Speaker 1: What's up everyone, and welcome back to the Epstein Chronicles.
Today Mark's day number one of the second week of
the Gallaine Maxwell trial, and we had more testimony all day,
now several witnesses, but the majority of the testimony came
from one person and that person was Kate. Now, the
government had set this up as four victims of Glaine
Maxwell giving testimony about what occurred and what they alleged
happened to them. Fast forward to today and we find
out that Kate, who is giving testimony today, is not
a victim of Epstein as far as the scope of
the timeframe we're talking about here, and is in fact
a witness. So it's a bit confusing. No, the government
asserted that had four victims, but when all is said
and done, they're really only going to have the three
victims up here giving testimony and now Kate who is
being recognized as a witness but not as a victim
of Glaine Maxwell. So that was a bit of a surprise.
And we saw some of those briefings get filed last night,
and we saw some of the challenges to Kate's testimony
here and Judge Nathan went on to rule that she
will not be called a victim as far as the
scope of these specific crimes go by the court and
will be looked at as a witness. So her testimony
today was relatively long. It took up a bulk of
the day. And then after her testimony, they spoke with
a person from JP Morgan Chase who has information and
a bit of the know as far as the financials
go between Maxwell and Epstein, meaning transfers of funds, and
we also heard from an FBI special agent, but both
of their testimonies were relatively brief. So that's pretty much
what occurred today as far as an overview of the proceedings.
And obviously I went through and put together some of
the different back and forth moments that occurred in court today,
some of the different questions that were asked and the
answers that were given. So we're going to jump into
that and we're going to see how it all wrapped
up inside of that courtroom today. So let's take a
look at some of these different proceedings and what went down.
Are right, So before the jury even got into the room,
the prosecution and the defense were ironing out an agreement
about a stipulation that they came to regarding the previous witness.
So the gentleman who was on the stand yesterday when
the proceedings ended, they decided that instead of calling him back,
they would just come to a voluntary agreement between the
opposing parties concerning the disposition of some matter that's before
the court. That's what a stipulation is. That's the definition
of it. So what they did is instead of bringing
this witness back, they came to the agreement, and then
they read that stipulation, the agreement that both sides came
to to the court as opposed to bringing the witness
back for what I'm guessing is a short period of time,
maybe a couple of questions. Again, this is the first
case that I've ever followed this closely, especially when it
comes to court proceedings. So this is something that obviously
they use when there's a situation that can be ironed
out before you know, having to bring a witness back
in for just a couple of minutes, I guess in
the interest of keeping things moving. Also, before the jury
even came in, Judge Nathan decided to not allow the
raunchy pictures on the walls in the massage room and
some of the other photos of the sex toys were
excluded as well. Epstein's house was searched in two thousand
and five and the scope of the crimes ended in
two thousand and four, so that would make that stuff inadmissible.
Now the schoolgirl uniforms, on the other hand, that is
admissible as long as it's relevant to the testimony, and
that was the ruling that Judge Nathan made before the
jury even got into the court. Now, obviously us pleabs
in the public We'll only get redacted versions and what
the court decides that when we're able to see. But
it's getting a bit concerning in my opinion, with the
lack of transparency here, and it's pretty uncomfortable, honestly. You
would think that a case like this, with as much
interest as there is in this case, not only in
America but around the world, that there would be a
big push for a lot of transparency. But again we're
having to rely on, you know, a few different reports
coming out of the courtroom. So I can't wait to
get to New York myself in the next few weeks
right after the holidays and ride out the duration from there,
because you know, it's It's one thing to get a idea,
you know, a basic sketch of what's going on. It's
a whole other thing to really be there and to
witness it and stuff like that and to get it yourself,
to process it that way. So I can't wait to
get in there the first week of January to get started.
After the jury came in, the judge denounced the stipulation
agreement and called on the defense lawyer, Christian Everdell to
read it to the court. The stipulation went on to
say that the evidence a cardboard box, was in fact
found in the closet of a guest room upstairs, and
that the box was unopened. So you see why they
did this little motion here, this stipulation as opposed to
bringing this witness back, especially considering the long testimony that
was given by the first witness today, who was referred
to as Kate by the court, and you know it's
going to be a long process. They they they're speculating
six weeks, so any point where they can move things along,
I'm guessing that they'd want to do that. So they
call Kate to the stand, and obviously, like I talked
about a couple of minutes ago. The defense argued that
she was not under age at the time of her
contact with Epstein and Maxwell, and she won't be recognized
as a victim of the crimes charged in the indictment
by the court. Instead, the court is referring to her
as a witness. So the questions begin, and the first
question asked by prosecution is about a piece of evidence
and if she recognizes it. She responds that yes, she
does recognize it, and when she was asked what it was,
she responded that it was her driver's license. This line
of questioning then moves towards what Kate does for a living,
and she said that she worked with survivors of trauma
currently and when pressed about what she did previously, she
answered that she was a musician and singer, So setting
it up for you know who she is her, you know,
an outline of who the court is talking to her basically.
