Jeffrey Epstein, Donald Trump and Sexual Blackmail Networks (w/ Nick Bryant) | The Chris Hedges Report

Despite a strong desire from the public to get to the bottom of the Epstein case, the cabal associated with Epstein continues its conspiracy to suppress the ugly truth of the ruling class.

This interview is also available on podcast platforms and Rumble.

Perhaps the biggest elephant in the room of American politics is the existence of a pedophilic blackmail network that involves some of the most powerful people in the country and the world. Despite efforts to get to the bottom of the Jeffrey Epstein case, which saw the trafficking and sexual exploitation of thousands of children, justice continues to be evaded and the cabal associated with Epstein — President Donald Trump notwithstanding — continues its conspiracy.

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Nick Bryant is a journalist and author who first published Epstein’s infamous “black book” in 2015 as well as Epstein’s flight logs. This information exposed the powerful names associated with Epstein and those who likely participated in his abhorrent pedophilic escapades as well as those who are likely controlled via Epstein’s extensive blackmail apparatus.

Bryant joins host Chris Hedges on this episode of The Chris Hedges Report to discuss his work as well as the history of the Epstein case and what can be expected next. Trump has resorted to calling the entire matter a “hoax” and Attorney General Pam Bondi, despite promising to release the Epstein files, has recently balked at the idea that there is evidence of an Epstein client list.

Bryant and Hedges discuss how there is already myriad evidence of Epstein’s crimes and relationships but efforts by the current administration could cloud the hope for justice.

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Host

Chris Hedges

Producer:

Max Jones

Intro:

Diego Ramos

Crew:

Diego Ramos, Sofia Menemenlis and Thomas Hedges

Transcript:

Diego Ramos

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Transcript

Chris Hedges

Following the arrest of Jeffrey Epstein in July 2019, federal authorities seized “hundreds—possibly thousands—of sexually suggestive photographs of girls who appear underage, as well as hand-labeled compact discs with titles like ‘Girl pics nude,’ and, with the names redacted, ‘Young [Name] + [Name],’” the New York Times wrote. The pictures and videos were held in the safe at Epstein’s New York mansion, which was the size of a closet. Business Insider quoted an FBI agent who said “hard drives” were also taken from the safe.

The refusal by the Trump administration to release the files and videos amassed during investigations, should put to rest the absurd idea, embraced by Trump supporters and gullible liberals, that Trump will dismantle the Deep State. Trump is part of, and has long been part of, the repugnant cabal of politicians – Democrat and Republican – billionaires and celebrities who look at us, and often underage girls and boys, as commodities to exploit for profit or pleasure.

The list of those who were in Epstein’s orbit is a who’s who of the rich and famous. They include not only Trump, but Bill Clinton, who allegedly took a trip to Thailand with Epstein, Prince Andrew, Bill Gates, hedge fund billionaire Glenn Dubin, former New Mexico governor Bill Richardson, former Secretary of the Treasury and former president of Harvard University Larry Summers, cognitive psychologist and author Stephen Pinker, Alan Dershowitz, billionaire and Victoria’s Secret CEO Leslie Wexner, the former Barclays banker Jes Staley, former Israeli prime minister Ehud Barak, the magician David Copperfield, actor Kevin Spacey, former CIA director Bill Burns, real estate mogul Mort Zuckerman, former Maine senator George Mitchell and disgraced Hollywood producer Harvey Weinstein, all of whom reveled in Epstein’s perpetual Bacchanalia.

They also include law firms and high-priced attorneys, federal and state prosecutors, private investigators, personal assistants, publicists, servants and drivers. They include the numerous procurers and pimps, including Epstein’s girlfriend and daughter of Robert Maxwell, Ghislaine Maxwell. They include the media and politicians who ruthlessly discredited and silenced the victims, and strong armed anyone, including a handful of intrepid reporters, seeking to expose Epstein’s crimes and circle of accomplices.

There is a lot that remains hidden. But there are some things we know. Epstein installed hidden cameras in his opulent residences and on his private Caribbean island, Little St. James, to capture his high-powered friends engaging in sexual romps and abuse of teenage and underage girls and boys. The recordings were blackmail gold. Were they part of an intelligence operation on behalf of the Israeli Mossad? Or were they used to ensure that Epstein had a steady source of investors who funneled him millions of dollars to avoid being outed? Or were they used for both? He shuttled underage girls between New York and Palm Beach on his private jet the Lolita Express, which was allegedly outfitted with a bed for group sex. His coterie of famous friends, including Clinton and Trump, are recorded as traveling on the jet numerous times.

Joining me to discuss the Epstein case is the journalist Nick Bryant who uploaded Epstein’s Black Book on the internet in 2015, which contained the names and private phone numbers of a host of powerful and wealthy patrons. He also uploaded Epstein’s flight logs from Epstein’s plane, which also contains the names of numerous perpetrators. It is probably fair to say that he has singlehandedly released more information about the Epstein case than any other single individual, including the Attorney General Pam Bondi.

Let's begin with, which I mentioned in the introduction, what we know they have. It is quite voluminous.

