At 22 years old, Jess Michaels was thriving. She was finding success as a dancer and model in New York City. Then, in 1991, she met Jeffrey Epstein. Jess Michaels was sexually assaulted by Epstein and it destroyed her stability, her career and her health. After doing the work to begin healing from this trauma, she has found renewed purpose as an advocate alongside other survivors of Epstein’s abuse. The day after excerpts from Epstein’s 50th birthday book were made public, Jess and her lawyer, Jennifer Freeman, joined Nicolle to call out the decades of institutional cowardice, and with a warning for elected leaders: Jess and her fellow survivors are not going away, and they are not going to stop until they get accountability, truth and justice.
A note to listeners: This episode contains discussions around sexual assault. Please listen with care.
Note: This is a rough transcript. Please excuse any typos.
Jess Michaels: Literally, all of these powerful men and women were looking at us as toys, and as jokes, and as playthings, and didn’t see fit to tell anyone or try to stop it.
(Music Playing)
Nicolle Wallace: Hi everyone and welcome to “The Best People” podcast. “The Best People” are often the ones going first and telling the truth, especially when that truth is painful. They’re not always women, but we find more often than not, they are. This is “The Best People” podcast and this is Jess Michaels and her attorney, Jennifer Freeman. Thank you both for being here.
Jennifer Freeman: Good to be with you.
Jess Michaels: Thank you so much for having me here, Nicolle.
Nicolle Wallace: I’m so moved by everyone who comes on the show, but I’m only changed by a handful of interviews and guests, and I was changed by my conversation with you on the show. So that’s why I wanted to have a chance to talk to you a little bit more today.
Jess Michaels: Thank you. That means the world to me. Thank you.
Nicolle Wallace: How do you find the courage, not just to survive what you survived at the hands of Jeffrey Epstein, but talking about the trauma part of your healing?
Jess Michaels: That’s a great question because talking about it was a very clear mission for me early on, because I couldn’t. When I first started even processing what happened, I could go 5 minutes, and this includes writing because I’m a big journaler. So I would try to write and I could go 5 minutes, 10 minutes, and I would be hit with a stomachache, a headache. I would fall into coma-like sleep because I just wasn’t capable of handling the truth of it all and really facing all of the feelings around it.
And so I made a concerted effort, I would say by 2020, I was slowly, day by day, inching my way into finding my words and healing this injury. And a lot of people don’t understand that when we go through sexual harm, we can injure this part of our brain, for trauma, any kind of trauma. You can injure a part of the brain called the Broca’s area, and that actually is the same area that is injured when someone goes through a stroke. So they can lose the ability to take the feelings of what happened and turn them into words. And so I’ve literally been rewiring my brain and healing that injury for the last five years purposely, because I know that’s the part that people miss in a survivor’s story.
Nicolle Wallace: I asked you your permission when you were on TV and I just want to ask again, I mean, are you comfortable telling us what happened?
Jess Michaels: Yes. So there are very specific parts of my story that I always like to share because I think it helps establish a pattern of behavior, specifically in regard to Jeffrey Epstein, but I think in the whole sex trafficking, sexual harm arena.
I met Jeffrey Epstein through a friend that I knew really well. She was a professional dancer. She was my roommate. She was someone that I had spent a lot of time with for a year and a half. I thought she was a sister to me. And I came back from a contract in Tokyo, I was dancing with a company there. I came back from the contract and she was telling me all about this wealthy Wall Street guy that she had learned to do massage with.
And I’d like to point out and remind people, this is a really common thing that dancers do. We work on each other’s bodies all the time, before rehearsals, before class, in between acts in a show. And massage is a really big part of our lives. So when she said there was this wealthy guy who loves dancers, loves artists, and is willing to train her to be a massage therapist, giving her all this money to learn, not just for the actual massage, but to learn, and then he was flying her all over the world to go with him wherever he went. I thought she is the luckiest person on the planet because he also allowed her to go to auditions. He allowed her to leave on contracts and come back. And that just seemed like the ideal position.
Now, the other part of my story I really like to be clear about is that I had worked really hard to become a professional dancer and I was excelling. I had just come back from Tokyo. I had worked for MC Hammer there. And two weeks before I met Jeffrey Epstein, I had been in a Aretha Franklin video as one of her backup dancers. I mean, I was excelling. I was thriving. I was confident. I was outgoing. I wasn’t afraid of much.
