Florida, driving in the hinterlands of Central Florida, going to prisons and I get a phone call that my car is repossessed You know, I bounnce so many checks. It's so embarrassing, really. But I was I myself was a single mother with two children. U at the time, we were, you know, it was a down it was the real downturn in the newspaper business And People were getting laid off. I had my pay cut You know, over twenty five thousand dollars a year, my pay was cut and furloughs on top of that. So I don't know, I really look back and wonder how the hell I did it really to be honest with you because it was a real struggle. I mean two kids through college in general. Yeah is a lot. Yeah. And then to do it while the industry that you're working in that you love is is putting you in a bit of a Iraq is szing is ye It's why a lot of people stop Yeah You didn't. I didn't. For one thing, I don't know if there was anything else really that I I was made to do this work. I was born to do this work. so I don't know if I could have ever really done anything else And I you know I tell students all the time, even though we talk a lot about all the things that are happening, bad things that are happening in journalism right now to say There's never really been a time that I hated my job I loved my job all the time You know, even on bad days, I would never want to do anything else I am contrasting What you've just described, your financial status as you're breaking Arguably the biggest story in America ontrasting that with the people you' reporting. Yeah And I'm contrasting that with The things I've learned in our reporting here about Harvard University. Right. My alma mater where They still are struggling and most generously we'll use that word struggling to disclose what they knew and when they knew it and how they were complicit in the construction of Jeffrey Epstein The man and the myth that was able to inside of the most exclusive and elite s of American life. and All around the world. Yeah You see University presidents of Harvard, Larry Sumers, most famously, but also Henry Rzovsky, accord tois reporting. These were all things that were inside of the Harvard system That were documented. Well, and not only that, but they gave Epstein cache And a lot of the victims, including Sarah Callen last week when she testified They were asking her, why didn't you leave? She said he had the brightest minds in science, in academia, in technology. I mean, you name it. Bill Gates. He was meeting with Fidel Castro And to her cameame like a normal thing Here's this important man, you know, And Harvard is a piece of that because they gave him carte Blanche at their university I mean, he had his own office at one. Yeah he you could access it again, a sweetheart deal. R in which he had access to an office that he also could decorate. His assistants followed him around. They moved around the campus. they went And Sat and Epein, according to Harvard's own disclosure. He sat in classes sometimes. Yes. I mean, I was on campus while this was happening. Yeah. You were there when this happened? I was I graduated in zero seven and we're talking in that period. was. Yeah, it was that period. And as just a pure side note in terms of like my angle of approach on this When I graduated, our class day speaker was Bill Clinton Our commencement speaker was Bill Gates, Wow, the president of University when I arrived was Larry Summers. And you go through Harvard's own records and their self report in twenty twenty, which left out so much that we have now reported on. the way in which they continued to sand Epstein these personalized updates on what his money was up to as a major donor to Harvard University, inviting him to things on campus. Hiding secret Jeffrey E. Epstein women's sports Right. Fund documents Yeah. Tragicomically disturbing. Yeah. Like, wow, this was all happening and I was there. Yeah It was a culture of silence too You know, let's not talk about him after the conviction, they continued to do, you know, business, so to speak with him, but it was really a cult a hush hush thing that they tried to do. MIT was also in that same category. Yeah. These academic institutions, and by the way, there are students, journalists all over the country Loo up all the names of all their presidents and they're all scouring and doing stories, Stanford, student law center. and there were a bunch of students there that were pouring through the files and were asking my advice on how to cover, you know, the names that they're saying. you know, it seems like he got around to other universities too Yeah. I mean, the way in which he was using the credibility of the most respected institutions available to him. Right. And the way in which those institutions for whom There was never enough money.. We're using him to both fund these projects academic and personal as well as Perhaps in the case of Larry Sumers who honeymoonved on Epstein Island. Right One of the crazier sentences you will find, I think, in this whole story, establishing personal rapport, friendriendships. R No that were deliberately seecret even into twenty twenty when Harvard