Then it goes into Kate's account of how she met
Maxwell in Paris and how she was introduced to Epstein's
pal by one of her ex boyfriends. She says that
she was approximately seventeen years old when this meeting happened,
and she went on to add some context, she described
how when she met Maxwell, they discussed what her plans were,
not only for the night, but also questions revolving around
where she lived and you know, some other small talk.
After this small talk, she was invited to Maxwell's house,
and you know, she accepted the invite and went to
Maxwell's house a few weeks later for some tea. And
again it shows you here how Maxwell rolled. One of
her favorite moves was to get into the confidence of
these girls by acting like, you know, the happy, go
lucky older sister or you know, the affluent woman who
into their life to offer them, you know, whatever kind
of package or whatever kind of offer that these girls
might not have ever had before. And most of these
girls are thinking to themselves, hey, look at this, this
is the upper crust. They're not thinking to themselves that
these are the kind of people that are going to
engage in abuse. So of course she accepts the invite
to go to someone like Maxwell's house to have a
tea a situation with her. Why not sit down, have
a little tea party. You know, who knows what comes
of it. Perhaps you can climb the social ladder, perhaps
a job opening. You know, these are the kind of
things that meetings that usually lead to that kind of thing.
So Kate went on to say about how when she
went to Maxwell's house, how she saw pictures of a
man with salt and pepper hair, who she says that
now she recognizes as Jeffrey Epstein. She says that Maxwell
made her feel special and that she had a good
time during the trip to Maxwell's for tea, and she
thought that she had found a connection with Maxwell and
that it could be meaningful for her. You know, somebody
that an older sister type, a mentor, somebody who had
been in the upper crust. And unfortunately, that was the
exact web that they liked to weave, wasn't it. According
to all the reports we know, this was exactly how
Maxwell operated lay the trap act like you're this loving, warm,
great person who's going to open doors for people and
then get them inside of the web and Epstein strikes.
So it's pretty typical for the way Epstein and Maxwell
went about their business. She had a feeling when she
left that meeting that she had possibly had found a
friend and that it was more than just a meeting, right.
You know, Maxwell had told her that Epstein was a philanthropist,
and she was just the kind of person that he
liked to help. Kate says that she was seventeen and
lonely and felt like an outcast and she hadn't found
a group of friends yet, so had no friends, nobody
to associate with really, and she was, you know, kind
of floating through meets. Maxwell thinks that this is going
to be the when the worm turns right. Get in
with this group of socialites, and who knows what happens there.
We all know that when you're around people in the
so called elite, a lot of doors are opened up
for you. Now, if you want to walk through them
doors and pay the price that it's going to cost
as far as whatever debts you're going to owe, then
that's a whole different story. But those doors will be
open to you if you're hanging out with people like this.
Kate then went on to talk about how she met
Epstein for the first time and how she was invited
to Maxwell's mused townhouse where there was a loud man
on the phone. He was wearing a sweatsuit, a jogging
suit basically, and she recognized the man as Epstein. Maxwell
went on to tell Epstein that she was the girl
that she had told him about, and commented on how
she was unusually strong for her size. Now, according to Kate,
she was ninety five pounds at the time, and then,
in a bizarre ass request, Maxwell asks Kate if she
would give Epstein's feet a squeeze to show him that
unusual strength that Maxwell had talked about. Kate says that
she went on ahead and did that. So again, it
just shows you the cooperation level between Maxwell and Epstein,
and it can be if it wasn't for the overall picture.
You could look at some like this and say, all right,
maybe the guy has a foot fetish, right, and he
just wants his feet touched. But we know so much more.
We know so much background, and there's so much other
evidence out there of what massage really meant to these people.