Nick Bryant

Well, as you said, Epstein's safe was drilled the day after he was arrested. And there was a huge cache of child abuse material that was taken out of his safe. And I think that there were other items. I've been told that there was blackmail evidence also in the safe. So I think that in addition to a huge cache of child abuse material, was also blackmail material.

And the FBI, the day after Epstein was arrested, and I believe the dark apparatus that deploys people like Epstein, they made sure that that safe was cleaned out real quickly. And that's where we get into problems with what the Trump administration is saying and Pam Bondi. On February 26, she proclaimed that the Epstein files were on her desk and that she was going to open it up and there would be full transparency.

And then she served us a nothing sandwich. There were no new revelations. And like you said, I put more incriminating information about Epstein and his network on the Internet in 2015 than she did in 2025. And I saw the black book. She included the black book that I put up on the Internet and everything was redacted. All the names.

We just redacted numbers and then there's lots of victims in the black book too, well over a hundred. And we redacted their last name and we redacted their numbers. So Pam Bondi said that she was going to go for full transparency and then she served us a nothing sandwich. And what she said is that she had been bamboozled by the FBI's New York field office.

So she was either inept or lying. And I'm a generous person, so I'm just going to go with inept. And then she said that there was a truckload of evidence on the Epstein case. And she said only matters of national security would be redacted. So now she has to tell us what a bunch of child molesters have to do with national security.

So she keeps digging herself deeper and deeper into the hole. And she acted like that truckload of evidence had never been seen before by anyone. And I'm willing to wager everything that I have that that child abuse material and everything in Epstein’s safe was being looked at that day and the next day. And there were probably some analysts that didn't even sleep because they wanted to know exactly what was in Epstein’s safe.

So for her to come out and say that they're looking at it now, it’s unbelievably disingenuous. And her crescendo of mendacity was the memo. And no one signed that memo that came out last week. Trump didn't sign it. Bondi didn't sign it. [Kash] Patel didn't sign it. No one wanted to sign that memo to be held accountable.

There are a couple of things about that memo that I agree with. I believe that there were more than 300 gigabytes of child abuse material taken out of Epstein's safe. I also believe that there were well over a thousand victims because Jeffrey Epstein trafficked girls for 25 years. And then things that I strongly disagree with are that he did this by himself and that there wasn't blackmail involved.

And if he did this by himself, why is Ghislaine Maxwell in prison? And was he going to the island with just some friends occasionally? And why are all these girls listed on the flight logs? It is so disingenuous.

And I think that the Trump administration really underestimated the intelligence of Americans and also their knowledge of this case because when they first released those documents, they must have felt that that would satiate people's curiosity to understand the Epstein case. And it did not. And then there was a huge blowback.

Chris Hedges

But there was nothing in those documents that hadn't already been released, is that correct?

Nick Bryant

Nothing new, no new revelations whatsoever. As I said, I released more revelations in 2015 than she did in 2025.

Chris Hedges

Do you believe that there is a client list?

Nick Bryant

I believe that there are files. I don't believe that it was like the Jeffrey Epstein travel agency and he kept a list of his clients on his refrigerator with a magnet. I don't believe that. But I believe that there's definitely a tremendous amount of documentation and also video evidence that there are Epstein files and if the government really came clean with the Epstein files and what's on the 300 gigabytes, think that we would really find out who the perpetrators are, who Epstein's co-conspirators are. Although we do know a number of them already, we actually would have definitive proof.

Chris Hedges

Let's talk a little about what we do know and I want you to talk about the affidavit that was about the woman under a pseudonym in California that was leveled against Trump but from what you released from what we know we do have some sense of what these video records may reveal can you talk about and that let's begin with just the Trump case.

Nick Bryant

When I put the black book up on the Internet, the black book was ultimately perlined by Alfredo Rodriguez, who was Epstein's house manager. And he tried to sell it to one of the attorneys that was launching civil suits at Epstein. And the attorney called the FBI. And the FBI did a sting and impounded the black book. And then I ultimately came by the black book through one of the attorneys.

And Alfredo Rodriguez had circled a number of names in the black book of people that he thought were in cahoots with Trump.

Chris Hedges

With Trump or you mean with Epstein?

Nick Bryant

With Epstein. And then we also had the lawsuit documentation of Virginia Giuffre. Maxwell sued her for defamation and she counter sued and Virginia named a number of her perpetrators in a lawsuit.

And this is where we can get double corroboration. For example, Alfredo Rodriguez circled Ghislaine Maxwell, who was definitely a perpetrator and a pimp. And Giuffre named her as a perpetrator and a pimp. Alfredo Rodriguez circled Ehud Barak, the former prime minister of Israel, and Virginia Giuffre named him as a perpetrator and a rather nasty character.

Les Wexner's name is circled by Rodriguez and Virginia Giuffre named him as a perpetrator. Alan Dershowitz's name is circled and Virginia Giuffre named him as a perpetrator. And Bill Richardson's name is circled and Giuffre named him as a perpetrator. He's the former New Mexico governor and he was also the Clinton's energy czar and Jean-Luc Brunel’s name is circled and he and Epstein put together, started a modeling agency called MC2 and Brunel…

Chris Hedges

Let me just interrupt Nick because it was copied on Trump's modeling agency.