was supposed to Finally open the kimono and show everybody, okay, this is what we did and this is why we're sorry Right And this is, you know, the former seecretary of the Treasury. of the those important economic minds in America It speaks to how what you reported Insofar as it got to the files being released It started, Julie, this massive group project Right For journalists for curious people R to get involved in. and I am one of them. Yeah.. to those people a lot. I have a couple of regulars on my signal group who are looking into aspects of it and they they've tipped me off on things that I didn't know about You know, I don't think this has really ever happened that I know of anyway in the history of our country where the Justice Department is completely open their files to the general public to look at. And the picture isn't pretty because they seem to have an awful lot of information about him. It seems to me that they just didn't take it far enough and really thoroughly investigate him, not just in two thousand eight you know, they had tips about him involved in narcotics trafficking, they had tips about him involved in money laundering. They had lots of other things that they had over the years and they just never really pursued them Well, one of the things that's also clear though, as the drip continues of the Epstein files is that at the very least, this is a bipartisan scandal I always say people just want to keep pointing fingers and I always say sexual assault doesn't discriminate based on Political party And there were people You know, I try to avoid even saying what party so and so is from unless it seems relevant to the piece that I'm writing. becausecause to me it doesn't matter. if you're committing sexual assault or you're committing any kind of a crime, it doesn't matter. This was a crime It was a cry. And it should have been investigated like that. and it wasn't, it really wasn't investigated like that That takes me back to this non prosecution agreement, which itself was legally problematic. Right. So for those again who don't remember this Jeffrey Epstein pleads guilty to state charges he'd been indicted on T state charged of soliciting prostitution, solicitation of minors for prostitution, had to regisered as a sex offender, serve consecutive prison terms, that's what we. But even that was watered down when we were able to find out,, I mean, his lawyers were brilliant And we're brilliant One of the things that they did, it was such a small thing. But it made a big difference was that the original victim in the case was fourteen They changed the agreement so that the actual countount that he pleaded to They slid in a victim who was sixteen So therefore, in some states, it's not a crime to have sex with someone who is sixteen But fourteen, most states you can't. In that respect, he didn't have to, for example, he didn't have to register as a sex offender in New Mexico. where he also had his ate Well, the thing that the Alex Acosta sweetheart secret non prorosecution agreement also did was not tell the victims. Right. It was sealed. This was another consequence of your reporting, which was that, oh, it turns out there's this thing called the Crime Victims Rights Act. Right, R. Well, I can't take credit for that aspect of it because there were two lawyers, very shrewd lawyers, Brad Edwards and Paul Castle who brought a lawsuit. It was ten years old by the time I did this. They had brought it right when the deal happened back in two thousand eight and they were still litigating it. They were the ones that were fighting, trying to undo the deal because it had essentially brok they broke the law Because under the Crime Victims Rights Act, you have to let the victims know when you're doing something like this They deserve the credit for that aspect of the case, which was very critical because it was critical to my reporting because that because that lawsuit has so much litigation attached to it I literally would spend hours and hours reading all the evidence that they had collected against Epstein. There were depositions, There was so much material in that lawsuit that really helped me build upon, including the emails that went back and forth between Epstein's lawyers and the federal prosecutors, their buddy buddy, you could see how they were working together to make this deal happen. And, you know, it was a good deal of me getting that information was a result of those two lawyers working that case Well, one of the other consequences and this is taking us to july twenty nineteen and the unfolding domino effect of your work on this case and surfacing the long battle that people in Florida have been fighting on the side of, hey People need to know more about this. those attorneys among them. It takes us to when Donald Trump nominated Alex Acosta and Defends initially Yeah. Alex Acosta as a really, really great secretary of labor I can only say this from What I know and what I do know is that he's been a great reallyally great Secretary of Labor The rest of it' have to look at will'll have to look at it very carefully. But you're talking about a long time ago. And