And when I heard about this opportunity, I was excited, of course, for my friend, but I was also jealous because I wanted that same opportunity. And for two months, I kept hearing all about Jeffrey Epstein, Jeffrey Epstein, and seeing the money that she had. And finally, after about two months, she said, “Hey, I got a dance contract and I want to introduce you to him if you’re interested. He’s looking for a backup person.” And I thought, great, I’d gladly. So I got the address of his Madison Avenue office and I know this because, as I said, I’m an avid journaler, and so I had my 1989, 1990, 1991, 1992 planner. And on July 2nd, 1991 is Jeffrey Epstein’s address, his phone number, his assistant’s name, her phone number, all in that day planner when I went down to his office.
The interesting thing is that when I met him and he talked about this job, he was very stoic and very professional. He asked me questions about the body, really quizzed me to see how much I knew, what I didn’t know, and set himself up as the authority, that he knew so much about the body. And the questions he asked me made me feel really insecure about what I knew. And so, at one point he said, “Look, come around the back of the desk. I want to give you something.” So he opens this drawer, and in the drawer were a dozen of the same book, “The Book of Massage,” and he pulls it out and he said, “You’re going to have to study this book.”
And I thought, now I know I can get this job.
I am a hyper overachiever. Just give me something to study and I know I can win. So I took that book. I went and grabbed a three-subject notebook from a store, and I went home and I started studying right away. My roommate comes home that night, and she said, “Jeffrey liked you. You’re going to call his office and make an appointment for a trial massage.” And I think, great.
So my appointment was July 9th, 1991 at 7:00 p.m., and it was at a penthouse. And a doorman turned a key and let me up to this apartment that when the elevator door opened, I arrived inside this palatial-looking penthouse, floor-to-ceiling windows all the way around, a sunken living room. And it was really in that moment, honestly, Nicolle, that I thought, oh, he really is rich. His office had been kind of stark, but this location was very, like I said, posh, palatial, expensive. And I was aware that it was a setting I was not used to being in.
Jeffrey Epstein comes around the back of this foyer, and he’s wearing a white bathrobe, and he has a white towel. And he introduces himself, again, says, “Hi,” all that. But I’m really trying to be the brave person that I am. I’m outgoing, and I say the thing out loud. I say the quiet part out loud. I say, “Why do you hire professional dancers to do massage when clearly you could hire professional masseuses?” And he said, “Oh, well, dancers, they love taking care of themselves. Their bodies are gorgeous. They know more about the body than most people do, and they know how to take care of the body. And you wouldn’t want a fat personal trainer, would you?”
And it was at that moment that he removes his bathrobe, and he doesn’t look at me, and he doesn’t ask me the question. He just states the fact. He said, “And dancers are comfortable with nudity.” And at that moment, I think, well, she didn’t say anything about nudity. He didn’t say anything about nudity, but he’s acting like this is normal. Like, this is not a big deal for him. This is professional. This is how it’s done, and it’s not a big deal.
So he lays the towel down, and he lays down, and I jump into the, “I’m going to be professional too. I’m just going to be professional about this.” So I grabbed my cheat sheet that I made from the book that I had studied, and I had all the hand positions written down, and I’m talking him through this. And, Nicolle, I want to stop for a second because I know this is a lot for people to hear, but there’s a reason why I’m actually telling you this much detail, and it has to do with something that happened today in the news. So bear with me.
I’m going through hand positions that I’m talking through, and he’s sharing with me anecdotes about massage and teaching me things. So if you massage the abdomen in a clockwise way, that enhances digestion, and he starts giving me all these other tips. And then at one point, the sexual jokes start. And the joke he made was, “In other countries, it’s not unheard of. You could have not just one masseuse, but you could have three, one at your feet, one at your head, and one in the middle, ha ha ha.” And I laugh and kind of giggle with him, because at this point, I’m really uncomfortable, and he’s crossed that line.
At 4:00 a.m. this morning, I was scrolling through Instagram and I saw, for the first time, one of the images from the birthday book. And I don’t know if you’ve seen it, but it’s the cartoon of Jeffrey Epstein on a beach lounging chair, with four young girls massaging him, one at his feet, one at his head, one in the middle. And as someone that has gone through a tremendous amount of trauma therapy the last seven years, I get triggered, but it’s been a while since I felt a really deep trigger. I mean, I saw that image, and at 4:00 a.m., it took me right back to what happened next, of him raping me.
