>> Today, we announce the unsealing of sex trafficking charges against Jeffrey Epstein.
The charges allege that Epstein sexually abused young girls by enticing them to engage in
sex acts for money.
>> That was the US attorney for the southern district of New York outlining the criminal
charges that Jeffrey Epstein is facing.
He has been arrested.
He is in custody, and this is following an investigation into acts involving minors,
minor girls to be specific.
In fact, we have some more video from the US attorney outlining exactly what he's accused
of doing, take a look.
>> Beginning at, at least 2002 and continuing until 2005, Epstein is alleged to have abused
dozens of victims by causing to them to engage in sex acts with him at his mansion in New
York and at his estate in Palm Beach, Florida.
The underage girls were initially recruited to provide Epstein with massages, and often
did so nude or partially nude.
These massages became increasingly sexual in nature and would typically include one
or more sex acts as specified in the indictment.
This conduct as alleged went on for years.
And it involved dozens of young girls, some as young as 14 years old at the time that
they were allegedly abused.
As alleged, Epstein was well aware that many of his victims were minors.
>> Now, this isn't the first time he's faced charges, very similar charges.
In fact, about a decade ago, prosecutors went after him for similar allegations.
But unfortunately, Alexander Acosta, who is now Trump's Labor Secretary, was the prosecutor
in that case.
And what he did was pursue a non-prosecution plea deal without even notifying the victims
that he was supposed to be representing.
And so in secret, he works out this plea deal and then Jeffrey Epstein gets off relatively
easily.
He wasn't even really in prison.
He served some time behind bars, but in reality, he was able to leave and work and then come
back and spend the night.
So it was just a disgusting plea deal.
Again, the victims were not notified about it.
It was done in secret.
And I'm happy to see that he's now facing charges again and hopefully justice will be
served in this case.
>> Okay, so a couple of weeks of important context and some details to this.
So this is about some of the same allegations between 2002 and 2005.
Prosecutors now say dozens of girls were involved.
Originally, investigators had found 30 victims.
The Miami Herald, when they did their excellent investigation of this, found 60 victims.
Credit should be given to Julie K Brown.
She's the Miami Herald reporter who originally broke the story.
We actually gave her the watchdog award for excellence in journalism this past year when
we did our Watchdog Correspondents' Dinner.
It's the only award we give for journalism, and she more than earned it.
It was wonderful piece of reporting, and that was the only reason why this arrest has happened
today.
If she had not brought it back up, the authorities on their own almost certainly would not have
re-engaged in this case.
Now, the important distinctions, what the prosecutor explained today is, hey, listen,
I'm in Manhattan.
This plea deal happened at the state level in Florida and it happened with the US attorneys
down in Southern Florida.
That doesn't have anything to do with me.
I didn't agree to that plea deal so it's not a deal for me.
I'm now bringing up charges for what happened in New York as well as in Florida.
So this is not double jeopardy and it does not endanger or affect his earlier plea deal.
So in Florida that still is the case but in New York, he's in a world of trouble.
Now, to Ana's point about how little he served, he got a 13-month sentence on reduced charges
of solicitation of prostitution.
That's not the issue here.
If he was soliciting prostitutes, I would be against this massive investigation and
spending of all of this money on pursuing a rich guy who was getting massages from adults,
right.
That is not the case here.
It is underage girls and he clearly preyed on them.
He had a method on preying on them.
He would even sometimes look for homeless girls.
Why?
Because they had no power and no one to fight back for them.
And that is why the abuse of power that happened down in Florida is even worse and uglier.
But wait, if you say well, okay, he got 13 months and Acosta, the current labor secretary
defends it by saying he was put on a sex offender list.
Yeah, if you're a sex offender and you've had sexual relations with dozens of underage
girls, it's not a big deal to be on the sex offender list.
That's what the sex offender list was for.
But for rich people, they always feel like we get hey, look at that.
We did slap them on the wrist.
No, you're not supposed to slap a guy like that on the wrist.
You're supposed to pursue real justice.
But get a load of this, he was out of the seven days of the week.
He was allowed out of jail for six out of the seven.
That's not a jail sentence.
They say he has to go to the work cuz he has a really important job.
No, he has a really well-paying job.
He ran a hedge fund, but it's not like it's earth shattering.
It's really important.
No, that's saying he's a rich guy who bought off all the prosecutors in this case.
So for six out of seven days, he went to work on his really important job of being rich.
And so I mean this was, it stunk to high heaven.
That's why I loved it, that Julie K Brown exposed him in the first place, and brought
all these back up.
>> Exactly, so I actually wanna go to Julie K Brown because following the arrest of Epstein,
of course, she was interviewed.
And a part of this story that you cannot ignore or avoid is Epstein's ties to incredibly powerful
individuals, including Bill Clinton and Donald Trump.
And so she was asked about that in a recent interview, and here's what she had to say.
>> Let me ask you quickly if I could hear Julie, just about the rogues gallery we've
been kind of talking about.
Virginia brings up Alan Dershowitz, Larry Summers, Kevin Spacey, Bill Clinton, Donald
Trump as well.
I'm curious of how you've seen that come to bear as you've been reporting this in the
aftermath of it.
We had Tom Winter, my colleague here at NBC News talking about, that the rest of other
principals in this investigation had been under because of Jeffery Epstein.
Individuals have been followed, their kids had been photographed, etc.