So when you frame it like that and you look
at the overall picture, it's pretty terrifying to know how
many girls came through this massage room. We're talking about
dozens and dozens. If you go back to Jeffrey Epstein's
first indictment and what must have occurred here and how
many of them. Maxwell allegedly had a role in grooming
and bringing to this point. After one of Epstein's massage
therapists canceled, Maxwell contacted Kate and asked her if she
could fill in. Kate is then asked if she was
a massage therapist by the prosecution at the time, and
she says no that she was not. So again, why
would Epstein and Maxwell be calling a seventeen year old
girl to come over and give them a massage. They
have all the money in the world. They could bring
in the best massage therapists money can buy, but instead
they're bringing in a seventeen year old girl who has
no training. It really sets the stage for Maxwell and
Epstein being up to no good, right again, another foundational
building block I thought in this whole testimony, I thought
that was one of the stronger moments as far as
the ties that bind and as far as a moment
of Maxwell being you know, put right there as part
of it, right, part of Jeffrey Epstein's whole nonsensical bs.
And it is interesting to me that it was Maxwell
made the phone call broader in and here we are, right,
especially considering the charges of Maxwell grooming, setting them up,
trafficking and all of that. So what it does, is
it definitely foundational blocks right. The questions then turned to
Epstein's a tire and what he was wearing when Kate
came over as the fill in massuse. When she was
asked what he was wearing under the robe, she says
that he was naked. Now, imagine that this gross ass
mf naked under that robe waiting for you. You're a seventeen
year old girl, can't even imagine the trauma. We all
know that Jeffrey Epstein's a goofy looking asshole too. Asked
if Maxwell was present, again, she says yes. She then
says that Maxwell gave her massage oil. Asked by the
prosecution if Epstein initiated sexual contact with her conduct with her,
she again responds with yes. When asked where Maxwell was,
Kate says that Maxwell was in the doorway. Now, according
to people in the courtroom, several of the sexual acts
are described here but barred by the court from being
made public, And frankly, I'm cool with that. I really
don't want to talk about that here on the podcast.
I'm sure those transcripts are gonna come out and you'll
be able to see them. But all of these years
talking about this stuff. I feel like I have to
drink bleach after every one of these episodes, like doubts
myself in bleach and then drink it because it's obscene.
All of it's obscene. Kate goes on to say after
her massage with Epstein, she says that she was met
by Maxwell, who had a whole bunch of questions for
her about her time with Epstein. She asked questions like
did you have fun and offered positive reinforcement by telling
her she was a good girl. Kate goes on to
say that she was pleased that she was able to
please Maxwell. Now note she doesn't say Epstein, but that
it was Maxwell she wanted to please. Once again, it
goes to show the hold maxwell her hat on these
girls and how Maxwell allegedly was a key component to
the normalization process that we've seen over and over again.
And it's telling right that Kate was more worried about
pleasing Maxwell than even Epstein. So again, foundational blocks, right, folks,
That's what they're building here, at least attempting to do it.
Kate goes on to describe how she was given a
schoolgirl outfit that included a short pleated skirt, a shirt, panties,
little white panties, and white socks. When asked why she
agreed to put on the outfit, she said that she
didn't know how to say no and that she feared
the consequences if she declined wearing it. That's definitely one
of their punishments, right, one of their tools of punishment.
I should say, as quick as we can give you
all of this, we can take it away. And that's
what these people do, right. They know that a lot
of these girls are in a position where they can't
friend for themselves perhaps, or they come from broken homes
or drug addiction, whatever it may be, and then they
use that as a fulk room. They use that to
manipulate the situation and to steer these girls into these
sorts of things and having these girls think that it's
a normal process as they're going through it. Asked if
Epstein performed a sex act on her, Jane, who responded
in soft tones, said yes. Maxwell then went on to
tell Kate that she was one of Jeffrey Epstein's favorites.
So I don't know how Maxwell can say she doesn't
know what was going on here, folks. It's rather obvious
that Maxwell had an idea of what was going on here. Okay,
and I'm being a coy, it's rather obvious that she
was involved. How are you going to stand in the
doorway and watch what happens and not know? How are
you going to allegedly abuse these girls with Epstein at
least in some instances and act like you don't know,
And that, of course is why she's facing those perjury
charges on the back end of this as well. Kate
also tells the court that she was bought a Prada
bag by Maxwell for her eighteenth birthday, again showing the
connection with Maxwell and the grooming process. So that's how
it works, right, let me buy you some gifts. Oh,
this is normal. See what I can do for you.