Nick Bryant

Yes, yes. And that agency, Jean-Luc Brunel was buying girls in Eastern Europe, not renting them, but actually buying them. And he was bringing them into the United States. And according to Virginia Giuffre’s affidavit that she swore in 2015, Epstein and Brunel had some kind of connection with the State Department or some mechanism in the government where they were able to get either visas or passports for these girls who some of them were well, Virginia says they're as young as 12 and there's another report that [says] they're 11 and 12.

But then I know of therapists who have counseled Epstein victims and we can get into that later. And actually a lot of those victims were or a number of those victims were under the age of 10.

Donald Trump's name is also circled, but I haven't found any corroboration that he was a pedophilic perpetrator. There was a case launched by Katie Johnson, who's in California, and she said that she had been abused by Trump and Epstein. And there was an accompanying affidavit by a woman named Tiffany Doe who said that she recruited her.

But it's very difficult to know what exactly went on there because she, I guess, was threatened and Lisa Bloom represented her. And from what I've been told, she was deposited in a hotel. And this is when Trump and Hillary [Clinton] were in the homestretch and she was deposited in a hotel. And then Lisa Bloom picked her up the next morning and said, we're going to go to a press conference and she wasn't ready for that. Now that's what I've been told.

Chris Hedges

Now, Nick, she was 13 and Katie Johnson is a pseudonym. In the affidavit, she said that apparently Trump liked to watch Epstein's orgies while he got a hand job, that he complained about the oral sex given to him by apparently this 13 year old and a 12 year old, is that right?

Nick Bryant

There was a young girl named Maria and I don't think we ever found out her age, but she would have been around 12 or 13. Here's the problem with that. I spent three years looking for Katie Johnson. And I ultimately found her. And I've sent her some emails. I found her about a year and a half ago and I sent her some emails and she will not respond to me.

And she's put together a decent life for herself. She's selling real estate in the Southwest. She's got a boyfriend. You can see how her life's unfolded on Facebook. And she goes to Europe with her boyfriend occasionally. So she's put together a really comfortable life for herself. And she doesn't want to talk to anybody about it.

Chris Hedges

Didn't she get, I don't know to which point this is alleged, but wasn't she paid off?

Nick Bryant

We don't know. It was more the threats that, it was the threats and then the press conference that really decided that when she decided that she was going to recant everything that she said.

Unfortunately, because of how she was handled, it's very difficult to know exactly what went on. And that's why I looked for her for three years, I really wanted to know her story, but she wouldn't get back to me. So I don't know what to make of that, of the affidavit.

Chris Hedges

Alright, but the charge is out there but let's talk a little bit about what we do know about Dershowitz, for instance, who makes these claims that he only traveled on the Lolita Express with his wife. You know the flight logs are exposing that to be untrue.

But what do we do know about what happened with these powerful men did within this Epstein orbit?

Nick Bryant

Well, Dershowitz has long been a misogynist, for sure. And what happened with Dershowitz is Virginia Giuffre submitted an affidavit and said that she had been molested by him up to approximately six times. And then Dershowitz went on an offensive against her two attorneys, Brad Edwards and Paul Cassell. And Cassell had been a former federal judge.

Dershowitz was pounding on his chest saying “I'm gonna get their licenses to practice law. I'm gonna make sure that they never practice law again. I only fly with my wife. She flies everywhere with me!”

Well, then I got the logs and actually Dershowitz is taking lots of flights with girls like “Tatiana” and “Claire” and his wife is noticeably absent from those flight logs. And in the Gawker article I wrote, he was asked, what about this girl? What about that girl? And his steel trap mind became rather rusty because he couldn't remember those girls. And actually, when we asked him what the third, there was another, a third girl that was, her last name was unknown and he decided to diffuse it with humor.

He said, that could have been my mother. So with Dershowitz, and he's lobbied for the age of consent to be 14, regardless of someone's partner, which is pretty horrible. But he believes in that. And I think that there's somewhere where he's written that child pornography should be legal or child abuse material should be legal. So Alan Dershowitz doesn't seem to be an ethical bellwether.

And his long friendship with Jeffrey Epstein demonstrates that they were very, very close. And there was a Vanity Fair article about Epstein in 2001 and Dershowitz is extolling the virtues of Jeffrey Epstein. And he says, and then he gets really quaint at the end. He goes, “if Jeffrey Epstein didn't have any money, I would still eat hot dogs with him at Coney Island.”

Chris Hedges

Well, let's talk about Trump because Trump had a 15 year relationship with Epstein. I mean, according to Trump's biographer, they were very close for a long time.

Nick Bryant

According to Michael Wolff, yes, they were very close. And we don't really know what caused the chasm. Michael Wolff says it was a real estate deal that went awry. Other people say that it was, Epstein was trying to procure underage girls at Mar-a-Lago. So it's hard to know what caused that divide. But yes, they were very, very good friends.

Chris Hedges

But Nick, I mean, Wolff claims that they shared women.

