financier

A dream team has assembled to bring a scripted series based on the book “Perversion of Justice: The Jeffrey Epstein Story” from the drawing board to the small screen.

Oscar-winning actor Laura Dern has signed on to portray Miami Herald investigative journalist Julie K. Brown, whose tireless reporting on the Epstein sex-trafficking case exposed how federal prosecutors approved what many have referred to as a “sweetheart” plea deal for Epstein in 2008.

Per Variety, the official description of the series reads: “An explosive account of an investigative reporter exposing the secret plea deal between Epstein and federal prosecutors. Drawing from Brown’s experience as a groundbreaking reporter for the Miami Herald, the book and the limited series follow her relentless years-long investigation that identified 80 victims, persuaded key survivors to go on the record, and led to Epstein[‘s] and Ghislaine Maxwell’s arrests.”

In 2008, the financier was charged with luring underage girls to his Palm Beach, Fla., mansion for sex. Under the plea agreement with then-U.S. Atty. for the Southern District of Florida Alexander Acosta, Epstein avoided a federal trial — where, if convicted, he could have faced a potential sentence of life in prison — and pleaded guilty instead to two state felony solicitation charges.

He served 13 months in a county jail but was allowed to go to his office six days a week on a work-release program.

Co-showrunners for the project are Eileen Myers, known for “American Hostage,” and Sharon Hoffman, best known for her work on “House of Cards” and who is adapting Brown’s book for television. Dern will also executive produce, along with Adam McKay and Kevin Messick, known for “The Big Short,” “Don’t Look Up” and “Succession.” Brown is also executive producing.

Although Sony Pictures Television is still pitching the series to networks and streamers, industry insiders predict that, with Dern and McKay on board, a green light is on the horizon.

Last week, Brown joined veteran journalist Katie Couric live on Substack to discuss her reporting on Epstein, and how the disgraced financier and his camp underestimated her. “I don’t think he worried about the little old reporter from the Miami Herald,” she said.

“When you have a sex predator of children who is — at the time I wrote this story, he was out there, you know, he was free — and he was still, as we now know, harming children,” Brown told Couric. “And so my goal at the time was to look at how this happened.

“Where was the breakdown? Was there someone who … was powerful who let him off the hook, and I just thought it was a good time to take a new look at it like a cold case detective would.

“By the time I decided to reopen the case, these women, these victims who were 13, 14, 15 years old, were now in their late 20s and early 30s, and Donald Trump became president right around this time. And ironically, as I was already looking at this story, he nominated Alexander Acosta to be his Labor secretary, and I knew at the time that he was the very person who had let [Epstein] off the hook. And so that’s where I started looking at this case.”

WASHINGTON — Democratic lawmakers on Wednesday stormed out of a closed-door briefing on the Jeffrey Epstein files by Justice Department leaders, and said they would push to force Atty. Gen. Pam Bondi to answer questions under oath about the case that has plagued the Trump administration.

Bondi and Deputy Atty. Gen. Todd Blanche went to Capitol Hill to try to quell bipartisan frustration over the Justice Department’s handling of millions of files related to Epstein’s sex trafficking investigation.

But less than an hour into the briefing, Democrats walked out in protest of the arrangement and said they would press to enforce a subpoena for Bondi to appear for a sworn deposition next month.

“We want her under oath because we do not trust her,” said Democratic Rep. Maxwell Frost.

Asked by reporters after the briefing whether she would comply with the subpoena, Bondi said, “I made it crystal clear I will follow the law.” She also defended the department’s handling of the Epstein files, saying officials are proud of their work to release millions of documents to the public.

The committee’s Republican chairman, Rep. James Comer, accused Democrats of political grandstanding.

“This for us, for the Republicans, it’s about getting answers,” Comer said after the briefing. “For the Democrats, it’s a political game, and they just demonstrated that today. There’s no reason for them to walk out and clutch their pearls and act like they were offended and outraged.”

Justice Department leaders had hoped the release of documents tied to the disgraced financier would put an end to a political saga that has dogged the president’s second term, but the agency remains consumed by questions and criticism over Epstein’s case and its management of the files. Bondi has accused Democrats of using the furor over the documents to distract from Trump’s political successes, even though some of the most vocal criticism has come from members of the president’s own party.

Five Republicans on the committee voted with Democrats to support the subpoena for Bondi to appear for a deposition on April 14. Lawmakers have accused the Justice Department of withholding too many files and criticized the agency for haphazard redactions that exposed intimate details about victims.

The Justice Department has called the subpoena “completely unnecessary,” noting that members of Congress have been invited to view unredacted files at the Justice Department and that department leaders have made themselves available to answer questions from lawmakers.

The department has sought to assure lawmakers and the public that there has been no effort to shield President Trump, who says he cut ties with Epstein years ago after an earlier friendship, or any other high-profile figures close to Epstein from potential embarrassment. Justice Department leaders have also rejected suggestions that they have ignored victims and insist that while there is no evidence in the files to prosecute anyone else, they remain committed to investigating should new information come forward.

“I’m not trying to defend Epstein — I’m not,” Blanche said in an interview this week with Katie Miller, who is married to top Trump advisor Stephen Miller. “I do defend the work that this department is doing today, right now, which is going after every single perpetrator anyway, and if there is a narrative that exists that we are ignoring Epstein victims, that is false.”

The documents were disclosed under the Epstein Files Transparency Act, the law enacted after months of public and political pressure that requires the government to open its files on the late financier and his confidant and onetime girlfriend, Ghislaine Maxwell. Maxwell, 64, was convicted in December 2021 and sentenced to 20 years in prison for her role over a decade in sexually exploiting and abusing underage girls with Epstein.

Criminal investigations into the financier have long animated online sleuths, conspiracy theorists and others who have suspected government cover-ups and clamored for a full accounting.

After missing a Dec. 19 deadline set by Congress to release all the files, the Justice Department said it tasked hundreds of lawyers with reviewing the records to determine what needed to be redacted, or blacked out. The Justice Department in January said it was releasing more than 3 million pages of documents along with more than 2,000 videos and 180,000 images.

Richer and Groves write for the Associated Press.