Experts review Epstein videos with CNN: 'He's acting like he's the victim'

[0:00] The very clear picture of a creepy guy and a really clear question, why did so many people [0:07] who had so much to lose keep hanging out with him? [0:10] We sat down with a couple of experts and said, you look at this, law enforcement people, [0:14] tell us what you think. [0:18] I think women, as I said the last time, have an intuitive sense. [0:24] What is intuitive? [0:25] They have intuition, they have feelings, and they're able to deal in the realm of things [0:30] that men, especially men like myself, find unexplainable. [0:35] So Melissa Marola, as a former profiler, Christine Dunn as a former federal prosecutor, when you [0:43] hear that, what do you see? [0:46] So I see somebody who clearly knows how to take advantage of the situation, how to size [0:56] somebody up and determine, is there a way that I can spot vulnerabilities and that I [1:04] can use those vulnerabilities and exploit them in some capacity? [1:09] I don't think he viewed any of his victims as actual people. [1:14] They were things to be used by him. [1:17] To what degree do you think this lavish lifestyle that he exposed people to was also just part [1:25] of the whole equation? [1:26] We know that most of his victims were vulnerable individuals. [1:31] And so they see something like this and they think, this is opportunity for me to get ahead, [1:36] to have a stable income, to have a place that I can go. [1:42] And so it's part of the grooming process. [1:44] It really is. [1:45] I'm in a privileged position to have some of the world's smartest people come to my house [1:49] and tell me what they think about different subjects. [1:52] Well, I think all of these famous individuals gave him legitimacy. [1:56] You come into the situation and you see, well, Jeffrey Epstein is good friends with this person [2:01] that I admire and respect, so there must be some legitimacy to him. [2:05] One of the things he talked about was his contact with other people and opportunities he could make for him. [2:12] He said there's this company called . He said he mentioned it to you. [2:15] He thinks they'll pay you a couple of million dollars to be on the board. [2:18] You're going to make a lot of money. [2:20] You're definitely going to make a lot of money. [2:21] You know, by being connected to Jeffrey Epstein, it opens up a world of contacts and profitable opportunities. [2:29] That's just hard to say no to, and maybe that's why people were willing to overlook some of these red flags. [2:34] I think he played his part very well. He knew what worked. [2:37] He clearly liked to present himself as, and other people saw him as, very intelligent. [2:43] How do you describe, in the art of intelligence, deception? [2:48] Kids who never lie aren't very smart. They're not very intelligent, right? [2:52] Do you see an intelligent mastermind, though, or do you see a con man? [2:58] He fits what we see in a lot of our domestic violence cases, when we see somebody who has the ability to physically, emotionally, mentally, psychologically continue to dominate, and that's what I think I see with him versus true intelligence. [3:16] There's this one clip when he's trying to rehabilitate his image, basically, and he's being asked by Steve Bannon for a potential documentary they're going to make about his impression of himself. [3:27] And it never struck you about how to end up in a situation like this? [3:30] No, that would probably mean I would be too self-aware. [3:33] You're suggesting I was somewhat depressed, and how could this happen to me? [3:38] I'm not saying depressed. I'm saying a moment of awareness of how could I get myself into this situation. [3:43] No, I would just say how strange that this happens. Just, it's strange. [3:47] He's unable to accept blame, unable to feel regret, feel remorse. [3:53] If he were still alive, I could see him continuing to proclaim his innocence. [3:58] He just does not value the gravity of what he has done, and will not, and did not, truly take responsibility. [4:07] Do you think you're the devil himself? [4:09] No, but I do have a good mirror. [4:13] It's a serious question. [4:15] I'm sorry. [4:15] Do you think you're the devil himself? [4:17] I don't know. Why would you say that? [4:19] Because you have all the attributes. You're incredibly smart. You remember, the devil is somebody who knows what? [4:24] The devil is brilliant. You read Milton's Paradise Lost. [4:28] No, the devil scares me. [4:30] I mean, he's acting like he's the victim here. [4:32] Correct, which is not surprising. [4:34] He was charming, and he was able to give people what they wanted, and people wanted to believe it so that they could stick around in this Shangri-La that he created. [4:44] And that is what you have going on, and why it went on for so long. [4:49] It was really informative to sit down with these experts and see what they can see here, because I'll tell you, there is so much you cannot see here. [4:58] We don't have the metadata on this. We don't know who took the video, where the video was taken, who was in the room, and some of it is so blacked out by the Justice Department, all you can see are the edges of the frame. [5:08] In that sense, this release leaves a lot to be desired, even as it's so much video, you can barely start plowing through it. [5:16] You know, anyway, I understand this is a lot, but it would be nice if it said why parts of that were redacted, or why you couldn't see parts of that, because it's also just so weird to hear from him, and to hear his voice. [5:25] Yeah, I think a lot of people really have never heard him speak, and to sit and watch him talk in these interviews, and to see him moving around, it's just a very strange world, a little window into it, and I think there will be more windows to come. [5:37] Tom Foreman, thank you for looking through all that for us, and showing it to us. It's illuminating, for sure. [5:42] Vice President Vance raising questions with this comment about Jeffrey Epstein