Nick Bryant

And Wolff also claims that he saw pictures of topless underage girls on Trump's lap too. So these are the things that Michael Wolff has said and he's got a lot of recordings, but he hasn't made them public. So it's going to be interesting. When I had the black book in 2012, no one wanted to touch it. No one. And I went to every publication in New York City and I was talking to editors and publishers and no one wanted to touch it.

And then when we published it in 2015, I mean the floodgates opened and there have been tons of ink dumped on stories about the black book since then. Now, Wolff is saying that he has all these recordings, but no one in the mainstream media is willing to touch it, which you think at this point, someone in the mainstream media would go for it.

So that's a little perplexing to me, but I also know that I've been writing about this realm for 22 years and the mainstream media gets very, very tenuous when these types of subjects are brought up.

Chris Hedges

Well, let me tell you why. Because the people who run these organizations circulate among these groups. These are their friends. That's how stories got killed at the New York Times. The real estate developers who were all socializing with [A.G.] Sulzberger, when he was the publisher when I was there, complained about Sydney Schanberg’s writing about evicting people and destroying rent stabilized [apartments] and Sydney got fired.

I mean, so we have to be clear that the reason the media has been so reticent about reporting on any of this is because this is their social circle.

Nick Bryant

And according to a number of things that I've read, six corporations own 90% of the media in our country. How hard would it be to, I mean, because I've been at this for a long time, it's very easy to compromise people. There's three things that make people really stupid: one is greed, one is arrogance, and one is sex.

And a number of our politicians and a number of our captains of industry have those three in spades. So how hard would it be to compromise someone at the top of one of these mega corporations? And then there's also the Sherman Antitrust Act.

These titanic media conglomerates could be broken up within a week if we really wanted to use the Sherman Antitrust Act because they are what the Sherman Antitrust Act was actually conceived for and the government refuses to break up these titanic conglomerates.

So I have a tendency to think that there might be some kind of symbiosis there where the government and the media agree on certain things and not to cover certain things. I'm sure that you saw that at the New York Times, especially with the war in Iraq.

Chris Hedges

Yeah. Let's talk about what we know. Describe for me the world around Epstein and how it worked and what to the extent we know Epstein did, we know we had cameras all over the place. I think there was a report of somebody walking into a room in his New York mansion was just filled with video monitors from every room in the mansion but describe to us how that world worked and what these powerful figures, Clinton and others, did within it.

Nick Bryant

Well, we got to go back to the Palm Beach Police Department. There was a 14 year old girl that told her stepmother that she'd been molested by Jeffrey Epstein. And the 14 year old girl took her to the Palm Beach Police Department and she told the Palm Beach Police Department.

And the Palm Beach Police Department really didn't know much about Epstein. They just thought that he was a multimillionaire philanthropic type. They didn't have a beat on him at all. And the girl described the interior of his home and also described his anatomy. And that was enough for them to start launching an investigation.

And there was a girl named Haley Robson who had recruited this girl. And then she was plundering various high schools for other underage girls. And she had been used by Epstein when she was a minor too and Epstein would give her $200 or $300 for every victim that she recruited.

The Palm Beach Police Department ultimately found 23 victims of Jeffrey Epstein, and they had the statements of five, but then they had corroborating statements of 17 people. So they were going to arrest Jeffrey Epstein on five counts of unlawful sexual activity with a minor and one count of lewd and lascivious molestation, which could have put Jeffrey Epstein in prison for the rest of his life on just those counts, but then they knew of 17 other underage victims and that case got taken away from them and it was given to a grand jury in Florida.

And I don't know if your audience is familiar with how grand juries work, but a special prosecutor is chosen to oversee a grand jury and it's not adversarial. Grand jurors are just citizens that have shown up for jury duty and they've been filed into a grand jury. And the special prosecutor shows them the evidence that he deems or she deems is important and calls the witnesses that he or she deems is important.

And there was a New York Supreme Court judge who said that special prosecutors have so much power over grand jurors that they could get them to indict a ham sandwich. So what happened with that Epstein case was there were only two victims that were called. One had been 14 when she was molested by Epstein and now she was 16. And one had been 16 when she was molested by Epstein multiple times and now she was 18.

And they were skewered by this special prosecutor, just skewered. And that grand jury didn't indict Jeffrey Epstein on a single count of child abuse. And what's very strange is it indicted him on one count of adult pandering. The only two victims that testified had been minors.

And I've got the transcripts of, actually, that grand jury and people can go to my website, EpsteinJustice.com or the website that I'm the director of a 501(c)(3) called Epstein Justice. I show just how ridiculous that grand jury… the grand jurors and the special prosecutor are calling these girls prostitutes. I mean, the poor girl was molested when she was 14 and it really scarred her.

And that's what people don't understand is if you get molested when you're 14, it can scar you for the rest of your life. I mean, it can really be damaging, just once it can be damaging. So Michael Ryder, who was the chief of the Palm Beach Police Department, he is the real hero in this story. He would not back down. I mean, and he took lots of threats and there was a lot of pressure put on him, but he's a good guy and he's an honest guy and he's an ethical guy. He wouldn't back down.