All you have to do is do what we want
you to do. The prosecutor goes on to ask about
Kate about the compensation fund, and Kate says that she
did indeed get compensated by the fund. When asked if
she was going to sue Maxwell, Kate answers, no, Now,
if you accepted money from the compensation fund, that prohibits
you from suing any of Jeffrey Epstein's cohorts or employees.
That was part of the sign off deal on the
compensation fund paperwork. Now, like I've always said throughout that
whole process, I'm not going to sit here and tell
anybody what to do as far as getting paid out this,
that or the other thing. None of us walked even
a foot in these girls shoes. We don't know the
absolute nightmare that they've lived in. And if some of
them just want to be done with it and you know,
try and rebuild their lives as best as possible and
take out whatever the payment is, I completely get that.
But it's shady from the beginning that this you know,
document would even be drummed up. And you have the
same people working on this fund who worked on the
nine to eleven fund, and from the jump it's always
been a bit weird to me. Then you look at
the fact that the United States government, via taxes, gets
the lion's share of this money, and you got yourselves
quite the dumpster fire once again. So they'll try and say, oh, well,
you got a payment from the compensation fund, so you're
just looking for money, And my counter to that is
that's restitution for time served, all the years of suffering
all the years of heartache, and Jeffrey Epstein's estate finally
recognizes that pain and suffering and that Epstein was the
cause of it, so they had to pay out money.
That's really what it comes down to. When they get
back from lunch, get back from their break, they set
the tone right off the bat, meaning Bobby Sternham Glenn
Maxwell's lawyers who are now ta taking over the questioning.
So she sets the tone right away, and she says
that Kate comes from a posh family and her mother
was a debutante and her stepfather was painted as someone
who was very wealthy and who had a residence in
a tony neighborhood. Sternham also is attempting to paint Kate
as an international model. Now. She says she asked Kate,
were you on billboards? Kate responds that she was on
one billboard, then asked about her work for a lingerie company.
Kate says that she was a model for the company,
but the company failed right after its launch unch, so
it wasn't like she had some long career with this
lingerie company. The defense goes on to ask about Kate's boyfriend,
who's who she says was an older man who was
in fact a former classmate of Maxwell's at Oxford. Just
another coincidence, folks, right, you know, sure are a lot
of coincidences around Glene Maxwell, Jeffrey Epstein and this whole
entire criminal conspiracy, conspiracy, aren't there, Sternham keeps Sternheim keeps
hammering away, asking if Kate was discovered as a musician
in a piano bar by the musician Seal. Kate responds no.
Sternham then says to Kate that in the past that
in the past, she asked if Kate had acted in movies.
Kate says she had no speaking roles, but had been
in movies. Sternham isn't satisfied and continues by asking Kate
if she was ever in a movie with a well
known UK actor, and Kate responds that yes, she was.
So what Maxwell's Team's doing here is trying to establish that,
you know, Kate's an actress, she knows how to act.
She comes from this this posh family, this whole entire setup,
and this is all just you know, a fabrication, basically
what Bobby Sternham is trying to set up here. Sternham
is digging in and asking Kate about the times she
had spoken publicly, and even asking about the time in
Judge Richard Berman's court, who was the judge who was
overseeing the Epstein case. So she's asking how many times
Kate had spoken publicly about her situation with Epstein, and
even about the time that she was able to speak
in front of Richard Berman. After Epstein's death, Judge Berman
lets some of the accusers come in and have their
say in the court because they were never going to
get that now that Epstein was dead. So was asking
asking Kate about that as far as her public acknowledgment
of this situation and talking about herself in the public eye.
She went on to also ask if Kate had ever
spoken with Virginia Roberts, and Kate says she had. Now
the Kate now the defense decides that they're going to
change it up a bit and they start going after
Kate for her drug use, asking Kate if she used
drugs for ten years, and Kate responds that she was
addicted to drugs for ten years. Now, this is a
typical move, right, They'll try and set it up like
Kate's a drug addict and she can't be trusted, her
memory can't be trusted. Nothing can be trusted, that she says,
and that she is somebody who is not credible. Once again,
the heart of the issue here for the defense is credibility,
and they're gonna hammer home at it. And when you
have people who have questionable backgrounds, they're gonna be a
little bit more exposed as far as the defense and
the strategy that the defense is going to employ. Sternheim
then goes on to continue with that angle about the
drug use, and she asked if it could have affected
Kate's memory, and Kate says that they didn't affect their
memories that she always had, And I think it's a
stretch to say that the drug use would affect her
memory for something as traumatic as all of this, I
would I would think that she would compartmentalize before she
forgot right. So I think that's kind of a weak
strategy for the defense to go after. But again, I'm
certainly not a doctor or anything like that. Maxwell's team
they were probing about her personal relationships today as well,
asking about about her ex husband, who owns two restaurants,
and they asked if she divorced him she replied that
he divorced her. Then team max Well went on to
ask if Kate married again, and she said that she hadn't.