And I want people to hear and understand how deeply this affects us for a long time because it’s not just happening in the moment. Trauma isn’t the moment. It affects our bodies, our nervous system, our brains. It’s pervasive through every area of our life afterwards. It can be. And seeing that picture today just brought me right back to that moment. So it’s been a really rough day. I’ll stop there because that’s already a lot, I know.
Nicolle Wallace: I don’t want you to stop, but —
Jess Michaels: Okay.
Nicolle Wallace: — I guess I want to ask you about the book and about the fact that it was a joke to Jeffrey Epstein and his friends to have the very act of rape that you endured become fodder for something that was so trivial to him, that in his circle, it was part of a birthday book.
Jess Michaels: It was part of a birthday book. I mean, the joke he told me in 1991 was a pattern of behavior that was clearly depicted in that 2003 cartoon. And I think the gut-wrenching part of it for me, that sat with me all day is that everyone around Jeffrey Epstein cosigned that behavior, everyone, including Ghislaine Maxwell.
It was acceptable. It was laughed at, but it was actually celebrated in this book by everyone that signed it, that everyone added a letter to, that every single person that saw it, how it was put together by Ghislaine Maxwell, it feels like a level of humiliation hit me today, that maybe I hadn’t allowed myself to feel. That literally all of these powerful men and women were looking at us as toys, and as jokes, and as playthings, and didn’t see fit to tell anyone or try to stop it in 2003
Nicolle Wallace: The lack of transparency today, what impact does that have on the trauma? And trauma, as you’ve explained it, is not on a time continuum. I mean, trauma is an injury that stops time, right?
Jess Michaels: Yes.
Nicolle Wallace: So what is the continued sense that this is being covered up, that this book was so forcefully denied by Donald Trump, that he sued the news organization for defamation? What does that ongoing denial of its existence and the existence of this levity around issues like rape and child sex trafficking due to those who’ve been traumatized by Epstein and Maxwell?
Jess Michaels: Yeah. I have a couple of things to say about that. And one is that I feel like this administration is normalizing the desensitization of sexual assault and almost the decriminalizing of it. He actually said that about domestic violence the other day.
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President Donald Trump: They said crime is down 87%. They said, no, no, no. It’s more than 87%, virtually nothing and much lesser things that take place in the home, they call crime. You know, they’ll do anything they can to find something. If a man has a little fight with the wife, they say this was a crime. See? So now I can’t claim a hundred percent.
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Jess Michaels: How silly it is to criminalize this little uncomfortable banter between husband and wife, and ignore the pain of people like Epstein survivors and Maxwell survivors. I want to say one more thing that I think that’s really important, especially because this is also part of what my mission is, discussing how this trauma is not an event.
Peter Levine has a quote that says trauma isn’t the event. It’s the absence of an empathetic witness. And when there is an absence of an empathetic witness, imagine how the delays feel, the delays, the constant disregard, the lack of acknowledging. Like, Karoline Leavitt couldn’t even acknowledge the words “Epstein survivors.” She couldn’t even acknowledge saying us as a group of women asking for this change to happen, for this transparency, for the negligence, the systemic failures.
I know I’m not just here just for me. I’m here for what happened in the past, and I’m here to say we cannot let this happen again, continue to happen. Something has to change. And that feels painful that there’s not even a desire to change something. There’s not even a desire to acknowledge that this happened to the point where they want to do something different. That’s painful.
Jennifer Freeman: Jess, I just want to first acknowledge you. I know how powerful that is and how meaningful that is for you to explain all of that, and how helpful it is. And from my perspective as an attorney for survivors, what I see over and over is when there’s a failure of accountability, when there’s a failure, there’s an institutional betrayal, which is what we have here.
Nicolle Wallace: Yes.
Jennifer Freeman: The institutions fail, the survivors don’t pay attention to them, ignore them or dismiss them, which is basically what’s been going on for 30 years. That is when the trauma remains.
In 1996, Maria Farmer came forward, went to the FBI, told the FBI that she had been sexually assaulted by Epstein and Maxwell, and she said that they were engaged in some kind of sex trafficking ring. And what did the United States Federal Bureau of Investigation do? Absolutely nothing, which created one of the largest failures of law enforcement in U.S. history. It’s gone on for three decades, and over a thousand women could have been spared if only the government had listened. This failure to listen then, and again in 2006 when Maria went again and told them again, as did many other survivors, is what really keeps this trauma going and underscores the importance of accountability, the critical importance of accountability, and that’s what’s really lacking here.
Nicolle Wallace: It’s so obvious now that it’s a failure. But what creates the conditions where law enforcement ignores women?