And then he went to the Department of Justice and said, he called that grand jury the greatest miscarriage of justice in modern times. And he went to the Department of Justice and Alexander Acosta was the U.S. Attorney for the District of Southern Florida at that time. And Alexander Acosta and the Department of Justice acted like they were going to impanel a grand jury, but then there was radio silence.

And what they were doing was working out a deal with Epstein and his dream team of lawyers, which included Alan Dershowitz and Ken Starr, that was so perfidious that it's kind of mind boggling. And I'll get into it. So they worked out a non-prosecution agreement with Jeffrey Epstein and then they sealed it.

Now there's a law called the Victim Crime Right Act and according to that law, victims of crimes get to follow the adjudication of their perpetrator and actually get to confront their perpetrator, but the Department of Justice bypassed all of that and sealed that agreement. And then it was appealed and the judge in Florida, Judge [Kenneth] Marra, ultimately wanted to unseal it, but then the feds appealed his decision.

And it was decided in the 11th Circuit. And the 11th Circuit said, this should be unsealed. These documents should be unsealed. And it's a treasure trove. I've got emails between Assistant U.S. Attorney A. Marie Villafaña and Jay Lefkowitz, who's one of Epstein's attorneys. And the deal that they put together was so dirty, A. Marie Villafaña, in an email, says to Jay Lefkowitz, there's one magistrate that will sign off on this and we have to go before him.

So they eventually got their magistrate. But what happened with that deal is not only were the victims given, they weren't given any kind of say into what happened to Jeffrey Epstein, but that document gave blanket immunity to all of Jeffrey Epstein's co-conspirators. Blanket immunity, everyone.

Chris Hedges

But they didn't name them, did they?

Nick Bryant

They named a number of them. Yeah.

Chris Hedges

There were four that were named and then others who are unnamed, is that correct?

Nick Bryant

Yes, there were four that were named. But it's very definitive. It gave blanket immunity to everybody, anybody that was associated with Jeffrey Epstein.

So after that, Epstein was required, the feds made a deal with the state and Epstein was supposed to get 18 months and then he served 13. And he would go out during the day and he would actually molest underage girls while he was ostensibly…

Chris Hedges

He only had to be in the cell at night?

Nick Bryant

At night, yes. So he would molest underage girls when he was ostensibly incarcerated. And that deal is so dirty. And then Alexander Acosta was getting vetted by the Trump administration. He was the U.S. attorney for the Southern District. He was getting vetted by the Trump administration as Labor Secretary. And he was asked, why did you go so light on Epstein? And he said, I was told that Jeffrey Epstein was intelligence and I had to stand down. It was above my pay grade.

And now, there's only, and I looked into this and I've talked to various legal scholars, there's only two people in the government that can tell a US attorney to stand down. One is the attorney general and one is the president. And this was in 2007. So the attorney general was Alberto R. Gonzales and the president was George Bush II.

And I can't imagine that an attorney general is going to tell a US attorney to cover up a nationwide pedophile network without getting the okay from his boss, the president. He's not gonna go out on a limb like that. So the Epstein case was covered up at the very apex of the Bush II administration. And then the Obama administration continued the coverup and the Biden administration and also the Trump administration.

Chris Hedges

Let's talk a little bit about how it worked. He had his private island. He had a huge opulent mansion in New York. He had a large ranch, I think it was in New Mexico. He had his Florida residence. He would host these opulent dinners. And by the way, none of us really understand why he got all the money he did. He got quite a bit of money from Wexner from Victoria’s Secret.

There's been, of course, allegations that he had a homosexual relationship with Wexner, I don't know. But he himself didn't seem to do much. I don't think he ever finished college, right? He was a college dropout or something but he amassed millions upon millions from this wealthy clientele. But just talk a little bit how it worked with the island, with the people visiting him, just the logistics of it.

Nick Bryant

When I wrote a book called The Franklin Scandal, and the Epstein Scandal is very much a carbon copy of the Franklin Scandal in many ways. It was about a nationwide pedophile network that was covered up. And there isn't any books about stuff like this. Well, now there is, there's The Franklin Scandal. But I was trying to wrap my head around this whole thing, I mean, a nationwide network trafficking all these children, blackmail, intelligence.

It has all the stuff that Epstein has. And I eventually got a blackmail photographer to talk. And he was very honest with me at certain points. And then he became rather unctuous later. But I believe that he was telling me the truth early on for the most part. But he told me, I said, how does this work?

And he said, well, once you're compromised, it's like you're on a yacht. It's a beautiful yacht and it's a beautiful day and you can have anything you want on that yacht. But if you decide to get off that yacht, the people on the yacht are going to make sure that you drown. And there's zero incentive. Once someone is compromised, there's zero incentive for them to get off the yacht. And actually being compromised is going to help their career.

Dennis Hastert is a perfect example. He had been a pederast going back 30 or 40 years. And his assent in the House of Representatives was meteoric. And he was the Speaker of the House for seven years, even though he had this very dark background.

According to Sibel Edmonds, she’s an FBI whistleblower, the FBI was aware of Dennis Hastert’s shadow life when he was Speaker of the House. So that was obviously a situation where they were told to stand down, like Alexander Acosta was told to stand down because he was compromised.