again, it was a decision made, I think, not by him, but by a lot of people. And of course, Donald Trump had previously quoted in New York magazine in two thousand two, calling Epsteenin a terrific guy, saying Epstein, quote likes beautiful women as much as I do, and many of them are on the younger side ote. I don't even say this to make an exhibit of Trump. I say this to say that Alex Acosta his handpicked labor secretary Resience. Finally after Jeffrey Epstein gets arrested. He had given a press conference before he was arrested where he completely defended everything that he did. And I remember I was on a panel on CNN when he did it when they wanted me to analyze it. And one of the arguments he said was Well, you have to remember way back then kind of crime wasn't thought about in the same way it is now. Times have changed. and coverage of this case has certainly changed since that article Facts are important and facts are being overlooked On what planet was it ever okay for a man to have sex with a you know thirteen year old girl? That was bad all the time. That was never accepted norm in our country. The excuses that he was giving for this deal It was very easy for me to dispel every single thing that he said in that speech. I imagine that one of the more satisfying things that a journalist can feel. is after they've broken a big story and they've published a multi part series They hear from In this case, the Southern District of New York You're reporting is one of the reasons why they reopen this case in the first place. Yeah them'm saying this on the Dais. Right New information that you already. I'm not going into any dealings with main justice, nor am I going to go into An aspects of how our investigation originated. I will say that we were assisted some excellent investigative journalism. That was pretty surprising to me. Journalists don't get that very often. No. It was very, you know, and the prosecutor later, subsequently he wrote a book, you know, and he later called me and he said In case anybody tries to tell you anything different, I'm telling you your story was the reason why. We open that case And I appreciated that because, you know, part of the story also was there were a lot of journalists that were dismissing my work Yes, because the story had been reported before So people who reported on it before were very offended that I was getting so much credit When people talk about all of this as worthy of A movie, a TV series in its own, right It is fun to get to say That is also actually happening now. I hope I mean, in this political climate right now There's a lot of people that don't want to take on controversial stories In this case, Adam McKay, who's a friend of Meadalg Media, he says This is a thing that I want in on. Well, actually, Adam Mc Kay way back with my series published He was one of the first who reached out to me and said he wanted to do this He didn't know what form, but he wanted to buy all the rights to everything because he was so keen on doing this from the very get go. Yeah. So I've been working with him a long time to try to make this happen. So let's hope it happens this time. And Adam's done big short one of my favorite things, Step brrothers as well. I mean, his work speaks for itself And the thing that I love is that when I reached out to Adam, I emailed him asking, you know, what about the character of Julie K Brown? is most sort of compelling to you He said, quote The big thing I noticed was how Julie's tenaciousness was viewed as a negative by legacy News. She can tell you how much he was struggling financially, but it's telling how compliant to power US News has become old school grinder of a journalist like Julie wasn't welcome in the club That's such an Adam Mcay statement too. I don't pay any attention to that stuff. I just like a bull China shop, I just keep moving forward. And I just want it and still want justice for the victims And so I still really focus on that aspect of it. I can't do this whole story from every angle To me, the angle that I am focused on is accountability Why wasn't he charged back then what you know, not get charged, not be arrested. Because had they done that back then, we wouldn't be sitting here. You would probably even know me, you know And yet now you saying exactly what you just said is why They're getting Laura Dern to play you But it's true though. I mean, it's like you are not somebody who is fundamentally interested. your work throughout your life has spoken to this. Yeah. Look, the pulitzer is so great, obviously, and the movie, TV series, whatever ends up being is wonderful You're you are like a dog with a bone on the fundamental thing that drew to the story in the first place, which is How is it that justice was not served to, in this case Dozens upon dozens of Women and girls. Thousands now It's in the thousands, we believe now. It's You know It Just it gets bigger, I feel like it gets bigger every day that there's more information coming out all the time and It's horrific that something like this was allowed to happen. There's so many Oh who who could have used their power to help You