How have you seen that nexus of power come to bear as you've reported this, and in the
aftermath of your reporting?
>> Well, I saw a lot of pressure.
Needless to say, these are very powerful people and I think that they're sweating a little
bit especially today.
We don't know how deep this went, how far reaching it went in government.
But there's been a lot of people that I could see their names on these message pads on a
regular basis as part of the evidence.
These message pads where they would call Epstein and leave messages such as I'm at this hotel,
why do you do that?
Except that you're expecting him perhaps to send a girl to visit you at your hotel.
So there is probably quite a few important people, powerful people, who are sweating
it out right now.
We'll have to wait and see.
>> So that's telling.
That answer was telling.
And she's very careful in, she doesn't want to incriminate anyone who hasn't been found
guilty of doing anything wrong.
She doesn't speculate at all.
But it has been reported over and over and over again that Epstein did have ties to these
incredibly powerful people, both in the political world and the financial world.
And so I'm curious to see how this all kind of plays out.
But what I can't get over is what our current labor secretary did in the previous case in
pursuing this non-prosecution plea deal.
Why did he do that?
Why is he currently Trump's secretary?
What's going on there?
And will there be justice in that case?
Because what he did there was 100% wrong.
You're supposed to representing the victims here as a prosecutor and he did the exact
opposite.
>> In fact, there's an important detail on that we gotta tell you.
And again, Brown broke this part of the story as well back in the day.
So he not only negotiated this awful, awful deal.
Just quick aside, guys, Epstein claims he has an important job.
That's why he could get out of jail for six out of seven days.
Could you imagine if you went and made that case in front of a judge?
Yeah, no, look, I did this terrible thing.
I did child molestation, but I have a really important job as a mechanic.
And so by the way, your job is probably more important cuz it's more relevant to feeding
your family.
But that would never fly for someone who wasn't rich, never ever.
But on top of that, Acosta then breaks the law by not informing the victims before they
go and do the plea deal.
The law clearly states and in April this year, judge said yes.
This was a clear violation of the law.
You must tell the victims, but Accosta did not tell the victims until it was too late.
And the reason you'd want to do that is if you're doing a shady deal, and you don't want
the victims to ruin the sweetheart deal that you had with this rich guy.
And look there are big heavyweight Republicans and big heavyweight Democrats who are implicated
in this.
So and while the idiots in the right wing and conspiracy theorists chase around pizza
parlors in Washington, here's actual child molestation happening with some of the most,
well, certainly some of the richest people in the country.
And potentially with some of the most politically connected people in the country, it's wide
out in the open.
You don't have to go to a nonexistent basement of a pizza parlor.
It's right here.
But since it involves potentially their beloved Donald Trump, all of a sudden the right wing
conspiracy theorists can't find the child molestation that's wide out in the open.
Anyway, look, we don't know that Trump did it or Clinton did it, but they palled around.
Here I'm gonna give you a quote from Donald Trump right now, okay?
But they all knew that his jet, Epstein's jet was nicknamed the Lolita Express.
And they would get on that jet.
They'd pal around with this guy.
A lot of people, Dershowitz says he got a massage but nothing happened during the massage,
maybe, maybe so.
He's good in court.
Maybe he'll find himself in court and he'll have to explain how nothing happened at that
massage.
I don't know.
That's what courts are for.
Trump told New York Magazine back in the day about Epstein.
>> And this is in 2002.
>> Yeah, he said, he's, quote, a terrific guy.
He's a lot of fun to be with.
It's even said that he likes beautiful women as much as I do, and many of them are on the
younger side.
>> As always, Donald Trump displays a level of transparency that for some reason never
gets picked up by people who should be paying attention, right?
>> Yeah.
>> Super transparent, so we'll see how this goes but-
>> And remember, Donald Trump is on record of saying to really young girls on tape, you're
really beautiful, one day, when you grow up, etc.
And remember, he's also on record in barging into Miss Teen USA's dressing room to catch
them half-naked.
>> Gross.
>> And even Donald Trump says Epstein likes them young.
So they knew, they knew, they knew.
At a minimum, they knew.
And by the way, if justice is ever delivered to Epstein, this time around he faces 45 years
in prison.
And you know how many days of the week he should be in prison?
Seven out of seven.
>> Absolutely, and I wanna leave you with a quote from one of the victims.
And this was following the first attempt to prosecute Epstein, which of course led to
that non-prosecution plea deal.
Courtney Wild was one of the individuals who finally spoke out, felt comfortable enough
to speak out.
And she said, quote, Jeffrey preyed on girls who were in a bad way, girls who were basically
homeless.
He went after girls who he thought no one would listen to and he was right.
>> Until now, look, I wanna celebrate this great journalist and that's why I keep mentioning
Julie K Brown.
This is what good journalism's supposed to do, supposed to uncover and highlight an important
issue and hopefully eventually lead to justice.
It looks like we might be headed in that direction.
And one important update that just happened in this story, prosecutors also said, when
they raided his homes and his mansions, they found hundreds if not thousands of pictures
of young girls.
They're not positive yet whether they are pictures of underage girls.
But they said that they are concerned about that based on the appearance of how young
those girls look, including some locked away in a safe.
So not only is he in potential trouble for the old charges, but also, perhaps, some new
charges as well that would add on to his time, but it's not just Epstein.
Make sure that we actually, no matter who it hurts, in what political party, who else
was involved here, we should do a real investigation of that for the first time.