Chris Hedges

Well if you're compromised, you're controlled. This is what [J. Edgar] Hoover at the FBI did. He had files on everyone and he used those files to maintain his own power.

Nick Bryant

And I think that there's a dark malignant corner of our intelligence. I hate to call it the CIA, but it might be some dark malignant corner of the CIA that compromises people. And, kompromat is not something that's new. And our media refuses to talk about it, which I find kind of mind boggling because it's so obvious. There was a Tennessee representative, US representative, named Tim Burchett came out about a year and a half ago and said, my colleagues are being compromised in honey traps.

And actually I had dinner with him about four months ago. And I was just amazed that a sitting congressman, U.S. congressman would come out and say that my colleagues are being compromised. And I was amazed by that type of integrity because I've known it for quite some time.

But kompromat is as old as our republic. Alexander Hamilton was having an affair with a 23-year-old. And she was married and her husband was blackmailing Alexander Hamilton. And there was a muckraking journalist that came across this story and outed Alexander Hamilton as having this affair. And [Thomas] Jefferson and Hamilton had a lot of antipathy towards each other.

So this muckraking journalist felt that he would get some kind of position in Jefferson's administration. And when Jefferson refused, he wrote a story about Jefferson having sex with one of his slaves, Sally Hemings. And DNA has shown that there's definitely, that there was a relationship between Sally Hemings and Thomas Jefferson. So when we're talking about kompromat, it's been going on forever, but it was certainly at the heart of our republic.

And then there's one example that I really like to use as far as being compromised. [Former United States Senator] Larry Craig was in Washington, D.C. for 25 years, and he was a very conservative, anti-gay, family values guy. And actually, I think he had the worst record of voting for gay rights in the Senate.

And I wrote a book called Confessions of a D.C. Madam: The Politics of Sex, Lies, and Blackmail, and I wrote it with a guy [Henry Vinson] who ran the largest escort service in Washington, D.C.. And he was sending escorts to Craig all the time. And then there was a documentary called Outrage. It was made by an eminent documentary maker, Kirby Dick. And he looked at closeted politicians and how they vote against gay rights.

And Craig came up in that movie and Kirby interviewed a number of people that had liaisons with Craig and that weren't involved with Henry Vinson. So Craig was in Washington, D.C. for 25 years as a hardcore conservative, getting escorts from all over. And what happened to him, he was in a bathroom in Minneapolis.

And there's, I guess, like a signaling system for gay people in bathrooms where one slaps his foot against the ground and then the other one realizes that he's hot to trot. And so that happened to Craig. He got arrested in an airport in Minneapolis for soliciting a vice squad cop. So here's a US senator that's trying to pick people up in bathrooms. How hard would it be to compromise that guy? I mean, a kid, for extra credit, with a smartphone could compromise Larry Craig. And I'm from Minneapolis, and I go back to Minneapolis about once a year. And I was sitting on a commode in a bathroom, and there was a guy in the stall next to me, and he was slapping his foot on the ground. I mean, really hard.

And I thought to myself, he had some kind of neurological disorder. But I'm just glad, I was about to say, can I help you? And I'm just glad that I didn't say that. So when we talk about blackmail, we've got multiple examples of blackmail.

Chris Hedges

So who? If these people are compromised, I know it's speculation. I mean, Ghislaine Maxwell's father, very close ties to the Mossad, Robert Maxwell, Ehud Barak, I think he, what is he, recorded 36 times visiting Epstein, to the extent that who's blackmailing who? How is it working?

Nick Bryant

So over the years, I've talked to people about kompromat and blackmailing. And from what I understand, the three countries that are the bellwethers of blackmail are the United States, Israel and the U.K. One would think that Russia would be in that mix.

Chris Hedges

Russia's pretty high up there. Ask anybody who's served as a diplomat in Moscow.

Nick Bryant

Absolutely and one would think that Russia would be in that mix too. But the people that I've talked to about it have said that those are the top three: US, Israel, and the UK.

So blackmail has been integral to our political system and with The Franklin Scandal, with Confessions of a D.C. Madam, with Epstein, there was a CIA asset who, when I wrote Confessions of a D.C. Madam, there was a CIA asset and we were able to show that it was a CIA asset, who was getting gay escorts from Henry Vinson. And we're talking mid 80s, he was spending up to $25,000 a month on gay escorts.

And his home was wired for audiovisual blackmail. And he was definitely a CIA asset. With Epstein, people say, was he working for the Mossad? And my reply on that is generally Epstein very well might have been working with the Mossad, but I can't imagine the CIA letting the Mossad compromise American politicians on American soil without getting a cut of that intelligence.

And when I think of the Mossad and I think of the CIA, I kind of think of the Genovese crime family and the Gambino crime family. They're always working together. And I think what we have with these intelligence services is very large crime families. Although there are people in these intelligence services that know nothing about the darker side. I should say that.

I have met people in the CIA that, or who have worked for the CIA that I think are pretty decent. And it's so compartmentalized there that although one of them had gone to a pretty high level, he was not aware of, like MK Ultra, he was not aware of that at all.