know, for the good of humanity were using it to make more money, invest with Jeffrey Epstein to just enrich themselves. and they didn't care what his background was They knew who he was, but they kept doing business with him because of the almighty dollar and the money he was bringing in for them. for me The thing that I think about is it's not that everybody who was complicit or aware in terms of we want to do business with this guy, nonetheless It's not that all those people ty of a literal crime. Right. B does feel appropriate for them to face questions Like hard questions about what did you know and when did you know it? Right And at some level, that's perhaps the best and only justice that they might ever face is the accountability of having to admit We did want to be in business with this guy. Yeah, I don't feel bad for those people that lost their jobs or those kinds of things. Th those people help give him the credibility that those girls looked at. Eespecially the people that kept the relationship for years and years. After there are a few categories of people who For a very short period of time, they were in his orbit And so you know, I don't feel the same way about that, but there are plenty of people that were in his orbit for years, decades I don't know how they sleep at night actually you know, someomeone, for example, like Bill Gates You have to vet every single person that you meet with if you're Bill Gates, right? You had he had to know You know, one assumes I mean, I vet everybody that I get, you know, I get invited to events all the time and I make sure I find out who's running the event, who's paying for the event, you know, because I just do that. so You know, B Gates probably had to. Well, it's interesting, right? Like when do these masters of the universe who are otherwise acting as extraordinarily competent and deserving of your trust as a member of the public in that they're selling you products or they are having deals the government itself Interesting when those people want to project authority and when they want to be infantilized Right The whole thing of convenient ignorance. Yeah. It's a bit inconsistent with the larger brand that they have constructed and profited off of only to then retreat from it as soon as it feels like, oh no now being held to a standard of an adult Right. And you know, I don't think enough attention is paid quite frankly to the people that didn't do that There were people that said, o no, I'm not going, you know. they don't get as much publicity Tina Brownly, you know, she got invited to a party and I think the prince was supposed to be there and all these Of course, journalists went all these people and she went Hell no, I'm not going to party with Jeffrey Epstein Tina Brown recalled being invited to an intimate Jeffrey Epstein party with his pal, Prince Andrew, the aforementioned royal who stepped down for the first time in the history of royals in four hundred years after your reporting. and Woody Allen Tina Brown declared, quote, what the hell is this? The Predator's ball Yeah, ye yeah. On some level, there is great investigative journalism that enabled the discussion we're having today. And at the same time There's also just, I think the basic capacity for lots of people to have smelled something wrong about this that did not require multi part series to be aware of. Yeah. Right And look, I And he said You know, I don't know how people sleep at night. I am worried about your sleeping habits though. because it's funny that you mention because I realized I was not sleeping at all and it was really affecting my health I was working around the clock. And then the Philadelphia Inquiry did a profile of me. and I looked at the photo that ran with the profile and I thought, Oh my God, I better get some sleep. I mean, I look like, you know, I hadn't slept So yeah. I dare say you look like someone who's been watching a lot of Philadelphia sports recently Yes There's no level of fatigue quite like that. I didn't stay up for the whole game last night, but I did see a couple of the home runs. But, uh I don't know. I'm so exhausted by the end of the day that I can't talk to people. Like I always tell people not call me At the end of the day and especially don't call me when the Phillies or when the Phillies are on And so what I want to do near the end here is somethingomething that may seem paradoxical because it is assigning you more work But I want to officially offffer Julie K Brown job. Pablo Torere finds out Philadelphia Sports correspondent. I think there's probably a lot better people to know more about Philadelphia spports than me. So I'm happy to accept But your humility will not dissuade me Julie K Brown Our new Philadelphia sports correspondent. I cannot help but think that you once worked in a literal bell factory and one of the great compliments I must pay your work is that it is this bell that just keeps ringing testament to somebody that really did make an impact Thank you so much for doing this. Thanks for having me this has been Pablo Torere findinds out, a Metadal Lark media production. And I'll talk to you next time