and Pizzagate. [5:47] One person sent an email to Jeffrey Epstein saying, oh, there were some really nice, like, pizzas and grape sodas or something like that, and I remember it sounded like the Pizzagate conspiracy theory, but here it was in, like, an email from a guy, and my reaction to that was, we should absolutely investigate that person. [6:09] It is unclear what Vance is referring to, but it's just one of a multitude of questions that the Epstein files raised. [6:15] For some Epstein survivors, the files have raised more questions than answers, and that is the case for Danielle Bensky, who returned to the townhome where Epstein abused her in search of those answers. [6:27] MJ Lee is out front. [6:33] You okay? [6:34] Yeah. [6:35] It's just not easy to see, you know. [6:39] It's like, it's just, it holds a lot. [6:43] I'm just like, who I was before I stepped into these doors and who I was after. [6:48] It's so long ago that I think, like, now, after becoming a parent especially, you start to realize that 17 is so little, you know. [6:59] I remember standing right there. [7:01] There was the J.E. on the side. [7:03] Would have been here. [7:04] Yeah. [7:05] What did you think you were coming here for? [7:07] What were you told? [7:08] To be a masseuse, yeah. [7:09] It was like, nice to meet you, you know, shook our hand, and then just, like, got down on the massage chair on the table and was like, you start up here, you start down on your legs. [7:18] So it wasn't until the second time when you came by yourself. [7:21] He said, ballerinas are crazy and they love to get naked, right? [7:25] And, you know, if you want to be a ballerina, like, is that like, are you like that, right? [7:29] Do you like to get naked too? [7:31] Like, you should totally try it. [7:32] And I got naked and massaged him. [7:34] So it was a gradual process. [7:35] Yes, very gradual. [7:36] And that's part of the grooming process and grooming tactics. [7:40] Look at how many cameras there are. [7:41] One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine. [7:46] So, like, that was what I expected to see when we were originally looking through the files. [7:51] I was expecting to see a lot of footage of girls, at least, in and out. [7:55] Nobody has that footage. [7:56] So where is that footage? [7:58] That footage is among the things that Dani began searching for when President Trump's Justice Department recently released the Epstein files. [8:10] What she found instead was what she told law enforcement about Jeffrey Epstein in 2008 when she was subpoenaed by the FBI. [8:16] I was, like, terrified. [8:18] So I remember calling my mom. [8:20] Yeah. [8:21] And my mom had said, you're going to derail your whole life, you know, and something that Jeffrey had already said to me multiple times. [8:28] Basically, you'll be brought up on prostitution charges. [8:31] That's the headspace you were in. [8:32] Completely. [8:33] And so I kept walking back, like, the amount of times, the level of abuse. [8:39] I blamed it on a friend a lot of the time. [8:41] Let's go through it a little bit. [8:43] This person became very upset, and Jeffrey ended up throwing the money at her and yelled at her to get out of his home. [8:49] That was me. [8:50] That was you. [8:52] Yeah. [8:52] So. [8:54] Well, you're talking about your experience as though you're somebody else. [8:59] Yes, because that is disassociation. [9:02] If I can remove myself and I can look at it as if it's someone else, then I don't have to experience it again. [9:11] Dani was interviewed by the FBI one more time in 2019 about Epstein. [9:16] She said she, again, was unable to share the full truth. [9:19] I find it so hard to reread these and look at these because it's like, why couldn't you just be honest? [9:26] Why couldn't you just tell someone? [9:28] Dani also found her MySpace account from 2008 and photos of familiar rooms and objects inside of Epstein's townhouse. [9:36] I sense that with you, there's this fear that this moment is going to pass. [9:41] There are people out there right now, 17-year-old girls right now, in parts of the U.S. that are being exploited and trafficked, right? [9:50] So I think that there's a lot of responsibility for those of us that have taken this story and turned it into advocacy. [9:58] This was part of a claim that I had to actually tell my story for the first time. [10:05] My mom was diagnosed with a brain tumor called an acoustic neuroma. [10:09] We looked at my mom's scans and he said that all it would take was one phone call to Mount Sinai to get her the top of the line care. [10:16] He asked what I would do for it and he told me that he wanted me to procure others, which I never did, though I was so intimidated by him. [10:28] At our sessions after, he repeatedly physically abused me and made me do things to him. [10:35] Finally, my mom had her surgery, no help from Jeffrey, and so I stopped answering the calls. [10:43] Before Jeffrey, I was a vivacious dancer with a love for ballet and the arts. [10:48] After Jeffrey, I quit dancing because I couldn't look at myself. [10:58] I couldn't look at my body in a leotard. [11:01] It felt like my body was no longer my own. [11:09] When I went to acting school, that was the time when I started to actually feel like I could come to terms with who I used to be. [11:20] I found dance for myself again and like the movement kind of recalibrated me to come back to myself. [11:27] And Aaron, we did ask the Justice Department whether there is any footage from the cameras that were outside of Jeffrey Epstein's house. [11:38] And a DOJ spokesperson told me that all of the footage, the camera footage that is in the Justice Department's possession has been released. [11:45] Now, meanwhile, the DOJ did not comment on my inquiries about Danny's name still appearing in the files. [11:51] But we will tell you that since the filming of this interview, her name no longer appears in the files. [11:57] Aaron. [11:57] Thank you very much. [11:59] An incredible piece, incredibly brave of Danny.