Exclusive: The NBA Player, the Congressman and the Epstein Files

Welcome to Pablo Torre Finds Out. I am Pablo Torre, and today we're going to find out what this sound is.
They really didn't do this interview.

They has back something 35 years ago that I barely remember.

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So the number one thing that people keep asking me to do on this show is look into the Epstein files.

And so what I should probably just tell you, finally, is that for more than a year now, I've been thinking about one specific piece of this story, a video, that I am guessing you've already seen.

The footage shot in November of 1992, before Trump opened the resort as a club, shows the future president surrounded by cheerleaders for the Buffalo Bills and Miami Dolphins, capturing Trump's fun-loving bachelor lifestyle for an appearance on Faith Daniels' NBC Talk Show.

We're going to get great ratings in your show. After a while, Trump goes to greet three new guests, among them the financier Jeffrey Epstein.
Come on in, go inside.

More than a decade before his guilty plea on state prostitution charges. Donald Trump knew the cameras were there.
In the video, he makes a point to draw Epstein's attention to them.

And the video captures Donald Trump and Epstein chatting while watching a group of women at the party dance. It's not an image that matches Trump's declaration that he was not a fan of Epstein.

This viral video is arguably the most famous artifact and the most infamous story in modern American politics. But as a sports journalist, the thing that caught my eye wasn't Trump or Epstein.

It was a background character who had been hiding in a way that would otherwise be impossible at 6'11,

basically in plain sight. In fact, you may have missed him right there, walking into that party at Mar-a-Lago, right alongside a woman and Jeffrey Epstein shaking hands with our future president.

And then trying to duck out of the frame a bit later on as Epstein doubles over laughing at whatever it is that Trump says.

And so last month, when the Epstein files re-entered the news cycle, release all the documents and let the American people finally see what the real story is about.

We here at PTFO emailed this larger-than-life character ourselves. And his name, you should know, is Tom Macmillan.

Tom McMillan, it turns out, was the ninth overall pick in the 1974 NBA draft out of the University of Maryland, where he now sits on the Board of Regents.

Tom McMillan also served three straight terms as a Democratic congressman.

And when we asked Congressman McMillan if he would indulge a conversation about his connection to Jeffrey Epstein and also his own historic and decorated life,

he said yes

before canceling on us five days later.

But in those intervening days, something fascinating happened.

The next wave of Epstein files, tens of thousands of pages of emails sent to and from the financier and convicted child sex offender who died in 2019 in prison while awaiting trial on federal sex trafficking charges, became searchable.

Thanks to publicly available databases. And I fell pretty immediately into this new rabbit hole.

Tom McMillan, meanwhile, did something that I truly did not expect.

He rescheduled.

Good morning. Everything good? Good morning.
I'm great. How are you doing? I'm good.
Good. Yeah.

I'm sorry, I had to. bow out of it last week.
I uh I cut my elbow pretty bad. So I was worried that this wouldn't happen.
Yeah, no,

I was

looking at your Filipino connection. I had a congressional district that had the most Philippine Americans in the country in,

you know, Fort Washington, around Washington, D.C., Oxen Hill, that area, Prince George's County. Okay, so I got to set up who you are, sir, because your resume is staggering.

And I need people to understand, Tom McMillan, thank you for being here, by the way, who and what you've done in your life. Well, I appreciate that.
Thank you very much.

You've done quite a bit yourself.

I mean, the resume, I'll just read it off.

All-American, Olympian, 11-year NBA veteran with the Buffalo Braves, now the Clippers, of course, plus the Knicks, the Hawks, the Washington Bullets, a Rhodes Scholar at Oxford, a three-term Democratic U.S.

Congressman for Maryland, member of the President's Council on Sports and Fitness, a businessman in medical devices and biodefense.

I was appointed by Richard Nixon as the youngest presidential appointee ever, and then I chaired it under Clinton after Arnold Schwarzenegger.

By the way, the former CEO of Lead One, the trade association that advises collegiate athletic directors in this era, this strange new era of NIL, name, image, and likeness, of course, which we'll touch on.

You're a man in just so many Rolodexes. And by the way, Tom, I do feel well, I should call you the honorable C.

Thomas McMillan as your alma mater at the University of Maryland, their Board of Regents calls you, because I think we all can recognize the tallest ever member of Congress at 6'11.

Yeah, that's true. Actually, I was the tallest altar boy in all time, I think, although it's not in his book of records.
I presume if you're Filipino, you have that good Catholic.

I was an absolutely average-sized altar boy. That is also accurate about my personal biography.

But look, part of the reason why I've been studying a biography, of course, is because of this video that was unearthed by NBC News, Tom, which I just want to address at the top here, if that's okay, because it is this historical artifact.

And as I was watching it and studying it, I was like,

hold on, that's the guy who might also be the tallest member of Congress. That's right.

So the story is

I was coming to a party at Mar-a-Lago. Trump had just bought it, you know,

and I'm walking in with my girlfriend and there's Trump and

Epstein there. This was in 91, long time ago.
November 92, I believe, actually, just looking at the date there at Palm Beach, Florida. Right.
And what happened was Trump was throwing an NFL party.

So there were all kinds of NFL celebrities there and he was trying to promote Mar Lago because, you know, he wanted to do something with it, like turn it into a club or something.

