Speaker 1: What's up, everyone, and welcome back to the program. In
Speaker 1: this episode, we're going to pick up where we left
Speaker 1: off talking about Larry Vasaski. The government clearly understood Avasaski
Speaker 1: mattered because federal prosecutors placed him before the jury during
Speaker 1: Maxwell's criminal trial. His testimony helped establish the internal architecture
Speaker 1: of Epstein's world before survivors testified about what occurred within it.
Speaker 1: That prosecutorial decision alone demonstrates that Vasaski was not considered irrelevant,
Speaker 1: yet being useful enough to establish Epstein's operational environment raises
Speaker 1: another question about whether authorities fully explored contradictions, inconsistencies, or
Speaker 1: gaps between what employees said they observed and what survivors described.
Speaker 1: The point of an investigation is not to presume guilt,
Speaker 1: but to subject potentially important witnesses to documentary verification. With Vasoski,
Speaker 1: decades of records existed against which his RECQORAE elections could
Speaker 1: theoretically be compared, making his position exceptionally valuable to anyone
Speaker 1: determined to reconstruct the entire enterprise. Consider what a pilot
Speaker 1: necessarily knows even without ever witnessing conduct occurring behind a
Speaker 1: closed cabin door. He knows destinations because he must physically
Speaker 1: fly the aircraft to them. He knows approximate travel dates
Speaker 1: because he's responsible for making the flight happen. He knows
Speaker 1: many passengers because aviation regulations and operational requirements make passenger
Speaker 1: identity and aircraft loading relevant. He knows which locations are
Speaker 1: visited repeatedly and which journeys depart unexpectedly. He knows which
Speaker 1: employees communicate travel instructions and which individuals receive special treatment.
Speaker 1: He knows when aircraft are repositioned without Epsteina a board
Speaker 1: and when another crew members takes over. He knows how
Speaker 1: often particular properties are visited and whether certain passengers recur
Speaker 1: on particular routes. That's why Yasaski's value to investigators should
Speaker 1: have extended far beyond asking the narrow question of whether
Speaker 1: he personally witnessed sexual activity aboard the plane. The famous
Speaker 1: cockpit door explanation illustrates exactly why the questioning surrounding Vasaski
Speaker 1: has remained controversial. Vasaski testified that the cockpit door was
Speaker 1: closed while he was flying and denied seeing sexual activity
Speaker 1: aboard Epstein's aircraft. Taken literally, that could perfectly well explain
Speaker 1: why a pilot actively controlling an aircraft did not observe
Speaker 1: events occurring inside the passenger cabin. But the relevant investigative
Speaker 1: inquiry should never have ended with whether the pilot physically
Speaker 1: watched the sex act while airborne. Epstein's operation extended across decades,
Speaker 1: thousands of miles, numerous residences, and countless interactions on the ground.
Speaker 1: Pilots leave cockpits, arrive at hangers, wait for passengers, observe departures,
Speaker 1: coordinate vehicles, communicate with staff, and spend considerable time around
Speaker 1: employers outside the few hours during which they're manipulating aircraft control.
Speaker 1: Vossaske's own long tenure meant his interaction with Epstein's universe
Speaker 1: necessarily extended across an enormous period. An investigator interested only
Speaker 1: in what he could see through a cockpit doorway would
Speaker 1: therefore be asking an artificially narrow question. The meaningful issue
Speaker 1: was what patterns Vasaski observed over nearly thirty years, and
Speaker 1: whether those patterns matched what prosecutors eventually established about Epstein
Speaker 1: and Maxwell. The absence of direct eyewitness testimony to sexual
Speaker 1: conduct does not eliminate the enormous, circumstantial and logistical knowledge
Speaker 1: a long time insider like Vasaski might possess. I think
Speaker 1: that Maxwell's trial demonstrated this distinction particularly well because Vasaski's
Speaker 1: testimony helped jurors understand that hierarchy. He betrayed Maxwell as
Speaker 1: an extremely important figure in Epstein's life, effectively identifying her
Speaker 1: as second only at Epstein within the environment he observed,
Speaker 1: and that was a scorcher. Because Maxwell's defense attempted to
Speaker 1: distance her from the responsibility of Epstein's conduct. Vysoski could
Speaker 1: speak to her importance because he had spent years watching
Speaker 1: how Epstein's world actually worked. That is, institutional knowledge in
Speaker 1: its purest form. Organizations often have formal titles that tell
Speaker 1: outsiders very little, while employees understand exactly who possesses real authority.
Speaker 1: Veyssoski's description of Maxwell revealed that he understood at least
Speaker 1: some of those internal power dynamics. If he could identify
Speaker 1: the hierarchy at the very top, investigators had obvious reasons
Speaker 1: to ask what else he understood about the people operating
Speaker 1: beneath it, who requested flights, who arrange passengers, who travel repeatedly,
Speaker 1: who greeted arrivals, who control properties, and who communicated Epstein's
Speaker 1: instructions were all questions falling naturally within his observational universe.