Jennifer Freeman: We don’t know. We’ve been asking for the records for the longest time. By the way, we’ve been asking through the Freedom of Information Act, that we now have a lawsuit going, to try to understand why they failed her. Why did they ignore her? Was there some special arrangement with Jeffrey Epstein? Was he involved, for example, and I don’t know if this is so, was he providing information in connection with the prosecution and ultimate conviction of Steven Hoffenberg in connection with the then largest Ponzi scheme in U.S. history of 450 million? Was he helping with that?
So the government just closed their eyes and said, well, he’s helping us in some other way. And was it something about that this was just not taken seriously This was dismissed. This is objectification. It doesn’t matter. It’s not important enough to pay attention to.
(Music Playing)
Nicolle Wallace: We are going to take a quick break right here. When we come back, much more with Jeffrey Epstein survivor and advocate Jess Michaels and her lawyer, Jennifer Freeman. Stay right here.
(Music Playing)
Nicolle Wallace: Well, Jennifer, let me ask you then, as a lawyer, does this moment feel different?
Jennifer Freeman: Not yet. It feels like there are the elements of feeling different and I have hope, I really do, because part of what that memorandum that the FBI and the Department of Justice issued, you know, like six weeks ago, when this whole thing started, when they said there’s nothing to see here. So you know evil, whatever.
Nicolle Wallace: Yeah. See, now, there are no evil.
Jennifer Freeman: Right.
Nicolle Wallace: All right. Yeah.
Jess Michaels: Yeah.
Jennifer Freeman: Nothing there. No lists. No nothing. We’re going to close the book. They also said that they acknowledge that one of their highest priority was protecting children from exploitation and some kind of sexual assault and trauma. So they did acknowledge that. But I don’t yet see the actions that are going to back that up.
But with people like Jess talking and talking and talking, which is what happened last week. We had a very large group of survivors getting together, many of them for the first time. Some of them coming forward for the first time, and making sure that people saw the extent of this this.
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Jess Michaels: This did not just happen to underage girls in Florida. In New York City, hundreds of young, ambitious women were abused by him. Epstein was not just a serial predator; he was an international human trafficker. And many around him knew many participated and many profited, and yet he was protected.
So I stand here today for every woman who has been silenced, exploited and dismissed. We are not asking for pity. We are here demanding accountability, and I’m demanding justice.
(Begin Audio Clip)
Jennifer Freeman: And that’s just 30-40 women. That’s not a thousand.
Nicolle Wallace: Right.
Jennifer Freeman: But even those women who are willing to come forward, or willing to speak, or willing to tell their stories, and it’s remarkably similar over and over again.
Nicolle Wallace: Jess, I want to ask you what it has been like to find community with other survivors. Has it been part of the healing, or has it been retraumatizing or a little bit of both?
Jess Michaels: For me, it was extremely healing and it felt, you know, very few people can really relate to what we’re going through on such a grand scale You know, I had only really ever talked on my own through a camera like this. I had not been a part of any of the things that happened in the past, back in 2019, back when Julie K. Brown did her provision of justice article. I had not been part of the documentary.
There’s a lot of survivors had. So when we were all meeting last week, a lot of them all knew each other, and I was worried I was going to feel left out. You know, in 1991, I’m a very different generation.
Nicolle Wallace: Different person, right?
Jess Michaels: Yeah. I am one of the early — I as, uh — as far as I know, I’m the earliest publicly known survivor. I’m not the earliest survivor. There are other survivors. But as far as I know, I’m the earliest publicly known survivor and I didn’t know how they would react to me. And everyone was warm and had this level of hope together. And we were really feeding off of each other, and being inspired by each other, and feeling the strength of us as a collective.
So it was less kumbaya, which seems calm and more like just powerful circle of fire. It felt very bonding. It felt very safe, these women, and I think I said it on the NBC interview, like we’re not children anymore. We’re not we’re not young women. I’m not a 22-year-old anymore. There aren’t young girls anymore. We’re coming back here, in a way, that is as adult women now, who are just done and really fighting together.
Jennifer Freeman: These women are a force. They’re a force together.
Nicolle Wallace: I watched it.
Jess Michaels: Yeah.
Nicolle Wallace: And it read very fierce.
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Woman: What is the message that we are sending to survivors of sexual violence about coming forward?
Woman: Yes.
Woman: Yes.