So I literally just walked into that. The only reason there were cameras there is because Trump was promoting the NFL,

you know, and promoting his club, you know, typical Donald Trump stuff. So I kind of walked into that.

And that film is still, you know, is ever present, but it was really an NFL party more than anything else. So,

and there was a whole host of celebrities there. It just so happens, and I walk in, there's Trump and Epstein in the front of the house.

So, I mean, the idea that the most famous clip, one of the most famous clips of Donald Trump and Jeffrey Epstein during this moment in which we are examining both Donald Trump and Jeffrey Epstein, has you and your then-girlfriend right there in that receiving line makes me want to just understand where you were in your life at that point.

Because I was doing the math on this, and I'm like, okay, so November 92, that would mean you're about 40 years old. I think you had just lost your bid for a fourth term at that moment in time.

Is that right? I got redistricted and so I went to Florida just to,

you know, take a break. And I've known Donald Trump for,

he gave me money when I ran for Congress. I knew him, I think I first met him when I played for the Knicks.
So I've known him a long time. So he invited me to that party.

And as I said, there were a whole lot of celebrities there. And then I just walked into the cameras.
That was what was the irony of it. The NFL aspect of it, right?

I mean, there were reportedly cheerleaders from the Bills and the Dolphins. This was, as you described, like this big sort of football themed kickoff.

Did you interact with Epstein that night? Do you remember what he was like as you were sort of like walking in together and all that?

No, I just kind of walked into the party.

The reason why I saw those cameras, I said, God, I didn't realize I was going to walk into a camera fest. And so that's kind of why I kind of want to get out of there and just go into the party.

We have this guy, Jeffrey Epstein, standing in the front, you know, but he was kind of a figure in Palm Beach. I mean, I mean, it wasn't like he was unknown.
He was in New York, Palm Beach.

He knew a lot of people. And

that's just his, he was an MO. And I mean, I don't think he said, I don't think I never knew whether Trump was close close to him or not.
So I couldn't even make a comment on that.

And just, I think they were just talking as he as he walked in, too.

So this footage from like NBC that they were collecting, the camera fest, the broadcast quality footage here, it brings me to this other video from that broadcast.

As we're going to hear the song Rhythm is a Dancer by Snap. This video, I will note

that

there is a very tall man that pops up from behind in the background.

You're kind of like ducking away from what is this very famous scene that I cannot imagine you would anticipate would be so famous in the future.

But the person that you're talking to there is Ghelaine Maxwell. Did you have any

relationship with her? What was the discussion that you were having at that moment behind Trump and Epstein? Because it's just like this historical time capsule of all of these characters.

Well, I think that was the front of the party and i was walking through that's the irony of it i was kind of saying pleasantries to people and moving on you know i just uh you know you walk in you say hello to everybody you go through so i didn't really know gee lane very well but i was i said to folks hello and then i went into the party so i mean right it's really

you know it's just the irony of that if it hadn't been the nfl thing there wouldn't have been any cameras so i mean i think that's the only picture that i've ever been in with trump and epstein and all that crowd so it was all you know people bring it up all the time but it was a a party 34 years ago so i don't know so you weren't like discussing future trips on jeffrey epstein's plane or anything with ghalay and maxwell and no i know it's been a i mean it's so long ago i barely remember it so uh you know other other than the fact that it's shown from time to time i I have very little memory of it.

Yeah. So just so we can move on and for the record, so the last time you interacted with Epstein would have been when? When's the last time that you would have been in a place? It's not like

maybe I

might have run into him in Palm Beach or somewhere in the early 90s, but I, you know, I really kind of lost touch with him.

I just never, you know, when I say run into him, I might have seen him at another part of somewhere. Yeah.
I mean, he was someone that moved around New York and Aspen and Palm Beach.

So, I mean, you would probably run into him in some of that stuff. And I mean, I can't recall, quite frankly, but

it's been a long time.

I want to move from that to a bit of our shared past here because I used to work at a certain magazine called Sports Illustrated. And

when I was

oh, yeah, I started as a fact checker. That was my first job as a real adult.
And February 1970, Tom.

There you are, the second ever high school player on the cover of the magazine, which is, you know, it's you.

And somewhere along that that lineage is like LeBron's chosen one cover, but it says there, the best high school player in America, Mansfield's Tom McMillan.

Do you remember what that time in your life was like? Well, of course. I mean, here I grew up in a very small town in Pennsylvania, and I'm playing a game in Scranton.

You know, this, this was a seminal moment because, you know, every kid read sports illustrated back then. It's a different sports illustrator than it is today but it was a

very iconic publication and to um to be on the cover was pretty amazing people bring that cover up to me all the time today and want it signed and i remember neil uh weifer the photographer great photographer yeah great photographer for sports illustrate climbed up on those on that basket and took that shot peter carry wrote in the beasts quote recruiters often simultaneously compare Tom to Lou Alsender and Bill Bradley.

Then he goes on to write, he stands at the top of his class academically and is the president of the student council, the first trombonist in the school band, a prize-winning orator, and perhaps the world's tallest altar boy, end quote, owing to the previous description that you gave.

And then the recruiting visits, you are such an in-demand prospect that apparently West Virginia introduced you to Lyndon Johnson, like President Lyndon Baines Johnson.

