If you’re not following the work of Ellie Leonard, change that now.
Leonard’s interest in the Jeffrey Epstein story started last year on a trip to Montana (where she has deep roots), and she wanted to better understand the story’s connection to Donald Trump. Fast forward to the passage of the Epstein Files Transparency Act, Leonard has been downloading and meticulously sifting through the DOJ releases page by page.
Leonard describes how she first started piecing things together, ways she uncovers redacted information in the DOJ document dumps and the community that has coalesced around (and adds to) her work.
Leonard’s tedious work has also revealed just how sloppy and disorganized the DOJ release has been, including releasing names of survivors while redacting potential co-conspirators. Leonard recently published multiple posts containing coded journals from an Epstein survivor that was written when she was a teenager.
“There was a very long list of perpetrators in there that was not redacted because the DOJ didn’t take the time to decode the journal. So now we have a long list of people who all worked at like AOL and who are like Virginia lawmakers,” Leonard said, with names like former Treasury Sec. Larry Summers, investor Leon Black, attorney Alan Dershowitz and former J.P. Morgan executive Jes Staley all being mentioned in the journal. “Like all these people are named. And it’s a very credible source because it was before this was like a hot button issue and people were talking about it. This is this is not somebody who was writing with the intent of submitting it to the FBI. It was just a kid in a journal. And so I find that very credible. And those are the names that I pay attention to.”
Leonard knows the topic of Epstein is ripe for conspiracy theories, which is why she is diligent about verifying information in the age of artificial intelligence.
“Everything just is so hard to sift through. And I work really hard at trying to stop misinformation if I see it,” Leonard said. “It’s so easy to spread misinformation because there’s so much information there.”
Leonard has downloaded all of the DOJ files into a separate Dropbox she makes public through her Substack channel and asks people to dig through the files with her.
“Really if you can read and you’re just very interested, like, everybody is qualified,” Leonard said. “If you guys just want a link to the Dropbox and you want to scroll the files with me, you don’t have to start at the beginning, just start somewhere in the middle. They’re all out of order. And let me know what you find.”
With millions of pages, there’s a lot to find. What started as a small handful of people lending their energy to the cause has now erupted into many thousands of people sending in discoveries. Leonard and her team are working out a next step to organize and categorize all of the information surfacing.
“It’s really cool to see people come forward and want to help because they’re usually the things that I present,” Leonard said. “I’m like, I didn’t find this. Somebody brought this to me and this is really amazing.”
In turn, she’s passed on some of that information to Rep. Jasmine Crockett and Rep. Jamie Raskin directly.
Leonard and Blue Amp Media just launched a weekly live deep dive to go over her latest findings and provide another space for open dialogue about the files. It will take place every Friday at 2 p.m. eastern on Substack.
“I think it’s important to remember why we’re doing this. It’s not because it is tabloid fodder. It’s not because it’s like, breaking news. It’s because it’s a story about children being hurt.” Leonard said. “Ultimately our job as adults is to protect them and provide them with a place and a world where they have rights and they have safety and they have the ability to do what they want with their lives without being traumatized on the way up. And so I’m doing that for my kids. I’m doing that for other people’s children. I’m doing that for the kids who didn’t have that when we were growing up in the 90s. I just keep my eye on that prize. That we are creating potentially a world where it doesn’t matter how much money and power you have. If you harm somebody, you will go to jail for it.”
Thank you Lev Parnas, Sharon Dymond, Pamela, Wendy E, CO, and many others for tuning into our live video with Ellie Leonard! Join me for our next live video in the app.
