The Epstein Files
Question Everything
Brian Reed
4.6 • 707 Ratings
🗓️ 25 September 2025
⏱️ 54 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Jeffrey Epstein’s crimes have been picked apart in headlines, documentaries, and endless conspiracy theories. And yet there have continued to be shocking new revelations in the story this year, as President Trump’s base has pressured him to release the government’s files about Epstein.
In this episode of Question Everything, host Brian Reed brings together the reporters who know the case best – along with one of their Trump-supporting producers – for drinks and a candid, no-holds-barred conversation. They compare notes, challenge each other’s assumptions, and reveal what it really takes to separate fact from rumor in a story that has tested the limits of journalism.
It’s one of the most provocative and confronting discussions Brian’s ever hosted about power, accountability and what’s at stake when the media goes up against billionaires and their networks.
Check out our Substack, by the way, where we get into juicy behind the scenes details and other good stuff from our episodes.
“Question Everything” is a production of KCRW and Placement Theory.
Drinking and fact-checking don’t always go hand in hand, so clarifying and correcting a few statements from the conversation here – which honestly in themselves give a sense of just how many crannies of global power the tendrils of the Epstein story reach into.
We reached out to Anouska De Georgiou to see if she wanted to comment, but we didn’t hear back.
Leslie Wexner is not the founder of Victoria’s Secret – he bought the company in 1982, and he said Jeffrey Epstein had stolen $46 million from him, not $60 million. Meanwhile investor Leon Black paid Epstein $170 million for supposed tax advice – not $160 million.
Virginia Giuffre sued Prince Andrew as an individual, not the Crown itself. Tara Palmeri’s reporting that Elon Musk dm’d Virgina Giuffre saying Trump would release the files is based on Virginia telling her this – Tara didn’t see the DM.
At one point, Eric says that in 2015, Roger Stone called Epstein’s island a “democrat orgy island”. Really, Stone wrote a book excoriating the Clintons called The Clinton’s War on Women, and there’s a chapter in there called Orgy Island, which highlights Bill Clinton’s friendship with Epstein. So Roger Stone didn’t call Epstein’s island a democrat orgy island. Just “orgy island”.
And last, but not least: the pope who was in a picture with Jeffrey Epstein, which was displayed on Epstein’s credenza, was John Paul II.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | A couple weeks ago, we did that thing we do now and again on our show. We closed up the Bibber and Bell Wine Store in Brooklyn, pulled some bottles off the shelves, and got together a group of reporters to talk shop. This time, it was reporters who have covered the Jeffrey Epstein story for years. In one case, for two decades. A story that has been so inescapable this year that even as we were setting up to record, there was breaking news about Epstein. I can't believe this just dumped. A House committee had just released an indecorous drawing of a woman's body, I'm sure you heard about this, with Donald Trump's signature on it from a book of notes compiled by friends of Epstein for his 50th birthday. Trump says it's fake. Where is it? Is it DOJ or is it the House Oversight? Oh, no, you're right. The conversation that ensued on this evening, sometimes heated, sometimes drunken, sometimes eye-opening, you will not want to miss this one. As one of our guests wrote me afterwards, it was an unusual evening. And another, I had a blast and maybe a bit too much whiskey. |
| 0:57.0 | From KCRW in Placement Theory, this is Question Everything. |
| 0:59.7 | I'm Brian Reed. |
| 1:01.0 | Stick around. |
| 1:05.5 | Even though Epstein has been dead for six years, somehow he has managed to haunt our news cycle as one of the most consequential stories of Donald Trump's second term. |
| 1:19.1 | Trump and other mag of figures has spent years promising their base that if Trump got reelected, he would release the files, all the secret information the government holds from its investigations into Jeffrey Epstein's crimes. |
| 1:32.0 | And now Trump got reelected, and he won't release the files. |
| 1:36.6 | The Epstein story has unleashed a kind of upside-down world where Trump's own party and base are furious with him, |
| 1:43.2 | which is quite a thing for a news story to be able to do these days. |
| 1:46.3 | And it's meant that reporters and news outlets have trained their sites back on Epstein and specifically on Jeffrey Epstein's relationship with Donald Trump. |
| 1:53.7 | It's well known the two were friends for years and what Trump's motives might be for not wanting to release the files. |
| 2:00.3 | The Epstein story, it's the decathlon of reporting challenges. |
| 2:04.2 | There's corruption, pataphilia, sex abuse, human trafficking, money laundering, fraud, suicide, alleged espionage. |
| 2:12.2 | The reporters we assembled have covered many of those tendrils of the story. |
| 2:15.5 | They still are, and I wanted to get them together to compare notes and get some perspective on this behemoth of a story. What is known, what isn't, what are they looking into right now, what are the things they most want to find out, and even the things reporters can and can't say about this story to this day. Here's who joined us. We have Vicki Ward, British accent, who's been a guest |
| 2:35.9 | at the wine shop before. Testing, testing, one, two, three. Vicky wrote what is pretty much the first |
| 2:41.4 | profile of Jeffrey Epstein for Vanity Fair in 2003. She's the only one here who actually got to know |
| 2:47.1 | and meet Jeffrey Epstein. This was before much about Epstein, let alone his sex crimes, was publicly known. |
| 2:54.2 | Vicky was assigned to look into this eccentric, wealthy man and where his money came from. |
| 2:58.8 | While she was reporting, two sisters came forward with allegations that Epstein had sexually abused them. |
| 3:04.9 | Vicki reported it out, but ultimately Vanity Fair cut the sisters from |
| 3:08.2 | the piece. These could have been the first sex abuse allegations against DeBstein to come to |
... |
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