Virginia, as a contrast, apparently, Corner Sports Illustrated, took you and your coach to meet a playmate of the month, which is a different sort of contrast in, I suppose, a recruiting visit.

All true. You know, I remember the West Virginia.
I was in 10th grade and Bucky Waters was the coach, and he took, brought me down to Morgantown. He's driving me around the campus.

He said, Well, would you like to meet the president? I said, well, of course I'd like to meet the president of the university. He says, no, I mean the president of the United States.

And LBJ was flying into Morgantown Airport. I went out and I met him as he got off the plane.
And I remember the first strong wave of bourbon that hit me in the face when I met

kind of new for a high school kid to sense that, but it's the first time I met a president of the United States. So it was pretty

crazy. Well, you go on to Maryland and you playing for Lefty.
Lefty Drazelle, this is one of the all-time great coaches.

And then, by the way, I got to speed run through some of this because you've just done so much in your life. You eventually end up at Munich in the 72 Olympics.

That was you as well in this all-time famous piece of footage where it's the U.S., it's Russia, it's the gold medal game, and the ending needs to be played three times as we watch the footage of you guarding the infamous inbounds pass here.

Well,

if you went back a little earlier than that, you'll see that the referee was

pushing me off the line and he didn't speak english so i was afraid that he was going to call it technical on me but pushing me back really made me ineffective this was the third play by the way this was not the first

there were two other plays where they had failed to score, but I never could understand why the referee was pointing to the ground to get off, because in international rules, as long as the player can go backwards, backwards, you don't have to get off the line.

So it was a, it was, you know, when they were not speaking English and they were not clear what they meant, the last thing you want to do is end up having a technical foul.

But it was a, it was a comedy of errors, but it was really,

it was a Cold War battle. I mean, I said Richard Nixon and Brezhnev could have just arm wrestled.
We didn't need to play a basketball game because that thing was preordained.

We were going to have, if the game got close, we were going to lose it. And

it was really kind of unfair in that sense, because we were young, we were 18 years old,

the Soviets were in their 30s, they were very mature, they were professionals. And yet we came from behind.
We came against odds and we won the game and then it was taken away from us.

It is heartbreaking for us because we really should have had the gold medal.

But it's one of those footnotes in history. The sad part is is that our medals are sitting over in Switzerland.

And I tried to get them to send them to a museum in the United States like the Smithsonian, and they wouldn't do it unless all of our team was willing to accept it. And they're not.

I am reminded of something else I found in my research, which is that you personally asked then Hawks owner Ted Turner to trade you to Washington.

This is toward the end of your career because you want to run for Congress. That's right.
Which I believe is not a thing that has ever happened otherwise. You were playing for the Bullets.

It was 1986. I mean, you had just won NBA Player of the Week, according to the records we just reviewed.

You were playing alongside Manut Bull, speaking of great international players, speaking of athlete activists. A level of player empowerment, Tom, that is probably historical in its own right.

You running for Congress while doing all of that.

Well, the history potent, I had gone to Oxford and I was a chemistry major at Maryland. So

I was a valedictorian in my class. I was a chemistry major.
That's very hard to do as a basketball player. And then I went to Oxford and I studied politics, philosophy, and economics.

I said, you know, I came back and I got very interested in politics. And so after coming back from Oxford, I said, well, you know, I'm going to run for Congress.
And so I bought a house in Maryland.

I spent my summers there. I campaigned and went around.

got to know everybody. And then I went to Turner one day and I said, Ted, I love playing for you.
He's such a great owner. And I said, but, you know, I really want to run for Congress.

Would you send me to Washington? And by God, he did a couple of months later. And funny enough,

when we were, I was on the telecommunication committee and we were, we were going over a cable bill on the, on the floor of the house.

And I remember Turner reminded me that I wouldn't be here without him. So he asked me for my support.
But it was a great story.

I mean, the fact that running for Congress when I was in the NBA, I announced for Congress before the season. I played a whole year as a candidate for Congress.
And then I left the NBA in May.

My primary was in May, and I was elected in November, by the way, the closest race in the country that year. So I don't think anybody's going to do it today.
I don't think the NBA would allow it.

I don't think the teams would allow it. It was just fortunate that I had owners that allowed me to do this.

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Do you remember who your first two campaign donors were in terms of the $1,000

donors, Tom? Who the first two were in your political career? Well, technically, Trump was one of the earliest,

believe it or not. I remember I went to New York and I got $1,000 from Trump.
You know, I can't recall. It's been so long.
We have NBA Commissioner David Stern

as one of the other early ones. David was a very early supporter, and that's right.
And a number of the NBA owners were contributors of mine.

All throughout the NBA, there were a lot of very wealthy owners who happened to be, have Democratic inclinations, so they were supporters of mine as well.

I'm going through your Twitter account and you are a man about town.

I mean, the era of early 87 to early 93 when you're in Congress, the jock caucus, this is like an all-time high watermark for athletes also being politicians.

This is post-Reagan, and here's the photo. Do you recognize these men that you're posing with at Capitol Hill? And they're all iconic.
Jack Kemp, who I was very close to. Jim Bunning, great player.

We came in the same time. Mo Udah,

real legend. Bill Bradley, of course, who I played with on the Knicks and myself.
It was really

quite a group of

athletes, and they called it the Jock Caucus. I don't think that we've ever had that many.
high-profile athletes in the Congress. And, you know, I mean, it was very bipartisan.

