Via America’s Lawyer: After years of recruiting underage girls for sex trafficking, Jeffrey Epstein’s elusive partner Ghislaine Maxwell is arrested and may finally divulge the names of Epstein’s high-profile clientele. Also, 16 Democratic senators vote against the withdrawal of U.S. troops in Afghanistan. Could the ‘Russian Bounty’ narrative be a tool to perpetuate our military presence in the Middle East? Mike Papantonio & Farron Cousins discuss.
Transcript:
*This transcript was generated by a third-party transcription software company, so please excuse any typos.
Mike Papantonio: Finally get to learn more about the sorted world that Epstein created. Joining me to talk about this is Farron Cousins from the trial lawyer magazine. Farron, you know, this story just is, it’s a story without end. Finally, though, now here’s what’s bothersome about, there’s so many bothersome things about this story, but why did it take 24 years for the FBI and the government to do their job in arresting this woman? 24 years. What’s your take?
Farron Cousins: Well, I think a lot of it has to do with the fact that Epstein was obviously very well connected and therefore everyone connected to him benefited from those relationships. I mean, even Maxwell and other unnamed accomplices themselves benefited from that non prosecution agreement back in 2007 or 2008, the first time that Epstein ran into legal trouble. That particular non prosecution agreement actually said, not just, we’re not gonna prosecute you Jeffrey Epstein, but we’re also not going to prosecute any of your accomplices. We’re not gonna prosecute any of your accomplices that we don’t even know about yet. That is how far reaching this thing went. And it is because Epstein was a powerful guy with powerful friends and his friends, unfortunately, since then have only gotten more and more powerful. So it is remarkable that they even decided to go after Ghislaine. I’m very happy they did. And I think it’s because the evidence against her at this point was just overwhelming.
Mike Papantonio: Well, okay. Let, let me go to two things that you just mentioned. First of all, the non prosecution agreement. That is unique to Florida. Okay. Now, if you’ll, she she’s, the crimes she committed took place all over, all over the world. She had her rich, powerful elite friends giving her money to hide during, while this has been going on, giving her money to hide, giving her places to hide, helping her, you know, on the run since Jeffrey Epstein died in prison. So, but what, what we know about this is she’s hiding because if she felt comfortable that this, this non pros prosecution agreement was going to give her a break, she wouldn’t be hiding, but she’s got problems with it. Here it is. First of all, you had a thuggish judge who allowed it to happen. This judge never should have allowed, never should have signed off on this.
You had a prosecutor who was absolutely in bed with Epstein and all the lead folks surrounding Epstein. And so they signed this thing and they never told victims about it. That’s where the flaw is. I think this thing it fails from abinitio. It fails from the very beginning. It should be set aside. She doesn’t have protection in my estimation. So what, Farron, let me ask you this, as this goes forward, you know, of course the names come out, but the reason the names seem important to me is because you get a sense of how, how she Maxwell and Epstein really hustled some of America’s most powerful people. What is your take on that?
Farron Cousins: Oh, I agree a hundred percent. I mean, we already know a lot of the names that have been named. We don’t know if they participated in the abuse, but we do know, I mean, there’ve been half a dozen or more photos of Ghislaine Maxwell and Donald Trump over the last few days. There is a picture of Ghislaine Maxwell sticking her head out into the aisle as Bill Clinton walks Chelsea down for her wedding. This woman knows these men, you know, current and former United States president. Good friends with former democratic governor of New Mexico Bill Richardson. Elon Musk is out there. I mean, she even was at the party with Stephen Hawking when Jeffrey Epstein was trying to recruit scientists for his bizarre experiments he wanted to do.
This woman is the only other person I believe aside from Jeffrey Epstein himself, who knows everyone that was there, everyone that participated, and we’re already seeing Alan Dershowitz, you know, he’s back out there with his denials before anybody can accuse him of any other inappropriate behavior. He’s already started with that. And there’s going to be more and hopefully, you know, what happened to Epstein does not happen to Maxwell because we need to know the extent of this underage, you know, essentially a pedophile ring that Epstein was running here. We need to know was involved.
Mike Papantonio: Okay. So, so some of it, it’s interesting. Okay. The people you mentioned, Mexico, New Mexico Bill Richardson, George Mitchell. Okay. Bill Clinton. So you go to, and then of course, on the other side, of course he was a Democrat back then Donald Trump. There, if you read this, there was this big, this really big effort the Democrats were in charge then. And what was happening with Epstein was he was trying to buy as much protection as he can. And the question comes down to, for example, what is that peculiar painting that was hanging in his New York house, where it shows Bill Clinton cross-dressing? What was that about? Was it, and it’s almost as if he had this, he had this power to get these people to do what they had to do, because he had him set up with orgies. We know the 14 year old, the, the, these, some of these folks that are coming forward now said they were 14 and 15 years old participating in orgies that were coordinated by Maxwell.
