A month after facing accusations of scrapping a Jeffrey Epstein story prior to the billionaire’s arrest on sex trafficking charges, ABC News announced it will air a documentary special and a podcast series on him.
The two-hour broadcast special, “Truth and Lies: Jeffrey Epstein,” will air Jan. 9, 2020. The eight-part podcast will debut that same day. According to the announcement, they will focus on “Jeffrey Epstein and the powerful story of the women who survived his crimes and fought back to reclaim their lives.”
“The accusers open up with emotional accounts of the abuse they endured, their resilience, strength and life now. The ABC News special features material from a 2003 interview in which Epstein discusses his life; deposition tapes of Epstein and his alleged co-conspirators; police interviews with the young girls; and their personal reactions today to seeing Epstein appear in court last summer,” according to the network description.
Project Veritas, the right-wing activist group that has tried to conduct previous sting operations to expose journalistic bias, released a video in November of ABC News anchor Amy Robach saying she was “disappointed” that her 2015 story on Jeffrey Epstein didn’t run.
It was unbelievable what we had. [Bill] Clinton-we had everything. I tried for three years to get it on to no avail and now it’s all coming out and it’s like these new revelations,” she says in the clip.
Epstein died in his jail cell by apparent suicide in August while awaiting trial on sex trafficking charges.
ABC News released a statement in November that alluded to the pre-planned special and podcast but said that at the time Robach was caught on a hot mic talking about her story, not all of the reporting met their standards to air: “Ever since we’ve had a team on this investigation and substantial resources dedicated to it,” the news organization said. “That work has led to a two-hour documentary and 6-part podcast that will air in the new year.”