I worked worked with Jack on a lot of stuff. Of course, Bradley and I were Democrat.

Jim was a Republican, and the other three of us were Democrats, but it was very bipartisan. Right.

I mean, so Jack Kem, for those who don't remember, this is an MVP quarterback for the Bills, AFL MVP, turned congressman, future vice presidential pick of Bob Dole.

Jim Bunning, of course, the Hall of Fame pitcher, then member of the House and the Senate out of Kentucky.

Mo Udall, you just referenced, a star player out of Arizona, played for the Nuggets in the NBA. Bill Bradley, aforementioned, and you, the congressman from Maryland.

And the thing about just like sports and policy at that point, I think it's fascinating to see what you were trying to do as a matter of legislation.

I mean, at one point, you proposed a bill that would have taken TV money and turned it into a monthly stipend for student athletes. That's also part of your story.

Well, it was to restore an antitrust monopoly for television for college sports. It was lost in in the 1985 Supreme Court case.
And to spread that money around more evenly.

And by the way, that's there people are trying to do that today, 35. That's why I bring it up.
And it was really meant to be a conditional antitrust exemption tied to reforms.

And by the way, Senator Maria Cantwell has that bill in the Congress right now. And she talked to me last summer when she was putting it in there.

But, you know, Bradley and I, we were two of the three that passed passed the student right to know bill,

which was the first college sports bill that required universities to disclose graduation rates, not only of their athletes, but all their students.

And believe it or not, the NCAA fought that at the time because

it was a consumer item.

Look.

You ought to be able to, a parent ought to be able to tell how a college is doing graduating their athletes and their students. And so it passed.

And then I got the idea of doing something bigger, which was this antitrust bill that

I proposed. But, you know, as I said, when I put that bill in, I said, this is like a time capsule bill.
People will pull it out 25 years later. And I said that at the time.

And believe it or not, Sarah Cantwell called me last summer. So that's actually 30 some years.
So I was slightly off on my time capsule calculation.

But the time capsule that we're exploring here, I mean, that's a bit of a through line in this episode. It takes us back now.
November 92, you have just lost your bid for re-election.

You got redistricted. And at that point, by the way, I'm just curious, did you think you would work in politics again?

I'm just curious what the ambition level was after something that must have been frustrating.

It was very frustrating because we had a Democratic governor in Maryland, William Donald Schaefer, who actually created a Republican map.

And I lost my seat because of

the, you know, the need to create another minority district in Maryland. But if we would have a Democratic Democratic governor, I would have still, I'd probably still be, I might still be in Congress.

But, you know, when I left Congress, I became a presidential appointee to Clinton.

I took over for Arnold Schwarzenegger as head of the president's council, along with Florence Griffith Chainer, a joiner, the president's council on physical fitness and sports.

I had served on that as a member under Nixon, and now I was chairing it with under Clinton. And I had known Clinton because he had went to the same college I did at Oxford University College.

So I've known him since 83. I was one of his earliest supporters.

And quite frankly, the council is a very highly regarded, highly sought-after position in an administration because you could actually spend some time with the president. You go running with him.

You get to, you know, go on his helicopter once in a while. And so it was kind of a fun, fun gig for a while to do that.

And by the way, the president's council on physical fitness and sports is again sort of back in the news. Trump has all of these appointees that he's put on it.
This is Triple H, the wrestler.

This is Bryson DeChambeau, the golfer. It's Nick Bosa, Harrison Butker, Lawrence Taylor, Alexi Lollis, Wayne Gretzky, Mariano Rivera, Tony Romo.

Like there's a whole, again, just like this other sort of roster that Trump has put together. But I'm just imagining like what it's like to leave politics in the way that you had.

And you're sort of like searching around. Did you want to be an ambassador at one point? Like,

how does that work? You get to figure out like, hey, if I could be appointed to some cool country, is that something that you were interested in?

I thought about it, but when I left and went into the Clinton administration as an appointee, I was offered some other positions

that would have been full-time in the government. The president's council wasn't full-time.
So it would have been the park service and different jobs like that. I decided I wanted to take a break,

but I never went back and ran for office again. But, you know, I've been very active politically, but just never ran for office again.

When I look at the Council on Sports and Bill Clint's Council on Sports, your time on that was cut short. Why was that? Could you explain what happened there? I had served a number of years

and

I really, I

pretty well served through his term, but I did leave a little earlier.

I really can't recall the reason. It was just,

you know, a lot of times I forget,

I can't really recall, quite frankly.

So, I just got to interrupt here for a second to read from an article that we found in the Baltimore Sun from November 1997.

Quote: Former Representative Tom McMillan of Maryland was forced to resign as chairman of President Clinton's Council on Physical Fitness and Sports yesterday, three days after armed federal agents raided the Capitol Hill offices of the health management company he heads.

The White House action occurred amid a federal investigation to determine whether the company's clinics had fraudulently billed government health insurance plans for chiropractic care as though it were for traditional medical care.

An aide in the White House personnel office telephoned a former acting U.S.

Attorney General, who was representing Macmillan, to instruct Macmillan to resign from his unpaid position as head of the Presidential Advisory Council. End quote.