They went on too this other strategy here as well,
asking if Kate had ever asked somebody to plant drugs
on the father of her child to advance a custody case,
and she responded with absolutely not. So they're going in, right,
They are definitely going in on the credibility aspect, and
I think that it's one of those strategies that it
could pay off, but it could also really backfire. And
so far the defense has had you know, I don't
want to say success because it hasn't been successful, but
they've had a complete and focused strategy on chipping away
at credibility. Now I would really like to see the
prosecution come swinging down with a hammer and really drop
the drop it on these guys, and hopefully that's coming soon.
But there's been a lot of back and forth, for sure,
and again Kate being on the stand today, this is
some damning evidence, right, A lot of foundational evidence, a
lot of stuff that definitely ties Maxwell to Epstein and
certainly ties Maxwell to the crimes that were being committed
but them positioning her as a victim at first and
then her just being a witness today, I think again
shows reflects poorly on the prosecution. So I certainly have
my concerns folks about the prosecution, and those don't seem
to be going away anytime soon. Now, Judge Nathan calls
for lunch after this exchange with Kate, and obviously it
was a long run for her. This was a of
the day Kate was on the stand and after the
stipulation agreement to lead off the trial, it was basically
the Kate the whole entire time before lunch. So after
Kate was done, Judge Nathan called for lunch, and then
the next witness up was Patrick McHugh from JP Morgan Chase.
Now he stated under oath that he can speak on
who can authorize or access accounts at the firm, And
then the prosecution went on to name a bunch of
different financial documents that are under seal, but one of
those wire transfers between Maxwell and Epstein for seven point
four million dollars had been between the JP Morgan Chase
Bank and the Bank of New York Mellon. So what
they're trying to establish here are the financial ties between
Epstein and Maxwell, which in my opinion, should have been
the first thing that they did, because these financial ties
run deep, and who knows how much illicit money was
being passed between Maxwell and Epstein. And again I hate
to harp on it, but if this was a Rico case,
they could really go hard here. Unfortunately it's not, so
the scope of it is limited, and what they're trying
to show here is the financial connection between Epstein and Maxwell. Unfortunately,
it's not going to go deeper than that. So that
was pretty much it for Patrick McHugh and his testimony.
So they moved on to the next witness, who was
Kelly maguire, a special agent of the FBI. They were
asking her about a piece of evidence and that piece
of evidence was Epstein's townhouse. They asked about the massage
room on the third floor and if they accessed it
during the raid, and she answered that they had. That
was pretty much it, though, right there was not much
else after that. Time was running out and Judge Nathan
decided to call it a day. So I don't know
if we'll hear more from Kelly McGuire tomorrow. I don't
think that we will. Honestly, again, a lot of this
stuff was under seal, so we don't have much to
go on, so we'll have to play it by ear
to see if we'll hear more from Kelly McGuire tomorrow
and tomorrow's testimony, but it doesn't look like they're gonna
get any more out of her. So I'm interested to
see where things go tomorrow and where we stand. But
as of today, folks, that's that's where we're at. That's
where it is. That's what happened today in the courtroom
from the bit that's available to us as of now now.
Tomorrow morning, obviously we'll be back for the morning update
and we'll take a look at any other information that
might have come out overnight to give us some context here.
But as of now, that's what it is. Kate gave
her testimony, had the f b I agents up there,
and that was pretty much the duration of the day.
So we'll see, folks, it's getting to it right. We're
in week two now, day one, and it's just going
to continue to fly by, more witnesses, more testimony, and unfortunately,
after each day, more questions. If you'd like to contact me,
you can do that at Bobby Kapuchi at ProtonMail dot com.
That's b O B b y c A p U
c c I at ProtonMail dot com. You can also
find me on Twitter at bo bby Underscore C A
p U C c I. All right, folks, that's gonna
do it. I will be back tomorrow with some more
and we'll see where we left off and we'll pick
it up from there. Have a great