Woman: And how far back are we going to take ourselves as a nation if we don’t give this the attention and scrutiny that it deserves. Regardless of who is involved, this was a crime.
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Nicolle Wallace: You know, I’ve covered Donald Trump for nine years and there’s one thing that doesn’t work and that’s fear. And there was no fear in any woman that I spoke.
Jess Michaels: Yeah.
Nicolle Wallace: They told stories of being stalked and threatened, but together, there was fierceness. And I wonder, Jess, if you’re optimistic that that fierceness is the variable that’s changing the politics around releasing the files.
Jess Michaels: I think we have fed off of each other’s speaking out, and that has led to more speaking out, which has led to hope, which has led to more empowerment. And I think it is becoming this snowball effect that is not going to stop until we get accountability, truth, justice. We are part of the conversation. And that is what I think is also really fueling us is the fact that we were so blatantly left out.
And so, as now, these women, we’re saying, you’re not leaving us out of the conversation again. And that feels healing. It healed parts of me I didn’t know needed healing.
Nicolle Wallace: When you saw Jeffrey Epstein, I mean, did you follow efforts to hold him accountable? I mean, like, how large did Jeffrey Epstein loom in your life?
Jess Michaels: He didn’t. He didn’t loom in my life. And this is, I think, an important aspect of trauma for people to understand, too. For me, I didn’t have visual flashbacks. I didn’t have thoughts of him. I didn’t even remember his name until I saw Julie K. Brown’s article.
But what I would relive was how helpless I felt in that moment. I share that I froze. That is part of my advocacy, is talking about the freeze trauma response and how that left me feeling, uh, stupid. A lost sense of who I thought I was, as that really competent and capable and confident dancer, and how absolutely incapable I was of taking care of myself in that moment, and then no longer trusting myself.
That sense of loss of myself at 22 is what stuck with me. I never saw his name again, never saw his face again until Julie K. Brown’s article in 2018. And so, I saw his face. I was just scrolling through my phone, reading the news, I didn’t remember his name, but I saw his face and there was something about it. My body started to react before I remembered that it could be him. I started having trouble breathing. I started to sweat. I started getting anxious. My hands started shaking.
And that’s when I went to go look for my day planner because I thought, for sure, I had written it down somewhere, and that’s when I saw that it was him. And I had this equally, like, polar opposite reaction of being completely triggered, completely devastated, while also reading the article and recognizing it wasn’t my fault. I wasn’t the only one. I thought I was the only one the whole time. I thought I was the only one that he had raped.
For 27 years, I thought I was the only one. So it wasn’t until 2018 until I learned that I was part of this survivor sisterhood that nobody wants to be a part of.
Nicolle Wallace: Did you ever confront your roommate who sent you to his office and home, with what happened to you?
Jess Michaels: So I never saw her again. In a dancer apartment, you have people coming in and out all the time, and I had left on a second contract to go to Tokyo to model. And when I came home, I was too scared to stay in New York. Within 24 hours, I had moved out of that apartment. I left New York.
And this was also the bizarre thing about it, why didn’t I think to talk to her afterward? I thought she had a good experience with him. I thought this did not happen to her. So I never reached out to her. What I started to realize years later was, hey, wait a minute, she never reached out to me either. I left and she never reached out to me again. I found out later that she moved in with a friend, and this girl had stayed working for him for a long time.
Nicolle Wallace: What is your sense of the blast radius of trauma? I mean, how can someone outside of all of the abuse and outside of all of the private suffering of people like yourself, you know, that you’re raped in ‘91 and until Julie K. Brown’s articles come out, I think, so sort of pre-Maxwell’s prosecution and —
Jess Michaels: Yes.
Nicolle Wallace: — the attempts to hold him accountable in New York. How would you try to quantify just sort of the scope of trauma and damage that he and Maxwell have done?
Jess Michaels: That’s a great question. I’m going to start where I know, for me. Within three months, I had so much anxiety, and insomnia, and depression. I had to leave New York. So I lost my career trajectory.
Within six months, because my food wasn’t digesting, I didn’t have an eating disorder, but my food wasn’t digesting at all, and I could pull a pair of size zero jeans down off of my hips without unbuttoning them. When I talked to a friend at that time, what I said to her, when I finally shared with her what happened and all that, I said, what do you remember most about me in 1991, in October, November, December of ‘91? She said, “I just remember that you slept a lot.”
So, I lost my career. I lost my health, my physical health, because once you’re stuck in survival mode, after decades, your organs, your systems start to break down. And that’s a whole other podcast.