Speaker 1: Once again, none of these answers necessarily would have implicated
Speaker 1: Vesoski himself, but they could have helped map a conspiracy
Speaker 1: much broader than two people eventually prosecuted federally. And this
Speaker 1: is why the government's historically narrow handling of the Epstein
Speaker 1: investigation becomes impossible to separate from the Vesosky question. Epstein's
Speaker 1: criminal world contained recruiters, schedulers, household employees, pilots, financial professionals,
Speaker 1: property personnel, and numerous other people who interacted with different
Speaker 1: pieces of his existence. A serious enterprise investigation should have
Speaker 1: attempted to determine where innocent employment ended, where wilful blindness
Speaker 1: may have begun, and where knowing facilitation could potentially be established.
Speaker 1: Those categories are legally and morally different, and collapsing them
Speaker 1: together would be unfair, but refusing to explore them would
Speaker 1: be equally unacceptable. Federal conspiracy law does not punish someone
Speaker 1: merely for working for a criminal, nor does association transform
Speaker 1: an employee into a conspirator. Prosecutors generally need evidence demonstrating
Speaker 1: knowing participation in an unlawful agreement or another independently chargeable offense,
Speaker 1: but determining whether such evidence exists requires aggressive investigation of
Speaker 1: the very insiders most capable of explaining the organization, and
Speaker 1: vesosky Is extraordinarily long tenure put him near the top
Speaker 1: of that list. And of course, Epstein's aircraft were particularly
Speaker 1: important because geography was central to a system. Survivors described
Speaker 1: abuse at multiple properties, and Epstein's aeroplanes provided the bridge
Speaker 1: connecting those properties. Zora Ranch alone demonstrates why this matters,
Speaker 1: because the secluded New Mexico compound sat far from the
Speaker 1: scrutiny surrounding Manhattan or Upon Beach. According to survivor accounts
Speaker 1: and subsequent investigations, abuse occurred at the ranch. While New
Speaker 1: Mexico officials later complained that the property had never received
Speaker 1: the federal investigative attention, its significance warranted. The failure to
Speaker 1: fully investigate Zoro Ranch when Epstein was alive also magnified
Speaker 1: the importance of people like the Saski. Investigators can recover
Speaker 1: physical evidence from a property, but they can't recover conversations
Speaker 1: that disappeared decades earlier. Unless witnesses remember them or records
Speaker 1: captured them. Employees become living archives. In cases involving long
Speaker 1: running organizations, a long time pilot can potentially remember unusual
Speaker 1: passenger requests, recurring travel patterns, periods of intense activity, and
Speaker 1: relationships that documents alone can explain, and these are exactly
Speaker 1: the details that transform isolated documents into a coherent investigative chronology.
Speaker 1: Vesoski decades of continuity made them unusually valuable because employees
Speaker 1: came and went while he remained, and allowing such institutional
Speaker 1: knowledge to disappear without exhaustive public accounting represents an enormous
Speaker 1: misopportunity in any investigation of Epstein's network. Then, of course,
Speaker 1: there's the issue of loyalty, a subject that can't be
Speaker 1: ignored when analyzing Epstein's inner circle. Epstein did not simply
Speaker 1: employ Vesoski briefly before moving on to another pilot. He
Speaker 1: kept them around for almost the entirety of the period
Speaker 1: during which Epstein developed the lifestyle that eventually became inseparable
Speaker 1: from allegations of systematic sexual abuse. Long term employment creates
Speaker 1: economic dependence and often personal loyalty, especially in the rarefied
Speaker 1: environment of private aviation reports and records concerning land, financial arrangements,
Speaker 1: and other benefits reinforce the impression that Vessoski's relationship with
Speaker 1: Epstein exceeded a completely impersonal commercial transaction, and while that
Speaker 1: might not establish criminality, it does establish a relationship worthy
Speaker 1: of careful examination, because loyalty can influence what employees notice,
Speaker 1: what they rationalized, and what they eventually tell investigators. Epstein
Speaker 1: possessed enormous wealth and could substantially improve the lives of
Speaker 1: people whose cooperation he valued. Investigators confronting such a structure
Speaker 1: should always examine whether benefits were ordinary compensation, generosity, retention incentives,
Speaker 1: or something more complicated. The public deserves to know whether
Speaker 1: those questions were pursued with the intensity appropriate to a
Speaker 1: decade's long sex trafficking investigation, rather than simply assuming that
Speaker 1: employment relationships were innocent or sinister without doing the work.
Speaker 1: One of the most frustrating aspects of the Epstein saga
Speaker 1: is that the public repeatedly received fragments rather than a
Speaker 1: complete organizational picture. We learned about the flight logs without
Speaker 1: always receiving a compar yetsive explanation of the flights. We
Speaker 1: learned about assistance without seeing every investigative interview conducted with them.