Chris Hedges

Let's talk, Nick, before we close here, about what all this means, why it's important. It has, of course, created divisions within the MAGA base who feel betrayed. Why is this important? And what's going to happen next?

You know, there were reports once that Ronald Reagan, from his time in Hollywood, there was a video of him, I don't know, having a sexual romp, which the Reagan administration managed to quite effectively destroy that may be rumor, I can't remember where I read it, but let's talk about what all this means.

Nick Bryant

What this means is that with some dark malignant corner of our intelligence, and we know about the CIA fomenting coups and releasing mosquitoes with dengue fever over Cuba. I mean, the CIA has done a lot of nasty things to a lot of different countries. We've imposed like [former President of Chile Augusto] Pinochet, the Shah [of Iran Mohammad Reza Pahlavi], [Former President of the Republic of Indonesia] Suharto, the CIA had their hand in all of that.

And those guys are pretty genocidal, especially Suharto. Americans have come to accept that. And we've been lied to a lot. I think we were lied to about the genesis of COVID. I do believe that it came out of that Wuhan lab. And actually, there have been a number of scientists that have said that it did. And the government has more or less conceded that we were lied to about that.

No heads rolled. We were lied to about the financial meltdown. No heads rolled. And we were lied to about the Iraq war. Blatant lies. That actually could have been exposed in real time. But no heads rolled. This is different.

Chris Hedges

Let's be clear, Nick, those few of us who tried were rather ruthlessly pushed aside, to put it mildly.

Nick Bryant

Yes, it didn't work out very well for you when you tried to tell the truth about Iraq. But molesting children, that's something completely different. Molesting American children. That's something that's completely different. I think that Americans have learned a lot about malfeasance from the CIA over the years, but this is something that just is very troubling.

And I just think that Americans, they can eat a lot of lies but about child sexual abuse and the government's involvement, they cannot eat that lie because when you cover up a crime, you're aiding and abetting that crime. So in the very least, our government is aiding and abetting child trafficking.

And if you look at the numbers of the abuse that happens in the United States, I'm using Centers for Disease Control (CDC) numbers. According to the CDC, 25% of underage girls and 5% of underage boys have been molested. And people in the field think it's slightly conservative for underage girls and way too conservative for underage boys. But if you just go with the CDC numbers, you've got over 50 million Americans that have been molested when they were underage.

And the Department of Health and Human Services commissioned a study and that study found that between 240,000 and 325,000 women and children are trafficked in the United States every year. And this is where it gets kind of mind blowing is if we just go with 240,000, if we go with the lowest number of the Department of Health and Human Services report, there's a federal human trafficking report that comes out every year. And in 2023, which is the latest one, it found that 664 individuals in the United States had been charged with child trafficking.

And there's millions of hours of child abuse material that infests the internet. And last year, there were 1,375 individuals that were convicted for making child abuse material and disseminating it. So you've got millions of Americans that have been molested, that have been trafficked. And this is something that people can identify with because it's so ubiquitous in our society.

One in four girls have been molested when they were underage. So this is something that, regardless of what the CIA has done in the past or intelligence has done in the past, this is something that can't be overlooked. And Trump said that he was going to be transparent about this. And that memo that they released last week is, I mean, completely fabricated, completely fabricated.

And I mean, there are some MAGA people that will drink the Kool-Aid, but there's a lot of good people that believed in Trump and they cannot abide by that document. They cannot sign off on those lies and that document because that document is saying that all these victims of Jeffrey Epstein, all of them, or most of them, when they say that they were abused by other people, are lying.

And the Epstein Victims Compensation Fund was established to give settlements to women that had been trafficked and molested by Jeffrey Epstein. 225 women have applied and 150 settlements have been awarded and 12 women have declined settlements because if you get, and David Boies is one of the architects of the victim compensation program, I believe he's a very dirty lawyer, but anyway, he oversaw this and he represented a number of these victims.

But if you get a settlement from that fund or that program, you've got to sign an NDA [non-disclosure agreement] and you cannot name any other of your perpetrators. So that's another example of if these girls didn't have other perpetrators, why did they have to sign an NDA where they can't name additional perpetrators?

And this is where it gets really ominous. Well, I mean, the whole thing is ominous, but it even gets more ominous. I've been involved in, I've been an activist with anti-child trafficking for a number of years, as soon as I realized how endemic it was. And the National Center on Sexual Exploitation has like a global summit every year, and I've spoken at three of those. And I spoke at a number of conferences.

And over the years, I've gotten to know a lot of therapists, psychologists, psychiatrists that work with victims of sexual abuse. And one of them is an eminent psychologist. Everyone in that field would know her name. And she had a client who described the interior of Epstein's home and a number of things about Epstein that she possibly couldn't have known unless she was there.

But she was trafficked by Epstein when she was under 10 years old. And the psychologist tried to get her compensation from that fund and the fund wouldn't give it to her. And that happened with another therapist that I know who believes that she is counseling or has a client of someone who was trafficked by Epstein when she was under 10 years old.