Your relationships suffer, your relationships, your friendships. You isolate without intentionally wanting to isolate, but also not feeling safe enough to really talk to anyone, even the people you love.
The CDC had a quote on damage back in 2014, the damage to a sexual assault survivor, like a lifetime, and this was conservative and approximate, is that $122,000 per person, and that was back in 2014, that that’s what the damage to sexual assault does. Now, times all of that by minimum a thousand, how many families, how many careers, how many relationships, how many bodies, how many survivors never came forward at all? How many survivors were like me, showed up once and then never wanted to have any part of this at all, and never said anything? So I know that the FBI, I guess, has said they estimated about a thousand survivors, and I’m going to say it’s probably a lot more. And that’s what we know.
Nicolle Wallace: I mean, Jess, what is justice then in response to that? I mean, what does that even begin to look like?
Jess Michaels: There are several parts to it, right? Justice is acknowledging negligence, acknowledging systemic failure, and having institutional courage to want to make change. And I think that’s the part that is so frustrating, is the institutional cowardice that is coming out now and has been. Institutional cowardice has been going on for decades around sexual assault and trafficking.
Actions speak louder than words. So it is changing policies. You know, in 1991, when I froze, the law said, as I understood it, it wasn’t even considered rape if you didn’t resist. So it’s another reason why I never came forward, because I had never heard of freeze, and so I blamed myself. Laws matter. The wording of laws matter in how much society believes us, in how much the people we love around us believe us, in how much self-blame and shame we carry. So I believe in policy change.
For me, personally, I am creating my own form of justice. I am trying to work outside of any legal definitions of sexual assault and under the umbrella of sexual harm, and focusing on the injury that happens. Like, what happened to me, post-traumatic stress disorder, or like a post-traumatic stress injury, which is what I like to call it. Because I was not disordered, somebody injured me. And words matter, right?
Nicolle Wallace: Yeah.
Jess Michaels: Like, words matter. Post-traumatic stress disorder sounds like I was disordered in how I responded to this really horrific event. And that’s not true. I actually responded in a really natural and normal way to a really horrific event. And so, for me, I focus on the injury.
Nicolle Wallace: PTSD treatments are, as I understand it, a lot sort of more of a medical mystery. I mean, have you felt like you’ve had to advocate for your own healing, sort of mentally and physically? And can you talk about that journey?
Jess Michaels: Yes. So, Nicolle, I am not just an Epstein survivor. I am from Newtown, Connecticut, where the Sandy Hook shooting happened. I worked for a dance studio where we lost three little girls, and I worked for one of the foundations for five years, still in Wings of Change. You asked me a question in the beginning about how I have the courage to do what I’m doing, and it’s because I watched these families before all this happened. I worked for these families, and I watched them turn a horrific, violent tragedy into some really incredible, life-changing, inspiring, and hopeful acts. And that’s what taught me what I wanted to do, right? Like, that’s what taught me.
But for me to get help for post-traumatic stress disorder injury, what I found is that I needed to trust someone. And for me, I started to realize that the only reason I have gone through the amount of healing that I have is that my therapist is from Sandy Hook. She served my community. And I thought there’s nothing I’m going to be able to tell this woman that is going to be shocking for her, and I could trust her with the depth of these horrific things, and it wouldn’t scare her. And so that’s why I believe I have had the inordinate opportunity to heal because of that.
(Music Playing)
Nicolle Wallace: My conversation with Jess Michaels and Jennifer Freeman continues right after the break. Don’t go anywhere.
(Announcements)
Jennifer Freeman: Nicolle, may I turn back to what justice looks like for a moment? Justice includes accountability. Accountability includes releasing the records, releasing the files, finding out what happened. There were so many violations of mandatory FBI and U.S. Attorney’s Office policies. Why were they violated? Why were they ignored? It’s important for us to understand this, to understand the depth of this negligence, so that we cannot do it again.
Nicolle Wallace: Yes.
Jennifer Freeman: Without going through this process, there’s really no way to ensure that. And because remember, certainly there were all kinds of survivors, and some of them were children —
Nicolle Wallace: Yes.
Jennifer Freeman: — 13, 14 years old. And in our culture, accountability, especially when the government continues to fail to do their job, that includes bringing a lawsuit, which was what we’ve done. We’ve brought a lawsuit on behalf of Maria Farmer, who was the whistleblower. And now, we are starting to bring claims on behalf of Jess and all of our other clients.
Nicolle Wallace: Yes.