So, I mean, as you look at this, she’s going to look, she is going to spill the beans. There is no question. And these people that think that they’ve escaped all this, it’s just begun. I mean, you know, it’s, it’s really a matter of it’s really matter of time, she won’t do well in prison. She won’t be, do, do well locked up, and it’s just a matter of time, but we’re going to get all the names and we’re going to get the truth about the connections of some of these folks.
Last week Democrats and Republicans joined together to send Trump a message that they’re not going to support ending the forever war in the Middle East. This to me is the most peculiar story. Look, first of all, we got a president who hasn’t done that many great things, but getting us out of Afghanistan, that’s pretty, that is pretty darn important. All of a sudden we see this new, we see this new, look, we’ve always assumed that the Republicans for the most part have been warmongers. I mean, they love a good war. And then, you know, just, just, just look history after history, but now what’s developing even more solidly is this list of Democrats. What was it 12 or 13 Democrats that signed up on the idea? No, we don’t want to leave Afghanistan and we, we want to, we want to keep our, our, our soldiers in Germany. Pick it up from there. This story to me is very bothersome because we used to have a line in the sand. They were called Democrats, but not anymore.
Farron Cousins: Right. You, you and I have been in this business long enough to, we’ve done plenty of segments way back in the day when Democrats were running on ending the Afghanistan war, anytime they’d run for House or Senator or president, that was part of the pitch there was, we’re going to end these, you know, George W. Bush Wars, and they’ve done nothing but perpetuate them. You know, all of those promises that we’re going to end this we’re the antiwar party. It’s a complete sham. 16 Senate Democrats, you know, a lot of people you would expect, but unfortunately, some that you wouldn’t have expected to follow this, like Sheldon Whitehouse.
Seeing his name as one of the people who said I don’t support withdrawing half our troops from Afghanistan, that was quite shocking to, to be perfectly honest. Sheldon Whitehouse has been, you know, fairly solid. And this was a, a huge, huge mistake for him. But to see these Democrats, as they really are, that that’s telling the public something. You know, on certain issues, there’s not a whole lot of daylight between the left and the right. And unfortunately, these forever wars is one of those issues where you’re not going to find much disagreement between Republicans and Democrats in Congress.
Mike Papantonio: Yeah. We’re talking, we’re talking about, we’re talking about a war that’s cost us in excess of a trillion and a half dollars, trillion and a half. We’re talking about a war for two decades. There are 150,000 fatalities in this war. Okay. So we start there and we say, what is happening with the Democrats to where they think this is a good talking point now? Now look, New York Times predictable. They, they ginned up the Iraq war, CNN, ginned up the Iraq war, MSNBC, the Iraq war. You might remember their big maps all over the floor and people walking around and trying to tell us day to day, how they’re embedded journalist are there for the war.
It was big business. They made big business. They, this was a big business by kill, by killing Americans. That’s what it was about. It was big business killing Americans. So as we, as we look at this, there really are no, there really are no surprises, right? I mean, because if, if you, if you consider the Democrats now are on this jihad also about, about Russia. That we can’t get out of Germany because of the Russia threat. Talk about that if you would.
Farron Cousins: Well, you know, you, you hit on a really good point there too with the media, because the media just a week, week and a half ago, was actually trying to keep the United States in Afghanistan before this vote even took place. When they’re running all of these stories that still have not been verified and we don’t have the actual evidence saying that Russia is paying the Taliban bounties to go out there and kill US soldiers in Afghanistan. And if that’s not, you know, a cause to keep supporting these endless forever wars, then I don’t know what is, but the media knew what they were doing. You know, I believe these intelligence officials who leaked these stories knew what they were doing, especially with the timing of this. This is to, you know, coincidental to be an accident. They knew that this vote was coming up.
They knew what Trump was trying to do. Again, as you said, one of the only good things this man would have done in office, and here, the Democrats teamed up with a member of the Cheney family, you know, partially based on these unverifiable stories from the New York Times. And here we are, and they’re still trying to sell us this boogeyman that’s always out there. It’s behind every sinister thing that happens here in the United States. You know, they can admit, God forbid that maybe our country’s just screwed up and we make bad decisions. It always has to be some outside actor who’s, who’s made things so much worse for us.
Mike Papantonio: Yeah. So, so all of a sudden, all of a sudden we see this bounty story. Now the bounty story comes out at the same time that Trump is talking about, we got get out of Afghanistan. It also comes out at the same time that the state department is trying to consider, how do we, how do we, how do we do sanctions going forward? This bounty story just happens to be there at the right time leaked by the CIA, which loves a war. Leaked by the folks who want a perpetual war. So there’s a connection here. And I think as it continues to, I think as it continues to develop, we’re going to see a lot more, the connection involved with this story.
