How the Justice Department Failed Epstein’s Victims

February 6, 2026·50 min·4 clips

Epstein served only a year in jail for raping 40 girls, thanks to a corrupt plea deal.

The mistake is painfully concrete. The Justice Department published personal details and unredacted survivor photos, including dates of birth and phone numbers, in material tied to Jeffrey Epstein. Accountability is still unfinished. Brooke Gladstone frames the Epstein story through a reporter still following the trail, with huge redacted pages blocking parts of the record while evidence of corruption remains in view. Then the excerpt turns south. Bad Bunny's Grammy win and Super Bowl headlining slot open the door to La Brega's third season, a podcast about Puerto Rican history and life in the U.S. colony. The statue does the talking. Alana Casanova-Burgess picks up the story of Ponce de Leon in Old San Juan, where one monument carried one official version of Puerto Rico's colonial past. Activists tore it down. They wanted a conversation about Puerto Rico's colonial present. The government wanted Ponce de Leon back on the pedestal. The timing is hard to miss. On January 24, 2022, Puerto Rican students were returning to classrooms while the pandemic was still going, and some had been away for two years because of earthquakes in the south. The king was coming too. Spain's King Felipe VI arrived for the 500th anniversary of San Juan's founding, with a three-day visit built for careful press coverage. That staging gives the story its bite. An empty pedestal could have held Puerto Rican heroes. Instead, the government insisted on Ponce de Leon. The show does not overwork the point. It lets exposed survivors, blacked-out files, celebrity timing, and an old statue sit beside each other until the argument turns cold: authority controls records, symbols, and too often the people most affected by both.

As heard by us

A sharp episode on Epstein survivors, Justice Department failure, and Puerto Rico's fight over colonial symbols.

On the Media opens on a Justice Department failure that put Epstein survivors at risk: personal details and unredacted photos were mistakenly made public, including information one survivor recognized as her own.

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Why you'd press play

When Epstein reporting turns into a lesson in how institutions can injure survivors again.

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