Jennifer Freeman: And I just want to make sure everyone understands that every survivor can participate in this, and it gives them the opportunity to come forward. And they could even come forward anonymously, under a pseudonym, to at least take the steps. They don’t have to do it, but take a look at it and see if that can help you move yourself forward in your healing journey, because I think it can. And getting those records is critical. Release the files. Release Maria’s files.
Nicolle Wallace: Yes.
Jennifer Freeman: By the way, I asked for Maria’s files under a simple FOIA request, Freedom of Information Act. Standard stuff, shouldn’t be difficult. Her records, these belong to her. There’s no privacy concerns about her. And what did they do? They wrote me a letter back. They wrote back in January, earlier this year. They wrote back and they said they were going to get back to me by November 2027, almost three years —
Nicolle Wallace: Wow.
Jennifer Freeman: — to thinking about whether they’re going to show me Maria’s own records. So this is what we’re facing.
Nicolle Wallace: Well, and what’s amazing is I understand from news reports that they put a thousand agents on the files, so there’s no denial that the files exist. They put a thousand agents —
Jennifer Freeman: Yeah.
Nicolle Wallace: — on the files to go through and look for Trump’s name. Multiple news organizations have reported that they told him his name is in the files. So there are some questions that aren’t knowable. This isn’t one of them. I mean, Jennifer, can you just take me through your theory of the case, your theory of this big government cover-up? What is in those files?
Jennifer Freeman: There should be information about a lot of allegations involving other men, some of which are already public. So this notion that there’s nobody to prosecute, there’s no one to look at. And one of the other big issues that I think are really important, and it’s the classic follow the money. How did Epstein become so wealthy? Where did he get all that money?
You know, for example, he worked closely with this Les Wexner for decades, for years, wound up with his then 20-million-dollar townhouse, wound up with the power of attorney over all of his finances. How did that happen? What happened as a result of that? Where was this close relationship, such a close relationship? We need to know those kinds of things. It’s important to understand. And these files, these records should reveal a lot of that.
Nicolle Wallace: Jess, let me ask you about the first thing you talked about, that you were raped by Jeffrey Epstein, and you stayed quiet because you felt ashamed, because —
Jess Michaels: Yes.
Nicolle Wallace: — you judged yourself, or you felt society would judge how you reacted as a victim. How do you begin to turn the culture so that after a crime of sexual violence is carried out by a powerful man against an innocent woman, the woman never feels any shame, the man does, and the society judges the rapist, the criminal, not the victim, the woman?
Jess Michaels: I think that’s a great question, and I think that that is actually a really important distinction that has to start happening. And I think the Me Too movement was incredibly successful at making us aware that we weren’t alone. The place where I feel like we’re at now is we’re all saying Me Too, and now what’s next? Because we don’t know what to do next, and the people around us don’t know what to do next, and that’s where I believe the part of my mission comes in, that I’m trying to do, is to really frame sexual assault as an injury first that demands care before there’s an interrogation or investigation.
Because what automatically happens, even as I saw it, I had a viral TikTok, 3.1 million views, yay, we’re great, and I cannot tell you how many comments of proof, proof, proof, and I have to keep saying this TikTok is about trauma. It is not about the justice system. There’s not a recognition of the injury that we are living with, that the injury that Maria has been living with since 1996, the injury that we are walking around and it’s completely re-traumatized every time things like a birthday book with a cartoon come up. So until people can start to recognize and learn more about that injury, I think we’re going to struggle in getting any justice.
And I just want to add something to what Jennifer was saying. In my social media comments, everybody is waiting for survivors to put together their lawsuit. And I said, we are. You know, I think not enough people are hearing about the fact that we are trying to pursue a sense of justice and accountability for all that we have lost and to protect future generations.
Jennifer Freeman: Well, you know, Nicolle, you make an interesting point, because civil litigation has been a big driver on achieving accountability also, especially around sexual assault, child pornography, some kind of sexual exploitation. It’s often either preceding criminal prosecution or alongside it. If you look at what happened with Jeffrey Epstein, it wasn’t until the civil lawsuit started pushing —
Jess Michaels: Yeah.
Jennifer Freeman: — that further investigation was done, along with very important media work, investigatory journalism by Julie Brown and others.
Nicolle Wallace: Can I ask both of you about the profile of a man like Jeffrey Epstein who would rape a 22-year-old dancer and then traffic in underage girls? I feel like we don’t capture the monstrous nature of that, and I don’t think this is an issue for women to wrestle with. I think any father of a daughter should be wrestling with it as many hours of the day as I am. I mean, what —
Jess Michaels: Yeah.