Speaker 1: We learned about properties long after opportunities to search them
Speaker 1: had vanished. We learned about financial relationships through civil lawsuits
Speaker 1: years after Epstein's first prosecution. We learned through Maxwell's trial
Speaker 1: that longtime employees could describe internal hierarchy even while denying
Speaker 1: awareness of criminal conduct. Thesaski embodies that fragmentation, perhaps better
Speaker 1: than almost anyone. His name appeared across flight records, testimony, correspondence,
Speaker 1: and the broader history of Epstein's properties, but the public
Speaker 1: has never received anything resembling a complete prosecatorial accounting of
Speaker 1: what authorities determined about his knowledge. Look At the end
Speaker 1: of the day, Larry Vsasky matters because Jeffrey Epstein could
Speaker 1: not have maintained his extraordinary lifestyle alone. Epstein required people
Speaker 1: who flew airplanes, maintained properties, arranged schedules, handled money and
Speaker 1: us through telephones, coordinated visitors, and solve problems. Some of
Speaker 1: those people may have been entirely innocent employees performing legitimate
Speaker 1: jobs for an employer whose criminal conduct remained hidden from them.
Speaker 1: Others could theoretically have possessed varying degrees of knowledge, suspicion,
Speaker 1: or involvement, and only evidence can tell us where particular
Speaker 1: individuals belonged on that spectrum. Vososki's longevity and proximity make
Speaker 1: him especially important because very few people observed Epstein's movements
Speaker 1: over such an extended period. He witnessed the evolution of
Speaker 1: Epstein's empire from the early nineties through the years of
Speaker 1: criminal investigation, conviction, renewed social rehabilitation, and eventual federal arrest.
Speaker 1: He transported Epstein while the financier accumulated powerful acquaintances and
Speaker 1: maintained residences across multiple jurisdictions. He watched Maxwell occupy a
Speaker 1: position important enough that he later described her as Epstein's
Speaker 1: number two. He remained close enough to the operation that
Speaker 1: prosecutors called him during the most consequential Epstein related criminal
Speaker 1: trial ever completed, and that's precisely why the lack of
Speaker 1: broader accountabilities surrounding Epstein's infrastructure remained so maddening. The federal
Speaker 1: government successfully convicted Glene Maxwell, proving beyond a reasonable doubt
Speaker 1: that Epstein did not operate entirely alone. Once that proposition
Speaker 1: became legally established, the obvious investigative question was how far
Speaker 1: the architecture of assistants extended. Not every employee was a conspirator,
Speaker 1: and accusing people without evidence just produces the very kind
Speaker 1: of injustice legitimate investigations are supposed to prevent. But an
Speaker 1: organization capable of moving Epstein's staff, young women, guests and
Speaker 1: associates across numerous properties for years unquestionably depended upon infrastructure,
Speaker 1: and aviation was one of the most important pieces of
Speaker 1: that infrastructure. And Larry Vassoski sat inside that aviation operation
Speaker 1: longer than anybody. And that's why it's important that Vasaski
Speaker 1: is not understood as just a byproduct or somebody in
Speaker 1: the back pages. He occupied a front row position to
Speaker 1: the logistics of Epstein's existence for a period spanning nearly
Speaker 1: thirty years. He knew the aircraft, the destinations, the properties,
Speaker 1: the travel rhythms, and many of the personalities passing through
Speaker 1: Epstein's world. Epstein apparently trusted him enough to maintain the
Speaker 1: relationship across decades and extend benefits while beyond the fleeting
Speaker 1: commercial association. Maxwell's prosecution demonstrated that Vasaski understood at least
Speaker 1: part of the hierarchy surrounding Epstein. While release correspondence has
Speaker 1: further illuminated how deeply aviation was integrated into Epstein's day
Speaker 1: to day logistics, whether that knowledge ever across the line
Speaker 1: into criminal awareness is a question that must be answered
Speaker 1: with evidence, but there should be no ambiguity whatsoever about
Speaker 1: whether authorities had reason to investigate the question aggressively when
Speaker 1: a convicted sex offender maintained a sprawling interstate and international
Speaker 1: operation involving private aircraft, remote properties, and the movement of
Speaker 1: young women. The longtime chief pilot was an obvious witness
Speaker 1: whose knowledge demanded exhaustive examination. The enduring scandal is not
Speaker 1: that the public can conclusively declare Larry Vsasky a criminal,
Speaker 1: because the publicly established record does not justify that conclusion.
Speaker 1: The enduring scandal is that everything we know about Jeffrey Epstein,
Speaker 1: Americans are still left asking what one of his longest
Speaker 1: serving and must trust it insiders knew, what investigators learned
Speaker 1: from them, and why the government has never provided anything
Speaker 1: close to a satisfactory answer. All the information that goes
Speaker 1: with this episode can be found in the description box.