Now, I should also note that this healthcare company apparently never got prosecuted as a result of that government raid. And so we did follow up with Tom McMillan about all of this.

And what he wrote in an email, in part, was this, quote,

I was never involved in the investigation and never even interviewed by the investigators.

It was a failed and hyped investigation by the feds, and the case was dropped with no charges filed against the company or its officers. I left the president's counsel to pursue other opportunities.

End quote.

But here, I think it is also worth pointing out another thing in Macmillan's biography from earlier that same year, 1997.

This in the lead up to the reportedly forced resignation from President Clinton's counsel.

Again, according to the Baltimore Sun, quote,

last summer, Macmillan was arrested after a confrontation with a female friend.

The friend, who had accused Macmillan of shoving her down a flight of stairs, later took back her story and police did not press charges. End quote.

Now, the Washington Post had separately and previously reported that on that night in question, police had found lamps busted, a coffee table tipped over, wooden stairwell slats broken, and a glass bathroom door shattered.

The woman, who would later become Macmillan's wife, appeared, quote, visibly upset and was bleeding and bruised end quote so we also asked Tom McMillan for comment about these reports of that initial allegation and in an email he wrote in part quote we are happily married this story is totally false

end quote

and this brings us for the moment past the 1990s and into Tom McMillan's re-emergence following all of that as a public figure and back into a different kind of politics this time.

College sports.

The biography of your life is so full. You go on to work in private equity, Homeland Security after 9-11.
I mean, this is an era of like bipartisanship that is quaint to imagine now.

Bygone is another way of putting it. It brings us to 2017, by the way, when you launched lead one.

And this group, I'll summarize it. You tell me if I'm getting it right, because it's a bit complicated, but also quite simple.

It's a lobbying group for athletic directors at the big-time power football schools, right? This is post-O-Bannon. This is post-the Ed O-Banning case moving through the courts in 2015.

That case, of course, ruled ultimately that the NCAA amateurism rules were effectively illegal. What was your theory of this organization?

What were you trying to accomplish when it came to being a student athlete, but also a student in a real way? It wasn't a lobbying organization.

We were not registered as lobbyists, so we didn't really do that. What we did do, this was the vision of Jack Slorbrook, who was the AD at Notre Dame.
And,

you know, he felt that the division, well, the FBS schools needed to come together. and to work on these issues in a more collaborative fashion.

And it was Jack's vision that by bringing ADs together and coming together on policies that they may have, you know, common visions on would be a productive thing for college sports.

So I ended that up. But it was a,

it was very interesting at the time because we really were trying to get these big-time colleague deaf leg programmers to collaborate together.

And The conference structure makes that very difficult because they're all

competitors on the field and many times they're competitors off the field as well. So

it was an interesting experience. I learned and met a lot of people.

I got to immerse myself back into college sports.

You know, I wrote, I mentioned something

we didn't talk about it, but I wrote a book when I was in Congress called Out of Bound, which

talked a lot about these issues. And here I was able to be in the kind of more of a leadership role.

That was interesting several years of my life.

Just to bring us back, this is the inaugural gala, January 2017, this gala at the Trump International Hotel. And this is one of those things where I'm...

We never did that. We talked about it.
We never actually had an event at the

Trump Hotel.

It never happened. We talked about it, but it never was never

transpired. But we talked about the, you know, trying to get presidential buy-in to some of the things we were doing, but

we never went ahead with that

event. We did have our annual meeting, just never at Trump Hotel, never at the Trump Hotel.
Okay, got it, got it, got it.

What I'm trying to sort of understand is just the reality of working in politics during this, now the second administration, but during that first one, it seemed like there is, of course, a political strategy to, if we're going to try and be an effective organization, we need to know how the bread gets buttered, where, in fact, we need to go meet the president and his allies.

I bring us to Twitter because I was just reading through something that you were talking about in terms of Donald Trump, which is the Commission on College Sports, the Presidential Commission on College Sports, which you praised him for.

Because I think this is an idea, by the way, speaking to your personal previous history, you had personally called for this conversation and for this commission almost specifically. Yes.

Matter of fact, back in 2013, 14, I helped former Congressman Jim Buran, who's my partner now, to,

he introduced a bill.

He introduced a presidential commission bill that was modeled exactly like the Olympic commission bill back in the 70s that ended up producing the kind of the modern United States Olympic structure.

And so I helped him write that. We actually copied, we use the same structure from that Olympic bill in Congressman Moran's bill.
So when it was discussed again, I was very much an advocate for it.

I thought bringing folks together in a kind of high-level commission, I saw it work in the Amateur Sports Act in the 70s. I thought it could work for college sports.

The Amateur Sports Act was very successful in reorganizing the modern Olympics. And that was the aftermath after Munich, when the Olympics were a mess.

Congress decided they were going to create this presidential commission. The commission met for four years.

Jerry Ford created it and they produced this legislation that modernized the Olympic movement. I thought something similar could be done in college sports.
And

that's why I was pushing it. So, you know, when the president talked about it, President Trump talked about it, I said this would be positive.

The problem today is that it's so partisan that commissions are really difficult to make work.

So, not sure that the idea is as meritorious as it was in the 70s, but it's something I thought would bring these issues to a high level and hopefully have some deliberation on.

But it hasn't happened, I don't know if it will happen.