Nicolle Wallace: — kind of monster, what kind of monstrosity is a child sex trafficking ring?
Jess Michaels: So this is what I will tell you, when I shared my story with someone that was a criminal behavioral analyst, and I was describing how when he opened that drawer with the books, I said there were a dozen of that same book. And should you realize that if there were already a dozen of those books sitting there in 1991, you were no match for him at 22 years old. You are no match for the level of manipulation.
The other thing I will tell you is that when he assaulted me, there is no way he didn’t know I was scared. There’s no way that he didn’t know that I was frozen and had gone numb, and it would be impossible for him to not know. So I think there is a characteristic of this type of person that it’s not just about sex, it’s about domination, and it’s about fear, and it’s about control.
And that’s why I think one of the big disconnects with a lot of men talking about this issue right now is they think it’s just, oh, you just had a bad hookup. No, it’s not a bad hookup when I freeze and go mute, and dissociate and can’t feel my body. When I leave confused and get on the subway going the wrong way, and I’m so traumatized by the violation, that it sticks with me for decades, I think that there’s a real disconnect in that concept of, no, it’s not just a bad hookup or a bad sexual experience. It was unwanted, it was not consented, and it was stolen.
Nicolle Wallace: I guess just the last thing I want to ask you about are the people who will make the decisions right now; Donald Trump, Todd Blanche, his Deputy Attorney General, who seemed to take an unprecedented interest in this case by going down and interviewing Ghislaine Maxwell himself; Mike Johnson, the Speaker of the House; Tom Massie, a Republican who’s sort of breaking ranks. I mean, when you look at the political actors and you look at the lack of transparency, what are your thoughts about our leaders and our politics?
Jess Michaels: I think it was something actually that you said early in this interview. I really think it’s going to have to be the women who stand up for us. I think we are going to need the women in power to stand up to the men in power right now.
Nicolle Wallace: Are you hopeful that they will?
Jess Michaels: I think we’re seeing some incredible women step up and stand with us, and unexpected women.
Nicolle Wallace: Unexpected for sure.
Jess Michaels: And I’m here for it, you know?
Nicolle Wallace: Yeah.
Jess Michaels: I think that I’ve heard other people say, well, where were they when we were talking out before about harm? I don’t care. If you’re with us now, then we may not agree on everything, but we agree on this. And so, I am begging, begging these women, that one step away from the people that are the decision-makers, that they will appeal for us, that they will advocate for us in a powerful way to make a difference.
I think that if you were to ask me, you know, what demographic do I think can make the most difference? I think moms. Moms understand this. Moms are hurting with us. And it doesn’t matter what political party they are. This is a nonpartisan issue when you’re talking about child sex trafficking and sexual assault, because I know the stats say 1 in 3, but I actually think it’s like 3 in 4 women that this happens to. I know more women that have been sexually assaulted than haven’t.
And so, I’m asking for every woman in the lives of the men, that are making these decisions, to please stand with us and speak up for us, and help them understand why this is important, not just for us but for our children.
Jennifer Freeman: And these women are not going away.
Jess Michaels: Yes.
Jennifer Freeman: These women are motivated, and they’re smart, and they care deeply about this. And this is their time to come forward, and they’re here and they’re not going anywhere.
Jess Michaels: Exactly.
Nicolle Wallace: Jess, you’re a force. You’re a force for good in a situation I cannot imagine having the courage or the presence of mind to do the same thing. You’re an inspiration. So thank you so much, Jess and Jennifer —
Jess Michaels: Thank you.
Nicolle Wallace: — for being here. Thank you for this conversation.
Jess Michaels: Thank you.
Jennifer Freeman: Thank you. It was very helpful.
Jess Michaels: Yeah.
Jennifer Freeman: Really important.
Nicolle Wallace: Thank you.
Jennifer Freeman: Thanks, Nicolle.
(Music Playing)
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“The Best People” is produced by Vicki Vergolina and senior producer Lisa Ferri, with production support from Anne Gimbel. Our audio engineer is Bob Mallory, and Bryson Barnes is the head of audio production. Pat Burkey is the senior executive producer of “Deadline: White House.” Brad Gold is the executive producer of content strategy. Aisha Turner is the executive producer of audio, and Madeline Herringer is senior vice president in charge of audio, digital and long-form.
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