And that's another really, really egregious side of the media. The media has decided that the youngest victim is 14, which is really bad, but they're not going to report on victims under the age of 14. And Virginia Giuffre said that these pedophilic orgies definitely had girls that were 12.

Chris Hedges

And let's mention that she committed suicide. I think her father claims, but anyway, she committed suicide. I just want to close with Epstein's death. We don't have any footage, despite what has been said there.

The cameras were not working in his cell block, so we don't know what happened. The former New York medical examiner who was hired by his brother and oversaw the autopsy claimed that his injuries were consistent with a homicide. Let's just close with that. What happened to Epstein himself.

Nick Bryant

Well, I mean, there were a lot of anomalies that night where cameras weren't working. You know, the Bureau of Prisons took a lot of heat for that. And if they had cogent video of that night in Epstein's cell, they would have released it at that point. What was released by the Trump administration was a joke. I mean, even if it wasn't edited, it was still a joke.

Chris Hedges

Well, it wasn't anywhere near his cell, right?

Nick Bryant

No, no. But here's the thing about that. I've been approached by various news outlets to talk about Jeffrey Epstein's death, and I generally decline because that's something that you can go around in circles with. What I want with Jeffrey Epstein is I want justice for the victims and I want the government to come clean.

And I started an organization, a 501(c)(3) called Epstein Justice. Your audience can go to EpsteinJustice.com. And we have webinars every month. And we provide people with the tools that they can use to start putting pressure on their legislators. And there was a, let me see if I can find it here.

There was a motion, House Resolution 3633 that was offered by Representative [Ro] Khanna that would require the Attorney General to preserve and release any records related to Jeffrey Epstein. Representative [Michelle] Fischbach voted no. Representative [Ralph] Norman voted yes. Representative [Erin] Houchin voted no. Representative [Nick] Langworthy voted no. Representative Austin Scott voted no, Representative [Morgan] Griffith voted no, Representative [Brian] Jack voted no, and then the chairperson, Representative [Virginia] Foxx, voted no.

It was defeated, it was a seven to five defeat. We can name these representatives. These representatives are trying to impede our knowledge of Jeffrey Epstein and we're going to address those representatives. And actually, in our next webinar, which is on July 22nd, we're going to show how these representatives have impeded. We got to start calling people out individually.

Chris Hedges

What about Ghislaine Maxwell? She's serving a 20-year sentence. She must know a lot, but she hasn't spoken.

Nick Bryant

Well, she built the machine, or certainly helped build the machine that destroyed a lot of girls. We're getting mixed messages from what's happening with Ghislaine Maxwell. I mean, for her to only be sentenced to 20 years is a joke because child trafficking is a heavy sentence in the federal system. It's 15 years to life.

And Ghislaine Maxwell was guilty of multiple counts of child trafficking, but she was only indicted on one. And she was given 20 years, but she was indicted on two conspiracies. No one else was indicted. I mean, that just shows you how screwy this whole thing is. And she was moved in, if you're an exemplary inmate and you're getting pretty close to the end of your sentence, you're often moved into a dormitory style living, which is very easy, much easier than the bars and the cells.

She was moved into dormitory living very, very quickly. So she's been treated about as cush as a prisoner can possibly be treated. And she knows a lot. I believe that she was told to keep her mouth shut and eat some time and then she'll be taken care of or be able to keep all the money. With the Franklin Scandal, you had one of the pimps kept his mouth shut, did about 10 years for crimes that weren't related to child abuse.

And then he had a no-show job waiting for him in Alexander, Virginia at a BMW dealership. And the other one committed suicide. And I think the other one, his name was Craig Spence, it's speculated on the internet that he was suicided. I have a tendency to think that Craig Spence was given a deal that he could either kill himself or else the dark malignant corner of intelligence that he worked for and compromised people with would kill him.

I think that he was given that alternative. And because he was a guy that was too used to creature comforts and living the high life. And I think Epstein was too. I think Epstein was, I don't think he would have gone gently into that good night, which would definitely have been a motive to kill him.

Chris Hedges

And we should be clear that, according to [Michael] Wolff anyway, Trump was considering giving Ghislaine Maxwell a pardon.

Nick Bryant

According to Wolff, I haven't seen any information other than what's coming from Michael Wolff about that. What's interesting about Maxwell's adjudication is that it's been brought to the Supreme Court. She's been denied at every appellate level. And the Department of Justice has put her case on suspension twice.

So we have no idea what's going on there, whether the Department of Justice is building a bigger case for her against her, although it's really difficult to build a much more airtight case against her, ironclad case. But the Department of Justice has suspended the vote, or whether or not the Supreme Court is going to listen to the Ghislaine Maxwell case twice.

So that is something, it could be there's a huge turnover in the judiciary because of the Trump administration or it could be something ominous. We just have to find out. We have to wait and see and then we'll find out.

Chris Hedges

Great. Thanks, Nick. I want to thank Diego [Ramos], Thomas [Hedges], Sofia [Menemenlis], Max [Jones], as well as Victor [Padilla], who produced the show. You can find me at ChrisHedges.Substack.com.

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Photos

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