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When I continue to scroll through your timeline, by the way, and I'm thinking about the lead one job and how you're back in the mix.

And so there is Ted Leonsis, the owner of the Washington Wizards, the Mystics and the Capitals in May of 2019 with you.

There is Adam Silver in May of 2019 as well, the selfie that you took at the Economic Club, talking about, I believe, esports and one and done and these other issues, as you put it at the time.

Are the commissioners, I mean, is Adam somebody that... you're close with, having been around, of course, sports and politics for a long time.

Well, I wouldn't say I'm close to him, but I do see him from time to to time. I saw Commissioner Goodell yesterday.
I was at a funeral for Paul Taglibu.

So I serve on a board with Commissioner Goodell on the National Football Foundation. So I'm proud to be on that board and the commissioner's on that board.
And

so I was good friends with Paul Taglibu. And, you know, I talked to Adam from time to time.
So I do have some

connectivity there. Look, the Rolodex of Tom McMillan, I mean, it brings us now now to August 2019.

And this, in terms of fact-checking, I just want to make sure I understand correctly because this is from page 80, Tom, of the exhibit. This is the Virginia Jufrey versus Ghelane Maxwell case.

It produced the black book, Jeffrey Epstein's Black Book, as it's been called.

And I just want to,

I mean, look, the names in here. It's Robin Leach, Mr.
Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous, the Champagne, Wishes, and Caviar Dreams Guy. Did you know any of these other people?

Well, no, I don't. No, I think I met Robin Leach maybe once, but I didn't really know him.
I mean,

I didn't socialize or have any real relationship with him. But as I said, Jeffrey, Jeffrey had been around the scene for a long time.
He was,

I never saw the craziness in his life. I didn't really deal with him much, but he,

you know,

he collected people. And that's obviously from his diaries and all that.
It's pretty apparent that he continued to do that all the way to the end. So what was it like?

I'm just trying to understand as a human, what's it like when you see your name with two entries in that black book? You're listed, C.

Thomas McMillan, as chairman and CEO of the risk group, but then also elsewhere just with your Landover, Maryland address. What is your reaction when you realize that you're in these papers too?

Well, I'm not surprised. I mean, that address goes back to probably the early 90s.
So, I mean, as I said, you run into people like this.

He was a collector of people. He had a staff of secretaries.
They probably kept all these names up. I didn't have

much correspondence with him or anything else. But, you know, he knew a lot of people.
There's no question about it. But

I mean, it's just the way it goes. I mean, you can pull anybody off the street.

And

if you go through that book, there's thousands of people in it. So it's just part of his

MO was to collect people really more than anything else. And, you know, as he got wealthier, I think over time, the people that he hung out with were, you know, Bill Gates and those kinds of folks.

And so I don't even know what to say. I think it's very sad.
I feel terrible about the victims. And,

you know, I hope that all this stuff comes to light and that there can be resolution to it. So.

as your name gets circulated in these ways that are not like super obvious, but I think people who know you, I just wonder like, I'm seeing this photo with you and my personal dear free enemy, Mark Cuban.

Yeah. And, you know, Mark's not a Trump guy.
Are these guys giving you, are the billionaires giving you shit for any of this? Not sure.

I mean, I was. The picture of me was like coming into a party with my girlfriend 34 years ago.
So I'm not sure what the implications of it all are. It's a, I don't know.

I mean, this is, I mean, this is like, it's almost 35 years ago. I can barely remember any of this.
So,

no,

I saw Mark Cuban at a political event. We had a great chat and he gave a great speech and really happy to engage him.

And to be clear, you've said very lucidly that you haven't interacted with Epstein since the 90s.

And just to sort of summarize, of course, for people who aren't familiar, he pleads guilty in 2008 in Florida to prostitution-related charges involving a minor.

He's ruled a registered sex offender in 2011 in New York. And now

I just need to examine. So, in November, the Epstein files that get released by Congress.

I don't know if you're familiar with this email, but I'll show it to you. This is an email.
The subject is Tom McMillan. Have you seen this, Tom, before I read it out? Because this is is one.

No, I it's so crazy. I mean, I have no idea where this comes from.
You know, it's some, I'm just trying to think who it is. Uh, so it's blacked out.
The from is, is sort of redacted on this copy.

It's January 22nd, 2013.

Yep. And I really don't know.
I don't know. I mean, it's just strange to me.
None of that would be make sense to me. So I have no idea.
So it's just crazy.

I'll read read it because it does verify something that you said though it says hi jeffrey i saw tom macmillan last night and he asked about you said he lost touch he's tight with the obamas and is going to be an ambassador apparently any country he wants so great exclamation point i'd love all caps love to be an ambassador and i'm going attempt to raise enough money on the next election cycle His info is redacted and redacted.

I hesitate to give him your info without your permission. I'm doing Aspen Institute Socrates Society program over President's Weekend.

If you're in Aspen, exclamation point, miss you, exclamation point, love and happiness, comma, Gwendolyn. Are you? I have no, I have no idea what that's all about.

I mean, really, I wouldn't have said any of those things. Just crazy.
I mean, it just doesn't. I have no idea.
I mean, it's, it's like

you're,

I can't even respond. I just don't even know what it's about.
Yeah. As a, as, as a fact-checking concern, I mean, the Gwendolyn in question.

yeah do you have any guess as to which gwendolyn it is no but they unredacted the email and it's a woman named gwendolyn beck

yeah do you know gwendolyn beck um

there's a gwendolyn beck that lives that ran for congress in virginia i think that's the one that she had some relationship with jeffrey

yes

we have i've run into her over the years but i don't know her well she did run for congress in virginia jeffrey epstein Epstein was a political donor to her campaign. She was listed in.

He ran as a Republican. She's pretty,

I know she's a big, I guess she was a candidate on the Republican Party. That's what I remember.
Yeah, she was listed in Epstein's Black Book under, quote, Massage, Florida.

Her name shows up 13 times in the manifests of Jeffrey Epstein's plane in the flight logs. Virginia Jufrey claims, quote, she was involved in some of the orgies with Epstein.
and so just

that character and the flight logs listing her yeah it's just gwendolyn back otherwise no no recollection of of her

i i think that i think we're getting into this crazy minutia well i spent 35 years ago i just move on and uh happy to talk to you about a lot of things but this one's like uh it just gets it gets tired people focus on this and you know it's just, what do I say?

I say, look, I haven't been involved in this thing for 35 years. So let's move on.
Totally understand.

And there's just one more thing because I just need to make sure I understand it for fact-checking reasons to clarify. Let's move on.
Yeah.

Let's move on. I really didn't do this interview.
They hashed back something 35 years ago that I barely remember. So totally understand.

It's just irresponsible of me to not ask the question about this is Epstein plane flight logs, January 29th, 1993.

This is two months after the party at Mar-a-Lago that we showed when you were talking to Glenn Maxwell right behind Trump and Epstein, three weeks after you left Congress. Do you recall this flight?

This would be from D.C. to Atlanta to Palm Beach? No.
Because your name is listed there next to Tommy Quinn.

I don't. I don't recall, and I don't think it's accurate.
So I don't recall. Yeah, there's a second line there.
It says Tom McMillan parentheses, Congressman.

So I'm just trying to make sure I just responsively to clarify what's happening. I don't

not true. I don't recall any of this.

Is Tommy Quinn somebody that you're close with?

Well, I please, can we move on? I mean, this is just, I thought we were talking about sports and stuff. This was stuff 35 years ago.
I don't have any relationships here moving on.

So I'm going to leave. I'm sorry that, I mean, I wanted to talk about the good things and some of the things that, you know, about college sports and so forth.

I I mean, this stuff's 30-some years old. Yeah, and I can't.

I consider you an important person in sports and politics. And so, for me, to tell the story of the time capsule of your life, it just requires me to understand.

I don't recall any of this. This is so long ago.
I bet you you don't recall 35 years ago. So, let's sign off.
Give me your final question. What is it?

Is there any final comment based on what I've shown you that you'd want

to express? I have said I have

any relationship with him since the early 90s. So I think that's it.
And, you know, I mean,

a lot of people

knew him.

I barely knew him. And so

let's move on. Okay.
Tom McMillan, I appreciate your time if that's how you want to end it. I just need to be thorough in my understanding of somebody who I consider a historical figure.

No, I just, I just, we'll move on. I really, I said I would do this for an hour.
So we've got it for an hour. So that's fair enough.
The Honorable C. Thomas McMillan, thank you so much for joining us.

I appreciate your time.

No problem. Thanks.

Before I can let you go here, I do need to just follow up on our follow-ups, some of which you've already heard earlier in this episode.

Because after this interview concluded, we decided to email Congressman Tom McMillan a series of questions in an effort to double-check our facts and also just make sure that we get this whole story correct.

And earlier today, this morning, Tom McMillan replied.

Saying that he was, quote, disappointed that the primary focus of the interview and the follow-up questions was a combination of Epstein and 30-year-old incidents that were insubstantial but could be made to look bad.

In addition, the interview went well past the 20 minutes I've been asked to do, running at least twice that long. End quote.

And so for a second here, I just got to jump in to very briefly point out that Macmillan agreed in previous emails to an hour-long interview, which our conversation was, but I digress back to his email.

Quote,

I ended the interview in a manner that could be made to look abrupt. And when I did so, I also made it very clear to Mr.
Torre that I felt misled about the substance of the interview.

The interview seemed to be looking for gotcha angles and not substance. End quote.

And so here I should also point out, for transparency's sake, that Congressman McMillan is referencing the original interview request that we made, which was, to be very clear, written before the tens of thousands of new Epstein documents were made searchable in those public records, in those databases, having been released by Congress.

And so my curiosity at that point simply hinged on what the hell it's been like to be the guy in the background of that infamous video with Donald Trump and Jeffrey Epstein.

To quote the email a PTFO producer sent Macmillan, quote, Pablo is really interested in getting to know you.

Yes, it's technically because Epstein is in the news, but no, it's not because of any gotcha angle.

Sounds like there's not much to that old party video, or at least your presence in it, but Pablo is legitimately curious about your multi-hyphenate post-playing days and what you think of how Trump interacts with sports these days.

End quote.

And so, as for the actual substance of our interview, which I do believe strongly is in the public interest, McMillan also did write us this in response to our follow-up fact-checking questions.

Quote, I never had a close relationship or what I would characterize as a friendship with Epstein, but have known known President Trump for about 40 years since he donated to my first congressional campaign and was on his guest list for various parties back in the early 90s, including the party to promote Mar-a-Lago that was filmed by NBC in November 1992, where my girlfriend and I entered the party at the same time as Epstein, then stopped to talk with Mr.

Trump while Epstein separately went into the party. I might add that this video and the story around it were widely reported in the press six years ago, and my explanation was the same as now.

End quote.

But on account of the newest wave of Epstein files, which again were released by Congress in the public interest and are publicly searchable for the world to see, Trump and Epstein also were not the only names we mentioned in this episode in connection with Tom McMillan.

For instance, Gwendolyn Beck, the woman who emailed Epstein about Macmillan in 2013, years after Epstein had become a registered sex offender.

Gwendolyn Beck does not simply appear a dozen plus times in the flight logs.

There is also this photograph I found where Beck is at another reception at Mar-a-Lago in 1995, standing right next to Ghelane Maxwell and Jeffrey Epstein.

And then there's this other photo from yet another party at Mar-a-Lago in 2000, which shows Beck standing between Epstein and Prince Andrew and Melania Trump.

Now, when we asked for further comment about Gwendolyn Beck, Tom McMillan wrote this, quote, As to the 2013 email that Pablo showed me from an acquaintance of mine to Epstein about her having run into me, I have no memory of any encounter, doubt that I am the one who brought up Epstein, and with respect to the comments about me securing an ambassadorship in the Obama administration, know that since I never discussed the possible ambassadorship with the administration, given my strong support for Senator Clinton's presidential bid in 2008, I don't think I would have even been considered for such a post.

It's highly unlikely that I brought up the topic with my acquaintance. End quote.

Now, we here at PTFO also reached out to Gwendolyn Beck with a very detailed list of questions, and she did not respond.

But in 2015, when asked why Epstein donated to her congressional campaign in Virginia, for instance, Beck told a local news outlet that she'd managed $65 million of Epstein's money when she worked at Morgan Stanley, and then proceeded to claim, quote, I haven't haven't spoken with him personally in years, end quote.

All of which brings us, of course, to yet another email Beck sent Epstein in the files, this one from 2017, asking to be considered for, quote, any special panels or commissions President Trump is forming.

And then Gwendolyn Beck closed with this: quote, Let me know if you get to DC.

Would love to see you.

Three exclamation points. Miss you and all the great times we had.
XXXX

Gwendolyn.

To which Jeffrey Epstein personally replied six minutes later, quote, great news.

But as for the other name, the last name, I asked Tom Macmillan about. This, the name right next to the congressman's on those flight logs from January 1993, Tommy Quinn.

You should know that Tommy Quinn also appears in Epstein's Black Book, where he is listed as Thomas H.

Quinn of Venable Law Firm, where, by the way, as of today, his bio states that Quinn, quote, offers representation in matters before the Federal Reserve Board, the Comptroller of the Currency, the U.S.

Treasury, the Banking, Finance, Commerce, Energy, and Ways and Means Committees of the U.S. House of Representatives, and the U.S.
Senate, end quote.

You should also know that that Tom Quinn appears in a couple other flight logs that I found, apparently with Jeffrey Epstein himself.

And when we followed up about these flight logs, complete with screenshots, to Tom McMillan, he wrote this, quote, I still do not remember ever being on Epstein's plane, including in January 1993.

Tom Quinn, a longtime friend of mine and a lobbyist with Venable in D.C., whose clients included Epstein Client Limited Brands, also couldn't remember the January 1993 flight, but he does remember himself personally taking a flight to Daytona Beach on Epstein's plane in August 1992.

We do not know if Epstein offered us seats in January that we ended up not using, so the logs are in error, but in either case, it appears from a Palm Beach Post story that I dug up that I was traveling to Palm Beach at that time to attend another Trump Mar-a-Lago promotion party, this time filmed by ABC.

Unlike the November NBC party, I have no specific memory of this party.

End quote. In an email, when contacted directly, Tom Quinn told us that he was, in fact, on that Daytona flight in 1992, the one listed with Jeffrey Epstein on it.
But he said simply, quote, no,

end quote, in regards to the January 1993 flight with his friend Tom McMillan.

And all of this.

At the very end here, leaves me with one more video for you. A video considerably more obscure, I'd say, than the one we started this episode with.

And this one comes thanks to a different kind of public record. A blog that I found on blogspot.com titled Hollywood on the Potomac.

And what you can see here is Tom McMillan toasting the host of his 60th birthday party in 2012 at the, quote, Georgetown home of a lobbyist and Democratic strategist whose name may now sound familiar.

Let's give a round of applause for Tom Quint.

And if you keep watching here, you don't just notice the literal icing on the cake, which is a photo of Tom McMillan in his New York Knicks jersey, you will also notice the birthday candles.

Except these candles, it turns out,

are trick candles,

which Tom McMillan proceeds to try and try and try

and try

to extinguish.

Trying so hard, actually, that the icing even gets on his tie and stains the lapels of his jacket.

And after a full minute of fighting these candles, a minute which feels a lot longer, in real time,

the tallest congressman ever finally gives up.

As if he has just realized what's been obvious to everybody watching this.

He can't make them go away.

This has been Pablo Torre finds out a Meadowlark media production.

And I'll talk to you next time.

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